Page 37 of Bloody Lace

Evelyn flinches, just a little. “There’s only one bedroom, isn’t there?” she whispers, and I nod.

“Yes. And I’m afraid I’m not enough of a gentleman to offer to sleep on the couch. Nor do I want a housekeeper or anyone else coming by and being given reason to think that my wife and I don’t share a bed. Appearances,” I clarify, and Evelyn only looks slightly reassured.

“Our deal holds,” I promise her. “I won’t touch you.”

She licks her lips nervously, sending a jolt of frustrated desire through me, and I feel my cock twitch. But I do my best to ignore it, and she nods, her jaw tensing as she grabs her bag again and heads for the staircase.

I follow her up, intending nothing more than to give her a brief tour and then leave her to let her get changed, showered, or whatever she likes. She pauses in the middle of the loft-like bedroom, looking around as I walk to one wall and press the button to open the blinds, showing her the view of the city from this room as well.

“This place is incredible,” Evelyn says softly. “It really is.”

“Thank you.” I watch as her gaze drifts over the room, to the king-size platform bed, the heavy wooden furniture, the door on the far end. “The master bathroom is in there. Free-standing shower, soaking tub, all the pleasures you could want.” My cock twitches again at the wordpleasures, and I grit my teeth, wondering if I’ll have a chance to ease that particular urge tonight. I’ll have to find some measure of privacy, in the shower, maybe. Right now, the urgency of it is beginning to feel as if it borders on desperation.

It’s only worsened when I see Evelyn catch her lip between her teeth, as if mulling something over, and then she turns to me with a reluctant expression on her face.

“I need your help with the back of my dress.”

Of course she does.One look at it could tell me that—the back is made up of dozens of tiny buttons running down her spine into the feathers of her skirt. I felt them against my palm when we danced, making me imagine how it would feel to run my fingers up the small bumps of her spine instead. But I didn’t think about the fact that she would need help unbuttoning them.

Or how the hell I’m going to keep my hands off of her after I do.

She’s standing there, glowing in the moonlight coming in through the window in her cream-colored dress, black hair falling like pools of ink over her shoulders, feathers draping over her hips and legs like an exotic bird. On most women, I feel sure the dress would look ridiculous, but not on her. On Evelyn, it looks like she was made to wear it.

“I just want to shower and get into something comfortable.” She looks away from me, as if she’s just as aware as I am of the tension of the moment, and wants to break it. But what she’s saying does nothing to achieve that.

The thought of her in the shower makes me instantly, painfully hard. I want to find out what she looks like naked more than I think I’ve ever wanted anything in my entire fucking life, and the thought of that bare skin wet, soap sliding over her breasts, her dark hair heavy with water and slick against her skull—fuck. My cock throbs as I walk towards her, and I can feel it straining against my fly, pre-cum sliding down my shaft. I need to fucking get off, and soon. My cock feels so hard I half think it might snap.

Evelyn turns away from me, pulling her hair over one shoulder so I have access to the buttons on the back of her dress, and I grit my teeth, trying to focus on the task and nothing else. Not the way the sharp wings of her shoulder blades press against her pale skin, begging for me to trace my fingers over them. Not the way I’m aching to brush my fingertips over the edge of the top of her dress, making her shiver before I start to undress her. Not the fact that this feels like the most intimate moment I’ve ever shared with any woman, and it’s with a woman that I absolutely cannot touch more than necessary.

Even though she’s my wife.

I tug the first button free, and I feel Evelyn tense. I reach for the next, what blood that’s left in my body that hasn’t gone straight down to my cock pounding in my ears, humming as that fog of lust threatens to cloud my better judgement. I want her so fucking bad it hurts, and it’s not just a desire for sex, a desire for release, it’s a desire forher. I want to find out what she looks like bare, I want to discover the sounds she makes when I touch her, when I taste her, when I make her come. I want to find out how she feels wrapped around my cock, every part of her, and I want to devour her until she’s part of my skin and blood and bones.

The lust that I feel for her is fucking powerful, beyond anything I’ve ever felt before, and I know in that instant that Evelyn was right earlier.

This was a mistake.

But it’s one that’s too late to undo, if we want to get what we both want. What we bothneed.

I swallow hard, trying to ignore the tightness in my balls, the intense throbbing in my groin as I undo each of her buttons. I force myself not to drag my fingers down her spine, not to think about the fact that there’s no bra under her dress, that if I slid my hands into it and around, I could cup her bare breasts in my hands. I try not to think about the fact that I feel as if I’m on the verge of coming without even having touched myself, like I might actually come just from unbuttoning Evelyn’s dress.

I’m a grown man, not a teenager who’s never fucked before, and that’s unthinkable. But in this moment, it feels like one wrong thought could make my cock explode.

When the last button is undone, I feel her pull away from my hands instantly. “Thank you,” she starts to say, but I’m already pivoting away from her, heading for the bathroom door, only one thought in my mind.

I have to fucking come, before I end up fucking my wife.

14

EVELYN

For a brief moment, I don’t understand what’s going on. Dimitri moves away from me like touching me burned him, the bathroom door slamming behind him before I even fully realize he’s gone, and I’m confused until I hear a low, stifled groan, and it hits me.

He’s getting himself off.

A room away from me, behind that closed door, my husband is jerking off. I’ve never been turned on by the thought of a man doing that before, but the moment the realization strikes, a wave of heat blooms through me, desire prickling over my skin and making me breathless.

Idid this to him. Unbuttoning my dress did this to him. Dimitri Yashkov, heir to a New York crime family, movie-star gorgeous and undoubtedly a man who’s fucked half of Manhattan or more, was so desperately turned on by me that he couldn’t wait another second to relieve that desire.

---