by Angel Payne
“But…I…”
“Ssshhh. I’m going to enjoy this.”
But she only lets me lick a couple of times before protesting, “This isn’t…ahhhh!”
“Isn’t what?” I grin, totally alpha dog about it, before daring to nibble along her labia. Her little yelp makes the gamble worth it.
She jerks, fighting my ironclad grip on her thigh. “This isn’t the damn meal.”
“Then what is it?”
“This is you, making me…” She huffs, becoming even more irresistible. “It’s… It’s—”
“Dessert?” I get in a couple more bites to her pussy. Christ. She’s so succulent. So wet. So pink and lush and enticing. “I’m fine with that. Doesn’t everyone like skipping to dessert?”
“But—”
“Ssshhh.”
“But—”
“Hush.”
Technically, her throaty mewl isn’t complete compliance—but it’s a damn fine substitute. The sound splices the air and my bloodstream as I curl in my tongue, unsheathing her sweetest button from its protective hood. The second I touch down on the stiff bundle at her core, she cries out again. I give her more wicked suckles. Her knees give out. I’m ready with my supporting weight.
“Oh, my God…”
I don’t bother demanding her silence now. I simply guide her into place, directing one of her hands to the desktop and her opposite leg over my shoulder. “I’ve got you, Bunny,” I vow against her pubic bone. “I promise.” And before I can help myself, I’m widening my mouth across her mons and plunging my tongue back into her tangy fruit. Yes. Fuck. Ambrosia isn’t even the right word anymore. “Lean in, baby. Let go. I’ve got you.”
For one incredible second, she does. The rush of her weight, her trust, is nearly as good as plunging my dick deep into her channel, and my body tells me so by spurting precome into my briefs. I groan from the perfect torment, a sound she takes in all the wrong ways.
“But… But who’s got y-you?”
Her voice quavers along with her clit, aroused but unsure, as if I’ve levitated her clear off the floor. She’s sure as hell already done that to my senses—and the stiffening rod in my pants seems ready to jump on board with a similar plan. Levitation for everyone. Fuck, yes.
“Let me worry about that.” I drive it into her wet folds as a command, giving her no option but obedience. Though a strained sound grits through her teeth, her muscles soften beneath my hold. She twists a hand into the back of my scalp and digs her heel into the center of my spine.
“Ohhhhh. Nooooo.” Her moans are throaty but high as I greedily tongue her succulent slit, bottom to top and back again, dotting the movement with a determined stab into her tight hole. But not all the way in. Not yet. That moment’s coming—and just thinking about it, I’m helpless to hold back my dick from leaking more. It’s torture and rapture in the same erotic moment. Nearly unbelievable. Is this going to happen? Is this woman going to make me explode in my pants just from the honor of devouring her gorgeous cunt? She’s the juiciest fruit I’ve ever opened. The sweetest dessert I’ve ever savored. The most breathtaking woman I’ve ever pleasured.
It doesn’t even matter that I’m not inside her. In so many terrifying ways, she’s already inside me.
“Try a new one, Velvet,” I growl into her sexy seam. “Try giving me a gorgeous ‘yesssss.’”
She obliges the humor in my tone with a warm tug at my hair but comes nowhere near complying with my suggestion. Which really wasn’t a suggestion. I communicate that with a fast bite to the inside of her leg.
“Oh!”
“Don’t you mean ‘oh, yes’?”
“You have got to be kid— Oh!” Another bite, this time to the top edge of her clit, makes her jerk back by a couple of inches. I don’t let her get farther than that. “Oh my hell,” she rasps. “Oh my—oh Reece…”
It’s not the first time in my life a woman has panted those words to me—so why does it feel like the first? Why am I zapped with awe I’ve never felt, surged with more power than I’ve ever celebrated? The logical grab is there in front of me, that my cock has been so direly neglected for a solid year it’s now leading the parade for the rest of me, but that’s the desperate—and inaccurate—way out. This singular desire, for this sole woman… It’s more than drought-recovery dramatics.
But how much more?
