He tilted his head, enough that she couldn’t see directly into his eyes. His hand at her throat, he stroked her jaw line and offered no defense.
“You can fuck a girl until she passes out, but you can’t kiss her?”
“Some traditions you don’t break.” He’d been holding his weight off her the whole time. Now he slid possessively onto her, the hand at her throat moving to capture her face. He ran his lips along the side of her face, along her earlobe. At the same time, he wedged his leg between hers, forcing her to spread them. “And, as much as I want to kiss you, I don’t think you’re ready to hop a flight to Vegas.”
Was he serious? She closed her eyes, afraid of what he might see if he looked in them. She wasn’t sure what it would be, but she damn sure didn’t want him knowing before she did.
With the soft whisper of his mouth against her skin, he asked, “So I’m not wrong?”
“Aaron… I…” Damn, he was serious. Or he was seriously playing her. “It’s… just…”
Complicated? Hell if it was. She wanted that kiss, wanted him to want her that badly. But marriage two days after hooking up? Hallie drew a shaky breath, looking for something to say. He placed a fingertip to her lips.
Okay, he was telling her to shut up, to let it go. Damned if she’d ever let a man do that before and get away with it, but he was the first to ask with such a look of pain on his face.
Nodding, she closed her eyes. “Just don’t let me get wild all by myself.”
Sliding her up the bed, Aaron chuckled. He pushed the red skirt up over her bottom to expose her panties. Sensing how wet the fabric must be, a new wave of heat flared across Hallie’s body.
Could he see it? Smell it?
Hands on her thighs, he pushed her legs apart and growled. “And if I drive you there first?”
“That would be just fine,” she answered, voice shaking as he kissed the inside of her left thigh.
He ran his tongue down to the edge of her panties, then hard against the fabric to tease her through the silk.
She reached down, stopping him as his tongue moved to her right thigh. “I want to see you come,” she whispered.
Aaron groaned and bit the flesh of her thigh. He bit again, his finger slipping beneath the silk barrier at the same time to circle her clit.
“Please, Aaron.”
Another groan and then he was up the bed, steadying himself with one arm as he leaned over her and unzipped his dress slacks. In less than a heartbeat he had the panties pushed to the side and was burying his cock inside her all the way down to its base.
Propping herself up on her elbows, Hallie spread her legs wider and braced the soles of her sandals against the bed frame. She let her head loll back and gazed up at him through half-slitted eyelids.
Aaron put his hand against the small of her back and then up under the sweater. She was wearing a strapless demi-bra and he unhooked it. He slid his hand around front and pulled the bra out, leaving her hardened nipples unprotected against the sweater’s coarser weave.
He dropped the bra to the floor and brought his hand back down against the sweater and her breast beneath it. She whimpered at the rough press of fabric and then he squeezed, elongating her cry.
He dipped his mouth to her ear. “Wider, moro mou.”
Keeping her feet braced, she scooted closer to him and, placing her hands on her knees, pressed them closer to the mattress. The position made her cunt even tighter around him. She gasped and arched her body closer to his.
“Such a sweet pussy,” he whispered, giving another rough pull on her breast.
“Aaron…” Hallie fought to keep from thrashing beneath him. He had driven her into a slow, hard climax. Her cream slicked her labia and thighs. She could feel it pearling beneath the silk fabric, her hair down there thick with moisture. And still she kept contracting around him, squeezing out more juice.
Wet as she was, she found him pushing deeper into her, pumping harder and faster.
“With me, Aaron, please.”
Her begging unleashed something in him. She saw it flicker across his face and knew she was lost. He was going to do exactly as he pleased because, secretly, it pleased her. She screamed, an intense wave of pleasure crashing against her.
Okay, not so secret. She begged him again, with her eyes.
“No, love.” Still inside her, he was backing up, his arms wrapped around her hips to bring her with him. He kept going until he was off the bed and had pulled her ass up where it rested on top of the footboard.
Pulling out for a moment, he peeled her panties away. Using both hands, he pushed the sweater up over her tits. He grabbed them so that each nipple was pinched between a thumb and index finger, while the other fingers dug into the flesh of her heavy breasts. Bucking against the footboard, Hallie threw her hands up over her face.
She felt his hand fall heavy onto her mound and squeeze. At the same time, he pulled his cock all but out, just the fat head making short thrusts inside her. He lifted his hand, brought it down again.
With just enough air left in her to whisper the word, she pleaded, “Again.”
He gave her mound another slap, harder than the first two. When he squeezed the flesh, his thumb slid between her labia to rub at her clit. All the while, he kept moving his hips in tight circles, the cap of his erection just inside her cunt. She could feel the bulbous tip knocking against her, increasing the internal pressure on her clit.
She gave a tight little whimper and then cried out at the next slap.
Grinding her hips, she whispered for another, repeating the word in a quick, breathless string until he responded with the sharpest slap yet.
“Open your eyes, Hallie.”
She shook her head. Now that her inner freak had just escaped, no way in hell was she opening her eyes.
“No?” His tone was teasing and she just knew he planned on tormenting her more.
