CHERISH (69 page)

“Yeah, good. But not done.”

I want more. I need more.

She slips her lips over the ridge, exploring with her tongue before I bring her back to me with my hands in her hair, showing her what I require. My length goes deep until I know she’s not able to take a new breath, and I hold steady.

This is the most primal of places. Taking her to this edge, watching her eyes stare up at me as I control the very thing that keeps us alive. I wait, but she stays with me. Her eyes start to tear, and I give her an inch backward, letting her suck me back in along with some air, then cut her off again, and, this time, I see she understands.

She locks eyes upward, trusting me to only take her so far, and I can’t deny I am filled with a sense of power that gets me right to the edge.

“Good girl.” I pull back and Promise gasps.

She is more than perfect. She pulls me back in and sucks me right into the back of her throat with a smile in her eyes.

That’s all she wrote.

I unload in the back of her throat, then pull her back off me by the hair, and she smiles, and her tongue comes out to take the next jets as I growl.

She gasps and swallows. There is no shame on her face. The fact that she looks like she wants to be right where she is, worshiping my cock, only brands her on my heart even more.

“You need something, don’t you babe?”

I pull her up and spin her around. This position is new, and I’m glad I’d been able to offload once because it takes the edge off my raging lust. I’m still hard and ready for another round.

Doggy takes me deep, and as much as I want to seat myself inside her from base-to-tip, I don't think tearing her in two is the right move.

“Over.” I push her face down into the white sheets, positioning her hips right at the edge of the bed and lining up. I can hear her taking little fuck me breaths already, and my dick rallies for round two without a timeout.

I take a good long moment to admire what’s mine. Seeing her like this sends my heart into orbit and my predatory instinct thumping inside of me. Her soaking pink gash is nearly mesmerizing. A goddamn priceless masterpiece.

I dip my fingers into her folds and revel in the fact that she’s already drenched.

“Good girl.” I’d never told another chick that before, but with Promise, it’s become my mantra, and I mean it. “I like you wet. I want you wet all the time. You know why?”

I listen to the beautiful music of her sounds as my thumb rounds her little nub. It hardens and swells as I play, and her body tightens and pushes back toward me.

She moans and I know she’s not going to form words right now. So I answer for her.

“Because I think about fucking you twenty-four hours a day, and it’s your new job to be ready.” I press two fingers down and swirl them around in the slick softness, watching her face. “You like that?”

“Um hmm.” She flips her head back and forth as I work a finger barely inside. I watch intently every move she makes, feeling for what’s working for her, and when I get her rhythm, I spin my other hand into the mix, soaking my finger and spinning it around her ass.

I feel her tense, but I keep working in her pussy until my entire hand is soaked, then slowly guide a finger into her other tight opening, owning her in a new way.

The seductive yelp I hear makes me more in love with her than a second before. She doesn’t pull away, doesn’t deny or hesitate as I begin to fuck my finger slowly in and out of her sphincter. I go deeper and faster as I listen for her sounds. Her entire body shakes, and I exchange my fingers in her pussy for the tip of my dick and begin to sink home.

“Beautiful, babe. Watching your body take me . . . fucking amazing.”

Her hips take on a life of their own, and she fucks back into me, shaking and cumming almost immediately like the little vixen she is. My finger in her ass pushes, gliding in and out faster. I’m sending her on another round of convulsions, and her pussy tugs at my cock until I’m inside her almost to the hilt.

I bend my torso over her, get my lips as close to her ear as I can. “Don’t lie to me again.” I want to reinforce our lesson when she is in this head space. I lay the first smack on the side of her ass and listen for her whimper.

“I’m sorry. I am. I’m so sorry.”

This place where she is right now is where I am the god of her pleasure, and her mind is utterly free. “You belong to me now. I’ll give you what you need. I’ll teach you and train you and rid you of all your old habits.”

I give her another inch of my thickness before pulling back and stroking deep in one long, slow thrust.

“You know what you did was wrong, don’t you?” I hold myself steady, locked inside her heat as I send my finger deeper into her ass, feeling her tightness stretch around it, imagining the day when it will be my dick inside her here.

She whimpers into the sheets, pushing up onto her elbows to give herself some room to breathe. I see her small nod, and my lips pull back from my teeth.

I push my hips forward until I feel the soft, round heat of her red ass against my body. I move over her like a blanket, covering her back with my chest. I give her a quick, sharp bite on the back of her neck with a deep thrust into her soaking cunt.

“Mine.”
It rumbles out of me over her gasp. I take my finger out of her ass and steady her hips with both my hands and go to work showing that pussy exactly who it belongs to.

“You don’t ever let another man see you except when you’re dressed. You don’t ever lie to me. Understand?”

“Yes.” Her beautiful, magical voice wanders over the soft sounds of our bodies merging. “Uh, god, it hurts . . .”

I slam into her and bump the tip of my dick into her limits. She curls her back into an arch and shakes with another orgasm that pushes me to my own.

“I want you sore, babe.” I smack hips to ass, going deep and feeling her glorious, silk tightness around every inch. “Every step you take from now on, I want you to remember me here. Only me.”

As much as I want to release inside her, I want her mouth more, and it is her mouth that needs me more than her pussy right now. The beast inside of me needs to see her feed on me. To show me how sorry she is.

I drop out of her and listen to the painful sounds she makes at being left so empty so suddenly.

“Come here. Swallow, babe. I want you to swallow it all.”

She slowly turns around, and her hair is a tangled, beautiful mess around her flushed face. This is her most beautiful moment. I say that, but I know there will be an infinite number of other moments when I think the same thing.

