Refresh

by Suzanne Steele

  Surely she wasn’t alone in her heightened awareness of all things sensual and pleasurable. She decided to put her theory to the test. Blaze was a masterful, skilled lover, but he always held himself in check, the epitome of restraint and control, rarely saying much, even during his own orgasms. We’ll just see about that, she thought.

  Catching him off-guard, she pushed him away and spun around, pressing her hand to his chest to push him back against the wall. He scowled as she dropped to her knees and unzipped his pants. She watched his features soften as she wrapped her hands around his shaft and began to work him. He stifled a groan and laid his head back against the wall, his breathing ragged.

  She clasped the back of his thigh with one hand and worked his length with the other, dipping her head down low to lave her tongue over his balls. She maintained steady eye contact with him as she sucked them, one by one, into her mouth. She decided the view from her knees was outstanding: Blaze’s jaw was clenched and his neck was flushed. Beyond his obvious erection, she could tell he liked what she was doing by the way his hips had begun to pump, as if he was thinking ahead to how it would feel to move inside her. Not so fast, she thought as she ran the broad surface of her tongue up his shaft and wrapped her lips around the bulbous, thick head.

  She loved the beautiful, mushroom head of his cock. His cock was substantial and thick all over, but especially there. The extra girth at the tip always made his first thrust of entry mind-blowingly intense because he had to force his way in, nudging her lips apart to get past that first ring of muscle at her entrance. During oral, she would linger there as she rubbed her lips and tongue over the hood. The swollen flesh became so taut and tender just before he climaxed–like right now.

  “Fuck, that’s good,” Blaze groaned in a burst of uncontrollable dirty talk that had her pussy flooding with creamy heat. “What are you doing to me with that tongue of yours, hmm? You’re driving me out of my mind. So good, so good. Fuck, let me in…” He clutched at her head with both hands, pressing her down, down, down, beyond the tip and down the length of his shaft, over and over. “Fuck, look at you. Take it all the way down. All the way…yeah…fuck, so good…” He snarled as the rhythm of his thrusts grew more aggressive, the pressure on her head more demanding. At the moment of his release, his fingers curled as he clutched her hair and held her head in place, sending hot blasts of cum down her throat.

  His hands dropped away from her head and he sucked in precious air, his arms hanging limp at his sides. Still on her knees, Rain leaned in and relaxed against his body, humming with pleasure. She slid her arms around his hips, stroking his lower back with her fingertips as she nuzzled the thatch of dark hair that surrounded his still semi-hard cock.

  “Do you feel that, Blaze? Feel how incredible it is between us? Even more than before? Something happened to us tonight on River Road.”

  “Yeah, I feel it. Come here.” They moved over to the bed, landing in a tangle of limbs. Blaze removed the rest of his clothes. Her fingers threaded through his thick, dark mane of hair and she felt his body shudder as he entered her. “Mine,” he breathed in her ear.

  She clutched at him as they moved together. The distance that had been of such concern to her was gone. He couldn’t get close enough as he tilted her head and covered her mouth with his. Their tongues collided in a sensual war for dominance. This time it was Blaze’s fingers threading through Rain’s curls. His brutal grip left no question of who was in control.

  “Fuck,” he groaned against her mouth, lifting his head just enough to look into her eyes, his lips brushing hers as he whispered, “I’ve never been harder, never wanted to climb inside you more than I do right now.”

  The visceral sexual connection between them took them deeper and closer than ever before. All the barriers had been broken. There was no room for resentment or any lack of forgiveness, there was only passion and a love so pure that the force of it was palpable in the air around them.

  “Baby, I’m going, I’m so close,” she gasped, savoring the first ripples of release as they wafted along her inner walls.

  Blaze raised up on his elbows, his hands cradling her head and his eyes burning into hers. “Together…”

  She nodded frantically. His nostrils flared with masculine satisfaction as her neck and chest flushed and she cried out. As if on a timer, their bodies shuddered in simultaneous release.

