Chapter 11
11
Katie’s heart fluttered as Alex handed her into the town car. What fate had she just damned herself to? As the vehicle pulled out smoothly into the night, she felt like she was on a one-way ride to some dark place from which she would never return. It didn’t help matters that Alex was sitting back in the shadows across from her looking positively demonic.
“What was all that stuff with Uncle Charlie about?” she tried. “I heard one conversation, but it seemed like the two of you were having an entirely separate one.”
Nothing . No answer at all . Alex merely stared at her broodingly.
Her trepidation climbed. The car pulled up in front of his condo and Alex told her quietly her to wait in the car. He got out and looked up and down the street carefully before gesturing her to join him. The car pulled away, and they were alone.
He gripped her arm tightly as he guided her inside. Was he afraid she would bolt, or was he already asserting the dominance she expected from him tonight?
The elevator ride was silent. Tense. He entered a lengthy number sequence on the keypad outside his front door and passed a magnetic card through the slot. A red light illuminated.
“Come into my den, little lamb,” he muttered darkly.
They stepped into the foyer, and there was no sign of Sister Mary Harris. Katie followed Alex to Dawn’s bedroom and the nun was asleep in the bed beside Dawn’s crib. The woman had a hand stretched out through the bars and resting on Dawn’s mattress.
Alex explained, “She’s as deaf as a post with her hearing aids out. She’ll feel Dawn cry with her hand.”
As he backed out of the bedroom, he scooped the twin hearing aids off the dresser top and pocketed them.
“Alex!” she exclaimed softly.
“You’ll thank me later when you need to scream.”
He pulled the door shut behind them.
Her knees quivering a little, she followed him back into the dark living room. As he moved to the bar and poured himself a glass of whiskey, she asked, “Are you going to hurt me?”
“Do you want me to?”
“We already established that I don’t have any idea what I’m getting myself into. I have no clue what’s going to happen, tonight. I only know I want to give you the same kind of pleasure you’ve given me.”
He raised his glass to her in silent toast and drained its contents. He untied his bow tie and let it hang around his neck as he stalked toward her, menace radiating from him.
“Do you, umm, want me to take off my dress?” she asked nervously.
He paused directly in front of her. He flipped his right hand down sharply, and a knife was abruptly in his fist.
Where in the hell had that come from? She sucked in a sharp breath as he lifted the blade, running the flat of it along her shoulder to the neck of her dress. With a quick flip of his wrist, he slashed the neck of her dress, never even nicking her skin. The halter front sagged, revealing her left breast.
Her nipple puckered in the cool air but she held her ground and didn’t run screaming. Frankly, she was pretty proud of herself.
He reached across her and sliced the other side of the dress, and the entire front fell to her waist, leaving her breasts naked to his gaze.
“Unzip it,” Alex ordered, his voice thick with desire.
It was nice to know he wasn’t completely unaffected. In the past, he’d held himself so totally aloof from their sexual encounters she could scream.
She reached around behind her and unzipped the dress’s skirt slowly. The silk slithered over her hips to the floor, leaving her standing in a pool of black, wearing only a black lace thong and high heels.
Alex walked all the way around her slowly, looking but not touching. Although, the heat of his stare felt like it would incinerate her. When he was standing in front of her once more, he reached around her head to remove the long clip holding her hair in its French twist. Her hair tumbled down around her shoulders in thick waves and she couldn’t resist giving her head a shake.
“Don’t move,” he ordered.
She stood there, a few wayward curls half across her face and was surprised when he pulled out his cell phone and took a picture of her. He stepped back a few paces and took several more pictures of her in all her topless glory. He moved behind her and snapped her from behind, and given how skimpy her thong was, the shot wouldn’t leave much to the imagination.
“Bend down,” he ordered coldly, “and grab your ankles.”
Embarrassment sprang to her cheeks in a hot rush. He was back there with his camera, and such a pose would be seriously lewd.
“Do it,” he bit out.
