Sugar (19 page)

“Shut up.” She glared down at him.

“Make me,” he taunted, knowing it was dangerous to dare her.

But then Cole lived for danger. At times such as this, he could almost believe it was the only thing keeping him alive, the only thing capable of convincing him that he wasn’t the one left laying dead and dismembered on that makeshift minefield back in Iraq. Combining danger with sex intensified the rush, drove the high that much higher, catapulted the climax to the craziest crush.

Sarah’s hand sang across his jaw, the strike a blur of slender fingers tipped in scarlet-painted nails. The sting made his eyes water. He blinked against the disorientation, a too-brief fix for all his inconvenient remembering.

“Again,” he said, swallowing hard against the collar’s cinching.

Her sexy, red mouth flattened at the edges. “Shut up.”

He glanced downward to his cock, standing pole straight from his groin. The thought of all the ways she still might hurt him had him leaking.

She slapped him again—hard. The reverberation sent his senses seesawing, not just touch, pain, but all of it, every fucking thing. Her scent filled his nostrils—her perspiration, her perfume, her pussy heat. As boldly as she brandished the vibrator, Cole wasn’t fooled. It was him she wanted, not some mechanical toy.

A moment’s pause and then she decided. He saw it in her face first, the setting of her slender jaw, the hard glint of her slanted, cat-eyed gaze. His shoulder muscles bunched, his belly clenched, in part with excitement, in part with . . . fear. The adrenalin rush reminded him of approaching an active bomb, those first few seconds when you weren’t entirely sure what you might have there. Sarah was like that now, an enigma, an entity he knew in pieces and parts, but for whom he was missing the composite picture. Not only wasn’t he sure what she was going to do next, she wasn’t sure. The latter made her absolutely lethal.

She was angry, so fucking gloriously angry. He’d always sensed it in her, this anger sizzling beneath the surface. He could only speculate as to the cause. Liz’s illness was probably part of it, and then there was the father of whom she refused to speak. But Cole sensed that neither accounted for a complete explanation. Something bad had happened back in LA. A lost-little-girl look came over her whenever the City of Angels was even casually mentioned.

She didn’t look lost now or anything close to a little girl. She slid up the length of him with utter confidence, not stopping until her sex reached the level of his mouth. He’d seen her wet, pink pussy plenty of times in close up—but not this close.

“This is all you deserve, dog.” Her voice reminded him of jagged glass, cutting and cold. Dropping down, she ground her groin against his mouth. “Now eat me.”

Cole buried his nose and mouth in her bush. He breathed her, his senses so overwhelmingly alert he felt as if the room must be spinning. The crispness of the damp curls brushing across his face, her vagina’s velvety softness, the briny tang of her arousal. If she ended by suffocating him, well, he could think of worse ways to die.

“I said eat me out!” she commanded, grabbing hold of the head board to steady herself as she pushed harder into his face.

Salty slickness coated his lips. Plump, plum-colored lips brushed back and forth, spreading their juices. A swollen clit bobbed like a miniature cherry against his tongue. Cole suckled. He circled. A loud thump by the bed announced the vibrator’s landing. In that moment, the power shifted. He might be the one of them tethered, but it was Sarah who was losing control. The power of what he could do to her, of what he was doing to her, was headier than any designer drug. Rushing on it, he licked and lapped, nipped and soothed. Sarah gyrated above him. Her thighs quivered. Her arms shook. On the cusp of coming, she let go of the metal bars and pulled back.

Cole stared up into her flushed face. Most of the red lipstick had been bitten off. Her eyes, rimmed by the heavy black liner, didn’t look angry any longer but liquid and stricken.

He caught her gaze with his. “You can tease with all the toys you want, but we both know that nothing and no one is ever going to feel as good inside you as I do.”

Sarah didn’t speak. She didn’t slap. She didn’t make a move to retrieve the vibrator or the flogger. The script from
Whipped and Creamed
. . . they might as well have burned it. Suddenly it was only them, not film characters playacting but two flesh-and-blood people probing the boundaries of passion and trust.

Holding his gaze, Sarah glided downward. She took his penis in hand, positioned herself over him, and came down—hard.

“Fuck me, then,” she said, sounding resigned.

