Bittersweet (5 page)

Uh oh. She could feel her anger rising and the urge to stamp her foot. She was being lassoed into something she did not want to do, which pissed her off. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I have a—” her eyes shot to Deacon and she smiled slyly, “I have a date.”

“Bring him!” Mrs. S. shrieked and Rayka pulled the phone away from her ear and winced.

Deacon took the phone and Rayka reached for it. He snatched it out of her reach. “Hello?” He nodded, smiled, and winked at Rayka, and she fought the urge to grab at the phone like a child. “Un hunh. Yes, yes, I see. Seven o’clock. We’ll be there.”

Rayka sat with her mouth open in surprise. “Why did you do that?” She sighed when he handed her her own phone. The traitor.

“Because I want to see you in action. And I want to be your date.”

“And you always get what you want?” she grumped, but then her heart sped up and her body betrayed her. She felt the moisture return again between her thighs. She remembered the feel of his hand on her thigh. His fingers in her pussy. How he hit that spot in her that made her light-headed without even seeming to try.

Chapter 8

Deacon wasn’t sure what had possessed him to force her into the party. Maybe the chance to see her in her element. Not overshadowed by him and his hulking want of her. He could step back and see the Rayka that wasn’t influenced by him. He took the corner fast and headed back to her place. He wanted her there. Didn’t know why. Didn’t care.

“We’re going to my house?” she asked. She kept shifting in the car seat as if she couldn’t get comfortable. He thought it was more than that. She was trying to adjust so that the slight vibration of the engine through the seat didn’t titillate. He grinned and clamped his hand on her warm thigh.

“I don’t normally move so fast. I am a bossy, headstrong business woman. I will start and finish a project in record time. But with men, no—that’s not me. I barely date. Most men just aren’t worth the time.”

Deacon took his hand from her and just listened. This is where the secrets of Rayka Sinclair’s heart lay. She was not used to intense emotion. Blind attraction was foreign to her. Going fast was unheard of. He could echo that sentiment but would not. She didn’t need to know that.

“I don’t feel like I do.” She turned to him this time and tentatively ran her hand up his leg. Deacon felt his skin grow warm and hum with her touch. Jesus. Just that alone was enough to make him feel like he would lose it and come right there. Come in his pants like a teenager with a hair trigger. She gave him a hair trigger. She gave him a deep swelling feeling in his chest and the urge to smile and the feeling that things were okay. Even his deep sense of loss over losing Gideon, his last remaining family, seemed less painful. It was fucking crazy.

“But you do. Always. You can say stop to me and I will. Just make sure you mean it.”

Her hand went a little further. It was if she were almost frightened to touch him, and yet she couldn’t seem to help herself. “I don’t want you to stop.”

“I haven’t started.”

“I won’t want you to stop. I went to dinner with you after you yanked my panties off my body and demanded I go ass-bare to dinner in a dress that fits like a second skin.” Her hand stilled but she didn’t withdraw it.

Deacon shrugged and pulled into the driveway. There was that little fairytale door. When he crossed the threshold, would he become the big bad wolf? He thought he might. “I don’t know. But it’s time.”

“Time for what?” Her eyes were huge in the shadowed interior, their blue somehow luminescent in the near dark. She looked terrified and excited. Deacon leaned in and bit her bottom lip hard enough to make her gasp but soft enough for her to feel it throughout her body. Just enough that the pain would up her pleasure.

“Time for you to take a few orders. Time for me to get my hands on you. All of you.”
Time for me to fuck you the way I want to fuck you and then maybe understand why you make me feel this way. Why I feel this way.
But he didn’t say that part aloud.

* * * *

“I never thought a candy store owner would rip my underwear off. Or make me—”

“Have phone sex? Call his name?” He laughed against the hollow of her throat. He could smell dark chocolate on her lips from the post-dinner biscotti. She’d had wine instead of coffee. Red wine. She had dipped the biscotti into the wine to soften it and then gently worked the hard cookie with her tongue and teeth. Deacon had thought he’d go mad before dessert ended.

“Yes and yes.” She arched into his hands that seemed to have a mind of their own. He’d deliberately cupped her buttocks and hauled her forward against him and rubbed his cock against the cleft of her sex that he knew was wet and bare beneath the dress. Then of their own accord, his hands would migrate. Breasts, shoulders, the slender small of her back, the bell of her hips as they flared out in a way that made him nearly crazy. All woman. Not one ounce of her angular or boyish. She was exactly what he longed for. She didn’t just turn him on, she revved him up.

He nipped her ear with his teeth, and she jumped in his arms. Her mouth was hot and wet against his throat, tracing the line of his jugular. Deacon pulled the sash on her dress and stepped back. He let it fall open on its own, and when it stopped just short of his desire, he parted the red fabric with his hands.

“Fuck,” he said, and she flinched. Thinking he was disappointed? Not at all. But Gideon had always said that he had the flair and romance of a monkey on crack. Which meant none. He should have remained a construction foreman, barking orders and dominating a bunch of sweaty thugs who could take it and then dish it out. Instead he found himself in a cotton candy pink world. Meeting women who seemed to turn him inside out and then twist him and shake him upside down just for good measure. “You are stunning,” he growled, to make sure she understood.

He grazed one nipple through her lacy black bra. It studded below his knuckle, and he couldn’t resist dipping his head to suck it into his mouth through the thin fabric. Rayka seemed to purr in her throat like a contented feline. Her body bowed up to meet him. He wrapped his arm around her waist and tugged her closer, sucked harder until she gasped and hooked her leg around his waist.

