by Angel Payne
We’re connected. Cobalt and gold. Steel and satin. A Bolt and his Flare. Energies climbing. Passions rolling. Arousals reaching…
“Oh!” Emma erupts again, shredding the word inside her clutching throat. “Oh, dear hell. I’m…I’m not sure I can…”
“Of course you can.” I’m purposeful with the words but not my self-control. Knowing it’s a damn mistake to do so, I join another finger to my first. But I need—I need—to watch her wet tissues welcome me, stretch for me, clench around me. My cock beats harder at my fly, beyond craving that tight tunnel to heaven for itself.
So close now…
Not close enough.
But how can I ask her to focus on keeping her desire tethered if I can’t force the same deference on my own dick? She’s worth it. So fucking worth it. The mantra becomes my dogma as I manipulate my hand with more determined twists, beginning a steady, taunting fuck into her dark, soaking depths. Soon, every push elicits a matching pant from Emma, as rough and primal and urgent as my treatment of her incredible cunt. For a long moment, I close my eyes, committing the sound to memory. This erotic rhythm will be the soundtrack of my most illicit fantasies for years—decades—to come.
If fate allows me to see those years.
Another attack of doom on the bubble. This time, I fight back by focusing on more comfortable things—like the incessant beat of my cock at my fly. The strain of my flesh and the growl of my veins are channeled at once to my voice, as I drive my digits deeper into her and instruct, “You can do this, baby. And you will do this. Just tighten everything, like I’ve taught you in training. Focus the effort into all the muscles around here.” With my free hand, I fan a possessive touch across the flat plane over her womb. “Rein it in. Hold it back. You can do this. Just like in training.”
She grips harder at the couch. Never in my life have I ever thought squeaking leather could be such a lust-worthy sound. Even her protesting growl adds to the perfect aesthetic of the moment. “In training, I’m not nearly naked and being turned to mush by a certain bastard’s magic finger wands.”
Before I can help myself, a chuckle spills out. “Says the enchantress with the pussy that could tame every ogre in the kingdom?”
Her giggle is like music. “Every ogre?” And her gasp, more perfect than the night wind that buffets the windows.
“Don’t get any fucking ideas.” I reinforce the dictate by withdrawing my fingers, instead sliding them around the erect red ridge at her center and closing them around it in a brutal pinch. “This talisman belongs to the king alone,” I growl in tandem with her sharp scream. “And the king refuses to share.”
“Well.” She stops to indulge another whispering tremble as I give in to an extra pinch of her pretty clit. “That sounds like a problem for the queen.”
“That so?” Our little break for levity presents a perfect chance to shift my ass—and the rest of me—into a decent gear. “Now how exactly do you figure that, m’lady?”
“Well, if the king’s got a thing for the enchantress with the talisman…”
“Ah. But what if the king is a wise man and ordered the enchantress to become his queen?”
“Forced wedlock?”
“Oh, never.” I emphasize with a pair of adoring kisses to the indents at the small of her back. “But a little tenacious seduction never hurt anyone…”
“Of course not.” Her hips quiver in time to her unsteady sigh. “Though a little screaming can always be so much fun.”
And that fucking does it.
So much for his majesty the urbane king, who’s reached for the fastenings on his pants with the refinement of an underwear model. I’m yanking and tugging and wrenching, only to encounter frustration with every move. “For fuck’s sake.” Seriously, fuckers? So I’m not a goddamned model, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been offered contracts. So when did this shit get so damn difficult? Another easy answer. Since you decided to play with your wife’s pussy until she creamed all over your fingers and turned your cock into a caged beast.
If that beast could chomp off my hand, I’m damn certain it would. But thank fuck for metaphors that only sound good on paper, because that bastard really fucking needs my hand right now. To stroke and squeeze, ensuring every screaming vein beneath the stretched skin feels acknowledged and appreciated. To tell them all it’s okay; everyone’s welcome to come out and play. And as soon as the blue-silver drops appear in the slit at the top, guiding their trajectory into the crevice that’ll bring on the best pleasure for my gorgeous, sparkling girl.
