by BETH KERY
“But there will be those that demand the solid proof.”
An imagined vision of a roomful of somber Durand executives and attorneys—all the potential doubters and naysayers, people who were panicked at the idea of possible upheaval at Durand Enterprises—flew into his mind’s eye. “There will be plenty who eventually want to see those test results,” he repeated as calmly as possible.
She bit her lip and glanced aside. Aside from all these bizarre circumstances she found herself in, Dylan knew Alice Reed was typically a practical, down-to-earth young woman with a brilliant brain for mathematics and business. Never let it be said that genes weren’t telling. Alan Durand had possessed one of the finest business minds he’d ever known, and Lynn had been an outstanding scholar. She’d been an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Michigan when Alan had first met her. He was glad to see Alice focus so rationally on the difficult topic.
“I don’t want anything of Addie Durand’s, so why should it matter?” she asked.
“You don’t know that yet.”
“I know what I want and don’t want, Dylan.”
“Then do it for yourself,” he suggested without pause. He’d been prepared for her response. He’d been prepared for her stubbornness.
“Myself?”
He nodded. “That’s what I meant before. You need tangible proof. Not just my word. You need firsthand evidence. It’ll be something firm to grasp onto.”
“A solid start,” she whispered.
“A solid start,” Dylan agreed, relief sweeping through him because he’d seen something click in her gaze, and knew she’d go for the genetic testing. He needed that tangible proof as a shield against potential challenges.
He leaned down and brushed his mouth against hers. His kiss was meant to be gentle and reassuring, but Alice was having none of it. She put her hand on the back of his head, pulling him farther down to her and going up on her tiptoes. He responded to her invitation as always.
Wholesale.
Their kiss deepened. His lust flared high on the fuel of her reciprocated need. So sweet. So Alice-like, to be wary and doubting one moment, and then taking him to the center of the flames within two seconds flat.
He would have to have her again tonight, experience her melting beneath his touch, laid bare and submitting to the bond between them. He needed it for Alice’s sake.
He required it for his own.
TWO
Dylan leaned down over her, their mouths melding, their tongues tangling. His hands were greedy and sure as they molded her back muscles and hips, and then slid beneath her underwear to cup her buttocks. Alice pressed closer to him, becoming desperate at the evidence of his growing erection just behind the fly of his jeans. Her hands mimicked his, sliding beneath the low waistband of his jeans and caressing the round hard globes of his ass. Arousal spiked through her, demanding and sharp. She thought it must have been the same for Dylan, because he groaned roughly into her mouth and shifted his hands as if to lift her.
She knew him well enough to guess he was about to carry her to bed and consume her utterly. One thing about Dylan: He never did anything halfway.
“No,” she whispered hoarsely against his lips when she abruptly broke their kiss.
“No what?” he muttered, his dark brows slanting dangerously as he looked down at her, his mouth set in a grim line. She also knew Dylan well enough to know he didn’t like being denied what he wanted, when he wanted it.
How he wanted it.
“In here,” Alice coaxed, cupping his whiskered jaw and urging him back down to her mouth. She didn’t know why she’d said it, precisely. There wasn’t a single piece of furniture in the room.
Or maybe she did know. She hadn’t liked what he’d said about this house and this room not being his. She wanted him to claim this space in the most elemental way.
Maybe she wanted to stake her claim, too. This room, this house, this world . . . none of it belonged to her. The only way she seemed capable of navigating this alien new territory was with Dylan as her guide. Her link. Sometimes, their passion, their intense hunger for one another, was the only thing that seemed real to her.
For a few seconds, he resisted her urging, his expression going hard and unreadable as he looked down at her. She rubbed her breasts seductively against his lower chest and ribs, circling her pelvis against his cock. Something sparked in his lustrous dark eyes. Gypsy eyes—that’s how she thought of them. She gyrated her hips more firmly. Triumph surged through her when she saw the telltale snarl shape his mouth. She slid her fingers into the cleft in his chin and then over his firm lips, tempting him.
