by Julie Kriss
And I followed her.
I wasn’t trying to impress her. I knew I couldn’t. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. But I’d brought her here, to this house, for a reason, and I only realized it now. As I saw the tender skin on the backs of her knees flash briefly beneath the hem of the dress, I knew it was because when I fucked her—and I would fuck her—I wanted her here. In this place. My place. We’d had hot, sweaty, fugitive sex in her apartment two years ago, and it had been explosive and incredible, but this time would be different. This time, when I ran my hands—my teeth, my tongue—over the sensitive skin on the backs of her knees, I wanted her in a safe place that was mine, that belonged to me, that smelled like me the way an animal’s den did.
She circled the ground floor and back into the front hall again, stopping at the bottom of the stairs. She put a graceful hand on the newel post and looked up into the dimness.
I stepped close, and she looked at me. Her dark eyes took me in, standing in front of her. They flickered over the shirt unbuttoned at my throat, the trim beard on my jaw, the sleeves rolled up to show my tattoo. Then they moved up to my eyes and held them.
“This place is beautiful,” she said softly, seriously.
I’d been right to bring her here. Olivia was the only woman—the only person—I knew who would appreciate this place like a work of art. “I know,” I said.
She looked me up and down again. “And you,” she said, her voice just as serious, just as appreciative. “You look like you belong here.”
That made me feel uncomfortable, like I didn’t deserve it, so I reminded her, “I just got out of prison, Olivia.”
She stepped closer to me and touched the skin where my shirt was unbuttoned at my throat, drawing her finger along it as if she couldn’t help it. “You belong both places,” she mused. “I don’t know how, but you do.”
The blood was roaring in my veins at that simple touch. We’d done a lot of things already, Olivia and me, touched a lot of each other, but her finger tracing my skin made me nearly insane. My breath caught, and she noticed. She leaned forward and put her mouth where her finger had been, her lips soft against the skin of my neck, her tongue hot where she licked me.
I moaned low in my throat. There’s only so much a man who’s spent two years in prison can take. “Go upstairs,” I told her.
She kissed me a moment longer, seeming to taste my skin, and then she pulled away. She turned and walked up the stairs, her hips and ass in the dress in full view of me as she receded. This time, she was well aware of the view she was giving me, and she let it be an invitation, blatant and perfect and hot.
I stood at the bottom of the stairs for a moment, watching her go, taking in the view, letting her know I appreciated it. Then I followed.
Upstairs, after that kiss, it became a game. One I could barely stand, I was so filled with tension, I could so clearly smell her lust. She walked softly from room to room, looking at each, gazing out the windows, leading me. And I followed. I was her big, nasty shadow, unable to hold back. Waiting for his cue.
One bedroom. Another. Another. One of the bathrooms, filled with a huge soaker tub and glass shower. “It’s all beautiful,” she said softly. “All of it.”
This time I didn’t answer, and she didn’t seem to expect it.
When she crossed the threshold to the master bedroom, something in me broke. As I followed her I reached out and put a hand on her back. I slid it up beneath her hair, to the back of her neck, and I felt her skin rise in goosebumps, heard her intake of breath. She paused and I felt her muscles flex beneath my fingers, her body stretch with arousal like a cat’s.
“Olivia,” I said, my voice rough. “Walk to the dresser and bend over.”
She sighed in pleasure. “Kiss me first,” she said.
I stepped forward and put my mouth to the junction of her neck and her shoulder, biting softly, and then sucking. She tasted sweet and soft, like cream. She gave a moan, the sound vibrating against my mouth, and then she pulled away and turned toward me.
I kissed her, deep and hard, taking her mouth. The kiss yesterday, at her work, had been a conversation; this was nothing of the kind. In seconds it turned wild as she opened her mouth and sucked my tongue, her arms coming around my neck. I scraped my teeth over her bottom lip as her fingers felt their way into my hair.
I walked her backward to the low dresser. I could have tossed her on the bed, but I didn’t want to. I wasn’t ready for a bed yet. I wanted to fuck her, take her hard somewhere that would make it clear to her who I was, how dirty I was. As if she didn’t already know.
We were walking so fast, so unheeding, that we hit the dresser hard, her ass knocking it back against the wall. She made a muffled sound of surprise in my mouth and dropped her hands to the skirt of her dress, pulling it up. A few quick motions and I looked down to see her black panties drop to the floor.
“Fuck,” I murmured as she pulled my shirt from my pants, her fingers quick on the buttons. Two years of pent-up lust roared over me, and I put my hands on her shoulders, pulling the sides of her dress down her arms. I dragged the straps of her bra along with it, and in one quick motion her shoulders and the tops of her breasts were bare, spilling out of the tops of the cups of her bra.
She had my shirt open and was working my belt when I spun her back around. She braced her hands on the dresser, her fingers white, as I pulled up the back of her skirt and showed the perfect bare ass I’d been picturing all through two hard fucking years in prison.
I cupped her, watching my rough, dark skin against her perfect whiteness, and then I dug my fingers in. “Spread your legs,” I said.
She pushed her legs wider. “Hard,” she said. “Do it hard.”
