Into My Arms (6 page)

I
grip the knob and have a gut-deep flash that the door will be locked. Because that’s what Z would do. No easier way to keep a person out than by turning a lock.

Taking a deep breath, I twist and the door creaks forward.

It’s open.

Shadows press against me as I squint, peering around. Just like the rest of the house, the cavernous interior appears virtually devoid of personality. No paintings hang on the wall. No personal knickknacks dot the wall-length bureau. A four-poster king-sized bed fills the bulk of the space.

No one is here.

How is that possible?

Z is at least six feet tall. Guys his height don’t just up and disappear.

“Hello?” I whisper.

No response, except from my heart, which kicks into high gear. I still taste Z on my mouth, the salty punishing kisses that left my mouth this side of swollen.

What are you doing?

This situation should by rights feel a little creepy. After all, he admitted to killing his father, although suggested it wasn’t due to any act of violence, but rather taking away that which he most loved. Still, when someone basically says, “Don’t trust me,” that’s exactly what they mean.

But my twenty-two years have taught me that life has a funny way of twisting a person’s insides until you can forget how the truth ever looked in the first place.

My shape reflects from a full-length mirror, my eyes are cloaked, and only a vague diffuse light from the window highlights my hair and the shape of my mouth.

The car accident taught me a lesson. There is the real truth and the truth we live, plagued by guilt and self-doubt. Z seems tangled in these knots, and perhaps that’s what makes me feel tied to him, connected in some deep way beyond just the physical connection.

I pad to the bed and run a hand over the thick gray comforter. Gray. Black. White. These are the colors he favors. Both his office and his home keep to the same monochromatic palette. Why does he insist on shying away from any brightness, living in shadows and eschewing any vibrancy? Always the somber, never the pleasure.

Without warning, he steps through the sliding glass door that must lead out to a balcony. His shape is forbidding, large and hulking, and my shoulder blades slam back on instinct.

Settle down.

This isn’t Batman, just a screwed up, angry guy.

“Why are you here?” His voice isn’t harsh despite the word choice. Instead he sounds dejected and more than a little weary.

“What would you say if I asked to make love to you?” I hadn’t realized until this moment that’s why I came in here.

“Make love?” His accent twists the words, cutting them with a mocking note.

“You prefer to call it something different?” I take a step forward. “Fucking?”

“Bethanny.” His hands ball into two fists at my approach. “I think bringing you here…to this place…alone…it was not wise…perhaps we…”

I rise on tiptoe and whisper in his ear without actually touching him. “Do you want me?”

“More than anything.”

“Good answer.” My hands drop down over his chest, and I splay my fingers over his hard pectoral muscles. He winces when I move to undo the top button.

“Seven years?” I ask. “I can’t believe you’ve gone that long.”

He teeters as if this is too much, like if I say anything else or move too fast or even breathe that he’ll fracture into so many jagged little pieces.

“You are barely holding on, aren’t you?” I still, refuse to let my body move a fraction. “And here all this time I thought you were the guy who had everything I could ever dream of. Professional success. Mind-boggling wealth. Power.”

“Power.” He grinds out the word. “Yes. That’s been my replacement lover. Ambition, my drug of choice. Did Brandon truly never tell you anything of me?”

“No. Not a word.” I get together with him and my friend Talia whenever our schedules allow, which is infrequently, as she’s busy with her radio job in the city and they tend to be insular—a quality I find myself envying.

Once, at a funky little sushi bar in Japan Town, Talia said, “You know, I think true love is finding the perfect person to nap with.”

Bran had given her an inscrutable look across the table and she’d coughed, pretending it was the wasabi.

The handsy way those two behave around each other makes it hard to believe they do a whole lot of sleeping. Ever.

I keep my touch on him featherlight. “Bran never mentions you; although, come to think of it, he does always ask how I’m enjoying the job, as if there’s more to the question. It never feels like small talk, but as if he’s waiting for me to tell him something. I’d always assumed what he really meant was, ‘Have you cracked it and quit yet?’ But now I can see there was something more, wasn’t there?”