Cole didn’t need to be told twice. He lifted his torso and hips, driving as deep as he could go. If she hadn’t been so drenched, he would have hurt her, but he was past caring about that and so, he knew, was she.

Sarah groaned and rocked against him. Her hands slammed into his shoulders, pushing him back to the mattress, her nails raking his already-scored skin. She pulled back and sheathed herself yet again. Pinned beneath her, Cole moved the only part of his body he still could—his hips. He thrust upward, hard, sharp, deep. A lesser lover might have lost her seat but not Sarah. She rode him just as hard, pushing him to the edge of his physical endurance and emotional control.

“Hit me again,” he said, and this time there was no mistaking it for anything other than a command.

Sarah lifted her right hand from where it was anchored to his shoulder. She hauled back and struck him—hard. Cole fell back against the pillow. His head swam. The inside of his mouth tasted of blood. He swallowed, throat muscles working against the slave collar. He hadn’t felt anything close since Iraq and that last, devastating explosion. Only now pain and fear were paired with pleasure—so much pleasure. And Sarah—for the first time since their games had begun, he felt like she wasn’t holding back. She was giving him all of her, or at least all of her shadow side. Surrendering to the gift, he stilled beneath her. Sarah slammed her pelvis into his. She advanced and retreated, again and again, harder and harder. He felt the exact moment when her orgasm hit. Her eyes dilated, her mouth opened, and her skin flared, so scalding he wondered she didn’t melt the vinyl. Her fingers bit into his shoulders like hooks, anchors against her body’s shuddering. Like a velvet fist, her pussy pumped him, the contractions rhythmic and powerful. Perspiration pouring, Cole finally gave in. He followed her into oblivion, coming harder than he ever had in his life, harder than he’d ever thought it was possible to come. Penis pumping, seed spraying, a single word, a name, broke free from his bruised lips.

Not “Sugar” but “Sarah!”

“Sarah!”

S
arah was dashing out the door to meet Peter for their first wedding planning lunch when her cell phone sounded. Shit! Clipping the post onto the back of a pierced earring, she grabbed for the phone with her free hand. Double shit—it was Martin.

She hesitated and then picked up. “Martin, hi!” she said, hoping she sounded sufficiently enthusiastic.

“Hi yourself, beautiful. How’s the Big Apple treating you?”

Even though she’d been deliberately ducking him, it was good to hear his voice. She might not miss LA; she didn’t miss the city at all, but she did miss the few friends she’d left behind there, her manager among them.

Smiling into the receiver, she couldn’t resist reminding him, “I grew up here, remember?” As someone involved exclusively with adult films, Martin saw LA as the epicenter of the universe.

“So that means I can’t be concerned?” His testy tone was tinged with hurt.

“Of course you can. Sorry. Everything’s fine, really good actually,” she added, thinking back to the previous movie-night meet up.

“Really good” didn’t begin to do it justice. She and Cole hadn’t just veered off script. They’d rewritten the scene completely, taking
Whipped and Creamed
to a whole new level and rocketing her to a Big O the likes of which she’d never before experienced. Two days later, her body was still deliciously sore in all the best places.

Afterward, they’d shared a shower, a bottle of wine, and a carryout meal. Not only was he awesome in bed but he was also so easy and fun to be around. Being with him was like having your fantasy lover and your best friend rolled into one, and not in a creepy way but in a . . .
really good
way. Too bad he didn’t seem to like dogs. Every time she’d tried bringing up what had happened in the play park, he changed the subject or tried making a joke of it.

Caught up in her thoughts, she suddenly realized that she wasn’t the only one of them not talking. Silence and Martin didn’t go together, not unless something was bothering him.

“Martin, what is it?”

His heavy breath blew in her ear as though they were in the same room instead of more than two thousand miles apart. “I don’t know if I should tell you this, but I ran into Danny the other night at Villa. Actually he was in the line outside it.”

Located in a former LA speakeasy, Villa catered to the scenester crowd with its library feel, splashy Golden Globe centerpiece, and insanely well-stocked marble-top bar. Hearing that Danny was hanging out there pretty much doused her hopes that he might have decided to get sober.

“Shit,” she said. Then it struck her. “He was waiting to get in?” That was another bad sign.

