THE TEMPTING

by D. M. Pratt

  “How was your day? We missed you,” she said.

  Beau barely looked at her as he crossed the room while pulling off his clothes and headed into the bathroom.

  “I’ve had better,” he answered.

  The next sounds Eve heard were his shoes and pants falling to the floor. The metal on metal of the shower curtain being pulled back blended with the squeaky turn of the handles inside the shower and the sound of falling water. She peaked through the crack in the door and watched the steam billowing up as the hot water from the shower clouded the room. She stood and watched the wet, bare shoulders of her husband-to-be glisten in the dim light. He had a broad, muscular back that curved into his high, firm ass, all perfectly balanced on two, long powerful legs. Eve liked how thick and strong his thighs were. She liked his body. She loved his hands. She wanted very much to make love to him tonight. The twinge of guilt from the attraction she felt when she and Mac spoke was still gnawing at her. Eve didn’t want to lie to Beau, especially after his long day dealing with the flock of legal vultures, but she didn’t want to stir up any paranoia he might have either. He didn’t like Mac and jealousy always seemed to rear its ugly head whenever the detective’s name, and even worse, his presence, arose.

  Eve slowly pushed open the door of the bathroom, stepped inside and closed it behind her. She studied Beau: an Adonis with his hands pressed against the shower wall, his head lowered, eyes closed and his mind obviously in deep contemplation. She slipped out of her nightgown, stepped into the shower and gracefully slid under his arm. Beau looked up. His eyes met hers. She could see in his eyes a pain and sadness so obvious it hurt her heart. She pressed her lips to his gently; once and then again. She felt the warm water run over her as she took the slightest bit of soap gel and lathered his chest and arms. With each slow circle she kissed his lips again and again. She soaped her own breasts pressing them into him, rubbing her soft mounds against him, slowly sliding from side to side until she could feel her nipples become erect. Her hands traced down his rock hard stomach before separating just above his patch of thick black hair. She moved slowly down each hip until her hands captured his penis, which hung thick and semi hard until the moment of her touch. Like a soldier called to attention by its general, his cock became rigid. Beau was a big man, well endowed, and he knew exactly what to do with all his attributes. For the moment, he did nothing except allow her to take him. Eve rubbed and washed him, running her hands up and down his legs. She turned him around and stepped into him, pressing flesh against flesh, using her body to wash his back as high as she could reach while her hands guided the water. She took the shampoo and lathered his ebony curls, then soothingly pulled his head back into the spray of warm water to rinse the thick suds away. He slowly surrendered as her hands washed every inch of him. With each caress she heard his breathing both gradually relax and deepen.

  He kissed her and slid his tongue into her mouth. His hands cupped her breasts, squeezing them just gently enough to make her moan. He kissed her lips with purpose before moving down the side of her face onto her neck, gently biting her flesh until he found his way to one ear. He sucked on her ear lobe and slipped his tongue inside its tiny orifice, tracing up to the edge of her ear. It tickled her and made Eve moan with pleasure. She felt beautiful in his arms. He let his face drift lower. She could feel his tongue wrap around hers. His kisses traced their way along her shoulder. He bent his body as he lifted one breast into his mouth; a kiss, a suck, a gentle bite sent chills through her entire body. She felt her libido ignite. Her hand closed around his cock, rubbing sensually up and down its shaft. She kissed him hard, a kiss filled with pure passion. She pulled from his grasp and slipped down his chest. Eve licked his nipples, playing with them as he had done to her. Her face moved down his stomach, kissing and caressing every inch of his torso. She loved his skin. It was taut and smooth with small, well placed, silky patches of dark hair. She felt her hands slide against the small dimple of his back and cup around the high, firm arc of his ass. Eve closed her eyes and squatted as her mouth found his cock, hot, hard as steel and wet from the flow of hot water that ran over them both. Her lips parted and he slid in. She sucked on him like her favorite new candy pop. He moaned a sound she’d never heard from him. She moved her head back and forth, pressing gently down with her lips. She traced up and down each side of his shaft using her tongue; she teased and licked and sucked on the sensitive head that was starting to throb. Eve heard a deep, guttural moan, a sound so primitive it sounded as if it came from another person … from another place. Eve glanced up into the shadows to see his head drop backward in pleasure. She took him deeper into her throat. His hips moved in and out gently, ever so gently at first. In and out again and again he rocked. His fingers wove into her hair to hold her head as he pumped his manhood between her lips and down her throat. His pleasure built with each plunge until climax was only a stroke away. Eve closed her eyes imagining him loving the pleasure she was giving, but the face wasn’t Beau’s - it was Mac’s. She was making love to Beau, but fantasizing about the Detective. As much as she wanted to shake the image from her mind, the fantasy of taking Mac turned her on. Beau stopped her, reached down and, catching her under her armpits, lifted her to her feet and into his arms so she could straddle him. Eyes shut tight she envisioned looking into Mac’s eyes. He parted her legs and stabbed himself inside her. Eve held onto the shower curtain with one hand and latched her arm around his neck with the other. He lifted her up and down again and again and again. She placed one foot on the rim of the tub for balance as he grinded and twisted inside of her.

