He fell heavily back into his chair as she got his jeans open. There was a glow of pink on the bottom of the window shade, signifying that dawn was at hand—which meant that a flight attendant could pull aside the curtain and offer them coffee and pastry at any moment.
She did not care. She wrenched down the stretchy black fabric of his briefs and took his thick, throbbing shaft into her hand with a sigh. Beautiful. Stone hard and broad and swollen, longer than any cock had practical reason to be, thick enough to be a bit of a problem. Overkill.
She squeezed her thighs around the juicy glow of lingering pleasure as she licked up glistening drops of pre-come. He gasped for air.
She sucked him into her mouth, relishing the salty taste, the hardness of his flesh, the silky skin, the deep throb of his heartbeat pulsing against her tongue.
Last night, she’d wanted to assault him with her skill. Now, she just wanted to be so close his pleasure would be her own, every stroke, every moan. She craved that closeness. She’d been alone so long.
She needed both hands to perform a proper blow job on this man. It was hard just to get his cockhead into her mouth, let alone the rest of it, but with the skillful addition of bold, twisting handwork and a generous amount of slippery spit, that was no problem at all.
It was perfect, feeling his response, the trembling dig of his fingers into her scalp, the hot, rich male smell of him, the tension in his muscular frame as he bent over her as he built up to it—and a volcanic explosion in her mouth. He spurted an outrageous amount of come into her mouth in complete and utter silence. Such self-control.
She kept him nestled inside the warm well of her mouth until the rhythmic spurts finally slowed down and eased off. She pulled her head away and admired the gleaming length of him, milking the last few creamy drops of come and licking them up, with tender, teasing flicks of her tongue. The sound he made was almost a whimper. His hands tightened in her hair. They were both damp with sweat.
She sat up, wiggling back down into her own seat and buttoning her jeans. She pulled her sweater down and her blanket back up. Val tucked his cock into his pants, adjusted his clothes, and fished a bottle of mineral water out of the seat pocket. He presented it to her.
Nice touch. The least he could do. She drank deeply and pulled her blanket back up to her chin. As if it were any kind of protection from his seductive power.
“Proud of yourself?” She forced some sharpness into her tone.
He shook his head. “Humbled,” he said softly. “And destroyed.”
She was getting embarrassed now, which always made her irritable. “I need a bath in the worst way,” she whispered. “And we have hours of travel time to go. Nor do I have clean clothes to spare.”
“Sorry, Tamar.” The sympathy on his face was fake. “When we get to Italy, we will buy you more clothing. And the hotel room I have booked in San Vito has a magnificent bathroom. A deep tub, with hydromassage. A beautiful marble shower, for two.”
“Why are you calling me that?” she demanded. “Nobody calls me that. It’s Tam, if you please.”
“I like it that nobody calls you that,” he said quietly. “And I like it that it is your real name.”
“Real.” She snorted. “What’s real?”
He reached out, slowly drew his fingertip over her upper lip. Then the tender inner part of it. Her mouth trembled in response. His finger smelled of her.
“This was real,” he said softly. “No comfort zone. I loved it.”
She blushed idiotically. “Hmph. Whatever. I want that shower. Your gooey gigolo sweet talk won’t help me with that. The bathroom in San Vito is still five thousand kilometers away. And you still trust me with your credit card?”
“Fuck, no,” he said, with feeling. “This time, I choose what you buy.”
She startled herself by giggling. He took advantage of the unshielded moment to grab her hand.
She stiffened. Her first instinct was to yank it back, as if she’d been burned. She stopped herself, by force of will, her nerves on edge.
Their hands were both a bit sticky, but it wasn’t as if either one of them had cause to complain. She had never actually held a man’s hand in her life. Other parts of a man, yes. But not hands.
It was uncomfortably, weirdly intimate. Almost, well…nice. In a way that was dangerously different from sex.
But then again, what did it matter if she indulged in a silly lovey-dovey fantasy? Even if it blew up in her face. Who would it hurt?
You,
she told herself.
It’ll hurt you. You’re letting the man literally fuck your brains out, and the end result will not be pretty.
