Safe From the Fire (18 page)

“Where
would you like it?”

“Everywhere,”
she breathed, and he had to grip himself tightly to prevent an explosion.

THERE
WAS NOTHING HOTTER than watching Matt hover on the brink of orgasm as he tested
his boundaries.  He’d surprised her with every request, and Grace couldn’t wait
to see what he would do next.  When he had himself under control again, he
shucked his jeans and made himself comfortable against the pillows, then
reached into the drawer, pulling out the large green vibrator Grace had
affectionately dubbed the “Martian.”

With
a smirk, he beckoned her over and had her suckle the ridged green head while he
tugged her panties to the floor, and then helped her straddle him, not face-to-face
as she would have thought, but with her thighs spread wide over his chest. 
Without the use of her hands, her breasts pressed against the ridges of his
abdomen, putting her at eye level with his cock.  The clamps were a constant
source of arousal, and she rubbed herself helplessly against Matt as he
arranged her knees where he wanted them.  Her hair caressed his thighs and he
tensed.

“Let
me feel how sorry you are, Grace,” he said, and flipped on the Martian, filling
the room with a persistent buzz. 

Grace
closed the gap and lapped the bead of fluid off the crown of his cock, and was
instantly rewarded by the press of the vibrator into her pussy, the buzz
stimulating her entire pelvis while the size stretched her almost as much as
the cock she was currently stroking with her tongue.

“I’m
doubting your sincerity, sweetheart,” teased Matt, “You’ll have to try harder.”

Moaning,
Grace pulled him into his mouth as he lodged the vibrator deep, but instead of
fucking her with it, he held it still, high and hard in her pussy.  Frantic,
she sucked, drowning in the taste of him, unable to free her wrists or move
herself on the vibrator, open and positioned for whatever he chose to do to
her, and the tension mounted higher as she took as much of his cock as she
could until, abruptly, she came, crying out around a heavy mouthful of his
shaft.

“Beautiful,”
breathed Matt, but only dialed down the vibrator, keeping it on a low hum,
buried deep between her thighs.

Grace
suckled him restlessly, unable to focus on what she was doing as Matt moved her
hips back just enough to reach her with his mouth.  She felt the scrape of his
stubble on sensitive flesh, followed by the devilish warmth of his tongue,
licking and lapping at her folds, flicking her clit, and tracing the rim of
tight flesh where the vibrator stretched her.

Too
much
. 
It was too much sensation, and she groaned, the sound muffled as he thrust up
into her mouth in steady, decadent strokes.  Overloaded, she came again, harder
than she ever had before.

Matt
waited until the last delicious spasm had died away, and then removed the
Martian, tossing it to the side of the bed before tugging his glistening cock
from her mouth.  He hadn’t come, and the shaft was so swollen and hard, it
looked painful.  With a show of strength that had Grace’s well-used pussy
fluttering with interest despite the recent alien invasion, Matt lifted and
flipped her around until she was sitting up, straddling him.

“Ride
me,” he said, his voice nothing more than a growl, and lifted her onto his
cock.

The
Martian was all well and good, but nothing beat the throbbing, hot flesh that
impaled Grace, inch after inch.  Her head fell back as he pressed in to the
hilt, and as she started to ride, setting a rhythm, Matt reached up to tug the
chain between her breasts, sending shards of sensation shooting from nipples to
clit.

He
was like a furnace under her, hot and alive with power, stretching her inner
walls to their limits with his cock, slick from her juices.  It was glorious,
and right at the end he forgot to be careful and gripped her hips the way she
was dying to be gripped, hard, pumping her on his shaft and using one hand to
milk her clit until he exploded with a shout, taking her with him.

GRACE
HAD NEVER HAD a lover like Matt before.  There had been the fumbling attempts
at passion with a couple of college boyfriends before she figured out what she
liked, and then a few Doms who revved her engine, but only stayed long enough
to unlock  the handcuffs and dispose of the condom. 

Not
Matt, who held her close after they came, his hands soothing and gentle, whispered
how amazing she was and then carefully untied her wrists and unbuckled her
insane shoes, stroking the marks left by the straps.  With a little helpful
instruction, he freed her nipples from the clamps, tugging each reddened little
nubbin into his mouth to soothe as blood returned in a stinging rush.  Grace
was boneless and satiated, and saw nothing wrong with letting him do whatever
he wanted to her pliant body.  He scooped her up and resettled them both in a bubbly
tub.

Grace
filed away the thought of stroking each of Matt’s delicious muscles with soapy
fingers for later and just nestled back against him to let him wash her breasts
with his slick hands.  Apparently her deliciously sore nipples were
very
dirty.  She felt safe and content, cocooned against him, and she fully realized
what a leap of faith it had been for him to give in to her requests.  The very least
she could do was
try
to take some risks of her own.

“Did
you know that I haven’t had a boyfriend that lasted more than three weeks since
college?” she asked.

Mat
stilled for a moment, and then continued his ministrations, stroking hands
around to her shoulders to begin a gentle massage.

“Why
not?”

“Well,
the first one dumped me because his Daddy didn’t want him to be seen with the
sister of the local pyromaniac.  The second one couldn’t understand that my
craving for sexual orders didn’t mean I was willing to let myself be bossed
around in the rest of my life.  The third one started dating me and then a week
later lost his job and couldn’t find another one.  He eventually left town –
apparently Dreyer had offered him a position in one of his holdings across the
bay.”

“That
isn’t right.”

Grace
shrugged.

“The
people here can be cruel, but I also have the best friends, a job I love, and a
house all my own.  It could be worse.”

“You
need to stand up and remind them that you’re part of this community, too.”

