Intrigue Me

by Lacee Hightower

  Desperate whimpers sounded in my throat as I lowered my palm onto the firm plane of his stomach, his muscles flexing in a tight line against my hand. Another pleading cry fell from my mouth as he leaned over and swept his lips against mine.

  “Feel how fucking hard I am for you.” With a groan, he eased my hand onto his heavy erection, and pushed into me with deep strokes of his fingers. “Tell me now if you want me to stop. Otherwise, I won’t.”

  Thoughts swirled in my head like a bundle of mayhem, the rousing scent of spicy cologne creeping through me like a seductive love drug. He smelled so damn good. So fresh, like newly bathed skin, the outdoors after a refreshing rain. Ravenous hot sex. I wanted him more than anything I’d ever wanted in my life.

  “I want you,” I breathed. “Don’t stop.” I unzipped his fly, my hand trembling as I grasped the firm length of his pulsing warm shaft.

  “Ava.” His tongue dipped inside me, sweeping my teeth, the roof of my mouth, my lips, in delicious, hungry licks that were sure and confident. Bold and powerful. Possessive.

  Somewhere in my blur of thoughts, I felt my skirt dropping around my ankles, my panties being tugged to the floor. Tage moaned, intensifying his kiss and arousing me out of my ever-loving mind. All my body parts clenched as he kissed me with fierce savagery like he couldn’t get enough. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, did this man know how to kiss a woman. How to touch one. Everything outside this room disappeared, and my hands were suddenly all over him, shoving at the waistline of his pants like a mad woman. I wanted him so fucking badly that I couldn’t think of anything besides him inside me.

  “Fuck.” Another deep groan wavered in his chest as he began urgently helping me lower his pants to his ankles. His breath was accelerated, the rings encircling his light irises seemingly darker. Strong hands lifted me, and my legs instantly wrapped around his waist, his hard cock jutting against me. “Where’s your bed?”

  I leaned my head to the side, gesturing toward the hallway and pawing his body, while my legs squeezed at him and I pulled his lips back onto mine. He lowered me onto the edge of the bed, rolled on a condom, and yanked my ankles up onto his shoulders, impaling his entire length into me in one hard thrust.

  “Oh, God.” The words rasped past my lips in nothing but a whisper.

  He was wonderfully deep, stroking in and out of me with beautiful perfection. He was thick, stone hard, and brushing against my clit with every thrust. There was no indecision, no doubt in what he was doing. Only absolute, confident movements like he’d fucked dozens of women. Trembling with satisfaction, every muscle in my body tightened with bliss. This hunger between us—it was so intense. So frantic and desperate.

  “Christ,” he growled, his arms circling around me and hoisting my hips up high, grinding against me and kissing my womb with every thrust. My fingertips drove into the bare flesh of his ass as tears pricked my eyes from the intensity of his gaze. “You remember my cock, doll? How good it felt inside you? Tell me how good it feels now.”

  The longing in his voice was heavy, thick enough to reach out and touch. He pounded into me with hard, rigorous strokes, his hands pushing through the sides of my hair, pulling, tugging, cruelly dragging at the beaded rubber band holding my ponytail.

  “Ow. Crap, Tage,” I cried out, trying to ease the torturing of my hair.

  “Don’t fight me, dammit.” Abruptly, he raised my arms over my head and began plowing into me like someone possessed. Like a man having sex the first time after being prison bound. Like someone … angry. He pulled my nipple between his lips and bit down on the sensitive flesh. My body lifted off the bed. Ripples of pain slid down my torso, while warm urges of pleasure flooded my core.

  “Tage,” I cried. “You’re too rough. It hurts.”

  “You’ll live.” He pounded into me harder, his breath tightening. “Now come around my cock, Ava. And look at me when I fill this fucking condom with cum. Then you can tell me how bad it hurts.” He urged my thighs apart, pressing deep into my cavity. In. Out. Again, and again.

  Holy shit, he was so rough. It felt like he was ripping me in half. But I wanted more. Dear God, I wanted more. Blood boiled through my veins. I could feel it from my toes to my ears. I eased my legs open even wider, hoisting my pelvis into each of his grueling thrusts as desperate soft whimpers fell past my lips. He lowered a hand between us and rubbed a thumb over my clit, then slapped a hard, punishing palm over my sex.