Z smirks. “That nosy bugger was checking.” He speaks of Bran with something approaching fondness.

“Checking on what?”

“To see if I’ve grown a pair to make a move. You see, I have noticed you, Bethanny, for some time. And he well knows it.”

“Well, I do work outside your office and we communicate two hundred or so times a day.”

“And before that even. One night, working late, I paced the halls of Zavtra Tech, thinking myself alone. I saw you at a desk, long after midnight.”

He did?
“Probably trying to keep up with the insane workload and pressure. You know your company as a reputation for being…how can I put this…”

“Demanding?”

“Ah.” I snap my fingers. “Yes, that’s the word. Sort of like you.” I pop open a button on his shirt. “Which makes me wonder? How would you feel if I called the shots for once?”

He stiffens.

“Downstairs on the patio, you told me that you liked to watch.”

“It is easier.”

“Okay, so what if you turn, look at yourself in that mirror, and simply…watch.”

I angle his body to face his reflection. “Don’t look away,” I whisper. “And don’t look down. It’s dark in here. Don’t think, just feel.”

I drop to my knees and unfasten his black leather belt, undoing the top button of his trousers. It only takes a quick glance to confirm that he’s doing exactly as I asked even as his whole body shudders with barely controlled energy.

I grind the zipper and his sizeable length strains against his boxer briefs. I want to tear down his walls, merge reality and fantasy. He reaches down, his palm grazing my hair, so gently it could be nothing, except I want his touch. I crave his contact. Leaning back, I urge him on until he fists my hair, threads it through his fingers, and grips tightly, as if overriding his own capacity for self-control.

And we haven’t even begun.

All it takes is a small jerk of the waistband and his cock is freed. He exhales a long harsh note and I have him inside my mouth. I suck that hot male flesh and his answering shudder, rocking his whole body, ripples into mine.

“Fuck,” he chokes.

Fuck is right.
Because I want to do this for him, but God, he’s delicious. I love the way his velvet skin slides over my tongue. I love every thrust. Balancing my hands on my knees, I pull back to the tip and flick my tongue over the slit. A slight tang of salt is my reward.

“Bethanny.” He grips my hair harder now; it doesn’t hurt, but the sensation grows intense. “I need…I need…”

“I know,” I murmur, taking him deeper, holding him in the back of my throat, feeling the pulse of the thick vein that runs down his shaft. It’s been a long time for him and I want this to be good. I want it to be so good that he can’t ever get enough. That touch becomes the thing he craves, that
my
touch is the thing he can’t be without.

Despite the darkness, I want to shine bright for him.

I quicken my rhythm and his hips respond.

“Yes,” he mutters. “Like that. Exactly like that.”

I want to give more suction, make it tighter, make it more everything, but that means additional touch. I raise one hand and grip the base of his cock, angling it so I can get a better up and down stroke.

His answering groan reverberates through my jaw. He grips my hair harder, more frantic with every shudder. Then he’s gone, stepping back, and the unexpected movement sends me off balance.

“Z.” I reach down and place a steadying hand on the ground. “You need to—”

“On the bed.” His deep tone brokers no disagreement. This is his CEO voice, the one he uses with me on the phone. Curt. Businesslike. Utterly in control.

I respond because I want to, but also because I’m curious. He craves control and while it was nice to take it from him, I’m also curious what it will feel like for me to surrender.

He points, his shirt half unbuttoned, pants open, cock out and proud. “Naked. Now.”

I slide from the dainty pajamas, scooting up the mattress to wait. Expectant. “Are we going to—”

“Fuck yes,” he rumbles like a man who hasn’t known a woman in seven years. He isn’t old either. Twenty-five. That means he was seventeen the last time? Only a boy.

My questions grind to a halt when he tears his shirt open. I was right that he was built, but I didn’t realize he’d be that strong. The shadows kiss his rough slabs of muscle. Nothing about him is soft or gentle. What we are about to do won’t be easy or tender. I know this instinctively and that’s fine; it’s exactly the way I want it.

