He hung the slacks on a thick wooden hanger, then turned to me in nothing but that ridiculous slip of underwear and a pair of dressy black socks. “So. Do you normally bottom or top?”
I didn’t answer. I doubted he actually expected me to, but if I did, I would’ve said, “Neither.” My inglorious conquests took place in the woods behind Center Park or down by the docks, with a dumpster at my back and a stranger’s hand down my pants. Ideally in the dark.
He planted himself in front of me so I couldn’t possibly look anywhere else without turning my head. The closet was scrupulously well-lit.
He leaned over and, directly in my ear, said, “Tell me who’s gunning for Helen.”
My jaw twitched, and my molars ground together.
“Didn’t think it would be that easy. But it can’t hurt to try.” Adam dropped his hand to my fly and worked the zipper down. “Maybe if I sufficiently diverted your attention, the words would just… slip… out.”
He dragged out my dick, and he was right; it was as hard as his—stiff enough to point at the ceiling without anyone holding it up. It was just a quick, utilitarian grab. Even so, jutting there, engorged and rigid, my hard-on ached from the absence of his hand.
“Impressive,” he purred into my hair. The word vibrated down my spine. “I was worried this whole sordid business would sour the mood. I’m so glad we can still be friends.”
He threw a leg over me and shoved down his briefs to free his straining erection. The sheer underwear cupped him, just beneath the balls, and his cockhead pointed directly at the hollow of my throat. It jutted there between us like a weapon.
I’d never had the urge to fall on a sword… until then. I’d never been presented with such an enticing sword to fall on.
Adam was still moving slowly, as precise as a dancer and twice as fierce. His face was a mask of bland amusement, but even through the Mark, I saw the fire in his eyes. He gripped the chair, one hand on either side of my head, and allowed his back to arch. His chest mashed into my face, and his dick trailed stickiness down my chest. He blotted out the light, and his earth-and-citrus scent drove the air from my lungs. It was like he could erase the very existence of me with his body.
The feel of him rubbing up against me was eroding my will faster than a sandblaster, and I was so damn weary of fighting a pointless battle. Would it really be so bad if he punched my clock? Wiped me from the face of the planet? Made it as if I’d never been born? Most men think about their legacies, but me, I wouldn’t leave much of a mark behind—a shitty room, a shitty bar. Once I was gone, both of those things would fill in, like a hole in the sand at high tide. They’d level out as if they’d never existed, and no one would even notice they were gone.
Except the one who’d be recruited to fill my sorry shoes—Shawn.
I turned my head away and sucked air.
Adam eased back—either that or he was drawing wet pictures on my chest with his leaking dick. “What is it, Johnny? Did you have an idea?”
“Only that if you kill me, I figured out who’ll be sent in my place. Nobody you’d know.”
“Are you sure?”
“He’s an innocent.”
“Ah. Then probably not.” Tenderly, he threaded his fingers through my hair… and then made a fist and yanked my head back. His face filled my field of vision, blotting out the sensation of his dick poking me just below the ribs. “I still can’t tell whether or not you’re looking at me. This purported ‘innocent’… what is he to you? A relative? A friend?” He nuzzled his jaw against mine. “A lover?”
I scoffed into his neck. “Right.”
“I didn’t think so. Even if you had one, you’d never acknowledge it. You’d just think of him as someone you happened to screw.”
“We can’t all be snapped up by rich old ladies looking to hang on to their youth.”
He did pull back then, without letting go of my hair. “Helen?” He looked into my eyes—one, the other, and back again. “Our relationship is intimate, I’ll give it that. But you truly don’t know the half of it.”
Abruptly he stood, hooked his foot under the chair rung, and gave my chest a shove. My arms snapped taut against their binding, straining to windmill and put me right. My gut clenched, bracing to hit the floor, but something caught me before I fell flat on my back, tied to that chair—a bench, a footstool, maybe an open drawer. I found myself at an odd angle, tipped back with my feet in the air and my face looking up into a rack of suit coats. Adam swept the jackets aside, then planted a knee beside my head and straddled my face.
