Darker the Release (21 page)

When he finally tore his mouth away from her in order to start getting rid of some unnecessary clothing, Kelly asked him, “So do you think we need to talk about some of the stuff that happened between us?”

It might have been temporary, it might have been from the bliss of finally making the right decision and of having everything he wanted, or it might have been the distracting compulsion of his hard cock, but Caleb didn’t even care about any of that at the moment. “Not now. Maybe later. Unless you want to.”

Kelly’s smile was beautiful and blinding. She rubbed deliciously against him, quickly finding the bulge of his erection. “Not now,” she repeated, rhythmically rocking up into him. “Maybe later.”

Caleb captured her lips again and plunged his tongue into her mouth, stroking it erotically against hers.

While they kissed, Kelly’s hands fumbled to yank her nightgown off over her head.

Moaning deep in his throat, Caleb lifted off of her just long enough to pull off the T-shirt he was wearing, so that he could feel her naked breasts moving against his skin. “Kelly,” he murmured, his teeth grazing her throat. “Kelly, I love you.”

Her voice sounded almost like a sob, and her body was rocking like a wave beneath him. “Caleb, I love you too.”

Then he felt her hands—eager and seeking—beneath the waistband of his shorts. When he felt her warm little fingers on the sensitive length of his cock, he groaned helplessly.

Her responding moan mirrored his. She was already trying to generate some friction by pushing her pelvis up into his, but one of her hands was still struggling frantically with his shorts, trying to push them off.

“Caleb,” she said in frustration, trying to undress him, massage his cock, and grind against him simultaneously. “Help me get them off.”

Laughing warmly, he pulled himself up enough to rid himself of his underwear. Then he allowed her to pull him back down over her, and he slid his hands under her hips to massage the firm flesh of her ass.

Still trying to kiss him, Kelly closed her hands over his cock in a way that made him choke on a curse. Then she was trying to guide his erection toward her entrance, and he hissed when she rubbed the head against the wet, swollen flesh of her arousal.

Looking in her eyes, he found her mouth again. Kissed her long and deep. He tried to show her how much he loved her, although he was having some trouble focusing on the kiss, since her insistent hands were still trying to get him into position.

Finally she gasped, “Caleb! I want you inside me right now. Why are you taking your time?”

“Sorry,” he murmured, chuckling again. “I didn’t realize there was such a big hurry.” His fingers joined hers, brushing along his cock until he was able to slip a finger into her entrance. She was very hot and soaking wet, and her muscles clung deliciously to the intrusion of his finger. “Eager, are we?”

She scowled up at him, despite her hum of pleasure as he used his finger to do a little exploring. “Don’t be smug. It seems like you’re kind of eager too.”

To prove her point, she rubbed her palm in tight circles over the head of his cock, and Caleb jerked dramatically and burst out, “Fuck, yeah!”

Having effectively made her case, Kelly smiled up at him sweetly. “That’s what I thought. Now, can you fuck me, please?”

Returning her smile, Caleb positioned himself more comfortably between her widely parted legs. Used his erection to nudge and tease her until she was groaning and quivering with impatience. But then he finally pushed inside of her.

They both released their breath as he fit himself into the tight sheath of her body. Caleb closed his eyes and tried to concentrate, feeling unexpectedly drained after all the events of the day and therefore nervous about the extent of his control. Fortunately, Kelly’s muscles were wet and clasping him in erratic flutters, so he was pretty sure it wouldn’t take her very long to come.

Pulling up her legs so that he’d sink into her even more deeply, Kelly twined her arms around his neck, holding him in a close embrace. She pumped her hips a couple of times. “Caleb,” she prompted breathlessly. “Any time now.”

He adjusted his weight onto one arm so that he wouldn’t crush Kelly, and then he reached down to guide her thigh up to where he wanted it.

Responding to his silent request, she wrapped both legs around his waist. Closing her eyes and whining in pleasure, she still managed to ask drily, “Better?”

“Yes,” he gasped, shaking a little at the sensations of sinking deeper inside her. He loved having her legs around him. Loved feeling like she wanted him deep, like she didn’t want to let him pull out. Her body was the most luscious home he’d ever known, and he clung to any evidence that she felt the same way about his.

He moved his forearms until they were crossed under her neck, and he kissed her again as he started to thrust.

