My Reluctant Warden (11 page)

He led my hand back to my side and leaned closer against his forearm, touching me with nothing more than those clever fingers. He wasn’t watching what he was doing, letting his fingers do the exploring. His gaze was on my face, deeply intense.

“What…” The word came out like a whimper. I started over, but couldn’t steady my voice, not when he was playing my body like he was learning a new musical instrument. “What are you doing?”

Amusement touched his lips but did not stop his fingers. They continued to alternately flick my clit back and forth and tease my entrance until he finally pushed in a single long, thick finger.

“I thought it was obvious. I’m trying to make you come. Maybe I need to try harder.”

As he spoke, he pressed his thumb hard against my clit and slipped a second talented finger inside me. My hips arched up of their own accord to meet his touch. I realized I was clutching the sheet and made myself let go to reach for his cock instead. I’d already forgotten his request.

“Maybe you could try with this,” I said, giving it a few fast strokes.

So soon after coming, he was already hard and ready for more. And yet, he clucked his tongue and sat up so he could pull my fingers off him.

“Not yet,” he said, and I didn’t hear the promise in his words, only the denial.

“Why not?”

I was losing my breath, and the question was buried in a moan, but Morgan heard it anyway.

“I want to watch you come,” he murmured.

I closed my eyes, back to clinging to the sheets. Pleasure was close, so very close, and as delightfully sinful as his fingers were, dancing on me, inside me, I knew all it would take was a thrust of his hips, that beautiful cock back where it belonged, and I’d come.

“A—again? You did. Las… Last night.”

His rhythm never faltered as he asked, slightly bemused, “Are you saying you don’t want me to make you come, Angelina?”

The way he said my name… That small lilt in his voice… The sound that felt like a caress…

I shook, a full body shudder that lifted my hips off the bed and into his hand.

A slow, sensual grin curled his lips. “I think,” he said in a tone of deep confidence, “that you like it when I say your name. You like it very much. Don’t you, Angelina?”

I shook harder this time, too hard to even manage a coherent word. All I could offer was a breathless moan. I was poised on the edge, ready to fall into that gleaming abyss of pleasure I could see opening in front of me. I only needed a few more strokes of his fingers. Or maybe only another word.

He leaned in close, and our eyes met when he murmured, “Come for me, Angelina.”

And I did.

His fingers never stopped moving, intensifying the pleasure that was flashing through my entire body. Before long, it became too much, and I closed my thighs over his fingers, trying to stop their maddening dance. At the same time, my hands flew to his wrist, and I tried to push his hand away from me.

“Let me,” he whispered yet again, resisting my efforts.

“It’s too much!” I gasped, squirming against him.

“Angelina… Let me, please. Show me just once more.”

My ears were buzzing, and I barely heard his last words. I wanted to protest again, tell him I couldn’t bear more, my clit was oversensitive almost to the point of pain and, surely, if he didn’t stop, I would break apart into a million pieces.

I didn’t manage to say any of it. I didn’t force his hand off me, either. I let him push me further and further, beyond that point I had thought was the limit of what I could take—beyond what I’d ever felt before.

I think I remember crying out. Or maybe I only wanted to cry out? It all became kind of blurry and… I almost said dark, but that’s not the word. There were lights in my head, colors, shapes, but none of it was anything I could put a name to. It was like flying in a maelstrom of sheer sensation.

I had to blink a few times before my vision cleared again. When it did, I found that Morgan had moved to kneel between my legs. He was stroking his cock with a lazy hand—the same hand that had brought me so much pleasure—and watching me with eyes darker than the deepest recesses of space.

“May I?” he asked, his voice low and husky.

A slow, contented smile spread over my face. I felt too languid to even lift a hand and pull him closer. “Well, since you ask so politely…”

Before I finished, he grabbed my hips with both hands and drew me toward him. I gasped. It only took him a second to line his cock up to my entrance; half a second later, he was deep inside me and reigniting my body.

