Unleashed: Declan & Kara (Unleashed #1-4; Beg for It #1) (32 page)

“You’re so
beautiful, Kara.” I gazed at her in the moonlight, worshipping her.
I couldn’t believe I got to do more than look. She’d been up on a
shelf for so long, it was a challenge sometimes to flip the switch in
my brain. Especially since she wasn’t mine, not really. We were
stealing a few nights together away from the watchful eye of her
father. But this wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. Which was why I had
to take full advantage of my one and only opportunity.

I took my time,
mesmerizing every inch of her delicious curves, slowly kissing and
stroking. She was so sensitive. Each lick, each touch coaxed out
whispered sighs and moans, her fingers fisting in the hay, at my
shoulder, in my hair.

“Declan,” she
moaned as I licked along the sides of her breast, palming it and
bringing it up to my lips. Her nipples pebbled hard, two aching
points throbbing, needing my attentions. But I kept it gentle with
her. The beast within me wanted more, wanted to suck and mark, to see
how she’d respond to that. I remembered the night a few weeks ago
when she’d sought shelter in the barn during the sudden storm. I’d
bit her then, bringing my teeth to her swollen nipples. She’d liked
it. She’d pressed her breast into my mouth, moaning, wanting more.

But I promised myself
I’d hold back. I’d stay controlled and sweet. I needed to go slow
with Kara. She deserved it. And once we got started down that path,
getting nasty and wild, I didn’t know if I could stop. I doubted I
could.

So instead, with a
light tongue, I lapped and licked my way to her nipples. Then I
brought my mouth down lightly to lick. She gasped, arching up into my
hand. “Yes, oh, Declan!”

“Do you like that?”
I asked, hot and thick, as I did it again.

“Oh my God, yes!”
she cried out. I knew I should put a hand over her mouth to keep
things quiet, but I couldn’t, not now, not when I loved every sound
that escaped her lips.

I played with her that
night until the sun threatened once again to rise. In the ghostly
pale of early dawn, she shivered and quaked in my arms, gasping and
panting and grinding against my thigh. I could tell she was wet,
though I forced myself not to touch. It almost made me lose my mind,
the sounds she made, the abandon with which she bucked against me. At
first, she’d been shy, but as I kissed and sucked her breasts she
grew more wanton. She snuck a leg up and around my thigh. Our hips up
against each other, she ground her pussy into my hard, driving
length, all through our clothes. Lots of barriers, but I could still
feel her heat. I could tell how slippery wet she grew, the sensual
smell of her, her molten core, begging me to draw near.

Instead, I kept my
hands above the waist. There, I touched and stroked, palmed and
licked. The feel of her, crazy and wild with desire beneath my hands.
The sounds she made, moaning, panting out my name. I’d live on it,
playing it back, remembering her exactly as she was at that moment. I
knew Kara would stay with me long after she was nothing more than a
memory. After it all ended, her ghost would haunt me even after my
arms and hands were empty.

Now

I heard a strange noise
when I walked into my penthouse. It was a noise I didn’t think I’d
ever heard in there before, a noise that rarely made its way into my
day-to-day life: humming. Cheerful, feminine humming.

It was coming from my
office, definitely a first for that room. For a second I wondered if
a new cleaning crew was at work that day, but they always came on
weekday mornings when they knew I’d be out. Sunday afternoon, not a
chance.

Then I noticed the
flowers. They burst out on several surfaces throughout my apartment,
in the kitchen, the living room, on top of the bar for God’s sake.
And these weren’t elegant white calla lilies in a sleek black vase.
These were a riot of color, a wildflower explosion with every hue in
the rainbow represented and then some. I walked over to the nearest
one on my kitchen island. The base looked old with unfinished wood
and the thing had a handle and six compartments. In those
compartments stood six vintage glass milk bottles. And out of those
bottles sprung daises, dozens of daises, poking up and around in
every direction.

Then the doorbell rang.

Kara came rushing out
with a giddy laugh. “Oh, I didn’t even know you were here!” She
brushed right past me to open the door and welcome in a delivery guy
holding a large shopping bag. She thanked him profusely, taking the
bag from him and sent him off with a tip.

