Agony/Ecstasy: Original Stories of Agonizing Pleasure/Exquisite Pain

by Litte, Jane

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  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorized editions. HEAT and the HEAT design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Heat trade paperback edition / December 2011

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Agony/ecstasy / edited by Jane Litte.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-101-55276-6 (trade pbk.)

  1. Erotic stories, American. 2. American fiction—21st century. I. Litte, Jane.

  PS648.E7 A38 2011

  813’.60803538—dc23

  2011033894

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  CONTENTS

  Transformed BY ANNE CALHOUN

  Rescue Me BY MELJEAN BROOK

  The Wooden Pony BY SHOSHANNA EVERS

  Kiss of Life BY LILY DANIELS

  Silverhouse BY SARABETH SCOTT

  Bruised Ego BY CHRISTINE D’ABO

  On My Skin BY DL GALACE

  Just Say Yes BY HELENKAY DIMON

  Into the Red BY CAMERON BELLE

  Overtaken BY SARA THORN

  About the Editor

  TRANSFORMED

  ANNE CALHOUN

  The first rule of combat was to gain and maintain tactical advantage, preferably covertly. On the surface, Cole had orchestrated a seduction: a bed stripped to the bottom sheet, pillows mounded at the headboard, the floor lamp in the corner casting soft shadows on the maple bureau. He’d maneuvered Marin Bryant into his apartment, into his bed, and under him.

  The perfect opening position.

  Stretched out beside her, he let his gaze sweep her from head to the toes of her bare feet. She wore white jeans and a white cashmere V-neck sweater, and her black lashes, opaque sea green eyes, and full mouth were startling bursts of color in her pale face.

  She seemed as cool and untouchable as moonlight.

  His next move was to rest his hand on her taut abdomen. Immediately she countered, laying her hand on top of his and looking right into his eyes. “What do you have in mind for me tonight, Cole?”

  His heart leaped against his rib cage. Only at the very end of the last of their nine previous encounters had his gaze met hers, so for him the effect was as stunning as the first seconds of a firefight. Marin, however, submerged all emotion under her maddeningly tranquil surface. Controlled in speech, controlled in movement, controlled even at the moment he fucked her full-throttle into a gasping, shuddering orgasm.

  Sometimes control was a prison.

  He didn’t answer her question, too absorbed in watching her, assessing the situation as the seconds passed, adjusting his response. Despite the casual question and her seemingly unruffled exterior, she was rushing the scene, something she hadn’t done before. He focused on the rise and fall of her stomach under his hand. A little rapid, a little shallow.

  Keep it slow. You know how effective that tactic is. “What do you think I want to do?”

  “Restrain me,” she said without inflection, a living, breathing statue carved from alabaster marble. “Black leather, not handcuffs. Then put me on my knees to suck your cock.”

  That amused him, the corners of his mouth lifting as he slipped his hand from under hers to brush her fine blond hair back from her face, exposing delicate bone structure and skin so luminous he could chart the stages of her arousal by the blood rising in her throat and cheeks. He stroked her cheek with his fingertips and watched the heat he knew burned inside deepen the pale pink to rose. With his index finger he traced the swell of her lower lip, then dipped inside to touch the tip of her tongue.

  The temperature of the air between them shot up ten degrees. Her pulse, visible above the V of her sweater leaped at the base of her throat as her tongue darted out to taste him.

  Such mixed messages. She was an enigma, a quest wrapped up in a five-foot-tall, slender woman.

  He trailed one finger down to her skittering pulse. “That’s a tempting offer, but I’ve got ten inches and a hundred pounds on you. I don’t need to restrain you.”

  Not a hint of reaction in her face, but a leap of blood under his fingertip. Her gaze sharpened as she took in his body as if seeing it for the first time, noting shoulders and hips, lingering at his hands, which were big enough to hold both of her wrists. If he were so inclined.

  “What do you need?” she asked.