  They clung to each other in the aftermath. Blaze rolled over and pulled Rain onto his chest. She felt boneless, sated, and, yes…invincible. Yes, something was different; something profound had indeed happened that night. She didn’t pretend to understand, but she felt like they could live forever. She wondered if they would.

  Long moments passed, the silence broken only by soft kisses. Her mind was overflowing with thoughts of gratitude and love.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” he murmured against her skin.

  “What?” She tilted her head back to look up at him.

  He rested on his side, elbow bent and head resting in his hand. “I can hear your thoughts, Rain. It’s like you’re talking out loud; I can hear every word.”

  “I don’t know if I like that. Can I hear you?”

  “I don’t know. Try.”

  He leaned forward. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to concentrate. “I don’t hear anything.” She smiled. “I sure feel it, though. Wow.”

  “What do you feel?”

  “Just an overwhelming love for me rolling off of you in waves. You have seriously got it bad for me.”

  He laughed and swatted her behind playfully, but with an undercurrent of raw dominance. “So I hear you and you feel me. Interesting.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on here, Blaze, but whatever it is has changed everything. There’s so much I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know if we died, if we were really in a wreck, or if someone slipped us the same damned mushrooms that gave us the same damned hallucination! And then there’s us having the same vision from that woman’s thoughts. And what was she anyway?! A ghost?”

  Blaze pressed two fingers to her lips and shook his head, chuckling, “Nobody’s slipping anybody mushrooms, I promise. You and I have a lot to talk about, more than we could possibly cover tonight. But suffice it to say that, yes, the wreck was very real. And in a sense, yes, you passed from this world–”

  “But–”

  “–and you came back as part of another one.”

  “Another what?”

  Blaze sighed and frowned as he searched for the words that would help his wife understand her new existence without sending her into a full-blown panic attack. “Well, another dimension, I suppose. A different plane of existence. We operate on the human plane, yes, but the source of who and what we are, the very essence of creation that brings us into existence, comes from another plane of existence entirely.”

  “Wait–what?! You keep saying ‘we’ and ‘us’ and you seem to know a lot about this.”

  “I do. It’s the dimension I’ve existed in for eons, Rain, and now you have joined me there.”

  She frowned, her mouth opening and closing several times without making a sound. She took a deep breath and tried again. “Blaze…what are you?”

  He smiled serenely but Rain couldn’t help but notice that his eyes took on a steely quality that brooked no argument. “I don’t know if I could ever explain it in terms that would make sense. Don’t question the wisdom of the forces at work in all this; just know that all is well. We are truly together now…for eternity.”

  “I’d say you were spouting gibberish, but I saw our broken bodies in the front seat of what was left of the jeep. I watched it burst into flames with us in it. And I was there when I woke up in my own body with you sitting next to me without a scratch, like we had just pulled over to admire the view. And we both saw that…that…whatever she was. So I can’t say you’re crazy because if you are, then so am I. Tell me I’m not crazy, Blaze. Please.”
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  He blanketed her body with his own and kissed her tenderly. “You’re not crazy. I promise. Because I saw it, too. Actually, I saw the whole thing…years ago.” He squared his jaw and his eyes grew solemn.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  He climbed out of bed and began to pace, his naked body tense as he revisited the disturbing, gory images he thought he’d forever banished from his mind. “The first time I ever saw you, I saw a vision. You. Your broken body. Twisted wreckage. Flames. It tormented me. I had to stop it the only way I knew how.”

  “In all the time we’ve known each other, why didn’t you ever say anything?”

  “Because I thought I’d fixed it, damn it!” He reached up and fisted his black hair for a long moment, then straightened and turned to face her. “I knew you were mine from the start. Mine!” He jabbed his finger at his own chest for emphasis, growling the word like a wild animal fending off predators who wanted his kill. “You belonged to me to the depths of my soul, Rain. I knew it and I didn’t question it, but I pursued you like a damn stalker because I thought marrying you would protect you from the fiery death I had seen in my vision.” Blaze sat on the edge of the mattress with his head in his hands. “But I was wrong. Instead of averting disaster, I guaranteed it. At least I was able to be in the car with you. We got through it together.”