I watched as she took
her bag back to the bedroom. My bedroom. The flowers on the table
next to the couch could not be pinker. Light pink, dark pink, bright
pink, pale pink. What was happening here?

I hadn’t even put my
briefcase down yet, or the black shopping bag I held. I’d stopped
in a store myself that afternoon, taking an uncharacteristic break
from work to make a few personal selections. It was a crime to have a
body like Kara’s and not lace, strap and showcase it in scorchingly
sexy lingerie. I was doing nothing more than being a law-abiding
citizen when I picked up a few things for her, lacy bits I couldn’t
wait to have her model for me, ideally in some stacked heels.

“Do you like it?”
she asked, rushing at me with exuberance. She threw her arms around
me and kissed me swiftly on the cheek. Then seeming to remember that
wasn’t our routine, we really had no routine at all, she quickly
pulled back. I instantly missed her warmth, her soft curves, her
smell like vanilla and honey.

“What exactly have
you been up to?” I asked, undoing the top button of my shirt and
finally putting down my things.

“It was such a fun
day, thank you so much. You’re going to love the baby gift.” She
ran off to the bedroom, ostensibly to retrieve something to show me.
I felt the tug of a smile pull at my mouth. I’d been in meetings
most of the afternoon, phone calls and in-persons, getting
information, calculating risks, making decisions. Typically, I’d
come back to my place and do more of the same—an empire didn’t
build itself, after all. But apparently today was going to be a
little different.

“Feel how soft this
is.” Kara pulled something out of a bag and held it to my cheek.

“What is this?” I
looked at the blue thing she’d touched me with.

“A baby blanket. And
wait ‘til you see this.” She held up some other sort of blue
thing. Her eyes flashed with joy and I could instantly picture her at
18 again, filled with such energy and exuberance, like a colt
galloping fast as it could just for the hell of it. She still had
that light in her now, at 24, but this was the first time I’d seen
it shine full on.

“Look!” She laughed
with delight, holding up what seemed to be something else for a baby.
“Can you imagine?” The smile at the edge of my mouth broke free.
I honestly didn’t know what she was talking about, but her
happiness was infectious.

“Thanks. Brett’s a
good guy. I’m glad you got something nice for him and his wife.”

“I want to get them
some champagne, too.”

“Spare no expense?”
I couldn’t resist teasing.

Her face fell. “Declan,
I’m really sorry if I spent too much money. I’ve never spent so
much money in all my life. I don’t know what got into me.”

“Good.” I stepped
closer, tipping a finger under her chin to tilt her head up. “I’m
glad you did. I wanted you to.”

She looked up at me,
hesitant. I traced her cheekbone with my finger and she shivered, her
eyelids fluttering closed for a moment. I loved how she responded to
me, as if every touch stroked her to the core. I continued to caress
her face, bringing my finger down to her lips. Lightly, I drew the
pad of my thumb across the lower edge of her mouth. Her lips parted
slightly, opening for me.

I’d never met a more
naturally sensual woman. I’d met plenty who tried, using every
trick in the book to wax, tweeze and dye themselves into a mold: The
Femme Fatale. Like pizza, it usually did the trick. Until you had the
real thing, actually traveled to Rome and waited outside a restaurant
in a cobblestone courtyard drinking chianti until they brought you
out something so perfect, with such an unexpected blend of chewy and
crispy and salty with a bit of sweet that supposedly came from their
ovens but clearly had dropped straight down from paradise. It made
everything you’d had before then taste like chalk.

I brought a hand to the
small of Kara’s back and she leaned in to me, reaching a hand up to
my shoulder and resting it there lightly as if she were still shy
about touching me, still getting used to it but unable to stop
herself nonetheless. Her hair felt like silk between my fingers,
long, cascading, shimmering waves of it.

The doorbell rang. We
stepped apart like kids whose parents had come home early.

“I’ll get that,”
she mumbled, biting her lip.

I watched her move, the
unstudied sway of her hips. Her rear, so perfectly round and lush and
tight. I wanted a bite.

She opened the door to
two more delivery boys bearing bags upon bags of what looked
like…stuffed animals?