Grace
was silent, thinking about it, and she could feel Matt’s tension beneath her. 
She wriggled until they were face to face and snuggled against him, kissing his
chest.  After a few minutes, he relaxed, stroking her back and sliding down to
cup her ass, which he seemed to have a slight obsession with.

“Tell
me about your father,” Grace said, bracing herself for his withdrawal, but he
only tensed for a second and then resumed his worshipful attentions to her ass
as he sighed.

“He
was the kind of guy who, if you ran into him when he wasn’t drinking, he was
great.  He taught me to throw a football, taught me woodworking.  But even when
I was really little, I knew something was wrong because sometimes Mom would
hide me in the attic or a closet or send me to stay with the neighbors for a
while because Dad ‘wasn’t feeling well.’ Once he decided I was big enough to
hit if he thought I needed it…”

Matt
trailed off and Grace didn’t push, just stroked and petted until he started
talking again.

“I
don’t remember a time Mom and I didn’t have bruises of one kind or another, but
she wouldn’t leave him.  She said he needed our help and always thought he
would come to his senses, but the rages just got worse.  When I was fifteen and
finally had a growth spurt, he came after me with a broom handle and I just
lost it.  I broke it in half and gave him a black eye.  Mom was horrified, but
Dad was actually proud, and said I was finally becoming a man.  He left me
alone after that, but it got worse for Mom.”

Grace’s
heart ached for him.

“It
wasn’t your fault.”

“Yeah,
the therapist tried to drill that into me, too,” he said with the ghost of a
smile, “But all I had to do was look in the mirror to see my Dad with all of
his strength and his temper.  I blew my knee out my senior year in college,
which was just as well – I was getting into fights on the field.  Then one
night I got this call.  Dad had gone on a bender and pushed Mom down the
stairs.  She wound up in a coma and two days later he was killed in a car crash
with a drunk driver.”

“I
read about it.  How awful, Matt.”

“When
Mom woke up – she’s still Mom, but she’s not the same.  She can’t tell if
things happened yesterday or years ago, and it breaks my heart that sometimes
she doesn’t recognize me at all.”

“Can
the doctors do anything?”

“There
are therapies, but so far, no luck.  But she seems happy at Sunrise Glen.  I
visit every week.  I told her about you.”

“You
did?” Grace sat up, water sloshing, feeling a little panicked, but Matt only
grinned.

“I’ll
take you to meet her if you like.  Next week?”

Old
and new anxieties filled her mind, and she nervously pushed a handful of wet
purple hair out of her eyes.

“You
look like a siren,” he chuckled, “rising from the deep.”

He
examined her breasts, which were reddened from all the day’s play.

“Did
I hurt you?” he asked, uncertain.

“Only
in a good way,” Grace assured him.

Matt
frowned, and Grace could see he was truly unsettled.  She reached behind her to
pull the plug, letting the water slowly start to drain.

“So
if I’m a siren, does that mean I get to seduce you to your doom?” she asked,
finding his cock in the dwindling bubbles and stroking it from root to tip,
feeling it swell in her hand.

His
expression cleared as heat filled his eyes, and his hips thrust up lazily into
her grip.

“I’d
be willing to let you give it your best shot,” he said gravely, and slid a hand
behind her head to tug her mouth gently toward his body.

STUPID,
COCKY, SON OF a bitch,
he thought, crouched way back across the road in a
cluster of trees, watching the three men pile out of an “Iverson’s Hardware”
truck.  He was too far away to make them out – the partially finished house was
set back from the road and the property cleared of trees.  The open area made
him nervous – unlike the other buildings, this one had no cover, nothing to
protect him from curious neighbors who might spot him running from a burning building. 
So, instead, he’d built the
tiniest
of incendiary devices and set it to
go off on a timer, and then simply walked away. 

And
now he was kicking himself.

It
wasn’t even dark yet, although it was late afternoon and the sun was starting
to slip over the horizon.  He’d gotten cocky – this was the last one, and the
whole thing had gone so smoothly that he’d gotten lazy. 

He
watched the men unload boxes from the truck, stacking them in the unfinished
garage.  The Banks family was living in a guest house across town while the
house was being gutted and expanded – Avery Banks had inherited a tidy sum from
a wealthy aunt and decided that it was time that his growing family of five
stopped living in a cramped house built for three.

Almost
smoothly, he amended.  The only true thorn in his paw was that all of his
attempts to deflect attention and suspicion toward Adam Mallow had seemed to go
nowhere so far.  He seethed.  The Sheriff’s Department was tenacious,
especially that new cop, Asher, and he knew that if they didn’t close the case
by actually having a criminal in custody, they’d simply keep looking.

And
that would be bad.

He
blamed Matt Harris most of all.  The man was clearly blinded by lust – whatever
depraved sexual things Grace Mallow had talked him into were making him stand
up for the boy, time and again.  And now he had Cal Iverson to blame as well,
who was too stupid to realize that the Mallow boy had stolen his toolkit.  That
was a major blow.  He’d knocked Adam out, taken what he had assumed was the
boy’s toolkit from the foot of the stairs, and set fire to the Murphy house,
conveniently leaving evidence behind.

But
then – nothing.

It
rankled.

He
checked his watch.  If they didn’t move now, they’d get caught in the blast. 
He might be able to warn them, but not without revealing his identity and his
actions, a double tragedy since he was
so close
to the finish line.

Until
now, no one had gotten hurt.  He was surprised to find that the thought didn’t
bother him as much as it should.  In fact –

The
one on the left looks like Cal.

It
would serve him right.

BOOM!

The
blast was bigger than he had anticipated, and a fireball filled the sky as the
house exploded.  One of the men was lucky – on the opposite side of the truck,
where he missed the force of the blast and hit the dirt.  The other two were
not – they were thrown, only to land, motionless.