Behind the Curtain

by BETH KERY

  “Just use your tongue for a minute,” he urged, needing a break from the emotion boiling inside him and the forceful stroke of her mouth.

  He watched her with a tight focus as she charted his cock with a red, wet tongue. This was no break. This was yet another wicked source of torture. The pleasure she gave him was every bit as pure and distilled as she was . . . as what he felt for her.

  Without a word, he reinserted his cock between her lips.

  “You can be aggressive, beautiful,” he told her a moment later, watching her every move. Her eyes killed him as she looked up at him and her head bobbed back and forth. She began to take him more strenuously, observing his reaction as closely as he watched her. His face tightened in pleasure.

  “Now use your hand as well as your mouth,” he instructed. He wrapped his hand around hers and guided her, until she took over, her hand squeezing him in tandem with her hot, eager mouth. Air rushed past his lips and burned his throat. For a stretched moment, he existed on a blissful, sharp edge.

  He felt so raw, so flayed by pleasure. All the feelings and thoughts he’d been having about her as he recognized the immensity of her talent combined with the razor-sharp pleasure she gave him so unselfishly. He gripped her ponytail and moved her head. She kept pace eagerly, the vision of her bringing him near to climax. He wanted to come in her sweet, hot mouth.

  He wanted to explode inside her, anywhere . . . anyhow . . . break through all the barriers, leave himself so deep inside her that there could be no doubt.

  They were one.

  The logical part of his brain never told him to move. It was that deep, primal aspect that had him lifting her against him and carrying her over to the couch. While he did it, he feasted on her mouth again. Even when he bent to set her down on the cushion, he couldn’t stop delving his tongue into her sweetness, feeding on her heat and her reciprocated need.

  He heard a ripping sound as he undressed her. He cursed. Laila didn’t seem to notice he’d torn her shirt, though, as she frantically assisted him. When he’d pulled off her jeans and underwear and she was finally naked, he didn’t stop there. He reached and slid her hair band off her long, smooth hair. He greedily grabbed handfuls of it and spread it around her shoulders. The perfume from the long, smooth strands permeated the air. He inhaled a lungful of it before he forced himself to stand.

  She looked up at him with glistening green eyes, her cheeks and lips flushed, her hair spilling around her shoulders and chest, an erect nipple poking out from the soft tendrils. Her thighs were parted. Harsh arousal tore through him at the vision of her soft-looking pubic hair and tender, flushed labia.

  “Laila,” he said, his voice sounding thick and grim with lust. He reached out and swept her hair behind her shoulders in a deliberate, slow movement despite his anticipation, baring her entirely to his gaze. He contained a shudder of emotion. God, he could probably come just from staring at her.

  “Asher.” She lifted her beautiful arms, the gesture going straight to the heart of him.

  He couldn’t stop it anymore. The frenzy. If he’d had to think about the mechanics of getting his clothes off his body so rapidly, or finding a condom, it would have taken twice as long. But that primal part of him had taken over, and it knew exactly what it wanted.

  A moment later, he put his hands on the back of the couch and looked down at her while she spread her smooth thighs, lifted her feet and bent knees and rolled her hips back, positioning herself at the edge of the couch to take him. He braced himself, leaning down over her with his thighs spread, his toes digging into the carpet for traction.

  He watched his cock sink into her inch by inch, listening to her soft moans, feeling her sweet heat encapsulating him, squeezing him mercilessly. His throat hurt. He met her stare.

  “I love you,” he said.

  Her face tightened with disbelief.

  “You do?” she whispered.

  “I’ve never stopped. I knew that for certain, watching you on that stage today. That’s what I was thinking about, Laila,” he said, because nothing else would come out of him in that moment but painful honesty.

  “I love you too. I’ve never stopped.” The words tumbled past her lips, like she’d been storing them in her throat, wanting to release them. Afraid to do it.

  He understood that feeling all too well.

