Transcendent

by Anne Calhoun

  Clearly this wasn’t what she’d expected . . . but he put enough of a taunt into his tone that she wasn’t calling a halt to it.

  His next move was a feint. He lowered his mouth to hers. As expected, she turned her head ever so slightly, her gaze flickering between his mouth and his eyes to gauge his response.

  He adapted, brushing his lips against the heated flesh of her cheek and using the rough scrape of his stubble in counterpoint to the occasional flick of his tongue. When she turned her head to the side with a sigh, he set his mouth to the hollow under her ear.

  A tiny, secretive shudder rippled through her. It was amazing what a precision stealth assault could accomplish where air strikes and heavy ordinance failed. “Put your hands above your head and leave them there.”

  “That has nothing to do with touching me,” she said without moving.

  True, but it had everything to do with surrender. “Surely you understand the concept of setting a scene,” he murmured into her hair.

  She turned her head to meet his gaze. Again, that heart-stopping jolt. Then, defiance in every line of her body, her mouth set in a firm line, she lifted her hands over her head, palms up, fingers curled, the movement as elegant and impassive as a ballerina’s. He sat up and straddled her hips, then trailed his fingers gently over the cashmere and down her sides in sweeping movements, stroking the fine material clinging to the lines of her body. The tension in her body eased ever so slightly with each pass of his hands. Her full lips parted as sensation lapped at her resistance.

  Then he switched tactics, increasing the pressure of his touch, catching the cashmere between his fingers and using it to caress the skin of her arms, then her shoulders, then abdomen. Eyes heavy-lidded, she undulated, then stiffened up again, as if reminded of her determination to defy what he made her feel.

  He avoided her breasts entirely until her nipples peaked under the material, then stroked only the gentle swell of the undersides. Nothing came between his hands and her skin except the sweater.

  “No bra?”

  “I’m barely an A cup. You know that,” she said. The words held a hint of Miss Banks’ green-apple-tart tone but were low, distant. Absorbed in what he made her feel, despite the set of her body.

  So the lacy bras and garter belts were part of the costume she wore for their encounters. He filed away this detail of the real Marin. “I like you like this,” he said. “Bare. Accessible.”

  Another soft, distracted sound, but she went silent when he used the backs of his curled fingers to pet the sides of her breasts. The first time he grazed her nipples she gasped and the second time she arched into his hands like a cat. He kept the material between his thumbs and forefingers as he pinched and rolled the swollen peaks.

  She grew taut underneath him, her body quivering with resistance. Her eyes opened, closed, opened again, fighting to stay alert and distance herself from what she felt. Another firmer pinch and she let out a whimper, bit her lip, then curled her fingers into the sheet above her head. His cock strained at his zipper, but he ignored his need and focused on the subtle battle she waged inside. Protracted, gentle touch generated an entirely different kind of need in Marin. Hotter. Softer. Languid. Her lips were pink and swollen from her efforts to muffle the noises growing throatier as the minutes passed.

  Watching her sink into desire and fight it every step of the way sent hot lust cracking down his spine. He focused his attention on her breasts and nipples and let sensation work against her trembling body until he couldn’t stand the barrier between them and pushed at her sweater.

  “Off,” he commanded.

  She’d followed orders frequently enough to automatically obey the tone, and let him pull her sweater over her head. He smoothed the tousled hair back from her face then deliberately bent to her nipples, patiently seeking the right combination of teeth and tongue to make her quiver with the effort of not reacting. She moaned when he abandoned the pink, swollen tips to press a line of kisses down the center of her body. With little effort he worked her jeans down and off. He kissed each hipbone, the taut skin of her abdomen, the bottom of her sternum, then shifted back to her side, leaned his head on his doubled arm and slid his fingers over her bare mound.

  The soft folds between her legs were wet and swollen. He didn’t gloat, just trailed her slick juices up to her clit and began to circle the taut nub, all the while taking in the way she struggled to lash down her increasingly undisciplined response. The abrupt, halting movements of her hips were completely unlike Miss Banks’ smooth, fluid responses, and blood dotted her lower lip. She’d bitten it.

