Abduction (72 page)

But when she tried his fingers clamped down and she felt how utterly in his control she was. She trusted him. Completely. Vaughn would never hurt her. Never. But under her faith some primal part of her brain sent bolt of fear-laden adrenaline through her body, and a rush of heightened arousal came in its wake. He had her. Helpless.

His eyes probed her, roaming over her face. She was aware of meeting his eyes, realized her brow was furrowed, that her mouth was open in a startled gasp as he thrust into her again, so hard, so deep he knocked the breath from her lungs; it came out a high-pitched groan. The next time his hips pumped her cry was even louder. Thrust after thrust she hear herself cry out, unable to keep the air in her lungs, unable to let go of it quietly. She didn't know, at first, if her noises expressed shock or pain or something else, but the more she struggled—an involuntary instinct born in her lower brain more 655

than a conscious need to relieve the torment Vaughn was inflicting—and the more forcefully he subdued her, the more intensely she felt her body reacting to his brutal, penetrating thrusts.

His eyes still fixed on her, he was sweating, grunting now as he fucked her, trembling Shuddering.

She lost herself. She was gone, buried alive under Vaughn's huge, forceful body.

His scent—his body, sweat, soap; his face, watchful, tense; his breathing—heavy, restrained; his body—hard, long and lean, taut and flexing, moving; his skin, smooth, hotter and slicker moment by moment. He'd taken her over. Entirely.

He came on, hotter. Harder. His hand covered her mouth. Clamped down. Hard.

He went still. Terror flitted against her hyper-wrought nerves, sickening as a fat, groping moth. A futile whimper died under his palm.

He stopped. Still insider her, just panting. And watching. Reading her. And the second he stopped she felt her want rising up through the thrill of her helplessness.

He began, fucking her again, jolting her with his violent thrusts, driving her whimpering moans from her lungs, stifling them with the palm clamped over her mouth, her body pinned to the mattress beneath his, her wrists clamped overhead in one strong hand, something happened to her. She fell apart. Deliciously. Her body, her voice, her will no longer hers. All she was feeling—emotion and sensation. She shook and wailed, desperate with uncertainty, want, pleasure. Wracked. Destroyed.

With a few subtle movements he teased her climax out to its furthest limit, feeling her, watching her twitch and shudder under him, around him, homing his ear on her little caught breaths, her groans that were almost sobs, faint and muffled under his hand, hot 656

and moist from her mouth. Then, when he'd wrung every last ripple of her orgasm from her, when he knew her body was at its peak of hypersensitive fragility, with a single sharp move of his hips he pulled out of her body. She convulsed and sucked in her breath. He hovered over her, his cock so hard and heavy it ached. She gazed up at him, raw and vulnerable from her climax. He waited. Panting.

“You haven't...” she said softly after a long, long wait.

“No.”

“Don't you want to...aren't you going to...”

“come?”

She nodded. The fine baby hairs framing her face were damp and curling.

”Yes, Dev. But I've been holding back. Can you take more?” He watched her still, then recede. Just slightly. Maybe she was already a little afraid. That his body, so large and hard, so pumped up with hot need, might be too much for her, now that he'd ridden her so hard, so long, sapped her strength, wrung her out.

“Yes,” she finally answered, her voice soft but her eyes steady, like she was sure she'd weighed the gravity of her answer.

“Then turn over.”

Hungry for it, he swallowed up the look of fear-tinged uncertainty that flared in her eyes as her lips parted. No words, though. He waited for her. She'd protest. Or comply.

“Vaughn, I...”

Her hot, damp palm was pressed against his chest.

Hesitation. He pounced. In one move he straddled her thighs, in the next he gripped her arms. Then a taunt. Just enough of a twist so she'd know. Not enough to turn her, though, without her cooperation. She fought him. Stayed flat on her back beneath him. Lips parted to protest, but all was silent except for rapid little rabbit breaths. Now he used his strength. Tightened his grip on her arms—so small where his fingers curved into her soft flesh, just below her armpits, that his thumbs met his forefingers—and twisted. She bent her knees and planted her feet, fighting him, struggling to stay on her back. But getting her over was easy. Vaughn pressed his hips up against her ass and listened for her little whimper. When it came his still-hard prick lurched.

“You took Conrad where you've never taken me.”

“Yes,” he heard just faintly.