  A tear skipped down her cheek. The truth was so sweet. Why did it ache so badly? He wanted to howl like a savage.

  He pressed his balls tight against her damp outer sex, grimacing in pleasure. Her soft whimpers cut right through him. His eyes rolled back in his head. God, he wasn’t going to survive this torture for long. He began to thrust, mindless pleasure pummeling him in every direction.

  He lunged with his legs, pushing with his planted feet, powering himself into the sheer heaven of her. Yes, he was greedy. Yes, he was forceful. It was an orgy of sensation—of feeling—and he reveled in her to the fullest.

  Her voice and the brisk slap of their bodies crashing together entered his lust-dazed awareness. She chanted his name again and again, the single word rife with lust and longing and love. Her hands gripped his ass, and she was pushing him to her, adding her strength to his thrusts. They groaned in unison, pleasure spiking as he slammed into her to the hilt. His body screamed at him for release, but he couldn’t heed the call. Not when he wanted this to last forever.

  He pulled out of her, his entire body shuddering at the absence. He knelt before her and pushed her legs wider.

  “Asher,” she moaned when he pressed his face to her belly. She was warm silk against his lips and nose. He smelled her arousal.

  “I had to have you,” he mumbled against her fragrant skin. “From the very first, I had to have you. Sometimes I wish it had changed, but it hasn’t. It can’t. It’ll only grow stronger. Sweet, beautiful girl.”

  He lowered over her, dipping his tongue into the creamy cleft between her labia. The essence of her in its purest form filled him. Fed him. For a moment, he lost himself as his tongue played in her sweetness and he absorbed her delicate shudders. Her shaking mounted, and she was clutching at his hair and repeating his name.

  Her release went through him like a shearing wave. He braced himself and absorbed it, eating up her pleasure. Craving more.

  He rose to ravish her mouth. She’d slumped against the back of the couch following her climax. He pressed down on her in his need, her body dipping between the two cushions. His cock found her unerringly. He carved into her, the walls of her vagina hugging him tightly even as she seemed to melt around him. A scream began to vibrate in her throat. He silenced it with his mouth, absorbing it . . . wanting to shout in crazy abandon right back.

  He took her harder now, faster, the sound of their bodies smacking together outpacing even his charging heart. But his desperation only mounted. He’d never get enough. He wanted deeper.

  More. Always more.

  He encircled her with his arms and hugged her to him, lifting her upper body and thrusting her up on his raging cock.

  Climax ripped through him. Brutal. Electric. He seized and shuddered, vibrating like a hammered gong. Her name scraped at his throat.

  “Love,” he heard her mutter against his throat. “Love you so much.”

  Dazedly, as the moments passed, he recognized that another barrier had been at least partially hurdled—that of their own caution and fear. They’d entered more dangerous territory. The words had been said. Their hearts fully exposed. He knew what path that led to last time.

  All he could do was pray this time would be different.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  The next few days flew by in a whirlwind of ecstatic contentment. Laila had never felt so alive in her life. She and Asher spent every minute they could together. He came to all of her rehearsals and her shows.

  Rafe was still a little distant following their breakup. But
after he witnessed her show on Tuesday night, some of his former enthusiasm bounded to the forefront again. When he saw Asher in her dressing room after the show, he frowned at first. But when Asher just met his stare unflinchingly, a change came over Rafe. He seemed to surrender to practicality. He’d been Laila’s manager before he’d ever dated her, after all. If Asher was the reason for her extra-passionate, emotional performances, then he couldn’t be entirely bad, in Rafe’s mind. He gave a small shrug and hugged Laila.

  “Even I can’t argue with results like that,” he said quietly near her ear. “You were beyond magnificent tonight.”

  She and Asher couldn’t get enough of each other. They expressed their love for each other so frequently, Laila wondered if unconsciously they thought the words were like a ward against a curse, a staving off of the inevitable. Their time was running out. Asher would be flying to London in seven days, six . . . five. It was like some giant clock of doom was growing closer and closer every day, ticking louder and louder in Laila’s dreams every night that she spent in Asher’s arms. She wanted to ask him what he was thinking and feeling about their separation, but she was afraid of his answer.

