Fierce (22 page)

When I’d watched him undress, I’d had a moment of near-panic at the size of him. I’d never seen a man in this state before, not in the flesh, but I’d seen pictures, and surely Hemi was too big for me. All the same, I’d wanted to touch, to feel. But the touching and feeling, it was clear, were all going to be his. 

His mouth left mine, moved to my ear, to my neck, and he bit me hard there, making me jump and moan. I heard his low chuckle, and then he was letting my hands go, moving down my body, kissing and licking his way, leaving a trail of fire everywhere he touched. 

When he flicked the clasp of my bra and brushed it open, then closed his lips over my nipple, I jumped again and cried out. 

“Anybody ever done this?” he demanded.

“N-no,” I said. “No.” 

“Ah.” His sigh was pure satisfaction, and then he was on me again.

Whenever I’d touched my own breasts, it had felt good, but it had never been anything special. I’d wondered if there was something wrong with me. Now, I knew. Because if Hemi’s fingers had felt good pinching me, his hard, suckling mouth was light-years better, sending an electric current straight to my core, setting up an answering throb that insisted on being satisfied. And my body was so charged, so primed, all it would take was a touch. One touch.
One.

It was a touch I wasn’t getting, because Hemi wasn’t doing it. Instead, he shifted his attention to the other breast, one hand continuing to lavish attention on the one he’d just left. My hips wanted to move, but they couldn’t, not with him between my legs, and I was panting, whimpering, my hands moving frantically over the bunched muscle of his shoulders, needing to hold on, needing to hurry him, needing what I couldn’t get.

He lifted his head, stilled his hand, and I cried out and tried to pull him down again. “No. Don’t stop.
Please.”

He was rolling off me, though, and sitting up. 

“Hemi,” I said, and if I was begging—well, I needed to beg. “I’m sorry if I did it wrong. Please. Don’t stop.”

His face was hard again, twisted with an emotion I couldn’t identify. Anger? Oh, no. “Please,” I said again. “Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. I just don’t know what to
do.”

He was reaching beyond me for the nightstand, dumping a handful of items beside me on the bed, and finally, he was answering.

“I wasn’t going to do this tonight,” he said. “Not for your first time. But I have to, because you need to be able to let go.”

He was holding a length of heavy red ribbon, twisting his hands, somehow fashioning two loops, sliding them over my wrists, then lifting my hands above my head and pulling the ribbon tight, fastening it to something behind me, and I was tied, exactly as he’d told me I would be, and I whimpered again.

“If you need to get free,” he told me, “if you get scared, you tell me to stop. Do you understand?”

When I didn’t answer, he gave the ribbon a hard yank that jerked my arms straight. “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I gasped, even though stopping was the last thing I wanted. Having my hands pulled tight overhead excited me almost past bearing, and the look on Hemi’s face as he gazed down at me was doing the rest. “But touch me. Please.
Touch
me.”

He didn’t smile. He just looked at me some more, then moved over me, got two hands around the band of my thong, and drew it over my hips, down my legs. And then he put one hand on either thigh and was pushing my legs apart, so far that I instinctively tried to close them. 

“No.” He was over me again, still holding me open. Lying much too far down my body. “No. We need to get you ready.”

“I’m ready,” I tried to tell him. “I’m ready now. It’s—it’s too embarrassing. Don’t.”

I tried to squirm away, but he wouldn’t let me. And when his tongue touched me, gave me a long, slow lick, my back bowed, my upper body actually rose from the bed, and the noise I made—well, you could call it a scream. And that was when he really started to work. 

The orgasm came fast, and it came hard. One moment I was spiraling, gasping. And the next, I was crying out incoherently, my hands jerking hard against my bonds. And Hemi didn’t stop. He kept going, but this time, his fingers were entering me, too, so alien, so hard, stretching me wide, and I was keening. 

He worked me through two more orgasms, each more intense than the last, until my breath was coming in sobbing gasps, and then he was rolling off me again as I opened my eyes and struggled to focus.

“I think—” His voice was strained, and he was ripping open a condom packet. “You’re ready. But we’re going to take it slow.”

“No,” I said. “No. Please. Fast.
Go.”

He didn’t listen, again, and he was right. At first, he met resistance. 

“You won’t…you won’t fit,” I said. 

His laugh came out a little strained. “Oh, baby. I’m going to fit. Just as soon as we relax you.” 

One hand came up to wrap around my wrists, and my excitement surged again at the feeling of him holding me there. His hard fingers closed over my breast, began to flick over the nipple, and I moaned. With a single thrust, he was inside, and I cried out. Not with pleasure this time. With something very much like pain.

He was on his elbows, holding still for a long minute, and I could tell what an effort it cost him. And then, finally, he began to move. So slowly, so carefully, and gradually, it began to feel…warm. To feel good. Every slide sent echoes through every bit of sensitized flesh, and the tingle was starting up again. 

When he felt me moving with him, he began moving faster, and that was even better, the tingles centralizing, becoming a pulse, a hum. A hard thrust, a slow withdrawal, a teasing pause while I squirmed and tried to hurry him. Every inch of him setting up residence, letting me know he was there to stay, and I couldn’t believe I’d thought he was too big. He wasn’t too big. He was perfect.