He had great plans for keeping their lovemaking slow and leisurely tonight, but as soon as he began to move inside her, Kelly started bucking her hips up urgently and whimpering with pretty little sounds of pleasure and impatience.

Her obvious need for him broke the lingering threads of his control. With a rough groan, he pumped his pelvis more rapidly, and his kiss became hungry and clumsy. He could feel his climax building with dangerous speed, and he tore his mouth away from hers so he could try to regain his focus.

It didn’t help. Because now he could see Kelly’s lovely face. It was flushed and twisted with the sensations washing over her, and her eyes were hot and wild, never looking away from his face. She was already panting and was still making those erotic little sounds every time he drove his cock into her.

“Kelly,” he moaned, the one word almost a plea, squeezing his eyes shut and burrowing his face into the space beside her neck in a vain attempt to hold back his release. It was almost embarrassing. He was usually so much better than this—he usually lasted so much longer.

She was gasping against the side of his head, and her breath was warm and moist. “God, Caleb,” she choked. “Faster. And harder. I’m almost there.” Her body was writhing frantically beneath him, her legs tightening around him with each of his thrusts and her fingers digging painfully into the skin of his back.

He tried to kiss her again, but they just moaned and panted against each other’s mouths. He accelerated their motion, trying to please her, making his strokes shorter, faster, and more powerful. Her inner muscles had contracted around his throbbing cock, and the tighter feeling made him want to howl.

Then Caleb felt his balls tightening, and—in a panic—he reared up, clinging to the last of his control. “Come, blossom,” he demanded roughly, clenching his jaw until it ached. “Come. I can’t…”

Her whimpers were louder and more desperate now, and her face was contorted with effort and rising pleasure. “Yeah,” she gasped, jerking her hips wildly as she tried to claim her orgasm. “Caleb…Yeah…I’m…God, Caleb!”

The last word was a sob as her body shattered beneath him. She shuddered through her orgasm, but Caleb could see that she was trying to keep her eyes open. On the first spasm of her channel around him, he let himself go, thrusting hard a few more times before he let his pleasure erupt.

He choked on her name as her muscles contracted steadily around him, and then the white rush of sensation overwhelmed him. He forced himself to keep watching her, and their eyes met in a vague, hot blur as he released himself in spurts into her quivering body.

He was weak and gasping when the pleasure finally faded, and he had to force himself not to collapse with his whole weight on top of her. Her arms and legs were still clinging to him, as if she couldn’t bear to let him go.

Caleb never wanted her to.

“Caleb,” she said at last, her voice just as breathless as he felt.

“Yeah,” he panted, nuzzling her neck and not finding the strength yet to pull away from her.

“Are we really all right?” she asked softly, her hands now stroking the little scratches she’d made in his skin. “After everything that happened? Do you think we’re going to really be all right?”

Her words weren’t entirely coherent, but he knew exactly what she was asking. And for the first time in so long, the answer didn’t scare him. “Yeah. It doesn’t have to be perfect for it to be…to be good. I love you. You love me. That’s never going to change. If we can survive this, then I’m sure we’re going to make it.”

He paused. Added, because this was still so new to him, “You think so too, right?”

She pressed a damp kiss just over his ear. “Oh, yes.”

They hugged and lay together in silence until he wondered if she was starting to go to sleep.

But finally she asked out of the blue, “So, seriously, what do you think you’ll do for a job?”

“I really have no idea.”

“I guess you’ll probably get a bunch of offers. With your résumé, I mean. You’ll be asked to sit on boards or do all kinds of things.”

“Yeah.” He was sure he would get offers like that. He wasn’t planning to accept them.

“You won’t take them, will you?” she asked, as if she’d read his mind. “Because it will still be a result of what…”

“What I did. Yes. I won’t take them.”

“So what do you want to do?”

He smiled and shook his head, nestling her closer to him. “I have no idea what I want to do. I’ll figure it out. It’s a strange feeling—being jobless like this, without any direction at all.”

“Well,” she said, a teasing note in her tone that warmed his heart, “at least you have plenty of money to tide you over in the meantime.”

He chuckled. “There’s that.”

