Pretty Perfect Toy -- A Temptation Court Novel (Temptation Court, Book 2) (12 page)

Ella Santelle isn’t any other woman.

And I know, once my body slides fully inside hers, it is only the beginning of my unraveling. The first layer of many she’ll rip free from the cells of my being, until I’m only a collection of naked nuclei, again showing her everything I am…everything the world doesn’t get to see. Everything
I
haven’t even seen, in so damn long, that I have no idea what it’ll look like. But I sure as shit remember what it feels like.

It’s going to hurt.

Even more than it does now.

“Cassian.
Please
.”

God
damn
, it’s going to hurt.

But denying her is like refusing to breathe. The fabric of my flesh has been created for hers. Every drop of my sweat has been chemically calibrated to her scent. Every tremble of her body becomes an earthquake in mine. She is my custom-created gift from the universe. The other side of me.

The perfect parts of me.

I choose that perfection now. Follow it as the light to reach at the end of this terror, letting it beam through my mind and guide my body.

A couple of shoves at my pants, and my cock is free. A pump of my fist, lubricating my length with the hot liquid at my tip, and I am ready. Holy fuck,
beyond
ready.

Yeah, for all of it.

Even the pain.

Though at the moment, only pleasure is my ruler.

“Fuck.” It erupts from my locked teeth, as her sheath closes over me. Draws me into her tight core, kneading my dick until I shake from the bliss. I widen my stance and clench my ass, letting gravity do some of the work, gripping into her hips in order to set the driving rhythm I know she loves.

“Ohhhhh.” She sighs, transforming it into one of the most erotic sounds I’ve ever heard. “Creator’s toes…”

I drop a short but hard kiss on her mouth. “You really thinking about toes right now,
armeau
?”

Her attempt at a laugh is adorable—and carnal. “No,” she rasps. “Only you.”
Harder
. “Every thought…is
you,
Cassian. Every sensation.
Everything
…”

I drag my gaze open far enough to look at her. Exult in how her pupils dilate every time her pussy rams over me. Bask in the beauty of her parted lips, the bounce of her long curls, even the golden sheen that forms over the column of her neck…

Christ,
yes
. Even her neck turns me on.

“Everything.” I don’t hold back the selfish need from it now. Make it damn clear that on my lips, the word isn’t an offer. It is a decree. The core of what I exact, in exchange for what her very presence exacts from me.

“Yes.” Her response is high and hot, filling me with celebration.

“You’ll take it all from me.”

“Yes.” Higher. Hotter. “I want it all.” Her nails rake my arms. Her eyes are stars gone supernova.

I spread her ass cheeks. Grind into her harder. Faster. “Every inch of my cock.”

“Yes.”

“Filling your perfect cunt.”

“
Yes
.”

I stretch my fingers in. Toy with the puckered rim of her most forbidden entrance. “And here.” I press in, my touch as unyielding as my voice. “You’ll take me here too.”

Her gaze flares. Instantly ingests the meaning behind mine. A trust for a trust. Revelation for revelation. My opening up…for hers.

“Push out.” I’m just as clear as before. It’s not a request. “It’ll widen you,
armeau
.” Deeper still, until I feel her compliance, the muscles expanding around my fingertip. “And it’ll feel so damn good.”

That
I’m not certain she believes—until I recalibrate, timing both invasions with each other, giving her double the stimulation with every drop of her delectable body. Once more, her mouth opens in astonishment—only now, it’s infused with something besides straight confusion. Tiny valleys begin to pinch her forehead. Little gasps become more strident huffs. Soon, they are finished with high-pitched cries…then pleading moans.

“Oh…my…
Creator
.” Her stare is now a wash of sultry need. Her pussy eagerly milks my cock. Her clit is stiff, popped out from its hood to rub up against my lower abdomen. I take a moment to revel in it all—both her tunnels tight around me, her wet sex rubbing and marking me—before even trying to form a reply.

