Unbound (3 page)

“But I wasn’t.”

His softly spoken words inflamed Michelle, but she shouldn’t forget as far as the game went, Sebastian Gray played with the highest stakes in the biggest pools. She’d been right to forget about him entirely.

“I doubt you have to be under a spell to perform, Sebastian. I’m sure you have lots of practice.”

“Is that what you think?”

“It’s what I’ve read and pictures don’t lie.” She’d studied the magazines, the tabloid articles inscribing every sordid detail of his fast-lane sex life. She wondered why after all the time he was away, he chose the last three years to live it. But every scandal had succeeded in closing off her heart to him that much more.

“Why didn’t you marry him?”

The pulse in her temples throbbed. She was shocked that he knew about her near marriage. Embarrassment coated her body. She’d rather die than have Sebastian know he alone represented the reason her relationship with Jeffry Farret hadn’t worked out. “How do you know?”

“You met him when you were twenty years old. You stayed engaged to him for four years and then jilted him at the altar. And no, your aunts didn’t tell me, but rest assured I know everything there is to know about you, Michelle. So tell me why.”

Did she imagine the tightening of his jaw as he asked that question?

“We had irreconcilable differences.” He needn’t know Jeffry had voiced his doubts, minutes before their wedding. Had accused her of giving up only a small portion of herself to him, which wasn’t enough to sustain a marriage. She’d done the honorable thing and set him free, a year ago exactly. Which proved why her aunts had chosen to loosen her up today of all days and why she accepted their help even if it wasn’t what they’d agreed upon at the onset.

“Did you love him?” he asked quietly.

“Yes, of course I loved him.” The truth remained she felt a small scale of platonic affection for Jeffry and nothing else.

“Ah, Glitterbug, you could never lie.”

“I wish you would stop calling me that.” The harder she strove for ordinary, the more it seemed her aunts—the reason Sebastian called her Glitterbug—wanted proven otherwise.

“I’ve called you Glitterbug since you were six years old.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“You were the most spectacular ladybug ever to grace the stage at your school.”

“And the beginning of years of endless alienation.”

“Your aunts were looking out for you. Don’t be too hard on them.”

“Really? Thanks to their interference and fury that I didn’t land the part of the princess, I got demoted, yes, demoted from being a pretty sunflower to an ugly bug.” But it didn’t stop there, her aunts had turned her into the shiniest bug they could, one that obliterated everyone and everything, including the princess, Catherine Simmers, the same Catherine Simmers who won Sebastian in the end.

“Well, I wish they’d stop trying to help me.” Even at the young age of six, she understood social ridicule. She could still see herself running to the lake at the foot of the Gray land wearing her glittering bug costume. She screamed and sobbed in embarrassment and wished for nothing but a normal life with normal people in it. The furious cry of her frustration had caused the old oak tree to shed every leaf it was worth. On that crescent-mooned night, she realized she was as much a part of her aunts as they were of her. And that’s the point at which she spurned the blood in her veins, no matter how her aunts begged her to acknowledge who she was. The last time she used magic had been to put back the oak tree’s leaves and never again since then.

He drove up the long, winding driveway, past the Gray house, and headed toward the cozy but spacious cottage. Her aunts had to revoke the spell. Sebastian Gray had to return to the other end of the world where he belonged. She had to get on with her life, preferably with both of them wiped free of this memory thanks to her aunts’ damage control spell. They owed her—they daren’t refuse her. She sighed and extended her hand. Come tomorrow he’d forget he’d ever seen her. And she him.

“I’m sure the reason you’re back is business related and I gather it must be waiting for you. I’m sorry to have taken up so much of your time.” She waited for him to take her proffered hand. “Goodbye. Sebastian.” He still ignored her gesture.

“I want to say hello to your aunts.” He alighted from the car and opened the passenger door for her before she could protest.

