Authors: Claire Kent
She tried for a heated look and thought she was probably successful. Her treacherous body was already responding to his closeness. When she glanced down, she noticed that her nipples had visibly sprung to attention beneath the fabric of her flimsy robe.
“Maybe. You’ll have to use your imagination.”
“I think you want to tell me. You’re wearing those schoolgirl braids for a reason, which makes me think you might have been a little—
naughty
.”
She’d been right. He’d read her appearance exactly as she’d wanted him to. He was almost in the right mood for the sex she wanted to have tonight.
Last night, he’d come to her bedroom after dark and moved over her, kissing her, and spreading her legs. It had been completely unexpected, and she wasn’t mentally prepared. She hadn’t had her defenses up, so her emotions had spun into chaos. It had been really hard.
She couldn’t handle missionary position with him. Not again. Not after last night.
She needed sex to be wild, impersonal, maybe even kinky. It was easier that way. It didn’t feel like her.
Last night had started to feel real, so she’d had to fake an orgasm quickly, and then get him to turn her over on her hands and knees to take her from behind.
She’d faked the second orgasm last night too.
“Don’t get any crazy ideas,” she said, a teasing edge to her voice so he’d know she wasn’t serious. “I don’t do the naughty schoolgirl routine.”
Caleb gave her a predatory smile and wrapped his hands around both of her wrists, spreading her arms out on either side of her so she was stretched to his gaze. Her robe had parted widely, exposing most of both breasts. “Don’t lie to me. That’s exactly what you want.”
Kelly managed an exaggerated, outraged glare, and then gasped loudly when he bent down to give one of her tight nipples a little nip.
“Tell me you want it,” he demanded, raising his head so he could devour her face with his eyes. “Don’t you?”
“That’s your ego talking.”
He reached down to untie her robe completely and the fabric parted all the way, revealing her naked body. “Tell me you want it.”
“I don’t.” She couldn’t fight his grip, but she didn’t want to. Arousal was pulsing between her legs, but this was much better than last night. She was in control of this now.
Caleb’s eyes lingered on her breasts. “Your nipples say otherwise.”
“It’s cold in here.”
“No, it’s not. You know better than to tell me a lie.” His gaze had lowered to her pussy. “If I touch you, it will prove how much of a liar you are, won’t it?”
She felt exposed and strangely embarrassed—and even more aroused. But she ignored it since this was what she was going for. “I told you I don’t do the naughty schoolgirl thing.”
“And I know that too was a lie. So, what should I do with such a naughty liar, do you think?” His eyes, his face, his voice, his body, his presence—were all hot tension. Kelly felt herself respond to it involuntarily.
She was panting now, and wanted to squirm against the ache of desire at her core. “What are you going to do?” she asked, sounding hoarse, overwhelmed, desperate with desire.
He let go of one of her wrists so he could rub a small circle over the peak of her nipple.
She gasped in pleasure, her head falling back in response to his touch.
“You like that, don’t you?”
“Mm-hmm.” She arched her back helplessly into the delicate touch of his fingers.
He dropped his hand without warning. “Then that’s a reward. And naughty girls don’t get rewarded. They get punished.”
Kelly bit her lip, her eyes very wide.
Caleb smiled. “You like that too, don’t you?”
“No.”
“Yes, you do. So ask me nicely, and maybe I’ll give it to you.”
It was someone else—not her—who was so turned on by this monster of a man. It was someone else who was letting him touch her like this, talk to her like this, play this little game.
The scene might have come from one of her personal fantasies, but it still couldn’t
be
her.
It was someone else—never Kelly—who begged him, “Please,” on a taken breath.
“Please what?”
“Please, punish me.”
And that was someone else too.
“Turn around.” His voice was low, commanding, dominant.
Kelly did as he instructed, turning around in front of the empty kitchen table, her robe hanging from her shoulders.
“Bend over.”
This was what she’d had in mind when she’d braided her hair this way. She should be pleased that things were working exactly as she’d intended. No intimate, missionary sex for her tonight.
She just wished her pussy wasn’t so hot and wet, and she wished her hands weren’t trembling as she bent at the waist and planted her palms on the table.
She leaned over all the way, trying not to squirm in response to the slippery heat of her pussy.
“Now show me your ass.”
She raised the hem of the robe, exposing the naked flesh of her bottom.
Her cheek was pressed against the cool wood of the table, and she could see him from the corner of her eye as he moved behind her. She couldn’t stop panting, and her arousal tightened every time he moved.
Caleb cupped and squeezed her ass. “Ask me nicely for what you want.”
