by Eden Bradley
“You made the decision to come to work on the island. How is this—how we handle our lives outside of the loss—any different?”
“I don’t know. It’s always felt like the same thing. Like one enormous ball of…sadness. But I guess I can’t…I’m choosing not to live inside that ball, as of now. Not to make it the totality of my existence. Is that what we’re both trying to figure out?”
He smiled at her. “Exactly.”
“Roan? Your wife died when? It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it?”
“It’s been ten years.”
“And you think you’re just now figuring things out?”
He ran a hand over his jaw, realized he’d forgotten to shave. “I think I’ve been very good at keeping it all under control. But control does not mean I’ve really moved forward.”
“God, that’s the story of my life.”
They were both quiet for several long moments, absorbing the context of the conversation. He’d started this discussion because of some wild, driving need. But now he saw how badly it had needed to happen in practical terms.
“It’s interesting, isn’t it, how control is so key in any kink dynamic, whether from the top or the bottom? The difference is that for me, I must maintain control, and you must let it all go.”
Miranda bit her lip. “Roan, isn’t there a time when you get to let it all go, too? Because kinky or not, we’re both still human. And control is the device we hide behind.” She stopped for a moment. “I’m sorry. I’m making presumptions.”
He shook his head. “No. You’re absolutely right. And we’re not in role now. We’re simply talking.”
She smiled at him. “Thank you. For being willing to do this with me.”
“Thank you. For making me see that I still have a few things to work out.”
She didn’t say anything, just watched him as he lost himself in her big, blue eyes. As he leaned in to kiss her. He pressed his lips to hers, feeling the texture, reveling in it, before her tongue traced his lower lip. With a groan he grabbed her face in his hands, holding her as he took the kiss deeper, as he lowered his hands and put his arms around her body, holding her tight. She went right with it, her body forming to his. She fit perfectly.
He pressed her down onto the soft fur and loosened the belt of the robe she wore, untucked his towel and laid his body over hers. Pure fucking heaven, just the feel of her naked skin, her soft, panting breath. He watched her lovely face, and even as he held her down, his hands firm on her hip, her shoulder, it was less about anything kinky and more about who they were together at that moment.
Fuck.
Had he ever had this? Had it simply been so long he’d forgotten how?
“You are so incredibly beautiful,” he murmured.
She blinked up at him, smiled a little, making him smile. Then he kissed her—he had to—and her whole body rose to press against his, her full breasts crushed against his chest. And for the first time in too many years, all felt right with the world.
Chapter Seven
Miranda loved the feel of his big body against hers—she couldn’t get enough. There was something slowly unfolding in her chest, the sensation building all through their conversation. But it was the physicality of him—his touch, his closeness, his scent—that brought it all home, that made her feel it in a way she couldn’t have escaped if she’d tried.
She didn’t want to try.
His mouth on hers was so warm. He kissed her over and over, long, lingering kisses that were a hard press of his lips against hers, a small release, then pressing again. And each kiss seemed to come harder and harder, to have more behind it. More desire. More emotion.
When he pulled back his eyes were blazing, a simmering green fire. He watched her as he used his fingertips to press into the pressure points beneath her collarbones, waited for her to gasp in pain, then moved to a new spot on the top of her breast.
“Oh!”
The pain was sharp, dizzying. The pleasure was just as keen. Her sex went hot. Wet. Needy.
He moved his hand down and pressed briefly—painfully—into the outside of her thigh, then slipped to her inner thigh, and she took in a deep breath, knowing how much it would hurt.
“Good girl,”
Pain and pleasure trembled through her body, like an electric current all over her skin, deep inside her. Her thighs opened wider without her even thinking about it. His hand moved lower, in between her thighs, stroking her wet slit.
“Ah, God, Roan.”
“Fuck. Need a condom,” he muttered.
Before she had time to think about it he’d slipped her out of the robe, lifted her and carried her to his bedroom. She had a quick glance at the space—it was open, airy, everything in shades of cool gray and white with the moon and the clouds casting light and shadow everywhere. He laid her down on the big bed and leaned over her to pull a condom from somewhere next to the bed. She didn’t care. All she knew was she needed him inside her as quickly as possible.
She licked her lips as she he knelt over her on the bed and smoothed the latex over his gorgeous, swollen cock. Her mind was emptying out, desire filling her up—her body, her brain. All she could think was a single word.
Yes.
As he slid into her they both gasped, their arms wrapping around each other. And as he began to surge into her, each stroke a devastating tidal wave of pure pleasure, she began to come almost instantly. So sharply all she could do was shiver and dig her nails into his strong shoulders, the only solid ground she could find.
Roan.
Even his name in her mind was like some glorious, searing heat.
“Ah, Christ, Miranda. You feel like…everything. Ah, God…”
Soon he was coming with her, his climax melding with hers, sweat pouring, bodies clenching, pleasure a dizzying height she never wanted to come down from.
