by Tara Pammi
His admission spun around them, cocooning them in their own desires. It blasted the last of her defenses, rendering her immobile. There it was, everything she wanted to hear from him from the minute she had faced the inevitable truth of her own attraction. The words seeped into her blood, exploded behind her eyes, clogged her thinking.
His grip tightened over her hips and he lifted her onto the glass table. If there was even a semblance of control before, it was all gone now. She had asked for the truth and she had to pay the price now.
His gaze glittering with desire, he bent his head while his hand at her back held her. And sucked her nipple through the thin cotton. Her knees jelly, Liv sunk her hands into his hair, as he repeated the action. Arrows of pleasure zoomed straight to her sex and she clenched her thighs together.
He didn’t let her. As though he could read her mind, his hands crept up her thighs under her dress, pushed the ridiculous thong she was wearing out of the way. She opened her mouth and gasped as his fingers parted her, and rubbed against her clitoris.
“Open your eyes and look at me,” he ordered, his words gravelly.
She did. She would have done anything he asked of her at that moment. Need glittered in his blue gaze. He crushed her mouth with his again, his tongue caressing the insides. Putty in his hands, she didn’t realize he had undone the knot at her neck until his tongue swiped over one rigid nipple while his fingers moved with sure intent over her sex, slow and fast. A million nerve endings stroked to life, she let out a throaty moan, her skin too hot and too tight. His clever fingers pulled, and stroked, and rubbed her tender flesh, she felt her muscles tighten, her breath stuck in her...
And suddenly he stopped.
She thought she would die. Until his long fingers teased her throbbing flesh again.
Every time she was close to her climax, every time she thought she would come apart, he slowed the pressure of his fingers, dragged his mouth upward to her neck until she fell from the dizzying heights he drove her to, frustrated and in sheer agony. Pleasure sizzled on her skin, quivered in her sex muscles, was so close that she could taste it on her tongue yet so far that she wondered if she would jump out of her skin. It was incredibly unfair, she thought in a haze, in a minute she would straighten, she would walk away...
Until he pushed a finger into her wet center and started the torment all over again. A swipe of his tongue over her nipple, there and yet gone in a second, a smooth glide of his thumb over her clit, enough but not enough...
“Oh...” she moaned, a sob rising in her throat. “You’re...”
He laughed against the curve of her breast, his tongue licking erotic paths around the hard nipples aching for his touch. “Ask nicely, Olivia,” he said, his words rolling over each other, his voice sounding drunk and hoarse.
She palmed his face and kissed him, the sinuous taste of him pulling her deeper. “Please, Alexander, I can’t bear it...”
Just when she thought he would never stop punishing her, he pulled her nipple deep into his mouth. His teeth tugged at the hard nub while his fingers tightened on the exact place she needed them to.
She cried his name as her muscles contracted tight and released, her skin sizzled. Lights exploded behind her eyes, her body quaking and trembling.
He pulled her closer and pushed her hair from her forehead. He gently held her boneless body. His lips curved into a tight smile against her temple, his muscles under her hands bunched incredibly tight. “Now that I’ve touched you, I need to see you, taste you.”
The most delicious shiver climbed up her spine at the dark promise in his words. She knew what he was doing. He was driving her crazy, pushing her to the edge, tormenting her for demanding the truth. She pulled his shirt out of his trousers and snuck her hands in. “No. I want touch you, too, I want to...”
Her words faltered as a knock sounded on the main door. A curse fell from his mouth and she laughed. His breathing rough and shallow, he leaned his forehead against her bare shoulder. The heat from his mouth singed her skin as he pressed an openmouthed kiss.
“Only Carlos could come knocking at the door right now. And he won’t go away until I—” he said, regret lacing his words.
Liv nodded, her cheeks heating up, shying her gaze away from him. Suddenly, she felt inexplicably nervous.
She tugged the edges of her top upward and tied the knot at her nape. She jumped off the table just as Alexander returned with Carlos. His forehead creased into a frown, he looked anything but the man that had driven her to ecstasy mere minutes ago.
