by BETH KERY
“Oh, yeah,” Tony moaned through a sublime smile.
Walker couldn’t take this anymore. Madeline always did know how to dish out her own form of punishment.
He took his cock in his hand—it felt like it was about to burst through the skin he was so aroused—and arrowed it toward Madeline’s drenched, tender cleft. They all moaned at once. She was hot and wet and so tight he had to thrust firmly to make way in her flesh. He gritted his teeth, watching as he slid into her and she gloved him like a muscular fist and melted around him at once.
“My pussy,” he growled roughly and began to thrust with long, thorough strokes, popping against her pink ass with his pelvis rhythmically. Sunlight beat down on them and Walker fucked the woman of his dreams while she caused their friend’s eyes to roll back into his head with her strong suck. Slippery, slurping sounds and grunts of pleasure filled the air as the yacht swayed them, its lulling motions a direct contrast to the frenzied storm building on board.
Walker watched Tony, unintentionally matching his fucking motions to the same rate Tony thrust into Madeline’s mouth. She began to keen, low and deep in her throat. It drove him crazy to see the expression of ecstasy on Tony’s face as he experienced the vibrations of her bliss.
“Hold her shoulders steady, Tony,” Walker ordered tersely. He’d said he didn’t want Tony touching her, but she was going to need stabilization with as hard as he planned to fuck her. Tony complied. Her constant keening turned to sharp whimpers as he began to hammer into her pussy. It must have aroused her as much as it did Walker, because Tony’s cock slid all the way into her, and Tony cried out in surprised pleasure.
“Don’t come inside her,” Walker commanded as his pelvis smacked against Madeline’s ass.
He watched, a snarl on his face, as Tony hurriedly withdrew and turned slightly. He jacked his penis and groaned as semen arched into the air and spattered onto the deck. His arms continued to move rapidly as he ejected his seed. His eyes remained closed, lost in his own private pleasure. Finally, he gasped and fell heavily back onto the couch, panting.
Walker withdrew from Madeline. He felt tight with a potent combination of lust, love, loss and fury. He touched Madeline’s shoulder, and she glanced up at him from her bent-over position. What he saw made him caress her, for the same wicked brew of emotions seemed to storm behind her dark eyes.
“Go down on your knees, Madeline.” His command had been gentle despite the untenable pressure building in his chest and balls.
She knelt before him. He could see how erect her small nipples were and that her cheeks were even pinker than her bottom.
He guided his cock into her mouth, stretching her lips. Next to them, Tony groaned between pants.
For the next several minutes, Walker was lost in a tossing sea of focused pleasure and cresting emotion. He dominated Madeline thoroughly, not just because he wanted her until it hurt like an unhealed wound, but because she let him. As she gazed up at him as he slid into her throat, he knew that Madeline had accepted what he’d said to her last evening in the bathroom.
“You’re mine,” he grated out between clenched teeth. Seeing her acknowledgment in her gaze made him bellow in anguished pleasure as he came.
He didn’t feel turned inside-out this time; he felt ripped inside-out.
When his thunderous orgasm finally quieted, he reluctantly withdrew and lifted Madeline to a standing position, murmuring to her softly as he kissed her sweat- and tear-dampened eyelids, cheeks and lips.
Seven
She’d lost all remnants of propriety or shame. She’d forgotten her anger at Walker and even her sadness for Tony’s foolish, life-altering mistake.
Nothing existed for Madeline in those moments that she was on the receiving end of the force of nature that was Walker Gray. His possession had been fierce, focused and forceful, but behind his sexual mastery, she’d sensed the unspoken lesson he strove to teach her.
Despite the long years of separation and Tony Hallas and Madeline’s stubbornness—despite it all—she was still Walker’s, body and soul.
And he was hers.
“I didn’t come after Tony to hurt you, Madeline. I love you,” he whispered gruffly next to her ear as he took her into his arms. He stroked her back and hips and buttocks while Madeline cried softly, her cheek pressed to his expanding and contracting chest. Walker’s gruff voice in her ear and caressing hands made her shiver uncontrollably.
