by BETH KERY
“I think you know,” he said, the slant of his mouth grim. His hands lowered to her short-covered ass. He cupped her buttocks. He shifted her, bending his knees, sliding his cock between the juncture of her thighs. “I worried about you all day.”
“I’m sorry. I was fine,” she whispered after a peal of thunder had quieted. The shine of his eyes in the darkened room was making her shiver, but this time not in fear. He moved his hands, cradling her jaw. It sent a thrill through her when he did that, his large hands holding her securely. He lifted her face further.
“Prove it to me, Alice. Prove to me you’re fine,” he rasped before he seized her mouth with his.
Her hands rose to his head, her fingers digging into his hair. Her hunger sprung at her with fierce claws, powerful and rampant. Had it really only been a matter of hours since she’d last held him in her arms?
He began to undress her a moment later, even as they continued to crane for each other, their kiss voracious. They only broke apart reluctantly after he’d removed her shirt and bra, and shoved her shorts down over her hips. Alice stepped out of her sandals, and helped Dylan get the garments down her legs. No sooner had she freed herself of her clothes than he was reaching for her, his mouth hard and slanted with arousal.
“Come here,” he mumbled gruffly, turning her firmly in his arms. He pressed her against him, her naked body to his clothed one, her back to his front. His hands moved over her belly and hips, pushing her closer. Despite the rush of heat that went through her, her skin pebbled in the cool, air-conditioned room and beneath his hot touch. His hands moved greedily, sliding against her overly sensitive skin, molding her hips, waist, and breasts into the curve of his palms. She sensed his barely controlled hunger, a simmering sexual desire that was spiked with a dark, glorious intensity of emotion Alice could feel, even if she couldn’t fathom entirely. His mouth pressed against her neck. She shivered uncontrollably as rain began to crash against the terrace and eave outside and lightning lit up the dark room. His long body curved around her, his cock pressing against the tops of her buttocks and lower back. One hand cupped a breast, the other slid along her pelvis and thigh. He bit at her shoulder.
“Dylan,” she moaned shakily, trying to turn in his arms, seeking the mindless rapture of his kiss. The hand on her thigh held her in place, however, and then opened between her thighs. She gasped at this new restraint. He covered her entire sex, applying a sweet pressure at the same time he ground his cock against her.
“I don’t like you being down at that camp, Alice. I can’t control what happens to you,” he said near her ear, his voice a low, rich seduction.
“You can’t control what happens every second of my day,” she whimpered, because he was kissing and nibbling at her ear, molding her breast to his palm, and applying an eye-crossing pressure to her sex, and it all felt so hot and delicious.
“Maybe not,” he rasped. “But right now I can.”
He shifted his hand slightly, sending the ridge of his forefinger between her labia. He grunted and kissed her ear more forcefully as he rubbed her slick clit. She cried out shakily at the burn.
“That’s so good, baby, so hot and wet,” he hissed in her ear. “Come over here.” He backed up, and she followed his lead. He fell onto the couch, pulling her with him. A surprised yelp flew out of her mouth when she plopped down into his lap. Before she’d recovered from the drop, he put his hands on her naked hips and began circling her against his cock.
Alice moaned, surrendering to the moment. She arched her back and let him grind her against him, joining in the subtle, erotic dance. Lightning lit up the room and thunder rent the night sky. Electricity zipped through her veins and tingled her skin. Dylan’s large hands cupped her ass and he groaned roughly.
“Stand up for just a second,” she heard him say through the pounding rain. She slid between his spread thighs at his urging, her feet finding the carpet. She sensed him rustling behind her, and knew he was unfastening his jeans.
“No, stay still. Keep your feet on the floor,” he bit out when she started to straighten and turn toward him. And then his hands were on her hips again, and he was pulling her back toward his lap. “Sit back on me,” he directed tensely. He wrapped his arm around her waist and slid forward on the couch. Then she felt his hand moving between their bodies and the brush of his cockhead against her sex.
