Charlene TEGLIA - Dangerous Games(ellora)
Page 9
She took the steps down and located the fireplace. It was an enormous stone structure that was as impossible to miss as the king-sized bed that now towered above her. Sunlight streamed in from the windows that filled one wall. No obvious depression in the wall gave her a clue about the dumbwaiter, but presumably it would open up automatically when the coffee arrived. The cabinet and closet in the bathroom had opened that way.
How would coffee get into the dumbwaiter? Waldoes? Leprechauns? Did it matter?Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic . Who had said that? A science fiction writer, but it seemed like too much effort to pursue the name and she let the thought slide away.
Plush carpet covered the floor in this room, the first she could remember that didn’t have a hard floor. She dug her toes into the luxuriant pile. Nice. Barefoot to the top of her head, Melinda padded to the windows and looked out. She didn’t worry about being seen. Nobody but Drake was around to see her naked, and if he wanted to see what she had again, he was entitled.
The world outside didn’t interest her much, but the sun felt good on her skin. She stared into the distance, not really seeing anything. She was content to let her mind drift and wait for coffee delivered by technological magic.
“French Roast,” the invisible voice said. “Your preference has been recorded and will be automated tomorrow morning. Do you require anything else?”
“Directions,” she answered, as reality intruded. “How do I find the bathroom?”
“There is a half bathroom in the master suite. The climate control chamber is three levels down. When you exit the master suite, follow the green indicator light.”
“Not the yellow brick road?”
“Your request was not understood. Please rephrase.”
“No request. Thank you.” And let that be a lesson to her to talk to a computer like it was a person, Melinda thought. Although she still hadn’t been able to stop herself from being polite.
She found the half bath, and then the coffee. After the first bracing cupful, she refilled her mug from the pot that came with it and opened the door to see if a green light really would lead her to her destination.
Chapter Seven
“Do you intend to leave her alone all day?”
Drake scowled at the interruption. “I’m working, Hal.”
“It is difficult for me to pretend to be lobotomized while conversing.”
“So don’t talk to her.”
“You should talk to her. She is your guest. It is rude to neglect her.”
“Thank you, Miss Manners.”
“You are being irrational again.”
“No, I’m doing the only rational thing I’ve done since I laid eyes on her. I’m giving her a chance to try to steal you. Your job, Hal, is to watch her. And not get stolen.”
Hal was silent for a short time. “I do not like this plan. I told you yesterday she has no idea what I am. I think you are making excuses to avoid her. How long do you intend to leave her in isolation?”
Drake shoved his chair back. “You make it sound like I’ve imprisoned her in solitary confinement.”
Hal’s nagging was making him feel even guiltier. He couldn’t win. If he left her alone, he was making her nervous. If he didn’t leave her alone, he was going to nail her again. Immediately. And the way he’d do it would make her a lot more than nervous. She might never walk right again if he didn’t restrain himself.
“She is not happy. She feels out of place. If you continue to leave her to herself, she will feel insecure.”
“Drop it, Hal.” But the damage had been done. Now he was going to wonder if she really was upset, if she needed him.
“There is a high probability that if you do not keep her in your presence, she will become resistant to you.”
“Let me worry about that.” He had ways of overcoming her resistance. Although if she started thinking about all the reasons why she shouldn’t trust him, that could be a problem. Maybe Hal had a point. He didn’t want her to stop trusting him. Except that he was taking advantage of her trust. So she should. Right?
This was going to make him insane, wanting her to trust him all the way and wanting her to be more wary so he didn’t have to feel like a complete bastard.
“She has been on her own all morning. She has made no attempt to breach security. She has given no indication that she knows anything about your work. She is sitting on the rock shelf behind the waterfall with her arms around her midsection and my sensors cannot read her face clearly. She has been there a long time.”
Drake swore violently. “I did not make her cry.”
Although he had probably given her reason to. He thought about what he’d done to her on his dining room table and the fact that he’d never even taken his pants off. He thought about the way she’d looked afterwards, like a shock victim.
It wasn’t a question of whether she’d enjoyed it. He knew damn well she had. It was the fact that she really was, to all practical intents, virginal. He was the first to awaken her sexually. He’d known that before he laid his hands on her the first time. It was largely why he’d lost his head. He’d seen the look of new awareness in her eyes and had the lunatic compulsion to imprint himself on her, to be the lover she would never forget. To make her his in a way no other man ever would.
She knew nothing about her own capacity for sexual response, her sexual identity. And instead of going slowly, he’d done things that would make an experienced woman think twice.
The fact that she’d been right there with him, coming her brains out, probably did not make her feel any more comfortable with it this morning.
