by Angel Payne
Headstrong. Histrionic.
Unstoppable. Unapologetic.
Astonishing. Amazing.
And utterly, totally, the new guiding beacon of my heart.
“I think your payment will begin right now,” I drawled, pulling at her hair. “Suck me, sugar. Let me feel your lips tight around my cock.”
Her eyes glittered brightly with her approval of that plan—right before she lowered her beautiful mouth over my erection.
Heaven. Hell. And everything in between.
I groaned as she started by simply kissing my swollen head. Choked and bucked as pre-come shot up the shaft, promptly sipped off with her delighted little mewls. She kept lapping at the tip, rolling her tongue in unhurried little circles, until I swore I’d discovered the true meaning of losing my mind.
“Margaux!”
“Hmmm?”
Damnable little wench. She hummed it like I’d merely asked her the time—making sure the sound vibrated through my head then rained reverberations down my whole length. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Ended up choosing neither, instead obeying deeper instincts by gripping the back of her head—and ramming her down on me completely.
Her hum erupted into a startled moan. Then a high little sigh. Then a succession of passionate slurps, as she went to work on my dick like no other ever had. I groaned in return—or thought I did. Awareness of anything past the contact of her mouth along my flesh grew more impossible by the minute. My thighs quaked. My chest pounded. I didn’t blink for fear of losing a second of this incredible sight. My hand twisted in her hair, plunging her onto me again and again. My groin synced in savage stabs, fucking up into her mouth. The peaceful idyll of nature around us, twittering and breezing in oblivion to our passion.
With a tormented yell, I finally pulled her off. She flashed up a stare full of shock. “Michael? What’s—”
“Condom,” I ordered. “Back right pock—back left pocket.” Perfect proof of why I tasked her with retrieving the thing. Remembering my own name right now felt more difficult than taking the Bar all over again.
I grunted my appreciation when she slid the latex on in seconds, her movements fevered but controlled. As I fell fully to my back, she pushed off her skirt and panties. Then, damn her, took her very sweet time moving back over me, spreading her pussy lips with one hand while balancing on my abdomen with the other.
With her fingers splayed over my stomach, her eyes grew heavy and heated. “Look at you,” she murmured, pushing up my shirt to caress over my stomach and chest. “You are so damn beautiful.”
A strained laugh spilled out. “You know how much of this ‘beauty’ comes from looking at you spread yourself like that?”
“It’s all for you,” she whispered. “Every last drop.”
My cock visibly jerked. “And every inch of that is going to take full advantage of that.”
“Hmmm.” She smiled, wetting her lips. “So what do you want me to do with it, stud?”
Deep growl. “You know exactly what I want you to do with it.”
“But the words, sugar. I need the words.”
I snarled. Then laughed again. “Vixen!”
“Scoundrel.”
The moment had come to turn the tables. I ensured her punctuation took form in a scream, as I rolled us both over in one motion, off the blanket and into the grass. It was warm from the sun and smelled like wildflowers—the perfect setting for letting our animals out of their cages again.
“Look at this,” I murmured before slamming a hard, fast kiss down on her. “I’ve found a sweet little flower to pluck.” With a flick, I jerked the ribbons free from the neck of her blouse—only then realizing she wore no bra underneath. “And look at this. She’s got some delicious nectar to feed me, too.”
Her grin grew, betraying how she searched for saucy words to zing in return. So not happening. She didn’t need to be coy, charming, or entertaining right now. She only needed to be filled, pleasured, fucked into bliss beyond words.
She only needed to be mine.
The goal burned into obsession. Nothing would stand in my way now. No more hesitations. No more delays.
I possessed her in the space of one urgent thrust.
“Ohhhh!” Her breasts jutted skyward as her body arched up. I leaned over, already breathing hard, fitting one erect strawberry into my mouth. Reveling in the moan I elicited for that, I slid to the other, sucking with carnal abandon.
