Chapter 17
My heart is pounding out of my chest.
My thighs tremble, and before I understand where I’m going, I take off out of the office and down the hall, pumping my arms for more speed, knowing full well what’s happening behind me, even as I’m lost and mindless. Not what, though.
Who.
Who is behind me, gaining speed, stalking me through the hallways, waiting to make his move and pounce. I’m soaked between my legs, my panties wet enough to increase the incredible friction as I jog. We both know what will happen.
Wanting Marcus to the point where it’s hard to breathe. He’s going to catch me. No matter how far or fast I run, he is going to catch me. And when he does?
I lick my lips, panting already.
I make it to the staircase before him and haul myself up one step at a time.
“Alicia?” he calls out to me. “Where do you think you’re going? There’s nowhere for you to hide.”
I refuse to answer, my tongue darting out to lick my lips, anticipation thrumming a primal beat in my blood.
He sounds like the big bad wolf running after his prey, and each footfall is heavier than the last. They join the beat inside of me, and although I want to stop and turn to look for him, I’m too turned on to pause. I’ve got to keep running. My breasts tighten further, until even the drag of fabric against my nipples has me shivering.
I haven’t been upstairs since the plane crash.
It’s the furthest thought from my head now, not when Marcus reaches the bottom of the stairs and his growl of anticipation echoes up to me.
I rush down the hallway and dart into one of the spare rooms, slowly closing the door behind me. There’s enough space underneath the bed for me to crawl inside.
My heartbeat echoes in my ears. Footsteps fall heavy on each step, one after the other. “Alicia…” My pulse ticks up further at the dark promise in his tone.
The bed is a bad choice. He’ll see me right away.
Marcus is almost to the top of the stairs, his footfalls dampening at the transition from marble to carpet. I sprint at the last minute to the closet and close the doors behind me. My body tenses, legs clenching together in physical discomfort.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are. Do you really think this is a game you can win?” he calls out.
I’d had reservations about the scene, considering how turned on the first read through got me.
The darker tones of the chase became a song of lust and stroked velvet claws along the inside of my ribcage. We shouldn’t have done it, not after what happened last time. Yet, here we are.
My pussy pulses, and I clench my thighs even tighter together. How will it feel to have him slide his cock between my legs rather than between my lips? Or will he stop at the last minute again, exactly as he did before?
I can’t handle any more rejection.
I bite down on my lower lip and strain for any sound of his approach.
Nothing except my bellowing lungs.
The doors fling open without warning, and I squeak, his eyes meeting mine and my chest catching at the look.
“I found you,” he whispers.
He grabs me by the ankles and drags me out of the closet, my body twisting at the last minute to claw at the hardwood. I can’t find purchase. I can’t stop myself.
He’s got me.
There’s no way out of it this time and, as much as it hurts me to admit it, I don’t want out. Marcus twists me around so I’m on my back and crushes his mouth to mine, pulling me fully under him until my legs open on either side of his hips. The kiss is deep enough that he steals my breath.
There’s no space between us, absolutely none, when he groans out my name and our bodies press together eagerly, two people who cannot get enough of each other. His stubble scrapes against my chin.
I want the anticipation and the keen edge of desire.
I want that little bit of fear from the way he looms over me, the way his body is so strong and masculine and hot for me. The bulge in his pants presses against my leg, and when he breaks the kiss, the intensity in his eyes is enough to have me gushing.
We’ve been dancing around each other for too long to go back now, teasing each other to the point of madness.
I’ve never had another man’s hands on me, and I never want to, not when I feel the way I react to the taste of him.
“Are you still the wolf?” I whisper.
“I’m worse,” he replies. “Because I’m not going to stop eating you even if you beg me.”
“Eat me?”
Is he planning to—
Marcus growls, grabbing the edge of my shorts and tearing them down my legs. He strips them off exactly the way Mr. Patterson does to Alicia in the scene.
I scream the surprise, my pussy right out there in the open and the cool air a physical touch on my overheated skin. It brushes against me as Marcus tosses the shorts aside, and they hit the floor outside of my line of vision. I don’t give a shit where my clothes go, not when I’m the most powerful woman alive. He’s staring down at me with a singular focus, his chest heaving, and I’m breathless.
He glances down at me once, shaking his head until hair obscures the darkness of his eyes. “I’m so hungry for you.”
Without saying another word, he drags my tank top down, my bra with it, and bends to take the peak of one breast into his mouth. He works my nipple between his teeth and spans his hand over my ribcage to keep me pinned. Over and over, his tongue laps at my breast, and he sucks it into the warm cave of his mouth as sensation tugs my gut into knots.
I squirm under him, but not to free myself. The more I writhe, the more of him I touch, and the harder he gets.
As much as I hated to admit it, I’d never been this turned on by any other man in my life. Boys, I correct. Only boys have come before him, and none of them with half as much skill as he’s showing. We haven’t even gotten to the main event.