“Stop,” he said, and she stilled in his arms. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open and soft. “On your knees now, Ray. Like we said.”

He just about lost it when she dropped without a word. Like she had done it every day of her life for him. A thousand times on her knees before him, instead of it being the very first time. New and surely scary. Yet there she was, gazing up at him, her blue eyes full of trust and fear and excitement. “Open,” he said softly. It seemed to be their magic word. And she did. Wider. Her already slack pink lips went wide and full for him.

Deacon swallowed hard as he unzipped. He wanted this, sure. A blowjob was a blowjob was a blowjob. But her mouth on his cock would cause problems. Because after a night of being with her, hearing her talk, seeing the growing hold he had on her, he didn’t know if he would last. All this talk about obeying and one wet slide of her mouth on his dick and he’d come unglued. Now wouldn’t that be a hoot?

He clamped his teeth down and focused. Focused on all the reasons he could not come. Firstly, he had to show her what he expected. Secondly, he never intended for her to finish him off. This was just an appetizer. He intended to take her tonight and make her say it again. “Deacon,” like she had on the phone. That sexy, breathy whisper that had made him come like someone flipping a switch. He wanted to slide her up and down his cock and watch her face and hear her say it like that for him. And then he would come. This time in person. Live and up close.

He freed his eager cock and ran the head along the sides of her mouth. Watched her eyes close softly. Her skin was so soft and the gentle puffs of breath on the sensitive skin made his fear that much worse. No way. There was no way he would last.

“Please,” she said, and that just made it maddening. She wanted this. It wasn’t him demanding it of her and her complying. She truly wanted it. When he looked in her eyes, he knew that was true.

She parted her lips further, licked her lips. She arched her chin forward and he watched her, fascinated, wondering who was really in charge. He slid his cock between her lips and the sensation ate up all thought. The slick warmth of her mouth was all he could focus on. He buried his hands in that honey blonde hair and shut his eyes.

Now all he had to do was hold on. Not come.

Rayka ran her tongue up his shaft. She hummed softly, making little happy sounds. The combination made his mind go blank, his body almost numb. Bad. Very, very bad. Because it was so very, very good.

Chapter 9

Rayka loved the feel of him. Never one for such an act, she was shocked by the little sounds she emitted. She hadn’t realized they were from her at first. He felt like silk on her tongue. Hard silk. And big. She went slowly at first to make sure she didn’t gag—she wanted it to be sexy, not comical. But then she forgot about all that and focused on him. In her mouth. She wanted to please him more than anything.

“Stop, Rayka,” he said. Commanded, really. Most of what Deacon said sounded like a command. When he spoke there was no hesitation. He spoke and expected that what he said would be carried out. But she was happy and she liked the feeling of submission mixed with power that she had. On her knees but controlling him with her lips and tongue. The way his big leg muscles clenched under her hands as she touched him lightly. He was fighting for control, and that made her cunt even wetter. Knowing that she had some power over him. She made her tongue rigid and ran just the tip up his shaft.

Deacon fisted her hair and yanked. Hard enough for her eyes to tear. Hard enough for her to yelp and to forget herself and bark, “Hey!” like she would to anyone else. But Deacon James was not anyone else, and the instant flurry of nervousness in her stomach reminded her of that fact.

“I said
stop
,” he said. He bit out each word as if it were an effort. “Up off the floor, Rayka.”

She nodded but her eyes went to his cock. Hard and at attention, she tried to pull her gaze away. To look him in the eye or at the floor, anything but eyeing up his erection. No such luck.

Deacon sighed and turned her. He didn’t say a word. He bent her, posed her, positioned her, and she let him. Rayka couldn’t get over how she was with him. Warm putty, mindless, so unlike herself. Or was it more, she wondered as he gripped her hips and then levered her ass higher on his lap. She knew where this was going, and her chest grew tight with fear even as her pussy clenched expectantly. But she trusted him. And that was the mystery feeling—why she let him pose her like a doll. She trusted him and hadn’t a clue why. All she could do was operate on intuition and let her trust radar guide her. And pray that he wasn’t a nut or a jerk. Pray that he was all that he seemed to be. A hugely gruff exterior with a stellar man on the inside.

“Count them off,” he growled. She yipped with fear like a child. Then she giggled, snorted, and hung her head. Dear Christ, what a mess. “Glad you think it’s funny,” he said and let loose the first blow.

Rayka stopped laughing as the fire shot through her skin on her ass. Her eyes teared and her mind seemed to go white hot and blank. “One!” she sobbed. Fuck. That was one—how many would there be? And how would she survive it? The question faded as another blow landed. “Two!” Rayka sobbed. Sobbing was appropriate because the pain was all-consuming. It swallowed her laughter and spit out more sobs.

Spanking? Jesus, she had never even been spanked as a child. And to be spanked as a woman. By a grown man who— “Three!” she yelped and the tears were then flowing freely, dripping down her cheeks to the hardwood floor, dripping off the end of her nose.

Once Deacon reached eight, Rayka was squirming. He kept grabbing her hips in his big hand and readjusting her over his lap. “You’re not going anywhere. Fifteen is what we’re doing here, darling. You need to listen when I speak. I said to stop and you didn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Rayka gasped. She wanted to explain. Explain that normally she didn’t much care for giving a blowjob, but with him it had been different. Hot and sexy and secretive. That it had made her wet just to touch him. To have his cock between her lips. Before any of that could escape, he hit her again, and she sobbed, “Nine.” Her head hanging down with exhaustion. Her long dark blonde hair swirling patterns in the splash of her tears on the floor.