“Oh, perfect!” she
exclaimed, telling them they could put them down near the couch. I
acted more quickly this time, handing them a crisp couple of bills
before she had the chance to tip them herself. I closed the door and
turned to watch Kara.

Giggling, she started
pulling out colorful things from the bags and putting them on my
living room furniture. Pillows, I realized. Throw pillows, lots of
them.

Seven went onto my
couch, the long, black leather couch made in Italy that had set me
back about $8,000. My designer had called it “minimal contemporary
modern” or some such nonsense. Whatever the label, I liked it.
Sleek, clean, uncomplicated.

Now it bursted with
fruit flavor. One needlepoint throw pillow had an American flag on
it. Another, a big red star. A few more with stars, another with
stripes. I sensed a pattern.

“Feeling patriotic?”
I managed, eyebrow arched as I watched her fuss over it all. Humming
again, she put a big decorative pillow there, a small one here, then
switched everything back up where they’d started.

“It is almost July
Fourth,” she exclaimed. “That’s America’s birthday.”

The woman was
certifiable. But again, I felt the slight start of a smile, just when
I had every right to be pissed off about her ridiculous assault on my
penthouse. It would all have to go, clearly, right back into those
bags they came in and returned to the knick-knack brick-a-brack flea
market where they belonged. But not right this second.

“Oh, I love this
one!” she exclaimed, pulling yet another pillow out of the bag. It
had a big, red heart on it. She tucked it against the arm of a
matching large black leather chair. Surveying her work, she giggled.

“You having fun?” I
asked dryly.

“Declan, even you
have to admit, your apartment is so bleak.”

“Bleak?” I looked
around. This penthouse apartment? Chicks loved it, high up looking
over the world, everything in it high-end, luxury. Hell, I loved it.
What was wrong with it?

“Bleak, you know,
lacking color. Seeming cold and empty.”

“I know what the word
means, Kara.” Now a lecture on vocabulary, this girl was going to
put me over the edge. Up to this point, all I’d heard in my
apartment from members of the fairer sex had been oohs and aahs,
first while admiring their surroundings, then while enjoying
themselves in my bed.

“There’s nothing
homey about this place.” Kara giggled again, sneaking back over to
her bags. One thing remained. She lifted it up, now bursting out in a
gale of laughter. “Until now!”

She held one last
pillow in her hands, her crowning achievement. Tassels, that was the
first thing I noticed, lots and lots of red tassels all around the
edges. The bulk of the pillow looked like it was made out of velvet,
a background in pink, a large smiling bear in brown, and a big, fat
heart in red, of course. The bear held the heart in his paws, as if
offering it up in exchange for a big hug.

“Are you fucking
kidding me?” I asked.

She burst out again in
what could only be called a gleeful cackle. “I thought it would be
perfect in your favorite chair!”

Oh no, she wouldn’t
dare.

But dare she did,
walking her sassy little self on over to my favorite leather chair,
the only one in my apartment I had to admit that really felt
comfortable for sitting. My decorator hadn’t liked it, said
something ridiculous like it was more country manor than city slick,
but I’d insisted anyway. It had a few cracks in it, a warm chestnut
brown leather.

And now it had a pillow
on it with a bear offering up his heart.

“That’s the ugliest
thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” I took a step closer, almost
admiring the handiwork. It took some doing so make something that
bad.

“I know, isn’t it?”
she laughed. “It’s so over-the-top.”

“Do you think someone
handmade it?”

“Definitely.” She
nodded. “Someone took a long time stitching up that smile.” She
poked me in the chest, turning the full force of her 100-watt smile
on me. “And now you’ve got him in your favorite chair.”

“How do you know
that’s my favorite chair?”

“How could it not
be?” She gestured at the other two pieces of furniture in my living
room. Gleaming with hard leather, they imposed rather than welcomed,
seeming to dare onlookers to try to sit on them. I guessed she had a
point. She hugged her hands to her shoulders and rocked back onto her
heels, glowing with satisfaction over her accomplishments.

“You’re enjoying
yourself, aren’t you?” I asked.

“I am.” She
laughed. “I’ve messed up your whole apartment with flowers and
pillows. You’re just lucky I didn’t get you any potpourri. Or
scented candles.”