This was not going smoothly. She gave up and buried her face in his chest, which was conveniently close enough to shield her embarrassment.
“Let me get this straight.” His voice rumbled deep in his chest. “You are here on my terms. You agreed, in addition to those terms, to be my sex toy for the weekend, in spite of the fact that you have had exactly two liaisons in your entire life.”
“You knew that, too?” Melinda closed her eyes, beyond embarrassed. He probably also knew she’d never had an orgasm before him, that until he’d hit her g-spot she hadn’t even been certain she had one, and that nobody in their right mind had ever looked at her with lust.
Drake looked at her with lust, but she wasn’t entirely sure why. Or if he was in his right mind. Maybe the same biological insanity that struck her down the minute she got close enough to see, smell, and touch him had flatlined his higher brain functions, too.
“Yes, I knew that, too. I know everything. Almost,” he corrected himself. “Which is beside the point. The point,” he roared at her, full volume, “is thatyou are here forme . I am in charge. I own you. I will do anything I want to you. And you arenot to sit there calling me your hero, or thinking I’m nice, or asking me if you can get down on your knees in front of me and give me a damned blowjob!”
Disappointment filled her. He didn’t want her to. She probably wouldn’t know how to do it right, anyway. And now she’d never get a chance to learn, because the odds that she would ever meet another man she wanted to take into her mouth or find the nerve to bring it up if she did were not good. “I’m sorry. I just thought—”
“And you will not apologize to me!”
Melinda heaved a long sigh.
“Stop that. Dammit, woman, you can’t honestly tell me you want to give me oral sex. You are practically a virgin. If I ordered you to put your mouth on me and suck me rock-hard and give me head until I came and then swallow me down, you would either faint or run screaming.”
She didn’t say a word, but the graphic description painted an erotic picture that hypnotized her.
Make him hard with her mouth. Make him come, with her mouth.
If she could do that, she would be as powerful and sexy as the dream image of herself in thigh-high boots and shorts no panties could be worn under, and somebody in that dream might want her to go without panties.
If she could give him pleasure with her mouth, a man like Drake who had had God knew how many women and all of them wanting to please him, damn them all, well. Then there might be hope for her in the future.
If she learned all about pleasure, giving and taking it, from Drake, then she might become the kind of person who knew how to have pleasure in her life afterwards, when the game was over and she no longer got everything she was afraid to ask for simply by submitting. There might be room for more in her life than the weight of responsibilities and the need to be practical and the barriers of shyness she didn’t know how to breach.
Swallow him down. Could she? How would he taste? Would she be able to lick at him while he was coming? How would that work?
Her mouth had gone completely dry and she was breathing faster.
If he would order her to put her mouth on him, maybe he would also tell her what else to do so she could do it exactly the way he wanted. Yes. Oh, yes, she wanted him to do that. She wanted the chance to please him that way.
“All right,” he practically snarled as if he could read her thoughts. They had to be plainly written on her face. “All right, if you really are salivating to try it, then who am I to stand in your way? But not right now.”
“Later?” Melinda closed her eyes at the hopeful note in her voice, but she really couldn’t help it.
“Fine, yes, later you can give me a blowjob. And if you hate it, I want you to remember this was your idea.”
She looked up at him, questioning. “Don’t you want me to?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. The feral hunger was there, glittering in his eyes.
He wanted her to. He just didn’t think she could do it. Well, she would. She would give him head. And it would be good head. Whatever that meant.
Maybe she hadn’t ever been good at sex before because she hadn’t had the right vocabulary.
But she suspected it had more to do with the fact that she’d never had Drake before.
The object of her determination got to his feet abruptly, grabbed her up to cradle her against his hard chest, and carried her further into the house.
Their clothes remained behind, Melinda noted.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
Corridors led off in multiple directions from the great room, and they all curved. Ellipses, she realized. No straight line halls. If she got lost in this place, she might never get found again. The corridor they were in seemed to lead gradually downwards, although there weren’t any steps and it might have been an illusion. It figured that the man’s house would be as physically disorienting as the man himself.
Their destination turned out to be one of the oddest rooms Melinda had ever seen. It looked, at first glance, like a jungle. Light came from some source but she couldn’t see any fixtures, windows, or a skylight. Ferns and some sort of mossy ground cover surrounded a deep sunken depression in the floor. Concrete? Stone? What was it made of?
As she watched, a waterfall began to cascade over the ferns, splashing into the sunken area.
“Oh, my God,” she gasped. “That’s your shower. Tub. Whatever.”
