“Trying to make out with me, huh, big boy?”
Blake’s nostrils flared. His gaze dropped to her mouth and for a moment she was sure he was going to snatch her up and kiss her. Instead, he met her gaze once more. “What I want is for you to talk to me honestly, the way you did at dinner. The way you were before I mentioned stand-up.”
Autumn licked her lips, the insincerity behind her attempts at humor suddenly obvious. “Your insightfulness is quite unnerving.”
“So I’ve been told. Look, the comedy thing isn’t a big deal, I just don’t get why a girl as smart and driven as you wouldn’t just sign up for an amateur comedy night and do her show.”
Another cutting insight, except this time she didn’t tell the truth. At least not all of it. “What’s the point? Nothing would come of it except I’d lose a hundred bucks and get heckled by everyone’s dickhole friends.”
“You don’t know that. This is New York, weirder shit happens every day.”
She groaned. “You’re one of those ‘New York is the magical place of magical magic dreams’ buttheads, too? Christ, you really have been sent by this city to rob me of my remaining self-respect.”
“What?” he said, turning his head to the side as though he hadn’t heard her, which, considering a huge truck had just driven past blasting The Chainsmokers, he probably hadn’t. She decided against repeating the butthead thing. “I don’t want to do amateur comedy in New York just because it’s a shitfully strange place.”
Blake opened his mouth, but before he could protest, a newer, better excuse struck her like lightning. “Besides, I’m probably going home soon. There’s no point trying to start a comedy career in NYC if I’ll be job-hunting in Melbourne next month.”
His gaze cut to the side. “You’re leaving next month?”
Autumn forced herself to laugh, though it sounded inauthentic even to her own ears. “Maybe. That’s when my work visa expires and the feds’ll kick me out. Shit, sorry I probably should have told you I might be breaking my lease in a more professional setting.”
“Okay,” Blake said, his shadowed face extremely forbidding as he stared a foot above her head. “You’re leaving next month. Fine.”
Autumn bit her lip, unsure of what to say. She’d come up with the excuse on the fly, but maybe it was for the best. Maybe telling Blake she was moving out was the kick in the ass she needed to finally call her parents and say “Ian cheated on me, Happy Paws Vet Clinic sucks, New York is evil, all the coffee tastes burnt, fuck the Yankees, fuck bagels and fuck that weird thing where people just pack more garbage into already overflowing garbage bins that no one ever fucking empties! I’ll see you cunts soon.”
Without the cursing, of course. She didn’t curse in front of her parents, one of the many reasons she could never be a stand-up comic. What if they came to one of her shows?
“You’re leaving next month,” Blake repeated, though this time he was looking right at her. “You’re going back to Melbourne?”
“Yeah. Hey, you said it the right way. ‘Mel-bun’ and not ‘Melboooourne.’”
“I said it the way you said it when you moved in. When I asked where you were from.”
Autumn felt a pleasurable squirm in her belly. He remembered a conversation they’d had six months ago and he pronounced the name of her home city the right way. She beamed at him, and he gave a little mouth-quirk back. She realized something—she liked Blake. She liked his scowls and moody silences and his pestering her about stand-up and all. She decided to show him how much she liked him. She moved closer, her head tilted upward, and was gratified to see his face soften. At least she was until he put his hands on her shoulders and said, “Not here.”
Autumn tried not to look hurt. “Not a PDA guy?”
He shook his head.
“Maybe you can kiss me back at your place?”
“We’re not going back to my place.”
“Oh,” she said, disappointed. She’d been looking forward to seeing the inside of his apartment again, getting a better look at his books and having hot sex in a new bed, far from the one she’d once shared with Ian. “Why?”
Blake tilted his head toward the street. Autumn followed his lead and began walking again. “You’ll feel safer if we’re not in my apartment,” he said as they resumed weaving through foot-traffic.
“Is that, uh…important? The whole point of my fantasy is that you make me feel unsafe.”
“I will.”
“Then why—”
“Quit talking and walk in front of me.”
She frowned. “Why?”