I’m not the same man I was a year ago. Angelique’s “friends” altered the color of my eyes. The length of my legs. The resiliency of my muscles. The chemistry of my blood. How much of me is me anymore—and is that the part falling so completely for this woman? Or are all these sensations courtesy of the new me, the phoenix from the ashes? If that’s the case, what do I even know about him or what he’s able to give a woman like Emmalina?
A woman who wants more. Who deserves more. Who deserves everything.
An everything neither part of me will be able to give her in the long run. Because eventually, if all goes according to plan, I’ll be dead.
But right here, right now? Giving her ultimate pleasure? Working my lips to untwist the most mind-shattering climax she’s ever known?
That I can do.
That, at least, hasn’t been electroshocked out of my consciousness.
I summon it all back to my will. Use every erotic trick in my wheelhouse to bloom her, spread her, arouse her. I even slick my tongue across her with new flicks and strokes, emboldened by her mewls, moans, and prompts. The more responses she gives, the more engrossed I become. My world becomes the heady trembles of her thighs, the lush opera of her breaths, and the perfect vibrations of her cunt, enticing me to explore deeper…deeper…
As I do, it’s making my cock harder. Harder.
“Holy. Shit.”
A stream of her honey fills my mouth. Yeah. Fuck. So damn good.
“Reece!”
She blurts the protest after trying to pull away, but I yank her even closer. With my hands cupped to her backside, I’m able to hide my glowing fingertips in the crack of her ass. Double win? The motion spreads her sex from behind, warming her pussy for the new invasion I’m about to launch.
As she keens a little higher, I moan a little deeper. Her thighs bunch and buck. Her ass squeezes and squirms.
“I-I thought you wanted to fuck me.”
“Oh, I did,” I growl. “And I will.”
I feel the conflict take over her—possibly preparing for me to stand up, slam her to the desk, and ram into her. And yes, ramming does happen, courtesy of my tongue in her tightness, spearing her without pause or remorse or hesitance. Holy hell, she’s delicious. I could fuck into her like this for another hour. Two. Three. All goddamned night.
And maybe I will…
She fists my hair. Her grip slips on the desk. Pens, papers, and a tumbler of water crash onto her chair as her gasp shudders the air.
I don’t relent. Not for a second.
She needs this.
I can feel it in every inch of the plush walls clamping over my tongue, urging me farther inside her trembling, tight body.
I need this.
My cock, getting relentless friction from the trap of my pants, broadcasts the update with throbbing clarity. My balls second the motion, ignoring my efforts at readjustment. It’s no longer a matter of if for those fuckers; it’s a matter of when—though I’m pretty sure of the answer to that query already.
I’ll blow when she does.
And fuck, how she does.
“Oh…gah!” Her voice is shaky and hoarse. Her body is tense and trembling. Her pussy is hot and soaked. “Oh, Reece. I’m…I’m…”
Her words dissolve as her body takes over, communicating the rest. The second she throbs around me, drenching my tongue with the cream of her climax, my balls blast an inescapable fire up my cock. I explode too, horrified but a little giddy. I’ve come like a wild teenager—from the bliss of bringing her pleasure.
It feels good. So fucking good. And unsettling. And terrifying. So much so, I’m frozen in pl
ace for a long moment.
Fuck.
I just got off—literally—by putting someone else’s needs before mine. This isn’t a shred of anything I recognize, not even a drop in the ocean in which Lawson Richards taught me to survive a long damn time ago. On Dad’s ship, only one motto mattered. Every man for himself. The patriarch himself values it so much, it’s why I haven’t been blackballed from the family altogether. Secretly, my douchebag rebellion pleased the bastard. I possessed the spine neither Chase nor Tyce had ever seemed to grow—which, before my spectacular fall, was probably why I took the behavior to such epic heights.
Or was it?
If my life hadn’t wound down this exact path, I never would have arrived here at the most extraordinary epiphany of my existence. At a moment that is making more sense than all twenty-seven years before it. At the feet of the person who’s brought me here.
The woman for whom I’ve fallen. Literally. Wholly.
