Wanted (22 page)

The corner of his mouth curved up, and I entertained myself with the thought that he could read my mind. More likely, though, he was simply pleased with how well I’d followed instructions.

“I wanted the wine,” he said. “But I want you more.” He took a sip as he let his gaze trail slowly over me. If vision were a caress, then there would be no part of me that he didn’t stroke throughout the course of that long, slow inspection. I was hot. Needy. And, yes, I was ready.

“Put your head back,” he said gently, “and close your eyes.” And though I hated losing sight of him, I complied.

“Your breasts are perfect,” he murmured. “Don’t hide them. Put your hands to your sides.”

My arms were still crossed over my chest, and now I slowly moved my arms to my sides. As I did, I reminded myself that I wanted this—and I did, I really did. But at the same time, I couldn’t help but wish that it wasn’t the afternoon, and the sun wasn’t streaming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. I felt exposed—which, of course, was exactly what Evan wanted me to feel.

“Spread your legs, baby.”

“Evan.” I said nothing else, but there was no missing the protest in my tone.

“Spread your legs.”

I squeezed my eyes more tightly shut and did as he ordered. At first, the air cooled my overheated sex. But that faded quickly. My inner thighs seemed as hot as embers, and I was suddenly acutely aware of how open I was. How wet I was. How terribly, wonderfully, deliciously exposed I was. My muscles clenched as if in anticipation, and my clit was a hard, demanding nub.

“Oh, baby,” he said. “You look good enough to eat.”

“Why don’t you?” I whispered, shocked that I could not only form words, but that I would utter such provocative and demanding ones.

He chuckled. “Patience.”

I whimpered, absolutely certain that if I didn’t do something to release some of the pressure bubbling up inside me, I was going to spontaneously combust.

“Do you want to be touched?” he asked. His voice was closer now, and I realized that he’d stepped farther into the room.

“Yes.”

“Do you want a fingertip stroking you? Playing with your clit while your orgasm builds? Teasing your nipples into tight buds?”

The muscles of my sex throbbed in response to his words, and I heard the smile in his voice when he said, “I thought so, baby. Go ahead then. Touch yourself.”

“What?” I couldn’t possibly have heard him right.

“Caress your leg, then slide your fingers up to heaven.” The amusement in his voice didn’t overshadow the tone of command.

I hesitated only briefly, then slowly did as he said. My touch was feather light and just as enticing, and I stroked down my leg, then slowly trailed my fingers up my inner thigh. A string of electric sparks, like a kickline of fireflies, seemed to follow my touch. I kept my eyes closed. Not because he’d commanded it, and not even because of embarrassment. But because it helped me to see—and what I was looking at was Evan’s hands stroking my body.

“Oh, Angie,” he said, as I trailed one fingertip over the soft skin between my thigh and my sex. His voice sounded wrecked, even painful, and I couldn’t help but smile as I imagined his erection straining against his slacks.

“Stroke yourself,” he said. “Tease your cunt. Do you feel how wet you are?”

“Yes,” I breathed.

“Imagine those fingers are mine—”

“I am.”

He groaned before continuing to speak. “And imagine that I’m playing with you. That I’m sliding my finger deep inside you. That I’m teasing your clit. Stroking it, finding that perfect rhythm.”

My hand moved in time with his words, and I spread my legs wider as the pressure inside me built. I was imagining it was his touch, yes, but at the same time I couldn’t deny the thrill of knowing that he wasn’t the one touching me. That he was only watching. And that seeing the way I touched myself was making him hard.

“Please,” I said, because I was so very close now. “Please, I want you touching me.”

“I want that, too,” he said. “But right now I’m enjoying this particular view. And from the way your pretty pink cunt is glistening, I think you’re enjoying it, too.”

I bit my lower lip, both in silent protest and in agreement.

“So tell me, Angie. Are you enjoying it?” His smooth voice was like an oral seduction.

I nodded. Right then, I couldn’t manage words.

“You like me looking at you?”

“Yes,” I said, though I’m not sure I actually managed a word.

“Does it make you hot, knowing I can see just how aroused you are?”

“Yes,” I said, my fingers continuing their dance.