  “Tage!” My nails dug at his flesh as gratifying pleasure rippled through me in long, delicious waves. Every muscle in my belly tensed and strained as shattering, blistering-hot pleasure erupted in my sex. Flood after flood of heated ecstasy billowed through my body as I clenched around his firm length, and orgasmed with a moan, maybe a scream.

  “Christ Jesus.” He lifted my hips and drove himself so hard and deep inside me that I had to pull back just a bit to ease the small fraction of discomfort. “Fuck,” he growled with a thundering roar, his body tightening as pulsing threads of warm semen filled the condom. “Sa vacker, Ava Montgomery,” he uttered softly against my lips. “You are so beautiful. See me again. Please.”

  His head dropped into the curve of my neck, his cock still pulsing inside me as he peppered kisses across my skin. Warm emotion trailed down my cheeks, memories of our last time together suddenly becoming a bitter reminder of broken promises and false devotions.

  You and me. Me and you.

  ****

  Tage

  Fatigued and irritable, a hammer already pounded at my head and it was barely 9:00 in the morning. Sleep hadn’t come easily. I’d left Ava’s house last evening with a strange feeling tearing away at my gut. Doing little more than go to war with my pillow, I’d finally given up and fired off a text to my attorney, asking for a favor. Something in the words of that brown doormat on her front porch still haunted me. Home is Where the Heart Is.

  Jesus, Morgan. It’s nothing but a slab of rubber to wipe your feet on.

  Acid churned in my chest as surly tension built in my shoulders. Anger clawed at my insides as I sat in a blank daze. I’d been led down a vicious, ugly garden path, betrayed in the worst kind of way. Deceived, tricked, lied to.

  My fingertips shook as I lowered the mug in my hand beside the pot of dark roast coffee that was only drops from being empty. An ugly jumbled contrast of different emotions stirred behind my chest.

  Eight motherfucking years plowed right through my ribs, sucking the breath out of me.

  Eight years!

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It had me in a fucking stupor, my body on pause while my thoughts tried catching up.

  “Define possibly, Rob,” I snapped at my attorney, who also happened to be a personal friend, already knowing his response.

  “Math doesn’t lie, Tage.”

  The muscles in my face tightened as tension bit hard at my upper body. Maybe she thought she was doing the right thing at the time, but Ava Montgomery was hours away from discovering just how wrong her perception had been. People didn’t fool Tage Morgan and come out of it on the upside.

  “No, it doesn’t. And I’ll make her fucking pay for this.”

  I heard Rob exhale a long sigh. “Revenge isn’t what you want, Tage. There are much better ways to deal with this. Proper ways. Legal ways.”

  Rage simmered inside me, a sense of bleeding guilt mauling me over a situation I had never known existed.

  Fucking fuck!

  “You have no idea what I want.”

  Chapter Six

  Tage

  Always pay attention to your gut feeling. Trust that intuition, that inner voice. The mind may play tricks, the heart may blind, but chances are, your sixth sense knows what your head has yet to solve.

  Moonlight and darkness danced through the cramped parking lot, enclosing me in a smoky golden shimmer. The Lodge was an old renovated art museum that had been built somewhere around 1960. Not huge and impersonal like some of the other clubs, the place was private, small, and intimate.
Inside were women. Beautiful women. Submissive women. Women who thrived on pain. Any of whom I could probably have my hands on within the next few minutes.

  My mood was like a seesaw—moving in one direction, then the opposite. My head was a swimming welter of conflicting gibberish, teetering somewhere between resentment, sorrow, and longing.

  “Fuck!”

  Go in, Morgan. Ease the stress. Unwind. There’s so much fucking tension clouding your thoughts. You know just how to fix that.

  Blinking out of a confused daze, just as I’d known when I pulled up, being here didn’t arouse me. The idea of my hands on another woman was seemingly unappealing.

  I craved only one.

  Problem was, the woman I wanted to fuck was also the woman I wanted to suffer for her evil-doings. I wanted to watch her porcelain-perfect skin blister from the leather of my belt, see her writhe and cringe from callous strikes of a flogger against the sensitive area of her inner thighs, then leave her back and ass a nice tint of red from the prickle of a cane.

