by Nora Ash
My cock throbbed eagerly at the memory. Who knew a rough hate-fuck would end up the best sex of my damned life?
I drew a teasing circle around her tight nipple and saw the small bud harden into a full peak.
Should have taken the time to explore her luscious little body some more, but the desperate need to be inside of her hadn’t left time for such luxuries.
I glanced at Mira’s sleeping face. Maybe she’d be up for seconds. Nothing beat lazy morning sex as a hangover cure, and we could always go back to hating each other after an orgasm or two. Or three.
I slipped my hand down her side and up underneath her chemise, eager to feel more of her warm skin. When I brushed across her soft stomach, something slightly rough and raised on her skin made me pause. It felt like scar tissue. My fingertips danced across it for a few moments, but the small burst of curiosity at the unexpected appearance of scars on her abdomen was quickly smothered by my cock’s desperate pulsing. Demanding fucker.
I pushed further up until my questing hand reached her soft breast. It felt even better without fabric covering it. I squeezed the plump flesh gently.
Mira murmured sleepily in response, and I quirked my head to see if she was waking up.
Her eyes were still firmly shut, and her face relaxed. No such luck.
Hmm.
Carefully, I rolled her off my shoulder—wiping her drool off my skin with a grimace—so I could maneuver better. She grumbled in obvious protest at the loss of contact, but still didn’t wake.
Mira was a heavy sleeper, apparently. At least after half a bottle of whiskey.
I dragged the loose neckline of her cleavage down far enough to let both breasts spill over the edge of the fabric, and hummed appreciatively at the sight before latching one to one of the peachy pink little nubs.
Mira mumbled in her sleep again. It sounded more like a moan this time, and it made an aching spasm travel down the length of my cock. Yeah, morning sex was so on.
I leaned over so I could rest on one elbow, letting my other hand travel down her body until it got to the heat between her thighs. I stroked one finger through her cleft while pulling gently at her nipple, and was rewarded when she spread her thighs with a sleepy sigh.
Damn, I needed to fuck her again. So much for exploring her body more carefully—one tit fondle and I was desperate to get inside her wet little snatch. What the hell kind of heroin did she hide in there?
I let my fingers find her clit, stroking it gently until she started to squirm, her breathing no longer deep and peaceful. Then I delved a finger inside of silken folds and was rewarded with the drenched embrace of her cunt.
She soaked so easily for me, it was a wonder she’d managed to put up so much of a fight before finally caving. I smirked at the knowledge that the prim and proper psychologist who had thrown me out of her office for asking for a fuck was as attracted to my body as any other red-blooded female I’d come across since hitting puberty. Perhaps even more so, if her pussy’s slick welcome was any indicator.
I slipped another finger into her while keeping my thumb busy on her clit, and this time, her response was a full-throated moan. Seemed like she was coming to. I pumped her slowly, aching to bury my tongue between her thighs, but ego made me hold back. I wanted to see her face fall apart when I sucked on her clit, and she’d have to be fully awake for that to happen. Maybe after the first round.
I curved both fingers in her tight heat just so, hitting the spongy flesh nestled behind her pelvic bone firmly.
“Blaine.”
I popped my mouth off her nipple to look at her at the breathy sound of my name, but her eyes were still closed even though a frown marred her face. I rubbed against her G-spot while watching her, and nearly came at the fine tremor playing across her pretty features as she breathed shakily. Slowly, her body began to move under mine, the rhythm of my hand transferring to her hips as I brought her closer and closer.
Nope, couldn’t keep watching her face or I’d end up fucking her before she woke up fully. My cock was hurting from the need to be inside of her, and watching her slowly come undone made it unbearable. Instead, I busied my mouth at her breasts again, licking and sucking at her pert nipples in time with my fingers’ thrusting.
