When I'm With You: The Complete Novel (23 page)

When I'm With You

Part IV

When I'm Bad

Beth Kery

I
NTER
M
IX
B
OOKS
, N
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ORK

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have control over and does not have any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

WHEN I'M BAD

An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author

PUBLISHING HISTORY

InterMix eBook edition / March 2013

When I'm With You
copyright © 2013 by Beth Kery.

Excerpt from
Release
copyright © 2010 by Beth Kery.

Cover design by Sarah Oberrender.

Photo: Burning Candles decorated with pearls © Achim Sass/Westend61/Corbis.

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375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

ISBN: 978-1-101-61661-1

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Chapter Seven

Watching Elise come, feeling her body tremble against his, hearing her excited cries, inhaling her unique scent—all of it made Lucien's head swim in a sea of lust. His hand continued to move between her thighs, his finger sliding with ease in the delightfully lubricated valley between her labia, playing with her clit, prolonging her pleasure . . . coaxing more shudders from her firm, soft body.

He was going to eat her alive, she was so sweet. He was going to take her like a rutting bull. For a blinding moment, he pictured exactly how it would feel to have that tight, wet pussy melt around his thrusting cock, her muscular walls clasping him, pulling at him like a hot little mouth. . . .

He needed to taste her even more than he needed to fuck her. He was intoxicated with lust, but still greedy for more sensation, starved for the pure essence of Elise on his tongue and in his throat. She whimpered in surprise when he leaned over the bed and placed her back on the mattress. He had a fleeting image of her eyes blinking open heavily. He touched her lips with his before he lowered himself, his knees on the floor.

“Lucien?” she murmured, her voice thick with satiation.

“I will taste you,” he said without preamble, spreading her white thighs. He stared for a moment. Her pubic hair was well trimmed, looking darker gold near her slit and between her labia due to her abundant juices. Her sex was a lush pink flower, the color of it decadently erotic in contrast to her pale thighs. Entranced, he parted her lips, revealing her swollen clitoris. Her scent filled his nose. He gave a low, feral growl and inhaled deeply.

“This pussy is mine,” he muttered, barely aware of what he was saying, guided solely by a primal need to possess, and hardly hearing his own voice his heart throbbed so loudly in his ears.

He slid his tongue through the creamy valley, agitating her clit. Her taste permeated his awareness and he was lost. He turned his head slightly, stabbing her clit with his tongue, only distantly conscious of Elise's cries of surprised pleasure and her fingernails scraping his scalp as she held him to her. She was musk and honey and sunshine, golden sweet, the very flavor of sex. His sole focus became to get more of her taste, fill his mouth with it, his throat, his very being. With her juices as his reward, he learned her perfectly, discovering the optimal pressure of his tongue to pleasure her, the precise amount of suction she needed to make her cries go frantic.

He distantly became aware of several unwanted sensations battering at the edges of his rabid arousal. The sound of loud pounding on the door differentiated from the hammering of his heart.

“Oh, Lucien . . .
God
 . . . someone . . . door,” Elise gasped even as her hand tightened at the back of his head and she pushed him closer to her pussy.

“Shut it up in there!” a woman's harsh, cigarette-roughened voice shouted outside the door. “All that slapping and screaming and moaning, my customer is starting to get ideas that he can't afford!”

“Should . . . stop,” Elise mumbled miserably. “I can't keep quiet. It's not . . . possible,” she moaned.

But Lucien was too far gone to care about disgruntled neighbors. He liked Elise's unguarded cries of excitement. He adored them. He continued to eat the sweetest pussy he'd ever tasted, determined.

“YOU! Don't act like you're not in there. Put a muzzle on it. Screaming like a banshee . . . giving my customers ideas . . .
French
,” the woman added bitterly under her breath.

Elise began to squirm beneath him—he couldn't be sure if she did it out of arousal or if she was trying to get him to stop—but Lucien refused to be denied. He held her hips down on the bed and lashed at her clit ruthlessly while applying a firm suction. He felt her go rigid in his hands, a helpless whine ringing in her throat. He turned his head more and sucked her entire clit. The tension in her muscles broke. Her whine swelled to a sharp shout, quieted, then swelled again into a moan as another wave of climax hit her.

