Standing in the Shadows

by Shannon McKenna

  He pinned her to the wall, crushing her breasts against his chest. She lifted her chin. “You’re acting like a caveman,” she informed him.

  “I’m not acting,” he said. “No masks, remember?”

  “That’s not fair!” she snapped. “I will not be bullied! Just because we spent the night together does not give you the right to—”

  “I’m not bullying you, Erin. I’m just telling you how it is.”

  He cut off her reply with a hard, marauding kiss. She struggled, but he just swallowed her muffled protests and moved his strong hands over her body. Oh, please. How ridiculous. Trying to stake his claim by brute physical force, the rude, arrogant…

  And all at once, her anger betrayed her, lending all its furious heat to the hunger that flared inside her. She shuddered in his arms.

  He wrenched the wide, scooped neckline of her nightdress down over her shoulders, exposing her breasts, and trapped her arms behind her in a tight swathe of white cotton and lace. He spun her around, pinned against his chest. A brief moment of fruitless struggle, legs pumping in empty space, and he sank down onto the bed with her on his lap, facing the mirror. He yanked the nightgown up over her waist.

  Their eyes locked in the mirror. She went very still in his arms. She should be spitting mad. She should tell him straight out that this display of macho, he-man garbage did not impress her in the least. But the words weren’t coming. She was speechless, her thighs clamped tight around an embarrassing secret. She was turned on.

  No, worse than that. She was extremely turned on. She vibrated in his arms. Her face was red, her breath shallow and labored, her eyes dilated. She couldn’t hide it from him. He knew it. She saw it in the triumphant glow in his eyes, the proprietary way he nuzzled her neck. So confident of his power over her.

  Dear God, this was awful. She’d been kidnapped by a repressed part of her subconscious, her body taken over by a wanton nympho with no dignity who was sexually aroused by bad behavior.

  She shut her eyes to block him out. “Why are you doing this to me?” she demanded. “Why are you torturing me like this?”

  “There’s torture and there’s torture.” He shoved the hair away from her neck, and ran his lips over an exquisitely sensitive spot. She jerked and quivered. “And you’re torturing me, too, Erin. The virgin bride nightgown is a calculated cocktease, did you know that? I take one look at the thing and in my mind I’m ripping it down the front and throwing you onto a Victorian four-poster.” He stroked the tops of her clenched thighs. She thrashed uselessly in the unrelenting circle of his arms. “Open up,” he urged. “Let me in.”

  She bit her lip. “Oh, God. Please, Connor.”

  “I never know exactly what you’re begging me for,” he murmured. He kissed his way up her neck, tugged her earlobe between his teeth, and suckled it. “I’m always off balance with you. Always guessing.”

  “Hah!” She shook with breathless, almost hysterical laughter. “You, off balance? Give me a break. I’m the one who can’t move. I’m the one who’s being yelled at and pushed around and manhandled!”

  His grin flashed. “Open up for me,” he pleaded. “Then look in the mirror and watch what I do to you. I promise, it’ll be good.”

  She glared at him in the mirror. “Why are you even asking?” she snapped. “Wouldn’t it be more Neanderthal to just make me do it? Shove my legs open, Connor. Go ahead. Doesn’t that fit your script better? You’ll do whatever you damn well please with me anyway.”

  His warm, callused hand stroked over her hip with exquisite tenderness. “Nah. It’s more satisfying to coax you into opening those beautiful thighs of your own accord.” His voice was low and silky. “The conquest is deeper that way. It’s a bigger rush. Way bigger.”

  She wiggled madly. “Conquest, my butt. This is nothing but a stupid power trip, and I’m not falling for it.”

  He kissed her neck again, the seductive bastard. “All I want is to make you melt,” he crooned. “Go with it, Erin. If giving in to me makes you hot, that’s great. I don’t think any less of you for it.”

  “It’s bad for your big fat ego!” she flared.

  He shook with laughter. “We’ll worry about my big fat ego another time. Like, after I make you come. Then you can tell me what a controlling bastard I am. All you want.”

  She flung her head back against his shoulder. She shook with confusion. “This is not OK with me,” she said. “I am not a submissive person.”

