by Moriah Jovan
“And Sebastian was a pretty boy.”
“Very. It only took him one very close call to figure out he was going to have to find some way to deal with it himself, so he had a gun by the time he was eleven. He’s lucky he didn’t kill himself—or me—trying to learn how to use it.”
“Did he ever have to?”
She tried not to smirk and her eyebrow rose a little, then he laughed. “I’ve been Sebastian’s sidekick since before I could walk. Once he started making serious money, he needed someone at his back he could trust. Knox was too busy squiring debutantes on Trudy’s command and being her perfect country club trophy son to be available when Sebastian needed him to be. That left . . . me.”
“He was a loan shark,” Bryce breathed. Giselle could feel the awe in his voice and she smiled. “So that’s how he made his money.”
“He’ll tell you it’s because he’s never borrowed money in his life.”
“Good point.”
“So my mother thinks that Sebastian taking me in hand so early has left me completely unmarriageable. Add in his blatant promiscuity and all she really expects of me is to stop sleeping with Knox.”
He laughed. “Well, I know you’re not unmarriageable nor sleeping with Knox, so why haven’t you married?”
“I have a philosophy: If I can’t have exactly what I want, I go without. I didn’t have anything left after my fire. No clothes, no money, no furniture, no credit, no—” She caught the flash of pain on his face and stopped. “Well,” she murmured, “you know more about that than I do. So I decided to go with that and stay as uncluttered as possible. I still don’t have much. I choose my jewelry, my perfume, my clothes, based on my opinion of its worthiness to be in my bedroom and I have very stringent criteria. I choose my men the same way.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Men?”
“That’s my point. There aren’t any, haven’t been any and it’s not just because I’ve been a good Mormon woman saving myself for a temple marriage.”
“So what are you looking for?”
“Hank Rearden,” she said, clipped, hopinghopinghoping he’d get that.
He gaped at her for a moment, aghast, then his eyes half closed and he purred, “Really.”
She breathed a sigh of relief then, because he did get it, and she wouldn’t have to get into details. “I see that name rings a bell.”
“Indeed it does.” His mouth pursed, and Giselle waited for him to continue. After a moment, he speared her with those eyes. Oh! Those eyes! “Do you have any idea what that really means?” he asked slowly, making it very clear to her that he did know what it meant.
“I think,” she said, her words measured, “I may have a clue now. What does it mean to you?”
He studied her, then murmured, “It’s everything I need to know about who you are and what you want—and no, you don’t know the first thing about it. But you’ll learn.”
And I’m the man who’s going to teach you. Tonight.
It hung in the air as heavy as if it’d been said and Giselle felt drugged, shot up with adrenaline and passion. Her heart thundered. “Would you really have taken me home that night, even thinking—?” she whispered.
“Yes,” he said, immediate, sure, his eyebrow raised. “To stake my claim.”
Giselle remained silent for a moment because she didn’t want him to know what that had done to her. “What about your temple covenants?” she asked carefully.
He shrugged. “I spent my entire life doing what I was supposed to do, what I was told would make me blessed and happy. Not only was I miserable in my marriage, I wasn’t even blessed enough to keep my children. I hated everything about my life, hated myself for trying to be exactly what I wasn’t. I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”
Giselle swallowed and looked down, fiddling with the napkin she still held, because that was a terrible, terrible conundrum.
Bryce said nothing for a long, long while and when finally she raised her gaze, she found him staring at her speculatively. He sat relaxed, his elbow on the arm of his chair, his cheek resting on his fingertips.
Finally he opened his mouth and rasped, “I followed you up the stairs and down into the tunnel.”
Giselle pulled in a soft, deep breath, her eyes widening at the second reference pulled from Atlas Shrugged, when the heroine lured her would-be lover down into a train tunnel, where they consummated their relationship.
She could feel the heat gathering within her, that same heat she’d had when she had lain on the ottoman with him, under him, at his mercy. She bit her lip and continued to stare at him, and he her.
“Galt,” she whispered, and then he smiled again: slow, easy, wicked.
“That’s right. Do you remember when Francisco tried to explain to Rearden the parallel between money and sex?”
“Yes.”
“He said, ‘The man who is proudly certain of his own value will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer—because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement.’”
His face was inscrutable and Giselle couldn’t give name to what went on inside her body. She never, ever wanted it to stop.
He stared her down with those brilliant green eyes, and Giselle swallowed, unable to do anything but breathe in long, soft strokes and bite her bottom lip. She could feel his mouth on her neck, her shoulder, down her arms. She could feel him inside her, stroking her, but he was sitting across a table from her and she’d never known a man inside her. He effortlessly seduced her with mere words.
Bigger than me, huh? I can pick you up and toss you over my shoulder.
Yeah, a lot of guys could do that. No one’s ever had the balls to try.
Bryce Kenard did—and he’d succeeded.
To stake my claim.
She was his. She knew it.
He knew it.
Bryce went on quoting Rand, his voice growing more hoarse with each word until he couldn’t vocalize some syllables. “‘Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself.’”
