by CR Robertson
Sexual technique was something that you learned and developed over time, until you knew a hundred different ways for a woman to orgasm. Tonight, I wanted to put them all aside and just allow myself to feel and enjoy the sensation of sex without contemplating all the intricacies involved.
“Fine, we’ll try this together.” Then I gave in to temptation and kissed her, swallowing the throaty moan that rumbled up from her chest.
We were in utter darkness, but I closed my eyes and pretended we were in the room in Krakow on the four-poster bed with billowing curtains. If tonight was about fantasies, then I may as well make the most of all of mine.
***
Chapter Sixteen
Cassandra
No one alive knew I held my dead sister’s hand while calling her name for hours. They sent me to counselling, but I never talked about that part of the accident. Somewhere in this mess, I found someone who understood the feeling of helplessness as they sat with a dead loved one while the world continued to turn around them.
His lips were soft and firm, coaxing me to open for him. Heat scorched across my skin as I started to combust from the inside. I’d never been so turned on by a kiss in my life, it was as if his tongue possessed magic that my nerve endings responded to. Without conscious thought, my arms wrapped around him, drawing him down to me. I would forgo sex if he kissed me all night.
Zee’s tongue slid against mine, his lips moving to deepen our kiss. Breathless… I couldn’t breathe because his essence surrounded and infused into me, rendering me a quivering mass of muscles.
We’d had sex lots of times, I would know him by his size and shape moving inside me, but I felt his emotions in his kiss. This was more intimate than sex, his passion pouring down my throat to infuse into my bones. I gasped as his lips trailed blazing kisses down my neck. His nimble fingers undid the clasps that held my breasts bound in lace, his tongue flicking against my nipples to torment them before he sucked them into his mouth.
“Zee,” I gasped, my legs winding around him to anchor myself.
We were lost in our own world where who we were no longer mattered, only the sensations our bodies created were important. I pushed until he landed on his back, my tongue learning every ridge of muscle on his chest. I normally never wanted to be this active a participant in my sexual encounters, but there was something about Zee that made me want to devour him. My fingers traced that delicious V that I’d seen in pictures but never in real life. His cock jutted out hard and strong from his pelvis.
My fingers struggled to wrap around his circumference as I pumped him up and down, my lips teasing his tip, tugging on his piercing.
“I need to be inside you,” Zee muttered, his hands grabbing me under the arms to wrestle me back on the bed. “On your back or your knees?” His lips grazed my ear.
“Back,” I panted. “I want to be able to kiss you.”
The crinkling told me he was ready for action. His lips found mine with eerie precision, devouring me like a man starved of oxygen and he needed to share mine to survive.
When Zee finally entered me, his tip pressed at my entrance and he gently slipped inside inch by exquisite inch until he was seated deep in my core.
“You are so fucking beautiful,” he said against my lips.
“You can’t see me,” I retaliated.
“I can see you with my hands. Your soul touches mine when we’re together. You’re beautiful, Cas, inside and out.”
“Do you call every woman that?” It was silly, but I needed to know.
“You’re the first.” His lips pressed to mine again, and I knew he was telling the truth, because that was what we did down here in the dark. We had found a confidant in one another.
His body undulated over mine, his skin sliding over mine. Zee’s fingers intertwined with mine as he pressed my hands into the pillow on either side of my head. Everything felt too much, the tension building in my stomach from his cock thrusting in and out of me in a slow tribal beat. Emotions began to choke me as pressure accumulated in my chest. I’d wanted him to make love to me, and now that our bodies were moving together, something was shattering inside me.
“Zee,” I moaned, pushing his shoulders until he lay on his back. I rode him, taking him as deep as I could as he held my hips, my forehead pressed to his. My body was so hot I was sure I would combust. His cock rubbed that place that most men needed a map to find, and even then, they got lost.
I gasped as his mouth found my breast, sucking and licking until I fell out of rhythm and arched back.
Zee grabbed my waist, sitting up on his knees with me still straddling his hips. He was barely moving inside me, grinding our pelvises together until I groaned. My arms were snaked around his neck, my legs on either side of his.
“I never want this to end,” Zee confessed. “I want this to be real so much that it hurts.”
“I know. These few nights with you have been the most real of any relationship I’ve ever had.”
His hands on my hips kept our pelvises moving to allow him small thrusts against my g-spot. Perspiration coated my skin as Zee consumed me. I screamed into his mouth as an orgasm radiated out from my core, making my legs tremble and my pussy desperately try to milk him.
When we finally collapsed on the bed, I doubted I would ever be able to move again.
Zee gathered me up in his arms and settled me on his chest, his fingers creating magical patterns that seared themselves like invisible tattoos on my skin. He told me about his business trip to Krakow, his uncle, and his suspicions that his friend had the hots for his cousin. The fingers of his left hand intertwined with mine, holding me in an intimate embrace.
“Uncle Luc will castrate him if he catches him anywhere near her,” he drawled in a lazy tone.
I laughed at the image.
“Anything happen in your world when I was away?” Zee asked.
