by Katie Allen
Meeting his eyes, she saw the spark of mischief in his hungry gaze, and a surge of affection for him coursed through her. This was Louis—the tease, the jokester, the occasionally tormented artist, her friend, her boss, her playmate, and now, finally, her lover. She wrapped her fingers around his thick length and slid her thumb over the head, wanting to give him as much pleasure as she possibly could, not just because he would reciprocate, but because he was Louis and he deserved every happiness in the world.
With a groan, he leaned forward. Her eyes slid closed, but he didn’t take her mouth as she expected. Instead, he brushed his lips over her temple, along the outside edge of her cheek to her ear. Tilting her head to allow his mouth better access, she tightened her grip on his erection and slid her hand down to the base and back up to the tip, spreading his pre-come along the entire length. She took her time, moving her hand almost lazily, loving the feel of him in her grip as he sucked at her earlobe. Tiny shivers of pleasure rippled through her as she worked his cock in her fist, and she wanted the moment to last forever.
Then his fingers were stroking her pussy, and her gentle enjoyment changed to a raging heat. Her hand moved faster, gripped tighter, and his groan felt hot on her ear. He stopped teasing her with barely-there strokes and slid one finger, then two into her needy warmth. Her body stretched around his invasion, her wetness allowing him to enter her easily, fitting inside her like even his fingers were made just for her.
When he pulled them out, she felt empty and hollow, but then he was playing with her clit, and she forgot about everything else. He pinched her just hard enough to send a shocking jolt of pleasure through her, making her hips buck. She tried to press against his hand, to force him to give her more—more friction, more pressure, more of those addictive, lightning-hot strikes of bliss she felt when he rolled and played her clit beneath his fingers.
He shifted, tilting his pelvis to thrust slightly, dragging her attention back to the desperately hard cock she held. As his fingers plunged into her again, curling up so they rubbed a magical spot inside of her, she matched her rhythm to his. Together, they moved faster and faster, driving each other higher and higher. His teeth closed on her earlobe, pinching tightly in a confusing mix of pleasure and pain, and she rubbed her thumb just under the head of his cock, making him grunt and drive his fingers deep inside of her.
As if he’d pressed a button, the building pressure inside her burst, and she tumbled into climax. With a strangled scream, she dropped her head to his shoulder and bit down on the heavy bulge of muscle there.
“Fuck, Annabelle!” His words were barely more than a bared-teeth growl as he tensed in her hold, his come wetting the hand that she kept wrapped around his erupting cock. His fingers continued to move in and out of her, dragging out her orgasm until she felt like she’d been coming for days. It was only when her body went limp and she slid her hands out of his shorts that he withdrew. His hands didn’t go far, however, but stayed on her ass, cupping her bare bottom cheeks possessively.
As reality slowly returned, she kissed the spot where she’d set her teeth earlier. “Sorry about that. Carnivorous moment.”
His chuckle, dark and deep and satisfied, rolled through her, and she shivered with an aftershock of pleasure. “Understandable. I’ve always considered myself to be quite a tasty piece of meat.”
It felt good to laugh, her amusement bubbling through her blissfully wrung-out body. Resting her forehead on his shoulder, right on the place she’d just bitten and then kissed, she allowed herself to relax, sinking heavily against him and letting him support her weight. “That was nice.”
His chest shook against her again, but his voice was back to his usual light tone when he spoke. “It was nice, wasn’t it? Nice like a volcano erupting or tectonic plates shifting or the world’s biggest tsunami. Nice things like that.”
She leaned back so she could see his expression. “Okay, there might have been some lava flowing, but I’m not sure how I feel about my hand job being compared to natural disasters.”
This time, his laughter was loud and long and honest, making it impossible for her not to join in. “It was in no way disaster-like,” he said when he finally caught his breath. “I was thinking more along the lines of the earth moving.”
