Sweeter Than Revenge

by Ann Christopher

  Kicking off his pants and boxers, he came right back to her outstretched arms, denying her more than a quick glimpse of his huge arousal, tight, rounded butt and endless legs. Later she would stare her fill, but for now, she needed him.

  The second his hot, naked body slid across the cool sheets and touched hers, they both lost all control. The waiting had gone on too long. Rolling on top of her, using his delicious weight to press her deep into the mattress, he stroked her overheated skin with rough, impatient hands. Up and down her sides they went, caressing her arms, kneading her thighs, palming her butt.

  She cried and whimpered, trying to wrap her legs around him and bind him to her, to kiss him, to stroke shoulders and face and sex, desperate to touch it all now,feel it all now,taste it all now.

  Unstoppable whispers poured out of her mouth between kisses and nibbles—things he should know, things she had to tell him. “I missed you,” she said against his mouth, licking those lips, biting him. “I missed you. Don’t leave me again. Promise. I missedyou.”

  But he was lost in his own mindless monologue, whispering his own secrets as he settled between her legs and rocked his hard, demanding sex against her, driving her wild.

  “Maria…Maria…I can’t believe we’re…Ah-hh, Maria. I missed you, missed you…missed you.”

  His lips worked their way back to hers again, and another deep, wet, sucking kiss set off the first vague wave of ripples at her core and sent them radiating out to her belly. It was only a hint of things to come before he got through with her. Laughing and crying, she writhed and remembered. It had always been like this with David.

  Always would be.

  Pulling back, he began his slow descent down her body, missing nothing, killing her. Teasing her breasts with maddening light strokes, pushing them together, licking, nibbling…biting…suckling…torturing.

  Her spasms grew as she arced against him, struggling to get away. “Please stop, David. Please don’t…I can’t take it…I can’t—”

  He laughed, as she’d known he would, and didn’t stop, as she’d known he wouldn’t. Moving lower, he paused long enough to press his tongue to her navel and the spasms low in her belly continued, as he could surely feel.

  Those long fingers came up to stroke between her legs and she tried to brace herself, but of course that was impossible. Flinging her arms over her head, thrashing, she floated in a netherworld between consciousness and un. Dipping his fingers in her dew, he crooned, a thrilling sound from deep in his throat. Taking all the time in the world, those fingers inched back…back…and then slowly forward so that eternity passed before he finally rubbed over her core.

  She shattered, hurtling off that razor’s edge into pure bliss, the sharp spasms racking her body in a delicious convulsion. From very far away, above the nothingness in her mind and the loudness of her cries, she heard David laugh again, in triumph, and she remembered, and loved, that laugh.

  But then he lowered his head, giving her not one second to catch her breath. Latching on, he suckled, milking the orgasm, drawing more pleasure from her spent body, building her up again only to shove her off the cliff again, faster and harder than before.

  How she survived it all, she didn’t know. She’d never known. All she knew was that even if it killed her—and it probably would—she would give him some small fraction of the ecstasy he’d just given her.

  Somehow finding the strength from some deep, hidden reserve, she pushed him off her and onto his back. Their gazes locked and some of the smugness in his expression faded, replaced by wary anticipation. She straddled him and he shuddered. And this time, she laughed.

  Gripping him, she stroked that straining velvet flesh. Against all odds, her body tightened anew with excitement.

  “I need—” she began, looking around, trying to focus for just one more minute.

  “Pocket,” he gasped. “Pants.”

  Staring down at him, she didn’t know whether to be angry at him for presuming or herself for being predictable. “Cocky bastard,” she muttered.

  “No,” he said, and his body tightened as though he were scared or anxious. He shook his head and stared at her with clear, serious eyes. “I hoped. That’s all.”

  For an arrested moment she teetered between believing him and not. In the end, the look on his face told her everything she needed to know. Mollified, she smiled and felt his body relax beneath her. She found what she was looking for and slid it on him while he watched and panted, his hips surging as if they couldn’t wait. Straddling him again, she leaned forward to lick his lips just a little—enough to tantalize but not satisfy.

  The teasing drove him wild. His dark, glazed eyes, the thrilling sheen of sweat, the ten strong fingers digging into her hips and holding her in a death grip all told her she had him where she wanted him. Shifting just enough, she dangled her breasts in his face, rubbing first one nipple, then the other, across his mouth.

  That did it. Growling—he’d always growled—he reached between them, maneuvered her a little, then brought her down, hard, on his penis. He stretched her, and she gripped him, and it was unbearable for both of them.

  Lowering herself until they were belly to belly, she cupped his face and stared into his dark, unfocused eyes. She would not close her eyes and miss anything. Not when she’d waited so long.

  Licking his lips again, nuzzling, she found a slow, lazy rhythm, and he met her stroke for stroke. His serrated breath feathered her face as he spoke.

  “I missed you, Maria…. Missed you…. Missed you.”

  The words became a chant, and they were the last things she heard before the pleasure became too great and she couldn’t hear anything. Mindless and wild, she let go of everything: the past, the lingering hard feelings, the doubt. She pushed herself up and ran her hands over her breasts as she rode him with a violence born from missing and needing him—needing this—for years. Bruising fingers clamped onto her hips, anchoring her even as he bucked wildly beneath her and drove her on. At last her body flew apart, and sharp, piercing ecstasy broke over her.