“Come for me, baby.” His command was low and full of heat, and as his words washed over me, the orgasm building inside me unfolded, filling me up and growing and growing until it had no choice but to burst free. “I want to watch you explode and know that I took you there without even having to touch you.”

As if he’d commanded it, my body seized up and then shattered. My climax ripped through me in time with his words, destroying me so thoroughly I wasn’t quite sure I could ever get myself back together again.

When I finally lay there, calm but breathing hard, Evan was sitting beside me, his hands caressing me, his touch more like worship than exploration. “You’re amazing,” he said, then closed his mouth over mine and took me in a kiss so deep and consuming it almost had me coming again.

I tried unsuccessfully to silence the drum-like pounding of my heart so that I could speak when his mouth left mine and he sat up again. But my pulse wouldn’t settle. I’d never experienced anything like what he’d just given me, and all I wanted was more. All I wanted was everything.

“Please,” I managed to say.

“Please what?”

“I—I want the rest. I want everything you promised.”

“Do you?”

I started to sit up, but he shook his head, a gentle hand keeping me on my back. “There’s something I need to know,” he said. “Do you wear pantyhose or stockings? Maybe tights in the winter?”

The question baffled me. “Um, yeah.”

“Where?”

“In the dresser. Left side, middle drawer.” It was only after he’d eased off the bed and was opening the drawer that I realized what he intended to do.

“Evan, I’m not sure that’s such a—”

“I’m sure,” he said, and I had to nod. For now, at least, that was good enough for me.

He held two pairs of winter tights in his hands as he moved around to the foot of the bed. Gently, he lifted my left leg. I closed my eyes as he did, letting myself surrender to the sensuality of the moment. The way he slid my leg toward the edge of the bed, leaving me scissored and even more exposed. The way the knobby cotton felt as he encircled my ankle with one foot of the tights. He pulled it tight, then tested the knot by slipping a finger between the material and my skin.

“Does that feel okay?”

I opened my eyes to look at him, and was so overwhelmed by the intensity with which he was looking back at me, that I could manage only a single, simple nod.

His eyes crinkled with his smile, and he took the tights and pulled on them until all the slack was taken up and my foot was almost brushing the edge of the bed. Then he knelt down and disappeared from view. If it weren’t for the persistent tugging on my leg, I would have had no idea what he was doing. As it was, I realized that he was using the tights like a length of rope, and he was tying me down to the bed frame.

He repeated the process with the other leg until I was trussed up and spread wide. Completely open to him. Utterly at his mercy.

I bit my lower lip, grateful that my hands were free. I trusted Evan, I did. But the thought of being that exposed, that vulnerable …

Well, it was both exhilarating and unnerving.

Then he moved back to the dresser and withdrew another pair of tights.

I didn’t even have to ask. I knew. “Hands,” I said.

“Above your head,” he confirmed.

I complied, taking only enough time to draw in a ragged breath before doing so. He bound my wrists together and then somehow managed to restrain them so that there was no way I could pull my arms down to cover my body.

“I want to touch you,” I said in mild protest.

“And I very much want you to. But later. Hush now,” he said when I opened my mouth to reply, then silenced me with a kiss.

It was, I thought later, that kiss that had launched me into space. Because it started the chain reaction. It was long and deep and had the effect of melting me, making me soft and malleable, my body little more than a repository for sensation. And then he exploited that state by slowly—painfully slowly—trailing a line of kisses down my neck and over my collarbone.

When he reached my breast, he closed his mouth over me and drew me in, scraping his teeth lightly over my nipple, then using his tongue to drive me absolutely crazy with his mouth as his fingers traced lazy designs up and down my other breast.

Every touch seemed magnified. Every lick more intimate, every caress more sensual. It was as if by tying me up he’d flipped a switch in me, and since I couldn’t maneuver my body in order to absorb or deflect sensations, I had to adapt to completely and wholly experience them.

I moaned in both pleasure and anticipation when his mouth abandoned my breast to spread kisses down my belly.

“Oh, god, Evan,” I whispered, writhing as much as was possible against my bonds.

