Susan Johnson (15 page)

“I know,” Trey replied mildly, slowly rubbing her golden hair between his thumb and fingers. “I can’t own you for only fifty thousand dollars. Your skin’s too white. But I paid to
use
you”—he deliberately emphasized the verb—“for three weeks. Are we agreed on that?” His fingers tightened on the fall of hair, and he tugged.

Empress winced, debated whether to resist, and for a confusing variety of reasons, many of which were muddled by the smoldering heat that seemed to emanate from the tall man towering above her, she moved forward until the tugging ceased and she was pressed up against gray silk shantung and a powerfully muscled body. “You’re wrong, you know,” she declared quietly, lifting her face to look into Trey’s cynical eyes.

“It isn’t three weeks?” he said sarcastically, but his mouth was already lowering to hers, and when his lips lightly brushed the fullness of her mouth, he murmured, “We’ll argue numbers later.”

She bit his lip in angry retaliation, and he grunted at the sudden pain, but his hands only tightened on her shoulders, and for a badly injured man his strength was formidable. His mouth closed fiercely on hers and with bruising force, reciprocating for her biting him, until a few moments later she felt him quicken against her and his mouth gentled.

It was madness to react, she told herself, insanity to feel a heat curling blissfully downward, intemperant to have this irresistible impulse to melt into his body. But then his tongue slid across the inner surface of her upper lip, slightly skimmed the smoothness of her teeth, and probed with delicate inquisition until her tongue met his and he drew hers slowly into his mouth. Her low moan escaped in a breathy, feathery exhalation, and his hands relaxed on her shoulders.

Leisurely his hips moved in a languid rhythm against the softness of her body, his arousal delicately, skillfully assertive, reminding her of all he could make her feel, reminding her of the pleasure he could give.
No
, she thought,
I won’t be seduced by a man so cynical and arrogant.
No, and never, and then her disloyal senses noted the warm tip of his tongue sliding up her cheek to her ear, recognized the blatant offering of ecstasy hard against her stomach, remembered exactly how long he could make the pleasure last until her whole body trembled. His touch was magic, his heated words whispered into her ear an invitation to his own special paradise, and she shivered in sudden anticipation, shivered away the no and never, twined her arms around his back, and spread her hands lightly over the Chinese silk.

Whatever she was, Trey thought with a practicality conditioned
by his impatient libido, she was exquisite and passionate. She may talk resistance, and maybe that, too, was one of her games. And effective. For when he’d felt her arms lightly embrace him and heard that soft, melting sigh, whatever she was doing worked. He didn’t care what her reasons for being here were; he only knew he must have her, and soon, or he’d embarrass himself like a callow schoolboy before he even entered her.

She was docile when he said, “Take the shirt off.” And while she did, he discarded his robe with only a brief, wincing pain. He couldn’t lift his arms too high or move too fast or bend any distance, but his legs were fine; his arms, at midheight, were competent; and the wild, pulsing erection lying flat against his belly was splendidly healthy.

A moment later Empress stood naked before him, her cheeks flushed, a pink glow suffusing her throat and breasts; her breathing, he noted with the authority of experience, was erratic. He reached out and softly touched her cheek with his fingertips, then her mouth, throat, and with delicacy brushed downward until his palm caressed her taut nipples slowly, feeling their hardness spring to life, watching, as his hand moved back and forth, the pleasure on her face. Her hand came up, closed around his wrist, and without a word she pulled him closer. Her timing was perfect because he’d been too long without a woman and was about to take her with or without her permission. Kissing her lightly, he murmured, “Heal me, fierce kitten,” and, pressing her up against the mirrored wall, bent his legs so he could enter her and slid upward into her hot, silky sweetness with a violent, thrusting need that he felt to the tips of his toes.

The rhythm of his desire was feverish, intense, and powerful, and Empress lay against the cool mirror and let her pleasure build in rushing, dark torrents that flooded her senses, let the peaking, hot spirals of passion spread outward from the imperious hardness that filled her. That impaled her with pleasure, and then withdrew until she felt Trey’s hands tighten on her shoulders and she waited again for the delicious penetration that touched her so deeply and powerfully that she understood with clarity how one could die for love.