“Please,” she choked out, wondering if it was possible to come from nothing more than anticipation. “Please, spank me.”
She cried out in response when he gave her one quick spank.
“I thought that was what you might want.”
The sharp sting, the vulnerability, and the embarrassment combined to turn her on even more. It felt like moisture was leaking out from her pussy. “Again,” she gasped. “Please.”
He spanked her again, and her arousal surged even more.
“More,” she begged.
Each spank stung more than the last, the rhythmic slapping sound combining with the sensations to leave her gasping with pleasure, lifting her bottom to meet every smack.
After several, he caressed her warm flesh. “Enough?”
“No. I need—I need—”
She knew what she needed. Desperately. She just couldn’t seem to bring herself to say it out loud—even in an erotic act where she wasn’t even
her
.
She whimpered, clutching at the table and desperately trying to keep herself from begging.
“Spread your legs apart more,” he said. His voice was starting to get hoarse.
He must be really aroused now too.
She obeyed him, gasping when she felt two of his fingers, first against her pussy, and then plunging all the way inside her.
“You’re so hot and wet,” he murmured. “I should have known you wanted a firm hand.”
She didn’t like the sound of those words, but she blocked them from her mind and focused instead on the physical sensations.
He spanked her again, his fingers still inside her, and she tightened instinctively around the penetration as the pleasure shot through her.
“Let’s see how firm you like it,” he said thickly. He spanked her again. And then again. And on the third spank she was coming hard all around his fingers.
“Good girl.” He was rubbing her ass as she came down from the intense orgasm. “That’s what I thought.”
She was still trying to catch her breath when he rolled on a condom, pulled her ass cheeks apart, and lined up his cock at her tight pussy.
He fucked her hard and rough, the way only he could, until she couldn’t keep quiet. She came again and again from his cock and wondered who this woman was, bent over a table, letting Caleb Marshall take her this way.
This had been the strangest two weeks Caleb could remember.
He sat at the computer in his home office, deciding he could get through a couple more emails before bed. More would come in overnight, so the fewer he had left this evening, the better.
He was tired though, and he couldn’t stop thinking about Kelly.
Fucking her in the kitchen earlier had been hot. So hot he got a little tense just from the memory. But something had felt off about it, and he couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was.
Maybe he was just too old for too much of that kind of sex. It had been good—no question—but having sex with her last night under the covers had been more satisfying. It had felt different then, for some reason. More real. Like he’d really been able to take hold of her for a moment, when it so often felt like she was slipping through his fingers.
It was probably why she still held his interest after two weeks—which was longer than any relationship he’d had in a decade. She was as much a mystery as a pleasure, and he’d always had a puzzle-solving mind.
It was as much a part of him as his sex drive.
His investigator had turned up almost nothing on her past relationships, except she had a long habit of one-night stands. He was no closer to finding out who this dangerous ex was than he’d been a week ago.
Frustrating, to say the least.
When he found himself typing the same sentence twice, he closed out his email and gave up for the night. He was too tired and distracted to work right now. He might as well go to bed.
Kelly had gone to sleep an hour ago.
He went to his room to shower, but he hesitated before getting in his own bed. Despite his fatigue, there was a kind of shuddering energy inside him that compelled him to leave his room and head down to Kelly’s.
He tapped on the door and opened it, the same way he’d done the night before.
She rolled over sleepily as he made his way to her bed in the dark, climbing in beside her.
“Hey,” she mumbled. “This is a bad habit you’ve fallen into of waking me up.”
He pulled her into his arms. She felt warm and soft and strangely shaky. Like she was experiencing the same kind of shuddering energy he was. “That’s your mistake,” he murmured. “You’re going to sleep too early.”
She softened against him and he kissed her, unwinding some of his tension as his lips moved gently against hers, as her lush body rubbed against his. He was too tired to jump into arousal quickly—particularly after the sex they’d had not so long ago in the kitchen—but he felt his groin just beginning to tighten at the feel of her, the scent of her.
For a moment, it felt like she was trembling, even as she responded to his embrace.
“Wasn’t our session earlier enough for you?” she murmured, stroking his bare back with a slow caress.
He wasn’t in the habit of answering questions like that, since they gave too much away. “Are you saying it was enough for
you
?”
“It kind of was.” It sounded like she was smiling in the dark, but there wasn’t enough light in the room for him to see her expression. “I thought men were supposed to slow down when they passed forty.”
Momentarily, he felt a sliver of concern. He was a lot older than she was. Maybe she would prefer a man her own age. Maybe there were things she was missing, since he was no longer in his twenties.
