Deceiver

by Robin Lovett

  I couldn’t put it into words, but him coming at me from behind, piercing me in the most perfect way, gave me these orgasms that were ecstatic and horrible. Ecstatic because they just kept going, rolling one into the other, but horrible because they didn’t stop and left my clit throbbing in agony.

  But without me even saying, he goes down on me like he’s read my body like a book, satisfying me beyond comprehension, sating me into hours of peaceful slumber.

  That I could sleep so much is at odds with my normal behavior. It’s almost like catching up after years of agitation I didn’t know what I was suffering from. I called it boredom, but now I know it was more an emptiness, a craving for something bigger than myself. How he’s not only tapped into it but managed to ease it, I don’t know. I’m not sure I want to know. I just want him to keep doing it.

  I really don’t care if he’s forcing me to be here with him.

  I should be appalled, but I’m too intrigued by him, too addicted to what he’s giving me, to care about leaving.

  I open my eyes and scan the white sands around us, the shorelines of palm trees. A barrier island, too small for houses, protects us from the ocean waves crashing on the far side. How he found this place I don’t know. A hideaway from everyone. From civilization and prying eyes and expectations for anything. It’s paradisiac.

  The water is so clear and cool, and I’m so warm from the sun, it beckons me to jump in and have a swim.

  “Don’t do it,” his voice comes warm and raspy beside me.

  I didn’t even see him lying there. On top of a cushion that matches mine, he lays shirtless in his aviators. The mirrors reflect my face back at me, and I’m disturbed at not seeing his eyes.

  I turn to him, propped on one arm, and pull his sunglasses down his nose. They reveal his eyes, as heated and hungry as ever.

  “Did you sleep?” I ask.

  “Next to you? Naked?” He pushes his sunglasses up his nose and looks at the cloudless sky. “Can’t.”

  I glance down at myself, totally nude. I’m glad I at least got a nice wax a week ago. “I’ve only ever sunbathed nude once before, in Italy. I never thought I’d do it in the States.”

  “Come to California. I’ll find you a nude beach.”

  “Would you take me sometime?” Am I really asking to go somewhere else with him? Whatever. Out here it doesn’t seem to matter whether I want to be with him. I chose to get on the boat. I chose to be fucked mercilessly by him. There’s enough choice involved that my apparent free will is intact.

  “Maybe. If my sister’s not around.”

  “If you’re keeping me forever, she’s going to have to meet me sometime.” I don’t believe for a second he’s keeping me forever. But I still believe he might turn my father in to the police—still working on that one.

  He doesn’t acknowledge my statement.

  My gaze crosses over his bare chest, and the contours of the muscles etched there call to my touch. I trace over his pecs, his abs. God, he must work out.

  Unbelievably, he has me growing turned on—again. Though I don’t know how that’s possible. I glance lower on him, at his swim trunks. “You didn’t want to go nude.”

  “I didn’t want to get certain parts sunburned.”

  I run my palm down his flat stomach and into the waistband. “How many more of those condoms did you bring on the boat?”

  “Three.”

  And I’m heating in my center, not just from the sun. “Really?”

  “I put as many as would fit in my wallet two days ago.”

  It occurs to me that I offered myself to him not even knowing if he’d brought condoms on the boat. I shake my head at myself for not remembering to bring some from my suitcase. “I’m a bit of a mess with you.”

  “I know. I like it that way.” He reaches his hand to brush my cheek. “You know, I meant what I said. I am clean. You can trust me. In that at least.”

  I didn’t notice it before, but something has changed in the honest things he has reluctantly revealed to me about himself. Even with him kidnapping me, he doesn’t mean me physical harm.

  I do trust him. In this at least. “I believe you.”

  He takes off our sunglasses then brings my head down for a kiss.

  His lips are a soft gentle pressure, sucking against mine, parting to draw one into his mouth. He teases me with the tip of his tongue, running it over my mouth in lazy swipes. It’s intoxicating and has me crawling over him.

