At the Brink (25 page)

Her hips jerked. “I can’t take that.”

“Don’t come yet, sweet. You do remember what you’re supposed to do before you come, don’t you?”

“Ask you,” she rasped.

I upped the power setting and landed the Sonic Boom directly on her clit.

The cry that burst from her throat boosted my cock’s newest growth spurt. Her arms flung out, her hips buckled and she would’ve been unseated had she not been firmly secured to the bed. She rose up on her elbows, but then collapsed on the bed, her body quaking high up on the Richter scale.

Christ, she was something to watch when she came. She’d been built to fuck. Her body was as sensitive as they came and her orgasms thrilled me as much as my own. I’d hit the jackpot on the day she said yes to me.

“Breathe, Lily.” I set aside the vibrator, got up and came around the bed. “Now, see? We have a problem. You came without asking and you also let go of the strap. What are we going to do about it?”

“I don’t know.” She heaved through parted lips. “You probably have some sort of...um...contingency in place?”

“Bright girl.” I gave her a quick peck on the lips and whispered in her ear. “Are you excited about it?”

My cock jerked as I watched her face flush. Her teeth dug into her trembling lower lip and her nipples sharpened into tiny, magnificent peaks.

“So here’s the deal.” I caressed her hair, smoothing the sweaty tendrils sticking to her forehead. “It’s simple really. I get to choose now.”

She shivered visibly. “The plug?”

“No, like you said, you’re not ready for it.”

She let out a long breath. “If I agree to this, will you answer a question for me?”

I stiffened. “It depends on the question.”

“What is it about seeing me like this that turns you on?”

I considered the question. What she was really asking was why I liked fucking her in this particular way. I wasn’t sure she was ready to hear what I had to say, but if she really wanted to know, I would tell her.

“I’d be willing to answer that,” I said, “provided you do your part. What do you say? Are you ready?”

“Yes,” she said. “You’d never hurt me.”

“You’re so right about that.” I kissed her. “But God knows, I can make you scream.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Lily

I clung to the strap because it was the only thing tethering me to this earth. For the last two hours, Josh had played with me, teased me, tested my endurance, brought me to the brink of pleasure, and then denied me.

Okay, that was a bit of a lie. He’d let me come. Twice. I’d experienced my very own internal sonic boom and, with Josh at the helm, the G-Hunter had found its prey pretty much instantly. But that had been a while ago. Right now, Josh’s magic formula was in effect. In his book, he got to choose the toys and delay my orgasm while I had to wait with every fiber of my being tightened into a knot of erotic desperation. I wanted to please Josh with everything I had, but my sex ticked like a time bomb that could go off anytime.

I lay on my new bed, eyes covered, legs strapped, body buzzing like a high voltage wire while Josh drove the G-Hunter in a protracted expedition of my sex. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know where to find my G-spot. In fact, he knew the location so precisely that it was probably marked in his GPS. We’d had some long, intense sessions before, but tonight felt different. I needed to know how as much as I needed to come right this minute.

The G-Hunter quit. Maybe it ran out of batteries. Perhaps it’d had its fill of me or gone on strike. Most likely, Josh had switched it off, but since I couldn’t see, I didn’t know for sure. I stopped fighting the straps and collapsed on the bed, trying to catch my breath.

The sound of my gasps filled my ears. The buzz was gone, the vibration too, along with all of that delicious, tormenting stimulation. I felt as if my body had been cut off from the grid. Relief. Disappointment. Regret. Irritation. I’d lasted a long time. I’d done everything he asked. Hadn’t I earned my release?

Josh’s voice came calm and smooth in the darkness. “I think I’ll try something new.”

My heart revved up. My sex clenched in anticipation. The sheets rustled and something slithered from under me, something that Josh had tucked between me and the mattress earlier, snuggled in the split of my ass.

“Nice and warm.” His body shifted on the bed and something tapped against my lips. “You know what to do.”