“Yeah, and I’d say his chances of seeing the inside of that club without you on his arm were pretty slim. He looked . . . rough.”

“I’m really sorry to hear that,” she said sincerely.

Any romantic feelings she’d once felt toward her ex were long gone, but he was still a person, and one with whom she’d spent a substantial chunk of her life. Even if he had gone about trying to get her back the wrong way, by leaving scary stalker notes, she had to believe those actions were the booze and drugs at work, not the real him. Still . . .

“You didn’t tell him where I was?”

“Of course not! If he finds out you’re in New York, it won’t be from me. Client or not, I’ve got your back, baby—always have, always will. You should know that by now.”

The rebuke was deserved. She should know better than to have asked. Martin, of all people, knew what she’d gone through those last few months in LA. “You’re right, of course I do. It was a stupid thing to say. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it, kid. You’re safe, that’s all that matters. Anyhow, along with checking up on you, I’m calling to let you know that
Camera Sutra
is doing killer, your biggest blockbuster yet. We made bank in the first week. I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t score a slew of AVN awards, including best picture.”

Loosely scripted along the lines of the
Kama Sutra
, her final film featured a sultry blond photographer (her) encountering a winsome young male model who she took on as her muse. The Pygmalion-themed script had originally cast the male actor as the photographer— of course!—and her as the ingénue—ridiculous!—but Sarah had insisted on a full revision. When she still wasn’t one hundred percent happy with the result, she’d sat down and rewritten it herself. Such was the power of being one’s own producer. Martin’s news was a vindication that depicting powerful women in porn was long overdue.

“That’s awesome,” she said, pleased and yet not nearly as thrilled as she would have been even a year ago. The film was a solid, sex-positive, woman-positive piece of work, but it was still porn—and porn no longer defined her.

“So, keeping busy?” Martin finally got around to asking.

Eager to bring him up-to-date, she answered, “I’ve reconnected with an LA friend who moved back here. Liz Carter, you probably remember her as—”

“Spice Carter! Dark hair, dark eyes, and built like a brick shithouse. The tits on that girl could have suckled a small village.”

Sarah hesitated. It had been a long time, if ever, that she’d thought of her friend in those terms. “Yes, well, she has a graphic design business and a kid now.” She didn’t mention Liz also had cancer. Other than Cole, Sarah hadn’t shared that information with anyone.

“That’s great. Give her my best.”

“Okay, I will.”

“Speaking of which, when am I seeing you again? Rested up and raring to go on number one hundred and one? I hope so because a great script just crossed my desk, and I think you’re really going to dig the—”

“Martin, stop!”

“What? What is it?”

Holding the phone to her ear, she fought back guilt before answering, “Look, I’ve got to be honest. I’ve had more than a month to think about it, and retirement still feels like the right decision—completely. I know it’s not what you were hoping to hear, and I hope we’ll always stay friends, but I have to do what’s right for me.”

“And what, being a billionaire, award-winning, adult-film actress and producer isn’t cutting it for you anymore?”

He was disappointed, she got that. Still, she wasn’t the only one of them she’d made rich these last ten years. Martin had done very well for himself managing her. She was no longer the twenty-something ingénue looking to him for guidance. She’d grown up and moved on, and now it was time for him to do the same.

Firming her voice, she said, “I have other things I’m focusing on.” She thought of the book, but in his current frame of mind he’d likely dash it down. Besides, what if it turned out not to be a book at all but simply a series of juicy-but-disjointed ramblings? Worse still, what if it sucked?

“Yeah, what’s his name?”

Sarah bristled. How dare he treat her as if she was some brainless bimbo! As if taking off her clothes and fucking on camera was all she was capable of! But no, this was Martin, her Martin, a squishy, soft teddy bear beneath the façade of hardened Hollywood agent. He hadn’t meant it that way, at least not totally. He was just upset.

Seizing on the chance to turn the topic, she admitted, “Among other things, I’m helping with a friend’s wedding.” She summed up Peter and Pol’s marriage plans in progress. “Who knows, maybe I’ll do event planning for awhile,” she quipped. Working to make her new friend’s dream wedding a reality was unexpectedly satisfying.