His hand over his nape, he walked around the living room, his movements anything but smooth. Did he even remember she was there? “How did she know where Emily was?”
“Who are you talking about?” Olivia said, before she could curb her tongue.
He glared at her, and she wondered if he would tell her to leave. He didn’t. It was a measure of how much he had changed toward her. “Isabella persuaded Emily to leave with her from her vacation. But I had Carlos plant 24-7 security around Emily.”
Sweat beaded on Olivia’s brow as his words sunk in. He hadn’t said tried to...he had said persuaded like Emily had been ready to go. “Emily had been ready to leave?” she shot at Carlos.
Carlos remained silent. His silence said everything he didn’t.
Alexander frowned. “That’s not the point here, Liv.”
She went to the fridge and took a bottle of water, trying to tune out their conversation. She needed to stay out of this, she was going to. She pressed the cold bottle to her heated cheeks, fighting to ignore the slow churn of anger in her gut.
“Let Isabella know that I will press kidnapping charges if she goes near Emily again.” His words were cold, smooth and bare of anything. “And inform Emily’s school that she’s not returning.”
Her fingers clenched around the bottle and she leaned her forehead against the cold, steel surface of the refrigerator.
She stayed like that, minutes after the door closed behind Carlos. The silence shifted and snarled between them. Her nape prickled as she felt Alexander behind her.
She stiffened as he laid an arm on her.
“Olivia, you’re shaking.” He pulled her toward him, his hard body behind her a deceptive invitation. Her muscles sighed against him, the evidence of his arousal electrocuting sense into her. She went into his arms like a rag doll as he turned her. “I’m going to regret asking this, aren’t I?” He tilted her chin up. “What’s wrong?”
Olivia closed her eyes, fighting for the strength to not care. And utterly failed. “How can you do this to her, to them?”
He clenched his jaw and released it. “Isabella will only bring misery to Emily. I can’t let that happen.”
An image of her mother, blurry, yet swamped in desperation, flashed in front of her eyes. The forgotten memory wrapped its choking fingers around her throat, clawing at her. “No, please, Alexander, listen. What if Isabella’s changed? What if she’s realized the value of what she’s lost? Everyone deserves a second chance.”
“You think I haven’t given Isabella a chance? I have given her a million. Every time Nicholas hit her, I took care of her. I tried to shield her from his blows, I took them myself. I begged her to leave him, and every single time she promised me she would. And the fool that I was, I believed her. Until I realized one day that they were all lies.
“Do you want to know what happened the night she shot him? He smacked her across the face because she flirted with another man in front of him. When I stopped him, he kicked me in the gut. I was so angry. I grabbed the gun from her purse. I had only meant to scare him. To stop him. But Isabella grabbed it from me and fired it by accident. And even then, I hoped she would see how damaging their relationship was. I hoped that she would finally leave with me. And she didn’t. She didn’t care about me, what I did for her, how much I l
oved her. I meant nothing to her and it destroyed me to walk away, to let go, to fight the paralyzing hold my love for her had over me.”
Tears spilled onto Olivia’s cheeks. God, he had been barely seventeen. Not only had he gotten himself out, but he had taken on his sister. The anguish in his words, the pain in his eyes unraveled something inside her. No wonder he was so good at wiping away any emotion from his life, no wonder he didn’t want to feel anything.
She stood up on her toes and hugged him for all she was worth. She peppered kisses over his granite jaw, touching him greedily, wishing she could take some of his pain away. His muscles shifted and shuddered beneath her hands, the emotion in him a minefield.
Alexander tugged Olivia to him and crushed her mouth. He didn’t want to remember, didn’t want to feel and it seemed only the taste of her could numb him, could close the gaping void he felt inside.
