Beneath the Burn

by Pam Godwin

He tapped the switch on his bedside table and washed the room in darkness. Shifting to face her, he inhaled the sweetness of her exhales and cherished each breathy trace of her existence. She was his greatest possibility. His reason. His why. He would give whatever she needed to be whole and happy, because loving her was as essential as drawing air.

  52

  A faraway gasp pulled at Charlee’s sleepy fog. She blinked through the dark, her eyes adjusting to the blanketing shroud. The wrinkled bedding, gray in the absence of light, was tossed back. The dip in the mattress beside her, empty.

  Another distant inhale. Without moving, she squinted in the direction of the sound.

  A silhouette blotted the far wall. She focused on the long, lean outline and the movement of the lower half. She needed neither light nor nearness to recognize Jay’s incredible body.

  She held herself still as his hands cupped his groin. No, they stroked. One up and down in long twists of his wrist, the other kneading underneath. His briefs pooled around his ankles, the back of his head resting against the wall. The sharp angle of his jaw stretched up, scissoring back and forth, and the slivers of his half-lidded eyes glinted, watching her.

  A hot wave of lust descended over her and concentrated between her thighs. There was nothing more seductive than the way his smoldering gaze raked the outline of her body as he rubbed himself with furious pumps.

  The speed of his strokes escalated, and his hips thrust into his rotating fist. The muffled sounds behind his closed lips skittered quivers along her thighs. Would he finish if he knew she was watching? Peeking through the narrow slits of her eyes, she held herself immobile, enthralled by the view and the man providing it.

  His shoulders bunched forward, rolling the muscles in his chest. He licked his lips, panting, his neck straining, his abs crunching. And still, his eyes remained firmly locked on her.

  The sight of his nude body, impeccably defined and flexing toward climax, pushed her heart beat from frenzied to dangerous. He shifted his stance, spreading his legs farther apart, and pressed his shoulders to the wall. Was he on the cusp of release? Imagining him letting go made her breath catch and her stomach take on that unnerving butterfly effect. She dug her fingernails into the pillow to keep from reaching down and massaging the pulsing ache.

  The twitches cascading over his body, the heat of his gaze, and the unrestrained way he rocked into his fist were too much. So completely enraptured by his lust, she jerked her hand down and covered the triangle of lace with stiff fingers, pressing against the throb as if that could possibly sate it.

  His strokes slammed to a halt, chest heaving and air hissing through clenched teeth. His lips, taut with arousal only a moment earlier, slowly slid up at the corners. “How long have you been watching me, pervert?”

  Holding his penetrating stare, she sat up and scooted to the edge of the bed. The sheet pulled away, and he sucked in a sharp breath.

  “Not as long as you have been watching me.” She leaned back on her arms, grinning. “Pervert.”

  He looked at the floor, hand clamped around his cock. “This isn’t—”

  “What it looks like?”

  His head fell against the wall with a thunk and he groaned to the ceiling. “I’m not usually this creepy.” Without releasing his erection, he straightened and squinted at her. “I won’t hurt you, Charlee. I promise I’ll stay right here until I calm down.”

  Clueless man. “We’re going to pretend you didn’t just say that.” She slid her panties down her legs and kicked them off her feet. “Any of it.”

  His nostrils flared and his fist squeezed, stroking once, twice. She burned everywhere his eyes lingered. Her breasts, her mound, her legs, darting back to her face.

  “Charlee.” A pant. Another stroke.

  Could she get him worked up enough to take her roughly? Would rough be enough to get her off? She raised her hand and drew her middle finger between her lips, out, in, out, in long sucking strokes, humming.

  His free hand splayed on his thigh as his fist resumed its previous rhythm. “Fuck, Charlee.” A shudder rippled over his torso. “Stop that. You’re not helping.”

  His voice, thick with arousal, thrilled her, powered her to continue. She’d never played with a man this way, had no clue what she was doing. Each slurp of her finger and smack of her lips was answered with a strained rattle low in his throat. He leaned toward her, but his feet remained cemented to the floor.