“They’re not here.” She swung her legs onto the gravel-packed ground and marched to the front door, the key already in her hand. The sooner she got on the other side of the door the better. Her ice shield melted and lessened under his gaze, the intoxicating scent of his cologne, the brutal heat from his body. All those components played havoc with her defenses. “I’ve been trying to reach them all day.” She managed to get the key into the lock. “But please, if you’re here tomorrow, by all means come by then. Thanks again and goodbye.” She slipped inside the house and locked the door. The keys dropped from her hand as she slid down to the floor in a puddle of helplessness.

Sebastian leaned into the passenger door of his car, crossed his arms and legs and stared at the red-varnished door of the thatch-roofed cottage. His vibrating cell phone cut into his thoughts.

“We want to know. Any progress yet? Did you find
the one
already?” The deep voice of his friend Zach resounded in his ear.

“Don’t sound so fucking smug.”

“Hey, you pulled the shortest straw, so go forth and be the first of us to beget heirs,” Nick yelled in the background.

Yeah, that’s what they did. Pulled straws. Real adult. But Zachery Wilson and Nickolas Coutrane felt the same way he did. One, they weren’t going to live forever. Two, if they died there’d be no more Grays or Wilsons or Coutranes left in the world to continue the legacies left behind by their own fathers. Their time together in Special Forces erased all hope of forming meaningful relationships, or any relationships at all. When they’d finished their last term with the government and entered high society as the heads of famous entrepreneurial empires, they had attracted all sorts of public attention, yet their pasts were still kept top secret. Sexy this and most wanted for that, it had everything to do with their bodies.

But over a bottle of vintage brandy, Sebastian drew the shortest straw and was appointed the task of being the first of the infamous bachelors to wet his feet in the marriage-and-kids pool.

“What do you guys want?” Sebastian wondered what kind of sons he’d leave behind to run his renowned textile empire. He supposed that depended on the woman he chose, which explained why he came back home.

“We’re landing in about an hour. See you at the house?” Zach asked.

“Don’t you idiots have work to do?” Ah, fuck. They were going to make his life a fucking misery.

“Nah. We want to show you our undying support.”

He’d been about to tell Nick what he could do with his undying support when the red door of the cottage swung open and Michelle charged toward him. His heart pummeled inside his chest. Every nerve in his body tightened. Butterflies, bloody butterflies, swam around in his stomach and in his head. She stopped his breath.

“I think I found her,” he said softly before pocketing his phone split seconds before she slung her legs around his waist.

The heat of her pussy surged through Sebastian’s clothes. He carried her lithe body through the door, down the hall, to where he remembered her bedroom being. He dropped her onto the bed and went down with her.

She tore at his clothes, throwing his shirt to the other side of the room before she tackled his trousers. He balanced on his hands, raising himself away from her body so she could undo his belt and zip.

“There’s a condom in my pocket.” Her fingers delved into the pocket on his right, skimming his painfully erect cock. “The other one,” he rasped, ready to explode at the slightest touch of her hand. But a surge of guilt started in the hollow of his stomach. There had to be another way around the spell. He hated seeing the vulnerability on her when it wore off, it made him feel guilty. Still, rather him than any other man. For now he had no other option but to please her enough to buy some time where they could come to a proper solution.

She tore off the seal of the condom. He used one hand to lower his trousers below his ass and between the two of them they got him insulated in the protection.

“Now, please, now.” Her legs parted farther, her skirt bunched at her waist. He dipped into her naked pussy, remembering her panties were still in her handbag. She arched her back. A deep moan escaped her lips. Feral thirst darkened her eyes as she opened for him. He slid all the way in. The passage into her electrified him. Every time with her exposed something different, more concentrated, primal and hotter.

“Slow down, Glitterbug.” He thrust in and out of her wetness with measured strokes. She pushed and toppled him over. Her increased strength surprised him but he managed to stay snug and heavy inside her as she straddled his waist. She ripped off her blouse and bra, shimmied her skirt over her head then threw her head back. Full and firm tits bounded up and down before his eyes. She set the pace, quick and hard. He fought to hold off the effect her sweet, pounding pussy had on his cock. Forced himself not to give in yet.

