When I'm With You: The Complete Novel
Page 17
Something squirmed inside her belly when she recalled the look of incredulity and vague disgust on the manager’s face when Katie had whipped into the parking lot of the soup kitchen to volunteer for service a few months back.
Note to self: don’t show up for philanthropic service in an expensive car; it reeks of self-disgust and the need to fill the empty hole of a useless life.
Katie shoved the depressing thought aside and smiled when the teenager dazedly waved back at her. She hit the brakes and waited while the kid walked toward the curb with a stride that was all long, scissoring legs and arms. She recognized his awkwardness and felt a rush of warmth toward him. She lowered the passenger-side window.
“Hi,” she called. “I’m Katie.”
“Uh . . . hi,” he replied, his deep voice spiced with a slight twang. Southern Illinois was a whole different world from the northern part of the state. She saw him inspect her car, and then her, with brown eyes that looked curious, but also slightly alarmed, as though he thought she passed for normal, but hadn’t entirely discounted the possibility that an alien had just glided into Vulture’s Canyon in a Maserati.
“What’s your name?” Katie asked.
His Adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed. “Derek Legion.”
“Hey, Derek. Could you tell me where I might find Eagle Perch Road?”
“Yeah. Just keep going straight through town, pass Dyer Creek and take the first right you come to.” He crouched slightly to get a better look at her. “You’re not going up to the Mitchell house, are you?”
“Yeah, I am. You know Rill Pierce?”
Katie thought she read a hint of belligerence in the kid’s expression, making him look older than he had just seconds before. “I know who he is. He manages to come down the hill a couple of times a week. Sees to the necessities,” he added, glancing pointedly across the street. Katie turned her head and saw where the boy was looking: the Last Stop Tavern.
She straightened in the car seat. She wasn’t surprised at the boy’s subtle judgment of Rill, but it still made her uncomfortable nonetheless.
Rill had practically been adopted by the Hughes family since he’d come to southern California from Ireland to attend UCLA. That had been almost twenty years ago. People usually gravitated toward Rill. Grandmas adored him and little boys begged him to rugby-tackle them. He could make a female of any age marvel at the wonder of her womanhood as she experienced the delicious contrast of her own sexuality and Rill’s easy charm and rugged good looks.
Things must be even worse than she’d thought if Rill’s behavior in the small town could cause this nice-seeming kid to glower so darkly.
She thanked Derek, assuring him that Rill was a longtime friend when he asked her if she was sure she should go up to the Mitchell place alone.
Twenty minutes later as she leaned over Rill’s mussed bed and stared blindly at the wall while his cock slowly carved into her flesh like a hot knife through melting butter, Katie distantly realized she should have heeded the boy’s warning.
***
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Beth Kery lives in Chicago where she juggles the demands of her career, her love of the city and the arts, and a busy family life. Her writing today reflects her passion for all of the above. She is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Because You Are Mine. Find out more about Beth and her books at BethKery.com or Facebook.com/Beth.Kery.
When I’m With You
PART I: WHEN WE TOUCH
PART II: WHEN YOU DEFY ME
PART III: WHEN YOU TEASE ME
Because You Are Mine
PART I: BECAUSE YOU TEMPT ME
PART II: BECAUSE I COULD NOT RESIST
PART III: BECAUSE YOU HAUNT ME
PART IV: BECAUSE YOU MUST LEARN
PART V: BECAUSE I SAID SO
PART VI: BECAUSE YOU TORMENT ME
PART VII: BECAUSE I NEED TO
PART VIII: BECAUSE I AM YOURS
Berkley Sensation titles by Beth Kery
WICKED BURN
DARING TIME
Berkley Heat titles by Beth Kery
SWEET RESTRAINT
PARADISE RULES
RELEASE
EXPLOSIVE
One Night of Passion series
ADDICTED TO YOU (WRITING AS BETHANY KANE)
EXPOSED TO YOU
One Night of Passion Specials
BOUND TO YOU
CAPTURED BY YOU
Contents
Also by Beth Kery
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Special Excerpt from Release
Beth Kery
When I’m With You
PART I: WHEN WE TOUCH
PART II: WHEN YOU DEFY ME
PART III: WHEN YOU TEASE ME
PART IV: WHEN I’M BAD
Because You Are Mine
PART I: BECAUSE YOU TEMPT ME
PART II: BECAUSE I COULD NOT RESIST
PART III: BECAUSE YOU HAUNT ME
PART IV: BECAUSE YOU MUST LEARN
PART V: BECAUSE I SAID SO
PART VI: BECAUSE YOU TORMENT ME
PART VII: BECAUSE I NEED TO
PART VIII: BECAUSE I AM YOURS
Berkley Sensation titles by Beth Kery
WICKED BURN
DARING TIME
Berkley Heat titles by Beth Kery
SWEET RESTRAINT
PARADISE RULES
RELEASE
EXPLOSIVE
One Night of Passion series
ADDICTED TO YOU (WRITING AS BETHANY KANE)
EXPOSED TO YOU
One Night of Passion Specials
BOUND TO YOU
CAPTURED BY YOU
When I’m With You
Part IV
When I’m Bad
Beth Kery
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WHEN I’M BAD
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PUBLISHING HISTORY
InterMix eBook edition / March 2013
When I’m With You copyright © 2013 by Beth Kery.
