Glimmer (Glimmer and Glow #1)

by BETH KERY

  “Yeah, that’s right. I can feel you,” he rasped. “You come so hard, don’t you?”

  Alice guessed so, because she almost blacked out in the seconds that followed. She came back to herself at a loud cracking sound. The sting on her bottom in tandem with wracking shudders of pleasure was delicious. Forbidden.

  “Again,” she whispered, shameless at the center of the fire. He gave her what she wanted, smacking her ass briskly as she finished climaxing. He rubbed and molded her buttocks into his palm as her pleasure waned. She sagged into his lap, spent by the force of her orgasm.

  It’d felt so good, she realized dazedly. So good, she suspected she should be worried. She pressed her flushed forehead and cheeks into the soft sheets.

  “God, I’m as much of a pervert as you are,” she moaned. Her mouth twitched at his low, delicious laughter.

  “No. You have a way to go before you get there,” he said. He pressed gently down on the middle of her back and lifted his hips, grinding his cock against her. Her eyes flew open, her satiation breaking at the reminder of his full, furious continued arousal. “I think I’ll show you.”

  “Show me what?” she muttered, turning her head. He’d removed the hand that was holding the vibrator from between her thighs.

  “What a degenerate I really am.”

  She smiled, both wary and excited. She loved the hint of humor combined with the stern edge she so often heard in his tone. Did he know, somehow, that if it weren’t for that gentle amusement, she might rebel at his authority over her senses?

  “Okay,” she agreed.

  “Lift up and scoot back just a little,” he said tautly.

  She pushed up several inches from his lap, bracing herself on her elbows and knees. She saw a quick flash of movement beneath her. Her eyes went wide. He’d just lowered his pajama bottoms below his testicles. His cock lay along his pelvis and taut belly. The thick head glistened with pre-ejaculate. Her fingers itched to touch him. Her mouth watered.

  He reached up and cupped her suspended breasts in both his hands, his thumb and forefinger tracing her nipples, rubbing them. She moaned. He continued to mold one breast and tease the nipple with one hand. The other dropped to his cock. He lifted the staff until it was at a right angle from his body.

  “Your breasts haunt me.” A thrill of sensation went through her when she heard how tight his voice was with arousal. He fisted his big cock, stroking himself. The sound and sight and feeling of Dylan nearly breaking with need was an addiction she’d never known or imagined. “I’ll be in a meeting or on an important phone call, and I close my eyes and see them. Give me something else that’ll torture me to remember, Alice. Let me feel them around me.”

  She acted on instinct, lowering again, this time with her breasts in the center of his lap. She pressed the flesh against his erection, pushing the thick column in the valley between her breasts. His guttural groan sounded so sweet in her ears. She craved seeing him just a fraction as undone as he made her. His hand fell away.

  Later, when she recalled what she did next, a wave of heat and embarrassment would rush over her.

  She used her hand as one point of pressure and his taut abdomen as the other, squeezing his cock between her breasts. She lifted and writhed in his lap, stroking his cock with her flesh, letting him take his pleasure. He began to shift his hips up and down subtly in a fucking motion, and that thrilled her, too.

  When he put the vibrator back on her clit, and started to talk dirty to her—I’m going to spank you harder this time for being so good, Alice. You’re so firm and soft, and I’m so fucking hard for you. That’s right. Faster. You’re so gorgeous when you’re hungry. Touch your nipple. Pinch it—she lost all vestiges of control or propriety. His cock poked out between the crevice of her squeezing breasts and she leaned down and sucked the succulent head into her mouth. His taste soaked onto her tongue.

  She grew even greedier.

  She cried out, her sexual trance breaking, at the sound of Dylan cursing harshly and pulling her off him. His cockhead made a popping sound as it leapt from her lips, she’d been sucking him so hard.

  “Come here,” he said. “Sit up.”

  She blinked. Was he angry? No, she realized breathlessly as he guided her with his hands until she straddled his lap. He dropped one hand and reached for the opened bedside drawer, his gaze moving from her face to her heaving breasts. He withdrew a condom.

