Since I Saw You (13 page)

“I know, but I had to run out for some Tylenol.” He focused watery eyes on Kam.

“You’re the guy from the restaurant the other night. Lin’s friend,” Kam said.

“That’s right. I assume you’re looking for her?”

“Yeah. I’ll try her office,” Kam said, starting to move past Richard.

“You won’t find her there, either.”

Kam glanced back.

“It’s Friday. The one and only day Lin ever leaves Noble Enterprises before eight,” Richard said.

“And where would she be then?” Kam asked with sarcastic politeness when Richard didn’t continue, just studied him with a smug smile.

“If I tell you, you won’t do something to make me regret it, will you?”

“Do I look like someone who is out to cause trouble?”

Richard’s gaze dropped over him, a glint of admiration in his eyes. “That’s exactly what you look like.” He sighed when he noticed Kam’s frown. “But I suppose I can use the excuse of a fever if Lin calls me on it. Besides, she could use a little trouble in her life,” Kam thought he heard him mutter under his breath. “She’s at the Community Arts Center on Dearborn and Astor. Two blocks west of here. She goes for dance lessons every Friday. Main auditorium.”

“Merci,”
Kam muttered.

“Je t’en prie,”
he heard Richard croak amusedly behind him as Kam stalked to the glass door.

When he entered the community center a few minutes later, the entry hall was empty. He found Lin by following the music he heard in the distance—a methodical composition of plucked string instruments, flutes, and gongs. He opened a door and let it shut quietly behind him when he saw the movement on the stage, pausing just inside the threshold.

Lin was the center spoke in a wheel of five other dancers. He knew her immediately, not just from appearance. He recognized her harmony: that smooth, supple, exquisitely controlled movement of her body. All of the dancers typified control, but none more elegantly, nor with such apparent ease, than Lin. That ease was an illusion, Kam realized as he slowly walked down a flight of steps, mesmerized by the dance. The amount of muscular control and balance required for the movements and postures would fell a trained athlete.

All of the dancers, including Lin, wore everyday workout attire for the practice—body-hugging cotton pants, shorts, and T-shirts. Their only concession to a costume was a sort of jacket of purple silk that included sleeves that extended several feet past the dancers’ hands. Every time they moved in unison, they did so in perfect synchrony. Not only their limbs were identical in movement, but also the twirling and twitching of the long sleeves. The overall effect was hypnotic.

He came to a halt fifteen or so feet before the stage. The houselights in the auditorium weren’t on, so he was cast in shadow. Still, he knew the moment when Lin became aware of him. Her dark eyes fixed on him as she continued the dance without pause, her gestures and movements incredibly precise, so graceful . . .

. . . so fucking sexy, it blew him away, but not in any way he’d ever before experienced.

As the center of the moving wheel, Lin was the only one who occasionally danced separately from the others, then blended seamlessly with their movements as the dance progressed. She wore only a pair of form-fitting black shorts and a cropped white T-shirt along with the long costume sleeves. Her feet were naked, a living poetry of graceful movement and strength. He couldn’t take his eyes off her pale belly and gliding, shifting hips. It called to mind the strength and precision of her counterthrusts to his when he was inside her.

A pleasant tingling sensation started in his lower spine and transferred to his cock, swelling the flesh. He couldn’t unglue his gaze from her.

Her hair was pulled back from her face in the front, but the rest was unrestrained. With her back to him, she slowly arched her spine until her long hair hung like a drape less than a foot from the stage, her arms weaving a spell. She made eye contact in the impossible position.

His flesh tingled like an electrical charge had gone through it.

She was like a carefully controlled conduit of pure sexuality. Just being in her vicinity made the hair on his arms stand on end and his blood race.

The last plucked note sounded, and Lin gracefully lowered a long leg and her extended arms. The women all relaxed their poses and began chatting to one another, some of them walking over to gym bags, the spell of the dance dissipating.

