by S. R. Jones
“Were you cold?” I glance at the fire. Outside it will be twilight now, and it’s been cool today, with grey skies and a wind, not the sun we’ve been lucky to have recently.
“No, but the forecast is for a storm.”
I nod.
“Thought I may as well get this going before it does get chilly.” He pats the rug by him. “Come here.”
I do as he says and walk to him, standing as he looks up at me, his eyes taking their time to travel the length of my body.
Sitting up on his heels, he pulls me to him, and kisses me right on my clit through the silk of my knickers. I give a small gasp of surprise. He runs one finger down the seam of the pants and then looks at me with raised brows. “What do we have here?”
He pulls the material to one side and strokes again. “Smooth. Did you shave yourself for me, cupcake?”
I nod, and swallow down a suddenly dry throat. There’s something extra predatory about him tonight.
“Did you know,” he says conversationally, “that spanking over silk feels and sounds different to the way it feels on skin?”
I draw in breath and freeze. He hasn’t spanked me, or mentioned it, despite me telling him I liked it. I figured maybe it wasn’t his thing, and I was partly relieved, not sure I was ready to go there myself. Not since Stalker Boy came on the scene. Also…Reece is big. He’s powerful in a way few men are, I can get off from that alone, from his big body above me, or holding me. From the way when he grips me at the height of things, it leaves small bruises on my skin. All of it gets me off in a big way.
“Come here.” He stands and walks over to the sofa, where he beckons me with a crooked finger. I do as he says and follow him.
Once there, he pulls both my hands behind my back in one of his. Holding me firm, but tenderly at my wrists.
“I want to spank you over these knickers so badly. You need a safe word for this.”
My heart is hammering hard and fast but I don’t want to wuss out, want to see where this leads. “Red,” I reply unimaginatively.
“Okay.” He gives me a terse nod. “Say it again, what is it?”
“Red.”
With no further preamble, no silly words about what a naughty girl I’ve been and I need a punishment, he pushes me over his knee. My toes almost leave the floor and I wonder if I’ll topple over but he’s holding me, one arm under my chest securing me there, his knees supporting my thighs.
“I’m going to give you fifteen, and they won’t be hard, only enough to turn this gorgeous arse of yours a nice pink,” he tells me.
I brace myself, and the first hit when it comes makes me give a little cry of outrage. If he considers that not hard then I’d not like to experience his going at it.
The next stroke is lighter, he’s tempered it in response to me. I wiggle my bottom a little on the third stroke, playing up a bit and the fourth is harder. Okay, so it’s like that is it?
He smooths his hand over the silky material after the sixth stroke, soothing my already heated flesh. He’s alternating between cheeks and something about him doing it over my panties makes it so much more deliciously naughty.
When he gets to ten, it’s starting to sting. “Ow,” I complain.
He laughs, deep and so fucking sexy. “You’re a bit of a brat, aren’t you?”
Two more slaps come in quick succession. Then he’s almost done, but as he brings his hand down for the last two, his other hand goes from under my chest, and moments later his fingers part my folds.
“So wet. You’re a naughty brat who loves this.” He leans in and whispers in my ear. “Next time, maybe we’ll have to use a riding crop, and not that silly pink thing you’ve got but a real one. Pull your hair into a ponytail and tug your head back while I whip you.”
Oh my God! The picture he paints with his words has me pressing against his fingers.
I’m suddenly done with being submissive, and want him so much I struggle to my feet as he finishes spanking me. He watches me for a moment and grins when I grab a condom from his wallet on the side and then sink to my knees between his legs. I take him out of his trousers and suck him down deep, but I don’t give him my mouth for long. After a minute of sucking, I get up and straddle him. I stare into his eyes as I sheath him in the condom and then sink down on him, gasping as he fills me.
I want this hard and fast and so I ride him the way I need it. Taking my pleasure from him, using him almost, not that he seems to mind, he’s grunting on every downward stroke I make.
