by Angel Payne
Until suddenly, it didn’t.
“Fuck.”
Shiraz tore away from me. Burned a stare at me through the tumble of his hair, before raking it back with a hand as he reared back on his haunches.
“By the Creator, Lucina. What the fuck are you doing to me?”
I gulped again.
Harder.
So much harder.
My dry throat resisted the moisture, as if letting that in also meant I had to address the sting behind my eyes. I pushed up on my hands, the tree line tilting, skewed by my shot-to-hell equilibrium.
“I…understand.” I was shocked I got it out, considering how hard my heart started squeezing, trying to keep its edges together. I promised the thing it could shatter in full later, when he wasn’t around to witness the carnage. When nobody was.
Which, in and of itself, had to be the most ridiculous concept of the week.
The week in which I’d only just met the man.
Whom, just two minutes ago, I was exalting as the fulfillment of my fantasies.
Freaking. Hell.
When had I become that nutcase of a woman? That desperate whacko, thinking I’d really land on a remote island, meet the prince, and find out—by the magic of the unicorn!—he was actually my soul mate waiting to be found? My kinky other half?
Life did not go like that.
Soul mates didn’t exist for weirdos like me.
“I understand.” I had to repeat it, as much for me now. “I’ll—um—I can go back to the beach and distract the other women, so they don’t see you leaving with me, and—”
The horizon cartwheeled again—as he laid me out with another consuming kiss. No. That wasn’t even the word for it. His mouth was on assault mode, full of driving anger and imperious intent. I was so stunned, I didn’t even know what to do with the new onslaught of arousal it brought on.
As if he was going to give me half a breath to process even that. “You shall do no such thing,” he dictated lowly, scooping a hand back beneath my shirt, and going straight for the clasp at the front of my bra. One masterful twist later, my bare nipples stabbed the air, awakening to the cobalt flames in his gaze. “You shall stay right here and take your full punishment, woman.”
I sat up as he did, naturally doing so as he yanked the shirt off the rest of the way. The bra fell to the ground behind me. “Yes, Sir,” I said, almost sensing it was expected, but utterly unsure what I was supposed to do next.
“You shall accept it…naked.”
That was sure as hell an answer.
A dangerous one.
All right, we weren’t just right off the walking path anymore—but we weren’t a mile deep into the middle of the palm grove either. Anyone coming through the grove from the beach might stand a chance of seeing us. Which would mean what, exactly? At this exact moment, he was still a man who could have anyone he wanted—and thank this island’s really awesome Creator, he wanted me.
And holy hell, how I wanted him.
How, despite my cynical mope, he was checking off more of my deepest, wildest fantasies by the minute.
Especially as he stood, unsnapped then unzipped, setting his erection fully free.
Especially as he took that dark, swollen length in hand, starting to stroke as he firmly ordered, “Stand up, tupulai. And strip.”
Chapter Twenty-One
‡
I wasn’t sure I’d ever taken off my pants faster.
And was damn proud of myself for doing it without tripping over my own two feet.
Ha fucking ha; great joke to laugh at—until one had to match the will of their brain to the actions of their body, with that part of Shiraz Cimarron’s anatomy just a few feet ahead. I didn’t want to take my eyes off him, even wondering for a moment if this was all one hell of an incredible dream. If it wasn’t, I knew the sight of his elegant fingers around his stiff, proud cock were going to be actually featured in a few dreams now…
But at the moment, I was a long, lonnnggg way from thinking of sleep.
At all.
The salty breeze filtered through the grove, making the trees whisper and my skin tingle, as I stepped before him, nude and vulnerable. I shivered again as his gaze touched every inch of me, noticeably pausing at my puckered nipples…and the pussy that clenched in anticipation of his cock conquering me there.
Dear God, I hoped that was part of this punishment shit.
His lips parted, but for a long moment, he said nothing. His stare, like his penis, just got darker and thicker.
Finally, he uttered, “By the Creator, Lucina. You are…something from my dreams. Like a siren from the sea.”
His voice poured over me like a wave, weakening my knees, throbbing my pulse. “I’m not that wet…yet.” And the attempt to one-liner myself back to composure was a soggy mess on the air—until he lasered it to pieces with the intensity of his attention, the command in his stance.
“I will be the arbiter of how wet you get, girl.”
Yes, please.
“Of course,” I murmured.
“Of course…what?”
“Of course, Master.”
“How you please me.” His voice rode the wind, wrapping warmth around me then inside me. He spread his legs, bracketing his stance, continuing to taunt me with the sight of his hard-veined length, the crimson head now kissed with the milky evidence of his lust. How I wanted to fall to my knees before him and taste that cream. Take it from him, as he commanded more of my thoughts, my will, the very drops of my desire. But I didn’t dare move toward him on my own. I didn’t even want to. I wanted everything masculine in him to take—and rule—everything female in me. Use it. Transform it into his special, sexual putty…
The thoughts lent me enough mettle to look back to his face. His jaw was firm, his neck corded with tension. Nobody gave better neck porn than Shiraz Noir Cimarron.
“How can I please you even more, Master?”
He inhaled, as if my words were the perfect perfume for him, before he directed a nod toward our palm frond bed.