  “Motherfucking Christ,” I uttered under my breath, turning on the ignition and pulling out of The Lodge. After all these years believing Ava had an abortion, my child was alive and well.

  I’d sensed something. Felt it deep in my gut. I’d pulled out of her driveway last night with the intention of heading the opposite direction that I arrived in, and catching Loop 12 home to avoid the misery of night construction on I-635. That’s when I saw it—a pink, small girl’s bicycle propped up against the side of the house, a helmet hanging off the handlebars.

  My sweet Ava. What a little liar you are.

  This was fucking sinister—a heinous crime. Bitterness crawled inside me like boiling acid.

  Only three days after Michael Kavanagh’s visit, with graduation only weeks away, I was transferred two counties over, to North Texas Academy Private School, where I finished my senior year. Two weeks after my birthday, I was already enlisted in the Navy and shipping off to boot camp.

  “You’re a letdown, son. Nothing but trouble. A bitter pill. Since you’ve already refused to work for the family business, it’s either Army, Navy, Air Force… Makes no damn difference to me.”

  As owner and CEO to N.B. Morgan Transport Systems, there had been days at a time during my youth where I hadn’t even seen Pops. His life revolved around his work, his affairs. Materialistic, self-centered, with morals the epitome of Nero, he couldn’t have cared less that he had a family. A wife who loved him. Two children that needed guidance. My head stirred with memories of that discussion. He’d been so fucking mad. He was the drunkest I’d ever seen him. He drank, but he didn’t generally get sloshed. Being a kid at the time, I hadn’t sensed it, but I damn sure did now.

  Pops was pro-life. He didn’t condone abortion—ever. Nathan Morgan had been fooled by the likes of Michael Kavanagh that day and, like dozens of other times, had taken his anger out on me.

  Agonizing fury stirred deep in my chest as I shifted in the leather seat, fingers tightly gripping the steering wheel of my Mercedes as I neared home. Chances were my child didn’t even know I existed. She’d probably been led to believe that I didn’t want her, or that I was another runaway father. A cold, damp sweat covered my brow as I eased into the garage, adrenaline pulsing through my body, my head ready to explode.

  I typed an apropos message on my iPhone and hit “Send”.

  This compelling need to meet my daughter was an urgency, more overpowering than anything I had ever undergone, even during my days of deployment. I was outraged, riddled with vigorous anger.

  I needed to see Ava.

  I would meet my daughter.

  ****

  Ava

  “OMG,” Lara Beth squealed from across the table in Martin’s Mexican Cantina, an icy mango margarita between her palms, as I stared down at the incoming text message from Tage.

  Saturday night. 7 PM. My p/t employee Clinton will pick you up. He’s somewhat reserved. No need for alarm.

  “This is huge, Ava. Are you going to see him?”

  “Should I?” I sipped at the glass of Ponche, Martin’s specialty alcoholic fruit punch. Tonight, it tasted strongly of pear and apple. It was refreshing and delicious.

  “Should you? Duh. You most definitely should. Number one, he’s hot as freaking sin, and number two, he’s Melli’s father.” She lowered her frozen glass to the table and propped her elbows on the table, leaning close to my face. “I know from experience what it’s like to have a parent who wants no part of your life. It sucks dick, Ava. Give Melli the opportunity to meet him,” she said, brushing her palm over mine. “Give Tage a chance to love his daughter.”

  “But Lara Beth, he doesn’t want her. He didn’t even ask about her. Never even looked toward her picture on the fireplace. I mean … fuck. He’s just another absent father. Why should I expect that to be any different now?” I reached for a chip, dipping angrily into spicy tomatillo salsa, then laid it down on my half-eaten plate of chicken fajitas without bringing it near my lips. My appetite was gone.

  Damn you, Tage Morgan. I understand not loving me back, but how could you not love your own daughter?

  “Maybe he didn’t see the photo, Ava. Maybe he didn’t know what to say.” Lara Beth stared at me. “God, I don’t know. I don’t understand it either. But maybe there was a reason. Why don’t you just ask him? See him again and find out.”

  Fuck his reasoning.