  God he was strong. One hand grabbed under her ass and lifted her up. She wrapped both her legs around his hips and held on. She was lost in her fantasy and he was lost in their pleasure – experienced animals, wild and unfettered. It was freer and more erotic love making than she had ever remembered. It was a feral kind of passion, exploding and building as they released all inhibitions and unleashed a new level of their passions. She rode him like a wild horse set to the rhythm of the pounding water.

  A rush of guilt shook her. Why was this fantasy so incredible? Eve forced herself to open her eyes to look at Beau. He was there. Her lover. Her husband-to-be, but he did not look back. His eyes were closed. Was he imaging someone else? All she could see was that he was beautiful. A haze of swirling shadows encircled him. She could see his eyes. They suddenly looked as dark as Philip’s. His expression was one of someone lost in the throes of erotic passion. Suddenly, Beau’s brow furrowed more and more with each thrust inside of her. The intensity was building, driving him harder, faster, stronger and deeper. Beau was there and yet he was someplace deep inside himself. It was what she’d seen when he stood naked in the bathroom with his fierce erection. He pushed her feet down from the step and turned her around. Eve held onto the wall. His cock slammed up inside her. He pounded into her harder and faster. Her hair in his hand bending her back, her face forced away from his, she felt each thrust like a jack hammer, filled with what felt like anger, meanness, a rage she’d never felt from him before. Eve tried to rationalize what was happening. Did he know she had a momentary fantasy of another man? He crashed into her harder. Eve braced herself, taking each thrust, feeling the guilt of her unspeakable sin. She took the pain as a kind of penance for her thoughts of Mac. Her mind raced. Maybe it wasn’t Mac. Maybe it was just all the frustration of everything that was happening in his life suddenly being released inside this act of violent sex. He whipped her around to face him and pulled them both down to the floor of the shower. He crawled into her, his body pressing onto hers. He was crushing her, jamming into her. The harder the stroke, the deeper his cock went, the bigger he felt inside her. Somewhere inside the pain she felt orgasmic waves of a very different kind of pleasure. Did she like his anger? Did she like the throbbing flashes that vacillated between pleasure and pain? She didn’t want to like it. She wanted him to stop!

  Beau stood up, towering over her and snatched her up into his arms
; lifting her, wet, dripping with water, he carried her into the bedroom and dropped her down on the silk comforter.

  “Beau —” Eve started to protest.

