Page 40 of Lair

“What is that?” I get out at last. “Is that—is that an orgy?”

The words make him pale, if he actually could. He runs a hand down his face. “Look, I—”

But my fury blazes up again. “What is this? What kind of fucking business meeting is that? Why did you tell me—”

“I’m sorry, Aurora. I was trying to protect you. Those—” He glances back and lowers his voice. “Those are not good men, okay? I did not want you in that room.”

I shift my weight, sullen and vulnerable. “Were you—were you participating—”

“No! No. This is—this is what’s required, when I host them. This is how it is, for... what I do.”

“And what is that, exactly? What do you do, Mr. Voper?”

He looks at me for a long, considering moment, shakes his head. “I can’t tell you that.”

“Why?”

“I just can’t.”

“Why?” I shout.

“BECAUSE I CARE ABOUT YOU!” The force of the explosion leaves us both speechless and breathing hard, inches from each other. Our eyes lock. He looks as stunned as I am. A thrilling tension grows, winding tighter and tighter, threatening to snap. I’m reminded of the way he looked when he rose out of the pool, huge and hulking and simmering of danger, and it crackles through me like an electric charge.

We. Are about. To fuck.

It happens faster than I can blink. He scoops me up by my ass and we crash against the wall, no doubt spiderwebbing it with cracks. My flats drop to the floor. My hands fall to his shoulders and my dress rides up my thighs. The breath has gone out of me in a whuff, but I don’t care—because he’s kissing me. And not like before. This is rough, ravenous, savage but tender. I push at his extravagantly muscled chest as if bracing on a rollercoaster. He does not budge. He is a brick wall, holding me in place. He vibrates with power, so intense it makes me feel limp and warm, blazing with sensitivity. When he pulls away, I come up for air as if surfacing into a strange atmosphere. His face is very close, he stares into my eyes. His voice comes out as a husky, angry promise. “No one’s ever going to hurt you again, Aurora.”

I shiver. No one—no one—uses my full name but him. And he knows it.

But how did he know? How did he know I’d been hurt before?

“I know you,” he says, as if reading my thoughts. “I know pain when I see it.” My heart thrums. “And I know what you want.”

Goose bumps break out all over me—whoo daddy, yes, he does. I growl in impatience and grip the scruff of his hair, pulling him back. Like a good boy, he accommodates. His mouth is eating me, his white teeth sharp. He tugs furiously at my dress and I hear material tear; he’s ripping my champagne gown to rags, fulfilling every woman’s deepest fantasy. I hear the clink of his belt, and I can’t help it—I moan, embarrassingly loud, thinking of what’s coming next. And it does. A sudden, urgent pressure that surges inside me, bouncing me up against the wall. I clap a hand to my mouth to muffle my scream. I’d been expecting his size, given how much bigger he is than me—but holy shit. He begins to move with excruciating control, grinding up into me in a slick rolling of his hips, bouncing me up and down with every thrust. My hands claw at his shoulders, his neck, his hair. I wrap my legs around him. I can barely blink, barely breathe. This is the hottest moment of my life. All I had ever gotten from Josh was a cold, unwelcoming bed, a disinterest in intimacy. But this—I don’t know how I can go back from this. I have never been taken like this before, ravaged like this before. He tangles his hands in mine and pins them against the wall above my head, presses his brow to mine, noses touching, and stares into my eyes. The passion there is so stark and real it sends wild terror bolting through me. How can I keep my composure in the face of that stare, ignore the sudden tightening of emotion in my chest, when I know that he wants nothing less than for me to hand over everything I am and ever have been, and be his?

It is too much. The pleasure cascades, and I am moaning and whimpering like a little puppy, lost in the extravagant torture of it. Please, please. I clutch at him, babbling pleas and brutal promises, my body helplessly quivering until I’m carried over a cliff into rushing darkness, annihilating oblivion.

Until I am sent—as if in sudden, blinding flight—over the edge.

The pleasure is searing, unbearable. I buck and claw and cry out, and he clamps a hand over my mouth as the waves of ecstasy ripple through me in a long subsiding spasm, leaving me wrung out, exhausted, on the far shore of where I once had been, who I once had been.

So. This is what they talk about. This is what we are capable of.

My eyes roll back in my head and I sag in sudden, heavy deliriousness, spent and empty as air. And he’s joining me here, in this bright new world. His thrusting pleasure carrying him over to a complete abandon in which he shudders and groans and I cling to his neck, kissing and moaning into his mouth—“Come for me, baby, come for me”—and then he’s exploding inside me in a flurry of amazed curses and I hold him to me, his head between my breasts, my hands in his hair, whispering, shh. I am swimming in a broth of devotion.

After a long time he sets me down, my ass sliding down the wall until I’m on my own quivering legs again. I suck in a big lungful of air and laugh. “Wow.”

But he doesn’t say anything.

“Adrian?” I turn to him. “What’s wrong?”

He has his eyes squeezed shut, head down, one hand braced on the wall beside me. He is shivering as if with fever. A chill touches me, and I put a hand to his cheek. “Adrian?”

He chances a look at me, my skin flushed with color, and jerks away in a grimace of agony. His shoulders heave, he shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he says, his normally smooth voice rough with regret. “This was a mistake.”

The bottom of my stomach drops out. “What?”

He looks at me with eyes hazed black, and the cold ferocity there makes my scalp crawl. When he opens his mouth again, it’s sharp. “I made a promise: No one will ever hurt you again.”

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