by Lisa Cach
He took her to the very edge of release, and then … stopped.
She shifted and tried to bite back the small noise of impatience that threatened to slip from her throat.
After several seconds he touched her again, and she inched toward the edge of bliss, her body straining, and then … he stopped.
She moaned softly in frustration. Enough of this teasing!
His next touch was quick and light, as sudden and fleeting as a hummingbird. Her body jerked, her eyes flying open. He was still watching her, his face deadly serious. She turned her face to her shoulder, eyes shut once more, and vowed not to open them again.
“Remember that I have the advantage of seeing how you touched yourself. And I’m determined to show you that I could do it even better.”
She began to arch her back in pleasure, then caught herself and forced herself to remain still. In this contest she could hold the advantage only if he didn’t know what she was feeling.
But, oh … it felt so good!
His pressure increased, his touch giving her what she wanted much too slowly. She wanted to beg him to go faster, and had to clench her jaw against the words.
Just as her frustration was verging on anger, he suddenly shifted gears and changed to a fast, flicking touch that tore a soft cry from her throat.
She could feel herself approaching the crest of her passion; she was rising swiftly toward it, carried by his touch. She pressed her hips toward him. She wanted him inside her right now, all of him, leaving no space in her for thought or emotion, just raw physical passion.
Her legs tensed, her body straining toward its goal. She was only a few heartbeats away from satisfaction, and with that knowledge a rush of triumph went through her: he’d said he would make her ask him for sex, but she hadn’t. She’d won! She would reach her peak, and then all danger of giving in to him would be gone, her passion spent!
Just one more moment …
He lifted his hand away.
Her eyes flew open and she whimpered in protest. “Declan.”
The barest whisper of a smile breathed across his lips. “You don’t really think I’ll let you off so easily, do you?”
She stared at him dully, her mind foggy with lust, until she felt his touch on her inner thigh, lightly feathering along her skin exactly as he had done ten minutes earlier. As if he was going back to the beginning, to start all over.
“No … ,” she said softly, shaking her head.
“All you have to do is say yes,” Declan said, “and you can have what you want.”
“And if I don’t say it?”
“We have hours ahead of us. I can bring you to the brink and leave you there a hundred times, until your body is burned by its own desires. If you go to that point, you won’t be able to come at all.” He touched her lightly, and she closed her eyes and moaned. “Don’t do that to yourself just to spite me.”
“It’s not spite,” Grace gasped. “It’s to prove that not every woman wants you.”
“I don’t care what other women want, only what you want.” He lifted his hand away.
Grace’s body cried out in protest, but she forced herself to smile. She licked her dry lips. “Do your best. I’ll never want you inside me.”
“You already do. The only question is how long it will take for you to admit it.”
“Eternity.”
“Then you leave me no choice, and I’ll show you no mercy.”
She didn’t want mercy. All she wanted was for him to touch her again, and he did. Over and over again he brought her up to the brink and abandoned her, her hips writhing with desire she could not control. The only mastery she had was of her tongue, and she held it silent.
Even that became almost too much. She started to second-guess herself, to silently argue that this was only a game, he already knew she wanted him, why not say it and get what they both wanted?
With each round of slowly intensifying touch, it took less and less time for her to reach the brink, but always he stopped just short of sending her over. How did he do that? How did he know just when to stop? She started to watch herself, seeking the clues she gave away to let him know when she was about to climax. If she could send the wrong message, even for as little as a few seconds, she could throw herself over the brink before he knew what was happening.
She sensed her whole body tensing as she neared the crest, her legs stiffening, the movements of her hips more frantic as she silently screamed, “Don’t stop! Don’t stop! I’m almost there!” And of course he stopped and started over.
The next round, she was ready for him. As the arousal built and she felt herself approaching the edge, she forced her body to remain at its level of tension, forced herself to pretend less passion than she felt.
Yes, she silently whispered to herself as his touch increased in intensity.
Yes, just a little more. She felt a strange dissociation from her body as she held control, faking relaxation when she wanted to grind herself against him.
Just a little more …
And then it came: one touch too many. Her body froze on the cusp, and then tumbled downward in pulsating waves of release. Her whole body tightened, her back arching, her thighs clamping together over his hand, her own hands gripping the bonds above her head.
“Got it,” she sighed in triumph and relief.
She felt Declan remove his hands from her, and opened her eyes.
“Goddammit! You tricked me!”
A smile curled her lips. “Some of us play the game better than others.”
His eyes narrowed. “No one said the game was over.”
She smirked. “You’re the short stack of chips at this poker table, buck-o.”
“A naked woman still in handcuffs should think twice about taunting the man who put her there.”
Her glee died. “What do you mean by that? It’s over, Declan. Just admit it.”
He grabbed a pillow off the floor and coaxed her to raise her hips, sliding it beneath them. “Have you never heard of multiple orgasms?”
“Sure, but I never—”
Her words were cut short by what he did next.
“It’s not going to work,” she said weakly, even as he patiently began to coax the first shimmers of desire from her and she melted into the bed, her limbs going limp. “It can’t work, can it?” she asked in wonder as she felt a tingling pleasure begin to spread through her loins.
