by BETH KERY
God, she was a fucking dream. He wanted to eat her alive.
Lust tore at him from the inside, demanding its due. For a moment, it blinded him. He sank to his knees before her.
He placed his hands on her rib cage, lifting slightly. She arched for him. So sweet, so generous in allowing him to consume her. He leaned down and took a nipple into his mouth, drawing on her with single-minded lust.
He wasn’t gentle. He was hungry, sucking sweet, responsive flesh, maddened by her large stiffening nipple and ripe firm curves. Filling his hands with her, he feasted while her soft cries and surprised-sounding gasps filled his ears. He held her breasts while he moved his mouth between each tempting crest, drowning in the bounty of her, every taste making him crave more.
Her nails scraped against his scalp, and a measure of reason returned. He slid his lips over her stiffened nipple regretfully, his tongue lingering for a moment. He stood. She looked dazed and startled by his abrupt movement, but he couldn’t think of what to say to reassure her. His need boiled inside him. It’d threatened to spill over at her desperate touch.
Without a word, he walked over to his bureau and opened a drawer. Her midnight eyes grew huge when he returned a moment later, carrying a pair of black leather padded handcuffs.
“You’re having difficulty keeping your hands where I ask you to put them,” he stated the obvious, attempting a small smile. It didn’t work. His muscles were too tense with need to relax into levity in that moment. She looked so tempting sitting there, her eyes shining with trepidation and lust, her breasts lush and vulnerable, flushed from his feasting. “Take off your shirt and move up on the bed. Lie down,” he directed. “Put your head on the pillows. The restraint will make things easier for you.”
“Easier for me, or for you?” she asked, the familiar Alice-wariness back in her eyes. Despite her suspicion, she twisted out of her shirt and slid along the sheets, lying back with her head on the pillows.
“Easier for both of us,” he replied, coming onto the mattress on his knees. He felt her gaze on him as he gathered her wrists and inserted them into the cuffs.
“You’re very … efficient at that,” she said. “I suppose you’ve had a lot of practice?”
He gave her a wry glance before he reached behind the pillows and the mattress and withdrew a strap that was fixed to the bed frame. “Do you really want to know?” he asked quietly as he gently moved her arms over her head, trying his damnedest to ignore the way the movement raised her round, thrusting breasts. The fullness of them in contrast with her narrow, finely made rib cage drove him nuts. He quickly attached her cuffs to the strap. She immediately pulled on her restraint, testing it.
He’d expect nothing less of her.
“You’ve tied me to this bed,” she said, not accusatorily, necessarily. If anything, she sounded a little stunned.
“I want you to hold still,” he said as he began to unbutton her shorts with grim determination.
“You want me to hold still while you do what?” she asked. He glanced up swiftly at the note of panic in her tone.
“While I take my fill,” he said simply. Her mouth fell open. “I’ll keep you safe, Alice. You have to trust me to do that. If I’m ever too forceful with you, just tell me to stop. Do you understand?”
She nodded slowly.
“Good,” he said, turning his attention to the task of peeling her shorts and underwear off her hips and long legs. The vision of the way she’d looked out there in the hallway—so disoriented and afraid—leapt into his mind’s eye.
You say you’ll keep her safe, but do you really have any idea what you’re doing?
His good friend and onetime mentor Sidney Gates had looked worried when Dylan had admitted—very briefly—that he and Alice had become intimate. That concerned expression had cut to the heart of him. Had Sidney been worried about Alice?
Or about him?
Everything was at stake. He couldn’t fail in this. He wouldn’t.
He stared down at Alice’s naked, bound body.
“Why are you so serious?” she whispered. He glanced up and saw the almost awed expression on her face.
“There’s nothing more serious than this.”
He slid his hands beneath her hips, his fingers delving into the firm flesh of her ass. He leaned down over her sex, tilting his head slightly, catching her heady scent in his nostrils. The impact of her fragrance was instantaneous. His cock lurched viciously. His mouth watered. He felt her sleek, toned muscles tense in his hands, and knew she was anticipating the moment as much as he was. He nuzzled the soft light auburn curls over her cleft. Her sex was still swollen and damp from their former lovemaking. He’d ridden her hard. She’d come just as hard. His cock ached at the mere memory.
