by April Lust
With a stern look from her he picked it up and hung it in the closet. “Yeah, all right. I’m sure I could. But that girl is like a virus. She likes to latch on and stick around even when you are done with her. And yeah, she’s hot but there is nothing else there. She doesn’t talk, she isn’t nice, and hell, I’ve heard from a couple of the guys that the sex isn’t that great.”
“Poor Samantha.” Emma took a deep breath and blew it slowly out of her nostrils. She wasn’t going to let that woman ruin this moment. She wasn’t even here. With a deft movement she tugged the sash loose and opened up the robe. “Poor, poor Samantha.”
Maybe it was the tone in her voice, or the flash of skin as the robe opened. Either way, Kellan’s head whipped towards her. “What are you wearing?”
“Not much.”
“Jesus, woman. Put yourself away.” He took a step back. His misty hazel eyes were wide.
“No.” She kept her tone firm. With more grace than she had known she was capable of she sauntered over to him. She thought of Hannah’s expert sashay. His gaze darted down to the swell of her breasts, the movement of her hips. “I don’t think so. You see, I plan on using you tonight.”
He blinked as if she’d struck him across the face with a pan. “You…what? Use me? How?”
She wrapped her arms around his neck, going up on her toes. Her lips nearly brushed his as she talked. “Kellan, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m stressed. This is worse than finals. Hell, this is like three weeks worth of finals with no notes and no study time. Everything in my life is screwed up one way and down another and I am just not okay with that. What I want, what I need, is to relax…and you are real good at helping me with that.”
He cleared his throat. “You think so?”
“Well, you’ve put your mouth on me often enough to give me an inkling. More than that, our little encounter in the kitchen had me thinking that you’d be real good at making me forget all my problems.”
She felt his muscles tense, the clutch of his fingers still at his sides. He was like a wire that she was tightening. If she kept going, she was almost sure he would break. She wanted him to break for her. After all these years wondering what Kellan would be like, she wanted the reality of it.
“Emma, I’m not sure this is a good idea.” He didn’t move as her arms slithered around his middle.
She stepped close enough that her breasts brushed against his chest with every breath. His hands flexed at his sides. She ran her tongue over her own lips and felt him shudder against her. His eyes had zeroed down into pinpoints.
“I’m sober,” she reminded him. “I am stone cold sober and I just had a near death incident. Forgive me if I want a big strong man to make me remember why I’m alive.”
“Emma, seriously.” He stepped back suddenly, pulling himself out of the ring of her embrace. She stumbled just a little, and all the confidence she had gained evaporated.
She huffed out an uneven breath. This was a mistake. She never should have thought she could seduce him. She had no practice, and he’d had girls like Samantha throw themselves at him. Just the thought of that plastic Barbie had her blood humming with a vengeful need. Sure, he might say he didn’t want the leggy bimbo, but what guy would really say not to that?
“Fine.” She whirled away and took two long steps down the hall. Her robe was like a cape behind her, fluttering with her frustration.
“Where are you going?” he demanded.
“To call Joe. If you won’t help me, maybe he will,” she responded flippantly.
“He won’t. You are my wife.”
She whirled back. Her eyes turning to hot slate. “Oh, am I? I mean, it’s on paper, but you’ve made it very clear to everyone that you aren’t really my husband. So, by default, I’m not really your wife. Joe’s a smart boy, college and everything. I’m sure he has had practice. Yes, you know, the more I think about it, the more I like it. He’s more my speed anyway.”
The words hit home. She saw his jaw become a hard angry line. He closed the distance between them and pressed his body to hers. She felt herself pinned between the cold wall and his hot form. Bright hazel eyes flickered down at her. He gripped her arms and pushed them against the plaster. She pushed herself towards him.
“You play a dangerous game, little girl,” he hissed. “I know what you’re doing.”
“I am not a little girl.” She surged against him, molding her body to his like a wave of barely restrained need. His hips twitched in response. “Maybe you haven’t noticed.”
“I’ve noticed.” His fingers skimmed down her wrist, towards the curve of her side. “I’ve been doing nothing but noticing. You’ve been driving me nuts.”
“Prove it,” she baited.
With a growl his mouth came down, hers went up. She couldn’t call it a kiss, not really. It was an onslaught of lips and tongue and teeth. Their mouths mated like it was a battle. He smelled like rain and masculinity and she wanted to drown in it.
“Do you want this?” He ground himself against her.
She felt the unrelenting throb of him shove against the tenderest part of her. “Yes!” Her voice echoed off the walls. “Yes, I do! Give it to me, Kellan. Give it all.”
“Fine,” he snarled. “Fine.”