He didn’t let her breathe. His hands in her hair, he kissed, nipped, bit her mouth until there was no more breath left in him, until he could feel nothing but the taste of her. But she didn’t back off. She gave as good as she got, her ragged breathing a soothing sound to his ears. He laughed against her throat, as she ripped his shirt open, the buttons flying around them.
Olivia sighed. His skin felt like velvet coating hard rock to her touch, the muscles shifting and shuddering under her hands. She moved her hands lower and cupped him through his trousers, her mouth drying up.
He jerked back, his features set into stone. He leaned her forehead against hers and smiled. “God, it’s going to kill me to stop this now, Liv, but I have to. I have to make sure Emily’s okay. Wait up for me, okay?”
Olivia nodded, trying to even her breathing. She ran her hands over his chest again before pulling his shirt together. There was such an intimacy around the simple act that it cut through the sensual haze around her, straight to the matter that had her heart thumping. What were they doing? She swallowed and locked the question inside. “Maybe I could talk to Emily. She’ll be angry with you, in fact, she’ll hate you right now. I can talk to her and convince her that —”
“No,” he said, his mouth wreaking havoc over her neck. “Don’t interfere in this. Don’t talk to Emily about Isabella, or yourself. In fact, I would appreciate it if you didn’t say anything to Emily at all. I’m already taking a big risk by—” He licked where her pulse fluttered and she held on to him to stay upright. Risk? Thinking became hard when he touched her. “I can’t risk anything else going wrong on top of Kim’s news.”
“I understand that but—”
“No, Liv. You need to stay out of this. If we want to see this crazy thing between us through, I need you to behave.”
She flinched and stepped back. “Or what? You won’t screw me?” Hurt seethed and boiled inside her, her stomach falling. “This is a first even for me, conditional sex.”
Color swam into those razor sharp cheeks. “Don’t cheapen it. That’s not what I meant.”
“No?”
A hard glint appeared in his eyes. “You have to know it can be nothing more than a fling, Liv, whatever this is between us.”
“No, I don’t know that. ‘No casual sex for Alexander King.’ Wasn’t that the headline when they voted you the perfect man? Every woman you dated, you did because you thought she could be the perfect woman, you had an equal relationship with them. Whereas with me, it seems you have automatically lowered your standards. Why’s that, I wonder?”
He grabbed her and forced her to look into his blue eyes, scorching her with his gaze. “This is different. I’ve never done anything like—”
“Of course it is. Because I’m not good enough for anything other than sex and the pretense that I’m Kim, right?”
She tried to push him off but he didn’t let her. “That’s not what I think,” he said hoarsely.
His grip on her was relentless until she gave up the fight and sagged against him, tears pooling in her eyes. Her gut felt as if it was turning on itself. “What were you thinking? Have me pretend to be Kim and screw me on the side until you had Emily’s custody and then go looking for another perfect woman?”
His utter silence cut her open like a whiplash. Her chest hurt with every breath.
“You really are a heartless bastard. Only I forgot that for a while.” She scrubbed her cheeks bitterly. “You know what? I’m actually going to take your advice. Take control and walk away. Because of all the mistakes I’ve made in my life, you would be the worst.”
Alexander stood stunned as Olivia walked away, her spine ramrod straight. The raw pain in her eyes knocked the breath out of him, rendering him silent.
Would he have touched her, kissed her, if he had known that beneath that self-sufficiency, that defiant determination, Olivia was hurting? Was she right? Had he broken his own rules because somehow he had assumed that Olivia didn’t deserve better?
Shame spiraled through him.
Every word he said, every action of his since he had met her, mocked him. Had he assumed he could sleep with her and then walk away with nothing changed?
He rubbed a hand over his eyes and stared at the door. Even now, the need to walk into that room and take what he wanted, to promise her anything just so that he could wipe the grief from her eyes was feral. But he couldn’t, not if he wanted to face himself in the mirror tomorrow morning.
He had to limit the damage to his life.
He had to walk away from Olivia before the havoc she wreaked on him, the pain he caused her, became something that he could never undo.
