House Of Payne: Scout (16 page)

She laughed, and it sounded as breathless as he made her feel. “Not today.”

“It is one of my favorite parts of you.” Without looking down, he kicked a basket she hadn’t noticed at his feet out of the way, while behind him the doors whispered closed. “But then, when I have your beautiful breasts in my hands and pushed together so I can bury my face there, then
that
is my favorite part of you. And when I feel those silky long legs of yours clamp around me to push me deeper into you, then they become my favorites.” With that rare smile glowing deep in his eyes, he brought her fingers to his mouth to run his lips over her knuckles in a way that was so gentle, so cherishing, it made her heart stutter. When had she ever been
cherished
? “Every part of you is my favorite. Every smile you give me is my treasure. Every touch, my serenity.”

Her heart paused in its faithful beating. How was she not supposed to swoon after something like that? “Then I guess it’s a good thing you get to have me all to yourself now that bad weather is rolling in. Unless you want to keep to our original plan by heading outside and into the rain?”

“I like the idea of not sharing you with the rest of the world.” Those pale eyes looked at her from over her knuckles in a way that left her hot all over. “Is there such a thing as an indoor picnic?”

“There is now. But I’m not hungry yet. Are you?”

“Not for a picnic. But I am for you.”

Yes
. “Good answer.”

“Glad you like it.” His hand released hers to delve into her hair, while the other one stayed firmly cupped to her southern cheek and pressed her into the slowly hardening length of him. “Will the elevator go back down to the lobby?”

“No.” Damp heat bloomed between her legs, thoroughly turned on by his arousal and sorry now that she’d bothered to wear a thong. Maybe it was best to adopt a no-undies policy whenever she was seeing him. “It stays up here with me. Security downstairs doesn’t summon it for guests unless I’ve given the approval. It’ll stay put as long as we don’t hit any buttons.”

“Your buttons are the only ones I plan on hitting.” With that, he claimed her mouth once more while his hands slid under her skirt. His palms glided up her thighs as if enjoying the feel of them, before his teeth nipped at her lower lip. “What, no stockings? No garter?”

“You disappointed I wanted you to have easy access?”

“If you really wanted that, you would not have worn this.” His hand plunged down the front of the thong to push into her cleft. Her head snapped back with a sharp gasp as he unerringly hit the proverbial bull’s eye, massaging her most sensitive point until her body jerked and pleasure filled her world. “Take it off,
ma fleur.
As much as I love your penchant for sexy underwear, it only gets in my way.”

“No-underwear policy it is, then.” He didn’t stop touching her as she moved to do as he’d instructed, and that made her laugh under her breath. Her undies couldn’t drop fast enough whenever he was around. When she moved to step out of the thong, she almost kicked out of the high-heeled pump it got hooked on, but he forestalled her, bending to help her get free.

“Keep those on. They make your legs look so damn sexy I get hard just looking at them.” He opened the picnic basket, reached into one of the many side pockets and pulled out a condom packet. “I came prepared to make a meal of you.”

“I have to say, I really like how you picnic.”

“It helps that I have a taste for the finest things in life. Like you. And this.” His hand slid back under the veil of her skirt to cup her sex.

“Ivar.” Helplessly she could only lean into his touch as her abdomen clenched with a flood of need. “God, what you do to me.”

“I hope that is no complaint.” With that, he resumed his intimate massage.

Feverish now with desire, she attacked the fastenings of his pants, barely keeping herself from ripping at the material. His touch had ignited a fire, and she’d lose her mind if she couldn’t feel him inside her. She throbbed between her legs, her intimate flesh slick and aching beneath his relentless ministrations, and she moaned against his mouth as together they rolled the protection in place over his hot, stiffened flesh.

“Hold me tight with your thighs,” he ordered, his breath as shallow as hers. He turned so that her butt was propped on the brass handrail that ran along either side of the elevator. Obligingly she wrapped her arms around his shoulders as well as locking her ankles together at the small of his back. Need mixed with bliss, an intoxicating drug that she was hopelessly addicted to. When his rock-hard flesh slid against the wetness between her legs, she reached down and guided him into her.

Yes.

“You feel so good. So fucking good, I can never get enough of you.” The words were growled against her neck as he filled her again and again, his thrusts sharp and edged with a kind of dangerous urgency she adored. Her inner flesh squeezed around him, a perfect fit, and with each surge of his hips he filled her all the way to his hilt. She rocked her hips to take him deeper still, chasing after that wild release, and it was enough to hit the pleasure center deep inside. She gasped raggedly, one hand flinging out to clutch at the wall beside her, and suddenly the world was moving.

