by Katee Robert
Her eyes widened even as she smiled. “I want your mouth here.” Samara traced the line of her neck with a single finger.
Beckett wasted no time following its path with his tongue. He kissed her neck as if that was all he’d ever get of her, the only touch she’d ever allow. She went soft in his arms, and he nipped her earlobe. It seemed to jolt her a little, because she reached down and unzipped her dress. A tiny wiggle, and it hit the floor, leaving her in only a bra and panties, both a deep purple. “My breasts. I want you there.”
“Gladly.” Instead of going to his knees, he hooked the backs of her thighs and lifted her to him. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and he felt the heat of her pussy even through his slacks. He captured her nipple through the lace of her bra.
“Harder,” she gasped. “Don’t be gentle with me.”
He walked them through the suite to lay her on the bed, using the change in position to shove her bra down, trapping her arms against her sides. He cupped her breasts, pinching her nipples and kissed one and then the other, laying into the sensitive bud with tongue and teeth, driven on by her moans and writhing hips.
“Lower. I need your mouth lower.”
He left her bra where it was, liking the picture it created. It reminded him of the way she’d waited for him in his bed. On display. And what a display it was. Her high breasts shook with each breath, her dark nipples at attention, her skin flushed from desire. For him. He licked down her stomach, stopping just shy of the band of her panties. “Here?”
“Not funny.” She lifted her hips. “Kiss me, Beckett. Kiss me like you mean it.”
He obeyed, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to her silk panties. She was so wet he could taste her through the fabric, and he sucked on her clit hard enough to have her back bowing off the bed. It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough as long as there was a barrier between them. He caught the band in his teeth and dragged her panties down slowly.
Her eyes flew open and she bent up to watch him, her lips parted. “Oh. My. God.”
He moved slower, revealing her inch by inch, until her panties hit her knees. There, they restrained her the same way her bra did, the pseudo bondage seeming to do as much for her as it did for him. “Someday, I want you tied in red silk…No, in purple the exact shade of your panties.” He parted her with his fingers and used his thumb to circle her clit. “Spread for me. Wet and wanting and desperate for whatever pleasure I’m willing to give you.” He pushed a single finger into her. “I wouldn’t make you wait long, Samara. I’m as desperate for you as you are for me. No power games, no matter how intoxicating, can hold up to that desire.
“I changed my mind.”
He froze. “What?”
“I don’t want your mouth.” She sat up and disentangled herself from her bra. “I want to give you mine.”
Samara pushed Beckett onto his back. She craved the feel of his cock in her mouth. She wanted to make him lose control. Even when he was inside her, driving her out of her mind with pleasure, he kept a part of himself tightly wound. Contained.
She wanted everything he had to give. He’d already seen and accepted her shadows—she wanted to grant him that same gift.
She moved between his thighs and lightly raked her fingers down them. He was as muscled there as he was everywhere else—lean and in fighting shape. She took his cock in her hand and squeezed. “I see you, Beckett King. I accept you.” I think I love you. She couldn’t say it. Not now. Not while so much still hung over their heads.
“Samara…” A muscle twitched in his jaw as she gave him another stroke. “You don’t have to.”
It didn’t matter if he meant giving him head or accepting whatever sins he carried within him. Neither of them was perfect, but that might just be what made them work. “I have you. Relax. Give it all to me.”
He huffed out a strangled laugh. “There isn’t going to be much relaxing with my cock so close to your mouth.”
“Mmm.” She leaned down and sucked the head of him into her mouth. Even if Samara hadn’t planned on giving Beckett the show of a lifetime, the look in his brown eyes would have inspired her to do exactly that. He looked like a drowning man clinging to a life preserver and watching a mountain of a wave descend upon him. Lost. Found. All at the same time.
She lifted her head enough to repeat, “Give it all to me.” And then his cock was between her lips and she sucked him down, down, down. Beckett’s thighs tensed beneath her hands, and he sifted his fingers through her hair, pulling it back from her face.
“Fuck, Samara, you should see the picture you make. Suck me hard.”
The command sent a bolt of lightning through her. She loved this, loved the push and pull between them, loved handing over control, if only for a little while. Beckett’s cock was wide and long enough that she had to concentrate to take all of him. She relaxed into it, running her tongue along the underside of him, reacquainting herself with every centimeter. Sheer pleasure threatened to send her spiraling and it was only his hands in her hair that kept her anchored in that moment. With him.
His grip tightened and he lifted her off his cock. “You keep sucking me so sweetly, I’m going to lose control and start fucking your pretty little mouth.”
She licked her lips, loving the way he followed the movement. It made her thighs clench together and pleasure throb through her clit. “Maybe that’s exactly what I want.” She needed him wild for her. She needed him to lose control.
“Samara—”
She was tired of talking. She flicked the tip of his cock with her tongue and sucked him down again. Before, she’d been playing—enjoying giving Beckett head for the sake of being able to do it again—but if he had half a chance, he’d stop her before she was finished. She sucked him hard, using her hand to counterstroke in the way she knew he loved. With her other hand, she cupped his balls, gently squeezing in counterpoint to what she did with her lips and tongue.
