Fire & Ice ~ The Drake Legacy: Book One

by Kari Wray

  I sucked his velvety lower lip fully into my mouth, then bit on it, only lightly, a little playful nip.

  “Hey!” he said, surprised.

  Just then, the cab pulled up, outside a glitzy high-rise.

  “I thought …” he began, “that you might want to come in, for a nightcap?”

  “Why not?” I said in my most sultry voice.

  I had completely sobered up now, and it felt like I was using all my energy not to betray my nerves at what lay before us.

  I wanted this to be perfect.

  It had to be.

  We walked through the silent lobby, Xander greeting the bored, tired doorman, and then we stepped into the gilt-edged elevator. Xander punched in a number, 415. And as soon as the door slid closed, we started kissing once again; this time with even more of an animal ferocity than before.

  I felt his hands cupping my buttocks, just as I’d imagined them doing only a week previous, and I sucked urgently on his tongue, knowing that soon, very soon, I would be able to explore the rest of his body with my eyes, my hands, my mouth …

  §

  There was no time to fully take in his apartment, other than to register that it was tastefully decorated - if perhaps a little minimalist − and that he was obviously wildly, insanely wealthy. (Although I could have guessed that part already.) Before I lingered any longer, we were through to the bedroom, and I turned to him, taking him in, drinking him in with my hungry, eager eyes.

  I could smell his cologne and make out the slight darkness of his five-o-clock shadow.

  He drew me urgently and forcefully toward him, and I opened my lips, closed my eyes once more, as his tongue quickly probed my mouth, and I felt his hands closing urgently around my hips, his fingers sliding my dress up around my waist.

  He pulled his lips away from mine, then leant in again and began kissing my neck, his lips so impossibly hot and full that they caused a delicious tingling feeling against the naked goose-pimpled flesh of my collar bone and clavicle.

  “Oh, Xander!” I gasped, unable to help myself as his right hand began cupping my breast through my dress and bra, causing a faint buzz of pleasure to swarm and mingle in my stomach.

  Without warning he knelt down on one knee and began kissing, making his way in light pecks up my thighs and then his mouth came to rest – over the top of the silky red thong – on the little mound of my pulsing swollen clit hood. With a grunt, he tugged the small strip of red material aside and licked at my bare sex with his eager hot tongue, as I ran my fingers through the shiny, silky black curls of his locks, mussing them up, as I pushed my legs open as wide as they’d go so that he could further nuzzle and lap at my dripping, yearning pussy.

  I could tell that he was thoroughly enjoying himself, too, as he was making muffled but pleasurable little grunting noises as he sucked and licked at my sex.

  With his mouth still clamped around my clit, he brought two fingers up to my hole, slipping them inside me with ease and gently beginning to fuck me with them as he sucked my tingling little nub hard between his lips.

  “Oh, oh!” I gasped, feeling the orgasm build in huge, sudden waves inside me, my knees turning to jelly and my hips bucking as I came hard against his mouth, my pussy even squirting a little – something it had only done once before, a long time ago, as I’d toyed myself with a hairbrush as a horny teen in my bedroom.

  When my orgasm was over, I fell back against the edge of the bed, my legs trembling, while Xander got proudly to his feet, wiping the dripping slickness of my juices off his dark, stubbled chin and then licking the remaining drops from his fingers with an eager smile.

  “Finer than champagne!” he exclaimed, giving me a cheeky, sexy wink.

  I couldn’t help laughing too, my nerves and worries completely dissolved now, replaced by a white-hot animal lust.

  “Now it’s my turn,” I purred, taking control.

  He looked up at me a little puzzled and surprised, but I ignored this quizzical expression.

  “Take that shirt off, and those pants,” I commanded, and so with a wry smile on his face, Xander did exactly as he was told, unbuttoning his flimsy cotton shirt and throwing it off to reveal the tanned sculpted body of an athlete: even hotter than I’d imagined … He unbuckled his dress pants and slid them to the floor, and with delight I saw that his legs were just as beautifully toned and sculpted as his upper body, and tanned a deliciously light, sun-kissed brown.

