“Stevie!” His voice booms over my shoulder, dark and menacing like a tornado twisting up alongside me.
Ten bucks says he thinks the horse got away from me—that I’m some damsel in distress in need of rescue. I laugh at the idea. I’m the furthest thing from it. I’m no damsel. I’m a miserable bitch through and through. My heart turned to cinder the day I tossed my sister into the wind. I’ve been hell-bent on revenge ever since, and had I not decided to execute myself this fine dragon’s blood evening, I would have exacted that revenge by pulling the rug out from under my father’s most prized company. I’ve dreamed of ways I could impart just a thread of the misery he’s imparted on me and my long-dead sister. That constant ache of wanting to belong, to be claimed as one of his own has been a never-ending loop. My mother, although just as much to blame in my eyes, would be tougher to nail to a wall. She blew through the earnings she received from the bestseller she wrote, rented out the home my sister and I grew up in, and currently lives in a Yurt with her new boyfriend. Her, I do my best to ignore.
But tonight Claire is out there, up there in the blood-red sky, waiting. The pier fast approaches as the waves crash over the shore—white monsters, roaring out their defenses before falling helpless to the sand. That’s all we were as people, hollow monsters, shouting to be heard only to fall helplessly into the mouth of the earth in the end. Death is the only true common denominator. Birth is simply the first step toward your shared destiny.
The pier comes up quick in jags. The horse tenses as if it knows it’s time to slow down, to relent from this game of slicing through the wind. I pull hard on the reins, steering us toward the angry ocean. Ford shouts something garbled, something faraway and frantic as I beat my legs against this restless steed. A wave pounces over us, and the horse bucks, nearly landing me backward into the water. She falls back on her hind legs and flops forward just as a strong arm swipes me off the saddle.
In a swift, herculean move, Ford pulls me over his lap and buries his face in my hair.
“Shit!” He pants it hot over my scalp. “You okay?”
I look up at him, the red sky reflecting in his eyes like blood-filled mirrors. His dark brows spread out and up like wings in flight, and, for a brief moment, I’m grateful that he stopped me.
“I’m okay,” it croaks out of me, unsure if I’ve ever been okay. “Told you I’d be your worst nightmare.”
He gives a little laugh as his chest expands and retracts, cutting the landscape in half with every other lungful. His face presses against the burnt orange sky like a cutout silhouette of a romance novel. A dull ache stirs in me to have this beautiful man. I pull him down by the cheeks and crash his mouth to mine. His lips brush hard before his mouth falls open and lets me in. My tongue does a pirouette over his, and then he’s on me, in me, drilling for oil, piercing me with his tongue, filling me with the promise of sixty nine lewd acts that he’s ready to impart. His touch softens. He’s making love to me, pulling me in with desperation, delivering deep, sensual kisses as if we’ve waited an entire millennium for this very moment. This is the kiss of the ages, the kiss of my brief lifetime, right here under the dragon’s blood sky, making wishes for a someday that I would never own.
He wraps my horse’s reins around his wrist and leads us out of the water.
“So I guess I watch the ceiling.” His dimples dig in deep and a fire touches down in my stomach at the sight.
“I guess you do.”
“Who are we kidding?” His lids hood low. “I’ll be watching you.”
“Do you like Zeppelin?” He thumbs through his phone trying to find just the right mood music to fuck me to. It’s almost romantic. I sigh as I fall back onto the mattress. Oh hell, it is.
I imagine this is where things get awkward. I’ve never actually had a one-night stand, but I’m betting most of them are fueled by alcohol and far less analytical behavior than we’re currently demonstrating. First off, we’ve both showered—separately. I’m currently wrapped in a fluffy white towel, and he’s wearing the same, low across the waist with the threat of falling off. We’ve gone from strangers on the beach to an old married couple about to have their Saturday night special in a single bound.
“I don’t know.” I bounce over the bed, and my towel unhinges, exposing the entire left side of my body.
He extends his gaze and suppresses the smile already pulling on his lips.