When it was over he stayed inside her for some indeterminable time. She only knew it felt too soon when he slipped from her to remove the condom. He pulled her into his arms, silently stroking her skin. She ran her hands over his body, savoring every muscular plane, stopping to stroke his nipples with her fingertips. Loving that he was allowing her to explore him. She leaned up and took one hard, flat nipple into her mouth, tasting the salt of his skin. Of their pleasure. When he groaned she sucked harder. And in moments, it seemed, his cock was hardening once more, nudging her belly, and she reached down to stroke it. So big in her hand.
“Roan…” she whispered, need choking her.
“Yes. Again, beauty.”
Once more he sheathed himself. Then he sat up on his knees, pulling her body to his so she was straddling his lap. He lifted her. Impaled her.
“Roan!”
They began to move together, her hips meeting his while he helped to lift her, moving her up and down on his cock. In the half dark she could see his face, torn with pleasure. When he reached between them to tease her hard clit her climax rolled through her again. She cried out, buried her head in his neck, bit into the flesh there while he groaned her name.
“Miranda… Miranda…”
His hips moved harder, faster, his free hand digging into her hip. So strong, hurting her. She craved the pain. Craved the pleasure. Didn’t matter as long as it was him.
Impossible.
He came in a torrent of heat inside her, a guttural groan deep in his throat as he threw his head back and cried into the night. And she loved that she had brought him this keen pleasure. It was all she wanted to do at that moment.
To make him happy. To love him.
Love him.
Impossible.
Three days.
Her heart raced. But he drew her tighter into his arms and kissed her and she couldn’t think of a good reason to be afraid.
She was safe with him.
She loved him.
Impossible.
He kissed her harder and she stopped thinking.
They stayed in bed for two days. The sex was amazing
—she’d never been so turned on by a man in her entire life. And he played her, a master at his craft of torturing her body with pleasure, with pain. He used the pressure points, which he seemed to be expert at, and which she loved. He spanked her, pinched her, bit into her flesh, leaving teeth marks and tiny bruises all over her. When she was alone in the bathroom she admired her marks—they gave her surges of joy and a sense of belonging. Had she really forgotten what that was like?
In between the play and the sex they talked—about their travels, food they loved, about the psychology of kink, and found they shared common views on nearly everything. They watched movies together, old black-and-white film noir pieces, another taste they had in common. They had meals brought in and left in the kitchen so they never had to see another person the entire time. She felt as if they were in some sort of lush, sensual cocoon, just the two of them and the wonderful food and the even better sex and breathtaking kink play. And when they slept they curled around each other, their bodies fitting like pieces of a puzzle.
She lay in bed on their fifth day together, watching the sun rise through the sheer, floating curtains on the big windows in his bedroom, a room she had come to know intimately. She waited for him to wake up, happy to simply be in his presence, curled up against his warm body. She’d come to know that intimately, too—every beautifully formed muscle, every inch of his tanned skin, the way his dark beard grew in overnight. She loved the scratchiness of it as much as she loved the softness of his lips. The hardness of his clever, punishing hands.
She loved him.
That hadn’t gone away. It had grown, if anything, day by day, hour by hour. She didn’t allow herself to wonder at it too much, afraid she would jinx things. And there was the fact that she had no idea how strong his feelings for her ran, or if they would continue once their week was up. The idea of asking him what would happen at the end of their allotted time together was too impossible to approach.
“Hey.” His voice was rough with sleep. His jaw was rough with the lovely morning scruff.
“Hey.”
“Have you been up long?”
“A little while.”
He wrapped his fingers up in her hair and gripped it hard. “And what have you been doing?”
She smiled. “Being content.”
He pulled her on top of him and she felt the solid ridge of his cock against her belly. “I’ll show you content my beauty,” he growled.
“Yes, please.”
“Dirty girl,” he said, obviously pleased with her answer.
“Yes I am. But you like it.”
“I do. But I’m a little too dirty. Into the shower, wench.”
“But I like the bed. I’m comfortable.”
“Too damn bad.”
He sat up, twisting her arms behind her back as he put her on her feet, marching her into the bathroom, making her laugh. He swatted her bottom good-naturedly and her head went down into subspace immediately. Floating already, she smiled to herself as he turned the water on, moving her into the enormous marble shower. The water came from every direction, from jets on every wall as well as the rainfall showerhead above. This shower was one of the great decadent pleasures in life. She would miss it.
Her heart hammered.
Not yet.
She let herself sink into his arms, into his touch, so rough and so tender at the same time as he brought her arms around and twined them behind his neck so he could grab a condom from the built-in shelves.
“Hang on, beauty. Hang on and ride me.”
He lifted her onto his gorgeously hard cock, and pleasure stabbed into her even as his flesh did. She wrapped her lags around his waist and kept her gaze on his as he began to move, tilting his hips, surging into her.
“You are so damn hot inside. Never felt anything like it. Never felt anything like you, Miranda.”
“Ah, Roan…”
“I want you to come onto me.”
Her body clenched at his command. “Yes, Roan.”
He reached under her and pressed a finger into her pussy along with his swollen cock, and the sensation was indescribable—sharp and filling her. She came, shivering all over, pleasure like fire in her veins, a thousand stars exploding in her head.
