Nate literally flinched when he felt that small crack in her defenses slam shut to him and their link.
“Who’s that, Nate?” the glamazon asked.
“Yes, Nate, why don’t you answer that? I’m interested in the answer myself.” The cold, flat quality of Holly’s voice—a voice so normally rich—sliced through him.
He surreptitiously wiped his mouth and stepped toward Holly, who moved back. He felt her rejection acutely. “This is Holly, my mate—my love. I told you that I’d found her, remember?”
Holly sent him a lethal glare. “Gosh, call me silly but the words you just uttered seem a bit at odds with the fact that I just walked in on you and another woman. A beautiful woman who was wrapped around you with her long, thin, gorgeous limbs.” Holly’s voice caught in her throat. Her feelings of inadequacy and insecurity shot through Nate and made him slightly sick in a way he hadn’t been since he was human.
“Holly,” he looked at her and then indicated the ebony-skinned woman who was now sitting on the couch looking every bit like she’d just had a great orgasm, “this is Shelly. She’s an old friend. She was one of my donors in Boston but moved down here a few years back.” Taking another step toward her, he continued, “Sweetness, you know I have to feed. I never lied about donors. Rhett and I both have them. You knew this. You know you’ll need them yourself when you convert. I was just pushing Shelly back and was going to reiterate to her that she wasn’t to clutch at me like that when I fed anymore.”
Disgust crossed Holly’s face then. “Oh well then, it’s just fine. I’ll just wait in my room across the hall, shall I? You can finish with your little friend and give me a ride to my cousin’s house. I’m sure I can stay with her. Or not. In fact, don’t bother, I’ll call a cab.”
Nate’s face darkened in his anger. This attitude of hers had to stop and it had to stop that very night. He turned to Shelly. “Thank you for your gift. I’m sure you understand why I need to be alone with Holly now.”
Shelly cast a curious look back at Holly and then nodded at Nate. “So I’m guessing this means no more sex when you feed?”
Nate wanted to groan when he heard the sharp sound of Holly’s exhalation and then the echo of her steps and the slamming of the door. “Yes, that’s what it means.”
“Too bad. If you change your mind I’d be happy to find myself available.”
He smiled at her, knowing it would never happen, and walked her to the door and locked it behind himself. In the hall, he called Rhett and told him to not come back for a while, explaining what had happened and his plans to deal with it.
He stalked into their suite to the room she currently occupied.
“You’re not going anywhere, Holly.” This was said in his arrogant voice, arms crossed over his chest.
She stopped her furious one-handed packing and dropped the phone from her ear. Mouth open in shock at his audacity, she stared at him, stunned. In that moment of surprise, the shields she’d erected around her feelings failed and her emotions crashed through and over him.
“Holly, how can you carry all of his around?” he said softly, gently, as he walked toward her. He wanted to weep at what she held in her heart.
She moved back with a panicked sound and started to walk around him and he grabbed her in firm but gentle hands. Bringing her body flush with his, he said seriously, “Sweetness, you can’t really believe that I’d be unfaithful to you. If I could sustain myself by only feeding from you or not feeding at all, I would. If I could remove the orgasm for my donors I’d do it. But I need blood and an outcome of feeding is climax. If you want to be present every time I feed, fine. If you want me to use male donors, fine. What can I do to show you that I want you to believe, to understand that you come before everything? That all I want to do is make you happy?”
He felt her emotions warring inside her. This insecurity—her worry that she wasn’t beautiful or worthy—was eating her alive, closing off her heart to anyone out of fear. He couldn’t stand her holding back from them for another day.
Taking a risk, he decided to push those walls down. No, not push. Blow them to little more than dust so that she had nothing left to hold them off anymore. Standing back, he gave her an order. “Come with me, sweetness.” He turned and walked toward the room he’d specially arranged for without looking back.
