by Celia Aaron
I reveled in his mouth, but I needed more. All of him. “Sebastian, please.”
“What do you need? I’ll give it to you.” He squeezed my ass. “Name it.”
“Fuck me.”
If his eyes had been bright before, they practically blazed when I asked for what I should have never wanted. He gave me a few more licks before prowling up my body. Pausing at my breasts, he teased each nipple with the same intensity he’d used on my pussy.
I writhed beneath him, desperate for more. “Please.”
“I can’t refuse you.” He rose to my mouth, sharing my taste as his tongue warred with mine. His cock rested against my pussy and slid down my folds to my entrance. “Here, damsel? Is this where you need it?”
“Yes.” I could barely form the word.
He took my hands and pinned me, our fingers laced together, as he pushed inside. I moaned at the minor sting and then the delicious pressure. God, he filled me just right as he slid all the way inside.
“Fucking hot cunt.” He dropped to my neck, biting and sucking, giving me fresh marks.
Keeping me pinned, he started a slow rhythm that built with intensity on each stroke. I spread my legs as far as I could, opening up to him, urging him to take what he wanted.
He didn’t disappoint, fucking me rough enough to rattle the bed against the wall. I knew I’d be bruised, but I wanted it. I needed to feel him, to sample every bit of him before I could walk away.
I arched against him, my sensitive nipples brushing against his hard chest. He growled and pulled out. Gripping my hips, he turned me onto all fours and surged inside me again.
My scream of pleasure and pain ripped through the room. It seemed to drive him wilder, because he pistoned inside me and slapped my ass hard enough for the sting to add an extra kick to the tightness inside me.
“I know you want it like this.” He gripped my hair and yanked me back to him as his other hand slapped my ass. “Rough, hard. You want all the dark. Tell me.”
I moaned when he slapped me again, the sting making my pussy ache for even more punishment. “I want it.”
“Fucking hell.” He pulled my hair harder and bit down on my shoulder, his hips bouncing against mine, our bodies slapping together with unfettered violence.
He released my shoulder and shoved me forward, pressing his wide palm against my upper back so that I was face down on the bed.
Another slap had me crying into the sheets.
“Look at that perfect asshole.” His feral growl sent a shot of fear through me. “Like a fucking flower.”
I jumped when he ran a finger down my ass. “Sebastian.”
Another slap, this one even harder. “Don’t deny me.”
I moaned, spiraling higher with each word from his dangerous lips.
“That’s it.” He kept his hard rhythm and pressed his wet fingertip around my asshole. The sensation was delicious and wrong, and I wanted more.
I pressed back onto his cock, impaling myself more deeply with each stroke.
“Oh, fuck.” He pressed his finger inside my ass.
I clutched the sheets as my entire body tensed. He pushed farther, and my orgasm exploded from nowhere. I cried out as my hips seized and pleasure rippled through me in deep waves.
“Give it to me. Come all over me.” He slammed harder, his finger in my ass sliding farther as I was still in the throes of my orgasm, each of his thrusts extending the aftershocks.
When the last tremor subsided, I gulped in air.
“You aren’t done, damsel.” He leaned over me, his muscled forearm next to my face, and reached beneath me with his other hand. When he slapped my clit, I bucked against him.
“Sebastian!”
Another slap against my hyper-sensitive skin had me trying to grab his wrist.
“You need to trust me.” He yanked my wrists behind me and held them with one hand, then snaked the other one beneath me again. Slap. “I know what this body needs.”
He used my wrists as a way to pull me back onto his cock with each surge forward. His fingers played against my clit, stroking and swirling, revving me up again. The next time he slapped me, I moaned with utter abandon. Nothing had ever felt so good. His fingers went right back to the spot where I needed them.
“I’m going to work you up so you come right when I shoot inside you. I want to feel your cunt squeeze me, to drain every drop.”