She was still shivering with the aftershocks when he said, “You come like no one I’ve ever seen. You are like no one I’ve ever seen.”
“Roan, please come. Into me. For me.”
His gaze held hers, hard and glinting. “Yes, beauty. For you.”
She felt him start to shake, and his growls turned into gasping cries, his face beautiful, pleasure an exquisite agony on his features, his big hands flexing on her thighs. She felt as if she were falling for him all over again, her body and her heart responding as one.
“Roan…yes!”
“God, Miranda. Ah, God…love you, Miranda,” he murmured, his jaw still clenching.
She felt as if she were spinning. Dizzy. Overwhelmed. She shook her head, held onto him tighter. And then she watched as his face seemed to fall apart. As his features just went loose all at once—and the quick recovery as he shut down. Went cold. He pulled out of her, set her on her feet and tore the condom off, rinsed himself under the water jets.
It had all happened so fast she didn’t have time to comprehend it. Then he had his hands rough on her shoulders, pressing her down.
“On your knees now,” he told her. “You’re going to suck me until I’m hard again.”
She went down. It was Roan and she couldn’t do anything else. She didn’t understand what had just happened. All she knew were the desperate words running through her brain at a hundred miles an hour.
Must get him to come back to me. Somehow. Somehow.
She took his still half-hard cock into her mouth, tasting the sweetness of his flesh. She was still deep enough in subspace that the urge to please him was strong. But she couldn’t forget what he’d said to her.
He loved her.
He was also freaked out about it. But she could do this for him. She would serve him until he remembered only the love.
She curled her tongue around the head of his cock, using her hand to hold the shaft, to pump it as she licked and sucked.
“Use your teeth,” he ordered, and she did, grazing his cock, nibbling. “Ah, that’s it.”
He grew hard again, and his hips angled, pushing his flesh into her mouth, then harder, choking her a little. There was a hard knot in her stomach at the change in him. But when he began to moan she relaxed, taking him deeper into her throat, teasing the urethral opening with the tip of her tongue, working the shaft with her hand.
Finally he panted. “Enough!”
She pulled back, feeling stung by his tone. He’d never been so stern with her.
He grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet, shut the water off and marched her out of the shower. Without offering her a towel or drying her himself, as he usually did, he bent her over the long marble counter, a condom already in his hand. She watched in the big mirror as he drew it over his cock, pressed her thighs apart with his and pushed into her from behind.
He was watching her in the mirror but his eyes were distant. Vacant. And the knot in her stomach was back, tears burning at the back of her eyes. He started to thrust, hard and hurting. Devoid of pleasure for the first time because the connection was gone as if it had never been there to begin with.
She pushed back against him, hard enough to make him lose his footing, and he slid from her body. She whirled on him, shoved hard on his chest with both hands.
“What the hell, Roan? What is this?”
He looked remorseful, but he only shook his head.
“Really? That’s it?” She pushed her wet hair from her face, waiting for him to speak, but he remained silent, unable to look at her. She grabbed a thick, white towel from the rack and began to dry herself in rough strokes. She was fuming inside. “What did I do to deserve this? What’s happened here?”
Finally he spoke. “Miranda�
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But she cut him off, too furious to hear him out. “No. This is done. I’m done. And don’t even try to tell me you don’t know what’s wrong.”
“I wasn’t going to. I was going to… Fuck, I don’t know what I was going to say.”
She stared him down, rage and loss burning her like acid. “Fuck you, Roan.”
She wrapped the towel around her body and ran through the apartment, through the marble foyer and into the open doors of the waiting elevator, punched the button for the lobby.
By the time she’d reached her apartment she couldn’t even remember how she’d crossed the lobby in nothing but a damp towel and reached her own bank of elevators.
It’s like a death all over again.
“God damn you, Roan Abrams,” she muttered, flinging the towel on the floor and moving into her own bathroom, slipping into her soft, pink robe. “Why did you have to make me fall in love with you? Why did I allow this to happen? Again?”
Love had been given, then taken away even more quickly than it had before, which was almost worse than losing Daryn in some weird way. All she understood was that she’d lost again.
She picked up her hairbrush from the counter and began to brush through her damp, matted hair a little too hard, needing the pain to center herself.
“Don’t fucking do it,” she ground out from between clenched teeth. But the tears came anyway. She had to turn away from the mirror, unable to watch herself cry.
She climbed into bed, burrowing under the covers and wrapping her arms around her body, trying to hold herself together. But it was as if all the years of pain had been unleashed, and the crying turned to uncontrollable moans. Then absolute sobs and howls of grief that were wrenched from the very center of her being. She couldn’t think. All she could do was feel everything she’d tried so damn hard to lock down over the years. And it shattered her into so many pieces she had no idea how she would ever pull herself together again.
Finally, completely worn, she slept.
Roan’s head hadn’t stopped aching since Miranda had rightfully told him to fuck off and he’d realized what he’d done. Fucking inexcusable. So utterly inexcusable he hadn’t been able to bring himself to face her. He had to do battle with himself first.