by Lora Leigh
"Kia, go to sleep, or your headache's going to get worse," he warned her. "When I slide inside you, I don't want to stop until we're both coming. Until our heads are exploding. You don't want that right now."
He gripped her hand, held her wrist still.
"You don't want me?" The edge of vulnerability in her voice sliced at his chest.
"One of these days, very soon, you're going to find out exactly how much I do want you," he warned her. "But not tonight." He lifted her hand from his flesh. "Not when it will only hurt you worse."
She moved to turn out of his arms, to pull away from him.
"Don't do it, Kia." He clamped his hand on her hip, staring down at her as she looked up at him in surprise. "You don't pull away from me, do you understand that? Not now, not ever again."
The hand that landed on his chest was less than gentle. A hard slap against the tensed muscles before he was forced to allow her to push away from him.
"Understand this," she told him fiercely. "You won't control me, Chase Falladay. Period. And the minute I'm able to push my butt out of this bed and stumble to that front door of yours, I am so out of here."
She jerked her pillow to her, slapped it, and laid her head gingerly against it.
Chase grinned. He waited, counting down the minutes, the seconds. Then easily, gently, he pressed his fingers back into her neck and began to knead the tense muscles again.
Nearly six inches separated them. For now. Until he could ease her into sleep, then he would have her in his arms once again. And in his arms was exactly where she belonged.
As her shoulders relaxed and her head settled deeper into her pillow, Chase moved to her. A while later, she was backing into his warmth once again, and it wasn't long after that he was following her into sleep with his arms around her.
Holding her completed him. He wasn't going to explain that one to himself, nor was he going to look into it too closely. It was that simple, and for the time being, he was going to let it stay simple.
"Where the hell do you think you're going?"
Five days later Kia froze in the act of attempting to slip from the bed and from beneath Chase's arm when his drowsy voice grumbled from the depths of the huge bed he had forced her to sleep in.
"I have to go to work."
She had lain around and done nothing but sleep and eat for nearly a week now. Her parents had driven her crazy, flitting in and out. That insane doctor had made her want to shoot him every time he woke her up, and Chase had her so frazzled she wondered if she would ever be able to settle her nerves again.
"Like hell. Sanjer said a full week." He hooked his arm around her waist and dragged her back to his chest. "Go back to sleep. You really don't want me to wake up yet."
But he sounded very awake. And he felt awake. The hard, thick length of his erection was pressed against her back. Because he slept naked. Because he had come to bed after she fell asleep and wrapped that hard, warm body around her.
And he made her like that. That was what he did. After she went to sleep, chilled and achy, he slipped into the bed and got her all warm and relaxed, and when she woke up the next morning all she wanted to do was stay there.
Well, she'd had a headache then, she assured herself. She didn't have one now.
"I really don't care if you wake up, Chase," she informed him irritably. "Or what Sanjer said. I have a job, and I have my own bed."
"A bed you don't sleep in," he snorted, holding her to his chest.
"I do now," she told him, her voice firm. She had to be firm when arguing with Chase, she had found.
He was quiet behind her. "What the hell does that mean?" he finally growled.
"It means exactly what the hell I said." She pushed at the arm wrapped around her and gave a moment's thought to just biting him if he didn't let her go.
A second later she was on her back, staring up at what had to be the sexiest sight God had ever gifted a woman with. Chase, long black hair tousled around the dark, arrogant features of his face. His light green eyes were narrowed down on her, thick, dark lashes doing nothing to shield the hunger, nor the fire in his eyes.
"When did you start sleeping in your bed?" His lips were tight, a muscle flexing in his jaw.
"The night before I bought my electric blanket and a vibrator," she said sweetly. "Why, Chase, I do declare, I've learned that that bed can be quite comfortable when I want it to be."
She relaxed beneath him as much as possible with the sight of those hard, powerful biceps flexing by her shoulders and the hard flush washing through his cheeks.
She was counting down to the explosion now.
"What kind?"
She blinked back at him. "Excuse me?"
Where was the anger? The fury? Drew had blown a gasket when he found her tiny personal vibrator years before. Wouldn't Chase be just as angry? Especially when she had done everything but demand he not touch her for the past few days.
"What kind of vibrator?" He leaned closer. "When you're using it, do you think of me, Kia?"
Her eyes widened. "What?" she stammered, her hands pressing against his chest, but not pushing him away.
She felt uninhibited suddenly. The look in eyes, that wasn't anger. The flush on his cheekbones, that was arousal.
