by Riley Murphy
“Look at me. That’s right.”
“Oh…Neil.” He flexed up and his cock was seated fully in her. It was almost uncomfortable, unbearable, but oh so fucking good to be filled this way.
He eased out of her a bit. “I want you to say my name.”
She did and he pushed into her once more. Then when he withdrew a ways, he ordered, “Again.”
This time he filled her so completely she had to catch her breath.
He continued the ritual, over and over, until she came so hard she screamed. Only this time it was his name while she was looking him right in the eyes.
“Very good, tiger. Now it’s my turn.”
She thought he wanted her to continue to ride him. She was ready to, but then he lifted her off him. “No like this,” he said, getting up on the bed and helping her into position. He wanted her on her hands and knees in front of him. He buried a strong hand in her hair and pushed. “Head down. All the way. I want your cheek on the mattress and ass in the air. That’s right.”
She barely had time to process this new position when he entered her from behind. He moved slowly, deliberately, the measured strokes plunging into her again and again, building momentum while he used her. He didn’t speak as he kept a firm hand on her. Exerting enough pressure that she knew she was pinned for his pleasure and that was fine with her. She wanted this. She wanted him to take what he wanted. It was liberating somehow to know that he felt he had a right to do this to her. She liked that he was doing this to her.
“Oh Neil.”
He slammed into her. Over and over again. She felt his power, his strength, and then when he growled and she experienced the heat surrounding him inside her, she let out a sigh. He didn’t seem to be as satisfied when he tugged on her hair a few seconds later, forcing her to lift her head and turn back to look at him.
“I’ll never begrudge your body pleasure because it’s mine. From now on though, when you come it’s eyes on me and you call my name. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
He let go of her hair and then brought his hands around to cup her breasts, lifting her to him until her back was against his front. “You got it half right, tiger,” he whispered in her ear. “You said my name and for that I think you deserve a gold star. I’m going to go take care of things but before I go do that, I want you to get ready for your reward when I return.”
His voice did things to her. She thrilled at this kind of attention from him. “What do you want me to do?”
“I’m going to slide my cock out of you and let you go. When I do, move to the center of the bed. No pillows. Lie flat on your back, arms above your head, and your legs spread. I want them wide open. Inviting, while you wait for me, because when I come back I want to see how wet you are before I taste you.”
Charlie’s whole world was spinning. She’d had great sex before, but this kind of great? Never. And she was even going to have more of it? “I don’t know what you were so worried about. I love this.”
He looked down once he’d disengaged from her. “I’m not sure I understand.”
She scooched back toward the headboard and gave him what she hoped was a sexy-sassy grin. “I adore sex this way.”
A frown marred his brow as he shifted, coming to sit on the side of the bed. The sight of him caused her to forget about his seeming concerned and examined his naked profile. His fists were balled and braced on the mattress on either side of him. His arms straining as they supported the bulk of his weight while he leaned back. God, seeing his thick shoulder bunched with rope-like muscle got her pulse racing all over again. Yum. But then her eyes caught sight of his ab muscles that resembled rollers stacked one on top of the other, and she really had the urge to crawl over, and bite every one of them.
“I’m kind of sorry to hear you say that, tiger.” Reluctantly she lifted her gaze and listened as he continued, “This was as closest version to butterscotch I can manage.”
She didn’t blink. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” his eyes went all dark and she was ready to drown in them again, “that the kind of sex I enjoy most often would feature you in cuffs, your nipples on lockdown, and a ball gag spreading your beautiful lips wide while I paddle you.”
Her heart thumped. “What about the plug?”
He gave her a lazy grin that made her dizzy with lust. “It’s out of my toolbox. That was the first item on your hard limits list. It was kind of hard to miss. Three underlines and I counted six stars.”
He got up and while she admired his fine ass as he walked away she thought about this. She was thrilled about it. Exploring those things with a man like him? Heaven. And if what they just did was butterscotch sex? He could bring it on all day and night. She was almost dizzy at the thought.
