All In

  “It doesn’t matter anymore, baby,” I interrupted. I hated to even imagine Brynne with someone else; another man seeing her naked, touching her, making her come. The images drove me mad with jealousy, but what she’d just told me also made me so damn happy at the same time. I was the first person to make her forget. Fuck yes! And I’d make it so I’d be the last person she’d ever remember too.

  “I have you now, and I’m holding on to you, and I don’t ever want to let you go.”

  She purred at me and her eyes flared as I palmed her other breast and found her tight budded nipple. She had sensitive nipples and I loved to devour them. And make her want me. This was the real motivation if I was honest. Making Brynne want me was my obsession.

  I moved her hair aside and latched onto her neck with my lips. I loved the taste of her skin and how she responded when I touched her. We had chemistry together, and I knew this from the very beginning. Right now she was arching into my chest, bumping her breast further into my hand. I pinched the nipple and relished the sound she made when I did that. I knew where this was leading, or where I wanted it to lead. Me moving inside her, making her come, her getting that soft, gorgeous look in her eyes after she climaxed. I lived for that look in her eyes. That look drove me into behaviors I had never even considered before with a woman.

  She started to grind on my lap. Her hips rocking over my now very aroused cock under the thin fabric of the joggers, making me envision all sorts of kinky things I could try. And man did I want to try out some kink with her.

  I snaked my hand up through the leg of the silk boxers she had on and right to her cleft. Easy access. And so fucking wet for me I could only forge ahead for more. She made sounds when I touched her quim and started circling over her tight bud of a clit that wanted my cock knocking against it. She wanted me. I made her want me sexually. If it was the best I could do with her for now then I would take what I could get. I wanted more from my Brynne though. So much more.

  I dragged my mouth away from her neck and my hand from her pussy and lifted her off my lap to stand before me. I stayed in the lounger and flicked my gaze over her. “Strip for me.”

  She wobbled on her feet a bit, looking down at me, her expression unreadable. I didn’t know what she would do with the command, but I didn’t care. I was about to find out and the thrill of the challenge hardened me to iron.

  “But we’re outside…” She turned to look off the balcony and then back to me.

  “Get naked and climb back on top of me.”

  She started breathing heavier and I still wasn’t sure what she would do, but I told her anyway. Brynne liked it when I was blunt.

  “No one can see. I want to fuck right here, right now, under the stars,” I said.

  She stared me down with those eyes of hers whose color cannot be named and brought her hands to the bottom of her t-shirt. She swept it up and off in a blink, but held it in one hand for a moment before releasing the fabric and letting it drop to the floor of the balcony. That delay, that look she gave me was pure unadulterated sexy. My girl knew how to play this game. She also had the most gorgeous tits in the world.

  She moved to the waist band of the shorts next. Her thumbs dug in under the elastic. My mouth began to water as they started down. She bent gracefully and stepped out of my silk boxers. She stood utterly bare for me, legs slightly parted, her hair wildly mussed from sleep, waiting for me to say what to do next.

  “God, just look at you. There’s nothing you could tell me that would change how I feel about you, or make me want you less.” My cock pounded with its own heartbeat, dying to spunk her up. “Believe me,” I told her, my tone carrying a bit of a sting.

  She got a look on her face that suggested my words relieved her. Brynne still had so much doubt in her about how her past might change my feelings for her. I have to work on showing her that it’s inconsequential to me. “Come here, beautiful.”

  She came to me and crawled onto my lap again, folding her legs and settling right over my cock with only a layer of soft cotton separating our skin. I went for her tits first, cupping one in each hand and squeezing. They filled my hands exactly, not overflowing but a soft weight that tantalized with the promise of claiming another part of her body for my own. Perfection.

  She arched back when I bit over a nipple. Not hard, but enough to give her a little twinge and then a glorious moan when I soothed it with my tongue. I wondered how she’d do with clamps. I bet I could get her to orgasm. In fact, I pretty much knew I could. She would be something magnificent to watch when it happened. I worked over the other breast and felt her stiffen, curling back in my arms, all splayed out and warm…and gorgeous.

  I had to be inside her. To feel Brynne orgasm around my fingers or tongue or cock was an indescribable sensation, one I had become addicted to. I moved my hand down her back, sliding over her bum in a trail, going further down and underneath to meet her wet slit from behind. She gasped a soft sound when my fingers touched her quim, and moaned when they penetrated her wet heat in a deep grip.

  “You’re mine…” I told her in a whisper, just inches from her face. “This pussy is mine. All the time…whether it’s my fingers…or my tongue…or my cock.”

  She flared her eyes at me as my fingers went to work. I took her mouth and buried my tongue as far as I could in tandem with what my fingers were doing between her thighs. Those gorgeous thighs spread open over my lap because I’d told her to do it.

  I was so sexed out I’m sure I was too rough with her, but I couldn’t seem to rein it in. She didn’t protest, and if she had, I would’ve stopped. Every response, every sound and sigh, every undulation over my cock, told me that, in fact, she got off on it. Brynne liked me dominant when we fucked and I loved her exactly how she was with me.