“Climate programmable chamber,” Drake informed her. “Wind to dry off with at variable speeds, water temperature to order, shower or bath mode. Or both, if you prefer. The waterfall can continue to cycle water from the bottom of the pool once it’s full and filters take care of soap residue. The light can be set for tanning or for therapeutic light levels, but in the summer I keep it set low.”
The dim indirect lighting added to the surreal effect of a fern grotto with waterfall in the middle of the desert.
“This is incredible. All it needs is a soundtrack.”
He slanted a look at her. “You want music?”
Melinda nodded.
“Enya. The Celts. Random play.”
Soft music came from hidden speakers somewhere in the jungle and she laughed in delight. “Voice-activated CD player. I love it. Ryan would go nuts.”
“The entire house is computerized with a voice recognition interface,” Drake informed her. “Your voice stamp was recorded on entry and you’ve been assigned guest privileges. If you need something, speak your request out loud.”
“Right now, I think I need soap. And a brush.” Her hair was probably the worst rat’s nest the man had ever seen. And she was definitely in need of a bath. Or a shower. Or both. She eyed the waterfall, then the enticing pool. Definitely both.
A hidden cabinet in an apparently solid stone wall slid open at her voice, revealing a selection of toiletries and grooming items.
“Anything you need should be in there,” Drake stated.
“Don’t tell me, you looked up my purchasing history, too,” Melinda sighed. “You are thorough.”
“Get what you need.” Drake set her on her feet and she padded barefoot over to the cabinet. The stone wasn’t cold underfoot. It felt like it was giving off radiant heat from some source. She wiggled her toes against it, enjoying the sensation. Not hot, but pleasantly warm. It was probably set precisely to body temperature by some invisible high-tech wizardry.
The magic cabinet contained her brand of unscented liquid body soap as well as her favorite herbal shampoo and conditioner. She scooped up all three. Her hair would detangle somewhat from conditioning, and then she might be able to get a brush through it. Carrying the essentials, she walked to the waterfall and stood under it.
Drake joined her there and, to her total surprise, thoroughly shampooed her hair, massaging her scalp while he did it. After the waterfall rinsed it clean, he worked the conditioner through, using his fi
ngers to sort out the worst of her tangles. “There.”
“Thank you, Drake.”
“Now you can wash my back.”
She giggled at his commanding tone, but complied.
Lathering his back nearly made her knees give out. She got to take her time exploring the curve of his spine, the musculature, the texture of his skin. Feeling daring, she let her soap-slicked hands trail down to his buttocks. Firm. “That’s enough,” he stated when she started to touch the dimple at the base of his spine. “I’ll do the rest myself.”
He suited actions to words, rinsed the suds away, and stepped out of the waterfall. “Take your time. I need to go take care of a couple of things.”
Naked and dripping, he strode to the arched doorway that was overhung with ivy and vanished from her view.
Chapter Five
Dry, dressed in faded denim jeans and a black short-sleeved tee imprinted with the statement, “I see fragged people”, Drake paced back and forth in the computer lab.
“Is something troubling you?” asked Hal.
“She trusts me.” Drake continued to pace, staring moodily down at the subtle pattern in the inlaid flooring.
“Your objective was to gain her trust and obtain her cooperation. You should be pleased.”
“She trusts me too much. She’s too damn cooperative.”
Drake no longer saw the floor, or the room. He saw her face, alight with newly awakened desire and curiosity. He imagined her kneeling in front of him to lick at him as if he were some exotic candy she’d been offered a chance to taste.
She shouldn’t look at him the way she did. She should understand that he was a big, barbaric, untrustworthy male who shouldn’t have been allowed within a mile of a woman like her.
Instead, he had her naked and at his mercy. Only when it came to her he didn’t have any mercy in him at all, just a devil driven to possess. He was debauching her and teaching her dirty words. He knew perfectly well she’d never used the “f” word in her life, until he’d goaded her with it. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, now he was bound by his promise to let her learn all she wanted to know about the fine art of fellatio.
“She’s going to get hurt. She’s going to feel betrayed. Why does she trust me? I wouldn’t trust me. Women!”
He stopped and raked his hands through his hair. If it had been any longer, dark locks would have stood out in all directions.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he ground out, ignoring the fact that he’d brought it up. “Besides, there’s probably nothing to worry about. She could be guilty as hell, and then I don’t have to be. Has there been any activity, anything that triggered higher security monitoring?”
“Your conversation by the front door was recorded and time-stamped. The language indicated a verbal agreement under negotiation.” Hal paused. “There is an ambiguously defined deadline for the agreement’s termination. Sunday night could be construed to mean sunset, or midnight. Neither of you gave a more specific interpretation.”
Sunset wasn’t enough time. He didn’t know anything yet. So midnight.
