Beneath the Surface (24 page)

133

Gracie C. McKeever

Tabitha slowly dragged her mouth off of him, swallowing down every drop of his essence as she slid up his body to lie beside him.

“God.” He gasped.

She giggled. “No, just me.”

He turned to her, eyes radiant as if lit from a fire within, raking over her with hungry heat. “Can you untie me now?”

“What’s your rush?”

“Tabitha.”

She glanced up from idly stroking his chest, fingers frozen mid-caress, recognized the command in his voice. “What are you going to do when I untie you?”

“What do you think?”

Tabitha gulped, nervous yet too famished not to obey. She got up on her knees and reached over to the left post to untie that wrist, then did the same with the right.

She sat back on her heels, watched as he smoothed each wrist in turn, reinitiating the circulation, noticed the half-moons embedded in the palms of his hands where he’d clenched his fists, suddenly concerned. “Did I hurt you?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

“You’re okay though?”

“More than okay.” He looked at her one long moment before he caught her around the waist and flipped her onto her back. “My turn.”

* * * *

“Because I’ve got a slight advantage over you.”

“More than slight,” she squeaked, warily watching him.

“And you like it that way, don’t you, Tabitha?”

She nodded, surprised him—always surprising him—yelped when he reached down with one hand and ripped the thong from her waist. “Hey!”

“Hey, indeed.” He bent and angled his head, lightly biting her left earlobe as he reached down and thrust one finger into her wet heat.

“Mmm,” she groaned, twisting beneath him, arching her body towards his as he held both her wrists above her head in one hand and worked her into a fever with the other. “Please, Eric…I want you…inside…I want you inside me.”

“Do you?”

She nodded again, nibbled her bottom lip, and his cock jumped in response, fresh memories washing over him as he watched her sinking her teeth into that swollen flesh above while he delved in her swollen flesh below.

134

Beneath the Surface

“I’m going to make you come, Tabitha. Hard, and when you’re done, I’m going to make you come again.”

“Oh…Oh, sheesh.”

He smiled, her body tight and pulled up like a bow, reaching, seeking as he released her wrists to strum her flesh like a violin, stroking her side from breast to knee cap.

“Please, Eric.”

“You didn’t listen to me when I begged.”

“You vindictive bastard!”

He chuckled. “I never said I wasn’t.” He liked sparring with her, always had, loved her spirit, her strength and passion. And he intended to turn each of them on her as he turned her inside out with need.

EJ scrutinized her body from head to toe as if he were a surgeon deciding where first to cut with his scalpel.

He paused to focus on her copper skin, the rosy glow enticing, making his mouth water. “You blush pretty.”

“I’m not blushing.”

“You’re burnished gold like a new penny. You’re beautiful.” He wiggled his middle finger inside her as if to accentuate his point, caressing the surrounding nerve endings inside before sliding in another finger and watching her eyes drift closed.

She panted, caught his wrist, holding his hand in place, trying to drive his fingers deeper as she pumped against them.

She was almost there, right at the edge, he could feel it—from the frantic movements of her hips, the hot moistness of her skin, her internal shudders riding up his arm—the idea of holding back and denying her, thus denying himself, exquisite torture.

“Uh-uh. Not so fast.” He slid out his fingers and Tabitha whimpered then punched him in the shoulder. “That’s not nice,” he murmured.

“Neither are you.”

He smiled before swooping down to claim her mouth again, tongue stroking the seam until she parted her lips for him and he plunged in his tongue to explore her mouth as if he’d never tasted her before. Each time he touched her fresh and new. Each time he kissed her a dizzying and different experience from the last.

“Eric…”

“I said I’d make you come baby, and that’s what I intend to do.” He reached past her, opened the nightstand drawer and retrieved a condom without looking.

She greedily stared as he opened the foil pack with his teeth and fingers before expertly rolling it over his penis.

135

Gracie C. McKeever

“Yes, good, let’s do this!” She settled her hands on his waist, caressing each hipbone with her thumbs in a conciliatory urgent manner that made him suppress a grin.