Then, I lose my mind and arch my hips higher when he transfers to the other breast and starts to work me there.
Marcus Ortega is a pain in my ass, but he’s incredible. He’s strong and muscled in all the right ways, and he only has to look at me to turn me on.
He breaks away, settling his own hips harder against me before jolting back. He balances on his knees and spreads my legs further apart, groaning, his fingertips skimming up the inside of my thighs, underwear gone, nothing between us. His gaze grazes down the lower half of my body, and my breath catches before he dives, going down until his face is between my legs. The first swipe of his tongue has me seeing stars.
He latches his mouth between my thighs, and I gasp, my head thrown back at the outstanding pleasure and pressure of his swirling tongue, locking and sucking and teasing a circle around my clit.
“Jesus Christ.”
“There’s no Christ here,” he says against my core. “There’s only me and you in this room, Empire. You’re going to remember who had their mouth on you first.”
“Always,” I whisper.
Always the two of us. I reach down and tangle my fingers in his hair while he licks at me, turning his tongue in tight circles around my clit before breaking away to taste along my entrance.
His mouth is between my thighs, on my core. I suck in a breath and tighten my grip on his hair as he licks me into submission. I close my eyes, my thighs shaking. “Fuck, Marcus!”
“Yes,” he hisses against me.“Give in to me.”
His hair is soft, twining around my fingers like bands of silk.
He licks me from my ass to my clit and latches his mouth over the sensitive bud again until I can barely breath. “You belong to me,” he says between nibbles. “No one else can touch you except for me. I own you.”
It’s a powerful thing to be claimed, owned, by a man like him. I’m not just his ward at this moment. I’m his woman. He knows exactly where to touch me to take the pleasure to its highest point. Every drag of his tongue, every expert stab into my pussy…
He grabs my leg and lifts it onto his shoulder, pressing his face to my core and devouring me. Hot, insistent.
Pleasure coils through me, and I lose myself to the feel of him. My hips lurch upward on their own accord as he eats me out, driving me toward orgasm, toward the rush of pleasure only he’s given me. No other man. He’s right, too. He owns me.
I don’t want to be free. I want to stay exactly where I am, pinned to the floor while he devastates me, wrecks me.
“You belong to me,” he repeats.
“Yes.” The word hisses out before he laps my entrance with his tongue.
“You belong to me, Empire. Say it. Say it out loud.”
It’s not about the scene, not anymore. I’m not sure it’s ever really been about the scene, not for us.
“It’s you, Marcus,” I murmur. My hips hitch again, and electricity jolts through my blood, dragging me closer to the edge. “It’s only you.”
I whimper at how good his mouth feels. I’m too far gone to even think about playing hard to get or continuing on with the scene.
“Who do you belong to?” he asks.
“You.”
“Again.”
Goosebumps erupt along my arms and legs at his demand. “You, Marcus. I belong to you.” No one else. There never has been, and I have a gut-wrenching suspicion there never will be.
He’s repeating it over and over, how no one else can touch me except for him. Hearing it sends me absolutely mindless, and he presses the tips of his index finger to me. When he strokes his fingers to the same tempo as his rhythm against my clit, I’m ready to do anything he asks.
Our argument is forgotten. The past is forgotten, if only for this brilliant and blinding moment.
I want his cock inside me.
I want to know what it feels like to have his cock fill me, to meet his thrusts as he pounds into me again and again. Here in this closet, in my bed, in his, it doesn’t matter.
The fire in my core burns hotter yet.
How will it feel to have him fill me? To watch him push into me and take me the way no one else has before? If this is the lesson of my life he threatened to teach me, then the lesson can continue for the rest of the night. Forever, really.
I know in my gut once we really start down this path. I’m not going to want to stop. I’ll crave his taste and the branding of him on my insides. I’m already halfway mad for him. I’ll want him the way an addict does with their drug of choice, and whatever it says about me, I don’t give a shit.
His fingers take up the most delicious rhythm, and I wonder if he’s going to work a third digit inside of me, or if it will be too much.
His name erupts from my lips just before I’m ready to give myself over to every wave of the climax. I repeat his name as anticipation slowly builds, and I shake and tremble around his fingers. Is it always this good? Or is it just because I want it this bad?
“Not yet,” he warns, breaking off suddenly enough to have me moaning in protest. “You’re not going to come until I tell you to come, like a good girl. If you really belong to me, Empire, then you’re going to play by my rules. Now, beg.”
“Beg you for what?” It’s hard to get the words out.
“Beg me to let you come. You’re pulsing against me, so hot and wet. But you’ve been very bad. You’ve been bratty and selfish and ungrateful, Empire. Beg me to come, and if you do it well enough, I’ll eat you out until this house fills with your screams.”
My vision goes blurry, and I barely look at him before gulping, my mouth dry. “Please, Marcus. Eat my pussy and make me come.”