She whimpered shakily as he lowered her on him, and his cock slowly carved its way into her pussy. When she finally sat in his lap, his cock throbbing high inside of her, he tightened his hold on her, his lips and teeth moving along her shoulder blade, firing her already prickling nerves.
“Now I can control you, Alice,” she heard him say darkly through the roar of the rain.
And it was true, she thought through a haze of thick desire. He could do whatever he wanted to her, in that moment, and she would have begged him for more.
He slid one hand along her lower spine, urging her to bend forward. The feeling of fullness and pressure only amplified. She placed her hands on his hard thighs to steady herself. At his urging, she started to move. He lifted her and pushed her back on his cock with his strong arms, but Alice was an equal, eager participant. She’d never made love in this position before, but instinctively understood the necessary motion. She stood on the floor, her knees bent, flexing her thighs for an up-and-down motion over his lap.
It felt exciting and lewd, her vulnerability and nakedness highlighted by the position and the frequent illumination of the room from the lightning. Dylan held her hips possessively, plunging her forcefully onto his cock. His rough groan entwined with the thunder and rain, and the sound of their bodies crashing together in a primal tempo. The friction was intense. Ideal. She burned everywhere: the tips of her heaving breasts, beneath Dylan’s forceful hands, along her flexing, straining thighs … all around his thrusting, demanding cock.
She craved release. She reached for it, the crash of their bodies and roar of the rain a wild cacophony in her ears. The burn in her rapidly flexing thighs segued to an almost unbearable pain. She let out a desperate cry at the discomfort, but never ceased her hopping in his lap, too drunk from the pleasure.
He must have heard her pain, however, because he slammed her down onto his cock and kept her in place in his lap.
“Shhh,” he growled when she made a mewling, desperate sound. His hand reached between her thighs. He found her clit, rubbing and tapping at the sensitive flesh.
She lit up like a Roman candle, pleasure shuddering through her.
She came back to herself with the sensation of him lifting and lowering her tensely in his lap, piercing her with short, sharp jabs. It didn’t take him long. He plunged her onto his lap, his fingers delving in her hips and buttocks.
“This is where I want you, Alice,” he grated out. Her eyes sprang wide as she felt his cock swell huge in her. “I’m never going to be happy when you wander too far away.”
She stared out onto the storm-tossed terrace and yard, not really seeing. Only feeling as his cock twitched inside her, and she felt his warm semen filling her. His rough groans of pleasure filled her ears. But in her head, she kept hearing his words echo again and again, like they’d been scored into her spirit.
AFTER the monumental tension had left his body, and he sagged back on the couch, Alice rose over him. She stood and turned, and he reached for her.
She curled into his lap, her knees against his heaving ribs, her cheek against his chest. He cupped her head with one hand, his fingertips massaging her scalp. His other arm encircled her waist, shielding her nakedness from the chill of the air-conditioning.
The roar of the rain turned to a gentle hum, and the thunder to a rumble. Alice felt like she was melting into him.
“The storm is letting up,” she murmured.
“Hmmm,” he acknowledged, sounding satiated.
Distracted.
She lifted her hips, making out his bold features in a flash of lightning.
“What
?” he asked quietly, his knowing fingertips transferring to the back of her neck. She closed her eyes briefly in pleasure as he massaged tense muscle.
“Are you really that worried?” she asked. She opened her eyes. “There’s no reason to be.”
Given his soft grunt, he remained unconvinced. She bit her lip. Despite all her confusion and trouble absorbing the events of the past few days, there was one question that refused to be suppressed or put on the back burner.
“Dylan?”
“Yeah,” he muttered.
“Can I ask you something?”
His massaging fingers stilled. “About Addie’s mother?” he asked warily.
Her throat tightened. “No,” she whispered. “I think … I think I don’t want to get into that tonight.”
His fingertips resumed their massaging motion. “I agree. There’s so much you still have to learn. So much to take in. Everything about … Addie’s parents … about her mother, that can wait,” he said grimly. “So what was your question, then?” he rumbled.
“Why did you first make love to me?”
