That meant, as a matter of sisterly principle, Indy could not tell her.
“We all come to these crossroads, Bristol,” she murmured. “One way or another.”
And though she’d meant to sound mysterious, the words landed in her as if they’d been carved in stone.
“I can’t tell you what to do,” Bristol said, and again, there was that note in her voice. Maybe it wasn’t rueful, necessarily. Maybe it was a kind of aware that echoed a little too sharply inside Indy just at the moment. “I wouldn’t dream of trying. But I can tell you that I’ve always admired your fearlessness.”
Of all the things her older sister might have said, she hadn’t been expecting that. Indy had a sudden flashback to a particular day of playing games of make-believe with Bristol in their backyard, running around and around the old oak tree that had stood there for hundreds of years. They’d decided it was their castle.
I’m going to be the princess, Indy had announced, though really, she was looking for Bristol’s permission. As the oldest and the bossiest, it fell to Bristol to make the decisions. I’m always the princess.
Bristol had looked back at her with all the bone deep weariness a ten-year-old could muster when faced with a younger sister.
That’s actually because you decided to be the princess, Indy, she’d said loftily. You could decide to be a wizard instead. Or a warrior. You know it’s up to you, right?
Indy could remember that moment so clearly, which was funny, given she hadn’t thought of those games they’d played in a million years. Eight-year-old Indy had stared back at her older sister, a part of her desperate to leap out into the unknown. To take on a role she’d never played before and decide to be whatever she wanted.
But she hadn’t.
Was it really Bristol deciding to get serious about her studies that had sent Indy down this path? Or had she been the one who’d chosen it all along?
Because she’d chosen the part of princess that day, out there playing make-believe. It had been familiar. It had required nothing of her. She could have played that role in her sleep.
In a way, she’d been playing it ever since.
“My fearlessness?” she echoed now. Then laughed. “I guess I fooled you, then. I don’t think I’m fearless at all.”
“Maybe that’s not the right word,” Bristol conceded. “Maybe it’s that no matter if you’re afraid or not, I’ve never known you to let that keep you from doing something. Even when we were kids. You always jumped in, no matter how deep the water was. No matter if everyone and their mother told you not to do something, you wanted to see yourself. And you did. I admire that, Indy. I always have.”
“I love you, too,” Indy whispered.
And then they’d mutually hung up on each other as quickly as possible, so there would be no sniffling.
But her sister’s words stayed with her when she got up from her white chair in the white room with its powerful splash of red. They haunted her as she wandered through the house, looking for Stefan the way she did more times every day than she would have imagined possible. Given that she’d never been one to look for a man before.
He isn’t just a man, a voice inside her chided her. And you know it.
She knew that he’d come back from his run this morning because he’d woken her up then. He’d flipped her over on her belly and had her digging her fists into the mattress and moaning out her pleasure before she’d even opened her eyes.
Indy had never been the kind of woman to claim she didn’t like morning sex. She’d never understood the complaint, because what wasn’t to love? A hard cock moving deep inside her before she was awake, so she fell out of sleep and into an orgasm without having to do anything at all. It was like a gift.
But she’d never loved it more than she did with Stefan, who made it something far hotter and deeper than any mere gift.
Sometimes he used the gym he’d installed on the lowest level of the house after his run, but he wasn’t there when she looked. She trooped back up to the kitchen, eying the ibrik that sat by the stove—the correct name for the pot he used to make Turkish coffee, as he’d informed her when she’d called it that thingie—and even though he’d showed her how to make it herself, she didn’t. Because she liked it better when he made it for her.
She looked around outside, down by the pool and in the gardens. His laptop sat closed on the table in the shade of the rose trellis, but Stefan himself was nowhere to be found.
Maybe you’ll just have to sit here with your thoughts, she told herself wryly. Instead of hoping he’ll distract you.
Indy sat there at the table, because that felt a lot like a challenge. She frowned out at the view, telling herself that she was fearless. Bristol had said so. And surely, if she thought about that enough and didn’t try to avoid it in the heat of another orgasm, her heart would open up wide and give her a passion.
A purpose.
A life she wanted, not the one she’d chosen when she was a kid who didn’t know any better.
And that was where Stefan found her sometime later. With his usual disconcerting telepathy, he set a cup of Turkish coffee before her, as if he’d been standing about invisibly in the kitchen and had watched her decide not to make her own.
“You look distressed,” he observed, his accent washing over the way it always did, like a caress. “What could possibly have happened since I left you, limp and moaning out my name?”
“Many things, Stefan. Many important and exciting things, none of which I’m going to tell you if you’re going to keep bragging about your sexual prowess. It’s so unattractive.”
His blue eyes gleamed. “Is it?”
She laughed as he sat down beside her.
“I like that,” he said.
