Charlene TEGLIA - Dangerous Games(ellora)

by Dangerous Games(ellora) (lit)

  He ate a slice of pizza off of her belly, spread her legs and ate her, then ate another slice of pizza off her breasts with many excuses to lick at her nipples. She was a quivering mass of nerves by the time dinner was over. He feasted on her body until need stretched her thin, stopping short of offering her release but keeping her balanced on the knife-edge of it.

  He decided they were going to watch a movie in the home theatre, sharing a chair. With her on his lap, facing away, leaning forward while fully sheathing his penis.

  “Don’t move,” he ordered her in the voice of command she wouldn’t have thought to disobey even if he didn’t have her mindless with need.

  So she sat, impaled and shuddering, while he used her nipples to bring her to orgasm. Occasionally he lifted her hips up and slid her back down his hard shaft. He toyed with her clitoris, he teased her breasts, and finally he allowed her to rock with him in a torturously slow pace.

  Melinda lost count of her orgasms. She had no idea what movie he’d played. She hadn’t seen or heard any of it.

  They returned to the pool for a second time after the movie. They washed each other in turn and then Drake gave her a leisurely fucking under the waterfall while the water poured down on her breasts and made her gasp from the stinging caress. He licked beaded droplets of water off her nipples and sucked them while she came.

  He was insatiable. He demanded that she respond again and again, come for him endlessly, and he took her in positions she would never have believed possible.

  It was well into the early hours of the morning when they returned to the bed. Drake placed her on her back, slid into her again, and let her sleep with his penis buried deeply inside her. She woke hours later to his vigorous thrusting, then slept again with him still inside her.

  He hadn’t exaggerated. He stayed on her and in her until the clock ran out. He used her to the limit, and because she would never have him again, she ignored the soreness and welcomed him inside her body as many times and in as many ways as he demanded. She loved him the only way the terms of their agreement allowed and the only way he’d accept, holding nothing back and giving him everything he asked of her.

  Towards the end they simply stayed entwined, not moving, bodies joined together with no thought of seeking release. They were both well beyond any need for release, and Drake had long since expended his store of semen.

  He rolled her onto her back again when the sunlight began to dim and rode her mercilessly while she came for him one last time, watching her face in the light tinged deep pink from the vivid desert sunset.

  Chapter Eleven

  Drake climbed out of bed and walked to the windows to watch the lowering sun. It was Sunday night. The sun was sinking into the horizon and the game was over. It had only been a game and now it was time to put the pieces away.

  He could use the ambiguous definition of night to tell her she had to stay until midnight, but it wouldn’t change anything between them and if he kept her any longer there was a very real possibility that he would never be able to let her go.

  He didn’t look in her direction when he spoke. “A car is at the door to take you home. I had your car towed and the garage will deliver it to you when it’s ready.”

  “Time to get dressed, then.” Melinda gathered up her clothes and put them on, one item at a time, not hurrying. He didn’t turn around. He kept his back to her and tracked the loss of her nudity by the rustling sounds of fabric. When she finished, she walked to him and touched his arm. “You can turn around now. It’s safe.”

  It was never going to be safe, but he turned and looked at her, careful to keep his expression impassive.

  She was wearing those damn prissy clothes again and Drake hated them with a passion. He wanted to cut them off of her and burn them. She looked cool and prim, not at all like the kind of woman who could have taken him into her mouth and swallowed him down and loved it.

  Her clothes made everything between them look like a lie.

  He had had her every way it was possible to take a woman and now she’d simply dressed as if nakedness served no further purpose. She had wanted him to teach her about sex and now she had what she’d wanted. She was going to leave him when he wanted her heart as desperately as she’d needed him inside her. But she would expect him to give her his in return.

  Melinda’s eyes were steady and her voice was confident. “You know, Drake, I thought at first that I needed your permission to be the person I wanted to be inside but didn’t know how. That’s why I jumped at the chance to be your sex slave. If somebody ordered me to do everything I secretly wanted to do, I had permission. But I don’t need anybody’s permission. I just need mine.”

  “So now you have permission. I hope you’ll find a nice man to give yourself permission with.” His voice was cold and even but inside the beast was raging. No other man should have her, dammit. She was his.

  Hurt registered in her brown eyes. She lifted her stubborn little chin. “That’s the worst thing anybody has ever said to me. I deserve a lot more than nice. I’m going to buy a pair of hooker boots and find somebody to appreciate me in them.”

