by Paige North
I don’t know what to expect of him or his promised seduction, but I don’t ask. As usual, I’m too anxious that I’m going to say something dumb, and turned to the point where I already can’t think straight.
Once we arrive home, we make our way to the elevators. We’re not alone inside the elevator, because there’s a rich, elderly socialite who obviously knows of Travis and probably suspects what I am to him. She turns forward with her nose in the air, and Travis raised an eyebrow.
I shrug at him, and he reaches over to tuck a wave of hair back over my shoulder. Then, as if rethinking this, he drops his hand to his side as if nothing happened. The rest of the ride is silent until the woman disembarks on her floor.
What’s going through his mind? Will I ever know?
I’m not sure why I care so much since there are no strings here, nothing to bind us but a couple of enigmatic looks that I thought meant something, an understanding of sorts, even though the truth is that I understand absolutely nothing about him.
We come to the apartment, and after we get inside he softly shuts the door behind us.
“Nova.”
I recognize his tone by now—a subtle command—and I stop. Then I feel him come up behind me. He rests his hands on my upper arms, running his thumbs beneath my capped sleeves. I take in a shaking breath.
“Wait in your room,” he murmurs. “I’ll be right there.”
I nod, butterflies tracing patterns around the inside of my belly, tickling and torturing me. When I arrive in my room, I turn on a switch to a lamp. I shouldn’t undress without him to tell me what to do, because that’s all a part of his games with me. He likes instructing me. Instead, I stand in front of the window, which is smeared with moisture from the faint rain. Squares of light from the high-rise windows across the way are like glasses filled with liquor, warm and inviting.
The skin on the back of my neck tingles as I hear Travis’s footsteps on the carpet. The lamp that I turned on goes dark, then he moves to my side and opens the windows so the sound of echoing traffic filters into the room, along with the slight illumination from the streets. A gentle breeze toys with the curtains and blows on me. The drizzling rain has stopped, but it’s left behind a coolness that soothes the burning of my flesh.
Silently, he coasts his fingers to my rib cage, where there’s a hidden zipper for my gown. As he pulls down the fastening, it’s as if he’s undoing me, too. Air combs over my skin as he works the top of my dress off slowly, surely.
“Jason Savage and Candy Badham definitely took a liking to you,” he says quietly.
The gown falls to the floor around my feet. “They were nice. And they seem to be crazy about each other in a fun way.”
He sweeps his other hand down the front of my thigh and gets to his knee, working at one of my high-heeled sandal straps. He takes his time, and my heartbeat melts through me.
As he slips off my shoe, I place my hand on his shoulder so I don’t stumble. I finally ask,
“There’s a reason I bringing up Jason and Candy,” he says. “You should know that they’re like everyone else who attends these charity events—they’ll use you.” He undoes my other sandal. “There’s no one out there who does anything out of the goodness of their hearts. Remember that, Beautiful.”
He traces a finger along the instep of my foot, and his dark words stick with me. He’s warning me, isn’t he?
After all, he’s one of these people who attends the same events.
As he caresses me, it makes me all too aware that I’m standing here in my satin bra and panties, waiting for his next move, yearning for it.
He stands, looking down at me in the room’s only light from outside.
With an arrogance that has my breath catching, he undoes my bra from the back. It loosens over my breasts, and Travis pulls at a strap, allowing it to ease off of me. I let it fall to the floor, joining my gown.
The wind has already pebbled my nipples, and now Travis’s famished gaze adds an extra naughtiness to my arousal. I ache for his fingers and mouth to go where his eyes have gone.
He walks in back of me, and even though he doesn’t touch me, I can feel the heat of him brush down my back, painting me with another layer of desire. I hear him working off his jacket, and he tosses it onto a nearby antique chair. It’s followed by his tie.
Across the street, some lights in the high-rise windows turn off. I feel the tips of Travis’s fingers on the tops of my shoulders, and I hold back a groan as he skims down my back so lightly that my pussy tingles.