“Do you think we have chemistry?” It seems fitting to ask since there’s a three-foot clearance between us.
His chin inches back as if he were baffled. The room fills with sappy music as he sets his phone down and snaps off the lights. Moonlight floods the room in watery hues, giving it a haunted appeal that makes me moan with approval. Ford glides in beside me, sans the towel, and my eyes snag on that dark shadow at the base of his hips.
“Wow, you really are a magician.” I run my finger down his happy trail and am shocked to trace out his hard-on, already locked in its upright position. Dear God. My fingers retract as if pulling out of a fire.
“My brother is the magician in the family.” He takes up my hand and replaces it over that iron rod pointing at the ceiling. His eyes stay on mine, forcing me to look at him as my fingers curve over him—his skin soft as velvet. A series of prickling shockwaves trace up from my fingers. He offers a brief smile as he plucks the towel from my body like swiping a tablecloth from under fine china—his smile broadens—not a teacup out of place.
He’s still looking at me, locking eyes in the moonlight with those luminescent beams of his, watching me as I wrap my hand around him. Ford pulls me on top of his body until his hot breath burns over my forehead. His skin singes against mine, his very naked skin, and every one of my cells detonates from his touch. His rock hard abs, his manhood scraping against my thigh, the rough hair on his legs gliding over mine—I soak it all in. It’s as if Ford’s body is the exact thing mine needed to finally breathe.
“Your brother’s a magician, huh?” I tease, giving his ribs a quick squeeze in the process.
“A lousy magician at that. Vegas vomited him back about six months ago, and now he works for me.”
“As a driver?” I tilt my head, endeared by his blue-collar endeavor. After years of slogging through my father’s expensive boarding schools, then moving to over-privileged Rigby, I’ve grown to yearn for my own people, the working class universe from which I was born and bred. I was nothing but a fake in the world of dollar signs and designer purses. That was Kinsley’s domain, never mine, never Claire’s.
“It’s not important.” He lands his hot mouth in my hair and rolls his face over my scalp. “You’re important.” His fingers glide up my thighs and dig into my hips. “This is important.”
“I bet you say that to all your pointless sex encounters.” I pull back and drill my gaze into his because a part of me is daring him to say it’s not true.
“I say it when I mean it.” His Adam’s apple dives then corks back up. “I promise you, there will be nothing pointless in what we’re about to do.” His fingers slip down my thigh, touch that tender part of me that’s been aching for him all night, and I gasp. “In fact, I’m about to make the first major point of the evening.”
I push his wrist away and back up an inch trying to catch my breath.
Crap. He would’ve had me quivering over his palm by now if I didn’t stop him. I’m right there, teetering on the brink of peak arousal—ready to shake out all over the room with one more wayward glance.
“Admit that this is nothing but a one-night stand, or don’t pass go.” I pin his arms up over his head, and his chest rumbles with a dull laugh. “I want to hear you declare my nothingness with your own lips, or else I might get carried away and explode into tiny pink hearts all over the nice clean walls.” It’s my way of saying I don’t buy into any love-struck fantasies. The human heart was designed in the shape of a fist for a reason.
“Who said anything about a one-night stand?” He shakes his arm loose an
d reaches past me before holding up a square foil packet. “I plan on keeping you hostage for days.”
“Very funny.” I snatch the foil square from him and flick it across the room. “I’m on the pill.” I lie. The thought of barreling into paradise with a baby in my belly pleases me to no end. I think Claire would get a kick out of it, too—sort of a fleshly memento from this dark, twisted planet.
He falls back on his elbows, and I watch as his features morph from godlike, to angelic, to downright demonic.
“What planet are you from?” I trace out his brows, and my insides quiver. This man drips sex like honey. Hell, he’s sex on a stick with a body designed for pleasure. How the heck did I get so lucky?
“Krypton.” His smile slips right off as he continues to study me in the shadows.
Krypton. I shake my head.