He’d take her hard again. Soon. Very soon.
He kissed her labia, applying a firm, indirect pressure on her clit. She moaned shakily and shifted her hips.
“Hold still,” he demanded. He opened her thighs wider.
His tongue parted her folds in a firm, questing caress.
He was distantly gratified when he heard her ragged moan, but mostly, he was spellbound by his task. He laved her clit. Her abundant cream coated his tongue. She was exquisite. Intoxicated by her taste, he used one of his hands to part her labia. He circled and played with her nerve-packed flesh for a while, thoroughly enjoying her soft cries and helpless whimpers.
The need to feast overcame him. He refused to be denied. She couldn’t distract him with her touch, bound as she was, but she twisted her hips when her pleasure grew too intense. He opened one hand over her hip, holding her down onto the mattress. He stabbed at her clit with a stiffened tongue before he soothed her with a gliding caress, ruthless in extracting his due.
“Oh no. Oh yes. God, you’re killing me,” she moaned emphatically a moment later.
His eyelids opened heavily and his gaze flickered up to her face when her words registered in his lust-drunk brain.
Jesus.
She was so beautiful. Her naked torso had taken on a gleam from a light coat of perspiration. Her full breasts heaved as she panted, the nipples stiff from arousal. Her cheeks were vividly pink, her lips flushed and puffy. It beckoned him, her mouth. He longed to pierce it with tongue and cock.
Her dark eyes were wild.
Yes. This expression on her face was so much better than the fear he’d seen as she’d stood in that hallway minutes ago.
Her lower lip trembled as he inserted two thick fingers into her creamy pussy. He held her stare.
“Stop fighting it, beautiful. Give in,” he directed.
Her moan was rough and anguished, as if he asked too much. She twisted her head, pressing her flushed cheek into the pillow. But he was determined. For several seconds Dylan just stared at her flagrantly pink, glistening sex, letting his hunger build as he thrust into her clasping, muscular channel. Finally, unable to resist any longer, he tilted his head and covered her outer sex with his mouth. He couldn’t disguise his greed. She keened loudly as he took her clit captive in his mouth, sucking her tautly and whipping the kernel of flesh with a stiff tongue.
Slippery juices and heat surrounded his fucking fingers. She cried out sharply, the sound striking him like an incredulous question. It crazed him, that sound, the sure knowledge that she was responding to his demanding touch.
He twisted his wrist, corkscrewing his fingers into her tight channel. He sucked her clit between his teeth. The walls of her sex clamp him tighter. She screamed as orgasm hit her.
He replaced his mouth with his finger, giving her what she needed to continue coming powerfully. Nothing could stop him from taking what he wanted as well. She was soaked. He slid one hand beneath a smooth thigh, rolling her hips back forcefully on the bed and parting her wider. He dove between her legs, his tongue immediately plunging into her pussy, driving deep and hard.
Pure decadence, to dip into her warm honey. A vicious sense of triumph spiked through him when she made a strangle
d sound and then screamed full throttle yet again.
If he didn’t watch himself, he’d lose himself to her. He could die happy like this, with the taste of her on his tongue, and with her juices running down his throat. He’d never known a woman to get this wet. She was so responsive. Mindless with lust and acting purely on instinct, he ran his finger below his piercing tongue, spreading her juices along her ass cheeks and perineum. Her cream had already gathered in the crevice of her bottom.
He lightly caressed her tiny, puckered asshole. He felt her muscles stiffen. His cock raged, but he knew he’d let his lust get the best of him at that moment. Something about her taste and wholesale responsiveness, which stood in stark contrast to her hallmark wariness, turned him into an animal. It meant something to him, her unguarded reaction.
He withdrew his tongue and finger and kissed her damp mound.