Still, he didn’t move.
She slid one hand down the smooth skin of his torso, relishing the way he roughened beneath her touch. She looked down to where her fingers touched him, watching herself caress the two scars just below his ribs. Powerful emotion surged through her. Dylan had been stabbed there by Addie Durand’s kidnappers. He’d almost died as a boy of fourteen, trying to save that little girl. She clenched her eyelids shut, but almost immediately opened them, aware of Dylan’s hawk-like stare and not wanting to betray her vulnerability.
Her fingers lowered, looking for a distraction to lighten her emotional weight. She immediately found it.
He was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen, let alone touched. She loved to taunt him, but that didn’t mean she still didn’t fear the result a little. She knew more intimately than most that Dylan’s polished business exterior shielded a fierce, sometimes savage, always magnificent spirit. Her knowledge of that sharp edge of his personality added a dash of the forbidden to her arousal.
She ran a fingernail over a rib, taking note of his slight flinch. Her fingertips skimmed his taut abdomen, trailing down the silky, thin strip of dark hair beneath his belly button. She pushed her forefinger beneath the waistband of his jeans and stroked his skin in that vulnerable sweet spot: up and down, up and down. His expression grew hard as stone, his stare on her narrowing. She grasped the top button of his jeans, feeling his tension and her own anticipation mounting. Very deliberately, she slipped the button free of the hole while holding his stare.
Leaving most of his button fly fastened, she reached beneath his jeans, finding his velvety-smooth cockhead where it pressed below his hip bone. She slid her fingers over the well-defined, succulent crown and gave a firm, abrupt upward tug beneath the rim.
He jerked and hissed. The next thing she knew, he’d pinned her hands at the small of her back. She gasped and then laughed shakily when he roughly turned her in his arms.
“You get your way far too easily, do you know that?” he told her, his low, silky voice and warm, firm lips on her ear and throat sending a potent thrill through her. He pressed against her backside and transferred her captured wrists to the front of her. He flexed his hips, pushing his cock against her ass, a steel-hard demand. She moaned. His teeth rasped gently against the pebbled skin of her neck, and her moan turned shaky. “But sometimes, you’re bound to get more than you bargained for, Alice,” he hissed near her ear before his mouth closed on the opening, and pleasure rippled through her.
He pushed her from behind, urging her to move toward the bay window. Alice caught a glimpse of her face in the dark mirror of the shining glass. Her eyes looked enormous, her expression a strange mixture of anxiety and arousal. She’d recognized that warning in his voice just now. She did love to tease him, and there was always a price to pay for taunting a tiger. But it was what she needed at that moment, the forgetfulness of his demanding passion.
“Bend over and put your hands on the seat,” he growled softly. Her heartbeat leapt into double time.
Yes. This is precisely what she wanted.
She bent at the waist, placing her palms down on the cushioned seat. The action sent her ass even tighter against his crotch. She bit off a moan and pressed closer. She could feel the outline of his erection and the subtle throb of his arousal. A cry leaked past her lips when h
e placed his hands on her ass in a possessive gesture. He stepped back, sliding his palms against her skin, lowering her cotton underwear to her thighs in the process.
“Spread your legs,” he instructed shortly. Alice opened her thighs several inches. The action stretched her panties tight just above her knees. She knew she’d taken the position he desired when she heard his rough groan. He opened one hand on her right buttock and caressed her.
“Something tells me you need a good spanking,” he told her. “Am I right?”
“I don’t deserve it,” she said with shaky defiance. His touch on her bottom was highly distracting, but she wanted to make sure she didn’t sound like too much of a pushover.
“But you need it,” he corrected, his blunt fingertips lightly feathering down the crack of her ass. She gasped, her pelvic and thigh muscles tightening around the sharp twang of arousal she experienced at his touch. “Don’t you?” Dylan demanded gently from behind her.
