by BETH KERY
It felt nowhere near as anxiety-provoking as she would have thought it would to touch him. In fact, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to do.
She thrilled to the heaviness of his cock beneath the cloth. Arousal spiked through her, and those life-altering words—primary mediastinal B-cell lymphoma—scattered to the periphery of her consciousness like frightened moths.
“Do you mind?” she asked, looking up at him, her voice vibrating with barely restrained emotion.
His nostrils flared slightly. “Are you kidding?” He sounded downright incredulous at her question. Their gazes held as she felt his heartbeat thrum against her palm. He reached up and ever so gently, careful of his paint-covered skin, touched her jaw. A strange, strangled sound escaped her throat at his caress.
She carefully, deliberately reached inside the pocket of the costume boxer-brief, intent on not ruining the makeup application on his thighs. She bit her lower lip when her hand closed around the circumference of his cock. She drew out his length.
For a moment, she just stared.
It was like holding life in her hand.
His naked penis stood in stark contrast to the elaborate makeup applied to his body. The long, straight length of it running from root to fleshy cap struck her as sublime. She held him up before her face, the tip slanting toward the ceiling. She ran the tip of her tongue from the ridge beneath the head all the way to the base, flicking a firm testicle experimentally.
He made a muffled gasping noise like his lungs had deflated in an instant. His male scent filled her nose. She twitched her fingers on the shaft, relishing his sheer virility, his weight and firmness.
Yes. This is what she needed.
She tightened her grip, closed her eyes and arrowed his cock between her lips. She abandoned herself to the voluptuous, eternal moment, escaping into it like a fugitive from a harsh, meaningless world.
* * *
Everett Hughes became distantly aware that his muscles were so tense, they felt like they’d break given one more ounce of pressure. He ached.
Everywhere.
He studied the crown of her head like he thought his stare could bore down into her brain and read her thoughts. It would probably do him good to read her mind, he thought with grim amusement. Her thoughts were undoubtedly mundane and matter-of-fact. Nowhere near as X-rated as his had become ever since he’d walked into the room and seen Seth Hightower’s niece standing there, looking like a fresh wild flower amidst a field of artificial and hothouse blooms.
She’d been about as aware of him as she was the paint on the wall as she prepared to work. It was an unusual feeling for Everett, to be overlooked. He relished the opportunity to study her openly.
If he’d gone by her face alone, he might have guessed her age in her midtwenties. Only her swift, sure movements as she prepared her paints and the feminine curves accenting a slender, toned body hinted to him that she was likely nearer to thirty than twenty. He knew that Seth was part Pueblo Indian. He saw some evidence of Native American heritage in Joy, but to a lesser extent than in her uncle. Mostly her still, calm expression and smooth, apricot and copper-hued skin called that strain of her heritage to mind.
Everett had become disenchanted with the term beautiful long ago, feeling the hollowness of the term as it was applied to every second woman he met. But this woman—Seth Hightower’s niece—she didn’t just deserve the descriptor. She epitomized it without trying.
He found himself staring at the top of her long mane of chestnut brown hair as he endured the erotic sensation of her felt-tip marker sliding across his skin. His cock was thickening. He couldn’t seem to help it. He closed his eyes and breathed through his nose, trying to envision the mechanics of a particularly challenging scene with Ellie Granolith, the leading lady in Maritime. Every scene with Ellie was a trial to get through, but this one was particularly difficult.
His half-assed attempts to distract himself fractured when Joy’s marker stimulated a patch of sensitive skin just below his hip bone.
He looked down into a pair of large hazel eyes.
You’ll have to lower your briefs enough for me to make the transition look natural.
His heart had lurched next to his breastbone when she’d said that. Everett was not unfamiliar with recognizing a spark of desire in a woman’s eyes. If he was seeing it in Joy Hightower’s solemn gaze, it had to be the result of wishful thinking, though.
His throat felt tight when he swallowed. He reached for the side of his briefs and lowered them. It felt very vulnerable for him, to expose himself in this way. He typically preferred being the dominant during sex, and something about this situation seemed to speak of the opposite of control. First off, this wasn’t a sexual situation. It was inappropriate for him to be aroused. He couldn’t control his sexual response, however, and that made him both uncomfortable and, paradoxically, more aroused. When she paused for a moment, staring at him while she clutched her marker, he felt sweat bead on his upper lip.
Seth was going to slug him if he ruined his makeup. The makeup department head was formidable, not the sort of man Everett would choose to piss off.
Seth would likely skip punching and go straight to killing him if he knew what Everett was thinking about doing with his gorgeous, wholesome niece at that moment.
Seeing her lovely face so close to the midportion of his body, studying the outlines of her full, thrusting breasts from above, feeling the whisper of her breath on his skin while the tattoo pen rolled over supersensitive nerves; all of it had been titillating. But when Joy transferred to using her paints, Everett entered the realms of torture. His cock swelled so large, he didn’t think there was room in his skin anymore. His jaw hurt from clamping it shut. He was going to explode, and all he could do was tell himself to stand still. It was like telling a lit fuse to be calm.
