Exposing Alix (21 page)

Alix nodded. “I’m not sure if I should blame Gunther or
Lena.”

“There’s plenty of blame to go around. Why pick one?”
Ryker’s brows loosened as he watched her. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have snapped
at you.”

“It’s been a long day,” Alix said, gazing mournfully at
the glass of whiskey she knew she’d never drink. “And it’s barely afternoon.”
She continued to rub her temples, imagining the endless evening to come with
Gunther’s Hollywood cronies and their gorgeous model girlfriends. Gunther
wouldn’t advertise who she was, but he wouldn’t hide it either, and then she’d
have to deal with all those questions, the obnoxious comments… She rubbed
harder as the throbbing intensified.

“Come here,” Ryker said, beckoning with one hand.

She stared at him without moving.

“I’m not going to bite.” He patted the sofa.

Reluctantly, she edged over and sat as far away from him
as possible.

He chuckled. “You pick the oddest times to be shy.” He
arranged himself directly behind her on the sofa. He placed his hands on either
side of her head, gently removed her glasses, and handed them to her. She took
the heavy plastic frames in one hand and tried not to hold her breath.

He rubbed his first two fingers in smooth circles at her
temples. The very touch of his hands sent prickling goose bumps up and down
Alix’s bare arms. He continued to rub, and the first tingling awareness slowly
faded, replaced instead by a warm, gentle throb between her legs.

Ryker’s hands fell away from her head, and equal amounts
of relief and disappointment started through her. But then he leaned forward
and placed a kiss on the back of her neck. Alix froze, her breath caught.

She cleared her throat. “Ryker,” she started to say but
lost her voice when he sucked gently on the spot where the muscles in her back
joined her neck.

A quiet sigh of pleasure escaped her lips. What was she
going to do? What should she say?

Ryker appeared to take her exhalation as a good sign. He
continued to trail kisses down the length of her neck and across her
collarbones. His fingers trailed across the soft fabric of her T-shirt, cupped
her breasts and then released them. Prisoner to the sensual spell he was
weaving, Alix froze, unable to move, to think.

“I love your breasts,” Ryker murmured in her ear. “Full,
soft, begging to be touched.” He teased the nipples to peaks, moving his thumbs
in slow circles.

Alix’s eyes slid closed. His hands were like a powerful
drug, eating away at her inhibitions and fears.

“I want to see you naked,” he said, slipping his hands
under her shirt to rest on her bare skin. “I want to take you in my mouth and
watch you move underneath me.”

She melted against him, shivers racing along her spine.
When his fingers reached under her bra to caress her, she moaned again, this time
because a sharp jolt of pleasure shot between her chest and her core. Her back
arched, and she rested her head against his shoulder.

He kept one hand at her breast while the other slipped
lower, down her stomach, over her jeans, to rest between her legs. Alix jerked
back, her body seeking his.

“Ryker?” A voice sounded in the hallway.

“Not now.” He lifted his mouth from her shoulder to call
back at the voice but didn’t move his hands.

Alix took advantage of the moment to give herself a quick,
internal slap. She bounded up and over to the door, which she flung open. Amir
stood on the other side.

“What’s up?” she asked cheerfully.

“People are wondering about tomorrow,” Amir said, darting
a look between her and Ryker, his curiosity barely contained. “Do we still have
rehearsal?”

Ryker stood and eyed them both, a familiar mix of
irritation and amusement quirking his lips. “Of course,” he drawled. “Call is
at eight sharp. Don’t be late.”

Alix cocked her head at Ryker. “Really?”

“We’ll work this out by then.” Amir nodded and turned to
leave. Ryker watched him disappear down the hallway and then locked the door
behind him. “Now, where were we?”

Before she had time to respond, he
took her face in his hands. She fit perfectly in his palms, her full lips
slightly parted, her expression a blend of fear and desire.

She didn’t pull away when he dragged her against his
chest. Her arms simply collapsed, her forearms pinned between them. He wanted
to feel more, feel her breasts unbound against him, but instead he focused on
her mouth. It felt strange to keep trying to seduce a woman who seemed so
willing yet so determined to avoid consummation. But he couldn’t stop touching
her. He couldn’t walk away. He even found himself enjoying the game, perfecting
the art of arousal and satisfaction without any promise of sex on the other
end.