“What…” With his hips still pumping into her, his head came up from where he had it buried in her hair to look at the elevator panel that she’d inadvertently hit. “Fuck, fuck,
fuck
. We’re going down.”

For one panicked moment she froze. “Oh, shit. We need to stop. Ivar—”

“Stop? Bite your tongue. Better yet, let me bite it.” With a smile that was downright sinful, he drove into her with renewed force, pulling her knees up higher along his sides to deepen the penetration. So deep, so unbelievably deep she could do nothing more than whimper with it. “We have about a minute to do this. Touch yourself, my Scout. You are almost there.”

“I… I…” Torn between horror and a shocking excitement over the possibility of getting caught, she found herself doing as he commanded, her free hand slipping under her skirt. She was sodden, her breath squeaking to a halt as the duel sensations of him thrusting into her and her own sliding touch ate away at her sanity. She closed her eyes while her hips writhed and the wall at her back vibrated, her breath coming in short gasps as the pleasure grew. Tremors started deep in her belly, and she couldn’t stop from moaning as it folded in on itself, intensifying the tension until it crushed her.

“I love you inside me,” she gasped, trembling on that razor’s edge of mindlessness. “Oh, God..!”

Then it snapped, that unbearable tension, and the relief of it was ecstasy. She arched her head back against the humming wall and gave herself over to it, her fingers clutching at him as his body tensed. The muscles beneath her hands turned to granite while he drove into her in a frenzy of motion while his every exhalation carried a tortured sound.

“You’re so beautiful,” she whispered, watching him, and at her words his eyes squeezed shut as he pushed himself into her as deeply as he could and roared out his pleasure. It was the hottest, most erotic moment of her life, and it was so profound it took a second to register that the elevator was slowing down.

“Sweetheart.” His head dropped to the curve of her neck, his chest heaving like a bellows. “Baby.”

“So good. It is so unbelievably good when it is with you,” he mumbled against her skin. He sounded dazed, shell-shocked. Ordinarily that would have delighted her, but they didn’t have time for it. With no small amount of regret, she slid her fingers into the thick silk of his hair, and gave it a good, hard yank.

“Trouble, wake up. In about ten seconds those doors are going to slide open and we’ll be exposed—
literally fucking exposed
—to the entirety of my building. Get it?”

A flurry of motion, the clinking of a belt buckle and the frantic rustle of fabric almost drowned out the sedate bong of the bell, announcing their arrival at the lobby. As the doors slid open, Ivar wrapped an arm around her, smiled at Darius and Zed who happened to be walking by, and pulled her to his front.

“Going up,” he said, and reached past her to punch the elevator button.

Only when the doors closed did she realize her pretty, discarded thong was lying in the middle of the elevator floor.

Chapter Sixteen

“I can never go downstairs again.”

“Now, now.” Ivar idly twirled her thong around his finger like a damn banner, carrying the picnic basket in his other hand as they made their way into the living room. “Nothing bad happened,
ma fleur
.”

“Are you kidding me? I have no choice but to become a shut-in now. I’ll have to do my work from home, which is impossible, because part of my job is monitoring the staff. And the majority of House Of Payne’s staff is made up of artists, which means they’re all crazy, God love ‘em. It’s like dealing with a class of ADHD kindergarteners who can smoke, cuss and get wasted on the weekends. In fact, I count myself lucky if they curb activities like getting wasted to just the weekends.”

“No one noticed a thing.”

“I’ll have to send out for food, and then hide while it’s being delivered. I wonder if Leo would mind coming up to personally deliver my morning tea? The only reason I go down there in the first place is because he’s so much fun to pester.”

“Scout.” Dropping the basket at his feet, he caught her by the shoulders and grinned down at her. Damn him, it was like he knew the power of his smile was like her personal Kryptonite. She just couldn’t resist. “There is no way you are going to become a shut-in.”

“Oh, yeah? Watch me. Or to be more specific,
don’t
watch me, because I’m going into hiding for the rest of my forever.”

“No, you are going to go on a picnic with me. Remember?”

“I’m not exactly in a picnicky mood.” As if on cue, lightning forked through the sky to dance over Lake Michigan’s gray surface, and even through the thick, insulated windows the wind could be heard.

“Too bad. I am.” He looked into her eyes with such intensity it was almost a tangible thing, sweeping over every inch of her. “Now. How does an indoor picnic work?”

“Like an outdoor picnic, but without the bugs.” Well aware that he was trying to distract her, she could only shake her head at herself when she realized it was working. “I suppose we should pick a spot to have it.”

“Since your dining room table is currently your office, the only place we could eat would be at the counter, yes?”

“No way.”

“Why not?”