But not vanishing, Kam thought as he watched Lin walk toward him. She shucked off the long-sleeve jacket and agilely leapt off the stage.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hi,” he returned. He suddenly felt very hulking and clumsy next to her sleek, contained beauty. For a few charged seconds, they just looked at one another, but then she glanced away. The hint of shyness in her manner fascinated him.

“How . . . how did you find me?”

“I went to your condominium looking for you, and someone pointed me in this direction.”

“Who?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Someone who thought I should find you, I guess.”

“I didn’t realize such a person existed.”

“Besides me, you mean?”

Her small smile fell at that. He noticed her pulse fluttering at her throat. Acting purely on instinct, he reached out and placed his hand on her neck. He closed his eyes briefly, focusing on the vibrant pulse of her strong heart.

She was so beautiful. Inside and out. Only true beauty could dance to the heartbeat of the universe so effortlessly. He opened his eyes. She looked up at him slowly, and again, he felt himself stir.

“I’m sorry. About last night. It seems I’m doomed to keep screwing up and then apologizing to you for behaving like an animal,” he muttered.

He felt her throat constrict as she swallowed.

“You’re not alone in this, Kam.”

He studied her still features searchingly. “Why can’t I stop wanting you?” he muttered. Her pulse leapt beneath his fingers like a tiny, trapped creature.

“Why can’t I stop wanting you as well?” she whispered, her desperation and longing an echo of his tone.

He found himself staring at her mouth, his nostrils flaring to catch her scent.

“Let me get my things and we’ll walk back to my place,” she said.

He just stood there. His anticipation was just beginning to build, and yet it had already cut him to the quick.

•   •   •

They entered her condominium, and Lin led him to her living room. “Why don’t you make yourself comfortable. I’m just going to take a quick shower. Can I get you anything to drink?”

He just shook his head, feeling awkward yet again in the midst of her luxurious living room with her formal manner. He wanted to tell her not to shower—he’d rather taste the efforts of her dance on her smooth skin—but maybe she hadn’t even asked him back to her place for sex.

She left him. He listened for a second to the bathroom door closing and pictured her peeling off her tight workout clothing. Again—he experienced that delicious ripple of sensation along the shaft of his cock. His body had never been more finely attuned to a woman, his cock never more sensitive to every nuance of her movement. He heard the shower turn on. She’d be naked now, jets of warm water beating against her smooth skin.

He removed his coat impatiently. The living room was like Lin herself: effortlessly elegant, expensive looking, and more comfortable than he would have thought at first glance, he conceded as he slouched down on a deep, soft couch. His gaze narrowed on the luxurious, raw silk, taupe-colored curtains with sheers on the windows. They were the precise ones Ian had recommended Kam buy for Aurore Manor for a majority of the downstairs windows. Removing the mildewed, heavy velvet curtains that had obliterated sunlight and replacing them with the sheer curtains and lightweight silk panes had made a world of difference. That, and the simple changes of new paint and a hard cleaning had altered the mood of the manor almost immediately. The decrepit mansion had been transformed into a home, and he had Lin’s impeccable taste, in large part, to thank for that.

Of course Ian hadn’t been the one to expertly choose those curtains or the sophisticated, yet comfortable, furnishings and bedclothes for the bedrooms. Lin had. Kam had realized that almost immediately after observing how Ian operated. She’d never even seen Aurore, she’d never even met Kam, and yet she’d clothed both his house and his body in a way that innately appealed to him.

Why can’t I stop wanting it, too?

We’ll walk back to my place.

The memory of Lin saying those words as she watched him with liquid brown eyes scored his consciousness. Was he supposed to have read them as an invitation? His body had considered it as such, but his mind continued to doubt.

He cursed quietly, stood and walked down the hallway toward her bedroom. His interpretation didn’t really matter. Staying away from her was an utter impossibility.

As he neared the closed bathroom door, he heard the water shut off and the glass door of the shower click open. He rapped softly before he put his hand on the knob.