  He dove onto her, slamming himself inside. Beau, on his knees, pulled her hips up, pushing and thrusting his cock into her. He grasped the brass bed frame above her head for leverage. Eve moaned beneath him, taking the rhythm of each stroke. He kissed her, his tongue probing her mouth. Deep gasps of air echoed in the room as the pleasure her body wanted and her mind’s fears fought each other. His hand moved to her breast and he squeezed hard enough to make her arch up. His mouth went to her nipple. He sucked and licked and with each action there was a counteraction below until she surrendered. She came, exploding in a rush of silken fluid that flowed over his cock and down her legs, hot and wet. Her wet, throbbing cunt aroused him more and he responded, his hips moving faster and faster, his cock swelling bigger than she’d ever felt him. The pleasure was insane and horrifying. Eve bent her head back, her eyes closed. This time she slipped her hand down and cupped his testicles, fondling them faster and faster. She wanted him to come before he ripped her apart. He erupted with the force of Vesuvius and Krakatoa combined. A sound so primal, so lost in pleasure, bellowed from his throat and Eve opened her eyes. What she saw looming above her in the dim, shadowy light made her close them in disbelief. Something else was over her or was this some wild imagining too. She felt a rush of terror.

  “Beau!” Eve called out in a helpless whisper.

  Her body tightened, but he didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t stop. He pushed deeper and drove himself into her harder and faster. That sound … that primal sound filled her ears and she felt a searing, burning fire between her legs. She was passing out. She wanted to look, to open her eyes, but his mouth covered hers, his tongue inside of her, his hands everywhere. Eve twisted her face away and opened her mouth to cry out.

  “Beau! Stop! Stop! Please! You’re hurting me!” She screamed, sobbing through gasps and tears.

  Everything stopped. Beau stopped. The shadowy haze that swirled around him stopped and faded like a ghostly mist running away into the dim light. He hovered over her, confused, breathless and panting.

  “Forgive me,” he said, gathering her into his arms. “I don’t know what happened.”

  Eve was trembling. She wanted to push him away. She stared around looking into the shadows of the darkened room and then back at him. Inside a slim sliver of light that fell from the window she could see it was Beau … only Beau, worried for her, not a horrific monster that had tried to rip her to shreds… only her beautiful Beau.

  “You make me crazy. I lost myself. You know I would never hurt you.”

  Beau kissed her face and arms and fingers. The gentle stroke of his hand traced across her body.

  “Tell me what you need me to do?” he asked.

  Eve shook her head and curled up into his arms.

  “Hold me. Just hold me.”

  She felt like a child waking from a nightmare and those she loved had come to encircle her. He felt warm and strong, but he didn’t feel the one thing she desperately wanted to feel at this moment … safe and that frightened her more than the pain throbbing between her thighs.

  Chapter Six

  Cora was having a very bad day. She had purchased the deluxe kit of Teach Your Baby to Read by Dr. Glenn Dorman and faithfully, every day, had done ten flash cards over 30 seconds of spoken and visual words, number dots, and famous paintings. Delia listened and looked, but to date refused to speak. On this element of child development, she and Philip had taken a strange code of silence, pointing to what they wanted, but never verbalizing their needs or demands. The two children would play together and sit or lie in an almost Zen state staring at each other as if communicating telepathically, a fact Cora was certain of since she first noticed the strange eye contact that held them spellbound for minutes at a time. However, nothing she said could convince either Eve or Beau that baby telecommunication was a feasible possibility.

  Today, Delia was extremely irritable and unfocused. After the first set of cards she stood up, went to Cora and, placing both little hands on the cards, pushed them to the floor with a look so defiant it actually frightened Cora. Delia then opened her mouth and started screaming in full-on tantrum mode. The day nanny, Zamara, was about as plain a woman as Cora could find after the last two cute young nannies found their way into her extensive, black label, couture-filled closets and helped themselves to her clothes under the bizarre assumption that was acceptable behavior. Zamara, on the other hand, was a healthy muscular size 14, in her late forties, Latina, a trained nurse and an avid reader. When she didn’t have Delia, she had a book or a reader in her hand. Zamara rushed into the room as a stunned Cora reached out to embrace her daughter in an attempt to control her temper. Delia flailed, arching her back and kicking her feet. She whacked Cora in the face with such force she left a tiny red hand print on her mother’s cheek. Zamara stepped in.

