Surrender (11 page)

As good as his mouth felt on me, I hadn’t actually had time to warm up, hardly knew which end was up. Frowning when he discovered I was barely damp, he worked his finger inside of me a moment and then changed tactics abruptly. Planting a hand on my breasts, he shoved me back, grasped my hips as I flattened out and yanked them upward to meet him as he lowered his mouth to my clit.

A jolt of fire went through me then.

Anything but that, I thought a little wildly, feeling blackness cloud my mind as my body shot from zero to sixty in two seconds flat as he fed greedily on my clit. I groaned, bucked against him, more interested in evading the torture of his mouth than embracing it. His head came up after a moment and he rammed a finger inside of me again. Discovering I was wet, he dragged me to the edge of the counter and pulled me upright. I slipped off the edge just as he aligned his cock with the mouth of sex, grunting as gravity helped him impale me on his shaft.

“Oh Jesus,” he ground out as I wrapped my legs around his waist and caught his shoulders with my hands to keep from falling, enabling him to sink deeply inside of me.

His arms tightened around me as he heaved several times, bouncing me up and down on his shaft. Grinding his teeth, he leaned against the counter, trying to get more leverage to take longer strokes. “Jesus, Anna, baby,” he muttered in a litany as the goal eluded him and he could manage no more than short, deeply embedded strokes.

I bit down on his shoulder to contain a groan as I felt my body quicken in response to the pounding strokes against my g-spot, knowing any moment I was going to completely lose it. He beat me to it, uttering a hoarse growl as he came, biting the side of my neck and sucking hard as he ejaculated his seed into me in hot bursts that matched his convulsing thrusts.

He swayed weakly when his body ceased to spasm but managed to settle my buttocks on the edge of the counter. Huffing for breath, he nuzzled my neck appreciatively. “You feel so good, Anna, so good, baby. I wanted it so bad. I’ll make it good for you tonight. I promise,” he murmured gustily as he lifted his head at last and pressed his forehead to mine.

I lifted my eyelids with a great effort when he caught my head between his palms and pulled away to stare at my face. My heart was still thundering against my ribcage SURRENDER Kimberly Zant 49

with the near miss, my body clamoring for the release denied me. He moved his lips over my face in nibbling kisses and finally paused with his lips barely a hair’s breadth from mine. For a long moment, he stared deeply into my eyes. I held my breath, fighting the urge to close the distance and feel his lips on mine.

It wasn’t rational thought that stopped me. It was the sudden flash of warning in my mind.

“Shit!” he ground out as if he had suddenly remembered that was off limits, pulling away from me so abruptly I nearly fell off the counter. He steadied me, straightened his shorts, and hitched his britches up over his hips, looking around a little vaguely as if he was surprised to discover we were in the kitchen. Striding toward the sink, he dragged his cock out and washed the residue of sex from himself, then grabbed a paper towel to dry off.

I watched him with a mixture of horror and unseemly amusement. When he had zipped his pants, he returned with a wet paper towel, dabbed at my nether lips, and finally handed the towel to me. As thoughtful as it was, I wasn’t terribly comfortable cleaning myself in front of him. On the other hand, I didn’t want to be dripping cum in the kitchen either.

“Hungry?”

I looked up at him in surprise and finally nodded.

His lips curled. “I make a fairly tolerable omelet.” Without waiting for a response, he began opening and closing the cabinet doors in a search for a bowl, finally dragging out a metal mixing bowl that looked big enough to mix a cake in. Keenly conscious of the use we had put the kitchen to I went in search of germ killer when I had finished cleaning up. It might only have been my imagination, but it seemed to me the room wreaked of sex, and I thought it likely the chef would have a heart attack when—if—he noticed it.

Gareth grinned at me, reddening faintly when he saw what I was about.

Chuckling, he focused on hacking up the ingredients he planned to add to his omelet and finally dragged a carton of eggs out of the refrigerator. He used half a dozen, dropped shells and egg whites all over the counter top and the floor, burned the first pats of butter, tossed the frying pan and burned butter into the sink and grabbed another pan. By the time he flipped his omelet onto a plate, the room no longer wreaked of sex. A dull haze of smoke drifted through the room about head high, and the entire room looked as if a tornado had swept through it.

