BargainWiththeBeast

by Naima Simone

  Hell, he snorted, turning away from the window. He should know. Before Evelyn he’d been the prince of casual affairs. He’d expected the women he fucked not to become emotionally entangled and to remain friends after their time together ended.

  That shoe throbbed like hell since it had become wedged on the other foot.

  He scanned the dining room and then the empty doorway. A quick inspection of his watch revealed the hour. Seven-thirty. Gwendolyn should’ve been downstairs for dinner thirty minutes ago. Worry pinched his chest. He frowned and hesitated just a moment before striding from the room. He crossed the foyer and loped up the stairs, unease a steadily tightening knot in his stomach.

  What if she’d had a relapse? Damn. He should have granted her another day to recover before demanding sex. He scowled, rushing down the hallway. He’d assumed her absence today had been due to their argument at breakfast, but maybe she’d been sick. Maybe the fever had flared up and she’d been too angry to call for him.

  Xavier swung open the door to her bedroom. His grip on the knob prevented the wood from smacking the wall behind it. Finding the bed empty, he skimmed the rest of the room until he located Gwendolyn, the picture of perfect health, perched on the wide window seat, a book in her lap and gaping at him as if he’d flown over the cuckoo’s nest.

  Even as anger kindled in his gut and replaced the concern, his body tensed, heated. Hardened. The smooth skin on her shoulders and toned arms glowed in the soft light of the bedroom lamps. Bare feet peeked out from under her thigh, the innocence of her position incongruous with the natural sensuality she exuded like a perfumed scent. Maybe that explained his powerful reaction. The animal in him detected some unique pheromone she emanated and went wild with a whiff of it.

  He shoved the door shut and her eyes widened at the loud crack of wood meeting wood.

  “What are you doing?” She laid the book aside and rose to her feet, the motion slow as if she sensed his intention to pounce.

  “Why weren’t you at dinner?”

  She straightened her shoulders, her body as rigid as the stern set of her full lips. “I didn’t see the point of going through formalities. As you mentioned earlier, there’s no need for it.”

  Anger flared bright and hot before chilling to an icy resolve. And the bullshit he’d repeated to himself since leaving her bed last night, the same he’d finished reciting in the dining room, sounded just like that—bullshit.

  If he’d wanted an automaton, he would’ve continued fucking escorts instead of his hand. But not possessing the same passionate, uninhibited woman he’d been balls-deep in the previous evening? Not an option. He didn’t just want her body. He wanted her fire, her unselfishness.

  He wanted Gwen. Nothing less than all of her would do.

  From the moment she’d sought him out for help, he’d demanded everything from her—her body, her submission, her trust—and had offered nothing in return.

  His turn to put up or shut up had arrived.

  He fisted the front of his shirt. A pit yawned wide in his stomach and his heart plummeted toward the dizzying, black depth. The last woman to glimpse what lay under his shirt and pants had been so disgusted she’d abandoned him. Fear coated his mouth, his nostrils. All he tasted and smelled were ash and smoke. For a brief moment, he considered whirling around and walking out. Shame flayed him and the stranglehold he had on his shirt tightened. The idea of baring the map of scars disfiguring his body scared him shitless.

  But if he desired her trust, he had to battle his fears, emerge from behind the false protection of pride and seize this last chance to make amends with her. A last chance to show Gwen her fire, touch and uninhibited response meant more than his pride. She meant more.

  He inhaled. Exhaled.

  And yanked the shirttails from the band of his pants.

  The unyielding line of her mouth softened, her lips parted and, as he freed the small buttons from their corresponding holes, her sharp intake of breath reached across the room.

  Damn, he loved witnessing the evidence of his effect on her. Hours on a shrink’s couch couldn’t begin to heal his battered, broken spirit like one soft, sensuous gasp from this beautiful, giving woman.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded, the small tremble in her voice undermining the show of bravado.

  He gripped the sides of the black material, his fingers tightening for a long instant before he shrugged it off his shoulders.

  “Getting undressed.” He tugged his belt buckle open. “Now get naked.”