He built her passion slowly this time, with no cycles of arousal and abandonment. He switched pace and pressure, keeping her guessing, never letting her get bored.
Grace wanted it to go on forever; she wanted to reach her second relief; she wanted to feel him inside her. She wanted all of it, but mostly she wanted him to keep doing exactly what he was doing.
“Say yes, Grace.”
She imagined him coming over her, his strong body between her thighs, his manhood pushing deep within her. Below, his tongue echoed her imaginings.
For the second time, her body reached its relief, her muscles tensing as her body fell into waves of contracting pleasure.
“No! Goddammit, no!” Declan howled. He punched the mattress in frustration.
Grace chuckled deep in her throat, and stretched languorously. “Thank you, Declan. What does that make the score? Two—zip?”
Declan rolled off the bed and stalked round the room, running his hands through his hair in aggravation, his cock erect and woefully unsatisfied. Grace was too sated to do more than lie there smiling.
“You’re all out of tricks, aren’t you?” Grace said in mock sympathy. “Poor thing.”
Declan glared at her, his eyes wild. He muttered something unintelligible beneath his breath.
“Would you please take off the cuffs? My arms are going stiff,” she said softly.
He sighed and unlocked the cuffs. Then he pulled the sheet over Grace and crawled in behind her. He pulled her into his arms, spooning her from behind.
“I guess that was something to write h
ome about,” Grace whispered drowsily.
Declan closed his eyes, pressed his face into her hair, and pulled her more tightly against himself, his arm between her breasts, his body protectively cupping the warm softness of hers. She was much smaller than he was, but her curves gave her enough solidity that he didn’t fear crushing her. There was something deeply comforting about holding her.
He wasn’t a man to analyze sex—far from it—but he dimly recognized that something important and unexpected had happened here tonight. Grace had challenged him in a way he had never experienced, and had held her own against all he could throw at her. It wasn’t just sexual, either; it had been a mental and emotional game they had played with each other.
All this, from Grace. Grace! The insecure Women’s Studies student in a fish T-shirt!
She wasn’t who he’d thought she was. She was a vixen, full of tricks and temptations, and motives he couldn’t fathom. She was like … like a young Sophia.
His eyes opened, his body stiffening. His longstanding wish to meet a younger version of Sophia had come true. People always said to be careful what you wished for—now he understood why.
Grace was a young Sophia but scarier; she was a sex monster who came across as a virgin. And she loathed him. She hid it, but there were moments when he’d catch the anger in her eyes and know that he might never be forgiven for how he’d treated her the first night.
A sick sense came to him that he had burned a bridge he would come to regret. He may have lost the woman of his dreams.
He buried his nose in Grace’s hair, inhaling the damp, earthy remnants of passion. She had set her sights on the passionless Andrew Pritchard. Andrew would never be able to meet her needs, but Grace thought she wanted him, for whatever reason.
Jealousy burned like acid.
So why the hell was Grace playing sexual games with him? She must have reasons of her own, of which he had not a clue. He had thought he was in control of their relationship, but he suspected now that Grace had used his self-assurance against him and was holding the reins all along.
“What the hell are you up to?” he whispered into her hair.
There was no answering murmur. His redheaded vixen was sound asleep.
CHAPTER
17
“Your aunt still hasn’t had her surgery?” Cat asked over the phone.
“No,” Grace said, sitting on her bed. It was late Saturday morning, and beyond the French doors the sky and ocean were a wash of brilliant blue. The cheerful sunlight was at odds with her cloudy mood. “Andrew pesters her about it at least once a week, but she always manages to turn the conversation in some direction that flusters him and he forgets to pursue the issue until the next time he’s here.”
“That seems kind of weird, doesn’t it? I mean, I thought the whole purpose of having you there all summer was so she could have help while she recovered.”
“What can I say? She does what she wants.”
“And she has plenty of hired help already,” Cat said slowly. “She has to have had an ulterior motive for inviting you to stay.”
“I think she just likes having people around.”
“Are Andrew and Declan spending a lot of time there?”
“Declan hasn’t been here for over two weeks,” Grace said, affecting nonchalance.
The morning after their sexual contest she’d woken up alone in her bed. Declan hadn’t just left her room; he’d left the house and the town. Sophia told her later that morning that he’d gone back to San Francisco.
Grace had felt a slight disappointment, barely enough to dim her glow of victory and sexual satisfaction. He had retreated in defeat, unwilling to face the woman who had bested him! Or maybe he was afraid that if he stayed, Sophia would sense that the two of them had been intimate. He couldn’t know Sophia would be more amused than distressed.
That first morning after, just thinking Declan’s name made her whole body tingle. The attention he had lavished on her and his determination to make her feel pleasure no matter the consequence to himself had gone a long way toward breaching the walls she’d built against him. His adoration of her body had felt like an adoration of her, the woman inside. When she’d briefly stirred from sleep to find herself held warm and secure in his arms, she’d assumed he must like her, maybe even love her a little. And she’d allowed herself to feel a frisson of the same, her blood humming with the excitement of new hopes.