"Tell me about your vibrator." One hand tugged at the slender strap of the camisole top she had worn to sleep in, pulling it over her shoulder. Suddenly she was uncertain, off balance.
"Ab-about my vibrator?" she stammered again.
"Is it as thick as my dick?"
She was the one who flushed now. She felt the heat wash over her entire body.
"Are you crazy?"
"Do you think of me when you use it? Do you spread your pretty thighs and press it into your tight, hot little pussy and whisper my name? You're so snug, so tight, it's like a silken vise when it wraps around me. Is that how it feels against the vibrator? Like you're being stretched until all you can do is cry out my name?"
He was aroused. Oh hell no, he was past aroused. He was clearly becoming dangerously, wickedly horny. And he was making her wet.
"I don't cry out your name," she lied, lifting her gaze from him, knowing she had. She had screamed out his name because she couldn't come hard enough, couldn't feel the release deep enough, to even take the edge off her need for him.
"You're lying to me, Kia." His voice deepened, caressing her nerve endings as she pushed at his chest.
"Get off me, Chase. I need to shower and get out of here. You don't really want me here, and we both know it. So let me go."
Before, she hadn't been able to contain the need to lift against him, to tear the camisole from her body, to drag her aching nipples over his hairy chest.
She had been without him for too long. Her body was protesting that absence vociferously. Her pussy was contracting involuntarily, spilling its juices against her silk and lace panties as she tried to
ignore the head of his cock pressing between her thighs.
"Tell me how you do it." He moved, gripping her hands and pulling them to the bed beside her shoulders. He shackled them to the mattress, his thighs spreading, parting hers. "Tell me, do you push it inside you slow and easy, or fast and hard? Is it slender and tapered, Kia? Or thick and wide? Do you warm it in your mouth and imagine warming me there?"
She couldn't help it. Her gaze jerked back to his, rounded in shock, a fever raging beneath her flesh as his voice turned deep, guttural.
"It's thick and wide," she whispered back furiously. "Just the length, just the width of yours, and
every time I use it I come until I pass out because it's better than anything I've ever had before."
Wicked, sensual, knowing, his lips curled seductively. "It makes you pass out, does it?"
"Every time," she said, though not in anger. She couldn't hold the edge of anger, but she couldn't dull the sharp edge of hunger either.
"Oh, Kia, you are such a naughty little liar." He chuckled as though in delight.
She held back her own smile, but she felt her lips pout as her lashes swept over her eyes. She arched against him then, rubbed the silk and lace of her panties against the engorged head of his cock.
"When you jack off, do you think of me?" she asked him then. "When your fingers are tight around your cock, Chase, and your cum is spilling from your flesh, is my name on your lips?"
"Every time."
Her lips parted in shock. She couldn't breathe. She was fighting for oxygen, fighting to clear her head enough to think when he had stolen her breath with those two words.
"I imagine those pretty lips first." He nipped at her lower lip. "Parting, sucking me in. I close my eyes and I see you there, but it's never as good, Kia. Are you sure it's as good with that vibrator?"
She swallowed tightly. "It's all I have."
"Is it as good as the feel of my dick working inside you?" he asked her again. "Stretching and burning you. I know I do, Kia, because you're so tight around me, so hot and rippling with the effort to take me. I know how I stretch you. I feel it. I see it in your face, hear it in your cries."
Her juices were wet and hot, saturating her panties, and she knew he had to feel it.
"Ah, pretty Kia." His smile was one of erotic satisfaction. "I feel it, baby. Come on now, tell me, does that vibrator really feel as good as I do?"
She would have lied to him then. She assured herself, she really and truly would have. But he chose that moment to lower his head and catch a hard nipple between his teeth. He took the silk of her camisole and the tender flesh into his mouth and sucked her. With hunger. And he watched her, staring back at her as the head of his cock pressed against the too-sensitive folds of flesh beneath her panties.
"Answer me." His voice hardened just enough to send a shiver down her spine. "Does it feel as good, Kia?"
"Better."
Oh God, she had lost her mind. She watched that smile tip his lips and she knew she was in trouble.
"Ah, baby" He caught both wrists in one of his hands, lifted them over her head and allowed the
other hand to slide down her side. "That was really the wrong little fib to tell."
His eyes. Kia stared up at his eyes, watching the light green flicker with dark highlights as that wicked, wicked smile curled his lips.
A dark overnight growth of beard darkened his jaw and chin, giving him a rakish appearance.
She wondered if she should be so damned turned on, or if she should be terrified out of her mind.