Giselle swallowed and said the only thing she could think of. It came out in a whisper. “Why Galt?”
“Galt was superior to Rearden. In. Every. Way.” Bryce didn’t smile, didn’t drop his gaze, didn’t do anything else while he watched her struggle with what he’d done to her, continued to do to her with each word that dropped from his tongue.
Suddenly, he threw his napkin down on the table and stood in one rapid sweep of movement, growling, “Let’s go.” Once he’d dropped a pile of cash on the table, he held his hand out to her.
Giselle looked at his hand, then up at him, his face serious and intense. If she allowed him to pull her out of her chair, the last shred of whatever speck of virtue she had left would slip away from her. She hesitated for a moment, but then placed her hand in his and let him draw her up on her feet.
They emerged from the cool air into oppressive heat and humidity. Here, there was no cooling off once the sun went down, such as she’d come to appreciate when living in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. The air here didn’t wash clean and crisp as it did in Provo Canyon, in Utah Valley; instead, it was moist, heavy, ripe, fecund.
Like Giselle.
He let go her hand and said nothing. She chose the direction they went on purpose, toward her home, the one she shared with Sebastian.
It was a little past midnight on a Saturday morning and she worked the situation over in her head. She looked up at him, but he didn’t return her look. He simply strolled along, looking ahead. She knew his reasoning: He wanted to give her the opportunity to think and say no without any more coercion or seduction.
She halted him once so she could balance herself on his arm to slip off her heels and loop them in her fingers, to walk barefoot. It was a convenient excuse to touch him, to feel his strength und
er her hand.
Giselle shouldn’t have hesitated to say no thanks. It’d been drilled into her from puberty that one didn’t put oneself in situations where temptation could take hold. He knew that as well as she did. Yet she found herself curiously without conflict about saying yes.
Everything she’d ever wanted had come true for her: The shared faith, culture, language of Mormonism, regardless that neither of them exemplified its teachings; that could be rectified. The shared philosophies of Rand, of excellence, money, sex. The shared political ideas and common goals and higher education.
But they were strangers and Giselle had a problem with that. He wanted her. He wanted to conquer her, to take her. She wanted him to. The thought both thrilled and terrified her, because no man had ever had been able to keep her off balance until this one, and she couldn’t decide if she wanted to get back on track.
On the other hand, Knox had vouched for him. He would know what kind of man Bryce Kenard was and wouldn’t send her with a man who didn’t live up to his standards.
It took a long two blocks of silence before Bryce’s patience ran out. He stopped abruptly, gripped her arm, and yanked her around tight to his big body, his mouth in her ear, hot, raspy, pounding:
“I want to fuck you, Giselle. Hard and fast. Once, twice, a thousand times. I wanted to fuck you at Leah’s funeral. I wanted to fuck you the night we met. I wanted to fuck you at the museum. I’ve wanted to fuck you all night tonight. For two years I haven’t thought of anything but fucking you. Do you understand me?”
* * * * *
24: HAMMER OF THE GODS
He released her as suddenly as he had captured her, arms wide, stepping back. She trembled and drew a shaky breath as she stared at him, sober, wary. She’d known the evening would boil down to this decision, but not like that.
She throbbed from the intensity of her arousal.
This was audacious and strong, the first salvo in his declaration of war on her strength, her will. She respected it, responded to it. Her shoulders stiffened and her chin rose in the air, ready for the challenge.
“We’ve spent a whole, what? maybe half a day total with each other, if that?” she finally said.
“Yes.”
“This would be very stupid.”
“Yes.”
“If we do this, it’s done and there’s no going back. I lose my virginity, you break your covenants. That’s possible excommunication for me, but an absolute certainty for you.”
“Yes.”
For a few minutes more she stared at him and then finally made up her mind. She spoke, her voice hard and her eyes narrow.
“You don’t get the luxury of fucking me and leaving me in the morning. You know the protocol as well as I do, so you don’t get a pass. You stay with me until we’re mutually sick of each other or we decide we can’t live without each other.”
It was his turn to stare at her while he thought. After what seemed forever, he nodded. “Done.”
After one moment more of staring at him, attempting to suss out any deceit or ulterior motives, she turned and continued toward home, he beside her. A few feet later, she snatched his hand to pull him into a run toward her house.
By the time they had reached the front door, they were out of breath and he crushed her between his body and the front door for a scorching kiss, his fingers wrapped in hers against the door over their heads.
She needed this—brash and bold, powerful and brilliant, exotic and hot-blooded—and oh! how he wanted her.
Giselle broke his kiss, turned and punched her code into the keypad by the door, then opened it when it clicked. Thundering percussion and operatic voices hit them when they entered the house; the music shook the walls and the floor.
“What is that?”
“Carmina Burana,” Giselle breathed. “Let it wrap around you and fill you.”
“Where’s it coming from?”
“Downstairs. Sebastian’s working.”
Leading the way to her bedroom, she closed the door behind him. Then, suddenly unsure, she dropped her shoes and just stood there, wondering what was next.
Not for long. Bryce knew exactly what to do.