Between the perfect globes of her upturned ass.
As soon as my precome drips into her sensitive valley and she reacts with the most erotically charged shriek I’ve ever heard, I realize that “sparkling” was just the woman’s opening show.
“Sweet Christ,” I grate as soon as her freshly amped cells send their aroused signal to the pores of her skin. She’s a thousand prisms flooded with dawn’s light. A million stars blown apart by an astral explosion. A flowing fabric of living threads, surely woven by the angels themselves. And when I reach out, flowing a hand down the graceful slope of her back, she feels just as magical.
She feels like my miracle.
With every breath I pull in while leaning back over her, acknowledging every one of her vertebrae with a savoring suckle along the way, I connect even more of my circuitry to that certainty. Knot even more of my spirit into the brilliance of hers. Lose myself in the gilded splendor of her body, the siren call of her soul.
I’m a ship in the night, helpless to resist.
I’m an aimless rudder, craving her guidance.
I’m a mast struck by lightning, needing her light to wrap around me. To repair me. To be one with me so that we can stand strong together in this storm we’re still attempting to call a life.
And with my sole, urgent thrust, she is.
And we’re groaning together as she surrounds me completely with her light.
And we’re moving together as I fuck into her with mine.
And we’re filling the room with craving, aching, burning, lusting, loving—not just because it’s crashing through our blood, swelling through our hearts, and exploding through our senses.
Because it’s taking flight throughout the room itself.
Glowing from the place where my fingers mash atop hers, neon blue against gold-glitter skin, writhing tighter and tighter as I penetrate deeper and deeper.
Bursting from the union of our bodies, the same mix of light splashing into the air every time I drive in, filling her with more of my cock each and every time.
Reflecting off the vanity mirrors along the wall, each glass sheet accepting the light and then casting it out, turning our passion into dueling auroras along the ceiling over us, their rhythms growing and swelling and intensifying as we move and grind and fly together.
Higher…
Higher…
Until there’s no more blue, no more gold, and no more striations of either.
There’s only blinding, searing white. A place where we’re no longer lightning and sun, or he and she, or even man and woman.
We’re a nucleus.
A creation.
An explosion.
A fusion.
Her fire is my fire. Her pinnacle is my pinnacle. Her climax is my climax.
In her, I finally find my wholeness. My power.
Myself.
As the truth of it resonates in my soul, my senses finally reconnect with my body. I rest my lips against her ear as I let out a rumbling caveman grunt, acknowledging that even though my cock’s just rocketed to the sexual version of outer space and back, it still feels damn good to expel the last of my seed on the mortal plane.
“Oh.” Emma’s exclamation is full of soft wonder as her head dips beneath the weight of mine. “Oh, damn.”
I jerk my head back. “What? Did I hurt you?”
“No. No. Don’t move. I think I’m going to…oh, I am…”
An
d I twine my fingers into hers again, doing my best to give her every drop of my essence as her cavern quakes around my cock once more. Her high, heated sighs are a perfect symphony in the air, and the scent of our lust gives me a contact high of primal joy.
That same primordial drive pushes my head back down to where I eagerly teethe her neck. With my thick stubble helping the abrasions, the woman will likely look like she got mauled by a mountain lion tomorrow, but the conclusion only spurs me to go harder. She actually lets me, at least for the better part of another minute, until she ducks away with a weary giggle. “My savage Zeus.”
I scoop in, biting the edge of her ear. “My erotic enchantress.”
She tilts her head back, offering her lips. “My beloved husband,” she whispers when we’re finished with our wet, gentle tongue tangle. The words sluice straight to the center of my chest, growing and billowing in my heart like a cloud filling with spring rain, only the drops consist of nothing but fulfilled joy…overflowing gratitude. I’m thrumming from its radiance. Dizzy. Vanquished. Demolished. Damn near speechless—except that the answering words I have for her are too damn perfect to ignore.
