by Kreig, K. L.
Alyse’s head is on my shoulder and she tilts it up, our eyes locking as the song encourages us to forget the past and take a chance on love. I see every emotion pass through her eyes as clear as day. Apprehension and anxiety, surrender and desire. But most of all, I see her plea. I can almost hear her begging me not to hurt her. It wraps around my heart squeezing like a fist. It pains me physically to know that someone in her past has made her so skittish.
Just like you.
We are two lost souls looking for redemption, a second chance, but scared as hell to let our protective barriers fall for fear we may not recover this time.
I already know I won’t.
“Don’t break me,” she whispers before closing the inches between us.
Ditto, I think, right before I cup her face and take everything she’s offering me, but giving equally of myself in return.
Chapter 13
Alyse
Before his lips touch mine, I see my plea reflected. Asher has a past, maybe as painful as mine, maybe not, but a past nonetheless. We all do. We all walk with our own story, our own secrets, our own damage, our own scars. Internal and external. Some of us just carry them better than others.
It’s apparent someone hurt him, broke his trust. Broke his heart, even. And I want to know about her. I want to know who turned such a caring, romantic, handsome man who could have any woman he wants into someone who can’t commit.
But can he commit now?
Can I?
As Asher kisses me long and deep, the questions and doubt fade into nothingness, powerful lust and longing easily taking their place. Just like every other time he touches me. Nothing feels more right than when his lips are on mine.
He’s like gravity.
He keeps me grounded in the present and out of my own head, where my personal demons try to torment me.
Mouth never leaving mine, Asher pulls me across his lap and suddenly I wished I’d worn a skirt for easy access, because I desperately need his hands on me. Instead I have dark, tight jeans and a clingy, black long-sleeved blouse, which shows off the swell of my breasts, courtesy of the deep purple push-up bra I’m wearing.
“Alyse,” he mumbles against my goose-pebbled flesh. “Tell me what you like, what you want.” His hands tightly grip my waist, hot tongue traveling slowly down to the base of my throat. His rock-hard erection pulses beneath me, throbbing, keeping time with my own beats.
What do I want? So many things. So many dirty, wicked things. Things I’ve never wanted with anyone else. I know Asher can show me. I’ve been with several men, but I almost feel like a virgin with him. Not in the physical sense, but the emotional one. I believed him when he said he would own me. God help me, I want that. I’ve thought of nothing else than what it would be like to be completely and wholly his in every sense of the word.
I will the chains I’ve secured tightly around my heart to loosen. I imagine the lock clicking open and slack taking up the links I’d wound so tightly, so securely that no one could penetrate them. It’s terrifying. It feels foreign, naked, like taking off a piece of jewelry you’ve not removed for years, the imprint of the precious metal leaving a visible mark behind.
And then I do the one thing that feels right in this moment, but goes against all that I’ve tried to protect myself from over the last eight years.
I submit.
“I want you to own me,” I beseech. Beg. Implore.
All of me. Not just my body.
My voice echoes loudly in the darkened room, like I’ve yelled those six words at the top of my lungs for the whole world to hear and judge versus barely uttered so that they sound distant, even to my own ears. I’m not even sure Asher heard me.
But he did.
His lips still, his body tenses, and his grasp becomes almost painfully tight. When he pulls back, the insatiable lust swirling in the depths of his striking blues causes my stomach to drop like I’ve just been tossed off a five-story building.
Burning eyes never leaving mine, one hand pushes underneath my blouse, traveling up to palm my breast. He pulls down the cup, his nimble fingers tweaking my hardened nipple. Pleasure ricochets off every cell like a pinball machine, landing squarely between my pounding thighs. My eyes drift closed on a moan until I hear his dark command.
“Look at me, baby.” His fingers never stop pulling and pinching and twisting, each movement sending another sharp zing on a fast track south of the border.
I finally comply, but my blinks are long and heavy.
“Fuck, I want to corrupt you in the wickedest of ways and completely ruin you in the best possible ones.”
He’s asking for permission, even though I already gave it.
He’s asking for trust, when it’s already his.
He’s asking me to be sure.
I am.
Letting a small smile tug the corners of my lips, I reassure him.
“Promise?”
Chapter 14
Asher
“Promise?” her sultry voice whispers.
Fuck. Me.
I think I may have fallen a bit more in love with her.
Despite what my brothers may think, I’m not into BDSM, but I do have a certain type of kinkery about me, like I imagine most people really do if they’re totally honest with themselves. I obviously haven’t shared any of this with Alyse, so I’m not sure she knows fully what she’s doing, but I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I won’t take advantage of her unwavering trust either, because I already know she does not give that lightly. It blows me away that she’s giving it so freely to me. I can’t wait to push her to her very limits.
Holding my smoldering gaze, she climbs off my lap and reaches for the hem of her clingy shirt. The one that’s been mocking me all fucking night. I could barely resist the urge at dinner to reach over and pull down the low-cut top a couple of inches, exposing the fantastic bra that I can now see is cupping her perfectly formed breasts. Ones that I will be sinking my cock between sometime very, very soon.