Oh, yes. This was every wet fantasy I’d had in my cell: Olivia, bent over, wet and willing, telling me to fuck her. I undid my pants and pushed them down while I stroked her with the other hand, letting my fingers slide into her pussy as she pressed back against me.
“Jesus, Olivia,” I managed, my last attempt to give her an out. “You’d better be sure. I can’t be gentle.”
“Then don’t,” she panted. “Please don’t.”
I slid my cock into her hard, nearly slamming her hips into the dresser. She moaned and braced her arms. “Yes,” she said.
I was wild, burning, all of me focused on the perfect pleasure of her wet heat. I gripped her hips and fucked into her again, making a low sound in my throat as she nearly shouted.
I didn’t bother with a condom. She’d told me she hadn’t fucked anyone else; neither had I. We’d done it raw last time, trusting each other. I’d risked everything, and so had she. And we’d been right.
She pressed back against me, arching her back and pressing her perfect ass against my hips, and my cock took over, chasing pleasure, chasing release. I worked her into a rhythm, fucking her so hard my belt clanged against the wood and the dresser banged against the wall—it didn’t matter because there was no one to hear. There were just me and her and the things we wanted to do to each other.
I looked up and realized that in the reflection in the window on the other wall I could see her face at an angle, could see her tits bouncing over the top of her bra, her bare shoulders. I could see her face, and in that split second I knew exactly what I was seeing in the way she bit her lip, in her half-closed eyes. It was pain and pleasure mixed together. I was hurting her. And she liked it.
The sight made me crazy. I braced one hand on the dresser—it had been buried in the soft flesh of her hip, just like my other hand, gripping hard enough to leave bruises—and fucked her harder as I felt sweat trickle down my back. I didn’t want to stop. I never wanted to stop. I wanted to do this forever.
She came, her body going supple and liquid under my hand, her back arching even more, a cry coming from her throat. I pressed myself into her deep, pushing her hips painfully against the edge of the dresser, and came, the release hitting me like a hammer blow, fast and violent. Maybe I made a s
ound, or said something; I couldn’t hear it over the roaring in my ears. I emptied all of me into her, every worthless part of me, just as I had two years ago. I’d come down her throat, in her pussy, and she’d taken it. She took it again now. And just like then, she had no idea she was getting more of me than she’d bargained for.
Sixteen
Olivia
Twenty minutes later we were in the huge bathtub in the master bathroom, ensconced in hot water. Devon was sprawled against the porcelain, and I was between his legs, my back to his chest, my arms propped on his bent knees. I was so relaxed I was almost liquid.
I liked having his big body around me. I liked feeling the wet hair of his chest against my back, the sound of the steady rhythm of his breathing. I liked the feeling of his muscled arms cradling me, his legs bracing me. It felt, for the moment, like all of that leashed power was mine.
And Devon Wilder was all leashed power. I’d felt it.
He was also a puzzle, a paradox. An ex-con and a getaway driver, a man who lived life every day expecting to die. A man who now owned this beautiful house and God knew how much money. I’d grown up in Hollywood long enough to know that money changed people, and almost never for the better.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, his voice a rumble against my back.
“I’m wondering if you’re going to turn into that Fifty Shades guy now,” I said.
He snorted. “That guy needed a therapist, not a girlfriend.”
I blinked. “You read it?”
“I had two years in prison and nothing to do except stare at the ugly faces of the guys in with me. Max kept lending me books. So I read them, And, yeah, he lent me that one.”
Max. That was his friend that took over Devon’s old apartment across from me, the hot guy with the beard. “Max has trashy taste.”
“Sometimes,” Devon agreed. “He followed that one with Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, though. I think he was just trying to piss me off.” He paused. “He worried that I was going to come out of there worse than when I went in. It happens to a lot of cons. Most of them.”
I shifted my weight between his legs. “I was about to say that I can imagine it, except the truth is I can’t.”
“Then don’t,” he said. “You’re not missing anything. So you know the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. You were there when it was happening.” He paused, and I knew we were both thinking of that night, of him devouring me in my bed. “Now tell me the worst thing that’s ever happened to you.”
It was an odd question, maybe, but I was realizing that one of the things I liked about Devon was that I never knew what he would say. “Well, my dad dying was bad,” I said, “but I was just little.”
“The worst thing you remember, then,” he said.
That was easy. “Failing art school.”
“You went to art school?”
“In San Diego. For a year. Before I moved here and got the job at Gratchen.”
“Why did you fail?”
I leaned my head back against his warm, hard shoulder, thinking back, as the water soothed my skin. “I couldn’t do anything right,” I said, trying to explain. “I’m just not an artist, not really.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“It’s true. Every project I turned in got marked low. I never got it right. When I turned in my final project of my first year, I think I already knew.” I tried not to wince at the memory.
“What was wrong with it?” he asked.
I didn’t want to talk about this, but he was right. I already knew the worst about him; it was a fair exchange. “I took photos. Then I blew them up, printed them, and painted over them. I added faces, dragons, fantastical elements to everyday street scenes. And the pictures, taken together, told a story.”
Devon was quiet for a minute. “So? What was the problem?”