“Hmm.” Although she was doubtful, she decided to let it go, feeling too boneless and blissed out to worry about Louis’s unfortunate metaphors. “So...any plans tomorrow?”
Cocking his head, he gave her an almost unbearably cute hopeful look. “More of this?” He made a circular gesture that encompassed the two of them and the bed. “Unless you had other plans?”
“I thought I’d do some shopping.” When his face fell, she rolled her eyes and tried to make her point more clear. “Maybe in the pharmacy section?”
“Oh! Condoms. Yes. First thing.” He was all smiles again, now that she’d made it obvious that she was amenable to spending most of the next day in bed with him. “Good plan. Wrap it up and all that. After all, safety is no accident.”
With a groan at his cheesy humor, she forced herself to move off his lap—or tried to, at least. Louis’s hands tightened on her ass, keeping her firmly in place.
Giving him a quick kiss—and loving that she had a full-access pass to his mouth now—she said, “I promise I’ll come back. I just need to clean up. You made me all sticky.”
His smile was wicked as he slowly, reluctantly pulled his hands out of her panties. “Fine. Hurry back, and then I’ll go, and then we can cuddle.”
“We could save time and shower together.” She gave him her best innuendo-filled eyebrow lift, but her stomach dipped when, rather than laughing, Louis dropped his gaze and his mouth tightened for a brief moment before he put on the fakest smile in the history of the universe.
“Go ahead. I’ll just get in your way.”
Unable to stand his plastered-on grin, she did the first thing she could think of: tickle torture.
His startled expression shifted to laughing protests as her fingers darted toward the spots on his sides that she’d found were especially sensitive. “Stop... Wait... You’re so mean, Annabelle Shay! Not there! Nooo!” After the initial few moments when he was surprised by the attack and strictly on the defensive, he started retaliating. She realized that she wasn’t the only one who’d been paying attention to finding ticklish spots earlier, and soon she was in full retreat mode.
“Enough! Uncle!” She scrambled off the bed and ran for the bathroom. “The bell has rung! The whistle has been blown. Tickle fight’s over!” When the bathroom door was almost closed, she paused and stuck her head around the edge. “The ref has declared me today’s official tickle fight winner.” With a satisfied grin, she closed the door, shutting out Louis’s howl of protest.
Once she was alone in the bathroom, however, her smile faded. It bothered her that he wanted to hide his body from her. She wondered if he thought she’d be disgusted, and it hurt to think he didn’t trust her enough to get naked around her.
Shaking off her gloomy thoughts, she headed for the sink. So much had happened in just one day, and her poor brain was completely overwhelmed. Louis would come around eventually. Tonight, she decided to just replay the memory of how he’d felt under her exploring fingers and the tender and hungry way he’d touched her. She couldn’t let her doubts ruin her enjoyment of their fun times.
Her smile returned as she recalled the mind-blowing orgasm she’d just experienced. And a very fun time it was, too.
Chapter Fourteen
A beeping sound woke her.
“Wha...?” She scrunched up her face when the sound didn’t stop. It wasn’t horribly loud, but it was enough to keep her from drifting off again. The other side of the bed was rumpled but empty, and she felt a pang of disappointment and worry that Louis wasn’t able to sleep. Squinting toward the source of the noise, she spotted Louis’s phone on the nightstand. By t
he way it was glowing, she knew it had to be the source of the beeping.
“Louis, you nut, why do you set your phone alarm to go off in the middle of the night? It’s not like you need help waking up or anything.” Grumbling to herself, she crawled over to the other side of the bed and grabbed the phone. Her eyes were still blurry with sleep, so it took several blinks before she figured out that the beeping wasn’t a regular alert. It was the app that notified him when the gallery alarm was tripped.