“I’m not calling you Superman if that’s what you’re hinting at. You have to prove yourself to me first.” I tickle his ribs, and he flinches as those dimples embed deep in his cheeks. “Besides, I was sort of hoping for the Hulk. I wouldn’t mind being manhandled a little tonight. I like my men a little rough around the edges, slightly dangerous, and green with envy.”
He belts out a laugh. His eyes skim over my features. His brows narrow with a hint of sadness.
“You do this often?”
“Only on days that end in Y.” There I go, pouring out lies like fish from a bucket.
“I call bullshit.” He leans in and takes a bite of my earlobe. My entire left side erupts in flames.
A dull moan escapes my throat, and he rumbles with a quiet laugh.
“That’s the sound, Stevie. I want to hear that all night long.” His fingers bounce up my thigh, tracking to the curve of my hip before fully cupping my breast. My heart ticks like a bomb. My legs tremble for what’s to come.
His fingers glide to my nipples, smoothing over them, slow and soft like an erotic feather massage.
I drop my head back and let out a stronger, viral groan. This is electric—something just this side of ecstasy that’s already enlivened every last nerve in my body.
His hand slides back down my belly, straight to that intimate part of me.
“Open your legs,” he says it stern like a command, and my knees part without hesitating. He runs his fingers over my sweet spot, his eyes still fixed on mine. “I want to see if you’re ready for me.” He gives a quick circular sweep with his thumb before slowly inserting two fingers deep inside me, and I’m gone. A strangulating sensation spirals all the way up my body like a hurricane gaining momentum, escaping through my throat by way of a moan.
My eyes clamp shut, my mouth fills with cotton, and, before I know it, Ford has me over his hips, impaling me with that steel scepter of his until it feels as if he’s about to burst through my stomach. A white-hot pain sears through me as my body stretches to accommodate him. I give a hard bounce and feel the pain ricochet through me like a gunshot. I want this to hurt. I want all of my pain to manifest itself physically tonight. I’m so damn tired of bottling it up and saving it for someday.
I swivel my hips over his body, slow and smooth like a belly dancer, rolling my head over my shoulders, from one end to the other until I’m drunk off this newfound madness.
I’ve only slept with two other people. The first time I was drunk at a frat party. I gave my virginity away after a rousing game of beer pong in a room with two other couples engaging in their own carnal depravity. The second time it was with my study partner from Business Law. We were pulling an all-nighter that ended with him grunting over me in the closet so as not to let my roommate in on the action. Pathetic. But this man—Ford, growls beneath me, his fingers hook into my thighs so hard I can already feel the bruises forming beneath him. And I want them. I want all of the scars, all the broken blood vessels, the broken heart he’s willing to give me. This is ecstasy. This is bliss.
His hands glide to my hips, and he dives me hard onto his body, merciless, unforgiving, the way you would throttle a one-night stand, not someone you were starting to see a future with. He rolls me over until my head falls soft onto the pillow.
“Hey, I believe I won the bet.”
“You did.” He presses a molten wet kiss onto my temple.
“I’m starting to think you’re a sore loser.”
“I am.”
He takes me wild and animalistic, like a savage who has something to prove in a tribal sense. He pulls out and flips me over, raising my hips in the air, leaving me wide and vulnerable as the breeze licks between my legs. He takes me that way too, nothing but flesh slapping against flesh, about as romantic as two-dollar wine. I was worth a fistful of stale bubblegum instead of imported chocolate. I knew where I stood from the beginning.
He pauses, pulling out slightly. For a second I think he’s about to switch targets, but he wisely stays on home plate. He pulls out and rolls me onto my back, pressing my knees to my chest, burying kisses where his dick was a second ago.
I grip the sheets. The room pulsates like a heartbeat. My head pounds in rhythm, and my breathing picks up. An entire series of foreign sounds emit from my throat. I’m gaging—crying—screaming all at once. The world collapses over itself like a dying star, and I let out a cry that I’ve held in my lungs since the day I found out my sister died. Ecstasy and horror all mixed in one. It’s true. She never leaves my mind, not even now could I escape her. I’ve never screamed like that before. I’ve never felt such a rush, such relief—such a swell of existence. This gorgeous man, this Hulk, this Superman, has pushed me into paradise, and now there is no turning back.
