by ANDREA SMITH
“The one right…here,” he said softly, brushing his thumb against that sensitive area I had on my neck, an inch or two south of my earlobe. I knew the one. He continued to lightly caress it, his eyes growing darker.
“Ahh, yes,” I said, remembering the way he’d made me tingle and my toes curl just with his soft kisses on that spot. “That spot.” I shifted uneasily.
Focus, Darcy. Disengage. I repeat: disengage!
“And then, you know, there’s that other special spot of yours…,” he murmured.
“Easton,” I warned, my tone getting stern. I shifted nervously.
“You know the one, love? That very deep, sensitive spot inside of you that loves the feel of my fingers and cock rubbing against it. Such a shame you haven’t had the pleasure of feeling my unsheathed cock. I’m betting my cock jewelry would likely put you over the edge. You’ve wondered about that, haven’t you? When you’re lying in bed at night, when the world gets slightly quieter as your imagination runs a little wilder…” His hand made its way to the nape of my neck, his fingers lightly drawing shapes across the sensitive skin. “I bet you have that night on replay, along with those thoughts of yours when you saw my piercing. And then you wonder what it would feel like to have it gently scrape your clit, slowly at first, but then I’d go a little faster. A little harder. Until I took it deeper and started all over again. And again.”
By this time, I could feel the wet spot in my panties. My lips were dry, so I merely nodded in agreement.
“Oh,” he said, smiling again, “Let’s not forget those very enticing nipples of yours and the way they respond when I taste them, right before I take them full into my mouth to suck. Hard. Quite a rush, isn’t it?”
Oh God!
The server approached, setting our drinks down, ready to take our order.
“Darcy?” Easton nodded, as the server waited, poised to write my order down.
“Uh, nothing for me, I’m still full from lunch.” He turned to Easton for his order.
“Check please.”
Against my better principles, I folded. Okay, I admit it! I was putty in his very capable hands, so shoot me! Which one of you would have done anything differently?
I thought so…
We made a mad dash from Christine’s to his hotel suite, where Easton very quickly and very expertly relieved me of my librarian clothing and proceeded to introduce me to his wooden paddle. It had tiny holes drilled in the center so that it was more aerodynamic. I was pulled naked across his lap, my bare ass soundly paddled while his longer fingers were probing the folds of my sex which grew wetter with each resounding smack.
Our banter was manic. It was a veritable kaleidoscope of mixed emotions fraught with sexual tension and sensual frenzy. Don’t believe me? Here, have a listen:
“You’ll not defy me again, do you understand?” he whispered in my ear.
“Yes sir,” I breathed.
“I’ll take you anywhere I want when I want, is that understood?” he growled in opposition to his tender hands, as they did delicious and forbidden things.
“Yes, Easton.”
“Have you had enough?” was asked softly from somewhere in the darkened room.
“No, please!” My voice was breaking, my nerves were ricocheting.
“Take it all in your mouth. That’s my good girl.”
“God, I love the taste of your cock!”
“Your pussy is starving, love.” I felt his tongue and hands, not being able to see him through the blindfold.
“Please…keep fucking me…Like that,” I begged.
“That’s it love, keep squeezing my cock that way.”
“Easton,” I panted.
“Fuck…,” I felt his lips against my spine.
We both flopped back on the bed when finished, panting from exhaustion, breathing heavily. The after effects of our fucking always left me covered with sweat, but feeling energized as well.
Easton rolled me over to examine my ass.
“I’m going to need to rub some ointment on you so you don’t chafe,” he said, launching himself from the bed and heading for the bathroom. He looked glorious in all his nakedness, his cock still glistening from the wetness of our sex. He’d been right. His cock jewelry totally rocked.
He returned, instructing me to lay on my belly while he gently administered aloe and peppermint extract oil to my reddened derrière. There was something about the tenderness with which he was doing this for the first time ever that was strange. He rubbed more of it on my back, lowering his head to deliver soft, butterfly kisses to my backside, and neck. I shivered from the intensity of the moment.
Intensity. That’s what it was. What had happened was so intense. That’s what I kept telling myself as I reran the events that had just happened. Correction: the most intensely pleasurable events so far in my life.
But no matter how I chalked it up…there was a feeling that kept coming back. A ghost-like feeling that I’ve always had about Easton, but considering what had just taken place…the feeling was becoming a lot more real.
This was a man who could shatter me at will. I mean, look what he’d done with my resolve to be professional. Where’d that go? He’d splintered it the moment he started telling me those things at the restaurant. I could already feel the slow fractures begin to confetti my thoughts.
I was attracted to him, for sure. Always. And I did want him—badly. If I allowed myself a slow moment to be honest, I’d realize that I wanted him the way you want to watch a thunderstorm. I mean it’s something great to watch from beneath a roof and through a window, but it’s something altogether different when you’re standing right in the thick of it, feeling the thunder through the ground you’re standing on, seeing the flashes of lightning land all around you. The intensity rocked because of the risk, the danger I was exposed to without the protection of normal, and without the understanding of the person Easton was. Just like thunderstorms, there was a part of Easton that frightened me. My instincts were shouting from the rooftops for me to walk away from this. There was no perfect storm where Easton Matthews was concerned.