The creature who crumples gently to the floor with me now, shuddering in the last throes of her climax, sagging into my arms with kitten-like surrender. I swear she starts to purr as I circle soft fingertips along the back of her neck, their soft glow illuminating the stray strands of her ponytail. With a resolved breath, I’m able to dial back the lightsabers of my fingers even more. Only my nailbeds pulse now in time to my heartbeat. I work on calming that pace, but it isn’t easy with her face consuming my attention…and the satisfaction of knowing I alone brought that sated serenity to her incredible face.
After a few minutes of our peaceful silence, she releases a long, soft breath. “Mr. Richards?”
“Yes, Miss Crist?”
“We have to stop meeting like this.”
“Couldn’t agree more.”
Her eyes flash open. Her pupils are huge and aqua—and alarmed. “Really?” A new flush takes over her face. She hastily clears her throat. “I mean, of course you agree.” She sweeps a look over her nude lower half. “This is getting kind of ridiculous.”
“Agreed once more.” I feel shitty for leading her thoughts on, but only a little. Sometimes the endgame justifies the play. Only by throwing her off guard can I pry more edges from her armor, exposing her to see—and feel—the importance of what we’ve begun here. The undeniable significance of this connection. This electrofusion… “I’d even say it’s gone beyond ridiculous.”
“Well.” She stiffens and attempts to straighten. “That’s good, then—”
“Oh, I wouldn’t call it good.”
“Pardon me?”
I wrap an arm around her waist, preventing her from completing her frosty escape. I melt the rest of her iceberg with a thorough kiss, not letting go until she opens for the dominion of my tongue. By the time I pull back, she clearly craves more. Good. She doesn’t get any quarter from my gaze, which I keep latched to her while spreading my other hand along the back of her head.
“Yeah,” I utter, my breath ragged. “Beyond ridiculous. Which means you don’t get to bring any reports or furniture dusters next time.”
“Huh?” Her eyes flare. I’m torn between grinning at her and just kissing her again. “Wait. Next ti—”
“Which will not be two nights from now. As a matter of fact, I won’t settle for one night.”
Her brows crunch. “Reece, what are you—”
I kiss her into silence. It’s quick and fast this time because my point isn’t complete. “What am I?” I counter. “What I am, Emmalina, is fed up with this. With us and our treatment of this.”
“This?”
“Yes.”
“This…what?”
“This. Us.”
Her armor breaks away a little more. She quirks her lips upward, and her eyes shimmer like we’re standing in full sun. “There’s…an ‘us’?”
Hearing her repeat the word drops a massive weight on my chest—with only one possible phrase to set myself free. “There is now.”
Yeah. Oh, yeah. That is perfect. And so fucking right.
In my new lightness, I tenderly brush my lips across hers. “But that doesn’t mean we have to define anything beyond now.” The honey of her mouth is so damn tempting. “No projections or forecasts. No definitions or boxes. Nobody telling us what we are or aren’t. Just this. Just the magic. Just the fusion. Just us, okay?”
She releases a high, soft sigh. “Okay.”
“But that also means one more thing.” I tug her hair harder, enforcing her attention. “I refuse to fuck you on another floor, footstool, or any other furniture not designed for being naked and horizontal.”
She curves her lips again. So goddamned gorgeous. “Okay.”
I tug again. Her amenability makes me want to push my luck. “So when you get off shift tomorrow morning, you’re coming straight up to the penthouse.”
Her grin grows. “Okay.”
“And you’re letting me make you breakfast.”
Here’s where her grin fades—though not enough to make me stressed. Not yet. “Breakfast.” She cocks her head. “So is that before or after the naked and horizontal part?”
I kiss her again. I can’t help it. Resisting her is like denying myself the privilege of breathing. There’s tongue involved too. Lots of it. And hair pulling—hers and mine. And groping, twenty fingers’ worth, as we feel and fondle and grab and possess, sealing the new bond between us in the most primal, perfect way possible.