Against his body he could feel her, warm and faintly trembling. In his left hand he gripped a fistful of her hair, silky and warm between his fingers and against his palm.

From behind he watched her head turn, her face coming into profile. He tried to keep his voice smooth on his excited breath.

“Like this I can watch, see your face through everything.” Every moment he was waiting for a word, but she never said it. But he was being careful. Going slow. Giving her the chance.

“Conrad was so, so gentle with you that day,” Vaughn whispered by her ear, leaving her to guess at the implication of his observation.

Straddling her hips, he hooked his feet between her ankles and flexed, forcing her legs wide, and almost as directly causing her fists to clutch at the sheet, her teeth to 658

clamp down on her lips. With one hand still sunk in her hair, holding her down, he pressed a lube-slicked finger between her cheeks and began to tease her hole, hardening and panting to feel her writhing a little beneath him, to hear her groan, half-muffled in the pillow. When he drove his finger into her she sucked in her breath then let out a little whimper. The tight grip of her body on his finger, her liquid heat gave him an uneasy thrill. He didn't ready her for his cock by fucking her with his finger. He just let her feel his finger open her, sliding in and up, gliding slowly out again, leaving her clench tight and slick. When he pressed the glossy head of his lubed cock to her pucker, it was tight as ever and a shudder rippled through her body. Quick and shallow her breaths rasped over the pillow, into the room.

With one small push he put the pressure on. Devan's back flexed rigid. Her knuckles went white where she gripped the covers.

”Dev,” he breathed against her ear. Her delicate little ear, pale, usually, reddening now, “be soft. Go soft for me.”

Between her pink and parted lips she drew a long, audible breath, then let it go.

Her body slackened under him, the pink came back into her joints as she lay her hands flat on the mattress. Slow, slow Vaughn went into her, his cock coaxing her open little by little until she'd let him in and he sank his hips down against her ass. Under him her body was shaking, her breath heaving.

Soft, he kissed her hot neck, the tender skin between her jaw and shoulder.

“Does it hurt, Dev?”

Her head moved a little, like she was trying to answer with a nod or a shake, but it wasn't clear.

“Dev?”

“No,” she breathed. “It doesn't hurt.”

“You'll tell me, if it does.”

This time she nodded.

Now he moved, just slowly at first. Getting her used to him, used to having that part of her used. Then he took hold of her hips and pulled her up and back with him, onto her knees, and got to really fucking her.

“Dev. Keep your face so I can see you,” he huffed down at her as his hips jolted her over and over.

Watching her, her eyes sometimes wide and startled, sometimes shut tight, her mouth always, always open for her fast, shallow, voiced breaths, he let himself go harder, faster, let his thrusts jar her body, knock her breaths from her lungs. When he reached around with one hand, touched her cunt, her soft skin sticky from their sex, the inside of her slick and swollen with fresh want, she keened sweetly. Driven on he went on touching, provoking her provoking sounds, driving hard into her, never hearing, never seeing a the sign to relent. And then her mouth went wide and a long, high sound rasped out of her and the slick and swollen flesh of her rippled over his fingers and soon after he came, hard, hearing, spurred by the violent cry of his own release.

Still panting his exertion, the release of the fierce need he'd pumped up half the afternoon, first all anticipation, then sensation, he touched her shoulder. She was soft.

Still. He coaxed her onto her side, drew close to her, trailing tender caresses down the nape of her neck, her back, her arms. Her flushed face was close, but her eyes stayed 660

closed. Or her gaze was cast so low it seemed like her eyes were closed. He kissed her warm, damp forehead. Kissed her cheek. Her nose. Still he couldn't see her eyes.

“Dev.”

Finally, when he'd sighed her name a second time, she lifted her eyes to him.

There was none of the anger he'd suddenly feared he'd find there. She just looked a little afraid. But as they lay there looking at one another, the fear in her cleared away.

He'd known she'd need reassurance. That she'd be afraid she'd see a change, in his way of looking at her, being with her. That most of her fear of what he'd just done had been her anxiety that to give herself to him that way would be to taint the sweetness of what they had together. Nothing to blame or laugh at. Too many people seemed to actually think that way. So he was prepared to prove himself different. And, meanwhile, to exploit these little false fears to give her the excitement she craved.

So he didn't talk her out of her baseless fears. Short of going to real extremes, they were the only leverage he had for accessing the fear that aroused her so much.