She shimmies out of her tight jeans that mold to the shapeliest ass I have ever laid eyes on. Alyse is perfectly proportioned with full breasts, a waist that curves in, and hips that flare. Perfect for holding onto when I’m fucking her blind from behind. Her stomach is just slightly rounded and her thighs are trim and toned.
She is utter, sheer flawlessness, right down to her pinky toe. In the glow of the firelight, one side of perfection is illuminated like a golden angel rising from the white-hot flames. The other side is dark, shadowed. Shrouded in mystery. It’s a perfect reflection of who Alyse Kingsley is.
She shows people the shiny, untainted surface.
I want the murky, damaged depth. The shadows.
I want in all the way.
I want the real Alyse, to solve the mystery that is her.
And that’s the one who will be mine.
The one I’m sure no one else has ever had.
I’m still reclining, hand behind my head, as I hungrily watch her slowly bend down to step out of her denim, foot by foot, and I am entranced. Wrapped up in everything that is Alyse. I’m so enthralled I almost don’t realize she’s starting to remove her bra, but I want that pleasure of completely unwrapping her for the first time.
“Stop.” I hold out my hand, which she takes. “Let me,” I rasp. Sitting up straight, I pull her to stand between my legs. My hands wrap around the back of her knees and move slowly upward as my lips find her heated flesh, placing scattered wet kisses right above her panty line. She sucks in a sharp, ragged breath. The sting of her grip in my hair causes an involuntary smile that I know she has to feel.
My palms itch with the need to redden her ass, but I won’t do that tonight. There are so many things I want to do with her that I won’t do tonight, but you can bet I am plotting every fucking one of them out in agonizing detail in my head.
When my hands reach her purple lacy panties, I tug them down, helping her step out of them. My face is just above eye lev
el with her nearly bare mound. I want to take my time with her almost as much as I want to strip and just pound into her like a madman. But I want to worship her like she deserves. I’m so hard with the need to be inside her, my balls ache and I am suffering big time, but ladies first, as my mother taught me. Although I’m quite sure this wasn’t what she had in mind when she said it.
Running my thumbs along her smooth, sensitive, womanly flesh, she exhales in a rush when I dip a finger inside, feeling her intense want for me.
“God, you’re beautiful,” I murmur against her naked flesh. “So damn beautiful, Alyse.”
And mine, I think.
Mine.
Because after tonight, I don’t think I’ll be able to let her go.
I force my lips from her skin, but am still slowly pumping that single finger in and out, and when I glance up her body, she’s raptly watching every move I make with hooded, smoky eyes, and fuck if that doesn’t turn me on even more.
“Does that feel good, my sweet Alyse?”
“Yes,” she breathes before her head falls back.
I insert another finger, then a third, before feathering my thumb over her hard clit. I keep my rhythm slow, my touch light, teasing, and even then her tight walls clench around me as she nears her release.
“Asher, God, yes.”
Placing her hands on my shoulders, she steadies herself. When she starts moving her hips, fucking my fingers it’s the most glorious sight I have ever seen, but suddenly I can’t wait a second longer. I need my mouth on her, in her, all over her.
I lie back on the wide couch and pull her over me so her knees are on either side of my head and, grabbing her hips, I slam her glistening, aroused pussy to my lips, groaning at my first taste.
Her body falls slightly forward as she props herself up on the back of the couch, holding on against my assault. I’m relentless, needing to devour every inch of her. I hold her open, my tongue darting in her slick channel before I flatten it, dragging it up to circle her clit, which is so fucking hard. Her cries and moans and breathless hitches spur me on. I thrust two fingers inside her tight, dripping sex and hook them, pumping my hand as furiously as I’m lashing my tongue.
She rides my face with complete and utter abandon and I love every fucking uninhibited second of it.
Then I tighten my grip on her hips, take her swollen clit between my teeth and bite while still flicking my tongue on the very tip. Her whole body shakes as she explodes, my name bouncing off the walls.
From beneath, I watch her fall apart.
I watch her lips part slightly.
I watch her eyes roll back before they fall closed.
I watch her back arch when she cries out.
I watch the pink flush of satisfaction creep up her fair skin.
In that moment, I watch myself lose my very heart and soul to her.
I force her to ride wave after wave, bringing her to ecstasy again and again until she’s begging me to stop. After the very last tremble fades, I pull her down my prone body, releasing her bra clasp in one smooth move. I push aside the loosened cup and take a dusky stiff nub in my mouth and suck.
Hard.
“Ahhh…” she breathes.
Flipping our positions so she’s on her back, I rip the bra from her arms and fling it across the room, my lips now traveling back and forth between her two tight nipples, biting, sucking, laving as my hands knead and twist. I feel the flesh pucker on my tongue and I am completely lost in her. To her.
“Asher—”
“What do you need, baby?” I ask before I capture her lips, making her taste herself on me. She can’t answer because her mouth is busy dueling with mine, but her hands do. She reaches between us, unbuckles my belt, and unbuttons my jeans before reaching inside to grab my throbbing cock.
When her tiny, warm hand wraps around my dick, I snap. I’ve waited eight fucking years to be inside of her.
I’m done waiting.