  “Of course you’re not,” he soothed. “And thank God for it. You’re a beautiful, regal intergalactic princess, and you drive me fucking nuts. Now open up, baby. Let me pay tribute to your surpassing beauty.”

  In your dreams, buddy, she thought. Meanwhile the wanton nympho who had taken over her body obeyed him, spreading her thighs wide. The glistening, flushed folds of her labia pouted out of her thatch of pubic hair, splayed wide for him to see, and touch, and toy with.

  She stared into the mirror, astonished. For so long, her sexual life had been limited to solitary experimentation in the safety of her own narrow bed, tinged with shame and loneliness and wistful longing. It was there that she had spun all her romantic dreams of Connor—and tried not to think about Bradley. Whenever Bradley came into her mind, any tension or heat she’d managed to generate drained away, leaving her more depressed and lonely than before.

  The woman she saw in the mirror was another person entirely.

  Her pose was aggressively sexual. Pornographic, even. Arms pinned back, face flushed, breasts jutting out. Connor’s muscular arm was clamped around her belly. His other hand fondled her, spreading her nether lips gently, murmuring with pleasure at how slick and wet she was. He spread the moisture everywhere while his thumb circled her clitoris, pushing and coaxing her into moaning, shivering madness.

  Her real-life Connor was so much harder and rougher and more problematic than her fantasies. Aggressive and demanding, and yet so tender, so ruthlessly skillful. And his appetite for her was voracious. She had never imagined anything like it. She still couldn’t.

  He slid his longest two fingers deep inside her, hooking them under her pubic bone, and pressed against that sweet hot spot inside her sheath as he pressed his palm down against her mound. He squeezed and circled, his strong hand sliding in her swollen, quivering flesh. She clenched around him, writhing against his pumping hand. The power grew and swelled within her until it became a heavenly torture. She screamed when the tension finally broke.

  It throbbed violently through her, charging her with shimmering warmth. When she opened her eyes, she was still sprawled on his lap. He held her limp body securely in place while he petted and stroked her lazily between her legs. Like he was petting a kitten.

  She turned her face up to him. He gave her a long, clinging kiss and smiled into her eyes. So smug and satisfied with himself.

  She clambered off him, extricating her arms from the nightdress and shimmying out of it. Her desire to cover herself was completely gone. She looked the nightdress over. “You ripped it,” she observed.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Can you fix it?”

  “I think so. It’s on the seam. No biggie.” She flung the garment in the general direction of her suitcase and looked down at him. She’d left big wet marks on his jeans, and she was not the least bit embarrassed about it. Her inner thighs and bottom were slick and wet. She was thrumming with readiness, and the thick length of his erection was clearly visible against his jeans. She reached for his hand, the one that had pleasured her, and pulled it up to her face. His fingers were still glistening with her juice. She suckled them. Tasted herself.

  His eyes widened. “Whoa. Jesus, Erin. I thought you said you were tired. You said you didn’t want to.”

  The feverish heat was burned into her face. “I’m OK.”

  “OK’s not good enough. Do you want me to fuck you?” he demanded. “Don’t dance around it. Don’t play games with me.”

  She laughed in his face. “Oh, you’re a fine
one to talk about games.”

  “Just say it,” he snarled. “I want to hear the words.”

  She seized a condom from the bedstand and ripped it open with her teeth. “Take off your pants, Connor. Is that clear enough?”

  He nodded, and stood up, unbuckling his belt. “You got it.”

  He stepped out of his pants and stood in front of her, his cock bobbing in front of him. He should be feeling guilty as hell. He had maneuvered her into this. She had to be sore, because he was. But he couldn’t resist. She had that wild, sex goddess glow of arousal in her eyes that brought him right to his knees.

  She plucked the condom from the foil package, and attempted to smooth it on him. He reached down and covered her fumbling hands.

  “That’s backwards, sweetheart,” he said gently. “Turn it around.”

  She made a huffy noise and leaned her hot forehead against his chest. She was so cute when she tried to act nonchalant. Her efforts to roll the latex over his cock were driving him nuts.