Aaron put both hands beneath her and lifted Hallie’s ass high off the bed like she were a rag doll. She felt him locking his fingers along the small of her back and then he thrust into her.
“I thought you wanted to watch me come?”
Her hands still covered her face and she pulled them slowly down, her eyes just as hesitant to open. When her eyes finished adjusting, Hallie drew a sharp breath. She’d managed in her thirty-plus years to walk some of the finest galleries in the world. And he was still the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen -- even with his damn sweater still on and his pants falling halfway down his legs.
The face was inescapable -- the eyes fierce, the mouth sensuous. She wanted to kiss him, lick him, smother him with her flesh only to revive him and start all over again.
She shook her head. “I do,” she answered.
Aaron widened his stance and pulled her more snugly to him. “Touch yourself.”
Pulling her bottom lip into her mouth, she blinked at the request. “Where?”
“Anywhere.” His gaze caressed her exposed breasts and the slick hair covering her mound. “Everywhere.”
Hallie started slow, trailing her fingertips down to her nipples. She circled the hardened tips, her hips squirming as she did so. She pinched them and felt his cock swell inside her. He moved his hips, left to right, right to left. Deep thrust.
She bit down hard on her lip, forcing herself to keep her eyes open, to keep the groan buried at the back of her throat. Still pinching one breast, she moved the other hand lower. With her index and ring fingers, she spread her labia and slowly started to stroke her clit.
“Like this?” she asked in a whisper.
He nodded, too entranced for words. Light from the fire and candles pulsed across his face and throat, its rhythm matching the flow of blood through her body. With the full strength of his arms and hips, he started fucking her again, lifting her up while he thrust into her, lowering her back down, only to repeat the cycle an instant later.
She kept fingering her clit, her eyes locked on his face and its subtle contortions. She continued
watching as he threw his head back, eyes shut tight, and cried her name.
Only then did she surrender to her own climax.
Chapter Six
Gnawing on the end of an already chewed brush, Hallie stared at the finished canvas. It was dark, disturbing, and, worst of all, it wasn’t the piece Aaron had commissioned her to do. Neither were the other six finished pieces.
She turned, dropped the brush into a can of cleaner, and walked to the couch. Plopping down onto the soft cushions, she stared at the commissioned piece. She had completed about seventy percent, with just the finer details remaining -- the pearl, her face, shadows and veining.
No longer allowing Aaron into the studio, she had given him a progress report last night. To say he had been displeased would be an understatement, even if he never said anything directly. He seemed to be on some kind of timeline now -- one he had no intention of communicating to her.
Hallie rolled onto her back and stared up at the blank ceiling. A strand of hair fell across her cheek and eye and she blew it away. Slowly she turned to look back at the easel and the canvases around the room. The prepped but otherwise blank canvas she had started yesterday bothered her the most, particularly with Aaron’s unvoiced deadline.
She rolled into a sitting position. “Damn men.”
She stood quickly, hands on hips, fingers strumming along her pelvis.
“Damn, damn, damn men.” Looking around the floor next to the couch, she found a pair of low-heeled mules. She put them on and then stood there, arms around her chest, gaze flicking between the commissioned piece and the studio door.
It was closing in on two in the afternoon. Aaron would be in his office, which was just as closed to her as her studio was to him. Neither of them seemed capable of getting any work done in the other’s presence.
She marched to the door and flung it open. She wasn’t going to wait until evening to talk to him. By the time night rolled around, any conversation she started ended with her on her back and moaning.
She strode down the main hall, past the library, her steps as fast as she could make them with the heels of the mules slapping against her foot. Aaron had a sixth sense about when she was approaching his office. He’d never told her flat out that she wasn’t welcome to visit him there. But he always managed to meet her just outside the room with the door closed.
Not today.
She closed the last few feet to the door and turned the knob without knocking. Just inside the threshold, she froze. He was sitting at his desk, its surface clear but for a few small pieces of sculpture. There was no computer, no printer -- no indication whatsoever that there was work going on in the office. He was just sitting there, staring back at her.
“Have you finished, then?”
It didn’t matter that he’d kept his tone casual. The question annoyed her. She took another step into the room, her gaze narrowing in the low light. “I’m hardly here to tell you I’m done. The remaining detail work sure as hell takes more than the six hours since I left our bed this morning.”
“Then why are you here?”
All right, now he was getting a tone. Not quite peeved, but hurried. She looked away from him, her gaze falling on the stone wall to the right of his desk. Drawing a sharp breath, she moved to the wall and put her hand on the carving in the center. It was smooth as glass, but the room was too dark to pick out the details.
“Is this all one cut?”
“Yes.” He had moved from behind the desk and was standing beside her, his hand on her elbow.
She didn’t budge. “Turn a light on.”
He moved back to his desk, opened a drawer and the room’s recessed lights brightened. She took a few steps back. The carving was monstrously huge, its theme playing off that of the Carracci painting with the three-headed dog. She smiled, wondering how she’d fallen in lust with the Armani version of a Goth Boi.
“Obsidian?”
“Yes, from Lipari.”