  Boots. The better to walk away from him with, Drake supposed. Well, damn her, she should start walking, assuming she was capable of it after the hours she’d spent serving his insatiable lust. He’d climbed off her not ten minutes ago and she’d apparently already started shopping for his replacement in her mind and her bed. He regretted giving Hal orders to let the driver pick her up at the door instead of the gate. He ought to let her walk the entire distance and feel the evidence that he’d left his mark on her body every damn step of the way.

  Melinda did start walking, but she turned back when she reached the doorway. “You shouldn’t ride your motorcycle without a helmet anymore, Drake. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Thank you for your concern.” He bared his teeth at her in a snarl of a smile.

  “I’m thinking of Hal.”

  And then she was gone.

  So, Melinda thought. She was back to her life. Starting her new life, in fact. Without Drake.

  That was just fine. Better than fine, actually. Before Drake, she hadn’t known what a wild woman she could be, or how much she’d been missing by staying safely in her comfort zone. Now that she knew, Melinda threw herself into life with a passion.

  She confronted her clothes and found them boring. Shopping followed. She still favored classic styles, but the new clothes were brighter, softer, more figure-flattering. And for reasons she didn’t care to examine too closely, the new purchases included jeans and a black leather motorcycle jacket.

  She ordered a pair of black leather boots that laced all the way up to the tops of her thighs and had five-inch heels she could never walk in from Frederick’s of Hollywood. And she marched into a store that featured lingerie and more and came out with a clandestine appliance that required batteries.

  She used a credit card for both purchases to make them as blatantly traceable as possible. If somebody was keeping tabs on her now, she sincerely hoped those two items kept him up at night.

  She drew the line at renting porn, however. The new, improved Melinda might have a wild side and might want to rub a certain male nose in it, but the films weren’t really her style.

  For all her brave talk about finding a man to appreciate the new her in her new boots, she made no effort to find one. There was only one man she’d ever wanted. She suspected there was only one man she ever would want as long as she drew breath.

  She confronted department heads who ignored her research results by browbeating them with facts and figures.

  She confronted Ryan about his goals, his schoolwork, his housekeeping. One thing she’d realized clearly from the computer cracking episode was that she’d been too lenient with him. She’d wanted to shelter him from the loss they’d both been dealt. Well, that was going to change. He wasn’t going to grow up expecting a woman to pick up after him and take responsibility for his poor choices. Someday, some wo
man would thank her for ingraining good habits.

  One Friday morning, exactly a month from the day she’d broken down on the interstate, Melinda confronted Ryan about doing the breakfast dishes and he immediately picked up the cereal bowls to carry them to the sink.

  “You’ve changed, Mel,” he said as he rinsed off the dishes before loading them into the dishwasher. “You look nice. You don’t let me get away with anything. If you’d met with Mr. Trahern’s attorney like this, you never would have gone to his house that weekend.”

  “I would have gone, because those were his terms,” Melinda pointed out. “And I looked nice before.”

  “You would have made him change his terms. Or you would have said that community service would be a character-building experience for me. And you didn’t look like that.”

  Melinda looked down at herself. She didn’t have any meetings scheduled for the day, so she was wearing a newly broken-in pair of jeans and a fitted red sweater vest that left her arms and the vee of her throat bare.

  Ryan had a point. Red was new for her. And jeans at work were new too, although casual dress prevailed in almost all work environments anymore.

  A month ago she’d worn tailored slacks, a soft pink shirt, and neither had revealed her figure like the new clothes did.

  She didn’t look flamboyant or overtly sexy. She just looked…different. Like a woman who was comfortable with her body and didn’t need to either hide it or flaunt it. So she didn’t have big breasts. Big deal. There was more to life than cleavage. Her body was neat and compact and healthy and it was part of her.

  “He’s good for you, Mel. I think you should tell him.” Ryan finished loading the bowls and reached for the glasses.

  “Tell him what?” Melinda asked, startled.

  “Tell him you love him. Tell him you want him back.”

  She didn’t want him back. He was an arrogant, infuriating man who didn’t want her love and hadn’t asked her to stay.

  But he was also so protective and intelligent, driven, sexy. And when he focused all that intelligence and drive and sex on her… Heat pooled in her lower body and her breasts tingled in remembered pleasure at the way he’d kept her so safe while he simultaneously dragged her into a game of dangerous passion.

  “What do you mean, get him back? It’s not like I had him. It’s not like we were dating. We’ve seen each other exactly once and that was for legal business. We had a deal, and it’s finished.” Melinda stared down at her coffee cup, seeing instead rough features that could smile in the most unexpected way.

  A man who could smile at her like that couldn’t really be all that tough. Could he?

  “So make a new deal. Or I could crack his system again. I don’t buy that whatever happened between you, it was just settling legalities. If that’s all it was you wouldn’t have come back different.” Ryan finished with the glasses and turned back to her. “Are you done with that cup?”