“Ford.” I clench my legs over his head like a vice and push his mouth off me.
“Happy birthday, Stevie.” He pries my legs open once again with a grin as wide as the sea. He’s panting, sweating, his hair is perfectly messy, and it sets me off like a siren again.
Ford kneels in front of me. The cool air hits that heated spot between my thighs as I fight to shut them. “Nope.” He gives my leg a gentle tap. “My turn.” Ford plunges in, and my body ignites like a parched hillside. I tense over the bed and watch through slotted lids as this beautiful man hammers his way into my life, one wild thrust after another. He’s watching me watching him until his head arches back, and he groans, pulling my hips into his with the strength of a demon. His fingers bite through my skin, digging deep into muscle, right to the bone. He lets out a roar and one final heaving breath before collapsing on top of me. His hot mouth finds mine, and we kiss and pant into one another for what feels like a comfortable eternity.
“Did I do it?” He buries a kiss on my neck.
“Do what?”
“Earn the title, you know—Superman.”
“Ha!” I laugh right in his ear. “No.” I’m not up for stroking his ego just yet.
His chest rumbles with a laugh. “That’s okay, I like a challenge.”
“Then you’re going to love me.”
“Maybe I will.” His chest continues to pummel mine as the sound of our heavy breathing hacks through the silence.
Maybe he will. The idea resonates in my mind like a cymbal.
I think I’ve found something far more interesting than death, something far more enticing than racing into the Elysian Fields and holding Claire just yet.
I think I found something—someone, who can keep me very, very entertained.
A man named Ford.
Ford
Her body writhes under mine, soft, hot and sticky to the touch. I’ve never slammed into anyone so damn hard. I thrust into her body with an all-out aggression like I was trying to save the world. I wanted to push through her, lose myself in her, keep up that alarming pace until the sky fell to the earth and time collapsed in on itself. Screw the company, screw every other day I’ve ever lived. This is the moment—this is the feeling—the high I want again and again.
My body locked up tight as I slammed into her that final time, and I let out a roar that unzipped the silence in the room. And then I did
it. I shook out into her. All these years of being careful, of watching my step after what happened—I threw it all to the wind tonight for a beautiful girl with mile-long lashes—even longer legs, a sad smile, those haunting eyes. One blink in my direction, and I was done. I would have given her the deed to everything I owned if she wanted, and if she knew who I was she might have asked.
I hike up on my elbows and take her in with my chest flexing as if I had just swam across the Pacific.
“You okay?” I comb her hair from her face and watch as those tragically sad eyes blink up at me. In truth, I tried to give her an out. I purposely didn’t attack her, maul her the way I wanted once we hit the beach house. If it were anyone else, I would have bent her over the couch the second we walked through that door. Hell, I took a shower all by my lonesome, half expecting her to be gone by the time I was through. I fiddled with my phone for a good fifteen minutes in the event she was trying to build up the nerve to let me down easy. There wasn’t anything in me that wanted to take advantage of Stevie, not on her birthday, not on any other night.
“Am I okay?” A thread of sarcasm pulls her voice out in a drawl. I’m guessing the sarcasm is a permanent feature. She’s a fiery one; I’ll give her that.
Her searing hot tits press into my chest, and I take a quick breath in through my teeth.
“I’m just getting started,” she whispers out the threat. “And you? Do you think you’ll survive? Should we raid the liquor cabinet? Maybe check the bathroom to see if he has any Viagra lying around?” She laughs as she says it, curling her leg over my hip as if she’s ready for round two, right on the spot.
“I won’t be needing any liquor. And I sure as hell won’t be needing any male enhancement products. Besides, rumor has it, you drink with that stuff and you end up with a boner in your coffin.”
She bites down on her ruby-red lip to keep from laughing.
Beautiful Deception Page 19