by Helena Maeve
I was Tracey Woodrow Kane’s only child. That made me a celebrity.
“You’re a journalist,” I said softly. Suddenly I wished I hadn’t wolfed down my burger. I dreaded being sick all over Ashley’s carpet.
He nodded.
“And you’re…what? Writing about me?” If I ripped off the Band-Aid fast, maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much.
“Not quite.” Ashley scrubbed his hands over the thighs of his jeans and made to face me. There was barely a foot between us, enough for me to silence him with a kiss if I put my mind to it. Enough for a slap.
I didn’t move.
“Murders and rapes were never my beat, so I didn’t follow your father’s case. But I was aware of the furore… I guess I was writing more about Clinton at the time.” Ashley smiled self-deprecatingly—an attempt at levity I didn’t echo. He became serious again. “I cover European politics now. Kind of a mercenary, highest bidder thing… I’ve got a book in the works. I swear I didn’t know who you were until a day or so ago.”
“What gave me away?” I breathed.
“The Times is running a rumor that Kane—that your father is finally willing to reveal where the other victims are buried.”
Josh Barnes had some serious balls, if he’d leaked the story to the press.
“And where do I come in?”
Ashley winced. “You’re not going to like this.”
“Try me.”
“They’re saying he’ll only talk if it’s to his daughter… My sources tell me there’s pressure to get a direct quote from you.”
He was right. I didn’t like it.
I could picture my face on the front page of the Times, paparazzi flocking to Rue de Sèvres to snap shots of me going out to lunch with my friends, speculation in all the tabloid rags about who I was seeing, what I knew, why I refused to help the investigators…
What was I hiding, as a nine year old who’d unwittingly helped daddy cover up his misdeeds?
“Tell them I’ve already booked my ticket,” I said, rising from the couch. Astonishingly, my knees didn’t give way.
Ashley’s surprise registered in my peripheral vision. “You’re going to see him?”
“Josh Barnes seems determined to fuck my life up whatever I do. I might as well get some brownie points out of this.” I rounded on him before I’d reached the front door. “You know, I actually thought you liked me.” I sounded seventeen.
“I do.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me all this before?”
“Because I didn’t know,” Ashley shot back, levering to his feet. He didn’t raise his voice to me, which I appreciated. I was overworked, my back hurt and I wanted to cry. I felt like a toddler about to stomp her feet because I wasn’t getting my way.
“Bullshit,” I snorted and made to leave.
“Is this what you do with all the men in your life or just me?” Ashley pitched at my back. “You find a woman in my apartment and you decide I’m unfaithful to at least one of you. You hear me put all my cards on the table, tell you exactly where I’m coming from…and you’d sooner give me a sound bite than work through what you’re feeling.”
“Oh, you’re a shrink now, too?”
Ashley pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m not psychoanalyzing you. I’m asking you to stay. To…talk to me, if you’d like.”
Every muscle in my body was poised to kick into gear, to carry me far from his reach. I knew that if I left this time, there would be no coming back. I’d already wasted my second chance.
I swallowed hard, dug my nails into my palms and forced myself to make a choice.
“Say please,” I bit out.
Ashley blinked at me, perplexed. I stayed.
Chapter Four
I showered at Ashley’s even though I had a perfectly serviceable shower in my bathroom just down the hall. I had no makeup remover, so I scrubbed my face with soap and water, and pinned my hair up with a scrunchie I’d found in my handbag. If I’d put some thought into last night’s rendezvous, I might have brought a change of clothes. Since I hadn’t, I wrapped myself in Ashley’s bathrobe, letting his scent caress my skin.
The urge to go through the cupboards in his bathroom was almost more than I could resist. I peeked behind the mirror into the medicine cabinet and found three boxes of condoms. It was enough to keep me from rummaging further.
Ashley was still in bed when I crept out of the bathroom, but he was awake. His eyes raked over my body, expression unreadable.
