by Alison Ryan
Stroking Barrett’s cock and kissing him while listening to him talk about her orgasms while standing naked in the sunshine on the balcony of a multimillion dollar mansion overlooking the Gulf of Mexico had Scarlet in a dizzying state of arousal already.
She steeled herself and looked him in the eye, feeling a clench between her legs. “Seven, Barrett. My body wants to come for you right now.”
He grinned. “Good girl. This will be fun.”
Barrett spun her around so she was facing the railing, and he pressed on the small of her back, bending her into position. His foot nudged her feet wider apart and with a searing thrust, he entered her from behind.
Scarlet’s hands clutched the railing and she gasped, trying to focus on the waves of the ocean rather than the tsunami threatening to crash inside her. Through gritted teeth she hissed to her lover “Eight. Fuck, Barrett. Eight!”
Barrett pushed deep inside and held her hips, just letting himself throb inside her. “Don’t let it get to nine. Fight it. Control it.” As he spoke, Barrett slowly withdrew until only the tip remained inside. Her hips rolled and bucked softly.
“Seven. Please put it back in. I need it so badly. I’m desperate to feel you inside me!”
“Mmmmm. Good girl.” Barrett entered her fully once more, repeating the slow withdrawal and thrusting back inside at an irregular pace. He noticed her hips were beginning to follow his cock when he pulled out, moving back with him. He’d increase his pace until she reached eight, then pull back and slow thing down until she reached a more manageable number. At six, he was giving her full force, deep, intense fucking. She was doing better, gaining some measure of control, but when he fucked her like that, she was at his mercy. Helpless. Her body needed an orgasm more than it needed oxygen.
“Barrett please. Please. You just feel too good I have to come. It hurts I need it so bad. Please!”
Barrett continued the game, taking her to a nine, as close as he dare without letting her release, and then easing her away from the edge. Twice people strolled by on the beach, but Barrett never stopped, and Scarlet managed to keep her gasps and groans to a decibel level just below that of the crashing waves.
He’d lost track of time, but her pleading had become frantic, and he feared losing her despite her best efforts. They were both sweating from their exertions and pink from the sun.
He led her trembling body back inside the house, to the nearest bedroom, a guest room bigger than the master in most of the mansions in the Plantation. He lay her down on the bed beneath a lazy ceiling fan and knelt between her legs.
“Same rules apply, Scarlet.”
With that, he began to cover her inner thighs with kisses. She was absolutely writhing, conscious thought given over to pure lust. He wasn’t sure she could form coherent thoughts, much less words, so great was her need. To test his theory, he let his tongue swirl around her engorged clit for a moment, waiting for a number. When none was forthcoming, he began to suck. She was humming, her hands balling up the comforter. He flicked at her clit with the tip of his tongue, employing the full range of his considerable gifts to take her to the brink, but she was having none of it. She’d found a place in her head where she could hide from the climax that was frantically searching for her, but she knew his mouth, his delicious mouth, would be her undoing.
“Seven. Oh you are so good at that. That’s my clit, you’re right on my … Oh Barrett eight I thought I could … you have to stop or … it’s nine Barrett please!“
With that, he mounted her and plunged inside. He held her face in his hands and kissed her passionately, his cock pistoning in and out insistently. The end was inevitable for both of them.
Scarlet tried to scream her number to Barrett, but his kisses – and his cock – would not be denied. She started to thrash just as he emptied himself into her. Feeling him pulsing as his seed filled her was too much. The power, the violence, the intensity of her orgasm was terrifying to both of them. It took all Barrett’s strength to remain astride the bucking bronco Scarlet Bloom had become. Her soul felt turned inside out from the explosion, and the look in her eyes was feral. Her fingernails dug into his back and she shrieked into his mouth.
Barrett had no choice but to remain fully impaled, as every muscle inside Scarlet seized and squeezed his cock. As the jolts finally began to wane, Barrett softly kissed all over Scarlet’s sweaty face and neck. He rolled onto his side, where their arms and legs become tangled into a human pretzel. When Barret began to speak, Scarlet raised a single finger to his lips to silence him and nuzzled into his neck. She needed to be held. She needed to be protected and cradled. Protected from the frightening sexual fury that lay buried within her body. Deep in a place only Barrett Evers could ever hope to find.
Barrett had only wanted to express his love to Scarlet and to ask if she was alright, but he could sense from her body language that more than anything, she just needed his arms around her.
She managed a hoarse whisper into his ear. “Four hundred.”
To the sound of waves crashing outside and fussy seagulls arguing over scraps on the beach, the two lovers fell asleep with nothing to clothe them but their sweat and the salty ocean breeze coming in from the open French doors to the balcony where their tryst had begun.
********
Barrett had woken up first as the setting sun of the day cast shadows across Scarlet’s naked body which was barely covered by a tiny square of an Egyptian cotton sheet.
His heart swelled seeing her sleeping so peacefully next to him, a content expression on her face. He wished he could dive inside her mind and see her dreams.
