by BETH KERY
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, not sure if he would understand her apology or not. His eyelids narrowed slightly. She sensed him studying her . . . considering. What had she been thinking? Of course he understood she was apologizing for her withdrawal following sex. What had Katie said? He was a creature of instinct. It was why he was such a great actor—he felt so much. He lived so deeply.
His life wasn’t governed by fear, like hers was.
He turned and whipped the light blue, raw silk comforter back, folding it at the bottom of the mattress.
“Come here,” he said quietly. He sat down on the bed, his back against the pillows, and beckoned to her with his free hand. Joy followed him, lying on her side and facing him. He held up his champagne glass. “To our little getaway. May it lead to a deeper understanding of each other.”
She lightly touched the flute to his. The champagne was cold and dry and delicious. She made a sound of appreciation. “Did you buy this?” she murmured, studying the bold lines of his profile with appreciation. He nodded. “I suppose you’re an expert. Let me guess—you took wine lessons from a world-renowned sommelier in his private chateau in the French Alps,” she teased.
“No, I was smart enough to listen to my mother when I asked her advice on a nice champagne to offer you.”
She paused in the action of bringing the flute to her lips. “Your mother? You told her about this weekend?”
“I told her about you,” he corrected. “Why do you act so surprised?” His gaze was narrowed on her lips. A shiver went through her.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly.
“Because you wouldn’t consider telling your mother about me, is that it?” he asked, eyebrows cocked. He put the glass to his lips.
“No, it’s not that. I might have told her. If she were alive.”
The champagne slid back into his flute before he’d drank it. “I didn’t know,” he said, staring at her. “How long has it been since she passed?”
“She died when I was almost eighteen.”
“Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“No. It’s just me . . . and Seth, of course,” she said evenly, sipping her champagne. “What about you? Are there more out there like you and Katie?”
He shook his head. “No. Mom and Dad always say they had their hands full with the two of us, and they couldn’t imagine adding more chaos to the mix.”
She laughed and pulled up her knees, cuddling closer to him. He put his hand on her hip and stroked her. She saw his eyebrow quirk up in male interest when he noticed she didn’t wear any underwear under the gown. She smiled.
“Your parents are still together?” she murmured, resting her head on the pillow.
“Oh yeah. They’re crazy about each other. It’s embarrassing”—he caught her eye—“and great. Katie and I were very lucky growing up. I didn’t realize what great parents Meg and Stan were until I was an adult myself.”
“They must be the reason you’ve remained so grounded, despite all the fame.”
“I’ve seen more people than you can imagine bottom out in this business. It seems like every time I’ve been on the edge of some Hollywood mind-fuckery, Dad was there to drag me out to the golf course and kick my ass, or I’d be bailing Katie out of some fiasco she’d gotten herself into with those crazy rich geezers she used to work for, or Mom would be calling, insisting I come over and help her get a hornets’ nest out of the gutters, or yelling at me for not sending a thank-you card to Aunt Sherry for the fruitcake she gave me for Christmas, or Rill would be telling me the latest project I was working on was ‘shite’ and when was I going to do some real work for him, and there you have it—no matter what, I’m always Stan’s and Meg’s oldest kid, and Rill’s oldest friend, and Katie’s big brother. It’s sort of hard to believe all the other crap you’re fed in Hollywood when you have all those people seeing you so clearly.”
“You’re so lucky,” she whispered.
His gaze sharpened on her. “Yeah. I am. So where was your dad when your mother died?” he asked so abruptly she didn’t have time to put up her guard.
“He was on the national racing circuit. He left when I was sixteen.”
“That must have been hard.”
“It was and it wasn’t,” she said, running her hand over the swell of well-developed biceps and over his shoulder. She felt his skin pebble slightly beneath her touch. “He wasn’t really there all that much, even when he was in residence, if you know what I mean. His job consumed him.”
“Do you like him?” Everett asked quietly.