  Holding her this way, with my arm down behind her ass, forcing her ever closer against me was something I had to do. I wanted her to understand that I couldn’t let her go again. I wouldn’t let her go.

  I guess it was the need inside me to possess her. I’d needed the control during sex before, but not like this. Brynne did something to me I couldn’t even comprehend. Never before had I felt this way. Only with her.

  I tugged her weight up off my hips. She got the idea and held herself suspended, enough for me to let go and to shove down the waist of my joggers. Not the easiest of tricks, but required if I wanted to be in her, and she seemed so on board with my plan. I held my cock straight up and told her on a harsh breath, “Right here. And fuck me good.”

  I think I might have actually got a tear or two in my eyes when she slid down on me and started to move. I know I wanted to. I felt my eyes water at the first touch of her cunt surrounding my cock with all that slippery, lush heat, and during the wild ride as she bucked up and down, shagging me into oblivion. And then again when I blew my load inside her. I managed to pull another orgasm from her with my thumb rubbing her sweet spot, and cherished every whimper and sound she made as she reached her peak a moment later. She came hard all around me. My name on her lips as it happened was the best though. Ethan…

  When she collapsed on top of me, my cock was still in spasms, buried inside her deep, rocked by the convulsions as her inner muscles grabbed and pulled. I was certain I could stay inside her forever.

  I held us together, never wanting to separate our bodies. We stayed out on the deck for a while. I just held her to me and rubbed up and down her spine with my fingertips. She nuzzled against my neck and chest, and felt very soft and warm despite it being night, and we were outside, and she was totally naked. I pulled the throw blanket off the other lounger and drew it around her.

  For the first time I understood what people meant when they said they cried because they were so happy.

  7

  “Go ahead and pick out the one you like for today,” I told her. Brynne grinned from my wardrobe door and then disappeared back into it.

  “Well, I love the purple ones, but I think today we’ll go with this one,” she a
nnounced as she emerged with a blue tie in her hand. She sauntered up to me and draped the silk around my neck. “It matches your eyes and I love the color of your eyes.”

  I love when you say the word love in reference to anything about me.

  I watched her expression as she worked on knotting my tie, biting just the corner of her luscious, bottom lip in concentration; loving her attentions and not loving the fact that she had obviously practiced on somebody else. She had stood right up against some other bloke and tied his tie for him. I knew it. I tried not to envision that it was morning when she performed this service for the cocksucker and that she’d not spent the previous night sucking said cocksucker’s cock. I was such a jealous bastard now. I’d never been jealous with any of the girls I’d dated before, but then again, Brynne was not just a girl to me. Brynne was the girl. My girl.

  “I love that you’re here doing this for me,” I told her.

  “I am too.” She smiled up at me for an instant before returning to the task at hand.

  There was so much more I wanted to say but I didn’t. Pushing her never worked out, and I’d learned my lesson in that regard, but still it was hard to take things slow. I didn’t want slow with Brynne. I wanted fast and intense and all the time. Thank Christ I didn’t say that aloud.

  “What’s your day look like, Miss Bennett?” I asked instead.

  “I’m having a lunch meeting with colleagues from the university. Keep your fingers crossed for me. I have to start thinking about getting that work visa and there could be something in this for me. Like a conservancy appointment at a major London museum.” She finished my tie and patted it. “There. You look very spiffy in your blue tie, Mr. Blackstone.” She held her lips up to mine with her eyes closed.

  I kissed her with just the tiniest peck on her puckered lips. She opened her eyes and narrowed them, looking a tad disappointed. “Expecting something more were you?” I loved teasing her and making her laugh.

  She fronted like she didn’t care. “Meh,” she said with a shrug, “Your kisses are…passable I suppose. I can do without.”

  I laughed at the expression on her face and tickled her in the side. “It’s a good thing you conserve paintings, my darling, because you can’t lie worth shit.”

  She shrieked at the tickling and tried to get away.

  I snaked my arms around her and hauled her against me. “No escape for you,” I muttered against her lips.

  “What if I don’t want to escape?” she asked against mine.

  “That works too,” I answered with real kiss. I went slow and thorough, enjoying this early morning moment together before we had to go to our jobs. She melted into me so sweetly I had to remember we both had work and there was no time to take her back to bed now. The nice part was that we would be here at the end of the day again, and I could make good on my very vivid imagination.

  I got to kiss her goodbye a few more times before we went our separate ways: waiting at the lifts, in the parking garage up against the Rover, and when I dropped her off at the Rothvale. Such are the benefits of having somebody you want to be with so madly in your life. Again, I am a lucky, lucky man. At least I am smart enough to realize it.

  ♥

  I went through the front entrance today after parking because I wanted to buy every major US newspaper and have them scoured for any small thing. They’d be crammed with political mudslinging by now, but the full bore fight between candidates was a ways off yet. Presidential elections were held the beginning of November in the US, so five months more of publicity. I felt a pang of worry and pretty much ignored it. I could not fail in protecting her. I wouldn’t allow a failure.

  Muriel grinned at me when I paid for the papers. I tried not to shudder at the sight of her teeth. “There you go, luv,” she said, holding out a stained hand with my change.