Her mood shifted abruptly. “I didn’t mean it wasn’t hard for you to do. The decision you made. I know how difficult it must have been. I didn’t mean to imply it was easier for you than—”

“I know,” he assured her. “Kelly, I know what you meant. It was hard. But this is the first time in a really long time when I’ve been absolutely sure that it was the right thing to do. I feel…I don’t know…almost free.”

She pressed a soft kiss against his jaw. Then she readjusted in a way that made it clear she was ready to go to sleep.

He was too.

And a vague thought came to him then, holding Kelly in the dark, that pretty soon he wouldn’t have to wake up with endless emails waiting for him to answer.

He smiled in the dark. That would be a very good morning.

Six months later, Kelly finished up with her client at about four on a Saturday afternoon. She hadn’t wanted to meet with the client on the weekend, but it was the only time the woman could make it work. Kelly had met with her for almost two hours, and now she was ready to get home to Caleb.

Both of them had been busy all week, and it felt like she hadn’t really seen him since last weekend.

A couple of months ago he’d given up his apartment downtown, and she’d moved into his big house outside of the city, so she had almost a full hour’s drive to get home. When she got there, she found Breah polishing the railings of the main staircase.

“That looks beautiful,” she said, admiring the way the old wood shone.

Breah smiled, evidently pleased by the compliment. “There’s some life in this old house yet.” Then her expression changed. “He’s in his office.”

Kelly frowned. “What? I thought he wasn’t going to work today.”

Breah appeared as displeased as Kelly was. “He’s been in there since you left.”

With a sigh, Kelly gave Breah an understanding smile and then headed back to the office. She should have known Caleb couldn’t stay away from work for an entire weekend.

Three months ago he’d run into a former business acquaintance who was some kind of technological genius. It hadn’t taken Caleb long to woo the man away from his current employer and partner with him in a new medical technology company.

The project had consumed him since then. Kelly had been very happy that Caleb had found something to pour his intelligence, energy, and ambition into, since he’d been kind of aimless and restless since his resignation. But he was a workaholic by nature, and the last few months had reminded her of this fact.

She found him at his desk, typing up something that looked like an email.

“Hey,” she said sharply after poking her head into the room.

He didn’t look away from his computer monitor. “Hi. You back?” He sounded distracted, exactly as she’d expected.

“So much for taking the day off.”

“Just catching up on some stuff while you were gone.”

“Well, I’m back now.”

“Give me a minute to finish up.”

He still hadn’t looked away from the screen.

She sighed, half in frustration and half in resignation. “I’ll be by the pool. I have a new bikini, in case you’re interested.”

He was still typing like crazy. “Nice.”

She turned to walk out, shaking her head, but then she said over her shoulder, “There was a time when the promise of me in a new bikini would have immediately roused the beast in you. Whatever happened to him?”

Caleb gave a wordless grunt as a response.

She pitched her voice as a lilting taunt. “I guess he’s too old to be roused.”

She left when he didn’t respond. She wasn’t even sure he’d heard her, but she thought he probably had. She knew him really well by now. No matter how consumed he was by work, there was no way he could resist a challenge like that.

She went to change into the swimsuit she’d bought earlier in the week to celebrate the arrival of warm weather—a dark red bikini that left little to the imagination—and she went to lie out by the pool, figuring she’d be seeing Caleb pretty quickly.

She was enjoying the warmth of the sun on her skin when she heard the gate to the pool area open about ten minutes later. She managed to hide a smile as she opened her eyes behind her sunglasses and saw Caleb approaching.

He’d changed into a suit too, and he was smiling at her with a familiar heat that looked almost predatory.

But she was annoyed with him for working when he wasn’t supposed to, so she kept her body still, rather than showing the sudden surge of feeling she felt at his presence.

“I approve of the bikini,” he murmured, his voice slightly thick as his eyes crawled up and down her outstretched body.

She stretched and let out a long sigh, as if she were too sleepy to focus on conversation. “I’m glad.”

Then she closed her eyes and pretended to sleep.

She felt him watching her for a minute, and she could almost hear his mind working, figuring things out—what she was thinking, how he should respond, what he should do to address her annoyance.

When she could hear him moving around, she peeked out of her mostly closed eyelids to see that he was leaning over the chaise beside her, stretching out his back.

No wonder. He’d probably been sitting in that desk chair since she’d left the house hours ago.