  “Now wait there a moment, while I get myself more comfortable,” I said in the same low, commanding tone, leaving him standing a little awkwardly in the middle of the bedroom, now dressed in just in his tight white cotton briefs, within which I could make out the swelling lump of his manhood.

  I was enjoying taking the lead now, focussing on my own pleasure, and doing exactly as I wanted; exactly as I’d dreamed of doing.

  I climbed up onto the crisp white sheets of his bed, and lay back on the large stack of pillows, propping myself up halfway between a sitting and lying position. Then, once I I’d got myself nice and comfortable, just how I wanted to be, I nodded to him to come and climb over me.

  “Bring your body up here, like this,” I directed, shaking my head and pushing him off me when he began trying to mount me, missionary style. Silly boy, I thought. I wasn’t ready for that yet. I had something very different in mind first …

  I grabbed his tight hard buns and pulled his crotch a little closer towards my face, and now he began to grasp exactly what it was I wanted from him. He straddled me obediently, placing his knees either side of my shoulders, so that all I could see now was his rippling six-pack abs, the small dark train of hairs leading my eager eyes down towards that enticingly big bulge beneath his white cotton briefs. With trembling hands, I tugged down the waistband of his shorts, to reveal his full, thick cock.

  “Oh Xander!” I gasped. “It’s beautiful!”

  It was an absolutely perfect specimen. The skin of his shaft was a light silky brown and his perfectly round hairless balls hung low beneath his semi-erect member. The head of his dick was the loveliest, pearly pink color and I just knew I had to have it in my mouth.

  So I reached behind him and pulled him gently towards my face, touching his hot, swollen cock for the first time as I directed the stiffening rod towards my mouth. And with a final gasp, I registered that it tasted just as divine as it looked.

  He had a beautifully manly, salty taste; a heady mixture of precum, sweat and his expensive tanned skin, and I grunted with pleasure as I felt his cock head swell and pulse a little against my eager tongue. As I sucked up and down on the stiffening shaft, I reached down with the hand that wasn’t softly jerking his rod, and slid my fingers deep into my soaking wet panties.

  With surprise and delight, I found my clit was already standing out like a hard little nub and I only had to touch it a few times before I came again, right there with his cock in my mouth, muffling my moans as the shudders of my second orgasm bucked and crashed through me, my pussy clenching and squirting even more clear juices out from between my fingers and onto the crisp white sheets.

  Fuck! I never normally came so easy as this! But Xander’s cock head was like some sort of divine elixir and I knew that as long as I had it in my mouth, I could’ve just kept on cumming and cumming, just by sucking on it and touching myself with my fingers.

  Xander, however, had other ideas.

  “Cassie, I need you now,” he grunted, pulling his cock out of my mouth. “And not like this. I need to feel you around my cock.”

  He fell back onto his back and pulled up me on top of him. I felt his hot cock brush against my inside thigh for a moment, and knew it wouldn’t be long before I felt him deep inside me. A final electric shiver ran through me.

  “I want you too,” I gasped, reaching down to stroke him between my legs, feeling how velvety and slicked with my saliva his cock had become.

  He tugged the front of my dress down over my breasts, freeing up the silky satin cups of my bra, then r
eached behind me, fumbling a little with the clasp before finally getting it free. He was about to suck my rock-hard left nipple into his eager mouth, when I noticed his eyes change in expression, widening in shock and confusion.

  I looked down at the patch on the bed where he was staring, and then realized in dismay just what he was looking at.

  Fuck.

  It was that business card.

  I’d forgotten to take it out of my bra.

  There it lay on the sheets, staring up at us both:

  Caleb D. Marchand

  CEO, Ignis Incorporated

  “Get out,” Xander muttered, in a low, cold voice; a voice I’d never, ever heard him use before.