Yes, she was so ready for him to bring it on, she quickly moved into the position he wanted her in. She was flat on her back and staring at that ceiling when she heard him call from the master bathroom.
“I do have one correction to make.”
She shut her eyes and wiggled her ass. For no other reason than she was restless and ready for him to return. Probably why she kept her response short and sweet. “Oh?”
“Yes. If you want to be a different flavor I don’t think butterscotch suits you. More like rocky road.”
Her eyes opened and she scowled. “Ice cream? I thought the reference went to— Why did Cat refer to Wilde as a vanilla pudding pop?”
“She’s a brat. Hey.” He leaned around the doorframe at such an angle all she could see was the upper half of him, and when she spied her teeth marks on one of his shoulders she didn’t dare smile. If he knew what kind of power the sight filled her with? Well…she was sure the Master in him wouldn’t like it. “Why are you thinking about them? Shouldn’t you be thinking about me and my head between your thighs?” His tone dropped to that low and husky level she loved. “Licking and tasting you until your legs shake and you can’t think straight?”
Yeah, he didn’t need to be anywhere near her to make her incoherent. Shit on a salty cracker, when he spoke to her like that there was only one thought in her head.
Sex.
With him.
Okay, two thoughts…
Chapter Twenty-Two
Neil smiled when he heard her sigh. It was dreamy. He liked that. He also figured he’d given her enough of a chance to rest up for the main course. He wanted to invite her downstairs. It was time to cleanse the sexual palate. The appetizer of butterscotch was done with. He was ready for— His phone buzzed and vibrated on the night stand, and he lost his train of thought. One glance and he knew it was Jude connecting. This was the text he’d been waiting for. It would seem that the holding pattern was over.
Shit.
He angled a look down and watched as Charlie moved closer and snuggled up against him, working to draw lazy circles over his chest and stomach with her index finger.
“I don’t want you to get that unless it’s dire.” She stopped drawing, but didn’t look up. “I’m wondering when we can go downstairs. Did I mention how much I liked the ball gag?”
Well didn’t this beat all? She was in the mood to continue to explore, to freely share what turned her on, and he’d hit a brick wall for the rest of the night. Now the trick was to get her to go home without feeling abandoned or suspicious. He couldn’t tell her that the text from Jude was dire, even though it was. He had to think fast to send her on her way before Jude showed up.
“Speaking of ball gags and your beautiful, but overactive mouth. Did you and your sister patch things up?”
Her head lifted off his chest as fast as if he burned her. In a way he guessed he figuratively had.
“Overactive…”
Neil listened to her mini rant that started with her not having a big mouth and ended with her sister being too stubborn to get along with. In between those two debatable points, she accused him of taking advantage of her fragile state. He almost laughed when she said that the only reas
on he’d fucked her brains out during the last several hours was so he could easily pick over the exposed cranium wreckage he’d created to get her to fix the situation with Cat.
He actually wished that were true, but it wasn’t. The major dilemma he faced now was that Jude was going to be at his place within the hour. That meant that he had to find some reason she couldn’t spend the night. The way he saw it, he needed to get his little tiger out of here and busy doing something constructive. Otherwise, she’d be hanging around asking questions and trying to get involved.
“Charlotte?”
“I don’t know, okay? I just didn’t get the chance to ask her. Why are we talking about this now? Oh, don’t go. I want you to stay in bed with me.”
He got up and was halfway to his dresser when he turned around. He literally felt her eyes on him. Damn, she could eat a guy up with that look. “What are you doing?”
