The Real Deal

by Lucy Monroe

  “Fighting would be a waste of effort,” she agreed, burying her face against him. She inhaled more of his scent, absorbing his essence skin to skin.

  If she was dreaming, she’d kill the sleep police if they woke her up before Simon made love to her.

  Simon’s heart was trying to pound out of his chest as he laid Amanda down on his oversize bed. She looked so incredibly small laying there, her beautiful skin flushed with arousal, her eyes dark pools of sensual promise.

  He started reefing off his clothes, stopping when all he had on was a pair of unbuttoned jeans. He didn’t take them off. Not yet. He wanted her a lot more excited before he bared himself to her. He would expire from unsatisfied desire if she bolted after seeing his full erection. And it was fully erect, so hard it ached and pulsed with a need only this tiny woman could satisfy.

  She hadn’t taken anything off.

  “If you don’t undress, I’ll rip your clothes off your body,” he said in his conquering warrior persona, but only half-joking. He wanted her so much that if he tried undressing her, that cute little cotton top would probably end up without any buttons left.

  Those startled doe eyes looked at him, doubt lurking in their depths. “You want me to take off my clothes?” She sounded just like a nervous virgin.

  Another shot of desire surged through him. He didn’t know how much longer he could keep up the game. He’d started it on a whim, sensing a need to put their lovemaking on a less intense level for Amanda, but far from lessening the tension, the role-playing was increasing it. At least for him.

  He mock-glared at her and started toward the bed. “Yes.”

  Something shifted in her expression and she scrambled to her knees, her hands on the buttons of her blouse. Her eyes questioned him.

  “Take it off.” Was that guttural voice his? He sounded like a primal male intent on subduing his mate.

  Her fingers trembled, but she undid the top button.

  He didn’t want to scare her. Stopping at the edge of the bed, he reached out and covered her hands with his. “The game doesn’t matter, sweetheart. I just want you.”

  She swallowed. “I, um . . .”

  He slipped his fingers under hers and undid the next button, exposing the top of her generous cleavage. He couldn’t help himself. “What?”

  She cleared her throat. “Simon?”

  “I’m right here, baby.” He liked calling her that, he decided.

  “Could we, um . . .”

  He put his knee down on the bed and loomed over her, slipping the third button out of its hole and giving himself a view of creamy white mounds. She wasn’t wearing a bra and for some reason that knowledge upped his excitement ten more notches. He had every intention of seeing her fully naked before long, but there was something about knowing that thin cotton was all that stood between him and her magnificent breasts.

  She took a deep breath, pressing soft flesh against the back of his fingers. “Oh!” She blinked her big, brown eyes at him.

  He smiled and lowered his head until their lips were a centimeter away from meeting. “Could we what, sweetheart?”

  “I want to play.”

  “I want to play too.” And he wanted to play for a very long time. He kissed her, nibbling at that delicious bottom lip that had tantalized him with its fullness earlier.

  She tasted so good, better than he’d fantasized. Her mouth was sweet and warm and he explored all of it, starting with her lips and then moving with gentle forays into the interior. Her tongue was shy, but when she let it slide along his, fireworks exploded in his head.

  They stayed like that for endless minutes, her shirt half undone, his hands buried in her hair and their mouths molded together like two halves of a work of art by one of the great masters.

  Finally, he pulled back. He wanted to finish the job of undressing the treasure in his arms. “Is that the way you wanted to play?” he teased as he undid the final three buttons in quick succession.

  Her hands grabbed his wrists before he could peel the fabric back and expose her flesh to his hungry gaze. “I mean I want to play conquering warrior and captive.” She said it all in a rush and then blushed crimson.

  He’d never seen a woman do that before, but Amanda’s cheeks were as red as a ripe apple.

  He let the pads of his thumbs caress the inner curves of her breasts. “You want to keep pretending to be my captive?”

  Did she have any idea what the scenario was doing to him?