His pants hit the ground next and he doesn’t hesitate. He turns, opens a drawer, and a box of condoms is in his hands.

“Do you need help?” I blurt.

He lets out a bark of laughter. “Bethanny, something tells me this will be like riding a bike.”

There is a tear of foil and he’s sheathed, approaching me, and in that last moment, I tremble. He catches it and stops. “Are you afraid? We can stop now. Tell me what it is you want.”

“You,” I answer. “God, please, you.”

“I…this will not be easy for me…it has been a long time.”

“We’ll figure it out together,” and I know truer words have never been spoken.

I didn’t realize how true until he thrusts inside me. My back bows like a shot because if this is control, he can take it from me any day of the week. He falls upon me like a starving man, sucking my nipples, the soft sensitive skin under my breast, the dip and hollow in my neck, and always maintaining the hard, relentless strokes.

He licks my ear. “This good?”

I nod. “Yes. So good.”

He does a slow circling thing with his hips. “And that?”

I squeak and giggle. Oh God. He laughs against me in a rough rumble. “Yeah, that’s good too.” Clinging to his broad shoulders, I close my teeth on his own nipple, reveling in the sharp hiss. “There is no way you can move inside me that won’t be amazing.”

And I’m not lying. It’s as if his body was designed for mine, the distance closed until there is nothing, absolutely nothing between us. It’s more than I can bear and yet I’m not sure this craving will ever be satiated. He braces himself, staring down, gaze glued to me as he thrusts again and again; each time his breath hitches as if that’s the best one, no, that’s the best, no, this is definitely the best one. He’s not gentle, no, he’s driving to the center of me, but I feel like we are breaking wordlessly through all the bullshit and getting closer to the elusive truths just as I’d hoped.

There are many ways to have a conversation and in this one Z tells me all I need to know. That for him, there is a pleasure in dominating, in taking power, and for once I understand because I am complicit here. I want to give him my control because I know in doing so, in giving him this gift, he will accept my offering and with gratitude make it that much better.

And my trust is repaid in dividends.

My thighs tremble and he hikes one high up on his hips, bracing his hand behind my head and getting me at just the right angle. The coarse, thick hairs from the base of his cock tickle over my clit and the grinding pressure is unreal.

For a moment, I have a passing coherent moment of gratitude that the house is deserted because I can’t be quiet, not now, not when Z is balls deep and ravaging me with an expression of all-consuming desire. A long hot shudder racks his body.

“Shit, I can’t…I’m going…”

“It’s okay,” I gasp. “I want you to.”

He pumps harder and then without notice I’m there, too, as if his pleasure is tied to mine, inexorably linked. He slams to the hilt with a final groaning crescendo and my pussy clenches around him, milking out the last bit of sensation as he is slammed again, coming with another burst, while burying his face into my hair, murmuring things I can’t understand, but from the tone sound like the sweetest endearments.

When he moves away at last, and that incredible feeling of fullness disappears, I don’t even feel sad, because my heart now has the same sensation.

I
turn my face to the shower spray and close my eyes, letting the hot water scald my face.
What. The. Fuck. Happened?

The temperature is set at the extreme, almost more than I can stand, but it’s not enough to remove the sensation of her skin on mine. I didn’t merely touch Bethanny. I made love to her as if the last seven years never happened. Every inhibition knocked down like a house of cards.

Bracing my hands against the marble wall, I splay my fingers across the smooth stone, a far cry from the softly yielding flesh from last night. This is spiraling out of control. Too fast. Too furious. I had hoped for something…what, I wasn’t sure. A miracle. Perhaps a kiss.

No. No point fucking lying.

I brought her here hoping beyond hope exactly what just happened would occur.

But now what?

“Now nothing,” I mutter. My life might have just been shaken from a 9.0 earthquake but it’s time to rebuild. Get back in control. Because once I return from Moscow, life must return to the way it was.

This weekend will become a bright light, an incandescent memory in my long night.

No point squandering time on hope. None of that exists for the likes of me.