24. Primrose
PRIMROSE
I whisper his name when I’d meant to say stop because there’s something unnervingly tender about the way he looks at me. The way his gaze moves over my face, his eyes the kind of blue that only appears once the sun begins to sink. The color is beguiling and fathomless. Impossible to look away from.
His hand lifts, the action so slow that I can almost predict what’s about to happen.
His finger will graze my cheek; maybe he’ll tuck away a stray strand of my hair.
He’ll murmur something sweet, and his words will dance tantalizingly across my lips.
I can predict it, and I should stop it. But I don’t as my lips part in anticipation when his fingers slide past my cheek with barely a graze.
He’s going to cup the nape of my neck and draw me—
“Ungh!”
The noise I make as he tightens his hand at the base of my skull should be embarrassing as my scalp comes alive with a wash of electric-like tingles, the hard tug resonating everywhere. It’s like a million nerve endings being tied together before bursting in unison.
Who knew it could feel like this?
“Give yourself to me,” he growls, his cheek pressed to mine. “Let’s finish what we started.”
“N-now?” That’s not what I meant to say.
“Now. Tonight. Tomorrow. All the days and nights until you leave.” He rains kisses across my jaw, his lips an open-mouthed slide down my neck.
“No biting.” My words sound as weak as a kitten, because I crave it.
“I would show you such pleasures.” The vibration of his words shudder through me in a wave of pure temptation, and my resolve stretches like cheap knicker elastic as he flexes into me again.
He’s so hot and hard, and I’m so—
Stupid.
I said I wouldn’t do this again. But those French whispers of his are something else. I know I should’ve told him I understand, but it’s too late now.
My fascination snaps from head to body when Luc peels open a button on my shirt. Another, then another, then he’s pulling the cotton from the waist of my shorts, and I’m not saying no. I can’t seem to make myself.
“You would never doubt yourself again. Say yes,” he whispers as his lips ghost over mine.
Say yes. To him. To a month of lust stitched tightly around the real reason I’m here. For Emmy. For his children.
“It would be madness,” I whisper, breathing him in. Utter and complete selfishness, I think with a shiver.
“Submit to it.” He traces his forefinger down the center of my chest, his clever hands moving to frame my breasts over my bra.
My white, lacy bra, the same one I ignored the whisper of truth as I’d selected it.
Wear something pretty… just in case. I give a soft sigh as he molds my flesh. “Submit to me.”
His dark head dips, his mouth engulfing my aching nipple over the fabric. I gasp, a seismic ripple of pleasure overtaking me at the sucking tug.
“Let it pull you under,” the devil whispers as he slips his fingers into the cups, releasing my nipples. His tongue licks long and lushly, drawing them into hot, aching points as his dark eyes watch my reaction, feeding from it almost.
His dark head bowed over my pale flesh, my white bra, and his lips as rosy as my glistening nipples. The sight is obscene.
“Oh, God.” I’m nothing but a cliché. The nanny, seduced by the older man. The boss. The dominant daddy. It’s so wrong, but it’s probably also the reason pleasure pulses through me.
One of the reasons. As though he understands—as though he somehow divines my thoughts, my sudden deviancy, he palms my pussy over my shorts. Clasps it tight. I make a noise that’s anything but elegant as I buck into his hand.
“You’re so fucking sexy.” His mouth plunders mine as he presses his thumb over my clit, almost getting me off on the seam.
I’m throbbing, held in the grip of him, pinned and desperate for the kind of praise I shouldn’t want to hear from him.
I know this is wrong—I didn’t come to Mallorca to be screwed seven ways from Sunday by some rich, bossy brute.
But I long to be picked apart by him. I want him to teach me.
Show me all that I’ve missed. I want him to fuck me so hard I break apart before he pulls my hair as he puts me back together again.
My fingers fold around the edge of his desk as though hanging on for dear life. I tip back my head as the Mediterranean sun blazes through the window, bright enough to bleach the world into blindness. No shadows or darkness to protect me now.
