Freefall (The Indigo Lounge Series, #5) (15 page)

Not that I have any intention of letting her do anything but follow me. The gates are locked. Only I have the code. Once the front door closes behind her, she’s only getting out when I’m good and ready.

I enter the cavernous hallway and kick off my boots and socks. The sensation of the cool tiles beneath my feet grounds me and allows me a moment or two of rational thought before I hear her enter behind me.

My slip needn’t be a problem. My marriage and divorce aren’t exactly state secrets—Cassie and I were a prominent New York couple before I put her out of her misery and ended our marriage—but an intelligent and curious person can discover things I don’t want discovered.

“So...you live in this mansion on your own?”

“When I’m here, yes.”

“And how often are you here?”

I whirl to face her, and she takes a single step back. “We had an agreement, remember? No personal questions?” I all but snarl.

Her eyes flash warily, but she props her hands on her hips. “Hey, you opened that door. I just peeked through it.”

“Well, consider it firmly shut.”

In almost perfect synchronicity, the door behind her, programmed to shut and lock after twenty seconds of no movement, clicks home.

She jumps at the small but ominous sound.

I release a breath that had been locked in my chest. The pulse at her throat flutters, and a fissure of sadistic pleasure erupts through me. I can’t help it. I’m drawn to helplessness, always have been. It’s why I love living in the jungle for months on end. The shark-like instinct inside me is extremely turned on by the thought of hunting prey, especially those who put up a good, worthwhile fight.

It’s why, in the end, I couldn’t stand the sight of Cassie. She gave up fighting and disappeared into a bottle of premium vodka.

Keely Benson is a fighter. And the hunt will be more than worth my while.

Now that I have her here, I don’t need to hold back the urgency and true scale of my hunger. I allow the barely civilized façade, which I’d adopted so she’d feel at ease, to slide away through my extremities. My fingers tingle with the need to grab, to possess, to devour.

She sucks her lower lip into her mouth and her arms fold in a self-protective manner. But she has no protection here. Not anymore.

I open the floodgates of the ruthless alpha inside. I see the moment she recognizes the change. Her nostrils flutter and she glances at the massive door behind her.

“Are you afraid, Keely?”

Her eyes narrow and she raises her chin. “No.”

My blood surges at her answer, even though I don’t totally believe her. “You wanted to set some ground rules. Here’s Rule Number One for me. If I ask for something that’s within your power to grant, you will grant it. Without hesitation. Are we clear?”

“Hell, no. I thought we were going to discuss this like
rational
human beings?”

I take another step closer. Her scent hits me and curls around my senses like a sweet but deadly poison, one I’ll gladly expire from. “Which part of that rule isn’t good for you?” I ask as I reach behind me and yank my T-shirt over my head and throw it on the floor. My very skin is on fire and stretched tight with what I feel for this woman.

Her eyes bulge and she swallows. “I...” Her eyelashes flutter as her slightly dazed gaze tracks my torso till it hits my belt.

My hands itch to release the belt and get on with what we both need, but I give her a chance to answer. “Yes?” 

“I have a problem with the
without hesitation
part.”

I shake my head. “That’s non-negotiable. I won’t let you overthink every request. Trust that I’ll think about it carefully before I demand it.”

“You mean like the way you requested your sex toy to not come until you were ready to let her?”

My fingers tingle and I know I’m at the edge of my endurance. “That was different. You and I aren’t quite there yet.”

Laughter trips from her lips and strikes me somewhere in my midriff. I rack my brain and honestly don’t remember when a woman has laughed at something I said that wasn’t a deliberate joke. Normally, they’re either afraid I’ll take it the wrong way or just afraid, period.

Keely’s brazen response makes my cock harder, and the need to teach her another lesson pounds through me.

“We’re
never
going to get there.”

I pause in my pursuit of her. “What makes you say that?”

“Oh, I don’t know, because I have more self-respect than to be treated as a
pet
or a
toy
? I don’t intend to be one of your brainless minions,” she snipes.

“Brainless implies you think the women aren’t cognizant of what they’re doing, or that only women with low self-esteem subject themselves to submission. Is that what you think?”