  I reach down to find him sporting a semi in his shorts, and I back up from his mouth. I watch his face as I pull off his swimsuit, wondering if he’ll stop me. He doesn’t. He makes no move to stop me or take control. But he still has me looking for permission—topping from the bottom.

  By the time I straddle his legs, his cock is lying hard and thick against his abs, its veins swollen in an artistic pattern. I grab it, I’m helpless not to, and stroke him, every pull of my hand a prod to my arousal.

  He watches me, his hands idle by his sides, his eyes a depthless wonder of insatiable things. I hold his gaze and raise up over him on my knees.

  I stroke the tip of him against where I’m growing wet and hot, needy and clenching, from the instinct to have him in me again. His mouth parts and his breath moves faster, but he doesn’t hurry me.

  I’m burning on the inside, aching to be full of him again, and he’s clawing his fingers on the deck and grinding his jaw with impatience. I take pity on us and I descend over him, sheathing him in me.

  We both suck in our breath, and it’s worse than last time—better. Stranger, harder. More intimate, without the latex separating us. I can feel the warmth of him, the heat of him sensitive inside me. He penetrates me so deeply, I feel invaded, in a torturous, blissful way.

  I lift over him and drop back down—a scraping of the most sensitive of my pleasure sensors. It awakens me and pains me at the same time. It taunts me to keep moving, to make it better, to make the feeling climb higher.

  His hands grip my thighs, starved for the control he doesn’t have in this position. I lean over him, bracing my hands against his chest, and rock forward. He rubs inside me, grinding against my clit at the same time.

  It’s so good I can’t stop, so good I can’t keep my eyes open.

  His hands wrap my breasts and massage them, teasing my nipples in his palms, ratcheting me with more sensation.

  Me in control is agonizing and amazing at the same time. I can move how I want, how it feels good to me, how it feels best to me. But I have to do it myself—I’m so aware of what I’m feeling, doing, that it makes it more agonizingly good.

  I falter, and he needles me. “Do it, baby. Make yourself come.” He grips my hips and thrusts his cock upward into me.

  It’s enough. Him meeting me, gripping me, lifting me, my hips sliding back and forth—I lose myself to abandon, to everything but the ecstasy flooding me.

  I come, crying and seizing, the ability to move stolen from me by my overwhelmed body.

  My core still lurching in the wake, he tosses me onto my back, pins me to the mat, his drives into my center like a madman.

  I didn’t know how much me being on top cost him, how much it frustrated him. It’s obvious now, with the smacking of his hips against mine, the wrenching of the groans from his chest and the speed of his pumping hips, that giving me control was a major concession for him.

  Harder and harder he goes until his face contorts in climax and he lets loose a cry to wake the dead—one of a soul not just tortured but moved against his will. He rams me so full of him, pouring so much of himself into me that I worry there won’t be anything left of him when he’s done.

  He stares down at me with something like fear in his eyes.

  His hips keep jacking in impulsive thrusts, as though unable to stop, and the look on his face is tight—like he’s trying to stop them, but can’t.

  I lift up and kiss him, cradling his head and pulling him down onto me. He collapses, still shuddering, over me.


  “What—are you—doing—to—me?” he gasps between his heaving breaths.

  “Shh, it’s okay.” I stroke his hair and catch my breath. “It’s just sex. Really—great sex.”

  He takes a deep breath and relaxes against me, taking comfort in my words. Though I wish I could. I wish I believed them.

  I’m feeling so frighteningly exposed with this man, I’m not sure how it can be just sex.

  But I’m too wrapped up in him to care.

  * * *

  “We don’t have anything for dinner,” I call to her from the galley below deck. “Unless you want sandwiches again.”

  She sighs from the cockpit. “We don’t have to go back, do we?”

  The sun is fast setting and there’s no way we’d make it back before dark, so no. But hearing her so forlorn about the prospect sparks a masculine pride in me.