She was tentative, restrained, and he coaxed her with his
lips and tongue.
Trust me
, his mouth told her.
I will pleasure you.
He caressed her forehead and temples, running his fingers through her hair,
tangling them in strands of pure silk.

He felt it the moment her resistance melted. It didn’t
trickle past but washed away like a great flood. Her fingers tensed, and she
exhaled on a long, languid breath. Then her tongue began to dance with his,
seeking and teasing, pulling away before going deep. When she bit his lower
lip, a jolt of pleasure ran straight to his groin.

She tugged him over to the couch, pushed on his chest
until he fell back against the cool leather. Then she slid down between his
legs until her knees settled on the floor. He sat up straighter and ran his
fingers down the length of her spine, feeling the outline of each vertebra
through her dress before letting his fingers slip around to hold her tiny
waist. She broke the kiss for a minute, stared at him with some intense,
unspoken emotion, and then slowly, methodically, began to unbutton his shirt,
punctuating each button with a kiss and a flick of her tongue.

When she reached the top of his pants and started on his
belt, Ryker got the first inkling he had lost control. A voice in the back of
his head told him to move, grab her hands, and kiss her until she was helpless
beneath him. But the voice couldn’t seem to propel his body into motion. He was
frozen, helpless under the sensual onslaught of her tongue, her busy fingers,
and her warm, soft breath.

When her hands brushed against him, the erection that had
been growing more painful by the moment jerked his hips halfway off the couch.

Her mouth moved lower on his chest as her fingers busied
themselves with his belt. It was torture, that mouth, catching his skin between
her teeth in a nip and then soothing the sting with a lick of her little pink
tongue. As she worked, she floated against him, alternately pressing her
breasts into his chest and letting the hard nubs of her nipples rub against
him, and then moving back to take another bite.

When she loosened his belt, his cock took over and erased
all rational thought from his brain. With a hungry look in her verdant eyes,
she pulled open his pants and caressed him through a thin layer of cotton. Her
touch burned with a mix of pleasure and pain. He groaned, and one hand came to
rest on her head, massaging her silky hair as she kissed a line of fire from
his stomach down to the elastic at the top of his briefs.

Her skin was soft and smooth, teasing him with its
proximity as she stopped and rubbed her face against his stomach. His shirt
draped across his bare skin, and she tickled around his hips, her fingertips
gliding over his chest, nipples, navel, leaving his muscles bunched and hard
behind her.

“Honey, slow down…” His voice came through tight lips, his
breath whistling a second behind. He tried to loop his hands under her arms and
pull her up, but she refused to back off, taking that moment to pull back the
elastic and free his erection to her slender fingers.

His body moved again, jerking and shuddering when she
touched his bare skin. He wanted to pull her against him, crush her body along
his, but she had rendered him helpless, unable to move or do anything that
might stop the next touch, the next sensation. She took advantage of his raised
hips to slide his pants and briefs halfway down his thighs. When he was fully
exposed, she stroked the head of his cock, and he groaned, the sound echoing in
the quiet room. She moved her hand down the length of him, caressing the scar
at the base of the head, feeling the length of the vein at the bottom, cupping
the soft sac at the end.

She was a witch, a devil, prolonging the moment of first
contact, moving her cheek closer to his groin, covering his skin with wet
kisses, then tickling the base of him with her tongue. Holding his cock firmly
in her hand, she waited, lips practically touching, until he leaped in
response.

Then she opened her mouth and took him inside.

He exhaled, his world narrowing to the feeling of her
mouth, hot and wet, surrounding him. She sucked on the tip, first gently and
then with more force, opening her mouth wider to surround him. The throb and
the heat felt so good he needed to go deeper, wished she could take it all at
once, and, as if she could read his mind, she took him deep in one long
draught.

He was on the verge of exploding, and in desperation tried
again, tugging on her arms. “Good Lord, woman, you’re killing me.” He wanted to
bury himself in her flesh, not in her mouth.

She backed off only long enough to circle his tip with her
tongue, bathe him in long, sensual strokes, and then let the length of him
slide deeper into her mouth.

