Red Hot Obsessions (188 page)

They kissed, their mouths fitting tight against each other and tongues sliding. She was already so close to coming, but she wanted him inside her. She plucked at his pants’ waistband, wanting him to take them off so she could have him, but his body was pressed so hard against her stomach that she couldn’t reach his belt.

Instead, he swiveled in her grasp and his arms lifted her behind her shoulders and knees. “Don’t,” she said yet again, like she did every time he picked her up.

His bare shoulders were hot under her hands. He kept kissing her while he carried her against his wide chest over to the huge wooden chair and sat down with her on his lap. The bulge in his pants pushed against her thigh, then her pussy. She gasped and almost came, but she twisted in his hands and straddled him, kneeling on the wide chair.

Sitting beneath her, he seized her boobs, lifted them in his hands, and sucked one nipple hard. She threw her head back and cried out. She ground her pussy against his pants, still trying to figure out his belt, and finally she managed the buckle.

He flicked open his fly and pushed his underpants down. His cock sprang out, a drop of pre-cum already glistening on the top. His hands roamed over her, squeezing and lifting her ass, and she tried to position herself over his cock but he pushed her back, denying her.

“Please!” she gasped.

His hands grasped her hips, then his fingers wiggled under the ropes woven across her stomach and between her breasts. When he gripped the bindings down the center of her chest with both hands, he held her over his cock with the head just poking into her.

He didn’t let her move, even though she struggled to press herself down on him, holding onto the heavy cords on his shoulders. She could barely open her eyes. “Please, Wulf!”

His face was close to hers as he leaned forward, holding her with his fists knotted in the ropes.

Rae wiggled, trying to take him in, but he held her off for another agonizing minute.

He squeezed the rope in his fists and jerked her down onto his cock. The rope bit into her breasts and waist as he used the rope like handles to muscle her, controlling her body. She could have gone limp and he still could have lifted her off him and rammed her down again.

His cock filled her as she came down on him. She arched her back and cried out. She was frenzied for him, and she tried to pump faster. Using those ropes, he levered her up and down his cock, harder but slower than she wanted, coercing her to accept his rhythm, his need.

Her ass slapped his thighs. She writhed, trying to take him faster, and the energy twisted inside her, compressing. Her fingernails dug into his shoulders as his cock breached her body so deep that he pushed a shriek from her lungs.

Her pussy clenched hard one last time, coiling tight like a spring. He dragged her down with the ropes.

Her orgasm ripped through her. She clung to Wulf’s muscled shoulders as he worked her twice more, each thrust zooming blinding pleasure up her spine, and then he gasped and arched under her.

His cock throbbed inside her as he came, sending her over the edge again. She grabbed his neck and held on as the orgasm quaked through her flesh.

The orgasm subsided, but she still twined her arms around his neck, not wanting this to end because she had thrown herself at him and he had resisted at first. She didn’t want him to stalk out, leaving her shattered.

Her vision cleared, and she turned her head, nuzzling him. His neck smelled like citrus and spiced tea.

Wulf pried his fingers out of the rope bindings and wrapped his arms around her. His biceps strained, holding her tightly, and his hands were bunched into fists. His voice was so hoarse that it sounded like he was forcing the words out as whispered near her ear, “All this, you let me do. Why couldn’t you have trusted me like this before?”

She took as deep a breath as the ropes around her ribcage would allow. “Lizzy was going to tell you how she felt. No one knows anything about you. I was the only one who could find out if there was a real reason to warn her off.”

“And now you know.”

“I saw the pictures. That’s all.” Her throat clenched around her voice. “Why did you tell me your name if you didn’t want me to know?”

His arms tightened around her, and she squeezed her arms around his shoulders, holding him close. His breath trembled on her bare shoulder. His voice didn’t quaver. “That first night, you didn’t know I was The Dom or Wulfram Augustus or anyone. You didn’t know anything, and you didn’t want anything from me. You saw
me,
as a man, and I could not stop myself.”

Rae didn’t understand, not really, but she held him close and stroked his neck.