“Because I want to watch you move.”
It was then she finally picked up what he was laying down. Blake wanted to play at what they’d discussed in the restaurant. Him watching her, her being watched. Conflicting emotions burst inside her like fireworks, but the biggest and brightest was excitement. “I don’t know this area. H-how will I know how to get home?”
“It’s straight all the way back to the building,” Blake said. “Just another ten minutes. That good?”
Autumn sucked her lips into her mouth in an attempt to hide her excitement. “Yes.”
“Good.” There was a gleam in Blake’s eyes that hadn’t been there before, and Autumn suddenly understood. She’d told him about the stalking fantasy at dinner, not because she was drunk or lonely or an idiot but because of what she’d felt. She’d looked across the candlelit dining table and seen the bookend to her own desires simmering in those incredible light brown eyes. Blake was excited by this as much as she was, and maybe he was afraid of it, too. Afraid of what it said about him as a man. The realization made her feel braver, less alone. She smiled at him, a goofy, companionate smile, and he smiled back.
“I think you’re a good guy,” she announced. “Maybe even a really good guy.”
His smile faded, though his eyes were still gleaming. “Walk, Fun-Size.”
So Autumn sped up, moving in front of Blake to strut the streets of New York alone. It was a strange sensation, being followed. At first she just felt self-conscious—what if she tripped and made a complete twat of herself? But as the minutes passed, she relaxed into the knowledge that Blake was watching her. She could almost feel his eyes lingering on her legs as she moved, memorizing the swing of her hips and the swells of her ass.
He’s following me, she thought, shivering in spite of the summer heat. He saw me out all by myself and now he’s following me home.
She remembered the way Blake had looked at her in the restaurant, the hunger in his eyes, and she put a little extra sway into her walk, sliding her legs forward and swishing her ass as though she were a drunk catwalk model. She swore she felt the intensity with which she was being watched increase. Unable to help herself, she turned and looked over her shoulder. Blake’s gaze locked on hers. His jaw jutted and somehow he seemed to grow larger. Autumn shivered with excitement. The sizzle of it ran down her midriff and into her pussy. She could feel herself getting wet, wet from being watched and lusted after, stalked as though she were nothing but girl-prey fit to feed this hungry male animal.
I thought you were a bra-burner, a familiar voice muttered in her ear. This isn’t a self-loathing thing is it, Auts?
Oh fuck off, Ian. Go have sex with someone who likes improv and let me have this.
Miraculously, her brain obeyed. She kept walking toward her building, her skin prickling deliciously and her mind full of thoughts of Blake and what was coming next.
She’d half-hoped Blake was planning to follow her into her apartment and continue their game without another word, but suspected he was far too responsible for that. Sure enough, he caught her at the building door, his heavy hand closing over her wrist. “You liked that.”
She nodded, knowing that if she tried to explain why, she’d ruin the mood. “What now?”
Blake bent down and Autumn caught the scent of his cologne, a woodsy aroma that increased her arousal a thousand-fold. Before she could stop herself, she turn
ed and kissed him, a soft closed-mouthed kiss. He kissed her back and she could feel surprise and pleasure in the way his lips worked. His hands found her hips and then she was dangling in mid-air with his mouth pressed to hers. He pulled her flush against him and it was unlike anything she’d ever felt before. Ian was taller than her, pretty much everyone was taller than her, but Blake was enormous. Being held by him was like being held in a cage, a gentle, living cage. With another man it might have felt oppressive, but as Blake kissed her deeply, all she felt was warm and safe and turned the fuck on. Within seconds she was rubbing against him, moaning into his mouth. Her landlord couldn’t talk worth a damn but god he could kiss. He kissed like it was his mother language, like he could tell whole stories with his lips and tongue. She began to writhe against him, desperate for more, and he pulled away, his eyes full of heat. “Not here. Not like this. You’re gonna take the stairwell up to your apartment.”
“I-I thought it was closed for maintenance,” she said, recalling the sign she’d seen on the building noticeboard.
“It was. By me.”