“Yes.”
“And you know I’m here to give you what you need.”
She glanced up into the black window before her, hearing the small smile in his voice. If he wasn’t humorous at times during his dominance, she didn’t think she could take it, no matter how much it turned her on. Dylan always did things just right.
He’d already been watching her reflection. His mouth twitched even wider when he saw her gaze on him.
“How fortunate for me,” she murmured with wary amusement. He reached with his other hand, cupping her from below. He molded both cheeks to his palms in a taut, greedy gesture.
“How fortunate for both of us,” he added thickly, massaging her lewdly—knowingly—for a moment before he dropped his hands. His smile vanished.
“Spread your thighs again, and keep them that way this time,” he said, tapping her inner thigh gently. She made a miffed sound at his brisk correction—she’d only closed her legs some because arousal had stabbed through her at his touch, after all. He placed one hand on her left buttock, holding it possessively, and swatted the cheek with his other palm. Alice jumped slightly. “Hold still, Alice,” he warned softly. Her breath sticking in her lungs, she met his glittering stare in the dark glass. Slowly, he moved his hand back, his muscles flexing.
He popped her bottom.
“Ow,” jumped out of her throat at the brisk sting of skin against skin. He never spanked her hard enough to cause any lasting pain. The experience was still new to her, however. It surprised her every time, how exciting it was.
“No more grumbling.” In the reflection, she saw his brows slant in dark amusement at her frown. He rubbed her flushed ass cheek with his spanking hand. “You agreed that you wanted this, didn’t you?”
She swallowed thickly, because he’d begun to massage her bottom with his other hand, as well. Her pussy was growing very wet. Her clit ached. She longed to clamp her thighs together, but knew she had to hold position for the spanking.
“Alice?”
“Yes,” she snapped. She saw his expression go hard at her tone. He lifted his hand and spanked her right buttock once, then twice. Alice moaned and shifted her hips instinctively when he raised his hand again. He captured her squirming ass by looping one arm beneath her belly and bracketing her far hip. He pressed her other hip firmly against his crotch, holding her in place. In that position, he spanked her several more times. The nerves in her ass began to burn and tingle, the sensation transferring down her perineum to her sex and simmering clit.
He paused and rubbed his hand over her ass, soothing the firing nerves.
“Yes what, Alice? What is it you want?” he growled softly from behind her.
She gasped shakily because his long fingers were stroking near the crack of her ass between her thighs. Her clit gave a twinge of arousal.
“I want more,” she grated out.
He cupped a buttock from below, squeezing it. The action pulled slightly on her sex—on nerves that needed stimulation so badly. She clenched her teeth together.
“And?”
“Fuck me,” she whispered hoarsely. “Make me forget everything but this. Make me forget everything but you.”
In the dark window, she saw him transfer his gaze from her bare ass to her face.
“I can do that.”
“I know you can.”
HE turned her bottom a vibrant pink, relishing her increasingly desperate moans as he swatted and caressed her, intoxicated by the heat emanating from her smooth, taut skin and firm cheeks. He loved both her slight defiance at being spanked combined with her complete immersion and submission to the experience. He walked a tight wire. At any moment, he might cross the line and infuriate her. Pricking her defiance sexually was a risk, but the challenge goaded him. It intoxicated.
Alice did.
And every time she submitted to the bond between them, he drew her closer to him.
He placed both of his hands on her hot buttocks and lifted slightly, revealing her pink, glistening sex. Arousal tore through him. His cock twitched uncomfortably. He dropped one hand, still leaving her partially parted for his gaze. He rubbed his raging erection through his jeans, trying to alleviate that sharp ache. Her harsh moan made him look up. Her eyes looked enormous in the reflection on the window.
He handled his cock more slowly, highly aware of her stare on him in the shiny glass.
“Is this what you want to see when you walk in this room? Is this the memory you want?”
“Yes. God, yes.”
“You’re never going to forget me again, Alice.”
