After You
Authors: Ophelia Bell
Tags: #Fiction, #Erotica, #Paranormal, #Romance, #dragon shifter, #Adult
After You
Ophelia Bell
Copyright 2014 by Ophelia Bell
Cover design by Dawné Dominique
Contents
Chapter One
Sun and Moon
Lazaro swept his tongue over Celeste’s clit with one last critical lick. Throaty affirmations rose from her lips and her fingers pulled painfully at his long, curly black hair. Her pelvis ground tight against his face while her entire body grew taut with her orgasm. His favorite part - the part he had his tongue tight against - pulsed in a steady rhythm. He let out a soft chuckle while she continued to hold his head against her, nearly suffocating him.
Her reaction also afforded him a perfect view of the new tattoo she’d gotten just at the peak of her cleft. The colorful, scrolling inkwork spread across the space previously occupied by a dark fringe of curls. Since he’d last seen her more than a week earlier the curls had disappeared, replaced by a design that was deliberate and delicately symmetrical, beginning at the top in small colorful flowers etched into her bare skin. The dark scrollwork converged at the center and came to a point barely an inch away from the top of her clit.
He tried not to think about how close the tattooist had to have gotten to complete such a work of art. Instead, he appreciated how intuitive the man had been to decorate her skin with a piece of visual candy that enhanced that part of her so well without ever touching it directly.
He closed his eyes again, delving back into heaven.
He made another circuit, much to her delight, sending her to a second climax in as many minutes. She lost her hold on his hair on the third rendition, losing herself completely. Her body writhed and bucked then fell limp, signaling that she was spent, though he’d have gladly given her more.
“You did miss me, didn’t you?” he asked, raising his head for the first time in half an hour. He swiped a hand down his chin to remove the remnants of her arousal.
“I always miss you,” she said. “Your work keeps you away too long at a stretch,
mi amor
.”
He moved up and settled on the bed beside her.
She rolled over and snuggled close, draping her leg over his. Her warm skin was a welcome comfort after a week of solitary moments worrying if she’d ever speak to him again. He thought the sex meant they’d reconciled, but she was still uncharacteristically quiet.
“What’s wrong, angel?”
“Did you like my new tattoo?” she asked.
A deep chuckle rumbled from his chest. “Like it? You must not have been paying attention. Do I need to show you again how much I love it?” He started inching down her again, delighted at her laughter and the slight tug on his hair when he reached her navel and darted his tongue out in a quick caress. Mostly he just wanted to be inside her now.
“No. Come back up here, we’re still talking.”
He slid back up to face her and rested his palm against her tattoo. His fingertips pressed into the wet heat of her and her head tilted back in ecstasy.
“Do
you
like it?” he asked in a low voice, his middle finger steadily penetrating her.
The corners of her mouth twitched into a sultry smile and she reached out and gripped his cock, beginning a slow, methodical stroking. He groaned in gratitude.
“Mmhmm. It felt good when I got the tattoo...
Really
good.”
In spite of her hand on his erection, her throaty pronouncement incited a burn of outrage in him. His hand faltered, then resumed.
“Oh? How good?”
She glanced up at his face. His jaw clenched and his fingertips thrust and rubbed with more intensity between her legs.
She gasped, her eyes growing wide and her hips twitching away from his relentless attention.
“Ow! Now I’m afraid to tell you.”
Her warm juices on his barren fingertips chilled in the cool breeze coming through her windows. He hated when she shut him down. Knowing the scent and feel of her skin might calm him, he tried to temper his words by scooting close again and nuzzling against her throat, teasing that sensitive spot just beneath her ear. “How good?” he asked again.
She laughed. “Lazaro...”
“Just tell me,” he murmured, nudging his way down to find one nipple and swirling his tongue around it. She sighed, arching into him.
“The vibrations... the stings... and where it was...”
The visual fascinated him, his cock twitching in response, but he stayed quiet. She moaned when his previously bereft fingertips slipped between her thighs and started teasing again.