“Sorry,” he muttered thickly, rising up over her.
He wasn’t really, but he knew he’d shocked her with that intimate touch. It was too soon, to expose her to the full extent of his greed.
Her expression as she looked up at him undid him. He gritted his teeth together and reached for the bedside drawer and a condom. She looked vaguely bemused and thoroughly ravished and …
Delicious.
He felt her eyes on him as he stood and shucked off his jeans, then rolled on the condom. He crawled back onto the bed, straddling her.
“You don’t have to be sorry,” she said through soft pants. “It felt so good. I loved it.”
“Jesus,” he muttered under his breath, straddling her bound body.
“What?”
He palmed his heavy cock from below and guided himself to her entrance. “How can you be such a smart-ass and so sweet at once?” he asked tensely. He glanced down and paused in his haste to get inside of her. The downy hair between her thighs was dark with moisture.
“I’m not sweet,” she hissed.
Unable to resist, he worked his cockhead along the creamy seam of her labia. She moaned shakily. Wetness coated his knuckles and gathered on the thin condom. Her pussy was a man’s dream come true.
“Oh yes, you are,” he groaned, before he repositioned himself, flexed his hips, and drove into her. Her clamping heat made his eyes roll back in his head. She made a squeaking sound and pulled on her restraints, baring her teeth. He planted his fists in the mattress and thrust, sinking into her to the balls. She gave a sharp cry and lifted her head, scraping her teeth against his ribs. He grunted at her show of animalistic hunger, withdrawing and sinking again, setting a wicked pace from the first.
“Do you want to bite me, Alice? Do you want to bite me while I fuck your little pussy?” he taunted her as he pounded into her, and the headboard began to rock against the wall. It was so good, having her there, helpless and hungry, bound beneath him while he plunged into her sweet heat.
“Yes,” she gasped, before she took a bite out of his side. His skin roughened in heightened arousal. She licked at the abraded skin with a warm tongue, as if in apology. Even in the midst of rabid lust, he marveled at the stark reality of her.
His spine tingled. His muscles strained when he drove into her hard, and she bit him again.
“You’re going to pay for that,” he growled.
She did, before he was done with her that night.
Dylan thought he might have paid even more, given her demonstration of such sweet savagery.
TEN
The sound of Dylan’s phone alarm going off awakened her from a deep, drugging sleep. She’d only passed out just less than an hour ago, unraveled and sublimely satiated from Dylan’s lovemaking.
Dylan had handed her his phone upon her request before they’d drifted off. She tapped the screen, turning off the alarm. She blinked, lying there immobile for a moment as memories of the bizarre, incredible night washed over her. Turning her chin, she peered into the darkness. Dylan had pulled her into his arms after he’d released her from the restraints. He didn’t move now, obviously still asleep. She thought of the world outside of the mansion: an alternate universe, a world to which she needed to return.
For the second time that night, she eased out of Dylan’s arms.
One large warm hand suddenly gripped her hip as she tried to slide off the mattress.
“Alice?”
“Yeah?”
“Weren’t you going to wake me?”
“What?” she asked, confused by the steel in his tone. He sounded very awake and alert for someone who had just seemed fast asleep … for someone who’d had little rest because he’d been making her scream in pleasure all night. “I thought you should just sleep—”
“Are you forgetting that I don’t want you to wander around this property alone?” His hand left her hip and she heard movement and the rustling of sheets. “I’ll walk you back every morning.”
“Every morning?” she asked dubiously.
“Yeah. You’ll come back. Tonight. And the night after that. Right?” he said, his tone implying this was going to be a regular practice. Despite her uncertainty and doubt, she melted a little at the sound of his sexy sleep-roughened voice emanating from the darkness. She longed to cuddle back against him … to forget that other world … to trust what was happening between them. But then again—
“Don’t you think we’re being stupid?” she blurted out.
“No,” he said, his voice firmer. “I won’t be able to rest, knowing you’re sleeping so close and yet separate. Will you?”
