Getting Even

by Avril Tremayne

  “I’m going to make you come again,” he said against her ear in a voice that seemed to answer the throb in her. Then he shocked her by shifting the vanilla-saturated stocking so it was against her asshole. And then, hoarsely, “Say if you don’t want this.”

  “I do want it,” she said, because oh God, did she want it! She wanted everything he’d done to her before this night and everything he hadn’t dared. She wanted him to take her as high and wild as she could go, obliterating everything except what he was doing to her body.

  He moved, his fingers in the mess of drenched nylon, pressing against her, probing gently but firmly, entering her with no more than a sheathed fingertip, waiting as her body adjusted to the intrusion. “I’m going to lick you here, Veronica. Give me permission.”

  “Yes, yes, please. I want you to lick me.”

  With a groan he dropped to his knees behind her. “Open for me,” he commanded, and she shifted her legs further apart. He spread her cheeks and she bowed her head against the wood in supplication. She was past wanting this—she needed it.

  He dropped the stocking, went in with his tongue, rimming her. She jerked with each lick of his tongue, frantic for more, and he gave it to her, one finger sliding into her. Tight. So tight she squirmed.

  “Veronica,” he said—and she heard the craving in his voice.

  “I’m okay, okay, don’t stop,” she urged, and forced herself to relax despite the desire coiling in her like an ever-tightening spring.

  He drew his finger out. She protested but, “Shh,” he said, and moved in to lick her once more.

  She moaned out a long “Ooooh,” relaxing her muscles. His finger—no, two fingers—slid into her again.

  “Me vuelves loco,” he groaned, his left hand snaking around her to come at her from the front, and she could only agree because he was driving her crazy. Fingers of his left hand flying over her clit, fingers of his right hand slowly stretching her asshole. “Te poseeré, te poseeré.” And she thought in that moment he did. He did own her.

  “Rafael,” she cried.

  “Let go, relax, let me have this,” he urged.

  Easing in, out, in, until she screamed her frustration.

  And he was up, on his feet, yanking at her legs, sliding inside her pussy now. Another time, she thought. Two weeks—surely now they’d started they would finish it.

  And then his words, in her ear, wrapped around his panting breaths. “I will take you every way I know how...before I’m done with you...I will fuck you until you can barely walk...I will replace every old memory you have of me...with new memories...and for every man who comes after me...you’ll think of me...”

  A vow—as though he were saying it to himself—but she made the same vow in her heart, to replace every memory he had of her with a new one, so that he would never stop thinking of her.

  His left hand came around in front of her, his fingers circling her clit, rubbing, pinching.

  “Come,” he ordered.

  But now she wanted to see his face, to see what she’d done to him. So, “No!” she said, “not until you untie me.”

  “Come, damn you.”

  “No!”

  And with a curse, he was untying her wrists, turning her, yanking her against his chest and kissing her as he slid his cock into her again. Once, twice, thrice. Again, again, so hard she landed on her back on the bed, him on top of her. Moments only, until she felt herself convulse once more, squeezing around his cock, and a split second later, he shouted her name as he came.

  * * *

  Breaths. Hearts beating hard. Another thrust even though he was spent, because it made it somehow...more. Made it real, to feel her against him in the aftermath.

  Then silence. Shocked and heavy.

  And somehow...desolate, though he didn’t understand it.

  Or maybe it was that he didn’t want to.

  “I didn’t hurt you?” he asked, too tentative.

  Her answer was to reach her arms around him, kiss him deeply. And then, “No,” she said, as though knowing he needed to hear the word.

  He gave in to the weakness of being held by her for too long a moment, and then eased himself off her. “I’m going to get rid of this condom, then get clean for you,” he said. “Get into bed. I’ll want you again in a few minutes.”

  And maybe, he thought, when he was clean and she was his again, he’d understand why what they’d just done still wasn’t enough.

  CHAPTER TEN

  FIVE O’CLOCK.