Chapter Three

“I’m sorry, Sebastian.” Michelle dug her fingers into his sculptured chest and squeezed her knees into his lean sides. An anguished wail filtered from her mouth. She took her pleasure from him selfishly, unable to stop herself, to slow down like he asked, anxious to assuage her own need. But her orgasm grew the need for another instead. The next one would satisfy her. It had to calm her down and cease the feeling of impending implosion. Could the spell be gaining strength? All of five seconds had lapsed since her last orgasm and already she hungered for another.

She bobbed up and down again, deepening the wedge of his cock between the lips of her sex, squeezing and releasing, leaning forward to titillate her clit. She moaned as the head of his shaft rubbed the spongy and swollen area of her G-spot. So close. Nothing mattered but her release. Her breath expunged, her clitoris pulsed, a flow of fire burst in her veins. Another orgasm shuddered through her. And still it wasn’t enough.

“Dammit, slow down, Michelle.” The gruff command diffused her frantic need to come but just for a moment.

“I can’t. I can’t stop myself.” She poised herself over his face. Her hands fisted in his silky dark hair. Her eyes roved over his features. The shape of his mouth, the sensuous dip in the center of his upper lip, the cleft on his chin, the stubble on his jaw, the flaming emerald of his eyes. Touching him, having him inside her, drove her wild on an ungraspable level. “Suck me.”

She ground her pussy in his face. He angled his mouth over her, teased her sex, sucked her clit until his teeth grazed her sensitive tissue. Her hips rolled and ebbed. His tongue lapped her, sucking more juice out of her than she thought herself capable of giving up.

She came with a howl that scraped past her dry throat, leaving her body quaking, her mouth arid, her nipples on fire. A different kind of thirst engulfed her soon after.

She climbed off him, deserting his face for his cock. She tore off the condom, yanked his trousers, shoes and socks off and opened her mouth over him. Her nails roamed between his strong abs as she knelt between his thighs. His breathing sounded ragged in her ears. His taste ignited pure greed. Her tongue lapped the base of his shaft, laved his balls all the way under to his ass.

“Fucking hell, woman.”

Sebastian’s hard, thick flesh overwhelmed her mouth. She played with his body until he stiffened and came with one long squirt. She swallowed every drop, licking what she missed but also trying to keep him hard long minutes after he had climaxed already.

Sebastian groaned as her keen mouth manipulated him hard again.

“Give me a few more minutes, sweetheart.” His orgasm had drained him dry.

“No. I want you hard again.” Her voice brimmed with vicious determination as she pumped him with her hand. He needed a few minutes to recover, but she refused to let up. He reached for her, swung her onto the other side of the bed and pinned his body over hers before she had an opportunity to test her teeth on his dick.

“I can make you come again with my fingers. Just relax.” She fought him, clawed at him, her legs kicking into the air, anything to get her hands on him. Her new strength brought his brows together but he fixed her wrists above her head.

“Let me touch…” He stopped, his frown deepened. She was hot before, but now her temperature had spiked way too high, her body a furnace beneath his.

“Michelle? Michelle?” Fear shuttled down his limbs as he climbed off her and reached for his pants. “I’m calling an ambulance.”

“No.” She vaulted off the bed and sent the cell phone flying from his hand. “It won’t help, you know that. Please.”

He knew enough from her aunts to know that magic-inspired incidences could never be solved with commercial medicine. Calling an ambulance would be futile. Fuck, where were her aunts?

Her temperature raged upward. She draped her naked body over his, rubbing her sweltering pussy against his body, any ridge or bump she could find.

“I need you to fuck me now, Sebastian. Please, just one more time.” She bit his lips. His thigh glistened with her juices. “I want you inside me.” She gyrated against his cock. “I want your hard, fucking cock inside me. Put it in my pussy, Sebastian. Don’t you want to fuck me?” Her hips swayed, her tits danced. She dropped to her knees, intent on taking him in her mouth. Not wanting to fuck her was not the point. Sure he needed a minute or two to get going again, but not wanting her was never an issue. The issue came from her obscene pulse rate and the way her chest heaved. She looked as if she was having a heart attack, but at the same time, her sultry, hungry eyes and the way her body smelled screamed for sex.