Grinning triumphantly, Gareth cut the omelet in half, divided it onto two plates and, settled both at the kitchen eating counter. I grabbed glasses, filled them with orange juice, and found forks before I joined him.

He watched me until I had tried the first bite. “Good?” I smiled at him. “Very good,” I responded, meaning it.

He frowned as he took a bite of his own, and I wondered if he had discovered a piece of egg shell in it. “You can talk, you know,” he said without looking up at me.

I stared at him as he looked up at me, struggling with the uneasy feeling that he was, for reasons completely unknown to me, trying to sabotage me. I cleared my throat uncomfortably after a moment. “Kaelen said I wasn’t allowed,” I responded finally instead of pointing out that, from what I could tell, the ground rules had been designed with two purposes in mind. One, to make certain I behaved like a proper submissive, SURRENDER Kimberly Zant 50

and, two, to keep the relationship in it’s proper place. Friendliness was liable to encourage one or more of the parties to forget that this was nothing more than a business arrangement. I doubted it had been designed to protect me. Most likely, it had been intended to protect them from having me become presumptuous.

“Kaelen isn’t here at the moment,” he responded, a slight edge to his voice now.

Coldness swept through me as my suspicion deepened that he might be trying to trick me. Before I could think of a response, though, before he had even completely gotten the statement out of his mouth, Kaelen entered the kitchen.

His gaze settled pointedly on the two of us for several moments before it swept the disaster area Gareth had created.

I had no idea whether Kaelen had heard the comment or not, but it was immediately clear from the resentful look Gareth sent him and his faintly heightened color that I had misjudged him.

“I trust your plans for the kitchen include cleaning it when you’re done in here,” he finally said levelly.

His face darkening, Gareth glanced around the kitchen as if both baffled and outraged at the suggestion.

“I’ll clean it,” I said quickly, hoping to avert an argument between the two brothers. “He cooked.”

Kaelen’s gaze zeroed in on me. I wasn’t entirely certain what that look meant until it dawned on me that I had spoken out of turn. As that sank in, I felt my own color fluctuate. “Sir,” I added belatedly, hoping to deflect whatever censure might be forthcoming.

Something flickered in his eyes. I had the feeling he was taken aback, but it was hard to gauge his reaction when his expression was so impassive. Finally, he merely nodded and left. I stared at the door after he had departed, relieved, but wondering what had brought him to the kitchen to begin with. He reappeared after a moment, strode to the refrigerator, snatched a diet soda from it, and departed again.

Amusement flickered through me despite my anxiety as I realized that in spite of his unruffled façade he had been so disconcerted that he had forgotten what he had come in for. Sucking my bottom lip between my teeth to keep from smiling, I focused my attention on my plate.

When I glanced up at Gareth, I saw that his eyes were gleaming and his lips twitching. “He’s got a father complex,” Gareth said dryly. “You’d think, the way he acts, he was ten years older than me instead of only three.” He shrugged when I looked at him curiously, hoping he would continue. “He was barely fifteen when he came into his inheri … when our father was killed,” he finished smoothly. “He’s been trying to father me ever since despite the fact that our uncle took us in to raise us with his kids.”

Empathy for their loss made my throat close. I looked down at my plate, but my appetite had vanished. All I could think about was that they seemed to have lost their childhood when they had lost their father. I hadn’t missed the slip. They had inherited responsibilities with the money, I didn’t doubt, that were damned heavy for two young teens. I wondered why he hadn’t mentioned their mother, but she must have died before, I decided. Otherwise they wouldn’t have had to go live with their uncle.

I had the feeling it wasn’t a subject I should pursue. “So … you grew up with SURRENDER Kimberly Zant 51

your cousins?”

He nodded. “Chance, Dev, and Cameron.”