The pull of his dominance rushed over her with dark sweetness. She closed her eyes and tried to resist, but her body called out to him. Her heart. If this was going to be their last night together—and she’d pretty much decided to leave for her cousin’s home that next day, alone—then she’d enjoy it.
She walked into the room where he’d gone and saw him like a dream, leaning against the wall at the head of the bed. She also noted the theme of the room, the hooks on the walls and the array of toys on the dresser nearby.
“Get out of those clothes, sweetness.”
She reached to dim the lights but he shook his head. “No. I want to see all of you.” Her hand faltered near the switch and her heart sped up. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen her naked but after that scene across the hall with the gorgeous donor she felt the comparison between herself and other women with a sting.
“I’m waiting.”
She narrowed an eye at him but quickly pulled her clothes off and started to go to him. Again he shook his head. She stopped and he pushed away from the wall and moved toward her.
He slowly circled her. He leaned in and ran the tip of his tongue over her shoulders and up her neck, feeling her racing pulse there. “Mmmmm, no one feels like you. Tastes like you,” he murmured.
All the while he spoke to her, his hands moved over her body. Fingertips tracing down the line of her back, circling the dimples at the small, skimming the curves of the creamy globes of her ass, over the soft flare of her thighs. He put emotion in every touch, every stroke. He wanted her to see the love in his eyes, feel his adoration.
Her eyes began to slide shut but he leaned into her body and spoke in her ear. “Keep them open. I want you to see what I see.”
She blushed then and he hardened his resolve. Reaching back, he pulled something out of his pocket. Gently, he took her wrists and slid the cuff restraints on and she let the shivers of anticipation slide over her body.
Taking her hands, he slowly pulled them above her head and attached them to the chain hanging from the ring in the ceiling. She felt exposed there like that, the lights burning bright, her hands above her head. Naked to his gaze.
He moved away, coming back with a large mirror on a stand, and put it in front of her. Standing behind her, he ran his hands down her arms and ribs. “Look at yourself, Holly.” Not a request.
She looked into the mirror and flinched. He sighed and took her breasts in his palms. “Look at these.” He thumbed over the nipples and they darkened and hardened. “So beautiful. Big, gorgeous. I love the way they feel in my palms, how responsive your nipples are. Hard and begging for my touch.”
He kissed her shoulder and moved her hair aside. “This hair, like a curtain of fire. So silky soft, smells so good. The way you look when you’re astride me, the ends of it stroking over my stomach and thighs,” he sighed appreciatively, “marvelous.”
Hands moved down her ribs and over her stomach. “You’re supposed to be soft, Holly. Soft and feminine and curved. So sexy.” Fingertips stroked over her thighs. “Here too.”
His fingers strummed in the dip of the back of her knees and over the muscles of her calves. Kneeling before her, he looked up into her face for a moment and then kissed her belly and she blushed.
He was so frustrated with her feelings of insecurity about herself. He and Rhett practically worshipped the ground she walked on, showed her nothing but love and respect and she still didn’t trust her feelings? He had to strip her bare and then let her re-knit with what the world really was with them in it as a unit, not what her world had been or she feared it might be.
“You still don’t see it, do you? I mean to brea
k down those walls tonight, sweetness, be warned.”
She shivered at the resolution behind the words and her own response to them. Terror and great hope too. Part of her wanted him to push his way inside of her heart, to free her from her fears, while the other part was utterly alarmed by being that exposed to another person.
“What do you see, Holly, when you look into the mirror?” he asked softly, stroking a paddle down her spine, furry side on her skin.
“What do you mean?” she asked with a slight break in her voice.
“When you look into that mirror do you see the beautiful goddess that you are?” his voice was deceptively soft. She knew all she had to do was open the link wide to know how he saw her but she was so frightened of seeing something there that she couldn’t handle, his disgust with her thighs maybe, or perhaps his thought of how pretty she’d be if she lost fifteen pounds.
“I…I like my hair.”
