“Get on your fucking knees,” he rasped, and didn’t have to ask twice. She scrambled to the floor while he wrenched his pants open and fisted her gorgeous red hair, trying to restrain himself from pushing down her throat when she freed him from his boxer briefs and swirled her delectable tongue around his crown.
Then her beautiful, long-lashed eyes glanced up at him, demure and adoring, and he almost lost that battle. Oh, fuck, Emma, don’t look at me like that . . . But then she closed her eyes and swallowed him down until he touched the back of her throat, groaning so the vibrations worked into his skin. “Yes,” he hissed, head falling back for a moment, keeping his fist in her hair to anchor himself to earth. He didn’t stay that way long, because he needed to watch. Her tongue’s graceful sweeps, her lips pulling him in. His length disappearing into her mouth. She braced herself with her hands on his thighs, and he wished he’d bound her wrists behind her back. He wanted her off-balance. Wanted his cock in her mouth to be the only thing keeping her steady.
But now wasn’t the time to suggest it, not when she’d just looked at him as if she would do anything he asked.
“You’re going to make me come,” he said, almost accusing, and she pulled back long enough to catch her breath and smile up at him, working him with her fist. Holding him tight, she leaned in to kiss and suck and nip.
“I want you to,” she whispered against his shaft, then curled her tongue around the bottom. “I want to hear you, watch you.”
He hissed in a breath. “Yeah? Why?”
That look again. “Because it’s the only way I know what you feel.”
She would still be deceived. It was only a physical reaction to a stimulus. Feelings didn’t play into it. But if it made her feel better, she could feast her eyes. The pressure building at the base of his spine was reaching a critical point.
“Rub your clit, Emma.” If he was going to leave her unbound, she might as well get some enjoyment out of it.
“I don’t think I—”
“Do it.”
She obeyed, her hand going between her legs. Her own building arousal fed her hunger for him; she took him deeper, worked him harder, groaned louder around him. So beautiful, so giving, it struck a chord somewhere in him that was left to reverberate maddeningly. Her fingers working faster, her movements picking up. Her other hand worked him feverishly where her lips couldn’t reach. Only when she cried out her own climax, letting him fall from her mouth, did he give in to his own release, keeping a firm hold on her hair to let his come shoot across her lips and breasts. As he watched, biting down on a growl, her little pink tongue came out to lick some of him away, and there was no stopping the sound then. Her eyes opened to stare up at him dreamily.
There wasn’t a more beautiful sight in the entire fucking world.
Slowly, he released his hold on her, smoothing her hair back gently from her forehead, then helped her get to her feet. Both of them were breathing raggedly, shaking from exertion and pleasure. He couldn’t seem to stop touching her. But he had to. “Go clean up,” he said gently, “and I’m going to stand here and watch you walk away while your jewel winks at me.” As he said it, he reached behind her and gave it a wiggle with his fingertip, and she yipped, jumping to do as he said. And it was a lovely sight to behold indeed, the little red gem between the perfect globes of her ass, the color almost matching the fierce waves of hair that cascaded down her pale back. She even cast a naughty glance back at him over her shoulder as she went, and he nearly pounced on her and pinned her against the wall.
A moment later, he heard her enthusiastic approval from the bathroom. “Oh, it is cute!”
He had to laugh, stripping his pants off the rest of the way. She was looking at it in the mirror. “My offer to take a picture still stands.”
“No!”
By the time she returned, he had crawled naked into her bed. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest place to be, but she didn’t deserve to be left alone after the intensity of what they’d just shared. He drew her into her arms and slid his hand down her back. “I’m going to take it out, you’ve probably had enough for the first night. Did you like it?”
“Mm-hmm.” She already sounded half asleep. He coaxed her onto her belly for easier access, and a moment later it was done. She snuggled into his arms.
“Good. Then I can’t wait to make you wear it while we go out,” he said, and her full lips parted as she looked up at him. Even as he watched, the tip of her tongue ventured out to wet them. “You’d like that, too, wouldn’t you?”
“I would . . . want to get more used to it first.”
“Of course. That’s why you weren’t wearing it at dinner tonight. It’s the first thing I thought about as I watched you coming down the stairs. And I think I would have gotten you off so much faster in the car.”
“I thought you were all about delaying orgasm.”
He leaned down and brushed his nose through her hair. “I’m also all about making you come on demand.” Emma tilted her head up, seeking his kiss, and he couldn’t deny her. “Is it always about what you want?”
“Always,” he murmured, and then he let his tongue sink into her mouth.
Chapter Fifteen
The next week passed in a blur of blinding pleasure. When he’d told her he wanted her ready for him at all times, he hadn’t been kidding. And it hadn’t been a problem. Knowing he might ambush her at any place, any time, kept her in a state of heightened arousal, like a cat in heat.
Drinking coffee on her little balcony one morning, he’d joined her out there, but before her cup was even half empty, he had bent her over the little patio table, fucking her until she feared it might give under her weight combined with the force of his thrusts. And she wouldn’t have much cared, as long as he didn’t stop. No one will hear you scream, Liz had said, and she hoped her friend was right, because her screams had echoed. They might have heard her all the way in the city. Ducks had flown from the pond in panic.