“I’m ogling you. I really wish I had the strength not to stalk you with my eyes, but that would be like asking me to poke them out with childproof scissors. You’ve got a body that I want to—”
“Enough.” It killed him to say that. With her he didn’t think he was ever going to get enough. And lucky for him, she seemed insatiable and although he really, really, wanted to test that theory, he couldn’t. At least not tonight. Fuck. She needed direction. “Eyes up here.” While he got dressed he continued speaking, “You need to fix this thing with Cat. I can’t believe you’ve allowed the history with an ex-boyfriend to remain a burr scratching between you two this long. She needs her sister.”
Charlie sat up and scooted back against the headboard. After she rearranged the sheets, she shrugged. “I apologized.” The look she gave him then was sexy as hell when she purred, “I want you to take me downstairs. I want to play with you.”
That statement sizzled right through him. It was just the wakeup call he needed. “Okay, butterscotch, here’s your first lesson in our trial relationship. I decide when to play. Remember that. As to going downstairs? Not until you make up with your sister.”
She was crestfallen. “I tried already. I thought…I thought I was rocky road.”
He would have answered but his phone went off again. Dammit. He really needed her to get on board with this distraction he was trying to create. “Yes, you did try, but you’re not very good at apologies. You want to know why? You don’t get to be forgiven just because you say I’m sorry. Those are words—you need to fill them with meaning, understand them with honesty, and be your truest self when you want to get back into someone’s good graces.”
“Maybe I don’t want to get back into hers. She said she hated me.”
He tucked his shirt into his pants and then stopped, looking at her. “She said that? Those exact words?”
“Well, no, not exactly.”
“What you need to do is listen. Be a good listener, okay? Are you going to get dressed?”
When she started to slide down the headboard with that sexy-as-all-fuck expression on her face he steeled himself. Damn, she was his favorite flavor—rocky road, and the Cat angle wasn’t working. He needed to bolster the idea with something that was going to carry some weight. “No, don’t go getting comfortable. This isn’t solely about apologizing to your sister, tiger. You still owe me an apology. A good one.”
That did the trick. It wiped the sexy expression right off her face. Currently, she now sported a contrite one as she got out of bed. “I already tried to apologize to you and you wouldn’t let me.”
He handed her bra to her and then motioned for her to turn so he could do it up. “No. What I didn’t do is let you make excuses or shift the blame on someone else. You need to take responsibility.”
“I know.”
Once she was dressed he pulled her into his arms and gave her a hug. “It’s not so hard. Just think. If I did to you what you did to me, what kind of apology would smooth things over? What would you expect from me? Think about that. Deliver that to me and maybe, just maybe, we can put everything that came before behind us for good.”
Neil figured he was in the clear, until she went to get her purse from the living room, and he opened the front door to find Jude on the doorstep.
Before he could ask how he got through the community gate that seemed to be a revolving one, Jude announced, “We found The Pearl.”
Neil wasn’t surprised when Charlie practically stumbled over her own feet getting to the door. “You’ve been working to find that as well? With Neil?” She looked between him and Jude no doubt waiting for one of them to confirm it. When neither of them did, she pulled her sleeves down, shivered a little and said, “I’ve been so worried. I know it has something to do with finding my sister, so this is good news, right?”
“Why don’t you come in?” Neil said to Jude, and then turned to grab his windbreaker from the closet, wrapping it around Charlie, before he ushered her out the door.
“Wait, don’t I get to talk to him? At least about Regina? Come on. You guys can’t keep locking Cat and me out of this. And now you’ve found the pearl. I know you’re talking to my dad and even he won’t say much. It’s not fair.”
Neil marched her right to her car and then stopped. “Are you listening? I don’t want you to worry about any of this. We’ll take care of it, I promise.”
“Why can’t I help?”
“There are several reasons, but if you’ve been paying attention, the most important is that I want you to do what I’ve asked you to do. I want you to go home and think about how you’re going to deliver the kind of apology we talked about, to your sister first and then to me.”
“I still don’t know why I have to apologize for telling her that I forgive her.”
Neil took her face in his hands and studied her in the crisp moonlight. The mist of their breaths collided while he acknowledged that there was no easy way to say this. “Since I first met you, and had to deal with your sister, I have never had to explain the fundamentals of being decent to another human being more.”