She blinks, and I catch a raw flash of emotion before her eyes slide away from mine. “I don’t really give a damn how other women prefer to get their kicks. All I know is that sort of thing isn’t for me.”

“And yet you got dressed exactly as I asked you to do today,” I point out softly. “What if I told you you’d already taken the first step?”

Furious green eyes meet mine. “I’d tell you go f—” She catches herself and I try not to let the triumph surging into my body show. “I’d tell you check yourself before you wreck yourself. Agreeing to wear pants and boots for you is a far cry from allowing myself to be tied into one of your inventions and begging to be whipped.”

Her back touches the door and the realization that I’ve been slowly stalking her lights her eyes. Her pulse is now racing like a freight train, and I’m close enough to smell her anger and arousal. Like the most potent aphrodisiac, I’m helpless to resist its lure for one second longer.

“We’ll table this discussion for later. But here’s your first test. I promise it’s an easy one. Do you want me to fuck you, Keely? Yes or no?”

“Yes,” she answers without hesitation.

I smile and she quickly inhales. “What?”

Green eyes dark with swirling lust meet mine. “You look different when you smile. Different hot,” she adds, then a hint of color touches her cheeks.

I give in to the frantic urge and touch my finger to the rapidly beating pulse. Electricity zaps me from the point of connection straight to my cock. “You’re hot when you smile, hot when you’re not smiling. You’re hot regardless of what you’re doing, and I very much want to fuck you, too.”

Her eyelashes flutter, and she trembles beneath my touch. “Can we...get on with it, then?” Although her voice is husky with lust, it still holds that snap, like a crack of a whip across willing flesh. The sting brings more fire to my veins and the roar in my blood is almost overwhelming.

I lean in until my mouth is almost on her neck. I savor the anticipation of tasting her skin. “Here comes the next command - unzip my pants.”

Her gaze drops to my crotch and her hands start to follow, but she stops at the last moment, and a look flashes across her face.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” I growl.

She gives a tight little laugh. “I’m thinking I’m alone in a strange but beautiful house with a man I barely know, who’s just asked me to unzip his pants.”

“But you’re not afraid of me.” It’s not a question because I don’t sense that sort of fear from her.

She confirms by shaking her head.

I move my finger from her pulse to beneath her chin and tilt her face to mine. “I’m the same man who rescued you from the icy ocean,” I cunningly remind her. Whether she wants to admit it or not, she owes me her life. I don’t intend to claim it, but I’m not averse to using it to suit my needs right now.

Her eyes shadow at the reminder, but she nods. “But then he scared the living shit out of me when I got into his car.”

“You wouldn’t have gotten into his car if you truly thought he would harm you,” I press.

She shrugs. “I’m not ashamed to admit I wasn’t exactly thinking straight that night.”

I let go of her chin and plant my hands on either side of her head. Her eyes widen as she stares up at me with that touch of helplessness that makes me step from the edge of the cliff into the abyss.

Because what Keely doesn’t know is that I love power. A little too much, my mother once accused. A sentiment wholeheartedly endorsed later in life by Cassie. I hadn’t defended the statement. I hadn’t seen the point. Just as I hadn’t pointed out that my love of power was what kept them draped in diamonds and private jet spa trips to Switzerland. The point had been redundant and beneath me.

“You’re not going to leave. We both know that. So unzip my pants, take my cock out and stroke it. Or you won’t get fucked.”

Keely

I
want to refuse.

I ought to.

Something’s happening here that I can’t quite wrap my head around. It started the moment the door closed behind me. Almost as if the man in front has become another person. The ruthless edge I sense in him is heightened, even though he hasn’t done or said anything to make me think I’m in danger.

But I sense something. Something that should make me refuse his command.

But I know I’m not going to.

I want to fuck him harder, longer, deeper, more desperately than I’ve ever wanted to fuck another man. The thought of being denied literally makes my heart ache, and I can’t breathe around the pressure in my chest.

So I reach for his belt and release it. Then my trembling fingers unsnap the single button on his jeans. His ominously thick cock jerks against my knuckles when my fingers brush it. I catch a strangled moan and a wash of hot breath against my neck.

