He twisted his hand and cupped her, blocking her sex from his in the most pleasurable way possible. “Just a second. It’s been a while since I’ve had to use one of these things.” As he twisted away from under her body to rip open the packet, he offered a wry grin. “Had to watch a YouTube video to make sure there hadn’t been any advances on the best method since the last time.”
He’d laid his practical groundwork that carefully? Oh, of course he had. Mack never lost a battle just because he’d failed to get all the information he needed.
It was so lovable, the caution with which he put the condom on. Not unconfident, but paying attention to make sure he got it right. Not something he could do without thinking.
How long had it been since the last time he’d had to use a condom? She hadn’t seen him with another woman in a long, long time. Mostly he seemed to date her, their “dates” to charity dinners and other functions. Nor did he ever talk to her about anyone else, except when he asked for her help fending off a particularly insistent young woman after his money. And Mack talked to her about pretty much anything.
“Hurry up,” she said. “Or I’m going to have to do it for you. And I haven’t been checking YouTube.”
“‘Hurry up’,” Mack murmured, with that deep, savoring tone. “That’s almost like fuck me. Only with huge room for erotic improvement. Come on, Anne.” He rolled back under her, but when she would have settled cautiously back into the position for which she’d been so hot before the interruption, he grabbed her hips and held her off. That fierce, taunting grin. Ha, I’ve got control again. “Say it.”
“Mack.” She tried to twist her hips down against his grip. Big, dominant hands tightened. “You bastard.”
He smiled, with complete lack of apology. “I know.”
“There’s no need to be proud about it!” Again she tried to twist down toward his penis. Again, he just held her, taunting and victorious.
“I am, though,” he said. “People always call me that when I’m about to beat them.” He lowered her hips just enough that his erection grazed her sex. She drew a hiss of breath.
So did he.
But he didn’t break for all that. He controlled her hips and his, shifting them enough to moisten his length against her sex.
She bit her lip, as the need for more washed through her, as her head arched back.
“You could always say it,” Mack whispered his taunt. “Then I’d do it.”
“Mack,” she said between her teeth, straining between need and rebellion. “Fuck you!”
“Close enough. That was my second favorite.” And he pulled her hard and sure right onto him. Just—bam.
Anne drew a great, shivering gasp. For a second, she could only sit, impaled on him, astride. So ridiculous, so vulnerable, so exposed. So invaded.
He stared back up at her, frozen, too. Their eyes held, and he licked his lips, his chest lifting in one huge, shuddering breath. “Anne.”
She closed her eyes.
He jostled her with his hips, sending sensation washing through her. She hadn’t let anyone inside her in so long, she’d forgotten there was even a way in. And here he was. In. Deep and hard and sure.
And her body kept clutching around him, tightening and flexing in this frantic motion, as if it was trying to close over the hole he made. Only he wasn’t about to remove himself and let it.
So her flexing, frantic muscles flexed around him.
And God, but he liked it.
He shuddered, arching his hips up into her. “Oh, shit, Anne, please do that again.”
So—yeah. She did. Again. And then again, as color suffused his face, as his fingers dug into her hips, as he lifted himself up against her, as he fought her for the rhythm.
Hey. This was fun. Giddily, erotically delightful.
She leaned down over him, pressing her forearms against his shoulders and chest as she rebelled against the rhythm his hands tried to impose, setting her own pace.
He groaned.
Yeah, this was really fun.
Malcolm Anthony Corey. In her power.
It might even be that the tiniest movement of her body could be felt all the way through his.
She went very still on him, so that his eyes popped back open, and his hands gripped her to try to get her moving again. Instead, she gave just a little squeeze of her inner muscles.
He flinched and groaned and shoved his hips up for more.
She grinned.
His eyes narrowed menacingly, which was hilarious, really, given how vulnerable he was to her. “Anne, you—”
“What?” she taunted merrily. Energy zinged through her. Sun-filled. Happy. Hungry.
He brought his hand between them. “I think I need to bring another weapon into play.”
She gasped as his thumb touched her already super-sensitized clitoris. Her movements slowed, as the sensation from it washed through her, more powerful even than the sensation of him inside her, or maybe working in tandem with it. Maybe it was all too powerful. Too much.
“Mack,” she whispered, as her eyelids closed out the world, everything but those feelings.
“Don’t worry, Anne, I’m going to,” he promised to everything she couldn’t say.
“Going to do what?” she managed to challenge. Because she still just had to challenge.
“Every single thing I can think of. Or that you can. Just give me your next fifty years.”
She drew great breaths, not sure what to say, not even able to open her eyes. She’d been going to give him her next fifty years anyway. Just—without the sex. Without this much warmth and love and vulnerability.
He rolled them over, his body coming up to dominate hers, to take all the power again. “Oh, and—say it,” he breathed to her. “Then I’ll do anything you want.”
Her eyes flared open.
His were always so damn blue. But this time, under the dark gray eyebrows, in that tan, time-marked face, they were blazing.
“You bastard,” she told him weakly.
He kissed her, his tongue slipping deep into her mouth, stealing that word right back out of it. “Come on, Anne.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled herself in close to his ear. “Fuck me,” she whispered. “You happy?”