He kissed the side of her neck gently. “Good.” He sifted the coppery strands through his fingers and then looked back into her eyes “What else, sweetness?” He reached down and held up her breasts. “What about these?”
“They’re too big. People always look at them instead of my face.”
He was angered for a moment thinking of any other man ogling her breasts but got it under control. She didn’t need that. Instead he nodded and gently let go and picked up the paddle and gave her one hard stroke at the bottom of her ass, where cheeks met thigh, where sensation could spread to her clit.
“OW!” she yelped and tried to evade him but he moved quickly and put ankle cuffs on and hooked them into the bolt in the floor, feet slightly apart. She narrowed an eye at him. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“You know the safe word if it’s too much,” he said without looking into her face. He said it like a challenge. He had to goad her into letting him continue. If he knew her like he thought he did, it would work.
She snorted. “I can’t believe you hit me,” she muttered.
He stood up before her. “I’d never hit you. Exaggerator. I paddled you and I’ll bend you over my knee if you don’t stop talking negatively about your body. Your breasts are not too big, they are perfect. I love the way they curve, so beautiful, the cinnamon-pink nipples jutting at the tips.”
She gave an impatient sound and he got behind her again and caressed her stomach. He felt her discomfort loud and clear. “What about here?”
“It’s…fine. I wish it were smaller, flatter.”
Another crack. “Hey! Damn it, knock that off!”
Moving away quickly, he came back with a chair. Reaching up, he unhooked her wrists before sitting down and bending her over his lap, leaving her ankles bound. The bar of the chair at the bottom served as a place to attach the wrist cuffs to.
“Now tell me how beautiful you are. Let me in that fucking fortress, Holly, and see for yourself. See yourself as I see you, as Rhett sees you.” His cock jutted into her mound and lower belly.
Refusing, she shook her head, and he brought his palm down on her ass three times quickly, each in slightly different spots.
“Tell me,” he said softly.
“Stop this! Who the hell do you think you are to spank me? This is stupid, Nate. Let me up!” She squirmed and he felt her wetness through the denim of his jeans.
He chuckled darkly. “Go on, just say it. Uncle, Holly. Use ‘pasta’ and this is over. Let me win.”
She harrumphed and he grinned at her rigid back. He slid the tips of his fingers down the crease of her bottom. Her skin was so pale, so sensitive, that she bore two perfect handprints on her ass and it was pink from the other strokes.
“Tell me,” he urged and she shook her head, her hair covering her face.
He spanked her again in a short burst. Five strokes this time and they began to do their work, radiating sensation up to her clit. Her squirms were more lascivious than panicked. He could smell her desire and they both gasped when he pressed two fingers inside of her and found her slick and hot, the muscles of her pussy pulling at him.
“Hmmm, someone likes being tied up and spanked.”
She opened her mouth to deny it but with his fingers stroking into her pussy and the wetness blanketing them both, she had no ground to stand on and instead thrust her ass back, pulling him in deeper. She’d be horrified at how easy she was for him later.
He made a tut-tutting sound and pulled his fingers out of her. “Now, where were we? You were going to tell me how beautiful you are. How strong and smart and self-sufficient. You’re going to open those gates and let me in, open the link that you know you should. See yourself through me, Holly. Let go of those views of the fat and shy Holly who can’t keep anyone in her life. See the Holly that is. The woman who has survived and continues to do so. On her terms but now paired with two men who adore her and want to fully share in their bond with her.”
He brought the paddle down on her this time, over and over, in different spots. Each stroke he delivered another compliment, another order for her to give up and trust them, open the link. Over and over, paddling and then fingers inside of her pussy until she’d nearly come and a withdrawal and more spanking or paddling and his infernal pushing to open the link.
Nate looked down at the pinkened skin of her ass and thighs. So delicate and delightful, heated and desire-slicked. The little zone at the apex of ass and pussy and thighs was glistening. He could feel her fighting her emotions and he knew that her control was only paper-thin at that point. He had to end it.
