Black Knight, White Queen (6 page)

She made a soft noise as his fingers brushed her skin, her hips lifting, urging him farther down. But he wouldn’t let her have what she wanted. Not yet anyway.

He let his hand fall away and got off the bed again.

“Fuck,” Izzy panted, falling over onto her back. She’d gone even pinker beneath her blindfold, her jaw tight with what was probably frustration. “You’re a sadist. I’ve decided I don’t like this punishment.”

“You can go any time you like.” He’d moved to the opposite side of the bed again, watching her. Figuring out his next move. With a strange lurch, he realized he didn’t want her to go.

If she wanted to, would you stop her?

Would he? Perhaps he would.

She said nothing for a long moment. Her breasts rose and fell in time with her breathing, her little nipples hard with arousal. Then she flexed her arms against the brightly coloured scarves and gave a slow undulation of her hips, a sensual cat-stretch.

No. She wasn’t leaving. Need coiled low and deep inside him, making him even harder.

“I would leave,” she said huskily. “But it looks like some sadistic bastard has tied me up.” Her head turned on the pillow as if trying to gauge his position, one corner of her mouth turning up. “I don’t suppose you want to help me out, would you?”

Aleks stared at her, at the curve of her lower lip. Wanting to trace the shape of it with his finger. Her smile fascinated him. How was it possible that just a smile could make him harder than he was already? Flirtation, teasing had never done anything for him. Sex wasn’t about fun. It was a bodily function that one satisfied when appropriate and ignored when it wasn’t.

And yet some part of him wanted to respond to her. Tease her. Make her smile more.

“No.” He came silently around the bed to the other side again. “Why would I want to help you?”

Izzy turned her head in his direction. “Uh, well, I’d be extremely appreciative. Extremely.”

He knelt on the bed, put one hand on her thigh, feeling it quiver beneath his palm. “I don’t think so.”

She bit her lip, shifted her leg so his fingers slid inward over her skin, thighs falling open. “Dude, you are so bloody frustrating.”

“And you don’t do as you’re told.”

“Well, no. That’s true.” Her mouth curved in another naughty, sexy grin. “I suppose you’ll have to punish me some more then.”

Oh yes, he wanted to. In fact he’d begun to want to do that more than was strictly good for him.

Slowly he let his fingers slide farther up the smooth, soft skin of her inner thigh, watching the progress of his hand as he went. She’d become flushed all over now, her pale skin a dusky pink, the gleam of moisture on her thighs. The scent of her skin, roses and musk and feminine arousal made his head spin.

He gritted his teeth.

Patience. Patience was everything. In the game. In life. Patience and control, and Izzy tested both. She was a good lesson to him. A test.

Aleks stroked her inner thigh, feeling the wetness of her against his fingers. Her whole body tensed, little tremors racking her.

He glanced up at her face. She’d caught her lower lip between her teeth, but the dark blue cotton of his T-shirt obscured the rest of her expression.

All of a sudden he needed to see her. Needed to look into her eyes as he made her come. See that look of ecstasy light her up the way it had lit her up out in the lounge. See what it was he did to her.

The urge puzzled him because he’d never wanted to do that with a woman before. It was far too intimate. Gave away too much of himself. He didn’t need to see what he did to her, it wasn’t about him anyway. This was about her. Concentrating on her. About forgetting the memories of that house in Santa Monica and the hard stone in his chest he refused to call grief.

Aleks frowned. Perhaps she’d been right when she’d told him they were both escaping something. Perhaps escape was what he wanted after all.

Gentle fingers slid over her intimate flesh, stroking so lightly she wanted to scream. Instead she moaned helplessly, her body shifting and arching as a thumb brushed over her clit, another finger tracing the wet folds of her sex. It wasn’t enough. Goddammit.

Then the hand was gone, and so was he.

“Shit,” she said thickly. “This is getting ridiculous. I don’t—”

The rest of her protest died in her throat as a hot mouth covered her nipple. Izzy cried out, her body lifting from the bed. The pressure of his mouth suckling on her made light flash behind her closed lids, electricity in her blood.

His hand moved between her thighs again, a finger circling her clit then stroking in a firm, hard motion as he drew on her nipple.

“Oh…Aleks. Please…” Izzy pushed her hips against his hand. The intensity of the pleasure blinded her. This was what she wanted. Exactly what she’d been craving.

Escape. Release.

Then it stopped and he was gone again.

She swore helplessly, her whole body screaming. The deep pulsing ache inside her refused to let go. Panting, she lay still, trying not to move because maybe that’s why he’d stopped. Because she’d moved.

Closing her eyes behind the blindfold, she tried to keep control of her breathing and failed miserably. Of course she didn’t need to stay here. Easy enough to take off the scarves, untie the blindfold. Get up and walk away.

But she wouldn’t. Right now she felt more alive than she had for months. Alive and awake, part of the world again. Not denied and ignored and invisible.

With every touch he’d rebuilt her. Remade her. In this bed she wasn’t the sister of a suicide victim or the sole surviving daughter. She wasn’t grieving or in mourning or bereaved. In this bed she was a woman who was wanted and desired and pleasured.

It was glorious and she didn’t ever want it to stop.

Trying to calm her breathing, quiet the pound of blood in her ears, Izzy strained to hear him. Figure out where he was. But he remained silent.

Yes, she could see why he always won. He had a core of ice cold steel in him. A purpose. If he wanted to win, then he would and he wouldn’t let anything get in his way.

Just like if he wanted to make her come only when he said, then he would.

She didn’t know why the thought thrilled her so much. Perhaps because no one had made it their sole purpose to give her pleasure before. Oh, she’d had boyfriends in the past who’d counted it a failure if they hadn’t given her at least two orgasms every night.