When he reached a hand down to grab my thigh and shove it up, I stiffened again. But when he wrapped his arm around the inside of my knee so my thigh was pinioned all the way up by my head, I understood. And when he did it on the other side, had me pulled up tight, was driving so deep, I’d started to sing out again. I was yanking desperately against my restraints, trying to get closer, knowing I was too noisy, but completely unable to help myself, because this was it. This was all there was. And then he laced his fingers through mine again and held me down, and I exploded. 

Again and again, convulsing around the delicious friction, the pressure that filled me so completely. Getting all of him, so deep, so hard. Getting everything. And Hemi shuddering, swearing, low and dirty and so thrilling, seeming to grow even larger inside me, until I really didn’t think I could take it.

“Yes,”
he groaned.
“Yes.”

He was there, and I knew how much he’d needed to be, and that I’d done that.

“Wow,” I finally managed to say when Hemi had untied my hands and pulled me to lie against his chest. I was still a little shaky, and he ran his hand over my hair, down my back, his touch soothing me. “Who knew it would feel like that? I definitely needed to be reading some better books.” 

I heard his low chuckle, and he was pulling the comforter up over us, settling me more comfortably against him. My hand came out to stroke the broad planes of his chest, and I wanted to touch him more, to feel him in the way he’d denied me tonight, but I was so sleepy. 

“Well, to be fair,” he said, sounding a little drowsy himself, or maybe just completely relaxed, completely unlike Hemi, “it’s not usually that good. I think that was you.”

That woke me up. “Really? I was…OK?”

“Yeh.” His fingers twined around a lock of my hair. “You could say that. Or you could say that you were bloody brilliant. How many times can you come?”

His words had set up a lovely little glow, but I was still able to be embarrassed, too, even after everything we’d done. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had enough time to…to tell. Like you said. But everybody does that. Don’t they?”

I felt the vibration of his low laugh all the way through my body. “Nah. They don’t. But it’s good.” He was stroking my thigh now, his hand moving over the curve of my bottom, and that tingle was right back. “Feeling sore?” he asked. “Inside?”

“A little,” I admitted, flexing my legs and feeling the protest from my tender flesh.

“We’ll take it easy tomorrow, then. Work you up to it.”

“Work me
up
to it?” I levered myself off his chest to stare down at his face. His eyes were warm, and for once, there was an actual smile curving his lips. “How much more are you planning to
do?”

“Oh, baby.” The smile grew. “So much more. So very much more.”

I woke without Hope.

Waking in a strange hotel room was nothing new to me. But it was always
my
hotel room. I preferred to retain home-field advantage, and what I’d told Hope was true. I didn’t sleep with women. But she’d been nervous enough already the night before, and it had been important to let her stay in her own space, to give her that comfort. And then I somehow hadn’t managed to make it back to my room afterwards. I’d fallen asleep with the sound of her soft breathing in my ears, one slim leg draped over mine, her arm across my chest, and then I’d just…stayed.

Where was she, though? The light coming through the curtains we hadn’t managed to shut last night told me it was barely dawn, the bathroom door stood open, and I couldn’t hear a thing.

I was at the door to the living room on the thought, trying to ignore the relief I felt when I saw her sitting at the little dining table. With her laptop.

“What are you doing?” I asked. 

It must have come out too sharply, because she started. “Oh. Hi.” She slammed the lid on the laptop, and I stared at it, then back at her. 

“Hope,” I said slowly. “What are you doing?”

“Um...” She was looking a bit flustered. “Martine asked me to take care of something.”

As I continued to stand and look at her, she jumped up. “So…did you want to get breakfast?”

“No,” I said, and if it came out grim, it was because that was how I felt. “I want to know what you were working on.”

“And I told you.” Her arms were crossed now over the white hotel robe she wore, and her eyes had narrowed. “A work assignment.”

“It’s Saturday.” 

“And your point?” She wasn’t looking flustered now. “Exactly what is it you’re thinking here? I find myself just fascinated to hear.”

“You shut your laptop,” I pointed out. “You’re standing up.”

“Well, you’ve got me there,” she said, and there was no question. I was getting those sparks again. “I
am
standing up. Color me guilty. What, I’m setting up my online dating profile, now that you’ve awakened my inner goddess?” 

When I didn’t say anything, she sighed. “OK. I’m going to tell you, on the principle I’m always trying to push with Karen, that open communication is essential to a mature, honest relationship. You might take note of that one. You want to know why I’m a little reluctant to share? Because Martine sent an assignment to me yesterday afternoon, and I didn’t finish it. I fell asleep after my bath, because I got a little…relaxed in there, you might say, and it was more work than I thought anyway. And then I wanted to be pretty when we went out to dinner, and I chose that instead. And I didn’t exactly want you to know that and think I was a flake, or that you’d made a mistake in getting Martine to hire me, and I’m nervous about my job anyway, so I got up early to try to finish it, and I still haven’t. So there you go. My dark secret for the morning. Happy?”

“Oh.” I ran a hand over the back of my head and tried to think of what to say. “I think you lost me a couple stops back. I got distracted at the part about you getting relaxed in the bath.”

“Uh-huh.” She was still trying to look severe, but that face wasn’t made for it. “I don’t think even your truly impressive line of dirty talk is going to get you out of this one. This would be a good spot to use that ‘s’ word again. You know, that one you’ve said twice already?”

 “Twice more than I’m used to saying it, and I’m not rapt about saying it again,” I muttered.