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Chapter Seven
Watching Elise come, feeling her body tremble against his, hearing her excited cries, inhaling her unique scent—all of it made Lucien’s head swim in a sea of lust. His hand continued to move between her thighs, his finger sliding with ease in the delightfully lubricated valley between her labia, playing with her clit, prolonging her pleasure . . . coaxing more shudders from her firm, soft body.
He was going to eat her alive, she was so sweet. He was going to take her like a rutting bull. For a blinding moment, he pictured exactly how it would feel to have that tight, wet pussy melt around his thrusting cock, her muscular walls clasping him, pulling at him like a hot little mouth. . . .
He needed to taste her even more than he needed to fuck her. He was intoxicated with lust, but still greedy for more sensation, starved for the pure essence of Elise on his tongue and in his throat. She whimpered in surprise when he leaned over the bed and placed her back on the mattress. He had a fleeting image of her eyes blinking open heavily. He touched her lips with his before he lowered himself, his knees on the floor.
“Lucien?” she murmured, her voice thick with satiation.
“I will taste you,” he said without preamble, spreading her white thighs. He stared for a moment. Her pubic hair was well trimmed, looking darker gold near her slit and between her labia due to her abundant juices. Her sex was a lush pink flower, the color of it decadently erotic in contrast to her pale thighs. Entranced, he parted her lips, revealing her swollen clitoris. Her scent filled his nose. He gave a low, feral growl and inhaled deeply.
“This pussy is mine,” he muttered, barely aware of what he was saying, guided solely by a primal need to possess, and hardly hearing his own voice his heart throbbed so loudly in his ears.
He slid his tongue through the creamy valley, agitating her clit. Her taste permeated his awareness and he was lost. He turned his head slightly, stabbing her clit with his tongue, only distantly conscious of Elise’s cries of surprised pleasure and her fingernails scraping his scalp as she held him to her. She was musk and honey and sunshine, golden sweet, the very flavor of sex. His sole focus became to get more of her taste, fill his mouth with it, his throat, his very being. With her juices as his reward, he learned her perfectly, discovering the optimal pressure of his tongue to pleasure her, the precise amount of suction she needed to make her cries go frantic.
He distantly became aware of several unwanted sensations battering at the edges of his rabid arousal. The sound of loud pounding on the door differentiated from the hammering of his heart.
“Oh, Lucien . . . God . . . someone . . . door,” Elise gasped even as her hand tightened at the back of his head and she pushed him closer to her pussy.
“Shut it up in there!” a woman’s harsh, cigarette-roughened voice shouted outside the door. “All that slapping and screaming and moaning, my customer is starting to get ideas that he can’t afford!”
“Should . . . stop,” Elise mumbled miserably. “I can’t keep quiet. It’s not . . . possible,” she moaned.
But Lucien was too far gone to care about disgruntled neighbors. He liked Elise’s unguarded cries of excitement. He adored them. He continued to eat the sweetest pussy he’d ever tasted, determined.
“YOU! Don’t act like you’re not in there. Put a muzzle on it. Screaming like a banshee . . . giving my customers ideas . . . French,” the woman added bitterly under her breath.
Elise began to squirm beneath him—he couldn’t be sure if she did it out of arousal or if she was trying to get him to stop—but Lucien refused to be denied. He held her hips down on the bed and lashed at her clit ruthlessly while applying a firm suction. He felt her go rigid in his hands, a helpless whine ringing in her throat. He turned his head more and sucked her entire clit. The tension in her muscles broke. Her whine swelled to a sharp shout, quieted, then swelled again into a moan as another wave of climax hit her.
He soaked in the sensations of her hungrily: her desperate cries, her raking fingernails, her scent, her taste.
The woman pounded angrily on the door for the next several moments as Elise came and he drowned in her essence. By the time Elise sagged onto the bed, panting, and he took one last, reluctant lick between her swollen sex lips, all was quiet.