He dismissed the thought as soon as it crossed his mind, though.
She’d made it perfectly clear in the last two weeks that he was more than capable of completely satisfying her. He had never felt anything less than confident before when it came to sex.
“I’ve always been exceptional,” he drawled.
She giggled, as he’d known she would, and the rippling sound prompted him to kiss her again.
Their embrace hadn’t deepened very far when she pulled away. “But, seriously, Caleb, I’m really tired tonight, and I’m not sure I’m in the mood.”
That was a first. He realized she meant it.
She’d never said no to any of his advances before. Honestly, he couldn’t remember the last time any woman had said no to his advances.
He didn’t particularly like it.
Fortunately, he wasn’t aroused enough yet for it to be a problem, although he was still experiencing that shuddering energy that just wouldn’t settle. He drew back slightly, lying on his side under the covers, facing her. “Okay.”
It felt like she was trying to peer at him, although the darkness made it impossible. “Are you sure?”
“Why wouldn’t I be sure?”
“I don’t know. You wanted to have sex.”
“I assure you I’m perfectly capable of dealing with rejection.”
“No, you’re not.”
He stiffened, since it sounded like there was a new resonance underlying the teasing words. “What does that mean?”
“Sorry. It was just a joke.” She scooted over and found his chest in the dark, stroking it with a soft hand. “It’s just that I don’t imagine you deal with rejection very often.”
It was true, but something about her tone just now still bothered him.
“I’m just not really in the mood right now,” she added, sounding like she was worried about his reaction. “I’m sorry.”
“No need to apologize.” Pushing aside his distraction, he followed the line of her body until he could slip his hand under her waistband, cupping her soft, round ass. “I imagine you’re still a little sore.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” She was teasing again, evidently relieved at the shift in mood. “Your spankings aren’t that hard.”
He chuckled, pulling his hand out of her pajamas before his body started getting the wrong idea, and settled her against him, trying to get more comfortable. “We’ll have to address that next time, I guess.”
“They say that practice makes perfect.”
He smiled at the wry note in her tone, enjoying how she felt pressed against his side, tucked under his arm. “That’s only true if one practices in the right way.”
After a stretch of silence, he started to wonder if she’d gone to sleep. Once she had, he would go back to his own room. He’d come down here for sex, after all. Not to fall asleep with her in his arms.
“Why have you never gotten married?” she asked.
He tensed automatically before he made himself relax, since he wasn’t in the habit of giving such revealing responses to questions. As close as she was, she would definitely have felt his initial reaction. “What kind of question is that?”
“I don’t know. Just wondering.” Her tone was very light as she added, “No need to worry. I’m not offering myself for the position or anything.”
“I didn’t think you were.” It was the truth. Kelly might be partly a mystery, but she wasn’t a mystery in this. He never once suspected her of having domestic designs on him. If anything, she kept holding part of herself back from any true intimacy.
She was like him in that. She was like him in a lot of ways. More than anyone he’d ever met.
Which might have been why he answered her question, when he normally wouldn’t have done so. “I don’t know. It just never crossed my mind as a good option. If I had a wife, I—”
“You what?”
“I wouldn’t treat her right.” He wished he hadn’t said the words after they were spoken. They sounded bland, unconcerned, but they exposed too much.
Kelly was silent for a moment, shifting slightly against him, her soft hair brushing against his skin. “A lot of men don’t treat their wives well. It doesn’t stop them from marrying.”
“That’s true.”
It felt like she was going to pursue the question, but then she seemed to pull herself back. He wondered why she’d asked in the first place, since she seemed to avoid any sort of personal conversation.
He felt off-kilter and strangely vulnerable—having admitted more than he had to anyone for years—so he asked, “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Why haven’t you gotten married?”
“No one has ever asked me.”
“Don’t give me that. You’ve never given anyone the chance to ask you. Didn’t you tell me on the first day we met that you don’t do seconds?”
He remembered that day well and wondered why she’d felt more complete to him then than she did now. What about her now—even with his arm around her—felt like it was always slipping through his fingers?
“Yeah. I might have said that.”
“So why? Why just casual sex?”
She pulled away from him, rolling over on her side to face him. He could only see a vague outline of her face and body in the dark, but she felt defensive, prickly, even though her voice was still light as she said, “Coming from a man who has lived his life with nothing but casual sex, that’s a strange question.”