  * * * * *

  Good God, the man is ripped.

  Golden skin stretched taut over lean, firm muscles that tugged and bunched in a mouthwatering display as he shed the shirt and let it fall in a pool of black material behind him. The anger she’d nursed all day melted under the heat of desire as soon as the first slice of skin appeared. Her heart thumped hard and then drummed in a fast, deafening tattoo. Blood pounded in her veins and filled the flesh between her legs. Dew gathered on the swollen lips and her pussy clenched when he pulled his belt buckle free.

  Then his order to “get naked” doused her in the face like an arctic spray of water.

  “What?” she asked and frowned. “Wait.” Was he kidding? She shook her head. “No.”

  Xavier arched an eyebrow but didn’t stop sliding the belt from his pant loops. “Take your clothes off, Gwendolyn.”

  “No.” She shook her head more vehemently. “Not like this.”

  “Like what?” The rasp of his zipper lowering was a discordant note in the quiet room.

  “In anger.”

  He paused and his eyebrows arched high, his lips slightly parted. “Anger?” he repeated and resumed toeing off his shoes. “I’m hard, baby. Not angry.”

  He shoved his pants and underwear down his hips and thighs, then stepped free of the clothes at his feet. Xavier straightened to his full height, robbing her of breath and speech with the full impact of his naked body.

  Last night before removing his shirt and pants, he’d extinguished the room’s lamp. As she’d caressed him, her fingers had skimmed the raised edges that crisscrossed his chest, abdomen and back. His wish for darkness had fully dawned on her then. His body had not been left unscathed by the accident. And he feared her reaction. But now—standing before her in the lit room, bare to her gaze—tears stung her eyes.

  He is beautiful.

  Honeyed skin melted over a body Hephaestus could’ve forged himself. Toned, strong muscles contracted and relaxed with each movement like an orchestra performing in perfect harmony. She lowered her inspection. God, the man even had sexy feet! Her wry amusement converted to a hot, startling rush of lust as she lifted her gaze to the long, ponderous weight of his cock. It hung down his thigh, the wide flared head the size of a plum. As if all the air had been vacuumed from the room, Gwendolyn experienced a moment of lightheadedness. How in the hell had he fit all of that inside her?

  But he had. He’d filled every inch of her pussy. His cock had branded her, stamped its ownership. A disquieting sense of foreboding curdled in her belly. For years no man, not even Joshua, had compared to Xavier’s sensual vitality and beauty. And he hadn’t even touched her then. But now…now that she’d been caressed and stroked by him, no one would fill her—complete her—as he had last night.

  Under her close scrutiny, the thick shaft lengthened another impossible increment. Her heart thudded in a dull, heavy rhythm. Did anticipation, arousal or fear pound through her veins and echo in her clit? Maybe all three.

  “I’m still waiting, Gwendolyn.” His husky tone transformed the order into an invitation—an invitation to revisit the exquisite pleasure of the previous evening. She’d lost herself in passion so overwhelming, she’d been almost bruised by it, as if ecstasy had been the waves and she’d been the shore they’d crashed upon.

  Trembling, she slid the straps of her tank from her shoulders and pushed the top down her torso, hips and legs, taking the cotton bottoms with it. As she straig
htened, she tried to convince herself she complied because their deal left her no choice. If he released her from this devil’s bargain, she would snatch up her clothes, leave the room and house and never see him again. But even if she could persuade herself she would’ve walked away, the cream coating the sensitive flesh between her thighs branded her a liar with a huge “L” stamped on her chest.

  She drank in his battle-scarred beauty and confessed in the most secret part of her soul she was glad he didn’t offer her the choice to leave. Because then she would have to admit the community center and the people there didn’t keep her in the bedroom. As much as she loved them, Xavier glued her feet to the floor. Desire did.

  Love did.

  As angry and hurt as she’d been today, neither response could override the potent emotion she’d harbored for years—an emotion so powerful she’d driven hours with a raging fever just to spend a few days with him. Even without the money for the center hanging over her head like Damocles’ sword, she would have agreed to this week with him.

  That damn money.