  She’d walked away from him once. Had she forsaken the right to beg him for a future?

  On Thursday, Asher said that he couldn’t attend her rehearsal because he had some errands to run. She missed him that afternoon and was extra eager to see him when she entered his Lincoln Park condo that night. When he led her into the living room, she paused in disbelief at the threshold. There must have been twenty or thirty wrapped packages dispersed throughout the room.

  “What in the world is this?” she asked him in stunned amazement.

  “Happy birthday,” he said, a slow smile spreading across his sexy mouth.

  “My birthday isn’t until June,” she exclaimed.

  He leaned down and kissed her, making her forget her incredulity for a minute.

  “I got one for every birthday I’ve missed,” he told her against her mouth a few seconds later. She saw his eyes gleaming in amused warmth. “And I picked them all out myself too. You taught me the importance of that.”

  She laughed. She couldn’t believe him.

  Each gift was as amazing as the last: a beautiful gold bracelet, a rare signed vinyl recording of Ella Fitzgerald, a gorgeous white silk negligee, a collection of leather-bound music notebooks . . . the treasures went on and on. Laila was overwhelmed. He gave the last one to her with a solemnness that made her wonder.

  “Why do you look like that?” she whispered as she ripped open the paper on the flat, rectangular box.

  “Because. I got this two years ago, on my last trip to Morocco. I don’t think I consciously got it for you. It just struck me yesterday, that maybe I had . . . even if it was only wishful thinking. At the time, I just told myself it was pretty, and wouldn’t think much beyond that . . .”

  She held her breath as she opened the box. She gasped, shivers pouring down her spine and arm.

  “It’s a hamsa,” she whispered, glancing up at him in disbelief. The hamsa was a popular symbol in Morocco and Northern Africa. It depicted the open right hand and was often used for jewelry. Asher’s gift was an especially rare and lovely necklace of a hamsa, made from finely wrought silver and some sort of jade or peridot stones—she couldn’t be sure—that had been carefully inlaid to make an intricate, delicate pattern.

  “I’ve never seen one so beautiful,” she told him, her heart in her eyes. “I can’t believe you got me this.”

  He scooted over on the living room floor, where they sat. “Here. Let me put it on you.”

  She smiled widely a few seconds later as she met his stare, tears skipping down her cheeks. She touched the hamsa below her throat with her fingertips.

  “Thank you. Thank you so much, Asher.”

  “You’re welcome,” he murmured, his gaze roving over her face. He used his fingers to dry her few tears. “It matches your eyes. That should have been the dead giveaway why I was buying it. It’s supposed to ward off bad energies, I understand. Perfect thing for you to wear when you go over to my parents’ house.”

  Laughter burst out of her throat at that. She threw her arms around him, love swelling so tight inside her, she couldn’t speak.

  Moments later, they made love heatedly on the floor in the midst of a sea of torn wrapping paper. She felt like she drowned in decadence, not just from Asher’s incredible, thoughtful presents, but from the richness of the love that seemed to enfold them.

  “You’re the best gift in the world,” Laila told him feelingly afterward.

  A pang of fear and loss went through her. She hugged him tighter to her, but the pain didn’t ease as much as it had in the past. She suspected it was because that ticking of the clock had grown even louder and more ominous in her head.

  • • •

  Friday dawned sunny, cool and crisp. Laila was up at dawn, jumpy as a skittish cat about the lunch appointment at Asher’s parents’ home in Winnetka. She met Asher in the living room at eleven o’clock. He looked very handsome in a pair of jeans, a button-down shirt, and a sports coat. She smoothed her skirt nervously.

