Descended (The Red Blindfold Book 3) (18 page)

“Thank you so much,”
I said as she handed the cashier Drex’s credit card.

She nudged me. “I got
to go shopping in the middle of a workday. I should be thanking you.”

“Drex owes you a
bonus. If it weren’t for you, I’d still be in the dressing room
tearing my hair out.”

“Instead you’ll be
the belle of the ball,” she said. “And if Brooke hates you, oh
well.” She slung the bag handles over her arms and walked out ahead
of me to the waiting car.

“Next stop,
mani/pedi,” she said, waving away the driver’s offer of help and
putting the bags in the trunk herself. “Then jewelry and makeup.
Mr. Cougan said we should buy whatever you want, even if it’s not
for tonight.”

I thought of everything
he’d bought me in Chimayo. It wasn’t high fashion, but I didn’t
care. It mattered more than anything expensive ever could.

“That was nice of
him,” I said, “but I’m good with what I’ve got.”

Ruby shut the trunk and
gave me a confused stare. “You could buy out the mall if you wanted
to. Like, this afternoon. You realize that, don’t you?”

I laughed. “A gown
and stilettos are enough for today.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“Wow,” she said, slowly shaking
her head. “When Mr. Cougan said you weren’t a typical Southern
girl, he wasn’t kidding.”

When I came home at
five-thirty, Jane skipped down the hall wearing nothing but one of my
old t-shirts and threw her arms around me. She smelled of shampoo and
rose-petal perfume, such a feminine combination of scents that I was
instantly hard for her.

“Well, hello to you,
too,” she said, feeling my erection against her stomach.

“What can I say?” I
said. “I haven’t seen you since this morning. Not to mention
you’re reprising your outfit from The Dead End, but without the
panties.”

“Except then I hadn’t
taken a bath.”

I slid my hands down
her ribs and over the curve of her waist. My blood was roaring
already and I hadn’t even loosened my tie. “Dirty or clean, you
arouse me either way,” I said.

She slid a slender hand
over the bulge in my pants. “I think we should take care of that
before we go to dinner. Otherwise you might maul me in public.”

“That’s a given
either way,” I said, “but absolutely – let’s take care of it.
Right after you model your dress for me.”

“Shouldn’t it be a
surprise, like a wedding dress?”

“We’re trying to
stop me from mauling you in public, remember? The more time I have to
get used to you, the better.”

She shot me a skeptical
look. “We only have an hour.”

“By the time I’m
finished with you it’s going to feel like three days.”

“Promises, promises.”

I smacked her lightly
on the ass. “Dress for me while I shower. I can’t wait to see how
you look.”

I went to the master
bathroom and tried to wash off the day, the video-conference calls,
the meetings with lawyers, the negotiations over leases and zoning
laws. By the time I was finished I’d gotten rid of every trace of
stress, except for one thing: the absolute certainty that I was in
the process of fucking up with Jane, and fucking up badly.

Old habits died hard.
Especially when they came wrapped in packages disguised as a very
sexy, bright, and interesting woman.

All day something had
nagged at me.

It wasn’t that Jane
wanted more time, but how willing I was to give her all the time in
the world. How ready I was to shove everything else aside. I’d even
invited her to Scott’s dinner without a thought for how we’d pull
it off. Me and the gorgeous stranger with no background –
brilliant. Just what I needed with Scott watching my every move now
that Elijah was on the loose and the company needed an infusion of
cash to expand.

Another complication.
Another situation I couldn’t control.

Too bad I couldn’t
control my lust for Jane either.

When I got out of the
shower I got a hard, unexpected jolt of it. Jane in jeans and a
simple dress was cock-stiffening enough, but in stilettos, black
stockings, and a garter belt, she was fucking unfair.

“Ruby thought I
needed lingerie, too,” Jane said.

“She was absolutely
right,” I said. “But…Christ. I didn’t know my assistant had
such a naughty streak.”

“Oh, you’d be
surprised.”

In the last fifteen
minutes, Jane had made herself up and the results were a knockout.
Her eyes seemed bluer than ever rimmed with dark liner, and shiny red
lipstick made her look like she’d just finished sucking something.
Something like, well…me.