She bent down and grabbed her ankles, burying her face against her knees. She’d asked for him to bust through her sexual boundaries. She couldn’t very well complain now that he was doing it.
But then his finger hooked beneath the narrow thong and lifted it aside, revealing all her most private parts. She hadn’t the slightest doubt he was photographing those as well.
He moved back in front of her. “Unlike me, you still have a reputation to concern yourself with. I will be photographing most of this night’s activities. Also unlike me, you have a soul.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” she blurted.
“A person with no reputation and no soul is rather more difficult to blackmail.”
She stared, shocked. “You plan to blackmail me? But I’ve got nothing you want. You’re rich.”
“I want your silence. These pictures are my insurance.”
“Alex, what goes on in the bedroom stays in the bedroom. I would never kiss and tell.”
He laughed shortly. “You’ll do a lot more than kiss, tonight, lamb.”
“So. You’re still all talk and no action.”
That got a real laugh out of him. “Ahh, sweet Katie. You never fail to surprise me. You should be scared to death right about now, and instead you’re goading me. You’re either incredibly brave or incredibly foolish.”
She cocked her right hip and planted her fist on it. “You gonna get busy or am I taking charge around here?”
Abruptly serious, he snapped, “On your knees.”
She did as he ordered and was not surprised when he reached for his zipper. A frisson of fear skittered down her spine.
But this was Alex. At the end of the day, she trusted him. She’d already trusted him with her life. She reached up and pushed aside his hands. Frankly, she was a little surprised when he let her.
She slid his zipper slid down slowly, revealing black silk boxers. She reached through their flap to grasp his member, which was wide awake. Hot. Hard. Silky. She ran her fingernails down its length and was gratified by the growl she’d elicited.
She pushed all the fabric aside and examined his male parts closely. She’d grown up with a bunch of boys and wasn’t a stranger to men’s bodies. But this body was hers to play with. She explored every inch of him, learning his textures.
Hesitantly, she leaned forward to taste him, and Alex sucked in a sharp breath. That was more like it. She was getting good and tired of all his self-control. She ran her tongue around the tip of his penis and then along his length. She swirled her tongue around the base and then back up the shaft.
His hand plunged into her hair and he pressed her forward, her lips sliding over his flesh. Her mouth filled with his heat and she was gratified when Alex sucked in a sharp breath. She pulled back slightly and then slid forward again. She repeated the process until Alex was groaning aloud. She remembered what it had felt like when he drove her slowly out of her mind and she did her best to return the favor now.
Without warning, his hands clamped on the sides of her head and he pulled out of her. “Enough,” he ground out.
Having to fight for control, was he? Excellent!
He pulled her to her feet and backed her up quickly. The cold quartz of the wet bar touched her hips. He hoisted her up onto the hard surface and pushed her down onto her back. He shoved her thighs apart. It seemed a little high for him to reach her with his?—
Oh. He bent down toward her. His mouth closed on her female flesh and she cried out in shock and pleasure and embarrassment. But then his tongue swirled around the center of her throbbing lust and all sense of propriety evaporated.
He pushed her legs higher and lifted his mouth to mutter, “Grab your ankles.”
It was a good thing she stretched as part of her regular fitness routine. But still, she felt wanton in the extreme clasping her ankles with her shoes still in those naughty stilettos.
The position opened her entirely to his mouth and tongue. The wet, swirling, plunging heat of it brought her to the verge of climax almost immediately. She bit her lower lip hard, doing her best not to scream. A nun was sleeping down the hall, for crying out loud.
“You think you can hold out against me?” Alex growled against her inner thigh. “Think again, little girl.”
His mouth closed on her pulsing flesh, biting and sucking right to the edge of pain. She lurched up off the bar as an orgasm slammed into her, crying out into her forearm to muffle the noise.
“Again,” he ordered.
She was surprised when his mouth closed on her again, and in a matter of seconds another orgasm shot through her with the violence of a lightning bolt.