Almost the second he opened the door and saw her standing in the shower, he knew she wasn’t surprised. She’d been waiting for him to come—or at least some part of her had. She stood very still, her beautiful body sheened with moisture, water droplets clinging on her bare breasts and thighs. He’d never seen her completely naked. His body hardened in a second, aching. He stepped toward her, vaguely realizing that the spell she’d woven as he watched her dance had fallen upon him again in full strength. How she did it was a mystery, but he was beyond wondering.

He was only feeling.

He reached for one of the towels on the rack without looking away from the vision of her. As he approached, she stepped out of the shower to meet him. He partially wrapped her in the towel, holding her stare as he lightly chafed her supple back and buttocks and thighs, drying her. She felt small in his hold, firm and feminine. His hand opened over a stretch of shower-warmed, moist back and lowered over her ass.

The towel dropped from his hands at the same moment that he palmed her bottom and hips, lifting her against him and pressing her tight.

•   •   •

It was as if they’d practiced this dance before. She saw the flash in his gray eyes, and he was lifting her to him in one fluid, muscular movement. His mouth covered hers. His tongue penetrated and stroked, wet, firm, and demanding. Lin kissed him back, every bit as greedy as he was, every bit as hot. She gripped onto his shoulders, and he turned, leaving the bathroom and taking her with him. Once he’d cleared the door, she wrapped her legs around his middle, her bottom resting below his belt. His erection was trapped against his clothing, slanting upward toward his right jeans pocket. She circled her hips, grinding against it, loving the vibration of his rough groan of appreciation into her mouth.

He set her on the edge of her bed and broke their kiss. Holding her stare, he reached for her hand and placed it on his cock. For a lung-burning few seconds, he just kept his hand pressed to hers, and then his hand dropped away. She bit her lip to stifle a moan as her fingers and palm mapped out his contours. He began to unfasten his belt as she stroked his solid length more rapidly through his clothing. It aroused her exquisitely, the weight of him, the shape. Leaning forward, she pressed her mouth to his jeans, gently biting at the hard column of his erection.

“Oh oui, encore,”
he grated out.
Yes, again.
She gave him what he wanted, liking his rough groan. He shoved down his jeans. She grew impatient to feel him naked in her clasping hand and immediately reached for the waistband of his boxer briefs.

“Ah” popped out of her throat as she freed his tumescent cock. He felt very warm . . . hot even. Feverish. She fisted him, her thumb and fingers not quite able to meet around his pulsing shaft. She regretfully released him momentarily while Kam rapidly shucked off his pants and underwear. Then he was standing before her again, his cock standing at rigid attention, hers to touch and pleasure.

She lifted the heavy weight of it and brushed the swollen, bulbous head against her cheek experimentally. Oh, he was soft as warm silk and yet so hard. He hissed and sunk his fingers into her upswept hair, loosening some of it so that it fell down her back and shoulders. A thumb slid under her chin and he pressed up.

She looked up at his face.

“Take me in your mouth. Please.”

It was both a demand and a ragged plea. She was more than eager to comply.

U
sing her hand, she pulled him down toward her mouth, licking at the smooth, fleshy head and tasting his flavor before she inserted him between her lips. His rough growl seemed to vibrate from his flesh to hers, thrilling her. She pulsed her head, her rigid lips sliding onto the thick, veined shaft. When she pulled back, she moaned in excitement at the sensation of sliding her lips across the defined ridge of the head. His whole cock was beautiful to her, but the swollen cockhead was exquisite—fleshy, succulent, mouthwatering. She slid down his shaft again, pausing to pulse him back and forth an inch with firm strokes until his hands tightened on her skull and he groaned. She pulled back, slapping her tongue against the fat head playfully before she sunk down on him again.

He was a mouthful, but she was hungry. So hungry. Her jaw began to ache from clamping him so tight.

