No Magic Moment (Secrets of Stone Book 4) (5 page)

He grabbed one off the sofa and slid it under my torso. “Better?”

“Much. Thank you, Headmaster.”

He gave me a sweet kiss on the forehead before stepping back behind me and flipping my skirt up, exposing my ass.

“Dammit, Margaux.”

“What?” I fought to swing my head around. “What’s wrong?”

Just like that, the insecurity beast reared its ugly head. I wasn’t surprised. Who wouldn’t find themselves stumbling over a few emotional triggers when tied in four places to a piece of furniture in the middle of their living room, taking a bath in streams of autumn afternoon light?

“Nothing.” His tone was a thick rope of meaning. “Nothing at all, sugar.” He ran his rough hands up my thighs and over my ass cheeks, spreading them wide, sinking fingertips into my flesh. “You’re just the most stunning creature I’ve ever seen.”

“Oh.” I couldn’t get out much more than that. The reverence in his voice…it affected me more than physically. Deep in my chest, strange sensations of warmth unfurled. Beautiful sensations…

“Baby…if you had
any
idea what you look like right now, with the sun on your skin and your passion on your pussy…” He interrupted himself, clearing his throat on a rugged cough. “It’s completely unfair that one person should possess so much beauty. But I won’t be the one complaining to the universe about it.”

I had no response at that point. There weren’t a lot of options after a man flipped one’s heart over a hundred times, right? There was nothing I could do or say but let him adore me—easier said than done—no matter how brainless it seemed. For a girl like me, it could be difficult. Perhaps impossible. In Andrea Asher’s world, you weren’t human if you weren’t perfect. Even now, I worried about all the wrong Michael would see in my body, instead of the right.

No. I didn’t have to believe that anymore. Despite how unnerving it was, I dipped my head, closed my eyes, and let his words of love surround me. This was Michael. My Michael. He’d never hurt me, and would never knowingly let harm come to me. I trusted him with that surety, and so much more. I’d let him lock me down without thinking twice. More significantly, I let him openly stare at me in this state.

I felt his heat against me. He rubbed my back with long, firm, strokes, continuing his words of worship in such perfect whispers, my mind gave over to my soul…and soared. His physical warmth and emotional bolstering had me glowing everywhere.
Everywhere.

Soon, his hand drifted lower…and gently petted my sex from behind. The steady pressure beckoned my senses like a light in the growing twilight of the room. I leaned deeper into his touch with each pass, moaning and purring, opening for him…craving him.

“Michael.” I rasped it like a prayer. “
Michael
.”

“What, sweetheart?” His voice was soft but urgent. The headmaster was gone. He’d was now the lover who knew every perfect way to touch me, every wonderful thing to say to me, every exquisite way to love me.

“Please!”

“Please what? Just tell me what you need, Margaux. I’m all yours. I’d move a fucking mountain for you.”

“No mountain,” I cried. “Just you. Do it. I’m begging you! Fuck me, Michael!”

He slipped right in through my wetness, barely needing to push. Though we’d been making love night after night for months, he still stretched me to the fullest I’d ever been. It brought pain—but the purest kind. The kind that came with the most perfect ecstasy my body would ever know.

The desk lurched forward with his commanding, demanding thrusts. We started inching across the floor. Neither of us cared. All that mattered was the passion pounding from between my legs, then spreading through my lower half. My entire womb was possessed by him. His body. His heat. His desire. But he consumed more than that. My spirit. My will. My heart. Everything I had, everything I was…belonged to him.

His fingers skated up my ribcage, reaching beneath my blouse to pluck at my nipples, granting no mercy even when I screamed. If I wasn’t on sensory overload before, that sure as hell hit the max capacity button.

I wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer. My body jumped back to where it left off only minutes ago, on the brink of another mind-melting orgasm.

Michael leaned over me, breathing heavily into my neck. “You feel so good, princess. So damn good. So tight around my cock. God
damn
.”

“Harder,” I gritted. “Need it…harder.”

He scraped his teeth against my neck. “Beg me.”

I didn’t think twice. I didn’t think at all. “Please. Fuck me harder, Michael. Do it. Make me cry. Punish me!”