She blinked, his question surprising her. “Like him? Yes,” she said, realizing what she said was true. “He’s fun and charismatic. He has a zest for life I admire.”
“So you’re not mad at him? For not being there when your mom died?” he asked quietly.
Her gaze zoomed to his face. He watched her with the steady, focused calm she’d come to expect from him. “No,” she said with pressured honesty. “I’m not angry with him at all.”
He nodded slowly. “If you don’t mind my asking, why did your mom pass? She couldn’t have been very old, if you were only eighteen.”
She studied the bubbles clinging to the side of her glass. “She had Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It eventually spread to multiple organs. Her kidneys and liver shut down, at the end.”
She glanced into his face when he didn’t speak. He looked still and somber, the line of his mouth grim.
“She went back and forth between remissions and reoccurrences, a few months of health followed by another round of treatment, for more than five years before she died,” Joy said. For a few seconds, she was scared he was going to mutter some kind of hollow platitude—one of the many reasons she typically didn’t mention her mother’s illness and death—but he didn’t. He just took another sip of champagne and stroked her hip, the gesture striking her as bizarrely both reassuring and sexual.
“And you really hold no anger for your father whatsoever? He left not just your mother when she was suffering, but you,” Everett said, his brows knitted together.
Joy turned and set down her champagne glass. “Have you ever had someone close to you die from cancer?” she asked when she turned back around.
“No.”
“My dad isn’t a monster, Everett. He had the guts to be honest in a situation he couldn’t bear. He did what he could. It’s all we can ever do in a heartbreaking situation—what we can.”
He emptied his glass and reached around her, setting the flute on the table. She thought he didn’t seem entirely convinced. He couldn’t understand what she meant. His life had been graced, and she was glad of it. More glad than she could put into words. Everett deserved the life he led. In spades.
She leaned forward and kissed an erect nipple. It’d been tantalizing her, tempting her the entire time they talked. She felt his hand at the back of her head, cradling her against him. She closed her eyes and tested the turgid flesh with her tongue. He exhaled harshly. She felt him stiffen even more against her circling tongue.
“You’re a closed book, aren’t you?” she heard him mutter from above her.
She blinked and glanced up at him in surprise. Why did his features look so hard when his stare was so soft? “I don’t mean to be.”
“No?”
She swallowed thickly at the hint of sarcasm in his question. His eyes seemed to bore right into her. “Then why don’t you let me restrain you before I make love to you again?”
The silence seemed to stretch tight and then slowly start to spin like a vortex, seemingly catching her thoughts and her very breath and swallowing them.
Had he really just said that?
It might have been something straight out of one of her overly zealous sexual fantasies in regard to him. His nostrils flared slightly as he studied her. “What’s wrong? Does that idea turn you off?”
She swallowed thickly. “No,” she said breathlessly. “I mean . . . I don’t think it does. I don’t have that
much experience . . . considering it. Do you mean you want to tie me up?”
“I want to restrain you. I would have anyway—even not knowing you, I mean. It turns me on, in general. But in your case, I’m exponentially interested in the possibilities.”
“Why?” she asked.
His mouth flattened into a straight line. He spoke quietly near her ear.
“Because you’re one of the most tempting, beautiful women I’ve ever laid eyes on,” he murmured, his deep, low voice making the hairs on her neck stand on end. He opened his hand wide at the small of her back and caressed her through the silk. “Because you’re soft, and you’re sweet, and because I want to give you as much pleasure as your mind and body can take.” He leaned up and speared her with his clear-eyed gaze. “Because I think you want to do the same for me.”
“I do,” she said honestly.
He leaned down and kissed her softly. “I see the shadows in your eyes.” She went still beneath his warm, moving lips. Shock reverberated through her flesh as she absorbed what he’d said. “I want to make them go away.”
“You mean . . . through sex?” she asked, confused, thinking about how he’d expunged everything from her brain on that night in her apartment save raw lust.