Her body was lifted the next moment, and a wildness raced through her blood. Then the velvety heat began to elude her,
just when she needed it most, and involuntarily she cried, “No!” her hands tightening on Trey’s back to pull him closer. His eyes shut with the sudden agony as her strong grip closed on his bandaged back, his smothered grunt of pain barely audible.

But Empress realized in an instant what she’d done. “I’m sorry … I’m sorry,” she cried softly, her hands dropping away as if burned. “Oh, God, are you all right?”

Trey’s eyes opened, he nodded and smiled, the more exquisite sensations drumming through his lower body, submerging the brief, racking torment. “I wouldn’t want to faint, though,” he murmured, his eyes heavy-lidded, his smile languid, “in the next few minutes.” Gripping her wrists, he placed her hands low at the base of his spine, whispering, “There … hold on tight, darling.” And the passionate invasion continued, forcing her open to accommodate his size, gliding expertly higher that extra small distance where they both lost control of their minds and bodies and rapture abundant and copious heedlessly held sway.

Into this prodigal sensual excess beating at the limits of their sensibility intruded a jarring sound.

“Trey, Trey … where are you?”

A shuddering pause to absorb the incredible.

It was his mother’s voice, and she was in his bedroom next door.

While his mind was receptive to the sensitive situation, his feelings were feverishly unimpressed. There could have been a gun to his head at that moment and he wouldn’t have stopped. An ungovernable passion was irrepressibly peaking, and he could feel the pleasure about to explode. Trey felt rather than heard Empress’s soft cry of alarm, and his arms only strengthened their hold. Bending his head low, his lips brushed her cheek, slid around to her ear, and he breathed, “Ignore her,” just a pulse beat before he surged upward, pouring a throbbing white-hot orgasm into the frightened woman in his embrace, tense with nerves.

A moment later a second call. “Trey, are you in there?”

And Trey, quicksilver-mutable with his orgasm passed, withdrew and, after a deep inhalation to refill his lungs, answered in a calm, controlled voice, “I’ll be right there, Mother.”

Empress was shaking in his arms, her own pleasure unsatisfied, capricious desire still volatile and burning. Trey’s withdrawal was too staggeringly abrupt, as if the unexpected suspension was an ice-cold current of air. But if her skin was cold where contact with Trey had disappeared, inside, her fire of wanting flamed. Unreasoning feeling impelled her, and though she knew better, she whispered, “Don’t go.”

He hesitated briefly as he reached for his dressing gown on the floor, glanced up at her with a quick, measuring look, then, straightening, his voice liquid and smooth, said, “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

Slipping his arms into the sleeves, he pulled it up onto his shoulders with a small grimace of pain and, while striding quickly toward the door, tied the belt with expeditious economy of motion.

Through the warm, pulsing rapture that throbbed undiminished through Empress’s senses, she saw Trey put a warding hand up as he opened the door and said, “Empress fell asleep, Mama. She’s been working too hard. No, she’s fine. I just covered her.” And serviced her, he thought, and will again just as soon as you, dear Mother, are convinced to leave.

In two minutes, perhaps, no more than three, he was back, an excitement flaring through his senses. Empress hadn’t moved. Not because of Trey’s softly spoken order but for lack of wanting. This was all very new to her, the brilliant, heated glory of wanting, the hurtling sense of pleasure that was like flamboyant excess, rich and luxurious, the feeling that made one weak with lust. She had never realized a sensation like that existed—where everything fell away, where nothing mattered but Trey’s touch, where delight and excitement and insensate frenzy fused into a hot glow that suffused one’s body and burned away reason.

She watched him enter the room and lock the door, the quiet sound of the key turning in the lock sending shivers of anticipation up her spine. Their eyes met across the sparkling, sunlit room, and Trey asked in a hushed whisper, “Are you ready?”

She stood exactly where he’d left her, her hands at her sides, her back against the beveled mirror, flushed a heightened rosy pink from her arousal, from the arousal that still kept her breasts tingling and the sticky wetness between her
legs throbbing in a hard, steady rhythm. His sperm traced shiny rivulets down the smooth flesh of her inner thighs. He could see the pearly glisten inside her left thigh from where he stood, and inside her right thigh, reflected in the mirrored wall opposite him. Her form was in profile, too, in those ranked mirrors, repeated in varying angles down the length of the narrow wall. Her breasts were large and firm, youthfully high with jutting nipples, pale and pink and jewel-hard. She was peaking still, his experience told him, unconsummated, her eyes half shut against the sensations, taut and flushed and wetly ready for whatever he wanted to do.

