She stiffened, straining against her bonds, gasping around his cock. Her back arched. Caught between his desire and his will. So close. She was so close.
“Come for me, Pet.” He stroked faster, harder. She twisted and moaned. His balls pulled tight. He gritted his teeth against the need. “Come for me. Come.” With a delicate slap, he brought her to the edge. With another, he sent her over. “Now.”
“Ace!”
She lurched and strained and bucked on the bed. Catching her jaw in his hand, he kept her from biting down. Replacing his cock with his mouth, he pushed her higher, kissing her deeply, passionately, wildly, feeling her pussy pulse, her heart race, taking her desperate gasps of his name into his lungs, his heart. His. She was his. So fucking perfectly his.
“Ace.”
Kissing her hard, cradling her close, he untied the scarf from the headboard. He lifted her still-bound arms. Moaning, she twisted and draped them over his head, burrowing closer when he wrapped his arm around her waist and rolled onto his back. She couldn’t get close enough for him.
He smacked her ass, chuckling when she jumped, smiling when the sting turned to heat and she quivered and squeezed his still-hard cock between his thighs.
“Are we done?” she whispered from the vicinity of his neck, her voice a combination of wonder and hope.
Rubbing the spot he’d just spanked. “Do you want to be?”
She tried to sit up. Her bindings prohibited the freedom. Her grunt made him smile.
“No.”
“Good.” Bracing his arm under her hips, he lifted her as he worked himself upright against the headboard. When he was done, she was flush-faced and straddling his thighs.
Sliding her hips up his cock, she wiggled on the tip. “Now, this has promise.”
“You think?”
Her nails dug into his shoulder as her body opened that little bit. “Yes.”
Fisting his hand in her hair, he drew her head back, stretching her spine with a subtle tension. “Why don’t you show me how much.”
Her eyes narrowed. Her tongue peeked out.
“Right now?”
He leaned back and smiled. Bound as she was, she had no choice but to go with it. She couldn’t look away from his face. His fingers tugged at her wrists, sending the scarf floating to the floor. Ace’s smile sent fresh shivers down her spine. “Then I’d say there’s no time like the present to press your luck.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
TEMPTATION. THAT’S ALL Petunia could think of with Ace’s sexy smile before her and his hard body beneath her. His cock pressed against her clit, sending up prickles of sensation, out and amok. He was her world. He was her strength. He was her center. And he was consuming her resolve. Everything within her wanted to just let go, just trust. But she couldn’t. She had to remember that distance. Had to be careful. But then his hand was between them, too, stroking and rubbing her clit, sending that fire ripping along her nerve endings, making her hips arch and logical thought fly away. So much sensation. She soared on it, fed on it, gloried in it. Only Ace could match her like this, give this to her. And when his thick cock parted her folds and stretched her that first delicious time, she cried out. He felt so good. So strong. So complete.
Yes, she sighed as he slid in, making a place for himself. Ace made her complete. The wild and reckless in her was welcome with him. Contained, guided, given a place. She dug her nails into his chest, holding on to him with everything she had. With a growl he anchored her hips as he withdrew with excruciating slowness, dragging the ridge of his cock along the sensitive inner tissue, sending frissons of sensation streaking inward. The feeling caught on invisible wires inside, vibrating along their length, sending goose bumps racing down her arms and across her chest. Her nipples pulled tight, and her breasts swelled until it felt impossible to take a breath. Everything inside felt swollen and aching and needing. But it wasn’t enough. She needed more. So much more. Digging her nails into his back, she pulled closer. Hard muscle bunched under her touch, stretched and flexed. Power. Strength. It was her turn to growl when his grip tightened, preventing her from moving. But even the latter was exciting.
He held her there, poised on the brink of bliss. His gaze dropped. Hers followed. His cock, thick and shiny within her. “Do you want me, Pet?”
Such a silly question. Her hips rocked, and her pulse pounded. The answer rolled off her tongue in a sibilant exultation. “Yes.”
“How much?”
She blinked as thought tried to pierce the drugging passion. He pushed his cock a little deeper, stretching her more. The seductive burn had her moaning and rolling her hips.
“How much are you willing to gamble on us, Petunia?”
Petunia, not my Pet. Panic nipped at her passion. She much preferred the passion.
“I don’t understand.”
“How much are you willing to give me?” His thumbs dipped between her legs, teasing her clit with the promise of sensation. “Are you willing to give me your body?” He skimmed his fingertips up her stomach over the underside of her breast, flicking the hard nipple before centering the hard tip in his palm in blatant claiming. Heat infused her breath. And longing filled her soul. His gaze never left hers as he asked, “Your heart?”
“I already told you I loved you.”
He frowned. Before she could say more, his touch moved on, skimming her shoulder. Chills chased up her arm as his fingers locked around her wrist, tucking it behind the small of her back, arching her slightly. The subtle tension honed everything she was feeling to a fine edge.
“Everything you are?”
Including the indecision. She didn’t want him to see the indecision. She didn’t know if she could give him the all he wanted. With an arch of her back and a slow circle of her hips, she opted for distraction. “Can’t we talk about this later?”
