by Angel Payne
Between those rough breaths, I finally compose words. “Wow.” Okay, one word. Saying it all yet saying nothing. How do I tell him he’s fried the neurons of my mind? Blown apart every imagining of my soul? Given my heart one of the greatest gifts it could ever receive? How do I tell him all that, without making it about Bolt?
Because he’ll never believe me. I even wonder if I’ll believe myself.
Because without the hell he endured to become this man in my arms, he likely wouldn’t be the man in my arms.
And I’ve fallen helplessly, hopelessly in love with the man in my arms.
The man who envelops me tighter in his hold, wreathing my torso in greater sparks of awareness and awakening, before whispering, “Wow is a damn good start.”
“A start.” I trail my mouth down to his shoulder. I breathe him in, all fresh sandalwood soap with a hint of his natural smoke and cedar, while sliding my tongue over every hard, hewn, heroic muscle of his shoulder. “But…just a start, right?”
“Only if you’ll have me for more.” He issues it in a soft snarl, which quickly becomes a fierce choke. The sound bites the air as I do the same to the bottom of his neck. “Fuck, Emma. Say you’ll have me. Say you’ll stay with me. Please.”
He digs a hand deeper into my waist, bunching fingers into my shirt. His shirt. I revel in the awareness. I’m in his bed, wearing his shirt. And now, I’m twisting to straddle his lap before planting my knees in his sheets. I’m surrounded by him—his scent, his fabrics, his bed, his energy—razing me from scalp to soles, inciting one consuming need in return.
To surround him with me.
“I’ll have you, Reece Richards.” I brace my thumb and forefinger against his jaw, securing him with possessive intent. “I’ll have you. I want you.”
I love you.
For a second, I’m terrified I’ve let it escape aloud. The way his whole frame stills—stopping as if I’ve shot him in the chest—has me dropping my hand.
“And you’ll stay?”
I smile, stroking his beautiful, noble face. Suddenly, all the royal comparisons are so perfect. So right. “Yes. I’ll stay.”
His features take on a breathtaking new hardness. His gaze beams with a force nobody would question twice. A message confirmed by every thrumming, throbbing, cell of my body, just before he lunges in until our lips collide.
Wow. Wow.
He’s untamed shrapnel in my mouth, everywhere at once, setting me afire with every sweep of his tongue. In response, I give a shaky, needy moan. I’m already collateral damage, gutted from his assault, gorging on his passion…
Ripping off his towel.
Looking down at him—all of him—with savoring hunger.
Rejoicing in every magnificent muscle I see. And caress. And spark into electrified glory as his blood heats and pulses and funnels to the most fascinating bolt in his body…
I wrap both hands around his cock and stroke him from glowing balls to the bold beacon of his head, wanting him worse than I ever have before.
This is going to be good. So damn good.
Chapter Four
Reece
“Emma. Fuck.” Both words are barely breaths, breaking past my locked teeth as her talented fingers coax more heat to the surface of my cock. Surface? Who am I kidding? Every inch of me, from the core of throbbing magma to the veins pounding at my stretched skin, is a new slave to her mastery, a new convert to her religion.
And what does my new goddess give me in return? A stare brimming with just as much adoration, worship, amazement, devotion. Blowing me away. Spinning my senses. That’s before she even speaks again.
“Reece. It’s beautiful.” She drops her head, brushing the glowing drop off my tip with her lips. “You’re so beautiful.”
I smile. At least I think I do. It’s hard to know what’s real right now. “You mean that, don’t you?” My astonishment is authentic. “You don’t think I’m a freak? That this is fifteen kinds of weird?”
“Of course it’s weird.” She licks her lips, spreading the sheen of my precome across their delectable curves like space-age lip gloss. “But it’s wonderful. And incredible.”
“And freaky?”
“Oh, that’s the best part.”
I join my gruff laugh to her sighing giggle as she resumes touching me. Squeezing me. Gazing at me. Fuck, yes. That’s the best part. Getting to see her eyes, wide as Caribbean seas, drenching my body with their heat and light and lust. Seeing that even though I could lead Santa’s fucking sleigh with my cock, she still can’t stop touching it and then kissing it once more.