“I know,” she replied almost inaudibly. She spoke the absolute truth. The power of his possession had opened her eyes. Walker Gray wasn’t the type of man who would have allowed what had just occurred unless love was involved. She understood Walker well enough to know what he’d just sacrificed. She whimpered when she felt his hand between her legs, moving, pleasuring tender, swollen flesh.
A moment before she was about to climax, she felt Tony press against her from behind. They both held her while she shuddered in climax, Walker taking what was his by nature’s decree, Tony experiencing for the first and last time what he’d always craved.
Madeline’s surrender.
* * *
Madeline didn’t turn around later that evening when she sensed him approach. She sat at the end of the long pier, her feet dangling off the edge, her gaze glued to the crimson-and-gold sunset. Walker didn’t make a noise as he approached her from behind, but she knew it was him, nonetheless.
He sat behind her, his long, jean-covered legs bracketing her hips. He pulled her back against his chest, his arms surrounding her. She leaned her head against him, her eyes fixed on the blazing departure of the sun.
It’d been a hell of a day. Wonderful and awful in equal measures.
“You okay?” he asked, his mouth near her ear as he nuzzled her hair with his chin.
“Yes,” she whispered. She reached back with her hand and cupped the side of his head. “I can’t believe Tony is in jail. It seems surreal. He seemed so resigned when they took him away.”
That wasn’t the only thing that seemed surreal. So was the entire sunlit, sex-drenched memory of being out on the yacht this afternoon with Tony and Walker. It was the memory of her good-bye to a friend she loved.
It was also the memory of her complete surrender to Walker.
Her feelings for Walker were strong enough to overcome the paradox of emotion, Madeline acknowledged as he lowered his head next to hers and pressed against her, cheek to cheek.
“I regret having to do it, Madeline. But Tony needed to be stopped. I was the only man who could do it.”
“I know,” she replied softly as they both stared at the sinking sun. “I wish to God he hadn’t been born so impulsive . . . so foolish. The degree of damage he created with his actions—not just real, but potential—boggles my mind. I can’t imagine what his parents must be going through right now.”
“They’re gone now. Victor plans to hire the best lawyer money can buy for Tony’s defense,” Walker said, referring to the Hallases, who had come to speak with Walker and Madeline after Tony had been taken by two members of Walker’s team and the Truckee police. Madeline had wandered out to the pier after Walker had regretfully described the charges against Tony. She’d been too hurt by the lost, wounded expression on Victor Hallas’s face at the news of the proof against his only son.
“Madeline?”
“Yes?” She turned her chin. His eyes were two perfect mirrors of the fiery waters of Lake Tahoe. An upsurge of emotion swelled in her chest. She recognized the sensation as her love for him, liberated. Her anguish for Tony remained, but her feelings for Walker reigned supreme, giving her comfort.
“I wasn’t lying. I did plan to come back to Lake Tahoe for you. I could have gone anywhere to start up my business. I’d already made my plans for leaving the Secret Service—for returning here—when all of the intelligence arrived on Tony.”
She swallowed thickly, her gaze glued to his.
“I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, seeing you after all these years and under thes
e circumstances,” he continued gruffly. “But I have to admit, I’d forgotten just how stubborn you can be, Madeline.” His eyes narrowed on her mouth. “How beautiful. I didn’t plan on seducing you. I couldn’t stop myself, though. I did a lot of things that could have cost us this investigation because I was so bowled over by seeing you again.”
She gave him an arch glance. “Are you saying you put your job at risk because of me?”
His nostrils flared. “I put everything at risk. My job. I might have ruined everything with you, as well, after what I did out there on that yacht.”
Her small smile faded. “You didn’t ruin anything, Walker. I’m here, in your arms. I’m not going anywhere as long as you don’t.”
“I told you, I’m here to stay,” he rumbled before his mouth settled on hers. Madeline opened her eyelids heavily a minute later only to see him studying her with fiery blue-green eyes.
“You do understand, don’t you,” he said, rather than asked. “Why I reacted the way I did out there, Madeline?”