I had no idea where the words came from. Maybe, deep inside, I knew they’d tempt his beast again. And maybe I should’ve kept my mouth shut—because out of nowhere came the hell spawn ruler again. This time, he struck the fleshy globes of my ass. I shrieked, though was thankful he hadn’t gone again for my inner thighs.

He didn’t break the rhythm of his cock while spanking me a few times on each side—enough to make sure I’d be standing through meetings tomorrow. Finally, he flung the stick aside to gain leverage for really pounding into me.

“I hate that thing,” I muttered, as it clattered against the wall.

“I love that thing,” he growled.

“You’re a monster.”

“And you’re the sweet girl with the red ass that’s driving me insane.” He lunged even harder. “Let it go for me, Margaux. Come again, princess.”

“I’m so close…”

Not a lie. One more naughty move and I’d be gone. As if Michael read my mind, he reached around, found my clit, and pinched my flesh so hard, I saw stars. They blinded me, bringing a climax so fast and intense, I couldn’t even announce its arrival. I went mute as the explosion lashed my body. Michael kept pounding away, groaning hard as his completion came, too.

Minutes or hours or days might have passed while we drifted back down to Earth. “Jesus Christ, girl,” he muttered, still slumped over my back. “You’re going to be the death of me.”

I laughed breathlessly while he fumbled with my bindings. A few moments passed before he was able to fully concentrate and set me free.

We tumbled to the floor in each other’s arms, sweaty and satiated, grinning and sleepy like we always were after a satisfying romp—though I wondered if “romp” would have to be replaced by a new noun this time. Terms like “best sex of my life” instantly made that short list.

He pulled the throw off the back of the sofa, down to where we lay on the floor. Neither of us spoke. It wasn’t necessary yet. It would happen eventually, though. Michael analyzed everything. It was something I loved and hated about him.

He added a couple of the big couch pillows to our impromptu bed before asking, “Where did the desk come from?”

I laughed again, unable to hold back. “I sent Andre out to find it.”

“Christ. I’m never going to hear the end of this one.”

“I didn’t tell him what it was for.” I batted him playfully.

He grunted. “Sugar, he’s a guy. And not as dumb as he may act at times.” He hitched up, leaning his head against an elbow and tugging on one of my pigtails. “Well…the outfit’s a keeper. That’s an order, Miss Asher.”

I played with my pinkie ring. “And the ruler?”

“You liked that, after all?”

“Took a little getting used to, but yeah.”

Michael grabbed my hands in his much larger ones, stilling my nervous twisting. His warm skin surrounded mine, comforting me at once. His nearness always gave me security and confidence—two elements I struggled with daily, no matter what the world-at-large believed. I didn’t care what they thought, anyway. The only person who mattered was the golden god of a man sprawled against me now.

I looked into his eyes, floored by the love I saw there. I wondered if he saw the same thing in mine.

“Do you have any idea how much I love you?” he whispered.

I smiled. “I really hope I do.”

A peculiar expression took over his face. This was normally the point where he started the post-coital analysis thing but his expression was far from analytical. It was…pensive. No. Expectant. Not that, either. “Hmmm.”

That sure cleared up…nothing. “Hmmm…what?”

“Funny that we’re bringing up all this love stuff right now.”

“Why?”

“Because after what happened yesterday with your ring, I really started thinking about us. Me. You. The lengths I would go to for you. The depth of how much I love you.”

“I love you, too.” I lifted fingers to his face, caressing his jaw. “I meant what I said earlier, you know. Every word.”

“Good. Now let me finish.”

“Ohhh…kay.” I almost made it a question.

“I know you wear that ring everywhere—because it means so much to you. That’s why I did what I did yesterday. It wasn’t because of the ring itself, but because of you. Because of how much you mean to me. That could have just as easily been anything else you cherished.”

“I know that.” I leaned over, nuzzling the base of his neck. His tie was loose but I unknotted it all the way and tossed it to the couch. “My Captain America.”

He scooted a finger beneath my chin and tugged up. “It made me realize something, Margaux. Something significant.”

“All right.” I took advantage of the chance to kiss him. “What?”

He took a deep, long breath.