“Get back down there for me. On your hands and knees. I am going to take you like an animal.”
“Yes, Master.” Though I came very, very close to not complying—due to my melting blood and knees gone to mush. Dear God. Did this man actually possess the power to reach into my psyche, learning every damn hot button I had?
Hot being relative.
Meaning it needed an instant superlative, nearly from the second I sank to the ground once more…and he lowered directly behind me.
Raked his touch up the front of my body.
Scratched his fingernails back down my spine.
Rose up, letting his cock rest on the small of my back, as he smacked one side of my ass then the other.
Hard.
“Fuck!” I gasped—then writhed, as my intimate channel dripped and pulsed and yearned for him…
“Yes?” he growled—spanking both cheeks together now.
“Yes,” I whispered back, my head dropping, my shoulders sagging—
Until he hunched over, jerking my head up with a hand in my hair, using the angle to sink his teeth into the base of my neck.
The pain jolted me even stronger. Fed my need even deeper. Made me moan and buck back against him—a good thing, since his other hand dipped in, seeking the hottest place between my soaked folds. He lunged a finger into me. A second.
I keened.
He purred. “Yes.”
“Y-yes,” I finally stammered, as he worked in a third finger. Stretching me. Pumping into me. “Damn. Yes!”
He nipped his mouth up to my ear. “It will be my cock next.”
I nodded feebly. “Yes, Master.”
“Tell me you want it, Lucina. Use my name this time. I need to hear you say it with desire on your tongue and my touch on your pussy.”
I struggled to summon the words, simply because he was making them impossible. He was making thought itself impossible. “I—I want your cock, Shiraz Cimarron. I want
it inside me…filling me…punishing me.”
And maybe the words weren’t so hard after all.
Hard being relative.
Because holy shit, did the man’s cock give the word new meaning.
A quick crinkle of foil, a slick of latex over his skin—and another turn-on, thinking he’d come looking for me, already thinking of doing this to me—and he was spreading my sensitive lips, making room for his length down there…
Then filling me down there.
Dominating every inch of my sex.
Pushing deeper, thrusting longer, fucking harder…
Showing no mercy.
Taking me to heaven.
I spiraled up fast and furiously, my clit already primed and aching for his touch. When he slid his fingers from my channel to that hot little ridge, it instantly quaked and throbbed, so ready to burst—
And it did.
A blinding, beautiful cataclysm, taking me to the tips of the treetops then back again on the wings of its perfect bliss…
But my eyes had barely uncrossed from the first orgasm, when he began coaxing me toward the next. Correction: dictating me to it. Literally.
“Such a sweet, wet clit. Rahmié Créacu, woman…how you tremble for my fingers. How you come alive beneath my touch…”
“Holy…shit,” I panted. His velvet words…his long, knowing fingers…his thrusting, relentless cock…he wove a perfect lover’s witchcraft over my helpless, submissive senses and my rejoicing, ecstatic soul. Inside, I begged that the paradise would never end—
Though the rest of me insisted otherwise.
My clit tremored and ached. My intimate walls were collections of clenching need. While I dreaded the explosion about to come, I also prayed like a frantic schoolgirl for it.
“Oh God.”
Perhaps even screamed for it.
“Oh God, oh God, oh—”
Smack.
He stole the rest of it from me with a spank. I yelped, wondering if the impact would leave a mark, then praying for that part too. I’d have something even better than a signed contract to take home with me from Arcadia…
“Not. Him.” Forget the spanking. Now I just wanted a recording of those two words, gritted exactly like that, from this man. Like he was going to even let me have that thought either. “Not him,” he repeated, dragging both syllables across razor blade beds. “You will beg me for it, tupulai.”
I didn’t dare not answer.
I didn’t dare not pick any other words.
“Yes…Master.”
With one whoosh, he twisted me around until I was on my back. In another, he was back inside me, shuttling his beautiful cock up into me, ramming everywhere inside me.
“Beg.”
He pounded.
“Me.”
He thrusted.
“Master.”
He stilled.
“Please!”
He throbbed.
“Fuck.”
We came.
Detonating in tandem. Screaming in silence. Intensity so complete, it shook us in spasms that surely must have bubbled the air itself, causing time to stop and the world to tilt.
Through it all, we stared at each other. Took in all the straining, stunning, ugly, unreal, unfiltered beauty of orgasms transcending physical bursts, or even emotional connections. In those wild, weird moments, something happened to us…beyond the chemical. Surpassing the sexual. Something transforming my cells…from the sheer force of my spirit.
Something metaphysical.
Something magical.
Something that was going change me.
Forever.
Thank freaking God the recognition fled as fast as it had hit.
And thank everything else for the incessant vibrations of Shiraz’s phone, still tucked in his back pocket, still in the cargo pants covering most of his ass. The pulses radiated through both our crotches, inciting us to shared spurts of laughter, resulting in the sad but inevitable slide of his body out of mine. But even as he rolled to his back, he didn’t let me go. With one arm, he kept me tucked close. After peeling off the condom, he used the opposite hand to hook my free leg across his middle. His cock, still warm and firm, indented my inner thigh. I smiled through a few blissful minutes of I-am-Eve-hear-me-roar. For just a little while longer, I could choose to believe the world was nothing but the distant surf, the kiss of the wind, and this man in my arms, lost in our private Eden.