  Amanda nodded, terrified of how he’d respond to her request. What if he didn’t want to keep up the pretense? She might annoy him with her silliness, but she’d thought that if she could get him to play the game, he would be in charge. He wouldn’t expect her to do anything. After all, a captive wasn’t required to seduce her captor.

  Simon might even mistake her sexual ineptness as an attempt to play inexperienced virgin. It would be his job to seduce her and then maybe she wouldn’t mess everything up.

  His hands slid inside the opened edges of her top and cupped both her breasts, sending her heart into her throat. “You make a very alluring captive, Amanda.”

  “I do?” she choked out.

  “Oh, yes.” His hands squeezed and she felt her pebble-hard nipples brush against the hard skin of his palms.

  She moaned.

  “You may be a virgin, but you cannot pretend you do not want me.” Heavens, he really sounded like the conquering warrior now.

  Her hands were still on his wrists, but she wasn’t trying to stop him from caressing her intimate flesh. She wanted it so much. “Yes, I want you,” she said, giving him the words.

  Then he kissed her, not gently and tentatively like he’d done before, but with all the passion she’d dreamed of sparking in her lover. His mouth claimed hers with a marauder’s skill and she went under without a count.

  Her sensory universe shrank to include only this man. His taste. His smell. The way it felt to have his mouth sucking at hers, his tongue invading her mouth. She let her hands slide along his arms and up to his chest, touching him like she had craved doing that first Tae Kwon Do sparring session when he had teased her with his naked torso.

  His skin was smooth over rock-hard muscles and she brushed the fan of silken black hair on his chest with her fingertips. She was glad he wasn’t hairy all over. She much preferred the velvety expanse of his skin, so warm, so vibrant.

  Suddenly the hold on her breasts changed. He took each swollen bud between a thumb and forefinger and began to roll them. She screamed into his mouth, the feeling so electric her fingers dug into his pecs.

  His mouth broke away from hers. “I’ve got to taste you, baby.” Then he was tearing her top off and his hot mouth closed around one nipple.

  He sucked.

  She screamed again, the sound unmuffled and shocking to her.

  He sucked harder and it became a pleasure this side of pain, but she would die if he stopped. She knew she would die. He started to play with her other breast again, using his fingers to torment the peak to a level of sensitivity she had never known.

  She couldn’t talk. She couldn’t even beg. All she could do was make incoherent noises with her mouth while the pleasurable tension inside her coiled tighter and tighter. She felt like a spring, ready to snap, but there was no letup of the pressure. She couldn’t stand it. It was too much!

  She tried to pull away, but only succeeded in falling backward on the bed, Simon still in possession of her sensitized flesh. He used his knee to push her legs apart and then settled between them, his big body pressed against the heart of her.

  She could no more help arching her pelvis toward him than she could stop the feelings shooting straight from her nipples to the core of her femininity.

  She reached her hands above her head, needing something to hold onto as the maelstrom of sensations threatened to overwhelm her. Her fingers encountered the bars of the bed. She grabbed them, her whole body tensing as Simon ground the hard muscles of his stomach against the
throbbing flesh between her legs.

  He released her nipple with a pop and air rushed against the wet, engorged tip. His head came up and his gunmetal gaze raked over her, his eyes narrowing when he saw where her hands were.

  He seemed mesmerized by the sight of her fingers clinging to his headboard. “Good idea.”

  “What do you mean?” Her voice came out in a husky whisper, which was all she could manage at that point.

  “A captive should be restrained, don’t you think? So she can’t run away.”

  Simon almost laughed at the look that crossed Amanda’s face at his suggestion, but he wasn’t capable of laughter right then. He was barely capable of speech. He wanted to bury himself between her legs, to feel the liquid heat of her swollen lips and blood-engorged tissues surrounding him.

  “You want to tie me to the bed?” she asked, her voice squeaking like Minnie Mouse.

  He cupped her tip-tilted, luxuriant breasts and squeezed them together, then buried his mouth against the nipples he’d pressed so near one another. “Yes.”