She acknowledged that brutal truth, she accepted it, she swallowed it down…but she did not let go of his hand.
I
f Val had not been so worried about Imre, so conscious of time, he would have actually been having fun with Tamar. He enjoyed her caustic wit, her sharp honesty. She stimulated him on every level.
They checked into the beautiful, baroque-era hotel in San Vito, and he hurried her up the grand staircase and down the high-ceilinged corridor to their room with unconcealed impatience. He had paid a ridiculous sum to reserve this particular room. It had a loggia, with three arches on the terrace, a spectacular view of the town rising steeply out of the azure sea and clinging to the mountain slopes, and of La Roccia, the huge rock formation that cut the town into two parts.
Not that he gave her time to look at it. He slammed the door shut and fell upon her, like a beast. True to form, she shoved him back, with a strength that still surprised him from such a slender woman.
“Do not take me for granted!”
He advanced on her. “I’m not,” he said. “I’m taking you, period.”
“The cave man game only goes so far, Val,” she warned.
Ah,
sì
. She was calling him Val, at last. Something inside him capered for joy. “Far enough for my purposes.” He grabbed her, heedless of her swatting hands, and flung her down onto the bed.
She struggled, but if she hadn’t been having a good time, he would be on his back, fighting for his very life. As it was, her eyes glowed, her color was high, she shoved, flailed, and slapped at him with high energy, but no lethal intentions. His body knew the difference.
He risked letting go of her wrists for long enough to unbutton her jeans, and got a couple of sharp slaps for his trouble. He snatched her hands and flung himself on top of her, his face red and tingling pleasantly from the blows. The bed rocked and bounced. He pinned her wrists and grinned into her furious face.
“Finally, a bed,” he said. “I thought it would never happen.”
“What makes you think it will happen now,
porco
?” she shot back. “After twenty-four hours of travel and no bath? Dream on!”
“Twenty-four hours of foreplay,” he countered, pulling down her jeans. “Fuck the bath. Bathe later. Trust me, you will need a bath later.”
They wrestled and writhed and struggled. He was on the verge of coming in his jeans, before he finally got her naked beneath him. He got a painful, two-fingered jab to his throat when he spared a hand to open his pants. The blow could have been lethal, had she cared to make it so. He wouldn’t take such a harmless version of it personally.
“We have a problem,” he told her. “I need my hands to get a condom on, but if I let go of you, you’ll rip out my throat.”
“Hah. Sounds like it’s your problem, not mine,” she informed him.
“Not at all. My solution to the problem is simple.” He grabbed his aching, throbbing cock, and nudged it inside her.
She was slick, swollen, and taut, with no latex to dull the amazing heat of her. He drove forward in one long, lunging thrust, and could have died from delight from this moment. It was worth every blow, every slap, every scratch. Every last insult.
She gasped and went still. “Wait! That’s no solution!”
“I have no diseases,” he assured her. “I am always careful, and I am tested regularly.”
“Me, too, but that’s not the problem,” she said. “I’m not using contraception.”
He was startled. “Ah. I see.”
“So get out of me. I do not want a baby from you.”
He tried to withdraw, but his body played tricks on him. He just found himself gliding deeper, rubbing, rocking. Just once…and then once more. “I won’t come inside you,” he promised. “Just a few strokes…in…and out, like this.” He lunged deep, twisting his rod.
Tamar caught her breath and arched, shoving her hips back to take more of him. She bit her flushed red lips and clutched his chest, her nails digging deep. “All it takes is one! And I don’t trust a man to have that kind of self-control. I don’t trust men for anything. So get out of me!”
He tilted his eyebrow. “You may be amazed to hear it, but I have noticed this lack of trust,” he said wryly.
“And? So?” Her bright eyes challenged him.
“So? I must prove you wrong. I will do as you ask.” He pulled out, regretting every clinging, caressing millimeter of sweet connection he was losing. “You cannot imagine what this
galanterie
is costing me.”
“Poor baby.” She sat up, coiling herself into a siren’s pose.
He rummaged for the condom, whipped the thing on and advanced on her, his erection jutting urgently before him.