  “But Xa-“ I began.

  “Get out,” he commanded, this time louder. “Just take your things and go. I mean it, Cassie. Or else I won’t be responsible for my actions …”

  I knew, from the frosty tone in his voice that there was absolutely nothing I could do to explain — at least not right there and then. I stammered and stuttered, feeling icy waves of shock and regret and confusion shooting through me, and then, as quickly and gracefully as I could under the circumstances, I got dressed again.

  Xander, meanwhile, stayed slumped on the bed, fully nude, now covering his face with his hands.

  Once I’d collected up my things, I considered saying something else. I stood there, framed in the doorway, looking back sadly at his beautiful naked body, like some kind of Greek god, but I could feel the anger and resentment seething in him, even from here. There was something about Caleb’s name that had triggered an violent, irrational hatred in Xander the likes of which I’d never ever seen in a human being before.

  It was scary.

  I turned and ran through his apartment, back into the elevator, and hammered on the button for the ground floor.

  And then, once the shiny machinated doors slid closed, and I was finally and truly on my own … I wept.

  Chapter Fourteen

  §

  Chicken Soup & Cuddles

  Mom woke me up with a cup of tea, the way only she could make it.

  “Thanks,” I murmured, taking a while to fully wake up and register where I was.

  And then two things hit me, almost simultaneously. The first was the splendid crash down to earth last night in Xander’s apartment, and the second was that today was the anniversary of my father’s death. Those two events seemed to implode inside me like a dying star and I crumpled up and clutched my face with my hands, sobbing hard for all I was worth.

  “Oh sweetie, hush, hush, don’t cry,” Mom cooed, placing the mug of tea down on the bedside table and climbing into bed with me, just like she had used to whenever I’d woken up from a bad dream as a kid.

  And so, just like that, we cuddled for a while, until I’d finally cried off all my bad energy and completely soaked through the front of her knitted blue jumper.

  Just having her here like this, I felt so thankful all of a sudden. She was like a big bowl of chicken soup; practically guaranteed to make you feel better. And before long, I’d wiped away my tears and taken a few gulps of my almost-cold mug of tea and then I’d begun to explain the strange turns of events that had made up last night …

  But as I tried to describe that icy-eyed fellow in the Excelsior’s lobby (pretending it was the lobby of the local multiplex cinema, instead of a glitzy billionaire’s ball), I had to change events around little; unable to explain just why I’d picked up the card. And as my mind raced forward to the steamy goings-on in Xander’s apartment too (which I realized I couldn’t tell Mom either) I realized I had to start changing my story round, to protect my modesty a little.

  “So Xander just starts freaking out when he sees me talking to this guy I don’t even know,” I explained. “And he tells me to leave him alone.”

  “He sounds kind of messed up,” she offered.

  I nodded. “I think he is … And I was so looking forward to last night, too.”

  As I said it, another pang of worry shot through me: what in the world would happen on Monday morning?

  “If I’m honest, I’m pretty scared about seeing him at work on Monday,” I said.

  “There, there, dear,” Mom said, stroking my damp hair out of my eyes. “I’m sure things will all have blown over by then. The best thing to do in the meantime is just to get plenty of rest and I’ll cook you up a nice, healthy lunch. I’ve seen the kinds of things you’ve been eating recently …”

  “Thanks Mom,” I said as she got up and left the room, closing the door gently behind her.

  §

  I lay there in bed for a while, trying to get back to sleep, tossing and turning, my head filled with worry and jumbled images: Xander telling me to “Get out,” the look of shock and disgust when he saw the business card, and the icy blue eyes of Caleb Marchand, whoever he was, piercing me with their frosty intensity …

  And then, all of a sudden, my mind flitted once more to that family dinner, five years previous; we were all sat around the table laughing, having fun, my mom off in the kitchen preparing to serve up her famous lemon pie desert, my uncle and aunt over on a visit from London, England, when my dad suddenly grew quiet and touched his face, and said he wasn’t feeling so great.