Soon, he grabs my hips and uses his strength to piston me up and down on him. Our flesh is slapping together, we are breathing heavily, and we’re both slicked in sweat. The sounds and scents of sex fill the air.
“Shit, I’m gonna come.” The look of surprise on Reece’s face. The fact he’s lost control, it serves to send me toward the edge, too, and as he groans and comes like crazy, I tip over and clench around him.
I didn’t use my fingers. It takes a moment to sink in that I didn’t touch my clit and I still came. He got me so worked up I came from penetration alone.
He leans back, breathing hard, and I take a moment to admire the burning hotness that is him. All golden and muscled, and now sated. Like a lion who has eaten his fill and is surveying all he owns.
We cuddle for a short while, and then I shiver as the sweat cools on my skin. In one fluid motion, Reece picks me up, and carries me to the rug in front of the fire where he gently lays me down, curling around me from behind, giving me his body heat.
We lay in front of the fire for a long while, but then I remember my gift.
“I’ll be back in a moment,” I tell a sleepy Reece before I get up and head to the dining room table, where my handbag lies. Unzipping it, I take out the gift, and bring it, wrapped in thin white tissue paper, to Reece. I hold it out.
“What’s this?” He frowns at it.
“A gift. For you.”
He looks at it and smiles, but then it falls from his face. “How did you pay for it?”
“Cash. I’m not an idiot.”
He sighs. “Okay. Good.”
I doubt my stalker has access to my bank details but in case he does, I never pay for things with cards anymore unless I have absolutely no choice. Direct debits for most of my bills come from my parents’ account, so things like my phone and TV package can’t be traced back to me. I pay them money whenever I see them to cover it. More than cover it. It means they get to do nice things, go on fantastic holidays and enjoy their golden years. After all, I’ve got more money than I need. Last year my books earned me nearly a million pounds, because one of them was sold for film rights. Doesn’t matter if the movie gets made or not, it earned me a ton of money.
I can’t spend it, stuck as I am as a prisoner of my stalker, but even if I could go out and about, I’m not one for the fancy things in life. I love my expensive face creams, and perfumes, but that’s about it. Clothes wise, I like them to be well made, but I don’t buy a lot of clothes. I don’t even love shoes, unlike most women. I prefer comfy sandals, boots in winter, or running shoes. Even if I were free to do as I wished, I’d still give a lot of my money away.
With an almost childlike glee, Reece tears the wrapper from the gift, snapping me out of my thoughts. I smile at his actions. He’s not methodical, or careful, like I am when I unwrap something. In a lot of ways, he reminds me of a Golden Retriever trapped in a human body. Big, happy, goes full-on for life every day, but he has a darker side. A distinctly un-Golden Retriever-like side. The way we fuck reminds me of that. What he does for a living reminds me of that. I would never underestimate Reece, but I imagine his sunny disposition, and his good looks have led many people to do exactly that. More’s the pity for them.
When the lighthouse appears, he looks at it for a long moment, turning it around in his long fingers, admiring the paint work, which matches the one outside the window here exactly.
“I love it.” He looks at me, eyes crinkled with sexy lines at the corners wh
ere he’s smiling.
“It’s a small reminder of here. Of…us.” I say it hesitantly. Not sure there even is an us but hoping in some ways there can be. Even if it is an us that can’t last, I want this to be real. To be something more than meaningless sex.
“If there is an us?” Crap, me and my big mouth. I put it out there, and then wait, heart in my throat.
“There’s an us, Kate. What it means going forward, I have no idea. My work…it takes me all over. You’re living in Scotland. I’m not great at relationships. I mean, I want one, but I screw it up somehow.”
I put my hand on his arm. I hate the words he’s saying to me. The excuses he’s making, the shutters he’s bringing down already. Not wanting to show how upset I am, how vulnerable. I smile. “I get it, Reece. I feel the same way. This is of a time and place, the here and now. I simply wanted to know if there was something happening for you, too. Not only me.”