With one move he hefted her up and took her into her own room. The lights were off and he didn’t bother turning them on. Her eyes weren’t quite adjusted to the dark when she felt her back greet the familiar cotton of her bedspread. She heard rather than saw fabric hitting the floor, the slide of a t-shirt over flesh, the metallic whisper of a zipper. When he prowled over her supple form she knew he was naked without touching him.
He perched over her, the foldout bed shifting with his weight so she slid into the natural sag of the mattress. Her newly adjusted eyes could make out the outline of his wide body sinking down her own form. The distant sliver of light that came through the gaps around the door illuminated the wrought muscles in his arms.
Her hands found him in the dark. Warm, his skin was so deliciously warm. She traced the solid outline of his body. Her fingers sliding up one way and down the other, touching every bit of his back. She could feel the outlines of scar tissue. Some were the satiny lines of tattoo work. Some were the deeper, harsher rigid skin of long healed battle wounds.
His palms slid beneath her red dress and cupped against her womanhood. She couldn’t see what he did. All she could do was feel it. She arched, acutely aware of his fingers sliding over her sex. She was shocked with how wet she was, suddenly and completely wet.
“Kellan,” she gasped.
“Not quite ready,” he whispered in the dark. “Let’s fix that.”
He slid one finger into her, and she groaned. She was enthralled with his touch. That single digit worked in and out, caressing her walls until he found that perfect spot, the perfect rhythm, and then he played it relentlessly. When she was soft and pliant with her need he slid a second digit into her. The hungry stretch of her body welcomed the pleasure.
“There’s my sweet college lady,” he murmured against her thigh. His breath was cooler than the heat of her skin. “Give in.”
“To what?”
“Pleasure.”
His hand shifted before he kissed her His tongue slithered over her, quick and light, like the kiss of a snake. It darted over her again and again. His hand moved in countermotion to his tongue. Shocks of pleasure pulsed through her with every movement.
“Oh god,” she moaned. “Oh god, don’t stop.”
A fire began inside her body, stoked by the way he teased her. She began to move her hips, arching against the need he fed. She was a furnace, and he stoked her. He seemed to know just how she needed to be touched, tended, and pleasured.
“Is this what you need?” His breath tickled along her body.
“More,” she groaned. “God give me more.”
She felt his breath on her thigh when he chuckled. “Impatient little thing, aren’t you?”
&
nbsp; She wrapped her legs suddenly around his middle. With a shove of her body she had him against the bed with her riding his chest.
“Damn, woman!” He laughed. “Those are some slick moves.”
“Oh, sweetie, you have absolutely no idea.”
She bent over him so her breasts, heavy and soft, swept along his face as she moved down his body. The pert peaks of her nipples drew their way down his naked form until she mounted his lap with pride. Her nightgown, still in place, made a shimmering fan over his hips, blocking either of them from seeing when she rocked her body against his in a parody of lovemaking.
He was so hard against her. She could feel him like steel encased in satin, pushing against her soaked lips. She moved over him again, her body a wave of sensuality.
“Mmm, Emma.” He reached to her hips, gripping the rounded flesh against his callused palms. “You teasing me?”
“Only for a little while,” she promised. “Just until you feel like you are going to break.”
She rocked over him, reveling in the power of keeping him pinned against the bed with her own body. Kellan Mathers was hers, if only for this moment. Would he want her again after this? Would this be their only night together? She hoped not. She pushed that thought away. It did not matter if this were only for a moment. It mattered that it was happening now, that this could never be taken away.
“I’ve wanted you for so long, Kellan.” She ran a single hand down his tattooed chest. “So goddamned long. I wanted to draw this out, take my time, but I don’t think I can.”
“Emma,” he said. His eyes glittered up at her in the dark like ghosts on a gray lake. “Emma, we got all night. Do what you want, baby. Do what you need.”
It was just what she wanted to hear. For all her planning of seduction she hadn’t lied. She wanted to feel alive. Her body ached with a need to be caressed, wanted, and given release. It was a heavy feeling, and she wanted to feed it.
She steadied her body by splaying her fingers across his chest. If she concentrated, she could see his eyes, those smoky hazel eyes that had haunted her teenage years. She could feel the smoothness of his skin beneath his palms. Emma pushed back, feeling the blunt tip of him pushing against her slick opening.
“Oh yes,” she purred.
She rolled her hips, stirring her body on top of his. The hot weight of well used fingers sliding over her hips to cup her breasts made her tremble. Awareness fed into every part of her body. She felt the cotton blanket beneath her knees, the sleek caress of his skin against her calves. His breathing pushing her hands up and down on his chest. Everything fed the fire that he had started. Heat burned along her skin.
It had never been like this for her before. Part of her wanted to understand it. Was it Kellan? Was it all those years of pent up frustration? Was it everything that was going on? Probably a mix of all three.
“Kellan…”
“Go on,” he coaxed. “Go on, take me, Emma.”
