Her Devil's Kiss

by Linzi Basset

  “Regrets?”

  “I shouldn't have stayed with him. The obligation to a religion that I didn’t even follow after I left home was misplaced. I had no reason to continue to be miserable to keep my family appeased.” The dim light of the lamp on the desk caught the glimmer in her hair as she shook her head. “I just wish I realized it years ago. I felt like I was consumed by sadness where there was no past or future, just living by the moment. Every day was measured from the moment of waking into this new reality I forced myself to create until my body was in auto-mode until sleep came to offer me a brief respite.”

  She looked deep into his eyes. Hers glistened with tears. “I’ve taken away so much from us, Alex, that we’ll never be able to get back.” She twisted her upper body and placed her palms on his chest, feeling the heat of his body scorch her skin. It flowed through her like a lifeline she clung to in that brief moment. “Why do you think I kept following you to all the clubs you visited? Why I pushed Rhone to offer me shares in CDC when I heard you were investing too.”

  She smiled wanly. “I know it was selfish, but I couldn’t survive without seeing you for more than two weeks. It was all I had, to love you from a distance. I soaked up every brief glance, every word I heard from your lips.”

  Alex could relate to that. It had been written in their gazes, every time they connected—the undeniable chemistry that had always drawn them to each other, a seed of love, an invitation to learn about the other. No matter that they always stood apart in a crowd, to him, he could feel her heart beating all the faster … in tandem with his.

  “I never stopped, Alex.” Her soft palm cupped his chin. “I love you, now more than ever, and no matter what happens from here on, I always will.”

  “What do you want from me, Pamela?”

  “To forgive me for all the hurt I caused you and perhaps to … give us a second chance. Maybe even … open your heart to me again.” She bit into her cheek, unable to read his closed expression as he regarded her intently. “I’ll settle for whatever you’re prepared to offer, Alex. Please just don’t chase me away.” Her voice broke at the end. His expression didn’t change.

  “What about the future? If we try again, where will it lead?”

  Joy flushed her entire body with a rosy glow at his words. He wasn’t pushing her way. They still had a chance!

  “I don’t understand.”

  Alex ran a tired hand over his cropped hair. His sigh settled in the atmosphere like heavy mist on a wintry night. “It’s no use denying my feelings for you. When I watched that bastard cut and strangle you, my entire world threatened to fall apart. Why do you think I never told you to leave and let me go on with my life? Why I accepted you following me wherever I went? I craved being around you, satisfied to make love to you with my eyes.” He watched the silky tresses fall through his fingers. “I love you, Pamela, more than you’ll ever know.”

  “Alex—” His fingers on her lips silenced her.

  “But what we had before isn’t enough for me this time. I need more. I’m not getting any younger and I want a wife and children. If you don’t want the same, then this is as far as it will ever go.”

  “But I do want! Very, very much,” she cried hoarsely. She leaned forward and kissed his warm lips. Her eyes glowed like fire on water. “I want nothing more than a future with you.”

  “Including marriage and kids,” Alex reiterated in a quiet voice, all the while struggling to keep the happiness that unfurled inside him at bay.

  “Yes, Governor, nothing but the full package.”

  Pamela leaned in, resting her forehead against his. Her soft breaths puffed with enticing warmth against his lips. He could feel her trembling under his hands that followed the curve of her spine.

  “Thank you,” she said in quivering whisper.

  “For what?” His resonant voice, low and husky, leached through the broken shell of her heart to salve the hurt and awaken the exuberant anticipation of building a future with him.

  “For understanding. For being you.” Her voice wavered, exhilarated from the growing sexual tension between them. “For loving me.”

  “Ah, my sweet love, there’s nothing to thank me for. We were meant to be. We might have taken a detour, but our destiny had been decided the first day we met.”

  He brought their lips together and said in a low voice, “You are the only woman in my heart.” The kiss was steeped in a passion that ignited the fire that raged inside their veins. It held a promise of realness, of the primal desire that lived inside all humanity. And with it he expressed his love, connecting their souls within as they fully embraced the joy of rediscovery. When they pulled apart, they were both breathing harshly. He leaned back and smiled wryly.