“That’s right,” he grated out from above her. “I kept thinking about your mouth, but it’s hotter and sweeter than I thought it would be. Are you trying to tell me how much you like this?” he added, his voice still rough as he watched her, but more sultry. Sexy.

She sucked him extra hard in reply, squeezing dense, delicious male flesh, letting him know without words just how
much
she liked this. He hissed a curse and abruptly reached down for her elbows, lifting her to her feet. She gasped when he popped out of her mouth due to their abrupt change of position. He urged her to turn and stand next to him, so that they both faced the bed. Opening his legs slightly, he firmed his stance. He lifted his glistening cock from below and held it at an upward angle, once again delving his fingers into her hair. She followed his urging, bending at the waist and immediately sucking him again into her mouth, the brief deprivation making her hungrier. He opened one hand on her back and swept it along spine, hip, and buttocks, as if he wanted to feel as much of her as he could while she gave him pleasure.

“Aw, Jesus. That’s good,” he moaned as she moved up and down on his shaft, her actions increasingly forceful and hungry. She placed her hand over his where he grasped his cock at the base. He relinquished his hold, and she wrapped her hand in his place. She’d pinned her hair onto her head for the shower with several clips, but thanks to their increasing excitement and Kam’s delving fingers, long tendrils of hair now fell around her head, some of it impinging her progress as she sucked his cock deeper into her mouth.

“Here, I’ll hold it for you,” he muttered tensely from above her, brushing the hair off her face. He grasped the mass of it in one hand at the base of her skull, restraining it. She lifted her outside hand and gripped his hip to steady herself. She twisted her face slightly, sinking her lips over him at a slightly new angle. His cockhead brushed against her throat. She gagged slightly and retreated, but was back for more in a heartbeat. “Look at you,” she heard him mutter roughly from above her.

Heat rushed through her at his words, a potent mixture of intense arousal and embarrassment, because he was looking at her as she devoured him.
Look at you, sucking me like a wild, sex-starved wanton. Who would have thought it of cool, contained Lin?
That was her imagination, of course. He’d never said that. She didn’t know if that’s what he truly intended, but her interpretation pleased her on some level. It also amplified her lust.

He tensed and thrust his hips forward slightly, his pose intensely virile and unashamedly male. He used his hold on her hair to guide her strokes, but he did so gently, increasing the pressure of her mouth on his cock but never forcing himself on her. She’d never performed fellatio like this—not that she’d done it more than a few times in her life. It was a very personal act, after all, and Lin had only had a couple of long-term relationships in which to practice it. On those other occasions, she’d been in bed with the man or kneeling before him. Kam was too tall for her to kneel, however. It was surprisingly comfortable, given their respective heights. With them both standing and her next to him, bent at the waist, the angle of penetration was ideal.

It was also shockingly arousing, and she loved the lascivious way he was rubbing her back, hips, and ass with his large hand.

She popped the fleshy round cockhead out of her mouth and bent farther, shifting her hand up the shaft and running her tongue over the root, wetting him. He grunted softly and she sensed his focused attention. When she reinserted his cock, she began to stroke the lubricated staff with her hand, pounding her fist forcefully in tandem with the movements of her sucking mouth. He groaned. She closed her eyes and lost herself in the primal rhythm, the feeling of desire infusing his flesh, engorging it, the clutching of his fingers in her hair as his excitement mounted . . .

She wanted nothing more in that moment than to feel him quiver in release, to squeeze his essence from his flesh, and blend his male strength with her own.

He cursed, piercing her tight focus. Then he was pulling his now-huge erection from her mouth and lifting her. He laid her on the bed and crawled on top of her. She lifted her lust-weighted eyelids with effort, watching as he straddled her hips with his knees and rose over her. He shifted his swollen penis until it thumped, heavy and moist, against her belly.

“I wanted to finish,” she whispered.