Perfect in so many ways, even the timing. Concentrating on her tits forced my attention away from how magnificent her sex felt, gripping every inch of mine, as our bodies began surging and retreating against each other. That surreal feeling swirled again, as if the world were yanked away and the universe sealed us into a bubble of hyperawareness. The brush of the wind on my ass…the grind of the grass beneath my knees…every sigh she let go against my neck…all of it was tossed into a sensory blender then switched on high, until I growled long and hard from the erotic overload.
When she joined me, a keen splitting off her lips, I grabbed both sides of her face, goring her with my gaze. “Not yet, sugar. Stay with me.”
She swung her head from side to side. Her hair, fanned in the grass, grew tangled with flowers from her efforts at control. “It’s so good. This is so good, Michael!”
“Look at me. Look at me. It’ll be even better. Hang on. Hold it back.”
“Bastard!”
“Minx.” I smiled it against her lips while lifting one of her hips, curling her knee all the way over my shoulder. “Clamp me, Margaux. Squeeze me tight with your sweet pussy, and don’t let go.” I hissed with the bliss of her compliance. “Fuck, that’s good. Yeah, princess, just like that.”
I made sure she’d have every reason to echo the sentiment, angling my body so every stroke of my cock also caressed her most sensitive nub. Since she’d already been so helpful in unsheathing her clit, it took very little time to feel that moist little ridge tremor from my fucking. Soon, she started gasping in time to the same rhythm. “Holy—shit—Michael—Michael—Michael!”
I rolled my hips before the next thrust, increasing contact even more—before freezing like that.
We both held our breaths.
Deep inside her body, violent convulsions started.
Deep inside my balls, white-hot molecules detonated.
“Now, Margaux. Let it all go, sugar!”
Her tunnel softened around me. The next moment, clenched tight again. Tighter. Tighter. As I pumped faster, faster—
“Michael! Oh my God!”
Faster still.
Riding her through the torrent of her orgasm. Then the explosion of mine. Then a second for her. Still she reared against me, clenching me more ruthlessly than one of those Chinese finger puzzles. She tore giant tufts from the grass, teeth clenched and eyes squeezed, as a third wave clearly crept its way closer to her breaking point.
I really had become Hercules.
And I loved every fucking minute of it.
“Come on, sexy girl.” If I’d learned anything about properly revving this woman to her fullest sensual joy, it was the value of talking dirty to her. And that was juuuust fine by me. “You have another one for me, don’t you? I’m not going to stop fucking your naughty little cunt until you give it up. Feel that, Margaux? I’ve already blown my wad but you still make me that hard, that huge, inside your tight little body. I’m not leaving until you cream again all over me. Until you make me want to come all over again myself…”
She swallowed hard. Roped a hand around, over my ass, urging me even deeper. “Holy—hell!”
I barely suppressed a smile. We were holy something, all right. She took me to heaven by getting to watch her heaven, drenching her face over and over again in waves of gripping ecstasy. But even if this was a clever disguise for the tunnel to hell…well, it bore repeating—the fall would be worth it.
“You’re so close, princess.”
“Yes! Yessss!”
She was o
n the verge of hiking that into a scream—
When her phone rang.
“Ignore it,” she panted. No need for repeating that one. I gladly obliged and kept on plunging—until it rang again. “Shit! Damn telemarketers!”
When the device went off for the third time, I peeled back, but not before ordering, “Stay. We aren’t done.” I dug in her purse—thank God it was one of those Barbie-tiny ones and not a fucking suitcase—and retrieved her phone. “Good afternoon. Miss Asher’s—errmm—office.”
Silence. A long one. Then a click.
Strange. Telemarketers usually lived for the moment somebody actually picked up the line.
By now, Margaux had pushed up to her elbows. “What?” she pressed, gazing at my frown.
“Huh?” Yeah, this was me. Yeah, completely distracted. Christ, maybe that thwarted marketer had been my secret blessing. Now that I’d pulled back, I took in the bigger picture. Her well-used body. The glistening curls at its apex. The thought that they’d look even better if I spread her now, making her take a long, teasing tongue fuck before I penetrated her with the real thing again. There were two more rubbers in my pocket—and a sampler packet of lube. Captain America came prepared.