Her eyes lingered on his lean body—his long legs, firm thighs, strong arms, impressive shoulders. The rippling muscles in his back. He had a really good body for a man his age. Her appreciation for his body was inevitably mingled with everything else she knew about him. His relentless will, the dark shadows in his soul, the power and intelligence and humor, the tenderness at the heart of him that he’d only recently allowed to come out.

She loved all of it. All of
him
. Body and mind and heart. Even when he was being annoying.

She felt herself melting as she watched, and she was about to drag him down on top of her when she noticed that his motion as he stretched gradually became slower, more intentional.

It was strange. Not at all like he normally moved. Her eyes lingered on his tight ass. It was almost like he was…

She suddenly knew what he was doing. She could even see the corner of his mouth twitch up in suppressed humor before he managed to hide it. She almost laughed out loud at the revelation, filled with amusement and appreciation and affection.

“That doesn’t work on women,” she said instead, struggling to hide the laughter bubbling up inside her.

He turned to meet her eyes with a bland expression. “What doesn’t?”

His tone was perfectly convincing. He’d always been a good liar. Just as good as she was. But she knew him better than anyone else. “Luring me out of my perfectly justified mood with your body. As fine as it is, that doesn’t work on women. We don’t have dicks to be led around by.”

He stopped trying to hide his smile as he stretched out on the chaise beside her. “Oh well,” he said, grinning at her. “It was worth a try.”

She couldn’t resist his grin—or anything else about him—so she got up and lowered herself on top of him, straddling his hips with her legs and leaning down to kiss him.

He returned to the kiss slowly, deeply, but he was still smiling when she finally pulled away. “I guess it did work,” he said, looking quite pleased with himself.

“No, it didn’t. I wasn’t that annoyed by you working when you weren’t supposed to. Appealing to my libido will only get you so far.”

He took her head in both his hands and pulled her down into another soft kiss, this one almost gentle. “I wasn’t appealing to your libido. I was appealing to your heart.”

She knew he was right. He hadn’t wanted her to be overcome with lust by his little show. He’d wanted her to laugh and remember how much she loved him—exactly as she’d done.

She smiled, relaxing in his arms. “My heart always seems to get me in trouble with you.”

He brushed a kiss into her hair. “Yours isn’t the only one.”

“I wasn’t even supposed to have a heart.”

“Me either.”

She raised her head to meet his eyes, and they gazed at each other for a long moment, understanding each other completely.

“I think mine has completely swallowed up the beast,” he added, a wry, resigned note in his voice. He must still be thinking about her comment before, as she’d been trying to spur him to put away his work.

“No, it hasn’t. The beast is still lurking in there somewhere. I like when he comes out to play occasionally.”

His brown eyes ignited at her words, and his focus lowered briefly to her breasts, which were barely covered with the material of her suit.

She smiled, her heart overflowing with a sudden, stark realization of how far they’d come in the last year. “But I think I was right when I told you on the first day we met that, by the time I was through with you, all your unrelenting alpha-maleness would be broken.”

“Not broken,” he objected, the corners of his mouth tilting up again. “Maybe just bent a little.”

She smiled and kissed him briefly. “Just so you know, you were right about me too. I used to think I was better off alone. I don’t think that anymore.”

“Good. Because you’re stuck with this man, no matter how old and boring and work-obsessed he gets.”

“I’m not stuck with you. I chose you, out of all the other men I could have had.”

His eyebrows arched. “Just how many other men are we talking about?”

She giggled and gave him a soft hug. “I’m not sure you’re in a good position to start comparing numbers.”

“Probably not,” he agreed drily. Then he adjusted her so she was looking at him again, his expression sobering. “I might be half the man I was before, but it’s the better half. You know that, right?”

She felt her chest tighten with feeling again, knowing how much he meant it, knowing how far he had come to be able to share his heart so nakedly. She nodded, her eyes burning slightly, realizing how far she had come too. “Yes. I know it. Same here.”

After a minute of silent acknowledgment, she gave her head a little shake, deciding the sappy part of the afternoon was over. “Now,” she said, pitching her tone as a taunt again, “if you think you can manage to rouse the beast a little, I can think of a few things I’d like him to do.”

It worked. Of course it worked. Some things would never change. And Caleb Marshall would never let a challenge go unanswered.