His briefs were gone.
“This is the part where I’d normally tell a guy he’s got a hot mouth… but frankly, when I look at you, I can’t see anything but those fathomless onyx eyes.” He took his dick in hand and trailed the velvety tip down my temple. If he wasn’t so well-endowed, his balls would’ve grazed my mouth. As it was, though, they were hanging just out of reach while he stroked my face with his cockhead. “Under all that stubble and raggedy hair, you’re actually kind of adorable, not that I’d ever let a pretty face lull me into getting my dick bit off. But that’s okay. I’ve been blown plenty… and honestly, my true preference is for a good, solid rimming.”
He sighed happily and lowered his spread ass against my mouth.
My world went dark as he engulfed my face. My body bucked as I tried to throw him off, but I was tied up and tipped back with my blood all rushing to my head. His thighs clamped around my ears and he drove the pucker of his ass against my lips. I tried to see and saw nothing. I tried to breathe and breathed him. There was nothing in my existence but the world between his thighs, a world I ached to lose myself in. Because if he reduced me to nothing but a mouth, a tongue… I could stop being me, if only just for the few glorious minutes it took to get him off.
And then he could put me out of my misery.
“Get busy, Johnny. There’s a gun pointed at the top of your head… and it’d be a crying shame to soil the carpet with your brains.”
Maybe I wasn’t so eager to throw in the towel after all. Adrenaline spiked, and the pressure from tilting back made my blood rush in my ears with every raging heartbeat. My breath was loud and ragged, constricted by the space between his thighs, and the rest of the world was muffled. It was like being underwater—in so many ways.
Suffocating.
Freeing.
At first, with panic juices flooding my veins, it just felt like a mass of indiscriminate, musky flesh pressing against my face. My sensitive tongue knew better. I felt along his smooth taint to the wrinkle of his pucker, then traced the shape of it, felt it quiver. As I tongued him, I figured out the lay of the land. His balls were draped over those eyes of mine he dug so much, and the hair on his thighs tickled my ears.
He rocked his ass against my mouth, and I ate it up. Because, when it came right down to it, even with so many favors banked that I was ready to bust, I was essentially powerless. It was a relief to stop pretending I wasn’t.
A huge fucking relief.
At first I was tuned into myself, but as I worked my tongue, I turned my attention outward instead. Adam wasn’t a moaner. In fact, I think he was doing his best to keep quiet and give me as little to go on as possible. His movements were controlled, and his breathing was even and steady… at least until I did a flutter that made his breath catch. And then I did it again.
My reward? A quiet sigh.
I’m nothing if not stubborn, and I was determined to do whatever it took to make this man—this arrogant, powerful, gorgeous man—as desperate for me as I was for him.
I kept working him, licking, prodding, until he was drenched with my breath, my spit. And maybe, if I really focused, I could feel his thighs quiver. I’m not sure how long I ate his ass. It felt like forever. It felt like a heartbeat. Eventually, carefully, he dismounted my head. When it hit me, the air of the room felt cold and foreign. I almost expected him to look as cool and unruffled as he had when he was holding a gun to my face.
But instead he looked flushed, pink at the cheeks and lips, even vulnerable. He looked needy. And at the sight of his need, the true desire I’d kept squelched down inside me ever since I could remember rose to the surface like the foamy head of a freshly tapped lager.
He said, “If you think I’m going to untie you, think again.”
With a jerk he tipped my chair back up on its feet.
All the blood in my body rushed from my head down to my dick. It jutted out in front of me, pleading for attention. Anything—a touch, a breath. I struggled again, rocked forward and back, but I was trussed up tight. The cords dug in to my ankles and wrists, and my hands were getting cold. Unconcerned, Adam stepped away, hard cock bobbing in front of him—and that was torture, too, being left with my dick out and no hope of release. In any sense of the word.