I separated my lips and dared to hope for another taste of him. He, too, should be ready for release by now, but his erotic endurance was unmatched and, while the object that slid into my mouth was large, hard and heavy, it was neither supple nor exactly shaped as I’d hoped. It dipped in my mouth, warmed to my body’s feverish temperature, smooth but rigid against my tongue, requiring my jaw to widen a little more as the ripples advanced through my lips.

The Emerald Wave. I might have said the name aloud, but my mouth grew fuller with each gulp. My ears perked at the whistle of a bottle squeezing. A cool blob pooled on my belly button. The wand retreated from my mouth. The length and weight of it landed on my stomach and splashed in the little pool. I realized what came next.

He spread me out as only Josh could. A rush of cool air kissed the fieriest parts of me. I gasped. Exposed, vulnerable and sensitive beyond belief, I had a moment of panic.

“Relax, sweet,” Josh murmured, massaging my vulva with a warm, well-practiced hand. “You’ve got to trust me on this one.”

The primal need in me rallied my courage. Trust. Was this what tonight was all about?

A smear of cool moisture followed the trail of Josh’s fingers. He painstakingly oiled me, even though my juices dribbled down my backside along with the cooler lube. His touch amplified throughout my body. My heightened senses homed in on him, trying to discern his every move. I fathomed I could drink his breath through my skin and taste the scent of his arousal on my tongue.

“Are you ready?” Josh said. “Tell me, do you want it?”

Pressure. A gentle nudge at the door. A sensation so exquisite and full of promise that I couldn’t breathe. All the nerves in my body roped together and coiled around my entrance. Breathe in, breathe out.

“All night long, you’ve been coming on nothing,” Josh said. “This time around, when I let you come, you’ll have something in you.”

“Thank you,” I rasped, and my gratitude was sincere.

More pressure. I tensed all over, lifted my head from the pillow and whimpered. “Josh?”

“Hush, sweet.” Josh patted my mons and thumbed my clit. “Steady as she goes.”

“Ooh.”

My body gave in and the glass head breached me and settled hot and weighty in my sensitive channel. Holy Mother. I lay my head back on the pillow, adjusting to the satisfying presence. The sensation was amazing.

“More?” Josh asked.

I nodded.

Josh worked the wand forward ever so gently. It inched upward, a slow, delicious advance. I pressed my cheek to the pillow, trembling with the incredible sensation. The hard glass glided into me. I felt myself widen to admit the next, bulkier bulb. My vaginal walls pulsed in delight while Josh’s steady hand manned the knob, driving the wand, driving me.

“Jesus, Lily, you’re a wonder,” he said, breath sharp, voice husky. “Yours is the prettiest, hottest, most appealing little cunt ever created. I wish you could see this.”

No way could I handle seeing what I felt. Not in my present state. In fact, I gave silent thanks for the blindfold. I also gave thanks for the straps that restrained my legs, especially when Josh added wrist, thrust and rhythm to the wand’s latest dive. The friction drove me insane but, strapped down, I didn’t have to worry about missing out on any of the sensations bedazzling my body. I didn’t have to worry about my body’s reflexes either, or about displeasing Josh or messing up his careful pleasure plans for me.

The erotic massager lived up to those fantastic reviews Josh had mentioned. Pussy worshipping had to be the fastest-growing religion in the world and I was its latest and most appreciative convert.

“Would you like another wave?” Josh asked.

“I’m good,” I said, breathing in and out through my mouth.

“Too full?”

“Just right,” I rasped.

“Excellent.” He stroked my overwrought sex. “Jesus, Lily, you’re drenched. It’s like a bottle of fine oil spilled in there.”

That’s exactly how I felt, what with the wand doing the bottle-busting and his hand adding to the mess. I had exactly an instant to feel guilty before I remembered that an “active sex bed” would be properly designed to withstand more than my emissions. Then the sound of Josh smacking his lips caught my attention.

“Hmm.” I imagined Josh licking his fingers. “We’d make a fortune if we bottled your broth.”