“I don’t make mistakes like that. I don’t let information slip, and I don’t accidentally divulge things.” The harsh tension in his voice sounded angry, not mystified. “I don’t lose control.”

She stroked the back of his head down to his broad shoulders, trying to soothe him. Her hands shied away from that soul-rending scar.

He said, “You were funny, and bright, and ambitious, and aggressive to the point of recklessness. I knew you were struggling to stay in college and build your clinic.”

She nodded to let him know she was listening.

“I lied to you that night. I said that I must have you for the Devilhouse. Even then, I wanted you for
myself.”

But she had ruined all that because she hadn’t trusted him.

Inside, her whole body trembled, on the verge of tears. “But you should want someone like Lizzy, not me.”

“Why would I want
her?”

She summoned all her fears and laid them out. “Because she’s pretty, and thin, and blond, and she would kneel naked at your feet and call you Master, and I won’t.”

His derisive tone surprised her. “Submissive women are as common as muck.”

“Because she wouldn’t pry. Even when she was mooning after you, she didn’t even try to find out anything about you.”

Wulf pried her arms from around his neck and lifted her off of him, standing her on the cold, stone floor. He arranged his pants and walked over to his white shirt hanging like a ghost from a hook by the door.

Rae covered her breasts with her arms, trying not to look naked and pathetic.

Pulling his shirt over his shoulder and the black tattoo around the deep, twisted scar on his back, Wulf said, “A submissive woman wouldn’t pry, that is true. Perhaps I should not have fallen for a natural-born Dominatrix.”

Wulf’s flat tone had been filled with regret, not sarcasm, and it struck Rae cold in the heart even as she latched onto his words,
that he had fallen for her
.

~~~~~

Abby Psych

Rae’s phone buzzed in her jeans’ pocket, vibrating against her thigh.

At the front of the lecture hall, her abnormal psych professor was pointing to a graph on the huge projector screen and had her back to the class.

Rae eased the phone from her pocket and glanced at the glowing screen. The text from Wulf read,
We will arrive at your dorm at 8:00 AM tomorrow morning.

Rae glanced up, her stomach clenching. Noontime sunlight shone hard through the windows and onto her cramped handwriting in her notebook on her tiny, student desk. Her chair was like a movie theater seat, except made out of hard, curved wood, with a clipboard attached to the right armrest.

Her abnormal psychology professor might notice if Rae texted back. Dr. Robbins was a stickler for cybermanners, which meant no texting in class, even though a hundred other students were scribbling notes in the echoing auditorium, too.

Rae dropped her hand to her lap and tried to text with just her left thumb while she took notes with her other hand. She typed,
U don’t have to go
.

She took notes on the disorder of the day, Trichotillomania, which is compulsive hair-pulling, for a few minutes, trying to pay attention. The professor clicked her projector remote that she had clipped to her jeans’ belt loop. An ascending graph drew itself on the screen, visible despite the glaring sunlight, and Rae copied it even though she would download the slides later.

Rae’s phone, which she had wedged between her thighs, buzzed, sending shivers up her legs.

Wulf’s text read: Mulligan might try something. It is settled.

Thank you,
she texted back, surrendering the argument because Wulf was righter than he knew, despite that she would have done just about anything to keep Wulf and her family at least a hundred miles apart.

The drive to Pirtleville would take five hours, and the last three hours were nothing but an unobstructed view of cacti, scrub brush, rattlesnakes, and dirt.

They would have time to talk, because surely the emotionally reclusive Dom of The Devilhouse was too sophisticated to have
fallen for
anyone, let alone a backwater country girl from the unfashionable southern side of the wide, snake-infested desert.

~~~~~

Driving South

The black SUV drove up to the dorm’s front door at eight o’clock sharp. Rae had been waiting in the lobby since seven-thirty, knowing Wulf’s penchant for punctuality.

Rae hoisted her backpack and trudged over to the SUV, ready to throw her stuff in the far-back and sit up front with Wulf. She had only brought clothes for the ride home tomorrow because she would wear stuff that she had left at her parents’ house to church.