  And then, out of nowhere, his eyes just rolled right back in his head and he clutched his arm and then he toppled and fell backwards off his chair.

  “Mom!” I screamed. “Mom! Something’s terribly wrong with Dad!”

  I was only seventeen.

  I didn’t know what to do …

  I knelt down next to my poor daddy and brushed the hair out of his forehead and told him to stay strong, whispering to him, over and over, that he’d be okay …

  But he wasn’t.

  He was pronounced dead by the emergency doctor, right there in our family dining room, just a short while later.

  Oh Daddy, I thought as I lay in bed, five years later, so sad and miserable and unsure what to do with my life and my future. I sure hope you’re up there somewhere, watching over me. Because right now things feel pretty far away from perfect …

  Chapter Fifteen

  §

  A Different Man

  On Monday morning, I strode into the office with a gigantic knot of worry in my stomach, big as a bowling ball. Maybe I was being paranoid, but I felt like the whole floor, all fifty or so of them, knew exactly what had gone on between us on Friday night; it felt like a hundred pairs of eyes followed me over to my desk outside Xander’s office.

  I sat down and took a deep breath, and when I reached out my hand to turn on my computer terminal, I noticed I was physically shaking.

  I wished my Mom was still staying with me; it would have been good to see her again this evening, but of course she needed to head back home to take care of things at her baking company.

  I’d waved her off, late last night, standing on the kern, trying my hardest to hold back the tears. At least she’d left me some healthy, comforting food in her wake. Right now my little fridge was stocked full of chicken soup, vegetable bakes, and individually wrapped sandwiches to see me through the week.

  Just then my computer terminal pinged into life and I immediately opened up the calendar application, scrolling through to the current week’s engagements. I needed to see when Xander was going to be in the office next, to prepare and steel myself.

  It said that he should be in any moment and that he was to be spending the whole morning here, before heading off to a lunch meeting at a Thai restaurant in the city a little later.

  I felt another lurch of nerves in my stomach, and another wave of sadness, and decided that I couldn’t face going back to my apartment alone tonight. So I pulled my cellphone out of my purse and began composing a message to Lauren.

  I’d only got as far as the ‘h’ of “hey” when I heard an ice-cold voice above me.

  “Put that away.”

  I looked up, shocked, to discover that it was Xander.

  He’d appeared at
my desk, seemingly out of nowhere, and his brow was knitted, his dark eyes filled now with an expression an awful lot like hate.

  “S-sorry,” I stammered, still taken aback by the horrible tone of his voice. “I was just …”

  “You were just wasting company time,” he interrupted, snapping the words at me violently. “Now please put that away and get on with some work. Now that you’ve had time to get settled in here, I’d like you to tackle some data entry …”

  At this, he walked over to a filing cabinet in the corner of the office and lifted out a huge stack of printed spreadsheets, there must have been thousands of pages, dumping the heavy stack on the side of my desk with a whumph. I looked at the top of the first one; it was extremely intricate, columns and cells of long, complicated numbers and calculations.

  "These all need typing out and formatting again from scratch,” he said. "I need you to re-enter all this information please."

  "But what's wrong with-" I began.

  "Just do it, Carrie," he growled. And I felt such shock at his new, angry tone — something I'd never heard come from him before, save for Friday night in his bedroom — that I just nodded and mumbled, "Yes sir."

  "Good," he said, nodding to himself, then striding past me, yanking open the door to his office, and slamming it hard behind him.

  §

  I worked hard all morning, but the stack of pages was so ridiculously large it felt like I'd made very little difference. My head was pounding and all the numbers had begun to swarm and swirl together and I was working slowly and methodically in order to avoid any mistakes. Heaven forbid I should be asked to do it all again …

  I knew deep down that he was just doing this to punish me, but I was still not quite sure what I'd actually done that was so wrong … And I really didn't like this new, cold side to him.