Power Play

by Landish, Lauren

  But as she bucks against my mouth, riding my face, I can’t wait any longer. The tension we’ve been building, not just tonight but for days, is rising in me, and if I don’t get inside her, I’m going to end up coming in my slacks like a fucking teenager.

  And that’s not happening. When I come, it’s going to be balls-deep inside this sweet pussy.

  I stand, turning her in place and capturing her mouth with my own as I rip off my shirt and tie as quickly as I can. Moving my hand to my belt, I tell her, “Take your bra off so I can see your tits.”

  She flushes pink, and I nibble along her jaw, wanting to feel that heat. But she makes fast work of the lacy piece and it’s soon added to the sprinkling of clothes dotting my foyer floor.

  “Gorgeous,” I tell her, my eyes hypnotized by the full roundness of her breasts, her rosy nipples hard and begging for my mouth.

  But I need to be inside her.

  I rub the head of my cock through her folds, coating my shaft with her slick juices. But I catch her jaw with my free hand, holding her tight and forcing her eyes to mine.

  “Are you sure, Emma? I need you to say it.”

  She nods, her words clear and strong even as she fights to catch her breath. “Fuck me, Nathan. Please.”

  And it’s somehow everything I’ve wanted from her, a complete submission to this unknown thing between us.

  I surge into her, driving my fat cock into her balls-deep in one thrust. She cries out, her arms wrapping around my shoulders, pulling me to her, hungry for more.

  I don’t give her time to adjust, immediately fucking her hard. She lifts one leg, wrapping her heeled foot around my hip, spurring me on.

  Even as our bodies chase pleasure, our eyes meet. The fire burning there is more than mere lust, a connection growing and building right along with our orgasms. So close.

  I lift her other leg, pinning her against the door as I rut into her. “Fuck, you’re so tight. Squeezing my cock with your velvet walls. I need to feel you come on my cock, Em. Do it for me. Come now.”

  She follows my command, her pussy quivering around me as her cry echoes through the house. “Nathan! Oh, ohh!”

  I let go too, roaring as my cock spasms and I pump rope after rope of my seed deep inside her. I keep thrusting until every last drop is either inside her or dripping down, making us both messy.

  Holding her to the wall, I kiss her lips softly. The monster inside me that demanded I take her is only momentarily sated, pushing us both to a level of closeness and satisfaction that demands more . . . soon.

  Getting a good grip, I turn and walk toward the stairs. Emma hollers out a whoop, grabbing on tightly to my shoulders as if I’d drop her. “Holy shit, Nathan. Just set me down and let me walk.”

  I grin. “That sounds like an order and I’m the one giving orders around here. Especially seeing as you’re the one currently impaled on my cock.” I give her a good bounce, and we both groan at how good it feels.

  She raises an eyebrow, and I can tell she’s deciding whether she’s going to play along. She quickly smiles, though, decision made, and teasingly says, “Yes sir. Whatever you want me to do.” She points a manicured finger at me, her smile sassy. “Within reason, mister.”

  * * *

  Several hours later, I’ve discovered that Emma considers a great many deliciously wonderful things to be within reason. After fucking each other to exhaustion, we’ve finally collapsed into my bed. She’s curled up in front of me, my soft cock cradled between her thighs as we drift in and out of sleep.

  I can almost hear her thoughts turning, though, so I trace a hand through her hair, petting her to calm her racing mind. “What are you thinking about so hard, Em?”

  I feel more than hear her swallow. “Something Maritziana said.”

  “What did she say?” I ask.

  “She asked me if I knew what I was getting into and I told her yes. But I feel like I’m in the deep end, like this is all over my head. Somehow, though, instead of feeling like I’m drowning, I feel like I have a lifeline. You. And that’s scary and dangerous and wonderful and I don’t even know what else. It’s just . . . a lot all at once, and I’m not sure what to think about it all.”

  I can sense what the confession cost her, how scared she is that she laid it all out there so bare, so fast.

  I press her back, encouraging her to roll over, to face me. I want her to see my eyes when I say this, but even then, she keeps her chin lowered, her eyes to my chest.