I would have agreed to anything he wanted as long as it involved me coming. Breathing into the sheets, all I could focus on was his cock inside me, his fingers creating an inferno that touched every part of my body and soul.
“Are you ready?” His voice shook, the control he’d exerted wavering.
“Please.” It was the only word I could form.
He intensified the pressure on my clit and thrust hard and deep each time. I was lost, buried beneath the wave cresting above me. It crashed down, drowning me with a release that blasted away everything I’d ever known until all I could think of was Sebastian.
His groan was the background music to my breathless orgasm, each pulse from deep inside me sending sparks shooting behind my eyelids. He surged deep, filling me with his release as my pussy squeezed him just as he’d instructed. I felt every jolt of his cock inside me, and our mutual release was the most erotic thing I’d ever experienced.
I collapsed onto the bed, my knees spreading until I was flat on the mattress with him lying on top of me, his cock still embedded.
His breaths came in hard bursts as he kissed my back, my neck, my shoulders. “Thank you.”
I didn’t know what to say. There was nothing except the lapping waves of release along with the harsh undertow of my captivity. He climbed from the bed. A few moments later, he cleaned me up with a warm washcloth.
Once he slid back between the sheets, he pulled me onto his chest. “That was the best hangover remedy ever invented.”
I snorted.
“Did you enjoy it?” He yanked the blanket up over me and laid his hands on the bare skin of my back.
“Yes, but it was another mistake. Like the first time. Shouldn’t have happened.”
“I don’t think that’s true.” He stroked some stray strands from my face.
I didn’t know what was true anymore. He twisted my reality around me. But not matter how much he made me question everything, I knew that I couldn’t stay. The messed-up thing was, I dreaded breaking what small piece of a heart he had. So many times, he’d told me he didn’t want to hurt me. But by kidnapping me, he had the very first day. I didn’t want to hurt him either, but I would, on the very last day.
39
Link
I bumped into a guy with two kids in tow, each of them with ice skates slung over their shoulders. Tourists on their way to Rockefeller, looking for some holiday magic.
The guy actually apologized—definitely not a New York native. I kept walking as a light flurry fell.
Mint had wanted to meet at a pizza place near his Uncle Hal’s apartment. I’d obliged. The more I’d thought about the blonde in the restaurant, the more uneasy I’d become. So here I was, engaging in cloak and dagger bullshit with a teenage horndog.
I pushed into the restaurant and headed toward a table at the back. Looking around, I didn’t see the kid. I leaned against the end of the bar and pulled my phone out to text the little shit.
“Link?” A guy stood from a nearby table.
“Mint?”
“Yeah.” He waved for me to sit across from him.
Hell’s bells. The kid was my height with an even bigger build. What the fuck did he do in his spare time? Lift? It didn’t matter, I would make sure he didn’t come any nearer to Camille than required for biology class. Calling him a kid didn’t seem right anymore.
I sat across from him. “What’s with the meeting?”
He pulled a sheaf of papers from a leather messenger bag sitting next to him. A waitress appeared and took our order. She was cute, a little older, but definitely within m
y fuckable range.
“I’ve been in touch with Veronica. She wanted to be here, but her mom’s health isn’t so great, and she had to fly home to visit for the holidays.”
“She’ll be missed.” I took a sip from the beer the waitress had deposited in front of me.
Mint opened a folder and slapped it onto the table. “Here’s what I have. Before Veronica left, she did some digging and couldn’t find a Dr. Williams with any expedition to the Amazon.”
“That doesn’t mean she didn’t go. All that tells me is you two need to brush up on your research skills.”
“That’s fair, I guess.” He shrugged. “I was still suspicious, mainly because of the taxonomy capitalization error. So I tried to get information from the airline about whether Camille boarded her flight to Brazil, but they refused to help me because I wasn’t a relative.”
“So you got nothing?” I took another swig of beer and wondered why I’d even come here. The blonde couldn’t have been Camille, and I hadn’t even told the kid about it.
