Shadows and Silk (22 page)

“I can’t take anymore,” she pleaded. “It’s too much.”

“You can take as much as I give you.”

The tears fell faster and were soaked away by the cloth around her eyes, and she shook
her hea
d as the tingles started again
low in her body.
His fingers dipped inside her again, and then they pulled back to the small star of
her anus, massaging the entrance with her own lubrication.

A finger slipped inside and she caught her breath, unused to the sensations it caused.
Nerve endings tingled
and she rose up on her elbows so she could get better leverage. She pushed against
him, trying to take more, and the sharp sting against her ass had her gasping in surprise.
Her bottom was
hot
where he’d spanked her and she could imagine it turning a fiery red in the shape
of his palm.

“Ah, a greedy wench,” he said
,
adding a second finger to the first.
“Don’t be impatient, love.”

He stretched her, scissoring his fingers, and
gaining
a deeper entrance all the while his tongue played havoc with her clit and his other
hand laid well placed slaps against her ass. She was so close to coming she could
scream, but he was keeping her just on the edge.

“Damn you, Brant. Finish it.”

He chuckled against her swollen folds, and her eyes almost rolled back in her head
at the new sensation.
Her hips were thrusting against his face and fingers, and noises she didn’t even know
she was capable of making escaped from her throat.

The hand spanking her ass retreated, and then she felt more oil being dribbled over
the tender area, his hand soothing where it had stung. And then he did it again, only
this time the oil dripped between her buttocks and gathered where his fingers were
piercing her, making it even easier for him to slide inside.

She tried to breathe, but even the simplest of
requests her brain was making to her body weren’t being heeded.

“Please, please—” she chanted over and over again.

“Whatever you want, baby,” he crooned.

His fingers left her and he scooted out from underneath her, leaving her bereft and
hanging on the precipice of pleasure. Her nipples grazed the terrycloth of the towel,
and her hips searched for him. She was seconds away from ripping the blindfold from
her eyes when she felt the tapered end of something unfamiliar.

“You asked what I had hidden away in my suitcase,” he said, pressing the device inside
of her without stopping to let her adjust. She was more than ready for it, but it
grew wider and wider as he continued to push, until she felt stretched and flames
of pleasure seared her to her very soul.

“I wish you could see yourself as I do,” he whispered. “Just relax against it. Take
it all, baby.”

She bit the back of her hand as the toy grew impossibly big, and then the flared base
popped in easily, so it was locked inside of her. Darcy cried out as the oxygen finally
ex
ploded fr
om her lungs, and the electricity
gathering in her womb
cra
ckled through her nerve endings and across her clit.

It was too much. She’d never take it and him too. Her hands clenched
at
the towel and she tucked her knees beneath her, huddling against the shivers that
wracked her body.

“I can’t—I can’t,” she cried out, rocking back and forth.

“Shh,” Brant said. “I’ve got you, baby.” He soothed her with a caress and a soft kiss,
and then slowly turned her body so she lay on her back. He splayed her legs wide and
then settled himself between them.

Darcy felt the head of his cock probe at her entrance, and she whimpered, her hands
grasping at the taut muscles of his arms for an anchor. He settled over her, but didn’t
enter her, and before long the anticipation
had her shuddering
with what was t
o come.

And then the tie around her eyes loosened, and she saw reddish light through her closed
lids.

“Look at me,” he commanded.

His voice sounded strained, almost as if he were in pain, and Darcy’s eyes fluttered
open. The dark green of his eyes was all she could see—as if she were looking straight
into his soul and to the man he wanted to be. It was a powerful connection, and she
realized with a start that when he walked away at the end of their time that there
would never be anyone else
like this
. It would have been a mockery of everything she’d ever believed in.

Her knees hitched higher around his hips, begging him
to slide inside of her, while the toy stretching her ass made her burn with a dark
desire she was almost ashamed of.
He moved against her, slicking the head of his cock in her juices, but still not pushing
home.

“Tell me what I want to hear, Darcy.” He pushed against her just a little so she could
feel the stretching at her pussy. “Tell me,” he demanded.

She shook her
head
in denial, wanting to close her eyes to block out the pain she saw in his face, but
she couldn’t look away.

“I said tell me. You’ve told me before.”

She bit her lip to stay silent and keep from giving in to his demands. He couldn’t
keep asking her to tear what was left of her pride and her heart to shreds. It wasn’t
fair.

“Damn you,” he said, his eyes blazing now with a combination of need and anger. “Damn
us both.”

And then his lips came down on hers just as he pushed the full length of his cock
inside of her with one stroke. He swallowed her scream at the invasion, and her legs
clamped around him as he began to move as if hell it
self were licking at his heels.

He was so thick and full inside of her, just a thin wall separating his hot flesh
from the toy in her anus, and the pleasure was indescribable. Fiery licks of sensation
devoured her from the inside, so she was stretched between a fine line of pleasure
and pain as he began to move with short, forceful thrusts.