He murmured an unintelligible reply against my skin, and then his lips were grazing the top of my pubic bone, and then straight down—no slow build, no tease upon my inner thighs—just a full-on assault on my senses as his tongue flicked over my clit on his way down, down, down.

I arched up, pleasure coursing through me, as he thrust his tongue into me with at least as much power and skill as his fingers had worked upon me earlier. His hands were on my hips to hold me in place, and his mouth closed over me, tasting and teasing, his tongue laving me. And his own groans of pleasure only made the waves inside me build faster.

“Do you have any idea how incredible you taste? How much you have exceeded every fantasy, every expectation?”

But I didn’t care about sweet words right then. “Please,” I begged, my hips bucking with insistence. “Please, don’t stop.”

“Never,” he said, and pressed his mouth once again to my slick cunt.

He played me, nipping and licking and sucking. And with every touch and every stroke I could feel the waiting orgasm building like a swell of waves growing before a storm. Higher and higher until there was nowhere else to go, and I went soaring off into the night sky, then crashed down like so much froth upon the shore.

“Oh, god,” I said, because I couldn’t seem to manage anything more articulate. “Oh, god, oh, god.”

He slid up my body and held me, but kept his hand cupped around my sex, his finger idly stroking me. I didn’t know if he was purposefully trying to keep me on edge, but I didn’t care. Right then, he could do any damn thing to me he wanted.

“That was amazing,” I said, turning my head to receive his gentle kiss. “But you haven’t—I mean, it was very lovely for me a million times over, but aren’t you a little bit—”

“Frustrated?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Very,” he said. He pulled his hand away from my sex, then made me shiver as he traced lazy patterns around my inner thigh where my panty line would be. “But this was about you.”

“Oh.” I considered that. “I like the way you think.”

He laughed.

“So will you untie me now?”

“Sweetheart,” he said in a voice so laden with promise it almost made me come again, “I’m not even close to done with you.”

fourteen

I woke in pitch-black, sweetly relaxed and completely sated. Evan had made me come twice more with mouth and hands, focusing so keenly on my pleasure that everything else faded away. Reason. Rationality. The whole damn world.

What he hadn’t done, though, was what he’d promised—he hadn’t fucked me. He’d focused entirely on me, making me exquisitely aware of my body, of each millimeter of my skin, of every nerve that had the power to send sweet pleasure twisting through me. He’d used me up, and when I was finally limp and lost, warm and sleepy, he’d gently untied me, pulled me close, and held me as I drifted off.

Now though …

Well, now I was awake. And I wanted the pleasure of watching him come. I wanted the feel of him moving inside me—and when I slid across the bed to find him, I had to fight down the sharp stab of fear I felt at realizing he wasn’t there.

“Evan?” I sat up, telling myself that gone didn’t mean
gone.
He could be in the bathroom. He could be on the phone. He could be anywhere.

But I wanted him beside me.

I sat up, then padded into the bathroom. He wasn’t there, but I grabbed my robe off the hook behind the door, wrapped the terry cloth tight around me, and headed out into the hallway to look for Evan.

I found him in the darkened living room. He’d pulled on his slacks, but remained shirtless. The only illumination in the room came from the glass and chrome case that held the copy of Da Vinci’s Creature Notebook. I stood across the room, lost in the shadows, and watched as he stood over it, looking down at the pages, with the soft light from below making his face and the intricate vine tattoo glow in a way that seemed almost magical.

I stayed perfectly still. The moment seemed strangely private. After all, until very recently, Evan had believed that notebook would be his, and I couldn’t help but wonder if in some small way he was angry at me. The thought troubled me enough that I took a step toward him. “Evan?”

He looked up at me, but I wasn’t sure that he saw me. He seemed faraway, lost deep in thought. Then his expression cleared and he smiled, holding out his hand in an invitation that I eagerly accepted. “Hello, beautiful. You look rested.”

I tilted my head up to receive his kiss. “You, sir, wore me out. But in the best possible way.”

His dimple flashed, the charm of it contrasting with the wicked gleam of the scar across his eyebrow. “I’m very glad to hear it. Are you hungry?”

“Mostly for you,” I said. I expected him to laugh and was disappointed when the smile that touched his lips seemed forced and didn’t reach his eyes.