My head jerked upright as if he had snatched it upward, my jaw going slack with stunned surprise. Apparently, Gareth misread my look of shock. “Dev’s Uncle Jack’s biological son. His wife took off when he brought him home.” His lips curled distastefully. “Bitch. I have to say this for her, though. She stayed longer than our mother.
She
took off when I was about two.” I was still reeling over the fact that I had been romping with five very closely related men. I had thought it was pretty kinky when I had only known about Gareth and Kaelen. This information took it to a whole new level, although it dawned on me after a moment that it wasn’t any more immoral to be screwing five cousins than five unrelated men and I hadn’t wrestled too long with that—because I couldn’t afford to be ‘nice’.

The comment about his mother effectively redirected my thoughts, though, submerging me in a welter of chaotic thoughts. Sympathy was strongest and outrage as my mother’s heart ached for the children abandoned by the one person any child ought to be able to depend on.

Uneasiness followed hard on the heels of both of those, though, as it occurred to me forcefully that not one of the men I was staying with had any reason at all to love or trust a woman. Was that why they had wanted a submissive? They wanted a chance to punish all women because of what had happened to them?

It seemed a little wild, even for me. The rules were strict, some even fairly harsh, but they hadn’t mistreated me or shown any tendency to want to.

It was still rather deflating to think there was a possibility that they had picked me, an older woman, because of some deep rooted need to get even with a mother figure—and they knew I was a mother. I wondered a little wildly if they had singled me out because they
could
separate me from my children and wanted to prove all women were whores who would dump their kids if anybody dangled money under their nose like a carrot.

I was letting my imagination run away with me, I realized after a moment. I was the one who had answered the ad. They had had no idea of my existence until I had shown up. It couldn’t possibly be premeditated in that sense.

That didn’t rule out the possibility that my age had had a bearing on their decision, and it occurred to me abruptly that Kaelen was three years older than Gareth, and their mother had abandoned them when Gareth was two, which would have made Kaelen five.

My daughters were three and six.

I felt unwell.

After an uncomfortable moment, I got up and began to clean the kitchen with the mindlessness of an automaton. I was vaguely aware that Gareth was studying me with a look that was a mixture of bafflement, uneasiness, and a touch of anger. It registered in my mind, but trying to decipher the thoughts behind it only added to my confusion, making it harder to reason anything out.

He was gone, I discovered with surprise when I had finished cleaning up. Feeling vaguely relieved, I left the kitchen intending to change since I had wet the bustier I was wearing while I was cleaning.

Dev waylaid me before I could reach the stairs. Hooking an arm around my SURRENDER Kimberly Zant 52

shoulders, he altered my course and headed for the parlor. Tumbling me onto the couch, he sprawled on top of me, shoved my arms above my head and rooted my breasts with his face for a moment before latching onto one nipple as if he meant to suck it off. And all the while, he was very busily arranging me and himself. Hooking one of my legs over the back of the couch and shoving the other onto the floor, he wedged his hips between my thighs, grappling with his zipper.

I was too besieged to gather my wits. I had already been stunned senseless by what I had discovered in the kitchen. I had no defense against his assault. My body, acting on autopilot, responded to the stimulus without any brain function to control it. I was already wet and panting for breath by the time he shifted and stuffed his cock into my hole. He grunted in satisfaction as his engorged flesh slipped inside of me without a great deal of effort on his part. Wedging his shoes against the arm of the couch for leverage, he began to pump into me like a pile driver, jarring me further and further up the couch until he discovered with his first mislick what he had done. Grabbing my waist, he dragged me back, clamped an arm around my waist once he had entered me again, and managed three more strokes before he came.

I was quivering on the verge of release when he slumped on top of me and panted gustily against my neck.

A feeling of misuse swept through me as a cloud of disappointment gathered over my head. I lay gulping for breath, trying to swallow against a knot of emotion in my throat that seemed as if it would choke me.

It wasn’t even noon, for crying out loud, and I had already been fucked twice with absolutely no consideration for my own pleasure!

The trend of my thoughts brought me up short. I wasn’t
here
for my pleasure. I was here for theirs! And I was being paid an obscene amount of money to ‘endure’.

God!
What had I been thinking! I hadn’t even
tried
not to cum! If Dev hadn’t been so focused upon getting his cookie and getting it over with, I would have screwed up for sure!