  “David,” she cried, arching backward as her eyes rolled closed. It felt like she’d lost all control over herself, and her hands flew to the sides of her head and pulled her hair because they didn’t know what else to do. The pain only intensified the endless, throbbing pleasure, and she keened, crying for him like a wounded animal. “David…David…David.”

  This time he didn’t laugh. In a single rough motion, he rolled her beneath him and then he was on top, thrusting and riding. Maria’s heavy limbs no longer wanted to work properly, but she managed to pull him closer, digging her nails into his neck so he couldn’t get away, and locking her legs around his waist. Sensations swirled around her: the delicious, musky scent of their mating, the slick heat of his hard chest flattening her aching breasts, the thrilling friction of him stretching her where they joined. It wasn’t enough. Could never be enough. Floating and euphoric, it took Maria a while to realize he was talking to her. Cracking her lids open, she saw glittering, focused eyes staring at her from his strained and sweaty face.

  “Do you still love me, Maria?” he demanded.

  Some lingering flicker of her instinct for self-preservation flared, but she ignored it. How could she deny something that was as plain as the nose on her face?

  “Yes.”

  His eyes drifted closed and a smile flickered across his mouth. Lowering his head, he nuzzled her lips, teasing her with his tongue but not kissing deep like she needed him to. She whimpered a complaint.

  “Do you?” he asked again.

  “Yes,”she gasped.

  Another kiss, another lick, another nuzzle, and then, “I don’t believe you.”

  Maria’s full heart and the pleasure bursting inside her strained to break free until she wanted to come out of her skin. “I do.”

  “I don’t believe you,”he insisted, though his lips were trying to smile again and the strain was leaving his face. “. don’t—”

&nbs
p; “I love you.”Arching backward into the pillow, trying to get away from the excruciating rapture that kept growing and growing, she struggled to hold on to consciousness. “I love you…love you…only you.”

  Some noise—a laugh, a groan, a sigh—came out of his mouth, and for one frenzied moment his pounding threatened to rip her body in two. And then he was coming, and she felt him jerking and wished there was nothing between them to keep her from soaking up the part of himself that he poured inside her.

  “Maria,” he cried. “Maria…Maria…”

  His hoarse, joyful voice endlessly calling her name filled her ears, and her heart.

  Later, lying face to face, with their arms and legs intertwined, they talked for a long time and tried to cover all the ground they’d lost in each other’s lives.

  “David,” she said, running her thumb along his bottom lip and marveling at its softness, “why didn’t you ever get married?”

  His face darkened. He gave her thumb a sharp nip, and she yelped. “Why do you think?”

  She’d suspected it was because of her, but she’d needed to hear it from his lips. There was one other thing that nagged at her. “Why did you come back?

  “To punish you.” He paused, then gave her a drowsy smile. “To get you back.”

  “Can I tell you something? It’s about…my marriage.”

  He stiffened, his arms tightening around her as if he feared George were hiding somewhere in the room, waiting to swoop in and snatch her from him a second time.

  “I don’t want anyone in this bed with us, Maria,” he warned.

  “There never has been. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

  Now she had his attention. He pulled back a little, propped his elbow and leaned his head on his hand. “What’re you talking about?”

  “I spent most of my wedding night in the bathroom of the honeymoon suite, crying my eyes out. And Geo—” She swallowed the rest of the name, knowing how much David didn’t want to hear her say it. “He was furious. He knew I’d never have married him if you’d wanted me. We argued our way through Europe, and I never let him touch me. So our marriage got off to a very bad start and got worse.”

  “Oh,” he said faintly. Thoughtful, he stared off in the distance for a long time. “So you never—?”

  “Consummated my marriage? Eventually. We should’ve annulled it, but if I’d been smart enough to do that, I’d never’ve married him in the first place.”

  Looking remarkably unhappy about the consummation of a failed marriage that’d occurred years ago, he tried to turn his face away, but she caught his chin and turned it back, forcing him to look at her. “I just want you to know this one thing,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “You were always in the bed with me and my husband. But he’s never been in ours.”

  Several long beats passed, and then the tension left his body, even if the doubt in his eyes lingered.

  There was no room for doubts between them. Not now. She kissed him, hard, on the lips. “Remember,”she whispered. “Only you. Only you.”

  “Maria,” he said, and now there was no doubt—only joy—in those dark eyes. “I can’t believe we’re back. Like this.”

  “Neither can I.”

  “I’m sorry I hurt you. I didn’t mean to.”

  Her heart contracted, remembering the pain. “Why did you leave like that? What did you think would happen?”

  He furrowed his brow and she could see that he was searching, trying to explain the inexplicable. Finally he blew out a frustrated sigh. “I don’t know. I can’t really explain it. On the one hand, I felt panicked, like I needed to get away from you before I got so obsessed that I didn’t care about school. Growing up poor, and then getting into a great school, I just…I neededthat opportunity. I couldn’t stay poor. I was too ambitious.”