“Oh yeah, you’re my landlord. Despite the fact that I used to call you The Landlord, I keep forgetting.”
Blake flicked her a quick not-quite smile. “Go ahead. Climb the stairs to the third floor and I’ll follow.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“What I want to happen.” His gaze dropped from her mouth to her nipples which were poking through her dress like hard candies. It was a leer, pure and simple, and it shot her straight back into her gazelle-being-stalked state of mind. “I…uh, guess I’ll go and wait then?”
Blake nodded. “As soon as the stairwell door shuts, you’re mine. No one will interrupt us. Nothing will happen that I haven’t planned. Start to finish, it’s what I want, you got that?”
She nodded, weak at the thought that it was finally going to happen, that she, Autumn Martha Reynolds, would finally experience the thing she’d been daydreaming about since puberty began.
“Say you understand me, Autumn.”
“I understand.” Understand that my underwear is ruined now.
“Pick a word to say if you want me to stop. Nothing you might accidentally say while I’m…” He raised his eyebrows.
Autumn licked her lip. “I choose…gold leaf. Specifically gold leaf. If I just say ‘gold’ or ‘leaf’ you have to keep doing me, okay?”
Blake’s mouth twitched again. “Go.”
Autumn walked into the building on wobbly legs. She ignored the ‘closed for maintenance’ sign on the stairwell door and turned the knob. Just as Blake suggested, it was open, and nothing seemed out of order. She began to climb, the sound of her heels deafening in the empty concrete space.
Ordinarily, she didn’t find the stairwell creepy. It was well lit and one of the building whackos was usually rattling around it, doing something inoffensively odd. But tonight Blake had presumably locked the doors on the other floors so that she could hear no one but herself. He’d apparently turned off the fluorescent strips so that the only thing lighting her way were tiny circular floodlights she’d never noticed before, casting everything into monochrome. She moved higher, past the first floor, the second, and then she heard a door slam beneath her.
Blake. Goosebumps prickled on her skin. She began climbing faster, her heart hammering against her breastbone. Her black pumps suddenly seemed much too high, her dress far too tight and short. Blake’s footsteps hammered against the metal stairs, his approach as inevitable as that of a coming train. She wasn’t sure how long it took him to get to her, only that when she whirled around and caught sight of him in the shadows, she gasped like the lead in a 1950’s horror film. “Who-who are you?”
Blake didn’t answer. He just stood there, his hands shoved in his pockets, looking her slowly up and down. Assessing. “You shouldn’t be wearing those shoes.”
Autumn’s heart was now racing so hard she felt dizzy. Her stomach was tight and all her nerves were thrumming. She simultaneously wanted the moment to last forever and for Blake to make his move so that the tension could split and be over. “Why shouldn’t I be wearing these shoes?”
A soft chuckle. “Makes it impossible to run.”
And before she had a chance to respond, he was on her, shoving her back into the cold concrete wall. Instinctively, Autumn tried to scream but a broad hand clapped itself over her mouth. “We’ll have none of that, Blondie. No noise, no concerned citizens coming to find us out.”
His free hand sought her wrists and he pinned them over her head. His scent was stronger now, that woodsy cologne mixed with something subtler, sweat or maybe just Blake himself, warm and powerful and one hundred percent male.
“That’s it,” he muttered, shoving his hips against hers. “Got you right where I want you. Right where you belong.”
His cock was hard against her stomach, thick and eager. It was such a relief to know that he wanted this, wanted her, that she pressed back against him. Blake grinned, his teeth flashing in the dark. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
He removed his hand from her mouth and kissed her. This time the kiss was deep and hot and animalistic. He was claiming her, exerting his will over her weaker feminine frame. Autumn strained against his hands and found she couldn’t move an inch. Her arousal ratcheted up another degree and when he pulled away, she had to stop herself from moaning his name.
Blake. He was doing this to her, he was giving this to her. What a fucking legend.
He rubbed his nose along her neck, inhaling deeply. “I was watching you, Blondie. Out on the street. I watched you move in this joke of a dress.”