When the driver’s side door flipped open, one of Wulf’s staff members, Dieter, emerged and reached for her luggage. “Good morning, Ms. Stone.”

“Hi?” She handed him the backpack.

“He wishes you to ride with us.”

“Oh. Okay. That’s fine.” It wasn’t fine but she didn’t know what to do about it, and they were here already so it would be rude to put them to so much trouble and then bunk on them.

Dieter held the back door open for her, and Rae climbed into the frigid car’s empty rear seat. The skin on her arms tightened into goose bumps. They must have had the air conditioning blasting the whole way from Wulf’s house to her dorm.

She glanced up to the shotgun seat, expecting to see Wulf there, but yet another man on Wulf’s staff nodded at her. She was pretty sure he was the guy who held her car door open for her in Wulf’s enormous garage. “Goot morning, Ms. Stone. I am Hans.”

“Good morning, Hans. Please call me Rae. Um, where’s Mr. von Hannover?”

“He will be following us. He prefers to drive whenever feasible.”

Well, if Wulf didn’t want to be cooped up in a car with her for five hours, so be it, and she certainly wasn’t disappointed that they wouldn’t have a chance to talk it out. If he didn’t want to,
fine.

Dieter drove the SUV out of the dorm area and headed for the freeway.

Rae glanced behind her into the way-back area of the SUV, which was filled with black duffel bags and long cases. “You guys know that we’re coming back tomorrow morning, right?”

“Yes. The plan is to be on the road by nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

Rae had always been jibed about girls packing too much stuff for just an overnight, but all those bags were ridiculous.

Well, when you have that big of a house, you must have a ton of stuff.

A small black sports car, not the silver Tesla but something else, sped past them, and Rae caught a glimpse of Wulf’s bright blond hair in the low car. He didn’t look up, but tinting shadowed the SUV’s windows so he couldn’t have seen her if he had.

Another black SUV trailed them, obviously riding in convoy.

“So how’s Ms. Keller?” Rae asked Hans and Dieter. She felt like she was already home, reciting the obligatory question of general concern after greeting someone,
And how’s your momma?

“Busy. She
ist
very busy,” Hans said.

“Well, she has that big house to run. I imagine that’s a big job.”

“Yes, but the household, we are moving.”

Rae grabbed the seat back as if the road had bucked them off. She couldn’t seem to breathe. Her head buzzed like radio static.

She had to say something. “Where are you moving to?”

“Mr. von Hannover told us that we would be going back to Deutschland or Helvetica for a few months, then elsewhere. Singapore, he mentioned.”

She needed to know. “Why on Earth would he want to move?”

“I would not presume to ask.”

His prim tone admonished her.

Wulf was leaving. He was leaving
her.

She had screwed it up, and it was really over.

It was better that she knew rather than make a fool out of herself.

She clutched her phone, hard, and waited for them to say something else, anything else, like the move was
tentative
or they had
assumed
they were moving, but the guys didn’t say anything.

She sat back and, keeping her eyes wide open so nothing squeezed out of them, opened her phone and caught up on all her “With Friends” games in about half an hour, trying not to think because her thoughts were a riot of self-recrimination and heart-ripping loss.

Her cousin Craigh had beat her at crosswords.

The SUV followed the speedy little black car through the bright city and out into the harsh glare of the desert. Wulf’s car looked like a black hawk sailing on the asphalt’s air currents with its wings swept back.

“Again, he is weaving,” Dieter said and flicked his fingers at the black sports car ahead of them veering onto the shoulder.

Hans sighed and dialed a cell phone. “
Ja
, Herr von Hannover,” and then
something-something-something
in Swiss or German or whatevs. Some more positive sounds, and then Hans hung up. “He says he will stop at the next truck stop for coffee.”

“That is not going to help.”

“He’s not drunk, is he?” Rae asked, doubly concerned because it wasn’t even nine o’clock in the morning yet.

“No,” Hans said. “He never drinks more than one when he is driving, and never in the morning, but he does not sleep this week. He usually sleeps no more than three hours, but he sleeps some. This week, not at all.”

“Not at all?”