“After all, I still need to find out who sent you.” He opened a drawer, rifled through it. Strolled back into my line of vision. Holding a bottle of lube. “You never bothered to ask what I prefer.” He squirted a shot of slippery gel into his palm. “Bottom. Insatiable… so I’m told.”
Even though he claimed he couldn’t tell where I was looking, he knew damn well there was nothing else to see but him. He planted his feet wide, held his junk aside, and pushed a pair of slick fingers up his own ass. He smiled, but only to himself. And I could see damn well where he was looking. Right into me.
He approached. His ruddy dick pointed at me like an accusation. He slung a leg over me and straddled my lap again, but naked now. He eased his way down, hands-free. As if our bodies were a pair of magnets, they lined themselves up—and if anyone had told me it was possible to be that gloriously hard, painfully hard, I wouldn’t have believed it. But there I was, poised just right for Adam to impale himself on me.
He looked me in the eye and lowered himself. The wet kiss of a lubed asshole touched my aching dick.
And then he stilled.
“I’m also told I have no self-control, but that’s in regard to spending dark favors, not sexual ones. The thing about sex is that no matter how long the journey—quick and dirty, or riding that knife-edge all night long—all that matters is that in the end, you get where you’re going.”
The sight of him, ruthless and beautiful, was too much. I closed my eyes.
He bore down, but only marginally—a promise he might very well break. He pressed his mouth to my ear and whispered, “Tell me who sent you, and I’ll bury you in my ass.”
Nothing came out of me but a shuddering breath.
“Can’t blame me for trying,” he said, and did a nearly imperceptible gyration with his hips. My stiff dick went along for the ride, poised, pressing, but not quite in. “It must be torture… having a giant favor to dispatch and not being able to carry it out. Being in favor-debt is such an uneasy feeling, like an itch you can’t scratch, but bleak and ugly, deep down inside. I hate pain. When I owe a favor, I drop everything and get it over with. But I’m an important man, in the secular sense of the word, much too busy to go around catering to some stranger’s whims. I suppose that’s why I haven’t racked up nearly as much dark favor as you have.”
He adjusted his stance. His tightness pressed against my dick, promising entry, then eased off again.
“I can’t imagine the power… if you’d been capable of carrying out your plan, I mean. It’s so inconsistent, how much of a charge these things carry. I’ve had a bigger rush from hailing someone a cab than shoving a cheating husband into traffic. But ridding the world of Helen Cross? I’m guessing that would come with a pretty sweet payout.”
Maybe. I supposed I’d never know. I thought I could feel the thrum of his pulse throbbing against my cockhead, but it must’ve been the pounding of my own heart.
“I’m just curious—are you one of those Chosen who gets off on the rush when someone else’s power fills you?”
I shook my head no.
“Really? What a surprise.” Adam leaned forward and dragged his lower lip delicately across my eyelashes. “Given your pretty, dark eyes, I figured you must enjoy it. But maybe you never really enjoy anything.”
He had my number, all right.
“Now, me,” he went on, “I adore that moment when someone empties himself inside me.” He dipped down, and holy fuck, my gullible body thought it was actually gonna happen—me, sinking into him.
But no. It was just a tease.
“It pains me to admit it, Johnny, but you truly are an enigma, hoarding power you neither want nor enjoy. And for what?”
That wasn’t how I saw things, but when he put it that way, I did have to wonder. “Some people are only alive because they don’t know how to die.”
“Is that a quote from a Clint Eastwood flick? If not, it should be.” He rocked himself—fucking hell, the tip was in… and then it wasn’t. My body screamed out for me to fuck him, and I flexed my hips, but he rode the motion and managed to keep himself just touching. “Here’s what I think. You run on spite, pure and simple.”
He must’ve been right. I couldn’t deny it.