He couldn’t hide his arousal. How could he? Regret sliced through him when she glanced up, and he saw the anxiety in her eyes. His baser nature had prevailed, however. He’d told her he could handle his discomfort. How could he possibly move away from the temptation of Joy and her slippery, cool brush sliding just inches away from his straining, hurting cock?
Why was he having the most debauched fantasies about taking advantage of her, of wrecking her smooth, calm exterior . . . of making Snow White so hot, she begged for it?
He suppressed a laugh at his idiocy. He really was losing it.
He wasn’t young anymore. A man in his position in Hollywood learned quickly enough that casual sex often didn’t end up being as casual or as sexy as a novice might expect. He’d become extremely particular about whom he associated with in the past several years. So particular, in fact, that his sister, Katie, had taken to calling him jaded. Maybe Katie was right, because in the past few months, he’d been choosy to the point of abstinence.
Maybe that was what made this unexpected experience feel so sharp, so imperative.
Seth could come in at any moment. Dozens of people moved and talked and shouted just feet away from the still room where he stood and Joy sat, etching her magic on his flesh. More importantly, Everett didn’t pull stupid, crazy stunts. Not anymore, he didn’t.
But a moment later, when her laughter had morphed into that still, sublime expression, he would have dared much, much worse than to explore the promise of her inner fires.
Then she’d spoken . . . and he’d almost had a heart attack at age thirty-six.
“Do you mind?” she’d asked.
He minded, all right. If he didn’t get the opportunity to feel her touch where it counted, he was going to boil and cook in his own sweat.
It’d felt like he was balancing on a narrow, straining wire the entire time Joy had sat before him and caressed him with her marker and tickled him deliciously with her paintbrush. When she so carefully reached into the briefs and extricated his cock, he fell right off that thin line of enforced rationality straight into a vat of need.
His cock felt like it was steam
ing when she wrapped her cool fingers around it. The image of her removing his length from the stupid seaweed pants was so exciting, he nearly came then and there. Her tongue was surprisingly red when she delicately licked him. Energy arced between them at the direct contact, their naked flesh becoming a conduit. She dragged the tip of it from head to pulsing root. Ripples of pleasure shot up his spine.
He bit his tongue hard enough to make him wince in pain. He’d be damned if he was going to ruin the richest erotic experience he’d had in . . . he couldn’t remember how long by exploding before he truly got to enjoy it.
The metallic flavor of blood spread in his mouth before he allowed himself to pry open his eyes. He groaned upon seeing her spreading her lips wide and angling his cock into her warm, wet mouth.
Christ, his cock was iron hard, so how was it that he felt like he was melting on her tongue?
She may look fresh as a wild rose, but she knew how to suck. She pulled at him. He winced in pleasure as he slid across her tongue, going deeper into the humid, hot glory of her. How could he have thought she was so contained, so cool?
She was a raging fever on the inside.
His hand moved, seemingly of its own accord. He cradled the side of her head. He withdrew and flexed forward again, suppressing a groan.
“God, that’s good,” he mumbled.
She ducked her head, sucking and sliding his cock between tightly pursed lips, taking him on a thrill ride of a lifetime. With every pass, she took him deeper. Her hunger was a palpable thing, the strength of it shocking him, a force that drove her farther and farther down onto the shaft of his cock. He watched her with a tight, feral stare, taking in every nuance of her—the way his erection strained her lips wide and stained them a dark, vivid pink as she pumped at his cock with a furious focus.
The sight of her consuming him like she thought it was her last meal was so powerful, he shut his eyelids to protect himself. Sensation still bombarded him: the feeling of her firm, sweet suck; the slippery sounds of his cock moving so forcefully in wet flesh reaching his ears even through the hum of the air conditioner. She continued to pulse him in and out, her unceasing suction assuring him he wasn’t going to continue this little side trip into fantasyland for very long.
“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath, unable to hold back any longer from the singular power of the experience and his own demanding nature.
He tightened his hold on the back of her head, stabilizing her, and began to thrust between her lips, his ass flexing tight. It was like plunging straight into the essence of pleasure. It surged through him in bursts, spiking through his flesh.
Ah, Jesus. This is what he’d stooped to—face-fucking Snow White while only a few feet and very thin walls separated him from dozens of coworkers.
His face collapsed in regret when he sensed her recoil slightly at his demanding possession, but then she was back—fiercer than before, sucking him until his eyes crossed.
He felt his balls pinch in delicious pain when the muscles of her throat closed around the tip of his cock. If he hadn’t been holding it in, his shout of pleasure would have made him hoarse. As it was, it scalded his throat as he strangled it.
Pleasure ripped through him. He held her head steady as he erupted, not because of his dominant nature, but because his body had been paralyzed in a rictus of sensation. As the second wave rocked him, he recognized the discomfort he caused her. He released her with a slight jerk, rocking them both. She made a sound in her throat—God, he hoped it wasn’t of dismay—but then his body tightened again in release. He came on her tongue, and his worries were buried by flooding pleasure.
He groaned gutturally, feeling like he was being emptied and filled all at once.
