Once the wave swept through her, it left her shaking and trembling in his hands.
Rising to his feet, he swept her up and laid her on the silk-covered mattress before swiftly divesting of his own clothing. By the time he stepped back to the bed, she’d rolled to her stomach and lifted herself to rest on her elbows.
The glitter of her green gaze greedily soaked up the sight of his naked body.
Erik had always taken good care of himself, enjoying the strength and ability he experienced when he maintained a well-honed physique. It was a welcome by-product that his trim, muscled form pleased his lovers. One he’d never been so grateful for as he was when her hot, desirous gaze settled on his standing cock and she issued a sultry moan of pleasure before murmuring, “Your turn.”
Chapter 10
The man was a goddamned masterpiece. Not to mention a genius with his tongue.
But of course he was. She’d seen the knowledge in his eyes at their first meeting. A man only came by that kind of self-assurance through honest means. And thank God for it!
Her body still trembled with receding pleasure. But if Maxwell was a genius, she was a savant because she knew they’d only exposed the tip of what was to come tonight.
At the moment, however, she couldn’t take her eyes off him. His body was honed with muscle. Solid and strong, yet trim and devoid of any unnecessary bulk. Most importantly, so was his cock. Long and thick without being of an obscene size, it curved proudly up toward his belly with a slight tilt to the right. The imperfection made her mouth water.
He stepped toward her at the same time she reached out for him, wrapping her fingers tightly around the base. Hot, hard, satiny flesh throbbed in her hand. She breathed deeply and evenly through her nose, reveling in the pure male scent of him. Clean, earthy, grounding. Then she flicked her gaze upward. Past his taut, rippled stomach. Over his defined chest covered in a sprinkling of iron-gray hair. To the tense line of his jaw, the firm press of his fabulous lips, and finally, to the sharp spear-like focus of his gaze.
Only then did she lean forward to lash her tongue over the head of his cock.
He tensed but said nothing. His eyes held hers with manacle strength and his hands fisted at his sides.
She extended her tongue again. This time executing a more intricate dance around the crown, teasing the slit and the sensitive ridge with quick flicks. He pulsed in her grip, growing even larger. Harder. In reward, she ran her tongue up his full length from base to tip. Then did it again, adjusting the pressure of her tongue, adding a few swirls and delicate little kisses along the way.
Yet still, her teasing did not break his calm or his patience.
Hmm.
Shifting position, she brought her knees up beneath her, resting her buttocks back on her heels. This allowed her a bit more leverage and freed her other hand, which she immediately put to use, cupping his balls as she directed his head between her lips. When her lips slipped past the glans to the veined shaft, he finally issued a deep-throated groan of pleasure.
Sliding her mouth back to the tip, she looked up at him again.
His eyes had closed and his head had dropped back. But only for a moment. Bringing his attention back to her, he slid a hand into her hair to grasp her head with wide-spread fingers.
Yes. This was what she wanted. This show of command. This display of base, primitive need. Her belly swirled with desire and wet heat pooled in her cunny.
For just a second, she resisted his subtle urging, holding her mouth an inch distance from his pulsing tip.
His stomach muscles released and contracted on a harsh and ragged breath as he waited.
But he waited.
Power surged through her. Power and pleasure and something else.
Despite the sexual hunger of his body, the obvious need coursing through him to culminate in the member grasped tightly in her hand, he waited. With his gaze glinting and sharp. His lips pulled back just enough to show the edge of teeth and his breath unsteady. He waited.
And Callista teased.
A quick flick of her tongue to the underside of his pulsing head. A gentle squeeze of his balls. A look of challenge.
To her surprise and delight, he smiled down at her. “Wicked woman,” he accused in a gravelly murmur.
She smiled back, but not for long as she was already bringing him back to her mouth. This time, when she took him as deep as she could then slid her mouth back to the crown, she didn’t stop. Continuing the rhythm of deep, sucking strokes, she reveled in the tightening of his hand in her hair, the low groans rolling through his chest, and the trembling she began to feel in his hard thighs.