He didn’t respond immediately. A flash of lightning—dimmer than it had been during the full force of the storm—allowed her to see his face. Was it her imagination, or did he look stunned by her question.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean …” She broke off suddenly. What did she mean? Everything felt so new and foreign to her, and it was so strange to try to assimilate everything that had happened to her since she first walked into the office and saw Dylan Fall last May, the barrage of bizarre information she’d received yesterday …
And now sitting here, curled up in his protective embrace after the fierce storm of their lovemaking. Such large, mind-blowing leaps and changes had occurred.
“Did you do it, so that you could have more control over me?” She realized how baldly negative that sounded, and hurried to smooth things over. “I mean so that there was a good excuse to have me with you during the nights, and … just a better idea of what was happening with me at Camp Durand? Dylan?” she asked uneasily after a pause, because he’d stopped his relaxing massaging motions on her neck and didn’t reply.
“You don’t know why I first made love to you?” he asked. She heard the blank incredulity of his tone, but didn’t register its meaning.
“No. Should I?” she asked bemusedly.
He slid his hands along the side of her neck, the movement making her hyperaware of the congested feeling in her throat. He cupped her jaw with both hands, the gesture tender.
Prizing.
“I made love to you because I’ve never wanted anything so much as I did you there in those stables, and every time since then.”
“Because of everything you went through,” she asked shakily. “Because of Addie …”
“Not because of Addie,” he cut her off. “Because of Alice.”
Lightning illuminated him for a brief moment. She wondered at what she saw in his expression. She touched his face in awe, like she thought she could capture what she’d seen with her fingertips, imprint it on her soul.
“I knew I would care about you,” he said gruffly when she touched his lips. “I had no idea I’d fall in love with you.”
Her breath hitched with emotion. “It was an unexpected complication?” she asked with a soft bark of laughter.
His thumbs caressed her cheek, and the tightness in her throat transferred to her chest. “That’s what I thought at first,” he said, his arms going around her. Alice laid her head on his chest, secure and awed in the cocoon of his arms. “Now it feels more like fate. Or a blessing,” she heard him rumble against her pressing ear.
Intense emotion rushed through her.
What he was telling her was nothing short of a miracle.
Had she—Alice—reached a point where she could trust in miracles? She didn’t know. It was just that there, in that moment, the swelling ache she held inside her for Dylan was bigger than the black hole of doubt and cynicism.
“The next few weeks or months are going to be hard sometimes. Challenging,” Dylan said. “You still have so much to take in, so much to learn. But I want you to remember what I just said, through it all. Alice? Promise me.”
He cupped the back of her head. Alice turned her nose into his chest, inhaling his scent, letting it wash away the residue of her insecurities and anxiety. When she was with Dylan, her fears and distrust grew so small.
One doubt, however, seemed to grip at her very heart at that moment.
She lifted her face, seeking out his lips in the darkness. “I promise,” she said. Their mouths fused. She couldn’t stop the shudder of emotion that went through her; she couldn’t disguise it from him.
“Alice?” he prodded, his brows slanting.
She pressed her forehead to his.
“I’m afraid,” she admitted through a choked throat.
His arms tightened around her. “I know. I can’t imagine what these last few days have been like for—”
“Not of that. That’s not what I’m afraid of. At least not right this second,” she said.
“What, then?”
She gasped softly against his lips, the truth cutting at her. “I’m afraid because I would promise you almost anything.”
Keep reading for an excerpt of the
next stunning book by Beth Kery
Where Alice and Dylan’s heartstopping
love affair continues …
It was the second time in a week that Dylan awoke in the dark room to find his arms empty. Instinct told him that it was still too early for him to escort Alice to the camp, a clandestine ritual they went through every morning before dawn. Neither of them wanted the Durand managers to know that Alice, who was a candidate to become a Durand executive, had taken up with the CEO of the company. What was between Alice and him was complicated, and it was their business alone.
At least for now it was. Dylan wasn’t sure how long he could keep Alice and Durand Enterprises in separate spheres. For all intents and purposes, Alice was Durand Enterprises. She just didn’t want to—or couldn’t—accept that reality as of yet.