“No, I didn’t get anything. But Veronica called the airline and pretended to be Camille. She knows all Camille’s personal info, so it was easy. She was able to confirm that, though a seat had been purchased for Camille, she never actually flew out of JFK.” He spun a piece of paper around on the table so I could see it. It was a letter from the airline confirming what he’d just told me.
“Okay, if you had all this information, why not go to the police?”
He retrieved the sheet of paper and tucked it into his folder. “We only called with the impersonation routine yesterday, and we weren’t exactly sure what we’d say. Veronica checked to see if Camille could have gotten on another flight with that airline, but they didn’t have any further information. She called the other airlines that had flights to Brazil, but none of them were able to give her anything. At that point, all we had to go on was a capitalized letter in a text and a missed flight.”
“And you have something new now?” I leaned forward, my beer forgotten.
“Yes.” He pulled a copy of a letter from his stack. It was dated the previous day and had a “hand-delivered” stamp on it. “How well do you know Sebastian Lindstrom?”
I grabbed the paper and skimmed it. It was a brief letter from Sebastian to Trenton Prep, wherein Sebastian offered to fully fund an upgraded greenhouse.
“I saw Mr. Lindstrom just a few weeks before Ms. Briarlane left for Christmas break. He came by the school to supposedly enquire about scholarships, but he seemed to spend a lot of his time in Ms. Briarlane’s classroom. Alone with her.”
“She never told me that.” Why hadn’t she told me?
“Exactly. I think he’s the prime suspect in her disappearance. His sudden interest in Trenton, especially the greenhouse bit. There’s something off about him. I’ve read up on his business, his personality. He’s a hard man.”
“Don’t I fucking know it. I work for the guy.”
“There was something about him. The way he looked at her that day at Trenton.” He shrugged. “Like he was, I don’t know, scheming.”
I gave Mint a hard stare. “How do you know? Were you watching?”
Mint dropped his eyes, finally looking more like a kid. “After I bumped into him, yeah, I hung around in the hallway.”
I drilled into him with my gaze. “How long have you been watching my girl?”
He sputtered. “It’s not like that. Not what you think.”
“No? It sure as fuck seems like it. You’ve been searching for a reason to see Ms. Briarlane again ever since she left.”
“That’s not true.” He snatched his papers back and stuffed them into his folder. “I’m just worried about her.”
“Tell me, kid. Do you jerk it to her once or twice a day?”
“Don’t talk about her like that!” His sudden outburst quieted the restaurant around us.
I glanced around and held up my hands toward him. “Calm down.”
“I am calm.” He slid his folder back into his bag. “I misjudged you, though.”
“No, you didn’t.” I hailed the waitress and ordered two more beers. “So, let’s say your suspicions are true, and Sebastian Lindstrom kidnapped Camille. What are we going to do about it? Police?”
“Not until we know for sure.” He shook his head.
“How do we do that?”
He gestured to his bag. “I have a list of all the properties Lindstrom owns. The most likely candidate where he’d keep her is a house in the Catskills. Secluded, lots of acreage. I think we should ride up there and have a look around. What do you think? Does all this sound insane to you?”
“Not as insane as you might think. I’m ready to head up there right now.” The beer arrived, and I pushed one across the table to him. “But first, let me tell you about something I saw a couple nights ago.”
40
Camille
The greenhouse hummed with energy, the misters running on the exotic section as I rinsed off my mortar and pestle. Night was already falling beyond the panes of glass.
The back door opened, and Gerry strode in. “I got all your plants in.” He swiped his ball cap off and scratched his forehead. “But I see you’ve noticed.”
I’d taken the new arrivals out and arranged them in their respective spots the previous night. “Yep, they all look good.”
He bent over and scrutinized some of the grafted hybrids that were already beginning to thicken along the stem. “You think these are going to make some sort of Frankencucumber?”
