Beautiful Scars (22 page)

He continued to watch her, his gaze searching. Finally, after long seconds passed, he stood and moved away, out of her sight again.

Squeezing her eyes closed, she twisted her wrists, jerking at the bonds that held her trapped.

“It’s not as easy as that to undo them,” Marc said from somewhere off behind her. “It’s going to take more than just jerking at the tape. Of course, if you want me to let you go, just say the word.”

Chaili curled her lip. She wasn’t about to do that. She just…

Muttering under her breath, she continued to jerk at the bonds until he came up behind her.

Then he touched her.

One finger.

Slicked with something unbelievably cool against her heated flesh. Teasing her clit. Just her clit. Tingles, cool at first, and then more intense, spread through her. She groaned and squirmed on the leather that supported her weight, jerking against the restraints harder, twisting against them almost desperately. “Marc,” she whispered.

“Unspeakable…dirty…things,” he said slowly. He spread the cheeks of her ass and she trembled, held still as she waited.

But he did nothing.

“What are you doing, damn it?”

“Watching you go crazy.” He reached down and stroked her clit, then traced her gate with the tip of his finger and that tingly sensation started to burn, spreading everywhere he touched. “There’s this gel you can use on a woman’s clitoris. Doesn’t work on every woman, but if it’s going to work, you’ll feel it pretty fast. Are you feeling anything?”

The sob caught in her throat and she twisted her wrists again in the tape. “Damn it, Marc…”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Yes???
Yeah. It was a yes. She ached, throbbed—could feel the blood pulsating…oh… Trembling as he stroked down and pushed one finger inside her, twisted his wrist.

She shrieked and clenched down around him, stunned by the intensity of the sensation.

A second time. A third time.

Each touch, each stroke was a cross between pleasure and the purest edge of pain.

And then he stopped, right when she was on the edge of climaxing.

She was trembling.

Marc stared at her as he grabbed the tube of lubricant from the couch. “That’s one unspeakably dirty thing,” he said, his voice raw, staring at her raised ass. “I’ve got you bound and restrained, so fucking turned on you’re almost ready to beg me, aren’t you?”

Her voice was a rough rasp as she demanded, “Is that what you want?”

“No. If it was, I’d tell you.” He grabbed a small tube from the couch, took off the top and sprayed it on the narrow opening of her ass, watched as she flinched a little. As the spray went to work, he reached for the lubricant and opened it, slicking it over his cock, and squeezing more of it into his hand. “Now I’m going to fuck your ass.”

She tensed.

“Is that a problem?”

“Marc…I…”

She jerked against the restraints—arms bound at her back, her ankles drawn up, tied to her thighs. He smoothed his free hand down her hip and then nudged her legs farther apart before he pressed his slickened fingers against her, preparing her. In. Out. The tight ring of muscles at her entrance resisted for a moment, then yielded, letting him know the relaxing spray was working. As he pushed past that first initial resistance, he closed his eyes, bit back a groan at how silken she was around him. “Is it a problem?” he asked again.

But all she did was moan, even as she tried to twist away. He held her steady with his free hand at her hip.

In. Out. Preparing her. The low sound of her whimpering, the broken sound of her breathing, the trembling of her body, he noted every nuance of her reaction and once he had her ready, he moved between her bound thighs, using his hands to spread her open.

“You know how to make it stop, Chaili,” he said gruffly. Tucking the head of his cock against the puckered mouth to her back entrance, he pressed against her. Slowly. Just the head…bit by slow, torturous bit, and oh, hell, it was amazing. “Now I’m doing another dirty, unspeakable thing…pushing into this hot, tight hole and you can’t touch yourself. Does it drive you crazy, baby?”

“Yes, damn it!” She jerked again.

“Aw, now,” he said gruffly, steadying her with a hand on the base of her spine. Stroking his fingers along her soft skin, he soothed her as he advanced another slow inch. “Be still now or you’ll make me get all rough here. It’s easier when you can touch yourself, isn’t it?”

She panted, tried to pull away. Catching her hips, he held her steady, the blood pounding in his ears, hunger biting into him, threatening to tear him into shreds.

He eased back, giving her a minute, but she cried out, clenched down around him in protest. “You want more, baby girl?”

“Yes, damn it. Please, Marc?”

He pushed deeper, waited until he felt the resistance and then he stopped, pulling out, keeping at just at that depth, a slow, easy pace. “You didn’t answer me. It’s easier when you can touch yourself, bring yourself to orgasm that way while this happens, right?”

“Yes. It’s easier…” A soft, pink flush spread all over her skin and she pushed back harder on him, taking him in deeper. It was pure bliss as she eased around him, moving with him. Splaying his fingers over the base of her spine, he started to ride her hard, feet spread out, head bowed, staring at her. Just her.

“I don’t want to give you easy.” He surged deep, held there as she tensed. Bending down over her, he murmured in her ear, “I want to give you what you need…I want to make you feel like nobody else ever has, like nobody else can…and I want to make it to where you can never build another fucking wall, where you can never think of another man when we’re together.”

A sob ripped from her. Propping his elbow next to her head, he waited as she shuddered, as she trembled and shook. “I won’t give you easy,” he promised again. “But I’ll damn well give you everything I can.”

He stood back up and started to do just that.

Deep, steady strokes.

She cried out with each one. Soft, broken little sobs.

“Come for me, baby girl,” he rasped. “Come for me.”