* * *
The need for a long, full breath overcame her at last. She slid his softening—but still formidable—penis out of her mouth. The slick, fleshy cockhead pressed against her cheek as she gasped for air, filling her lungs. His hold on her gentled. He stroked her hair as she desperately tried to catch her breath.
It was as if she’d just been caught up in the furious twist of a cyclone, only to be suddenly tossed out again into a motionless, hard world. Her mind struggled to make sense of what had just occurred. Fragments of vision and sensation bombarded her awareness.
“Are you okay?”
She froze on an inhale at the sound of his voice.
She felt a slight pressure from his hand, as if he were willing her to look at him.
Her cheeks burned. Dear God, what had she just done?
“Joy?” he prompted when she didn’t move.
Keeping her head lowered, she leaned back, separating herself from him. She carefully raised his boxer-brief and covered him, keeping her gaze averted from his glistening cock.
He was just as beautiful to her satiated as he had been rigid with need . . . so naked, so vulnerable. She began to anxiously search for damage to his makeup.
“What the—”
His bewildered-sounding voice stopped abruptly when someone shouted in the distance.
“Seth!”
“What?” Seth Hightower barked impatiently, his voice sounding as if it came from twenty or thirty feet away.
“I need you to take a look at this.”
Joy stood so abruptly, the chair she’d been sitting in rolled backward several feet. She met the man’s startled gaze.
She didn’t even know his name.
“He’ll be here any second,” she said. She immediately picked up her paints as the first wave of panic started to flow through her. He caught her wrist.
“Hold on. It’s going to be okay, Joy.”
She was mortified to realize tears had sprung to her eyes.
“No. No, it’s not.” Not for me, it’s not. He looked taken aback.
For a second or two, the silence swelled.
“Of course it is,” he said, smiling even though puzzlement shadowed what she could see of his features.
She swallowed and looked away from his smile. “I need to touch you up,” she said, realizing for the first time that her voice was hoarse from taking his cock so deep. Another wave of heat flooded her cheeks. She tried to move to gather her paints—to gather herself—but he continued to hold her wrist.
“Joy.”
She glanced up at him doubtfully, her heartbeat pounding in her ears.
“Meet me later. After the shoot. Please?” he added when she just continued to stare in the vicinity of his collarbone.
“I . . . I don’t know what . . . why . . .”
“I understand,” he said quietly. He released her wrist and touched her cheek until she looked at him. “I’m not sure I know, either. But I want to figure it out. Meet me at the statue? The studio statue? After this craziness is done? Just give me enough time to get out of this getup and shower, and I’ll be there. I just want to talk to you. Please, Joy.”
Something squeezed at her heart a little when he entreated her. In the distance, she heard her uncle’s voice as he approached.
“I haven’t got time right now. You’ll have to handle it,” Seth called out, as if he was walking away from whomever had interrupted him.
“Joy?” the stranger said sharply.
She looked into his clear aquamarine eyes and nodded once.
“Say it. Say you’ll be there.”
“I’ll be there,” she whispered.
Six hours later, she checked her watch yet again.
He wasn’t coming.
She should have known better than to come herself.
The photo shoot had been completed now for almost three hours. She’d kept herself busy in Seth’s studio during the shoot itself. Seth had returned after a while in order to oversee prosthetic removal. Joy had helped him, but she hadn’t caught sight of the man she’d promised to meet.
She’d been waiting by the United Studios’ statue of the seven muses for long enough. There was no way the man was still occupied. Not when almost everyone else on the set had
long since showered and left. He’d stood her up, plain and simple.
She stood from one of the benches that lined the little park at the north studio entrance. One of the bronze muses caught her eye.
Joy lowered her head and walked toward the gate. She didn’t need the muse’s somber stare to know it was time for her to leave the whimsy of fantasyland and deal with the reality of a harsh world.
* * *
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Beth Kery lives in Chicago where she juggles the demands of her career, her love of the city and the arts, and a busy family life. Her writing today reflects her passion for all of the above. She is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Because You Are Mine. Find out more about Beth and her books at BethKery.com or Facebook.com/Beth.Kery.
When I’m With You
PART I: WHEN WE TOUCH
PART II: WHEN YOU DEFY ME
PART III: WHEN YOU TEASE ME
PART IV: WHEN I’M BAD
PART V: WHEN YOU SUBMIT
PART VI: WHEN YOU TRUST ME
Because You Are Mine
PART I: BECAUSE YOU TEMPT ME
PART II: BECAUSE I COULD NOT RESIST
PART III: BECAUSE YOU HAUNT ME
PART IV: BECAUSE YOU MUST LEARN
PART V: BECAUSE I SAID SO
PART VI: BECAUSE YOU TORMENT ME
PART VII: BECAUSE I NEED TO
PART VIII: BECAUSE I AM YOURS
Berkley Sensation titles by Beth Kery
WICKED BURN
DARING TIME
Berkley Heat titles by Beth Kery
SWEET RESTRAINT
PARADISE RULES
RELEASE
EXPLOSIVE
One Night of Passion series
ADDICTED TO YOU (WRITING AS BETHANY KANE)
EXPOSED TO YOU
One Night of Passion Specials
BOUND TO YOU
CAPTURED BY YOU