I laughed. “I don’t think so. Probably a medium-sized cucumber with superior pest resistance.” I clapped the dirt off my hands and moved along the row toward him. “But I’ll eventually have to field test. Probably with aphids.”
He stood straight and peered around. “You want to set aphids loose in here?”
“Of course not.” I pointed at the yard. “Maybe sometime in the summer we can put a few test gardens out there.”
“I reckon Mr. Lindstrom would be fine with that. Yeah.” He stared out at the dormant grass, the sunlight fading behind the trees.
“I’m surprised you’re working today. You don’t get Christmas Eve off?”
“I do.” He slapped his worn cap back onto his gray hair. “I just wanted to come by and make sure you were happy with the deliveries.”
“I am.” I have everything I need.
“Good. If you want anything else, I’ll be by again soon.”
“Great. See you then.” I smiled. “And thanks for everything.”
“Yes ma’am. Very welcome.” He strode away. “Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas.”
He left me alone with my greenery and my thoughts. The morning with Sebastian had been mind-blowing and unexpected. There was some piece of me inexplicably tangled up in him. I’d been foolish to think I’d ever get these stolen days back, that I’d ever be able to move on as I had before. He’d changed me, and as I returned to the sink and finished rinsing my tools, I couldn’t tell if it was for the better.
The door to the house swung open. “How did Gerry do on the plant delivery?” Sebastian walked to me and wrapped his arms around my waist as I dried my hands.
“Perfect.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
“Anything of particular interest?” He glanced down the rows of plants.
The coil of tension in my shoulders relaxed under his steady touch. “Not really, unless you’re into orchids.”
“I’m afraid I’m not much of a gardener. Nothing like you. If you asked me to point out which plant in here was an orchid, we’d be here all day.”
“Noted.” I turned and looked into his eyes. “But I’m not much for business, so I suppose we’re even.”
He leaned in. “You have any mistletoe?”
“No. Mistletoe is actually a parasite that affixes to trees and feeds from their nutrient systems.”
He smirked. “A vampire plant?”
“Somet
hing like that, yeah.”
“Is there anything you don’t know about plants?”
“I’m sure there is.” His nearness sent my compass spinning. “Someone would have to ask me the right question.”
“Speaking of questions, what do you want for Christmas?”
“I think you know.” It was worth a try.
He sighed. “Other than that.”
“Hmm, let me think about it?”
“All right.” He took my hand, and we walked into the house. “Aren’t you going to ask me what I want?”
I crinkled my nose. “I’m certain it would be an exceptionally explicit sexual favor.”
He kissed the back of my hand. “See? You already know me so well.”
He led me to the foyer.
“Where are we going?”
“I want to show you something.”
“What?” I cocked my head at him as he handed me a coat.
“It’s a surprise.”
“Is it bodies? It’s bodies, isn’t it?”
He laughed, a full-throated sound that tried to melt every pocket of resistance inside me. “No. Maybe I’ll take you on that tour a little later.”
He helped me into my coat, then snugged a knit hat down over my ears. “Warm enough?”
“Toasty.”
“Excellent.” He grabbed his own coat and led me out the front door. His phone buzzed incessantly, but he silenced it.
“Glad the anklet still works,” I said dryly. “Would hate for it to go out.”
“I’m glad we agree there.” He pressed his hand to my lower back and led me to a black ATV sitting just outside the front door. A cold sweat broke out along my skin. Did he know what I was up to?
“Let’s go.” He slung a leg over the seat and patted the leather behind him. I followed and climbed on.
Before I could ask where we were headed, he took off down the smooth driveway. Darkness had fallen quickly, the gloom growing deeper with each passing moment.
I clung to him as he gunned it, the cold air cutting past us as we hurtled away from my prison. A fleeting thought of him releasing me scurried through my mind. I swept it away before my heart put any stock in it. Sebastian wasn’t going to change his mind. That much I knew. And that’s why my course was set. Even so, I pressed my cheek against his strong back and breathed him in.