Her moans and whimpers spurred me on until her pussy clamped up tight, squeezing my fingers to a halt for two long seconds before erupting in a series of fluttering spasms. Her body seized underneath mine, and she gasped her pleasure out as I lifted my head just in time to see her eyes pop open.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
I gotta be honest, that wasn’t exactly the response I’d expected. Nevertheless, I gave her flustered and panting face a smirk and thrilled my fingers over her undoubtedly hypersensitive G-spot. “Getting you off.”
Mira jerked underneath me and grabbed at my wrist to still my teasing movements. “Get off me!”
“I would rather get off in yo—uff!” I hadn’t been observant enough, and paid for my cheek when she dug a knee into my gut and pushed.
For a relatively small bird, she had a lot of leg power.
I rolled off her, pressing a hand to my now pretty sore abs, and narrowly avoided getting kicked in the dick by her flailing legs as she scrambled up to the headboard of the bed, duvet wrapped around her like a virgin hiding from some tentacled hentai beast. Her hazel eyes were large and unfocused, but the anger in them was unmistakable.
Great. Seemed like we were gonna go right back to hating each other before I’d gotten as much as a thank-you wank. I rubbed at my sore stomach and gave her an irritated glare. “What the hell was that for?”
“What was that for…?” Despite her obvious trouble with seeing me clearly without her glasses, she managed to look both astonished and absolutely furious at the same time. I might have been impressed, if my flagging cock didn’t mean I now had enough blood left in my brain to properly feel my hangover again.
“That was for molesting me, you absolute twat!” Apparently, she’d had enough of not being able to focus all that anger at my face, because she reached out for her glasses on the nightstand, and managed to knock over the near-empty bottle of whiskey she’d placed there the night before in her efforts.
“Molesting you? You just came all over my hand! While moaning my name, I might add. Jesus fucking Christ, what about a ‘thank-you’ instead of kneeing me in the gut?”
“A ‘thank-you’?” Her voice turned shrill, and I winced as it went right through my brain. She leveled a glare at me through the black-rimmed glasses that could have turned a more easily intimidated man into stone. “Right! Then thank you for taking advantage at me while I was drunk and emotionally fucked up after the worst week of my life. Which, I might add, is a pretty goddamn bad week. And while I’m at it, thank you so much for marrying me against my will and ruining my life! Now kindly get the fuck out of my bed!”
Awesome. We were back to this, then.
Something that seemed an awful lot like disappointment nestled in the pit of my belly. I had no idea why—perhaps the first-class fuck had given drunk-me some half-baked hope that this arrangement wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Drunk-me was a moron.
Letting the bizarre sense of disappointment be washed away by my general annoyance—at her, at my father and most definitely at my once again hard and hopeful cock—I got out of bed and stretched, rolling my shoulders to ease some of the irritation out of my body.
“Fine. If this is how you want it, this is how you’ll get it.” I shot her a dark look over my shoulder, letting her know exactly who she was dealing with. She might know I had a weakness, and her body might draw me in like a moth to a flame, but I was still Blaine Steel. And like it or not, she was going to have to deal with being my wife. My unwanted wife.
“Get dressed and pack your things. I’ll send one of my men up to get you after exactly forty-five minutes. He will help you get your stuff down to the lobby. Do not be late. If I have to come get you myself, you’re
going to be sorry. We’ll discuss the rest of the rules you’ll have to live by once we’re home.”
Satisfied with her dumbstruck expression, I bent to snatch my clothes up from the floor and left the bedroom with as much of a door-slam as my head could handle.
If she insisted on making life hard, then I could certainly play that game too. No one bested a Steel, and the sooner the obnoxious little shrink learned that lesson, the better.