“Fuck.” My hips convulse as she sucks off more drops from my strained head. “Velvet…baby…that’s…”
“Freaky.” She laughs it out while kissing her way up my torso. Her lips, still heated by the drops she just took in, close over one of my nipples. “Guess it’s a good thing I’m into freaks.” Then the other.
“Damn good thing.” I cup the back of her neck, directing her to do it again. She flattens her tongue, forming a hot wet trail between my pecs as I use my other hand to push at the T-shirt covering her. Though she’s turned white cotton into a fashion statement I’ll never tire of, naked is how I need her right now. Her tits are what I crave, smashed against my chest, smeared in the same fiery river blazing the plain over my heart.
I finally strip the shirt away from her. With a starving growl, I yank her down to me. In a crazy torrent, we kiss. Bite. Devour. Spar. Fighting to expel our passion while feeding the monster with every passing second. It’s frenzied, fiery, passionate, and frightening—and I never want it to be any other way.
Hell. It was the word I just used to tell her what made me this way.
A hell I’ll endure again, a thousand times over, if she’s the prize waiting at the end.
“Ohhhh…wow,” she exclaims against my lips as her breasts pillow against my chest. I lift a smile in return, nipping at the soft nectar of her mouth.
“One way of putting it.” I scrape her chin with my teeth before jerking at her hair, forcing her head all the way back. Jesus. The sight of her like this, like my velvet Valkyrie in captivity, swells my mind with amazement and my cock with fresh heat. All of this just keeps getting better, especially as I scratch two fingers down the exposed column of her neck. Her skin is so creamy and smooth…and ready for my mark. Needing to be branded.
I lift my head, growling as she gasps, scoring her skin with my rough kiss. Between our bodies, my cock jerks again, growing by the second. More arousal spurts from my head, soaking the barrier of her panties. I curl my head tighter to look down there. The sight of the spot I’ve made, turning the satin from light pink to dark, unhinges something even more feral in me. Something that needs that underwear out of my way. Now.
I twist a couple of fingers into the sweet pink lace and jerk hard—only to have the material battle my grip. Damn it.
I lift her and flip her all the way over. Pushing back for leverage, I’m treated to the world’s best aerial view. The landscape of her body is a silken dream, topped by the succulent berries of her erect nipples. All I need to see now is the bare peach between her thighs.
A satisfaction I need this second.
“Close your eyes, Emma. Only for a second, beauty,” I add as she sends an are you serious glower. I make good on the promise, pulling up on the lace at her hip so it’s nearly a taut pink rope—and now, a perfect target for the blue laser my forefinger becomes.
Inside a second, I sear the material away. Emma’s gaze pops open as the smoking satin falls from her body. I take a deep breath, forcing the heat to subside, though it’s damn awesome not to worry about hiding my ten lightsabers anymore.
“Holy…wow.”
I wiggle my fingers slowly…before lowering their tips to the graceful ridges of her pubic bones. “Wow,” I echo, spreading my touch outward, coaxing her thighs to spread the same direction. “You enjoy that word, don’t you?”
“In this case, it fits.” As my
thumbs meet, toying with the top of her pouting slit, her hips writhe. “It fits you.”
I work my thumbs downward and spread the rest of my fingers along her pulsing lips, reveling in how they eagerly kiss at the air. “Fitting you is my goal, Miss Crist.”
“Oh,” she mewls. The sound deepens and darkens as I work my thumbs in more, spreading her wet depths. Soon, I’m pushing into her as well, a tender but steady finger fuck. My other fingers spread out, keeping her thighs apart. I brace my elbows against her knees—which start to shake, becoming erotic turn-ons in their own right. Holy hell. Because of her, I’m now a knees guy.
Fuck.
Because of her, I’m now an everything guy.
“Reece.”
“Emma.”
“Reece!”
I replace my fingertips with my hips and gulp hard at how good her inner thighs feel against me. At how good all of her feels against me.