Chapter Two
Emma
I emerge from my office, but I’m still in a fog. A giant, pink-tinted bank of the stuff—and for once, I don’t fight. I’m like one of those cartoon girls with birds and stars swirling around my head—or in the anime version, with my pupils turned into bulging hearts. Maybe that’s a good thing. If everyone’s gawking at my eyes, they won’t notice my knees have turned to taffy—another write-off, considering I don’t need them anymore.
Knees aren’t important when a girl can just float through life.
Okay, not Life, capital L. It’s only life right now, all lowercase. It’s not like Reece marched into my office and shut and locked the door with a ring in his hand.
Though the man did show how magical he can be on his knees…
And incredible. And passionate. And giving. And bold.
Stealing my breath. Demanding my surrender. Blowing my mind.
Yeah, even now. Especially now.
The comprehension has me gripping the frosted-glass countertop at the front desk for support. I actually glance down, confirming I’m still truly planted on terra firma, though the pastel cloud still lingers. The stratosphere into which Reece Richards launched me with the power of one word.
“Us.”
I run a finger along my lips after whispering it. I can feel the contact, meaning this must really be my life. Not a dream. Not a bizarre alternate world in which Reece Richards isn’t a tabloid darling and a world-class rogue and hasn’t just sneaked out of the executive offices in the back elevator with a dorky smirk on his lips and my Pentatonix tour sweatshirt tied around his waist—hiding the crotch he’s just soaked while pleasuring me.
Holy wow, that pleasure. Right before he brought on the wizardry. The sincerity. The honesty.
The word that changed everything.
“Us.” I dash it off again, almost in a song, while clicking into the guest-services log from one of the front-desk terminals. Fershan is also at the desk, though he’s talking on the phone at the other end. Observing the lobby is busier than usual, probably due to the bored tour group members deciding to drink their night away in the bar, I stay put in case he needs any backup. Besides, a good song starts playing. A classic. My spirit as buoyant as the tune, I start quietly singing along with the anthem.
“I got me a Chrysler, it seats about twenty, so hurry up and bring your—”
“Excusez-moi, mademoiselle?”
I shut off my metaphorical microphone somewhere between “jukebox” and “money” before stammering, “Yes? I mean, good evening, ma’am. I’m so sorry. I was
pulling something up, and then—”
“Singing?” The blonde, a stunning mix of classic Catherine Deneuve and Gwen Stefani, adds to the exotic factor with her French accent. I gawk a little longer as she lifts one side of her flawless crimson mouth in a droll smile. “What would the world be without songs, n’est-ce pas?”
“Valid point.” My response is polite but guarded. Why is this creature, in her black cashmere dress and red-to-black ombré fingernails, making my skin prickle and my instincts edgy? Okay, besides the obvious—that she’s worldly, sophisticated, and oozes more sexuality from one of those tapered fingers than I do in my whole body. This is the case for nearly half the women I meet up here, so that doesn’t fly in this instance. There’s something else about her. An aloofness but a watchfulness…
“How can I be of service to you this evening, Madame—”
“Mademoiselle”—she dips her head, smoothly deferential about the correction—“La Salle.” A smooth arc of her hand produces a business card that wasn’t there two seconds ago. The engraved header gives away her first name. Angelique.
Of course.
A name evoking the heavens for a woman who could tempt a dozen monks to sin. At the same time.
“International Commodities.” I read the next line down. The only other text on the card is her phone number, prefaced by the international dialing code. There’s no company name or her specific position in that organization—though for some reason, I’m anxious to find out. Or perhaps she makes me anxious, period. “Sounds…cosmopolitan.”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“What kind of commodities, if I may be so bold?”
“Collectibles.” Her tone remains impassive. “Rare finds. Objects of wonder. Works of art.” She moves at last, angling an elbow up to the counter, drawing out the last of it with curious vocal emphasis. Worksss of arrrt. All too clearly, I realize she isn’t talking about Renaissance busts and oil paintings of virgins getting pounced by devils—though this makes me feel exactly like one of those maidens, gazing toward a heaven that doesn’t care about the Lucifer about to rape her.
