by Aurelia Fray
Breaking the kiss, he pulled back, allowing me to yank the shirt over his head and toss it to the floor. In the glare from the near constant lightning, I looked upon his rippling muscles, filled with the desire to trace every rigid line with the tip of my tongue until he begged me to taste every last inch of him.
He chuckled, as if enjoying my perusal of his body. “You’re turn, my sweet.”
A powerful arm wrapped around me, lifting me up, and with his free hand, Davian tugged my shirt up and over my head. My breasts bounced with the motion, and his mouth instantly sought out his prize. Sucking one pert nub, he laved and bit until I rocked against him once more, driving my wet folds against the smoothness of his skin. The slick warmth between our bodies grew, and I knew I was going over the edge.
The first orgasm rocketed through me, and I let my head fall back as stars danced in the darkness in front of my eyes. My thighs shook as I felt my walls clench in need. I thought, in that moment, that I could die from the pleasure ripping through my body as his determined mouth searched the other breast with relentless pulls and licks.
“Dav-v-ian, I want you. My god, I need you inside me,” I pleaded, feeling more brazen than I’d ever been with the rat bastard or my other exes. Not that there were that many.
A low rumble came from deep within his throat, vibrating against my flesh, and I dug my claws into his shoulders. I felt him lower as the bed sagged beneath our combined weight, and with a gentleness of that had always ached, he laid me out before him—naked and teeming with desire.
His silhouette dark against the glare of lightning strikes, he knelt between my thighs for a long moment, as if drinking in the sight. My body shivered, cold without the heat of his skin, and I reached my arms up to beckon him back into my embrace.
“Greedy witch,” he growled.
Leaning down, he braced one arm near my shoulder as the other worked to tug away the pants still keeping his flesh from mine. When he’d shed the cumbersome clothing, he covered my body, pressing his length into the place where my stomach concaved at the hip.
The almost painful pressure as he slid upward to capture my mouth once more sent filled me with a frenzied need, and I grinded against him. All of him. The glide of his shaft felt like silk over iron, and I whimpered with the desire to have him buried to the hilt inside of me.
However, my lover was in no hurry. Trailing his lips from mine, he licked and nipped a scorching, wet path down my throat, across my collarbone, and over my breasts. His relentless tongue paused to swirl around each nipple as his hands stroked my sides, the bends of my knees, and the insides of my arms. Ripples of electricity seemed to shoot from his fingers, awakening my body in ways I hadn’t known possible. Each tiny shock felt as if I’d licked a fully charged eight-volt battery.
By the time he began a path down the plane of my stomach, I was trembling from head to toe and my thighs were drenched from the pleasure driving me mad. His thumb pressed down on my clit as his mouth worked my inner thigh, and I moaned, thrusting my hips forward. His thumb still in place and his mouth moving in a torturously slow path, he splayed his fingers over my stomach and pressed my hips down.
“Lay still, my love. I want to give you everything you wished for.”
Warm breath fanning across my folds melted my muscles into pools of liquid desire. Helpless, I squirmed under each touch and kiss. He lapped and tasted all of me, except where I needed to feel him the most. All while the pressure against my clit kept my passion strung as tight as a piano string. My body hummed with need, the wet ache between my legs becoming almost unbearable.
I raked my nails against his flesh, the sound of the storm outside burying my moans and pleas. Head tossing from side to side, I bit into the pillow in both frustration and bliss. Every touch seemed to draw the pleasure out and prolong each sensation to the point of torture. I wanted it to continue forever. At the same time, I wanted Davian inside of me, pounding my body until I shattered inside.
Finally, he rose up on his knees, taking his rigid cock into his hand. “Are you ready to feel me, Georgia?”
“Yes,” I cried, willing to beg if that was what needed to be done.
His deep laugh caused me to open my eyes, and I realized the storm had passed, leaving the sky a hazy purple in the coming day. I’d spent hours in the bed with this man, this stranger. I’d let him touch every inch of my body in intimate ways that no other man had. I was naked, spread eagle, and nearly pleading for him to take me. Yet, I didn’t even know who he was.