He reached blindly, finding his cell phone on the bedside table. He squinted at the time. No, he’d been correct. It was only a few minutes past two in the morning, way too early for Alice to be up and preparing to return to the camp.
He rose from the bed with just as much haste and alarm as that first time, but on this occasion with more certainty that he knew where to find her. The knowledge didn’t quiet his worry any. He flipped on a bedside lamp and hauled on some jeans.
On that other night, he’d found a half-wild, disoriented Alice blindly seeking in the pitch darkness of the west hallway. When he’d flipped on the hall light, he’d cringed at the vision of her searching hands, pale face, and huge haunted eyes. The ghosts of the past could come so close to her at times—even leap from the deepest recesses of her unconscious mind until they seemingly took form in front of her. Alice had said she’d seen a woman in that hallway on that night, a woman that Dylan knew for a fact had died nearly two decades before.
The human mind was as mysterious and vast as the night sky.
That night, Alice had seen her biological mother. It was as if her long-buried, resurging memories were too foreign to process in her everyday consciousness. Instead, those memories had been projected into her nightmares and even into the solid reality of her surroundings, like a weird unconscious hologram effect or a ghost taking shape. Or at least that’s how psychiatrist Sidney Gates had tried to explain it Dylan.
Presently, he found Alice standing square in the middle of the large empty bedroom suite in the west hall. Her long, toned legs were naked. They looked especially vulnerable in the bright glow of the overhead chandelier.
Tension coiled tight in his muscles. It was so hard at times, not knowing what to expect from her from one moment to the next. Sometimes he felt like he could only be certain of her when he was making love to her, an
d he felt her to be entirely present in the moment with him, abandoning herself wholesale to pleasure.
To him.
“Do you remember to whom this room belonged now?” he asked from behind her, his voice echoing off the bare walls in the mostly empty room. She’d accused him of manipulation and lying when she’d realized he’d purposefully kept her from entering this room. That was before he’d told her the truth of her identity.
He was glad when she started slightly and turned her head, meeting his stare. Since Alice had come to Castle Durand, there were a few times when she’d go utterly still in his presence, and he’d seen the ghosts of her past flicker eerily in the depths of her eyes.
Is that what he was to her? A ghost?
“Was it Addie Durand’s room?” she asked slowly, her low, hoarse voice causing his skin to roughen.
His heart knocked uncomfortably against his sternum, even though he knew his appearance remained calm. No matter how hard he was trying—no matter how much he understood—he couldn’t entirely adjust to Alice’s distant, disconnected attitude about what he’d told her about Adelaide Durand.
He nodded and stepped toward her. “It was originally Addie’s nursery, and it had just been remodeled for her before she was taken. Are you remembering?” he asked her again cautiously.
She shook her head adamantly. Her short, dark hair was growing some. Her spiky bangs fell into her eyes. She stuck out her bottom lip and blew up on them to clear her vision. The uncontrived, potently sexy gesture distracted him.
Just like almost everything about Alice did.
“I don’t remember anything,” she said.
Despite her quick, firm denial, he wasn’t entirely sure he believed her. “Then why did you come here?”
“I was curious,” she replied, her eyebrows arched in response to his quiet challenge.
“And how did you guess this was Addie’s room?”
She shrugged. “You tried to keep me from it. And it’s the most ideally situated in the house, so large and airy …” She faded off, glancing around at the ornate crown molding, the bluish-silver silk wallpaper and the enormous bay window with a built-in, curving cushioned bench that looked down on the gardens, and the sharp drop-off of the dune to Lake Michigan. Because it was night, only their reflections and that of the chandelier’s glowed in the black glass. The room was nearly empty, only a few of his personal items remaining from his recent occupancy. He saw Alice’s neck convulse as she swallowed. “You and Sidney had suggested how the Durands prized Addie so much, always giving her the best. I just guessed it’d belonged to her. And to you. Alan Durand prized you, as well,” she added, once again meeting his stare.