“Not only you,” he says, and picks my hand up from his arm, kissing my knuckles. It should be affectionate, but it feels like a brush off.
“I need the loo.”
I head out of the room, blinking back my tears. I should never have gotten involved with him. He’s blindingly beautiful, a god walking amongst us mere mortals. A golden, sun hued god. And I am a drab mouse of a woman when it comes right down to it. I’ll probably see him one day, in the dim and distant future, on the news, married to some gorgeous model he was paid to protect. And then because I have a far too active imagination, I see it all clearly playing out in front of me. Him and her, both gorgeous, both golden, burning up in one another’s orbit.
Mere mortals like me shouldn’t dare fly too close to the sun.
I did, and now I’m going to get burned.
Chapter Nine
Reece.
Fuck. I hate myself right now. Why do I always do this?
Why do I either choose women who don’t want to be involved, safe bets all round, or when something good does happen, why do I go and screw it up? Pull away? And I am pulling away. I feel myself putting those barriers up, and what’s more Kate did, too. She’s not stupid. I’m also a bit angry at her, though. She had to push. I thought her regal, composed, to be honest. I supposed I thought she handled herself a bit like a man at first. Then we got hot and heavy, and I saw a more vulnerable side to her, much more. I should have stopped it then. Hell, I never should have started it.
I need fucking therapy is what.
More than any of my friends, I always wanted a relationship, and before the event, I think I’d have eventually found one. The time spent in that fucking dry and rotten hellhole of a room with Liam warped something in me. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t get away, and now I have this need to always be free. Even my friends moan about it, as I’ll cancel something we’ve arranged to go off climbing or hiking. I don’t think they understand how pathological it is, though.
I used to believe I’d find what I wanted one day. Get a family and a home where I can settle. Now I’m not sure I ever will. Not sure I can.
It’s as if, after being trapped in such a way, not only can’t I bear to be indoors for too long, but I can’t bear to be tied down in any way. I want to be with someone. I want what my friends have found, but the thought of it also terrifies me. Yep, I need therapy. Not going there, though.
And Kate? I let myself think about her. Is it her? Is it that she’s not what I want?
No. I decide instantly, on instinct. She’s fucking amazing. Beautiful, intelligent, strong. I realize then that she’s scary as hell to me because she could be the real deal, and because I can’t cope with the idea.
I’m already pulling away. She broke our magic spell, the little bubble we were in. I can’t blame her, she only wanted to know this was real. And it is. But by making it something tangible, explicit, and worse, stated, she’s set off the itch within me. That need to keep moving. To be free.
Can I overcome it? Somehow find a way to tamp down the incessant need to be able to do what I want when I want? Find a way to compromise so I can live something approaching a normal life?
Shit. If anyone is worth it Kate is, which terrifies me all over again.
“Fuck.” I hit the wall by my side, wincing as my knuckles crack against the plaster. I’m such a mess, and I’m going to fuck this up.
I hear Kate leave the bathroom and try to compose myself for when she comes back into the room. After about five minutes, I realize she’s not coming back, so I head on upstairs, searching her out. I don’t want to leave it like this. I find her in her room, curled on her side in bed, eyes closed. She’s feigning sleep. She’s not actually asleep. I can tell the difference, but I don’t know what to say to her, and I want to give her this respite. Some time to regather her thoughts, and her dignity.
Not that she’s got any reason to feel embarrassed, but I expect she is. She put it out there and I slapped her down.
I go deal with the fire, and then take a long, hot shower. Then I head to my own bed. It’s only ten pm, and normally I don’t go to bed until midnight or later, but I’m depressed as shit with my stupid fucking self, and so I go clean my teeth, and sink under the covers.
There’s another issue I need to talk about with her. I’ve been doing some digging behind her back into her finances and her life. I could have asked her, but I had to find out everything I could, and people cover shit up when they know someone is going to go looking.