“Because you can’t have a picnic in a place where you usually eat.”

“Again I must ask, why not?”

“Because then it’s just lunch.”

He burst out laughing, and it was such a rare sound she could only stare at him in a kind of awestruck wonder. He was always beautiful in a thoroughly masculine way; by now she was almost used to being dazzled by him. But when he laughed—
really
laughed, from way down deep—he was the most spectacular sight she’d ever seen.

“My God, woman, you make me happy to be alive.” He cupped his hand around her nape and brought her face close to his so he could look into her eyes. “Being with you is like being bathed in perpetual sunshine, even on a day like this.” He kissed her before she could think of a thing to say—which worked for her, because her mind went completely blank—before he grinned down at her. “All right, picnic expert. Where would you like to eat?”

“Um.” Touched beyond belief at his admission, it took her a second to collect herself. “Picnics happen on the ground, so that’s where this one’s going to happen.”

“You wish to eat on the floor? Are you serious?”

“Absolutely.” Beyond the windows, the world dimmed as the rain finally began to fall in vast gray sheets, and as the need to be cozy-cuddly hit, a sudden idea occurred. “Tell you what. We’ll set up our picnic right here, in the middle of the living room, but don’t unpack anything yet. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it up right.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll see.” With a quick kiss and a grin of anticipation, she zoomed off to the linen closet, then her bedroom. Eventually she rejoined him, trailing the plush down comforter from her bed behind her. “Do me a favor. Bring a couple of stools over and place them across from each other, in line with the edges of the couches.”

He didn’t move, instead staring at her as she dumped her armful of bedding on the floor before she headed into the kitchen in search of the bag of clothes pins she used as chip clips. “Why? What are you doing?”

“Isn’t it obvious? We’re going to build a blanket fort.”

“A what?”

That stopped her cold, and she turned an appalled face to him. “Are you serious? You’re… Wait. Are you telling me you’ve never heard of a blanket fort? A fort made out of blankets,” she added, just in case something was getting lost in translation.

Ivar shrugged. “No.”

“Not even when you were with your nanny?” At the bewildered shake of his head, she plastered a hand to her heart. “Oh, sweetheart, really? That’s just tragic. We need to fix this, like,
yesterday
.”

“Scout—”

“No, you’re just going to have to trust me on this, okay? Your life hasn’t been fully lived until you’ve known the boundless comfort there is to be had in a blanket fort.” She went back down the hall to the room she used for general storage, momentarily irked with herself for not having followed through with her vacation plans to convert the space into an office. But then, considering how she had spent her time, she couldn’t really complain. “We need to make this fort special,” she announced, raising her voice so that he would hear her. “Magical-special. It’s crucial.”

He yelled back from the living room, sounding equal parts baffled and amused. “Why is it crucial?”

“I don’t ever want you to forget your first blanket fort, sweetheart.” Digging into a box marked “Xmas,” she surfaced with a coiled string of multi-colored lights and returned to the living room to find Ivar looking around in confusion.

Oh, yeah. This was going to be fun.

“Okay, newbie. Let me explain the basics.” Dropping the lights on the pile of sheets and blankets, she tugged the cushions off both couches, plunked them on the floor in the small space between the sofas, then doubled up her comforter and placed it over the cushions like a feather-filled cloud. Perfect. “Blanket forts are basically made of blankets, sheets, magic and anything soft and squishy that you can get your hands on.”

“Sounds good so far.”

“It gets better, because once they’re built, blanket forts can be clubhouses, where no one else is allowed to enter without the password. They’re the one place that belongs solely to you, because you built it yourself and no one can take it away from you—a big deal to a foster kid like me.”

His smile dimmed. “I wish I had known you then.”

“The question is, would I have allowed you to know the secret password to get into my super-awesome fort?” More touched than she could say at the soft understanding in his eyes, she gave him a bright smile. “They can also be a secret hideout that shields you from all the scary things in the world. There were lots of scary things when I was growing up, so I spent a lot of time in blanket forts, even if, technically speaking, I was just hiding under the covers. It helped to think of being in a blanket fort if I’d pulled the sheets up over my head.”

As she shook out a sheet, she heard him make a soft sound deep in his throat. “I can imagine. But does this not mean we are too old for blanket forts,
ma fleur
?”

“Blasphemy! Even if we were a hundred, we wouldn’t be too old. Now, how about you help me get those barstools over here? I’ve got some serious constructing to do.”

