Sweet and Dirty (22 page)

H
e wasn’t there.

Nora could tell from the moment she opened the door and nothing but the scent of dusty air rushed out that Sylvester hadn’t been there.

She hesitated, torn between wanting to go inside and simply wait, and moving on before Mage freed himself and came after her. The unwelcoming dark interior decided for her. She closed the schoolhouse door, wondering what to do next.

Suddenly a hand covered her mouth. A low voice spoke into her ear. “Don’t move. And don’t scream.”

Panic swept through her. Reflexively, she twisted and shoved, and then she was free, off and running again. This time there was no sensation of strength and confidence to buoy her. She ran spooked. What if that wasn’t Sylvester or Mage? What if there was a real predator after her?

She ran blindly, not pacing herself at all, her instinct guiding her direction.

She realized she’d found another clearing only when the moonlight dazzled her with its comparative brightness. Sparse grass and clover covered an otherwise bare ground. She heard labored breathing, and realized with surprise it was herself. Her side ached, too, a stitch in it like she got when she pushed too hard and too fast. Which she supposed she had. How silly, to run like a B-movie heroine fleeing a monster.

It was only Sylvester.

A voice spoke from the shadows. “Hello, Nora.”

She choked back a cry, fear rising again.

Sylvester stepped into the clearing.

Her nerves tensed immediately. He wore gray pants and a lighter shirt, but his eyes were dark as she’d ever seen them. His mouth curved in a cruel smile. A thrill of frightened anticipation touched her spine.

She backed away as he approached.

He shook his head. Spoke softly. “There’s a fence behind you. The property line. Nowhere to run.” He continued to approach, arms by his sides but his palms facing her as if ready to prevent her escape.

She tried it anyway, lunging to his right to slip into the forest, lose him in the dark.

She almost made it. Just as the moonlight was cut off by tree canopies, Sylvester grabbed her, held her arms above her head. He breathed heavily and so did she, as both anxiety and lust flared in her, turning everything complex. She wanted to cry, she wanted to plead for her freedom. She wanted to laugh her triumph, she wanted to wrap her legs around his hips.

She wriggled and fought to free herself from his grip. “Please! Stop!”

His grip tightened. He walked her back until she felt a tree’s rough bark abrading her through her jogging shirt. He pressed against her firmly enough to feel every inch of his hard body.

One of her wrists twisted free of his grip. She pounded his chest, hard, before he recaptured it, brought it back up, where he enclosed both wrists in one cruel grip. His other hand roamed her body arrogantly, roughly. The tree bruised her and Sylvester did, too, but she couldn’t move. It made her feel afraid. “Please…don’t.”

He yanked her shirt up. She whimpered as he brutally pinched a nipple, the fiery agony turning instantly to pleasure and taking the little pains of her bruises and abrasions with it. Her knees weakened with desire, and the old shame over how she could be brought to such a state with such treatment. She blinked away tears as he twisted the other nipple, and she couldn’t be sure if they were tears of joy or pain.

Sylvester thrust himself against her, making animal noises of lust that reverberated through her body.

Then suddenly she heard a bass thump, and Sylvester crumpled to his knees.

Nora stared with horror at the man who threw a heavy serving bowl down, then grabbed her arm and pulled her toward him. “Ryan!”

“Yes. Remember me?” He slapped at her breasts. “Nice. Real nice. Couldn’t wait to get yourself banged by him, could you? Well, guess what. I’m the only one who gets to fuck my fiancée.”

“I’m not your fiancée anymore.” She pulled her shirt down. Her hands were shaking.

“Yes, you are. I did everything they asked. And you know what? I’m no one’s submissive, or doggie, or footstool! I’m your goddamned fiancé.” He flung her down some distance from Sylvester, unzipped his pants.

“I don’t want you. Red. I said red!” Ryan wasn’t stopping. He was going to turn his inability to accept his submissive nature into something truly ugly unless she convinced him otherwise. She supposed she could fight or run as a last resort. And she didn’t feel like running.