As she’d done to him earlier, he took her hands from his waist. “Good things come to those who wait, Tabby-Cat.”

She bared her teeth, hissed at him and he glimpsed a hint of her namesakes in that instant that made his heart thunder with the idea of taking this fierce and fiery woman; flutter with the idea that this woman had taken and now owned him.

He settled himself over her body, cupped a perky bountiful breast in one hand, finally able to enjoy the full magnitude of her bosoms at his leisure. He bent his head to lave each hard nipple until they shone liked washed black cherries in the dim light of the room.

Tabitha squirmed beneath him, raked her fingers through his hair, fisted the long soft locks near the base of his skull and held him close, pushing her pelvis up against his rock-hard penis, and he groaned in painful ecstasy at the brief contact.

EJ wasn’t going to be able to hold out much longer.

He slowly made his way down her body, leaving a moist hot trail of kisses and love-bites from her breasts to her stomach until he finally paused at the apex of her thighs where the musky-sweet scent of her desire wafted up to him in warm engulfing waves.

She grasped his hair and pushed her hips at him, and he met her thrust with an obliging flick of his tongue, hungrily licking her cleft. She released a primal noise that goaded him to dive in, tongue pushing by damp curls until Tabitha was mindlessly swinging her head back and forth on the pillow and begging him to take her.

He stroked her clit, slowly building a rhythm before he drove his middle finger into her pussy and her muscles clamped down and sucked him in.

“Oh, God, Eric, I want you. I want
you
inside me!”

He timed it to the minute, pulling out his finger, rising and carefully positioning himself between her thighs, penis hovering over her opening for one endless moment as he stared down at her and willed her to look up at him before he slowly slid into her.

“Oh…Oh, yes…”

“You are so fucking tight!” And hot and wet and she felt so good, just as he’d known she would, just as he’d fantasized. He thought he’d come from the rush of finally being inside her.

He paused half-way in, rotated his hips, then thrust deep, felt her canal stretching to accommodate his width and length, heard her sigh as he slid home inside her.

EJ did something then he’d never done with another woman, not even in the throes of his deepest passion: he slipped into Tabitha’s mind as he slid into her body. The bond, the transition so natural he didn’t even have to try hard, the effect of his entry echoing back to him with the force of a tsunami, making him feel what she felt.

136

Beneath the Surface

He undulated his hips as if to test his theory, pulled out until just the tip of his penis brushed her vulva, torturing her with several quick shallow thrusts before he drove back in full, and ground his pelvis against her.

It happened again. He felt his own taunting, felt his own entry as if
she
had slid into
him
. He gasped, wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, eyes shut tight, chest full as he tried to hold onto the feeling, hold onto her, the opportunity to get into her head, her heart, ephemeral and quickly slipping away.

Her shields were down, she was totally open and vulnerable to him and he might have had time to regret his invasion if Tabitha didn’t stiffen in his arms at that very moment, her sudden orgasm crashing down and knocking the wind out of them both. She cried out, milking him, every drop as EJ released a hoarse grunt and stopped short of collapsing on top of her.

He rolled to his side next to her, panting as he reached out a hand and twined his fingers through her chestnut hair, the scent of strawberry shampoo from last night’s shower still fragrant and fresh on the strands.

She turned her head towards him and he touched his forehead to hers as he lifted a lock of her hair to his nose and took a deep breath.

“That was nice,” she murmured, stroking his chest.

“Nice? You are the mistress of understatement.” He peered at her, and she was no longer reachable, her mind closed tight.

Damn, for an instant, just an instant, he’d had her. Not her thoughts, but her feelings. And she had been so in synch with him, and he in synch with her, that he knew it had been more than “nice” for her because it had been way more than nice for him.

“Maybe.” She averted her eyes.

“Maybe,” he whispered.

137

Gracie C. McKeever

He’d done something to her.