Fear spiked through me, adding a cold edge to the flames of desire still pushing my hips upward, offering him a sheath for his erection. He slid the head over my slick core, dipping just the tip into my awaiting body before dragging it back up to lie against my swollen nub. All resistance faded, all worry vanished, and I gasped.
“Mmm, yes. Please, Davian. Take me.”
He glided the tip downward once more in a slow tease before gripping my hips and driving deep inside my hungry body. Once, twice, three times he thrust in to the hilt. Pleasure burst behind my closed eyes, and my body exploded around him. Walls clenching his thick cock, I screamed, “Dav-v-ian! Yes, yes. Oh, God. Yes.”
The words became a mantra, falling from my lips in mindless repetition as he yanked at my hips and thrust his own, slamming our bodies together. Harder and rougher than I’d ever been taken before, I felt all inhibition sleep away. The feel of my body stretching to accommodate his girth was both pain and pleasure, and each of his powerful lunges set me into tremors.
A rush of passion dripped between us as he dipped his head to capture my mouth, tilting my hips farther until he filled me at a new angle. My breaths came in furious little gasps as orgasm after orgasm built, erupted, then faded—only to begin again with the next hard slam of his dick inside me.
“Georgia, love. Open your eyes. Look at me. I am your bliss, your pleasure. I am whatever and whoever you want me to be,” he coaxed between grunts of ecstasy. “Look into my eyes, Georgia, meet your destiny.”
Something in his voice, something wrong. I began to crack open my lids, but then I felt the bite of his fingers into my skin, almost bruising. Before I could think more, he dropped his hand between our bodies as he rose to his knees once more.
His thumb pressing down on my clit, he made quick little circles as he drove deeper and deeper. Carried away by the ecstasy building in the center of my body, I threw my arms over my head and pressed my palms to the mattress. With every thrust he gave, I pushed, slamming my hips against his. Each time he pulled backward, I raised to keep him in as deeply as I could.
My moans no longer contained words. Instead, they’d become animalistic noises and cries, punctuated by deep gasps. Our pace was unfathomable as we rushed to join each other in that final plunge over the dam of ecstasy and into the waters of sublime pleasure. Sweat soaked our skin, limbs tangled, tongues lapped and teased. We were one with each other, this stranger and I.
“Look at me!” he demanded once more. “Look into my eyes.” His hand came up, gripping my face with gentle insistent and turning it straight.
Again, I knew the moment I obeyed, I’d regret it. In my head, I chided myself, Don’t you do it, Georgia Dawn Lancaster. Don’t you open you …Oh my God!
The final orgasm hit me like a ton of bricks. I felt like I was flying. The world inside my head expanded, the intricacies of space and time no longer existing. I knew the world’s secrets in that moment and they all centered on the driving cock that pushed me into a bottomless pit of absolute, all-consuming ecstasy.
Davian cried out, his body shuddering as my core throbbed around his cock, and I felt the rush of wet heat fill me as my body greedily clamped down on him. Still, my eyes remained squeezed shut, refusing to open.
“Georgia, please.” The words were half-whisper, half-moan. “Before…it’s…too late.”
The sadness in his tone broke through my chaotic thoughts of fear and sexual bliss. It pulled at my heart and tore my lids open
.
I was alone, lying in my bed naked. The sheets beneath me were soaked with sweat and the stickiness of my multiple orgasms. As I struggled to still my raspy, quick breaths and pounding heart, I stared down at my glistening flesh. I could’ve convinced myself that it had been a dream. I could’ve have filled my head with the notion that my exhibition on the porch and the storm had brought about lucid visions of a mystery lover. I could have, except for the proof that shined out like red paint on ivory.