Nothing like being fondled, savored and found delicious to get a girl to make more of that.

“Now, Lily,” Josh said. “I want to see your pussy working the wand.”

“Don’t make me do that,” I protested, but behind the blindfold, in the black canvas of my mind, I immediately began to imagine what he’d see.

“Try it,” he said. “Show me what your sweet, eager, enterprising little cunt does to my cock every time I fuck you. Make it enticing, a little seduction can get you some extra ‘fuck me’ points, but remember—don’t come until I tell you to.”

“You’re a monster.”

He laughed. “But I’m
your
monster.”

I bore down on the wand and discovered a host of new sensations. My body hummed with the thrill. Knowing that Josh was watching me made me braver, bolder. I tightened, loosened, swiveled and slid back and forth on the undulating shaft with increasing enthusiasm. I felt sexy working the pole, the way I imagined a pole dancer might feel when she danced, except that this pole was in me.

To my joy, Josh’s breaths quickened. His intensity heated the air and I caught a whiff of his need’s heady scent as he worked the wand in my sheath in slow but thorough strokes.

It was supreme torture. If I’d been tested before, now I was being vetted. A vetting process, yes. Maybe that’s what tonight was about. Pussy worshipping was a demanding faith and divinity at this level of hyper sexuality required grit, endurance and talent I never knew I had.

“Oh, God!” I cried out. “Josh? I have to come.”

“Do you now?” He withdrew the wand entirely from me and left me hanging, dangling at the edge of a tantalizing orgasm, chest heaving, body wet with a fresh coat of sweat, legs straining in the bonds, heels dug in the mattress.

“Don’t do this to me,” I protested. “Not now.”

“Everything I do is for your own good,” Josh said.

I grumbled. “Finishing me would feel really good to me right now.”

“All in good time,” he said. “We stick with the plan.”

I groaned in frustration. His freaking plan was driving me mad.

“Now, pay attention,” he said. “I’m going to untie your legs, but don’t move, not even a toe. And keep your hands on the strap. Okay?”

He was going to untie me? Why? Was he done with me? Because I was definitively not done with him.

The pull of the straps on my legs subsided. My hips gave a little and my knees lifted a couple of inches off the mattress. I kept it together. I didn’t move, even though I wanted to rip off the blindfold, flip Josh on his back and hop onto his erection.

But I knew better. I kept my hands on the strap while I tracked him moving around the bed. My heart boomed in my chest when the weight of his body settled carefully over me. He smelled of sex, sweat, activated deodorant and me.

“Is this what you want?” He whispered in my ear as the head of his cock brushed against my groin and his tongue thrust into my mouth in a rapacious kiss that ended with his teeth raking over my lower lip.

“Think carefully before you answer,” he whispered, kneading my breast, rubbing my nipple between his fingers, tugging and squashing it, until I arched beneath him and gave out a long, lusty moan.

“Yeah, think it through,” he murmured, “before you let me fuck you in my home, in this bed, because tonight was just a sampling and this bed has tremendous capabilities.”

A sampling? Is that what tonight was? Not just an inauguration of the bed but an initiation of our new relationship and perhaps even a reminder of his sexual terms and conditions? I was drunk on his scent, maddened with desire and in no condition to think, but I wondered: Was tonight a warning? An enticement? Both?

“Grab your ankles.” He shoved his hands behind my knees and tugged on my legs.

My body bent to his will. Braced by his arms, my legs opened into a wide “V” and my heels took to the air somewhere in the neighborhood around his shoulders. I let go of the strap and groped blindly, but he guided my hands to my ankles and now I was spread open all over again, with my hips tilted up against his groin, his breath gusting over my face and his cock perched against my opening.

“I’ll ask you one last time,” he rumbled. “Is this what you’ve wanted all night?”

My fingers tightened around my ankles. My heart and soul aligned to power my whisper. Same old answer. “Yes.”