Tabitha didn’t know what it had been, didn’t know how he’d done it, but as soon as he’d entered her, when they’d made love, something besides the physical had happened, something on another plane, shifted and changed.

She hated thinking in terms of clichés, but she couldn’t think of any other way to put what had happened between them, except eerie.

She was different, wouldn’t be the same again, and didn’t think she wanted to go back if it meant being without the intense feelings he evoked, if it meant doing without his wild and crazy sensuality or his warm and easy smile.

Sheesh, this scared her, scared the holy crap out of her. He scared her, and she hated feeling this way, tentative about a possibly life-changing moment, maudlin and wimpy and
open.
These sorts of emotions could only lead to disaster, always did.

She wasn’t like this! She faced challenges and changes head-on, had been doing it ever since she’d been a little girl and left in the state’s care. She’d had no choice, had no one to take the blows for her, or help her deal with changes, no one who
cared.

“May I join you?” Eric pulled back the shower curtain, stepped into the modern spacious tub with her, and closed the curtain behind him before she could answer.

She glanced down his body, licked her lips and immediately got wet when she saw that he was fully erect, surprised that they were both turned on so soon after their last round just twenty minutes ago. “Obviously, that was a rhetorical question,” she drawled.

“Obviously.” He grinned.

“Did you order breakfast?”

“I love a woman with a one-track mind.” He bent his head to kiss her right shoulder, caressing her arms from shoulders to fingertips before he twined his fingers with hers.

138

Beneath the Surface

“I’m a woman with a hungry belly.”

“And I’m a man with a hot and hard cock. What are we going to do about that?”

“Breakfast?”

“I don’t think that’s going to solve the problem.”

She punched him in the gut. “Who’s going to let room service in when they come up?”

“I will. This isn’t going to take very long…” He bowed his head to lick her throat, pressing her against the slippery tile wall away from the hot spray of the shower.

“This is dangerous.”

“I’ve got this.” He held up a condom with a flourish, grinning widely.

“You know that’s not what I mean,” she said, her tone solemn. “We could slip and bust open our heads and hotel security will find our bodies days later horribly bloated and swollen after we’ve stunk the place up and the neighbors have complained.”

“God you’re morbid.” He grimaced. “But don’t think that’s going to scare me off.”

She looked at him, still worried and he picked up on her anxiety right away.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never done it in a shower before.”

She blushed, her coloring and silence telling him all he needed to know.

He leered and slid his free hand down to her slit, slowly pushed in a finger. “I’ll walk you through it,” he whispered.

Walk wasn’t exactly the appropriate word, more like carry her through it, after he instantly sheathed his penis, reached down and behind her to lift her by the bottom and up into his arms.

Tabitha instinctively wrapped her legs around his waist, held on tight.

He pinched her round cheeks. “Mmm, nice cushion,” he said, maneuvered her against his body until her vagina rested against the tip of his cock, slowly lowered her onto him as he thrust and completely buried himself in her hot moist depths.

She sighed when his penis filled her, clutched her pussy muscles around him and entwined her arms around his neck as she nuzzled his throat, nipping and sucking the skin there until he trembled.

Her nipples painfully pebbled and she took the edge off rubbing back and forth against his chest, squirming in his arms as he drove in and out of her with increasing force and speed until the friction became unbearable and she had no choice but to climax.

She fastened her legs around him, shuddering, vagina throbbing as his muscles flexed around her when he pressed her against his chest.

Tabitha came back to herself a moment later, raising her head to see his grin.

“Was that nice?”

139

Gracie C. McKeever

She lazily moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, nodded as her eyes drifted shut again, muscles spent with satisfaction. “Better than nice.”

“Yes!” He pumped a fist. “Progress, that’s what I like.” He kissed her full on the lips, sweeping his tongue into her mouth, briefly sucking hers before someone knocked on the suite door outside. He pulled away to smile at her. “Do I have perfect timing or what?”

He put her back on her feet and she had to grab hold of the towel rack to keep from falling as she watched him get out of the shower and wrap a big fluffy white towel around his trim hips.