by Cassia Leo
She was breathing deep, full breaths, not the panting fear-gasps of earlier. She kissed him back, swirling her tongue with his. His arms slid under her shoulders, and he held her.
If he unbuttoned his fly, he could fuck her right then, and she could feel his hard cock through his jeans against her stomach. Her own openness to him sent a thrill through her.
Alex just kept kissing her, deeply and sweetly. His chest rubbed her breasts as he meshed his mouth with hers, his silky chest fuzz sliding his skin over hers. His fingers toyed with strands of her hair, combing them back and away from her face.
Her heartbeat quickened, the throb pulsing against his chest.
He broke off the kiss and reared up, the muscles of his abs and chest sliding under his golden skin. Sliding backwards, he dodged under her chin and mouthed her neck, his lips sucking for a moment over her pulse. His hand slipped down her side, caressing the skin over her ribs on the way down. He slid backward, tonguing her breasts and lingering there for moments, before he climbed off the end of the bed.
Alex kept one hand on her calf as he turned the crank beyond her feet. With every dip, the aqua and turquoise ink on his back winked toward her. Darker ink looked like things were flailing in the water.
The ropes pulled, raising her wrists and her feet. Georgie pushed down on the stirrups under her shoes, and her knees rose.
The cords under her back tightened.
Alex paused to kiss the inside of her calf.
Georgie breathed and closed her eyes to better feel his mouth on her leg.
The crank clicked as Alex wound it, and the ropes drew at her limbs, pressing her arms together but spreading her legs.
The apparatus lifted her, and Georgie clutched the cords.
Alex’s mouth was pressed to the inside of her calf. “Trust me,” he said against her leg.
Georgie relaxed her hands until she didn’t feel like she was clinging to the ropes, but she still held onto them.
“Good,” Alex murmured and mouthed up to her knee.
The cranks clicked again, lifting her higher. Her ass left the bed, suspended, and the ropes under her seat swung gently. Her thighs spread farther apart.
Alex leaned in, mouthing her leg up to her knee.
Georgie sighed as his mouth moved higher, sucking at her thigh. She let her head fall back and rest against the back of the seat.
When you give yourself over to a piece of art or a work of literature, when you allow yourself to believe the impossible for the few moments that you’re inside the work, it’s called the willing suspension of disbelief.
Georgie the Ice Princess never gave up control. Georgiana was a closed-in, frightened girl with a cast-iron shell that no one could touch.
But now, she was suspended in the air and in time, and Georgie opened her lungs to take in a breath and believed that Alex would hold her until she was safe on the other side.
The ropes ascended again, and Alex moved up her leg with them. Georgie was just about to make some crack about operant conditioning when his warm mouth and sultry breath moved past her knee, his hands pressed her thighs wider apart, and his white teeth grazing the inside of her thigh occupied her full attention.
Alex kneeled on the bed now, holding her hips with his hands, and he barely bent his neck as he nibbled on her skin, nearing the apex of her thighs.
Every time his jaw opened, every swipe of his tongue over her leg, and every exhale of his hot, moist breath on her skin fluttered shivers over her flesh. She couldn’t stop him, couldn’t move, couldn’t push him away.
She could have said her safe word, but she sure as hell didn’t want him to stop.
The warmth of his breath brushed the sensitive skin of her sex.
Alex’s fingers kneaded her legs as his breath became the touch of his soft lips, and that deepened to gentle sucking on the folds of her skin. The sensation vibrated through Georgie, and her breaths turned to gasps.
He kissed her more deeply, each suck turning into a slow lick and swirl of his tongue that delved between her layers of soft skin. Georgie grabbed the ropes as tension began to build inside her. Every stroke of his tongue rubbed her harder, spiraling the ache.
Her eyes fluttered open. Down between her thighs, Alex’s dark blond head rocked as his tongue worked her. When he saw her peeking, still clutching the ropes and her breath catching in her throat, he drove his tongue deep inside her and ran the rough flat of it up and over her clit.