He slid his hand off her buttock. She lowered her head and gasped loudly when he thrust a finger into her pussy. So warm. He saw the slight sheen at her nape and experienced an urge to slick his tongue through her sweat. His greediness for her was epic; his hunger for her complete submission unparalleled.
“I’m not going to forget you. I never did,” she added desperately.
He pushed higher, cupping her tender, wet outer sex with his hand, his finger still penetrating her. He circled his hand, stimulating her clit. She made a choking sound.
“Are you remembering more than you’re admitting?” he demanded grimly after a moment.
“No,” she cried out. “I meant that of all things, you’re the most familiar to me. You . . . you bring me the closest,” she finished raggedly, panting. He felt a ripple go through her flesh, and knew she was very close to climax.
He froze, still applying a firm pressure to her sex, absorbing her admission. He understood instinctively what she’d meant. It was his presence that brought her closest to the threshold of memory, to the deep, perhaps unbreachable split between her present and her past. He bent and lowered her panties to her feet.
“Step out of them and get up there on your knees,” he prompted. He lowered his hand and grasped her naked hips, guiding her onto the curving bench built beneath the triple bay window. It was a narrow cushioned seat, meant for gazing out to the Great Lake and the magnificent gardens below. “Scoot right up next to the windows.”
“But what . . .”
“Just do what I say,” he said quietly, urging her toward the wooden frame between the two on the far right and the center window. “Now bend forward and put your hands over your head. Brace them on the wood frame. Don’t worry. It’s solid. I saw how this window was manufactured during the remodeling of the room before I moved in.”
A measure of satisfaction and amplified arousal went through her when she followed his instructions without further hesitation, bending at the waist while she was on her knees, exposing her pink round bottom. Unable to resist the temptation, he spanked her briskly but softly on one buttock, letting his other hand roam up her belly beneath her snug T-shirt. She moaned his name shakily when he cupped a full breast and smacked her bottom again. She turned her face so that it rested on her upper arm and he could see her profile. Her cheeks were as flushed as her ass; her eyelids heavy. She was exquisite. Slowly, erotically, she circled her hips, waving her ass in an eye-cros
sing temptation.
Beckoning him.
He swatted her firmly, squeezing taut, hot flesh, punishing her for trying to set the pace yet again . . . rewarding her for her singular beauty.
“Alice,” he hissed, tested by the vision of her arousal. Her abandon. “Open your eyes.”
He saw her eyelids flicker.
“Look at yourself in the window,” he commanded. Deliberately, he peeled her T-shirt over the globes of her breast and her head, exposing the beautiful stretch of her naked back. He tossed aside the shirt, his gaze trained on her. Her skin was such a lovely color—peaches and cream where she didn’t tan, a coppery apricot where she did. The vision of her pale suspended breasts in the window made him clamp his teeth hard. He’d never known another woman to compare to her. He watched himself in the glass as he stroked her taut belly and suspended breasts for a moment. His cock raged for her.
“You’re going to watch me fuck you. You’re not going to forget that, are you?” he asked, ripping at his button fly and jerking down his jeans. Despite his hasty actions, he kept his eyes pinned to her luminous face in the black pane.
Her lips framed an emphatic no.
He kicked aside his jeans and moved behind her, his cock a heavy ache. She instinctively bent several inches when he held her hips, positioning herself. He grasped his cock and pulled back a hot ass cheek, feral arousal shooting through him at the vision of unspanked white skin in the crack of her ass and her glossy pink sex.
He moved his cock toward her slit. The angle wasn’t ideal, but he was determined to make it work. He’d understood Alice’s unspoken desire somehow. She wanted to be branded here. She wanted to make this space her own. Theirs.
He was more than happy to give her what she wanted. They’d create more memories, but this was a damn good start.
He lifted his foot, placing it on the cushion next to her knees. He lodged his cockhead at her damp, clamping channel. The angle was much more hospitable now.