He grabbed her knees, pulling her forward on the slippery quartz and grasping her around the waist. He lifted her off the bar and turned her around, shoving her down over the back of the couch, her rear end high and vulnerable in the air.
Embarrassment started to return, but then something smooth and hot and throbbing pressed against her wet, wanting flesh. She braced herself for an impact, but instead, the invasion of her body by his happened by slow, maddening degrees.
Alex was prodigiously endowed, and he seemed to take pleasure in letting her take the full measure of him inch by torturously slow inch. The sensation was incredible. Her internal muscles stretched to accommodate him, pulsing around the invader, clasping at his flesh convulsively. He withdrew just as slowly, tantalizing her with a feeling of loss so acute she wanted to sob.
He slammed into her all the way to the hilt so deep inside her she could sob in relief.
He withdrew again, and this time, she pleaded, “Again. Fill me again.”
He obliged and she groaned. Over and over he filled her to bursting, his hips thrusting hard against her. She started to shudder, with her whole body this time, her muscles clenching and releasing in time with his invasions. The shudders built into a giant convulsion around him and she shouted her release into the seat cushions.
An arm went around her waist and another around her legs. He carried her swiftly down the hallway to his bedroom and kicked the door shut behind them. He let her body slide down his, and she craved every delicious masculine inch of him.
“I can’t get enough of you,” she gasped.
He shoved her up against the wall and she grabbed his shoulders and wrapped one leg around his hips. He lifted her and she wrapped her other leg around him as he entered her again.
The wall gave her no recourse from his hard thrusts and she shuddered in ecstasy with each one. He spun away from the wall, and sat her on some sort of vanity. His arms swept everything on its surface to the floor with a clatter, and this position gave him the right angle to press deep, then deeper still, into her.
When that failed to satisfy him, however, he picked her up again without pulling out of her. This time he backed her up against a heavy, soft drape. She grabbed the fabric high over her head and hung on for dear life as he drove up and into her with powerful, flexing thrusts of his buttocks.
“Oh my God,” she groaned.
“Sing for me, Katie. This room is soundproof.”
Sing she did. She moaned and sobbed and even screamed as Alex drove her completely out of her mind. When her arms were trembling with fatigue, he spun her away from the window and laid her on his bed. Her body lifted eagerly to his, matching his urgent rhythm, chasing whatever demons drove him with the same abandon he was.
He grabbed her hips and pulled her to him hard. She rose willingly in his hands, giving herself to him without reservation. She literally sobbed in gratitude as he filled her over and over, harder and harder, faster and faster.
She lost herself in an alternate universe where nothing existed but Alex and the raging inferno between the two of them. Time ceased to have meaning as the blaze roared around them consuming everything she’d ever been before this moment.
She urged him on, praising him and pleading with him, and finally, when all words failed her, crying out in continuous, endless release as her body exploded and kept on exploding, over and over and over like the climax of a mighty fireworks display.
Alex’s shout joined hers and he slammed into her one last time, staying buried deep within her for an eternity while his body pulsed along with hers.
She went limp beneath him but continued to hold him in her arms. Thankfully, he made no immediate effort to move away from her.
Gradually her breathing slowed and his did the same. His bedroom was spacious and dark and cool. After a lovely eternity with his reassuring weight on her, he rolled away and stood beside the bed. He pulled down the bed covers and tucked her under them.
“Sleep now,” Alex ordered quietly.
“Aren’t you going to join me?” she asked as his shadow moved toward another doorway.
“Later.”
And with that, he slipped out of the room.
She felt bereft. Abandoned. Why hadn’t he stayed with her to cuddle? Or was this all part of his larger plan to convince her of what a twisted, unlovable bastard he was?
Thing was, he’d given her nothing but pleasure and more pleasure, tonight. He talked a big game about being a bad guy, but she had yet to see any evidence of it.
Next time, though, she wasn’t letting him go when he tried to walk away from her in his bed.