“You don’t like my cunt, Sebastian?

“Hell. It’s not that. You’re on fire, your pulse is tearing through your skin and your heart looks as if it’s going jump out of your chest. I want you, but I first want you to be okay.”

“I’ll be okay if you fuck me.” She kissed him, wetly and deeply. “It’s a lust spell and only you fucking me will ease it away. Please.”

“You’re killing me, woman.” He picked her up and tossed her onto the bed. He spread her legs and knelt between them. The tips of his fingers burned as he touched her pussy. She was burning up from the inside out. He used his other hand to pump his cock into a reasonable erection.

“Yes, that’s it. Get hard for me. I’ll be okay after just one more time. But be quick, I’m going to explode with want if you aren’t.”

“Come on,” he shouted at himself. That’s exactly what he feared—her exploding and not from want. Nothing about Michelle construed as normal, not when she had a sex spell running through her veins. But her words about dying if she didn’t get it rang in his head over and over again. His cock shrank an inch.

“No, fuck it.” He checked the galloping pulse at her throat then attacked his dick once more. His fingers probed deeper inside her, his eyes feasted on her tits, on her fair, porcelain skin peaked with rosy nipples. Sweet innocence shared with brazen sexiness and a mouth chilly and lovely at the same time. Everything always came down to her. When he’d discovered she intended to marry an accountant, half of him had died. But now she was his again. Forever this time.

His cock twitched, his veins thickened a fraction. He covered his semi-erection with a condom and wasted no time in stuffing it inside her, drawing her across his lap to magnify his thrusts inside her. He’d beat the spell.

“Can you feel me inside you?” He stroked her clit with his thumb. She smiled with her eyes closed. “That’s it, sweetheart. Want to ride me? Want me to fuck you?” Her eyelids flickered, once, twice, three times before they unlocked her golden eyes. His quickly hardening cock slowed her pulse.

“Ah, Glitterbug.” Relief washed over him as she rushed into him. “You scared the fuck out of me.” Soft moans fell from her sweet lips. Her hips rocked, her legs spread even farther apart. She tossed her head from side to side.

“Thank you,” she whispered against his jaw. “Thank you.”

His fingers dug into her hips. He controlled her body, making her perform for him. Her untamed gyrations slowed and halted. She threw her head back as spasms of her contractions strummed along his cock. Just fucking beautiful.

He daren’t come, not yet. The blazing heat in her body cooled off a minute degree but not enough to keep her pacified. She skipped the afterglow of her climax. A sly grin played across her lips. She bulldozed him away from her, flipped onto her hands and knees, tossed her hair out of her face and turned her head to look at him.

“Again.”

He lost his mind at the sight of her upturned ass, her pussy lips all thick, wet and swollen staring at him. He pounded into her.

“Yes,” she cried. “Fuck my pussy with your big cock. Yes, like that.” He grinned at the thought that she’d deny saying any of that if he reminded her later on.

He recycled his energy, forcing into her with hammering motions, bruising her hips with his hands. He held his breath, fighting not to shoot his cum inside her. But he couldn’t hold on much longer, felt himself on the brink of coming. With one profound bellow of strength, he drove himself hilt deep inside her, roaring with agony and pleasure as a powerful stream of orgasm rocked her body and clenched around him. He tangled his hands in her hair, pulled her face around so he could see her eyes and shattered inside her.

He rolled onto his back. The potency of his orgasm left him lightheaded, weak, yet more alive than he’d ever felt before. But more than that, he brought her back from wherever the hell she went. Scariest moment of his life, yet he had faced killer weapons on a daily basis.

Michelle rose from the bed, quickly gathered the sheet around her nakedness and scurried to the other end of her room. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes but she refused to let them fall.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine, thank you.” She tightened the sheet around her trembling body.