  I turned my attention to the waitress who stopped to refill our water glasses, smiling, then swallowed a drink of iced lemon water. My stomach clenched with upsetting knots. “He lied to me for weeks when we were together. He claimed over and over that one day I would be his wife. He’s nothing but a lying dick. I … hate him,” I breathed, sinking into the booth, knowing very well I didn’t, but wishing like hell I did. “But then, I want him more than I’ve ever wanted a man in my life. That’s so fucked up. You know it is,” I said stiffly.

  Eyes softening with empathy, Lara Beth uttered, “I’m sorry, Ava. Really, I am. I wish I knew the right words. The right advice. Shit, maybe you should just screw his brains out one last time.”

  I already have.

  “Get him out of your system.”

  Not possible.

  “Then kick him to the curb. Sue his ass for back child support. It’s not like he’s not capable of paying it.”

  I blinked away warm tears, my breath catching at the mere thought of him and what he was able to do to my body. How did he do that? How could I even stand him after what he had done? And I never asked for a dime from him. I didn’t before, and I wouldn’t today. If he wanted no part of our child, then I wanted nothing else from him, money included.

  I folded my napkin and laid it across the plate, a chilling shiver sliding through me, followed by a throbbing ache between my thighs as I thought of the impact his body had on mine. He was hot as sin and a god in bed, but he was also still the same heartless bastard who left me pregnant.

  Tage Morgan could fuck right off. I didn’t need him.

  “Actually,” I said, lifting my glass of Ponche. “You know what I think?” I took a long swallow of chilled, fruity goodness. “I think we should forget our problems for the night, finish these stellar beverages, and order another round. Let’s both drink ourselves into an ugly hangover and direct our dreary thoughts to the tatted hunky stud walking through the door right now, and fantasize over screwing his brains out.”

  Lara Beth smiled, and I did the same. It was fun sharing dinner with a girlfriend for a change. The distraction was nice. I needed to do this more often, and would. What I wouldn’t do was respond to Tage’s message. Not now. Maybe not ever.

  Some minutes later, we were finishing that next round of drinks, both tipsy, both laughing like schoolgirls and talking dirty about men.

  I smiled at the handsome man as he walked by our table again, his hand clenching the smaller hand of a young boy who was obviously his son. The hunky stud’s eyes were a deep blue. Beautiful and sensu
al. Sexy, and flashing with mischief. But they were far from the sky-blue eyes of Tage Morgan.

  Oh fuck! Of course, I would see Tage again. I needed to.

  I had to.

  Chapter Seven

  Ava

  Just the way he looked at me made me feel beautiful. When he kissed me and touched my body, he did it like no one else ever had. I felt like someone different. Like I could run a marathon, take on the world. So why was I more nervous than I had ever been in my life?

  I grabbed my newest purchase, a Prada calfskin dome satchel I’d snagged at the outlet mall, and answered the door with my heart trying its best to pound through my chest. A fair-skinned, middle-aged gentleman with sparkling green eyes and a slick shaved head stood on my doorstep. Clinton.

  “Ava Montgomery?” His voice was deep and professional. A little unfriendly.

  “Yes. I’m Ava.”

  “I’m Clinton. I’m here to drive you.”

  The unpleasant man had a coldness to his eyes, somber and unsmiling, and a chill in his demeanor that was bizarre, and creepy as fuck. Mr. Personality.

  After I set the new Briand alarm system that had been installed exactly as Tage had said it would be, Clinton stepped to the side, letting me through the door, then escorted me into a shiny black Mercedes S-Class sedan. Minutes passed, and I knew we were headed somewhere east, but other than that I was unaware—and too damn nervous to ask. Mr. Personality reached for something beside him and reached over the seat, handing me a lacy blue blindfold. “Mr. Morgan would like you to wear this for privacy purposes, Ms. Montgomery.”

  Huh? What the hell?

  For a moment, I was too dumbfounded to speak, only staring at the lace dangling from his hand. “Privacy purposes?” I finally managed to ask. “What exactly does that mean?”

  Piercing forest green eyes met mine in the mirror, the raw iciness of his stare chilling me straight through the bone. As Adam might say, this guy had a look about him that was as mad as a March hare. “Mr. Morgan is a most particular person, ma’am,” he replied. “He’d prefer you wear the blindfold just until you’re safely inside his home. There’s no reason for alarm. He’s simply concerned about protecting his private matters.”