I didn’t tell her and instead I spied on her. I did so by digging into things on my own, hacking into her life. It’s led me to a guy I think is possibly the man to blame for stalking her, but if I tell her that, I’ll have to tell her I went behind her back. I sigh and stare at the ceiling. I’ve gone and truly fucked up by getting involved with her. She’ll hate me now for what I’ve done on both scores.
I open my iPad, needing to kill time before I check in with Liam at eleven, and turn to the book about the ill-fated expedition to find the Northern Passage, but that only reminds me of Kate. With a sigh, I close it and shut my eyes.
I must have fallen asleep because I awake with a start, something putting me on full alert. I can go from asleep to awake and alert in an instant, and now I’m wide awake and something is off.
My eyes search out the red letters on the alarm clock. Eleven-fifty pm. Shit, I missed touching base with Liam. I don’t move a muscle, instead listening, watching, and utilizing other senses, those ancient senses that most humans don’t use anymore. There’s a storm raging outside, I can hear it even through the shutters and the thick glass.
In here, though, there’s an odd stillness. It’s too still, the odd calm before the tornado rips your house apart. Once more, I tune into those more ancient senses. The ones that prick the back of your neck, or tell you a person is wrong somehow, from a simple glance. I let them come online fully as I lie stone still in the thick dark trying to figure out what woke me so suddenly. There’s no noise. No odd scents, and though it is dark, my eyes can’t make out anything moving.
Then I feel it. A tiny disturbance in the air by my head before a blinding blow hits my temple, knocking me sick and making bright forks of lightning flash in front of my eyes.
Another searing blow and all fades out.
**
Pain.
So much pain.
My head is splitting. Sharp, searing flashes of white hot agony zing down the left side of my skull. Where the hell am I? I try to lift my head and it makes my stomach roil, so I let it stay hanging. I’m laid on a cold, rough surface, legs behind me, and my arms in front of me, out to the side at an unnatural angle. I try to open my eyes but the moment I crack them a millimetre and a tiny bit of light streams in, my head screams, so I slam them shut. I move my arms. A loud rattle, and the cold chafing of metal against my skin tells me I am handcuffed, or maybe chained.
Crowded thoughts flit through my mind. Am I on a mission? Afghanistan? Something in Eastern Europe?
Christ, Reece, focus.
The fog make
s it difficult to think, but I need to cut through that and concentrate. My life probably depends on it. Where was I last?
As if reaching back through a dark tunnel, I try to grab the memories of what came before this endless pain in my head.
A house. Near a beach. A woman.
Kate!
My mind snaps back into focus. I was with Kate. What the fuck has happened?
I need to open my eyes. Look around.
Carefully, I try once more to lift my head and with a groan manage it. My shoulders ache at the sockets where my arms are forced up and out at an unnatural angle against my prone body. Once more my stomach churns at the smallest movement and I swallow down thick, acrid bile. Shit.
I think the fucker has possibly fractured my skull because the pain is horrendous. Worse than I felt after a nearby bomb detonation hit me with the blast wave in Georgia many years ago. And I got a nasty blow to the head from debris then.
I shiver and look down at myself. Where are my fucking clothes?
I’m naked, and my feet are tied together with thick black tape. As I slowly move my gaze up my body, I see there’s more of it around my legs below my knees. Kate is maybe at the hands of a madman right now, while I’m handcuffed and bound, head spinning.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Panic crawls all over me, and I drag myself out of the threatening pit of despair, go to that place in my mind where I can remain calm, focused. There must be a way out of this. There’s always a way out. Who has done this to me? The only person I can think of is Kate’s stalker, which means she might be in a similar condition to me right now. Held somewhere naked, hurt, and at the mercy of a sadistic sociopath.
This time my stomach can’t be stopped, and the muscles in my abdomen convulse as I bend over and vomit. Marvelous, now I’m going to have the stench in my nostrils.