  I grip her chin. “Look at me, kitty. I’m just as surprised as you are by this but just as sure that if this is drowning, I will happily forgo air to share yours.”

  And I devour her mouth once again.

  She’s right, to be honest. This is new and dangerous and a bit scary.

  But I told my brother I wasn’t a pussy, and I’m damn sure not going to start being one now.

  Not when Emma is here in my arms.

  She snuggles into me and I let her get some rest.

  For now.

  Chapter 15

  Emma

  I awake slowly, consciousness returning like walking through fog to see a cliff directly beneath my feet.

  Except the cliff isn’t earthen, a landslide-shaven edge.

  It’s physical, personal, and currently has a rather pleasantly well-muscled, if a bit heavy, arm pinning me down as he breathes against my neck.

  Nathan.

  Last night.

  The memory hits me, driving any last vestiges of sleepiness from me, and I am awake.

  Completely. The images freeze me in time and space as the reality of my not-quite-surreal dream life hits me.

  After we finished our torrid, frenzied lust fest last night, my every defense had gone down, gauzy streamers that let my words through like a rusty sieve. And those words had been truth, gut-churning and scary. I’d wished I could snatch them back as soon as they caught air.

  But Nathan had taken them, not a care in the world at the irony that I felt like he was a lifeline to something safer when the truth is, I know he’s by far the most dangerous man I’ve ever met. Including Nikolai.

  Maritziana was right.

  I am soft.

  I am blind.

  But I don’t think I want to be anything else. Maybe I can’t be anything else, at least where Nathan’s concerned.

  This fairy tale feels real, and maybe I can pretend to be this princess just a little longer.

  I will forgo air to share yours.

  It is the very definition of suffocating, smothering, drowning. It’s a four-alarm clinger. But still, when Nathan offered his own confession in return for mine, I willingly held my breath and jumped off the cliff with my arms spread wide, hoping for the best.

  As the darkness rushes up to me, eagerly taking me into its fold, I am rewarded, and Nathan takes me in. I snuggle into his arms, drifting back off peacefully.

  Minutes or hours later, I’m awakened by another type of need.

  Though I am comfortable in Nathan’s arms, his cock pressed against my ass like my big spoon, nature calls.

  Delicately, I sneak from under the weight of his arm, slide to the edge of the bed, and get up, praying with every move that he doesn’t stir.

  I pause at the doorway, my bladder fighting with my desire to just look at him, relaxed and almost boy-like in his sleep with his hair mussed and his lips slightly parted, innocent.

  Eventually, I lose the battle, and I quietly close the door to the attached bathroom behind me.

  I take care of business, use a bit of soap from the counter on my face to sweep away the last bits of last night’s makeup, and twirl my hair up into a messy knot on top of my head. It’s not nearly enough, but the wild look in my eyes takes the focus from the mess of the rest of me anyway.

  I offer the foolish girl in the mirror a smile when I see the red marks along the skin of my neck and collarbones, bumpy irritation from Nathan’s scruff and tiny bruises from his kisses.

  “Girl,” I whis
per to my reflection, “you look thoroughly and very pleasurably freshly fucked.”

  My first blush of embarrassment morphs into pleased satisfaction as I brush my fingers over the marks, still grinning. A sign of his possession, of his loss of control over himself, of his utter control of me.

  A manic giggle escapes, and I shove my fist at my mouth to hush myself from laughing too hard.

  I grab a robe from a hook behind the door, a flash of jealousy at who might’ve worn it last soothed when I smell Nathan all over it, the sheer size reassuring me of the ownership a moment later. It’s his, and that makes me wrap up in its largeness even deeper, taking the musky notes of him into my pores.

  The deep breaths bring another scent to my nose, and all girlish fantasy is left behind in my absolute sudden desperation for coffee. I’m an addict and I’m well aware, but I’m not giving it up.

  Death or coffee . . . I choose death.