“Yes. I wanted to hurt you, after what you told me about Tony . . . and when I believed you’d come for your job and not me. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too,” he admitted. He glanced out at the setting sun. “But I’m not, as well. You’ll never know how hard that was for me, seeing you and another man together.”
“I know.”
“How do you know?” he asked hoarsely.
“I could see it in your eyes. The whole time. I could hear it in your voice. I see it now, as we speak.” She touched his cheek and he met her stare. “We did it for each other, Walker. We were acting out our own stuff, our own past. But we did it for Tony, too. What you did wasn’t a betrayal of your job. It wasn’t a betrayal of me, either. What we did was between us—Tony, you and me.”
She leaned up and touched her lips to his lightly.
“Everything from here on out is between you and me, Madeline.”
“Yes,” she whispered before his mouth fastened securely on hers.
Keep reading for an excerpt from
ONLY FOR YOU
A One Night of Passion novel by Beth Kery
Available December 2014 from Berkley Books
Two and a half years ago
His final project for the benefit ball cast admiring looks at her many reflections as she sashayed out of the room. Not without good reason, Seth acknowledged with wry amusement as he glanced at the Alien Ice Queen’s ass gloved in a clinging blue gown. The starlet paused in the act of appraising herself from all angles.
She had ample opportunity to adore herself in the luxurious but garish dressing room where they stood. No less than a dozen gilded mirrors adorned the suite, including a large one on the ceiling. Daphne DeGarro, the heiress-turned-reality-show-star and hostess for the Cancer Research Benefit Ball, had opened several rooms in her Hollywood Hills mansion that night for the transformation of her guests. She’d reserved her risqué, decadently decorated dressing room for Seth, however. Earlier that evening, Daphne had led him to it with a sly grin. Seth had made her his first project, turning her into a magnificent, sexually flagrant Marie Antoinette, his creative instincts sparked by the woman’s opulent bad taste and brassy beauty. The benefit ball for cancer research was now in full swing in an almost equally gaudy ballroom and downstairs terrace.
Seth was the last special effects makeup artist to finish. He was weary. He’d done his part for tonight. Between him and fourteen of his regular staff and two eager interns from Hightower Special Effects Studio, they’d completed nearly two hundred characters in costume and makeup. The price of their labor, in addition to the use of Hightower’s extensive costume-and-makeup collection, was a sizable donation to the Cancer Research Fund by each client. Daphne DeGarro might have been in love with herself, but she was shrewd. Hollywood players would pay a hefty chunk of cash to be turned into a fearsome fairy-tale creature or glamorous fantasy character for one magical night.
Perhaps the young actress noticed his gaze lingering on her backside in one of the many mirrored reflections, because she turned to him.
“Aren’t you attending the ball, Seth?” she asked.
“No, I’m done for the night,” Seth replied, briskly zipping up an airbrush case and returning it to his kit. Realizing he still had on the tinted glasses he wore when he did an application, he shoved them impatiently back on his head.
“That’s all it was then? Work?” The Ice Queen asked. He paused warily, hearing the hint of seduction in her tone. She’d drunk too much champagne while he was doing her application. He glanced up. She was arching her back slightly, highlighting her ample, airbrush-frosted breasts beneath the low-cut gown. Earlier, he had offered to glue the edges of the gown—her nipples were bound to pop over the edge at any moment—but his offer had been flatly refused. Apparently the possibility was something she hoped for rather than dreaded.
She was a temptation, all right, but one he’d grown well accustomed to denying himself. Seth liked women a lot.
Just not the actress variety.
He resumed packing his kit methodically. He knew firsthand the level of infatuation a woman could get for a man who could turn her into a breathtaking vision. He tried to recall her name, but quickly gave up. What difference did it make? Seth avoided women possessed of fame fever. This particular ingenue was burning with it, which had perhaps been his inspiration for the Ice Queen makeup.
She could use a little something to cool her down.
“No. Not just work. It’s my art as well,” he replied levelly, sliding some paints into his kit.