Though she enjoyed this act more than some women, she’d never particularly loved the culmination. But this time, with him, she found herself craving that moment when he’d reach climax and release his pleasure into the heat of her mouth. So much that the thought of him pulsing between her lips had her moaning softly as more heat flooded her sex.
While she lowered her head to tickle one of his testicles with her tongue, he reached over her, sliding his hand down the arch of her spine. He first squeezed one buttock before gently slapping the other. Then he slid his finger down the cleft between, until he reached the flesh that ached so sweetly.
Her moan was full and sultry around his cock as he spread her moisture along her folds before taking her clitoris in a spine-tingling pinch.
Her breath caught and held at the burst of sensations he caused. Her belly clenched with a harsh, hollow feeling. And as she sucked hard on his length in an instinctive urge to fill that void, he eased two fingers deep into her body.
Her exhale was another moan. Involuntary and raw.
He withdrew his fingers then thrust them into her again.
She arched, tipping her hips higher, spreading her thighs, giving more. Demanding more.
He set a rhythm to match the one she executed with her mouth and hands on his cock.
But soon it got to be too much for both of them. In unspoken accord, they shifted position. Erik climbed onto the bed, kneeling as Callista rose up to her hands and knees, turning her back to him.
There was a brief pause as he grasped her hips in his hands.
His erection bumped against her heated flesh, but he did not thrust forward. She glanced over her shoulder as he slid his hands up along her rib cage to her shoulders. There he gathered the full mass of her hair in one fist, twining its length around his wrist.
Then very gently he pulled her up to her knees until her back was flush to his chest. She tipped her chin up and turned her head to the side. He met her there with an open-mouthed kiss that made her bones melt. Their tongues tangled and their teeth nipped.
Wrapping his other arm snug around her waist, he held her against him as he scooped his hips and entered her in a smooth upward thrust. The sharp angle had him hitting all the right spots inside her, making her gasp and shudder. Another short, rolling thrust nudged his head along that sensitive inner flesh that made her thighs tighten and her low back bow.
Again and again, he thrust like that, while his mouth fell to her shoulder. He sealed his lips over the muscle there, sucking hard on her flesh, giving her the edge of his teeth and a hard pinch on her nipple as she gasped and strained and shook in his hold.
A fucking genius. No denying it.
And when he shifted his hold to grasp her breast, her body convulsed, on the verge of another climax. This one promising to be more intense than the last.
His growl at her ear made her tremble from head to toe, her body weakened by the sound of his possession. Bringing a hand up to rest around her throat, he deepened his thrusts and whispered darkly against her skin, “Come for me, Callista. Now.”
And she did. The pulsing pleasure overwhelming her like a tidal wave, washing through her, obliterating thought or resistance of any kind.
She’d never been with someone who so effortlessly took command of her body and her pleasure. Anyone who’d tried in the past had been
efficiently and subtly redirected. No one had ever seemed to know exactly what she needed before she did herself. No one had ever touched her with such confident and focused intention.
But Erik did it effortlessly.
He was utterly attuned to her shifting needs as she was to his, she realized as they once again changed positions without having to speak. And as she looked down at him stretched out on the black silk while she straddled his lean hips and took him into her still throbbing body, she realized something else. Something that touched deep inside her.
Connection.
The acknowledgement was startling.
As she should have expected, he seemed to sense her sudden disquiet. While his stiff member throbbed inside her, he gently slid his hands up her spread thighs. Then he reached up with one hand to curl his fingers around her nape and pull her down to him. His gray eyes were dark and focused as he brought her mouth to his.
But he didn’t kiss her. He just held her there like that as she stretched atop his solid form, her lips hovering a breath from his, his cock buried in her pleasure-swollen heat.