Excitement ripples through me at the thought, soft and silky, like caramel through ice cream. Anyone could see me, naked and spread across the desk. Or open this door and see us like this. The risk feels like lightning in my blood, the possibility as real as his hold.
His head lifts, and his gaze follows. Unlike last night, he offers me no reassurance but a sly-looking smile.
“I would show you off to everyone,” he whispers, low and rough. “Stripped bare for my pleasure.”
Heat consumes me. Shame and pleasure wash through me. It’s such a heady concoction. Why do I react like this? It feels so unreal, and I don’t mean like porn. Him and me, now—this moment. It’s worship and war. It’s risk and its seduction as he pops the button on my shorts.
My body moves with the violence of the motion as he drags them from me, my bum moving across the burr walnut. I want to say something clever as he yanks them down my legs, but all that comes out is a caught gasp as his thumb slips inside me, peeling me open to bare my clit.
“You like the sound of that, don’t you, little flower?”
I nod like a marionette, hot, sweet shame showering me as my hips move into his touch. As my bum sticks to the desk. As I hear myself growing so embarrassingly wet.
I moan as he strokes over the soft rise of my clit, both my brain and body seduced. His fingers slide lower, two fingers driving inside me. A tight revolution of his thumb over my clit and I’m done for.
“They’d watch you bloom. Breathe you in as they watch the flush of your excitement stain your milky skin.”
“Oh, God.” I close my eyes, seeing myself up on that stage, faceless people watching as Luc drives me to my peak.
“But only I would get to fuck you.”
“Yes!”
“Mon dieu, you’re so fucking perfect.”
I want to tell him I’m not. That he should punish me.
Fuck me against the glass like the shameless slut I am in my head.
But my nice girls don’t admit such things.
Not that I look like much of a good girl right now.
Legs parted, chest heaving, nipples wet and glistening. And loving every minute of this.
In a moment of daring, I slide my thighs wider. He smiles, an oddly sweet-looking thing but with teeth, like he can see right through me as he brings his mouth to my ear.
“Can I help you with something?” he taunts.
“You should stop talking and do something more useful with your mouth.”
His chuckle is filthy as he drives those fingers deep inside me. Strong fingers. Experienced hands. I want to feel them everywhere as he twists his wrist, his dark lashes flickering as his lips close over my nipple again.
I arch my back, gifting my body to him. I want what’s left of my clothes to disintegrate as his clever mouth slides down the underside my of breast. A press of teeth and I moan before he kisses his way down my torso, teeth and tongue and lips exploring every inch.
I’m strung so tight, I feel I might break. Snap like the stem of a flower.
This is such a rush. I’m moments away from coming apart under the hands of this man.
Again. His fingers sunk so deep and curling inside me as the smooth glide of his freshly shaved cheek touches my belly.
He bites the soft flesh, and I buck. And I curse.
He hasn’t even gotten to the good part yet, and I’m already on the brink.
I feel so light-headed, I wonder if I might pass out.
I inhale a deep breath, hoping that will help.
It doesn’t. I feel like I am nothing but the place where his mouth has been and the places it hasn’t reached yet.
His teeth graze just south of my navel, before the point of his tongue slides lower, and slips inside me. It feels so good, it ought to be illegal. I lose track of everything—my dignity, the awareness of this risk—as a ragged moan slips out of me.
Luc stops, just for a heartbeat, glancing up at me as his mouth lifts with a slow, hungered kind of amusement; his face is close enough to drink in my every twitch.
“Those sounds make me want to swallow you whole.”
I shouldn’t make so much noise, I know. But the walls are thick and his office far from the kitchen.
“Make me want to suck the marrow from your bones.” His voice sounds so rough, the refinement of the man nowhere to be seen.
“You make me forget everything I’m supposed to know.
” French this time. A language I’m not meant to understand and a sentiment I’m not meant to comprehend as his tongue flicks at me again.
My hips buck clumsily—I don’t care. I just want this. I need this, I fear.
“So slick and pink.” The sound is more of a masculine groan as though the sight of my pussy is some source of awe as he peels me open by the v of his fingers.