“You think I don’t know that?” he asked, his mouth quirking in amusement. “That was a definite one-way ticket, the way you were going at it.” He reached with both hands and caressed her neck and then her shoulders. His cock seemed to burn the skin where it rested on it. She reached for it, but he halted her with a hand on her wrist. He pushed her arm against the pillow above her head. Her cheeks flushed hot.

“I want to see you come,” she said, her stark admission surprising her a little.

His cock lurched on her belly. He seemed less surprised by her outburst than she was. “You will then. But not yet.”

He watched her, as if assessing her reaction. Her nostrils flared slightly as he slowly moved her other hand to join its mate on the pillow. A bolt of excitement went through her. She ground her hips down onto the mattress, writhing, getting indirect friction on her simmering sex.

Kam’s eyebrows went up in prurient interest. “You like to be restrained?”

“No.” She bit her lip as molten heat surged in her sex. “I don’t know.”

“You mean you haven’t let anyone do it before?”

She shook her head.

“Would you mind if I bound your wrists then? While I play with you? I’ll free you anytime you like. Just say the word.”

She swallowed with difficulty, suddenly going still when she noticed where Kam was lustfully staring. Her nipples had pulled into painfully hard points. Her body had certainly found his proposal arousing.

While I play with you . . .

“All right,” she whispered.

He swung a long leg over her and clambered off the bed. She sorely missed his heat and hardness. She watched him remove his shoes and socks. He made short work of releasing the buttons on the white shirt he wore. Her breath caught as he whipped open the placket and she was gifted with the vision of flexing, ridged muscle and smooth, swarthy skin. His cock looked even more stark and flagrant jutting from his nude body. He retrieved a condom from his jeans pocket and lunged toward her bedside table. She turned her head, her line of vision directly on his suspended cock.

She moaned and reached. He captured her wrist.

He extricated something from her bedside table drawer and was crawling back on the bed again.

“You already almost made short work of me three times running. Give a man a chance,” he murmured, his rough voice like a gentle fingernail going down her spine. He straddled her and gathered her wrists above her head again. She gave him a stunned glance. “You said I could restrain you.”

She caught sight of something in his hand.

“With my headband?” she asked, realizing he’d removed the thick elastic headband from her drawer. She wore it, and others like it, to pull back her hair while she removed her makeup in the evening. She often forgot to remove it until she went to bed, and thus had a collection of them in her bedside table drawer.

He made a sound of preoccupied agreement as he twisted the band around both her wrists, restraining them. He gently pushed her hands against the pillows and sat back.

She watched, her mouth going dry as he just inspected her nude body for a moment with a long, glittering stare of male appreciation. He slipped a large hand beneath his heavy erection and stroked himself.

“Kam,”
she whispered disbelievingly when arousal stabbed at her. It was unbelievably exciting to watch him touch himself. Her hips twisted on the bed, but he pressed down with his pelvis on her thighs, stilling her as he continued to slide his fist up and down his erection. He pressed the tip of the fleshy cockhead between her labia. Her eyes sprung wide at the erotic vision, her initial gasp becoming an incredulous, shaky moan. He stilled her shifting hips with an open hand at her hips.

“This pussy . . . I’ve been dreaming about it constantly,” he said, sounding distracted. He began pulsing against her clit with his cock. “Do you shave because it makes you more sensitive?”

She just shook her head, too overwhelmed with pleasure to speak. It felt so good, to be stimulated so intimately with the very cockhead that made her mouth water. He looked up to her face when she didn’t respond. A small, fond smile titled his mouth, the hot expression in his eyes leaving her even more breathless than she’d been.

“You do it because it’s neater that way, right? Sleeker.”

“I suppose,” she gasped.

His smile widened slightly, then vanished when he looked back at his illicit task. “Look at that. Look how wet you’re getting me.

Despite his words, she continued to watch his face. He looked utterly transfixed as he watched himself rub his cockhead against her clit. Eventually, she glanced down and saw how her juices made the ruddy tip shine. The pressure against her clit, the illicit slide and press of his most sensitive flesh against hers was delicious. She flexed her hips upward as much as she could, a choking sound rattling her throat.