  Not enough seduction? Fine. She spread her legs, hooked her heels on the bed frame, and lowered her finger from her mouth to her clit. She looked at him, knowing her eyes conveyed an earnest request.

  Dark hair clung to his forehead in a bed-ruffled mess of sexiness. He brushed it away and shoved off the wall. Given the tense lines of his muscles, she expected him to rush the distance and tackle her.

  His strong, lithe legs stepped out of his briefs and moved in a deliberate, predatory stalk toward the bed. The sinews in his thighs stretched through his strides and his hand fell away from his arousal to ball at his side, his eyes intent and unblinking.

  Bared in her spread position, toes curled around the bed frame and one arm wobbling to support her backward lean, she imagined him carrying a paddle, swinging the danger in waves through the room. Her desire mounted.

  The way he prowled toward her with clipped breath and that made-for-sex physique, he had dangerous perfected. His dominant side vibrated at the end of some kind of noble leash. She knew it was there. Hell, she’d seen the proof of it tied to a piano. But instead of tying her down while she slept, he’d snuck across the room to jerk off at a safe distance, the polite bastard.

  She circled her finger around the centermost point of her ache. “You told me on the plane that part of my problem was thinking instead of feeling. Are you taking your own advice?”

  He stopped at the mattress and bowed over her, hips between her thighs, chest pumping against hers, arms braced on either side. His eyes were a rich brown in the darkened room. A thin band of moonlight glanced off his jaw, highlighting the masculine square of his chin. “Tell me exactly what you want.”

  The beat of her heart stumbled. “I want you to take without asking.” Never would she have uttered those words to anyone else. Why him? How had he coaxed all her reckless desires to the surface so fiercely? By the softened look on his face, he understood the degree of trust and vulnerability she offered.

  Their gazes clung in that stalled moment, their bodies straining toward the other, and finally, finally, he reached between her legs, nudged her hand away, and cupped her with the possessive strength she longed for.

  She arched her back and sought his mouth, urgent and greedy. He drew in her tongue and pushed it back with his own. Their deep, gasping kisses energized the air and coated her body in goose bumps.

  He slid his lips over her cheek to her ear and placed a gentle peck on her bandage. “Lay back. Hands above your head.”

  Her breath caught and her entire body ignited with tingles. That command in his deep, husky timbre…Holy hell, what a seductive combination. She raised her arms and collapsed on the mattress.

  “Good girl.” One of the fingers between her legs pressed in, rotated, and slipped out with a rush of moisture.

  Her impatience squeaked in her throat and she blinked in the glare of his dilated eyes.

  He entered her again, fuller this time. Two fingers, maybe three. She squirmed as he stretched and stroked her walls, rippling shivers through her body.

  “Stop wiggling.” His eyes glimmered and his tongue slid lazily over her parted lips. He radiated heat everywhere he touched her. His breath, so close, washed over her face in a minty haze. Another swipe of his tongue and he plunged past her lips in the same curling movement as his fingers inside her.

  When she bucked again, he yanked his fingers out and slapped her thigh. She sucked in a breath, his breath, breathing him in, because his mouth was there, trapping hers.

  She calmed the roll of her hips and followed the
lead of his nips and licks. No one had kissed her since Roy, and no one had ever kissed her in the acquiring, ravenous manner in which he controlled her mouth. It was as though he wanted to bring her inside him and consume her. It was unfamiliar and so very intimate to be enveloped and adored by man who was both intense and caring.

  Fingers returned to her entrance and the invasion was deliciously forceful. At the same time, his other hand combed through her hair from root to tip with a tenderness that made her ache in a whole other way.

  His assault on her pussy strengthened, quickened, and he devoured her mouth so thoroughly, she struggled to breathe. All she could think over and over was how much abandon she would find beneath the bruising strength, slamming fists, and punishing thrusts of a man she trusted. “I do trust you, Jay,” she gasped against his mouth. “Please.”

  He broke away, panting, his body slick with sweat. “What’s your safe word?”

  “What?” There was only one reason he’d need—

  “Safe word. I need a safe word, Charlee.” He crawled over her leg and yanked open the drawer in the bedside table.