Fully awake, she got out of bed, still clutching the phone. The beeping grated on her too-alert nerves, and she tapped at the screen to silence the alarm. Although she knew it was most likely nothing—Louis was probably the one who’d set it off—her heart still beat more quickly. The bathroom was dark and empty, and he wasn’t in the living room or the kitchen, either. That made it even more likely that he was wandering around the gallery and had forgotten to punch in the deactivation code, but the emptiness of the rooms made her shiver. She wished he was there so she could hand over the phone and let him deal with it. At three in the morning, it was all too easy to let her imagination run her into a panicked state.
After grabbing her keys, she eased open the door that led into the hallway outside the studio and peeked around the frame. Her blood rushed loudly in her ears, even when she saw that there was nothing moving in the hall. Without turning on the light, just in case there really was an intruder, she tiptoed to the studio door and let herself inside. The tile was icy against her feet, and she blamed the chill for the goose bumps that decorated her back, even when she knew it was apprehension more than her literally cold feet.
The studio appeared empty, as well. The only illumination came from the security lights edging the floor and what filtered in through the windows. The worktable and the cardboard box on top of it cast long shadows across the floor, and Annabelle realized that she was tiptoeing through the dim space like a cartoon cat burglar. She tried to laugh at herself, but she was too tense.
The edges of Louis’s phone dug into the palm of one hand, as her keys bit into her other. By the time she reached the gallery door, her fingers were cramping with tension. As she shook them out, the keys jangled together, loud in the silent, empty studio.
Stop being an idiot. The practical voice inside her head calmed her, and she moved to press the code into the digital lock on the gallery door. Before she could touch the keypad, she saw that the door was already ajar.
It’s just Louis, she told herself as she silently eased open the door. After all, he’s not in the living quarters or the studio, so where else would he be? She was going to kick his ass for freaking her out like this. He should know better than to trip the alarm. It had become so automatic for her to deactivate and set when she was coming and going in the gallery, and he’d been doing it for a lot longer than she had.
She was tempted to call out to him, but something stopped her—the same something that kept her from turning on any of the lights. It was the what if thoughts. What if it wasn’t Louis? What if someone had broken in? What if it was a serial killer, and any sound from her would give away her location, and he would creep up behind her with his enormous machete—Stop. Her practical side did not have any patience for the thread of panic running through her.
Stepping into the gallery, she glanced around. Unlike the sparely furnished studio, the gallery was full of nooks and pillars, which created strange shadows and dark crevices, hidden places just big enough to fit a full-grown adult. Her breath came more quickly, and she consciously slowed down her inhalations and exhalations, needing to hear over the sound of her heart beating and the air leaving her lungs in a noisy rush.
She made her way through the gallery, her eyes up as her gaze moved around the space, trying to pick out anything that seemed out of place. It was hard to do, since the room looked completely different in the dark. She was used to the gallery when it was brightly lit, rather than the place of shadows it was in the middle of the night.
When she’d almost reached the back room and nothing had reached out to grab her, her shoulders fell slightly, making her realize that they’d been drawn up defensively toward her ears. She’d never thought she was this big of a chicken, but this false alarm had brought out her nervous-Nellie side.
As she reached for the back room doorknob, a faint sound caught her attention. There was a faint wailing of an emergency vehicle in the distance, and she groaned out loud. Since no one had entered the code into the alarm in time, the police had received a notification. Now she was going to have to deal with letting the officers know it had just been a false alarm...and in her skimpy pajamas, no less.
Blowing out a frustrated breath, she shoved the back room door open and stepped inside, the thought of the upcoming embarrassing meeting distracting her from her nerves. The complete darkness of the windowless room enveloped her, and she turned to reach for the light switch, mentally cursing Louis for causing this whole mess and then disappearing on her. Finding the switch by feel, she flipped it on just as she realized that the room should’ve been locked.
Pain exploded across the back of her skull and everything went dark.
* * *
Yet another beeping noise woke her. Unlike in the movies, she was fully aware of where she was and what had happened as soon as her eyes opened to see Louis’s worried face hovering right above her.
“Hey, Louis,” she said, her voice sounding gritty.