He sat up. “I won’t turn down the opportunity if it works.”
She just lay there, bewildered by his grim expression. He swung a long leg around her and stood. She couldn’t take her eyes off him as he got up from the bed, crossed the luxurious bedroom and opened a dresser drawer.
She turned and sat up slowly, her elbows bracing her upper body on the bed. He closed the drawer with a thud and faced her. He held several padded cuffs and a tangle of black straps in one hand. She felt the pulse at her throat start to throb and a pinch at her clit. He was always beautiful to behold, but seeing Everett stalk toward her holding those cuffs was a sexual sin in and of itself.
He stood at the side of the bed and started to unravel the straps.
“Four of them?” she whispered when he separated all the cuffs and set them on the bed.
“Yes. Is that all right?”
She met his stare. Her pulse now felt like it was trying to leap out of her throat.
His expression softened infinitesimally. “I’m not going to do anything you don’t want me to do, Joy. All you have to do is tell me to stop and I will.”
She swallowed and nodded. “Yes. Of course.”
“Take off your gown.”
She licked at her lower lip nervously as she sat up on the mattress. He stood watching her, his expression somber, his focus on her sharp. She lowered the straps of her nightgown and drew her arms through them. She began to draw the thin fabric down over her breasts.
“Slower,” he said.
She paused, looking at his face, but his gaze was glued to her breasts. She watched him as she slowly lowered the gown over the upper swells of flesh. When her nipples peeked out behind the fabric, he shifted on his feet and his penis jumped behind the cotton pants he wore. Sensing his arousal joined her to him, despite the space that separated them. It fed her desire and quieted her anxiety. She opened her hand at the edge of the fabric, letting her palm cup the sensitive skin of her lower breasts and drag along her rib cage and caress the curves of her hips.
“Stop,” he said abruptly when the silk lay like a yellow shimmering pool in her lap. “Stretch out on the bed.”
Joy followed his instruction. Rill and Katie had furnished the guesthouse with comfortable luxury. The pale blue sheets felt sensual and cool next to her heated skin. She lifted her head, her heart racing when Everett touched her left ankle. The padded cuff slipped over her foot. She saw only the top of his head as he bent, tightening the cuff around her and somehow affixing it to the frame of the bed. He moved over to restrain her other ankle, and she pulled experimentally on her left leg. She could bend her knee, but only slightly. Everett lowered to tie her other ankle, and her thighs parted into a wide V.
“Does that hurt?” he asked, glancing up from where he knelt on the floor in front of the bed.
“No,” she managed. She wasn’t lying. It wasn’t the stretch of her muscles that had made her eyes go wide.
A tiny smile tilted his mouth. She watched him, her breath growing increasingly choppy, as he moved to the head of the bed and restrained both of her wrists. Her head lay flat on the mattress, her arms stretched over her head toward both corners of the bed. The position seemed to constrict her breathing—or perhaps that was just her growing trepidation and excitement. If she weren’t able to clearly see the fat, mushroom-cap-shape of the head of Everett’s cock bob against the cloth of his pants, she might have considered telling him to stop. Everett had been right, though, when he’d said he thought she wanted to give him pleasure. Seeing how aroused he was becoming while he tied her up was her own aphrodisiac.
He finished and climbed onto the mattress, straddling her prone body on his hands and knees. His gaze lingered on her exposed belly and breasts.
“Try to relax,” he murmured. She suspected he noticed her erratic, shallow breathing. “Do you want me to tell you a joke?” he asked, smiling.
“This doesn’t seem very funny,” she whispered.
“No, but it’s not supposed to be brain surgery, either.” She met his stare. She laughed when she saw the heat and humor in his eyes. He chuckled and reached for one of the soft, decorative pillows and carefully lifted her head, leaning down and placing the cushion beneath her. “How’s that?”
“Fine.”