“I want to make a commitment to you. I want the
world
to know that I’m committed to you. I want you to marry me, Margaux. I want to be your husband, to take care of you every day in sickness and health, for richer and poorer, through the shining times and the shitty times—for the rest of our lives. I want to be the man you always turn to when you need someone to lift you up, and even when you don’t. I’m—this is—hell, it’s not coming out at all like it should, but just make me the happiest fucker on Earth, okay?” He lifted my hands and smashed fervent kisses on the knuckles. Then again. “Say yes. Say you will be my wife. Wear my ring, Margaux. Wear a ring that will come to mean as much, if not more, than the one I fished out of the sewer yesterday.”

I answered him with dead silence. And didn’t know if I had anything beyond it.

I sure as
hell
hadn’t seen that coming.

Michael

“M
ichael.”

It wasn’t just how she whispered it.

It was the silence before it. The kind of silence that stretched beyond nervous, even uncomfortable.

Into gut-wrenching.

“
Michael
.” She looked up. For two seconds. In the first, she yanked out my heart, stripping it of its hopeful joy. In the second, she rammed it back into my chest—full of defeat.

“Right.” I mumbled it while breaking our gazes. “Got that message. Loud and clear.”

“Hey.” She yanked on my hair, pulling me back around. “I love you, okay? I really do.”

“But…” I uttered the word for her. Her answering wince shouldn’t have been so encouraging, but misery loved company and all that depressing shit.

It wasn’t like I’d planned for the words to spill out—though now realized they’d been pushing all day. While organizing my new office, I’d thought of doing the same in a new home, with Margaux. Over lunch with Carter and Grace, the fraternal twins who’d been charged with showing me the ropes at the firm, I’d considered what it would be like to tell them about my weekend plans with my “wife.” After that lunch, I’d even paused at a jewelry store window to check out the engagement rings.

“But what?” Margaux sat up, pulling the blanket over her cleavage. The demure move was surprising, considering how I’d just had my wicked way with her breasts and nipples—which made it arousing as hell, too.
Great.
“You really don’t see the dozen ways an engagement would be a shitty idea right now?”

So much for arousal.

I rose and refastened my pants. “So your idea’s the highlight of the night, and mine’s the ‘shitty’ stuff.”

“Excuse the hell out of me?”

“You heard me.”

“Wait. Whoa. Hold on there, cowboy.”

Hold on.
That had been my plan, hadn’t it? I’d wanted to
hold on
for the rest of my damn life. I’d never laid myself barer for a woman—which apparently, had been a “shitty idea.”

I stomped across the room, looking for my keys. Another tangle of feeling rolled across my chest, tight but filthy, like a tumbleweed hitting a swamp. Clashing ecosystems aside, the ball collected what it had to off my soul—the acceptance of why she’d really turned me down.

“So, no harm, no foul,” I muttered. “I get it, okay? Dressing up the guy from the apple farm doesn’t make him any less the guy from the apple farm. If I’m Mr. Right Now instead of Mr. Right, then so be it.”

My keys were on the floor, near the school desk, where they must have fallen from my pants when—

Of course.

Fuck.

I avoided looking at the cuffs still attached to the furniture, afraid of what I’d remember now…of what I’d feel now. All the ways she’d captured my heart, multiplied deeper. That she’d trusted me enough to give herself to me like that…it had gutted me then filled me right back up. Humbled me but made me soar to the fucking stratosphere. But clicking sexually didn’t mean matching in other areas. Not the important ones. And now, I had to be okay with that. She hadn’t given me a choice.

“So be it?” She stood as she bit out each word, wearing an expression I couldn’t decipher. On one hand, she’d never looked more an incensed princess, though her gaze bore the pain of a lost little girl. I blinked back, confused—until she shot out a fist, brutally clipping my shoulder.

“Hey. Ow! What the—”

“You are such an idiot.”

“
I’m
an—” I rubbed my arm but froze as she let the blanket fall. Nothing like this woman, pissed off
and
naked, to strip me of coherent thought. “I’m not the one who said no,” I growled, shoving back the arousal.

“Did you hear me say no?” Margaux snapped. “Ever?” She stepped around me and marched to the kitchen, reaching for the bottle of wine we’d started last night after capping off our passion in the car with another round on the counter in here. She recorked the Cabernet, reaching for the Scotch instead.