He walked naked downstairs to the kitchen to make them both some sandwiches, something he’d never done much for himself, much less another woman. But all he wanted to do was meet her every need, to take care of her. He stared out into his future now and all he could see was her. And it made him happier than anything he could have ever imagined.
When he got back upstairs she was sitting up, stretching her arms again while topless, and making him hard at the vision.
She gave him a drowsy grin, her hair a wild mane around her head, “You brought us sustenance. How thoughtful.”
He handed her one of the plates and a cold bottle of water that he dropped between her legs making her yelp, causing him to laugh.
“You jerk,” she teased. “That’s cold!”
“I can see that,” he said, looking at her nipples. “Your body hides nothing from me.”
She rolled her eyes, “You’re insatiable, Barrett Evers. Thanks for the sandwich by the way. You read my mind.”
Barrett sat next to her, both of them enjoying their turkey on rye as they reveled in the breeze of the early evening hitting their skin. It was beyond heaven, this moment.
“So any plans for tonight?” asked Scarlet as she took a sip of her water. “Besides the obvious?”
Barrett shook his head, “I was thinking of walking out on the beach later. I’m going to jog it in the morning but I’d love to go out there with you tonight and put our feet in the water.”
“Sounds good to me,” she said, leaning over to kiss him. “Thank you for my food. I love you.”
He put down his sandwich and held her face as they kissed. It was a long, lingering kind, the kind that would normally lead into other things, but Barrett had other thoughts on his mind.
“Feel like just talking for a while?” he asked as he took her empty plate from her and rested both on the nightstand next to him.
“Of course,” she said, suddenly nervous. “What about?”
“Well,” he said, wrapping his muscled arms around her and pulling her on top of his bare chest. “You talked about meeting your family the other day. It got me to thinking.”
“Oh?” she said. She knew she’d moved too fast asking him to spend time with them. She was nervous.
“Yeah. It made me really happy that you asked me that. It made me realize this is going somewhere serious, more serious than I’
m used to anyway,” he confessed. “I know it’s kind of silly, but this is the closest thing to a relationship I’ve ever had.”
That shocked her. Barrett’s alleged love life was one of the most popular things to speculate about it in the tabloids and celebrity magazines that rested at the front of every grocery store she entered these days. How could this possibly be true?
“But the media…” she started. “You’ve just been linked with a lot of women.”
He nodded, “True. Linked. Maybe even spent time with. But I’ve never loved anyone. Not even close. Not until I met you.”
Her eyes widened and her heart started racing, “Why me?”
“Why you? Why me?” he asked, kissing her head. “Why am I this lucky? You’re so pure and perfect. Or at least, perfect for me. And no one makes me come like you…” He growled against her ear making her laugh. “But really, you’re like home, Scarlet. The home I always craved when I was younger. The safe place I need. Where I can rest my heart. You have the ability to annihilate me if you chose to do so. Don’t you know you’ve always held all the power?” He looked into her eyes, the ones that would always haunt him. “As much as I own your body, you own my soul, Scarlet.”
She kissed him, “I love your soul.”
“I’m glad,” he said, running his hands through her hair. “I always worried I wouldn’t have a very good one. Not with the DNA I share with a certain person.”
“Your mom?” Scarlet asked. “Is she that terrible? I mean, you make her sound like someone out of a fairy tale. The wicked stepmother or an evil queen.”
“That would be putting it kindly,” he said. He had his head supported by one crooked arm while his other hand traced circles around her torso. Her skin was so smooth. “In a way she isn’t far from those archetypes. But it’s worse because she’s a real person.”
“I need examples,” Scarlet said, touching his face. “How can she be that bad?”
“My mother,” Barrett began. “Comes from old southern money. Why does this make a difference? Because she comes from the kind of old money that doesn’t have money anymore. Sure, she went to the best schools, networked with the right people. But by the time she met my father, her family didn’t have money anymore, they just had their name. Since they’d always had money they were terrible with it. They didn’t know that unless they invested or built something with it, it would go away. So my mother was pressured to marry very well. To use her natural gifts to keep the money and name in good status. Not very many people know that about her, she confessed this to me one night when she was drunk and I was nine years old.”
“Not the most appropriate conversation to have with a nine year old,” Scarlet said. “But I’m completely fascinated. Go on.”
“Well, you have to realize, my mother never considered me a child. Or my brother and my poor sweet sister. We were expected to be adults by the time we were four. So anyway, my mother comes from a people who care very much about who your family is and where your people are from. Blood lines matter to her more than bank accounts for the most part. It’s a terribly snobbish kind of philosophy. Anyway, she clings to it, the name thing. My mother’s family goes back to the Mayflower, which I guess is a big deal. I stopped caring about that shit a long time ago. So when you understand that, you can understand why she is the way she is. She has been raised to believe she is above almost everyone, just by virtue of her existence. Therefore, her children are above others, since they share her sacred genes. It’s fucking ridiculous.”
Scarlet was quiet for a moment.
“So,” she said. “I guess there’s no chance you can ever bring me home to her. Being that I don’t have a lineage. Though my mom is convinced we’re related to Mark Twain. I have no idea how or why. Wishful thinking on her part.”