My inner walls, my labia, and clit were all still hypersensitive, pulsing with blood and pleasure from my last orgasm. The simple act of Morgan entering me, my flesh yielding to his thick cock, pressing tight all around him, sent another small, quicksilver orgasm flashing through me.

Moaning, I gripped his biceps with both hands, telling him by touch what I couldn’t say in words: wait, slow down, let me cool off a little. He must have understood because, while he did start moving on top of me, it was slowly, gently, just enough to draw moans from him.

I didn’t need to say a word when I was ready. His eyes met mine, he dipped his head for a quick kiss, and then he picked up the pace of his thrusts. I clung to his arms, moved with him, and before long I was moaning continuously, a breathless, low-pitched ‘Oh’ that spurred him onward.

It started to become too much again, too intense, and I opened my mouth to tell him—and again he seemed to read my mind. He slowed down, gentle enough that I could catch my breath while he caressed my sides, breasts,  and neck with his hands and lips. It was his cue to accelerate again.

I don’t know how many times we repeated the cycle. I just know that every time I thought this was it, it was too much, too intense, and still he managed to push me a little higher yet. I almost wanted him to stop, but if he had, I might have screamed and fallen apart.

I realized something then. Something so obvious that I didn’t know how I had failed to notice before: he was holding back.

From his thrusts to the way he gripped my hips, each of his movements screamed of his restraint. I had the fleeting thought of asking him to let go, to give me all he had, but I couldn’t manage a word. How could I say anything, how could I ask for more when he was already breaking my mind apart with pleasure and putting it back together with each slip and slide of his cock?

No, this was quite enough for me.

Or at least, it was enough for this time. Next time, however…

Yes, I was already hoping for a next time. How could I not when we fit so well together, when he made me feel so sexy, so special, just so damn good?

Both my hands slipped from his shoulders to the back of his head, and I pulled him down at the same time as I raised myself up. Fire burned in his eyes. Our mouths met, our tongues entwined, and that one touch was what pushed us both into a chasm of pleasure.

I had to wrench my mouth off his to cry out my joy and my orgasm—and his name. I clung to him, though, drew him tight against me, and I felt each of his quiet moans, buried against the crook of my neck, and the last of his jerky, uncoordinated thrusts as his body took over and he came inside me. His chest was still against mine, but my heart beat fast enough for the two of us.

Too soon, he rolled off me, and I made some inarticulate sounds of protest as I tried to hold on to him.

“Shh…” His voice came from a little higher on the pillows. I could feel his body alongside mine. “I’m not going anywhere. I don’t want to crush you.”

Being crushed was the very least of my worries right then. I half turned toward him, rubbing my cheek against his shoulder and enjoying the coolness of it.

“In a bed is a lot better,” I babbled. I knew I was babbling. I couldn’t summon enough brain cells to care. I’d just shared great sex with him. I was allowed to babble. “Not that the balcony wasn’t fun,” I continued, pressing a hand to the center of his chest where the skin was silky smooth and pale. “It’s definitely more practical than… I don’t know. The back of a car.”

“The back of a car, hmm?” he repeated, brushing his fingers through my hair. “Are you speaking from personal experience?”

I pressed a grin against his shoulder. “I might be. Don’t tell me you’ve never had sex somewhere stranger than a balcony. I absolutely would not believe you.”

So, yes, I admit, it was a lame attempt at getting him to share about his past. It didn’t work. At all. His fingers stilled in my hair for a second before starting to comb through it again. He didn’t say anything, and I was afraid to look up to see his expression.

“Just…” I went back to safer subjects. “You’ve got to admit, a bed is a lot more comfortable.”

“It really is,” he said in a tone that conveyed that he both agreed and was humoring me.

“And you know what else?” I said, hiding a yawn behind my hand before resting it on his chest again.

“Hmm?”

“We can just… lie here. No fear of anyone walking in on us or anything.”