  Ah, mission finally accomplished. She stepped back, gripping him with an authoritative hand. “Just one thing,” she said. “Don’t drive me to the edge and leave me all alone there. Don’t do that to me again.”

  She punctuated her statement with a tight squeeze of her hand, milking him from root to head. He struggled to remember what she’d said. “What the hell are you talking about, Erin?”

  She stabbed at his chest with her finger. “Don’t play dumb. You know exactly what I’m talking about. If you make me lose control, you’ve got to come with me. All the way. I can’t take any more of your dominating, calculated power trips. At least not today.”

  He tossed her onto the bed, landed promptly on top of her soft, hot, squirming body. “It’s not that simple,” he growled. “You can afford to lose control. I can’t.”

  She shoved at his chest. “Why not?”

  “Because I’m bigger and stronger, that’s why. I don’t know what you’re complaining about. You trick me into losing control almost every time we do it. It freaks me out. I’m supposed to protect you.”

  She heaved furiously beneath him. “I’m not made out of glass!”

  “Thank God.” He shoved her into position: flat on her back, legs folded up high, open and drenched and ready for him. “Are you sore?”

  “I’m all right,” she snapped.

  “I didn’t ask if you were all right.” He enunciated each word with exaggerated clarity. “I asked if you were sore.”

  “Yes, I am, but I don’t care! So don’t stop, or I’ll have to kill you!”

  He couldn’t help but grin. “I’ll be gentle,” he said. He guided his cock to her and slid it over her labia. “Tell me if I hurt you.”

  “What if I don’t want gentle?” she demanded. “Stop being so goddamned anxious! You’re driving me nuts!”

  That made him laugh out loud. “Oh, God, I love it when you’re a heartless, insatiable bitch.”

  He thrust inside her, hard as he dared. She was wet and hot for him, but she was delicate and small, and he was a big man. She could snap at him all she wanted, but he wasn’t going to risk hurting her.

  This tart-sweet furious sex kitten persona of hers made him burn with lust. He kept veering back and forth between the screaming berserker who wanted to fuck her brains out, and a shaking tenderness that made him want to cry.

  God forbid. That would be all he needed.

  He pulled out, gasping as her sheath clutched and hugged him, and thrust even deeper, seeking a gentle, surging rhythm. It was so good. He could do this all day, all night. For the rest of his life.

  Erin smiled her fey, mysterious smile and brushing her tingling hot magic fingers over the surface of his throat, his chest, his shoulders. “Let go, Connor,” she pleaded. “I love it when you go wild.”

  She could make him do anything when she looked at him like that. Her eyes glowed like the sun shone behind them and lit them up like stained glass: glowing amber, honey-streaked sunset warmth. Her plump breasts were crushed against his chest, her quivering thighs were clenched around him. She gasped with pleasure with each heavy, gliding stroke. She was working up to another explosion. He could feel it build, and he knew just how to give her what she was whimpering for. He knew it in his bones, in his blood.

  It came to him, out of nowhere. He pulled back, held himself motionless above her. “I’m not leaving you alone with Mueller,” he said.

  She started to protest, but he trapped her face between his two hands and kissed her deeply. “That’s the deal. I give you what you want, you stop fighting me. Nod if we understand each other.”

  She shook her head. “This isn’t fair. You can’t manipulate—”

  “Oh, yes, I can. And I will,” he promised. “I will.”

  She glared up into his eyes, clutching at him in helpless frustration. He rocked against her with soft, licking, maddening thrusts with just the head of his cock when he knew damn well she wanted it deep and hard. His thumb barely tickled over the slick, quivering bud of her clit. Teasing and tantalizing. No mercy.

  She threw her head back and cried out through clenched teeth, clawing at his shoulders. “Goddamn it, Connor—”

  “Do we have a deal?”

  “Yes, just do it! Now!”

  He let go, and sealed the bargain with his body. He gave her everything he had, everything he was. It went further than he had planned, further than he’d ever dreamed. It carried them away.

  Passion fused them together. All the truths of their hearts were known to each other. Nothing could be hidden, nothing held back. No boundaries, no borders. One being.