My lust makes me bold. “Travis, why pay for what a man like you shouldn’t have to pay for?”
He turns his hands so that his palms press against my skin, then he strokes them into my panties. He cups my bottom, squeezing gently. An electric zing pierces my clit, buzzing around it until my entire pussy is humming.
“I don’t have time to date,” he says.
He uses his fingers to coax my legs apart, and like the good student I am, I do it for him. He slides a finger through my folds, back to front then back again, and with a shock, I pitch forward, bracing my hands on the window sash. He doesn’t have to tell me that I’m already wet for him.
“You do learn fast, Nova,” he says.
Then he guides my panties all the way down, and I obediently step out of them. My sex is hungry for him to touch me again, to toy with me until I have another orgasm.
“Let me guess,” I say, my voice unsteady. “You don’t want any emotional strings or attachments, just a straightforward sexual exchange where you get what you want and your women get what they want.”
“It seems only fair that everybody gets what they want,” he says, and I can’t tell if he’s serious or not.
He walks around to the front of me, blocking the view out of the window with his entire, heart-thudding silhouette—broad shoulders, wide chest, all muscle under the shirt he’s started to unbutton. I’m dying to touch him, to feel his warm skin against mine.
“I do this a few times throughout any given year,” he says, “and that takes care of my needs. I can focus on business without having to worry about my personal life.”
But does he have one? And why would he tell me this much information about his needs unless he’s trying to get some kind of point across?
Don’t get attached, I think. That’s truly what he’s saying without actually saying it. Does he give this speech to all his women before he has his way with them?
I look up at his darkened face, all my systems on overdrive, pumping, juicing, priming me.
“Close your eyes,” he says, and after a moment, I do it.
I hear a sound that makes me think he’s opening a box. Soon, I feel him move in back of me again, then reach in front of me. When I open my eyes again, I see a necklace heavy with gems right before it presses against my chest. As he clasps it behind my neck, I touch the net of diamonds.
“Turn around, Nova.”
Still stunned, I face him, naked except for the jewelry. The electricity in my clit sizzles at the way he’s watching me—more than hungry, more than lustful. His gaze is fierce, desperate for something that he’s clearly trying so hard to hide.
He looks at me. I look at him. There’s no doubt he knows that I’m seeing something I shouldn’t see, just as I did at the party, and he shuts himself down, then takes a tense step back.
“Travis…”
But he’s already moving out of the room, away from me.
Chapter 11
There must be something about me that Travis can’t bring himself to have sex with. But if that’s the case, why does he seem to like my body every time he looks at me or touches me? Is it my personality that turns him off?
I don’t know how long I stand there, thrown into a state of confusion, but then I see something in my peripheral vision: my image in the bedroom mirror. As I turn to it, I see a sophisticated yet scared girl looking back at me, her bare curves on display, her breasts full and erect, the diamonds around he
r neck the only thing in the room that’s glittering. Then I see the look in her eyes. My eyes. There’s a banked anger, a fire that’s been started by Travis and then ignored.
He can’t just leave me this way.
Without thinking of the consequences, I march over to the chair where he tossed his jacket, yank it on, and pull lapels closed. I stomp toward the hallway.
“Travis!”
Maybe I should be calling him “Mr. Star” like the rest of his employees do, but I couldn’t care less.
I’m halfway down the gallery when he saunters out of the living room door, his shirt still unbuttoned, two drinks in his hands. He leans against the doorframe, raising a dark eyebrow at me. He’s a totally different man from the one who walked out of my bedroom. All emotion is gone, replaced by a cockiness that still gets me hot. I hate that it makes me that way.
A flicker of lust consumes his gaze, and I think that he likes seeing me wearing his jacket as well as the diamonds. Then he’s back to coolly eyeing me.
“Did you think I went somewhere?”
In my frustration, I want to rage about everything: his mysterious gazes, his hot-and-cold attitude. But I only stand there thinking that he left me alone because he was showing me too much, tipping the hand he’s always playing so close to the chest.