“Maddox made me come... when he was giving me the tattoo. He didn’t mean to, but it happened.”
He pulled back and stared at her. She didn’t look away, her eyes intent and searching. His vision clouded. He swallowed, casting his eyes away from hers and down to the tattoo. He’d spent countless hours with the tattooist, with Celeste in attendance on many occasions, and he considered the man a friend.
He also had incredible talent, and not just for tattoos, apparently.
“Did you like it?” he asked, gruffly.
“Do you like having orgasms?”
He laughed in spite of the jealousy that gripped him. “Fine, so... do I need to kill him?”
“What? No! It was an accident. It was a... side effect. I did ask him to tattoo my pussy.”
“Yeah, I’m sure he was all too willing,” he retorted, trying to ignore the churning turmoil in his belly. “Why are you telling me about it at all? Why not just keep the fucking secret and leave me out of it?”
“Are you saying you want me to
lie
to you? I won’t do that. I don’t give a fuck how tender your feelings are.”
“Why give me the details at all?”
“Because... of what I didn’t do.” She took a deep breath. He could sense more words coming, but they lingered at the back of her throat like an arrow taking aim. He braced himself.
“I wanted him,” she murmured. Her softer tone only made the confession hit harder.
A cold chill crept through his body and his sight grew fuzzy for a second time. He struggled to control his physical reaction, clutching her even tighter to him. Her soft, supple flesh and her pragmatic attitude had always calmed him when he’d had to deal with a few particularly debilitating tragedies. Even now he had an instinctual reaction during unpleasant moments to reach for her. So far she’d always been there. It wasn’t quite the same when the medicine stung as much as the affliction.
“Why didn’t you just
fuck
him and leave me out of it?”
Anger flashed in her eyes. “Because I love you, asshole. Besides, I have a better idea. You know that thing you wanted to do last week, but I said no to?”
He remembered the conversation in detail. His mis-aimed cock pressed between the two perfect, fleshy mounds of her ass and he went with it, hoping maybe she wouldn’t object to a little back-door action for once. But she’d pushed him away, furious and spouting curses before she’d smacked him.
“I should’ve asked. I told you I was sorry.” His previous ire dissipated in the hope that her better idea might involve letting him follow through, though he had no idea where the tattooist came in.
Her eager hazel eyes met his, burning with the same beautiful, adventurous lust she’d shown him their very first time together—
her
first time with anyone. Over the course of their three-year relationship, he’d come to believe her sense of adventure was boundless, but as yet there was still one unexplored frontier, and he craved it like he couldn’t believe.
She pushed his shoulders back against the pillows and straddled his hips. The sight of her long, tousled brown hair and heavy breasts poised above made his cock hard again. She slid down his length and fucked him. Her slick, hot flesh sucking him in made him forget the conversation, but only briefly.
“Hmm, so this idea of yours... do tell.” His hands slipped around her hips and squeezed both plump cheeks of her ass, reveling in the way they flexed with each undulation of her pelvis.
She eyed him from beneath lowered lashes, her voice a languid purr. “You want to know what it feels like to sink your hard cock into my ass and fuck me?”
He growled and sat up, squeezing her tighter. His arms flexed with the effort of lifting her slight weight and slamming it down again on his cock. She only grinned in response to his violent treatment, wrapping herself tighter around him.
“Tell me how you’d do it,” she murmured into his ear.
“I could show you right now.”
“Tell me.” She leaned in and nibbled on his lower lip.
“I’d get you good and wet first. Then coat my finger with that juice and slide it into your tight little asshole.” He slipped a hand further back and found his target, still slippery from his earlier attention, and pressed against it.
“Not so quick.” She grabbed his hand and pulled it away.
“Fuck, woman, just give me a little taste. Compromise.”
“I’ll compromise.” Her pussy clenched around him. “If you want that little taste, you have to go first.”
“What, like pegging?” He tried to picture her with a strap-on but the image didn’t hold.
“No. Let me watch you get fucked. By him.”