He grinned in utter triumph. “It lacked conviction. We might have to practice it some more. That’s okay, honey. I’ve got some ideas about how.”
And he let them both go. All words gone, driven out by the rhythm. His face dark, everything drawn into the pleasure, in her, his thumb against her, until she clawed his back in her fight not to come again. It scared her, it was like a tsunami wave, she clawed to get away. But she lost, it overtook her, she drowned in it, as he drove into her one last time and held on, swirling away in it, too.
Chapter 10
Mack was about as full of himself as a man could be. He felt like marking some victory brand on his skin with the tip of his sizzling finger. Score five million for me.
Score everything.
Shit, hell. Anne Winters! He’d gotten Anne!
He filled up her great whirlpool bath and put her in it while he took a fast shower, far too invigorated to laze around.
“I’m sore,” Anne told him, when he asked her when she wanted to get out. “Go away.” But she was smiling a little when she said it, not quite looking at him, but not looking away. A little…shy? Happy? Ruefully self-conscious? He might have to learn a whole new range of expressions for her.
This one reminded him of nothing so much as a kitten his girls had had, the first time it had managed to sneak through the door outside, stopping still, its eyes going big, its paws cautious, easy for Jaime to scoop back up and bring back inside.
A cautious kitten? Anne Winters?
And yet it was so oddly appropriate. The world looks bigger outside that castle, doesn’t it, kitten? I bet you’ll take to it really fast, though.
Shit, he hoped so.
“Come on, Anne, you can’t tell
me that was worse than one of your boxing sessions.”
“It’s not the same muscles,” she said very loftily and coolly, and he just leaned over the rim of the big bath and kissed her.
She caught her breath at the contact of his lips, and a flush climbed her cheeks.
He grinned. Yep. See? That’s what you just did. You let me in. Now I get to kiss you as much as I want to.
Unless…well, unless she did say no thanks. Unless they went back to just the beach walks.
He sat on the edge of the bath now, and took her hand, joy fading a little before seriousness. Would she do that?
That’d be crappy. He hadn’t quite realized how crappy it would feel ahead of time, to have gotten in, and then get kicked back out. He had a hell of a lot more fantasies to get through, but it wasn’t just that.
There was a trust thing going on. Damn it, he liked fighting, but he wanted to be able to curl up on the couch and cuddle. He wanted to hold hands. Yeah. He wanted someone to just slip her hand into his as natural as breathing, as if that was the best place in the world for her hand to be. He wanted her to come to Paris with him and turn that damn, sterile luxury apartment he and his dad had bought into something welcoming, a second home.
She’d probably fix his apartment up for him anyway, if he asked her, and buy another one for herself while she was at it. The woman had a home-buying addiction. But…he wanted her to be inside the cozy home she made, part of it. With him. A cozy home with nobody but himself and his dad rattling around inside it wasn’t cozy at all. It had no future, a home like that. It became a place where a man didn’t savor the prime of his life, he just dwindled into lonely old age.
Well, hell, if she did kick him back out, he’d just have to keep working at it from another angle, wouldn’t he? Give her a break to get used to it. To miss it, maybe. Come around again from the flank.
It was like anything you wanted to get in life. Even when things seemed to be going well, you plotted for every eventuality and figured out how to win at every single one of them.
“I’m pretty sure Sylvain and Dom have ruined those burgers by now,” he sighed.
She covered her face with her free hand and started to laugh.
His grin came back. This was going to work out. He might not even have to keep fighting the battle for a couple of years before it did, either.
And what was he doing wasting this moment because he was so full of himself he couldn’t sit still? If he wanted a cuddle…no time like the present.
He shrugged the guest robe back off, trying not to wonder whether it was just one of those things Anne automatically kept around, the way she had everything always exquisitely prepared for any possible guest, or whether it had ever been worn by any man but him. If it had, she hadn’t ever let him even realize the man existed, which meant it probably wasn’t his business. He gave the thing a little kick when it dropped on the floor, though, just in case.
The weirdest feeling flashed across him as he slipped into the bath with her—he was almost self-conscious, too. Just for a second, he thought of all the younger men who had pursued Anne. His own damn son-in-law thought she was hot, the bastard. Mack had a strong body. He felt good in it and treated it well, gave it exercise, took it outside to live. But just for a second, he thought of the cocky twenty-somethings she could have instead, if she wanted. That tight feeling he’d had to his skin back then, that suppleness to his every movement, that a man fresh out of college took for granted.
Anne looked up at him as he climbed in, and her eyes widened and widened. Damn it, she really did look like that kitten.
Yes, here we both are, naked in a tub. Naked together. That’s how this works, Anne.
Hell. This was going to be a lot trickier to maneuver than fight-sex. Anne loved to fight. Who didn’t?
But being vulnerable and naked…yeah, that was a lot harder.
“Don’t you need to get back to the barbecue?” Anne asked uncertainly. Not quite fighting him off snappily, but not exactly relaxing her guard, either. Yeah, inside the castle, there were all kinds of musketeers ready to spring to the queen’s defense.
The trick was, of course, don’t make them think the queen is threatened.