Drake pictured her again, kneeling in front of him, naked and eager to please with too damn much trust in her eyes, even though it was exactly what he’d wanted and what he’d asked for. Hell, what he’d demanded.
Midnight was too long.
Since he couldn’t seem to make a decision, Drake noted the ambiguity and decided to deal with it later in whatever way seemed more to his advantage.
“Tell me what else you’ve noticed.”
“Her vital signs fluctuated wildly. At first I was concerned she might be ill, but I have been accessing human physiology in the context of mating behavior. Her reactions to you are extreme, but within the range of human norm.”
So he turned her on. He didn’t need a recording of her heart rate, respiration, or body temperature to know that. The way she bucked against him when she came kind of gave it away. If he wasn’t big enough to hold her down, she could actually dislodge him with the violence of her thrashing. Being bigger, he stayed buried deep inside her while she writhed and twisted, wringing every last bit of climax out of her.
Drake rubbed his hands across his eyes as if he could erase the memory along with the image and restore clarity to his mind. “Anything else?”
“I’ve been studying Godzilla movies,” Hal said. “Godzilla and Space Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, MechaGodzilla. Her interpretation of Godzilla as hero is a valid one. Godzilla also may be seen as a symbol of the misunderstood, hated and feared by the very people benefitting from such protection.”
“That’s perfect,” Drake bit out. “Now I’m not just her hero. I’m her damn tragicallymisunderstood hero.”
He paced around some more. “Have you noticed anything helpful? What kinds of questions has she asked you? Do you think she suspects you’re not just a voice-activated convenience? What’s she doing now?”
“Now she is floating in the pool. She asked for the track titled ‘Fairytale’ to continuously replay. I turned on the water lilies. She seemed to like them and thought they were automatic. She does not suspect that I did it on my own initiative. I also adjusted the water temperature. Your preferred setting is too cool for her. She didn’t notice.”
“You’re sure?”
“Humans have measurable, involuntary physical reactions. It is why lie detectors work. I am considerably more sophisticated than a lie detector. She has no idea what I am.”
“That seems only fair. She has no idea what I am, either,” Drake muttered. “Hero. Women!” He kicked at a chair.
“She is tired. Her breathing patterns indicate that she is entering a pre-sleep state. You shouldn’t let her fall asleep floating in the water.”
“Fine. I’ll go rescue her. Because that’s what a fuckinghero would do,” Drake snarled and stalked out.
He was more than halfway to his destination before it dawned on him that rescue was completely unnecessary. He could have told Hal to drain the pool from where he was. For that matter, Hal was perfectly capable of doing it himself without being told. Preventing an accident like drowning in the bath shouldn’t have taken anything more than an automated response without even triggering the need to fully assess the situation and make a conscious decision.
“I’ve been manipulated,” he growled. “I built a golem and now it’s matchmaking. I deserved to get kicked out of government work.”
“Technically, you were not kicked out. You resigned.”
“Same thing. Do not get any ideas about her, Hal. She’s not a stray kitten. She is temporary and we don’t get to keep her.”
“And I did not manipulate you,” Hal continued, ignoring the last statement. “Although I did distract you. You were being irrational.”
“Irrational,” Drake repeated. Now he was being irrational, but a silicon matchmaker was reasonable. He kept striding along the corridor, not slackening his pace.
“You seem to think that she will feel betrayed, that her trust in you is misplaced. But the two of you distinctly defined the parameters of your second agreement as an entirely separate matter from the first. Why should she expect you to stop investigating the circumstances surrounding the network security breach?”
“Because she’s a woman.” Drake increased the tempo of his steps. “Because she thinks I’m a decent man, and a decent man does not sleep with a woman for the purpose of extracting information.”
Hal refrained from pointing out that none of the information Drake had extracted by that method thus far was in any way relevant to the investigation, although her insight from Japanese films was intriguing. He also did not point out that Drake knew several ways to obtain the information he wanted that didn’t include sleeping with her.
Humans engaged in mating behavior were completely irrational, Hal decided. Animals behaved far more sensibly. They found a suitable mate, they joined, offspring resulted. Some species even pair-bonded for life and repeated the cycle of reproduction year after year
.
This was an intelligent and efficient arrangement. Hal approved of lifelong pair bonds.
He withdrew and switched his higher awareness level back to continue watching the Godzilla movie featuring Mothra. The special effects were dreadful, the acting was worse and the soundtrack did not synchronize with the lip movements. But the tiny telepathic twins fascinated him.
“Come over here.”
Melinda smiled at the command but didn’t open her eyes or hurry to respond. It was so comfortable, so relaxing, so dreamlike floating in this enchanted pool. She wasn’t in a hurry to get out.
Charlene TEGLIA - Dangerous Games(ellora) Page 6