Page 61 of Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire)
Her eyes were closed again, and she was humming. “You won’t want to do that,” she had to protest all the same, even though every bit of her resistance was weakening, I could feel it. “Taste me, I mean. I’m…”
“Yeh,” I said. “I will.” My hands were moving down again, all the way to her upper chest, finding the tight pectorals, digging my thumbs in, forcing another moan of pained pleasure from her. And when my palms finally slicked over her breasts, she drew in a hard breath, then let it go in a long, low moan as my fingers found her nipples and began to caress them.
“I’m not…sore there,” she said.
“Shh.” I stayed there, massaging, playing, teasing, as the oil shone on her body and the scent of sweet almond filled the air, until her lips parted and she began to breathe harder. I watched her lying beneath me, her eyes closed, the candlelight casting shadows over her ivory skin. A butterfly, resting its wings.
“You’re so pretty,” I told her. “So pretty, baby.”
She smiled without opening her eyes, finally trusting, finally waiting for whatever would happen next, and I was moving down to her thighs, working the quadriceps, stroking all the way to her calves, the oil slick on my fingers as I painted her, stroked her, made her melt.
When I was at her feet, I took her ankle in my hand and worked my other thumb gently over the instep, more firmly over the ball of her foot, then, finally, pulled on one toe at a time, stretching it, releasing the tension. First one foot, then the other, and her hips were shifting now, as if her toes were wired straight to her core, telling me that the silver stream of pleasure was running through her entire body now, even though we’d barely started.
So much promise, so much beautiful sensuality, and it was all mine, because I was her man. And there was no hurry, none at all. We were alone, we were together, and this bed and this night were all there was.
“Feels sogood,”she murmured, her eyes still closed. “How can my toes feel that good? How?”
I did it some more. How could I do anything else? “Because it’s all connected,” I told her. “Nerves, and muscle, and blood, and sensation. Because you were born to feel pleasure, and to give it.”
Her eyes had opened. “Hemi,” she said. “I want you so much.”
“Shh. Wait, baby. Just wait.” My hands were stroking, whisper-light now, up the silky, softened skin of her thighs, nudging them gently apart, my thumbs tracing over that most sensitive spot, the inner thigh that was one of the sweetest places on a woman’s body. Up and down, until her thighs were parting more, because she couldn’t help it, until her sighs had turned to low moans, until she was nothing but wanting, nothing but needing. Craving everything I had to give her.
And then, when I’d stopped her hurting, had softened her skin and her muscles and the knots inside, too…then, I loved her. Slowly, and thoroughly, and with everything I had. Taking her into my mouth, running my tongue over her, painting her there, too, while my fingers probed and played and she forgot to be self-conscious, forgot that she was anything but a willing, eager body, that she was anything but mine. And when she was going hard, I used my teeth on her, on those sensitive inner thighs, and heard her gasp again. I bit her, gently at first, then not quite so gently, while my fingers moved inside her, until her hips were rising, her cries were broken, and she needed it too much for me to deny her anymore.
She did taste like a cookie. She tasted delicious, so I ate her up. And she didn’t even manage to put her hands in my hair. She just lay there, splayed on the bed, her arms flung up beside her head, and let me do it all. She let me love her with everything I had, let me drive her slowly up into a sweet, long, slow, rolling orgasm, and then another and another, because Hope could ride that rollercoaster like no woman I’d ever known.
When I slid over her at last, when I couldn’t wait another moment, when I finally pushed inside her and felt all the tightness and the heat of her, the drug I needed more than anybody had ever needed anything, she still didn’t hold me. She lay there, pliant, melting in my arms, and let me make her come some more. And I felt like the most powerful man in the world.
She didn’t say anything for long minutes afterwards, and she didn’t move. Finally, though, she stirred herself, left the bed, and went back into the bathroom to clean up, and I blew out the candle. She came back in the dark, climbed into bed again, and snuggled up against me without bothering to find her undies, all modesty forgotten, her oil-smoothed skin soft under my hands.
I pulled her in, spoon fashion, against my body, and put a gentle hand on her belly, there where I couldn’t soothe the hurt enough, but where I still wanted to try. I could feel the way I’d loosened her stiffness, though, how I’d eased the ache, and I loved knowing it.
She said, her voice barely audible in the darkness, “You are the best lover in the world.”
I had to smile, and I may have had to kiss her hair, too. “You may not be the world’s biggest expert, eh.”
“I don’t have to be,” she said. “I know for sure. Nobody could be better than that. Nobody could love me like you do. Nobody could be more generous, and nobody could ever be sweeter.”
“Shh,” I said, rubbing her belly a bit more. “Ruin my reputation, won’t you. Hard first day, then, there at the office?”
“Yes. No.” She sighed. “I don’t know. How about you?”
“Maybe,” I said. “But it’s better now.” And it was true.
Hope
Hemi Te Mana may not have been perfect, but he sure had his redeeming qualities.
The morning after he’d knocked my socks off yet again, I woke when he did, at the ungodly hour of five-thirty, and bundled the sheets off the bed while he laughed at me. “That’s why I pay Inez, you know,” he said. “All you have to do is leave it unmade, and she’ll know they need changing.”
I hid my face in white cotton of such a high thread count, I couldn’t feel the weave. “I’d die of embarrassment, though. They smell like almond oil. They’vegotalmond oil all over them.” Not to mention a few spots of blood that I was going to have to wash out with cold water before putting the sheet in the laundry basket, because there was no way I was leaving that for somebody else.
Hemi came over to me, dressed only in some very attractive black briefs, tipped my face up, and kissed me. “Hate to tell you,” he whispered in my ear, “but I think she’s guessed we’re having sex. We’re engaged. It’s allowed.”
I took advantage of the opening. “How’s that going? With Anika?” Casually, as if it had just occurred to me.
He didn’t seem too convinced by my acting job. “Fine,” he said, dropping his hand from my face and heading back into the bathroom, which put an end to that particular tender moment.