  I poke my head out of the hatch to look at her. She tucks a towel around herself, her nipples still on display. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that. “You like it here so much.”

  “Duh.”

  “Can’t get enough of me, can you?”

  She raises her eyebrows. “I believe it’s you who can’t get enough of me.”

  I can’t help a small smile. She’s practically glowing from a day spent bathing and sexing in the sun. Her skin this radiant golden hue, and her eyes sparkling with a joy that’s—

  I clear my throat and look away from her. I will not think about her eyes or what they look like or what they’re saying. It doesn’t matter.

  She climbs down next to me. “There has to be something to eat down here.” She squeezes next to me into the three feet of space that is the “kitchen,” her ass pressing squarely to the front of my groin.

  I grip her hips around the towel. “You know, you really don’t have to seduce me. It’s a waste of your energy.”

  She turns, brushing her breasts across my bare chest. “Taunting you is never a waste of energy.” She nips at my pectoral, leaving little teeth marks in my chest.

  “Ow!” I flinch.

  She flashes her teeth at me with a clicking bite. “Keep your distance.”

  “Keep my—? You invaded my space.”

  “Oops.” She starts moving through the galley, opening every cabinet and drawer.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Hunting. Oh!” She opens the little closet that my aunt keeps her things in. “How cute is that?” She holds out some white fabric—I have no idea what it is.

  “A shirt?”

  “No, it’s a cover-up.” She drops the towel and bends over—her pretty ass in the air like on a buffet.

  “Christ,” I mutter, and close my eyes. I will not get hard again. I will not get hard again. I will not . . . Fuck.

  What happened on deck, the second time when she topped me, was a shock and overload to my system. What she did to me, how it overcame me—I can’t look at her the same now. She has a power over me that goes beyond physical desire. It’s like she’s commanding the recesses of my soul just by existing, pulling things from me that render me helpless to control it.

  “Look!” she demands.

  I crack one eye open. “What?”

  “Why’d you close your eyes, silly?”

  “Because you’re—you’re—” The thinnest white cotton I’ve ever seen hangs over her breasts and gathers at her waist, then stops at the tops of her thighs. “What are you wearing?”

  “It’s a cover-up.”

  “To cover up what? It covers nothing.” It looks more like lingerie—so much worse than her naked because it makes me want to take it off her.

  “It’s supposed to cover a bathing suit.”

  “But you’re not wearing one.”

  “No.” She drops her voice and looks at me from hooded eyes. “I’m not wearing anything underneath. Do you want to see?” She lifts the skirt.

  “Do you want to be sore?”

  She laughs, “Maybe,” and continues her search about the cabin.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Something . . . Ha!” She pulls the cushion forward on the bench seat and reveals a storage hideaway. “Perfect!” She rummages into the hole.

  I can guess what she’s found, and it’s not going to be good. “Did you find the . . .”

  “Yes!” She holds out the four-foot length of rod with the line and the reel, like it’s a trophy she won.

  “Fish? You want us to catch fish for dinner?” I cross my arms, trying to maintain a serious expression but losing the battle fast. The expression of mischievous glee on her face reminds me so much of the sprinklers at the garden party, I have to bite my lip to keep from smiling.

  “What’s wrong? Don’t you eat fish?” She scrunches her nose like that would be appalling.

  “Have you ever caught a fish and eaten it?”

  “No.”

  I’m not interested. “We could sit out there for hours and catch nothing.”

  “We’ll catch something. It may be a tin can, but we’ll catch something.” She pushes past me up the steps.

  I duck away from the swinging fishing rod. “You don’t have any bait.”

  “You could help, you know. Do you really want a cold supper?” Something about the optimism in her face, the lightness in her eyes, makes me want to keep it there. And, I realize, I want to make her smile.

  Before I can think twice, I say, “I’ll find some.”

  She does it. The smile she shows me—it could light up a runway. It could light up me. If I let it. Which I won’t.