A smile danced on my lips at how normal this conversation was after what we’d shared. “I won a big contract at work. The client thought he was being sneaky arriving a day early for the meeting, but my assistant and I had everything sorted.” I told him about the meeting and my boss’ reaction.
His chuckle washed over me. “Are you the organising type?”
My teeth bit into my bottom lip. “Just a little bit. I like to bring order to chaos.”
“Maybe you should try organising my life,” he quipped. “I live in chaos, pretending to be someone I’m not on a daily basis.”
“Why can’t you be you?”
He was silent so long I didn’t think he was going to answer. “The world sees the man my father wants me to be. That man is hugely different to the one you know.”
“Which is real?” I whispered, staring up at where his face should be.
“The one here with you.” His fingers tightened on mine. “I have nothing to hide in the darkness, so all that’s left is the man behind the mask.”
I contemplated his words and felt the truth of them in my bones because it echoed what I felt. “Me too.”
A bleep sounded in the darkness and I pushed myself up.
“Relax, it’s my watch telling me it’s two in the morning.”
Shit! Where had the time gone? “I need to go…”
Zee sat up. “You got your last wish, Cas. I’m allowed one too.” His hand traced down my back to curve around my ass.
Which was how I found myself with my hands bound to the headboard and my ass burning from the spanking I was currently receiving. I was the woman who used to read books and roll her eyes at the woman allowing a man to smack her ass. The sting was soothed by his hand caressing over it, his lips kissing every vertebra down my spine in between until I was squirming and moaning. Moisture gathered between my legs as Zee kissed the flesh at the bottom of my back.
Zee had bound me to the bed, but in reality, he’d tethered me to his soul. I would walk away tonight, but I doubted I would ever be the same again.
“Ready, beautiful?”
; “Hmmm.”
His strong hands gripped the swell of my hips as he surged into me, forcing my body forward with the power of his thrust. My mouth fell open and my eyes widened. His hips pounded into mine as if he was trying to engrain himself on me, leaving a permanent mark. He already had in a way that created a lump in my throat.
He grunted with every thrust. There was nothing delicate about this, no loving touches, no tender caresses. Zee was stamping his ownership on me, his cock ruining me for any man who ever wanted to take me in the future. I knew I would compare every one of them to this moment and find them lacking.
His teeth sank into my shoulder, pinching the flesh and making me grip the restraints tighter around my hands. Zee was fucking me like he hated me even as he held onto me like he never wanted to let me go. My body would be sore and battered tomorrow, but my heart would be in shreds.
Megan was right. I should never had come here tonight.
I’d found the perfect man in the darkness, but I’d signed the waiver to say that I could never arrange to meet him in real life. He could walk past me in the street, and I would never know it was him.
My knees hurt and my shoulders slumped in defeat.
“Please, Zee,” I pleaded in a small voice. “Don’t finish what we have in hate.”
His hips slowed their punishing pace and his head rested between my shoulders. “I need to become the man I was before I met you, Cas, or I’ll never survive.”
“I know, but the man I met that first night took me with detached passion, not suppressed violence.”
His cock slowly pulled out of my core before plunging back in at an angle that hit my g-spot. Zee’s hands roamed over my breasts and stomach before they found my clit. He steadily stoked the fire that took me to the heights of erotic suspense before he flung both of us over, our bodies spasming together as we both cried out our release.
When he collapsed on my back, I swore I felt tears trickling down my skin.
We held each other as if neither of us ever wanted to let go. Hours must have passed before we dragged ourselves to our feet. His fingers skimmed over my skin as he helped me dress in my lace and silk.
“Please.” One word that sounded like it was torn from his soul when we got to the room door.
“If I stay, I won’t want to leave and this isn’t what this place is about,” I replied, pressing my head into his chest.
Our route to the exit felt like a walk to the execution block, every step breaking me inside.
“Goodbye.” We stood at the end of the corridor that led to the female lift. Zee refused to speak, so I grabbed his head and brought his lips to mine. We clung to each other, desperation in our touch.
“Please, Cas, we can sort something.”
I shook my head. “Somewhere in the middle of three crazy nights you managed to claim my heart, Zee. What would happen if we continued this?” I placed one last kiss on his lips. “Goodbye.”
He held my hand until only our fingers touched, and they trailed over each other.
I walked away, refusing to look back, my heart shattering into a million pieces. Tears poured freely down my face even as I slumped against the wall in the elevator.
Could you really find love with a complete stranger in the dark?
Without thinking, I thumped the wall and screamed.
How did I let this happen? And how would I survive the pain in my chest?
***
Chapter Seventeen
Xavier
The bag swung away from me with the force of my punch, my leg following it with a roundhouse kick. Anger coursed through my veins and culminated in my fists and feet as I channelled it into the kicking bag in the gym.
Tonight was Michael’s birthday party that was technically his wake. None of us wanted to go, but the Council insisted it would cause an uproar if Ash, Jordan, and I missed it.
“What’s up your ass?” Jordan demanded as he stalked past me.
“Not a damn thing,” I snapped, punching the bag again.
“We’re meant to be strong for Ash because of tonight, and you’ve be stomping about since we got home like a bear with a hangover who’s discovered his honey’s been stolen.”
