Ultimate Surrender: The Surrender Series, Book 2 (10 page)

Moving his hand up, he caressed the base of her rib cage. He’d been right, she was definitely on the thin side. Her thinking otherwise totally made him want to growl. Swallowing the impulse took a lot more effort than he thought it would.

Shifting his hand upward, he tucked his fingers beneath the bottom edge of her shirt and found perfection with the backs of his knuckles. The lower swell of her breast called to him. As if some part of her trusted him, she breathed his name again and shifted another inch closer to the protection of his body.

Fully embracing the need to feel her, he flipped his hand up and followed the outside curve of her breast until it filled his entire palm and then some.

Fuck.

Perky. Round. Soft and silky. Real. Hell yeah.

A tiny whimper escaped her mouth as he brushed his thumb across her nipple.

His mouth watered to taste her.

He continued, slow and steady, around the tight peak of her nipple.

He breathed out once and knew he had to wake her if he intended to go any further. Consent was a huge part of his world, and the thought of seducing her down into the rabbit hole with him did it for him on so many levels he lost count after a few seconds.

Softly pinching her nipple, he whispered her name. She wiggled once but settled quickly back into sleep. Gently squeezing the handful of breast he held, he spoke a little louder. “Natalie. We’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Another moan as he circled her nipple a couple more times and then her eyes blinked open.

Drowsily, she focused on him.

He pinched her nipple again a little harder, and she sucked in oxygen as if it would be her last breath ever.

With a gasp she came fully awake. “Fuck, you’re hot.” She said it and then looked shocked as hell as she practically fell out of bed trying to get away from him.

Definitely. Not. A. No.

Chapter Eight

Natalie

Natalie scrambled out of bed with a whimper and a full-body jerk, which freaked out both dogs who jumped out of bed and went barking toward the door. As she panted, staring at Campbell, the dogs calmed down and moved to the dog bed.

Zeroing in on the man between her sheets flipped some switch inside her. Some low-level hum shimmied through her, because oh my holy shit he was even hotter lying in her bed. The last thing she needed was to be even more turned on by him.

Willing her pulse to calm the fuck down did little good as he adjusted his cock beneath his pants. The shadow his cloth-covered dick made from the moonlight coming through the side window made her drool.

“You confuse the hell out of me,” he accused as he flopped back on the bed.

“Uhh, what?” she kind of grunted while keeping a tight leash on the bottom of her t-shirt, which all of a sudden felt about three sizes too small.

“You scramble away but I can smell how turned on you are, and your nipples are hard and I want to lick them.”

Whimper.
Fuck
. Her body and hormones were betraying her.

“And then there’s the noises you make. Grouchy. Whimpers. Sighs. I can’t figure you out.”

“You were touching me.”

“Guilty.”

“That’s it? No defense of copping a feel as I was sorta sleeping.”

“You’re incredibly sexy.”

“Oh.”

“Oh? Do you even know how to take a compliment?”

“Uhh… I don’t have a clue how to respond to that.”

“Okay, let’s try this. I give you a compliment and then you say ‘thank you’. Got it?”

She actually had to think about it for a second. “I think so.”

“You’re hot and I want to bite your nipples.”

Her abdomen contracted again as if he’d actually done the biting and she bit her lip. Took her a couple seconds to get back online. “Thank you,” she whispered. She could barely hear herself. No clue what he’d heard.

“Come again?”

Natalie smiled. “That’s what she said.”

“Come on, Miss Deflector. I want to hear it. I get the impression you don’t get compliments often enough, and for whatever reason I’ve decided you need a few. So giddy up. You make my dick hard and I want to lick your pussy until you scream.”

“Fuuucckkkk…”

“Nope, that’ll come later if you’re a good girl. What do you say to a compliment?”

One big breath. “Thank you, Campbell.” Her tongue touched her teeth on the last syllable of his name and she couldn’t help pondering how badly she wanted a taste of him.

His smile, it lit up his whole face. How had she never noticed what an amazing smile he had?

“Now. Was that so hard?”

“I don’t know. Is it?” His obvious challenge rose between them and she almost took a step toward the bed, but she stopped herself.

“Hold on.”

“That’s what I’m trying to get you to do.”

“Stop. Time out.” She even made the motion with her hands. “What are we doing here?”

“I’m squeezing my cock, which I’m pretty sure should be your job, and you’re squeezing your thighs together trying to get enough friction to get off, which I’m pretty sure should be my job.”

Looking down, she stared at her thighs. Hell. He was right. She was moving them back and forth, searching for the pressure needed to come. “Jesus. Okay.” She took a half a step to the right with one foot so nothing could touch. “And stop jacking off. We need to talk for a second and you’re distracting the shit out of me.”