He grunted in incomprehension, groaning when she slowed, then stopped moving. He buried his face against her neck. “Explain it to me. I guess I’m a little slow.”
Her lips tickled his ear and she moved again, bracing her hands on his shoulders and fucking so slowly he thought he might go mad.
“I’ve seen how Maddox looks at you. I think you secretly enjoy it, too. I get wet thinking about watching him fuck you. Let me have that and you can do whatever you want to me. Anything.”
He chuckled in disbelief. “I don’t think he’s gay.”
“He isn’t. He looks at me the same way.”
Frustrated by her erratic fucking he flipped her over and sank his cock deeper into her. His previous anger returned and he took it out on her in the only way he was able to focus on at the moment: by fucking her harder.
Amid grunts of pleasure he asked, “So you want him to fuck us both? You’re one demented woman, you know that?”
“All I know is I want it. I’m pretty sure he wants it. And I’d like you to want it, too.”
“Hell no.” His asshole squeezed tighter at the idea until her slender fingertip slipped between his cheeks and probed.
“You want it,” she insisted, breathless.
He could tell she was so close to orgasm again by the tightening of her muscles around him. She cried out, grinding hard against him. On cue, his ass relaxed and her finger slipped inside, the familiar penetration so acutely focused it was like she’d flipped a ‘come now’ switch. A loud yell escaped his throat as he thrust hard once more, the hot stream of his come pulsing into her.
With a sigh, he collapsed beside her, drifting off and hoping she would drop the subject.
“You want it and you know it,” she whispered. “I just don’t know what you want more, to have his cock buried in your ass or to have yours in mine.”
“Crazy talk.” He dismissed her suggestion as he drifted off. But in his dreams he found himself in the embrace of the only man he considered his equal, and his dream self wanted it so much he woke up hard again.
Chapter Two
Frontiers
The seedy underbelly of the Los Angeles crime world was home for Lazaro, the men money-hungry killers and the women beautiful liars to the core. Celeste had always been above it, so far beyond his reach any effort to grasp her would have been be futile. The daughter of the one of the city’s most prominent drug lords wasn’t someone a man should be overt about pursuing. Besides, he may as well have tried to pull down the moon and fuck it for all the attention she’d ever given him at first. Then the moon had come to him one heavenly night. She’d shown up at his door with a split lip and a torn dress, the angriest he’d ever seen her. He hadn’t thought twice about agreeing to kill the man who had done it to her, and would’ve done it again even if she hadn’t offered herself to him afterward.
Now all she asked was for a night spent with him and another man. He struggled to tell himself that he didn’t want what she had to offer as much as he thought he did, but even after his vehement rejection of her proposition, it lurked in the back of his mind.
After a week of adamant denial and being driven mad with the tantalizing sight of her in a G-string on the hot California summer afternoons, he gave in and finally let his mind entertain the idea. That she wanted Maddox for their third wheel shouldn’t have surprised him. The tattooist was intimidating on the surface, at least to most of his clients, and like Lazaro in a lot of ways. Most women hesitated to approach him, yet the worst ones seemed to gravitate toward him, attracted to his darkly inked arms, thick from daily workouts, and his piercing gray eyes that let everyone know he didn’t miss a thing. Those women were the self-destructive vipers Lazaro had always avoided. In his mind, Celeste was stronger, purer, and far more deadly than the rest of them put together. And in spite of what she’d said the week before, he hadn’t missed the tattooist looking at her. The fact that she was looking back for a change was what galvanized him into action. He’d be better off giving her what she wanted before she decided to take it for herself, leaving him out of the equation.
Three days in a row he drove to the tattoo shop and parked his car, only to start the engine again and drive away. On the fourth day he finally had the balls to walk in.
“Maddox,” he said, swallowing tightly and crossing the barrier into the tattooist’s realm.
Maddox paused his work on his client, lips pursing in irritation. He tilted his head up. His gray eyes hit Lazaro and the irritated look disappeared. His mouth spread into a cocky grin—a silent, infuriating trump if it meant what Lazaro thought.