“Do not tell me I must start from zero once again,” he begged.
The smile she gave him was razor sharp. “What makes you think you’ve racked up any points at all?”
Savage frustration flared inside him. He breathed it down with great difficulty “You will not give in to me for one single instant, no? No matter how much you want to.”
Her taunting smile faded, and for a brief, naked instant, he saw something in her eyes, something frantic and lost, like a trapped animal. “I can’t,” she said starkly. “I just…can’t.”
He was taken aback. The confession moved him, though it maddened him, too. He sensed her need, her frustration. The aching tension. Steel cables strung so tight they hummed from the strain.
He’d never wanted so badly to be tender to a woman, and he had never met a woman so desperately in need of tenderness. But it was unbearable to her. She simply could not tolerate it. Yet.
Until she could, he would just close his eyes, take a deep breath, and follow his instincts.
“Then don’t,” he said. He lunged for the bed.
She spun, trying to scramble away. She let out a startled grunt as he landed on top of her. All his weight. There would be no escape from the pleasure he meant to inflict upon her.
His hand slid down, caressing her trembling ass cheeks, sliding lower. Playing with her tender folds. Silken smooth, hairless, perfect. He tongued and kissed the back of her neck, her trembling spine as he pinned her flat, immobile, and played with her clit, her juicy cunt.
When her first climax wrenched through her, he savored the powerful, clutching pulses, her hitching, gasping breath, and then waited for the insults, the verbal slaps.
They did not come. She buried her face in the bedclothes, and shook. Wordless.
He forced his cock inside while tremors still rippled through her. When she caught her breath and raised her head, he was seated deep within, rocking slowly in that tight, gliding sheath. Waiting for a cue.
“Someday, you will let me be gentle with you,” he said.
Her hair swung as she shook her head in negation. “Don’t hold your breath,” she said jerkily. “I can’t even be gentle with myself.”
“I am patient,” he told her. “I can wait.”
“Shut up. Get to work, Val,” she snapped. “You talk too much.”
There was his signal. She rocked back to take in more of him.
He meant to give her everything he had to give, all the power and control, the technique, but something snapped, and they spun out of control together, heaving and bucking against each other, dripping with sweat. He held her in a grip that would leave bruises. She clutched handfuls of sheets with white-knuckled fingers. She did not fight him.
The danger zone, terrifying and wild and wonderful.
She looked over her shoulder. “Turn me over,” she demanded, panting. “I want to see your face. I want to see if you’re for real.”
“Of course I am.” He didn’t even question the truth of those words before they burst out. He pulled out, flipped her over, folding her legs wide to stare at the perfect pink flower of her pussy. She was so flexible, elastic as a dancer. Her skin, soft as a fine new leaf unfurling. Every curve and hollow astonished his eyes.
He mounted her again before she could change her mind, and they found their rhythm face to face. She stared into his eyes, undulating frantically, nails digging as the energy of her climax began to crest.
She panicked then and started slapping him, in a disordered, haphazard way, her eyes bright with furious tears. “Damn you,” she hissed. “Damn you, you son of a bitch.”
He tried to catch her hands, but she wrenched them away with a snarl. He just let go, let her pummel at him while their bodies slammed frantically together. She needed that violent struggle for dominance, and he sensed that she needed him to win it for her sake. But nothing she could do to him could hurt him now. He was riding a thundering crest of colossal pleasure.
Some time later, who knew how long, he found himself on his side, facing her. They were bathed in sweat, their arms still around each other, clutching. Her legs wound around his hips.
He tried to loosen his grip, but his shaking muscles would not immediately obey him. Their hearts thudded against each other.
He willed his arms to relax. Their bodies unglued with a little wet sound. He pulled his gleaming, softening cock out of her. They fell back onto their backs, shivering in the cool room as their sweat dried.
Someone knocked on the other side of the wall. “
Ehi. Auguri, amico,
” their neighbor called in a dry, amused voice. Hey. Congratulations, pal.
Neither of them had the energy even to react.
When he dared to look at her, she flinched away from his gaze and dragged herself up to the edge of the bed. He laid his hand against the elegant curve of her shoulder blade. She started away as if his hand had burned her and got to her feet. She stumbled, her legs buckling beneath her, and caught herself against the wall.
