Page 62 of Tourist Season
It might not be delivered as a promise, but I want to believe that. I want to trust him in this too. And if I could just tell him the truth, that I’m not who he thinks I am, maybe everything would be easier. I know I’m no saint, not after the things I’ve done. Not after I left him for dead. Even still, I wonder if he could forgive me for that if I were honest. But I will not break my promise to Arthur. “I’m not the person you think I am” is the closest I let myself come, and even that is only a whisper, as though anything louder will shatter my vow.
“You’re right, you’re not,” he says as he slowly pulls one of my feet away from the other, dragging it through the rubber mulch. “You’re so much more than what I thought you would be.”
He could mean anything by that, good things or bad. But the heat in his touch sets off an electrical storm in my veins. I can feel the dampness of my panties. My nipples tighten. A shiver trembles through my flesh, one that has nothing to do with the deepening dusk.
“I’m desperate for a taste of you, Harper.” He pulls my otherankle through the mulch, spreading me wide. “I’m fucking starving for it.” My breath comes in shallow pants as his hands travel the length of my lower legs, gliding over my knees. He grasps the hem of my skirt and slowly pushes it up my thighs. “It’s all I can think about.”
It’s all I can think about too. I don’t say the words, but he can see them in me, as though I’m projecting them into the space between us. His eyes are still fused to mine as he drags my skirt higher and higher until it reaches my hips. “Will you let me have just one taste?”
“No,” I say, and he goes as still as marble. There’s relief in knowing he will immediately stop without any hesitation. The earnest questions and concerns burn so brightly in his eyes that I nearly laugh. I might love his words and all the fantasies they evoke. But I love antagonizing him even more, perhaps because I know that he’ll never stop meeting whatever gauntlet I throw down. The wisp of fear that he’s crossed a line still lingers in his eyes until I lean a little closer with a devilish grin. “Not just one taste. I’m not some fucking snack.”
I spread my legs wider. A ravenous shadow descends across Nolan’s face.
“If you start, you’re going to finish your fucking meal.”
SPLICEHarper
THERE’S A FLASH OF METALin the dim light. He holds a knife in his hand, the blade curved like a tiger’s claw. “You’re a bit of a brat, aren’t you?” Nolan says as he shifts closer, the heat of his body settling between my thighs. He drags a finger along the seam of my tights, the fabric damp, and then pinches my clit. I gasp. It treads the line of pleasure and pain as he lets the bundle of nerves slip free, the fabric of my tights and panties still pinched between his fingers. “You know what happens to brats, don’t you?”
“They’re punished?”
“Yes. But I believe that punishment should come second …” The tip of the blade pierces through the fabric in his grip. Every muscle tenses as I lock my body in place, anticipation coursing through me. The blunt edge of the curved blade touches my folds in a cold kiss of metal. It presses just hard enough to be a threat, a warning not to move. And I don’t. I barely breathe as it drags up to my clit, the cutting edge shredding the fabric in a long, slow slice. “A brat needs to be tamed first.”
I let out a long breath as the blade pulls away from my center,but detours toward my right thigh. Nolan watches me with an intensity that burns through the shadows descending around us. He turns the blade so the tip is now flush with the tender skin at the crease of my thigh. Then he drags it slowly down my inner thigh in a straight line toward my knee, tearing through the fabric as he goes. I stay perfectly still, aside from my racing pulse and the ragged breaths that shudder in my lungs. The tip of the blade coasts over my leg just hard enough to leave a line of discomfort in my skin, but not hard enough to bleed. When the tights are cut all the way to my ankle, he shifts to my other leg, doing the same but from the bottom up. His touch is such a gentle contrast to the hint of pain, his free hand sweeping up the path of the blade in a soothing caress.
I swallow a moan when the blade arrives at the crease of my left leg. He catches the edge of my panties and glides it over my lower abdomen, pulling them and my tights taut against the cutting edge until they both fall away from my skin.
Nolan lifts the blade away, closing it before sliding the knife into his pocket. I’m bared wide to him. A tremor vibrates in my bones. I can smell the subtle musk of my arousal rising on the cool breeze that caresses the moisture gathered at my entrance. Nolan licks his lips, a slow smile stalking across his glistening flesh. “What a good girl you were for me. You stayed so perfectly still, and I didn’t even have to ask. It was almost as though you were …tame.”
Well …fuck.
His smile widens at the scowl I give him. “Don’t get used to it,” I say.
I can just make out his dimples in the dark when he laughs. He runs his hand through his hair and it falls back into place to skimhis cheekbones in that perpetually disheveled way that makes my heart ache.
His smile fades. He leans closer to my center. A line of cool air flows from his pursed lips, teasing across my pussy. When I shiver, he leans back. “Maybe it’s time to be punished.”
I surge forward to grip the back of his neck with my hand, my face so close to his that his breath of a laugh floods my senses. “Nolan fucking Rhodes—”
“I sure hope you’re about to say ‘please’ when you tell me to eat your pussy.”
My lips clamp shut. I was definitely about to say something along the lines of “eat my pussy or I’ll cut you into ribbons of flesh,” no hint of a “please” in sight. And as he leans a little farther away, his hands braced on my thighs, I know he’ll toy with me if I don’t give him the one little word he wants.
“I thought you said you were going to take care of me,” I finally venture.
Nolan’s eyes track upward as though he’s digging through his memory, his expression pensive. “Actually, I suggested you should let someone take care of you. I never said that was going to be me.”
My chest feels like a burning pit of rage, and Nolan’s loving every minute of my descent into madness. “I truly hate you—”
“But …” he interjects, trailing a single finger up my inner thigh, crossing over to my pussy. With a long, slow stroke, he drags his touch through my arousal and then swirls his finger over my clit in a caress that’s far too gentle to be anything but a tease. “If you ask menicely…”
“I …” Any protest I hoped to make dies on my tongue, my brain short-circuiting as he presses a little harder on my sensitivebud of nerves. His wolfish smile. The dark and dangerous shine in his eyes. He’s watching me like he knows he’s about to win. “Nolan Rhodes …”
He bats his long lashes at me in faux innocence. “Yes …?”
“Would you, pretty please with a cherry on top”—I lean closer, holding his eyes—“take your hand off my pussy?”
He swallows, and judging by the sudden pain that surfaces in his expression, it could have been blades that just passed down his throat. But he does so immediately, lifting his touch away from both my clit and my knee without delay.