So, summoning up strength from God knows where in my depleted body, I scoop the hair away from her neck, lower a worshipful kiss into its soft sheen, and murmur, “My beautiful, beloved queen.”
Her sigh, emanating from such a huge breath that her whole body rises and falls from it, is all the answer I need. After we fall into several minutes of a reflective silence, I finally and reluctantly pull away from her—but only long enough to pivot around until I can sit down, never letting my touch stray from at least some part of her skin, still as vibrant and sleek as gold satin. I continue to openly admire it while tugging her over to sit on my lap, transfixed by how the tracks of my reverent strokes are marked by a lighter shade of yellow for a few seconds. But when she shivers as well, I crunch a curious frown.
“Everything okay, baby?”
“Says the guy who just gave me a double dose of wedding night fireworks?”
Her tinkling laugh is pure music in my blood. I greedily soak it in before cuddling her closer. “Says the guy who also knows this wasn’t the wedding night you’ve dreamed of.”
Emma reaches up, clutches the side of my face, and doesn’t stop tugging until I look directly into her eyes again. More golden magic greets my stare, like flecks of the real stuff in a clear Sierras stream. “All my best dreams only have one thing in common, mister.” She gently turns up the edges of her mouth. “You.”
I pull in a resigned breath. “And a world in which you actually know where your mother is?”
The smile fades from her lips, but the flecks still gleam in her eyes. “My mom…can be a piece of work sometimes. She’ll spend three hours picking out shoes, three days on menu selections for the Charity League’s fundraiser, and then three weeks finalizing the right theme for that party. So yes, she’s loony and trivial and even much too materialistic.” She tilts her head, resting her cheek on the ball of my shoulder and her hand on the center of my chest. “But one thing she’s not is weak—and another thing she’s not is dead. I’m as sure of it as my own heartbeat,” she insists. “I just know it, you know? If she were truly gone, I’d feel it. She’s my mom. I know that sounds crazy, but…”
“No.” I run the pad of my thumb along the crest of her cheek. “It doesn’t. At all.” My next inhalation brings a pronounced ache. “As soon as Tyce was gone, I truly felt it. There was a…void…in my bones.” I shrug. “That’s still not right, but the closest I can come to describing it. I just felt this discernible absence…like someone had yanked the chain on a light in my psyche.”
She draws up again. Stares at me with unblinking turquoise intensity. “And with your father too?”
I circle my thumb back into her hairline. “I’m not sure,” I mutter. “I mean, the memories from that moment are jumbled.” That’s the fucking understatement of the year. My retention of that entire night in Paris, including the party-that-never-was at the Virage and then the insanity in the caverns below, is a massive mix-up. Streams of my mental clarity are hole-punched by black voids, misty images, and gut-deep roadblocks. “I was still struggling with the shock about what Tyce had done—and the rage at my father for being responsible for it.” I grit my teeth, struggling to mitigate the sting behind my eyes because of the recall.
Then again, there’s the easier option. To surrender to the healing warmth of my wife’s silken touch. “That makes sense.” And the haven of her confident voice.
“Sense.” I repeat her word on a short chuff. “Not a word we can often lay claim to these days.”
She takes a second to render her response, tossing in a quiet huff of her own. “If I wanted a world with nothing but ‘sense,’ Mr. Richards, I’d have stayed in Orange County and married a banker.”
She’s making an effort at the cheer-up thing—that much is glaringly clear—but I can’t help uttering, “And the place would be better for it, Velvet.”
“And that is the last time you’ll say something like that to me,” she spits, resettling against my chest as her figurative hackles settle again. “I want to be nowhere but here, mister.” She tucks her hand inside my shirt, rubbing until finding my nipple and then twisting with grinning determination. As I hiss and narrow a mock glare, she elaborates. “Right here—on the lap of the sole man on earth who can turn the pants-around-the-ankles couch-surfer look into the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
I laugh. “So I could’ve been bingeing the CW with a tub of cookie dough between my thighs for the last year?”