Or maybe I’m being the cocky one and I’m totally wrong.
“I thought you left me.”
He walks toward me, holding up a glass. “You were tense, so I thought a cocktail might do the trick.”
I was tense?
Nevertheless, I take the drink from him, and he reaches down, lightly pulling me by the jacket back to the bedroom.
Maybe I should drink every drop of this cocktail right now. Maybe that’s the only way I’ll stay sane with this man who’s messing with my mind with such arrogant expertise.
Or maybe I’m totally misreading him. Maybe I’m just a victim of wishing that I could be that one girl who matters to him.
At any rate, I follow my own advice and gulp some brandy, then cough at the burn in my throat and chest. He relieves me of my glass, setting both of ours down on a table. Then he strips his jacket off me with one tug and throws it on the chair again.
As my body picks up where it left off, crackling with heat and need, he leads me to the bathroom. Light whispers through the window, but it’s still enough for me to see his face as he stops me near a gold-trimmed marble washstand with a basin and pitcher. He fingers the diamonds around my neck, and as I search for some meaning in his gaze, there’s nothing there.
He skims a finger away from the necklace and down, through the center of my breasts. “You wear these diamonds so well.”
“Thank you.”
At my ingenuous answer, he laughs with that edge to him. He turns to the pitcher and pours water into the basin. I don’t ask how the water got there; I assume a maid was in my apartment during the charity benefit, preparing it for Travis’s needs. As always, I just wish I knew what he has in mind.
The way he dips a washcloth into the basin tells me that, whatever he’s about to do to me, this is something he does with all his women, and I’m only the latest in the necklace he’s created of us, one gem at a time.
He holds the cloth out to me. “Wipe some of that makeup off your face.”
It’s another demand, but a quiet one. I’m actually relieved to be getting rid of this mask I’ve been wearing all night, and when I’m done, I check the dark mirror. It’s still me. I’m still here.
Travis is wetting two more cloths. “You can put that used one on the counter now.”
As I do what he wants, he wrings out one of the washcloths, sets the other on the basin, then faces me. He glides the rough-smooth fabric under my breast, and I grip his loose sleeves, exposing more of his chest where his shirt is unbuttoned. His skin looks dark in the mottled moonlight, and I focus on that as he slowly drags the cloth over me. Then, with more leisurely strokes, he arouses my other breast. My pussy is a swirl of cream, my clit pounding out a needy rhythm.
He slips the cloth around to my back, then lifts me until I’m half on the cool marble counter.
“God, your tits,” he says. “I can’t take my eyes off of them. I’ve been thinking about what I want to do to them all night.” His voice tightens. “Wrap one of your legs around me so you don’t lose your balance.”
My heartbeat pings around me, hitting every pleasure spot and leaving sparks. I bring up a leg and wrap it around his hard thigh. He feels so damned good.
“There you go, Beautiful.” He swipes the cloth over my nipple, and the texture stimulates me, makes me arch against his touch.
His gaze lowers, enflamed, and as he bends down to bring me toward him, I hold on tight.
When he sucks my nipple into his mouth, I push my lifted leg against him, biting my lip. He laves his tongue around my distended tip, and a sensual jolt forces me to rise to on my toes. He pushes my hips against his groin, my wet folds sliding against the nudge of his head in his trousers. I wiggle against the hardness, mewling.
His mouth worships my other breast as I keep rocking against him, gripping his hair. Thoughts of reality slide out of me, because now I’m in a place that’s part mist, part fire. I’m washed through by cool and hot, and the combination makes my head reel.
As he keeps sucking at me, he draws his hand from my back downward. He slips the cool cloth between my cheeks, washing and rubbing me there, too.
I let out a shocked, delighted sound.
“I can’t wait to touch every part of you,” he says, his words like kisses against my skin. “Just be patient, Beautiful. We’ve got time enough.”