She beats me to it. “More.” Locks her sexier-than-shit gaze to me, baring the grit of her teeth just a little. “
More.
”

I want to refuse. She’s not ready for this—not without lube aside from the juices from her pussy—but she wiggles, freely taking my finger deeper into her virgin entrance.

“Fuck.” I roll the digit, working to stretch her, while scraping a bite to the edge of her jaw. “
Fuck me
. Gorgeous…sorceress.”

She leans up, returning the favor by clamping teeth over my ear. “Abra…cadabra.”

And isn’t that the goddamn truth. How can I deny her now? How can I resist her
ever
? How can I stop my cock from shuttling harder up her channel and my finger from pounding deeper into her ass, when she’s the sexiest creature I have ever held in my arms…allowed to blast into my soul?

“I’m going…to hurt you.”

A last-ditch effort at a protest. Do I even mean it? Could I stop if she protested completely? Pull out and admit that her scent, floral and fuckable, hasn’t thoroughly bewitched me? That her heat, clutching and captivating, hasn’t milked all logical thought from me? Deep inside, somewhere, I still hear the answer, and it’s yes. But dear sweet God, I pray it’s no.

“Then hurt me.”

Thank. God.

“
Dammit
.” I’m inside her to the hilt, making her gasp with every plunge into her tight, hot holes. She scores into my back with both hands, creating craters for my sweat with her grip.

“Cassian!
Oh
!”

Her spell wraps me deeper. Thighs smacking. Nipples tightening. Pussy tightening. Ass clenching.

“Am I…hurting you?”

“Y-yes.”

Good.

“Fuck.”

“No!” She tears one hand up to my head. Forces my cheek against hers, our skin rubbing slick together. “Do not…stop. Oh…Cassian…please…” Her voice vibrates with the tone she reserves only for me—the notes that say she just heard what nobody else can in
my
voice. “It is all right. It is
all right
.”

“Not…yet.”

My throat goes dry, turning the words into a pair of bricks that would be ideal window destroyers.
Ideal analogies for the Daily Double, anyone
? Showing her the shattered glass in the turret was tonight’s easy part—and I can only make this next part happen because of her.
With
her.

Instead of searching for the words to accommodate it, I put action to it. Pump more violently into her, until her body rides the wood at her back like a rag doll. Dear
fuck.
So beautiful.

She lets out a sharp yelp. Clamps her legs higher around my waist, angling me deeper inside her. I groan and intensify the pace. The door audibly rattles. We’ll both be bruised tomorrow, and I gloat in the knowledge…welcome the pain. It’s nothing compared to the different version of the shit about to hit me from inside.

“Cassian.”

Sweet, fucking hell. She’s still using
that
voice, turning my name into something between a prayer and a poem. I’ve never adored her more. I’ve never hated her more. I’m about to break, and it’s all her fault.

“God
dammit.
” I trap her tighter. Drive in deeper.
Not deep enough.

“Oh…Cassian.”

“
Not…yet
.” I dictate it in a growl, even as I fight the force of the storm. Sweat cascades down my spine, between my ass cheeks. My balls pull in, kissing that delicate space of her body above the entrance where my finger plunges. Her neck is slick against my forehead. My flesh fills her body but she surrounds my soul, making it safe to let the tempest roil closer. To let the wave crash in…

“Cassian.”

“Not yet!”

Please…fucking God…not yet
.

“Cassian! By the Creator, I am going to—”

A scream is her punctuation, as her walls crash over my cock in spasms of completion. My balls declare mutiny over my spirit, punching lightning up my cock. I detonate so hard and fast inside her, my own bellow is delayed by long, speechless seconds. But once my groan hits, it lasts forever—or so I pray and pray and
pray,
knowing that once it is done, my defenses will be annihilated.

And they are.

I pull out in a harsh yank. Manage to get her safely on her feet, though I am unsure of attesting the same for myself. My limbs are liquid, my strength drained—

And that’s just the fucking start.