I watched the red splotches from where strong hands had gripped my body and a hungry mouth had nipped and teased fade almost faster than my mind could register they were really there. The soreness of my thighs, and the tenderness at their juncture did not lie either. I had been with a man only moments before. He had been in my bed, touching me, as my eyes had begun to open. I could feel his residue dripping from between my still spread legs.
“No, no, no,” I mumbled, confusion and denial rushing through my thoughts.
***
I stripped my bed, put the sheets in the washer, and stood in the shower until the water turned from scalding to lukewarm—all in an attempt to cleanse away the fear seeping into my soul and clinging like a cat over a rain barrel. By the time, I wrapped myself up in the thick, terry cloth robe and twisted my hair into a fluffy towel, I almost felt better.
Standing in front of the mirror, I tried to ignore the haunted look in my eyes as I told myself, “Georgia, that was just one helluva wild and wicked wet dream. Quit gettin’ yourself so riled up. Momma would say you were acting like a nervous hen, clucking in your own damn hen house just because the cock’s not been crowing.”
The sound of my voice, too high and too trill, sent me scurrying downstairs. I needed coffee, sunlight, music, and something to distract me from my crazy thoughts. I mean, there was no possible way that I’d just had the best sex of my life with a man that wasn’t real. Was there?
Tired, worn, and feeling the uneasiness creep along my spine like a spider, I grabbed the paper off the front porch. Standing in the early morning sun, letting it warm my cheeks, I felt a little better. The storm had left the air thick and sticky, but the smell of the honey suckles and the sight of the green grass shimmering with left over rain drops lightened my step as I turned to go back in the house.
I locked the door behind me for the first time since I’d moved out to the woods from town, and the ridiculousness of my actions brought a sardonic smile to my lips. “Lotta good that’ll do you,” I grumbled, reminding myself that ghosts could walk through walls.
I sat at the kitchen table, ignoring the puddles of rain water still staining my hardwood floors, and opened up the paper. Suddenly, the already increasing temperature wasn’t so bad. I seemed to have a chill in my bones I couldn’t shake. Even the warmth of the coffee cup steaming between my hands couldn’t seem to force out the cold I felt at the center of my chest.
With a shake of my head, I let my eyes fall to the front page, and I gasped. Coffee splashed as my hands shook, staining the edge of a grainy, black and white photograph. The man from my fantasy, the man I could have sworn had been in my bed only an hour so before, stared back at me.
For a long moment, I was frozen with my breath caught in my lungs so long they began to burn. The headline screamed at me in bold letters, driving the impossible into my mind even as I worked to deny it.
Massive Storm Strikes on Anniversary of Tragic Deaths
Hot liquid splashed over my fingers, and I managed to gasp in a lungful of air. Carefully setting my coffee cup to the side, I tried to focus clearly enough to read the article wrapping around the picture of my mystery man.
Of course, I knew the story. Everyone in St. Martin’s Bay did. Davian Winchester had been a young, successful aristocrat in the South. As the proprietor of several of the biggest plantations throughout the state, he’d not only owned the town, but the property where my house sat. In the 1800s, Davian had been called out to deal with a shipment being held at the docks. Worried about his product rotting in the ship’s hull, he’d rode out into the storm without a second thought. When he’d returned home, he’d found his house burnt to the ground with his wife and child inside, and no one knew why.
Davian had gone mad with grief. He’d sold off his houses, livestock, slaves, and anything else that was worth a dime. In a drunken haze he’d slept his way through the upper class and all the way down to the cathouse girls. He’d become known as the Southern Cassanova, rich beyond imagining, but crazy and a bit dangerous.
Refusing to rebuild the house, he’d lived off the land, occasionally taking refuge in the emptied slave quarters on the back of the property when the weather grew poor. On his best days, he had seemed a broken man, content to waste away his fortune on alcohol, gambling, and women. On his worst days, he had been violent, broken, and quick to strike anyone who did not meet his fancy—man or woman. However, when a storm blew in, Davian had become withdrawn and frighteningly attentive to the women he kept in constant supply.