  “Is this all right?” she asked him. “I thought this skirt would look nice with the new boots you got me,” she said, referring to the beautiful pair of supple, russet leather boots he’d given her—he’d informed her last night with adorable solemnness—for her eighteenth birthday.

  His gaze dropped down over her. “You look gorgeous. I like that sweater,” he said, his gaze lingering on her breasts warmly.

  “Is it too tight?” she asked, sounding a little shrill.

  He walked toward her, holding his arms out and laughing gruffly.

  “Of course it’s not too tight. You can’t help it that you have beautiful breasts.” He wrapped his arms around her and placed a kiss on her nose. “Or the prettiest face in the world or stunning eyes,” he continued, dropping two kisses on her eyebrows.

  “They’re going to hate me,” she whispered, her voice thick with dread.

  “Not hate. Hate is too passionate. Much too common. Insufferably middle-class. Dislike, maybe. Disapprove with a white-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant arrogance, which is like an ice-cold blast of air,” he murmured nonchalantly. He planted a kiss on her mouth. “It’s unpleasant, but not deadly. It’s just something you have to forbear. Brace yourself for it, and then just count the minutes until you can leave. It’s the best you can do. Trust me, I know.”

  Her brows pinched tight. His levity on this topic pained her. “How can they dislike you? You’re the very picture of an ideal son.”

  “Never mind,” he said, briskly moving back and taking her hand. He pressed her knuckles against his lips before he led her toward the door. “It’s their way of loving me. It’s warped, but that’s WASP love for you.”

  His voice still rang in her head when he turned his car down a tree-lined drive forty-five minutes later. Despite his teasing manner, she knew that his parents’ opinion of him mattered . . . that their cool disapproval pained him deeply.

  “Asher,” she began determinedly. “Please don’t get too . . . sensitive about anything your parents do or say today when it comes to me.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, frowning slightly above his sunglasses.

  “It’s just that I sensed how much your mother wants to patch things up with you. And she seems really concerned about your father’s and your relationship. I just don’t want to be the thing that gets in the way of you guys making up before . . . Well, I just don’t want to stand in the way,” she continued, shying away from mentioning the fact that he was leaving for London in a few days. They mentioned it less and less to each other, as their time together dwindled away. She fingered the hamsa at her throat in a nervous gesture. “Will you promise me you’ll try to keep things as smooth as you can with them?”

  “Do what
you do? Is that what you mean?” He noticed her confusion. “Like you told me when we were young? How you knew just what to say in front of your family, and what not to say, in order to keep everyone happy?”

  “Is that so bad?” she asked him quietly.

  “I don’t know. I used to think so,” he said, his expression hard and guarded as he stared forward at the road.

  “Just try to be patient with them, Asher? For me?”

  He glanced over at her. “All right,” he said, grasping her hand. Relief swept through her. “If it’s important to you.”

  As the house came into view, the butterflies in her stomach transformed to what felt like a swarm of bees.

  “Is that it?” she asked through a tight throat.

  “That’s it. Home sweet home. Cozy, no?” he muttered dryly.

  They zoomed toward an enormous, intimidating-looking, pale limestone French Provincial–style mansion. In the distance was the pale blue lake. Asher pulled the car up to what appeared to be a six-car garage at the rear. A youngish dark-haired man jogged out to greet them. He opened Laila’s car door for her.

  “Thank you,” Laila said as she alighted.

  “How’s it going, Jerry?” Asher said, coming around the car and shaking Jerry’s hand.

  “Well, sir. It’s good to see you again,” Jerry said.

  “Hopefully I’ll make it for longer than an hour this time,” Asher said under his breath.

  “Yes, sir,” Jerry replied with a brief knowing glance and a compassionate smile.

  Asher took her hand and led her to a large double-door entryway. At that moment, one of the doors opened and Asher’s mother stepped out onto the upper step, followed by a tall, handsome, gray-haired man wearing a dark suit and open-collar button-down shirt. He was much younger and handsome-looking than Laila expected. He looked like Asher . . .