  Veronica had lapsed into her usual sleep-coma two hours ago, at which point Rafael had gotten out of bed, prowled restlessly around the cottage, collected her dress and purse and brought them upstairs, and noted she hadn’t moved so much as a muscle while he’d been gone.

  That was normal: she’d always slept like she was in a coma. In their first month together he’d held a mirror to her mouth no less than four times to check she was still breathing. A wave of nostalgia swept through him, making him almost smile as he slipped back into bed beside her. He wished she’d roll into him and wake herself up—then maybe he could stop thinking and just...

  Just what?

  Just talk to her? About what? Hadn’t they said everything they needed to say to get them through to the end? And if he had nothing new to talk to her about, what was the point in her being awake? To fuck her again, obviously. As long as she wasn’t too tired. Or too sore. If she was either of those things he could just kiss her and tell her to go back to sleep.

  At that point in his musings, it became obvious to him that being close to her without having an actual body part inserted in her somewhere was dangerous. I want to fuck you—that’s what he’d said to her at that mausoleum, what had kick-started the whole damn thing. Not, I want to kiss you and tuck you up and hover over you like a nursemaid making sure I wasn’t too rough last night.

  I want to fuck you.

  Was it still considered “fucking” when your chest ached with melancholy the morning after because whatever you’d gotten from a woman, it wasn’t enough, and you knew it even if you didn’t want to acknowledge it?

  Was it really considered “fucking” when dread was creeping through your veins because you knew that even if something changed in the next two weeks and you both decided that not only was the sex just as good as it had always been but you wanted to keep going, and going, and going, that the most you could ever hope for was one more week? Because that was when she’d get your book, and when she read your book she’d give up sticking pins in the voodoo doll she’d made of you and stick them right into your actual balls?

  He should never have bargained for the two weeks—he should have stuck with just one night. He’d be putting his suitcases into his car right about now if he’d done that, and heading for the airport, and he’d be no worse off than he’d been yesterday.

  Except that he would be worse off. Because he would have had last night—one more night—to grieve over the loss of her.

  What a mess.

  He wished he could go back in time and not leave her in that what-the-fuck-am-I-doing moment. And yet he knew it was only by leaving that he’d made himself good enough, successful enough, to have her—and, Jesus, wasn’t that a twist and a half of craziness!

  What he really wanted was...the impossible. To merge two time periods and cut out the in-between. To have been the man he was now back when he’d had a chance of keeping her.

  Fuuuuuck. Two weeks of such mental gymnastics and he’d be in a straitjacket.

  She stirred, and he looked at her face, expecting her to wake. But all she did was murmur his name in her sleep. “Rafa...”

  Rafa, not Rafael. Such a small thing to move him so terribly. She wasn’t the only one to call him that and yet when she did, she was the only one in the world.

  He knew what was coming when she said that in her
sleep, and braced for it. But even expecting it, even preparing himself for it, a lump still formed in his throat when she reached out a hand and patted his chest, as though making sure he was there, then left her hand resting over his heart. He’d missed it so much, and resented missing it, and wondered—of course he’d wondered—if she was doing exactly that when she was asleep in bed with first Piers then Simeon. Feeling blindly for them, reassuring herself she wasn’t alone, that they were beside her, keeping her hand over their hearts as though the beat of them was a talisman to keep her safe. And the weird thing was that he’d wanted her to have the comfort of it, but hated the thought of her sharing her one, her only, her secret vulnerability with anyone but him.

  So of course he’d had to go and give that quirk to Hope in Stomp. Except he’d turned it into a pretense—a manufactured vulnerability, a siren’s trick. Hope wasn’t really asleep when she used it on Alejandro (Alejo, she called him)—just pretending to be, because she knew Alejandro, with his towering need for her to belong to him, would trust her gestures more if they were coming from her subconscious.