He swore again and went to comfort the damsel he’d distressed. Although whether she’d find his presence comforting or distressing was an open question.
She was, in fact, behind the waterfall. Drake stripped his clothes off and joined her there. She didn’t look up or speak. He eased down beside her and lifted her onto his lap with her back to his chest, letting her face the waterfall instead of him.
She gave a long sigh.
He let his hands play up and down her arms, gentling her to his touch. Although her naked bottom was nestled against him and could undoubtedly feel him growing hard. Not the gentle mood he wanted to convey.
“Did you miss me?” He let his lips graze the curve of her neck.
She stayed quiet.
“I missed you.” Soft kisses along the baby smooth skin of her cheek. He let his hands move up to touch her small, sensitive breasts. Stroking. Petting. Gentle. “I had some work to do.” An unspoken apology for leaving her to wake up alone.
Her nipples were erect from his touch and she leaned back against him, accepting his hands on her and the living chair he made for her.
“Don’t want to talk?”
She shook her head. “Not really.”
He stroked the smooth satin skin of her belly and the soft public nest below. He shifted her so that her legs slid apart and fell to either side of his and cupped her mound with his hand. “Are you sore?”
She shook her head again and the silk curtain of her hair slid along his skin.
He petted her sex, taking care to caress and arouse without touching her clitoris directly or opening her with his fingers. Soothing her. Offering a different kind of pleasure than he had the day before. He gave her the touch of a lover lost in leisurely exploration. Not the touch that saidnow . The touch that saidno hurry .
He stroked his hands back up to her sensitive little nipples and tugged and teased them. She was responsive and accepting, but not at ease with him the way she had been before. Wary. Resistant.
“You’re upset.”
“No.” She was quiet for a minute, then added, “Not exactly.”
He rolled her nipples between his fingers, liking the way she squirmed in response to that. “I like this position. I can touch all of you so easily.” He worked her small breasts with his hands and enjoyed the way her heart sped up and the flush of desire
spread over her pale skin. “How not exactly upset are you? Do you want me to stop touching you?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters very much. You make me wild. I want you to be wild for me, too. I want you to feel me touching you and ache. Here.” He slid his hand down to stroke her open with one gentle finger, demonstrating exactly where he wanted her aching. “I want you to ache for me inside you and need me to fill you.”
“I ache.” She said the words on a helpless groan.
“Tell me.”
“I feel empty. Hollow. I want—”
She stopped and Drake prompted her with deeper probing between her legs. “Keep talking. Tell me all of it. You want what?”
“I don’t know what I want.” Melinda sounded thoroughly confused.
He could understand that. He didn’t know what the hell he wanted from her, either, or why it seemed so damn important that he get it. Whatever it was.
All he knew was that knowing she still wanted him made the tight feeling in his chest ease enough to let him breathe. That feeling how slick she was becoming for him made the feeling of something wild and uncaged inside him ease enough to let him keep a layer of civilization over the animal drive. He hadn’t frightened her off with his uncivilized sexual domination of her, after all.
“Tell me everything. If you’re confused, you want more than one thing at a time, or things that conflict with each other.” He stroked in and out of her with his fingertip, then trailed the wayward hand back up to cup her belly. Safer there for both of them.
“I want you as my lover for the weekend. I want to be yours. I haven’t changed my mind about our game, although I didn’t know I’d get such a kinky thrill out of being a sex slave. It’s really the urban renewal that’s taking some getting used to. Old buildings in the form of old ideas smashing all around me. I wanted that, I expected it, but it’s unsettling to go through the process. I feel so strange.”
“Strange how?”
“Strange, like…needy. Desperate.”
Oh, yes. He could understand that part.
“You make me feel like I don’t know who I am. I’m not needy. I won’t die if you don’t fuck me again.” Melinda sounded confused and disgruntled and she used the explicit word with an urgency in her voice that made Drake instantly ready to see to it that she would live forever.
“Ah. I wouldn’t want you to die. I have certain responsibilities as your host.” His hard cock flexed against the curve of her ass as if that part of him wanted to assure her of any lifesaving assistance she might need, too.
That got a laugh out of her and he felt some of her tension ease, her barriers lowering for him again.
“I don’t understand it, Drake.”
He didn’t have to ask what she meant by it. The sex. The wanting. The hungry need between them that no amount of physical contact seemed to satisfy.
“Some things in life defy understanding.” He kept his hands away from sexual danger zones and cuddled the curve of her belly instead. “I’ll make you another deal. If at any time you feel like you’re in danger of dying, I promise to instantly sacrifice my body to save you. And in the meantime, why don’t you just relax with me? I won’t go away and leave you alone, but I will stop constantly pushing you sexually.”