“We have staff with him during the day, but he walks the house at night. The night staff tell us.”

“Does he have insomnia often?”

“No.”

“How long’s it been since he slept?”

“We think he must have slept some, at some time, but it has been a week.”

“A
week?
” People could die from lack of sleep, right?

Hans wrenched himself around in the seat and looked back at her. “At the truck stop, we tell him that you like his car very much and you want to try to drive it.”

“I don’t think he wants to be alone with me,” she admitted.

Dieter snorted.

Hans backhanded him on the arm.

Oh, Jesus in Heaven, they did know that she and Wulf had slept together at his house and they were talking about it. Rae wanted to melt into the seat cushions and leak out onto the freeway asphalt.

Hans said, “If he doesn’t want to ride with you, you can drive his car and he can ride in back seat with us.”

“
Ja,
maybe the back seat will make him sleep,” Dieter said. “My wife drives our little baby around if she won’t nap. Doesn’t work as well with hybrid cars, though. The babies, the engine noise, they like.”

Hans told Rae, “You act happy and smile.” He turned toward the windshield and the busy freeway beyond. “He like it when you smile.”

Rae didn’t think that her smile would have any effect on Wulf at all, but she resolved to try.

A few more miles of cacti and sand slipped alongside the SUV, and they followed the little black sports car off the highway at the next exit.

When they pulled up, Wulf was leaning on his car, pumping gas. He was wearing black fatigues like his staff men, and it was the first time that Rae had seen him not wearing a suit. His body looked leaner than when he camouflaged himself with a suit, and his shoulders looked broader. He blended right in with his paramilitary-ish guys, from his woven belt and his athletic stance to his high-and-tight haircut. The only difference was that Wulf wasn’t wearing combat-style boots like his men, just black tennis shoes.

Dieter got out of the SUV and strolled over to him, looking like a secret soldier in his black fatigues and projecting nothing-to-see-here. Rae stepped out and leaned against the car, smiling hopefully at Wulf. He nodded to her, acknowledging her but neither curt nor friendly.

Dieter and Wulf spoke in some other language, presumably German.

Rae smiled big, trying to look interested in the car, which kind of reminded her of a seventies hatchback but she knew a Porsche 911 when she saw one.

Wulf glanced at her once, then nodded agreement. Dieter motioned her over.

“I’m going to get coffee,” Wulf said. He still had that closed look. The desert wind barely ruffled his short, blond hair. “Would you like some?”

“Yes, please. Cream and sugar, please.”

Hans stepped up. “Sir, I can get it.”

“I’ll get it,” Wulf said and walked into the store. Hans and Dieter oscillated for a second, clearly trying to decide whether or not to follow him, when yet another man in black fatigues stepped out of the other black SUV that had pulled up behind Dieter’s SUV and followed Wulf inside.

Dieter said, “Friedhelm has him.”

Hans and Dieter rounded on Rae. They were even taller than she was, and the two big, blond men stared down at her.

“We have to get his keys from him,” Hans said. “If he won’t give them to us, you get them.”

“Go to the driver’s side,” Dieter said. “Get into the driver’s seat and sit there with your hand out. You can drive manual transmission,
ja?
”

“Yeah, I can drive a stick shift.”

“Goot,”
Hans said. The two tall security men marched backward one step and pivoted, standing about as relaxed as Marine honor guards at a military funeral, holding the flag, on the Fourth of July.

All that pomp must be exhausting.

Hans retrieved her backpack from the SUV and popped the hood of the ebony Porsche, which was so shiny that it looked like it was made out of black piano keys. He dropped her backpack under the hood, between the headlights. Rae peeked. The sealed-off storage area looked big enough for a wheelie overnight bag but not much else. Hans pressed the hood closed.

Wow. So Porsches had their trunks up front, like old-time Volkswagen Beetles.
Weird.

Wulf came back from the store, holding a tray with four cups. The other oddly fit staff man, Friedhelm, also held a tray full of coffee cups, and he nodded to Hans and Dieter as if he were passing the responsibility to them before he climbed in the passenger side of the other SUV.

~~~~~