And something pulled taut in her chest. It was a painful, breath-stealing force.
Her first instinct was to become angry at the intrusive emotion and her body tensed. But he wouldn’t let her retreat. Instead, he tickled his fingertips across her nape in a soothing caress while his other hand grasped firmly to her rear.
When he spoke, it was in a ragged whisper, words that soaked through her skin and snaked through her blood. “You know what this is, Callista. The truth is evident in your gorgeous eyes.”
A hard thread woven deeply into her being would have had her pulling away or scoffing some denial, but the rest of her trembled on the verge of accepting something impossible.
His eyes darkened even more. “Embrace it. Revel in it.”
Before she could reply, he pulled her mouth to his. The taste of him ignited red-hot flames in her belly. The swirl of his tongue erased any further thought. The power of his kiss claimed her as his.
Astonishingly, she allowed it.
She sunk into it and surrendered to it. But only for a moment. The feeling quickly grew too heavy, too consuming. The pull in her chest ached. She could not succumb completely, could not give herself over to whatever magic he’d conjured between them.
This was simple lust. An act of physical desire manifested. This was fucking and she knew fucking.
Pushing against his chest, she sat upright astride him and shook her hair out behind her as she rolled her hips to initiate a deeper, more intent rhythm. Sensation sparked and spread out to her fingers and toes. Closing her eyes, she focused on the pleasure, ignoring all else. There was nothing different about this experience than any other before. The man beneath her might be exceptionally—phenomenally!—skilled as a lover, but that was all this was.
Yet when he smoothed his hands up and down her thighs before kneading her hips with his strong fingers as a rough sound of pleasure sounded in his throat, she couldn’t keep herself from glancing down at him again.
His body was drawn taut and his head was thrown back. The cords of muscles in his throat stood out and his arms bulged with strain as he held her hips in his large splayed hands. Pleasure had nearly consumed him. He was perilously close to the edge. A few quick snaps of her hips, a squeeze of her inner muscles, perhaps a teasing pinch of his nipples or a bite on his shoulder and he would fall apart.
As she braced herself to finish him off, a dull regret spread through her chest. She wasn’t ready for it to end.
In her brief moment of hesitation, he opened his eyes. A fiercely lit gaze met hers and she suddenly felt as though he could see straight through to the darkest pit inside her. He saw it and claimed it in an instant as he sat up and rolled them both over.
In a breath, she was on her back. His cock remained deep inside her as he settled between her thighs. Reaching for her hands, he held them to the mattress beside her head. She lifted her knees, expecting him to start a fast, punishing rhythm to claim his release. Instead, he stilled completely.
The only movement was their chests expanding and contracting with their deep and even breaths.
“You think this is over?” he asked, circling his pelvis in a subtle motion that sent tingling sparks through her core. She bit her lip to hold back the gasp rising in her throat. He smiled. Wicked. Knowing.
Too knowing.
She felt exposed and vulnerable in a way she had never known. And she’d experienced helplessness a hundred ways in her life. It was a feeling she abhorred and spent a great deal of effort avoiding at all costs. Yet this man managed to invoke this unprecedented emotion with a smile.
She might have hated him a little bit in that moment.
“I think you’ve proven your abilities, Mr. Maxwell,” she stated as evenly as she could considering how favorably her body was responding to his physical dominance.
His eyes narrowed at her reply. The light in their depths flickered with something dangerous that stalled her breath even though his expression remained calm. And frustratingly patient. “You speak of sexual gratification, madam. Pleasure is easy to come by and fleeting.”
As if to prove his point, he circled his hips again—a deeper, lusher movement that ground his pelvic bone against her clitoris and touched on all her pleasure points.
She arched her spine and tried to roll her hips, seeking more. But he held her too securely, his body pinning hers. Only he had freedom of movement.
“This,” he continued in a gravelly voice as he gave a short, shallow thrust inside her, “is something far more precious.”
