He pulls in a deep breath. She tenses, her mind running over with horrific images.
He says, “Anyhow, I will spare you the details. There was a shootout at the end of it, but it’s nothing glamorous. We lost eight of our men. The citadel went up in flames. Hugh was trapped inside. I tried to find him, but the fire was too horrific, too hellish. We had to run for our lives. So I left him in there and mourned him for dead.”
His body stills. He falls silent, and she senses that this is all he will tell her about the subject. For now.
She notes that he has not mentioned any particular woman. But she very distinctly heard Hugh say, “My brother always had good taste in women. Notwithstanding what he did to her.”
Her.
There was a woman involved somehow between them . . . in Iraq. The Channing she knows today has an origin. The way he is today – distant and emotionally unavailable – may have had its genesis in Iraq.
Why he won’t kiss her, for instance.
Why he isn’t attached, despite being one of the most eligible heterosexual males on the planet.
“Go to sleep, Susan,” he says in the dark, still absently stroking her arm and her hair.
She doesn’t think she can go to sleep. There’s a lot he didn’t mention. What is he hiding? What does he have to hide?
She hears his breathing even out and he stops stroking her. His hand falls limply upon her head. He has fallen asleep. There would be no sex tonight, only her wild speculations and the vast power of her would-be dreams.
She has little idea then – wrapped up in his arms in a foreign bed – she would be completely in over her head in the worst way possible.
3
When she wakes up, he is not at her side. Alarmed, she sits up, only to see his handwriting on a notepaper upon his rumpled pillow:
GONE SWIMMING TO RELAX. MEET ME AT POOL DOWNSTAIRS.
She smiles. Then her mood dampens when she realizes she has nothing to wear. Would the closet downstairs be worth raiding? But Fred and his mercenaries are around. What would they think?
She decides she is not going to swim but watch him from the side of the pool instead. Yes, that would be a sight worth feasting her eyes on.
She pads downstairs in her shift, feeling a little scraggly despite brushing her hair and applying just a touch of makeup. She makes a beeline for where she thinks the pool is. The grounds are so vast. She is rewarded by a vision of blue in an area beyond a huge terracotta tiled patio.
Channing is doing laps in the thirty meter long pool. He is completely absorbed in his task, free-styling from one end to the other without stopping. She wonders how long he has been doing this because he appears very fit, tireless. She seats herself upon a striped deckchair. She can watch him forever – the silvery sprinkles of water slide off his skin as he surfaces, his silhouette as he dives in each time, the way he turns a hundred-and-eighty degrees at each end, kicking his long legs against the walls to propel himself forward.
She remembers their newfound intimacy last night. In many ways, what they shared is more physically profound than sex. Channing is now cleaving through the water at an incredible speed, as though he’s trying to drive last night’s events out of his system.
She doesn’t blame him. She thinks he’s not telling her everything, and whatever he’s not telling her is eating him inside, and he has to power it out in the only way he knows how – with sheer physical force.
He does a final lap. He stops at the edge of the pool, panting slightly. He looks up and sees her.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” she replies.
“You aren’t swimming.”
“Don’t have a swimsuit.” She really has to talk to him about sending her back to her apartment to get her clothes.
“You don’t need a swimsuit.” Droplets fall from his brow and chin. He’s devastatingly handsome. Almost unrealistically so.
She raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“Yeah.” He upends himself to stand on the floor of the pool. Then he reaches beneath the surface and strips off his speedos.
A lump bolts to her throat.
“Where is Fred?” she asks.
“Outside the house.” He crumples his wet swimming pants into a ball and tosses it onto the side. “This part is considered inside the house. We’re all alone.”
There’s a difference in their relationship. He’s not ordering her around like a piece of his property anymore.
For now.
“Do you want me to come in?” she says hesitantly.
He is lounging by the side of the pool, his well-muscled arms hanging out of the water. His blue, blue eyes arrest hers. Her gut does a flip. She’s unable to look away.
“Yes, I want you to come in.”
“Without my clothes on?”
He has seen her totally naked. What is she so shy about anyway? Then she realizes it’s their environment. The pool may be ‘inside’ the inner grounds, as he suggests, but they are still starkly outside, under the blue sky. A brick wall surrounds the pool, bordered by trees, but she still has the prickly sensation of being watched.
“No, I want you to jump in with all your clothes on.” He clicks exasperatedly. “Of course without your clothes. Are you going to come in or do I have to climb out to get you?”
He waits, glowering.
Oh.
She’s flustered now, remembering his alpha-ness and his threat of spanking. She rises to her feet and starts to grab the hem of her shift. She’s wearing only her panties underneath. She shucks it off and her panties as well. She stands naked in the morning breeze, shivering. She imagines prying eyes in between the foliage, and she scans the trees, hoping to catch a glimpse of Fred and his men.
She is so exposed. So naked. She stands with her legs together bashfully. She wants to cover her breasts, but she doesn’t dare.
“Jump in,” he says.
His tone is no longer in invitation mode. It is a command. Oh, oh, oh, she thinks. That wonderful intimate mood – of equals and lovers – has dissipated. He has worked out his internal issues and he no longer is vulnerable anymore.