He pulled her head up, her hair wrapped around his fist, forcing her to look in the mirror. “Look at yourself, Holly. Look at the woman bent over my lap, her ass pink from my strokes, hair in disarray, chained. Look at her and tell me she’s a fat, ugly, stupid girl that no one wants!” he hissed. “Is that who you’re going to hide in your whole life? Are you going to limit your future by hating yourself so much that you won’t open up to people who love you?” He had to steel himself, he wanted to comfort her and pull her to him, kissing away her hurts, but he had to push her hard and then he could comfort her.
She burst into tears as he rained three more strokes with his palm. He felt it all rush free and it took all of his control not to dash in and take up the opened link. He waited and this time when he pushed fingers into her, his middle finger slid up and over her clit, flicking over it from side to side.
“I love you, Holly. You’re beautiful and stubborn and intelligent and damn it, you have so much love to give and to receive. Just fucking let it go!”
She met his eyes in the mirror and he saw the tears tracking down her face, felt her resistance fall away and her yearning for connection with him. He took her invitation as he brought her off and she arched back as he filled her with his soul, his love, and felt hers in return like a shy gift that he cherished even more for it coming to him in such a tortured way. She was still afraid but her defenses were gone, she was too tired to hold him back and when she opened her eyes she saw herself through his eyes in that mirror and gasped in surprise.
Gone was the pudgy shy girl with awkward looks and in her place truly was a goddess. A woman who was alive with curves and femininity, with a crown of hair that inflamed the senses of the man holding her.
“I’m beautiful,” she said with awe. “Because you love me.”
He gave her a smile and shook his head. “No, because you’re beautiful, I love you. Your inner beauty shines through as well as the way you look on the outside. I can’t get enough of you.”
He reached down and unhooked her ankles and wrists and reached back and pulled out a tube of something that he poured over her skin, cooling it and soothing the sting. “This will make you feel better. I’ll let you be on top so you don’t have to lie on your back.”
She let him help her up and she stood on shaky legs and watched him as he pulled his jeans off before sitting back down. She moved to sit astride him and guide him into her body. He gave a long groan at the exquisite pleasure of it,
of being with her in such a physical way, but the strengthened link also fed the emotional sensation. Before it was like a whisper of sensation between them but now it was the roar of the ocean. Her hunger, the sensations of their mating sliding through her, tied them together in ways he’d only heard tales of before. He felt himself in her heart, felt her in his.
A sheen of sweat on their bodies caused them to slide over each other, to cool hot flesh. Grabbing her hair in his fist, he brought her mouth to his and devoured her. Slaked his thirst for her with the sweetness of her lips, the carnal flesh of her tongue, her taste. He took in all of her soft noises of pleasure, all the while just meeting her body when she slid down him with a thrust of his hips.
As he got closer to climax he moved his lips from hers and they slid down her jaw to the spot where neck met shoulder. He nicked her and felt her blood rush into his mouth, into his body.
She arched her back with a cry as she began to come, the tips of her neat, squarely trimmed nails pressed into the flesh of his shoulders as she spasmed around his cock. With each swallow of her blood the pleasure of her climax rushed into his body.
He held her down on him with his hands at her hips as he came with a roar, body thrust up tight into hers, filling her.
Her head fell forward after he’d closed the place he’d fed. “I love you, Nate,” she whispered into his ear.
Something deep was pulled free from him at that moment. It was disorienting for a small span of time—the enormity of her love for him, of those words spoken by his mate. After they’d just had an intensely emotional scene, hearing such a declaration pushed him so deeply in love with Holly Daniels that he’d have walked into the sunlight if she asked him to.
The door opened and Rhett was standing there, chest heaving, watching them both, incisors glinting in the light.
* * * * *
Without a word, Rhett pulled Holly up and into his arms, making a frustrated sound because she tasted of Nate. He clawed at his clothes and tore them off as she kept her lips to his as much as she could.