“Jesus,” I said.
“I’m a goner.”

She turned and gave me
that wide, disarming smile. She wasn’t self-conscious or even
flirty, she was just pure
her
.
Sex and sweetness to the core. No wonder I couldn’t do what was
right anymore. I couldn’t even think straight.

“What’s with the
panties?” I said, hearing how gruff and impatient I sounded.

She looked at her tiny
silk G-string in the mirror. “What do you mean?”

“Did I give you
permission to wear those?”

Her lips parted. I’d
surprised her, and I liked it. “No. I didn’t think I had to ask
permission.”

I dried off my chest
impatiently. “I said I wanted you to dress for me, not dress while
I wasn’t looking. You’ve put almost everything on and I didn’t
get to see it.”

“I’ll…take them
off, then.”

“Yes, you will,” I
said. “You’ll do it right now, starting with the panties.”

“Are you angry?”

“If I’m angry, you
won’t need to ask. Now undress. Slowly.” Maybe it was the stress
of work, or four days of Jane being off-limits, but all my dominant
instincts were battling their way to the surface.

Eyes on me, hair
falling over her shoulder, she bent and pulled the panties to her
ankles. “You mean, like that?” she asked, and bit her full lower
lip.

It was all I could do
not to grab her and haul her straight to bed. “All the way off,”
I said. “You’ll put them back on when I tell you to.
If
I tell you to.”

It had been a long time
since I’d made a woman truly submit to me. If I didn’t feel
intense attraction, then the urge to dominate wasn’t there.
Ordinary sex would suffice, because I couldn’t be bothered with
anything deeper, or more intimate.

But with Jane, it had
been different from the word go. I’d tried to treat her gently at
the beginning, but my patience was at an end. I was one come-hither
look from roping her to my bed and giving her the fuck of her life.
And mine.

“If you think I’m
going to a formal dinner without panties, think again,” she said,
stepping out of the G-string.

She held it up for my
inspection. From three feet away I could see a streak of sticky
wetness across the cotton center. Now I was not just achingly hard, I
was salivating, famished for her drenched pussy. I had to taste her,
use my tongue to possess every inch of her.

“No panties, no date
– is that what you’re saying?”

“Damn right.”
Panty-free, pussy slick and glistening, she leaned her hands back
against the edge of the sink. “Do we have a deal?” she asked,
crossing her steep stilettos at the ankle. “Or don’t we?”

I dropped my towel to
the floor. Her eyes flickered down to my very thick, very hard cock.
Sure, I was proud of it – always had been. But tonight I was
absolutely arrogant about it. No man could give her the pleasure I
could, I didn’t care who he was.

“Yes, we have a
deal,” I said. “We have
my
deal.”

“Which is?” she
asked huskily.

“Whatever I say,
goes.”

Her pale brown eyebrows
went up. “Did I agree to this deal?”

“Your beautiful pussy
certainly did, and that’s good enough for me.”

“I guess my body has
a mind of its own,” she said.

“A very dirty one,
apparently.”

I stopped six inches
away from her, not touching, just relishing the differences between
us. I was a good seven inches taller, and hard where she was soft. My
hands were big and rough, hers long-fingered and delicate. I knew as
soon as I saw them braced behind her on the sink what I wanted her to
do with them.

“Touch yourself,” I
said.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Is that an order?”

“I don’t waste
words,” I said, feeling the heat rising off her skin. Her nipples
were pink and engorged, so ripe to be squeezed that my fingers
twitched.

She looked down at
herself, her long mascaraed lashes blinking twice. “You’ll have
to be more specific than that if you want me to obey you.”

Obey
you.
If she kept talking that way we’d never make it out
of the bathroom, let alone to dinner.

“Touch your breasts,”
I said.

“Like…how?” she
asked.

“The way you would if
I weren’t here, and you were thinking about me.”

“About you?”

“Don’t tell me you
haven’t thought about me when you’re alone.”

Her cheeks glowed. “Of
course I have.”

“Then you know what
to do.”

Still facing me, she
began to raise her hands.

“No,” I said,
taking her by the shoulders and turning her toward the full-length
mirror on the wall. “Like that.”