She paused, her mouth hanging open as his words painted a picture in her head of tossing and turning in her bed in the cabin. Tortured.
Burning.
“No,” she whispered after a moment.
“There you have it. Getting some decent sleep isn’t stupid. Not accepting the obvious is.” She blinked when he switched on the bedside lamp. He looked good. He leaned on one elbow, his back to her, but had twisted his torso around to pin her with his stare. The sheet rode low on his trim hips. His broad well-muscled back beckoned her. She wanted to muss his smooth sexy hair even more than lovemaking and sleep had. “I want you to remember what I said. About not wandering off by yourself,” he repeated.
“So the ghosts don’t get me?” she asked, using sarcasm to defray the alarmingly strong desire she experienced at that moment. She dragged her gaze off the vision of him and stood next to the bed. Her determination was halfhearted at best. She cast him a sideways, covetous glance. His stare lowered over her naked body, making her skin prickle.
“There are much worse things on earth than a ghost,” he said grimly after a moment, turning away and throwing the sheet off of his naked body.
THAT afternoon, she and Thad fell in step side by side as they vacated the field behind the stables that was used for football and soccer. The kids had rushed ahead of them along the wooded trail toward their cabins to wash up for dinner. She and Thad had stayed behind to gather up the equipment and scrimmage vests.
“You were being modest about your skills. As usual,” Thad teased her, referring to Alice’s sixty-yard run for a touchdown just minutes ago.
“It was pure survival. Judith Arnold looked like she was going to mow me down. I think she considered it a rare opportunity to flatten me without getting into trouble.”
“We were playing touch football,” Thad said.
“I doubt that’d stop Judith,” Alice muttered under her breath. She noticed Thad’s sideways glance. “The girl hates me, plain and simple.”
“Weren’t you the one who suggested it’d take a while for them to get to know us? Trust us?” Thad asked.
“Yeah. I guess you’re right,” Alice admitted as they walked off the field slowly. She didn’t know about Thad, but she was exhausted after the first full day of camp.
After a total of only three or four hours of sleep in Dylan’s bed. At least the sleep she’d gotten had been deep and solid.
Getting some decent sleep isn’t stupid. Not accepting the obvious is.
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nbsp; Graphic memories of being in his arms, of moments of intense intimate pleasure swamped her brain. It felt odd having those memories, as if they belonged to another person’s experience. Yet at the same time … she’d never felt anything so deeply. So personally. Her body heated of its own accord at the vivid memories. An ache mounted between her thighs. Something rose in her, a powerful craving like she’d never before known. It alarmed her, but she couldn’t deny it.
Despite a head full of uncertainties, she couldn’t wait to see Dylan again tonight.
When a brisk wind came off the lake, she turned her face into it, hoping to cool her flushed cheeks.
“You okay?” Thad asked her.
She glanced at him in feigned surprise. “Yeah.”
“Good first day?” he asked.
“Yeah. It was great, actually,” Alice said after a few seconds of reflection. She was telling the truth. The kids had been sweeter, fresher, and more excited to be there than she’d realized they would be. The opportunity for supportive, stress-free fun in such an idyllic setting, the removal of all the usual difficult obstacles from their life, seemed to peel back a lot of their armor. “For the most part, it was really special,” she admitted to Thad.
“You shouldn’t let Judith worry you. She’ll come around. And the other kids are already warming up to you. Even mine,” he said, referring to the kids from the Orange Team who had been playing football with them. Alice noticed his smile and grinned back. Unlike her, Thad looked even more appealing when he’d worked and played hard all day. His golden hair was sticking up in spikes and darkened from sweat. His gray T-shirt clung to his toned torso, emphasizing his taut muscles.
“You’re the one reassuring me now. I can see why. You’ve found your stride,” she said as they entered the woods. “You’re fantastic with kids. You should be a teacher.”
He looked startled at her off-the-cuff statement, but she’d only been telling the truth as it struck her. He was a natural with kids, warm and funny but authoritative. Easy to follow.