  She studied his rigid face a moment later as he held up his cock to enter her. He was nearly as rabid with lust as she was, by the looks of things. She gave a shaky, helpless moan as his cock pierced her slit. He was huge with need, and this was a new position for them. The pressure was intense.

  “Shhh,” he rasped, holding a portion of her weight with his hands at her waist. He lifted her, and she followed his lead, rising over him. He jerked her back onto his cock with a lewd slap of flesh. Alice gripped his shoulders and shuddered. “Things might start out deliberate with you, but they turn to”—he moaned loudly as they repeated the taut stroke in unison, and again, their straining bodies crashed together—“fucking madness in about two seconds flat,” he grated out between clenched teeth.

  His large hands lowered to her hips, his fingers delving into the flesh of her ass. Alice had hardly paid attention to what he said, because he was lifting and then grinding her down on him again, and her cry was mixing with his harsh grunt. Pleasure swamped her from every direction. He’d set a faster pace, a ruthless one. She rose and fell over him as he built a delicious friction in her. He looked beyond beautiful to her in that moment, his torso muscles drawn taut and defined, his arms bunched tight. She leaned down and took a gentle bite of an edible-looking shoulder muscle.

  He swatted a buttock and then gripped it, driving her down on him. She hugged him desperately, like he was a life preserver and she was in fear of drowning. She pressed her aching breasts against his chest and writhed against him. Time seemed to go still, and yet they moved together, faster and faster, harder and harder. There was something wrong. A pressure was building in her that was beyond the need for sexual release, twining with her arousal and pulling so tight it felt like it squeezed at her heart.

  “Help me, Dylan,” she moaned feverishly.

  “God bless it,” he hissed, and she heard the fierce anguish in his tone. His hold tightened on her hips and ass, and his muscles swelled impossibly hard. He pounded her down on him, and she was tossed in a sea of pleasure and pressure. She felt his thumb on her clit, pressing and sliding. Lifting her cheek off his chest, she screamed and bucked her hips against his hand. Orgasm slammed into her.

  Her eyes sprang wide at the sensation of his cock swelling in her while she shuddered in bliss. He jerked her down against him, nailing her to his lap as he started to come. Through her haze of pleasure, she saw him watching her with a tight, glittering gaze, a slight snarl shaping his mouth. A muscle leapt in his rigid cheek. She felt his cock convulse deep inside her. With a hand at the back of her head, he pushed her down until their foreheads touched.

  “I’ll always give you what you want, Alice. Always.”

  The words sounded like they’d been ripped out of his throat. No, Alice thought wildly as he moved her over him again, withdrawing and sinking and making her gasp.

  Surely she was mistaken, but his words sounded like they’d come from someplace even deeper.

  TWELVE

  Alice’s brain was confused. She couldn’t figure out why she kept cherishing those strange, wild, emotional moments making love with Dylan and, at the same time, cringed in anxiety when she found herself indulging in the experiences and the memories so completely.

  “I think I’m going crazy,” she said quietly, her lips feathering Dylan’s skin. They’d turned out the light and set the alarm. He lay on his back with his arms surrounding her, and she on her side pressed against him, her cheek resting on his chest. His idly caressing fingers on her shoulder slowed.

  “Why do you say that?”

&nb
sp; “Because I can’t figure it out.”

  “What out?” She pressed her lips to his skin, a pressure building in her chest. “Alice?” he prompted.

  “Why everything seems so strange.”

  Her thready whisper sounded very fragile in the yawning silence that followed.

  For a moment, he didn’t speak. Alice imagined he was trying to decode her feminine oddness in his rational male brain, and again experienced that twinge of discomfort. She was exposing too much of herself.

  Dylan’s hand opened at her back. He stroked her along her spine. She sensed a tension building in the air between them and regretted her momentary weakness.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me anything about the reports?” she asked.

  “Did you actually get anything out of them? I thought you were too distracted,” he murmured. She heard the humor in his voice and suppressed a sigh of relief. The tense moment had passed.