“I hope you’re pleased with your creation then. I know I am. I feel so honored to have been touched by the best,” the Ice Queen said tremulously. When he didn’t look up, because he had a damn strong suspicion she was feathering her fingertips across the top of her breasts and peekaboo nipples, he heard a resigned sigh.
“I see. All the rumors about you not fraternizing with the talent are true then. Shame.”
The door closed.
He exhaled in relief and shut his kit briskly in preparation to leave as well. Eight members of his staff had volunteered to stay and assist with prosthetic and costume removal after the ball. A delivery service had been hired to pick up all the costumes and gear left at Daphne’s house tomorrow.
He paused next to one of several iced buckets of champagne in the room and poured himself half a glass. He rarely drank champagne—or any alcohol, really. He’d developed a dislike for the stuff at an early age after seeing firsthand its effects on his father and two uncles in his home village, Isleta Pueblo. It had been a long, trying night though. Usually a script and his creative instincts drove his work. Tonight, he’d been driven largely by vanity and questionable taste.
He drained the flute, finding the cold, dry liquid cleared his mental cobwebs better than he would have expected.
He caught his reflection in one of the gilded mirrors, a tall man holding a delicate flute in a large hand. Next to the feminine flounces and pastel shades of green, gold and blue décor that surrounded him, he looked especially out of place, a bull in a china shop . . . a savage in the midst of contrived artifice.
It was the paradox of his life that those unlikely, big hands contributed to the subtlety, artistry and nuance of Hollywood’s grand façade.
He couldn’t wait to leave. He set down the flute. A small amount of peace and a large steak were awaiting him at home. Even though it was the weekend and almost nine thirty in the evening, it was early for him to be taking off. He was looking forward to a little R and R.
He swung open the door to the hallway and halted abruptly at the sight of a young woman’s pale, startled face—a face he definitely did not know. In the distance, however, he heard a voice he recognized all too well.
Shit. Cecilia.
“Why is she playing coy?” Cecilia was saying, sounding out of breath. “Half my client list
is here tonight. I haven’t got time to play hide-and-seek with her. What makes your girlfriend think she’s so important?”
“I told you,” a man said in a bored tone. “She claims I’m not her boyfriend anymore.”
The girl stared at Seth with huge green eyes. At first, he thought she was stunned. He quickly realized she was dazed, but also nearly panicked. Reacting purely on instinct, he reached for her hand and pulled her into the room with him. She came without hesitation, spinning into him in a motion that bizarrely struck Seth like a dance move between familiar partners. Her back was to his front as he reached around her and silently shut the door. He could tell by the sound of their footsteps that Cecilia and her companion had rounded the corner of the hallway in the distance. Very gently, he turned the lock. His fingers lingered on the metal while his other hand continued to clasp the woman’s hand in the vicinity of her waist.
For several seconds, they just stood there, utterly still as he half-embraced her, staring at the door and listening. He heard the sound of door after door opening and shutting as Cecilia and the man carried out their search.
“What have you done now?” Cecilia Arends, one of the most successful agents in Hollywood, continued. Cecilia was smart and savvy. Seth and she had gone out a few times. Cecilia had made it clear she wanted more than a few dates. He regrettably didn’t return the interest, and he had been friendly but frank with her about it. Cecilia was way too attached to her cell phone and doing business, even while they were on a date. When Seth took off from work, he relished his private life, his freedom and anonymity. Cecilia had infringed on his privacy via her celebrity deal making while at candlelit dinners—or finally—during an intimate moment following sex. He’d ended things with her the next day.
He hadn’t been avoiding Cecilia—until tonight, that is—but he hadn’t been seeking her out either.
“Did she catch you at it with another girl?” Cecilia was saying. “I’ve told you all along Gia won’t stand for your antics. She’s too smart for her own good and values her opinion far too much for someone so young. Good God,” Cecilia added in a beleaguered, distracted tone. “Look at this décor.” A door snapped shut. “Who does Daphne DeGarro think she is, the Whore of Babylon? You’d think with that much money, she could buy herself some taste.”