“Fuuuuck.”
The word was her only warning. One second she was going for broke, the next she was on her back with Beckett’s mouth on hers. He wrenched her legs wide and thrust against her, his cock sliding over her clit. “Wicked woman.” He lifted her hips to fit them more tightly together. “You want my cum? You have to fucking earn it.”
She couldn’t catch her breath. She wasn’t sure she wanted to. Samara raked her nails down his back, urging him closer. “I was earning it.”
“Not yet.” He nipped her neck and then sucked the spot hard. “I love the sight of you taking me deep, but it’s not your mouth I’m craving right now.” He reached between them and shoved two fingers into her. She clamped around him instinctively, and he groaned. “It feels like you’re trying to hold me to you.”
“I am.” She couldn’t think past his fingers filling her. It was good—so good—but nowhere near enough. Beckett had been right all along—there was only one thing she craved and anything else was a poor substitute. “I need you. Now.” She snaked her foot down the back of his leg and pushed up with her hips. “I can’t wait any longer.”
He cursed again. “Samara, I’m trying to do right by you and you’re making it fucking impossible.”
“The only thing I want fucking is us.”
He chuckled against her neck. “Yeah, I got that.” He shifted them closer to the edge of the bed and reached blindly into the nightstand. He pulled back and ripped the condom open, but Samara snatched it out of his hand.
“Let me.” She kissed his jaw as she rolled it over his cock, taking her time. As much as she wanted him inside her, teasing him was totally worth waiting a little bit. Once he was sheathed, she gave him another stroke.
“You’re killing me, woman.” Beckett settled back between her thighs and framed her face with his hands. He kissed her like the kiss itself was the main event and his cock wasn’t poised at her entrance. The slow slide of his tongue against hers held a promise that encompassed more than this moment.
A future.
He thrust
into her in a smooth movement, as natural as her next breath. Pleasure and promise built with each stroke, and still the kiss went on and on. Beckett held her as if she were the most precious thing in the world, as if nothing else mattered but her happiness. Dangerous, fanciful thoughts, but she wrapped them up and held them close even as she clung to him.
“Yes. Yes. Yes.” Each word punctuated a thrust, an answer to a question he hadn’t given voice to. It didn’t matter. Words were superficial compared to the connection they built there and now.
Beckett’s tempo increased, and she rose to meet each stroke. He wrapped his arms around her, so she lay in his embrace instead of on the bed, holding her as close as two people could be. “I don’t give a fuck what the world throws at us. I’m keeping you, Samara. ”
She came with a soft cry, pressing her face against his shoulder, telling herself the burning in her eyes was orgasmic bliss and not anything resembling tears. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes to everything.”
Chapter Sixteen
Journey made it into the office before anyone else on Wednesday morning. Even her mother hadn’t graced the building yet, which was just as well. Nothing ruined a day like dealing with Lydia before they both had their morning coffee. In the twenty-four hours she’d spent going over Samara’s information on the bid, Journey had racked up over a hundred emails.
Sixty of them were marked as needing urgent responses.
Journey dropped her head to her desk and groaned. I should have fought harder to keep Samara on this project. Or at least demanded that either Anderson or Bellamy come back here to help with the workload. She knew better than to ask for help from her little sister. Her brothers both held executive roles within Kingdom Corp, but precious Eliza was off finding herself or some bullshit in Europe. Oh, that wasn’t what anyone was calling it—she had a modeling contract, after all—but that’s exactly what she was doing. Dodging her responsibility to the family.
None of it mattered right then. There was no one to help, and Journey wouldn’t ask them for help even if they were in Houston. To ask for assistance was as good as admitting she wasn’t capable of doing her job, and her mother would never let her live it down.
The phone rang, and she spent three seconds seriously considering crawling under her desk and pretending she wasn’t in the office yet. Just long enough for her to drink her damn coffee in peace and conquer the overwhelmed feeling taking root deep inside her.
But the phone just…kept…ringing.
Journey angled her head to look at her watch. Six a.m. Who the hell was calling her at six in the damn morning?
There was no help for it. She answered. “Journey King.” It was too early to fake a smile, so she sounded downright surly.
“Hey, sweetheart.”
She went cold. Not this. Not today. Oh God, make it stop. It took everything she had to make her voice cool and disinterested. “Elliott.”
“Don’t be like that, sweetheart. You don’t sound happy to hear from your old man.”
She stared blankly at the photograph across from her desk, trying to draw strength from the vivid autumn tree standing alone in a misty field. As alone as I am right now. “I’m not happy to hear from you. It’s been…” She shuddered. “Eight? No, nine—nine months since I heard from you. I would have preferred to have gone another nine years. What do you want, Elliott?”
All the playful wheedling disappeared from his tone. “Your mother’s in a shitload of trouble. If you’re not careful, she’s going to bring you down with her when she crashes and burns.”
Journey pulled the phone away from her ear. “Where are you right now?”
“Los Angeles.”
She did some quick math. “You’re drunk, aren’t you? That’s the only reason I can think that you’d be calling me at four a.m. your time and spouting some bullshit about Mom. If you want to fight with her, leave me out of it.” She leaned forward to hang up.