  “I didn’t attend to them a fraction as much as I could have, but I have a few preliminary observations.”

  “Okay. Let’s hear them,” he said, his firm, matter-of-fact tone reassuring her.

  “That new marketing firm you hired for the Northwest region? You might want to consider hiring them globally for the VitaThirst campaign,” she said, referring to a new and popular Durand energy drink. “That social media campaign they’ve designed has had a huge effect on sales for the eighteen- to twenty-four-year-old age group, and the cost of their campaign was a fraction of what other regions spent.”

  “Yeah. I noticed that. The Northwest was our test market, and that’s where we hit the hardest.”

  “To good effect, obviously. But I’d warn against assuming that because you had such awesome results generally, that you’d spent your advertising dollars as wisely as you could have.” She delved into her findings, hitting the statistical highlights of what she’d absorbed so far. She sensed Dylan’s sharp focus on her the whole time, although he remained silent. “My quick and dirty cost-benefit analysis of the Northwest region campaign versus your more traditional campaigns in the other regions shows a fifteen-to-one payback, factoring in relative population of the region, age group disbursement, company costs and net sales,” she finished.

  “If that’s true, then we also might need to make a correction in regard to our targeted market as well. We were going for the twenty-five- to thirty-nine-year-old health-obsessed urbanite,” Dylan mused.

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking. The numbers suggest that the younger person in more sparsely populated, ‘outdoorsy’ regions might be just as prime for the product, if not more so, than your current target. Those commercials that little advertising firm came up with were hilarious. They went viral, you know,” Alice said, yawning. It took her a few seconds to realize he didn’t speak. “If you don’t believe me, I can show you my numbers. I drilled it down. The spike in sales in that region has to be due to that advertising campaign.” She started to get up from bed despite her exhaustion, determined to get her notebook and defend herself.

  Dylan halted her. He pulled her back against him.

  “I’m not doubting you. I’m amazed, that’s all. You got all that, after looking at those reports—by your own admission distractedly—for a little over an hour?”

  “I can do better with more time. I only got through the VitaThirst numbers.”

  He laughed. The low rough sound of his mirth made her stiffen.

  “Relax, Alice,” he said sternly, and she realized he’d sensed her bristling. He sighed and pushed at the back of her head, urging her back to her relaxing pose. She resisted a little, until her cheek touched his skin and she inhaled his addictive scent. He sank his fingers into her hair.

  “I’m impressed, not doubting you,” he added gruffly. Her pique evaporated at his sincerity. “Where do you think you got that head for numbers from?” he asked after a moment of her melting into him as he massaged her scalp. She closed her eyes, her flesh growing heavy and warm.

  “Certainly not Sissy. She got confused counting change. In all fairness, though, she may have been a genius before meth turned her brain into Swiss cheese,” she mumbled.

  “You never mention your dad.”

  Her eyelids flew open. Had Dylan felt her eyelashes flick against his skin?

  “You said he’d passed away. Did you know him?” he asked.

  “No,” she replied shortly. She couldn’t stop herself from swallowing thickly, and thought Dylan might have felt the convulsion of her throat. She held her breath, worried she was revealing too much. His fingertips continued to move in circular, soothing motions on her scalp.

  “Do you think you got your mathematical brilliance from him?” Dylan asked.

  For several seconds, her lungs locked. Finally, they gave with a hitching inhale. “I sincerely doubt it,” she said.

  “Why do you doubt it? Alice?” he prompted when she didn’t speak.

  It struck her how gentle he sounded in those moments as he held her fast against him and stroked her. It only increased the swelling pressure in her chest. Was Dylan patronizing her? She lifted off him abruptly.

  “Just how far back in my life did Durand go when they did that background check?” she blurted out.

  “What?”

  “Answer me, damn it. If you know something about my father from that stupid investigation Durand Enterprises did, just say so. Don’t play with me.”