It had been rumored that he’d demand his bed partners to look at him, that they acknowledge him as he took them to the height of their release. However, if the unlucky lady obliged, Davian would become enraged because the woman beneath him could never be as good as his late wife had been in his eyes.
Six years after his wife and child had passed from this world, a beautiful young whore had taken him to her rooms and had turned her green eyes up to him in response to his command. Davian had lost his mind, strangling the girl as the rumble of thunder and the crack of lightning had drowned out her screams.
Before his heinous act could be discovered, Davian had walked out of the brothel and into the raging storm. Everyone believed he had been so consumed with guilt and grief that he’d died that night, though his body had never been found. In fact, one of St. Martin Bay’s favorite ghost stories is to warn young girls away from strange men on stormy nights because Davian Winchester still roamed the town, searching for a lover to help him heal his broken heart and killing those who dared look into his eyes.
The article repeated the same old dates and the same old legends, leaving out the more candid details, but its main focus seemed to be about the backed up drain on Main St causing deep water to consume the road. The headline was just another attempt to attract readers by the promise of an old and tired story, but for me, it made terrible, horrible, terrifying sense.
Davian Winchester had come to me that night. He’d loved me as no man ever had or will. He’d given me pleasure beyond any that I could have imagined, but had I opened my eyes, I would not have lived to see the morning sun rise.
Somehow, knowing I’d toed the line between life and death in more ways than one seemed to settle my nerves. Maybe I’m just crazy, wouldn’t be the first time someone has said so. Hell, the rat bastard used to tell me I was crazier than a shit house rat on a daily basis. Still, I took comfort in the fact that I was there, at my kitchen table, drinking coffee as the sun broke through the haze of mist in the air.
Davian hadn’t claimed my life, and I hadn’t been harmed. Yet, a part of me seemed healed from the troubles I’d faced with my ex-lovers and my body was certainly sated. I didn’t need a man in my life, but for the first time since that hillbilly shit had taken off with my momma’s pearls and an overused tramp, I thought maybe I wanted one. I hoped that wherever he was, Davian had gained some type of peace from our encounter as well.
Reaching for my coffee cup, I gave the picture a wink, and said, “Hell, maybe next year you can visit the rat bastard’s whore and get her to open her eyes for you, Davi. I hear she’s got green eyes.”
UNTIL DEATH WE WON’T PART
Emma Michaels and Michael Cross
“We need therapy.”
I’ve always found that statement to be one of life’s little ironies. My girlfriend, Kelly, told me we needed therapy. What she meant was that she wanted me to open up.
I couldn’t blame her. I’ve been distant these last few months. She and I
were like twin hearts beating side by side. We weren’t two separate beings, but the same, single entity.
Yeah, I’m sappy.
But things changed. I changed. Now we’re sitting in the office of the third therapist we’ve seen this month. I think Kelly is worried I’m taking her, us, for granted. I’m not. I’ve just gotten a new perspective on life – well, death. I’m not taking her for granted. Everything I do is for her. I want to keep her safe. And as far away from my work as I can.
“James?”
I blinked and glanced up at the therapist. He smiled patiently. “Did you hear me? I asked about your career. Kelly is worried it might be taking up too much of your life.”
Life. It’s not my life that it’s been taking up. I sighed inwardly. “Work is a bit all-consuming.”
He nodded and made a small note. “What about your sex life? Is everything good?”
Our sex life is none of your business, I thought. Besides we’re doing great.
“It’s been a little lackluster lately,” Kelly said.
I turned to her, surprised. “Really?”
The therapist nodded. “It looks like communication hasn’t been that great in or out of bed.” He made another note.
I wanted to grab the notebook and throw it at his head.
“Have you thought about switching occupations, James?”
Only every day for the past three months. Not like it was an option. With my career there was only one way out. And it’s not one I’d consider.
“It’s not really possible for me to switch.”
Another note. I started tapping my foot.
“Why do you feel you can’t switch?”