Kept (17 page)

“You had no idea who I was,” she reminded him as her thumb swirled around the plump head, wet and slick with thick beads of precome. She skimmed his chest with openmouthed kisses, bent her head to trace the ridges of his abs with her tongue. “All you saw was a woman. A woman you wanted to be with.”

He gave a low groan as he thrust his hips against her grip. “It’s different now, now that I know.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” she whispered, tilting her head back so she could look into his face. She saw a man at war with himself, his mouth tight, strained, his eyes stormy as need threatened his rigid control. “Pretend I’m nobody. Like any other woman you’ve ever been with. Like I was that night.”

“Trouble is, the real world’s always waiting for us,” he said as his hands came up to close over her shoulders.

“Not for another two days,” she said with another swirl of her thumb around his cock. “No one knows we’re here. No one knows what we’re doing. For the next two days, I’m a nobody. I’m just like any other girl you’ve ever met.”

J
UST ANOTHER WOMAN? Was she fucking kidding? There was no way Derek could act like Alyssa was like any other woman he’d ever been with.

No other woman made him feel like this, insane with lust from the slightest touch of her hand. Rock hard and ready to go from the sweet smell of her skin.

And absolutely, completely incapable of turning her down.

He bent to kiss her, moaning as her grip tightened around his cock. What he felt for her went beyond want, beyond desire. Dark and primitive, going against every instinct that demanded rationality and self-preservation, leaving him needing, wanting, powerless to control it. He knew he should push her away but couldn’t make himself stop touching her, kissing her, licking her.

Just one more taste. One more touch. Memories of their one night roared through his head until he knew he couldn’t stop himself from indulging one more time.

He tugged her stretchy tank top up over her head and slid his hands over the silky skin of her back. Warmth radiated off her like rays of the sun, bathing him in her heat. Her hand slid up and down his dick, stroking him into oblivion. He reached down and grabbed her wrist, knowing if he didn’t stop her he was going to blow in her hand.

“I knew the minute I laid eyes on you, you were going to be nothing but trouble,” he muttered, sinking to his knees in front of her. Tight, pink nipples stared him dead in the face, and he sucked one into his mouth. Salty, sweet, she tasted even better than he remembered. “God, you have the sweetest tits,” he murmured, taking each into his mouth in turn, sucking and licking the bullet-hard tips.

“Thanks.” She laughed breathlessly. “My mom was always trying to convince me to get implants because they’re so small.”

“Crazy,” he said, his hand closing over the giving softness. “You’re perfect, sweet, soft.” He didn’t know where the words were coming from. He didn’t say stuff like this, didn’t talk during sex or compliment his lovers’ bodies. He made sure they got off before he did, made sure they were happy, but he didn’t lose control or get all swept up in the moment. He sucked her nipple between his lips. Maybe with his mouth full he’d shut the fuck up.

She cried out and arched against him, and the sound made his balls tighten and his cock harden another inch. His hand slid down the curve of her waist and closed over her hip. His mouth released her nipple and skimmed the soft plane of her belly. He dipped his tongue into her navel, smiling a little at the way her muscles jumped and twitched. She was like a live wire under his mouth and hands, switched on.

He shoved her pajama bottoms off her hips and down her legs to pool around her ankles. His mouth watered at the sight of her pussy, sleek and bare except for that damp patch of curls at the top. All he’d done was suck her tits, and she was already dripping wet, her clit a moist little berry poking through, begging for attention.

He pressed his mouth to her in an openmouthed kiss, his tongue delving into her folds, sliding up and down her clit as he lapped up every last drop of juice. His name exploded
from her lips as her hands fisted in his hair. She was silky hot and salty sweet, the taste and scent of her flooding his senses, pushing him to the brink.

Her body tightened; pain pricked his scalp as her fingers pulled his hair. Her hips arched against his face. She shifted her legs, trying to part them wider, only to be hampered by the pajama bottoms tangled around her ankles.

Derek didn’t help her. He liked her like this. Vibrating like a tuning fork as her orgasm hovered just out of her reach. Wanting him so much she shook with it.

Like any other woman.
Christ, it couldn’t be further from the truth. He didn’t tease women, stroke them to see how high he could take them before he made them come. Didn’t ease up and tease their pussies with featherlight strokes of his tongue until they arched and moaned and begged him pleasepleaseplease don’t stop. Didn’t hold his lovers on that razor-sharp edge for as long as he could just because it made him feel like king of the fucking world that he could bring a woman to such a state.