His fingers tightened. His cock flexed. “I asked you a question.”
His tone was as hard as his cock, but not as pleasing. She wanted pleasing. For once, just pleasing. Taking control, she circled her hips again, teasing them both, she ordered, “Later.”
A different sort of tension invaded his body. His eyes narrowed.
“What did I say about giving me orders?”
“You don’t like it, but—”
“No buts. All or nothing, my Pet.”
His cock grazed her clit. Her pussy ached; her nipples burned. She didn’t want to talk about this. Not now. “Later. We’ll talk about it later, but right now...” With a hard push she took that first bit, feeling him entering, stretching, feeling that unique pleasure pain. On a gasp she finished, “Right now I want you to make love to me.”
His grasp switched to her waist. She braced her hands on his chest. “Then later it will be.”
Just that fast all that heat and promise was taken away, and she was plopped unceremoniously on the mattress.
“What?”
Hitching her leg up, she shifted her position so she could see him. She expected the worst, and she found it. Ace lay against the pillows looking at her, his cock hard and jutting, and his expression stern and forbidding. Her pussy throbbed with frustrated desire, but her pulse slowed with dread. She had the irrational impulse to touch the flat plane of his stomach. In apology, she realized. Curling her fingers into a fist, she resisted the urge.
“What’s wrong?”
“I asked you a question.”
“At a bad time.”
Surely he could see that. The time to talk was not when her senses were scattered to the four directions.
He propped another pillow behind his head. She wanted to yank the sheet over his cock. How could he be so calm when everything in her was in chaos?
“You can’t control me, Pet.”
She wanted to lean over and take that hard shaft in
her mouth, feel it slide over her tongue again. She wanted to make him moan, make him mindless. She wanted him to want her more than he wanted to control things. Or maybe not. Right now she just wanted the mockery of her nakedness covered. Grabbing the sheet, she tugged. To no avail. It was stuck in a tangle beneath them. Grinding her teeth, she dragged the comforter from the foot of the bed across her breasts, breaking his view. He didn’t say a word. That set the indecision into a surge.
Pulling her leg up, she tackled it head-on. “Who said I wanted to?”
“You want to surrender to a point.”
She couldn’t dispute it, but that didn’t mean she had to like the way it made her feel. He felt so distant. She could see his desire. Feel his tension but the two weren’t related anymore. Inside her the indecision that had been a kernel swelled. Her stomach knotted.
“This is new.”
“That’s an excuse.”
“You’re mad because I didn’t want to talk when you did?”
He swung his legs off the bed and sat up, shaking his head. “You continue to think that you can control me.”
“You felt good. I didn’t want to stop.” She threw up her hand. “What’s wrong with that?”
Grabbing his shirt off the back of the chair, he shrugged it on before reaching for his pants. She didn’t know what to do. How to fix it. She licked her suddenly dry lips, tasting him. “You’re not leaving now, are you?”
He stepped into his pants. The belt buckle jingled as he pulled them up. He looked at her evenly as he buttoned them. “There’s no reason for me to stay.”
Petunia debated letting the comforter drop, but she couldn’t. Not when he was dressing to leave. Of course, he noticed her aborted movement.
“Do you think if you cover your breasts I don’t remember how they look? How they feel?”
He reached out and stroked her cheek. The caress was surprisingly tender. With a tap under her chin, he brought her gaze to his. What she saw there scared her so. He was holding nothing back, letting her see him as he was. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t go there. Because if she did, there’d be no going back. Not for her. She wasn’t made like others. She couldn’t keep her distance.
“That’s a damn shame because the only way I want you is naked.” His thumb pressed against her lips. “Defenseless.” Parted them. “Vulnerable.”
While she was still coping with the storm of emotion, he slid his thumb inside, stopping just short of contact with her tongue.
The denial of contact hurt. She needed more than that. She needed him to hold her. To tell her it was all right. He always saw that before. Why couldn’t he see that now?
His hand dropped to his side.
Hurt coiled, lashed out. “You want a doll.”
“I want you.”
His counter lacked her heat. “Defenseless.”
“Yes.”
His calm drew her in. Her fear pushed her away. “I’ve never been that way.”
“I won’t accept any less.”
“So you’re going to leave me again?”
“I’ve never left you.”
She hiked the comforter around her, hating the feel of it against her skin. Hating she felt like she needed it. She didn’t want to be guarded with Ace. But she needed to be safe. Why couldn’t he accept her as she was? She didn’t know how to be any way else. With anyone. “You couldn’t prove it by me.”
That got her a mocking cock of his eyebrow. “I’ve been your protector, your confidant and your savior. I’ve asked you to be my woman. How is any of that leaving?”
Yanking the sheet from under her hip, she rose up on her knees. Maybe that wasn’t but there was an important detail in his wording. “You rank woman over wife?”
Ace just shook his head, unruffled by the challenge, and buttoned his shirt. “Anyone can be a wife.”
“Meaning not anyone can be your woman?”