“Michael? Who was it?”
I shrugged. “Scared them off, I guess. Silence, then a hang-up.” I glanced at the phone’s screen. “Hmm. Chicago number. Did you break a heart out there while we weren’t looking, missy?”
My joke…apparently wasn’t one. She jackknifed up. Despite the heat of the afternoon, the color drained from her face.
Right before she stared at the device in my hand the same way she’d peered at the corners of her condo.
“Margaux? Hey. What the hell?”
She didn’t answer me. Her phone, now rang a fourth time. With the same Chicago-based number.
Before I could process any theories about that, she snatched the thing out of my grip. Yanked her top back up as she stood and muttered a terse “What?” as greeting—if one could call it that—to the party—if one could call them that—who’d yanked her back to spooked shitless mode in the space of thirty seconds.
Who the fuck was doing this to her? And why?
I back-burnered the need to start lining up the clues in hopes that a few fit together, focusing instead on any new evidence to cull from her side of the exchange.
“I told you it’ll happen, so it’ll happen,” she snapped. “Because I said so, that’s why.” As if she sensed me inching closer, she glanced over her shoulder, flashed me eyes full of alarm, and paced farther away. A few lines went by of furious hisses I couldn’t make out and shouted profanities that I could, before she jabbed a finger at the air as if the caller herself—himself?—had materialized in front of her. “No, dammit,” she yelled. “I think you’re the one who’d better watch their ‘little footsteps’. And you know what they say about men and their little feet, darling.”
So the caller was a “him”. Yeah, and inflation was on the rise. But only one of those statements made me feel like tearing one of the trees out of the ground and going battering ram with it against the boulder wall.
And she still wasn’t done. Oddly, she did turn back toward me to finish off the conversation. Necessary or unnecessary? I couldn’t tell shit from studying her face. Within a minute, she’d gone from coming undone in my arms to throwing up walls in my face.
Who the hell was on the other end of that phone call?
“We’re done here,” she bit at him. The savagery in her tone did nothing to loosen the fist in my chest. Him. “I said we’re done.”
A shaking breath left her as she disconnected the call. As she looked around for her purse, she wrapped both arms against herself like a prisoner at mealtime. Her stance gutted me. I hated it—but if I moved even a step toward her, I knew I’d cave to the need to crush her close again. I was locked in the same prison, scanning the area for enemies I didn’t know about, couldn’t see.
And if this whole episode had taken place in her condo…I’d be scouring the corners for demons, too.
Fuck.
I stood motionless as she jerked back into her underwear and skirt. When she dragged a hand through her hair, revealing eyes so dark I wondered who’d died, I finally snapped to action. It was surprising but not shocking that she jumped from the brush of my hand on her shoulder.
“Whoa. Hey.” How quickly old habits came back. Three years of hell beneath Declan’s thumb meant perfecting the art of keeping a gentle tone when one’s temper raged. It helped that I was upset for her, not at her. “Hi. It’s just me.”
Why that agitated her deeper, I couldn’t fathom. “Michael.”
I slipped my hand around, running it from her shoulder to her elbow. “That’s me. At least last time I checked.”
She blinked. Stared around the clearing as if it really had turned into a prison yard. “I—I have to leave.”
“All right. Let me just pack up—”
“No. Now.”
“Something urgent at the office?” Okay, so it was a massive straw grasp. But working for Asher and Associates had taught me that the most desperate straws were often the ones that worked the best. “Mom has a laptop upstairs and a few PCs in the office. Her internet is lightning fast. I’ll get you set up—”
“No.” Take straw. Snap in two with undisguised irritation. “No, dammit. I have to get out of here, Michael. Out of Julian. Back to town.” She moved the wine and glasses off the blanket before wrapping the rest of the spread up in it, hobo-knapsack-on-crack style, then shoved the bundle at me. “Here. We’re packed.”