Aching need grabbed her. Georgie bowed backward. “Alex, please!”
Alex lunged to his feet. His jeans were already unbuttoned and shoved down, his thick erection so hard that it curved back toward his navel. He bit down on a foil packet, ripping it open with his teeth, and slapped it on.
Georgie struggled in the ropes, wanting to lie on the bed with him, but the snug leather cuffs around her wrists and ankles wouldn’t budge. Even the movement of her own muscles inside her body was driving her closer to the edge.
He grabbed the ropes near her feet, swinging her to him.
Oh, wow. He had positioned the hammock ropes to the perfect height for him to—
Alex dragged the swing back, leaning over her and aiming into her body, and slid her onto his cock.
Georgie gasped and arched her back, her fingernails digging into the thick ropes in her hands.
He glided through her smoothly, his hardness slipping into her wet flesh.
The ropes creaked in the pulleys and loops. Above her, the sturdy frame didn’t sway with her weight, just the ropes moved. She grabbed the ropes and held on.
He seized her knees and pushed her back, pulling his cock out of her, and hauled her forward, all with smooth and sinuous motion, leaning into each stroke like he was rowing hard. Every thrust plunged into her, a long glide that rubbed inside and scrubbed across her clit. Georgie clenched her fists around the ropes as he drove every stroke deep inside her, cranking her body more tightly around him.
Alex pounded into her with the relentless tempo of a march, driving her toward orgasm.
Her fingernails dug into the ropes as her belly and chest tightened with the tension. Alex surged into her as she clutched the straps, her back bowing impossibly far as the energy spiraled and then seized her. The orgasm dug its claws into Georgie and ripped her in half, rocketing up her spine. Her mind turned white behind her eyelids, the pleasure blinding and deafening her with its roar. Her shout rose to a scream in her throat but she couldn’t hear herself with the tides tossing and drowning her for what felt like hours.
Later, hours or days or forever later, her cheek pressed against something warm, and her arms could move and she grabbed onto Alex, holding tight as the waves still wracked her body. Warmth surrounded her, and she was safe as the last of it billowed through her. She clutched him around his neck, that green-grass scent fading with the musk of their sex and his natural scent, and his strong arm held her up as the ropes restraining her ankles slackened so she could curl her legs around him, too.
“Alex,” she whispered. His name was a sigh in her mouth.
“I’m here,” he said, his deep voice rumbling against her.
Her head spun. “I’m not afraid anymore.”
“Good,” he said, his lips pressed to her forehead. “I never wanted you to be afraid, mon coeur.”
“What did you want me to be?”
“Yourself, of course. You wanted to explore certain things about yourself.”
“We sure did that.”
“We should have talked about it more beforehand. I should have told you that I tend to be—” Alex paused.
Georgie raised an eyebrow, although he wouldn’t be able to see it because she was nestled in his arms and against the silken fuzz on his chest. “Go ahead. Say it.”
“There are terms for what I like, a certain vocabulary, if one is into that sort of thing.”
She craned her neck and looked up at him. “You’re a Dom.”
He inclined his head, acknowledging. “
That’s one word for it.”
“That’s the only word for it.”
“And you’re a sub.”
“Absolutely not.”
“My mistake. You just really like it when a man takes charge.” His tone mocked her, but with with humor, not sarcasm.
“Not that way. Not like, you know.”
“I know very well, Georgie.”
Even though Georgie was already running away from this incarnation of her life, even though she should already be deciding on a new name and someplace to live, for the moment, she was safe in Alex’s arms as he gently unbuckled the cuffs from her wrists and ankles.
He murmured into her hair, “We’ll go to my hotel for a few hours of sleep before I show you what I’ve been working on. I need someone to hear it.”
“Seriously? You still want to play the music?”
“It’s why I came here.”