  She was silent for so long, he thought she was going to say no. He laved the sweet reddened berries with his tongue, totally willing to let the game go if that was what she wanted. He needed her, her body, her generous and giving passion. Her. Nothing more. Nothing less.

  “All right.”

  His head shot up and he looked into doe-brown eyes glazed with desire.

  “You can tie my hands to the bed.”

  He felt a spurt of pre-ejaculate come. Not at the thought of tying his lover up, but at the knowledge she trusted him enough with her body to let him do it.

  He came up on his knees and straddled her right over the apex of her thighs. Her breath heaved in and out, making her flushed and excited flesh quiver.

  If he didn’t need to be inside her so bad, he could watch her just breathe all night. He traced the smooth skin of her abdomen with one fingertip. “Baby, you are beautiful.”

  “I’m not.”

  Anger equal to his passion coursed through him. “You are, and you can damn well stop accusing me of lying. You’re the prettiest, sexiest, most incredible woman I have ever known and if you try to deny it again, I’ll gag you.”

  She laughed, the sound almost as beautiful as she was. “You can’t gag me because then we couldn’t kiss.”

  She had a point. “Then I’ll just have to kiss you silent.”

  Her mouth curved in a Mona Lisa smile. “Is that supposed to encourage me to be good . . . or bad?”

  He groaned. “Minx.”

  Leaning over her, he reached for the nightstand drawer and slid it open. The box of condoms Jacob had presented Simon with the day after catching Amanda sleeping in his arms winked up at him, but it was the antistatic straps he had stashed there at some point that interested him at the moment. Their soft composition and Velcro fastening made them ideal for what he had in mind.

  Pulling two out, he sat back up, grunting as the movement caused his iron-hard flesh to brush against her mound in a way guaranteed to drive him crazy. He wanted to get her pants off and see that place reserved just for him.

  She stared at the EST straps in his hands, then looked up at him and smiled such a sweet smile he had to lean down and kiss her.

  Amanda reveled under the onslaught of Simon’s kiss. She was so close to orgasm that one more movement down there and she was going to go off like a model rocket on a short fuse. He had no idea how tantalizing she found the prospect of having her hands bound. If she couldn’t touch him, she couldn’t mess up touching him. It was a win-win scenario for her.

  And he was so good at this touching thing. He ground himself against her and she felt herself right on the verge of ecstasy, but she needed more, just a little more.

  She pressed against him with herself, spreading her legs wider to increase the friction between their bodies. Rotating her hips in a circle, she fought frantically for that final touch that would make the explosion nuclear.

  But, cruelly, he pulled away, moving his body so that no matter how she arched and twisted, she couldn’t get the contact she needed.

  She tore her lips from his. “Simon! Please, I need you to make me come. I’m so close,” she whimpered.

  His hands cupped her face. “Baby, I want to taste you. I want to touch you. I want some part of my body, and I don’t care if it’s my tongue, my finger or my sex, inside you when you come for me for the first time. Please.”

  She stared up at him, frustration warring with the undeniable need thickening his voice. His need and hers . . . to be desired that strongly . . . won. “All right.”

  He smiled and kissed her with obvious approval. Then she felt his fingers at work at each wrist and she found herself bound loosely to the bed. If she yanked or worked the bindings, she could get loose, but she didn’t want to.

  Then he climbed down her body until he could reach the button and zipper on her cotton Capri pants. He undid them and began to pull them off, taking her panties with them as they went. When he reached her feet, her tennies and socks came off too, leaving her completely naked and open to his gaze by the time he stood erect at the end of the bed.

  She looked so vulnerable lying there, like she expected him to find her lacking. Her expression of nervous worry was impossible to misinterpret.

  He shook his head. “You are gorgeous.” Dark brown curls hid the secrets of her femininity and he climbed back onto the bed so he could brush his fingers through the silky fluff.