* * * *
Chapter 8
Mira
Don’t leave the house without an escort
Don’t go into the shed
Don’t invite anyone over
Don’t ask questions about visitors
Don’t speak to visitors unless spoken to
Don’t open the door without permission
Stop sulking
I glared at Blaine from behind the kitchen counter, where I’d been watching him write down the “house rules” in big, black letters on the fridge. My ire had grown for every line, but the final one pushed me over the edge, my irritation finally overwhelming whatever fear was left from the drive here. Being surrounded by goons was such a sharp reminder of exactly what sort of family I’d gotten married into, and Blaine had been quiet and broody ever since our confrontation in the morning. On top of how the morning had started out, I’d been too shaken to feel anything but the return of my anxiety.
That is, until the arsehole started making The List.
“Maybe I’d stop ‘sulking’ if you stopped acting like I’m your prisoner. What’s number eight going to be? That I have to ask before going to the bathroom?”
Blaine rubbed at his neck as if he was trying to work out a particularly bothersome knot, but he didn’t turn around to look at me. In fact, he hadn’t looked at me all day, since he left our bedroom in a huff. “I don’t give a fuck about what you do when we’re alone, as long as you do it inside the house. These rules are as much for your sake as they are mine.”
“Go on. I can’t wait to hear how it’s for my own sake that I can’t have visitors.” I was pretty pleased with my dry tone.
He finally turned around then, and looked at me with one eyebrow cocked. “It’s been a while since you’ve lived in this world, hasn’t it?”
“You mean, since I’ve had to live among criminals? Yeah, it has.”
Blaine capped the black marker he’d been using to write on the American-style fridge, crossed both arms over his chest so his muscles bulged against the strain of his T-shirt, and leaned a shoulder against the appliance. “My family has a lot of enemies, and you’re a soft and squishy target. I can guarantee you that every single one of those enemies is trying to find a way to get to you as we speak. So say you invite a friend over, and someone watched them walk in the door here. You think many of the men who are out to get me would hesitate to snatch them off the street to find out anything they might know about us?”
I paled at that implication. No, I knew that sort of men all too well. They wouldn’t hesitate to use torture if they thought they could gain an advantage.
“Want to order a pizza? If it’s not checked by one of our guys, you have no guarantee it’s not delivered by a hitman in disguise. Feel like taking a wander around the neighborhood? Those same men who would snatch up your friends in a second would do much, much worse to you. So you might think of yourself as a prisoner if that floats your boat, but I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a lot better than the alternative.”
I bit my lip at his challenging stare, more than a little annoyed at his excellent use of logic. I wasn’t in the mood to back down. “And the shed? What horrors will befall me if I dare venture into the backyard? You keeping a magical rose in a glass jar or something?”
Blaine grunted and shoved off the fridge so he could make his way toward the French doors between the kitchen and the hallway. “You say you’ve not been involved in this world for a while. Let’s keep it that way.”
I stared after him as he sauntered out of the room, but quickly averted my gaze when he grabbed the hem of his T-shirt and pulled it over his head, revealing his tattooed and perfectly muscled back. There was absolutely no need to see anymore of Blaine naked. Not after what had happened in that blasted hotel room.
“I’m grabbing a shower. My room’s the big one on the first floor. Pick any of the others for yourself, and do whatever the fuck you want to the rest of the house,” he called as he disappeared around the corner. The sound of his steps made it obvious that he was headed up the large staircase I’d seen when we came in through the front door.
Great. I looked around the large kitchen while pointedly ignoring the offensive list on the fridge. The house seemed about as warm and inviting as my new husband—no decorative touches lit up the bare surfaces and stainless steel appliances.
Not that I really wanted Blaine to be “warm and inviting,” no siree. My cheeks flushed hotly at the memories I’d been doing my best to suppress all day. Thanks to the hefty amounts of alcohol in my system, I didn’t have a fully intact recollection of what exactly had happened between us, but my brain didn’t spare me many details from the actual sex. The hot, sweaty, and ridiculously good sex.
Not that I’d been able to live in ignorance, even if my brain wasn’t such a dick. Every muscle in my body hurt, like I’d been worked over good and thorough, leaving a lazy sort of ache not only in my limbs but also in the kind of places whiskey just didn’t get you sore.