He kissed her lightly. Almost soothingly. “No.”
Instead of calming her, that sent that panic expanding more, pushing out the last bits of desire. This was serious. That kiss felt too much like goodbye. The emotion welling inside her felt too much like failure. All that earned her was another shake of his head.
“I told you, no shame. Just surrender.”
His saying such things didn’t help. “What if it’s not in me?” The fear escaped on a whisper. She’d been fighting so long. What if she’d forgotten how to relax?
Tucking his hand behind her neck, Ace leaned in. Her lids drifted down. Instead of focusing on the panic, she focused on the slight rasp of his calloused fingers over her nape, the strength of his touch, the calm that always surrounded him. This kiss was just as soothing. This kiss lingered. But when she opened her eyes, nothing in Ace’s attitude had changed. He was serious about this.
“I’d never ask for more than you can give.” The next kiss landed on her temple. “That’s all you need to remember, my Pet. Nothing else.”
Grabbing his boots and socks, he headed for the door, and heaven help her she couldn’t find her voice to call him back. But inside she was screaming.
As if hearing her silent cry, he stopped at the door. Looking impossibly handsome and completely remote, he turned back. “When you understand that, come find me.”
The door closed softly behind him. She sat back on the bed, staring at the dark wood. Touching her tongue to her lips, she remembered the other kisses. How he’d positioned her. How he’d held her. Her pulse kicked up. As it always did. She wanted to give him what he desired. As she always did. And yet she couldn’t. As she never could.
Damn it! Grabbing the pillow, she threw it at the door. Damn it. It was happening all over again. Someone asking and her not being able to deliver. The pillow hit with a dull plop before falling harmlessly to the floor. She stared at it for the longest time, too aware of the similarity between its effectiveness and hers.
I’d never ask for more than you can give.
Tears burned her eyes, and once again she was the little girl staring at her drunken father, doing her best to appease his grief at her mother’s death, being pushed away, hearing again those words when she tried to make him smile. Tried to make him see her.
Go away. You’re not her. You’ll never be her.
The pain of that rejection was as fresh as it had been twenty-three years ago. And she knew, just knew, she couldn’t be the wrong thing for the right reasons again. She didn’t have it in her to fail like that again. Why couldn’t Ace see? Why couldn’t he want...less? Why did she want him to? Downstairs the front door slammed shut. The panic burgeoned.
I’d never ask for more than you can give.
She pulled the comforter up over her head and fell back on the bed, whispering, “Maybe you just did.”
* * *
HESTER BREEZED INTO the kitchen two hours later, her smile annoyingly bright. “Evening.”
In Petunia’s current mood the cheeriness in her voice wasn’t much less annoying than her smile. Petunia took a sip of her now-cold coffee. “Hi.”
“That is not the happy face of the woman I left enjoying the attentions of a handsome suitor,” Hester said, hanging her coat on a peg by the back door.
Petunia sighed. “I don’t think he’s a suitor anymore.”
“Uh-oh.” Hester grabbed the coffeepot and a mug and poured herself a cup. “What happened?”
Petunia pushed her cold cup away. She could hear the children laughing outside, the glow of the sunset streaming in the window. Smell the homey scent of pine from the Christmas tree. See the spices lined up on the counter. They were supposed to bake cookies tonight.
“He wants too much.”
Hester plunked down in her seat. This close Petunia couldn’t miss the swollen fullness of her lips. The slight
pinking of the skin around her mouth told the rest of the story. Even her blue eyes had an extra sparkle.
“Hester, have you been out sparking?”
Hester lifted the cup to her lips. “Maybe.”
“With whom?”
“A lady doesn’t kiss and tell.”
Since when? “I thought a lady didn’t kiss at all.”
That brought the cup down and Hester’s eyebrows up. “In what world?”
Out back, the pump clanked as the children washed up. “In this one.”
“I must have missed that sermon.”
“Or forgotten it.”
“Could be. There’s a reason the preacher warns so heavily against the sins of the flesh. Once you get a taste...”
Petunia sighed. “You always want more.”
“Amen.”
Hester fell silent. Petunia wondered if she were thinking of her husband. Or of the man she’d been out with. She hoped it was the latter. Hester deserved happiness. Even if it were a sin. Though how it could be when that husband had remarried, she wasn’t sure. Petunia sighed. “I need to go to church more.”
Hester’s cup settled on the table with a little thump. “Either that, or make an honest man out of Ace.”
“Like you intend to make an honest man of Luke?”
It was a shot in the dark. Hester could have been out with anyone. Except that was Luke’s deep drawl she heard over the children’s laughter.
Hester glanced toward the back door. “Luke and I have an understanding. He doesn’t ask for more than I can give, and I indulge his whimsy.”
“Luke has whimsy?” Petunia considered herself an educated woman with an active imagination, but even she couldn’t get her mind around a whimsical Luke. The man was too darned...male.
“Either that or he’s plum out of his mind.” Hester shrugged. “Since I’m not kissing on some crazy man, he’s got whimsy.”
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