Barrett shook his head, “No, baby. I don’t care about what my mother thinks. That’s my point. I know for a fact she won’t be happy with anyone I ever bring home to her. Which is why I never have and why I’ve never allowed myself to get close to anyone like this. Because what a nightmare to lead them into. My family is fucked.” He sighed, looking past Scarlet and out towards the ocean. “You just need to know that. So you can know what you’d be getting yourself into. If you chose me.”
Scarlet wanted to hold him and never let go.
“We choose each other,” she said. “I’m not afraid of your family. I’m only afraid of this not lasting the rest of my life. Because I’m ruined for anyone else. I’ll never love anyone like I love you.”
It was what he needed to hear, but Barrett still wasn’t sure Scarlet would ever be able to understand what she was getting herself into by loving an Evers.
It would be another two months before she finally did.
Chapter Four
Scarlet had fallen asleep around midnight, with her mother next to her and Nancy on the sofa bed, when Barrett got a call from Mark, his bodyguard.
“I’ve been texting you all day to find out where you were,” Barrett whispered angrily into the phone. “I know you were off today but I’m guessing you haven’t been completely off the grid and you’ve seen the news.”
“Yes, boss,” Mark said. “That’s why I’m calling.”
“Okay,” Barrett said. “So where are you?”
“I’m close by,” he said. “Going to your mother. Or heading to her hotel at the moment.”
Barrett was confused, “Why is my mother in Nashville and why would you be heading her way? And what the fuck does this have to do with anything?”
“You’ll see,” he said. “It has everything to do with what she hired me to do.” Mark paused, nervous about what he had to say next.
“I have Thisbe,” he said.
********
Barrett had almost lost his mind when he heard Mark say he had Thisbe. It took everything in him to remain calm, since he wasn’t sure what Mark’s motivations were and he didn’t want to say the wrong thing that might put Thisbe in harm’s way.
“Why do you have her, Mark?” Barrett whispered. “And is she okay? And why aren’t you bringing her to me?”
“Because your mother wants to see her,” Mark said. “And what she says goes. You know that.”
Barrett’s heart pounded in his chest, “You work for me, Mark. And Thisbe is my child. Are you aware what kidnapping is, Mark?”
“It’s not like that,” Mark said. “And I don’t work for you. I never did. I always worked for Patricia. This whole time, I’ve been her eyes and ears. And now I want to be the one to save her granddaughter. So she’ll let me come back to her.”
Barrett was now confused and scared. What the hell was happening?
“Okay, Mark,” Barrett placated. “How can I help you? We can all win here. What happened today?”
“Well, I went to the Holloways. Ahead of you and Scarlet. Last night, in fact. I wanted to warn them that you planned on taking their child away from them,” Mark said. “My hope was that they’d leave town. Take her with them. And you’d never find them again and I could let Patricia know I solved a problem for her. You know, she’d be very angry if she knew Scarlet had your baby after all.”
God, Mark sounds like a psychopath. Barrett’s blood ran cold thinking about this man and all the trust he’d put in him these last few years.
“Okay,” Barrett said. “So what happened then?”
“Well, they were upset. Said they couldn’t let that happen. I assumed that meant they were going to get outta dodge. I shouldn’t have assumed anything,” he said. “They told me to meet them at their house the next morning, before you guys got there. I didn’t know what would be up but I showed at the crack of dawn. That’s when I found them. With a note.”
Barrett was shaking with rage but he knew he had to stay cool, “A note? What did it say?”
“Well, being that they were dead, it was a suicide note. They’d done it while Thisbe was sleeping. It was to you and Scarlet. Saying if you were taking Thisbe, you gave them no choice, they co
uldn’t live without her and that I needed to take her to you so she wouldn’t find them like that. And to call the police right before you were both supposed to arrive,” Mark paused. “It was pretty terrible. You and Scarlet killed that poor couple. You two ruin lives.”
Barrett wasn’t sure how to proceed. “But you didn’t bring her to me. So what do you want? How do I get my daughter back?”
“Easy. You do what I tell you to do, for once.”
********
Patricia had been on a plane when the news about Thisbe came out to the press, and being that her phone was off, she’d heard nothing about the biggest news in the media at the moment. Websites were already calling it “Lindbergh Baby, the Sequel” which was insensitive and cruel, especially knowing the fate of that poor baby.
Patricia was a bit of a Luddite when it came to technology. She didn’t like being interrupted, even by Pierre or Mark, and her cell was off more than it was on. She didn’t have any social media nor did she follow any kind of news that wasn’t in a newspaper. The woman had insulated herself from the world. She just didn’t care.
But on this day, that was most inconvenient.
She’d owned a condo in downtown Nashville for at least a decade. It had been for Clementine, in hopes that she would go to Vanderbilt, but that never panned out. Nothing ever did with her daughter. Such a disappointment. But in this case, it was suitable since Patricia loathed most hotels, and Nashville didn’t have anything that was going to work for her tastes. She just didn’t understand what her son and that toxic Scarlet Bloom could be doing here. But she intended to find out. Even if it meant dealing with Mark.