CHAPTER TEN
OLIVIA THANKED THE flight attendant, leaned back into the luxurious leather seat and took a sip of her coffee. In the seat opposite her, dressed in a severely cut Ralph Lauren dress, Emily King sat rigid, the tension from her lanky frame swathing them all. There was such a depth of sadness in her gaze that Olivia couldn’t look away.
Ever since she had arrived at Alexander’s penthouse this morning, mere hours before they had boarded the flight, Emily had attacked Alexander with a savage anger. And more surprising was Alexander’s infinite patience with his sister. Amid Emily’s continuous barbs and tantrums, he had been nothing but incredibly gentle.
A chill crawled up Liv’s spine.
Watching Emily was like looking in the mirror and seeing her most self-destructive version, even if she hadn’t known it then. Confused, starved for attention, willing to go to any lengths. With every passing minute, it was becoming harder and harder to keep her mouth shut.
“We’ve been over this, Emily.” Alexander sighed as Emily, once again, refused anything to eat. “Starving yourself won’t get you anywhere.”
Her blue gaze, so much like her brother’s, glittered with determination. “No, but it hurts you, doesn’t it? And right now, that’s all I care about.”
Olivia gasped at the bitterness in the teenager’s tone. Could Alexander not see that she was a train-wreck waiting to happen?
Every instinct within her wanted to help the girl, maybe even grab her and run once they landed in New York, before Alexander’s rigid constraints pushed Emily into doing something reckless.
Because Olivia would bet her last precious dollar that the teenager wasn’t going to meekly obey.
She set her coffee cup down and cleared her throat. “May I speak with you, Emily?”
“Stay out of this, Liv,” Alexander roared at her.
“You’re Olivia, not Kim,” Emily instantly caught on, her gaze studying Liv curiously.
Liv nodded, smiling as Alexander’s muted curse reached her ears.
A tentative smile curved Emily’s mouth, her anger at her brother momentarily forgotten. “I’ve heard so much about you at school. My friends and I think you are the coolest. Everyone’s always talking about how you broke so many of those stupid rules, I mean, you were even expelled becaus
e you—” Pink flushing her angular cheeks, Emily pursed her mouth, her gaze anxious. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to... How did you end up with Alex of all people?”
Olivia sighed. Really, how equipped was she to dish out advice to a confused teenager? To actually think, she had indulged, even if for a crazy second, that she could steal Emily away from Alexander’s care. “That’s a long story, Emily.”
Alexander’s wrath next to her was a tangible thing. Even Emily looked anxiously from him to her. “The last thing Emily needs is a talk with—”
“And once again, I don’t care what you think,” Liv burst out. Their gazes collided, tension spiraling tighter and tighter. “What will you do? Cut me out of your life if I don’t behave? Oh, wait, you would have already done that except you need me.”
Alexander glared at her. “Don’t push it, Liv. You’ve already gotten yourself kicked out of a project to work on and who knows what’s next. You know more than anyone—”
“How ruthless you can be?” she finished, her insides trembling. “Yes.”
Emily’s laugh reverberated around them. “Wow, I like you already.”
Olivia ran shaking fingers through her hair. This was so not what she had intended when she had opened her mouth. She leaned forward in her seat. “I understand how much you want to see your mother. I can even imagine all the ways you’re scheming to get in touch with her once you’re in New York. My punishment when I didn’t stop talking about my mom was to be packed off to boarding school, too. I hated my father so much for that.”
Right on cue, the color leached from Emily’s face. “Then you know how much I—”
“I do. But please don’t do something you’ll regret for the rest of your life, Emily. Once you go down that path, there’s no—”
“I don’t need another adult preaching me.” Tears filled her blue gaze. “All I want is to see my parents.”
Olivia clutched the girl’s hand, memories she didn’t want to remember swarming her, the helpless, stifling feeling that had been a constant companion. Every decision made for her, every choice taken out of her hands, from something as trivial as dancing classes that she’d hated, to something as important as what she remembered about her own mother.