It had taken all I had not to limp in front of Blaine or his “men.” It was bad enough I’d had the biggest lapse in judgment of all time—I wasn’t about to boost the jerk’s ego any further by acknowledging how stupidly well-endowed he was.
Not that he didn’t already know. Logging around a cock the size of a damn water bottle was not something a man as arrogant as Blaine would be ignorant about.
God dammit! And here I was, obsessing about the damn thing when I should be busy either having a nervous breakdown or figuring out a plan as to how to get out of this nightmare of an arranged marriage. Just great!
I spent most of the afternoon exploring my new home, partly to keep my mind off any further unsavory thoughts of Blaine.
I had thought this was Blaine’s house, but when I walked around, I saw that every room was only sparsely decorated with the necessities, and a few of them had unopened moving boxes scattered around. Seemed like we were both new occupants.
The house itself turned out to be gorgeous and absolutely huge. It was an Edwardian-style townhouse located off a quiet street, but during my initial explorations I counted six bedrooms, five living rooms, a library, and a couple of smaller, empty rooms that would likely make good offices or playrooms. I didn’t count that many bathrooms, but most of the bedrooms seemed to be en-suite.
Crime had to be paying more than well for the Steels, because this house would have been so expensive it could have fed an African village for a decade.
I picked one of the smaller bedrooms located on the top floor. It wasn’t the grandest of spaces, but it was plenty big enough for me, and it had a window bench with a great view over the lush back yard. Whoever had lived here before, they’d hired a superb landscaper.
After dragging my suitcase upstairs, I collapsed on the already made bed for a power nap, too physically and emotionally drained to even get undressed.
* * *
When I woke up again it was dark outside, and my hangover seemed more or less on the retreat.
I lay in the darkness for a bit and let my mind settle in for the first time since my family found me.
And as I did, I felt myself finally start to relax a bit. Yes, the worst had happened, but I was still alive. They hadn’t killed me, and as I’d realized last night in my drunken stupor, my new marriage meant that I was free of them. I might have been dragged back into the criminal underworld, but I wasn’t a teenager anymore. And, dangerous as he might be, Blaine didn’t seem like he would physically harm me. In fact, I’d kicked at him and he hadn’t raised his hand in
retaliation. Not really, anyway.
I flushed at the hazy memory of his hand smacking down between my legs. I probably should be outraged, now that alcohol wasn’t fogging over my brain, but all I could muster was embarrassment—and a hot stab of desire.
No, the only physical danger I was in from Blaine was my own body’s mutiny every time he got near me. Pure, carnal attraction I should be able to ignore.
Which meant it was time to face my fears and realize that I wasn’t helpless anymore. I had been for the last week, locked up like a sacrificial lamb, but that was over now.
I hugged myself close and breathed deeply, repeating that phrase in my head again and again until an inkling of belief took root in my mind.
I was a grown woman now, not an abused child, and I had years of training in dealing with the human psyche. If I could help my patients, then I could help myself.
I can’t say that calmness took over me as I lay there, but more a certain sense of determination that allowed me to focus like I hadn’t been able to since my family found me. If I wanted out of this, then I could find my way with calm planning.
Blaine would no doubt stop me from leaving. Now that we were legally married, it would be an insult to his honor if his wife up and abandoned him. His reputation would suffer, and I knew all too well that honor was everything to men like him.
I briefly touched a hand to my midsection on top of my shirt. I couldn’t feel the scars through the fabric, but I knew they were there. Ugly reminders of just how important honor was to men in this business.
But would he chase me down if I got away? I highly doubted it. Once I was out of London, the damage would have already been done, and I was under no illusion that he would grieve my departure. He and his family would be in their full right to cancel any business arrangements they’d made with my father, and likely also demand compensation, so as long as I figured out a way out of the city, Blaine wouldn’t be a problem.