Her body was making the decision for her. It was arching against him as she felt something around her wrists. Her head turned and she stared up at the slender leather straps he had pulled from the back of the headboard.
"You wouldn't!"
He did. Before she could struggle her wrists were bound with two velvet-lined leather cords.
"Perfect." He grinned, leaning back to stare down at her as her head turned back and her eyes widened at the sight of his cock straining out from his body. "I wouldn't want you to hurt yourself when you start thrashing around."
"Thrashing around?" she almost squeaked.
"From the pleasure, Kia." His brows lowered, his look darkening. "Do you think I'd hurt you?"
She shook her head, albeit slowly. "What are you going to do?"
He gripped the front of her camisole. "It's a good thing Ian pays well." He ripped it open, pushing the edges past her breasts as she arched to him, involuntarily, because this really shouldn't be turning her on.
"Damn. That's so pretty." His hands cupped her breasts, his thumbs flicking over her nipples.
Pinpoints of electricity began to sizzle across her nerve endings.
She had never been restrained in her life. She had never wanted to be restrained. Until now.
Until she strained at the velvet-lined cords securing her wrists and Chase knelt between her thighs.
"This is insane," she gasped as he gripped her nipples with thumbs and forefingers and applied just enough pressure to make her twist beneath him. The sensations raced past pleasure and bordered on an edge of pain that had her reaching for more.
"Look how hard your nipples are." He lifted his fingers from them, only to lower his head and lick one, then the other. "I love your nipples. So sweet and tight, and hot. They flush that pretty bright pink and make me hungry to taste them."
"Let me go. I want to touch you." She needed to touch him, to feel his flesh beneath her hands, to hold him.
She stared up at him as he straightened once again, his glaze flickering over her nearly naked body.
"No."
Her lips parted as some dark, erotic challenge flickered in his face.
"No?"
"Not until I make you pass out from the pleasure. Are we making bets on whether or not I can manage it?"
Kia narrowed her eyes back at him. Surely such a thing wasn't even possible.
"If you lose, you get to trade places." He was going to lose. She had known the pinnacles of pleasure with him already. She had never heard of anyone passing out because the orgasm had been so good, and she was hoping Chase was all bluff.
His grin was daring. "I've never been tied down in my life, Kia."
"First time for everything," she warned him, allowing a hint of smugness to show. "Come on, Chase, pleasure alone?" She stretched beneath him, lifted to him, and watched his eyes narrow.
"You're bluffing."
He was silent. His expression went still, tense.
"Don't do that, Kia." There was a warning growl in his voice. "Don't dare me."
"You won't hurt me." She tugged at the bonds. "We both know you won't, Chase."
"There are some things women don't want to know about themselves," he told her then. "You're strong, resilient. But do you really want to touch the places I could take you? The places I will take you if you continue to dare me."
Her chin lifted. "And a dare's all it takes? Are you certain you can do it without help?"
She was crazy. She had accused him of being insane, but as she watched the dark lust flash through his eyes again, she wondered if she wasn't the one who had lost her mind.
"Oh how brave," he whispered, part playful, part dark eroticism.
"Baby, anything you've known while taking both Khalid and me is nothing compared to what you'll know now."
"Holding back on me then?" She arched as his fingers grazed the silken crotch of her panties.
"Shame on you, Chase."
Her voice was rough, her confidence not really everything it should have been as she felt her excitement growing.
He clicked his tongue at her. "Shame on you, sweetheart, because you just bought yourself the edge."
Chapter 18
Kia had no idea what the edge was, but she had a feeling it was going to go way beyond mere pleasure. Touching Chase, being touched by him, was an adventure each time. The adventure she had craved all her life, the challenge and the daring wild ride into sensations she had only fantasized about.
She tugged at the bonds that held her wrists. She was helpless; she felt helpless, sensually and erotically helpless.
She should have been frightened, she was sure. She should have been hesitant about allowing him to control her sensuality in this way. But her sensuality reveled in it. She reveled in it.
"You can pull back at any time, sugar." His smile was pure, erotic demand. "If you pull back, you lose your bet."
The challenge was clear.
Kia let her own laughter whisper past her lips, though it was strained, filled with nervous anticipation.
"You can't come before I do, Chase," she informed him and watched his expression crease with a grimace of both pleasured anticipation and wariness. "If you get off, then you lose."
She wasn't about to give him any edge. If he wanted to make his own rules, then she could make hers as well.
"That wasn't in the deal." He chuckled, but there was an edge of rueful acceptance in his expression.