I stood behind her,
watching her watch herself. Slowly, she trailed her fingers up her
sides to her breasts and covered them with her palms. “Are you sure
you want to see this?” she asked in a quiet, seductive voice.

I slipped my hands
around her curvy waist and let her feel my cock against her bare ass.
“Want isn’t the word, Blue Eyes. This is need.”

“In that case, it
would be cruel to deny you.”

“More than cruel.
Torture.”

With gentle stroking
motions she caressed herself, slipping her fingers along the
porcelain undersides of her breasts and up across her nipples. They
stood even higher now, so pink they were almost red. I couldn’t
wait to suck them, bite them gently until she gushed with excitement.

“Pinch your nipples,”
I said. “Tell me how it feels.”

Using her thumbs and
forefingers, she followed my instructions. “It feels amazing,
especially with you watching me.”

“Define amazing,” I
said, squeezing her waist tightly.

“They’re so
sensitive,” she almost whispered. “I feel it in my chest and all
the way to my clit.”

“To your clit? So it
makes you wet.”

“Yes,” she
admitted. “Very.”

“I’ll have to take
your word for it, because I’m not going to touch you.”

Her eyes were wide and
needy in the mirror. “Ever?”

“I might, when I
can’t stop myself,” I said. “That could be in ten minutes, it
could be in two days.”

“I’m betting on ten
minutes,” she said, and slipped a finger over her tongue. She ran
her wet fingertip across one nipple and then the other, letting her
head fall back against my shoulder.

If
I make it even that long,
I thought, slipping my shaft
between the soft, firm cheeks of her ass. It was insane how perfectly
we fit together. If I let myself think about bending her over and
taking her like this – but I wouldn’t. Because then ten minutes
would be a real stretch.

“Does that feel
good?” I asked, watching her rub her nipples in short, quick
strokes.

“Not as good as your
tongue,” she said, raising her head to look at me in the mirror.

“You like it when I
suck your nipples, don’t you?”

“So much,” she
said, tilting her ass back against me. I could feel the heat of her
pussy just a few inches from the tip of my cock. It had been less
than a minute and already I was losing the war.

I might like to think I
had all the power, but I had none. I couldn’t even control my
responses, when usually I had iron-clad restraint. Whatever I didn’t
want to feel, I didn’t feel.

But Jane was too damn
tempting. It was like she’d been designed to break me down.

“Goddamn dinner
party,” I muttered. “Why tonight?”

My hands itched to feel
her wetness, to cover my fingers with it and smear it across her flat
belly. Sticky, warm, sweet as honey. I wanted to tease her, make her
beg for me, but she’d wrecked my willpower. All it had taken was
her pretty nipples and a full-length mirror.

I was hard as a rock
and too aroused to be gentle. When I pushed my hand between her legs
from behind and thrust two fingers inside her, I was playing rough
and I knew it.

She gasped, a cross
between pleasure and surprise. “You said you wouldn’t touch me,”
she said.

“I lied.” Grabbing
a fistful of her hair, I pulled her head back and took her mouth
hard. We’d never had a kiss that wasn’t intense, but this was
crazy.

As I plundered her
mouth she whimpered, a hot, submissive sound that made me growl in
response. Fuck control. Fuck dinner. If we made it, we made it. If I
gave her my cock all night instead, that was a lot better.

Mouths wide open, we
licked and sucked each other’s tongues. As if I weren’t hard
enough, blood pounded through my veins, making me bigger and stiffer
than I’d been in my life.

“Are you hungry for
me?” I asked, sliding my lips across her silky smooth jaw.

“Starving,” she
whispered. “Ravenous.”

“Then show me,” I said, pushing
her to her knees. “Show me exactly how ravenous you are.”

Kneeling on the plush
bath mat, I took Drex’s cock in my hands. It was so impressively
huge and hard, I could only stare at it.

“Is that all for me?”
I asked, looking up at him.

“Every big inch,”
he said with a smile so sinful my stomach turned over. Shopping,
champagne, and now Drex standing in front of me like an aroused Greek
god. This was turning into the best day I could imagine.