He looked up at her face. “Could you come like this?” he rasped, continuing to manipulate his swollen flesh up and down a scant half inch, every once in a while pausing to stroke the heavy staff.

“Yes,” she admitted shakily. Why deny it? Her clit was burning. She’d love nothing more than to ignite with the tip of his cock as the trigger.

“Hold still,” he warned her darkly when he removed his restraining hand from her hip. She struggled to follow his instructions, even though she longed to push more firmly against the steely cockhead. He reached between her thighs.

“Oh,” she gasped loudly when he inserted his thumb into her pussy.

“God, you’re soaking,” he mumbled, sounding both excited and gratified. The tip of his cock began outlining a tiny circle, pressing and bobbing against her clit. She simmered. Even the bottoms of her feet sizzled as they flexed helplessly. His thumb plunged in and out of her, amplifying the pressure on her clit. He grunted in arousal. Lin’s entire body tightened. He began to thump his cock gently against her clit like a lewd drumbeat.

“Oh no,” she mumbled, her head twisting on the pillow as she crested.

“Oh
yeah
,” he disagreed as she broke in orgasm.

•   •   •

His body seemed to scream at him, the savage male in him pummeling at his consciousness as Kam watched her writhe against his hand and pulsing cock.

Take her. Sink into all that tight, sweet glory.

But the image of Lin experiencing rapture was even more compelling than the taunting voice. He nursed her through her climax, feeling the rush of her warm juices around his finger, her convulsing channel pulling at him. Desire lanced him. She looked so beautiful, her eyes closed, her face lightly glazed with perspiration, her breasts thrust upward, the nipples tight and hard. For a few seconds he protected himself against the image of her, clamping his eyelids shut. He grasped his cock hard, squeezing it into submission.

It didn’t work—not really—because once she’d given one last gasp and sunk heavily onto the mattress, he fell on her like a ravenous animal. He nuzzled her belly and slid his tongue over satin-smooth skin. The harmonious beauty of her stunned him anew. Had he ever touched such an exquisite woman? He took a gentle bite at the side of her waist. He slid a delectable nipple into his mouth and laved the stiff crest briskly with his tongue. Using his hand, he molded the firm flesh, making it more pronounced for his mouth, licking and sucking and biting ever so gently at the responsive flesh. She bucked her hips up against him and moaned, giving him her approval. Finally lifting his mouth, he transferred to her other breast, but he didn’t like leaving the first sweet crest at all. He continued to play with it as he hungrily sucked the other, tweaking the damp, erect flesh with his fingertips and shaping her breast to his palm.

Her sharp cries finally breached the thick haze of his lust. He lifted his head, staring at the erotic vision of Lin’s firm, fleshy breasts flushed with desire, rising and falling so temptingly as she panted. His breath was coming fast and erratically, too. It was hard to think, with his cock feeling ponderous and aching between his thighs, his desire about to burst out of his very skin.

He shifted his knees slightly, kneeling over her, his gaze still glued to her heaving, thrusting breasts. He cradled them from below and lifted before letting go, entranced by the spring of firm flesh.

“Kam,
please
,” she cried out sharply when he repeated the action, pausing to rub her nipples with his thumbs.

He focused on Lin’s face. Her large, usually somber brown eyes were glazed with passion, her expression tight and wild. The vision of her transformed from a cool, calm professional into a hot-blooded, hungry woman scored his consciousness. She was an addictive substance, without a doubt.

He reached between her thighs, his fingers dipping into the evidence of her abundant arousal. He rubbed her clit firmly and soaked in her whimpers. His cock leapt a moment later when she held her breath and let it out on a shaky moan of climax. She twisted beneath him, her pelvis coming off the mattress as she pressed against him, shuddering in pleasure.