  She grabs the nape of my neck and smacks a hard kiss to my mouth. I can’t grab her back, though. She lets go and disappears above deck. And it hits me in the chest like a ton of bricks.

  She hasn’t smiled like that in days.

  She should be smiling all the time.

  It’s my fault.

  I stare at the floor, the grains of the wood, the runner carpet—I should do better. I should treat her with more care. She didn’t deserve to be taken away from her home, her family, her job against her will.

  For me to punish her for the guilt of her father, my father, is grossly unfair.

  “Hello down there?” She peeks in one of the open vent windows. “Anyone at home?” I turn to her and whatever she sees on my face surprises her. “Are you okay?”

  No, I’m not. I want to say. I’m guilty. Of horrible things. And I’ve brought you into it. And I should be sorry. But I’m not. And that makes me even worse.

  “We don’t have to fish, Blake. It’s okay.”

  I’m a sinking ship and I’m dragging her down with me.

  She crouches closer to the window. “Blake?” Concern lines her face. “Do you want me to come back?”

  I shake myself from my haze. “Bait. You want bait.” I turn to rummage in the cooler. I can at least give her that.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The look on his face—shame, regret, fear.

  He shut it down as fast as it appeared, but I sit back on the deck and gaze out at the crystalline water. My lips quirk.

  It’s working.

  He’s feeling things. He’s waking up. There’s more to him than this obsession with revenge. Maybe soon he’ll realize it.

  He brings me pieces of ham to use for bait and sits beside me while we fish the evening away. It’s strange. He’s quiet, demure, almost apologetic.

  He’s nice to me. I don’t like it. “What is wrong with you?”

  He looks at me with sad, tired eyes, eyes that lack all the anger and desire that I like. It’s not him. He’s supposed to be my source of excitement, and now he’s filling me with dread.

  I let the fishing rod rest on the rail. “Do you hate fishing that much?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Too much sex? Are you tired?” I almost see it. His eyes flash with something, but he looks away out at the water. “Or the opposite.”

  His look morphs, peeling back, exposing the things I want to see. But the fish
ing rod jerks.

  “Ah!” I shriek in excitement. I jerk it back to hook the fish and start to reel it in. There’s weight on the end of the line and the pole arches.

  I pull it up and there’s a medium-sized fish dangling from the end. “Ha!”

  He gives a small laugh. “I’ll be damned.”

  “Told you so.”

  “Luck.”

  I humph. “I never said anything about it being skill.”

  “Do you have the skills to gut it and fry it?” he asks.

  I haven’t caught a fish since I was a little kid and I’ve never eaten one I’ve caught before. “I’ll have to look it up on my phone.”

  He gives a half smile. “Here, I’ll do it.”

  I give him the pole. “You know how?”

  “Sure. Mr. Tanner keeps the lake stocked on the estate. I used to catch and cook them with Mrs. Tanner.” He maneuvers the hook from the fish’s mouth.

  “You made it sound like you hate fishing.”

  “I never said that.” He takes the fish below deck.

  There’s a story there. A childhood story. The way he refuses to look at me when he says it. The way he walks away before I can ask questions.

  It doesn’t taste bad. He finds a bottle of wine and a box of rice in the kitchen to have with the fish.

  I sit across from him in the cockpit, the sun setting beside us, the sounds of the ocean still ebbing and flowing in our ears. “Not bad for a makeshift meal. I catch, you cook.”

  He lounges across the table from me. “I never would’ve pictured you as a fishing sort.”

  “I never would’ve pictured you as a cooking sort.”

  “I like working for what I want instead of having it done for me.”

  “But you don’t have a job. You have servants.” My parents have money, and my mom has someone who comes clean once a week, but we never had live-in help like he does on his estate.

  “My father’s old estate has servants. I do not. I’m a lawyer. I have a job.”

  “Then why aren’t you at it?”

  He swirls the wine in his glass. “I’m on an extended leave to settle my father’s affairs.”