Another surge of wetness bathed his tongue as her clit pulsed under his lips. One more suck, one more stroke.

Derek’s cock pulsed, insistent, greedy. Selfish. He wanted to be inside her the first time she came, feel the ripple of sleek, tight muscles around his aching cock. He backed off and stood up, ignoring her cry of protest as he scooped her up into his arms and carried her into the bedroom.

He left her long enough to get a condom from the giant box under the bathroom sink. He wondered in passing what the hell Raj had going on up here that necessitated that many rubbers. The sight of Alyssa naked, on her back, knees parted to reveal the shiny wet folds of her sex, rendered him incapable of wondering anything other than how fast he could get inside her and how fast he could make her come so he could follow her headlong into oblivion.

As Derek approached the bed, he reminded Alyssa of a battle-hardened jungle cat. With his big, heavily muscled body and tracing of scars, he was all barely leashed strength, barely controlled fury. A shiver ran through her, and she remembered the first time they’d had sex. The same fascination tinged with fear had swept through her then. He was so powerful, so big. He could so easily overpower her if he wanted, do anything he wanted to her, and she would be powerless to stop him.

Call her sick, but that made her even hotter for him because she knew, with every fiber of her being, that he would never hurt her. Not physically anyway.

Her gaze caught on the huge erection jutting between his thighs. He was big everywhere, she thought with a small smile. And as gorgeous there as he was everywhere else. Long and thick with a tracery of bulging veins, the plump head so engorged it looked as if it were going to burst from his skin.

“Oh, yeah, nothing but trouble.” She looked up. He was watching her look at him, a long dimple creasing his cheek as his mouth crooked into a smile. She heard the rip of foil and watched him smooth the latex down the length of his cock. Her legs shifted, her hips arching off the bed as her body pulsed in anticipation. He knelt between her legs and hooked her knees in his hands, spreading her wide.

Alyssa grabbed him with shaking fingers and guided him in, her back arching as he slid home. He lifted her knees, pressing them back against her chest as his cock stretched and squeezed its way inside her body. She was so keyed up that was all it took to send her over the edge, her orgasm hitting her with stunning speed and intensity.

She pulsed and shook around him, clutching his hips as he thrust hard and fast, riding her through her peak until
she didn’t know if she was having multiple orgasms or one long, endless wave.

She didn’t really care as long as Derek kept the thrusting, swirling rhythm, pounding into her with his granite-hard cock until she was shuddering and shaking, molten at her center like a chocolate lava cake. She loved looking at him braced above her. Every muscle stood out in sharp relief against his sweat-slick skin.

She’d never been with anyone like him. So quiet and controlled but like a barely tamed animal in bed. But still he held something back, kept his lust in check as he measured his thrusts, controlled the motion, didn’t quite let himself go at her with total abandon. His dark eyes glittered through his thick lashes as he watched her, taking in every detail of her response, adjusting the pressure, the depth, the angle accordingly until she felt like every nerve ending was on fire. His thumb flicked her clit, and her body convulsed again, the pleasure so keen tears stung her eyes.

She rocked her hips against him, wanting to pull him even deeper, helpless to fight this thing building and building inside her that made her want to grab on to Derek and cling tight. His hips jerked against her, and his thrusts picked up speed. His face pulled tight with pleasure, and harsh groans pulsed from his throat. She loved watching him come, knowing she had, even for a second, broken through his ironclad control.

Derek collapsed beside her, breathing hard, and she wound her arms and legs around him. Through the haze of pleasure she felt a niggle of fear. What had she gotten herself into? She’d meant for this to be playful, fun, to steal a few days of pleasure with a man she found insanely attractive. This was dangerous, the pull he had on her. She’d been a complete idiot for a hell of a lot less.

Derek stretched as he padded into the living room the following morning at a little after nine. He paused in the kitchen to pour himself some coffee, frowning when he looked around and didn’t see Alyssa. The door to her bedroom had been open when he’d passed it, and he’d poked his head in to find the bed empty.

A suspicious thought tightened his stomach. Had she fucked him into complacency so she could sneak off again? He took a sip of coffee to wash away the bitterness of the thought. Surely he wasn’t that stupid.

He moved into the living room and started to call out for her when he caught a glimpse of pink outside the sliding glass doors that led to the house’s massive redwood deck. He moved in for a closer look, his mouth going bone-dry at the sight that greeted him.