“I highly prefer what you just did with your thighs.”
“Me too, Bunny.” I lower my head to tenderly take her lips—though at once, I know that won’t be enough. I dip in again, intending to rectify the mistake with a scorching crush—
Except that another mistake is now back to haunt me. The one where I let my libido talk my body out of getting up to lock the damn door.
Oh yeah, that portal is swinging open wide and fast now—and for a second, I wonder if the wind has simply kicked up that violently—until my sister-in-law’s face and form appear, defined by panic I’ve not seen on anyone beyond the scumbags I’ve cornered in dark alleys. Thank God she’s still in her gown and heels, slowing her normal dervish whirl of movement enough for me to sweep Emma’s gown off the floor and drape it across both our nastiest bits.
“Baby girl!” She bursts it rushing across the room before realizing the state in which she’s just found us. “You need to come—oh, holy shit.”
“She’s beat you to the punch, sister.”
I mutter it as ’Dia spins around, dropping her face into her braced forefingers—but the commiserating giggle never comes from Emma. Instead, she’s scrambling to sit up while not turning me into the dick flasher of Malibu Canyon. “Dee Dee?” she charges. “What is it? What’s going on?”
Lydia groans while pivoting her head, gawking at us through her parted fingers. “Dear gawd.” She spins back around. “Get yourself decent and then back up to the main house. And make it fast.”
“Why? What is it?” Emma demands. “Have they found Mom?”
She’s too busy readjusting her dress to catch the defined slump of ’Dia’s shoulders. “It’s more like she found us.”
Emma emits a tearful cry. “Oh, thank God!”
Lydia drags a hand through her hair. “I wouldn’t be doing that just yet, baby girl.”
“Why?”
Lydia tightens her lips. “Because you might need to be sending up prayers for other reasons first.”
Chapter Three
Emma
I burst into the ranch’s main building in bare feet and with my dress half zipped, unable to think about anything beyond basic propriety after shoving myself back into the thing. Tears run unchecked down my face, already prey to the thousand horror scenes I’ve steeled myself for. Between the dressing suite and here, my imagination has covered everythin
g from Carrie-level buckets of blood to finding Mom catatonic and curled in a corner.
I finally make it into the living room…
And skid to such a hard stop, the balls of my feet chirp against the wood floor.
A thousand scenarios, from the gruesome to the anguished to the soul-splitting. But none of them have come close to covering this.
Mom is seated in the center of a horseshoe-shaped sofa, holding hands with Dad, who clutches her as if expecting her to disappear again any second but gapes as if she already has. Lydia stands off to the side, staring in the same way but with Sawyer as her physical anchor. Alex and Neeta are still here, though Reece sent Wade and Fershan back to the ridge to conduct the search for Laurel with their advanced machines and scanners. As a whole, I’d describe everyone in the room as past the point of tense.
Everyone except Mom.
Who looks like she’s been treated to pot brownies and Doritos for the last few hours. On a unicorn ride. With Chris Hemsworth.
Okay, maybe not the Hemsworth part.
I step down into the room, peering at her more closely. “M-Mom?”
Her whole body bounces a little. “Oh, Emmalina!” She smacks her hands together but keeps applauding with just the tips. “Oh, yes! Here you are, honey!”
Sooooo, maybe Hemsworth after all.
“Ummm. Yeah.” I almost issue it as a question but manage to funnel the curiosity into the looks I scoop around to everyone else, even Dad. But clearly, they’re all as stunned as me. This isn’t Laurel Crist. The woman I know as my mother was never this walking smile emoji. Of course, nobody would ever label her as gloomy, but she’s always been careful about her happiness, as if the universe has only allotted her so much each day and she has to select where to dole out each ration. But the woman sitting in front of me now is practically radiating the stuff, her eyes agleam and her smile open and even her backside getting into the action, bopping on the cushion in time to some song only she can hear. The song is definitely either EDM or the My Little Pony theme song. Or both. Like it matters. Clearly not to Mom.