  “Maybe that was the point.” She sat close behind him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, keeping her voice low and soothing. “Maybe you were meant to find me so we could, somehow, die together. Maybe that was the only way we could move forward.” She laughed self-consciously and started to move away from him. “I don’t know where that came from. I’m talking crazy. Sorry.”

  He gathered her close and buried his face in her hair. “No, no, you’re not talking crazy. You’re actually making a lot of sense; more than you realize. And I think you’re right. Finding you, marrying you, dying with you, and finding our way back together: I think it’s our destiny. Mere words can’t do justice to the forces at work here, but I guess it would be fair to say that you’re not really human anymore. You’re something…more.”

  “Something more? Wait, hold up, hold up,” she blurted, pushing him back against the headboard and straddling his hips. She held up a hand, her palm facing him. “Wait–so you’re saying that we died tonight and came back to life?!” He nodded sagely. She lowered her hand to his chest, unconsciously sliding her fingertips through the sprinkling of dark hair. “So the damage to the jeep, not to mention our deaths, was done–and undone–by some kind of supernatural force?” Another nod. “Blaze, that makes no sense. Is something like that even possible?”

  “Yes, under certain circumstances. You see, I pushed the envelope a bit, I’m afraid. I married you and brought you into something beyond your mortal understanding–”

  “What the–what?! My mortal–”

  He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “It all makes sense now. Balance had to be restored. It was the only way. I had no warning, Rain. I was as surprised as you were.” At her skeptical glare, he shrugged and nodded once more. “Fair enough. Not quite as surprised as you were, but nonetheless, I had not been made aware of what was going to happen. But I am eternally grateful because this means I get what I wanted in the first place. You. Forever.”

  He made to pull her down toward him, but she pressed against him with the hand resting on his chest. “Stop distracting me. You’re insatiable, by the way. Blaze,” she complained on a groan as he gripped her hips and ground the length of his thickening cock against her pussy lips. “I’m serious…”

  “So am I,” he murmured as he lifted her and angled the head of his cock at her slick entrance. “I’m sure you have questions. Do go on,” he whispered silkily, digging his fingertips into her hips as he slowly impaled her onto his aching length.

  “Oh…just…okay, if what you say is…oh God…true, then why have I never been visited by the spirit of the man you killed? You’d think he’d have a few things to say about it.”

  “Because I didn’t kill him. Shhh,” he said quietly, “don’t move. I need to be inside you while I tell you this.” A few deep breaths as he struggled for control. “I let you believe I killed him so you would fear me. I know I should be sorry, but I’m not. I doubt it was anything more than what the media reported: a carjacking gone wrong. I suppose I let you believe I killed him because I had wanted to so badly. The man wasn’t right in the head, Rain. The way he was following you, I knew I would eventually have had to kill him to protect you. By claiming you as I did, by taking you as my wife, I set a series of events in motion. I can see now that a supernatural force did away with him to remove the threat of you leaving me. You see, fallen angels don’t usually get to enjoy domestic bliss.”

  “Fallen angels? What, you’re like some kind of guardian angel?”

  “Hardly.” He laughed, the sound dark and foreboding. “I had broken the rules. Balance had to be restored. Those events culminated in tonight’s wreck…and, yes, my love–your rebirth and my own.”

  He shook his head and gazed at her in wonder as he began to move inside her. “All this time, I thought I had been your salvation, but I was wrong. You were mine.”

  Chapter Seven

  Electra’s eyes flew open at the sound of the creaky basement door opening. The sedative effect of the drugs she’d been given did nothing to stave off her abject terror at the sound of two men’s voices approaching. They were talking quietly as they descended the steps. Their footsteps paused at the bottom.