The physical liability is just the crack in the dam—through which my grief has every excuse and reason to flow.

Driving me to run. To escape, locking myself in the bathroom.

Only it’s no escape at all.

In here, naked and cold and by myself, the anguish has even more room to spread—to attack.

Driving me to battle back, roaring in sorrow—

Mindlessly violent.

*

Mishella

T
he last time
I paced a hospital hallway floor, it was in dress heels.

Doing it in flats does not make the ordeal less nauseating.

The tension on Doyle Knight’s face tells me he agrees. All right, there is
always
tension on Doyle’s face, but this is strain of a different ilk, the kind only possible when a man is brother-close to another. Doyle’s history with Cassian is still mostly a mystery, but I have glimpsed enough to know that tonight’s outcome shocks him as thoroughly as it has me.

I steal glances at the man. If Cassian is a golden sorcerer, Doyle could be his comrade in darker shades of allure, with those bronze tiger eyes, cascading umber hair, and vigilant demeanor—that does not betray a shred of his inner thoughts.
Maddening.
Where I can all but complete sentences for Cassian, all I can read in Doyle is rigid stress, polished off with anger.

But at what? Or whom?

My stomach clenches from contemplating the answer.

Before my mind resonates with one of Vylet’s favorite expressions.

Suck it up, buttercup.

A smile edges my lips. Even from thousands of miles away, my best friend knows when I need her corny motivations the most.

“Doyle.” I turn, shoulders back and arms set, before the resolve leaves me. Buttercup is doing well so far. “If you must say something to me, just say it.”

The man unfurls his long legs from the chair in the corner. Drops the issue of
Cardiology Today
he has been pretending to read. “Yeah,” he mutters. “You’re right.” Steps over, hands in the back pockets of his faded jeans—until he comes close enough to scoop up both of mine. “I’m sorry I didn’t get this out sooner, Mishella.”

Forget the nausea. Pure pain stabs everything south of my ribs. “Get wh-what out?”

“Thank you.”

Head snap. “Thank me?”

“Yeah.”

“You—you are not—mad at me?”

He mirrors my gape. Well, the Doyle version of it, which equates to one arched brow and a quirk at the same end of his mouth. “For thinking on your feet the second shit-for-brains put his hand through the shower door?” His brows hunch, nearly in proportion to mine. “Come on, Mishella. You’re the reason twinkle toes hadn’t lost a gallon of blood by the time we got him here.”

I swallow. He deserves the truth, despite how hard it is to form the words. “I…do not think it was an accident, Doyle.”

All right, they are not
the
words I intended—but they are not lies. All too vividly, everything plays out in my mind again: a string of moments that seemed a crazy collision at the time, thanks to the confusion stabbed through every one of them.

Our climaxes, cataclysmic…perfect.

The sag in my body. The expectation of the same in his.

Instead, his jolt of tension while sliding from me. His gentleness, alarmingly stiff after the lust he had just unfurled on me, while easing me back to the floor.

His rushed yanks on his pants, as if newly ashamed of his nakedness.

The harsh stab of his hand through his hair.

The terrifying swiftness of his turn.

The stunning speed of his retreat into the bathroom.

Calling after him—to think the closed door had suddenly become the slab over a crypt. Then his silence, so deep and dark—

Before the burst of his tormented bellow.

Then the crash of the shower’s door
.

I slam my eyes shut. Issue an internal plea to the Creator, to take the rest of the recall away. He sends Doyle as my savior. The man’s chuff borders on a growl, though his tone is actually an easy slide as he goes on, “Who the hell’s calling it an accident besides the press?” Gets in a short shrug. “Nobody who knows the man, I can tell you that. I’ve seen Cassian Court nearly every day for the last three years. He’s never tripped on a damn shoelace, let alone his own feet in that football stadium of a bathroom. No way did he ‘slip’ into that glass door, no matter what he ordered me to believe.”