The Darker Side of Pleasure (35 page)

A tear fell onto the sofa cushion below her face.

“Such pretty tears. So pretty you deserve some sort of reward.”

She clenched her eyes shut, trying to stop crying. He shifted her weight in his lap and reached down to pull something from between the sofa cushions. She tried to see what it was, but couldn’t. Then she heard a low, whirring buzz. She almost cried again in relief.

“I have here a very large vibrator. I hope you can take it. Do you think you can?”

“Yes! Please.”

“Are you sure?”

He pushed her thighs farther apart so that she was open to him. Then he touched the buzzing tip of the phallus to her hungry cleft. She moaned.

“Can you feel the size of it? Not yet, can you?”

He shifted her body once more, turning her facedown, then guided her up onto her knees. He had her spread her thighs, so that she was kneeling over his lap and wide open to him. He touched the vibrator to her again, this time pushing the tip inside. Her whole body shuddered with pleasure.

“You’re so damn wet, I think you could take anything,” he murmured, almost as if to himself. His quiet words were followed by a sharp plunge, and the thick, hard shaft sank into her waiting sex.

“Oh…” The sensation was excruciating. The shaft was enormous, filling her completely, painfully. Yet the vibration was exquisite, sending waves of near-orgasm quivering through her body.

“It’s only halfway in. Can you take more? Do you want it? Tell me.”

“Yes…yes, I want it.” She was shaking all over, with need, with pain.

He slid it in another inch and she felt the walls of her sex stretching, trying to accommodate the solid girth of the object. Very slowly, he moved it inside her, then slid it back out, until only the tip rested in her hot, clenching sex.

“Just breathe, Magdalena. Hold onto that edge. Ride it out. I’ll let you come soon.”

She took in a deep breath, tried to concentrate. But all she knew was the shock of pleasure stabbing through her body. He twisted the vibrator and she gasped.

“Hold it, Magdalena. Hold it back.”

“I can’t,” she panted.

“You can. You will do it for me.”

He held the vibrator against the lips of her sex for several long, agonizing moments.

“Please…please…”

“Yes, now.” He gave the instrument another twist, sending a shard of pleasure knifing into her body, then he shoved it deep inside her. Pain and pleasure fused, burst, and she screamed as she came. Sensation roared through her system like wildfire, searing her, branding her. She cried out again as she shattered in his arms.

Even after he slipped the phallus from her body she trembled and moaned, fell into his lap, tiny wisps of pleasure shivering deep inside her. His hands were all over her, stroking her everywhere.

He whispered, “I loved to hear you scream. I loved to see you come so hard for me.”

He kissed her skin, between her shoulder blades, blazing a trail of hot kisses down her spine. More tears that she couldn’t control. How could any man make her let go the way she just had with him? How could he make her feel these things?

The crying turned into a long, deep sob. He turned her over, gathered her in his arms and held her. “It’s alright,” he told her, his voice quiet, a little ragged.

And she felt that it was; that it was okay to cry in his arms, to let him hold her. To be weak in this way with him.

He untied her wrists and let her cry herself out. He didn’t let go of her for a moment. When it was over she was limp all over, exhausted. She wiped at her face.

“I don’t know what happened to me…”

“People often have an emotional release with this kind of play.”

“I wasn’t playing.”

He paused for what seemed like a very long time. Then he said quietly, “No. Neither was I.”

She looked up at him. His hazel eyes were burning. With what emotion she didn’t know, but that intensity of expression drew her in. She couldn’t look away. He swept her hair from her face, then moved his thumb down to trace the line of her jaw. The motion was so tender, so gentle, her throat seemed to close up completely. How could he be doing this? How could this man, this detached sexual sophisticate, be looking at her like this?

How could he make her feel like her heart was about to come apart in her chest?

He leaned in and brushed her lips with his. And before she had a chance to think about it her arms went around his neck, pulling him closer. He kissed her harder, as though he really meant it. She parted her lips, letting him in.

He tasted just as she remembered, but sweeter, somehow. His tongue delved into her mouth, the kiss crushing, bruising her lips. She didn’t care. She needed this. Needed him.

When the hell had that happened?

She pulled back, turned her head away from him, into his chest.

“Don’t, please.” She was panting so hard she could barely speak.

“Maggie…”

“I can’t, Damien. I can’t do this if it…if it means something.”

“Fuck.” His breath was as ragged as her own. “Damn it, Maggie, it does mean something to me. I don’t know why. But it does.”

“Oh, God, don’t tell me that. Don’t tell me what I want to hear.”

“I’m only telling you the truth.”

She was quiet while a flurry of emotions moved through her body like physical sensations: fear, longing. She shook her head and insisted, “I can’t do this.”

He didn’t say a word, just held her tighter than ever, as though he knew she needed that. Needed to feel safe while her heart hammered away, while fear flooded her veins.

He held on for a long time. Until, for the first time in her life, she did feel safe, felt as though she could give herself into someone else’s hands.
His
hands.

But it was this very sense of safety that scared her to death. She knew better than to count on something that could be taken away from her on a whim.