A kitten and an ice queen. With boxing gloves. Well, he’d known this would be complicated. He was really good at complicated.
He grinned. To be honest, he kind of assumed he was really good at everything, except losing.
“What’s so funny?” Anne asked, her eyes narrowing a little.
“Me.” He pushed some bubbles her way, let her feel clothed. Leaning back against the edge of the tub, he relaxed, deliberately not moving in on her. “Don’t worry about the barbecue. They’re probably over there debating the best way to ruin the ketchup now. And Dom and Luc don’t really drink, but once the rest of them get started, they’ll be there until six in the morning. Do you know the damn country even has a term for staying up until six in the morning drinking? Cade told me. They call it refaire le monde. Remaking the world.” He rolled his eyes. “I mean, when I remake the world, the world can actually tell.”
Anne laughed again, spontaneously, like sunlight flashing across…well, some very slushy ice at this point.
Must be disconcerting, to feel yourself getting so slushy. He didn’t have that problem. He felt stronger and more intent every second.
He stretched his arm around the curve of the great, round tub and just casually, his arm relaxed against the edge, took her hand. He’d positioned himself so that was all they could reach—each other’s hands, stretched out along the edge of the tub.
He took hers easily, playing with it idly, not holding on or trapping or possessing. Just stroking his thumb over her fingers, running it up between each one. Hell, he’d love a hand rub. Just giving her one made him think about how good it would feel to get one back.
She watched their hands with a very curious look on her face.
“How you feeling?” he asked, and then kicked himself. Christ, what kind of question was that? She might tell him.
But Anne, of course, gave him an appalled look.
That made him grin a little, but it also switched his mood around abruptly. Now he was a little pissed off that she wouldn’t tell him. Which just proved that a man was an idiot to ask a question like that. Nothing good could come of it.
“Sore,” she said crisply. “I mentioned.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Are we going to do this the hard way?”
Her chin lifted a little, a gleam coming back into those moss-and-honey eyes. That brilliant pleasure in a challenge, instead of that shyness. “Possibly, Mack.”
“Anne Lindsey Winters.” He leaned forward in the bath and pointed one blunt finger at her. “We’re sleeping in the same bed tonight. Don’t you even think about using me and dumping me. Shit, I’m not that kind of man.”
She bit back a grin—another one, hell, he was going to run out of fingers and toes to count them on soon. He started to settle back against the side smugly and then leaned straight back toward her, that dominating finger still bossing. “And another thing: I like to cuddle on the couch and watch inane movies that show no conception of the way the real world works, once in a while. Bourne. Star Wars. Not those new dipshit Star Wars. And I’m not putting up with any of that squirming away, putting pillows between us shit, or whatever you might be imagining.”
She stared at him, that gold in her eyes like that early, early dawn sky, as light started to fill it. Little squeezing things were happening at the corners of her mouth that might be amusement or might be something more complex. “What if I like thoughtful, emotional dramas?”
Appalled, Mack sat all the way back, with a swoosh of water around the movement that lapped bubbles at her breasts. Which was about the coolest thing in the world, to be able to enjoy that view. “Since when? Are you kidding me?”
She raised her eyebrows just barely and gave a minute, haughty shrug of her bare shoulders. Again, the bubbles care
ssed the movement. Damn, but he liked that view. That vulnerability of only water and bubbles and her own haughtiness as a shield.
“Well, look,” he decided. “We don’t want to make Dad feel left out. We each get a turn picking one.” If his dad even stuck around here for any time, given his fondness for following the girls to Paris. If he was around, Jack Corey wasn’t going to be picking thoughtful, emotional dramas either, unless he did it just to torment his son. Mack could probably grind his teeth and endure one emotional drama every third movie night. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d had to tolerate someone’s movie choices, given that he’d raised two girls.
Although, to be honest, he’d infinitely prefer watching the Disney movies he’d had to endure with his girls over thoughtful, emotional dramas. Except The Little Mermaid, Jesus. The girls had had the damn thing memorized and would enact it throughout the house. And what the hell kind of role model was that, a girl who dumped her powerful dad to run off with some dipshit with black hair who couldn’t even tell the difference between a real girl and a fake one? And signing contracts like that without even reading the fine print. Christ.
If Pixar and Blue Sky hadn’t started coming out with movies like Shrek and Ice Age, he might have been warped for life.
“Mack,” Anne said pityingly. “Thoughtful, emotional dramas? Seriously? You bought that?”
“Oh, thank God.” Mack slumped deeper in the water in relief.
Anne burst out laughing. Just—laughter. Merry and free and—it was like being flooded with sunlight. That moment when the sun leaped over the ocean and blinded you until you wanted to open your arms to embrace its light but it was too much and it drove your eyes closed.
Hell. He ducked under the water, soaking his head a second, and peeked back up, just his eyes above the water, feeling like a damn frog.
Her eyes were tolerant, her chin superior—and she splashed him.
So he just ducked his head back under and twisted under water, sliding up past her breasts, to lift all the bubbles with his head and brace his arms over her. “Hey.” He grinned down at her.
She scooped something off the top of his head without touching him and showed him the handful of bubbles. “You look ridiculous.”
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