“Lazaro.” The tattooist nodded in greeting then bent back to his work. “Give me a sec.”
The mass of Latino meat being tattooed gave Lazaro a nervous glance. Lazaro jerked his head dismissively. Being feared had some drawbacks.
“So what is it?” Maddox asked after the client paid up and skittered away. He peeled off his latex gloves and began cleaning his tools. “Finally decide on that back piece we talked about last month?”
“You could say that. I want one like hers.”
Maddox’s eyes gleamed and the corner of his mouth twitched in amusement. “Celeste’s, you mean.”
“Yeah, only bigger. And darker.”
Maddox licked his lips and an underlying hint of something distinctly primal flickered in his eyes as they skimmed over Lazaro’s tense posture. Lazaro couldn’t help but wonder if Celeste’s assessment of the man was right.
“I can do whatever you want.” Maddox’s smile widened, his teeth shining white. “But something that pretty might be a challenge to duplicate. Might need to see it one more time.”
Lazaro’s tightly managed level of tension snapped. In a quick pair of strides, he crossed the room and gripped Maddox by the neck, easily lifting his heavily muscled body off his chair. The formica-covered workbench lining the wall teetered when Maddox’s weight hit. The pieces of his tattoo machine clattered to the floor.
Sticking his nose in the other man’s face, Lazaro spoke through gritted teeth. “You’re fucking lucky I haven’t cut your goddamn balls off. If I’d known she’d come to you for it I’d have been here with her to make sure you behaved.”
Maddox’s continued look of arrogance inflamed him. Lazaro squeezed Maddox’s throat, pressing his head against a low cabinet above the workbench, neck bent at what had to be an uncomfortable angle. Blood pounded at his temples and belatedly he realized that wasn’t the only part of him reacting to his anger with a pulsing rush of blood. As common an occurrence as it was during previous violent confrontations, he really didn’t appreciate having a hard-on just now.
A hot breath puffed against his cheek as Maddox let out a low chuckle and tilted his hips a fraction, grazing against Lazaro’s pelvis. The friction made him grunt in surprise. He glanced down and with horrified fascination realized Maddox was just as aroused as he was.
“You’re already hard thinking about what I did to her, aren’t you?” Maddox rasped, his words constricted by the hold Lazaro had on his throat. “What pisses you off most, imagining her reaction, or knowing I did it to her? Or do you want to see if I can do it to you, too?”
Lazaro pressed his hand tighter against Maddox’s neck, ignoring the tight heat that continued to build in his groin. The other man’s arrogant amusement dissipated, replaced by a look of desperation he couldn’t even fathom. Lazaro’s grip loosened on his throat, uncertainty building at the look that crossed Maddox’s face. Maddox’s hands tightly gripped the edges of his workbench, never moving. He found himself bound by the look in the tattooist’s eyes, a need that went deeper than hunger. Celeste had been right in so many ways.
Through clenched teeth, Maddox said, “I’m sure you’d have liked watching her come as much as I did, but I didn’t lay a finger on her, except to give her that pretty little tattoo,
right
where she asked for it and not an inch lower. I just wanted to see if she’d come clean about how much she enjoyed it. Most girls just come back begging for more. But if you two are still together I guess she really does love you after all.”
Lazaro’s chest heaved while his eyes bored into Maddox’s.
“I love her, too,” Lazaro said. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
After a second Maddox’s eyebrows twitched and his expression grew sad. “Well isn’t that a bitch. What’s left for a guy like me?”
“Don’t know what you mean.” Lazaro released Maddox’s throat. He stepped backward, sitting on the tattoo chair.
Maddox eyed him with raised eyebrows, then turned away, leaning on his workbench. He exhaled a deep, ragged breath, and glared over his shoulder.
“You can make a goddamn appointment like everyone else, you fuck. Instead of coming in here threatening me for doing my fucking job. I have other clients this afternoon.”
“Cancel those appointments. Give me that tattoo and I’ll make it worth it. I have a proposition.”