But that had all been about them and their prowess. Aleks did this for her pleasure alone.

Electricity whispered over her skin, and she didn’t know how she knew but she became aware he was close. The sound of glass clinking. Liquid being poured.

Izzy frowned beneath her blindfold. What the hell?

Then the fingers were back, wet this time, tracing patterns on her skin. And following the patterns, licking the wetness from her body, his tongue.

She lay back, let it happen. Let him touch her. Let him trace his fingers all over her. Let him lick her, taste her. Along her stomach, around her nipples, her bellybutton, the sensitive crook of her elbow, behind her knees. Her inner thighs and finally between.

Izzy screamed when he put his mouth on her sex, when he spread her delicate, slick flesh and licked her. Nerve endings pushed to the limit, her eyes screwed shut beneath her blindfold, she screamed again when his tongue pushed deep inside her, a cry of ecstasy on the edge of pain.

“Come, Izzy,” he murmured, his breath against her thigh.

And she let go. The orgasm blinded her, white light against her closed lids, pleasure exploding like a sun going nova. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Could only lie there as the aftershocks echoed through her body in waves, feeling as if she’d been broken apart.

And then the cotton of her blindfold was pulled up, more light flooding her dazed senses. Aleks knelt between her thighs, fully protected with a condom, his face taut with hunger. His eyes were like quicksilver as they stared down into hers, a hand sliding beneath her, lifting her up.

She gasped as he pushed his way inside her, a deep, slow move that had her trembling with the intensity of it. She found herself hypnotised by the expression on his face, by the way he looked at her like he was searching for something.

As the initial discomfort and sensitivity lessened, leaving a liquid, heavy kind of heat that had her wrapping her legs around his hips so he could go deeper, harder, Izzy watched him. Fascinated by his expression. By the tension in it. As if he was holding something back and not just desire. Something more than that. An emotion that burned like magnesium in the depths of his eyes. Grief. Or fear. Or anger. Or maybe a combination of all three.

She twisted her hands like he’d showed her and as he’d promised, the scarves fell right off. Then she reached up to him, took his face between her palms. “Don’t hold back, Aleks. You have to let go.” Because for the moment she had. And the feeling of freedom was too good not to share.

He paused, still inside her, shock clear on his face. And for a brief second the intimacy between them was too much even for her.

Gently Izzy tugged his head down against her neck and closed her eyes. Shutting out his intense gaze. “Just take me,” she murmured, letting her hands stroke down his back. “Escape with me.”

His long, powerful body shuddered. Then he turned his head into her neck and took her. Hard and fast, without any of his earlier control. Pounding himself into her as if he was trying to lose himself.

Escape. She’d recognised it. She knew it.

That’s what they both wanted. That’s why they were here.

Izzy put her arms around him, closed her eyes and let the pleasure take her.

Chapter Six

Aleks came awake almost instantly, a habit he’d never been able to break himself of since his days of sleeping rough. Something was different and he wasn’t sure what it was. It took him a couple of moments to realize that it was because someone else was in his bed with him.

He turned over to see Izzy sitting on the other end of the bed, her knees drawn up, a pad balanced on them. She had her head bent, the mass of her pale hair pushed to one side as her hand moved over the pad. It looked like she was drawing.

Then she lifted her head, met his gaze and smiled.

An odd feeling caught in his chest. An emotion he didn’t understand and didn’t want to. He sat up. “What are you doing here?”

Her smile faded at his tone. “I’m drawing, what does it look like?”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to draw you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. You have an interesting face.”

He looked down at the pad on her knees. At her hands resting on the paper. And remembered her arms around him. Remembered the way he’d lost it for the second time that…evening? Was it still evening? His body clock, usually pretty accurate, felt all out of kilter.

Glancing at the clock beside the bed, shock began to seep through him. Eight a.m. So, not evening after all. Which meant Izzy had spent the whole night with him.

Aleks took a silent breath. Women didn’t sleep with him at all, let alone the whole night. He’d never liked the feeling of vulnerability inherent in sleeping beside another person. It was too intimate. Too much trust involved.

Why hadn’t he sent her back to wherever she was staying the night before? Called her a taxi or something?

He couldn’t remember. His last memory of the night before had been lying in her arms, feeling as if the world had collapsed on top of him.

A sense of claustrophobia, like a large stone pressing on his chest, began to tighten inside him.

“You fell asleep,” Izzy said calmly. “If you’re wondering what happened, that’s what happened. We had fantastic sex and then you fell asleep pretty much straight away.”

“No,” he said automatically. That couldn’t happen. That never happened. He never fell asleep with a sex partner. They screwed and then they were gone. That’s how it went.

“Dude, you did. And I should know since you fell asleep on me and you were really heavy.”

The claustrophobic feeling became even more intense. Aleks turned away from her, sliding out of bed, going over to his bag to pull out some clothes. Izzy’s gaze was a sharp pressure against his back. “You should go,” he said curtly, pulling on his jeans. “I have things to do.”

“I beg your pardon?”
 

“I said it’s time for you to leave. Didn’t you hear me?”

A brief silence hung heavy in the air.

He turned. She’d gone quite pale, staring at him. “What’s the matter?”

A spark ignited in her eyes. “You. You’re the matter.”

“Why?” He tried to detach himself from a slow-building anger simmering in his gut. An anger that had seemingly sprung out of nowhere.

“Why? Why do you think? We have the most amazing, mind-blowing sex and then you just…just…” She flung a hand out. “Again, you’re treating me like a bloody prostitute. Just the way you did last night!”

The anger coiled tight, and he had to work to keep the wall of ice between himself and it. “I don’t understand. Why are you angry? You wanted a night. And you had it. There isn’t any reason to prolong this.”