  “I think you better go and make that tea.”

  “Tea can wait. Making love to the love of my life is much more important.”

  “You’re not strong enough, Pamela. Nate said—"

  She quieted his words with a brief kiss. “Nate isn’t here. It’s just you and me. Leaving me all hot and bothered is going to cause me a lot more damage. Besides, I know my body, my love. I can assure you I’m strong enough for a little nookie.”

  “Nookie? I haven’t done any nookie since I was a teenager, baby. I don’t think what I have in mind is ...”

  His words dwindled off as Pamela shifted on his lap until she straddled him. She slowly unbuttoned her shirt and spread it open with a slow seductive smile on her lips. She was gloriously naked underneath except for a triangle of lace between her legs.

  “You talk too much, Governor.”

  “I’m paid to talk,” he said, watching with shuttered eyes as she ran her palms over her nipples. They turned hard under the slow caress.

  “Hmm, maybe this time you could waive your fee and act instead?” She lilted with growing eagerness to feel his hands replace hers.

  “I might consider it,” his voice deepened, “providing …” He allowed the word to hover between them.

  “Yes?”

  He pushed the shirt over her shoulders and with a twist so fast, she could only gasp, he used it to tie her hands behind her back.

  “But I want to touch you,” she protested when she found her voice.

  “I need to stay in control, baby, and your hands on my body is going to ignite the beast inside me.”

  “I love when the beast comes out to play.”

  “Believe me, so does he, but you’re not up to such robust play.” He grasped the white lace panties and with one hard yank, tore it from her hips. “Now … I believe there’s been enough talk.”

  His hands slowly worked their way over her body, feeling each crevasse, every line along her sensual physique. Her breath hitched in her throat when his lips trailed a wet path over the upper curve of her breast, ending with a teasing circle around the areolas with the point of his tongue. She held her breath as he placed kisses on her aroused breasts, inching closer to their tight peaks. His warm breath triggered alive every nerve ending on her skin as he blew a hot breath on each nipple.

  “Ahh.” The moan burst in a low, carnal plea from her lips as she gracefully arched her back, silently pleading for more.

  “I love your tits, baby. Have I ever told you that?”

  “I’d rather you show me, my Master.”

  The growl of satisfaction at her words, preempted his hot mouth closing over a taut tip to draw it deep into his mouth. Alex dragged her hips forward until her clit pressed against the hard bulge of his cock in his pants. With slow grinding movements, he guided her body in slow circles against his swelling shaft. A surprised moan escaped Pamela’s lips, lost in the realm of erotic manipulation, as he rolled his tongue lightly around her succulent nipples, building her lust to the brink of insanity.

  He drowned in the soft gasps that fell from her lips as he used his tongue to press a nipple against his palette, hard, while he rolled it back and forth with slow tantalizing moves.

  Pamela gasped at the stinging pain th
at triggered an arrow of heat to travel from there to set her clitoris throbbing in reaction. She moved restlessly against him.

  “More, please more.”

  He obliged and tugged on her other nipple, then clamped his teeth tight around it while flicking his tongue over the tip.

  More pain … that set her aflame with need. It blossomed and metamorphosed into heat that engulfed her whole body. For the first time in years, Pamela felt overwhelmed, teeming with sensations that coiled in her core, catapulting her need to heights surpassing the highest mountain. Every nerve in her body sizzled. Her brain felt completely fried as his fingers found the swollen tip of her clitoris. The first brief stroke was all that was needed to stoke a furnace inside her.

  “God, Alex, you know just how and where to touch. Lord, I missed you so,” she wailed as she inhaled his scent. He smelled so good and, oh lord, he felt even better. His hard torso pressing against her stomach caused cosmic tingles all over her skin.