Her obvious passion reminded him again of his misgivings apropos her previous experience. Was she a novice as she professed, or a practiced virtuoso skilled enough to portray that fugitive innocence with a rare talent? It would be, he thought, untying the belt to his robe, fascinating to discover the answer.

The door was locked, she was clearly ready, she was also, after all, his purchase, so the manner in which he assuaged his carnal appetite and discovered the answers to her previous sexual history were unobstructed.

Empress’s eyes followed him as he approached, discarded his robe, and came to stop short inches from her. Tumbled waves of fair hair framed the expectant face she raised to him and her eyes, meeting his, were magnetic with longing. “Forgive me,” he said softly, “for leaving you”—his bronzed hand reached out delicately to stroke one turgid nipple; she shivered uncontrollably—“unsatisfied,” he finished in a whisper. A novel excitement stirred his senses. She was prime and primed, and so near to orgasm that it was tantalizingly provocative. He was hard again in one racing moment.

“Look in the mirror,” he said, cupping her chin gently and turning it toward the reflecting wall. “Would you like that inside you?” His erection was magnificent, poised quivering only inches away from her own shuddering need. A tiny gasp escaped her, and he turned her face back, his fingers warm on her skin. “You sound interested,” he whispered. “What would you do to have that inside you?”

Her eyes came up passion-hazed, but she fought for command of her senses. “That’s not fair,” she declared in a small, hushed voice.
“Aren’t you used to games, darling? After all, if you’ve known many men, there had to have been games. And if you were a virgin … the games must have been
interesting.
” The accusation was low, husky, tinged with distaste.

“You’re wrong,” Empress said, but her voice wouldn’t argue, for her senses were still in thrall to the lush mysteries of passion coursing through her body.

“Tell me how I’m wrong,” Trey insisted in a hard, brusque murmur.

“I can’t … touch me,” she replied in one uninterrupted rush of words. “You must,” she finished in a rich, throaty imperative that bespoke her years of wealth and position.

It stopped him for a moment—the sureness, the authority, incongruous somehow in the trembling, sexually aroused woman he held, with his long fingers securing her jaw. He forced her chin up a fraction higher, an imperious gesture of his own. “And if I don’t?”

Empress reached down and touched him, her small fingers curving around the pulsing crest of his rigid manhood. With an economy of motion she slid her curled fingers slowly down, and then up again, the pressure strong and sure, and with an equal economy of words she said, “Maybe you will now,” as he released her from his grip.

He let the exquisite surge of pleasure subside, then laughed softly, charmed by the swift, adept altering of vassalage.

“Now that I have your attention,” Empress purred sweetly, “if we set our minds to it, I think we can both help each other. I take orders so damned poorly.” She drew an imaginary line in the air midway between them. “Meet me halfway,” she murmured, her voice delicious with suggestion, “and I’ll take you to paradise.…”

He chuckled. A low, rich sound of pleasure. “A charming proposition,” he whispered, the words like velvet on her skin. “How can I refuse?” His eyes lazily gauged the distance between them, and he bent his head a small, measured extent, his silvery eyes amused yet curiously alert. It was a quiet engagement of wills, and then—

She smiled.

He smiled.

And their lips met precisely, exactly, equidistant between
vassalage and command. An agreeable position for two personalities well grounded in pride.

They kissed leisurely, letting the raw emotions, the hard, rough disagreement subside, letting the beauty of minute sensation unveil slowly. It was so endlessly blissful with him—was it so with every man? Empress briefly considered old Chu and Jake Poltrain and, though inexperienced, instantly decided Trey was special, that what he was making her feel was special.

Trey didn’t question his feelings, although he recognized the exquisite arousal experienced with Empress as unique. But introspection was a thousand priorities down the list at the moment. Rather, he was wondering if his back would tolerate lying down with Empress riding him. Why not try? he resolved venturesomely and, nibbling at her lips, murmured “Come.” Taking her hand, he led her to the chaise.