  She dropped her gaze. Hindsight had the vision of an eagle. If she had never approached him about the grant, he wouldn’t have the money to pitch in her face every time she dared rub too close to the festering wound in his heart and soul. The irony didn’t escape her. He would never have allowed her in his home, in his bed, without the deal. Xavier with his scarred face, body and soul, wouldn’t have believed she wanted him—loved him.

  So should she accept the money and stay with him, steal what time they had left? Or tell him to hell with the money, she wanted to remain because of her feelings for him, and be evicted so fast her ass would leave skid marks on his pristine wood floors?

  Either choice resulted in being thrown out of his house. But only one granted her a precious slice of time in his bed, his arms…his life.

  “Get on the bed.”

  The quiet command drew her attention back to him. Xavier had moved to the small dresser flanking the bed. Though his eyes tracked her slow progress, he pulled open the top drawer, dipped his hand inside and pulled an object free. Gwendolyn flicked a glance at his fist and pulled up short. Shock, apprehension and a sliver of…excitement sliced through her.

  Thin, shiny black strips dangled from his closed hand.

  Ties. Recognition slapped her and she jerked her inspection to his face. The stark mask of lust snatched the breath from her throat. Skin stretched tight over his cheekbones. Nostrils flared slightly as if to catch the perfume of her arousal. His green eyes glittered and the sensual fullness of his lips flattened into a straight, hard line. As if his hungry stare were the match and her arousal the accelerant, heat whooshed through her veins like a flash fire, setting her breasts and sex aflame. A small moan escaped her throat and his gaze narrowed, sharpened.

  What was happening to her? She’d never gone for extreme sex games or BDSM. Granted, until last night, her sex life had been very tame and sedate—nice, but not the screaming, cataclysmic experience Xavier had supplied her. But still she didn’t like being tied up, bent over or spanked…did she?

  “On the bed, Gwendolyn,” he repeated and the low, rough timbre stroked over her skin like a calloused hand—gentle, yet hard enough to leave tingles behind. Like a drunken woman, she stumbled the last few feet until her thighs bumped the edge of the mattress. She raised a bent knee and rested it on the covers. On the other side of the bed, Xavier mimicked her movements. In seconds they both knelt, facing each other like an erotic game of chicken. “Give me your hands.”

  Disobedience wasn’t an option. Yes, she was in the dark regarding his intentions, but she wanted whatever he could give her. God, did she want it. Wanted him. She extended her arms, fists down, and Xavier engulfed her hand within his larger one. He turned the fist over, opened it and grazed the sensitive skin of her palm with his fingertips. The small stroke reverberated in her clit and she bit back a gasp.

  He drew a tiny circle and, this time, she didn’t contain the moan. Or the groan. And when he lifted his finger to his mouth, sucked on the tip and traced a damp line from her wrist to the base of her thumb, she trembled and squeezed her thighs against the fluttering in her pussy. Such a benign caress and yet it echoed between her legs as if he’d traced the crease of her pulsing sex.

  With her skin still tingling from his touch, Xavier laid the leather ties across her open palm. She stared down at the slender black strips, lost.

  She frowned, glanced up at him. “Xavier?”

  Her bewilderment increased when he released her and presented his loosely closed fists as if he wanted her to… No, he couldn’t intend…

  But one glance at his hooded eyes and the grim set of his mouth confirmed her suspicions. The ties weren’t meant for her…but for him.

  She clutched the slim, leather straps and their inconsequential weight was incongruous when compared to their significance. This man who prized control and trusted no one had handed her a tiny measure of both.

  She closed her eyes and hope jimmied open her heart and the tiniest degree slipped through once again. With a sigh that sounded more like a sob, she lifted her lashes and fastened the ends of the ties around his thick wrists.

  Silent, his intense, bright stare fixed on her, Xavier reclined on the bed and stretched his arms above his head. The sinew and tendons were delineated beneath his golden skin like a powerful, deadly panther at rest yet ready to spring at the slightest threat…or sight of prey.