My second session with Lacee the following morning was more uncomfortable than the first had been. I was sitting next to her in the conference room while she worked on her laptop, showing me Easton’s files, passwords for the various business entities, and weekly reports I needed to upload. I was scribbling down instructions, trying to write and watch at the same time. It was nearly lunchtime and my fingers were cramping from trying to write things down as quickly as she spit them out.
“Lacee,” I finally said, “can you slow it down a bit? I need to make notes and observe and you’re whipping through this so quickly, I’m not getting it all down.”
She stopped immediately, looking at me warily. “I was under the impression you moved fast, Darcy. It seems to me you’re climbing the ladder very quickly around here. In fact, I’ll give you an extra tip. Buy some disposable douches to keep handy at the office. Pretty soon he’ll want nooners.”
I wasn’t about to give her the benefit of seeing my feathers ruffled.
“Hold on,” I said, raising a finger while still scribbling the last of my instructions. “Okay, now let me write that last one down: ‘get disposable douches—keep handy.’ Got it. What’s next?”
She was fuming as she slammed her laptop closed and stood up, distancing herself from me. She was pacing, trying to collect her thoughts. I waited patiently for the outburst I knew was coming.
“Don’t think,” she hissed, jabbing her index finger into the air, “that you’re anything special to him. You’ll serve your time and purpose, just like all of the women before you, including me. The only thing different is that this time, he’s picked a nearly carbon copy of the only woman he’s ever truly loved, Bianca Templeton. Maybe for that reason, he’ll hang on to you a bit longer, but love is definitely not on his agenda, I promise you that.”
“Excuse m
e,” I interrupted tersely. “My personal life is none of your business, and as far as I can tell, Easton’s personal business isn’t your concern either. What’s your interest?”
“I’ll tell you what my interest is. I’ve given him five years of devoted service, and the last two have included servicing him sexually. I can tell you this: it wasn’t always very pleasant, as you probably already know.”
“Do tell?” I replied, now curious as to what she actually meant by that.
“Oh, come on!” she snapped. “You actually enjoy his brutal games in bed? Or what about the fact that he never even bothers to kiss you while he’s fucking you? And then there’s afterwards, when he orders you out of his bed after he’s used you and then two hours later, hunts you down in another bedroom and it all starts again with him punishing you for leaving the damn bed he ordered you out of?”
“Okay, Lacee, I’m going to interrupt you right now. You’re presuming things have happened based on nothing. So, the question here is, if all of that’s true, why in the hell would you tolerate it for two years?”
She was now morphing from angry to sad. Tears welled up in her aquamarine eyes.
“I thought with love I could change him,” she halfway sobbed. “I didn’t know what I was up against with his demons. The biggest demon of all is Bianca Templeton, but let me tell you this: his own mother has no use for him. I wish you luck.”
She picked up her laptop, brushing the wetness from her cheeks. “That’s it for your training today,” she said, heading for the door. “You’ve been warned.”
chapter 21
I didn’t see Easton the rest of the afternoon, which was fine by me because after Lacee’s meltdown, I was extremely unsettled. My mind was seriously spent after today’s affairs. Literally.
And all of it could have been avoided, that’s what bugged me the most. I’d already made that decision with Easton. I told him flat out, and in no uncertain terms, I wasn’t one to sleep my way to the top. Then, on the first day I work with him, all of that went out the friggin’ window just because he managed to be a little creative with his conversation at the faux business dinner.
And then there’s Lacee. Holy moly, dude! What was that? The girl had a mental breakdown next to a fax machine. I couldn’t help thinking that if I didn’t get my shit together pronto, that was going to be me in two years.
Fuck that!
I went directly to the gym after work, putting myself through a punishing workout before I went home. Eli had left a note on the fridge.
‘Having dinner with Maddox this evening, so fend for yourself. Don’t wait up!’
I smiled, glad that Eli was at least getting somewhere with Cain.
Guess it’s just the three of us tonight: Me, Myself, and I! God, I so want a cat.
I went upstairs and took a long, hot shower, scrubbing the day’s sweat off of me. I threw one of Darin’s FBI T-shirts on that I’d confiscated during one of my sleepovers at his place, not bothering with a bra, and a pair of clean sweats, not bothering with panties. After blowing my hair dry, I brushed it up into a ponytail, mentally telling my grumbling stomach to hang tight.
I skipped down the carpeted steps heading towards the kitchen when I caught movement in the corner of the living room. My heart thudded as I shrieked.
“Oh Jesus Christ, Easton! You scared the hell out of me! What—how’d you get in here?” I demanded. Maybe that meltdown was going to come a little bit sooner.
“You left the door unlocked,” he answered casually, as if it was still perfectly acceptable to come into someone’s home if they were negligent in locking the door. “I didn’t see you this afternoon, and I wondered how things went with you and Lacee.”
He followed me into the kitchen, where I grabbed a handful of seedless grapes from the fridge, offering him some.