  He bent down and tasted the hot copper tang of her blood. “Stop fighting me. Stop fighting yourself,” he said. “Let this happen.”

  “I’m not . . . I can’t,” she said on a desperate sigh, but her hips lifted into his hand and her thighs tightened as she said it.

  “It’ll be good,” he murmured. “You know it will.”

  But a part of him wanted her to hold out. He’d seen her come more times than he could count, fucked her as ruthlessly as he’d ever fucked a woman, but he’d never seen her battle the riptide of pleasure’s onslaught and lose.

  A few more strokes along her swelling clit and sweat broke out between her breasts and in the delicate crease of her thigh. Suddenly, as if the prolonged caresses snipped a taut-strung wire, the tension in her body shifted from resistance to red-hot need. She pulled up one leg, giving him a little more room to maneuver, then her other leg came up and dropped open against his hip. Primitive male possessiveness surged in his chest as the delicate scent of sweat and female arousal drifted into the air.

  Cole clenched his jaw to keep from ripping open his jeans and plunging into her. Hard and fast would get him physical release, his and hers. He wanted more. He kept the pace and the pressure, watched the familiar blood flush bloom on her collarbone, spread up her throat, into her cheeks as she arched, then went rigid and succumbed. Her clit pulsed under his fingertip as she tried to stifle her moan of release. Then the tension eased from her body, leaving her slack-limbed on his bed. He lightened his touch, then stopped moving entirely, simply resting his hand on her mound.

  On the surface, it was such a simple experience, surrendering to a relentlessly gentle touch, but already they were off the map, physically and emotionally. He kept his body relaxed, his breathing even and waited for the results of the skirmish.

  Marin’s muscles bunched and she scrambled to her knees at the foot of the bed. “We’re done.”

  Success.

  He grabbed for her, his fingers closing around her delicate wrist. “We’re not done.”

  Ten inches taller and a hundred pounds heavier hung in the air. He kept his gaze level, watching fire and fear snap in her eyes, and tried to look like a badass motherfucker who’d use physical strength to his advantage.

  A long moment passed before her gaze went semi-opaque again; her shoulders straightened and her arm slackened in his grip as she pulled her serenity around her like a mantle of snow. “What did you hope to prove with that?” she asked. “We both know you can make me come.”

  He cursed mentally, because he could work with Marin in flight or fight mode but not on emotional lockdown. “You don’t think that was different than our entire history to date?”

  It was, and they both knew it. She lifted her chin and shrugged, distancing herself.

  Keep her curious. Guessing. He let her wrist drop. “The deal was I touch you however I wanted, for as long as I wanted, but if it’s too much for you . . .”

  The taunt hung in the air, along with Find out. Marin was too smart to manipulate but too adventurous to walk away from a mystery. “Why?” she asked obliquely.

  “Undress me,” he said, tying the answer to her compliance.

  A long moment passed, then she knelt in front of him and began to unfasten the buttons on his shirt. He waited unti
l she was focused on the task, then spoke.

  “I saw you dance Thursday,” he said.

  Searching her real name on Google gave him a shock equivalent to the one he felt when Miss Banks walked into the room their first night together. Marin Bryant, aka Miss Banks, was a principal dancer at the peak of her career with a modern dance company, and in a heart-stopping moment of realization when he clicked through reviews in Time Out New York, the Post, and the Times, the puzzle pieces of who she was and what they were about clicked into place.

  She paused in the act of tugging his shirttails free from his jeans. “Thursday night was the closing show of our season. Tickets were sold out nine months ago. How did you get a seat?”

  “I’m now a Platinum Circle Patron of the Selma Galenti Company,” he said.

  She let out a short laugh as she glanced significantly around his Fifth Avenue apartment, then pulled his shirt free. “God only knows who the front office browbeat into giving up a seat to please a new major donor,” she said, then slid both hands up his chest to his shoulders and pushed the fabric down his arms.