I’m trying to be patient, but when he gnaws on my nipple, I arch against him harder. He keeps rubbing me with the cloth in that wicked place between my cheeks, and the texture drives me wild enough so that I start gyrating against his cock with every pass.
“Fuck yes,” he says, then drags his mouth away from my tit. “My virgin wants to dry fuck before the real thing. Doesn’t she?”
He brings himself up hard against me, and I whimper, responding to his every churn as he rubs his cock against my bare sex. Each time, he kneads my breast, stoking me with a heat that’s threatening to blow at any moment.
With a curse, he drops the washcloth. His breath comes hard as he replaces the fabric with his fingers, stroking my folds.
“Now you’re going to cream for me again,” he says between clenched teeth. “And then you’re going to come, Beautiful. You’re going to come hard when my cock’s deep inside of you.”
His dirty talk makes me even hotter, and I can feel myself getting juicy in record time as his thumb presses my clit, back and forth, flirting with it.
“Just like this,” he says. “There’s my hot, tight girl…”
I can hear just how wet I’m getting again as his fingers work me. The sexy sound clearly turns him on, too, because he leans over to gnaw at my neck. Electricity rides my nerves, a network of flashing lights that spark and pulse.
“So hot,” he says against my skin. “So damned—”
He slides a finger up and into me, and I pull hard at his hair, bringing his mouth to mine. As he opens my lips with his tongue, he pushes his finger deeper, then sweeps his tongue against mine as he slips his finger out. He begins to pump me, echoing each thrust and pull with his lazy kisses.
A primal sound slips from my lungs as I melt with every carnal move. He suspends the kiss, his lips still on mine.
“So she likes being finger banged, too,” he whispers against my mouth. “Isn’t that right, Beautiful?”
He keeps calling me “Beautiful,” not “Nova,” but I don’t think much on it, because the next unintelligible sound I make answers his question. Yes, I damned do like it. Forever yes. Now yes.
“Does that mean you’re ready for more?” he asks.
YES!
He slowly kisses me again, then pushes two fingers into me. At the pressure in my passage, heat expand
s in my belly, rumbling, rising, and I reach between us to grab his wrist. I’m urging him to go on, moving my hand with his as he pumps me, definitely juicing me up for…
My god, it’s going to happen. This time he’s not going to stop.
At the mere thought of going all the way, passion rushes me, and with a striking bolt that comes at me out of the haze, everything shatters, and I cry out louder than before. But even if I’ve already come for him, he doesn’t stop banging me. He only looks into my eyes, still priming me for more.
He grits his teeth, and I see that strange something in his gaze. A tenderness, an openness that…
He closes his eyes, and when he opens them, the darkness has taken over again.
He pulls out of me and carries me out of the bathroom. The way he handles me isn’t rough, but it’s not intimate either, and when he puts me on the bed and strips off his clothes, I grip the covers.
Something has changed between us yet again, and I try to catch my breath, shivering in anticipation and fear.
His rock-hard silhouette makes my already pulsing sex twist and beat even harder. In the dim light from the window, I see his perfection: the muscled chest and abs, the cut lines of his hips and thighs, the animal way he crawls onto the bed and hovers over me. I press my fingers to his chest, even though I don’t want him to stay away.
“You’ve got me so fucking hard.” He grasps my hand and brings it against him. “Can you feel that?”
“Yes.”
He’s so stiff, pulsing in my hand. I’ve done this to him and he doesn’t seem happy that I have so much control. But he’s going to be inside me soon, and a restless, hot scream of desire rises in me, pressing against my core. My clit pumps, my pussy soaked.
“Are you ready to feel all of me?”
“I’m ready,” I say with urgency. “Please, Travis.”
He likes the please—I can tell by the gleam in his eyes as he presses the heel of his hand against my bare mound. I lift off the bed at the erotic shock, then writhe back down as he drags his fingers over my belly and lower. He comes to my pussy, separates my lips, and I hold my agitated breath.