32. Rhett
Rhett
I resist the demand to fall to my knees when notes begin playing from Ana. She is magnificent. The most exquisite and perfect thing I’ve ever seen. Or heard. Or felt. She weaves the sort of magic in the air that makes the world feel less cruel and gravity less heavy.
Ana moves as if she’s one with the song that touches soul-deep.
Her body’s so graceful, answering to the push and pull of her bow against the strings as if the world is lost to her.
Except me. Every now and then her eyes flick to me and such raw emotion spills over her face, like she’s communicating all she can’t in our language with music instead.
And I hear her. I fucking hear and see every piece of her that she bares to me and my chest pounds to give her all of me right back. No more hiding.
I became fiercely protective of Ana the moment I met her.
When I got to know her, I decided she was mine no matter what happened, even if I couldn’t keep contact with her after my post. But it’s in this moment I fall in love with her.
Since I first laid eyes on her I’ve been climbing toward this inevitability.
The plummet there’s no coming back from.
I am wholly, irrevocably in love with this woman.
It’s the kind of love I didn’t know truly existed.
A love that believes in immortality, because no amount of time on this damned earth is enough with her.
My heart belongs to her; my soul belongs with her.
I’m absolutely terrified to condemn her to me.
It’s selfish. Cruel. She deserves far more than I can ever be for her.
Yet as her song finishes and the crowd erupts with applause, I barely hear any of it.
I move to the gravity always pulling me toward her, and as she lowers her violin and searches for me with the brightest grin that banishes all the darkness around me for just that moment, I take her face in my hands and claim her mouth—her body—her soul—uncaring of the crowd around us when nothing matters but her.
I need Ana to feel even a fraction of what’s taking over me.
Fear, passion, desperation. It floods out of me and onto her in a kiss that is transcendent.
We break apart, sharing breath as I lean my forehead to hers.
“What was that for?” she asks, so oblivious to my reforming world around her.
I kiss her again. Just once.
“I need to have you,” I say. “Now.”
We find the closest hotel, not caring about lavish or anything when I’m aching to get her to bed.
I can hardly keep my hands off her, my lips off hers, still reeling from the fact she’s here in Philadelphia at all and drunk on the high of the performance I didn’t anticipate could strike such euphoria in me.
Every now and then my wicked demons surface. They want to banish this comfort on today of all days. Sarah died four years ago today, and I battle with the notion that engaging with Ana like this means defiling Sarah’s memory.
“Hey,” Ana says softly, wrapping her arms around me as we head up to our room in the elevator. “Stay with me.”
I know what she means. She can read me like a fucking book, and that is both daunting and liberating.
“I’m right here, baby,” I say, kissing her and drinking in every little breathy moan of hers that makes my dick twitch.
My arm tightens around her waist, and the way she lifts herself into my arms so easily, legs circling my waist, further proves to my demons this is right. Something sure and promising I didn’t think I’d ever find again.
Our mouths barely part as I carry her to our room and swipe the key card. Our jackets and scarves are on the floor in seconds and she’s pressed under me on the bed.
I can’t stop touching her with a new wild hunger and raw passion now the confession is free in my mind. I love her. I will love her, protect her, and worship her until the day I die.
Yet as I finally pull back to look at her beautiful flushed face, I won’t say it.
It will be my salvation at the end of this nightmare.
One that began not just four years ago, but the day my parents died and I became the meticulously crafted weapon of a monster.
Alistair Lanshall has to die. Then Anastasia Kinsley will have the power to save me from the wreckage of all I’ve become, or she’ll shatter me once and for all.
“Are you okay?” she asks gently, tracing delicate fingers over my nose and cheek.
“Far more than okay, little bird,” I say, kissing her chest and down the dip of her little red dress, which is driving me to madness. “You didn’t have to come all this way. I didn’t expect you to.”
“I know, it just ... feels right.”
Yes, it fucking does.
“I can’t tell you what it means to me,” I say, barely a whisper when this woman is making me feel more in one night than I have in a lifetime.
Ana pushes up on her elbows. “You can show me.”