“Bet you thought I’d left,” I ventured, leaning against the door frame. I didn’t know which part of myself to show off more—the navy bathrobe covered me from knee to collarbones and the sash made it impossible for the heavy fabric to part in the middle.
“I considered the possibility,” Ashley admitted, “but I doubted you’d do it naked.”
My clothes were strewn over an armchair, tangled with his. I’d slept in my underwear. Ashley had offered to lend me a shirt and a pair of pajama pants, but I’d refused. Part of me had hoped we’d get up to things other than conversation once we went to bed.
We hadn’t. We’d talked until two in the morning. Six hours later, I’d woken up untouched, Ashley snoring softly on his side of the mattress.
“For the right price, I could give streaking a shot. I don’t do indecent exposure for just anyone.”
Ashley propped an arm behind his head. “And here I thought the French embraced the doctrine of letting it all hang out…”
“Spoken like a true American.”
He made no move to reel me back to bed, so I padded over of my own volition and propped a knee onto the mattress. Offering myself to a man never came easy. I was acutely aware of my small breasts and boyish hips. I was terrified of being rejected. Doing it without makeup on, my shower-damp hair curling every which way, was nerve-wracking.
I relished the heat in Ashley’s gaze as he watched me pull the bathrobe open. Neither of us spoke as I undid the knot of the belt and tugged the robe down my shoulders. I knelt over him, my legs astride his hips as he steadied me with his hands. My heart, I discovered with thunderstruck surprise, was thumping frantically in my chest.
Last night I would’ve jumped Ashley and ridden him with abandon until we both surrendered out of sheer exhaustion. But that was before I’d bared my secrets to him, before he’d tipped his hand. We were exposed now, and the sense of intimacy was as scary as it was new.
He cupped my cheek, his fingertips warm at the hinge of my jaw. My thoughts inevitably traveled to the last time we’d gone to bed together. Memories of his thick cock surged behind my eyes. I swallowed, heat inexplicably pooling in my veins as I parted my lips to let his thumb penetrate my mouth. I must have looked ridiculous, shower-flushed and naked in his lap, sucking on his finger.
But Ashley wasn’t laughing.
After a beat, he traced his spit-slick thumb over my neck, between my collarbones, into the valley between my breasts. His gaze followed the same path.
I shivered under his touch, but that didn’t stop him running the pad of his finger along the underside of my breast. He was so gentle, so deliberate, that I was moaning in anticipation long before he pinched my nipple.
“You like that?” he murmured.
“Yeah.”
“Say it,” he ordered, twisting at the hard, pebbled nub when I didn’t comply fast enough.
A whimper caught in my throat. “I like it when you play with my tits.” I wasn’t embarrassed to say it, but my cheeks still grew hot. Arousal sparked at my core, my clit pulsing eagerly.
I wanted his touch lower. I wanted his mouth again.
Bedsprings squeaked as Ashley wrapped an arm around my waist and spilled me gently onto the bed. I felt dizzy enough with the change of altitude, but when he kissed me, it was like I’d tumbled down the rabbit hole. I clutched blindly at his shoulders, the sheets tangling between our bodies, and gasped when he took hold of my wrists.
The total number of times I’d let a
man pin me down in bed was a big fat nil. I started to protest when Ashley did it, but then his lips zeroed in on that spot on my neck that made my legs weaken and the thought slipped from me.
It wasn’t so bad, I decided. His grip was firm but not punishing, no force in the clasp of his fingers around my wrists.
I relaxed gradually, anxiety coaxed into submission as we kissed. At length, I freed a leg from the tangle of the sheets and stroked my toes up his calf to the back of his knee. He groaned into my skin, air fleeing his lungs in a rush. I made a note of that.
Erogenous zones in places other than his cock? Check.
I was no different. Ashley only needed to rake his teeth along my collarbones and I was squirming against his thigh, trying to ride out the flutters of tension building in my cunt.
By the time he flicked his tongue over my nipple, I was already wet, my inner muscles clenching.