  With a slight shift, she knelt at his side, her knees brushing the soft patch of fur beneath his arm. Controlling the tremble in her fingers as she tied the leather strips to the bedpost proved impossible. The resulting knot wouldn’t present a challenge should he decide to break free, but it was all her virgin bondage skills could manage.

  Awkward and more than a little embarrassed, she straddled his torso. She transferred her weight, preparing to move to the other side of his body in order to reach the last binding. Even as she lifted her leg, his small inhalation stopped her. She dropped her gaze and good God. Her core contracted and a wave of desire almost propelled her down to his chest.

  Long, dark lashes concealed his gemlike stare. His thin, aristocratic nostrils flared and his chest rose to press her opened sex as he deeply drew in her scent. His full, sensual lips parted as if he tasted the aroma signaling her arousal. The unguarded, pure delight softened his features and lanced her heart. Outside this bedroom, he would never reveal such an uninhibited, honest delight. He would consider the reaction a vulnerability, a weakness. But here in this bed, he admitted a glimpse into the hedonistic animal that enjoyed pleasure and reciprocating it.

  He raised his eyelids and his intent inspection ignited a fire in her only he could extinguish. An image of her rubbing over his body in a long, sinuous caress like a cat in heat flashed across her mind’s eye. She longed to discard every perception of sex she’d ever harbored and redefine it with him. Let him show her what desire, touching and ecstasy entailed.

  If this man was the poisonous fruit, she would gladly gorge on it and dive into Death’s embrace. He would so be worth the sin and fall.

  Her pulse accelerated as she swung her leg over his body and completed binding him to the bed. The deed done, she didn’t resist the impulse to trail a caress down the corded muscle under his arm. She leaned back on her haunches and beheld Xavier bound, stretched and contained.

  Like a harnessed tornado—dangerous and wildly exciting.

  His wide chest rose and fell in deep, measured breaths, causing his ridged abdomen to stand out in stark relief. She longed to savor every intriguing crest and dip of his rib cage. Travel to the shallow indentation of his navel. Curl her fingers through the wiry, russet thatch of hair surrounding the thick, long column of flesh flexing next to his muscled thigh. Smooth her cheek over his cock and inhale the musky, sexy, spicy scent belonging solely to him.

  “Why?” she whispered, the reason flickering like a tiny spark of longing against the encompassing darkne
ss of fear. She wanted him to speak the words and fan the flame sputtering in the face of her doubt.

  “I’ve taken from you, Gwen,” he murmured. “Take from me. All I have to give.” Though his hands were restrained, his hot stare stroked her as if they were unbound, free to stir her desire to a fever pitch.

  All that I have to give. Not the declaration her heart desired to hear, but more than she had this morning. And for now, with his trusting her with his body and satisfaction, the offer was enough.

  The inside of her thigh slid over his abdomen as she reclaimed her position astride his upper body. A hum of delight caught her by surprise—she hadn’t meant to release it. But as she stroked her palms over the firm plane of his chest and the small, hard pebbles of his dark-brown nipples grazed her skin, shivers coursed up her arms to her breasts, down her stomach and settled in her clit like a low-level buzz of electricity.

  His beauty awed her.

  She formed a bracket with her thumbs on either side of the thin patch of skin that throbbed in the dip of his throat. His life’s blood pounded under her touch and the primal rhythm surged through her, connecting them. Gently, she cupped his face and lowered her forehead to his until their breath mingled, mated. His soft sigh reached her seconds before he tipped his chin upward and claimed her mouth.

  How did he manage to wrest control from her when he was the one bound? He pierced her lips with his tongue and licked the roof of her mouth, inviting her to join the sensuous ballet.

  She emitted a groan. He did have complete domination.

  His wild, wind-and-rain taste overwhelmed her. He nipped her bottom lip and the slight sting arrowed straight to her pussy. Her quick puffs of breath filled his mouth as she ground the pad of her sex against his abdomen, seeking relief from the swelling ache. She cradled his scalp, tipped his chin up farther with her thumbs and reclaimed control. She ate him up like rich, sweet chocolate. She was greedy, gluttonous, returning to his mouth time and time again for more of his lush, decadent flavor.