“What?” she asked, though she was already distracted by his proximity. Indy had never been into the drugs that, he was right, had been a huge part of a great many of the scenes she’d frequented over the years. Strip clubs and all kinds of other parties, in all different countries.
But Stefan was far more potent than any party.
It was amazing what all this time with him was doing to her. Day after day of this. Of them. It made everything seem to take a different shape. Though the way she wanted him only seemed to increase, it was different now. Because she knew that she would have him.
Sooner or later, she would have him again.
It made the waiting hotter.
It made the wanting deeper.
“When you laughed now, you mean it,” Stefan said quietly. “I like it.”
And he didn’t wait for her to react to that, the way he sometimes did. He didn’t study her, tracking every stray emotion as she had it. This time it was a matter-of-fact statement. Then he picked up his laptop and cracked it open.
Leaving Indy there beside him with the sweet and rich taste of his coffee on her tongue, and a new ache in her heart.
It took her some time to compose herself. To gaze at the roses, let their scent fill her, and remind herself that she’d fooled at least one other person into believing she was fearless.
“How did you know that you’d be good at...what you used to do?” she asked.
The look Stefan shot at her was amused. “I did not know. I did it and did not die. Again and again. This is how I decided it was good.” The corner of his mouth kicked up, and she knew by now that it was his real smile. She could see the way it made his eyes gleam. “Also I made money. This was also good.”
“Some people have a calling, you know.” Indy sighed. “Is something wrong with us that we don’t?”
“If you want there to be.” He reached over and tapped her on the nose. “Yes, some people have a calling. But everybody has a life. You are not required to choose your path once, long ago, and never deviate from it again. Maybe those who live that way are lucky. But then again, maybe not. Ma
ybe it is better to try many things, so that when you choose, you know you chose well.”
“Says the gangster who’s made himself an art dealer.”
His smile sharpened. “All art dealers are gangsters, Indiana. Ask any artist.”
That night, everything seemed hotter. Brighter.
She knew by now that the kind of intensity she’d been so afraid of was both better and worse than she’d feared. Better, because it didn’t wreck her and it made everything sing, in and out of bed. But it did ask more of her than she’d ever given before. It was the intimacy of this month together. It was staying put and more than that, letting herself enjoy what that was like. To relax into the time. To do it without daydreaming where she’d go next.
It was the conversations they had, rambling and endless, picking up and carrying on from one hour to the next. From one night into the next afternoon, making her think things like forever.
It was Stefan himself. This wild thing they’d built between them.
And it was worse, too, because it had an expiration date.
But Indy didn’t like to think about that.
It was a long night. Stefan woke her again and again, taking her in every way he could, almost as if he was marking her. Imprinting himself on her and inside her, making her body his so that there would be nothing left of her that wasn’t his.
A thought that made her come all around him, screaming out his name.
The next morning he was there when she woke, looking down at her with a stark expression on that beautiful face of his.
She blinked, then moved closer, searching his gaze as she fit her palms to his jaw. His beard had come in and scraped at her skin, but she loved it. She loved the heat. She loved—
Careful, she warned herself. Be very careful.
“What’s the matter?” she asked him.
“Today is a naked day, foolish girl,” he said, darkly. And she remembered, vaguely, that she’d once complained about that endearment. When now it was like a song inside her, sweet and long. “And it will be intense.”
“Isn’t it always?”
But she had hardly recognized the smile he gave her then. It didn’t make it to his eyes.
“This will be different,” Stefan told her. “Because this will be the last.”
CHAPTER TEN
“STEFAN...” INDY BEGAN.
But he didn’t want to hear it.
Because their month was up tomorrow and the only thing she seemed to want to talk about was how to find her passion.
Meaning, clearly, it wasn’t him.
He was going to have to find a way to be okay with that.
Tomorrow.
“Quiet,” he said now, his voice low. “Today will be a day of silent reflection.”
Indy laughed, and not in the genuine way he loved. “I don’t think that it will.”
“If you are not quiet,” he continued in the same tone, feeling the anticipation in him surge, “I will find a way to encourage you. You do like it when I spank you, don’t you?”
“You can do whatever you want,” she said. “But first—”
“No,” he said, cutting her off. “No first. On your knees, foolish girl. There’s much to do today.”
Indy looked a little surly, but she obeyed him. Because she knew by now that when it came to naked days and power exchanges, he meant what he said.
And she loved that he did. She told him so, but even if she hadn’t, the way she melted in his hands would have done the trick.
“You might want to do something about the insolence in that gaze of yours,” he murmured as she sucked him in deep. “Or you can be sure I will.”
She lowered her lashes immediately, but he knew full well that he would have the opportunity to express himself as the day wore on.
Because Indy loved to play sex games, but she was only submissive when she thought it was hot. It wasn’t a lifestyle.