She doesn’t know whether to feel wary or relieved.
She moves to the side of the pool. It has an overflow edge, and the water keeps seeping over into a covered deck drain. She sits on the edge uncomfortably, sliding her legs into the water. It is cold. She doesn’t think he’s the type of guy to heat his water – probably likes the barefaced chill as a punishing wakeup to the senses in the morning.
He wades towards her. His piercing blue eyes are serious as he clasps her hands.
“I need to fuck you,” he murmurs.
Here? In the pool? She feels a little faint. But she senses that if last night was an emotional catharsis (of sorts) for him, today is its release through physicality.
He tugs at her hands, and she finds herself falling. Falling into his arms, falling with a helpless splash. She gasps in the water as she struggles to steady herself. Her body is against him. Wet bare skin to wet bare skin. He’s holding her waist and sensuously roaming his hands down her body. His face is very close to hers. Hot damn, but he’s fine. She can gaze into his eyes forever.
In the water, his hand brushes against her pussy. Her pubic hair trails in the mild current. He seems to find this amusing as he toys with it, pulling at its wet strands playfully. She holds very still – as discomfited as she is in this situation – while he probes her pussy lips, something he is very fond of doing. Erotic pleasure uncurls from her clit, which he nudges and squeezes now and again.
Ohhh, Channing.
She grabs his arms – those marvelously sculpted arms with veins like snakes glistening below his skin. Their eyes devour one another as he continues his underwater exploration of her secret folds. Her fingers dig into his skin. He snares the throbbing sliver of her clit in between his index and third finger. An electrified impulse implodes within her tender flesh.
Her moist facial lips part in hun
ger. Her vagina begins to ache with pressing need.
Channing, Channing. Please, oh please.
She wants him to fuck her. She needs this release as much as he does. It has been a hell of a past twenty-four hours and they both can use a good fuck.
But first, she wishes he would kiss her.
His face is very close to hers, but he makes no move to lean his marvelously shaped lips towards her.
He never does, she thinks. There is no impasse. It’s one step forward, one step back with him.
Oh Hugh, what have you done to each other?
His probing fingers find her pussy hole. He wriggles two fingers in. Her passage is snug and filled with water, a tunnel runneth over. He makes a circuit, rubbing her walls with a sweep. Tendrils of lust course all over her vagina, and she feels her spine tingling.
He expands those two fingers, makes a V sign inside her. A knuckle grazes her G-spot. She shudders with both desire and the cold.
“I want you,” he murmurs again.
Exhilaration surges within her. I want you. What she longs to hear from him, though it’s second best to what she really wants to hear.
I love you, Susan.
Yesssss.
He pushes her against the wall of the swimming pool. Water eddies around them, coy and subtle. He parts her thighs. He bends his own knees so that he can ready himself for the thrust – the torpid underwater penetration.
His fingers slip out of her pussy. He grasps her buttocks and lifts her up. Her knees are bent and her feet wave viscously in the water. She can feel the iron hard rod of his flesh, positioned just beneath her greedy hole.
Her eyes are dilated with need. Her mouth is still slightly agape, and her cheeks are very, very flushed.
With a sharp intake of breath, he spears her. She can feel his solid column of flesh rushing into her watery tunnel. Ohhhhhhhh. Pulsing in inch by delicious inch. Her vaginal walls are cleaved apart just as his hard body has arrowed the water earlier. He seems to be in a hurry. There’s an urgency to his thrust, as though he needs to get there quick.
He allows her to get used to his size and girth. She is filled pleasurably. Wonderfully so.
But he doesn’t allow her to get used to him being inside her, because he begins to move. Rapid strokes. Quick in-out rocking movements. His firm chest rubs against her breasts. She’s being stimulated in so many areas.
His strong hands support her hips, and her back is pressed against the wall as an anchor. Her pussy juices swirl with the water – warn cream mixing with cool aqua. The way he feels in the water is intense, as though they are both moving in a dream – as though she is being washed and douched at the same time he is fucking her. Cleansed from improprieties. Cleansed from all worries except the present, the now.
His skin is pebbled with clean water droplets, and his pupils are extremely dilated as he holds her gaze. He pants slightly. After that massive swim workout he has had, she’s surprised he can still be so energized.
He thrusts and pierces her with an aggravated frenzy, closing his body in onto hers, kneading her breasts with his heaving chest. She clings to his shoulders and back. So firm, so smooth, so godly. She brushes her lips against the skin of his shoulder and licks and tastes the fresh water on it. He doesn’t even notice she does this.
His grunts become more pronounced as he races towards his climax. His groin slaps against hers, and in the water, the compression becomes more buoyant. He takes more effort to nail himself into her each time. She moans and twists. His cock is angled at her G-spot, where each blunt rub against it sends fire streaming through her orifice, shooting into her entire pelvic region and snaking up her spine to meld in the glowing mush of her brain.
