Looking Inside

by BETH KERY

  She gave him a disgusted glance at his sarcasm. “You don’t understand at all.”

  “I think I’ve been pretty up front about that from the first.” He set down his water glass and turned to her, thinking it might be advisable to change the subject. He’d never experienced anything like it before: the way he disapproved of her exhibitionism and boldness for some stupid reason, and yet was still turned into a rutting pig by it. “So . . . what are you doing for Thanksgiving?” he asked her.

  “Spending it with my mom and dad in Evanston.”

  “Just the three of you?”

  She nodded. “What about you?”

  “I’m driving to Rockford for the long weekend.”

  “For . . .”

  “My parents are there. That’s where I grew up, on a farm a few miles out of town. My sister and her family will be there too. I think my brother is coming from New York as well.”

  “So you have a brother and a sister? And your parents are still together?”

  “Oh yeah. They’re still disgustingly in love too even after forty-four years.”

  “Really?” she asked slowly. “That’s nice.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It all sounds so . . . normal.”

  “Normal? What’s that supposed to mean?” he wondered.

  She looked a little guilty. “I don’t know . . . you’re so . . . not normal. I was just expecting you’d spend your Thanksgiving holiday in a more exotic way.”

  “So you think I’m abnormal?”

  “No. I think you’re exceptional.”

  He blinked in surprise at her small outburst. He leaned closer, catching her clean, floral scent mingling with the fragrance of sex.

  “I’m just your basic Midwestern boy,” he murmured, captured by the shine in her green gold eyes. He noticed her doubtful look. “I’m serious. I may have taken some forays into exotic lands as an adult”—he paused when she rolled her eyes at his lame attempt at symbolism—“but I’ve always remained a simple Midwestern kid at heart. You don’t believe me?”

  “Let’s just say I believe you’re anything but simple.”

  He laughed. He pulled down on the sheet covering her breasts. She tried to pull it back up. For a second, they played tug-of-war. Then he merely looked up at her, slightly exasperated but patiently waiting. Slowly, her fingers relaxed. He lowered the sheet deliberately, teasing his senses. He exposed the pale gold mounds and then the pink tips. Her nipples were in a state between arousal and relaxation. They appeared flushed, fat and luscious. He wanted to make them hard as pebbles all over again.

  “You’ve got the prettiest breasts,” he said, admiring her openly. He gently ran his fingertips over a nipple. She inhaled sharply, sending the mounds higher. He glanced up at her. She looked a little flummoxed. “Please don’t hide them from me. Ever.”

  He saw her throat convulse as she swallowed.

  “Eleanor?”

  “Yes?” she mouthed silently.

  “Can you explain what your motives were again for turning me into a drooling animal in a room full of high-minded, serious people?”

  Her eyes appeared huge in her finely wrought, small face. She lifted the glass and drank determinedly. When she’d drained the water, she had no other excuse but to answer him.

  “I told you why I did that,” she replied shakily.

  “Because you saw me from your condo, and you decided you just had to have me?” he asked, trying to restrain his sarcasm. He saw her expression and knew he hadn’t succeeded in disguising anything. She leaned across him aggressively and set her glass down on the table with a clunk. She looked irritated enough that he didn’t think she’d dragged her nipples across his ribs on purpose. That didn’t lessen his appreciation any.

  “What’s so hard to believe about that? I mean . . . have you seen you?” she asked with incredulous sarcasm, waving down at his body. “So I went after what I wanted. That doesn’t mean I’m a slut. Or a witch.”

  “Fine. If you say so.”

  “I say so.”

  “Okay,” he said, putting up his hands in a “don’t shoot the messenger” gesture. He stopped himself from laughing—barely—because somehow, he just knew she’d move from spitting to hissing if he did. “So . . . do you like your book?”

  The fire drained out of her. She gave him a blank look.

  “Born to Submit?” he prompted.

  “Oh . . . yes,” she recovered, her voice sounding a little high-pitched.