“Margaux—”
“This wasn’t a great idea. How could I even think it was?”
“What the hell?” I cut in. “You squealed when you came down and saw the picnic basket.” Then jumped on me, locked her legs around my waist, and jammed her tongue down my throat, if I remembered correctly.
“Not this idea.” She slashed a hand up. “This entire idea. Coming here. Running away. Hiding out.”
My frown was so deep, it screwed down through my jaw. “‘Hiding out’?”
“So messed up. So stupid. How could I even think I could—”
“How you could what?” I went ahead and growled it. Surprise, surprise. Something about having an armful of ruined picnic in my arms brought out my real big bad wolf. “How you could actually enjoy yourself for once? Have a little—oh shit, wait for it—fun? Not have to race back to the city on the whim of some irate client?” And who the hell was I still trying to fool with the “business call” excuse? Even on her worst days on Andrea’s team I’d never heard the woman sound like that with a client. Taut. Desperate.
And dammit…scared.
The same fear that crawled through the underpinning of her rejoinder. “I don’t expect you to understand, okay?”
Well, that did it. My last damn straw snapped in two. As it did, I let the knapsack drop to my feet with an angry clatter. “Try me.”
Her mouth trembled on a manic laugh. “Let me get back to you on that.”
“Try. Me.”
She stumbled back as I cleared the knapsack in one stride. But then she planted her stance, summoning the bitch-on-wheels I knew and adored—only this time, I was on the wrong damn side, too. She welcomed my approach by shoving at my chest—with strength that was, pretty honestly, astounding. “I thought you walked your talk, Pearson.”
Forget the punch of her fists. There was a wallop I couldn’t forget. “Excuse the fuck out of—”
“The past?” she countered. “And shit being best left in it?”
“Right. Sure.” I folded my arms. “When it’s in the past! Not when it’s calling you in the middle of a pretty damn hot date, panicking you to the point of full body shakes—”
“I’m not panicked!”
“Okay. Sure.” Her evasion wore me down. I was so pissed off, I’d come full circle back to being lethally calm about it again. “You stick with that, princess, and the rest of us will b
e waiting outside your door—in the land of reality.”
“Reality?” she shot back, also slamming arms back in. They fell to her sides a second later, one still fisted around her phone, the other snatching up her purse. “How’s this for reality?” she flung over her shoulder, heading for the path we’d taken to get here. “I’m texting Andre to bring the car up and take me home, so you no longer have to be concerned with my ‘carriage’, ‘kaysies?”
“No. No ‘kaysies. Shit. Princ—”
“And don’t call me ‘princess’ anymore.”
“Margaux! Dammit!”
She tossed up a hand, all flippy and full of attitude, but I didn’t believe a goddamn inch of it. I wasn’t the reason for this. Neither was anything or anyone in Julian. The mystery asshole who’d called her from the city was responsible for this.
Whatever the hell this was.
“Fuck!” I snarled. Then again. Helplessness wasn’t just my hot button. It was my red-pill-turns-you-into-a-goddamn-cretin button. As if those minutes in Mom’s room Tuesday night hadn’t served as a disgusting enough reminder, I stumbled through the same torture chamber of frustration now, actually thankful the knapsack was there for grabbing up and curling my fists into. Still couldn’t guarantee I’d make it out of here without dropping the shit and going to town on a tree, though.
Maybe it was best she had her space, then. For now.
I gave her that berth while we walked in silence back to the gate to the orchard, then through the apple trees. During our walk out here, I’d stopped to point out the different trees to her, also explaining what kind of fruit they’d bear in a little over a month: Red Delicious, Jonathan, Gala, Fiesta, Liberty. She’d listened with genuine interest, giving me hope that she drew the same parallel as I did: that over the last couple of days, we’d planted the seed of something damn good—and that perhaps, with a lot of care, the tree of us would grow healthy, strong, enduring.
Now, our sapling was dying. Because of some fucked-up root rot I couldn’t even identify, let alone target.