  He pushed two fingers inside her hot, wet pussy as he slowly pumped inside her. His fingers found the spongy array of nerves on the inside wall of her vagina. He watched her closely and pressed it to detonate the last of her reserves. Her moans escalated in volume. Alex clamped his palm over her mouth and bit into a nipple, pulled her breast away from her body and shook his head. The full-bodied scream, although muted, echoed through the room as a climax shattered through her with the force of a cyclone surging forth.

  Pamela had forgotten the feeling. It had been so long since she’d come this hard, even without penetration. She gasped and panted through the explosion of sensations repeatedly crashing over her like waves during a storm. She moaned, silently begging for mercy but to no avail. Alex continued to evoke sensation upon sensation from her as another orgasm rippled through her.

  “I love your sensuality, baby. I’ve never felt the power to control passion over anyone like I do with you. You take my breath away when you climax. Gorgeous, and so fucking sexy.”

  Alex reached into the drawer and took out a condom. Pamela shook her head. He froze.

  “We don’t need that, Alex. We’re both clean and I’ve longed for so long to feel your skin against mine when you’re deep inside me.”

  “I know you’re on the pill, love, but Nate warned you the medication and anesthetic counters its effect.”

  “What better time than now to start,” she lilted with a glowing smile.

  His heart thumped so hard against his chest he worried it might explode. “Pamela, are you saying what I think you are?”

  “Yes, my love. I’m not getting any younger either and I’ve long had the yearning to become a mother. I’ve accepted my fate over years that it would never realize, but now …” Tears filled her eyes. “If we managed to make a baby tonight, it would be the best gift you could ever offer me.”

  “God, I love you, woman. Don’t ever doubt that.”

  Alex pushed his hard cock deep inside her without her noticing him unzipping himself. Her neck arched with the pleasure that scored against every nerve ending along his hot, satiny shaft.

  “Yesss,” she hissed. The warm buzz that started in her chest, quickly radiated outward to devour her mind as he slowly began rocking against her. The florid rush of sensations pulsed into her core, igniting a firestorm that swept over her body.

  “Easy, love,” Alex cautioned as she thrashed against him. Cognizant of her current frailty, his hands closed around her hips to keep her and his own rising lust in check. He was enchanted by the sight of her desperate attempts to orbit her clitoris against his crotch. The way she squirmed in helpless surrender against the uninhibited fervor that dictated its power over her in a rosy hue of her skin.

  “Alex, I need … I need …” Pamela gasped as he dragged her body down onto him, embedded deep inside her to the hilt. She was amazed how quickly he’d turned her body into a torrent of lava made of flesh and bone that blindly seethed and writhed under his expert manipulation.

  His fingers closed around her clit, pinching and rubbing sensually at the same time as he suckled with vigorous hunger on her nipples.

  “Oh lord, that feels so good,” she rasped as a shudder ripped through her, beckoning for the final voyage to yank her over the edge she’d been hovering on into tectonic combustion.

  He nipped sharply on her nipple and pinched her clit, driving his cock into her with rhythmic precision.

  Pamela’s breath puffed out in gasps as the room tilted in a blur and sucked her up the face of a tsunami wave to curl her mind in a crest of unworldly eroticism. Stars exploded inside her mind as she floated weightlessly in euphoria—her body tossing around in a sea of sensate denial.

  Alex increased the pace as he lost the will to govern his lust. Heat stabbed down his back and swept into his scrotum with a hot blast of arousal that finally unhinged him. With a muted shout that demolished all thought, he erupted inside her with thick ropey jets.

  He exulted in the soft contours of her body as she slumped against him while trying to calm the hammering in his chest. Neither moved as they quietly soaked in each other’s warmth, lost in the aftermath of the height they’d just danced their most satisfying tango ever.

  “Now my luscious, little peach, it’s time for you to go to sleep.” He picked her up and carried her to his room. Her smile was blinding as he placed her on the bed and kissed her lingeringly.

  “Don’t move, my precious. I’m going to make you that tea.”