Alyssa’s lusciously rounded ass was pointed up at the sky as she executed a downward dog position worthy of a professional yogi. Her legs, clad in stretchy pink pants, were slightly parted, her palms flat on the damp wood of the deck in front of her so her body formed a perfect vee. The rain had finally stopped. The sky was bullet gray, the air swirling with fog off the Pacific, but she didn’t seem to notice the cold as she jumped her feet forward, straightened halfway, and then lowered herself into a half push-up, arched her chest forward, and then pushed back into the inverted vee.

He watched, enthralled, as she repeated the sequence three more times, wondering how he could be so turned on watching Alyssa do yoga when he’d fucked her six ways to Sunday less than eight hours ago. But watching her bend, stretch, twist made him think of a thousand other ways he wanted to fuck her. From behind, with that surprisingly round ass of hers bouncing against his hips. Her on top, her strong, flexible legs spread wide as she rode his cock to oblivion.

Derek grimaced as his cock thickened behind his flannel
pajamas. What the fuck was wrong with him? He’d scratched the itch that had been nagging him since Alyssa Miles had been thrown back into his life. Finally confirmed that, yes, sex with her was as good as—no, better than—his fevered memories had insisted.

But now the itch was scratched. Case closed. She’d gotten what she wanted—another tumble with a guy who wouldn’t sell her out. And he’d gotten what he needed—a good lay to hold him over for the next several weeks.

So there was no reason in hell he should be popping wood all over the place and calculating how long it would take him to retrieve a condom from the bathroom, strip off those pink pants, and have her spread-eagled on the nearest flat surface.

Derek struggled to wipe his face of expression as Alyssa straightened and turned to come into the house. If she had any inkling that he’d been watching her like a dirty old man at a peep show, it didn’t show in the wide smile that encompassed the entire bottom half of her face. She stepped through the sliding glass door, the mist floating in behind. Her long hair was caught back in a ponytail. Derek tightened his hand around his coffee mug as he fought the urge to smooth his fingers over a damp tendril that had escaped to curl next to her ear.

Her cheeks were flushed from exertion and the damp, cold fall morning, and she smelled like fresh rain.

“Good morning,” she said brightly as she breezed past him into the kitchen. “You found the coffee—I hope it’s okay. I don’t make it a whole lot, so I sometimes make it too strong.”

“It’s fine,” he said, studying, watching her for any signs of discomfort or morning-after awkwardness. He was surprised when he saw none, especially after he had basically rolled off her and beat feet to the guest room for the rest of
the night. When she’d asked him sleepily where he was going, he’d muttered something about sleeping better on his own.

The truth was he’d needed to get out of there, away from her soft skin, tight body, and insane pull she seemed to have on him. Needed to breathe and convince himself she was, as she’d put it, just another woman he’d taken to bed.

She seemed to have taken it all in stride, judging from the way she bopped around the kitchen, putting a few dishes in the dishwasher in between bites of a banana. Then again, he thought as the pit in his stomach made another unwelcome appearance, maybe she was used to fucking guys like it meant nothing and didn’t care one way or the other if they spent the night or not.

The thought stuck in his throat, choking him with a knot of things he had no business feeling.

“I’ll be back in forty-five minutes,” she said and tossed her banana peel in the garbage.

Her pronouncement jolted him from his jealous musings. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Her eyebrows shot up at his harsh tone. “I’m going for my morning run.”

“Alone?”

“Is that a problem?” She was already lacing up her shoes.

He put down his coffee cup as it became evident she was going whether he liked it or not. “Hang on, I’ll go with you.”

“You don’t need to,” she protested. “It’s totally safe up here, and no one knows who I am anyway.”

Her voice trailed him down the hall as he quickly pulled on the workout clothes and running shoes he always carried with him. She was right. He didn’t need to go with her, not for safety reasons anyway.

“It’s not like I’m going to try to escape on foot,” she said testily when he emerged from the guest room.

“I’ll feel better if I keep an eye on you.” Watching her little pink butt bouncing down the road wasn’t going to do anything to quell his libido, but at least he couldn’t do anything about it for the next five miles or so. Besides, despite her protestations, he still didn’t trust her not to try to ditch him again.

They ran in silence for ten minutes or so. She was surprisingly swift, her strides long and even. He didn’t have a problem keeping up with her, but the pace was fast enough to get him breathing hard. The road they ran along paralleled the beach, offering glimpses of crashing waves and craggy rocks through the thick coastal fog. The houses dotting the coast were similar to the one where Alyssa was staying, sprawling, wood-shingle structures designed to make the most of the dramatic views. Nice, but not the kind of five-star resorts where Alyssa was known to frolic.