CHAPTER EIGHT

H
E COULD SEE HER FEAR
. I
N HER FACE, IN HER
tightly strung muscles. He understood it. What he felt for this woman was the first thing that had frightened him in years.

God, she was too much of everything. Her gorgeous, pale skin, her sweet mouth, her fine mind, even her need for control. It all got right under his skin. And to know she was feeling the same things he was feeling…that made it even harder, even better. Torture.

He had decided a long time ago never again to become emotionally involved with a woman. Now that Maggie was breaking that wall down, he understood what he’d sacrificed in the name of protecting himself. It had seemed like a reasonable price to pay at the time. But finally, he had to stop and question the way he’d lived most of his adult life.

How could she have caused all of this change in only two days?

She was still trembling. He had to clear his mind, to care for her as was his responsibility.

“What do you need? Something to drink?”

She shook her head.

He pulled a white, cashmere throw blanket from the arm of the sofa, and laid it over her naked and shivering body. “You’re cold.”

“No. I don’t know.”

“Do you want to get dressed, to go back to your hotel now?”

“No!” This followed by a muffled sob that went right to his gut like a hammer blow.

He pulled her closer. “Okay. Okay. You’ll stay here with me.

With me.

If only she could. But she would be with him tonight. And, if he was lucky enough, for the remaining days before she had to return to her life. That would have to suffice.

Why did that idea make his whole chest squeeze as though a heavy weight had been placed there, crushing the breath out of him?

He shook his head to clear it. Then, gathering her in his arms, he stood and carried her down the hallway, up the wide staircase to the second floor. Down another hall and into his bedroom, where he laid her on the soft, brown suede duvet on his bed. He could barely stand to leave her, but he had to get the wax off her.

He went quickly to his bathroom, returned with two cloths: one warm and damp, the other dry, as well as a bottle of almond oil. She was exactly as he’d left her, lying still on his big bed, the throw blanket from the living room wrapped around her, her still-hard nipples making alluring peaks against the cashmere. He leaned over her and pulled the blanket back, trying not to focus on the luscious mounds of her bare breasts. So tempting, this woman.

Gently, he peeled the hardening wax from her skin, then poured a few drops of the oil onto her. She was quiet as he smoothed it in, rubbed away the last remnants of the wax. She let out a soft sigh when he followed with the warm cloth, closed her eyes as he dried her.

Finished, he set everything on the nightstand. He turned back to her, saw that she’d curled on her side, looking like a small and frightened child. Innocent, somehow. Lovely.

He watched her for a moment, but it was pure torture not touching her, not being able to feel the heat of her body. He undressed except for his black boxers, climbed in beside her, pulled her close to him, and heard her quiet moan. She fit perfectly within the hollow of his chest. Even more so when she moved back into him.

He didn’t mean for it to happen, but he went hard the moment her buttocks pressed into his lap. As tender as he felt toward her right now, the desire for her was simmering beneath the surface, ready to be awakened at any moment. Desire was easier to deal with. And more pressing, as his cock filled and throbbed.

He smoothed a hand over her skin, loving every inch of her. Stroking the curves and valleys of her body, shoulder, waist, hip, he listened to the increasing cadence of her breath. And his cock grew, hardened even more.

“Maggie…”

“Yes?”

“I want you. It’s not right for me to ask you now. Not after what you’ve just been through.” God, what was wrong with him? He’d never been tentative with a woman—or anyone—in his life.

“Please, Damien…please. I need you now.” She surged back, her smooth flesh right up against him, every surface connecting. His cock gave a hard pulse.

“Christ, what you do to me,” he muttered before pulling her over on her back so he could kiss her.

He kissed her hard, forced her lips apart, found the wet heat of her tongue. She kissed him back, eagerly, wantonly, threw her arms around his neck.

He filled his hands with the lovely mounds of her breasts, her nipples hard against his palms. He had to taste her.

He lowered his head and looked at the beautifully rising flesh before him. Such perfect breasts. The nipples were a dark pink against her pale skin. He bent and took one into his mouth.

She groaned and buried her fingers in his hair. He flicked his tongue at the stiff peak, pushed her breasts together with his hands and suckled first one, then the other. She was panting, her ragged breath making him crazy with need. Making his cock throb until it almost hurt. He’d never wanted a woman like this in his life.

When she reached down and slipped her hand into the opening of his boxers, wrapped her fingers around his cock, he had to fight not to go off like a rocket.

Control.

He wanted to make her come again before he did anything else, before he satisfied his own aching desires.

He slid down her body, moved her legs apart, and breathed in the honeyed scent of her arousal. Just that scent made him impossibly harder. He bent and tasted her.

Her hands tightened on his hair, then slid down over his cheeks. “Yes…”

He feathered his lips across her mound, paused to blow gently on it, loving her tiny gasps. Then he dove in, licking and sucking, pushing his tongue inside her while she squirmed and panted beneath him.

It was only moments before he felt the first pulse against his tongue. Then she was coming into his mouth, her hips bucking as she called out his name.

She was still trembling with her orgasm when he lifted himself over her body and slipped out of his boxers. Torture, to have to pause even long enough to find a condom in the night table and sheath himself. He paused at the entrance to her lovely body for one aching, exquisite moment before he slid inside.