“Please,” I gasped. “Fuck, I need…”
Ashley tore his mouth away, lips bruised red and his eyes dark with promise. “What do you need?” His deep, husky voice reached into me like a key turning in a latch. I was powerless, unable to lie and unwilling to attempt it.
“You,” I mewled. “Your cock.”
He’d kindled a fire at my core and, with my hands pinned to the bed, I was powerless to put out the flames.
Ashley brushed his lips to mine in a chaste, dizzyingly tender kiss. “Don’t move.”
I didn’t understand what he was telling me until I felt him pull away and leave the bed. Cool air rippled across my skin, rushing in to replace the sweet burden of his body atop mine. “Where—where’re you going?” I started to sit up when Ashley turned, stopping me with a look.
I slid back to the mattress, my chest rising and falling with every harried breath. I wanted to touch myself. I wanted to grab one of his pillows and ride it until I came. I did neither.
The click of the cupboard above the sink quenched my panic. Ashley returned a moment later with a condom. The tent in his boxers told me I wasn’t the only one dying for release. He stopped at the foot of the bed and hooked a hand in the sheets, peeling them away from my body at a glacial pace. Every scrape of fabric against my heated flesh was torture. I had to bite my tongue not to tell him to hurry up.
“Come here,” Ashley said, crooking a finger.
I couldn’t obey fast enough. I knee-walked my way to the foot of the bed, settling my weight on my heels. My pussy was dripping wet. It took everything I had not to rock back and forth to take the edge off my need.
Ashley held me in thrall. He only needed to fold a hand in my hair and I was already ducking my head to his cotton-sheathed member, sealing my lips around the tip as best I could. His moan undulated across my flesh like electric current. I wanted more—of his pleasure, of his touch—but Ashley pulled me off after a mere handful of seconds.
He tugged me to him and I parted my lips, eager to be kissed. I loved feeling our tongues duel together. He had a way of taking possession of my body that I didn’t find worrisome. I couldn’t explain it, but his touch was erotic and confident. I didn’t feel like he was using me for his pleasure even as he bid me to settle on hands and knees. I knew he’d make it worth my while.
My trust was repaid a moment later. Ashley cupped my pussy with a sure palm and slid a finger between my moist folds, tracing my sex from the opening of my vagina all the way to my clit.
“Oh, God,” I moaned, dropping my head onto bent arms. I couldn’t resist thrusting back, much less when he entered me with two fingers and crooked them expertly against my G-spot. I radiated heat, the intensity of the pleasure building up inside me nearly enough to drive me over the edge.
Ashley pulled me back by the hair, my body strung like a bow between his hands, and circled my clit with his thumb. I was gone. I came faster than I had in years, my cunt clutching at his digits as I bucked helplessly against his hold.
He took no heed. I keened when he removed his fingers, the sound perishing in my throat as he entered me with his cock. His thick length filled me far better than his fingers, but I was oversensitive and my initial reaction was to retreat.
Ashley made a noise of denial low in his throat and cupped the back of my neck. It arrested my movements instantly. Suddenly it felt like he was the one in charge of my body and not I.
The thought frightened just as much as it excited me.
“Ride it out,” Ashley growled, stroking my hip as I tried to adjust to his girth. “That’s it. You’re so tight for me…”
How could I not be, with orgasm still igniting aftershocks all over my aching body? I didn’t have the strength to muster a comeback. The unintelligible sound that spilled from my throat was too mortifying to be termed an answer.
Ashley didn’t appear to mind. As my limbs grew soft and pliant and I crumbled to the mattress, he followed me down, spreading my thighs with his knees and covering my body with his. I spared a brief, demented thought to suffocating under his weight, but he wasn’t that heavy and I seemed to be doing fine without a whole lot of air in my lungs.
“You like that?” Ashley purred in my ear. “I can tell. I can feel you shaking around me. You’ll come for me again.”
It wasn’t a question. He sounded so sure, so confident that I couldn’t bring myself to doubt his word.
I whimpered, half with longing and half with dread.
Fatigue tugged at my insides. I wanted to close my eyes, let the heat in my veins fade slowly into post-coital bliss. Then again, I also wanted to savor the relentless thrust of Ashley’s hard cock inside me.