I shrugged, the motion making the water in the bathtub swirl. “The professors said it was too commercial. That it lacked passion.”
His finger traced the side of my neck. “I don’t think you lack passion,” he said softly.
I paused as a shiver raced up my spine. Suddenly I was very aware of my nakedness. Of his. Of the flex of his stomach against my back. Of what we’d just been doing, bent over the dresser in his bedroom. “I was passionate when I did those pictures,” I managed. “I felt passionate. It was devastating to fail. I haven’t felt that way again until—” Until I first saw you climb the stairs to your apartment, I almost said. Until I got in your car in the rain. Until I let you into my apartment that night.
“I let my mother down when I failed,” I said. “She paid the tuition. People think actors are set for life, but my mother hasn’t acted in twenty years. She did a couple of shampoo commercials to send me to school, and to pay for Gwen’s tuition to acting school. And we both failed. She was nice about it, but things just sort of felt… over for a while. I had to join the real world. Go and get a job.”
“A job you don’t like,” he said, his voice musing.
“Most people have jobs they don’t like,” I said. I pulled away from him, feeling his legs flex in an attempt to keep me, and I turned around, rising to my knees in the water of the tub. I wanted to see his face, his expression. I leaned in and traced my fingertips over his short beard, over the line of his mouth, and watched his green eyes watch me. I’d told him my worst possible thing, and nothing bad had happened. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” I said, running my fingers along his jaw, his cheekbones. “There are other things I want to do naked in the bath with you.”
He was still for a moment, letting me do what I wanted, and then something dark and wild flared up slowly behind his eyes. “You miss me?” he asked softly.
Fuck. Yes. Like crazy. It wasn’t possible to miss someone you’d only been with once, so I said, “I don’t know. It feels like it.”
His hand came out of the water and brushed over my nipple, making it go hard. “Did you come thinking of me over the past two years?”
Yes. Oh, yes, I had. But I said, “I’m not going to tell you that.”
“No?” His hand dropped to my waist, and his other hand came out of the water. “Then show me.”
The water sloshed as he placed me back, sitting me on the edge of the huge tub, my legs and feet in the water. He kept his hands on my hips. “Show me,” he said again.
I knew what he wanted. I wanted to do it. But I was still a little shy as I pushed my knees apart and slowly dropped a hand between my legs.
His gaze followed my hand. “Keep going,” he said.
I ran my fingers along myself, inside myself. My self-consciousness evaporated when I saw how avidly he watched me, how hypnotized he looked. “Like this,” I whispered, using my fingers to push myself open. “And like this.” I rubbed a slow, sure circle around my clit.
He made a small noise, almost like a sigh, and didn’t move his gaze. He grabbed the back of my knee and pushed it farther, dipping his head so he could get a better view. “And what are you thinking about when you do that?” he asked roughly.
I’d never had a man look at me like that before. I’d never shown so much to a man before—any man. “You,” I said, watching his dark, bent head, the hard lines of his posture. I was starting to get sweet, familiar shocks moving up through my body from where my fingers swirled. “I’m thinking of you.”
“Doing what?”
“You—” I could barely form the words. “Your mouth. On me.”
“That’s nice,” he said softly. He brushed a finger over my entrance, making me flinch with pleasure. “I know exactly how this tastes.”
“It was so good,” I said, half-closing my eyes. Now I had two equally hot images in front of me—Devon right now, watching me, and the image of the Devon two years ago, burned perfectly into my brain, putting his mouth between my legs. It had been good. I let out a breath, dropping my head back a little.
I felt his fingers brush me again, and the touch, mixed with m
y own, was exquisite. “And then what do I do?” he asked.
“You tell me you want me,” I said, reciting the next part of the fantasy without thinking. “You tell me you want to fuck me. That you can’t stand it anymore.”
His fingers pressed harder, touching my entrance as I stroked my clit. “And do I?” he asked, his voice harsh. “Do I fuck you?”
“Yes,” I said. I was arched back now, my eyes closed, every part of me focused on the sensations between my legs, on the fantasy. “You fuck me like you did that night—and—and it’s so good—” He slid two fingers all the way inside me, stretching me, and I lifted my hips off the edge of the bathtub. I couldn’t talk anymore. I just let it happen, his fingers and mine, both of us moving. My body took over, the hot pictures in my memory and in front of my eyes, and I came in slow, rippling waves, panting quietly.
Devon swore, and I heard the splash of the water, and I felt his hands on me, and then I was in his big, wide bed, the sheets cool beneath me. He bent over me and kissed me, long and hard, his rough chest brushing my nipples. When he pulled away, I was wild, even though I’d just come. I hadn’t seen him fully naked, either when we’d had sex or in the bath, but I saw him now. His big body, his knees on either side of my hips, the fine dark hair on his chest I remembered, his lithe hips, his strong legs. And his cock, hard and ready for me. He looked down at me, watching me watch him.
“I thought of you,” he said bluntly. “Every day.”
I was silent, breathing hard, watching him.
He leaned forward, bracing a hand on the top of the headboard, looming over me. His cock traced my stomach. “Like this,” he said. “I thought of you like this. Naked in bed. Begging me. It got me through every fucking day.”