He soaked in the sensations of her hungrily: her desperate cries, her raking fingernails, her scent, her taste.

The woman pounded angrily on the door for the next several moments as Elise came and he drowned in her essence. By the time Elise sagged onto the bed, panting, and he took one last, reluctant lick between her swollen sex lips, all was quiet.

Elise lifted her head and met his stare. His rabid lust fractured for a moment from amusement. The dazed, vaguely bewildered expression on Elise's sex-flushed face was priceless.

“Was that Ms. Inga?” she asked him disbelievingly.

His hands transferred to her waist, his fingers delving gently into the muscles of her back greedily. He grunted in satisfaction. Her punishment and orgasms had made her flesh noticeably suppler.

“I have no idea if it was Ms. Inga. I've never made the woman's acquaintance, and have no desire to ever do so.”

Still, what she'd said partially penetrated his brain. He glanced around the room, seeing the paint peeling on the walls, the rust stain from a leak in the corner, the threadbare carpet. He closed his eyes and willed the throb of his heartbeat in his raging erection to slow. He kissed a soft, pale thigh and stood.

What was he thinking? It wasn't time for this yet. He had coached himself not to become bowled over by her thousands of times, but the taste of Elise made logic a feeble thing.

“Get dressed,” he said, purposely avoiding looking at the flushed, naked splendor of her as she lay there with her legs parted. She was a sex-mussed, unmade bed that he wanted to spend about a week in . . . for starters. He needed to gather himself. He'd almost lost control several times tonight, come
so close
to throwing himself wholesale into the inferno of her.

“I'll start to pack your things.”

“Pack my things?” she repeated, shock ringing in her voice. She sat up slowly.

He glanced at her. His cock lurched against his trousers, the stab of arousal a sharp pain. He looked away, hiding his wince, and opened the closet door.

“Yes. You can't think I'd allow you to stay here,” he said as he pulled a suitcase from the closet.

“I didn't think you had a say one way or another!”

“Again, you thought wrong. You're coming with me,” he said, his tone brooking no argument as he tossed the suitcase on the bed and opened it. “Get dressed, Elise.”

From the periphery of his vision, he saw her rise and move toward the dresser.

“Where are we going?” she asked, her incredulity now replaced by amazement.

“To my place.”

When she didn't reply, he turned. She stood before the dresser, a T-shirt clutched in her hands, the material covering part of her belly and her mons, but little else. It took him a distracted moment to realize she looked utterly floored.

“You want me to move in with you?” she asked, her voice sounding hollow with shock.

“Yes,” he said, his matter-of-fact tone belying his wariness about the plan. He began tossing the items on her bedside table into the suitcase. “You'll stay at my place until we decide what to do.” He frowned as he picked up a bottle of her signature perfume from the dresser top—Hermès Perfume 24, Faubourg—and rolled it up hastily in a silk bathrobe. “It's an . . . unusual circumstance, but we'll have to make do.”

“Where do you live?” she asked breathlessly. He glanced back and wished she'd put on the T-shirt.

“Near Lake Shore and Astor. Not far from where we met at the market the other day.” He located a plastic bag and walked over to the closet, where he began scooping up loads of designer shoes and shoving them into it.

“That's a very nice area. But . . .”

“What?” he asked, his irritation growing when she continued to stand there, frozen.

Naked.

Lovely.

He raised his eyebrows in impatient expectancy when she didn't immediately reply.

“Well . . . don't you want to . . . finish?” she asked, staring at the bed and then down to his heavy cock.

His body leapt into full, throbbing readiness once again as he stared at her naked beauty and experienced the graphic fantasy of him laying her on that sagging bed and sinking into the glory of her. It was because of her uncertainty—what he could only call shyness—that he found his strength. How could such a flagrant wild child seem so naïve at times?

“I will not make love to you for the first time in this hellhole, but on my terms and in my place of choosing,” he stated simply.

He saw her throat convulse as she swallowed.

“And Elise? The time
will
be of my choosing. Never think otherwise.”

Rebellion flashed in her eyes, but she quickly cast her gaze downward, hiding it. Much to his surprise, she contained her pique sufficiently not to reply. She dressed fleetly before helping him pack up her belongings.