So, for now he just pulled her into his arms, nuzzling and kissing until Dev softened and warmed, then smiled as they looked at each other, and finally began to touch him back.

“Does it ever worry you, all the time they spend on their own?” Vaughn asked.

“What? Jeremy and Devan?” Gordon looked vaguely surprised. Then he seemed to consider for a moment. Turning his attention from the computer monitor to focus an intent gaze he said to Vaughn, “Am I afraid they're up there doing dirty things? Is that what you mean?”

That answered that. Gordon looked, sounded, what? The opposite of jealous.

Vaughn pushed down a smile.

“Something like that.”

Gordon rose from his chair, perched on the edge of the desk, so close that Vaughn had to resist a temptation to take a step back. Gordon grinned, maybe at Vaughn's insinuation, maybe at his nervous shifting.

“I know you know. About their night of almost-sex.”

Vaughn smiled. So Gordon knew.

“I don't know how it is, between you and Devan,” Gordon said in a voice so low and slow that it was almost...seductive, “but Jeremy knows better than to go messing around with anyone, especially Devan. Unless I'm there to watch.” What a tease. For a second Vaughn had been afraid Gordon was about to let him down.

“You look too amused,” Gordon went on, “for someone worried his love is upstairs playing doctor with her study buddy.”

“No. It doesn't worry me.” The warmth spreading through him, brought on by Gordon's designation of Devan as Vaughn's love churned as it caught on the other phrase. Gordon's recurring references suggesting the others were children irked Vaughn.

“So?” Gordon was searching Vaughn's face, and Vaughn tried not to squirm under the other's scrutinizing stare. “What's this little chat about, then? I don't suppose that it worries Devan, all the time we spend on our own, while they're off being collegiate?”

”No,” Vaughn laughed, then something made is chest tight and he stopped laughing. “I don't think so.” Then something occurred to him. “Does it worry Jeremy?”

“A little,” Gordon said, “But Jeremy knows that anything I could do in secret would turn me on twice as much, doing it in front of him. And the idea of that, I know for a fact, gets my boy stiff in the shorts.”

What he was saying and the way Gordon was looking at him had Vaughn's heart hammering. And it felt like someone had taken a whisk to the thoughts that had been lined up so neatly in his mind when he'd initiated this conversation. Well, no, not this conversation. A different one.

“I hope,” Gordon's voice unsettled the fresh arrangement of thoughts in Vaughn's head, “you're about to make me an indecent proposal.”

Vaughn laughed, amused, unnerved, flattered. This warmth made him want to move away, across the room. But he didn't.

“I am. But not the one you're expecting. I hope you won't be too disappointed.” Devan filled the stainless steel martini shaker with ice and poured in four shots of vodka.

“Gordon takes his with an alive, right?”

“Two, actually. And,” Jeremy's voice dropped to a whisper as he glanced toward the shuttered doors dividing the kitchen from the sitting room, playing at conspiracy,

“don't let on I told you. He actually likes it a little dirty.”

“As if that's a secret,” Devan teased back, handing Jeremy the shaker. “You give that a good shake. Now we put just a drop of vermouth in each glass, and a couple 663

olives. And now that you’ve got the vodka good and cold, just pour it over the olives,” she concluding her lesson, then looked up at him coyly as she handed him a glass and clinked hers against it.

“To new stages,” she said, locking her eyes on his.

Jeremy lifted his glass in the gesture of a toast, but he looked grim. It was fun, being in New York, especially now that he'd been accepted to the program he'd applied to at the University of Washington, so there was no more feeling that discussing her pending grad career was a slight to him. But they were both sad at the coming separation.

“That’s definitely a different flavor,” he said after he'd put the glass to his lips and taken a sip.

The face he'd made was starting to fade. She took a step nearer to him. So near, so deliberately, that the martini glass, full to the very brim, was shaking in his hand. He seemed to be making a conscious effort not to take a step back, to put a comfortable bit of space between them. Still looking up at him she came still nearer. Then trapped his hand where he held his glass in front of him, his fingers curved lightly around the inverted, conical hollow of his glass. Her breast was just an inch from his hand. His breathing altered, sped as very slightly, very subtly she leaned forward, shutting out that precious inch of air between them, and grazed the back of his finger. Then, still watching his tormented face, she began, ever so slightly, twisting at the waist, sliding the point of her breast lightly back and forth against the back of his finger.