  “Is that your typical reading choice?”

  “Erotica, you mean?” she asked, straightening her spine and meeting his stare determinedly. “Yes, it is. I read it exclusively. Do you like it?”

  “Erotica?”

  She nodded, her demeanor serious.

  “I can’t say I’ve ever read any before. What’s it about?” he asked seriously, trying to match her mood.

  “Oh . . . you know.”

  He quirked his brows in a polite query.

  “Sex, of course,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “That’s it?”

  “Well, no . . . I mean . . . it’s about this couple: Xander and Katya.”

  “Nice names.”

  She gave him a sharp glance. “Someone named Trey really doesn’t have the high ground for making fun of names.”

  He just smiled and waited expectantly.

  “Well, anyway, he’s her boss. She’s his secretary and . . .” Her cheeks flushed and she gave him a repressive glance. “Don’t look so smug. I know it’s cliché-sounding, but it’s actually pretty good. Better than I thought it’d be. Anyway, they enter into a dominant-submissive relationship.”

  “Relationship?” he prodded doubtfully.

  “Yes, relationship. There’s some really sweet give and take between Xander and Katya, at times.”

  “Sexually?”

  “Yes, and emotionally. Why do you find that so hard to believe?”

  “I don’t,” he defended. “I’m just prodding you, because you’re not giving me much to go on. You were turned on. Reading it, I mean.”

  She blinked at his abrupt turn of topic.

  “Well, you were, weren’t you? What was happening in the book? When you were getting turned on, there at the coffee shop?”

  At first she looked annoyed. Then, ever so slowly, a grin slid across her lips. His cock popped up against the sheet. He couldn’t decide what was sexier about her face, her big, expressive eyes or her sometimes sweet, sometimes X-rated mouth.

  “Why don’t you just read the book and find out? I have a feeling you’d like it.”

  He straightened against the pillows and leaned toward her. “What’s that supposed to mean? Eleanor?” he prodded suspiciously when she didn’t reply.

  “Just read it and see,” she told him, lifting her chin. And despite her play at haughtiness, she gave him a sideways, curious glance. “What about you? Do you like Pride and Prejudice?”

  He shrugged and turned to retrieve his glass of water, a little disappointed she wouldn’t give him some dirty details from Born to Submit. “I don’t know,” he replied, taking a sip of water. “It was kind of hard to concentrate on it, with you there. But I don’t think so.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “You don’t like Pride and Prejudice?” she asked, clearly scandalized.

  There it is. The feminine outrage. He groaned and set down his glass. He turned in the bed and reached for her, hauling her up against him, their naked skin sliding together. It felt good. She gasped and wiggled against him, surprised by his abrupt action. He liked the way that felt too. A lot. He put a hand on her hip, keeping her in place. When she stilled, he slid his opened hand along the warm, silky curve of her hip to her waist. Sure, it was a dirty way to defray a disagreement, but it seemed to work. Her eyes went enormous in her flushed face.r />
  “Don’t lecture me about Pride and Prejudice. If you want me to tell you that it’s deep and romantic, I will.”

  She blinked, and he had the impression that for a moment, she’d forgotten what they were talking about. Then he felt her touch him on the back of his hip, the tentative caress striking him as shockingly erotic. Pleasure snaked down his spine to his groin. His cock stiffened and brushed against her satiny, taut belly.

  “But you don’t really think it is? Any good, I mean?” she asked weakly.

  “Good? Sure, I mean it’s well-written. I don’t get why you women think it’s so romantic, though. Darcy’s a jerk.”

  “He isn’t a jerk,” she exclaimed. He gave her a “seriously?” glance. “Well, maybe at first he is. You just haven’t read far enough. That’s the whole premise of the book. They misjudge each other upon their first meetings, and both of them have to work through their pride to admit it. ‘I could almost forgive his vanity had he not wounded mine.’”

