by Various
155
Doreen DeSalvo
He moved until he was kneeling between her spread legs, staring down at her sex.
She stared at him in return. God, if only she could touch that magnificent cock.
He grasped his cock with one hand, exactly as she’d just imagined doing. “I’ll make you beg for this,” he said.
Her hands reached for him reflexively, and her shoulder muscles ached in protest.
Damned ties. “I’ve already begged.”
In another minute, she’d use the safe word and get him to untie her. And then she’d jump his bones.
He groaned, then let go of his cock and fell forward over her. He kept most of his weight on his forearms, but his chest rubbed against her sensitive nipples. And his cock, oh, his cock pressed against her sex perfectly, the tip nudging her clit. She tried to move under him, to drive his cock against her harder, but his hips had her pinned down tight.
“Don’t say it,” he murmured in her ear.
“What?”
“The safe word. Don’t say the safe word.”
Ah, he’d picked up on that. Now he was the one begging. Good. “If you don’t make me come within a minute, I’m going to scream your damned safe word,” she threatened.
“You want me that bad?” he whispered.
She squirmed, trying to press his cock against her more firmly. “Yes. Please. Please.”
His hips moved, his cock sliding, seeking her entrance.
God damn it. His thought startled her. Before she could ask what was wrong, he lifted off of her.
He’d nearly forgotten a condom. Something he never forgot.
She smiled. At least he was as lust-crazed as she was.
It only took him a second to find the box. She heard the cardboard tearing, heard the crinkling of a foil wrapper. Then he was back on top of her, hard and hot and strong.
He filled her with a quick, savage thrust.
She cried out. He groaned.
He stopped, stopped with his cock buried deep inside her. She felt him panting against her neck. And the connection between them grew even stronger. Their thoughts flew almost simultaneously.
Good?
The best.
Yeah.
Move. Move.
Like this?
Yes, yes!
156
At His Mercy
She couldn’t even think anymore. The hard thrust of his body on hers felt too good.
But she didn’t have to think. He knew what she needed, knew it intuitively. Knew exactly how to angle his hips…how fast to thrust…how hard to grind against her aching clit. He bit her earlobe an instant after she imagined it. She wrapped her legs around his the moment the thought formed in his head.
And they moaned together, moaned and gasped and cried out, speaking to each other with wordless, shameless noises. She felt her climax build—felt his climax build—
she couldn’t tell the difference anymore. It didn’t matter. Just don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t ever stop…
She pushed up against him, straining to get closer to his pounding hips, struggling to match his impatient rhythm. Every thrust took her higher…closer. She opened her eyes and saw his head thrown back, his jaw clenched with aching force as he moved.
Mine, he thought fiercely. Mine. Without missing a thrust, he dropped his head and bit her neck, hard. She gave a sharp cry before her pain merged into his savage need.
The need to brand her.
The thrill of feeling his desire, of driving him to such frantic heights, pushed her over the edge. Her passion burst into a savage climax, and he was right there with her, matching her spasm for spasm, groan for groan. She felt him come, felt it deep in her psyche, in her bones, as though she was a part of him. And he was a part of her.
They cried out together, trembling and shaking together as the passion drained away into aching satisfaction. Jake collapsed on top of her, a heavy, protective weight.
God, she wanted to hold him.
He nuzzled his face in the crook of her neck as they both gasped for breath. After a minute, he lifted his head and looked down at her with a bemused, tender expression on his face. “Wow,” he said.
She smiled up into his handsome face. “You said it.”
He lifted off of her, leaving her sweat-sheened body chilled. She felt him fumbling with the ties that bound her wrists. Her very sore wrists. And her arms were a bit numb; she couldn’t lower her hands.
He rubbed her tingling biceps. “Do they hurt?”
“Just a little.”
“I hope it was worth it.”
He looked concerned. She smiled and draped her arm over his shoulders, pulling him close. “You know it was.”
“You’re still reading my mind?”
She probed gently, verifying her suspicions. The connection between them had dissipated. “No.” Perhaps it had only been so intense because they’d wanted each other so desperately. But that was no excuse for what she’d allowed to happen. She’d read his most intimate thoughts…at his most unguarded moments. “I owe you an apology, Jake.
I’m sorry I read you without your permission.”
157
Doreen DeSalvo
He smiled and brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “Thanks, but I did challenge you to read me. So it’s not like I was unwilling.”
“Yes, but I’ll try to be more careful in the future. I don’t want to invade your privacy.”
He winked at her. “I’d say the invasion went both ways.”
“I guess that’s true.”
His expression grew serious. “I’m not afraid of anything you might see from me, Faith.”
Lying here with his strong arm wrapped around her, she felt safe and secure. “I’ll try not to be afraid, too.”
“Good.” He turned away and trashed the condom, then rolled to face her again. A warm hand stroked down her arm. “Are you cold?”
She was shivering a little, but hadn’t noticed. “Yes.”
He pulled the side of the bedspread over them both, then wrapped his arm around her waist. “I suppose if you can’t read my mind anymore, I’ll have to resort to mundane methods like speaking to share my thoughts with you.”