He jerked up, alarmed. “Are you—”
“Fine.” She spat the words out. “I’m
fine.
”
He stetched out a pleading hand. “Tamar—”
“Don’t,” she said. “Just don’t. I’m going to take a shower. I’ll be a while. Don’t bug me.”
He stared at her retreating back, flinched at the slam of the door. The brass key clicked and ground in the antique lock. The shower began to hiss against the marble. His heart still drummed. And beneath it, his belly was cold and heavy with guilt for what came next.
Now, damn it
. This was his only chance. Still, he sat on the bed like a lump of lead. Miserable.
Imre.
Novak’s game would continue, and tomorrow a fresh piece of erotic footage was due, to keep Imre in one piece. Val couldn’t be queasy and hesitant about getting it. After all, he was not literally hurting or betraying her by doing this. God knows, he was putting his whole heart into fucking her. He had never been so honest and forthright with any woman in his life—except about this. This one little detail.
The rationalizations didn’t work. He had to do what he’d learned to do as a boy, when Kustler sent him to certain apartments, certain houses. Special clients. Or when he had no appointments, and was sent out to work the streets. The cars would stop for him, and he would put the mechanism to work. Break off a piece of himself. Let it get into the car and do the job while his mind floated somewhere apart and safe. Numb.
He had survived it. It had gotten easier with time. But this, for some reason, did not.
He unfastened the cellophane that covered the plant he’d ordered via the Internet from a local florist. A voluminous fern. He rigged the little camera in the shadow of two gracefully draped fronds. Adjusted the angle to make sure he got the bed. Adjusted the leafy fronds, to conceal the camera but not block the view. He would make it right with her somehow. God grant, she never had to know at all.
A great deal to hope, the way his luck was going.
After an hour in the shower, Tam began to feel ridiculous, cowering in the billows of steam. She was appalled to be feeling this way. Emotions sprawled over her face. Truths she never meant to say, or even knew were true, bursting out with no warning. She couldn’t trust herself to act in her own best interests. And there was the humiliating phenomenon of morphing into a mindless, scratching cat in heat whenever he looked at her with those smoldering eyes.
And she would do it again. Right now. She would just march right out there buck naked and leap on him with all four paws. At the slightest provocation.
She shut off the water, toweled dry. The mirror was obscured by condensation, which was good, because she didn’t want to look at her own face. Not when she was this angry at herself.
Working a comb through her hair killed another twenty or so minutes. It was getting stupidly long, but she hadn’t wanted to bother with dying or styling it for so long, it had evolved into its own new super straight look that suited her austere mood these days. She considered slicking it back with styling gel into a tight, wet braid, and then rejected the idea. Let it dry, and hang wherever the hell it wanted. She was sick and tired of trying to control every last fucking tiny detail. Enough.
Same with her eyes. She stared into her travel-reddened topaz eyes in the mirror, hating the idea of inflicting colored contacts on them again, without even the benefit of a night’s sleep. What did she care if Val knew the real color? He knew every other significant fact about her. Why balk at this?
To hell with useless barriers. They were draining her energy.
She wrapped a huge bath towel around herself and flung open the door. Val sat naked on the bed, waiting for her. Or rather, waiting for his turn in the bathroom. The guy probably had to piss like a racehorse after all their traveling. She had no sympathy in the least. Served the presumptuous fucker right for not booking her a room of her own.
But the bitchy mental chatter faded as she took in that huge, sculpted golden body, his intense, somber face. His thick penis was impressive even when it was soft, dangling against a springy twist of curling hair. Her fingers curled with the urge to grab him and pet it.
He sensed the thought and his penis twitched, lengthened.
She turned away deliberately and went to rummage through the suitcase he’d ordered for her. She dabbed herself with expensive face cream, deodorized her pits with the ridiculously pricey bottle of deodorant. What a blast of naughty, fleeting fun she’d had with that online catalog. The criteria by which she’d chosen each item had been exquisitely simple. She’d just gone for whatever cost most.