My breasts tingle madly and my nipples are so painfully tight, I want to beg him to touch them, pinch them, alleviate the torture. But the words strangle in my throat. Or maybe I sense that voicing them would mean breaking some rule I don’t even know about.

That’s how mind-fucked this whole situation is. I firmly believe everything I said a minute ago about not wanting to be a sex toy or pet, and yet I have every intention of groveling at his feet like some pathetic infatuated fool.

I’m almost afraid to speak, to ask him to touch me the way my body is screaming to be touched. I make my near useless fingers grip his zipper and slowly lower it. When my hand connects with hot, naked, eager cock on the way down and I realize he’s commando, I gasp.

Urgently, I grasp him with my right hand and push down his pants with my left. His insane girth makes me moan and my head automatically starts to drop in my eagerness to see him, to see the cock my fingers can barely circle.

The finger beneath my chin stops me.

“No. You can’t look at me yet. Stroke me and keep your eyes on mine.”

I don’t argue. The command doesn’t seem like a big deal to me. And also because my left hand has just cupped his heavy balls and the look on his face has me completely enthralled.

I stroke him, long and slow, flicking my wrist just a tiny bit when I get to his head.

His lips part and a strangled groan falls from them. “Yes. That’s it,” he mutters thickly.

There’s something raw and electrifying about him forcing me to witness his pleasure. The connection is a little too much, like staring into the sun for a moment too long. I’m blinded by the emotions charging through me, but I can’t look away.

His head descends. His mouth stops a whisper from mine, and his breath washes over my lips. “Faster,” he commands, his eyes still locked squarely on mine.

I open my mouth again to tell him to quit with the orders, but stop at the last moment. Again it doesn’t seem like a big deal. I obey and he groans, rewarding me with an even thicker erection. My pussy clenches and unclenches in deprived desperation, and my whole body shudders through the storm rocking my foundations.

My next stroke upward is greeted with a drop of pre-cum, and my mouth waters with the ravaging need to taste him, but the pressure on my chin prevents me from looking, never mind tasting. My tongue slides over my lower lip and my breath shudders out when I squeeze his balls and his pupils dilate.

“Open your mouth.”

I open my mouth. His thumb replaces his forefinger beneath my chin, and his middle finger slides into my mouth. I don’t wait for his command to suck it deep and hard into my mouth.

“Fuck,” he grits out as his cock jumps in my hand. “You’re incredibly good at that. You’re also very wet. I can smell you.”

I don’t bother to release his finger to answer. My panties are soaked, and I’m not even a little bit ashamed of the fact. I continue to stroke and suck, reveling in the amazing feeling of his smooth, steely cock in my hand and his finger my mouth.

After a minute, I feel movement below. The sound of the belt hitting the floor and his widening stance tells me his jeans are off. Mason is completely naked, and I’m still fully dressed, right down to my purse dissecting my breasts.

The imbalance feels deliciously decadent, if a little unfair. I forget all about it when he starts to pump his hips, fucking himself between my fingers.

“I’m going to come in your hand. You’re going to let me.” Before he’s finished saying the words, he’s increasing the tempo. My fingers automatically grip him harder, and I know he’s right; I’m going to let him.

Fucking hell. What’s wrong with me? For the first time in my life I want to give pleasure, utterly and completely without taking any for myself. And it’s not because I feel I owe him for Montauk.

No, right here, right now, all I want is to please him, to satisfy that ravenous hunger in his eyes, the voracious edge that’s riding his body and sending tremors through his hot body.

More pre-cum coats my fingers, and I spread it over his rod, my wrist working harder as I keep up with the almost frantic rhythm of his hips and the finger fucking my mouth.

“That’s it, baby,” he whispers into my ear. “Do me like that. Work me harder. Faster!”

My cheeks are beginning to burn with the pressure of sucking him, but I keep at it, a part of me reeling with the fact that I don’t want to disappoint him.

I flick my tongue against the pad of his finger and he releases a deep groan. His eyelids flutter as my left hand grips his balls harder, stroking the smooth skin in tandem with my hand pumps. “Ah Christ, I’m going to fuck you everywhere. I’m going to spend hours imprinting myself on every inch of your body. But for now, I want you to watch me come for you. See how much you please me.”