“Ugh. Talking.”

“Oh shut up and quit whining.”

Instead of getting offended he laughed. “You don’t do this very much, do you?”

“I sure as hell don’t, so why don’t you lay it on the line what you’re trying to do.”

“Screw you. Simple. I want to fuck you out of my system. I want my cock so deep inside you your eyes roll back in your head when you come on my dick. That’s what I want.”

Tingles raced up her spine but she beat them back. “But? Your eyebrows are all scrunched together. I know there’s a but in there.”

“I don’t just want to fuck you. I’m attracted to you, think I might have been for a while, which is totally fucked up. Don’t really want to be either but I still am.”

“Well that sounds…complicated.”

“Complicated,” they said at the same time.

They eyed each other and Natalie could feel Campbell’s gaze on her exposed flesh. Her feet, calves, thighs, arms, throat, lips. His eyes lingered on each piece, making her shiver.

His cock jerked and her sigh wouldn’t stay silent.

“See, there you go again. Mixed signals. You’re telling me to slow down so we can chitchat, but you’re giving me every signal you’re more than ready to continue on a more horizontal playing field.”

“You’re hard.”

His groan shimmied straight to her nipples, making them even harder. “And talking about it isn’t going to make it go away so stop rubbing it in.”

“What if I prefer to rub one out?”

Silence. “Huh?”

Now it was apparently his turn to go nonverbal.

After taking a deep breath she threw every warning in her head out the window, climbed back on the bed, and didn’t stop until she had straddled his legs. “How’s this for a very straightforward, non-mixed signal?”

He dug beneath her shirt until his warm palms rested on her thighs. “This is much better but what exactly is this signal trying to tell me?” He glanced up at her. “I want you. Not gonna lie. I want you something fierce I can’t seem to get past. Again. Odd. But I’m not some forever kind of guy looking for a two-car garage and suburbia and marriage and all the crap that comes with it.”

“Good.” Her hands on his hard chest totally distracted her but she locked back onto the conversation. “I’m not looking for some white knight to come rescue me. Fuck that if you don’t mind me saying so.”

“Not at all.”

“I’m also not looking for romance and dating and some bull honkey lies you feel the need to tell me to get into my pants.”

“Awesome. And I’m not looking for a nag who wants to know where I’m at 24/7 and if I’ll pick up tampons and chocolate ice cream for the fourteenth time in two days.”

“Never asking for that. As in ever.”

“Great.”

The whole time the pads of his fingers drew small circles on her skin, slowly getting closer and closer to her sex.

“So what exactly are we agreeing to?” he asked with a whole lot of sexy voice rumbling into her.

“Sex. No strings.”

“One time,” he added with a finality, telling her there was no discussion possible.

Her heart gave a squeeze but quickly got back on track. “Agreed. No relationship. No emotions or hurt feelings tomorrow. We won’t let it be weird between us and in the light of day we can go straight back to being our snarky selves.”

“Completely agree.” The way his chest and shoulders moved beneath her hands turned her on so much she was probably soaking through her panties.

“I didn’t think you could do it.”

“Do what?” He watched her mouth as she said the words and his fingers moved even closer to her clenching pussy.

“Talk me out of being celibate.”

Laughing caught her off guard with the sexual tension pulsing between them. “Celibate, huh?”

“Totally.” He shrugged. “I’ve had a few bad run-ins lately.”

“Well, I’ve had no run-ins lately, good or bad. So the law of probability states we’re both due something amazing.” She bit her lip and dug her nails into his shoulders. “Think you can live up to my expectations?”

Whipping her shirt over her head, he rubbed against her pussy with his hard shaft she’d trapped between them. “You don’t even know what to expect and if you did you might be a bit nervous.”

“I expect a good time.”

“A good time? A
good
time? I’m going to blow your mind.”

“That sure of yourself, Campbell?”

A simple nod.

If he’d been boastful or full of himself or a dick about it she would have blown him off. Expected meh maybe and reminded herself she could get off with a vibrator after he was finished if he couldn’t get the job done.

But he wasn’t any of those things.

A quiet confidence surrounded him, drawing Natalie further into the fold of something she couldn’t let change her.

Shoring up her defenses, she ran her palms down his chest and stopped to draw along the ridges of his abdomen. He might touch her body but her heart was strictly off limits.

It was one night. Only one.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d given in to something so hedonistically decadent. It didn’t further her goal to make something of herself.

A name for herself.

One that she hadn’t been cursed with at birth.