Then there was the stable, where she learned that sex in hay was all fun and games until it was poking you in places hay should never go.
The kitchen again. The living room. The den. Her bedroom almost every night no matter where else they’d been that day. The dining room table, where he had her for dinner and dessert. In the Jag, where she’d ridden him in the driver’s seat. In the Bentley, where he’d ridden her in the backseat. In the pool. In the Jacuzzi with jets of water swirling around their joined bodies. She became well acquainted with her little jeweled plug; she even asked for it. He made her wear it to dinner, as promised, where she was hyperaware of her body all night, and had nearly ripped his clothes to shreds to get him inside her later.
But the one place she never had sex with Damien was in his bedroom. And no matter how late they stayed up getting lost in each other, he never stayed an entire night with her.
“Is there some reason you won’t let me in your bedroom?” she asked him one night as they lay in her bed, and she was trying to deal with the knowledge that he would be gone when she opened her eyes in the morning. It shouldn’t hurt her, but it did. This wasn’t a relationship, for God’s sake; she preached that to herself several times a day. He didn’t have to sleep with her when he slept with her. But it would be nice if he would, even if only sometimes.
She couldn’t quite explain it even to herself, so maybe she shouldn’t have brought it up to him. He gave her an odd look, as if she might be losing her mind a little, and sometimes it definitely felt like it. “You can see it anytime you want,” he said. “Nowhere is off-limits. I can show it to you right now.”
“But even if you let me in, you wouldn’t let me sleep there, right?” she asked, knowing the answer was going to hurt.
“I thought you would want your own space.”
Yes, he’d explained that. He’d really given her no reason to believe it was bullshit, but she suspected it was. “And you don’t want me invading yours. It’s okay. I’m just curious.”
She was tryi
ng to be “adult” about this. After only a week, she was finding it difficult. The kind of adult who could go back to normal after feeling the things she had in only seven days with him wasn’t the kind of adult she wanted to be.
But she supposed that was the kind of adult he was.
“Emma, if you want to sleep in my room, you can. I won’t stop you.”
“But you always bring me in here, so obviously you don’t want me there.”
“If you think I don’t,” he said, a hitch in the normal smoothness of his voice, “you’re crazy.”
“Oh . . . well, I mean, I’m not trying to pester you, I’m only trying to understand. Are you going to make me sleep alone when we go to Vegas? Because I don’t want to. And you’re always about giving me what I want.”
Damien raised himself up on his elbow, looking down at her. “What do you want? Because I don’t believe all this is about where you lay your head at night.”
She turned her face away. “I just . . . It makes me feel . . .”
And he turned it back, making her look at him. “Tell me.”
“Cheap. Okay? It makes me feel cheap. Used. At the same time, though, that makes sense because that’s what this was about, wasn’t it? So I’ll shut up now and we can keep going on the same way we have been.”
“So you’re saying sleeping in my bed with me at night would make you feel less cheap. Do you want us to pretend to be in a relationship?”
It made no sense for that to hurt like the bite of a whip, leaving a deep, bleeding gash across her heart. No sense whatsoever. But it did. “I don’t know,” she said miserably. “We go on dates and I live with you and we have amazing sex . . . it almost feels like a relationship. But I know it isn’t. It’s taking a toll on me. I thought I could do it, but I’m not sure I can. I’m not built this way.”
“Then I think your sleeping with me would only confuse things further, if you put that much meaning to it.”
Her eyes filled with tears. She hated them and tried to hide them, but she knew that he saw. “Just go,” she snapped, trying to roll away. This time, he let her go, even though she wished he wouldn’t. What she wished is that he would hold her down and make her feel better about all this. “I know I’m being irrational. It’s PMS. I’ll have my period in a couple of days, just so you’re aware. My mouth will be fully operational for your needs, but I’d ask that you not venture any lower, please.”
“Emma.”
“What? That’s all I’m for, right? That’s what this whole thing was about. I’m sorry I confused things. It’s my fault.”
“Christ,” he grumbled, and despite telling him to go literally not ten seconds earlier, she was horrified when he started getting out of bed. “Are you leaving?”
“No.”
She gasped as he yanked the covers off her nakedness and easily hauled her up and over his shoulder. “The fuck are you doing?”
“You want to see my bed? You’re gonna fucking see my bed. And I hope you like it, because you’re not leaving it for a while.”
When the hell would she learn to stop pushing him? On second thought . . . Note to self: Push Damien more. His shoulder pressed hard into her midsection and she dangled helplessly down his back, holding on for dear life. And for a moment, she was speechless, but that didn’t last long.
His strides were long and savage and though she couldn’t see a damn thing, she heard when he opened a door and stalked inside a dark room. A moment later, he delivered a smack to her ass that made her yelp and then dumped her unceremoniously on a bed. “Here you go.”
Emma shot to a sitting position and shoved the unruly hair out of her face, glaring up at him with murder in her eyes. She could barely make out his shadowy figure above her. “You don’t have to be such an asshole about it!”