The light swirls he made against my leg turned into an inquisitive squeeze. “What are you thinking?”
Tiny grunt. A kiss to the heartbeat beneath my ear. “That’s a dangerous question, mister.”
“More dangerous than sprawling in the open with my cock hanging out, after catching a gorgeous forest nymph?”
He had a point. And had expressed it with swoon-worthy effectiveness. “I’m thinking that if that was your idea of punishment, I’ve got to think of more ways to be bad.”
The hand he’d gripped to my shoulder trailed down to my breast. “I am already filled with those kind of ideas, tupulai…”
He dipped his lips to finish that with a kiss—
But uttered an Arcadian oath instead, thanks to the new buzz of his phone.
“Somebody needs you.” I teased the subtext to that with a little buck of my hips. “More than me. If that’s possible.”
He dug out the phone, scowled at the screen then rammed the device to his ear while jabbing a thumb in to open the line. “Adym. I left instructions not to be—” His features bugged in shock. He bolted to a sitting position. “When?” He swiveled around, glaring the direction of the beach. “You are certain?” By the time he looked back to me, my clothes were already in his other hand. “Understood,” he barked, pushing the garments at me. “Merderim, Adym.”
His voice emphasized the thanks. A lot.
Did I dare ask him what for?
“One of the women on the beach saw me entering the grove,” he muttered as I climbed back into my T-shirt.
The second my head emerged, I flashed a curious stare. “And called Adym about it?”
“No.” His face tightened as he stood and zipped up. “Called Ambyr about it.”
That sure as hell explained things.
“Holy shit.” I hurried back into my jeans—mentally bashing myself at the same time. Officially, there was nothing here to be holy-shitting about. On paper, Shiraz was still an unclaimed man—though that wasn’t a valid argument either. “On paper” didn’t mean crap when it came to people’s hearts and minds. On paper, I’d been Ryan’s committed girl. On paper. Dad was a bad-ass detective, out to catch bad guys. The descriptions hadn’t stopped Ryan from leaving, or a criminal from putting a bullet through Dad’s brain.
On paper wouldn’t stop everyone in this kingdom, and possibly the world, from branding me as the skank who’d been Shiraz Cimarron’s fuck buddy before he settled down with the nice island girl.
Not the lover he’d taken to the damn moon and back.
Not the woman he’d led back a special part of herself with his dominance.
Not the person who was never going to be the same, after knowing the perfection of his passion…
Moroseness for another time. A much later time.
Right now, I had to find my damn shoe.
The black boot magically appeared—clutched in long fingers I was doing my best to forget. “Thank you.” I accepted it without looking up. Adding his eyes atop the temptation of his fingers was a definite no-go at this moment.
Though the beautiful bastard himself had other ideas.
“Lucina.”
Much different ideas then getting out of here—with those fingers now sifting into my hair, his breath mingling with my own, and his head tucking lower, making me watch how he bit into his bottom lip. Yeah, right into the part I’d taken a nick out of.
“The thanks, tupulai, is mine.”
I didn’t want to answer him with such a swoony smile. I should have been giggling at hi
m and that clichéd line, not angling a stare so enamored, I could feel the stars going twirly-sparkly in my eyes. Shiraz smirked in return, knowing how his sultry utterance would unravel my resistance…melt the marrow in my bones…fry the damn blood cells in my veins.
He knew it would tear down all my walls again, making it possible to take me in his arms for another long, toe-curling kiss.
And yeah, every one of my toes coiled in. As I sighed into him.
As he moaned back—then pushed in more. Parted me. Invaded me. Reduced me…
And in the doing, reimagined me.
Once more, I wasn’t anyone or anything. Gone was the little girl who’d had to grow up so fast, as well as the woman she grew up into. And the woman who just wanted to be that loved little girl again. And the woman who recognized those issues, knew she’d been escaping them with sex, and didn’t care.
But gone as well was the wedding planner who always scoffed at the concepts of soul mates, colliding stars, and the sacrifice of true love.
Who’d become a woman in love.
The lightning hit me so hard, I jolted backward. Slammed fingertips to my lips, as if they’d burst with the words if I didn’t keep them pushed inside.
Only there was the fucking rub. The lightning burning my brain. Pushing at my lips.
I love him.
“Tupulai? What is it?”
I love you.
No.
I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
I wouldn’t.
I took another step back. As I did, I literally imagined that part of me—that burning, bright, ball of completion and joy I’d allowed myself to acknowledge, even if just for those few seconds—now left behind, plopped on the ground between us. If the orb had been real, it would’ve left behind a burn on the ground. Would have branded that small part of the world…
The same way he’d changed mine.
Had changed me.
I couldn’t fight the acknowledgment any longer. Couldn’t deny I’d be leaving Arcadia a much different woman, a much different person than I was just a few days ago. But renouncing that new Lucy was like shitting on the man who’d given her to me in the first place. Shown me the truth of who I was…
And how beautiful that truth could really be.
Me.