  How could he lie beside her with her hand on his chest knowing he’d used this private moment in his scathing book? And he hadn’t just used it, either. He’d stripped it of its authenticity, adulterated it, turned it into a manipulation. That Veronica didn’t know she did it and therefore wouldn’t recognize it when she read it somehow made it worse—like he was telling the world her most personal secret. His secret, too. And he couldn’t shake the feeling that once the book was published, he’d ruin his own memory of it and never forgive himself for doing so.

  A sense of urgency, a need to rip it out of the book, gripped him.

  In fact he needed to reread the whole book with fresh eyes and see what he’d done to her, ask himself if she deserved what he’d done to her, while there was still time to change it.

  He took her hand, desperate now that she not wake up, tucked it carefully beside her and got quietly out of bed. He grabbed his washbag from the bathroom, picked up his suitcase and his briefcase, and made his way into the second bedroom to shower and dress before settling himself into the armchair with his manuscript and starting to read.

  One chapter in, he knew he was going to need whiskey—maybe drunk straight from the bottle—and he headed down to the kitchen.

  * * *

  Veronica opened her eyes slowly, not trusting the feeling that she was exactly where she was supposed to be, even though she was more than three thousand miles from home.

  She eased cautiously up onto her elbows to look around, but she already knew Rafael wasn’t in the room. If he were, she’d either hear him in the bathroom or he’d be wrapped around her in bed.

  Which meant she could safely indulge herself by grabbing his pillow, snuggling her face into it and breathing him in. She could pretend they were back in their DC town house, on a typical Sunday, and he was out for his usual morning ten-mile run. She’d be “sleeping” when he got back—an excuse to be waiting for him in bed. He’d know she was faking it but he’d leave her alone and go shower off—always so fastidious about being clean before he touched her—and then get back into bed with her. A tug to bring her against his chest, a kiss below her ear, a murmur in Spanish—Te amo. I love you—before making slow, gentle, welcome-to-the-day love to her.

  It was a lovely memory, but at the moment she was more interested in the reality of now—which was not so much slow and gentle as wild and tough. He’d gone for her last night as though it were his last day on earth and he needed everything, all of her, urgently, frenziedly, before the chance was lost. Just thinking about it made her breathless.

  Breathless...and something else. Something perilously close to happy.

  Well, damn, she deserved to be happy, didn’t she? So she’d be happy. Even if it was to be only two weeks—well, thirteen days now. She’d make it enough. Take him a million times, gorge herself on him the way she’d gorged herself by eating twenty-three cupcakes at Phyllida Graeme’s eleventh birthday party—she’d thrown up all night, and she’d never eaten a cupcake again!

  She gave Rafael’s pillow one last, long sniff—de-li-cious, he really, truly was!—then tossed it back onto his side of the bed, stretched her arms out and up, and leaped out of bed with a laugh that quickly turned into a groan as her legs almost collapsed under her.

  “Whoa!” she said and grabbed for one of the four bedposts to steady herself. Rafael hadn’t been kidding when he’d said he was going to fuck her until she could barely walk! Every muscle in her body was aching—muscles she didn’t know she had were aching!

  Glorious.

  She leaned into the bedpost, rubbed her cheek against the wood. This was the post he’d tied her to. He’d probably thought she’d protest that treatment, but she’d loved every single thing he’d done to her—so much so, the remembrance sent a tingling throb all the way through her until it arrived with a zap between her thighs before spreading backward and zapping her where he’d licked her so thoroughly.

  Was it right to feel so powerful when you were tied up?

  Maybe that was something she should discuss with Scarlett.

  Hmm. Or maybe not. Scarlett had been so suspicious when Veronica had called her to relay that the catastrophe scale had worked, that she hadn’t killed anyone, that she’d had a civil conversation with Rafael (because, hey, it had to be classified as civil when she hadn’t killed him, didn’t it?) and that everything was under control. She wasn’t sure a segue from “civil conversation” to being tied to a bedpost with her own stocking wouldn’t have Scarlett planning an intervention and catching the next flight out of New York. And since she was a full thirteen days away from needing an intervention, she’d rain-check the call to Scarlett until she was back home.