A TERRA COTTA BIRTHDAY CAKE
Georgie
After showering in the rough granite spa-stall showers of The Devilhouse’s locker room—because what the Hell, no one else was there—and stealing yet another cocktail dress from the costume closet—because The Devilhouse was closed and Bonfils owned it—Georgie drove her Lexus through the deserted streets to Alex’s hotel.
In the passenger seat, Alex laid his head against the headrest, his long hair spreading against the beige leather.
The streetlights shined yellow circles on the vacant asphalt, and the emptiness of the streets made her think that the zombies must have already eaten everyone in town. However, she was sure that no one was following them because there were no other cars on the roads. She dragged both her bug-out bags out of the car, unwilling to leave even a few of her remaining possessions in the car overnight, even in a hotel parking lot where black globes on tall poles kept watch inside the chain-link fence.
Alex took her around to the back entrance where several fawning bellhops tried to snatch their bags to ferry them up to their room, but Georgie wouldn’t let anyone take her bug-out bags—even a cursory shakedown would find her stacks of cash in there—and Alex seemed freakishly, if very subtly, possessive about his guitar case with its hidden fiddle compartment. The two gentlemen in black slacks and shirts settled for carrying Alex’s garment bag.
He must have pulled the I’m-a-real-Duke card. Hotel staff don’t fall all over themselves for mere rich guys, especially at tall hotels like this one.
Though he had reserved the penthouse. Maybe they pulled out all the organ stops for penthouse guests.
As soon as the bellhops left with what Georgie thought was an exorbitant tip for only carrying one bag, Alex and Georgie walked through the gold-splashed living room, fell on the gilded bed, and twined around each other, holding on tight, and slept deeply for a few hours until three in the dark morning, when Georgie’s phone cheeped.
Alex shook his head, his long hair an artfully mussed bedhead that tousled over his shoulders. He drew his hair back from his temples, and it fluffed and fell in gorgeous waves around his strong cheekbones and jawline.
Because he was a guy.
It wasn’t fair. They got longer eyelashes, too. Damn them all.
Georgie could feel that her own long hair was a magpie nest. Half of it was snarled like tangled fishing line on one side of her head, and she was pretty sure that the chocolate left on the pillow by the turndown service had melted onto her scalp.
She grumbled, “I’ll be just a minute in the bathroom.”
Luckily, she could shower quickly, even if her long hair dripped down the back of her shirt while she drove them both through the very early morning to the music building.
“It’s always unlocked,” she explained, walking through the front doors. Alex caught the spring-loaded door before it could crash closed on her or on his guitar case. “People practice at all hours because there are too many music majors and not enough pianos.”
“Why wouldn’t a music major go to Juilliard or Berklee?” he asked, looking at the lobby as they walked to the elevators. As much as the outside of the building looked like a terra cotta wedding cake with frosting swags looping from each story, the lobby had been remodeled a few years before and was paneled in long curves of inlaid dark and blond wood.
“Yeah, let them eat cake,” Georgie said, sarcasm lilting in her voice. “Are you related to Marie Antoinette, oh Monsieur French Duke?”
“Very indirectly,” he said, sounding distracted because he was examining the shape of the silvery ceiling three stories above them. “The Monégasque princely family is descended from nobility, counts and dukes, but very little royalty. Flicka was quite a catch for Pierre. Why would they put aluminum up there? The acoustics in here are deplorable.”
Marie Antoinette? Georgie had been screwing with Alex. She stopped him with a hand on his elbow. “Seriously?”
“Yes, the acoustics are awful. Our voices are echoing so much that I can hardly see. Tell me that the performance rooms are better than this.”
“No. The thing about Marie Antoinette.”
“Distantly, and indirectly,” Alex said, still looking up as if scanning for dive-bombing birds. His fists knotted around his backpack straps, and his knuckles were turning white. “We share some common ancestors and have noble relatives in common, most of whom were Austrian or German. Can we get out of this lobby?”
Georgie watched Alex’s dark eyes. They were a little wider than usual, and he almost seemed to be watching things that weren’t there. She hadn’t seen him drop any acid or anything.