  They writhed together in the heart of a burning star.

  Sometime later, he rolled off her and flopped onto his back. He was chilled by the sweat cooling on his skin. That had been way out there. He was almost afraid to meet her eyes.

  “Wow,” she whispered. “You don’t do things halfway, do you?”

  “Never. In my whole life,” he said. “Better get used to it.”

  They subsided into shy silence. Not a word about Mueller. Not a word about that weird, coercive bargain he had struck with her. And certainly no discussion of…of that. Whatever the hell it had been. Souls touching. Yikes. Sounded like New Age bullshit. Better not to even touch it with words. It was made out of emotion and energy. Only the wisdom of their joined bodies could comprehend it.

  Erin climbed out of bed. She kept her face turned from him. “I have to get ready,” she said hesitantly. “I’ll just jump into the shower.”

  They both needed a time-out, so he waited his turn, and showered after she was done. When he came out, Erin was busy making the second bed. The first one was mathematically smooth and perfect.

  He stared at her, bemused. “Why are you doing that?”

  “I can’t think straight if the bed’s not made.” Her voice was snippy and defensive. “And I need the space to organize myself. Here, use my comb, and be nice to your hair, please. No ripping or tearing.”

  He pulled on his chinos and sat down to watch the floor show. Erin was a sight to behold bustling around in her bra and panties. She ignored him as she ironed her things, and then laid her suit out on the bed and held up an imperious hand. “Your shirt, please.”

  He fished around on the floor until he found it, and handed it to her. “You’re sexy when you iron,” he told her.

  She sniffed. “If you value your life, you will never say anything so stupid to me ever again. Did you know there’s a button loose on this?”

  “Nope,” he told her. “Never noticed. Never would have.”

  She set aside her iron and dug into her suitcase again, this time producing a big sewing kit. She pulled out spools of thread and held them against his shirt with a worried frown. “I’ve got taupe, and I’ve got white, but this shirt is really closer to oatmeal,” she fretted. “What I really need is beige, and I thought I had some in here.” She upended the whole thing onto the bed and began sifting through the heap.
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  He gaped at the spectacle. “I had no idea you were like this.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Like what?”

  “The type that quibbles over taupe or beige. I never would have dreamed that you were so, uh…”

  She brandished her needle. “If you say anal retentive, I will stick this needle into your arm a half an inch deep.”

  He took a cautious step back. “How about obsessive-compulsive?”

  “I prefer to think of myself as detail oriented,” she said primly. “Take off your pants, please. I want to stitch up that rip in the back, and then they need to be ironed. Badly.”

  “Detail oriented, huh?” he said, shucking his pants. “Check me out, Erin. I’ve got a few details I’d like to orient you toward.”

  She looked, all innocence, and squeaked. His erection bobbed right in front of her, practically at eye level. “Connor, please! You’ve had your way with me twice this morning! Don’t you ever get enough?”

  “Once,” he said. “It was twice for you. Only once for me.”

  “Now who’s quibbling over details?” she said tartly. “You had your way with me all night long.”

  “It’s not enough,” he said. “I’m never going to get enough of you.”

  The air was suddenly too hot and thick to breathe. His cock stuck straight out, begging for her attention. Damn thing had no dignity at all.

  Her lips tightened. “I’m on to you, Connor. You would love it if I was late to this meeting, wouldn’t you? Or if I missed it completely. That would suit you right down to the ground.”

  “I could care less about your meeting, sweetheart.”

  She turned her head resolutely away. “That’s enough of your tricks. I’m in work mode now, and if you value those precious body parts that you are waving around at me, you will wrap a towel around them and hand me those pants. Right now.”

  He winced. “Ouch. How long does this work mode of yours last?”

  “As long as it takes to get the job done,” she said briskly. “Right now, my job is to make you presentable. When we get to the resort, I become an expert on ancient Celtic artifacts.” She jabbed her finger toward his chest, and he darted back, wary of her needle. “Your job is to be polite and unobtrusive, and not say anything that will reflect badly on me while I do my job. Is that understood?”