Red Hot Obsessions (185 page)

So Many Secrets

Pieces of Rae floated inward to coalesce.

She gasped for air.

Wulf’s skin warmed her body.

Her vision refocused, and the tiny light bulbs embedded in the ceiling glowed like an array of suns.

Wulf kissed her, and she kissed him back, her arms draped around his neck. Her hand drifted toward his back and his scar. Her fingertips grazed the tangled skin. He didn’t flinch, so she explored it with her fingers. Tough ridges surrounded the gouge.

Wulf braced himself on his forearms while he kissed her. His languid kissing seemed like he was trying to prolong being inside her, like he hadn’t had enough of her yet. Her body shivered at the thought, and her pussy gripped his dick.

He chuckled, and his lips pulled away from hers as he smiled.

“What?” she asked.

“If you keep doing that, you might not leave tonight at all. What would the staff say?”

She slapped his shoulder. “I should leave. They’re going to talk.”

“It doesn’t concern us.”

“Oh, my Lord.” Rae covered her eyes as if trying to block out the thought. There was something so embarrassing about people not just suspecting but knowing that they’d been having sex and then, horrors, talking about it.

He rolled off of her, and she felt empty as he pulled out. He slid one strong arm under her shoulders and pulled her close to him. With the other hand, he flipped the blue comforter over them both.

Rae hadn’t even noticed him pull back the covers. Wow, she must be really tipsy, or just really into him.

Really into the ways that his hands stroked her.

Really into how his body slid between her thighs and into her.

Desire smoked in her again.

That was ridiculous. She couldn’t just hop on and ride him every five minutes.

Rae laid her head on his strong shoulder. She traced the ridges of muscle banding his chest and stomach. Black tattoo ink shrouded his other shoulder.

“Are they really going to talk?” she asked, even though she was ashamed that she was so ashamed.

“Probably,” Wulf said. “They discuss anything that amuses them.”

“Why are we even here? Why didn’t we just go to a restaurant and a hotel?”

“I wanted you to meet Rosamunde and the rest of my staff.”

“Because they’re your friends.”

“It’s a different relationship than friendship. It’s more like family, a series of reciprocal obligations.”

“But they’re not your family, really.”

“No, they’re not. They know their place, and they certainly keep me in mine.”

Rae ran her fingers over his chest, still shying away from that black ink blotch on his shoulder. “I can’t imagine living so far away from my family.”

“My mother died when I was fifteen.”

Visions of gunfire and spraying blood played in Rae’s head. “I’m sorry.”

“Breast cancer,” he said.

“I’m so sorry.” So prosaic and lingering a death seemed worse.

Maybe someone who had seen his brother shot to death would have a different opinion of a death that allowed time to say goodbye.

He said, “Most of my staff have been with me for years or are the grown children or younger siblings of previous staff.”

“So, their whole families serve you.” The feudal overtones creeped Rae out.

“They aren’t obligated to.”

“Are you going to ask them what they think of me?” She asked it as a joke, but if they hated her she would just die, and it would be worse if they despised her, and not just because of what that might mean for this whatever-it-was with Wulf. She hadn’t behaved like a snooty lady should. She had probably embarrassed Wulf in front of them by being the backwater country girl that she was.

Wulf’s smile turned wry again. “I don’t need to ask.”

Rae’s heart seized up. “How do you know?”

“They have been with me for years, day and night. Rosamunde will feel a need to polish you a bit, to which you may acquiesce or not, but they liked you quite well.”

“She trains up all your girlfriends, huh?”

“She’s never met one before.”

Rae wasn’t sure what to say to that, and she still felt stupid-needy. “Are you sure they liked me?”

Wulf glanced at her with sardonic side-eyes, like he wasn’t sure how she was going to take what he was about to say. “I was being a bit facetious when I was scouting for staff on our way to the bedroom.”

“I could tell you were poking fun at me.”

“Not at all. Doubtless, they heard your qualms and did not want to cause you discomfort. The living areas of the house had been flushed of staff. I have never seen this house so empty.”

“Oh.” So they all knew Rae was a tramp. Splendid.

“Had we gone to the garage, a line of staff would have said their goodbyes. You may well brace yourself for that in the morning.”