  “Well, here they are,” their captor said proudly in his tinny, nasal voice. He looked like the nerdy guy next door. Medium brown hair. Medium height. Medium build. Nothing about his looks was at all unusual or would have caused her any concern if she’d just passed him on the street.

  “All…five of them, eh?” The second voice had a rich, bass, almost unbelievably deep timbre. Electra thought to herself that, under different circumstances, she might have found the voice soothing, even sexy. Especially when he chuckled as he was doing now.

  “Well, yeah,” the nerdy guy replied. “Five. Just five. What’s so funny, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “None of your concern. It’s between me and my little friend over there. Tell me about that one. I want to know about her.” He gestured toward Electra.

  “I thought you might. Yep, that’s the new one, Electra. Some of my best work. Got her just the other night. One of the other girls helped me get her.”

  “How’d you manage that?”

  “A little innocent conversation, then a little Smith and Wesson–how do you think? She’s fiesty, that one.”

  Electra struggled to keep up with the conversation. No one else in the group seemed to be awake, so she felt obligated to gather whatever helpful information she could. Damned drugs. She and the other women had agreed not to drink anything their captor gave them unless it was sealed, so she had felt secure drinking from the unopened water bottle. After all, it was important to stay hydrated and strong if they had a hope in hell of overpowering him and escaping. But the bastard had used a syringe needle to inject their water with a tasteless sedative that had knocked them out for who knows how long. Once again, their captor was two steps ahead of them.

  But the man with him sent a frisson of fear up her spine. Despite her somewhat bleary state of mind, she did her best to discreetly study him, just in case she did get out so she could identify him: tall, athletic build, and blond hair that was impeccably styled. A navy blue, bespoke suit. The high gloss of his leather shoes struck an odd contrast with the dingy lighting of the basement.

  He looked like a doctor or a lawyer, not like a man who would have any reason to be eyeing five women in a cage with such disdain. He dropped to a knee in front of the floor-to-ceiling bars that held her, and rested his forearm on his thigh.

  Her drowsy eyes wandered over his form, settling on the slight expanse of skin visible at his wrist. She found herself thinking that it was
wrong for even an inch of his beautiful skin to be visible for just anyone to see it.

  “Really.” His amused, steady gaze was unnerving, as if he could somehow read her mind. The frosty blue of his eyes was almost more than she could stand, but she couldn’t look away.

  “The fighter of the bunch, I see. Well, isn’t this my lucky day. I do so enjoy breaking a woman.”

  “You should be helping us, not fantasizing about using your sexual mojo to break me,” Electra hissed indignantly.

  He ran a fingertip along one of the bars of the enclosure, never breaking eye contact. She gasped and instinctively covered her arm with her hand. She could feel him touching her, even though his hand was on the other side of the bars. What the hell?! Up and down, up and down, his finger trailed along the metal bar. She shivered. He slowly lowered his hand and wrapped his fingers around one of the lower bars, idly stroking the metal with his thumb. Her breath caught in her throat at the unmistakable sensation of a masculine hand sliding along her inner thigh, and what felt like a thumb stroking her skin and venturing perilously close to her pussy. She bit back a groan of pleasure.

  She lifted her gaze to the stranger’s face. His gaze was fixed on the apex between her thighs. She was painfully aware of her lack of panties. There was no barrier between her skin and whatever was somehow touching her; nothing to stop it from stroking her, entering her, making her come. Nothing to stop it from fucking her. The thought brought a gush of heat to her pussy just as what felt like the pad of a thumb slid lightly along her slit, not disturbing the lips but merely grazing along the flesh that so desperately yearned to bloom beneath his hand. But she knew that couldn’t be possible because his hand was still clutching the metal bar, even as his thumb slid back and forth in a steady rhythm. Electra’s muddled mind couldn’t make sense of how she could be so turned on by a touch that wasn’t even there.

  He raised a sardonic brow, clearly amused, maybe even pleased, by her obvious arousal. “Now, now... Who said anything about sex?” he purred, his voice silky and deceptively soft.