  Her eyes slid shut and she moaned as he pressed one fingertip between the plump lips. He sought out her clitoris and touched it. Just lightly. He didn’t want her going off yet. She’d come so close earlier and he hadn’t been lying when he said he intended to be inside her when it happened.

  He wanted to taste her, to get her so mindless with pleasure that when he went to join their flesh, she wouldn’t have enough wherewithal to get nervous about his size. He would never hurt her, but she wouldn’t know that until after they’d made love, would she?

  He told himself to stop worrying. She’d trusted him enough to play sexy games with him. She wasn’t going to freak out when she saw his straining erection.

  She arched off the bed, her body flushed with passion. “If you don’t do something soon, I’m going to scream.”

  “You’re going to scream all right, but it will be because I’m doing something.”

  She gave a choked laugh that cut off when he pressed her silky thighs apart and buried his mouth against her wet and swollen flesh. She was slick and sweet and hot, so damn hot. He’d done this for other women, but he could never remember being as turned on by it as he was right now.

  Every ripple of pleasure in her flesh echoed in his own.

  Every sexy little moan brought a responsive groan from deep inside him.

  And she tasted like every erotic fantasy he had ever had.

  Her body writhed against him. “Simon, oh . . . ! That feels so good. I’ve never . . . Oh . . .”

  He slipped his tongue inside and used his thumb to draw circles around her hardened clitoris. She went ballistic, screaming his name while pressing herself against his mouth with so much force he was afraid she’d hurt herself on his teeth.

  “More!” she shouted.

  And he gave her more. And more. And more. Until she was sobbing with pleasure. Until she was begging him to stop, her body convulsing and jerking with every slide of his tongue, every glide of his finger. And more. Until with a groan of utter abandonment, she went limp beneath him.

  He kissed her labia softly, then the sweet spot he’d pleasured so unmercifully and then finally paid homage to it all with a gentle kiss on the very top of her mound.

  She expelled a shuddering sigh.

  He stood up and shucked out of his jeans and black knit boxers, the relief of letting his sex free an overwhelming pleasure in itself. He walked around the bed and dug a condom out of the drawer in the nightstand. It took two tries to rip open the foil packet because his
hands were shaking. He finally got it on and turned to look at Amanda, ready to gauge her reaction to his size, but her eyes weren’t even open. Her face wore the most blissful and sweet expression he’d ever seen, but tears ran unchecked down her temples.

  Chapter 12

  Oh, man. Was she okay?

  Amanda felt a tentative fingertip trace the path of her tears and smiled.

  “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” He sounded so worried.

  She didn’t want him to worry, not when she was as close to Heaven as a woman could get and still be living. “No. It just feels so good.” She forced heavy eyelids up and turned her head toward the sound of his voice.

  He was beside her and leaning above her, propped up on one arm. “You’re crying because it feels good?” His tone was one of disbelief.

  “Yes.” She looked deeply into his storm-gray eyes. “Thank you. That’s the most beautiful experience I’ve ever had.”

  The worry cleared from his expression to be replaced by masculine arrogance. “There’s more.”

  “Not possible.”

  That made him laugh. Low and husky, sending a skirl of pleasure through her when she thought all pleasure had been wrung from her body.

  “Do you want me to release your arms?”

  She thought about it. Everything had gone so well so far. He didn’t seem disappointed and she’d experienced the most amazing sensations of her life. There was an old saying, “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.” It definitely wasn’t broken.

  “No.” Then she peeked at him to see if her answer had disappointed him, but he was already moving over her, pressing her legs apart with his muscular thighs.

  He hooked her knees with his forearms, pulling them up, exposing her to him in a way she could not have stood with anyone else. “You wanted more, Amanda, and I’m going to give it to you.”

  She remembered screaming that at some point during him making love to her with his mouth. Unbelievably, renewed desire sparked to life inside her. She thought she’d been beyond arousal, so satiated her senses could not take in any more pleasure.