But as the hours turned into days without a word from Declan, Grace’s euphoria had drained away. She’d thought she’d won the battle in her bedroom, but she’d lost. She’d let him fool her into thinking he cared, again. How could she have been so stupid?
Her burgeoning romantic hopes were replaced by darker emotions.
Violent emotions.
Blood-tinged, incoherent, howling animal emotions.
Emotions that needed an ax for full expression, one of those old medieval axes they used for chopping off heads. After she chopped off his head, she’d disembowel him and leave his innards on the rocks for the seagulls to eat.
“Declan’s not around,” Grace told Cat now, “but Andrew is here a lot, and he’s got me going to this CRON group he’s part of.”
“A what group?”
Grace explained the theory of calorie restriction and longevity. The members of the CRON group struck her as fanatical, obsessed with eating only the peels of apples and charting the nutritional value of every microgram of food they put in their mouths. Several had histories of eating disorders, although they all claimed to be taking charge of their health through CRON.
But the biggest downside was that what Andrew had explained about libido was apparently true. Testosterone dropped. Several members of the group had been celibate for more than a year, and not just because they were nut jobs who couldn’t find a date.
“Are you actually doing this calorie-restriction thing?” Cat asked incredulously. “You, who never met a Ben and Jerry’s flavor that couldn’t be improved with hot-fudge sauce?”
“Shocking, huh?” Grace said, feeling a prick of annoyance. Why should it be such a surprise that she might give up ice cream, at least for a summer? Was she such a glutton that it seemed impossible? “You’re not going to believe this, but in the two months I’ve been here I’ve lost thirty pounds.”
“Grace!”
“It’s great, isn’t it?”
“Grace! That’s almost four pounds a week. That’s not healthy,” Catherine scolded.
“Oh, phhtt,” she said. “The first ten pounds were mostly water.”
“You can’t be eating enough to be healthy.”
“I am.” For once, she was grateful for the CRON meetings. They made a great cover for a diet. “One of the CRONies showed me a computer program to calculate all my daily nutritional needs so I can be sure to eat the right things. I’ve been exercising a lot, too.” She’d been exercising with more vigor since Declan had disappeared; the next time he saw her, she wanted his eyes to fall out of his head. Her weight loss had been stalled for a week or so before they’d had their encounter. Since then, the pounds had flown off. Maybe anger burned extra calories.
“You, exercise?”
“Yeah,” Grace said, irritated. “Me. Exercise.”
“You aren’t turning anorexic, are you? Did Sophia drive you to this somehow?”
Grace’s anger—with judgmental Cat, with despicable Declan; with prim Andrew, and with her perpetual, aching, crazy-making state of hunger—all boiled over. “You know, I’d think you’d be happy for me. Everyone always told me to eat better, to exercise, that the fat around my middle was going to give me dementia, diabetes, arthritis, and a heart attack all at once. Now I do what everyone said and take care of myself, and all I get is a bunch of crap about being anorexic! Goddamned anorexic! No wonder fat people stay fat. They can’t win either way!”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Grace ground her teeth, fuming.
“Hit a nerve, didn’t I?” Cat s
aid at last. “Defensiveness is a sign of an eating disorder.”
“Fuck you!” Grace shouted into the phone. “Fuck. You! Ever since I turned you down you’ve been trying to control me, to keep me to yourself. You don’t want me to lose weight because then I might find a guy who’ll take me away from you. You’re like one of those lesbian abusers you work with, trying to keep me dependent and helpless so I can’t leave you. Well, fuck you, Cat. You have no hold on me.”
Silence. Grace could hear her own heavy breathing, her body shaking with anger, her heart racing. She felt a tingle of dread at what Cat’s response would be, but also felt an eager, almost violent wish for verbal battle.
At last Cat’s answer came. “Whoa,” she said softly. “I’ve never heard you this upset before.” Her voice quavering with real concern, she asked, “Gracie, are you okay? Is everything all right?”
“I’m fine! Better than ever!” Grace barked back, but without the bite of before. She was vaguely unsettled by Cat’s calm, caring response.
“Talk to me, Grace. What’s going on?”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk to me, but you should think of talking to someone. Professor Joansdatter. Your mom. Or maybe Dr. Andrew?”
“Aren’t you afraid he’s part of the problem, due to CRON?”
“There’s not a lot of choice for someone to talk to in that house. At least his heart’s in the right place, and he seems to like you.”
“Yeah, he seems to,” Grace drawled. “As much as he can.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means the guy might as well be a eunuch,” Grace groused.
There was a sound suspiciously like a chuckle on the other end of the line.
“What?” Grace demanded.
“Nothing! Really!”
Grace scowled. “You think sexual frustration has caused my bad temper?”
“No, not exactly.”
“Then what? Tell me, Ms. Know-it-all.”
“I’ve had a passing acquaintance with unrequited love myself.”
An image of Declan sprang to Grace’s mind. Declan smiling at her, teasing her, leering at her. Touching her … “I’m not in love with him,” Grace insisted.