“Open wider for me, beauty.” I lean over, kissing her in long, passionate pulls as she complies. “Yeah. Like that.” My own breath stutters. “Do you know how many times I’ve imagined being with you like this? Completely bare like this?” I skate my touch back up over her puckered breasts. Watching her nipples light up beneath my touch is a turn-on beyond the dreams I’ve just referenced. “No holding anything back. No more hiding.”
Emma clutches my hand and guides it to the side of her face. “Never again.” Her tawny lashes lift. Her stare is pure blue conviction, engulfing mine. “No more hiding.”
I curve my fingers in, catching the edge of her hairline, outlining her features with an ethereal glow. My glow. “Fuck.” I gulp hard, struggling to put what I feel into words but finally accept that uselessness. I can only stare, gutted and grateful, for what she’s done for me in this moment. Her elegant profile illuminated like this turns my garishness into a gift, my curse into inspiration.
Because of her, I’m no longer a victim. I’m a survivor.
I’m stronger.
And maybe, someday, I can even think of calling myself a hero.
Right now, it only matters that she sees me as one.
With her eyes glimmering and her lips parted, she releases my hand and slides her touch up my arm. Once she gets to my shoulder, she doesn’t stop. Tremors radiate across my back as she skates her hand down, skimming past my waist, before molding a palm across my ass. Before I can process how fucking amazing that feels, she grips my other cheek too.
Pulling me closer to her softness. Urging me deeper into her beauty.
I fall onto my elbows. Our faces are inches apart, and our breaths weave into each other likes mists meeting in sacred canyons. She’s just as perfect a sight, with her eyes like sapphire smoke and her skin a glistening sheen of arousal. I inhale as she exhales. Her breath smells like sex… The essence she’s already kissed off my cock. The desire I have yet to sate.
The lust with which she grips my ass, seating me tighter between her legs.
“Light me up, Reece.” Her voice is a shimmering, demanding plea. “Do it. Light me up. From the inside.”
“Emma.” I shake now too, fighting for restraint. There are more words to be said here. Words that must be said. Shit about being careful and grabbing condoms and…
“It’s all right.” She rocks beneath me, lithe and lusty, taunting my dick with the soft, soaked layers of her pussy. “I’m on the pill. I didn’t tell you before because—” She interrupts herself, coloring a little. “Well, because…”
I kiss her nose in reassurance. “It’s all right, beauty. I get it.”
“And now you’ve got me.” She lifts her legs, crossing them at the small of my back. “And I need you. Please. All of you. Every freaky, weird, magnificent, glowing inch of— Oh!”
As hot as I am, she’s hotter.
As taut as I am, she’s tighter.
As bright as I am, she’s so much brighter. Illuminated. Ablaze. A sensual, incredible angel, looking like a goddamned page out of a comic book herself. Her hair fans against my sheets as if she’s flying. Her face, surrounded by my neon fingers, is alight with strength, sensuality, surrender, joy. Her body, spread for me, is a collection of muscle and might and power—especially in the center of the gem where we’re joined. As we rock, completely in sync with each other, the light of that juncture pulses and intensifies.
“Ohhhh!” She screams it again as I shove at her legs.
“Ohhhh!” Once more as I stretch her deeper.
“Ohhhh!” Even louder as I slam into the tight, dripping oval welcoming my cock. She’s perfect. So fucking perfect.
I stop only for a second to grab at the pillows and bunch them behind her head. “No more closed eyes, Emmalina.” I angle her head down, ensuring she focuses toward the sight of her body sucking me in, over and over and over. “Watch,” I dictate. “Watch me.”
“Yes.” Her breath-filled obedience is like rocket fuel to my swollen dick. “Yes.”
My balls constrict.
The fusion of our bodies is raw radiance.
“Do you like the freak fucking you?”
The beast inside me growls into my words, feeling so damn good to be let out.
“Don’t see any freaks around here, Mr. Richards.” She puts a coy spin on the smirk. “You sure you got the right address for that claim?”
“Oh, I’m sure.”
“Better check again.” Her eyelids go heavy, emphasizing the tease of her pouting lips. “Or knock a little harder.”
My grin splits wider.
My cock swells against her walls.
“You are really asking for it, Miss Crist.”