  “I didn’t learn anything about your father,” he replied in a hard tone that informed her he was insulted. “It was a standard report about criminal charges or any unusual circumstances you’d been involved in since you turned eighteen. What did you think I’d find out about your dad?”

  “Nothing. I just wish you’d stop—” She cut herself off suddenly, unsure of what she wanted to say. “Pushing me,” she finally hissed between clenched teeth. She turned over on her side and clamped her eyelids shut when she realized how tense and crazy she sounded. Mortification swelled inside her for a few awful seconds. The truth did, too. She had a practiced lie at the ready about her father dying in a car accident before she was born, but it wouldn’t leave her throat for some reason. Not while she was with Dylan, it wouldn’t.

  She didn’t know who her father was, but she knew enough to harbor shame. The probable truth was disgusting.

  Wasn’t she—Alice—disgusting, in turn?

  Shame flooded her, anger fast on its heels. It was all his fault. She pulled out of Dylan’s arms.

  “I’m going,” she said. The need to be alone suddenly overwhelmed her, that harsh mandate of a wounded animal. She jerked furiously when Dylan halted her with a firm grip on her upper arms.

  “Alice, stop it,” he said firmly.

  “I don’t know who my father is! There. Are you happy?” she spat.

  The silence seemed to press on her eardrums and chest. She didn’t know why she’d said it. Desperation? Irrational anger at Dylan for inspiring such a friction of feelings inside her? Maybe she wanted to let him in.

  Maybe she just wanted to show him her ugliness, and get his inevitable dislike of her over with and done.

  “I don’t know who my father is, either.”

  He said it so evenly, so calmly, it took her a moment to soak in what he’d said. When it did, all the air rushed out of her lungs.

  “What?”

  “My mother was a prostitute. My father could have been one of any number of assholes, one as worthless as the next.”

  She heard herself panting softly. “I don’t believe that.”

  “It’s the truth,” he said, and this time, she heard the tiny edge of anger to his tone, the legacy of a defensiveness she understood all too well. It was true. That hint of vulnerability, a distant echo, given the man he’d become, was the stamp of the genuine. He really was akin to her, in a way.

  The glimpse of his reality made her feel twice as naked, yet strangely … a little stronger, too.

  He exhaled, and at the same time, slowly brought her b
ack against him. Her nipples brushed against the taut skin covering his ribs, and she relented, sinking against him. His hand spread again at the back of her skull. Those magical fingers …

  “Why do you say you don’t believe it?” he asked quietly after a full moment of silence.

  “Because … of who you are,” she whispered brokenly. “You’re so …” Brilliant. Special. Wonderful.

  He cradled her chin with his hand and lifted. She was glad for the cloak of darkness when she raised her face to his.

  “Thanks. And so are you, Alice,” he said as if he’d heard her thoughts. “We define who we are with our everyday lives. Not by our parents. Not by the circumstances to which we’re born. You’re living proof of that.”

  She gulped thickly, despised tears filling her eyes. “But what if …” She broke off because emotion was closing off her throat, and she sounded so weak. So helpless.

  “What if what?” Dylan asked.

  She closed her eyes. Tears spurted down her cheek. “Nothing,” she managed thickly. She pulled away again, desperate that he not feel the wetness of her tears, the evidence of her weakness.

  “Alice—”

  “I’m not leaving. I’m just going to the bathroom,” she reassured through a congested throat.

  He let her go, but she felt his eyes on her as she moved through the darkness.

  DYLAN had an overnight trip planned to New York on Friday. He instructed her—a little too sternly for Alice’s liking—to return to her cabin on Friday night after her shift was finished and lock the door.

  “Why are you so paranoid?” Alice demanded as they left the darkened castle early on Friday morning, walking out into a humid predawn. “Did you find something out about that person following me in the woods?” she asked, recalling how he’d said he’d look into the matter.

  “Not really,” he said, taking her hand and leading her across the dewy side lawn toward the woods. “I asked the sheriff of Morgantown to come out and I reported the incident. I like to keep him apprised of what goes on here, especially when camp is in session. His name is Jim Sheridan. He’s an old friend.”