He caressed my forehead with his lips. “True.”

“I could even… sleep here. I mean, unless you—”

Unless he didn’t want me to, but I knew, a certainty as deep and powerful as his eyes, that he wanted me to sleep right here, next to him. And I wanted it just as much. I even felt like I needed to or something bad might happen. What a silly idea!

“Do you sleep at night?” I said instead. “You don’t, do you? I mean, vampires—”

This time, my voice didn’t shake quite as hard when I said the word. But I didn’t get to finish the thought. He shifted lower on the pillow and brushed a kiss against my lips.

“No,” he murmured, “I’m not going to sleep now. But that doesn’t mean you can’t.”

I felt his grin against my mouth more than saw it.

“Or at least,” he continued, “you could rest for a little while, until you’re ready for more. The night is still young.”

I was smiling when I closed my eyes. As light as feathers, his fingers settled on my cheek, cupping, caressing ever so gently. I drifted into sleep with that touch anchoring me to him.

I don’t remember dreaming, and I have no idea how long I remained asleep, but his hand was still there when I woke up. Still cool, too, like he’d just laid it on my skin. I opened my eyes and was startled by how close he was—close enough that I could have drowned in his gaze. Or kissed him.

Before I could do either, he did one small, innocuous, meaningless thing that changed everything.

He blinked.

*

Morgan—No. Not Morgan.

Mr. Ward blinked. For a second, his eyes didn’t seem quite as dark, like an inner light brightened them.

My heart was racing, my mind swirling even faster.

Like the previous night, two realities were battling in my head. I knew which one I was in and which one I liked best, and they definitely weren’t the same. But why couldn’t they be the same?

I had fun with Morgan. I liked him. I liked him a whole lot. Maybe we’d had sex a little fast—all right, there was no ‘maybe’ about it—but I didn’t regret it, not in either reality. He hadn’t pushed me into it. Both times, I’d been the one to initiate things. Not that he hadn’t been enthusiastic, but that first step had been mine to take.

Maybe…

Maybe if I took that first step now, Mr. Ward’s icy demeanor would melt and Morgan would emerge. Maybe he was only waiting for me.

It was crazy, I know. Like I said, things had happened too fast in that alternate mind world or whatever you want to call it. Going too fast in the actual world couldn’t possibly be good. Add to that Mr. Ward’s antagonism toward me—or rather, our continued mutual antagonism toward each other—and the fact that there was an underlying element of coercion to everything I did since I was trapped in this house against my will…

Crazy, yes. I must have lost my mind somewhere between reality and that lovely fantasy. Or maybe I had Stockholm Syndrome.

Whatever the case, after a few seconds when he still hadn’t moved, I leaned forward, ever so slightly, until our lips brushed together. I watched his eyes close and was about to deepen the kiss when they snapped open again and he bolted out of the bed. And when I say bolted… Think bolt of lightning. That fast. And not just out of the bed, either. He was out of the room before I even knew what had happened.

Clearly, only one of us enjoyed our fantasy meetings. The realization was about as pleasant as being drenched in icy water on a cold winter day

With the shame and embarrassment of rejection flooding me, I could only be glad he wasn’t there to watch me leave his bed. And yes, I could leave, I realized after I had picked up my shoes and left the room, barefoot. I had no issues breathing or trouble controlling my body.

The compulsion was apparently satisfied that I’d followed Miss Delilah’s order: I had slept in his bed. I have this weird mental image of a miniature-sized Miss Delilah sitting in my brain and commanding my lungs or legs to stop functioning properly if she didn’t like what I did. Not a pleasant image.

I had been on my way back to my room when I passed the door that, in the fantasy, had led to the dining room. Feeling suddenly curious, I opened it, just enough to peek inside. The decor was the same as in the fantasy, except that the table was bare, with no placemats, candle, or rose. I closed the door again and tried to figure out what that meant. I had never set foot in that room, so its image had come from Mr. Ward.