His mouth came down on hers and the next barrage of insults rising in her throat died there helplessly. This kiss was hard and brutal and hot as fuck but, just as she was feeling the explosion of arousal he always set off, he pulled away. She drifted in darkness, dizzy and disoriented. “Where’d you go?” she complained. “Damien, I’m sorry, you just get me so crazy.”
“No crazier than you get me,” he said, his voice reaching her from somewhere across the room. It sounded as if he was sitting down. Jesus, I made him have to take a step back before he strangles me. Benjamin had it right after all. “This is it, this is my room. You’re in my bed. Are you happy now? Does it help? Do you feel less cheap?”
“I can’t see.”
A lamp flipped on beside him, and he sat back in the chair, practically glaring at her. It was probably the angriest she’d ever seen him. On her first glance around, there didn’t seem to be anything remarkable about his room except for the luxury that was evident all over his home. But she only gave it a cursory perusal before turning back to him. “It’s awesome,” she snapped.
“I’m glad you approve.”
“Please don’t get mad at me. You asked. You wanted me to tell you what was bothering me. I was honest and told you, then you blow up at me.”
“I’m trying to understand what you want.”
She couldn’t tell him that when she didn’t know herself. And even if she knew, if the very thing she feared was happening and she was in the beginning stages of developing feelings, she couldn’t tell him that, either. “Don’t you know? Aren’t I the piece of glass you can pierce right through with your fucking all-seeing eyes? Why don’t you tell me what I want.”
“That isn’t my fucking job.”
Misery settled on her, thick and suffocating. She felt like an ass, and she didn’t know why. She couldn’t make sense of anything. He was turning her inside out.
In that moment, all she wanted was to go home. Her cute little house, her own creaky but comfortable bed. All her own comfortable things surrounding her. “I’ll go back to my room if you want me to.”
“No.”
“Fine,” she huffed, crossing her arms. “Then let’s go to sleep.”
“Oh, I doubt very seriously there will be much sleeping going on.”
“Damien, I’m tired.”
“I am, too. But you’re not sleeping or leaving until you tell me where this is coming from.”
“I don’t know! I’m not built this way!”
“You keep saying that. What way?”
“To be someone’s . . . toy.”
“I’m not treating you like—”
“Please. You dress me, you set me up in a house, you fuck me when you want, you call me ‘doll,’ for Christ’s sake. How am I not your fucking fuck toy?”
He sat back and regarded her for a moment. “If it all bothers you that much, Emma, then go home.”
The words reached out like a hand to slap her across the face. So easily? He would call the whole thing off and send her home with nothing? Her eyes began to burn maddeningly again. A moment ago, she’d longed for the place so hard it was like a physical ache, but now the thought of going there was impossible to fathom. She’d come too far to go back now, even if she didn’t know where the hell she was. Yet another layer of confusion he’d dumped on her. “You know I can’t.”
“I don’t know any such thing. You can stay or you can go. The choice is up to you. I thought you’d made it a long time ago, but apparently I was wrong.”
She sniffled quietly for a moment, and he leaned forward, the magnetism of his eyes holding her gaze all on its own. “Emma, I dress you because you are beautiful and deserve beautiful things, and I want you to have them. I fuck you because I have wanted you from the moment I set eyes on you. I thought the feeling was mutual, and I still think it is. I have you here because yes, that makes it easier. And my mother had a porcelain doll that she cherished. It was the only clean, pure thing in her filthy fucking life. You remind me of it, fucked up as that sounds. But if you don’t want me calling you that anymore, then I won’t.”
“I remind you of it?”
“You’re damn sure the purest thing in my lif
e.”
She didn’t know what to say. She only knew what to do, driven by some primal instinct that reacted to the darkness in his eyes, the tension in his body. Sliding down from the bed, she crawled on all fours until she was in front of him, and everything about him had gone unnaturally still as he watched her, nothing moving except his shadowy irises tracking her every movement.
“Emma,” he breathed when she put her hands on his knees and rose up on her own. Already, he was hardening for her, but when she reached for him, he caught her wrist in an iron grip. “Tell me your darkest fantasy.”
“What?” she asked, thrown off-balance as much by his lightning-quick movement as his question. “Those are details for someone that I’m in a relationship with,” she said, unable to hide the tinge of bitterness.
“Then tell me about your relationships. How many serious ones have you had?”
“That’s personal, too.”
“If I’m going to give you everything you need for the rest of our time together, these are things I need to know.”
“I’m not here for what I need. This has never been about me.”
He shifted forward so that his face was close to hers. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? This is all about you.”
She licked her lips and stared weakly up at him, his dark beauty, his burning intensity all focused on her. “I’ve had two boyfriends I would consider serious. Both lasted just over a year. My relationships always seem to have an expiration date,” she added, but in the end it turned out that neither had been any great loss. But this one . . .
It didn’t matter. It wasn’t a relationship.
“Did you tell them your fantasies, since those are strictly for your partners?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you ever let anyone in?”
“Have you? I’ll answer if you will.”
His mouth thinned ever so slightly. “Certain people get access to certain areas. But, Emma . . .” Leaning down even farther, he brushed his lips across hers. “There’s no one less likely to judge you than I am. There’s no one more willing to give you everything you need.”