“Hey, Annabelle Shay.” He didn’t pull away. If anything, he leaned closer. She had to admit that it wasn’t a bad sight to wake up to, even if she was in the hospital, if the beeping machines and stiff sheets and narrow bed was anything to go by. “You scared the fuck out of me.”
“Sorry.” Clearing her throat, she swallowed, trying to moisten her dry throat as she shifted, performing a mental inventory. Her head was throbbing like a torpedo had tunneled through it, but all her other body parts seemed to still be intact. “I take it that you weren’t the one to set off the alarm in the gallery, then?”
His brows puckered together. “I know better than to forget to deactivate the alarm.”
“Right. I should’ve known that.” After hearing him say it, the thought of him accidentally tripping the alarm didn’t make much sense. She should’ve just stayed in bed and called to ask the police to come more quickly. It was starting to feel weird to be looking up at Louis, as much as she loved seeing his face, so she tried to push herself up.
“Wait. Be careful.” He fussed around her, obviously torn between holding her back in a reclined position and helping her sit up. “You were just unconscious for a long time. I think you should stay still until a doctor approves you being in an upright position.”
Her laugh sounded rusty and hurt her head, but it still felt good. “Don’t be a doofus and help me sit up. Doesn’t the bed move? Which button is it? I don’t want to shoot myself up with morphine or call in a team of nurses or anything by accident.”
Now Louis was starting to smile, although he didn’t stop hovering and trying to do everything for her. “Here. It’s this one. Quit grabbing for it. I’ll do it. I’m not the one who had my head knocked in.”
Once she was sitting up with the top of the bed raised, her head was pounding even more, but she felt less helpless and vulnerable than she did lying down. If only Louis was going to be in the room, she was okay with staying horizontal, but doctors and nurses and other people she didn’t know would be traipsing in any minute, and she needed a more upright position for that.
Louis settled on the chair next to the bed for just a moment before he bounced up again. “Shove over.” He sat on the bed next to her, using his hand to lift his prosthesis to rest next to his outstretched leg.
She was going to make some snarky comment about how it was okay for her to be jostled when it was for something he needed, but she kept her mouth shut and shifted over enough so he could sit next to her. The press of his b
ody against hers was reassuring and warm, and she didn’t want to lose that contact.
Wrapping his arm around her shoulders, he pressed a gentle kiss to the top of her head. Even that slight pressure hurt her poor, sore noggin, but she didn’t complain. His kisses were worth the bit of extra pain.
“Are you okay?” she asked, not able to stop herself from cuddling against his side. “What happened after I got knocked over the head? That is what happened, right? There was someone in the gallery, and they hit me over the head with something?” Her chest grew tight as she said the words. Hearing it out loud somehow made it feel more terribly real, and her heart rate quickened, making her head throb even more ferociously with each pulse of blood through her injured skull. “Where were you? Did they knock you out first?”
“I was on a run.” He kissed her head again, his lips lingering this time. “Sorry, Annabelle. I shouldn’t have left you alone, especially in the middle of the night. I slept like a rock for a few hours but woke up...” Clearing his throat, he raised his index finger to point at the ceiling. “Excited.” She bit back a laugh when she finally caught his meaning. “Since you were sleeping and have threatened my life if I even thought about waking you up in the wee hours, I figured I’d go for a jog. I left you a note on the fridge, but you wouldn’t have seen that in the dark, or in the light, unless you were going to make breakfast or wanted a middle-of-the-night snack or—”
“It’s okay.” She felt bad interrupting when he sounded so guilty and angry with himself, but she was dying to know what had happened. “You don’t have to babysit me all the time. I lived all by myself for six months before moving in with you, remember?”
His mouth tightened into a straight line, his jaw firming stubbornly. “After this, no more middle-of-the-night runs unless you come with me. I’ll just wake you up for fun times, instead. I’m going to stick right next to you. When I saw you lying there on the floor, I thought you were...” He cleared his throat. “That’s not going to happen again. Not on my watch.”