She cries with the pleasure of it. He takes heed and increases his intensity. Their pants and grunts merge into one another’s – twin sounds of mutual pleasuring, mutual understanding and mutual satisfaction. His fingers dig into her flesh, a sign of his building excitement. She throws back her head and arches her back. The tiles are cold against her skin. She grips him harder, and harder, until her fingernails indent his solid flesh. She doesn’t think he notices this either.
Her mind tumbles over with his name, his face, his ripe, luscious body merged with hers. A succession of images pound like strobe-like flashes within her mind. Herself as a desert waif, clothed in fluttery sails of clothing. Running towards that figure coming towards her.
Channing! she cries.
He begins to run towards her. He comes closer, handsome as the devil himself and larger than life. They kiss, their lips pressing fiercely against one another’s.
Oh Channing.
She lets herself climb the crests of the whitewater peaks – the peaks upon peaks of the tsunami. And the flotsam washes over her – all sound and fury and raging madness of it. Bliss enters every pore of her body. They are kissing again in her daydreams – voracious lips parting and tongue twisting against tongue.
Along with her orgasm comes the yearning for something more. Much, much more.
Channing.
She wants every part of him, and not only what he has to offer right now. As her climax sends her muscles into deep spasms and shudders, she realizes – in dismay – that she has fallen in love with him. Irrevocably, senselessly, desperately and hopelessly in love.
Oh God.
What is to become of her now? How did she allow herself to love a man who cannot and will not love her back?
With her orgasm, he allows himself to climax as well. Despite the swirling water in her vagina, she can feel the very real gush of his hot semen into her, like a jet of molten lava against the cold balm. She closes her eyes and tips her head back. Her hair is wet from all the rippling their lovemaking has caused in the water.
She wishes she can stop and pause this moment forever – Channing inside her, climaxing, hissing his pleasure in a gush of breath against her neck.
It’s a semblance of love. Almost.
He pants against her, holding her. His cock is still stiff inside her, though she feels it waning a little. He pulls out of her. He leans against her, his chest expanding and contracting as he tries to moderate his breathing.
“Thank you,” he murmurs. “I needed that.”
“So did I,” she gasps.
He appears abashed. His eyes flit away from hers.
“And thank you for last night,” he says. “For listening.”
She doesn’t have anything to say to that.
They both stand in the pool, facing one another, feeling discomfited. It’s as though they are suddenly strangers instead of two people who have shared their bodies thoroughly.
He says gruffly, “I have to go out to do stuff.”
She knows without asking that it will be stuff concerning his brother.
“I need my clothes from my apartment,” she says.
He nods. “We’ll get them later. I can’t let you go alone. It isn’t . . . safe.”
She agrees.
“Cook us something for dinner,” he says. “I missed your lasagna last night.”
It’s the first time a man has ever claimed to miss anything she cooked, but he doesn’t know better . . . yet. She disguises her smile.
“Wear something sexy when I get home,” he says. “Choose one of the French maid outfits. I didn’t have time to enjoy that yesterday.”
They are both back to their comfort zones. He is once again the supreme alpha, master and commander of his home. She is once again his employee and submissive.
“Yes, sir,” she says wryly.
A ghost of a smile graces his wide, sensuous mouth.
Never, she promises herself. Never will I tell him I’ve fallen in love with him.
4
When he comes home, he is visibly tired. She wants to ask what happened, but an almost imperceptible shake of his head tells her he doesn’t want her to know.
He regards her outfit. She has gone out of her way to please him again. She wears a racy black number wi
th white lace trimmings that is corseted at the waist and cut very low to reveal her cleavage – right down to her navel. Whatever expanse of bare skin she has in front is crisscrossed by black lace, so that the contrast is stark.
The skirt is unusual. The back of it is completely cut away in an inverted ‘V’. She is not wearing any underwear, so the cleft of her buttocks is completely exposed. She dons thigh high stockings and very pointed black heels.
“Very nice,” he says softly,
“Thank you.”
“Come here.”
She goes to him, and he caresses her breasts and buttocks, squeezing the flesh firmly.
“You’re making me hard again, but I need to eat first.”
His hand roams down her pussy under her skirt. She’s already creaming for him. A trill of satisfaction prickles her ego. I can make him hard, she marvels. I can make this extremely handsome, extremely powerful and confident man hard. He desires me. I can see it in the way his eyes light up as he takes me in.
It’s a high she has never experienced before in her working environment.
“Later,” he promises, taking his hands away.
She’s disappointed.
She serves him in the dining room – at a table large enough to seat fifteen people. He must get lonely eating here alone, she thinks, but doesn’t mention it. She has outdone herself in the cooking department. She has made them pasta in béchamel sauce, with roast chicken and onions. She opens a chilled bottle of white wine. Simple food, but he eats it ravenously.
She watches him eat, reveling in his beauty and in the fact that he is actually enjoying something she made with her hands.
“This is really good,” he says between bites.
“Thank you.” A blush tinges her cheeks. No one has ever praised her cooking. Is it really that bad, or has she just been with the wrong men?
His Indecent Desires (Bound and Shacked to the Billionaire Erotic Romance) Page 2