“For the rest of the weekend? I didn’t say I wanted you to stop!” Melinda protested.
That made him smile. Yes, she still wanted him. She was still his. Precisely why he could let up, because he didn’t have to keep proving it to both of them. She didn’t want to stop this dangerous game they were playing together any more than he did. She was just finding that her first experience with real passion took some mental adjustment and he could give her some space to sort it out.
“No, not for the rest of the weekend. I’m not nearly enough of a gentleman to let you off the hook. But I can give you a breather.” Drake bit the curve of her neck and drew on the skin just enough to mark her. “Spend the afternoon with me, wearing clothes. I won’t promise not to touch you at all, but I won’t touch you the way I have been.”
“How, then?” She sounded interested and torn, as if he was presenting her with a choice between two flavors of ice cream.
“Like this.” His hands on her belly squeezed, a comforting touch but with the unmistakable familiarity of a lover. Possessive. “Like you’re mine and I’ve already had you and I’m going to have you again. But nothing that isn’t socially acceptable in public.”
“Broadcasting that I’m yours and you’ve had me doesn’t sound very socially acceptable in public.” Her voice was doubtful but definitely interested.
“Don’t forget the part about me having you again. I sure as hell haven’t.”
She shivered at his low, sexual growl.
“You are so responsive to me. The next time I make you come, you’re going to be facing me so I can see the look in your eyes and every bit of expression on your face. I want to see you lost in the pleasure I’m giving you.”
He slapped her bare ass lightly but with a sting. “Now get up or I’m going to change my mind about giving you clothes and a breather.”
Melinda got up, walked through the waterfall, did a shallow dive into the pool and climbed out the opposite side.
“Cold water, Hal,” Drake said and stepped under the waterfall himself.
It almost helped.
“What are we going to do?” she asked him when he joined her to dry in the warm air blowing around them.
“I’ll show you around the place. There are things you haven’t seen.” Drake tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, unable to keep himself from touching her in little ways.
“Like what? You’d have to kill me if you told me kinds of things?”
If only she knew. People would kill to know all the secrets hidden in his desert lair. Safer for her to never find out.
“Things.” Drake gave her a mysterious smile. “Many things.”
She surprised him by taking a robe out of the closet again.
“Don’t want your clothes?”
“No.” Melinda dug her toe in the floor and twisted it, not looking at him for a minute. “I don’t want to wear them right now. It feels wrong. It feels like—” She paused and struggled for the words to express something not fully understood, “Like a snake crawling back into its shed skin. I was a different person when I wore those clothes. I’m turning into somebody else. I don’t know who. But I like her. I like me. I don’t want to jinx the process. I don’t want to go backwards.”
Then she looked up and her brown eyes met his with an openness that nearly stopped his heart. “The old me wouldn’t have looked at a stranger on the highway and wanted him. Wouldn’t have let him touch me. I wanted you. I let you touch me. I knew it meant I could never go back to who I’d been before when I agreed to our game, and I don’t want to. The woman who was brave enough to strip and spread her legs for you wouldn’t chicken out and put her clothes back on now. And I’m not going to.”
She lifted her chin in defiance, as if she half expected him to argue with her. Stubborn. And irresistibly sexy.
Drake leaned down and gave her a kiss instead of an argument. Not a claiming, mating kiss. A sweet kiss, lips brushing and clinging, as if he had all the time in the world to savor the texture of her velvet lips against his. He tugged her into his embrace and let his hands hold her shoulders first, then move down to cup her ass with both hands and press her close.
She broke the kiss, opened her eyes and blinked at him. “Is that a socially acceptable way to touch me?”
“Any man who’s had a woman and is going to have her again would definitely grope her ass given the opportunity.” He squeezed gently. “And her tits. Be warned.”
Melinda blushed, but he saw the spark of interest in her eyes. “It doesn’t sound like anything you could do in public.”
“The trick is to do it when nobody’s looking.” Drake kneaded her ass just because he had his hands filled with her and he
liked it. “But first, lunch. You didn’t eat breakfast, did you?”
“I wasn’t hungry.” The blush staining her face turned even darker and told him that more likely she hadn’t wanted to return to the scene of the crime.
“Couldn’t face the dining room, huh? We can eat in the kitchen.” Drake rocked her pelvis into him and swayed with her from side to side. “I haven’t debauched you on the countertop in there. Neutral territory.”
Melinda buried her face in his bare chest.
“Do you realize this is a first? I’m naked. You have something on. If you’re going to get your breather, we’d better start in the bedroom.”