Delicious (30 page)

“Luc!” The demanding shout was more like a sob.

“That’s it, sugar. Yeah. Keep tightening on me.” He clutched her shoulder and used it as leverage as he continued to saw in and out of her body at a molasses pace that made her insane. “Tell me what you want. I can’t give it to you until you do.”

He was playing her, daring her. Giving in went against her grain . . . but Luc had become so effective at strumming her body for his pleasure. The staggering ache kept crashing in on her until she had no more defenses.

She sobbed again. “Please . . .”

“Tell me. Open that pretty mouth and tell me what you want.”

“Faster! Fuck me faster!”

Still he hesitated, his hot, heavy breaths on the back of her neck making her tremble. “Faster? If I do that, what will you do for me?”

He wanted something, and Alyssa had no idea what. If she’d been in her right mind, she would have refused. Who promised something before knowing what it was?

But Alyssa was in no frame of mind to bargain.

“Anything,” she gasped, trying to push back on his cock.

Luc clutched her, preventing any movement. “Just anything?”

The pleasure was coalescing inside her, turning thick and sharp and tight. The slightest movement . . . She needed it. Now. Her mind was about to snap, her body already his slave.

“Anything.”

“What if I want everything?” he growled.

Alyssa couldn’t find her breath, so she gave him a shaky nod.

“Say the words, my little wife.” His fingers retreated, tracing the soft pad of flesh above her pussy, denying her that one touch to her clit that would send her into the stratosphere.

God, she had nothing left to fight him with, no way to keep even an ounce of herself hidden. She arched to him, and he slid a bit deeper inside her. And still it wasn’t enough.

“Everything!” Her cry resonated in her ears.

Like a predator sensing blood, Luc moved in for the kill. “Absolutely everything?”

“Yes,” she breathed. “Please, God, yes!”

“That’s exactly what I’ll take,” he vowed in a snarl, then pounded into her with deep, merciless strokes, fast enough to multiply the friction and still slow enough to savor the mountain of pleasure burying her.

He pressed slick fingers onto her clit again and rubbed in tiny circles. Her blood boiled over, her sanity snapped, and the pleasure burst through her, seemingly bigger than her whole body. It rewrote the definition of amazing sex, became the stick by which she measured encounters with every other man. They all came up woefully short. And still the ecstasy kept piling on top of her, a raging deluge she gladly drowned in.

She’d barely caught her breath and remembered her own name when Luc struck again, this time circulating his slick fingers around the rosette of her back entrance.

Oh, God. He wasn’t just trying to tear away her defenses; he was trying to destroy her. “No.”

“You said everything,” he reminded, his fingers, wet with lubrication still circling the small hole.

“It’s too much.” Alyssa heard the pleading note in her voice and no longer cared.

“Did I hurt you last time, on our first night?”

He knew better. As often as she’d come for him, he
must
know. But like everything else tonight, he wanted her admission.

“No.”

He pressed two fingers deep, his tongue laving her shoulder. “I’m going to make it good, sugar. So good.”

Of that, she had no doubt.

Alyssa gasped as his fingers went deep, deeper, as his cock stroked in and out of her pussy, bringing back to life nerve endings she’d been certain were overwrought and dead. They didn’t just flicker, but flared, leapt, raced, throbbed.

She was still trying to adjust to the change when he withdrew from her, then angled his body higher over hers. He began pressing his cock into her small back entrance. The stretching bordered pain, and she hissed at the riot of needs flaring to life again as he shoved past her resistance, then pushed in a seemingly endless tunnel inside her until his body pressed completely against her back and she swore she could feel him everywhere.

“Fuck, yes!” He clutched her shoulders, traced her waist with his palms, then grabbed her hips in a brutal, desperate grip. “Rub your clit. This is going to be hard and fast.”

Small mercy after all this time, and she should probably tell him she wasn’t following his directives. She’d rub her clit if she wanted to and not before. But he’d already made her itchy, edgy, needy.

As soon as she touched herself, Luc set a pounding pace that stole her breath. In seconds, he overwhelmed her. Sensations she hadn’t felt in months, wrought by the awakening of greedy nerves and a jacked-up libido, demanded more. She touched herself, dragged up higher and higher by his ferocious strokes into the deepest recesses of her body, igniting the darkest of her fantasies where Luc took her exactly as he wanted, for as long as he wanted, making her climax for him at will.

As he pinched her nipple and tunneled back into the tight channel, he panted at the back of her neck, “Come!”

Her world exploded like a supernova again. Tears of relief and release burst forth. Luc had devastated her, scraped her raw. And still, he kept at her, thick and hard and demanding as tears streamed down her cheeks, until she possessed no more buffers between her husband and her battered heart.

T
HE Sunday following their wedding, Alyssa leaned against the doorjamb of the master bedroom and watched Luc pack the last of his suitcase. She’d lived alone for a decade or more. Solitude had always been a comfort. Luc had moved into her house the day after their wedding. It was logical, given that, between his upcoming TV show and his appearances, he’d be traveling, while she was tied to Lafayette by the club and the restaurant. But him
living
in her personal space, her making room in her closet, bathroom, and drawers, all seemed weird. He was neater than her. And he ironed, which was a big bonus. But for the first few days, she’d felt invaded—home, body, and heart.

Now, watching him prepare to leave, Alyssa had to swallow down sadness. She was going to miss Luc, probably more than she should. She’d grown accustomed to seeing him in Bonheur’s kitchens, watching over her during Sexy Sirens’ wee hours. Two days ago, his publicist had released the news of their wedding. Since then, Luc had whisked her to her car each night, tightly holding her against his side. She’d gotten used to him fixing her a light snack before bed, his comforting presence beside her as she slept, inevitably waking to his delicious, addicting touch and the way he kept her on orgasm overload.