“Wow. That doesn’t sound very flattering.”
“It’s like you guys think you’re one person and the faults the other has is a bad side to your personality. You’re two people. Two hearts. You have two sets of feelings and both sets count. And, just because one of you thinks some hare-brained, crazy-ass scheme is a good idea, doesn’t make it a good idea.”
She tried to pull away from him. “We don’t do that.”
“Yes, you do. You and your sister manage to get caught up in the little things when you should be focused on the bigger picture. The stuff that happens in life happens for a reason. Do you know why she was with your ex?”
She stopped trying to escape him. “No.”
“I bet the reason is far more compelling than the act itself. Ask her and then thank her. At the end of the day she saved you from being saddled with a man who does that kind of thing to the woman he’s supposed to care about.” He let go of her. After she was seated in her car with the engine running, but before the door was closed, he added, “Oh, and I’ll be waiting for my apology. If you do it the way I suggested you do, I’ll be looking forward to it. Surprise me, tiger. I love it when you surprise me.”
Once she was gone, and he returned to the house, Wilde met him at the door. He was concerned and Neil figured he had every right to be. “Is she going to be a problem? We can’t afford any at this point.”
“No. I’ve steered her in a different direction. Hopefully she stays on course. How’s your brother?”
“He’s almost recovered. I can’t tell you…”
Neil put a hand on Jude’s shoulder and looked him in the eyes. “I know. He got out alive. Enough said about that.” He let go and stepped around him, heading into the living room. “So where is she?
“I don’t want you to call Daniel yet. After I found Regina strung out in a strip joint on Channey Row—”
“Strung out? Is she okay?”
“She was really good. Even doped up she turned out to
be an asset in her own escape. I’ve never seen a woman fight like that.”
“Knowing what Kelli is capable of, she was fighting for her life. I’m glad you got to her before she disappeared for good.” They both knew the chances of recovery were slim once the victim was moved out of state. “Where’s Pearl?”
“Kelli’s got her.”
“The auction isn’t for another week.”
Jude nodded. “He brought her in early. Listen, I hear she came in from Mexico. She’s been living there in some kind of sanctuary so she’s been sheltered. It’s not going to be easy extracting her. She’s probably going to be scared.”
Neil had read the product detail sheet that Sharp was circulating to interested parties. A virgin. Raised by nuns. No prior male influence. Those words on the page weren’t what had Neil worried, it was the picture. She was a beauty, just like her twin sisters.
It was a bitch not knowing who they could trust. Kelli had a far reach. He thought about Daniel and the one person in law enforcement he did trust, Maddox, but pushed those options aside. At this point, it made no sense involving anyone who was emotionally attached to the situation, which meant that left him and Wilde to deal with this. And even then there wasn’t much distance between him and those involved. In the few weeks since Neil had come to know Charlie’s father, he deeply respected the man. He was good people. He also had a growing soft spot for Charlie and this was her sister they were thinking about stealing from a lunatic. No, saving from a lunatic. He had to think in those terms. As far as Grey went? If he called him in on this there was a good chance he’d talk Neil out of confronting Kelli for the greater good again. A greater good that never seemed to culminate.
There might be so many variables to consider but there was also one sure fact. Eventually, Neil would get his chance to deal with Sharp the way Sharp deserved to be dealt with. Until then, he had to keep his eye on a finish line he was determined to reach.
Pearl.
He turned to Jude and asked, “What’s the plan?”
“I’m thinking we pull the trigger tomorrow night. It’s going to be a busy night for them. They’re closing the kitchen down and packing the club space for a number of demonstrations. They’d hoped to use the pier and dock space for additional seating, but the cold weather screwed them out of that. A break for us. Sharp will have his hands full accommodating the crowd. He’d never expect such a bold move when the place is packed.”