  A release of tension shook from her muscles. Was it a release? Or was it an outpouring of fear? The kind of fear she longed for. “Huntress.”

  He froze, looked over his shoulder at her. “Huntress?” His face was tight, but a smile gleamed in his eyes.

  “Yeah.” She lifted a shoulder and leaned around him. “If you’re looking for a condom, you don’t need one. I get birth control shots. And I’m clean.”

  In the next breath, he fisted her hair and used it to haul her bodily up the mattress to where he knelt by the headboard. Burning stings ripped across her scalp, sparking her arousal. She moaned.

  He released her, eyes wide. “Oh fuck. I hurt you.”

  She reached for his face, hovered her hands above the flushed skin without touching. “That’s the point.”

  His eyes glazed over with a cloud of tortured debate. Jesus, she shouldn’t have asked him for this. It was selfish and cruel and could hurt him in a way he didn’t deserve to be hurt. She tugged on her hands in his clasp. “Jay, stop. This isn’t right.”

  He shoved her to her back on the bed and knelt over her. “Stop isn’t your safe word. I will ignore it. Do you understand?”

  The hardened look he gave her stole her voice and swept shivering pleasure down her legs. She nodded.

  He shifted to the bedside table, dug in the back of the drawer, and returned with a bundle of rope. “I’ve never used this in this room. In fact, other than the staff, there’s never been a woman in this room. But I know how to use it safely.” He rubbed his nape. “And have more times than I care to point out.” He raised his eyes to hers. “Still trust me?”

  She jerked her head up and down.

  “I might know how to tie knots, but I’m new to this…power exchange concept.” He pinned her with a hard frown. “I trust you to use your safe word.”

  “That won’t be a problem.” And it wouldn’t. A couple Doms had threatened to terminate her contract because she abused the power she had with the word.

  She held out her hands, wrists together, and a thought came to her. “Are you tying me because you’re afraid the touching trigger might come back?”

  He twined the rope over her wrists in a practiced pattern. “That’s part of it. We could test your hands on me like we did before, but I’m not inclined to ruin the mood if I’ve relapsed.” The corner of his mouth popped up. “We’re doing this without any hindrances. I’ve waited too goddamned long for you.”

  With a yank on the rope, he tightened the knot and used it to pull her arms over her head. A tangle of excitement and apprehension flittered through her veins.

  A few minutes later, he finished with the length strapped around the mattress, under the frame to the foot of the bed, and tied it to one of her ankles. She was effectively and unnervingly restrained.

  She wondered how disgusting she looked trussed up like that until he knelt between her thighs and scanned his work.

  “My God.” The look on his handsome face transformed. His jaw sharpened, his sensuous lips seemed to swell as they opened, and his breathing became more erratic. “I’ve never been so weak with want.”

  The affection in his eyes drained away, replaced by something primitive and stern. She could feel the change in his body, too, as he spread over her, hard-packed and heavy, and jerking in stiff, hasty movements.

  She bucked uselessly against the binds as he drew the head of his erection up and down through her sopping folds. His weight pressed her body into the bed and his mouth fed on hers, one manic kiss after another. His control was slipping, his mouth moving in earnest, clumsy caresses.

  Because he wanted her. Not as a possession to own. Not as a paying client. He wanted her. A sense of power swept through her, at odds with the vulnerability of her bound body.

  He dropped his brow to hers and gripped the inside of her thigh. “I’m going to fuck you now.” His words raised the hair on her neck, and he buried himself in one piercing thrust.

  53

  Warm. Slippery. Comforting. Better than any fantasy Jay had ever conjured. He felt every clench and pull of Charlee’s narrow passage. He fucking felt her.

  If he moved, even an inch, he’d shoot off and end it before it even started. So, he hung onto her tight little body, his hips biting into hers, hands squeezing her ass, and coached his breath.

  With one ankle tied down, she wrapped the other around his back and ground against him, her inner muscles grabbing hold of his shaft, sucking him in deeper.