Though her heart lurched and her belly twisted, she stared boldly up at him and forced a flippant reply. “This…is fucking.”
There was a flicker of disappointment in his eyes, there and gone in a flash. But she saw it—felt it. Her next breath was tight as his lips widened slowly into that smile again. The one that said he knew what she was doing and confidently declared her ploy wouldn’t work. The one that promised to give her exactly what she wanted even if she couldn’t admit what that was.
Lowering his head, he took her mouth in a kiss with that smile still spreading his lips. She felt it, tasted its dark and lovely sweetness, took the promise of it into herself before he murmured heavily against her lips. “If that’s what you believe, then fine. Let’s fuck.”
He shifted his hold on her hands, interlocking his fingers with hers as he straightened his arms to hold himself above her. Bending his knees, he brought them under her thighs, lifting her hips to accept the deep, full strokes of his cock.
Her body ignited with sensation.
Planting her feet on the mattress, she rolled her hips to meet and accept every thrust.
Yes. This was what she wanted. The power of primal mating. The mindless physical hunger. The reckless, personal striving for sexual satisfaction. She arched and writhed. She tensed and bucked and moaned while he brought her higher and higher with every plunge of his body into hers.
Finally, when she neared the peak, felt the crest beginning to break, sensed the imminent approach of an orgasm that promised to destroy her, she met his gaze again.
And knew in an instant—he was right.
Pleasure exploded like a star throughout her being. Reaching every corner, brightening every dark secret she’d ever possessed, bringing the truth into stark, undeniable view.
And through it all—the gasping, trembling, pulsing release—she couldn’t look away from him. She was bound by his gaze. Bound by his pleasure when he finally gave himself over to his own climax with a harsh growl that satisfied a deep animalistic craving she hadn’t known existed within her.
She saw the spark of power in his eyes. The possession. The truth.
For those long moments while their bodies communicated in a far more succinct and powerful way than words could ever achieve, she did indeed revel in the beauty of it all.
But feelings so intense and powerful cannot last
forever.
Eventually, the trembling slowed, sweat dried, heart rates returned to normal, and Callista’s chest tightened with the press of undeniable reality.
She might have experienced something that far surpassed every expectation or understanding of what was possible, but now it was over. The man who’d been so generous and perfect might still be pressing soft kisses to her eyelids, the corners of her mouth, the pulse at the base of her throat, while his member remained hot inside her. But soon, he’d roll from the bed, perhaps mutter a quick thank you, and then leave.
Though she’d been pleasured beyond prior experience and had gotten exactly what she’d wanted out of her one night with the man, she wanted more. A hell of a lot more.
But she was no fool. She allowed herself just one more moment. One moment to acknowledge the loss filling her heart. One moment to remind herself who she was and how she’d gotten where she was now.
Men were a distraction at best, a liability and a source of destruction at worst. And Erik Maxwell had just proven himself to be the most dangerous of all.
His hands gently framed her face while his thumb brushed across her lower lip.
“Callista.”
Her name was spoken softly but intently in his rich, gravelly voice. She barely noticed his accent anymore, but she heard it then in the way he formed the vowels of her name.
With her belly swirling, she opened her eyes and forced a gentle smirk to her lips. “Well done, Mr. Maxwell.”
His gaze narrowed as one brow arched in question. “You cannot bring yourself to call me Erik?”
She lifted a hand to pat the side of his face where black and gray stubble roughened his skin. It took all of her willpower not to caress the hard line of his jaw or drift her fingertips across his frowning mouth. “Of course…Erik.” His name felt too perfect in her mouth—succinct, formed with a smooth roll of the tongue that ended with a short kick in the back of the throat. “I suppose I shall have to offer my concession.”
“I don’t want a damned concession,” he said slowly. Heavily.
Have Yourself a Merry Little Secret : a Christmas collection of historical romance (Have Yourself a Merry Little... Book 2) Page 127