Pushing myself off her, I strip, letting my pure, raw lust for her bleed thick and hot. Grabbing my wallet, I pull out a condom. This will be the one and only time I use one with her. I’m clean and tested and once I confirm she is, we will never need one again. I already know she’s the last woman I’ll be with.
“Put it on me,” I command, handing her the foil packet as she sits up. I need immediate relief as I wait, so I fist my cock and pump.
Hard.
Fast.
Swirling when I get to the head, I groan at how fucking good I know it will feel to finally sink home.
She fumbles with the packet, distracted by my self-pleasure.
“Baby, do it now or I’m going to come all over your perfect tits and I don’t want to do that. Not the first time at least.”
Her eyes darken. She licks her lips and I immediately know I’ve found my soul mate.
Sexually.
Emotionally.
Spiritually.
Jesus, I’ve found my wife. And the fact that thought doesn’t freak me the fuck out means every cell in my body knows it too. Her soul has called to me for eight years. I just wasn’t listening.
She wraps her palm around my cock, right over mine, our hands moving together in tandem for a few strokes. It feels so goddamn good I almost don’t stop her. If she puts her mouth on me, I’m done. There will be no going back. The first time I come with her, I want to buried so deep we both forget our names, so I force her to stop, take the condom from her other hand, and roll it on myself.
My only goal is to get inside her as fast as possible.
I sit down beside her and pull her astride me. She hovers right above my stiff erection, like she’s waiting for permission. Or direction.
Which I’m more than happy to give.
“Guide me inside you, Alyse. Now, baby.”
Chapter 15
Alyse
Holy hell. I have never in my life had a sexual experience like this. Yes, mouths, fingers, and cock have pleasured me—or in some cases, attempted to—but I’ve never been worshipped with a man’s eyes the way Asher is doing to me now.
Exalted.
Revered.
Like I am the only thing that has or will ever matter to him.
That’s a stupid, foolish thing to think so early on, but I know what I’m feeling. I know what I see. I know what he’s silently telling me.
His eyes have mine snared. Helpless. I’m unable to do anything but fall further and deeper within their warm, bottomless pools as I follow his command, guiding him to my opening. I sink down slowly and we both groan. It’s exquisite. My lids feel heavy, but our eye contact never breaks.
He’s big.
He’s thick.
He stretches me to my limits.
But I’ve never felt anything more perfect in my life.
He grabs my face between his strong hands, holding me tight as he thrusts into me, my multiple orgasms making his drive easy and smooth. My breath hitches and my body burns. I need him to move more than I’ve needed anything. Ever.
“Alyse. Jesus…you feel too damn good. So fucking perfect.”
He withdraws slowly, pushing back in slowly. He does this over and over again until I am crazy with want.
Delirious with need.
Frantic with the desire for him to possess me.
He never lets my face go. Never lets my eyes leave his.
“Fuck me harder, Asher.”
“No, baby. I’ve never felt anything like this in my entire life. I need to savor you.”
“Please,” I pant. “Possess me. Own me.”
“I am, Alyse. I am. You’re mine now.”
“Possess me faster,” I beg.
But he doesn’t. He just continues his methodical pace, pleasure etched over every inch of his face. I’m on fire. I need to come. My hand snakes between us, but he grabs it, pinning it behind my back.
“Asher, please.”
“Your orgasms are mine, Alyse. Mine to give. Mine to withhold. They all belong to me now.”
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A long moan leaves me, a cross between intense euphoria at how right he feels and sheer frustration because I need more.
Jesus, this is like deliberate torture.
I want hard.
Rough.
Messy.
I don’t want tender. It’s suddenly making me feel too vulnerable. Now, my earlier thoughts about being completely consumed by him are suffocating me. Like a weight that’s slowly pressing me into the ground. Asher’s slowly been taking pieces of me day after day; some I freely give, some I’m trying to hold back, but it’s like they’re drawn to him.
Like they’re his already and they’re finally being called home.
I feel the chains tightening. I feel the lock trying to slam back together. Inside I’m having a slight panic attack and I’m trying to keep it from showing, forcing him to take me like I need instead. This is exactly what I do when people get too close. I try to shut them out. God, I could win a Pulitzer, I’m so damn good at it.
But Asher’s perception about my inner struggle doesn’t go unnoticed.
His hips halt. “Stop.”
“Stop what?” I roll my hips, causing us both to moan. I need to get him back on task so I can get the hell out of here and back to the safety of my self-imposed lonely prison. Why do I have to be so fucking screwed up? I almost want to cry.
One hand leaves my face, palming my hip instead, but the other holds me steady, so I’m forced to watch him. Just when I think he may end this, trying to have a heart-to-heart instead, he takes a different tactic. He resumes his slow, methodical plunges, causing my eyes to roll back before refocusing on him.
“Do you know there are different forms of possession, Alyse?”
I don’t answer. I’m in such excruciating pleasure I can’t string vowels and consonants together, let alone instruct my tongue and lips to make sentences.
“Quick. Fast. Brutal.” He punctuates his words with vicious thrusts. I nearly come from the pleasure his movements stir in every sensitive, swollen nerve ending. I’m so damn close, a couple more pumps and I’ll be flying.