Well there went any idea of calling the cops. “Oh sure, Officer Steve. Take your time, I’m offering him some food as we speak, and we’re thinking about opening up a bottle of Chardonnay. He seemed a little perturbed after the whole getting-through-my-lock thing, so I wanted to make it up to him.
“No, I’m good,” he said, watching me in amusement as I popped several into my mouth to assuage my growling tummy. I picked a banana off the top of the fruit bowl on the table.
“Banana, Easton?”
“Still good, love, just waiting for an answer.”
I peeled the banana, returning to the living room, plopping down on the sofa. “You seem anxious,” I commented. “Is there some particular concern you have about my session with Lacee today?”
His shrug was non-committal; hands in his pockets, simply waiting for my response. He finally sat down next to me, clasping his hands together. “She left work early and quite upset,” he said. “She looked as if she’d been crying.”
“And that bothers you?”
He gazed over at me, his eyes searching mine. “I don’t like to see any of my employees distressed,” he said.
I had to scrunch up my nose to hold in an un-girly sound.
“I don’t think her distress has anything to do with working for you. She loved you. Maybe she still does,” I shrugged.
I watched him flinch at the thought of that. What the hell was his deal?
“She also warned me about you. She said, in time, I’d be cast aside just as she’s been.”
I deliberately left out the part about Bianca whomever to see if the name surfaced from Easton’s lips anytime soon. Maybe he’d even open up to me about his past. Crazy and unhealthy as it was, I wanted to believe I wasn’t just some shiny, new toy for him to play with until he grew tired of it.
“I never loved Lacee. I never led her on or gave her reason to believe there’d ever be anything else between us.”
Screw being crazy and unhealthy. Suddenly, I was just very…tired. With that last statement, everything that Easton and I had been doing, what with my initial and powerful attraction to him on the beach, and then the scene with him and Lacee at the rehearsal dinner, followed by my knocking on his door at the hotel, and the great finale of becoming my boss and my fraying willpower that had led us back to said hotel…
Circles. That’s all we were doing, dancing in circles around each other and the mess that it was starting to cause. Jesus, how annoying had I become? I’d made a decision that night of the rehearsal dinner that I wanted no part of this gorgeous—yet clearly out of my league man. And then I folded. Then I folded again making yet another decision to not screw him once he became my employer. Good God—I was starting to sound like one of those heroines in books who make damsels of themselves when they could’ve saved themselves a long time ago!
“Got it,” I said, after giving myself that little wake-up call. “But you do get that you just described you and me as well, right? You never made any promises to Lacee, and here you are—not making any promises to me. The difference is: I’m not Lacee.”
I took a quick breath, slowly shaking my head at the thought. “My first heartbreak with Darin was bad enough. But it was a quick, clean break. However, this back-and-forth thing between you and me? It won’t be a fast break. It’s going to be one of those slow ones full of gray areas and unpromises.”
“What are you saying?” he interrupted, his voice husky.
Man up, Darce.
“I’m saying fast-forward six months, Easton. At the rate we’re going, you’ll be my boss, and I’ll still be that employee of yours who’s not fooling anyone with my short, easy-access skirts that you’ll have me start wearing so that we can have quickies in a locked bathroom.” I shot him a quick look to see if he understood the jab. “I’m saying that I’ve crossed the line. And I don’t want to do it again. I can’t fuck a guy without developing feelings for him. I’m just not capable of it. It’s not who I am.”
He rubbed his eyes with his fingers as if exhausted. That was rare to see Easton anything but energetic; when he walked, when he talked, at work—in bed
when he fucked, it was all about power and energy. He was different now.
“I can’t give you what you want, Darcy. I don’t have it to give, I’m sorry. But isn’t what we have the next best thing? We enjoy being with one another—isn’t that enough?”
I want to spit banana in his face! Calm down…think before you speak.
“No,” I replied calmly. Making sure my face was void of any of emotion or any kind of weakness Easton could seduce.”We have nothing, as far as I can tell.”
He stood up, totally frustrated, turning his back to me, running his hands through his thick, dark hair in exasperation. He finally whirled back around, and came closer, lowering himself in front of me, resting on his haunches. His hands were steepled together and his gorgeous eyes shuttered as if he was trying to choose his words very carefully.
“I can’t seem to stay away from you,” he confessed. “You have to know my regard for you is nowhere in the same vicinity as what was between Lacee and me. With her, I could take it or leave it, not so with you,” he said gently, finally looking into my eyes for some kind of understanding.
I didn’t understand. I don’t know, maybe it was a guy thing, or an Easton thing, but I certainly didn’t get the memo about all these different degrees of caring. In my world, you either cared or you didn’t. People either mattered or they didn’t. You either had a future together or not.
I’m not gonna lie, something inside me snapped a little.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better? The fact that you have the ability to…what? Compartmentalize people and emotions on some…some EASTON scale? So, you’ve established the fact that with Lacee it was purely a physical, no strings attached thing, and then there’s me. What am I? A notch above that? Maybe a notch-and-a-half? Define my role, please. What does being a notch-and-a-half above Lacee give me?”
I was on a roll now. I don’t think anything save him suddenly using his necktie as a gag to put over my mouth could stop me. Don’t think for a minute he probably wasn’t contemplating doing just that.
