Anew: Book Two: Hunted (28 page)

Amelia

A
heavy languor weighs
my limbs as Ian carries me back into the suite. By all rights, I should be
exhausted yet incredibly my body is still aroused. I can’t help but wonder what
is happening to me. With all that Ian and I have shared in the past, I’ve never
been this insatiable.

Tonight, for the first time, I find the power he has over me
frightening. I’ve become lost in him so easily, slave to the forces he
unleashes. Even in the grip of ecstasy, I can’t think of anything other than
pleasing him.

He’s doing this to me deliberately. I’m certain of that but
I don’t know why. Has he set out to prove his dominance and my own willingness
to submit? Or is something else driving him? How does Davos and the Council
meeting fit into all of this, as I’m sure it does? What has happened to banish
his concerns and strip him of all restraint?

I can only wonder, especially about the latter, as with
quick, long strides, he takes me directly into the bedroom. It’s in the same
opulent style as the antechamber, the walls covered in burgundy silk that glows
warmly in the light cast by crystal chandeliers suspended from the coffered
ceiling. The bed itself is massive, framed in dark mahogany with a box canopy
in which lengths of tufted gold silk have been woven. At its foot is a red
velvet settee. Ian sits down there, holding me on his lap. He strokes me gently
through the black lace robe that still hangs open. His touch is light,
tantalizing, and unmistakably proprietary.

“Are you all right, baby?” he asks softly.

My head is tucked against his shoulder, my knees bent and my
legs drawn up. I’m surrounded by his strength, protected and cherished. It
would be so easy to succumb to that but for the growing need I feel to right
the balance between us. So far, the initiative has been entirely his. It’s time
for that to change.

I straighten and lightly brush my lips along the curve of
his jaw. “Truthfully, I’m a little overwhelmed at the moment. This is turning
out to be quite a night.”

“It’s Carnival,” he says with a grin. “Anything goes.”

“Really, anything?”

“Absolutely, sweetheart, no limits.”

I struggle to repress a smile. “Well, in that case--” Taking
him by surprise, I slip from his lap to the floor covered by a thick Aubusson
carpet and sit back on my heels. Naked, sprawled on the settee, Ian is a
glorious sight. Even after the climax we shared on the balcony, his cock is
semi-erect. The man’s stamina is truly impressive.

I wiggle closer and put my hands on his knees, urging them
further apart. He tenses and stares at me, his eyes heavy-lidded and dark with
the smoke of barely banked fires.

“Amelia…?”

“Anything goes,” I remind him. “Isn’t that what you said?”

Before he can reply, I move between his legs, lower my head,
and stroke the tip of my tongue around the velvety smooth crest of his cock. He
tastes delicious, a combination of my own juices and the traces of his come.
Immediately, I want more. Feeling very daring, I suck the first few inches of
him into my mouth. Within moments, he’s swelling, becoming longer and thicker.
Gratified, I suck harder, taking more of him. My tongue finds the sensitive
ridge under his crest and flicks back and forth.

Ian gives a muffled curse and drives his hands into my hair.
He holds my head still and lifts his hips, thrusting deeper into my mouth so that
his cock brushes the back of my throat. As he pulls out, he says, “Is this what
you want, baby, me inside you like this?” As though in emphasis, he thrusts
again, even deeper this time. For a moment, I can’t breathe. The sensation is
at once terrifying and darkly arousing. A part of me that I don’t want to
acknowledge responds to that. But another, and at least for the moment larger
part, rebels.

Carefully but deliberately, I let him feel my teeth. He
stills at once, smart man that he is. A low, reluctant laugh breaks from him.
“We could be at an impasse here, sweetheart,” he says.

I let him go, rock back on my heels, and smile at him. “I
hope not. You taste delicious.”

His gaze narrows. He looks at me speculatively. “And you
want more?”

“I do, yes.”

“Good, so do I, but we do it my way.” When I frown, he
laughs. “Trust me, if you want this, you’ll like what I have in mind even
more.”

I’m intrigued. Whatever can he mean?

Ian stands, drawing me up with him. Bending slightly, he
tucks an arm under my knees, lifts me, and carries me over to the bed. Before
he lays me down, he strips off the counterpane, tossing it onto the floor. The
sheets are a dark burgundy red, cool and smooth against my heated skin.

To my surprise, he positions me across the width rather than
the length of the bed so that my head hangs over the edge, both resting in and
supported by the palm of his hand. I’m not uncomfortable, just startled.

“Remember you wanted this,” he says in the moment before he
nudges the smooth, hot tip of his cock against my mouth. “And we can stop at
any time.” His voice reverberates in me.

My lips part. He slips into over my tongue and deeper. In
this position, he has a straight path down my throat. As though in answer to my
yearning, he says, “Take me, sweetheart. All of me.”

I obey without hesitation. Above me, his face is taut with
need, his hips pistoning as he moves into me slowly and carefully. A
combination of multiple orgasms, more champagne than I’ve ever had before, and
the effect of Ian himself leaves me utterly relaxed.

Instinctively, I feel a need to swallow. As the muscles of
my throat begin to ripple around him, he grunts with pleasure. “Good,
so
fucking good
.”

He strokes a hand down my body to the apex of my thighs,
parts the lips of my sex, and teases my swollen clit with his thumb. A
white-hot frenzy ignites in me. My muscles contract, squeezing him even as he
keeps up his delicious torment. Pleasuring Ian as I am, even as he plays my
body so expertly, sends all my senses into a swift upward spiral toward
release. I can’t hold back, can’t deny him anything… The orgasm that hits me is
sudden and remorseless.