Elise lifted her head and met his stare. His rabid lust fractured for a moment from amusement. The dazed, vaguely bewildered expression on Elise’s sex-flushed face was priceless.
“Was that Ms. Inga?” she asked him disbelievingly.
His hands transferred to her waist, his fingers delving gently into the muscles of her back greedily. He grunted in satisfaction. Her punishment and orgasms had made her flesh noticeably suppler.
“I have no idea if it was Ms. Inga. I’ve never made the woman’s acquaintance, and have no desire to ever do so.”
Still, what she’d said partially penetrated his brain. He glanced around the room, seeing the paint peeling on the walls, the rust stain from a leak in the corner, the threadbare carpet. He closed his eyes and willed the throb of his heartbeat in his raging erection to slow. He kissed a soft, pale thigh and stood.
What was he thinking? It wasn’t time for this yet. He had coached himself not to become bowled over by her thousands of times, but the taste of Elise made logic a feeble thing.
“Get dressed,” he said, purposely avoiding looking at the flushed, naked splendor of her as she lay there with her legs parted. She was a sex-mussed, unmade bed that he wanted to spend about a week in . . . for starters. He needed to gather himself. He’d almost lost control several times tonight, come so close to throwing himself wholesale into the inferno of her.
“I’ll start to pack your things.”
“Pack my things?” she repeated, shock ringing in her voice. She sat up slowly.
He glanced at her. His cock lurched against his trousers, the stab of arousal a sharp pain. He looked away, hiding his wince, and opened the closet door.
“Yes. You can’t think I’d allow you to stay here,” he said as he pulled a suitcase from the closet.
“I didn’t think you had a say one way or another!”
“Again, you thought wrong. You’re coming with me,” he said, his tone brooking no argument as he tossed the suitcase on the bed and opened it. “Get dressed, Elise.”
From the periphery of his vision, he saw her rise and move toward the dresser.
“Where are we going?” she asked, her incredulity now replaced by amazement.
“To my place.”
When she didn’t reply, he turned. She stood before the dresser, a T-shirt clutched in her hands, the material covering part of her belly and her mons, but little else. It took him a distracted moment to realize she looked utterly floored.
“You want me to move in with you?” she asked, her voice sounding hollow with shock.
“Yes,” he said, his matter-of-fact tone belying his wariness about the plan. He began tossing the items on her bedside table into the suitcase. “You’ll stay at my place until we decide what to do.” He frowned as he picked up a bottle of her signature perfume from the dresser top—Hermès Perfume 24, Faubourg—and rolled it up hastily in a silk bathrobe. “It’s an . . . unusual circumstance, but we’ll have to make do.”
“Where do you live?” she asked breathlessly. He glanced back and wished she’d put on the T-shirt.
“Near Lake Shore and Astor. Not far from where we met at the market the other day.” He located a plastic bag and walked over to the close
t, where he began scooping up loads of designer shoes and shoving them into it.
“That’s a very nice area. But . . .”
“What?” he asked, his irritation growing when she continued to stand there, frozen.
Naked.
Lovely.
He raised his eyebrows in impatient expectancy when she didn’t immediately reply.
“Well . . . don’t you want to . . . finish?” she asked, staring at the bed and then down to his heavy cock.
His body leapt into full, throbbing readiness once again as he stared at her naked beauty and experienced the graphic fantasy of him laying her on that sagging bed and sinking into the glory of her. It was because of her uncertainty—what he could only call shyness—that he found his strength. How could such a flagrant wild child seem so naïve at times?
“I will not make love to you for the first time in this hellhole, but on my terms and in my place of choosing,” he stated simply.
He saw her throat convulse as she swallowed.
“And Elise? The time will be of my choosing. Never think otherwise.”
Rebellion flashed in her eyes, but she quickly cast her gaze downward, hiding it. Much to his surprise, she contained her pique sufficiently not to reply. She dressed fleetly before helping him pack up her belongings.
* * *
His condominium was everything Elise expected it to be, given it was Lucien’s lair—sensual, rich, masculine décor set within the ideal backdrop of the lake facing the east, and the labyrinth of sparkling high-rises to the north and the west. Of course, since it was Lucien, he was on the top floor of the building, occupying the premier penthouse.
When they first arrived in the hushed, luxurious residence perched high above the city, Lucien took the suitcase she’d been rolling along with the one he’d been carrying. “Why don’t you relax for a moment here in the living room,” he said, nodding toward the large, breathtaking expanse of space before floor-to-ceiling windows. “I’m going to get your room ready for you.”