“Damn right I am, freak.”
I’m not sure what drives me more blissfully insane—the sexy sarcasm in her tease or the come-on in her eyes. In the end, it doesn’t matter. In the end, I’m ramming her tight, perfect cunt with all the force I can flex into my hips, all the power I can surge into my cock…all the passion I can summon to my spirit.
All the pleasure, heat, and fire I can give her—bursting into the high, aching joy of her climax.
“Reece!”
“Emma.”
“Need…you…with me!”
“On my way, beauty.”
Not a lie.
Because I am. Because I do.
My cock isn’t just the color of a laser beam anymore. It feels like a laser beam. I’m consumed by a cataclysm as I push through a cosmos of blinding heat and fury, bursting like a goddamn star and pouring liquid life into ultimate darkness. And defeating that darkness with the brilliance of this epic explosion, a fuck that’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced or known, until there’s nothing left of the light anymore either…
But everything left of the ashes.
And the freak is rising from them like the most bizarre phoenix in the history of ashes. A guy I’m not sure I recognize. A man who might actually be ready for this superhero gig. Like he just might have something worthy to add to the narrative.
Not that I’m ready to go spreading that shit around.
I mean, it’s just a thought. At the end of the day, I’m a man more used to VIP ropes than police tape. I’m happier finding discrepancies on spreadsheets than tracking down bad guys in sewers. I thought it might be the right thing to do, after all the douchebag moments to which I’ve subjected the world, to pay back Karma—and, yeah, the Consortium—by going out in a blaze of glory instead of headlines of scandal. Who thought a few do-the-right-thing moments might actually feel right too.
Not that I was ever really taught anything about “right.” In boarding school, “conduct” and “character” were ideologies to make fun of between chasing tail and sneaking booze, not part of the life lessons I ever learned from Lawson Richards.
Maybe that’s why I question how good everything feels now. How right.
It’s her. Emmalina. I’m obsessed with her beauty, slammed by her passion, floored by her purpose, consumed by her simple but sublime wonder. And I know, even if the world neve
r does, that with this, with her, I got shit right at least once in my life.
I know it with the certainty still flooding me, hours later, when I drag my eyes open and still find her in my bed. I know it as I reach over to brush her hair from her face and feel a smile breach my lips in tandem with the one curling hers. I know it with every thump of the heartbeat that greets her as she burrows against me.
“Mmm.” She inflects it with kittenish gusto. “You’re warm.”
“And you don’t even have to plug me in.”
“Oh, there’s another one for the he’s-a-keeper column.” Her teeth snag her bottom lip. “Not that you’re a keeper keeper. I mean, not like that. I mean”—she gulps—“shit. Can I have a do-over?”
“Not on your fucking life.” I jam a firm kiss to her forehead. “I like being your keeper.” I slide my lips down the bridge of her nose. “Just say you’ll be mine too.”
“I…I want to…”
“You already promised you’d stay,” I growl.
She narrows her eyes. “You meant for tonight, and so did I. Now that we’re talking about more…”
“What?” I don’t mean to bark it but that’s what comes out.
She nibbles the inside of her bottom lip. “I’m not opposed to more either. But Reece…”
“Yeah?” Stay open. Stay calm. But that’s easier said than done. I’m the one used to doling out this kind of anxiety. Suffering it is no fucking fun.
She flattens a hand over my sternum again and gazes right into my eyes. “I need to know everything.” A careful swallow. “About Angelique.”
I roll to my back and suck in a long breath. She shifts too, rolling to lie on her side next to me…her stare palpably intense. “What about her?”
“She’s the one, isn’t she?” Her query is soft and knowing. “The one you trusted. Who led you into the hell that changed everything.”
I snort out a laugh. She looks like I just hurled in the bed. I’m sure as hell tempted to, especially when replying. “I wasn’t exactly white milk, apple pie, and innocence about the whole thing, okay? I met the woman in Paris, in a club where condoms and blow were offered on the menu next to appetizers, and the private rooms were more crowded than the dance floor. We did the circuit there together for a week, and I was enthralled because she knew more people than I did.”