  He glided his hand to her back and pulled her closer against him, his cock pressed along her stomach, his balls resting at the top of her moist mound. “Are you quoting Pride and Prejudice?” he asked, peering down at her, incredulous. Pleased, for some reason. She’d sounded sort of prim saying it. It turned him on, the way she came off all girls-gone-wild one second and a proper Sunday-school-teacher type the next.

  “What if I am?”

  “You just said you read erotica exclusively,” he reminded her drolly.

  “Well, I might have exaggerated a little,” she mumbled, her gaze darting around the room.

  “Yeah. You do that sometimes, don’t you?” he said without any real heat. She made him want to crack up. She also made him hornier than a stag in heat. “Do it more,” he growled, leaning down to kiss her nose and then her lips. They were cool from the water, but he sensed her heat just beneath the surface. “It’s better than dirty talk.”

  “You shouldn’t make fun of Pride and Prejudice,” she scolded him, but her tiny smile as he plucked at her lips only encouraged him.

  “It’s not my bible.”

  “Why are you reading it, then?” she demanded, backing away slightly.

  “Because all you women take it so seriously. I was just trying to figure out the secret to it, that’s all,” he said, unable to pry his gaze off her lips and highly aware of how soft and curvy and firm she felt against his stroking hand. He lowered to her ass, shaping a buttock to his palm. Incredible ass . . . the things he’d like to do to it. He liked her soft gasp of pleasure, and then her obvious attempt to look serious again.

  “There’s no secret to Pride and Prejudice. It’s funny . . . and it’s fun. Elizabeth was making fun of herself when she said that line I just quoted. You said you were interested in something light right now,” she reminded him with a remonstrative glare. “Well Pride and Prejudice can be downright froth. You shouldn’t be approaching it so seriously.”

  He considered what she’d said for a minute.

  “Maybe you’re right,” he conceded. “I told you I was having trouble concentrating on the book. You were the one who was responsible for me being distracted. You have no right to be pissed for me not getting the nuances,” he said before he nuzzled her ear, inhaling her scent. He cupped a breast and ran his thumb over a beading nipple. She shivered against him. “Quote some more to me, Eleanor,” he growled next to her ear before he kissed it.

  “I will not,” she said, but her arms encircled his neck. He pushed and she rolled onto her back. He came down over her. She smiled that witch’s smile up at him. “Why should I bother? You’re a heathen.”

  “At least I don’t deny it,” he said, nibbling at her succulent lower lip.

  “At least?” she mumbled.

  “Yeah. You got all defensive when I called you a witch,” he reminded her, lowering his head to her beautiful breasts. He leaned down, anticipation building in him, and glided his lips against the silky skin at the top of one globe. She whimpered and dug her fingers into his hair. Was her hand shaking? Could she really be that excited, just from chatting in bed? Maybe it wasn’t that much of a shock she was aroused from talking, because God knew he was. Her fingernails scraped his scalp. His skin roughened in excitement.

  “See, unlike you,” he explained gruffly as he brushed his mouth over her breast and kissed the sweet tip, “I’m just heathen enough not to bother denying it when I’m called one,” he finished before he firmed his hold on her rib cage and lifted her breasts to his feasting mouth.

  EIGHT

  Eleanor awoke while it was still dark outside. She was turned on her side facing the floor-to-ceiling windows. Instead of being disoriented upon waking up in a strange place, she immediately knew where she was. It was strange, to be looking at her condominium from a whole new angle.

  She’d gone through the looking glass. She was inside Trey Riordan’s world.

  Her sex ached, but pleasantly. She hadn’t had sex for over a year before last night, but that didn’t fully explain her tender state. Trey was a passionate, skillful, demanding and . . . potent lover. They’d had sex three times before they’d finally fallen into an exhausted sleep. Each time had been more exciting than the last.