There was no mindless fumbling for buttons and such. In one smooth move, he slipped her jacket off, ripped the dress zipper down her ribs, slid the straps off her shoulders, and let the dress fall to the floor.
His gaze swept down her almost-nude body to see the holster and weapon he surely must have felt when he’d grabbed her and propositioned her. She bent to it and he growled, “Leave it on.”
Giselle couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t believe she would get exactly what she’d always wanted from a man who would not hesitate to give it to her. And then some.
Leave it on.
She’d never imagined such a thing in her whole life.
Bryce deftly unhooked the front of her strapless bra and let it fall to the floor while lifting her so that he could suck on her nipple. Giselle went limp. Her back arched and her head dropped back.
“Wrap your legs around me,” he said, rough, demanding, and she did that. He pressed his cock up into the V of her legs, stopped only by two or three layers of fabric. “Feel that?”
“Yes,” she whispered, barely able to think, much less talk.
“You want it?”
“Yes.”
He lowered her just until her mouth was level with his, her arms wrapped around his neck. One big hand cupping her ass, he pressed her tight to him so she couldn’t forget how hard he was. The other big hand cupping the back of her head, he pulled her to him for a kiss.
It was nothing like any kiss she’d ever had, even from him: hungry, hot, wet, nasty. He demanded her submission. His tongue teased her lips and tongue mercilessly. He sucked her soul right out of her. He devoured her and she ached in ways she didn’t know she could ache.
Bryce carried her the two steps to her bed and abruptly dropped her. She caught herself on her elbows, her legs spread wide. She looked up, up, up at him, this enormous man who wanted to fuck her and had told her so outright.
Giselle gasped when he bared his chest for her and couldn’t help but bite her lip, then watch as his hands undid his trousers. She stopped breathing when he revealed his long, hard cock and he let his pants slide down his legs.
“Back up,” he muttered, and she did, then he knelt on the bed, crawling on all fours toward her, dark, lithe, like a panther. Her chest heaved from how much he intimidated her and how that aroused her. He rose tall and proud on his knees between her legs and she was so dizzy with desire and pleasure that she thought she’d pass out.
“Lift your hips.”
She did and he pulled her panties—her last guard—down her legs and tossed them over his shoulder.
“Open your legs.”
She did. He drew his finger down her belly to her vulva.
“You shave,” he murmured as he ran his finger over all the little creases before he slipped two fingers up inside her. Giselle had never felt anything like that before. She arched her back and moaned, her eyes closed.
“And you’re dripping. Open your eyes. Look at me.”
Giselle opened her eyes and looked up at him, watched him take his fingers out of her and lick them. Her breath caught yet again and he gave her a wicked smile.
“You wanted Hank Rearden.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“He’s a girl’s fantasy. Galt is a woman’s. Choose. Now.”
“Kenard.”
Bryce started in surprise and stared at her for a moment as if dumbstruck. Then he smiled, slow, soft, perhaps even happy, just before that pretty smile turned predatory. He gripped her ankles then released them to run his hands up her legs, caressing gently. Finally, he hooked his hands behind her knees, flexed them, then yanked her across the bed toward him, spreading her legs wider, wider. He nestled the tip of his cock just inside her, teasing her.
“This,” he whispered, his voice nearly gone. He balan
ced himself over her, his hands on either side of her head. “Is fucking.” And he drove his hard cock right into her, smothering her surprised shriek of pain with his mouth.
And oh, it hurt. He was so big, so powerful. So hard, so solid. He stretched her beyond what she thought possible.
She liked it.
He didn’t move while he kissed her, pinning her hard into the bed with his hips. He was inside her, filling her, until the pain ebbed. Her arms wrapped around him and she felt every bump and ridge of his naked back under her fingertips. Her body adapted and her muscles began to work. She clenched around him when his mouth left hers to suck and bite her nipples until she couldn’t do anything but release a hard, shuddering sigh and lift her hips, inviting him to take her.
“Fuck me,” she whispered finally when she needed to feel him move inside her. She wrapped her legs around his thighs, wondering if there would be anything in her life more wonderful than being filled by this man.
“Say, ‘Please fuck me, Bryce,’” he commanded against her breasts, his breath brushing across her wet skin.
“Oh, please fuck me, Bryce.”
And he did. Over and over again. Hard and fast, as he’d promised. She lost count of how many times she died, how many times she arched her back, meeting him thrust for thrust, clutching at the platform behind her, her arms stretched overhead, crying out with the intensity of the sensations gathering in her and bursting.
Bryce pulled her up sharply, his hand wrapped around the back of her neck, and kissed her cruelly. Giselle could taste herself on his tongue and she wanted more of that. It was then she realized that she couldn’t take his kisses away from him, because she tried. She did what he had done to her in the parking lot and succeeded for about half a second before she felt him smile against her mouth.
And take it away from her again.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and sighed when she felt his hands on her hips, rough, sliding down, down between her legs, spreading her apart farther and farther. Again he gripped her hips, pulled her up a bit, then brought her back down hard on his cock, impaling her. She cried out yet again and collapsed against his chest, holding on because she didn’t have the stamina or strength for much more.