“Come on.” She took his hand—which was uncharacteristically cool and damp under his calluses on his fingers and palm—untangling his finger’s from his guitar case’s backpack straps around his chest, and led him to a hallway with the standard, pock-marked acoustic tile on the ceiling and white-washed drywall sopping up any stray vibration.
Alex leaned against the wall and scrubbed at his face with his hands. “Sorry.”
“What happened out there?”
“Nothing.” He sucked in a deep breath—Georgie’s counselors would have called it a fortifying breath—and said, “Lead the way to the practice rooms?”
“Sure.” She kept an eye on him in the elevator up into the top layers of the birthday cake, but other than a furtive wipe of his face by stretching his tee shirt up, he didn’t fidget any more.
When they got to the practice room, Alex slung his guitar case to the floor. “So I have this piece I’m working on,” he said. The upright piano in the corner left just enough room for a chair for Alex and his guitar case on the floor.
“Yeah?”
“It’s a song.”
“Like ‘Alwaysland?’”
“Yes, a ballad, but I’m having problems fitting words into it.”
“What do you do with all these songs?”
“I beg your pardon?” Alex asked. He cocked his head like he was politely quizzical. The blond ends of his hair slipped over his shoulder.
“There’s ‘Alwaysland.’ Now you’re working on this one. What do you do with your songs?”
His tight smile was rather proper. “Isn’t it enough that they exist?”
“You’re being very Socratic, answering my questions with more questions. No, it’s not enough that they exist. Assuming this wasn’t a nookie run, you flew all the way here to bust into the music building in the middle of the night to play a song for me. It isn’t enough to say that it just exists.”
“I’m one of those spoiled rich brats. We do things like write songs for no reason.” He laid his guitar case on the floor and unclipped the latches.
“And fly on a moment’s notice in the middle of the night to work on a song that no one will ever hear?” She sat down on the piano bench but didn’t face the keyboard.
“Yes.” He lifted his guitar and sat on the chair, flicking his fingers over the strings and twisting the tuning pins at the top.
He wasn’t going to tell her. She was withholding all kinds of stuff from him, t
oo, so that was probably fair. “Well, all right then.”
“Shall we begin?”
“Sure. What’s the name of the song?”
“Scrambled Eggs,” he said.
“Ooo. Romantic.”
“Just listen.” He warmed up for a moment, running his fingers up the fretboard and plucking the steel strings with his other hand. He held the guitar like a classical guitarist with the body between his legs and the fretboard running up near his shoulder, not like a contemporary musician with the instrument lying across his lap like it was falling-down drunk.
Georgie had played instrumental music all her life, to the point where lyrics sometimes seemed intrusive to her.
Alex’s song drifted out of his guitar, a haunting, wrenching melody of longing.
By the time he was finished, her hands were clenched into fists in her lap. “Oh, my God, Alex. You wrote that?”
He nodded. “What do you think?”
“It’s gorgeous.”
“Words haven’t fit it yet.”
“It’s beautiful the way it is. You shouldn’t distract from the music with words.”
“I don’t think that’s possible. It needs words.”
“Well, I think it’s gorgeous.”
“Notes?”
“I don’t know, Alex. Let me hear it again.”
They stayed in the practice room past dawn, with Alex playing his song and Georgie playing it back to him on the piano, varying the cadence and tempo, until they had strengthened it.
“It’s an amazing piece of music, Alex, but I have an eight-forty class that I should be at.” If no burly Russian bratva guys were waiting for her outside of it. “I just have the one class, though. I’ll be done in an hour.”
“I’ll noodle around here,” he said, tightening a tuning peg on his guitar what Georgie could only call an imperceptible amount. “When you get back, we’ll go for breakfast.”
“Cool.”
Outside the music building, Georgie dodged through the crowd thronging the sun-drenched sidewalks. She watched—oh, she watched hard—but no big Russian guys were lurking behind the palm trees that lined the pedestrian malls nor did anyone film her on their cell phone for nefarious purposes.