  And anyway, it was under control. Even when she’d been tied to that bedpost, and she’d known he was intent on...on conquering her somehow, he’d let her be in control, and she’d swear he hadn’t even realized he was doing that. She’d wanted to be untied—he had therefore untied her. Simple.

  Was she crazy to have let him tie her up in the first place? Was she crazy to believe she could control what happened to her despite being tied up? He was altogether harder, tougher, stronger, more demanding than her Rafael—and yet her Rafael was in there, too. He had to be, or she couldn’t have trusted him.

  Would he trust her to tie him up?

  Now that was an interesting question.

  She decided she liked these control games. She wanted to push it, push him, and be pushed herself. She liked the combination of danger and trust. Liked the feeling that she was off the leash, alone with him, with nobody to get in the way of their sexual odyssey. It was like a...a honeymoon, almost.

  Okay, honeymoon was a step too far.

  She let go of the bedpost and made her way gingerly into the bathroom, compiling a list of ablutions to make herself ready for seduction.

  Brush teeth

  Shower

  Wash & blow-dry hair

  Apply makeup—lipstick not required

  Dress sexy

  Halfway through step one she realized she couldn’t see Rafael’s washbag, so she turned to see where he’d put it only to be distracted by the sight of herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the door.

  Her vigorous tooth-brushing slowed. Slowed. Stopped.

  “Wow!” she said.

  She looked like she’d been manhandled. Mauled, even.

  There was a sizable love bite on her neck, the sight of which made her feel weird—but weird in a good way, a sexy way. She’d always thought a hickey was a thing you got in high school from an overenthusiastic boyfriend. But she didn’t feel like a schoolgirl when she saw that circle on her neck—she felt like tasty vampire bait. He’d bitten and sucked her all over, but this was proof that Rafael had lost control for once in his life because he’d never marke
d her before.

  And it wasn’t the only proof, either, because her nipples were erect and they had been all night, because he’d sucked them on and off from the time he’d joined her in bed until the time she’d fallen into a sex-drenched oblivion. So relentlessly had he gone for them, she suspected they’d be sticking out for the rest of her damn life! And she had beard rash. Not only on her breasts but also on her mons—one of the joys of waxing everything off was that she could see the abrasions—and that did something weird to her, too. Weird and fantastic. She felt like the most desirable woman on the planet, remembering how many times he’d burrowed his face down there, how he’d slid lower, deeper, sucking, licking, kissing.

  Ooooh God, she was freshly wet now, needy as hell, wanting him to come into the bathroom, bend her forward and lick her some more.

  She was shaking as she returned to the sink to rinse out her mouth and then, as though spellbound, she returned to the mirror because she needed convincing that it was really her she was seeing. She leaned in close, focusing on her face. Her mouth was swollen and it was a darker pink than normal. Her eyes looked positively sultry, her eyelids heavy and slumberous. More beard rash—her cheeks scraped to blush-color from his regrowth. Her hair was a tousled mess of silvery gold.

  “Wow,” she said again—not caring that her vocabulary wasn’t as expansive as usual this morning.

  She looked sooooo sexy. A snowdrop that had been turned into a wild orchid. And she smelled just as exotic. Vanilla, salt, sweat, the musk of arousal. And Rafael’s cum, because that last time he’d been caught off guard, ejaculating on the lower part of her back before he could get the condom on. And even that little mishap was thrilling, now that she thought of it.

  Okay. Okaaay. When he’d said he wanted to fuck her, she’d known he was going to fuck her good and she’d wanted that. But it seemed now his intention had been to fuck her bad, and if this was what being fucked bad looked like, felt like, smelled like—like you’d been savaged, half devoured—then she’d take it, by God.