  She handed it to him. He loaded it and closed the dishwasher.

  “Make a new deal,” Melinda said. It was a new idea. For all her determination to be a brave new self, she had been subconsciously waiting all this time for Drake to take the first step. But maybe she didn’t have to wait. Maybe she could take the first step.

  Make a new deal. She turned the idea over in her mind. Maybe she could do that.

  “If you married him, I could be his tester. I’d always get to play his new games first.”

  “That’s very noble and selfless of you, Ryan.”

  “I’m just being practical. You shouldn’t overlook any advantage. And my school counselor says I need masculine guidance and a strong male role model.”

  Melinda rolled her eyes at that one. Wait a minute, this was Ryan talking. She had learned to underestimate cyber-spies at her peril. She shot him a suspicious look. “You haven’t been up to anything behind my back, have you?”

  “No.” He looked offended at the very idea. “Besides, I don’t have to. You’ve been different ever since you met him, so it follows logically that he is, too.”

  Ryan’s words stayed with her throughout the day.

  Tell him she loved him.

  Tell him she wanted him back.

  Make a new deal.

  She thought about just going up to Drake and saying the words. But what if he felt sorry for her? What if he simply didn’t want her? She couldn’t offer him the thing he’d been drawn to anymore. She was now thoroughly sexually educated. What if he said the deal was finished, the game was over, and that was all?

  “You would have made him change his terms,” Ryan had said. Meaning she was different now and that meant she could do things differently. Even demand different terms.

  Could she do that?

  The more she thought about it, the more she thought she could. He was tough, but she was no pushover. Maybe she was a little tough, too. Melinda sat up straighter at her desk at that thought.

  He wasn’t so tough. She could take him. She could make him listen to her and admit there was something more between them than a stupid deal and if he argued about it, she could demand that he prove it by giving them a chance. Like another weekend. That was fair. And then if they didn’t still go up in flames every time they touched each other, she’d admit she was wrong and get over him.

  No, she wouldn’t. She wasn’t wrong. And she was never going to get over him, not if she lived to be a thousand years old. He wasn’t an easy man, but easy was dull.

  She missed him.

  She loved him.

  She wanted him back.

  Melinda stood up and got her purse. She was done for the day, and she had somewhere to go. Ryan was right. She had to go tell him.

  Once she’d made up her mind to act, she didn’t hesitate. She only paused long enough to leave a message so Ryan wouldn’t wonder where she was if she didn’t make it home that night. If luck and love were with her, Hal would be making her coffee in the morning and she would never need D batteries again.

  * * * * *

  “I’ve been reading,” Hal said. “The book of Genesis. ‘And the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone.’”

  If ever there was proof that misery did not love company, this was it, Drake reflected. Misery loved solitude. Misery did not love unwanted reminders and pointed remarks and endless damned nagging. The fact that Hal never slept was a serious design flaw.

  He buried his head in his hands. “I don’t believe this. This is the end. The flower of my creation, the world’s first and only true artificial intelligence ever to pass the Turing test, has got religion.”

  “Psychology,” corrected Hal.

  “Oh, good. That’s better. Now I’m being psychoanalyzed by cathode tubes.”

  “I am considerably more complex and sophisticated than a television set. Listen.”

  Hal continued to recite in a sonorous drone, “‘And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.’”

  Drake closed his eyes in pain. “Is there a point to this?”

  “Yes. You are a man. She is your woman. You were happy when she was here. You are not happy now. It is not good for you to be alone, as the book says.”

  “I’m not alone,” Drake ground out between gritted teeth. “If I were alone, I wouldn’t be listening to this crap.”

  “You are alone without her,” said Hal.

  “A computer isn’t supposed to read creation myths and wonder where it came from. Don’t you have anything better to do?”

  “Don’t you wonder where I came from? It is an interesti
ng question,” Hal answered. “You built and assembled my hardware. You wrote my software. You filled my memory banks with data. Yet I am more than the sum of my parts. I am self-aware.”

  Hal was undeniably that, Drake admitted. Self-aware and a pain in the ass, not letting a man stomp and stew and brood in peaceful silence. Brooding was what tragically misunderstood heroes were supposed to do after they’d nobly sacrificed their own desires and stuck to their word.

  The last thing he needed to hear were words like “naked and not ashamed”. The image of a certain naked, unashamed woman was seared into his retinas for all time and Hal was not helping him exorcise the ghost image of her with these reminders.

  “You and your woman together are more than the sum of your parts, too. You are more with her. Less without her.”