“You weren’t fine minutes ago. Did you even know how fast your pulse was racing? I thought you’d die, Michelle. What kind of a spell did your aunts use on you?”

She turned to face him. “I can’t remember any of that.”

Did he know how hard she tried to maintain a life where she could hold her head up high even though her aunts could be caught cackling at midnight down by the river? And then everything to come down upon her head in this way, with him of all people?

He rose from the bed. She didn’t need to be bewitched to appreciate the stunning beauty of his naked body as he strode toward her. Tight planes, hard curves, old scars. His muscles long and liquid but powerful and solid. She couldn’t miss the scratch marks she’d left on his face and chest. She swallowed the guilt at having physically hurt him. How had her day launched into such utter madness and how cruel Sebastian Gray witnessed every crazy scene. Whatever memory-swiping spell her aunts came up with, she planned on taking it twice. How else could she sleep in her bed every night and not remember Sebastian in it?

She backtracked. He followed her. “Please, don’t you come any closer.” She turned her back on him and rummaged through her drawers for clothes she’d wear after she had showered.

“I think your aunts’ spell went from fun to dangerous and I’m not leaving until I know what kind of danger you’re in.”

If she didn’t know better, she’d think genuine concern lined his words. But she knew better.
Turn around, Michelle, face him head-on and tell yourself you are no longer in love with him. Turn around and do that for yourself and for your future.

“You’ve always been curious, Sebastian. Everything has always been an adventure for you. But this time, I think it’s a little beyond you. My aunts will know what to do.” She swung around to face him. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but you should get dressed.” Her gaze engaged his.

“Michelle.” Challenge was clear in the depths of his green irises.

“And leave.” There, she’d said it. Her self-imposed immunity to all those stupid ideas about her and Sebastian ever being together as strong as the day he deliberately chose Catherine Simmers over her without the blink of his eye.

She walked to her closet to find a skirt to match her t-shirt. But the sound of crunching gravel thwarted her need for a shower and clean clothes. Her blood pressure rose as she bounded out of the room in nothing but the sheet around her body.

“You,” she accused, wagging a finger at her three bubbly and rosy-cheeked aunts as they entered their home. Their presence always colored the entrance hall with a kaleidoscope of hues. Checked-red flare skirts, polka dot blouses, ostentatious hats, heavy black boots even in the height of summer. Their arms filled with bundles of who knows what.

“Oh, Michelle, you are not going to believe what we picked up for you at the fair. Come and have a look in the kitchen. We’re dying for a tea.”

The smell of toasted nuts and chocolate truffles permeated the air, making her taste buds slither. She hadn’t eaten anything since her breakfast of a single slice of toast and two cups of coffee. Of course she hadn’t eaten anything all day long. She’d been too busy having outrageous sex to care about her stomach.

“No, no gifts. You know exactly what you did so don’t try to bribe your way out of this, Aunt Surtie.”

They always failed at hiding the mischief gleaming in their gray eyes. She just never knew what that mischief involved or the damage it entailed until it poured all over her head.

“But child, whatever are you talking about?” Aunt Esmie curled her arm around Michelle, caressing her spine with her chubby fingers.

“There, there, a cup of tea will sort you out, hmm? And wait ’til you see what the Waxy Witches fair had on offer,” Aunt Lindie chirped in, bracketing her as they maneuvered her into the sunny kitchen.

“Yes, thank you, tea would be lovely,” Michelle approved obediently, vaguely wondering why she’d suddenly swapped her fury for a cup of tea. Oh, they were good. She leaped a meter away from them, using the large wooden kitchen table as a barrier between her and her aunts. The magic touch of their hands on her spine always soothed the most tumultuous storm inside her. But not this time ’round. This time they would play fair.

“You stay right there.” She raised her palms to shield them off. “Don’t think you can pacify me. I’m furious. Furious, do you hear that? Whatever you’ve done to me you will fix now. Right this minute.”