All that would be gone for the next two weeks. Of course it wasn’t the end of the world, but somehow being away from him made her jittery and anxious.

“I’ll call you when I get in,” he promised.

“Thanks.”

“You’re feeling okay today?”

Alyssa nodded. “A little tired, but that’s normal.”

“Don’t work too hard. Sadie’s watching you for me.”

“She’s a tattletale.” She crossed her arms over her chest in a mock pout.

“Which is why I chose her to keep me informed.” Luc zipped up his suitcase and set it on the floor. “I’ll be back to spend Thanksgiving week with you and go to your doctor appointment the following week.”

The first meeting with her obstetrician. The first time to hear her baby’s heartbeat. “I appreciate you being here for me to lean on.”

He crossed the room and took her face in his hands. Determined dark eyes bored into her. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

God, when he spoke to her, in that voice, with that concern on his face, he absolutely melted her. He must know that.

“Before I go, I have something for you.”

She stared, all frowns and confusion as he turned away and pulled something out from behind his briefcase, which leaned against the wall. It was a box roughly the size of a loaf of bread, wrapped in thick foil paper that shimmered with small silver scallops. An elegant white bow topped the gift.

Luc handed it to her. “It’s a belated wedding gift.”

“A gift? You didn’t have to—”

“But I wanted to.”

Swallowing down a lump of emotion, she removed the bow and tore through the wrapping paper to reveal a plain brown box. After wrestling with the cardboard, she pulled out the contents and gasped. Inside was a picture frame in the shape of two silver rings entwined. On the left, a picture of her in her wedding dress. On the right, a picture of their wedding kiss. In the middle, where the two rings overlapped, he’d had their first names and their wedding date engraved.

“It’s gorgeous!”

She almost choked on a mixture of gratitude and love. Their marriage wasn’t perfect. They were still getting to know each other. But Luc was trying. She was still holding back. Then again, sometimes she caught him staring at her, sometimes he thought too long before he answered her, and she sensed that maybe he was too . . .

“You like it?”

Tears threatened, and she tried to blink them away. “I
love
it. Thank you.”

Luc took it from her hands. “I thought maybe you could put it here, on the dresser.” He set it on the long, rectangular piece on the wall opposite the bed. “That way, while I’m gone, you could look at it.”

And think of me
. He didn’t say the words, but Alyssa heard them. Why would he ask unless he cared, at least a little? How could she refuse him?

“That’s perfect,” she murmured, making her way to his side and wrapping her hand around the steely strength of his biceps.

He turned her into his arms. Softly, he kissed her mouth, and like every other time Luc touched her, she found her will dissolving. He made her warm and weak, enthralled her completely.

With a grunt of frustration, he pulled away. “If I do any more of that, I won’t make my flight. I can just see me trying to explain that I missed the first taping because I couldn’t manage to stop fucking my wife.”

She laughed. She’d done so little of that in years. Luc was one incredibly sexy man, but living with him now . . . she was beginning to see a whole side of his humor that added a dimension to her attraction.

Every day, she fell a bit more. So damn dangerous, this bottomless pit of feeling. And still, she couldn’t stop.

“I don’t need anyone blaming me for anything else. I’ve already got half the women of Lafayette pissed at me. Don’t start dragging California bigwigs into the snake pit.”

Luc smiled vaguely before his expression settled into something serious. “I have to say something before I go. Peter’s been quiet since he’s been out on bail.”

“I hope his daddy has a tight leash on him now.”

“If anything scares you—anything—don’t hesitate to call me.”

“You’ll be two thousand miles away. I’ll manage. I’m wearing my big-girl panties.”

“For big-girl panties, they always seem very . . . small.” He leered, brushing a hand up under her skirt and cupping her bare cheek, then sighed. “And I know you’re self-sufficient. Photographers have been a little annoying in the last few days, but I’m sure they’ll follow me to L.A., rather than stay here to hound you. Still, if you have any trouble, call me.”

“Yes, Daddy,” she mocked.

“Am I being overprotective?” He winced.

“A touch.”

He sighed. “I’ll try to back off. But . . . call me if you need to. Or want to.”

“I will. But I’ll be fine. The baby will be fine. Bonheur, Sexy Sirens . . . fine. It’s only two weeks.”

“Right.” He ran his hands through her hair, then palmed her nape. “Miss me?”

Like mad
. He hadn’t left yet, and his absence was already a gaping hole in her heart.

Alyssa didn’t trust her voice, didn’t trust that she wouldn’t reveal too much. She simply nodded.

“And I’ll miss you,” he whispered against her lips.

Then, after an all-too-brief kiss, he was gone. She was left staring at his incredible gift through her stinging, watery gaze, almost afraid to be this happy. What if it didn’t last?

BY Wednesday at four a.m., she was frazzled. The crowd at Sexy Sirens had been unusually rowdy tonight. She’d fended off more male octopi than she cared to count. Her two blessings were that Tyler never left her side, and Peter, who’d started lurking around the club again on Monday, had apparently been picked up for a DUI early this afternoon so he was back in County—and out of her hair.

Now home, she dragged herself through the front door. After not sleeping well since Luc’s departure and the baby sapping all her vitamins, she
needed
a good eight hours’ sleep. But damn, it was cold in here. She’d have to turn on the heater pronto.

When she turned to disable her burglar alarm, she saw it had been smashed with a sledgehammer. There was nothing left to disable.

Plastic pieces were strewn across the floor. Wires dangled from the panel. The air in her house felt violated, just like her club and office at Bonheur once had. Why the hell had she insisted to Tyler that she didn’t need him to escort her home?