  “Let me have her, Miss Bouvier,” Zamara insisted.

  Zamara lifted Delia into her arms and whispered something into Delia’s ear. Silence fell, leaving only the echoes of Delia’s voice ringing off the marble surfaces in the atrium.

  “What … what in tarnation did you say to her?” Cora asked, rubbing her cheek.

  Cora noticed there was blood on her lip as well.

  “Nothin’ really, Ma’am,” Zamara responded.

  “Nothing? A thirteen-month-old, in a full out nuclear tantrum shuts up and stills when you whisper in her ear and you choose not to tell me what you said? Seriously?” Cora said, glaring furiously at her nanny.

  “It’s not the words, Miss Cora. It’s deep inside the breath that carries them.”

  Cora stopped, completely stunned. Her daughter was not only calm and quiet, she snuggled into Zamara’s arms and buried her face in the nanny’s neck.

  “It’s an art with children my Mamacita taught me. I could show you if you like?”

  “I would like very much if you showed me how to do that, please,” Cora said.

  Zamara lay Delia down in the cradle, gave her the warm bottle of milk she was bringing up anyway before the sounds of infant Armageddon broke out, and crossed to Cora.

  “The key is to be as still and calm as you can be in the middle of such chaos,” Zamara explained.

  “Well, that’s the first challenge, suga’. I can’t be still and calm when the world is in utter chaos,” Cora said with a roll of her eyes.

  “Then it won’t work, will it?” Zamara said, her voice even, her tone pointed. Zamara tipped her head and arched her eyebrow as if to say, “Do you want to do this or not lady?”

  Cora took a deep breath. “Okay. Okay. I’m calm.”

  “Good. Now, take a deep long breath,” Zamara said, doing it as she explained.

  “What?”

  “Breathe. You don’t breathe right. You breathe from your chest, not from your abdominal muscles and back. If you breathe deeper, you will be able to calm yourself in a stressful situation. Now, breathe,” Zamara commanded and took a breath with her.

  “The second thing you have to do is lock your arms around her, like this.”

  Zamara came up to Cora and put her arms around her. Cora didn’t realize how much taller Zamara was than she until that moment. She felt the strength in Zamara’s arms press in on her so tight Cora’s breathing was actually constricted. Not enough to make her panic, but certainly enough to make her aware she was being securely held. Then with a soft, gentle breath Zamara blew, using her nose, into Cora’s ear. The result was instantaneous. Cora’s entire body relaxed, every ounce of tension released and her body turned to Jell-O. If she’d wanted to speak, she couldn’t. It was the second breath Zamara blew into her ear that made Cora melt in a way that shocked. Cora felt her nipples become erect and her vaginal juices flush as if she’d just had the most gentle, most sensual orgasm she ever experienced in her life. Cora released into Zamara’s arms, her head dropped to Zamara
’s shoulder and in those few moments Cora felt as calm as she’d ever felt in her life.

  Slowly Zamara released the forcefulness of her grip and somehow navigated Cora to the glider. Zamara’s hands, strong yet as smooth as silk and velvet combined, lay on Cora’s skin and the connection sent waves of pleasure through her.

  “This is what happens to Delia?” Cora asked, whispering the words.

  “She relaxes. What happens is what you want to happen,” Zamara said.

  Cora was mush, a human pudding. All she could do was look into Zamara’s eyes. And that too was strangely erotic. Her eyes were the color of sable with flecks of gold. Cora studied her, peering at her perfectly smooth, olive colored skin. Zamara had full lips and a keen nose, high cheek bones and bone straight black hair that had to have Native American in its DNA. Zamara was strong, beautiful and commandingly sensual.

  “I … I don’t understand what just happened. What’s still happening,” Cora said, almost unable to speak.