  I quietly slip through the bedroom and out the door, wandering down the hallway toward the delicious aroma. I pass a room with an open door, more office than guest room, and almost as if she can sense my obscene lack of interest in her mission, Claire resonates in my head.

  Go look in there and see what you can find.

  Drugs, gems, black market, Anna.

  I glance up and down the hallway, seeing no one and nothing to stop me. As if telling me he’s okay with it, Nathan even snores from behind the bedroom door. It’s an absolute freebie of an opportunity.

  But something stops my hand from even leaving my side to reach toward the doorknob.

  Instead, I continue toward the coffee, knowing full-well that my choice speaks loud volumes as to where my head is at with this whole mission.

  Claire is going to kill me, but this is my life we’re talking about.

  And even if it’s dangerous, I want the fairy tale. After all, what good fairy tale doesn’t have a little bit of danger in it? Hansel and Gretel had the witch, Jack had a giant, Snow White had bewitched apples, and Little Red Riding Hood had to deal with a wolf with very large . . . things.

  But they all got their happy endings, and I want that too.

  I want it so bad I can taste it, just like the coffee pulling me further down the hall, down the stairs, and into the kitchen.

  I hadn’t considered that someone had likely made the coffee. I guess I figured Nathan just had a fancy coffee pot that started on a timer.

  But no. Instead, there’s someone in the kitchen, and before I know it, I’m through the door, the wood swinging shut behind me.

  “Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone would be in here,” I say, startled. Shit, I’m in a fucking bathrobe and nothing else.

  To make matters worse, it’s not Grant’s haughty but slightly rheumy eyes that turn to look back at me. That’d be way too fucking easy. No, it’s Caleb’s intelligent glare that greets me.

  “Well, I do live here.”

  My eyes widen, and I hurriedly pull my borrowed robe a little tighter, cinching the belt in place. “You do?”

  He smirks and points at me though he holds a wide green mug in his hand. “No, but you’d think you, of all people, would be better at knowing when someone is lying. Or acting, Emma.”

  My arms cross over my chest, my hips rocking to the side, and my eyes narrowing. I’m a study of posture posing to show my emotions, just like my improv professor once gave us a painfully long lesson about.

  My snark, anger, and defensiveness are so obvious, they could be read from the back row of the highest balcony.

  “So you know who, and what, I am. Is that supposed to be an accusation, a warning, or what?”

  Caleb snarls, moving closer, halving the distance between us and almost coming into my personal space bubble, obviously trying to intimidate me.

  I lean back but refuse to take even a small step backward. When Nathan is this close to me, his dark heat calls to me, wrapping its silken tendrils about my body and soul.

  Caleb, for all his charming good looks and frat-boy sense of humor, feels jagged and icy, dangerous in an entirely different way.

  A way that’s perhaps more threatening than even Nikolai.

  “I don’t like liars,” Caleb says softly, his voice even and laced with danger. “I don’t like women who worm their way into places they shouldn’t be. I don’t like questionable motives, especially when they concern my brother.” His every word lashes at my skin, the insults hitting home just as he intends.

  “And you think I am all of those things?” I ask it as a question even though the answer is obvious. “I lied, but I’m not a liar. I am in a place I shouldn’t be, but it’s just as much a surprise to me as it is to Nathan, and it sounds like to you too. My motives . . .”

  I pause, remembering the stalled moment in the hallway. Opportunity presented, but I chose not to follow that path.

  “My motives are simply to be close to Nathan.”

  It’s the truth, both at the start of this mess and now.

  He snarls in my face, looking me up and down angrily. “Bull fucking shit. Is this about money? If it is, name your price and I’ll have it to you in an hour. Then you can just walk away. Leave my brother the fuck alone.”

  I flinch as if he’d slapped me and then bow up to battle the utter disgust in his eyes. “Fuck you! I’m not a whore.”

  His grin is feral, but he doesn’t raise his voice. “Oh, but aren’t we all whores for the right price? And I do recall that your first visit to this house was under the guise of playing hostess for the right price. That ended with you on your knees.”