Her lips open, her eyes wide but innocent, taking my heart more every second.

Her lips are around me without a word, sucking deep before she brings a hand up between my legs, cradling my sac, and that’s it.

I give it all to her, pushing down her throat. She takes as much as she can. A swell of pride comes over me, watching how hard she’s trying to take my length and swallow at the same time.

That’s my girl.

The tips of my fingers shake, and a wave of euphoria comes over me, unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. I feel closer to her than any other human being in my life, and if the way her eyes are locked onto mine is any indication, we are more together at this moment than I’d ever imagined possible.

The room blurs and my mind goes somewhere as I fill her mouth. Lights dance behind my closed lids, my head stretches back, and I belong to her as much as she belongs to me. The muscles in my thighs turn to stone as the last spasms take over, and I think this must be what heaven feels like.

Her lips are decorating me with small kisses up and down my length, wide-eyed and flushed, looking up at me.

“I love you.” The words come out without thought, and I watch as she absorbs them, giving me the most beautiful gift I’ve ever received.

“I love you, too.”

Promise

Beckett is laying next to me on the bed.

I’m not even trying to pretend I’m not staring.

He’s beyond words.

He’s naked, one arm up and crooked behind his head, and he’s giving me that half-smile that zaps me in all the right places.

“You know, most girls would be horrified—
horrified
—about what you just did to me.” I say, and he raises his eyebrows. “I mean the
spanking
idiot.”

I’m still in a bit of shock that he just turned me over his knee like a kid. I am also about as turned on as I’ve ever been, thinking about it.

There is a lingering warmth where I sit. The skin under where he laid his hand isn’t painful but more
aware.

His calm patience is infuriating. Even when I was kicking up blue thunder as he wrangled me over his knee, he never scared me. I never felt anger coming from him. He never seemed exasperated or irritated.

When the spanking was over, and he curled me up into him, I had truly never felt so close to anyone before. I’d never really felt that human connection before. I’ve read about it, and on the Hallmark Channel, everyone’s running through wildflower fields, arms wide toward their one and only, like it's the most common and natural feeling in the world.

I'd never felt it. Not once. Until now.

And at this moment, I can see something I’ve never seen before. A future where I laugh, and we tell each other secrets because I know whatever our future is, everything will be okay.

“Do you think I care about what any other girl would think? Look into my eyes. Do. I. Look. Like. I. Care?” He grabs me around the waist and tucks me on my side against him. He is utterly shameless. The confidence he exudes is like gravity.

“I’m quite sure you do not.” I trace very lightly over the part of his silver scar that cuts from his forehead down through his eyebrow, wondering how he didn’t lose his eye.

“Listen, I want you here.” His voice drips over me. I’m still half on fire and half frozen from the world of sensations I’ve experienced, but his voice flows into all my open painful places soothing me.

He pulls me extra tight and reaches over with his free hand to guide my leg over his, tangling our bodies together and pressing me as close to him as possible. He shifts the hard muscle of his thigh between my legs, and my still slick warmth throbs on his skin.

“I’m here.” I sigh, letting my entire self relax into him.

“No. I mean I want you
here. Living here.
”

So much for total relaxation.

“Uh, well . . .” Relaxation is now panic.

A thousand thoughts are screaming through my head. First and foremost, there is no way Jeremy would be on board with that. Second is we just met. Yes, yes . . . what I feel tells me something different, but I’m trying to stay on planet earth.

“What? Tell me you don’t want to be here. Just that, don’t think of anything else. Just that one question, do you
want
to be here? With me?”

I nod my head because it is the only thing that seems to work.

I want to be here, but I can’t be here.

I can’t imagine not being here . . . or wherever he is. Anywhere he is.

It makes zero sense.

I don’t want a man. I don’t want to need Beckett. But, it would seem there are other forces at work, and I am falling under the spell of his kung fu, which is proving stronger than the layers of my armor.

I’ve met a lot of people in my life. Going from house to house, you not only encounter the families who, for whatever reason, decide to let the street urchins of this country settle with them for a period of time for a monthly, state provided dividend, but you also meet all the other people in their lives as well. As much as you would prefer not to know yet another new person, it is simply part of that life.

So, I know how it feels to meet people.

When I walked into Mr. Fitzgerald’s room a week ago, and my eyes touched on Beckett, it was unlike any meeting that had ever come before.

I knew him. Instantly. Not in an oh-yeah-we-met-at-that-thing-once kind of way. I
knew
him. I regarded him, and the image of who he could be in my life settled into my soul and into my dreams regardless of how much I wished him away.

Now, he’s completely silent. He’s staring at me. I can't see his eyes, but I feel them. And, I think he’s smiling, too.

Yes, he’s definitely smiling. I know how it feels when he smiles.

“Then it’s decided. I’ll get a moving company to pack up your—”

“No!
I can’t move right now. I mean, you asked if I
wanted
to be here—not if I
could
be here. I can’t, not now. Not with what’s going on with Jeremy and Jordan and everything.”

The wretched panic in my voice is startling even to me. Beckett stays completely relaxed next to me, the lines of his naked body as fascinating as they were the first moment I saw him naked just days ago.

He doesn’t speak right away, and I’m so thankful. I don’t want to talk right now. I’ve talked more in the last week than I have in years.

I know he has more to say. I can feel it even as I bury my head into the side of his chest, trying desperately to forget about my pitiful reality.

Just as he inhales, I close my eyes, knowing whatever niceness we’ve had is about to be ruined by more talking.