“Good,” he said. He shifted his weight and came down next to her on his side, his elbow bent, his jaw in his hand. She turned her chin and looked at him.
“You like this, don’t you?” she murmured, noticing his satisfied expression.
He reached across her and opened his hand along the side of her ribs, brushing the sensitive skin. Her nipples pinched tight.
“Why wouldn’t I like this?” he asked, his gaze on her breasts. “I’m not stupid.”
He continued to stroke the side of her from hip to waist, sending prickly tendrils of sensation across her breasts, belly and sex. He flickered his fingers between two ribs and then traced the taut skin over the bone. She gasped at the sharp sensation, something between a tickle and a jab of arousal. Her muscles tightened in the restraints. She saw his eyes on her torso, studying the effect of his caresses, seeing her pebbling flesh and tightening nipples. He glanced into her face.
“I noticed it before—how sensitive the side of your body is. It’s amazing. I thought it might feel sharper for you if you were restrained.”
She didn’t respond. She couldn’t, because his fingertips had trailed over her belly. He gently caressed the sensitive skin just above the draped silk of her gown, just inches away from her spread pussy. Warm liquid surged between her thighs.
“It’s because your body is drawn so tight,” Everett murmured next to her. She turned her chin to look at him, but he was watching his fingers enliven her flesh. Joy felt perspiration bead on her brow. “It stretches the nerves. Amplifies sensation. Here. I’ll show you better what I mean.”
She parted her lips to tell him she thought he was doing a fine job proving his point as it was, but was distracted when he shifted and straddled her again. His cock strained against the cloth over his left thigh. The bulbous head brushed against her as he reached for the pillow beneath her head.
“Tell me if I’m making you uncomfortable,” he said. He shifted the silk pillow down behind her back, sliding it down to just above her waist, forcing her back into an arch. Before she understood his intent, he came down on his hands and bent his elbows, flexing his arm muscles, and licked her right nipple with a warm, laving tongue. She made a strangled sound, and then whimpered helplessly when he flicked at the sensitive morsel with the tip of his tongue.
“You have the prettiest breasts,” he said, his warm breath striking her wet nipple. He gave the tip an openmouthed kiss and let the edge of his teeth graze her, fini
shing with a lusty smacking sound.
“Everett,” she moaned.
“See what I mean?” he asked, giving her a smoky glance.
She swallowed with difficulty and nodded. Her entire body was stretched tight, her breasts thrust upward, easy targets for consumption. She saw what he meant, all right. Even his most innocent-seeming touches were making her burn.
“Say yes,” he commanded quietly.
“Yes.”
He leaned down and kissed her mouth. His firm, moving lips seemed to stroke her entire body—coaxing, molding, biting. She craned up for him, pulling the restraints tight.
It was as if she’d never experienced a kiss until that very moment.
She cracked her eyelids open a moment later when she felt the absence of his lips. The light from the bedside lamp gleamed in his narrowed eyes. He shifted suddenly. She twisted her chin to see what he was doing, but his stretching body blocked her vision. The sound of something clicking against metal reached her ears.
He came back over her. A shock went through her when he pressed a small cube of ice to her lips. He slid it against her lower lip, pressing, until she felt a trickle of cold water stream into her mouth. He made a gratified sound in his throat.
“You melt it in seconds, you’re so hot.”
He pressed another cube to her mouth and watched as he traced her spread lips with it. “I remember how hot it felt in your mouth,” he murmured distractedly. “I thought you were going to melt my cock.”
She made a desperate sound in her throat. His gaze flew to meet hers. The ice was now completely melted. Water wet her lips and trickled down her chin. He pressed his thumb to the center of her lower lip. “Where did you learn to suck cock like that, Joy?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t remember ever being taught,” she replied, her voice sounding garbled because of his thumb on her lip. He rubbed her chilled yet feverish lip again while he considered her somberly.
“No? Maybe I’ll refresh your memory,” he said.