I groan, kissing her again. Deeply—but nothing ever feels enough. That’s what I discover love is: being forever greedy and yearning for one person about whom there are infinite things to discover. I’ll never stop wanting. Craving. Demanding. Everything I can get from her. I’m completely undone.
“We should get you warmed up,” I mutter against her lips.
“I’m sure you’ll figure that out.”
Before she can pull me down I slip off the bed, hardly able to suppress my amusement at her adorable bewilderment.
I go into the bathroom, turning on the shower, not wanting to risk her catching an illness from the cold.
I find her standing with her back to me.
Ana rubs the goose bumps on her arms and then reaches behind herself for her dress zipper. I catch it before her fingers can pull.
Undressing Ana is like unwrapping the best fucking Christmas present.
Her dress pools to the floor and I have to take a moment to close my eyes, press my lips to her shoulder, and collect all my damn sanity while my cock juts at the sight of her lacy red underwear and high white stockings clipped to a suspender belt.
She turns in my arms, circling hers around my neck with a seductive twinkle in her eye. “Merry Christmas, Agent Kaiser,” she whispers.
She’s going to be the death of me, and at the same time I’ve never felt more alive.
Tucking the loose strands of her deep red hair behind her ear, I say for the first time in years, with nothing on my mind but Ana, “Merry Christmas, baby.”
I bend, lightly biting her peaked nipple through the thin lace of her bra. She gives a delighted moan of surprise.
“You look so fucking exquisite I can’t decide if I want to fuck you right now with it on or take you in the shower.”
“Both,” she pants, tightening her fist in my hair as I give her other nipple the same attention.
“Greedy girl.”
I plant hands on her waist, and Ana squeals as I lift and throw her on the bed beside us. I’m upon her like a starved, insatiable man, pushing her thighs apart and kissing along the inside of her soft flesh. She’s a damn goddess in her red lace against the white sheets. Mine. All fucking mine.
I waste no time in hooking her panties to the side and running my tongue through her slick pussy.
It practically melts for me. Humming in satisfaction with her cry, I suck hard on her clit and then spear into her like I can’t get deep enough.
Her hips undulate against me, and I love that about her, how she takes what she needs.
Stopping my assault, I climb up her body before hooking her waist. She gasps as I flip us, hands planting on my chest.
“You’re going to get up here and ride my face like you’ve been begging to,” I say. My dick is rock-hard restrained in my pants and it’s torture, but I need this to be about her for now. Need her to know how treasured she is.
She looks unsure for a moment. “I-I’ve never done that before.”
That arouses the fuck out of me and also annoys the hell out of me. How has no one else ever given this woman every single thing she desires without her needing to ask for it?
“Good,” I growl, coaxing her by her thighs as she shuffles up my chest and over my shoulders. “Hold onto the headboard and lower those hips for me.”
Like a good fucking girl she obliges, and the moment her pussy is back on my face I devour her like my favorite fucking meal.
She tries to push up in her uncertainty at first, but my hands around her thighs pull her right back down.
It takes a short moment, but she begins to find her rhythm, moving her hips and knowing exactly where she wants me to fuck her with my tongue and mouth.
Slipping a finger inside her draws out the most beautiful sound, and I add another one right away, greedy for her noises and the way she rocks harder against my face.
My tongue flicks over her clit while I slide in and out of her tight heat.
She’s close. I can tell from her short pants and the quickening pace as she chases her orgasm.
While I want to feel her explode over me, I don’t forget her little stunt in the last hotel we stayed in.
When her pussy clamps tighter on my fingers I pull them out, stopping my assault, and she quivers with a precious cry from the denial of finishing.
I chuckle darkly, kissing each of her thighs. “Oh, little bird, you followed through on your threat. I’m holding to mine.” Unhooking her thigh, I reach up her back and unclip her bra.
“Please,” she says, so needy for the orgasm she was on the cusp of.
“We have a few more of those pleas to go before I let you come.”
Reaching lower, I unclip her belt before peeling her long, stunning legs from each of the white stockings. Then, finally, I hook her panties and slide them off. Her full nakedness will never fail to make a deranged man out of me.