  Asking the question subtly changed the dynamics. She’d never asked before, so here they went, over the cliff, into thin air. “To touch you. However I want to. For as long as I want to.”

  A charged stillness followed, quiet enough to hear the ebb and flow of traffic on Fifth Avenue, ten stories below, and the rush of blood in his ears. Such a simple word, touch, encompassing so much. Their previous meetings, arranged by Lady Matilda’s Introductions service at Marin’s request, involved exploring the pleasure found in searing, unavoidable pain.

  Wary for a number of reasons, he used only his first name but Marin came to their encounters shrouded in a character, Miss Banks. The experience was so all-consuming it took him three meetings to realize Banks was a pseudonym and another six to discover the fine seam in her defenses, curiosity.

  Is this the only thing that turns you on?

  Hardly.

  She’d paused after that single word. Sometimes silences were as informative as words or tone. This one wasn’t hesitant. Marin owned her sexuality without reservation; the possibility of more and varied sex with him didn’t crack her.

  What do you have in mind?

  Find out.

  For nine heated nights touch was limited to restraints of leather on wrists and ankles, to sweat-soaked cotton sheets and his belt on bare skin, to his cock in her cunt, to thrusting and grasping, the smack of flesh against flesh, to agonized gasps and groans. Suffering, erotic and real. Then simple curiosity undid Miss Banks and, for a split second, ignited Marin.

  He wanted more than a split second. Getting it was the problem.

  At his statement, she reacted much as he anticipated, breathing halted, muscles tensed and poised for flight. It took visible effort for her to inhale and say, “You need to touch me.”

  Need didn’t cover it. “Yes.”

  “You touch me every time we’re together.”

  “According to your rules,” he countered. Rules she’d established to protect herself. He wouldn’t dismantle her physical or emotional walls.

  By all means, keep out the rest of the world, or at least the rest of the male population of the world. But not me.

  Intensity sat familiarly on his face, but its tight grip on his heart felt unusual. Urgent. “Be daring, Marin. Find out what I have in mind.”

  Clearly this wasn’t what she’d expected . . . but he put enough of a taunt into his tone that she wasn’t calling a halt to it.

  His next move was a feint. He lowered his mouth to hers. As expected, she turned her head ever so slightly, her gaze flickering between his mouth and his eyes to gauge his response.

  He adapted, brushing his lips against the heated flesh of her cheek and using the rough scrape of his stubble in counterpoint to the occasional flick of his tongue. When she turned her head to the side with a sigh, he set his mouth to the hollow under her ear.

  A tiny, secretive shudder rippled through her. It was amazing what a precision stealth assault could accomplish where air strikes and heavy ordinance failed. “Put your hands above your head and leave them there.”

  “That has nothing to do with touching me,” she said without moving.

  True, but it had everything to do with surrender. “Surely you understand the concept of setting a scene,” he murmured into her hair.

  She turned her head to meet his gaze. Again, that heart-stopping jolt. Then, defiance in every
line of her body, her mouth set in a firm line, she lifted her hands over her head, palms up, fingers curled, the movement as elegant and impassive as a ballerina’s. He sat up and straddled her hips, then trailed his fingers gently over the cashmere and down her sides in sweeping movements, stroking the fine material clinging to the lines of her body. The tension in her body eased ever so slightly with each pass of his hands. Her full lips parted as sensation lapped at her resistance.

  Then he switched tactics, increasing the pressure of his touch, catching the cashmere between his fingers and using it to caress the skin of her arms, then her shoulders, then abdomen. Eyes heavy-lidded, she undulated, then stiffened up again, as if reminded of her determination to defy what he made her feel.

  He avoided her breasts entirely until her nipples peaked under the material, then stroked only the gentle swell of the undersides. Nothing came between his hands and her skin except the sweater.

  “No bra?”

  “I’m barely an A cup. You know that,” she said. The words held a hint of Miss Banks’ green-apple-tart tone but were low, distant. Absorbed in what he made her feel, despite the set of her body.