  He glances down at my legs, exposed only minorly because of Nathan’s oversized robe, but for all its coverage, I feel naked under Caleb’s gaze. “I’m merely asking what your price is now. And know that I already figure it’ll be a higher rate than your hostess fee. I’m prepared to make it worth your while to get the fuck out and never come back.”

  Every word is filthier than the last, making me feel like a dirty slut. And not in a fun, naughty way but in a degraded, shameful way that infuriates me.

  A flame burns hot and white in my core, incinerating the insults into ash that I fling back.

  “I am not a fucking whore,” I say again, this time with more attitude. “So put your fucking checkbook away before I shove it up your conceited ass.”

  I whirl, intending to stomp my way out of the room and already letting a good bird fly as a parting shot.

  But I run into a problem, a brick wall blocking my dramatic exit.

  Nathan.

  “What the fuck is going on here?” he yells, all peace and boyishness wiped from his face as his brows knit together and his chest heaves beneath my hands.

  I didn’t mean to. I wasn’t trying to look like some romance novel cover girl feeling up some muscle model or something, but they just landed there when I ran into him. Still, they stay there because the hard planes of muscles tempt me even in this ugly moment.

  Caleb, true to his laissez-faire attitude, merely shrugs and rolls his eyes. “Just negotiating price points to get your animal problem to go. Isn’t that right, Kitty?”

  I look back, stabbing daggers into him with my eyes, and with a smirk, he dramatically corrects himself. “Oh, my apologies. I mean Emma. That’s what you’re going by today, right?”

  Fight or flight. I’d already tried flight and ran into Nathan, so fight seems like the next logical step. It’s all I have. So I turn back to him, crossing the few steps between us to stab him in the chest with a fingernail.

  “You want to play semantics, Caleb?” I ask, accentuating every other word with another jab of my finger. “Fine, as it seems you’re well aware, my name is Emma. I’m an actress and an assistant. I came in as a hostess named Kitty Williamson. I am not a whore, have never traded sex for money, and have no interest in starting now. And cherry on top, I like your brother.”

  The recap is snarky, the last words more heartfelt even though I wield them like a blade. It even shuts Caleb up, who takes a
step back as I glare at him. “Satisfied?”

  Nathan looks between the two of us in shock, answering for Caleb. “I think you’ve answered all the relevant questions quite nicely.”

  But Caleb isn’t done, not by a long shot. Taking a breath, he recovers his mojo, and his face hardens again. “To be fair to your honor, as it seems to be a sticking point for you, I’m not offering you money for sex. I’m offering you money to not have sex. I’m offering you money to go the fuck away.”

  He smirks at me, but before I can even work up a single rebuttal, Nathan lunges at him, wiping the cocky arrogance from his face with a shove that sends him into the counter and spills the bit of coffee left in his mug.

  “Leave it, Caleb,” Nathan growls, his eyes flaring dangerously. “For once, fucking leave it alone.”

  In a flash, it’s on like Donkey Kong.

  I’ve never had brothers, just Claire and me, and while we definitely had some hair-pulling catfights as teens, we never tore into each other like this. Nathan’s lunge gave him the advantage initially, but Caleb returns with a scary fury.

  The punches fly toward each other’s guts, both of them avoiding the other’s face mostly, but the amount of beef slamming into every other surface of the kitchen turns the whole room into something akin to a UFC Octagon.

  And I’m for damn sure no ring girl, cheering on the madness. Instead, an embarrassingly constant stream of exclamations and screeches comes from my mouth as I beg them to stop.

  But they don’t hear me because mixed in with the fighting, they’re mouthing at each other. It’s an argument in two forms, punctuated with cabinetry and kitchen appliances rattling in between.

  “What the fuck, Nathan? This right here is what I was talking about!” Caleb stutters around punches as he gets Nathan in a headlock.

  But Nathan battles back, sweeping against Caleb’s leg to make him unbalanced. If it weren’t for the granite countertop, Caleb would go tumbling, and he just catches himself with a forearm.

  As Caleb releases Nathan’s head, he battles back verbally. “Just leave it, Caleb. I’ve got it under control.”