Campbell was a destination in and unto himself.

He was a playboy. Pleasure wrapped inside a sexy package that throbbed beneath her.

“Last chance to back out,” he told her as he licked his bottom lip and brushed her hair aside to run his thumb across the beaded tip of her nipple.

“I’m not going anywhere. We both know the rules. Sex. No emotion. One night. No holds barred.”

“Nothing barred? Really? I didn’t think we’d actually negotiated for a free-for-all yet.”

She shrugged and started to move. “Well, if you’d like to back out I won’t blame—”

Flipping her over, he pinned her on her back with her thighs spread wide and his hips between them. He trapped her wrists together over her head with one of his hands. And the fingers on his other hand trapped her nipple between his thumb and first finger. “I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart. There is nowhere,” he ground his erection against her panties-covered clit and her back arched into his touch, “I’d rather be than right here. But I want to make a few things quite clear.”

“Wha-what would those things be?” Her eyelids drooped closed so she could focus on how he touched her, how he sounded, smelled.

He released her nipple and bent forward to lick it, but only once. “I like kinky sex. And I’m not just talking a couple swats on your delicious ass.”

“Then…” She had to swallow to keep going because if he didn’t stop his slow and steady rub on her clit she was going to come before they even got started. “What kind of kinky do you like?”

“The raw kind. The kind where I’m going to pull responses from your body whether you want to give them or not. I’ll be able to read your body no matter if you can speak or not. No matter if you can hear or not.”

“Hear as in…?”

“Ear plugs, blindfolds, a gag.” He glanced into her eyes as her mouth fell open. “Taking one of the senses away makes the rest of them burn even hotter.”

“I’m already burning up inside.” The confession came out a whisper because she didn’t mean to voice it, but there was something different about him. Something dangerous and delicious.

Something she’d sensed in him from that very first kiss on the sidewalk far down below where reality lived.

But reality had no place here. Not in the silky place he’d spun around them.

“And if I do something you don’t like?”

“You won’t.”

Squinting at him, she waited for more but it never came as he squeezed her hands.

“How can you promise that?”

“Simple. I won’t let you fail.”

Her brain tried to kick out several witty comebacks. Some kind of well-placed jab to try to put them back into more of an even power exchange, but nothing would come. Her brain wouldn’t give her anything helpful but a “Yes Sir,” which had no place coming from her lips so she clenched her teeth together to keep it inside.

But his words hit home. Digging beneath every wall and every shield she had in place to keep her separated from everyone else.

Failing.

Her biggest fear.

And here was this man, larger than life, offering to give her something she’d been craving for longer than she cared to admit.

Did she dare give him her control?

Yes it was only for a night, but she sensed the ramifications of being with this man would touch her for days and weeks and months in the future.

As if he sensed her hesitancy his nostrils flared and he licked his lips again. “I can smell your pussy, can tell exactly how turned on you are.” Rubbing his cock against her sure as hell had something to do with that.

“Ready to play, sweet Natalie?” He licked her other nipple and bit it just enough to send adrenaline racing up her legs.

“Yes,” she answered without a moment’s thought.

She wanted what he was offering.

Craved it.

Needed it if only for a night.

This would be one of those what if happenings that she’d always wonder about. And she didn’t want to get to the end of her life and have nothing but regrets to keep her warm at night.

Life was short.

Too short.

As if to remind her Campbell softly ran his fingers over a patch of skin still healing on her knee from when she’d been attacked before.

“I only have one big rule. Everything else we can handle tonight as it comes up.”

“What’s the rule?”

“No is no. I don’t play with safewords and all of that broccoli, ragamuffin, detritus word bullshit that you’re not going to be able to regurgitate if you truly need to. So if you need to stop, if you get freaked out, scared, whatever, then tell me to stop. I will
never
be so far gone that I can’t hear the word no. Understand?”

Natalie’s worry melted away with his words. She believed him, and in that moment she knew without a shadow of a doubt he wouldn’t hurt her.

“I understand. I’ll tell you no if I need you to stop.”

“Good. One more thing,” he added. His voice dropped low into some kind of timbre reserved for dirty sex and apparently not the sweet kind.

“What is—”

One blink. Only one. And her panties were shredded and he flung them to the end of the mattress. “Bare. I want you bare.” He slid one finger and then two through the wet lips of her sex, and her pelvis jerked as he fed his wet digits into her weeping pussy. “The smell of your pussy has taunted me for hours. Leave your hands up on the pillow.” Releasing them, he shifted down lower, swiping her flesh with his tongue as he went. He fucked his fingers into her wet sheath as he settled between her open thighs.