“Yes, speaking will have to do.”
His hand wandered to her hip. “Tonight…having a strong, sexy woman at my mercy…it was like a dream come true.”
He really could be disarmingly sweet. She smiled against his shoulder. “It was a fantasy I never knew I had,” she admitted.
He moved back a little, until they were lying face to face. He seemed oddly serious.
Unsmiling. “Well…it was great, but it’s not something I’d like to do all the time. Maybe on occasion, but…”
He trailed off. Was he trying to tell her this was just a one-night stand? Was he trying to find a way to get rid of her?
She could read him to find out, but she’d just promised not to probe without his consent. She put a finger over his lips. “You don’t need to make excuses, Jake. Do you want me to leave now?”
He frowned. “Do you want to leave?”
Communication sure was easier when they were reading each other. “No. I thought you were trying to let me down gently.”
“God, no.” He grinned. “If you could read my mind, you’d know I’m already thinking about next time.”
He had to be kidding. She forced herself not to lift the bedspread and look at his cock. “You’re ready for next time?”
He laughed. “Not yet. Give me an hour.” He stroked her arm, brought her hand to his mouth, and tenderly kissed her sore wrist. “I’ll be so gentle with you, you’ll feel like a virgin.”
158
At His Mercy
God, he was sweet. She felt sentimental tears in her eyes. She must look like an idiot, grinning through her tears.
He pulled back just a little, to where she could focus more easily on his face. “About this psychic stuff…”
She s
tiffened. Now that she wasn’t reading him, she had no idea what to expect.
“I thought it was just a game,” he went on. “Nothing but tricks. Easy guesses. I thought that people believed it because they wanted to.”
“And now?”
“Now I don’t know what to think.” He brushed his hair out of his eyes with one hand, then cupped her cheek. “But I know you have a gift that I can’t explain.”
At least he didn’t think she was a charlatan anymore.
“And I know that I’ve never experienced anything even remotely similar to what I felt tonight,” he said.
“Neither have I.”
His brow furrowed. “But you can read other people all the time. Other men.”
He sounded so jealous, she nearly smiled. “I’ve never…” She felt a blush heat her cheeks. “I’ve never done it in bed before.”
He raised an eyebrow—his trademark skeptic’s gesture.
“Really,” she assured him. She wouldn’t tell him how unique their connection had been, or that she’d never read anyone so easily. Or that she’d never had anyone else read her. She didn’t want to scare him off. “Usually I have a lot more control.”
He smiled. “So you really were out of control.”
She nodded. “Jake…” She didn’t want to spoil the tender mood, but she had to know. “About the grant…”
He kissed her, a quick brush of warmth that stopped her speech. “You’ve held up your end of the bargain, Faith. You’ve more than proved that psychic—that intuitive—
abilities are real.”
“That’s not why I came to bed with you.”
“I know. And I still have concerns about the university’s reputation. But I can’t explain what happened between us tonight, and that’s what research is all about.
Studying the unexplainable.”
She kissed him back. “Thank you.”
“There’s something I have to ask you.” He seemed to struggle with his thoughts for a moment. “Do you live here in San Francisco?”
He’d been so serious, so intent, she hadn’t expected such a mundane question.
“Yes.”
He stroked along her arm. “It’s not so very far from Monterey.”
And he’d mentioned earlier that he lived in Monterey. “No, it isn’t.”
159
Doreen DeSalvo
“I might be in the city more often in the near future.”
She wasn’t sure where he was heading with this, but she’d play along. “Really?
That’s nice.”
“So, the next time I’m in the city, do you think you might want to see me?”
This was the man who’d tied her up? This man looking at her so cautiously, asking so diffidently if she wanted to see him again?
“I don’t mean for sex,” he said quickly. “Well…not only for sex.”
She laughed. “I’d love to see you again. For sex or anything else you have in mind.”
He grinned wickedly. “Oh, I have a lot of things in mind.” He leaned closer for a deep kiss.
She sighed against his mouth. “I’ll never be bored with you, Jake.”
He chuckled. “You just read my mind.”
As their lips parted, a vivid image came to her. Jake on his hands and knees, a blonde-haired toddler riding on his back, tiny fingers pulling at his hair…and an identical baby reaching up to him, giggling as Jake bent his head and planted a sloppy wet raspberry-kiss on her belly.
Her breath caught.
Twins. Their twins.
She nuzzled her face against his shoulder to hide her dreamy smile. No, she’d never be bored with Jake.
160
About the author:
A lifelong daydreamer, Doreen DeSalvo sold her first short story at the age of eight.
Her payment was a candy bar. Over thirty years later, her passion for writing—and chocolate—remains. She currently lives in a Victorian house in San Francisco with the man she fell in love with as a teenager. Having experienced her own personal fairy tale, she can think of no career more rewarding than writing passionate love stories.
Doreen welcomes mail from readers. You can write to her c/o Ellora’s Cave Publishing at P.O. Box 787, Hudson, Ohio 44236-0787.