Maybe it was a strange question, but he knew why he resisted any serious relationship. Wes had been right a couple of weeks ago when he’d said he always ran when things got real. He didn’t know why Kelly resisted, though, and he wanted to know. “Coming from a woman who just asked me why I’ve never gotten married, that’s a strange response to a harmless question.”
He felt her relax with a long exhale. “I’ve just never wanted to do relationships. Is that so strange?”
“It’s rather unusual, yes.”
“Because I’m a woman?”
“Partly.”
“I don’t know.” She rolled over onto her back and now seemed to be staring at the ceiling. “I don’t like to depend on other people, and in a relationship I would have to. I’m not inclined to trust people, and you have to trust to make a relationship work. Sex I can control, so that’s what I do.”
A thick silence followed her words, a silence Caleb could feel in his chest. He somehow knew the words were true and that she hadn’t intended to say so much.
If he’d been a kind man or a sensitive one, he would have let the topic drop, since her tension now made it clear she wasn’t comfortable with this conversation. But, for the first time, he felt close to getting her, reaching her, understanding her, and he wasn’t going to lose the advantage.
“Why don’t you trust people?”
“Because they let you down.”
Her voice was small, tight, clearly trying for casual, and it evoked the most unexpected response in him. He reached out to pull her against him again, holding her snugly. She buried her face against the side of his chest, clinging to him with a strange sort of tension.
He didn’t understand it at all, but she felt uncharacteristically needy. After a minute, he asked, “Everyone in your life has let you down?”
“Not everyone. But if they don’t, they get taken away anyway.”
His throat suddenly tightened so intensely, so powerfully, that he couldn’t breathe for a moment. Because he knew—he knew—he
knew
how she felt.
It had happened to him too.
She might look beautiful and soft and untouched, and she might be secretive and sensual and damaged, but she wasn’t all that different from him.
He understood her. Knew her. The way he knew himself.
Maybe she sensed some of what he was feeling. Maybe she felt it herself. Because, after a minute, she raised her head and stared down at him in the dark. “What about you? Do you trust people?”
“No.” Just the one word, the one truth.
“I didn’t think so.”
It felt like she was drawing away from him, so he tightened his arm around her. She didn’t resist, settling against him again.
“What about your mafioso lover?” He’d been putting pieces together about her in his mind.
She jerked.
“What?”
“The guy who’s after you. If you just do casual sex, how did you get involved with him?”
After a brief hesitation, he felt her shrug. “I was just trying something out with him, and obviously it didn’t work. Plus, what makes you think he was Italian mob?”
“You said he was connected.” He stiffened as he processed this new idea, the puzzle distracting him from his intense, softer feelings before. Maybe—he sucked in his breath as a different thought crossed his mind. “If you’re going to tell me you got involved with someone in the Mafia or some—”
“Oh, just shut up. It’s none of your business who I got involved with. Just let it go.”
He didn’t respond, knowing she was really annoyed now, so the conversation would be fruitless, but he was worried in an entirely new way. Some wannabe gangster from Atlantic City would be one thing. A Russian or Albanian would be something entirely different. The stakes would be much, much higher.
He was mulling over this new avenue of investigation when she shifted beside him, stroking his bare belly with her hand. “Sorry,” she murmured.
“Don’t be. It’s fine.”
“I know you’re just trying to help, and I don’t want to sound ungrateful. But it’s my mess.”
“I know you don’t like to depend on other people, but sometimes we can’t get out of our own messes without help.”
She gave a loud sigh. “I know.”
They lay in silence for several minutes. She started to stroke his chest and belly again, and he couldn’t help but like the feel of it.
Finally, she said, “I should probably start figuring out what I’m going to do with my life now. I can’t stay here with you much longer.”
He tensed involuntarily, for just a moment. “Why not? I’ve told you that you can stay for as long as you need.”
“I’m not your mistress, you know.”
“Damn it, Kelly,” Caleb snapped, responding to a surge of resentment and—very strangely—defensiveness. “Of course you’re not my mistress. You’re staying here because you’re in danger, and we just happen to be having sex.” He wasn’t sure why he was reacting this way. It wasn’t like him at all.
It must have to do with how vulnerable he’d felt a few minutes ago.
“You’re supporting me, and I’m fucking you. You go to work, and I lie around here all day. It feels like being a mistress to me.”
“You are under no obligation to fuck me. I’m not going to kick you out if you’ve gotten bored with it. The sex is not the reason I’m letting you stay.”
It was part of the reason—he had to admit to himself. He found it unlikely that he would be this interested in her, this invested in her, if they hadn’t been having sex, if the sex hadn’t been some of the best he’d had in a long time. But he was bothered by the implications of her words.