He sneered at her. “I can rape you as well as anyone else. And you’ll get your fantasy fulfilled. Lucky you.”

“Unlucky you.” Sylvester’s voice made them both start. Nora hissed with sympathetic pain as his fist met Ryan’s face when the man turned to look.

Nora scrambled back from the fray, but it was over. Ryan lay moaning, clutching his jaw.

Another shadow detached itself from the forest, glided forward. “I will take care of this one.” Mage pulled Ryan up by the hair, making him yelp. Mage grinned at Sylvester and Nora. “Enjoy. Good-bye.”

Nora waved to him from where she sat on the ground.

Sylvester turned a still-fierce expression on her, but she met his gaze without flinching. He was okay. Not hurt. Relief and adrenaline warred in her. She looked at his thick hair and her fingers itched to play with it, and then to explore the rest of him.

She made her hands lay against the ground. Obedient hands. “How’s your head?”

He stared at her. “I just punched your fiancé.”

“Ex-fiancé.” Her hands felt the grit of dirt and the silkiness of the clover. It was steadying, calming, to have the earth under her fingertips. Just not her first choice. “Thanks.”

“Why aren’t you afraid of me?”
His voice was a harsh demand.

“I am.” As she said it she realized it was true. Her insides still spiraled with the dangerous excitement of his proximity. He was a strong, potentially brutal man, with a body that punished and hands that did exactly what they pleased. “I just want you more than I’m afraid of you.”

She saw him swallow. Then his face went expressionless as he nodded. “You don’t know shit,” he told her in a harsh, raw voice. “I’m going to do you a favor. I’m going to give you ten seconds to get the hell out of here. One.”

A thrill of fear flashed through her body, followed by scorching heat. He wanted her to run.

“…five, six, seven…”

She jumped unsteadily to her feet, stumbled away from him.

“Ten!”

She ran.

He tackled her, sending her sprawling. “Too late.”

I
t felt terrifyingly real, not role play. Fear surged through her body. On her belly, she tried to crawl away from him, but he hauled her back by her ankle. “Uh-uh,” he chastised, looping his hands around her stomach and pulling her tight against his erection. “Feel that? That’s for you.”

She felt it. It was impossible to miss. It felt as large and hard as a tree root.

“I’m going to pound it into you, slut.” As he ground it against her, hurting her, tears blinded her eyes. Yet the degree to which she responded stunned her. She struggled, whimpering, as he yanked at the elastic edge of her pants, shoving them and her panties down around her knees.

Even as she tried to escape him, her body ached all over for his touch. The feeling was much more than sexual desire. It was a culmination of years of forbidden heat, capped by the long weekend of arousal. She’d never felt more ready.

She heard the zipper, and felt the new warmth of his bared flesh against hers. It galvanized her into renewed struggles, but he slapped her hard on the ass. “Be still, and maybe I won’t hurt you too bad.”

The next moment, Sylvester grabbed her ass cheeks, spread them apart. His cock prodded deeply between her thighs, then her pussy lips. She felt the large, blunt head of it slide over her clit, and she tensed, all thought fleeing her head before the violence he was preparing to do. “Please god, don’t do this, don’t do this…” A force seemed to envelope both of them, an unholy harbinger that made her clench her body, struggling to keep him out. Even as she fought hard, she shuddered with the excitement of being violently breached.

She could hear his breath come fast. His thick fingers felt clumsy and hurtful as he kicked one of her legs until he’d spread her open to him.

Then his cock plowed into her, driving in and up until he’d lodged so deeply it hurt, and his balls lodged against her mound.

She screamed.

He grasped her hips as he withdrew slightly. Then rammed it home again.

The pain and the fullness couldn’t be denied, wished away, or transmuted into something loving. He hurt her, pounded into her repeatedly. “Stop,” she gasped, crying. “Please, it hurts.”