Also by Doreen DeSalvo:
For the Love of Rigah
Passionate Hearts
TIME-SHARE: AMELIA’S JOURNEY
Lora Leigh
Lora Leigh
Prologue
Venus 2245
“What the hell is this? We’ve lost stabilization, Commander. Guidance is gone and radar is offline.”
“Steering is shot all to hell.” Commander Saber Madison struggled against the resistance in the manual guidance column, his hands clenching on the wheel as he fought the turbulence threatening to rip the small shuttle apart.
“We’re heating up!” Major Mike Tennison furiously yelled as he fought to re-engage system electronics. “Control. Control. This is East Eden. This is East Eden. We have total system loss. Repeat, total system loss.”
Static answered.
“Communications are gone, Commander,” Tennison barked as the shuttled continued to drop from the sky.
The air inside the small craft was heating up, sweat building on their bodies as instinct kicked in to cool them down. Commander Madison was fighting the steering, pulling the wheel up and out as he tried to force the nose higher and activate the emergency gliding system.
Amelia Collins sat behind the co-pilot tightly strapped into her seat, her eyes locked on the commander as he struggled with the wheel. Desperation filled the cockpit as they dropped from the sky, gravity catching the spacecraft and pulling it at an enormous speed to the planet waiting below.
“Just a little more.” Saber’s voice was strained, the muscles in his arms bulging so tight his shirt bit into his arms as he pulled back on the wheel. “Almost there.”
The emergency gliding system was just that. It required the complete failure of all on board systems, which meant steering. Pulling the column up manually was next to impossible, as the system electronics were said to be failure proof. Someone had evidently been wrong because every light and switch on the pilot and co-pilot’s console was black and the air inside the craft was becoming increasingly thin.
“Got it!” Elation filled the dark voice as the column locked in place and the emergency power flickered around the cockpit.
The shuttle jerked, shuddered, the force outside breaking dramatically as the emergency stabilizers began to retract and lock in place. The craft groaned in protest as the direction changed, fighting to nose up, slow down and ease to the surface rather than being thrown into it.
164
Time-share: Amelia’s Journey
“Control. Control. We have complete systems failure. Are you there, control?”
Tennison continued his call to the space station as he fought to manually rebalance the oxygen and bring radar back online. “Dammit, Saber, where the fuck are we?”
Cloud cover was thinning, but there was still no way to tell exactly how far they had slid from their projected heading. Radar was shot, and the GPS silent.
“We’re coming out of cloud cover. Shit. We got ocean under us.” Saber was fighting with the steering to turn the craft in another direction, hopefully one with land beneath it. If they crashed in the ocean, there wouldn’t be a hope of salvaging the onboard communications or their link to control. The mission was slated to be so perfectly safe that only the basic equipment had been included in the survival packs.
“We’re turning. We’re turning,” Saber gritted out as Amelia felt the craft change direction. “We have potential landing at a heading of three o’ clock. I’m heading in.”
How he managed to wrestle the manual steering from a twelve o’ clock position to three, Amelia had no idea. The shuttle turned, though, amazingly, descending without aid of the breaking system at a fast, though hopefully survivable, rate.
�
��We’re going to hit hard!” Saber yelled over the sound of the craft’s stress. “Brace in and expect to bounce.”
And bounce they did. Amelia wondered if bones had managed to break as she was thrown time and again against the harness as the shuttle hit the ground and began moving across it at breakneck speed. Saber and Mike were involved in a long string of vitriolic curses as they fought to get the craft under control and stopped while still relatively intact.
“Fuck. We’re gonna hit!” Mike suddenly screamed.
Amelia fought to stay conscious as fear overwhelmed her. She wasn’t supposed to die on this mission. It was supposed to be safe.
“We’re gonna clip.” Saber was still fighting the steering as the shuttle groaned, howled, but once again shifted direction. A second later the air seemed to explode as the craft jerked, bounced hard and the sound of tearing metal filled their ears.
“Shit. We lost the wings.” The wings, but not their lives. The rate of speed had slowed dramatically, enough that when the shuttle plowed into something seconds later it shuddered to a stop rather than bouncing over it.
At that second, Amelia’s harness snapped on the right, throwing her heavily into the other side. As she bounced into it, the left side gave as well and pitched her into the pilot’s area.
She cried in shock as she pitched forward, her head clipping the back of the pilot’s seat and rendering her mercilessly unaware as her body flew toward the glass shields ahead.
165
Lora Leigh
He caught her. Saber had only a second’s warning that Amelia was being tossed headlong into the forward section of the cockpit. Only a breath of time reach to out, break her flight and jerk her into his arms.
The force of speed nearly ripped his arms out of their sockets as he braced his body and pulled her sideways, sprawling her across his lap rather than head first into the shield before them.
The shuttle was still rocking, shuddering. Steam erupted from the panels beneath his feet and sparks flew from the control console around them before they fizzled to dust at his feet.
His heart was racing, sweat pouring down his body as he trembled from the exertion it had taken to maintain control of the small craft. Beside him, Mike was slumped in his seat, breathing harshly as well, muttering every curse the other man must have learned during his years in the Air Force. And that was quite a vocabulary.