Her knees clamped against his naked hips. A thin layer of sensual sweat spilled between them. She shoved herself backwards, piercing her body with his. One moment she was empty, the next she was full of him. The weight of her body pushed him to the very depths of her.
The world fell away. The near dark of the room made the sensation all the more intimate. She could barely see him, but she could feel him. She felt the spring of hair on his legs against her ankles, and she heard the hitch of his breath become a hungry moan as she took him inside of her.
“Hot,” he groaned, “so damn hot.”
She moved, she shifted her body up and down on top of his, plunging him into her over and over again. But it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. Her body simply would not cooperate with the depth of her desire.
“More,” she pleaded. She didn’t know what would bring her. She hoped he did. “I need more.”
“Grab the back of the bed,” he coaxed.
“Hmm?” It made no sense to her. “The bed?”
He didn’t repeat it. He gripped her hands and put them on the back of the couch. She dug her fingers into the soft cushion. The fabric bunched against her palms. He grabbed her hips hard enough to keep her still. His fingers laced over the swell of her buttocks. For a moment she didn’t understand what he was doing, and then he levered into her. The tip of his shaft breached the deepest parts of her. Dimly she knew it should hurt, but it didn’t. It was pleasure with the fine edge of pain.
She must have made some sound because he went completely still beneath her.
“Emma?”
“Don’t stop,” she hissed at him.
He took her at her word and pounded into her from below. She felt every stroke of his thrusting body as he surged up and up. His shaft pushed deep, and deeper. She held on for dear life, bending her body to contain his rigid shaft.
Then, quite suddenly, the pain of it disappeared. It was as if her entire body accepted the sensual assault. His thrusts became heavy and erratic. It was glorious.
“Oh god!”
“There we go,” he grunted. “Take it, Emma. Take it.”
The fire whelmed inside of her. Her skin felt too tight.
“Kellan, oh god, Kellan!”
The fire burst with such heat that for a moment it blinded her. Her hips moved of their own accord, drawing every shock wave of pleasure through her. She was flying, and then it went higher. One moment she was inside of her body, the next she was falling into an inferno of ecstasy.
“Emma.” The strangled sound of that one word made her clutch around him.
“Don’t stop,” she gasped.
His body twitched, taking on that uneven rhythm of a man too close to the end to have anything resembling control. Rough hands raked over her tingling body as he struggled to make it last just a little more.
He cursed, over and over again, his voice jagged with desperation. A moment later he cried out and filled her.
# # #
The pullout bed was small with Kellan in it, but Emma couldn’t bring herself to mind. At some point they had turned on the lights, and all she could see was his long legged form laid out against the rumpled sea of her bed sheets. It looked good.
“Relaxed yet?” he asked.
“Getting there.” She smirked. She was tucked into the muscular curve of one tattooed arm.
He lay back, stretching his free arm back over his head. She watched his stomach do a fascinating dance with the moment. “All right, you just let me know when you are ready for round two. I’ll see what I can do about the rest of your tightly wound body.”
She laughed and shook her head. Her finger traced along the collarbone, and then down the center of his chest. The light brought out the colors of his tattoos. Most of them were dark ink, grayscale works of art forever imprinted on his skin, but a few had vibrant color in them.
“Did you know, in Russia, the tattoos that convicts and criminals have are basically their record? They mark what crimes they have committed on themselves like a body résumé.”
He raised one brow at her while her finger trailed over the largest one on his chest. It was just Beasts, spelled out in Old English script. She couldn’t help but be impressed by the line work involved, like ink-driven poetry.
“Arkaday Bronnikov made a big study of it between the 1960s and the 1980s. He wanted to understand exactly why criminals liked to tattoo themselves. What it was about ink on the skin that marked a person as other.” She squirmed into a half sitting position, pillowing her head on the palm of one hand while the other continued the trek across his body.
Her eyes flicked up to his face. His eyes were closed but his lips were curled into a gentle smile. The locks of dark hair had more curl to them than they’d had before, probably from all the sweating. She reached up and brushed it out of his face.
He glanced down at her. “Did he figure out why?” He lifted his head up so his eyes could follow her fingers as she spelled out the name of the club that had affected her life since childhood.
“Well, he didn’t, but a few sociologists have proposed that it goes back to warrior cultures. Many societies in which the warrior, or hunter or whatever name you want to use, was exalted using their scars to tell a story. Over time they added ink to wounds to make the scars last longer. Over time needles and ink replaced this. Their best warriors used this as a kind of bragging.”
“Yeah, I can tell you that criminals totally love to brag.” His gentle smile turned into a wide grin.
She smirked and sat up completely, tucking her legs close to her body. She leaned over him, her form still clad in red satin. “Can you tell me that criminals see themselves as warriors?”