She returned to stand in front of it, her hands exploring the contours of the dog’s heads. All three had their teeth bared, the fangs razor sharp. It was amazing -- the size of the stone, the workmanship. And he’d kept her from it by keeping her out of his office.
Glancing over her shoulder, she frowned at him, but he just lifted his brows, as if to repeat his earlier question.
“I’m here to tell you that if you think you’re stamping a deadline on the commission all of a sudden, you can eat it.”
He had moved closer to her again and she flounced away, her gaze in search of the room’s next extraordinary curiosity. She noticed it a second later on a table at the opposite end of the room. She approached the piece and kneeled in front of the table to study it. A cast iron set of scales, the plates held a black feather on one side and a carved heart on the other. Only, somehow, the carved stone balanced equal to the feather. She lifted each plate separately and tested their weight.
“How does it work?”
“Magic.”
Hallie responded with a hiss. She had researched enough about Aaron before their first meeting to know he had a truckload of patents to his name across more than one branch of science, although most were in engineering and mining processes. She lifted the carved heart off the scales and the plate holding the feather slowly lowered. “C’mon. How do you get it to balance? I’m not going to run out and file a competing patent or anything.”
He had followed her over to the table and he took the heart from her. “It doesn’t always balance.”
Aaron put the heart back on the scales, its plate sinking as it should. “It depends on the heart.”
She pointed at the heart at last weighing heavier than the feather. “Oh, and whose heart is that?”
“A thirty-six-year-old investment banker on the upper east side of Manhattan. He overdosed on ecstasy this morning while sexing up the family’s nineteen-year-old au pair.”
“Ooo-kay. You’re kinda cute when you’re being weird.” She gave him a side glance and asked, “And my heart?”
He put his finger on the plate holding the feather and slowly pushed it down so that the feather balanced heavier than the heart. When he took his finger away, the plates remained in place.
“Nice trick.” She turned to him and studied his expression. She put her hand on his chest. He was an odd one -- not as eccentric as some millionaires she’d read about, but he certainly had a taste for the darker side of existence as long as it was beautiful and mysterious, like the scales or the obsidian Cerberus.
She gently tapped his chest. “And yours?”
He shook his head, his gaze darkening. “I’m all out of magic for the day, Hallie.”
He turned, his steps quickly taking him to his office door.
Shit. He had to be headed for her studio now that she’d invaded his office. She followed after him, trying to read the set of his shoulders, the way he held his hands close to his hips despite the long strides. His mood seemed to have done a one-eighty after her last question. Not that she was sure -- a month in his bed and the only sure thing she could read was his passion.
“You can’t put a timeline on creativity,” she reminded him as his hand came down on the door handle to her studio. “And…”
She trailed off as he entered the room and turned a slow semi-circle.
“I suspected as much.”
“I’d be painting other pieces at my home studio.”
Approaching the piece Hallie had finished that afternoon, Aaron gave her a side glance. “And your point is, what?”
She opened her mouth then quickly shut it. She didn’t have a point and sure as hell didn’t want to be back in her home studio -- or her old bedroom. She was the most productive she’d been since her mother had passed. Even with the freakishly invisible staff, the accommodations were amazing, and the entertainment…
That was to die for.
“No point,” she admitted.
He put his hand near the canvas, his fingertips a few centimeters from t
he top layer of paint. “Dry?”
She nodded. “Acrylics.”
His touch light, he outlined the painting’s foreground. “How do you know what it looks like?”
She frowned. “Google images. You stocked the room with a Mac Pro.”
He shook his head, his eyes flicking to her again before he bent down for a closer look at the oyster shell. “You didn’t see one that looked like this.”
He was right. She had looked at resource photos online but all the shells were too razor-edged or spiky along their lips. She’d made the edges as softly rolling curves, just like --
She tried to shake the image out of her head. The image of the oyster shell that could have held Aaron’s black pearl was meant to be dark, not sensuous. But the instant his fingertip had touched the canvas, the picture was transformed.
His face an inch from the canvas, he murmured something like, “Closer than I thought.”
“What?”
His head snapped back, his blue gaze narrowing. “I didn’t say anything.”
The hell you didn’t ran through her head but she only shrugged.
Aaron turned to the next canvas and Hallie thought she detected a slight jerk.
“Hired hands,” she offered. It was something of a self-portrait -- her sitting in front of a vanity mirror while disembodied, skeletal hands ran a brush through her hair, placed heavy baroque rings on her fingers and applied mascara to her lashes. While she had stopped teasing him about his invisible staff, the painting played on that theme, only the skeleton hands were freakier than the voices over the intercom, or their owners, who always managed to show up and clean the room when she had just left it.
Not looking at the other images, Aaron walked to the couch and sat down with his hands in front of his face. Hallie joined him on the couch, her fingertips gently resting on the back of his neck. She curled her other hand around his biceps and waited for him to stop hiding.
It was confusing as hell. His main collection was full of life, including the four canvases he’d already bought from her. But his room, the dark corners of the house, his office -- all of the truly personal spaces were filled with somber, foreboding pieces. The pieces in front of him were nothing like her usual work, but she had thought he would like them.
His Black Pearl Page 4