He stabbed into me, a firm, long thrust that went all the way to my cervix. I screamed, from pleasure, from agony, from the sheer joy of a fierce and absolute possession. Nothing in the world could satisfy me like Josh did. No toy in the universe could match the pleasure of his full cock throbbing at the bottom of my sex, cramming the void in me, pumping in and out of my channel, plowing me for the imminent arrival of his seed and the orgasm that would surely end me.

“You wanted to know,” he rasped. “Why I like to fuck you real hard like this.”

I wasn’t sure that the why was so important at the moment, as long as he kept doing it, but he told me anyway. “Because you, Lily, you need it.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Josh

I woke up from a deep, satisfying sleep. There was a woman cuddled next to me, pillows and blankets everywhere, and an awful lot of cobalt blue around me.

Lily’s room. I remembered and smiled. She had said yes. To me. She’d accepted the keys. She’d slept in my house, in her bed, next to me. She’d liked all of her surprises and becoming the direct beneficiary of her happiness had redefined mine.

The cell hummed, pounding on the night table with remarkable grit. I reached out and grabbed it, stealing a look at the time. It was five past nine in the morning.

I scrambled out from under the blankets and stumbled out of Lily’s bed. I was late. Me. An hour and a half late. I blinked to clear my sight and saw that it was Alice calling. She was probably wondering if I was dead.

I clicked on the phone as soon as I got to the landing. “Alice.”

“Mr. Lane?” she said. “Where are you? You were supposed to meet with the Swiss at nine o’clock. Mr. Riker and Mr. Stratton insisted I call. They’re here, Mr. Lane. The Swiss are punctual. What are we supposed to do with them?”

“Tell Thomas to start the meeting.” I headed up the stairs, zippering my pants. “Tell him I’ll be there in twenty minutes, half an hour max.”

“Okay.”

“And Alice?” I took the stairs in twos. “Have Amman run over to Olivetti’s and get me an asiago bagel with salmon-infused cream cheese and a large latte in a thermal cup. Got that?”

“Got it.”

Jesus Christ. How I’d overslept was beyond me. But for some reason, after last night’s sport, I’d fallen asleep like a bear in winter. Maybe Lily’s deep slumber was contagious. I bolted through my bedroom and stared at the stranger in the bathroom mirror. He wasn’t me. He couldn’t be. He looked bewildered, in a rush, a little out of control. His hair was too long, his beard stubble was too dark. He looked...rested?

Definitively not me.

I rushed through my morning routine. I ripped everything off and hopped into the shower. I showered, shaved and was ready in twenty minutes, suit, tie, accessories, the works. In all truth, I’d skipped several steps, but what the hell. I was late. Late.

I met Amman at the door. He smirked when he handed over the bag with the bagel and coffee.

“Wipe that stupid grin from your face,” I said.

“I’ll do it if you do it.”

I slammed the door on him.

I left the food on a tray by Lily’s bed. She stirred and smiled when I kissed her good-bye and then went right back to sleep. How I wished I could stay.

I got to the office by nine forty-five. By then the meeting was in progress. It worked better than expected, because Thomas had already presented them with the projections and all I had to do was close the deal. Needless to say, my inbox was crammed full by the time I got to my desk. It was going to be one of those days.

“Mr. Lane?” Alice walked into my office. “Mr. Stratton asks if he can come up.”

“Affirmative.”

“And you’ve got a visitor on the way.”

“I don’t have anyone on my schedule.”

“Yes,” Alice said cryptically. “I know.”

I looked up to see Lisa Artiaga stepping out of the elevator. She wore knee high boots, a tiny twill miniskirt and a matching jacket with a plunging neckline. She wasn’t alone.

“Tell her I’m in a meeting,” I said.

“She’ll wait,” Alice said. “She’ll sit there like she did the last time and she won’t go until you see her.”

“Okay, tell her I have a meeting in five minutes and then send her in.”

Alice made for the door. “Good luck.”

Yeah. I was going to need it.

“My dear,” Lisa said, marching across the office, coming around the desk and planting a kiss on my lips. “I have the final report on the gala. Such a smashing success.”