Sweat dampened his skin and the thick cords of his neck muscles strained as he pounded
inside of her. But the green of h
is
eyes never wavered from hers.

“Fuck.
Y
ou’re so tight. It almost hurts.”

She was incapable of speech. Even of breathing. Her back arched and her hips welcomed
every thrust, and her pussy
spasmed
in uncontrollable surges that were beyond her control, milking him deeper inside
of her.

Her nails dug into his arms as liquid flames erupted from the center of her body,
and she heard him cry out h
er
name as the world dissolved around her.

Brant wondered what the human body’s threshold for pain was. And then he wondered
how close he was to achieving it. Because he swore the hole where he thought his heart
should have been was breaking right in two.

He pulled away
from Darcy’s still quivering body
, and quickly removed the toy, storing it in a bag to be cleaned later. And then he
rolled
onto his back and threw his arm across his eyes in case the tears he felt building
inside of him actually came.
The breeze cooled the perspiration on
their
bodies, and he knew he should hold her right now, but to God’s honest truth, he needed
someone to hold him first.

“If I could love anyone it would be you,” he said, his throat dry and the words barely
audible.

But the sharp sob of breath told him she had heard, followed by a self-deprecating
laugh that made him hate the man he’d become.
She rolled away from him and curled into herself, but he didn’t have the strength
or the courage to pull her back.

“I was married before.” He didn’t know he was going to say the words until they were
already out, and now he had no choice but to follow through. He owed her an explanation.
She needed to know why.
He felt her go still beside him, and knew she was listening, even though she stayed
unusually silent.

“
Her name was Vivian Rothschild,
and we met in a Miami bar while I was working undercover
doing
surveillance. She caught my eye because I thought it was you at first, and I wondered
what the hell you were doing in Miami and how I was supposed to keep my hands off
you without your brothers around to run interference.”

Brant kept his arm over his eyes, but he felt Darcy turn toward him and knew her eyes
were watching.

“But she wasn’t you, and I was almost grateful. It was an instant click for me, and
I thought
This
is it. She’s the one.
I didn’t find out until later that she’d studied you—how you moved and the expressions
that crossed your face.
Even that smart mouth.
She knew you inside out, and reeled me in like a goddamned fish.
We got married that weekend.
I didn’t need to wait. I knew she was the one.

“
Your brothers didn’t even
find out about the wedding
until later, and I could see the knowing disappointment in their eyes as they looked
at her and thought of you.
It’s as pissed as Cade’s ever been at me. He didn’t talk to me for months. But
I made them swear they would
n’t tell you. I figured I’d
break the news
when the time was right. Maybe you’d settle down yourself, and then it wouldn’t be
so hard.
”

“Am I so hard to love then?” she asked. The sadness in her voice was enough to
break
him.

“You were a fucking child. What kind of bastard would I have been to have pursued
you that young?”

“I was
eighteen
. Not a child.
And adult enough to recognize
love when it slapped me in the face.
Age doesn’t put limits on things like that.
”

“
Believe me, society and your brothers would have.
You have no idea what it felt like to
look at
you at sixteen and know that everything about
the way you made me feel
was wrong. And the older you got, the harder it became
to fight
. But you still had a lot of growing up to do.
I wanted you to come to me as a woman. But i
f Vivian hadn’t come along when she did
,
I would have stolen what was left of your youth and dreams and taken you for myself.”

“
If that’s what you thought the
n you knew nothing of my dreams,” she said, the anger coming through.
“
I guess it’s lucky Viv
i
an came along. Maybe I should thank her.”

“You’d have to take a one-way ticket to hell to find her.
It turns out she was a Russian double agent, and I had just enough security clearance
to make me a target. Political stirrings were rising in Russia, and DHS had moles
everywhere over there. They have the largest supply of weapons of mass destruction,
and things are volatile politically.
”

Brant sat up and
scrubbed his hands through his hair. He still hadn’t looked at her. It was hard enough
to get this out without those witchy eyes on him. He
watched the waves coming in closer and closer to where they sat, and he wondered briefly
how long they’d been out
in the sun
.

“
Like I said,
” he continued.
“S
he studied you and
spent months setting the stage.
We were married for six months before the lust started to clear and my brain began
picking up on small things it should have seen from the beginning.
My security clearance had been raised again, and I was working my way up the ranks
pretty quickly. I knew identities of agents we had undercover in Russia, and several
of them reported to me directly. Declan help me set a trap for her.
” He laughed but there was no humor to be found.
“
I went to him with my suspicions
,
and
Dec
just gave me this lo
ok like, “What took you so long?
”

“Dec suspected her as a plant from the moment he met her, but he waited until I saw
it for myself. If he’d had hard evidence he would have come to me of course, but some
things a man just needs to realize on his own.”

The breeze had picked up and clouds had begun to roll in. It looked like a late afternoon
storm was brewing, and it fit comfortably with his mood. The waves grew larger and
more violent
the longer they sat.

“What happened?” she
finally
asked.