He’d bring me off again if I let him have his way. I could already feel him rocking gently against my hips, his balls brushing my ass with every slow push. It shouldn’t have been enough—the angle was all wrong to stimulate the parts of me that usually needed stimulating—but my oversensitive body couldn’t tell one sensation from the next. I was hooked on the soft, painless bites he pressed into my nape and the gust of his warm breath against my cheek. Even the clutch of fingers around my wrists stirred my need as I lay beneath him, hopelessly at his mercy.
Ashley didn’t disappoint. He built up to quick, shallow thrusts, then just as I thought I could match his rhythm, he lashed my pussy with a deep, hard roll of his hips, scraping my G-spot on the upstroke. I quickly lost track of my nonsensical pleas. At first it was just his name, a mantra with no clear end, but he soon robbed me of the ability to form words.
I both envied and despised his stamina. Every time I thought he’d give in and let us both topple over the edge, he’d pull back, leaving me bereft and aching.
I clawed the sheets the third time he did that, my moans acquiring a new cadence. “You son of a bitch,” I swore. “Fucking controlling bastard… Stop fucking with me. Please. Goddamn—”
He cut me off with a hand in my hair and the other clutching my jaw in a brutal grip. “What did you say to me?”
I winced, but not with pain. We were skirting the edge of what I felt I could take, but we hadn’t crossed it. Ashley’s hot breath in my ear kindled a flicker of doubt in my breast. Had I bitten off more than I could chew?
“I called you a controlling bastard,” I gritted out, putting paid to any hope that I might apologize.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ashley smirk. Then he shoved me back into the sheets and sat up, still inside me, and wrenched me back into his lap. “You little bitch,” he snarled—a harsh indictment, but I heard the tenderness in his voice, so at odds with the slur, and couldn’t bring myself to mind.
He set a ferocious pace, slamming into me hard enough to make my teeth chatter. I tried to brace myself against the sheets, but I couldn’t find a grip. I was too busy trying to get my breath back between one thrust and the next, need coiling sharp and hot behind my clit, when he slipped a hand between my legs and gave my cunt a sharp, stinging swat.
I cried out. Ashley did it again.
I came with a howl, my arms giving out as I collapsed to the bed in a sh
aking, useless heap. I was dimly aware of Ashley thrusting in once, maybe twice more before he groaned and spent himself into the condom. I had a hard time getting my bearings even after he’d pulled out. He put his arms around me, cock painting a wet stripe against the back of my thigh, and we lay there, shaking together as syncopated breaths scraped our throats.
At some point I must’ve closed my eyes because when I opened them again Ashley lay beside me, half of his face hidden by the bed sheet. The one eye I could see was watching me intently. It took a little conscious effort to roll over onto my side and prop an arm beneath my head. I didn’t just feel spent, I felt wrecked, my body sated in ways I’d never experienced.
“Too much?” Ashley murmured.
“Yeah… But I liked it.” For values of liked that included seriously dreading getting out of this bed.
He ran a hand over my forearm from elbow to fingertips and gently twined our fingers together. “I didn’t mean to come on too strong.”
I snorted a laugh. “Why not?”
“Didn’t want to scare you off.” He said it like it was obvious. Maybe it was, to people who expected lovers to stick around, who didn’t see disappointment lurking behind every friendly face.
“I look more fragile than I am,” I quipped feebly.
Ashley shook his head. “You don’t look fragile at all. What we just did… That takes a certain amount of discussion. Normally.”
“I can promise you that being involved with me is guaranteed to be the furthest thing from normal you’ve ever experienced.”
I wanted to sound mysterious and confident saying as much. Yet as I lay there, the perspiration on my body cooling and the scent of sex heavy in the air, I knew it wasn’t bravado. I leaned over Ashley to kiss his lips and settled against him, leaching his body heat as my own threatened to desert me.
‘Normal’ had never been on the table for me. I’d never wanted it to be, until now.