None of the guys knew about Cas, as they would have given me the same lecture her friend gave her. It was good advice, I just didn’t want to hear it. Two nights ago, she walked down that corridor and out of my life and I couldn’t shake the feeling that something important was now missing.
Dad said he knew from the moment he met her that he loved Mum. Uncle Lucas said the same thing about my aunt. Meeting in the dark was unconventional, but that woman knew more about me than most people who were part of my life.
“Fuck!” I growled and hit the bag again.
The strong hand landing on my shoulder made me jump and spin around. “Are you okay, man?” Jordan asked in a low tone. “Is this about the woman you mentioned at Lucas’?”
I shrugged his hand away and spun back toward the punching bag before he saw the unwanted emotion in my eyes, or the tears that threatened every time I thought about her. “It’s all over, and I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Our life is hard for anyone to adapt to,” he muttered behind me. “Why don’t we get fucked up tonight after the party and forget our responsibilities for a few hours?”
Oblivion sounded perfect right about now.
“I’m up for that,” Ash commented as he wandered into the gym. “Mum is driving me mental with all the last-minute party plans. Apparently, Michael is bringing a girlfriend. Her name’s been added to the guest list.”
“On it,” Jordan said, marching out through the door he only entered a few moments ago.
“You okay?” I stopped attacking the bag to ask my oldest friend.
He stared at me for several seconds, chewing the side of his mouth. His eyes became suspiciously wet before he glanced away, shaking his head. “I watch Mum continuing as if everything is normal and still the same, while I know…” His voice broke and he trailed his fingers through his already messy hair. “She’ll never forgive us.”
“Michael is a grownup, Ash. He knew the consequences for his actions, and he did it anyway. There’s nothing any of us can do now.”
His shoulders slumped and his chin dipped toward his chest. “Dad didn’t even fight for him or suggest we exile him. Would he do the same to me if I displeased him?” His head came up and he stared at me. A tear escaped and he brushed it away with an angry fist.
“We’ve all displeased our dads, but Michael betrayed his. He’d happily have all of us incarcerated so he could take what remained of the Council and run it. He’s been jealous of you being the eldest and heir since he could walk. That level of hatred never goes away, Ash, you know that. Let’s get through tonight and then walk away. The less you know, the less you can torment yourself.”
“I know this is the result of his decisions, but he’s still my brother.”
I sighed and gave him a one-armed hug. “Feel like a bout in the ring before we go up?”
The one thing that men like us understood was violence. The release of energy through kicking or punching a bag allowed us to relax and focus afterward. Ash needed to keep his head off the fact that tonight was probably the last time he was ever going to see his brother Michael. None of us wanted him to die but there would be repercussions if any of us tried to intervene. The Council was archaic, and we were trying to change it from the inside, but traitors were one topic they were never going to change their mind on.
Michael had committed the one sin that there was no redemption for in the eyes of the men who controlled all our destinies.
Ash fought like a man possessed, his fists and feet flying as I dodged and ducked. Normally I would hit back, but today he needed this control. As his friend, I was here to ensure he kept his shit together.
“The little fucker just never learns,” Jordan exploded as he stormed into the gym.
Ash and I stopped to lean against t
he rail and stare down at him in silent question.
“Michael’s guest is an undercover police officer,” Jordan snapped with barely controlled anger. “I’ve doubled security, but she’s here because he’s obviously told her where to go snooping and leave some eyes and ears behind her.”
“Fuck!” Ash kicked the post before turning his back to it, sliding down onto his ass and covering his head with his arms.
Even if Ash’s father had been able to convince them to change their decision, any last hope had just gone up in smoke. Not only had he broken the trust of the Council, but he’d just brought the police into one of their homes and given them access to everyone present.
“Why does he have to be such a dick?” Ash shouted. His head turned so he could see us. “Out of all my brothers, he was the one Dad doted on and gave him everything he wanted without question. The rest of us were made to prove ourselves.”
“That’s part of the problem,” Jordan replied quietly. “He’s developed a sense of entitlement that he can have whatever he wants and there’ll be no repercussions.”
I crouched in front of Ash. “I’d asked Dad to petition on his behalf, but the Council will want to send a message now to anyone who tries to cross them. We need to stay visible within our businesses over the next few days and show no difference to the outside world.”
In other words, he needed to get his shit together fast so that no one suspected we knew what was about to happen.
Ash took deep, gulping breaths and I watched as he donned his emotional armour. His jaw tightened and his shoulders straightened until a creature of no emotion stared back at me.
“This is who we are,” I said. “We are the men our fathers honed us to be. They taught us to love nothing because it can be snatched from you by a cruel twist of fate. You don’t need to go through this alone, Ash. Jordan and I will be constantly at your side.”
He nodded, dragging himself up by holding onto one of the ropes.
“It’ll be quick and painless,” Jordan said, grasping Ash’s shoulder. “I know the end result is the same, but I can make sure he won’t suffer. If some of the Council got their way, he would he tortured for days and his body never found. This way your mum will have closure.”