“Imagine if you could really sink your teeth into your contrarian nature.” Adam punctuated the observation with the press of his ass. I expected it to be a tease that time, so he lingered with me poised there, tip partially in, for an extra heartbeat, in which my dumb dick thought it might be true. Then he pulled up again, barely touching. “Have you ever tried overwriting someone else’s favor with your own? No. I suppose you were too angry to experiment and test the limits of your power. Turns out it’s a huge waste of time. Once the original favor’s seeped into someone’s pores, there’s no stopping it until it’s… finished.”
He bore down again, and I screwed my eyes shut to stop him from looking right through me as my dick sank into him—not all the way, not in a single shove, but definitely in. I was so focused on my dick that I didn’t realize his lips were on mine until it was too late. And when he kissed me, I kissed him back. Once I figured out what was happening, I turned my head away. Too late. The deed was done.
“I taste myself on you,” he murmured.
I clamped my jaw shut tight.
As if the kiss hadn’t just happened, he went on briskly. “I don’t recommend trying to countermand someone else’s favor. Not only is it useless, it’s about as satisfying as flushing your blow down the toilet. Too bad—otherwise I could ask you to forget about your mission and be done with it. But don’t worry, Johnny. I’m nothing if not resourceful.”
He pressed his forehead to my temple. “Do me a favor,” Adam said, “and before you say no—I’m guessing that’s your knee-jerk response—let me reassure you, it contradicts nothing you’ve already promised. It’s imminently doable. And….” He flexed his supple body. “I’ll make it truly worth your while.”
Now that I’d breached him for even that single, shallow moment, I sank in more easily. I might not claim to know him, but my dick did. I moaned despite myself and felt him smile against my cheek.
When I answered, my voice was ragged. “No.”
“So you say… now.” He sank down hard, and everything went white as my body screamed for release. Not from the bindings, but from the pent-up frustration I’d been carrying around with me my whole sorry life. “But I’ve danced this particular number before. I know how to drive a man crazy… so it stands to reason I can make sure I’m the only one who comes away from our little encounter with a smile on my face.”
He rose and then drove himself down again.
“We fit together so well. Just enough curve to your cock.” He gave a grind. “Right there. That’s the spot. Uhn. Perfect.”
And so, Adam fucked himself on me. I did my best to think of something else, but it was useless. I don’t know which was worse—the dizzying, hot grip of his ass, or the look in his clouded eyes as he used me to work himself up. Everything about him made me ache with want, and my body responded. But whenever that brink crept up on me, he knew it—felt it—and he eased off the throttle.
“I can
go all night,” he said. “So what do you say? Over the course of your life, you’ve obviously been generous with your favors. Why not do one for the man riding your cock?”
I managed to find my voice. “Sometimes, a thing gets too fucked up to put right. You can try, but it’s like rolling in shit and hoping to get clean.”
“Kinky. Perhaps some other time. Right now, I’m grooving on the way you’re rubbing up on my sweet spot.”
He wasn’t just saying so either. His cheeks were pink, and his lips looked swollen—like they weren’t sexy enough to begin with. He was starting a climb, and I had no doubt he could take himself right over that brink but leave me hanging.
“I’m so close,” he said right against my lips. “And it’s so good. It can be good for you too, Johnny. Do it. For me. One tiny favor… and I guarantee, you won’t be sorry.”
I was sorry already. The old man had told me specifically to leave him alive. Did he know this coupling was inevitable? Did he want me to complicate something that was already way too convoluted?
Adam drove himself down… and no. I shuddered, deep in my guts. No way anything that felt that good was part of the plan.
Even with my big head hijacked, I was overthinking everything. Free will does exist. It’s the only reason favors have power. I hovered on the brink of a decision, second-guessing, doubling back.
It was the sight of him coming that broke me.
I’d be going against my nature if I promised a favor to Adam. But if I looked back at the scope of my existence, I realized that whatever I’d been fighting had no more interest in me than the chair I was tied to. I’d been hitting a brick wall and wondering why it didn’t care that my knuckles were bleeding. But just because I’d been doing something my whole life, it didn’t mean I couldn’t choose to stop.
Devil Take Me Page 52