  So the lacy bras and garter belts were part of the costume she wore for their encounters. He filed away this detail of the real Marin. “I like you like this,” he said. “Bare. Accessible.”

  Another soft, distracted sound, but she went silent when he used the backs of his curled fingers to pet the sides of her breasts. The first time he grazed her nipples she gasped and the second time she arched into his hands like a cat. He kept the material between his thumbs and forefingers as he pinched and rolled the swollen peaks.

  She grew taut underneath him, her body quivering with resistance. Her eyes opened, closed, opened again, fighting to stay alert and distance herself from what she felt. Another firmer pinch and she let out a whimper, bit her lip, then curled her fingers into the sheet above her head. His cock strained at his zipper, but he ignored his need and focused on the subtle battle she waged inside. Protracted, gentle touch generated an entirely different kind of need in Marin. Hotter. Softer. Languid. Her lips were pink and swollen from her efforts to muffle the noises growing throatier as the minutes passed.

  Watching her sink into desire and fight it every step of the way sent hot lust cracking down his spine. He focused his attention on her breasts and nipples and let sensation work against her trembling body until he couldn’t stand the barrier between them and pushed at her sweater.

  “Off,” he commanded.

  She’d followed orders frequently enough to automatically obey the tone, and let him pull her sweater over her head. He smoothed the tousled hair back from her face then deliberately bent to her nipples, patiently seeking the right combination of teeth and tongue to make her quiver with the effort of not reacting. She moaned when he abandoned the pink, swollen tips to press a line of kisses down the center of her body. With little effort he worked her jeans down and off. He kissed each hipbone, the taut skin of her abdomen, the bottom of her sternum, then shifted back to her side, leaned his head on his doubled arm and slid his fingers over her bare mound.

  The soft folds between her legs were wet and swollen. He didn’t gloat, just trailed her slick juices up to her clit and began to circle the taut nub, all the while taking in the way she struggled to lash down her increasingly undisciplined response. The abrupt, halting movements of her hips were completely unlike Miss Banks’ smooth, fluid responses, and blood dotted her lower lip. She’d bitten it.

  He bent down and tasted the hot copper tang of her blood. “Stop fighting me. Stop fighting yourself,” he said. “Let this happen.”

  “I’m not . . . I can’t,” she said on a desperate sigh, but her hips lifted into his hand and her thighs tightened as she said it.

  “It’ll be good,” he murmured. “You know it will.”

  But a part of him wanted her to hold out. He’d seen her come more times than he could count, fucked her as ruthlessly as he’d ever fucked a woman, but he’d never seen her battle the riptide of pleasure’s onslaught and lose.

  A few more strokes along her swelling clit and sweat broke out between her breasts and in the delicate crease of her thigh. Suddenly, as if the prolonged caresses snipped a taut-strung wire, the tension in her body shifted from resistance to red-hot need. She pulled up one leg, giving him a little more room to maneuver, then her other leg came up and dropped open against his hip. Primitive male possessiveness surged in his chest as the delicate scent of sweat and female arousal drifted into the air.

  Cole clenched his jaw to keep from ripping open his jeans and plunging into her. Hard and fast would get him physical release, his and hers. He wanted more. He kept the pace and the pressure, watched the familiar blood flush bloom on her collarbone, spread up her throat, into her cheeks as she arched, then went rigid and succumbed. Her clit pulsed under his fingertip as she tried to stifle her moan of release. Then the tension eased from her body, leaving her slack-limbed on his bed. He lightened his touch, then stopped moving entirely, simply resting his hand on her mound.

  On the surface, it was such a simple experience, surrendering to a relentlessly gentle touch, but already they were off the map, physically and emotionally. He kept his body relaxed, his breathing even and waited for the results of the skirmish.

  Marin’s muscles bunched and she scrambled to her knees at the foot of the bed. “We’re done.”

  Success.