  The shirt caught on his still-buttoned cuffs. The error made a blush flare in her cheeks, but he liked the unscripted feel of this, and at an extremely base level, he really liked the way she looked kneeling naked in front of him.

  She recovered quickly, murmuring, “What did you think?” as she unfastened one cuff, then the other, playing the subservient role to the hilt.

  He couldn’t put what he thought into words. When the curtain opened and he saw Marin rise off the stage, using what seemed like an acre of iridescent silk in her skirt as a prop in a whirling, leaping piece titled Transfixed, his heart seized tight and punched his ribs. Then his brain shut down entirely.

  “I don’t know anything about dance,” he admitted, “but you were spectacular to watch.”

  At his faint, inarticulate praise, she glanced up. Electric shock times ten, because the wildness and power and intensity of the dance flashed in her eyes before she locked it down. He went still.

  There it was. Transformation. That was what she locked down, except when she was performing. That was what he’d seen flashing under Miss Banks’s serene surface, the surface no amount of erotic pain could crack. That was what he wanted to feel flowing through him, over him, what pleasure had almost broken free a few minutes earlier.

  Life itself, channeled through Marin.

  She pulled off his shirt and tossed it toward the foot of the bed. “You’re not supposed to ‘know dance.’ You feel dance. At its best, dance steals into your soul and transforms you.”

  “Then what I saw was dance at its very best,” he said quietly.

  She halted in the process of hooking her fingers in his belt and looked up at him, absorbing his words. “Thank you,” she said, but she didn’t stop removing his clothes. With deft fingers she got his belt open and jeans unzipped, but he didn’t lift up so she could push off his jeans.

  “What do you have in mind, Cole?”

  Her trademark serenity was a thin veneer over the passion he felt straining to break free. He’d come too far to flinch now.

  “Kiss me.”

  The wildness glinted bright and hot in her eyes then disappeared as she bent her head. He smoothed his palm along the side of her jaw, cupped it, stroked her cheek with his thumb. There was nothing more intimate than mouth-to-mouth contact, the shifting, sliding pressure of lips, the mingled breaths, the soft words and pleas tasted as much as heard.

  She looked at him then, really looked at him. He had no idea what she saw. She was Marin Bryant and Miss Banks and a conduit for Terpsichore, the goddess of dance, but he was Colson Fleming IV and Fleming from prep school and Captain Fleming to his fellow Marines and then Fleming again when he joined Cooper Bensonhurst as a trader. He had no idea what she saw in his eyes, but he prayed it was something like You can own me and I can own you if you just let down those goddamn walls.

  “I don’t like being vulnerable,” she said finally.

  No fucking doubt. “You’re vulnerable every time we meet,” he said, encircling one wrist with his fingers.

  “I’m not,” she whispered.

  He lifted that wrist to his mouth and pressed a kiss into the inside. “Ten inches taller and a hundred pounds heavier, remember?” he said, then grasped the other.

  “You wouldn’t hurt me,” she said, but he was kissing that wrist as she said it, then nibbling at the tendons under the skin.

  Her eyes were closed, her voice low and distracted as the words tumbled into the air. As they dissipated into the room she opened her eyes and looked at him, the battle between wants and fears playing out in every line of her body.

  With her he could be wholly himself. He wanted to offer her the same freedom.

  “I won’t hurt you in any way,” he said. “Trust me, Marin.”

  He knew what he was asking her to do. For someone who experienced life deeply and had the talent to translate it into an intense, physical art, wild emotion felt dangerous. Threatening. Marin used the discipline of dance and their meetings to channel her strongest, wildest emotions—lust, anger, desire, love, need—into all-encompassing, explosive release. She’d never kissed him, never let him kiss her, and he wanted her mouth on his more than he’d ever wanted anything else in his entire life. Not for himself, so he could “claim her,” although no lie, he would do that.

  He wanted this for her. He wanted to give her the complete freedom to experience and show everything, no fear, no boundaries, no restraints, no roles. Just him and Marin.