It didn’t take nearly as long to construct a fort as it did back in the day—no doubt because as an adult her physical reach and understanding of basic engineering was a lot better than her little-kid self. In less than ten minutes she was plugging in the multi-colored string of lights she’d draped along the backs of the couches and stools beneath the sheltering fabric. Ivar, after a few minutes of confusion, got into the swing of things and insisted they needed a portal so they could see the TV from inside—a total guy-idea if there ever was one. As he went about creating that, she scrounged every pillow she could find and arranged them inside in a plush nest, before turning off the rest of the lights and grabbing up the basket he’d brought.

“Okay,” she said, kicking off her shoes and pulling back a flap with an inviting flair. “Let’s eat.”

“This,” Ivar declared about a minute later, shoes off and crawling carefully into position beside her, “might be the oddest thing I have ever done.”

“Then you need to start pushing the boundaries of your comfort zone.” Sitting cross-legged, she watched him ease back against throw pillows, bed pillows, shams, bolsters and a random teddy bear with an internal squeaker she’d found in a closet. A cocoon of gentle warmth closed around them, muffling the sound of the storm raging outside. As she delved into the basket, she couldn’t help but smile at the joy of being enclosed with Ivar in their own private world. “Though I’ll give you this—you’ve come a long way from the guy who refused to do the Chicken Dance.”

He glanced at the teddy bear, then grinned as he stuffed it behind his head with a squeak. “I still refuse to dance like a chicken.”

“Not even if I asked you nicely?”

“Only if we dance in private, and I have the promise that you will always shake that amazing ass of yours like you did that night.”

“Done.”

“And we do it naked.”

“If we’re naked in the same room, alone, I doubt my mind’s going to be on the Chicken Dance.”

“Then my plan has worked.”

Smartass. “What did you pack for us today? Besides condoms, I mean.”

“The usual fare—champagne, a cheeseboard, figs stuffed with
chèvr
e
and wrapped in prosciutto. Baguettes, herbed butter, fresh fruit in a coconut rum liqueur. Lemon meringue tarts and chocolate-covered strawberries for dessert.”

She waited a beat. “So, no peanut butter and jelly and a jumbo bag of Fritos?”

“Sadly, no.”

“I guess I’ll just have to make do.” Bowled over that his picnicking level was clearly expert while hers was still stuck in pre-school, she tried not to gape at the fine linen napkins she ran into. “Picnic food is perfect for blanket forts. Well, actually, that’s not true. The
most
perfect food is cereal, without milk, eaten straight from the box, and so sugary your teeth threaten to jump out of your mouth in protest. And after that, popcorn. And maybe—”

“Scout.” The sound of her name cut through her cheerful rambling, and in an instant her interest in food vanished. That made sense. There was no room for anything else when her mind was suddenly filled with him. “Give me your mouth.”

Amazing, was all she could think even as she moved toward him. Even after having the most satisfying stand-up sex she’d ever had, all it took was one look from him and she revved up all over again. Maybe his penis really did have magical powers, like Sass had said, and it had transformed her from an ordinary gal who enjoyed sex, to a wanton nympho who craved it.

As long as it was with him.

Shoving the basket aside, she rolled to her knees and propped her hands on either side of his head, her palms sinking into the pillows. For only a second she gazed down at him, and that blink of time the world came to a quiet standstill. The rainbow-hued light from the string lights played over his face. He was the most magnificent being she had ever seen, never more so than that moment, yet for some bizarre reason he was looking at her as if he thought
she
was the breathtaking one.

No one had ever looked at her like that before. No one.

A sweet ache bloomed in the most devastating way, stealing her breath and pounding her heart against her sternum as she slowly lowered her mouth to his. Slowly, because as much as she wanted to kiss him, she also didn’t want to lose sight of the way he looked at her.

Then their mouths melded, and she sank into the kiss until she had to close her eyes to savor it all the more.

She loved how completely his kiss claimed her. The bold pressure of his mouth and the lush sweep of his tongue made it seem as though he really was on a quest to give her what Sass had said—an oral orgasm. His hands slid down her back, lingered on the swell of her behind, before sliding to her hips to urge her closer. Understanding what he was communicating, she swung a leg over his prone body so that she straddled him, her knees on either side of his hips. He refused to relinquish her mouth as she positioned herself the way he wanted, kissing her like he’d never let her go again.

She had no complaints about that.

Her new position was also nothing to complain about. The bulge behind a barrier of denim was positioned perfectly, pushing against her cleft left unveiled beneath her skirt. The urge to rock against that hardness to make it even harder was almost impossible to resist.

“You really are a wonder.” Her voice was a husky purr when he let her come up for air. The sound of it seemed to please him, if the seductive fire his eyes was any indication. “With stamina like yours, I’m beginning to suspect you’re Superman in disguise.”

“Careful. That sounds like you think I could be faster than a speeding bullet.”