“Oh, good Lord.” Good thing that Rae was lying down, or else she might have swooned at the thought of his whole staff witnessing her walk of shame. “I can’t stay the night, anyway. I have to get back to my dorm. Hester will flip if I’m out all night.”

“Surely she wouldn’t.”

“Oh, surely she would.” Rae snuggled closer to Wulf’s lean body and rested her hand on his muscled chest. His heartbeat pulsed under her palm. She curled her fingers through the light blond fuzz on his chest and trailed her fingers down his rippled belly.

She peeked at the black tattoo ink that crept over his other shoulder.

When Rae had dragged Wulf’s shirt off his shoulders in The Devilhouse, she had exposed that terrible scar. A tattoo framed it, though she hadn’t had a good look at the tattoo because Wulf had bellowed his safe word and Rae had tossed his shirt back over his shoulders, horrified at what she had done.

Rae touched the tattoo ink.

Wulf didn’t say anything.

She ran her finger over the feathered edge, where the pool of dark ink met his pale skin. Not all the ink was black. Violent pink and white peeped over his strong trapezius muscle.

Rae rolled half onto him, engrossed in trying to see more. She stroked the black ink. “Does that hurt?”

“No.” He ran his hands down her ribs to her waist, stroking her skin.

She asked, “Did it hurt when they did it?”

“It stung a bit. There appears to be some nerve damage on my back, because I didn’t feel parts of it.”

“The ink is really dark.”

“It was engraved in the traditional Japanese method. Would you like to see the whole thing?” The calm in his voice seemed practiced.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to.” Rae scooted back.

Wulf rolled onto his stomach. Heavy muscles wrapped his back and tapered to his narrow waist.

On his back, draped over his right side, dark blacks and blues scrolled around flowers. “What kinds of flowers are these?”

“The white ones are chrysanthemums,” Wulf said. “The pink are cherry blossoms.”

Twigs of pink cherry blossoms separated the white chrysanthemum bursts. A long, snake-like creature wove through the flowers. Blue and green highlights tinged its white scales, almost opalescent on his pale scar. “And a dragon.”

“Yes.”

The whole design was encased in a black cloud that became the background. The flowers vined around the white dragon, which was actually his own pale skin showing through. The grotesque scar where the bullet had burst out his back was the body of the dragon. “You decorated it.”

“An attempt to incorporate the scar into my psyche. Perhaps not entirely unsuccessful. My school chum Yoshi suggested it when I visited him in Tokyo quite a few years ago. It took three months of weekly visits, directly before I took over The Devilhouse, as I recall.”

Rae didn’t like needles or pain and didn’t ever want to get a tattoo that took three months. “Do the things mean something?”

“The cherry blossoms represent the fragility and transience of life.”

Her heart hurt for him. “And the dragon?”

“Strength. Endurance. Mythological connotations of magic. Yoshi has a similar one.”

“That’s quite a commitment for school chum.”

“Yoshi dragged me under a car when that madman shot at us. When Yoshi was reaching for me, he was winged on the arm. He maintains that we both had blood all over us, and so we are blood brothers.”

Rae had to be careful, here, talking about the shooting, and blood, and brothers. “That’s awful.”

“It was not ideal. Have you seen enough?”

“Yeah.”

He rolled onto his back, and Rae slid down to lay beside him. The wine and exertion made her sleepy, and she felt her eyelids blinking. This room, lined with the spectrum of books, was a cozy enclave in Wulf’s castle.

Still, she noticed, there were books, relics of intellect, but there weren’t any pictures.

She twined her leg around his thigh, snuggling up to him. His arm tightened around her, holding her close, but he stared up at the bright LEDs in the ceiling.

“Were you all right with me seeing that?”

“Yes.” He didn’t even blink. “Give me a moment. It might have been disconcerting.”

Wow. That was quite an admission for the man with the shiny, mirrored shell. Rae rested her head on his shoulder and wound all of herself around him. She arched her back to press her body all down his side.

After a moment, something nudged her thigh.

“I know,” she wanted to giggle but she didn’t know how he would react, so she just mimicked his accent. “‘It will go away presently.’” Her accent came out as more cockney than his standardized British, but what the heck.