Too bad, he thought, because if it were, he would simply order her to stay with him and that would be the end of it.
But that wasn’t who he was, either.
He came with a roar, his hands deep in her hair. And he watched, feeling himself heat up all over again as she swallowed him down, then smiled as if she was the one in control.
Sometimes he couldn’t tell either.
And this was the last day, so he knew this was going to go, didn’t he? The only mystery was how she would leave. He didn’t think she would creep away in the night. He thought she would put on one of her performances. A lot of laughter, probably some sweetness, and then she would dance away into what was left of the summer, leaving him here with whatever was left of him.
He would have to find a way to accept that.
Because this was the tyranny of wanting things he couldn’t simply take. This was the problem with the intensity he demanded from her. For the first time in his life, he had something to lose. He would have to live without her, knowing what it was like to have her.
He hated it.
And he took it out on her delectable body.
They both liked toys, so he fitted her with one of her favorites, then made her walk down the stairs with it in. He made her keep it in, so that even the act of standing with him in the kitchen while he calmly made coffee made her blush and shift from foot to foot, moaning a little.
“Do not come without my permission,” he said as he poured the Turkish coffee into two cups and then carried them outside. Where he had her sit in the sun, letting the light dance all over her skin while she squirmed in her seat and looked at him like he was the best kind of monster. “Or you will regret it.”
“I already regret it,” Indy retorted, her voice rough and greedy, just the way he liked it. “It’s torture.”
“It is not. But it could be. Is that what you would like?”
“I would like to talk—”
“A spanking it is, then.”
Stefan pushed back his chair and patted his lap, lifting one brow.
Indy stared back at him, naked but for the way her hair tumbled down over her shoulders. And oh, he loved to watch the expressions that moved over her lovely face. At first she looked mutinous. He saw the distinct flash of her temper. And then, almost despite herself, the heated awareness that became a flush. Her nipples hardened. Her lips fell open.
She muttered something beneath her breath but she got up, crossed to him, and draped her naked body over his lap. Deliberately making it awkward when he knew how graceful she was, as yet another level of protest.
“I’m not really into this, you know,” she told him as he widened his legs to keep her where he wanted her. But could feel the way she melted into him, no matter what she said. “Not when you seem mad. Which, by the way, you do.”
“Yes, I can see how not into it you are,” Stefan murmured, his hands playing between her thighs. He gripped the base of the toy and fucked her with it until goosebumps broke out all over her back and the sweet curve of her ass.
He was not mad. But he did not wish to tell her what he was.
Maybe he didn’t know where to begin.
“Stefan...” she started. Again.
“I told you to be quiet,” he reminded her. “But there are some lessons you do not want to learn, Indiana. Maybe today, you will.”
He removed the toy. And then he paddled her. He didn’t go easy on her, either. He spanked her until her ass was red and she was sobbing with a mixture of outrage and pleasure. And the more she sobbed, the slicker and hotter she got between her legs.
When she melted against him again he pulled her up to bend her over the table before him, fumbling with his trousers before he thrust himself inside her.
Inside her, where he belonged.
Stefan pounded into her, making sure he smacked up against her reddened ass with every thrust.
Then she was coming, sobbing out his name. Then he was too, and it was all heat and intensity and how could she walk away from all this?
Because she was Indy. That was what she did.
He pulled out of her, but she stayed where she was, looking thoroughly debauched, tossed across the table.
“Will you make it?” he asked her dryly.
She didn’t open her eyes. He bent over her, wiping away the moisture beneath each eye, and found himself tenser than he ought to have been—at least until she smiled. Sleepily, but smugly, as if she’d gotten exactly what she wanted.
“That’s almost as good as your Turkish coffee,” she murmured.
Stefan didn’t keep her in the sun too long, but he did keep her naked.
He took her back inside and commandeered one of his sitting rooms. He let her recover from their first round, but when she was awake again and sitting up—if gingerly—he started all over again.
And this round, he really took his time.
Indy finally screamed out her release and shattered. He followed, but recovered far more quickly. He brought her a tall glass of water and some crackers, setting them down near the couch where he’d left her, seemingly dead to the world.
Then he watched her as she slowly came back to life.
First she opened her eyes. Then she slowly pulled herself up to sitting position. She gazed back at him for a time, almost without comprehension. Then she looked a bit more like herself, and reached out for the water. She drank deep, ate a few crackers, and frowned at him.
“I get that you like intensity, Stefan. But this seems over the top.” She considered him for another long moment. “Even for you.”
“Then let us make it more intense,” he suggested. He was already sitting across from her, so he settled into his seat. Then waved a hand. “Make yourself come.”
“Now? Really?” She sputtered a little. “When we just...?”
“Now,” he ordered her quietly. “It may take some time. And I do not want you to close your eyes, Indiana. You will look at me. The whole time.”
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