  “Finally,” she crooned with a cheeky grin.

  He offered her an askance look of pretend reproach. His voice rumbled to crawl deep inside her heart. One sound … just one short, deep vibration, a reminder of the depth to which their souls connected.

  “Hmm.”

  Chapter Twenty

  He used to find sweating abhorrent. It was the dark stain under the pits of old men while they played bocce ball in the sun, hot enough to drop a cow. To him, as a teenager, it had been right up there with pus and puke. But that changed as he matured; now he couldn’t last three days without running until he was soaked in sweat. When his hair was saturated and the salty drops ran into his mouth, it was a kiss of life. The reassurance that he could still run, still enjoy the body that he had slowly been building stronger and stronger.

  Seely stepped off the treadmill. It was top of the range and had been a godsend from his capturer. His legs trembled. He grunted at the rising feeling of nausea from his stomach.

  “Fucking overdid it again,” he muttered to himself.

  It never ceased to amaze him that the muscles that were working so hard only seconds ago now struggled to hold his weight. He staggered to the mirror to gawk at his sweaty form. He stared critically at himself and nodded at his reflection. He was close to regaining his full strength. There were no signs left from the torture Jack Blackmore had subjected him to, except for a permanent scar above his left eye, but visually his muscles bulged like before and he felt strong and ready to get out.

  “This is fucking shit!” he growled as he stared at himself. When he woke up in the comfort of this spacious living quarters, he'd been relieved. Now, he realized he’d just been transported from one prison to another. Being cooped up on his own with only the silence as company was just another form of torture. Some days he thought it had been better chained up and beaten to death by Blackmore. At least he kept entertaining him with funny quips in between. Waiting throughout the day for his visitor and daily interrogation was much worse.

  “If only I knew what more he wanted from me.”

  Every day for the past two weeks he’d been blasted with questions for hours until his head spun. He had no more to tell, and still, the man he had now come to fear above all else, kept drilling him.

  “I’m sick and tired of being cooped up in this fucking hellhole!” he sneered into the silence. He craved the warmth of the sun on his skin, god knew he’d even settle for the coldest snap of a winter breeze. Anything would be better than the thirty by twenty square feet room
where the walls kept closing in on him.

  He walked into the shower, steam filling the room as he turned on the hot tap. His movements were brisk, efficient as with everything he did in life … especially his favorite pastime. Killing. Maybe that was what had him itching at the bit. He was dwindling away without the thrill and excitement of the next kill.

  Dressed in a pair of sweatpants, a tee-shirt and sneakers he walked toward the kitchenette to prepare breakfast. The rich aroma of coffee filling his nostrils stayed his stride. Unease crept over him like an icy chill, numbing his brain. As he stared at the large man pouring two cups of coffee, his frozen state of mind offered only one thought. Today was the day. The tipping point. There was no avoiding it. He walked closer, feeling like a cow being herded into a truck for the slaughterhouse, only the cow didn’t know where it was going. The sense of doom weighed heavier on Seely’s mind with each passing second, warning him that his day was about to get a lot worse. His tormentor never arrived this early. He usually only came early evening. The change in routine unsettled Seely.

  “Sit down.”

  He followed the gruff order, glad to slide into the chair and relieve his trembling legs. He hated feeling this vulnerable. Him, the feared hitman and Bossam of the Sixth Order.

  Seely accepted the fragrant cup of Java and took a sip, shifting uncomfortably under the direct stare he was subjected to.

  “I’ve run out of patience, Seely.”

  “Goddammit!” Seely gave vent to his own frustrations. “I told you all I know. What more do you want from me?”

  “Something you’ve been blithely avoiding.” The large man straightened. “Let’s talk Cosa Nostra.”

  The slight twist of the otherwise stoic face warned Seely that he’d failed to hide his own surprise.

  “The Sixth Order has no association with them. Zee and Powell are too greedy for power and money. In that order. They’ll never share their glory.”

  “I already know that. However, what I don’t know is who you are in cahoots with?”