Instead of answering, he did it again, and again, humping her with savage grunts. The width of him stretched her, and as the length slid in and in to her most personal space she felt violated anew. Made dirty. Each time, she cried out, her tears running freely down the sides of her face to drop into the dirt. Debased. Horribly used.

She felt him tense, and his cock throbbed and grew even larger within her. “Yeah, that’s it. That’s what you’re good for.”

He was coming within her. Sudden heat. Slipperiness.

Despoiling her. She felt the orgasm rocketing up through her at that most intimate of thoughts.

When it hit it made her entire body convulse with a pleasure scraped from the depths of the abyss, magic shooting up to take the deliberately obscene actions of Sylvester’s abuse and transform it, on waves of shattering joy, into the sweetest, purest gift he could have given. This was her fantasy, her rapture, and he was the perfect lover who’d given it to her.

He trembled, still within. He whispered in her ear, so soft it might have been in her mind: “Thank you.”

After, he cradled her.

He brushed her hair back from her moist brow with fingers so delicate it felt like the gentlest of night breezes. How was it possible to feel so cared for, so cherished after what he’d done? This counterpart to violence, this thoughtful caring, held an exquisite sweetness that touched her as deeply. She murmured drowsily. “Is this your aftercare? I love it. You said it would be ‘long and thoughtful.’ I hope it goes on and on and on….”

“As long as you want,” Sylvester promised. “Anywhere in the world, anytime you wish.”

As she smiled against his warm chest, content, she heard Mistress Kiana’s brass bell begin to clang.

“R
yan did the same thing to Black, when she went to check on Osmond. Waited until she had her back to him, then smashed her over the head with a ceramic bowl. Knocked her out.”

Nora curled one leg under her, sitting on one of the two cozy velvet-covered chair sets that made Sylvester’s living room such a comfortable place to hang out, even when a body had the run of the entire huge place.

Well, except for Mage’s loft, of course. But that wasn’t where she wanted to be.

Nora picked a grape from the platter Little Peter had left with her, before departing with Mistress Kiana. “Is Black okay?”

Sylvester closed his laptop. “Yes. White says the doctors reported no concussion, no lingering effects beyond a bad headache. Which I can relate to.” He looked at her.

“I’m sorry. I’m so glad he’s gone. I can’t believe Ryan did that to both of you.”

“I can.” He patted the laptop, then pulled his chair closer to hers. “But let’s talk about you. Do you realize you’ve managed to do most of the things on your checklist? It was a tiny list, but still.”

She threw a grape at him.

He picked it up from the ground, placed it on the low, carved teak table in front of the two chairs with no change in expression. “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you wish, Nora. But what about your job? Vice president is a big deal.”

How did his voice both soothe and stimulate? She had to admit it. She was well and truly infatuated. The subject of her company’s executive options felt foreign, and unwelcome next to the option of staying at Twisted Wood for as long as she wished.

The feel of his lazily circling thumb on the nape of her neck made it hard to concentrate. Or maybe she just didn’t care as much about her career climb as she once did. Not if it meant giving up such bliss.

She tried to focus. “I can’t go back to twelve-hour workdays and no time off to speak of. And I don’t want to keep looking at all the places I’ll never get to go. Being vice president there would seal my fate.” She was surprised to feel so strongly about it. “I guess I’ve decided to say ‘no’ to their promotion.”

She checked out his reaction. Neutral? Indecipherable. Of course.

Mildly piqued, she said, “Also, I’m going to quit my current position and be a travel writer instead. Travel writers get to go all over the world, and we always need good ones to send back photos and reports. I mean,
they
do. The company.”

“Mmm.” Still neutral. Uncaring?

“Means I’ll finally have the time to do what I’ve always wanted to do. Stop the workaholic insanity. See the world.” Pointedly. Was he actually yawning? He was! Discreetly, but still.

She wriggled away from his fingers. “Not that you’re interested in my boring career choices or anything.”