“No, it won’t.” Wulf whirled with her and she was under him again. His knee between her legs surprised her but she opened to him. He didn’t indulge in foreplay this time, and he took her.

“Wulf! We shouldn’t. The condom. I’m not—” but his mouth came down on hers. His body rocked between her legs, driving his cock into her and she couldn’t think any more. He did something at the end of each long stroke that felt so good inside her that she wanted to scream. She grabbed him around the shoulders and held him tight.

Wulf pushed into Rae again, and her breath caught in her throat. With every movement of his supple body, waves rushed from Rae’s pussy to her head, driving her breath out. Her hands traveled down his body. Her right hand caressed his smooth skin, feeling the heavy muscles on his shoulder and side. Her left hand gingerly touched that terrible scar.

The image of the screaming blond boy flashed in her head again, and she shuddered. She held him as he slid in and out of her.

He pushed himself up on his forearms and gazed down at her. His intense gaze unnerved her, and she reached for his neck. He thrust into her, still watching her eyes. Rae moaned and arched, unable to keep her eyes open as each wave overcame her.

“Wulf, oh my God. Wulf!” She grabbed him and pulled him down to kiss him because she could see the pain in his eyes. His lips sucked her mouth as his cock pumped her.

She knew that she must be irrational or drunk or something because she wanted him to come in her. All that condom-wrapped sex that she had ever had seemed like playing around compared to this skin-to-skin heat. She wanted every bit of him, to wrap him in herself and drink him in.

His body tensed. He pushed into her one last time. That last grind on her clit threw her over the edge. Her body undulated with waves of pleasure that rushed through her and she cried out. Her body rose, pressed against his, flying. His lips never left hers, but his arms shook where he braced himself above her.

“Reagan,” he whispered against her lips.

“Oh, Wulf.” She couldn’t seem to get enough air because even her lungs trembled. The last of the waves rippled in her pussy and her spine.

She opened her eyes, expecting to see his usual self-contained expression on his face, but he looked so vulnerable. His blonde hair flopped over his forward, and his blue eyes searched hers. He sucked air in and his lips parted, verging on saying something that was going to come out in a rush.

If he told her about his brother, she might react wrong, and he would know she hadn’t kept her word. Hurting him was the last thing she wanted to do.

A faint beep peeped from her purse, which was lying next to the door.

She asked, “What’s that?”

“Nothing.” He kissed her, and she savored his silky lips and soft kiss.

Her phone fweeped again.

“Ignore it,” he said.

She didn’t want to move. She didn’t think she could stand up, anyway, so she held onto his kiss. His tongue slid into her mouth and stroked her tongue for a moment, and then he backed off, still brushing her mouth with his.

Her dang phone cheeped again.

“It’s probably just my cousin-roommate, wanting to know where I am,” she whispered against his lips.

“Is she that forward?”

“Oh, she keeps tabs on me. She’s terrified that I’m going to Hell.”

“Don’t move.” His breathy voice sounded so unlike him.

“I have to. She’ll freak. She’ll call my parents because she’ll think I’ve been raped and left for dead in the desert.” She patted his arm, asking him to move.

He rolled off her.

Her muscles felt wrung out, as if he had sapped all the life from her, but he didn’t look like he could move either, stretched beside her.

“I just have to text her back that I’ll be home soon.” Rae pulled a sheet to cover herself as she stood to go get her purse.

Wulf opened a drawer beside his bed and tossed her a thick robe.

She stuck her arms through the sleeves and belted it. “Oh, shoot. I forget to bring my clothes up from the car. I’ll have to wear that red dress back to The Devilhouse. I can still get inside to change clothes, right?”

Wulf cleared his throat like he was trying to cough up something. “Since I was planning to drive you home in the morning, I asked the staff to take your backpack and launder your clothes.”

“When did you tell them that?”

“While we were dining.”

So she had no street clothes. Going home in a ball gown was less horrific than staying out all night in terms of the haranguing that Rae was going to get. “Oops. Oh, well. Thanks, anyway. But I do have to go home. Probably soon.”

Rae plodded over to the dark doorway. A green light blinked inside her purse.