“Don’t you dare end this call, sweetheart. You won’t like what comes next.”
Journey froze, and hated herself for reacting to that tone in his voice. She closed her eyes. He’s not here. He’s not even in the same state. She wasn’t a scared little girl anymore. She had her own power, and with hundreds of miles between her and her father, she should be able to handle a single conversation. Except even hearing his voice makes me feel like I’ve been doused in sewage. “If you were in a position to do something with that big talk of yours, you would have done it by now. Good-bye, Elliott.”
“You tell that bitch mother of yours that she’s bit off more than she can chew with Beckett King. That boy isn’t going to roll over the same way his daddy did.”
Journey opened her eyes. Questions bubbled up. What the hell do you know about Beckett King? What did Lydia do this time? How do you have anything to do with it? She didn’t voice any of it. Questioning her father was like feeding internet trolls—once he got a little taste of power and attention, there was no getting rid of him. Better to ignore his bullshit until he found someone else to terrorize. “You’d be better served to sleep that drunk off than calling me issuing threats. Don’t call here again.” She hung up.
Her hands shook so hard when she reached for her coffee that she abandoned the motion halfway through. Fuck me. She shot a look at her open door, half sure she’d heard her mother’s heels clicking down the long hallway from the elevator to her office. But no, it was all in her head.
It was just a phone call. The man was two time zones away. There was absolutely no reason for her heart to be kicking in her chest like she’d just run a marathon. She wrapped her arms around herself, but that only made her shakes worse. Damn it.
Before she could talk herself out of it, she grabbed her cell phone and hurried to shut her office door. Journey locked it for good measure, but it didn’t make her feel any less exposed. Stupid. Irrational. Crazy. She shut the blinds next, blocking out the lightening sky. It wasn’t enough.
Her chest hurt, and no amount of trying to count her way through her inhales and exhales helped. It got tighter and tighter, until the only thing she could do was huddle on the little sofa situated in the corner farthest from the door. She pulled her knees to her chest and rocked back and forth. He’s not here. He can’t get to you. You are not this fucking weak. Get ahold of yourself. It didn’t help.
It never did.
She unlocked her phone with numb fingers, even as she told herself it wasn’t necessary, that it was wrong to call her big brother. It didn’t stop her this time any more than it had stopped her every other time. The phone rang and rang, the seconds spiraling away from her in a whirlpool she could almost see.
“Journey?”
“Anderson.” Her voice was barely a whisper of an exhale.
The background noise faded and she could hear him moving away from wherever he’d been. Probably an important meeting that your crazy ass is dragging him away from. A door closed and then he was there, extending a lifeline through the phone to her. “What’s wrong?”
“It was him.” No need to specify. There was only one him in their lives.
“He’s not there.” Anderson spoke sharply, as if he could command his words to be the truth rather than the inquiry they actually were.
She shook her head. “No. He called. I…I’m sorry. I should be able to handle this on my own.” She was so damn capable in so many damn ways, but one call from Elliott Bancroft and she was a whimpering mess reaching for her real-life teddy bear.
“Don’t be sorry. I’m here. Do you need to talk, or do you want me to?”
The question felt just as formal this time as it had every time before now, starting when she was a little girl who would hide in her big brother’s room to escape their father. “Can you? Just for a little bit.” She loathed the weakness, loathed leaning on him. “Wait—Anderson, don’t. I’m okay. I…I’ll be okay.”
He ignored her pathetic attempt at bravado just like he always did. “I’m hoping we’ll wrap up the last o
f these meetings today and reach an agreement with Senator McMurphy. He’s coming around, but he’s taken a disliking to Bellamy, so it’s hampering the progress.”
“Poor Bellamy.”
“No ‘poor Bellamy.’ The first thing he did when he saw the good senator was to drop the names of both the man’s mistresses in conversation. He’s so damn smug I want to toss him out a moving car sometimes.”
She cracked a smile. “Poor Anderson.”
“That’s right. Poor Anderson. And you’ll never guess who I saw yesterday…” He went on like that, talking about nonconsequential things until her panic retreated and she finally stopped shaking.
Journey inhaled deeply. “I’m okay now.”
“Do you need me to come back?”
He would if she asked. To hell with their mother’s plans and the important business meetings and political agendas. If Journey told her big brother she needed him, he’d be on the next flight out of DC and winging back to Houston to save her.
I need to be able to save myself.
“I’m fine. I’ll see you next week?”
“Yeah, we should have things wrapped up by then.” He hesitated. “Hang in there, Jo. I know that asshole doesn’t call often, but if you need me to…”
He didn’t have to finish that sentence for her to know where he was going with it. “No.” She straightened and put as much of a command into her voice as she could. “No, Anderson. Don’t you dare.” Her brother had been protecting her for too long, and she’d be damned before he put another stain on his soul on her behalf. “I’m fine.”
“I know.”
It couldn’t be more obvious that he didn’t believe the words any more than she did. She had to get off the damn call before he changed his mind and did come back. “I’ll call you soon—a real call. Not me freaking out over nothing.”