* * *

His condominium was everything Elise expected it to be, given it was Lucien's lair—sensual, rich, masculine décor set within the ideal backdrop of the lake facing the east, and the labyrinth of sparkling high-rises to the north and the west. Of course, since it was Lucien, he was on the top floor of the building, occupying the premier penthouse.

When they first arrived in the hushed, luxurious residence perched high above the city, Lucien took the suitcase she'd been rolling along with the one he'd been carrying. “Why don't you relax for a moment here in the living room,” he said, nodding toward the large, breathtaking expanse of space before floor-to-ceiling windows. “I'm going to get your room ready for you.”

“
My
room?” Elise said, startled.

He studied her from beneath hooded eyelids. “I told you, we will do this at my pace. Are you willing to accept that?”

She bit her lower lip, trying hard to disguise her disappointment. She'd been hoping to lie next to Lucien's body, absorb his heat, his strength, tease him until he couldn't deny her the delicious explosion of his male power. She longed to be taken, to be claimed. She craved having her fill of him—of letting him take his fill of her—of falling into an exhausted sleep only to awaken and begin all over again. . . .

She'd never been so
hungry
, so starved for a man in her life.

When she noticed he waited, his eyebrows raised, she nodded reluctantly. Apparently, Lucien had different ideas as to how he wanted things to proceed.

“Say you accept that we'll do this at my pace,” he said, and she realized he expected her to put the promise into words.

She vanquished her frown. “I accept.”

“Good. Just give me a moment to get things set for you.”

She murmured with pleasure a few minutes later when he led her into a large bedroom suite decorated with toasty brown shining antiques, beige walls, and decadently soft-looking ivory bed coverings and furniture. Silk and fine wool curtains draped elegantly from the floor-to-ceiling windows.

“It's a far cry from the Cedar Home Hotel,” she murmured teasingly as she tossed her purse on the luxurious four-poster bed.

“I should hope so.” She glanced up curiously when he paused a few feet away from her. What would he do now?

“There are fresh towels in the bathroom. My maid comes on Saturdays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. If you have any special requests for food or other products, just leave her a note on the board in the kitchen. She shops on Tuesdays.”

“Okay,” Elise said uncertainly.

“I'll say good night. It's been a long day. I'd imagine you're tired.”

“Lucien?” she called when he started to walk out of the room.

He turned.

“Thank you. I'll . . . I'll pay you back for this. Someday.”

“You'll pay me back by being good.”

But I want to be bad.

For a panicked moment when he narrowed his gaze on her, she wondered if he was practicing his mind-reading tricks again.

A few hours later, Elise cautiously turned on the light in the sleek, modern kitchen and padded silently across the white alabaster marble floor.

“Yes,”
she whispered triumphantly a moment later when she spied a pitcher of iced tea in the refrigerator.

After Lucien had left, she'd showered, read, and turned on the television in her suite and flipped distractedly through channels. Then—once she suspected Lucien slept—she had made a quick reconnaissance of the penthouse. It was larger than she'd thought, including a good-sized office, an elegant dining room, and a cozy, windowed breakfast area off the kitchen. She'd even discovered behind a closed door some stairs that led to a stunning private terrace on the roof of the building. The only room she didn't peer into was Lucien's, of course. She assumed his quarters were behind a closed, carved wood door at the end of the hallway. The door reminded her a little of the one that led to his office at Fusion.

So like Lucien, to possess so many thick, elaborate closed doors in his life, she mused as she found a glass and began to pour herself some tea. The better to keep his secrets.

“What are you doing?”

She splashed some tea on her wrist when she jerked her chin around. She stared, her mouth gaping open. He stood at the entrance to the kitchen, wearing a scowl, a pair of ivory drawstring pants that hung low on his hips, and nothing else.

Very clearly nothing else.

“I . . . I was just getting some tea,” she said, flustered by his unexpected appearance . . . by his appearance in general—the gleaming caramel-colored skin tightly gloving bulging muscle and cut, ridged abdomen. The ivory pajama bottoms set off his coloring to perfection. His chest was smooth, but there was a thin path of dark hair that began at his navel and disappeared beneath the waistband of his pajama bottoms. If she'd had to describe his physique with one word, she couldn't decide if she'd say
lean
or
muscular
because he was both—all sleek, coiled, primal male power.