  She had to want to do this. He could strategize and maneuver, make her come a dozen different ways and times, but he couldn’t make a kiss meaningful unless she offered it to him.

  When she lifted her eyes to his, it was his turn to freeze. Everything lashed deep down in her soul was glinting in her green eyes, turning them a stormy sea green. He braced himself, waiting for her to come to him. Then she rose just enough to bring her face level with his, tilted forward, and brushed her lips across his.

  He’d asked for one kiss, and one kiss only, but she didn’t pull away. Instead her breath eased from her in a shuddering little sigh that soothed the sparks popping under the skin of his mouth. Delicate and sure, she stroked her tongue along his lower lip, then paused, as if evaluating the taste of him.

  Barely daring to breathe, he stayed silent and still. A moment later she gave him another kiss, this one with more pressure, her mouth open against his, then her tongue dipped into his mouth. The faintest trace of coppery blood dissipated with the kiss. The instant when her tongue stroked over his, when the floodgates opened and she let everything she felt flow through her, into him, the brilliant, nuclear heat of the sun shot through his veins.

  He cupped the back of her head with one hand and wrapped his other arm around her waist, pulling her naked body to his. He’d never felt so alive, not under machine-gun fire, not under the daily stress on the trading floor, not in Lady Matilda’s shadowy boudoir with Miss Banks. There was adrenaline, and there was Marin, mouth open under his, tongue to tongue, trading gasps.

  More.

  She might have said it, he might have imagined it, but they both felt it. Breathing hard, he backed off the bed and shoved his jeans down, then grabbed a condom from his nightstand. He sheathed himself by touch because he couldn’t take his eyes off her, sitting back on her heels in the middle of his bed all pale skin and white blond hair, transformed into a white-hot column of flame.

  He crawled back to the middle of the bed, pushed her on her back, and moved between her legs. Braced just above her, her nipples brushing his chest with each inhale, his cock nestled just inside her wet, swollen folds, he looked down into her stormy green eyes and said, “Kiss me. Don’t stop until I’m inside you.”

  She gave a high-pitched groan, then gripped his nape with one hand and brought his mouth to h
ers. He felt his pulse pound as she kissed him like she couldn’t get enough, licking and nipping at his lips and tongue. Sweat broke out on his back as he slid in, inch by excruciatingly hot, tight inch, until he was as deep inside her as he could get, hip to hip, chest to chest, and finally, his mouth on hers. Limitless energy unleashed, she writhed under him, but he withdrew as slowly as he’d slid in, paused for a deep, thorough kiss, then eased forward again.

  Again. Again. Again and again and he was going to go out of his mind, because she was surely going out of hers. Trapped between his body and the mattress, she writhed under him, strong enough to make him work to hold her down as everything she felt animated her body. He held her down and fucked her slow and steady until that wild, restless energy coalesced into pure need. On his next deep, gliding stroke she lifted her hips to meet his, her sheath clamped around his cock, her mouth open under his. A high-pitched, shuddering noise he’d never heard her make slipped from her mouth. She shoved at his chest but he didn’t move for her.

  “God, Cole,” she gasped against his mouth. “You’re cruel!”

  Given their history, the irony of that particular statement made him laugh. “You love it,” he growled, political correctness and everything he’d learned about being a gentleman long gone.

  He braced his elbows above her shoulders to keep her in position and put the full power of his hips into the next thrust. Her eyes slammed shut as she arched hard and cried out. Christ, it felt so good, hot and slick and so right to be inside Marin, naked and sweating and striving together.

  “Look at me,” he said, and paused until she did.

  The open vulnerability in her eyes had his heart battering his breastbone and his throat locked too tight to breathe. He could see how hard it was for her to be vulnerable like this, like the conduit of human emotion she became on stage, exposed for everyone to see, for him to see. But she did it, let the emotion he sparked in her flare through her eyes as she clung to him, fingers digging into his shoulders. Each plunging thrust forced a gasp from her. The pink flush of sex was high in her cheekbones, in her exposed throat.