  Tingles rippled over his glans and his balls drew up. “Stop moving,” he ground out.

  She continued her torturous flexing and blew out a half-sigh, half-groan.

  The seductive sound and the caress of her breath threatened to flatten his control to pulp. He tweaked her nipple. “That includes no breathing.”

  A laugh skated past her lips, contracting her cunt, and stealing his brain cells.

  He shoved a hand between them and clasped her circling hip. “I mean it, Charlee. Give me a minute.”

  What was she doing to him? He’d never experienced this problem. Quite the opposite, in fact. She had him so completely under her spell, he couldn’t even fall asleep beside her. Instead, he had to throw himself off the bed and jack off like a blue-balling virgin.

  Her fists flexed in their bonds, nails piercing her palms, knuckles blanched. She strained against him, her eyes huge and round. They begged as if uncertain he would deliver the pain she needed.

  He’d spent his entire adult life seeking transitory moments of distraction, a buzz, a high, a meaningless orgasm. Now he had Charlee, and he was terrified he would make a mistake, do something stupid, and lose her.

  He tilted her chin up, made her look at him. “No matter what happens, no matter where we go from here, we go together.”

  Damned if her pussy didn’t squeeze with each word he said. Her body relaxed into the bed and a smile kissed her beautiful lips.

  As charming as she was, he needed a verbal acknowledgement. “Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  Those two words saturated the gaping hole inside him, a hole that had been empty for so fucking long. For a fleeting moment, he let it morph into a more explicit meaning. To have and to hold, for pleasure, for pain.

  Eyes locked with hers, he lowered his mouth to her breast and went after her nipple. He tried to focus on what he was about to do and not the soft, wet heat sucking on his dick. He lined his teeth around the precious nub and bit. Hard.

  Her neck arched, and a coppery flavor washed his tongue.

  Oh God, no. There wasn’t supposed to be blood. He looked into her eyes, and the smoldering arousal he found there both scared him and turned him on.

  “The other one,” she said softly and without a hint of misgiving.

  “No! You’re bleeding.” Shit, that came out too gruff, and he knew his expression was a mask of horror.


  Her face pinched and her head turned away. “Okay.”

  Well, that was one way to ward off premature ejaculation. “Look at me.”

  She did, her eyes glassy with shame.

  “Whatever you’re thinking, stop it. I’m fumbling. I know it. And this is too damn important to fuck up.”

  “Jay, it’s okay. Listen—”

  “No, you listen. I’m going to make a mess of this. It’s an honest-to-fuck certainty.”

  “That’s pessimism, not certainty.” She winked.

  God, she was sexy. And understanding. And maybe a little crazy. But the sexy, crazy firecracker needed limits. “No blood. Not budging on that.”

  He followed her lowering eyes to the tiny red bead clinging to her nipple. With a swipe of his tongue, he licked it away. This was her normal. Her benchmark for judging the value and quality of pleasure. He was an outsider, trying to get in. He’d get there. He would. In the meantime, he’d have to do things her way.

  “Be patient with me.” He shifted his attention to the other breast, tasted the unmarked skin. “Don’t you dare feel bad when I get frustrated.” He dragged his teeth over her nipple. “And I get frustrated a lot.”

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  Smart ass. He pressed forward and took her mouth. She met him with the same desperate energy, turning his thoughts to drivel. The firm slide of her kiss made him wild to deepen it, to own her mouth the way she owned him. He worked her lips over, pressing hard, biting, rubbing until they were swollen and red. He dragged his mouth over her jaw, down her throat, and sank his teeth into the rise of her breast without breaking the skin.

  She blinked, bit her puffy lip.

  Well, shit. The last time he bit a tit like that, the woman—he couldn’t remember her face—screamed for ten minutes. It had killed his erection instantly.

  He rotated his pelvis in slow circles. She felt like an extension of his own body wrapped around him, and looked absolutely sinful tied to his bed. It made his heart pump harder, sending more blood south. There was a good chance he was going to pass out if he didn’t come soon. He needed her at his level, burning at the same fevered pitch. He pinched the uninjured nipple.