All the fingers. All inside me.
My hips rise as his tongue swipes my clit, my hands grasping his hair as he engulfs it with his lips. Sucking. Swirling. Flicking. The sensations feel enormous, and my cries echo around the room. This is so intense, my whole body electrified as his fingers and tongue work again and again.
“Please!” Please more? Please stop? I can barely think, held together as I am between the desk and this very bad decision.
“God, Luc!” It’s not even a plea—the noise is pure relief as he whispers his praise, a spill of rasping heat of yes and a good girl and you taste so fucking good falling from his lips.
I come so hard my teeth rattle, but he doesn’t slow.
And I don’t ask him to as his tongue licks and laves, keeping up the divine kind of pressure that draws out in waves.
My muscles lock, my knees, the keening noise I make raw and primal.
It’s almost ugly. But it’s real. And I need it. God, I need it.
A minute or a year later, a bird screeches in the sky, and the spell inside the room flexes under the weight of a reality that feels too bright.
Luc’s smooth cheek rubs against my inner thigh, and I shiver at the press of his lips. “The angels must’ve had a hand in making you.”
Did he say that in English or French? I can’t process as I shakily sit straighter, drawing my legs together as the wet pleasure between my thighs grows cool.
I frown at the window, reality and fantasy at odds. I don’t like it.
“The terrace is walled,” Luc offers, reading my expression again.
“That’s no guarantee of privacy,” I murmur to myself.
“True.” But he looks amused. “I wonder if that would have mattered.”
I shuffle my bum squeakily across the desk—I die at the sound—and out from under him. “Of course it matters. I’m not like that. You—you don’t know me.”
“I know what you like.” His expression is so shockingly sure that I do a double take.
“That doesn’t mean anything.” I catch a glimpse of myself in the window, my shirt askew.
Nipples still hard enough to take out an eye.
“Sex doesn’t mean anything.” I pull the sides together, unable to look at him suddenly.
“I can’t believe I let this happen again.
” My voice sounds hard, though I’m mostly angry with myself.
“I thought… last night.” He stands, his eyes careful as they follow me.
“Last night shouldn’t have happened. This shouldn’t have happened. Please don’t ask to see me alone again because I won’t.”
He cants his head. “Until next time.”
At first glance, looks unbothered, casually leaning back against his desk. But there’s something about the action that seems forced.
“There won’t be a next time.”
Somewhere outside, a lawn mower starts up, and I think of the staff milling around the grounds dressed in dusty green overalls. The thought of being seen again makes my skin feel clammy.
“Primrose.” The way he says my name, it’s like he’s mildly disappointed. “No one is forcing you into this.”
“I know that.” Just as I know I shouldn’t be here. But when I’m next to him, it’s like all my good sense just falls out of my head.
“Do you think you don’t deserve to know the pleasure of sex?”
“I know I do.” I know that now. “I’m not broken.”
“No, you’re not. Not for me.”
My answer is an unhappy-sounding laugh as I swipe up my shorts. First, he pushes me out of the door, then I let him lift me to the kitchen countertop and go to town on me. And now this, on his desk—with his children milling around!
I am so angry with myself right now—and angry with him.
“I suppose it’s time to test that hypothesis,” I mutter, stabbing my legs into my shorts.
“Hypothesis?” I glance up as he rises from the desk as I imagine Poseidon would surge from the sea. Except Poseidon’s shirt wouldn’t look like it’s spent time at the bottom of the ocean’s laundry basket. “Test it how?” he demands.
I continue fastening my shirt, taking care to match each pair; button to correct buttonhole.
No mean feat when his angry tone feels like a finger curling inside me.
Why, I don’t know. I tuck my shirt into the waistband and take a moment to smooth the hair from my face.
Then I force myself to look at him. Oh, man, he looks pissed.
“Obviously,” I begin evenly, “with someone else.” Wow, where did that come from?
“Who?” he almost bellows.
“Alejandro.” I pivot and make for the door—vite! vite!—despite my Bambi-esque legs.