“I
can’t
,” she whimpered. “Not like this…not without…”

He slid a hand down, slid it around to press it against her belly. “Doesn’t this feel good?” he asked, rolling his hips against her ass. “It feels damn fucking good to me. Your ass is hot, snug silk around my dick and you’re so fucking pretty like this, bound for me, here just for me…doesn’t it feel good, Chaili…” He bent down and pressed his lips to her shoulder. “Having to have me do hot, dirty, unspeakable things to you…”

She trembled and under his hand he felt the silken muscles of her belly clench. “You, bound, waiting and open… Your ass all but grabbing at me each time I sink my dick inside you… Doesn’t it feel good?” He eased his hand down lower. Lower. Felt the muscles of her belly tense.

But before he reached her clit, her entire body quaked and she tightened around him, tighter…tighter… “Aw, fuck.” He gritted his teeth as she clenched down around him and came with a broken, ragged cry.

And as she finally fell, he let go as well, hunkering over her and surging deep, echoing the hard, driving hunger that rode him every damn time he saw her.

He’d wipe those shadows from her eyes…somehow, damn it.

And she wouldn’t keep thinking about anything, or anybody else, when she was with him.

Chapter Thirteen

She could hear the music drifting from his studio.

Bent over her laptop, Chaili let herself close her eyes for just a minute, let herself get lost in the music. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to get lost in
him
.

“It’s already happening, you twit,” she muttered.
Already happened
… As the music for “True Believer” started to play, she groaned. No. It wasn’t already happening. It had already
happened
. She’d been lost in Marc since they were teens, and before that? The infatuation had been well under way.

Pretending otherwise was just a waste of time.

She could remember sitting in the house with Shera, bent over homework, listening to him and a couple of the guys from his first band piecing together music. She’d been spending the night when he had first started composing “True Believer”
—
the strains of that song still made her shiver. It had been his breakout hit, the one that took him from being a fairly popular guy in the Chicago music scene to an international star.

She loved the song, but sometimes she also hated it. It marked the point when she started to lose him. Not that he’d ever really been hers, but at least she’d gotten to see him from time to time. She’d been able to console herself with that.

And it was before she’d made the biggest mistake of her life…

Asking him out that last time.

Having him smile at her. Pat on her shoulder like she was a cute little puppy who’d amused him.
Nah. I’m beat… I just wanna crash for a while
. Then, the next day, she’d seen clips of him out at a party. When he’d been supposedly too tired to catch a movie. Yet he’d gone to a party with one of the shiny little perfect girls he always seemed to date.

A week later, she’d met Tim.

Six months after that, they were married.

Six months after that…

She rubbed a finger over the top edge of the tattoo, able to find it without even looking down.

How much different would her life have been if she hadn’t married Tim? Jumping into that relationship certainly hadn’t been the wisest decision she’d ever made. If she hadn’t bothered with dating him? It wasn’t like she hadn’t already known what she liked, right? She’d maybe taken it a little darker, pushed her boundaries a little further. And yeah, she’d figured out just how far her limits were, but she’d learned a little more about pain, learned too much about rejection.

Life would have been just fine without all of that.

It might have made her stronger, but…

Marc’s voice filled the house.

Deep. Strong. That raw, whiskey-soaked velvet. Wrapping around her, intoxicating her.

And she found herself being pulled back to the past night.

I want to make it to where you can never build another fucking wall, where you can never think of another man when we’re together…

Why was she even wasting her time thinking about somebody who had hurt her so miserably bad?

Somebody who had thrown her out of his life when she’d needed help the most?

“Because I’m an idiot,” she said sourly. “And I need to stop it.”

Shoving it out of her head, she focused on the screen and even managed to tune Marc’s voice out until it was just background noise. Mostly. Background noise that managed to send shivers up and down her spine.

She had a lot of work to get done and only so much time to do it. Twenty minutes back into work, she had to hit the Internet. She was thinking that what she wanted to do with Marc’s website was just start from scratch and she had an idea for what she wanted, but she had yet to find
exactly
what she was looking for.

A hunt on the website she usually used was a waste of time. Yet again.

Closing her eyes, she rubbed her hands over her face, let herself pull up the idea she had in mind. Something different. The idiot who had screwed up her site design hadn’t exactly had the wrong sort of
idea
, just bad execution, tacking it onto a design that wasn’t right for it.

She could incorporate that sort of feel into the new design and already had an idea, but what kind of…

It hit her.

She went to her email and sketched out what she wanted to do, sent it to Marc. She didn’t know who was handling this end now since he’d hired her himself, but she figured he’d handle forwarding it on. He’d have to run it by the rest of the guys in the group, or whoever was going to be the go-between, but at least she had started.

Now to get to work building it.

She could always buy the basic design, but if she wanted his site to be completely unique—and she did—she’d be better off doing it on her own.

Whether or not he was going to like the ideas she’d proposed, she didn’t know, but that wouldn’t change what she had to get done first. All the coding was going to be a pain in the ass and—

His reply was already in her inbox.

Come to the studio
.

Arching a brow, she emailed him back.
Why
?

Barely a minute passed before she had his answer.
I want to see you
. In parentheses, it read,
And after that, I want to strip you naked and fuck you.

Okay…that made something warm and delicious settle in her belly. But still. She needed to get a little bit of work done on this. And she knew she wouldn’t get anything done if she didn’t do it before she went in there to see Marc.
I’m working right now. I need to spend some time on this website design and I have to take care of a few others things too
.

Marc scowled at the message that came up on his iPhone.