As it seizes me, Ian cries out, shouting my name as he comes
in thick, hot spurts jetting down my throat. I clench around him, holding him a
prisoner to my own desires and take all he gives. Above me, I see him, his head
thrown back, eyes closed in ecstasy, as the climax I’ve brought him to rocks him
to the core.

My body sags. I am suddenly, overwhelmingly exhausted.
Dimly, I’m aware of Ian withdrawing. With care, he straightens me on the bed
and joins me there. My last thought before sleep claims me is that I don’t know
whether to be more delighted or afraid of what has changed in him.

I wake some unknown time later. It’s still fully dark, or at
least as dark as it ever is in the city. I miss the stars so visible at the
palazzo. Dimly, I think that perhaps Ian and I should return there but I won’t
go without him and I know that he won’t leave the city until Davos is no longer
a danger.

The curtains are open across the tall bedroom windows. I can
see the apartment on the other side of the street. The orgy has wound down,
only a few bodies visible where they lie slumped and asleep. Music still plays
in the distance but it’s much quieter than it was.

Slipping from the bed, I turn to look at Ian. Asleep, he
looks younger and disarmingly innocent. I can’t begin to put that together with
the man I’ve experienced over the past few hours. Instead of trying, I find the
bathroom and consider taking a shower but the effort is beyond me. With a start
I realize that I’m still wearing the black lace robe. It hangs open, revealing
my painfully hard nipples and bare, swollen slit.

I clean up, then belt the rope around me and go back into
the bedroom. Ian is still asleep. For a few moments, I stand beside the bed,
trying to decide what to do. I’m so precariously balanced on the edge between
exhaustion and arousal that I doubt I will be able to go back to sleep. But
neither do I have the strength to do much of anything else.

Finally, I sit down on the soft carpet with my back against
the settee and stare off into space, struggling to make sense of what has
happened. For the first time, I notice the full length mirror in a curved
wooden frame opposite me but I avert my eyes from it. I don’t need to see again
how unraveled he has made me.

 In that dark hour of the night with my calm, reasoned
self hanging by a thread, my thoughts drift to Susannah. I’m not like her, to
be handled like spun glass, nor would I want to be. She was strong in her own
way but I’m stronger still, just as she intended. Yet I can’t help the pain
that twists through me at the thought of how gently Ian treated her. She
brought out the noblest and most honorable aspects of his nature whereas I--

I don’t really know what I am to him. At the beach house, he
was open, honest, sharing more of himself than he ever has before. But tonight…
Tonight he has simply overwhelmed me.

Unraveling as I am, it’s perhaps no surprise that a tear
slips down my cheek, followed swiftly by another. I brush them away
impatiently. I’m as much a party to everything that has happened between us as
he is. If I feel confused and dazed by the results, that’s for me to deal with.
I know what it is to be truly helpless. I am not now nor do I ever intend to be
that way again.

Even so, I haven’t moved when, a short time later, Ian
awakes as though drawn by some sense of the clamor in my mind. As soon as he
sees me, he leaves the bed and comes over to me. Bending down, he takes my chin
in his hand and compels me to meet his gaze.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

I shrug. “Nothing, I just can’t sleep.”

A wry smile plays across his mouth. “So much for my manly
prowess.”

I give a small, hiccupping laugh. “Don’t blame yourself. I’m
sure you did your best.”

He winces. “Talk about damning with faint praise.” His long
finger strokes my jaw. “Seriously, are you okay?”

“Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”

A flicker of something--regret, concern?--darts behind his
eyes. “I’ve pushed you hard.”

 “You haven’t done anything that I haven’t let you do.
And enjoyed.”

My honesty takes him by surprise. For a moment, he looks
uncertain but that vanishes as he says, “That’s good because I’m not done yet.”

Oh….

“Let me guess,” he says as he sits down beside me, his long
legs stretched out in front of him, our bare thighs brushing. I glimpse us in
the mirror and am startled by how right we look together, at once comfortable
and intimate.

“You’ve got a thousand thoughts ricocheting around in your
head,” he says, “and you can’t make sense of any of them. You’re confused,
ragged, and all you want is to let go, blank it all out, and just feel.”

I stare at him in amazement. “How can you possibly know
that?”

He runs a hand over his face shadowed by soft stubble and
says, “Because I feel the same way, baby. I don’t know what’s happening to
me…to us but I do know that when I’m balls deep inside you, nothing else
matters. You’re the calm at the center of my universe. The one place where I
really belong.”

My mouth drops open. We’re surrounded by the heat and smell
of raw, unbridled sex. His language is crude, his handling of me even more so.
And yet--

I can’t help it, I laugh. At the sound, he raises a brow.
“What?”

“I’m sorry,” I say, trying to stop but not quite succeeding.
“There’s got to be something wrong with me. I think what you just said is
romantic.”

He stares at me for a moment before giving me a smile that
steals what little breath I have left. “What did I tell you, baby? We’re
perfect together.”

He slips a hand under my robe and strokes my back in a
gesture that, especially for the circumstances, is oddly soothing. His eyes
gleam with the sheen of gold as he says, “I want to strip you bare, no
defenses, no limits, nothing between us except exactly who we are.”