  She nodded unhappily, trying to be understanding about this unneeded reminder that he’d chosen his education and career over her.

  “But on the other hand,” he said, “I thought you understood what I needed to do…that it was for us…and you’d wait until the time was right and I came back for you.”

  “For us?What do you mean?”

  “How could a poor guy like me hope to have any chance with an uptown girl like you? I had to do something to secure my future first.”

  “My God,” she cried. “How many different times do I have to tell you I never cared about whether you had money or not—”

  “Icared.”

  Stalemated, they stared at each other. In his eyes she saw his pride and his absolute immovability on this issue. Somehow she loved him even more because of it.

  “We have to do better this time,” she said. “I need you to let me in, okay? Tell me what you’re thinking, so I can understand you. I don’t read minds.”

  “I know.”

  “You try to keep me from getting too close, and I don’t like it. You never wanted me to see your apartment before, and you’d never introduce me to your father, and now he’s dead and I never got to meet him—”

  His face tightened and his eyes went stormy and dark.

  “You have to trust me, and I’m not sure you do. You’ve got to know I don’t care about any of that. The money, your family, your roots…none of that matters to me.”

  Looking away, he blinked, and she felt him struggling with something. “What is it?”

  He looked back, and whatever emotion she’d seen was now safely banked where she couldn’t access it. Raising her hand to his lips, he kissed her palm. “That’s enough for now, baby. We’ll get it all figured out.”

  “Will we?”

  “Yes.”

  His fierce determination stopped her cold, and she didn’t dare question him again. “Well,” she said, reassured but still uneasy, “I guess we’d better get ready to go home, huh? We still have to face Daddy tonight.”

  Pulling away, she scooted to the edge of the bed, the covers falling and exposing her to the waist. Behind her she heard his sharp intake of breath, and then his hands caught her around the hips and hauled her back. She squealed with delight as he rolled on top of her and nudged her thighs apart with his knee.

  “In a minute,” he said, settling between her legs.

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 18

  “Let me get this straight,” Ellis said later that night.

  Seated behind the desk at his home office, he stared at Maria from over the top of his narrow reading glasses. Doting father had been replaced by businessman with a killer instinct who couldn’t understand the near loss of a client. His white eyebrows had lowered into a single, furry, angry line over his eyes, like a giant albino caterpillar. Other parents no doubt had an angry voice to let their children know they meant business, but with Ellis it was the quiet, civilized voice that struck terror in her heart. David sat on the sofa in the corner, far away from her chair in front of her father’s desk, but still ringside to the verbal thrashing her father was about to give her.

  “I talked with Anastasia earlier. You remember Anastasia, don’t you?” Ellis continued.

  Maria really could do without the sarcasm right now.

  “She said you told her she’d made an ass of herself on national TV. You called her employees stooges.Oh, and—what was it?—you told her we couldn’t give her book away if there was a toilet paper shortage. And then, to top it all off, you firedher. Does that about cover it?”

  Surly though she felt, Maria knew better than to answer her father. She settled for crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at him.

  “Luckily, she had a reading—” Ellis made quotation marks with his fingers “—and decided the stars wanted her to stay with the firm.”

  Maria heaved a huge sigh of relief and heard David do the same.

  Ellis pulled his glasses off and tossed them on his blotter. “But she still complained about us to her publisher.”

  Maria’s heart sank.

  “Not half an hour afte
r I got off the phone with her, I got a phone call from Essex House, telling us the shocking news that they’re not too happy with our services right now and we’d better get our asses in gear.” Ellis paused for a long, nerve-racking minute, and then whistled between his teeth. “That’s quite a day’s work, even for you, Sugar.”

  Maria held her head high and said nothing.

  “Do you have anything to say in your own defense?”

  Maria had hated that question ever since she’d first heard it, when she was three years old and Ellis caught her finger-painting on the living room walls, and she hated it now. Still, she wasn’t going down without a fight.

  “Yes,” she said defiantly. “Anastasia Buckingham is an overgrown, semitalented, fake-accent-having diva who wouldn’t be happy if we arranged for her to win the Nobel Prize for literature. I kissed up to her. I flattered her. I read her incomprehensible book. I consulted on her wardrobe and fetched her drinks, cookies, pens and everything else she decided she wanted. I did the best I could for her, but I was notgoing to sit by while she blamed David for something that was her own damn fault.”

  Ellis scowled.

  “I’m…sorry,” she added, although she didn’t really mean it and knew Ellis knew she didn’t mean it.

  “Ellis,” David began.

  Ellis held up a hand and silenced David without ever looking away from Maria. “I’m sorry to do this, Sugar,” he said, managing to sound both stern and regretful, “but I think you’ve still got a lot of growing up to do if you can’t even control your temper with a paying client.” He sighed harshly and ran a hand across the back of his neck. “You leave me no choice. You won’t be getting your trust on your birthday. My lawyer is drawing up the papers for me to sign.”

  Maria catapulted out of her chair, slammed her palms on the desk and screeched with more fury than she could ever recall feeling. “You have no right to do that, Daddy! This is mymoney, and I have been working by butt off for the last few weeks, doing my best, and—”