It was too much. Ryker felt himself slip past the edge of
control as the pleasure intensified. He began to thrust against her, moving
inside her mouth as his hips nearly lifted him off the couch. There was
suction, heat, and the movement of her tongue against his flesh, all conspiring
to drive him past the edge of sanity. When he approached the edge, he felt his
body tense, pause, and then explode in pure pleasure.

#

When the room stopped spinning, Ryker opened his eyes and
tried to focus. With some effort, he was able to make out the viewing room, a
place he’d never look at the same way again; the blank screen looming over him
and the woman who had just fulfilled weeks of fantasies leaning back on her
haunches, gazing at him like a tawny panther surveying a kill. If he wasn’t
weak as a baby, and far too satisfied to move, he would have drawn her down on
top of him and drunk one more time from that dangerous pink mouth.

But instead, he simply looked at her. Even blinking seemed
an effort.

The longer he looked, the clearer it became that he had no
idea what possessed her. Who she was. What she wanted.

Sphinx-like, she rose to her feet and rearranged her
clothes. “I need to get ready,” she said. “I’ll see you tonight.”

“What?” He struggled to stand, suddenly uncomfortable with
his vulnerability. He jerked up his pants and redid his belt.

“Gunther’s party,” she repeated. “I’ll see you there.”

A roaring sound began in his ears as he worked to shake
off his post-climax stupor. He’d never been dismissed before, but he had the
feeling that was exactly what Alix had just done. He contemplated her for a
moment, watched her pink tongue dart out to moisten her lips. How could that
mouth—that incredible, naughty, dangerous mouth—still look so
innocent? Her hair draped over one shoulder, sparkling with red and gold
lights. Her green eyes were guarded, carefully masking any emotion, but her
hands were tangled together in a nervous heap, laced and then unlaced.

“Right,” he drawled. “So I’m supposed to say thanks for
the blowjob, and see you later?”

She took a step back, obviously flustered by his anger. “I
don’t understand why you’re upset. I thought this was what you wanted.”

He let the silence stretch uncomfortably between them
before he spoke again. “I’m not some prick who just wants to get off, Alix. If
that’s what you think, then we can forget the whole thing.”

“Forget
what
whole thing? There is no
thing
,
Ryker. You know that better than anyone.”

Before she could go any further, he pulled her back into
his arms and claimed her mouth in a deep, penetrating kiss. She put her hands
back up to his chest as if to push him away, but her protest died before it
even began.

He could taste himself on her tongue.

He inserted his hands between their bodies, teased her
nipples in several short strokes back to the hard buds she had ground against
his skin minutes before. He refused to let her walk away thinking she’d given
him what he wanted. Thinking he was some shallow bastard who would be content
with a blowjob and a pat on the head.

He leaned forward, put one hand behind her knees and the
other at her back, and lifted her off the ground.

She squealed a protest as he dropped her on the sofa, her
arms and legs wide as she landed on her back and struggled to right herself.
Her eyes were huge, dark saucers in her elegant oval of a face. She swallowed
once, then again. He forgot, sometimes, how beautiful she was, when she covered
her face with her sunglasses and disguised her body in ill-fitting clothes.

“Ryker, I—”

“I’m not letting you go. Not yet.” With that, he lowered
himself into the position she had just occupied, holding her gently in place as
she tried to sit up. He swallowed her murmured protest with another kiss.

He turned his mouth to her breasts, nibbling their peaks
through the thin material of her shirt until she moaned with pleasure. Then,
with a deep sigh, she leaned her head back and let her body melt into the
cushions.

He felt a surge of satisfaction. She wanted him.
Everything else she said, everything she did was just noise.

Releasing her knees, he flipped her shirt over her head,
released her bra, and finally held her naked breasts in his hands. With a
fierce pleasure, he caressed her nipples, rubbing circles around her flesh
until her hips bucked and demanded his attention. He slid his hand down her
body, wishing he had her in his bed so he could lick and stroke every inch of
her skin. Instead, he unzipped her jeans. She lifted her hips, and he shimmied
the thick fabric down over her ankles. When he reached her panties and found
them already wet through, he smiled and felt a new shot of lust.