He immobilized her by grasping a fat handful of her hair. “No, you don’t. I’m interested in every damn thing about you. My goal in life is to make you happy, or haven’t you figured that out yet?” His eyes glinted with pleasure as he watched her halfhearted struggle to free herself. When she stilled, he released her to resume the slow, sensual movement of his thumb. “This connection,
us
—it’s the most important thing in my life, Nora. Never doubt it.” She felt like purring, but he was continuing. “Why don’t you just quit? More flexibility in your—our—destinations that way.”

She considered. If she threw the career advancement out the window, what was left? Her work satisfaction once lay in successfully portraying exotic locations as alluring destinations. But that pleasure paled next to the excitement of actually visiting the destinations. She answered truthfully. “I’m good at the job—the descriptions, the photos. I like the idea of freelancing. But the biggest reason I can’t up and quit is the usual one.”

“Money? Not an issue.”

“It is for me. Trips around the world aren’t cheap.”

“Neither is your new boyfriend. No, don’t argue. If you want to work, work. If you don’t, don’t. I respect your choice either way.”

She stared at him. “How rich
is
my new boyfriend?”

For the first time, he seemed awkward. He looked away. “Quite well off, actually. Had some good fortune at a dot-com start-up, and invested well afterward…you know.”

“Sylvester?” She looked at him wonderingly. He was blushing. She’d never seen anything more adorable in her life. How astonishing, that a man who spoke unflinchingly of flesh hooks and nipple clamps could be made abashed by mention of filthy lucre.

She would enjoy investigating his many layers.

But for now, she would change the subject.

“France has the most lovely lavender fields, and the food is nothing short of exquisite.”

“The Chez Kink B and B is in France.”

She looked at him sideways. His blush was gone as if it had never been. She nodded. “Fun. I’ve always wanted to see the tulips and windmills in Amsterdam as well. They’re astonishing in the springtime. Did you know Keukenhof, near the town of Lisse, is the largest flower garden in the world? It’s a massive park that’s open only in the spring. Maybe we could go on a river cruise on the Rhine. Wouldn’t that be glorious?”

“The Dark Tulip B and B is in Amsterdam.”

She tried unsuccessfully to suppress a smile. His own lips curved in a gentle smile as well, though she felt sure his thoughts were anything but gentle. “Another fun destination would be New Zealand. Many people don’t realize there are special
Lord of the Rings
tours to showcase the stunning scenery in those movies. And Milford Sound looks like one of the most beautiful places on earth.”

“Master Don’s Xtreme B and B is in Auckland.”

“You’re impossible. I give up.” She threw up her hands in mock exasperation. “A one-track mind.” She stood, turned her back, and started to walk away from him.

She heard the disturbed air as he moved, and a split second later strong arms lifted her, captured her.

Joy radiated through her as his grip changed, grew expert. He cradled her firmly to him. “I do not”—he kissed her head—“have a one-track mind. I’m fairly certain there must be at least two or three tracks.” She reveled in the strength and warmth and affection she felt from him.

He carried her toward his master suite. It reminded her of her first visit with him there. They’d sat in his private library, talking about her checklist and what she found desirable. She’d done her best to ignore her attraction to him. Suppressed the forbidden fantasies about him flinging her onto that enormous four-poster bed she could see in the next room.

She snuggled closer to Sylvester.

Happiness washed over her, a warm, tingling river of pleasure. They hadn’t even tried the bed yet.

She snorted laughter as he carried her through the doorway.

“You remember your safe word, right?” he inquired. Polite.

She nodded.

How she relished the feel of his enormous erection when he released her legs but not her torso, controlling her slow slide down his body. She couldn’t miss the fierce gleam in his eyes when she tried to break away and he prevented it. His large hands gathered her wrists into a cruel grip, crossed before her chest.

She tried hard, but couldn’t break his grip.

Her whole being flooded with desire. Exhilarating. “No. Please don’t,” she gasped, her voice quivering with need and something more. He grinned in response. He kicked the heavy wooden door shut behind him.