He tugged the front of it down, exposing her breasts, and Autumn bit back a moan. The scraping fabric and cool air on her nipples was making her whole body throb. They’d barely done anything, anything, and she was more turned on than she’d ever been in her life.
Blake stared down at her tits and for a moment, the mask slipped. His mouth slackened and he made a soft choking noise, which spoke not of possessive lust but the same desperation she felt thrumming in her veins. The sense that they were both in exactly the right place at the right time.
“Let me go,” she whispered, shy but determined to do this right. To do it the way she’d dreamed of it being done.
“No,” he said with a snap like a loaded gun. “You’re mine now, sweetheart.”
“You can have my wallet, my phone—”
“Don’t want either.” Blake lowered his head and sucked her right nipple. Sensation shot through her like electricity and if he wasn’t holding her up, Autumn knew she would have fallen to her knees. Possibly to beg for him to do it again. “Please, let me go?”
He released her nipple with a pop. “Not a chance.”
“But, why?”
He sucked her other nipple then blew a cold stream of air over it. “That’s not what you want. I knew that as soon as I laid eyes on you. You want a man to pay you a special kind of attention, don’t you?”
“No,” she said, the huskiness in her voice betraying her excitement.
Blake returned his hand to her mouth. “Shh. I know that’s what you have to say, but I saw you walking around in this baby scrap of fabric, your tits jiggling and your ass swaying from side to side for every man to see. That means you’re either a dirty pricktease or in desperate need of a fuck.”
Autumn shook her head. She was sure her eyes were as round as hubcaps. She would have to take back what she’d thought about Blake being bad at talking. Her insanely monosyllabic date was apparently some kind of filth wizard, taking nothing and spinning it into pure gorgeous filth.
“That a no?” he asked, bending down to suck at her right nipple, harder this time, as though he was angry with her.
Autumn moaned and tried and failed to protest against his palm.
“Can’t understand you, honey. Guess I’ll have to answer my own question.” Her landlord yanked up the hem of her dress and then his hand was against her pussy. He wa
sn’t fucking around either, within moments two rough fingers were rubbing along her insanely wet slit, dipping into her cunt. The stimulation was so unexpected, so dirty and perfect and rude, Autumn screamed against his palm.
Blake laughed. “That’s just what I thought, Blondie. You’re wet. Wet enough to drown in. And no panties either, you dirty little slut.”
His fingers moved deeper inside her, curled expertly in a way that had Autumn panting against his hand. He looked feral in the dim light, more animal than human.
A ripple of genuine fear ran through her. She hardly knew this man, not his parents’ names nor his family history or even what his favorite book was. Panic slipped its shadowy fingers around her throat but before it could take hold, she remembered the way Blake had kissed her outside of the building, the strength and sweet security she’d felt in his arms. She relaxed into the wall, into the scene. She did know this man, even if what she knew were more feelings than facts.
His thumb found her clit, the rough pad brushing against her with expert precision, and her orgasm just…popped. Like the corks on the champagne bottles they kept bringing out at Eleven Madison Park.
She was in a stairwell with her shoes on and her dress shoved the wrong way in both directions, but it didn’t matter. This felt so good. Resistance to how good this felt was impossible. She collapsed into the wall, boneless but still humping Blake’s fingers, still trying to get more. Blake let out a snarl of satisfaction and began pumping her even harder, wringing more pleasure onto his fingers. “I knew you wanted it, filthy girl.”
The elevator came rattling past, loud and unmistakable, and the thought of other residents being so close to where she was ravished by their landlord brought Autumn to the brink all over again.
Blake seemed to know it. He released her mouth to brush a thumb over her painfully sensitive nipples, his other hand working even harder to stroke her clit and dip inside her pussy. He was so coordinated, he felt like more than a man, he felt like a machine designed to extract maximum pleasure from her body.
“No one knows you’re here,” he snarled. “I could keep you here for hours, fuck you every way I know how, make you scream while you come all over my cock.”
Captivated Page 8