  There was no precedent for her, no prior experience that had remotely prepared her for him. Just thinking about what he’d done to her in this bed—about the things he’d proposed they do in the future—made her shift her hand beneath the sheets. Carefully, so as not to awake him, she cupped her sex and closed her eyes, drowning in the memories for a moment.

  Trey embraced her from behind. He was like a subtle furnace. She wanted to curl farther into him like a content cat. The exciting memories, his long, solid male body pressed to her backside, and the pressure of her hand on her sex created a languid state of sensual arousal in her.

  After their second round of scorching sex, where he’d again owned her body and soul, he held her against him in the darkness for a while. Neither of them spoke, but she sensed he was awake from his stroking hand on her hip. She found their silence strangely full. Relaxing. Comforting. Before she’d drifted off to a satiated sleep, he’d spoken gruffly next to her ear. She recalled every detail of that exchange now in the early morning darkness, her heart and her senses waking up before her brain fully did.

  “Eleanor?”

  “Yes?” she whispered.

  “Before, when you told me I should read Born to Submit because you thought I’d like it . . . were you hinting that you’ve seen something before, when you were looking into my bedroom?”

  Her heavy eyelids sprang wide.

  “What do you mean?” He stroked her thigh and then her ass in the tense silence that followed.

  “Did you ever see me restrain a woman . . . spank or paddle her?”

  Shivers rippled down her spine.

  “Yes,” she finally admitted, intensely aware of him caressing her bottom. She waited tensely for him to reply, but for a moment, he only stroked her.

  “Did you know in advance I’d be at the event, because you work at the museum? Is that why you chose the book you did?”

  “I thought it might get your attention,” she confessed breathlessly.

  Another silence, this one swelling with unsaid things.

  “Do you like to do those things? From the book?” he asked her after a pause.

  She hesitated. Of course she knew she was supposed to be playing the part of the sexually liberated, bold woman with him. But she increasingly longed to be honest with him, as well.

  “You mean do I want to be tied up, spanked . . . things like that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I liked reading about them . . . while you watched. But submission or bondage really hasn’t been my area of expertise or interest in the past,” she admitted cautiously.

  He squeezed her buttock before he gently spanked her in a ge
ntle reprimand. She jumped in surprise and made a little squeaky sound.

  “Right. Your area of expertise is voyeurism. Exhibitionism. Driving a man nuts,” he stated rather than asked, and she’d sensed his frown from his grim tone. Is that what he thought? That she was an expert on something sexual? There were times that she was sure he remained humorously unconvinced by her act, but on this topic, he seemed strangely certain. Excitement flickered through her at the realization that she’d fooled him so completely on at least one thing. She forced herself to focus and not break her role.

  “That’s right. I like watching. And I like being watched,” she whispered. She left out the fact that she’d never dabbled in either voyeurism or exhibitionism until him. He was her motivation, not some sexual preference somehow worked into her genes. But if he thought she was an expert on a particular area of kink, well . . . it only helped her performance.

  More important, it put her on more level footing with him, something she sorely needed when it came to the arena of sex. He was vastly more experienced than her. And she knew she came off like a fumbling fool at times. But her supposed expertise in voyeurism and exhibitionism? Miraculously, Trey never seemed to question it.

  He continued to stroke her in the silent seconds that followed. She could almost hear him thinking.

  “I’m not sure what I think about voyeurism or exhibitionism. And you say you’re a novice to any kind of bondage or submission—although if I had my guess to the way you were reacting to that book and the way you are in bed, I’m hopeful,” he’d added dryly under his breath. She wiggled against him, made restless by his words. He stilled her hip with his hand and thrust his cock up the furrow of her ass. She whimpered. He was growing stiff.

  Again.

  Was that because of this talk they were having?

  He spoke directly into her ear, his hoarse, low voice sending shivers down her neck and spine. “But maybe we could share what we know with each other . . . make our light little experiment together more of a challenge?”

  “You mean, agree to”—she swallowed thickly—“scenarios that take both our preferences into account?”