  He grabbed for her, his fingers closing around her delicate wrist. “We’re not done.”

  Ten inches taller and a hundred pounds heavier hung in the air. He kept his gaze level, watching fire and fear snap in her eyes, and tried to look like a badass motherfucker who’d use physical strength to his advantage.

  A long moment passed before her gaze went semi-opaque again; her shoulders straightened and her arm slackened in his grip as she pulled her serenity around her like a mantle of snow. “What did you hope to prove with that?” she asked. “We both know you can make me come.”

  He cursed mentally, because he could work with Marin in flight or fight mode but not on emotional lockdown. “You don’t think that was different than our entire history to date?”

  It was, and they both knew it. She lifted her chin and shrugged, distancing herself.

  Keep her curious. Guessing. He let her wrist drop. “The deal was I touch you however I wanted, for as long as I wanted, but if it’s too much for you . . .”

  The taunt hung in the air, along with Find out. Marin was too smart to manipulate but too adventurous to walk away from a mystery. “Why?” she asked obliquely.

  “Undress me,” he said, tying the answer to her compliance.

  A long moment passed, then she knelt in front of him and began to unfasten the buttons on his shirt. He waited until she was focused on the task, then spoke.

  “I saw you dance Thursday,” he said.

  Searching her real name on Google gave him a shock equivalent to the one he felt when Miss Banks walked into the room their first night together. Marin Bryant, aka Miss Banks, was a principal dancer at the peak of her career with a modern dance company, and in a heart-stopping moment of realization when he clicked through reviews in Time Out New York, the Post, and the Times, the puzzle pieces of who she was and what they were about clicked into place.

  She paused in the act of tugging his shirttails free from his jeans. “Thursday night was the closing show of our season. Tickets were sold out nine months ago. How did you get a seat?”

  “I’m now a Platinum Circle Patron of the Selma Galenti Company,” he said.

  She let out a short laugh as she glanced significantly around his Fifth Avenue apartment, then pulled his shirt free. “God only knows who the front office browbeat into giving up a seat to please a new major donor,” she said, then slid both hands up his chest to his shoulders and pushed the fabric down his arms.

  The shirt caught on his still-buttoned cuffs. The error made a blush flare in her cheeks, but he
liked the unscripted feel of this, and at an extremely base level, he really liked the way she looked kneeling naked in front of him.

  She recovered quickly, murmuring, “What did you think?” as she unfastened one cuff, then the other, playing the subservient role to the hilt.

  He couldn’t put what he thought into words. When the curtain opened and he saw Marin rise off the stage, using what seemed like an acre of iridescent silk in her skirt as a prop in a whirling, leaping piece titled Transfixed, his heart seized tight and punched his ribs. Then his brain shut down entirely.

  “I don’t know anything about dance,” he admitted, “but you were spectacular to watch.”

  At his faint, inarticulate praise, she glanced up. Electric shock times ten, because the wildness and power and intensity of the dance flashed in her eyes before she locked it down. He went still.

  There it was. Transformation. That was what she locked down, except when she was performing. That was what he’d seen flashing under Miss Banks’s serene surface, the surface no amount of erotic pain could crack. That was what he wanted to feel flowing through him, over him, what pleasure had almost broken free a few minutes earlier.

  Life itself, channeled through Marin.

  She pulled off his shirt and tossed it toward the foot of the bed. “You’re not supposed to ‘know dance.’ You feel dance. At its best, dance steals into your soul and transforms you.”

  “Then what I saw was dance at its very best,” he said quietly.

  She halted in the process of hooking her fingers in his belt and looked up at him, absorbing his words. “Thank you,” she said, but she didn’t stop removing his clothes. With deft fingers she got his belt open and jeans unzipped, but he didn’t lift up so she could push off his jeans.

  “What do you have in mind, Cole?”

  Her trademark serenity was a thin veneer over the passion he felt straining to break free. He’d come too far to flinch now.