  I got a look at that grimy hand and decided she needed the change more than I needed to contract a contagion. “Keep it.” I looked into her oddly beautiful green eyes and nodded once. “I’ll be getting all these US papers regular from now on if you want to have them ready,” I offered.

  “Oh, you’re a darling, you are. I’ll have ‘em. G’day to ye, handsome.” She winked at me and showed a bit more of those horrifying teeth. I tried not to look too close, but I think Muriel could compete with me on beard stubble. Poor thing.

  When I got into my office I started on the intel in earnest. I listened to the message of the man who’d called Brynne. I played it several times. American, very matter of fact, non-confrontational, nothing revealed in his inquiry gave anything away about what he might know. “Hi there. This is Greg Denton from The Washington Review. I’m trying to find a Brynne Bennett who attended Union Bay High School, San Francisco…”

  His message was short and utilitarian, and he left his information for a call back. The history showed he’d only rang her the one time so there was a very good chance he didn’t know much, or if Brynne was even the right person he was attempting to contact.

  I briefed Frances without giving away specific details, told her to look into this Greg Denton at The Washington Review and also to see what else she could scrub up in the newspapers I’d bought this morning.

  I was just sitting back down, eyeballing my desk drawer where the smokes were stashed when Neil came in.

  “You seem rather…human…this morning, mate.” He sat in the chair and looked me over, a bit of a smirk going on his square jaw.

  “Don’t say it,” I warned.

  “A’right.” He pulled out his mobile and looked busy with it. “I won’t say I know who stayed over last night. And I definitely won’t say I saw you two snogging while waiting for the lift this morning on security cam—”

  “Piss off!”

  Neil laughed at me. “Hell, the office is thrilled, mate. We can all breathe again without fear of disembowelment. The boss got his girl back. Praise the gods!” He looked upward and held his hands up. “It’s been a fucked-up couple of weeks—”

  “I’d love to see how your miserable arse would do if Elaina suddenly decided she couldn’t stand the sight of you.” I cut him off, offered up a fake grin, and waited for the change in attitude. “Which could always happen, you know, as I know all your shameful secrets.”

  Worked like a charm. Neil lost the dickhead posturing in about one point five seconds.

  “We’re really happy for you, E,” he said quietly. And I know he meant it.

  “How’s the military investigation into Lieutenant Oakley going?” I asked, giving in and opening my desk drawer to pull out my lighter and a pack of Djarums.

  “He’s been doing very bad things to the people of Iraq and getting away with it, but not sure for how long that’ll stay buried. I think the senator can only be relieved his son is off getting into trouble in Iraq as opposed to anywhere close to his election campaign.”

  I grunted in agreement and sucked back my first, sweet inhale. The cloves gave quite a kick, but I was used to it. Now I just let the nicotine do its work and felt guilty for what I was putting into my body. “So he’s career military you think?” I exhaled away from Neil.

  Neil shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  Neil had the keenest instincts of anyone I knew. He wasn’t just an employee, not by a long shot. Neil was much, much more. We’d been boys together, gone off to war, survived that hell to return to England, managing to grow up in the process and start a successful business. I trusted him with my life. Which meant I could trust him with Brynne’s as well. I was glad she liked him because I had the feeling she would have to be guarded eventually whenever she went out. Brynne would so hate that. But even as much as she loathed the security detail, she’d not take it out on Neil. My girl was far too kind for that sort of thing.

  I wasn’t kidding myself either—friend or no, I was really glad Neil already had a woman, and if he’d been single wouldn’t have been my first choice. He was a good looking guy.

  ??
?Well this is the interesting part. Lieutenant Lance Oakely was stop-lossed just a few weeks after the plane went down. From what I could find out, the US pretty much ceased with stop-loss over a year ago, and only just a mere handful are served now.”

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, mate?”

  Neil nodded again. “As soon as the senator found out he was the next vice-presidential hopeful, he got his only son stop-lossed for another tour in Iraq.”

  I clucked my tongue. “Sounds like the Senator knows his son very well and figures the further his boy can keep away from the campaign, the better the senator’s chances of being elected.” I leaned back in my chair and puffed on my clove. “Who better to get a stop-loss order than somebody who has political connections. I’m starting to think Senator Oakley rather hopes his son never comes back from Iraq. War hero and all that...looks smashing for patriotism.” I waved my hand for emphasis.

  “Precisely where I was going.” Neil eyeballed the ciggie in my fingers. “I thought you were cutting back on those?”

  “I am…at home.” I stubbed it out into the ashtray. “I won’t smoke around her.” And I am pretty sure Neil was savvy enough to figure out why I wouldn’t. But that was the thing about friends…you understood each other, didn’t have to explain ad nauseum about painful shit you wished you could forget, but pretty much knew was a part of you down to the marrow in your bones.

  ♥

  Brynne’s mobile lit up and roused me out of my work. I checked the caller ID. One word—Mom.

  Well this ought to be fun, I thought as I pressed send. “Hello.”

  There was a beat of silence, and then a haughty voice. “I’m trying to reach my daughter, and as I know this is her number, to whom am I speaking?”

  “Ethan Blackstone, ma’am.”