“You could’ve emailed me the report.” I motioned toward the chairs, wiping off the lipstick from my mouth.

“I wanted to share it personally with you.” Lisa plopped down across the desk. “This is my friend, Rachella Willis. She wanted to meet you.”

Rachella Willis seemed familiar. “Do I know you?”

“No, but I want to know you” She winked at me. “You might really like meeting me.”

Jesus Christ. Lisa was desperate.

“Here’s the report.” Lisa placed a sealed envelope on my desk. “I think you’ll find it satisfactory. Don’t you want to open it?”

“I’ll look at it later.” I set it aside.

“Now would be better,” Lisa said.

“I don’t have time right now.”

“Okey dokey,” Lisa cooed. “If we’re having a super busy day, then we should meet soon, tonight maybe?”

“I can’t.”

“I’m so looking forward to hosting our next benefit together.”

“I already told you that I can’t host the next benefit.”

Lily wouldn’t like that at all. She wouldn’t like learning about this meeting either. I smiled inwardly. Lily’s jealous streak had surprised me, but given what I knew about her childhood and her history, I understood it. Oddly, part of me felt lucky that she felt strongly enough about me to engender such fierce emotions. Go figure.

“Surely you’re interested in the welfare of all those wounded warriors,” Lisa said. “You must host the New Year’s extravaganza. Nobody brings out the money—old and new—like you do, Josh, and Rachella here would love to work with us.”

Rachella raised her hand as if she were in a classroom. “Oh, I want to volunteer. Please?”

It was an all-out assault and a few weeks ago I’d been so bored with my life I might have gone for it. Now I wasn’t even stirring as Rachella uncrossed her legs and gave me a very good view of her private assets.

“Did Alice tell you I have a meeting?” I said, spotting Thomas outside my door.

“Yes.” Lisa got up and bent down slowly to collect her expensive purse from the floor.

It was impossible not to remember what her best asset had been.

“Call me,” she said. “Okay?”

She smiled at Thomas as he held the door open for her.

He couldn’t take his eyes off her ass.

“How do you do it?” he asked, after the women were gone.

“It’s a curse,” I muttered. “What’s up?”

Thomas plopped down on the chair across from me. “Mr. Chamberlain called me first thing this morning.”

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “The son of a bitch is going to sue me.”

“You’ll be surprised,” Thomas said. “He asked me to convey his apologies. He didn’t think you’d mind a dance.”

“He knew better.”

“Maybe, but you can’t blame him for trying to rattle your cage when you tried to rattle his. After all, DaSilva was his guest for the evening.”

“Nobody touches Lily,” I said. “Nobody.”

“I think he got the message,” Thomas said. “In any case, he apologized. He wanted to know if you got a chance to look at his latest proposal.”

“My position is the same,” I said. “We’re not looking to be bought.”

“All right,” Thomas said. “Did you have a chance to look at WindTech’s reports?”

“Not pretty,” I said. “Let’s give it another week or so.”

“Li Chao wants to know if you’ll be heading the Chinese review next week in Shanghai.”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“Iceland?”

“Got to fit it in somehow.”

The screen on my phone lit up. A quick glance revealed that Lily was awake.

“I want to talk to you about a technical partnership,” Thomas said. “A joint project with Cal Tech.”

“Can you email me the details?”

“Sure, but—”

“Email me the project description, then we’ll talk,” I said impatiently. “Anything else?”

“Nothing that can’t be done over email.” Thomas got up and straightened his jacket.

Even I could tell that I’d ruffled Thomas’s feathers.

“By the way,” I said. “You did a fine job with the Swiss today.”

“Thank you, Josh. I’m glad everything went well. I think we could have another banner year ahead. If we keep up the pace, stay focused, we could beat last year.”

“I think so too.”

Thomas’s implications weren’t lost to me. It was an important reminder. But knowing Lily was awake, I was impatient to move on to her next surprise. I dismissed Thomas with a nod and clicked on Lily’s number.