All In (The Blackstone Affair, Part 2) (10 page)

I passed the bedroom and heard nothing but
silence. I wanted Brynne to sleep well. No more nightmares for my
girl. She’d been through enough for a lifetime already.

The night sky held millions of stars
tonight. It wasn’t often they were so sparkly and I realized it’d
been a long time since I had sat out here. I lit up another cig.
This one was a throwaway though. If I smoked outside then nobody
had to know about it. I shouldn’t smoke inside with Brynne here
anyway.

I crossed my feet up on the ottoman and
leaned back into the lounger. I let my mind wander into thoughts of
today and all that had happened. I thought about Brynne’s tragic
story and just how things had altered now. For both of us. Yeah…our
times of darkness had been like a parallel universe. She’d been
seventeen and I’d been twenty-five. Both of us in a very bad place.
I felt more connected to her than ever, sitting out here alone,
dragging spiced tobacco into my lungs.

I used to smoke Dunhills. It was my brand of
choice and top of the line. I like fine things so they were no
surprise. But that all changed after Afghanistan. Lots of things
changed after that place. I absorbed the nicotine my body craved
and looked up at the myriad of stars shining overhead.

…
Every guard smoked clove tobacco. Every
last motherfucking rebel had one of those lovely, imperfect
handrolleds hanging off his lips as they went about their tasks of
beatings and mind fucks. And the smell? Like pure ambrosia. I
dreamed in smokes in the first days of my capture. I dreamed about
the sweet scent of clove mixed with tobacco until I was sure I
would die before I ever tasted one. The beatings and interrogations
started later. I don’t think they knew what they had captured at
the first. All in good time though, and they did figure it out
eventually. The Afghans wanted to use me to negotiate the release
of their own. I got that much from their nearly insensible ranting.
Was totally out of my hands though. Government policy is no
negotiation with terrorists so I knew they would be disappointed.
And I knew they would take out their frustrations on me. Which they
did. I often wondered if they knew how close I’d come to breaking
in the beginning. I had terrible guilt for knowing the truth, and
felt great relief I’d never had to choose, but there were some
interrogations (if you could call them such) where I would have
sung like a canary in a coal mine if they’d offered me one of those
beautiful, sweet, clove handrolleds to smoke. It was the very first
thing I asked for when I walked out of that rubble pile. The US
Marine who got to me first, said I was in shock. I was…and I
wasn’t, I suppose. I think he was in shock that anyone alive came
out of what was left of my prison after they bombed it to shit
(which I thanked him nicely for). But really I was in shock because
I knew in that instant that the fates had changed for me. I had
finally found some luck. Or luck had finally found me. Ethan
Blackstone was a lucky, lucky man—

A shadow moved the faint light behind me and
caught my attention. I turned my head. My heart lurched inside my
chest to see Brynne standing just on the other side of the sliding
glass watching me. We stared at each other for a beat or two until
she slid open the door and stepped out.

“You’re up,” I said.

“You’re out here smoking,” she said.

I set the ciggie in the ashtray and held my
arms open to her. “You caught me.”

She came right over, looking decadently
tousled from sleep in a light blue t-shirt and a pair of my silk
boxers.
And nothing underneath them
. I tugged her down to me
and she smiled a little, folding her long legs on either side of
mine, straddling my lap and holding my face in her two hands.

“You are so busted, Blackstone.” Her eyes
moved infinitesimally, trying to read me. I knew that’s what she
was doing and I so wished I could know what she was really
thinking. Just the fact that she had crawled up on my lap and held
my face thrilled me, but seeing her relaxed and happy after waking
in the night, pleased me more.

“Mmmmm, I know how you can punish me if you
want,” I told her.

She snuggled against me and I drew my arms
around her. “What were you thinking about? You looked very far
away, sneaking your cigarette out here in the dark.”

I spoke into her hair and moved my hand up
and down her back. “I was thinking about…luck. Being lucky. Having
some.” It was the truth and the reason I still breathed even if I
couldn’t share that part with her yet. I wanted to, but didn’t know
how to even begin that journey with Brynne. She didn’t need more
painful shit piled on top of what she already had to carry
around.

“And are you? Lucky?”

“I didn’t used to be. But then my luck
changed for the better one day. I took the gift handed me and
started playing cards.”

She traced over my chest with her fingers
very softly, probably unaware of how much she got to me.

“You won a lot of tournaments. My dad told
me that’s how he met you.”

I nodded against her head, my lips still on
her hair. “I liked your dad very much when we first met. I still
do. I talked to him tonight.”

Her hand on my chest stilled for a moment
but then resumed the soft rubbing. “And how did that go?”

“It went just about like I imagined it
would. We both said what we needed to say and got down to brass
tacks. He knows about us. I told him. He wants the same as me—to
keep you safe and happy.”

“I do feel safe with you…I always have. And
I know my dad respects you very much. He told me how he had to push
you to take me on.” She made a sound against me, her mouth right
over my pectoral. A nice sound; soft and pretty, and one that got
me very hard. “I just wish he had told me what was happening with
you.” She paused and then whispered longingly, “I have to know
what’s going on, Ethan. I can’t ever go back to being the unaware
victim. Secrets will destroy me—I just can’t handle them now. I’ll
always have to know everything. Waking up like that and finding
myself on that table, not knowing who or what—I can’t—”

“Shhhhh…I know.” I stopped her before she
could get too worked up. “I realize that now.”

I reached for her face. I wanted to see her
eyes when I told her the next part. She was absolutely beautiful
looking up at me in the starry nighttime light from where she
rested on my chest. Her lips needed kissing and I wanted to be
inside her again, but I forced myself to speak instead. “I am so
sorry for keeping secrets. I understand why you need transparency.
I get it, and I promise to tell you everything from now on, even if
I think you won’t like to hear it. And I know that was hard for you
to tell me your story tonight, but I want you to know I am so damn
proud of you. You are so strong…and lovely…and brilliant, Brynne
Bennett. My beautiful American girl.” I rubbed over her lips with
my thumb.

She smiled with half of her mouth up at me.
“Thank you,” she mouthed.

“And you know what the best part is?” I
asked.

“Tell me.”

“You’re here with me. Right here, where I
can do this.” I dipped my hand up under her shirt and cupped a
breast, so soft, filling my hand with its gentle weight. I smiled
at her. The kind of smile I can feel on my face, and pretty much
only give to her and a very short list of others.

“I am,” she said. “And I’m glad I’m here
with you, Ethan. You’re the first person to make me…forget.” Her
voice grew softer but strangely, more clear. “I don’t know why it
works with you, but it does. I—I couldn’t do—intimacy for a long
time. And then it was still…difficult…those times I tried—”

“It doesn’t matter anymore, baby,” I
interrupted. I hated to even imagine Brynne with someone else;
another man seeing her naked, touching her, making her come. The
images drove me mad with jealousy, but what she’d just told me also
made me so damn happy at the same time. I was the first person to
make her forget
. Fuck yes!
And I’d make it so I’d be the
last person she’d ever remember too.

“I have you now, and I’m holding on to you,
and I don’t ever want to let you go.”

She purred at me and her eyes flared as I
palmed her other breast and found her tight budded nipple. She had
sensitive nipples and I loved to devour them. And make her want me.
This was the real motivation if I was honest. Making Brynne want
me
was my obsession.

I moved her hair aside and latched onto her
neck with my lips. I loved the taste of her skin and how she
responded when I touched her. We had chemistry together, and I knew
this from the very beginning. Right now she was arching into my
chest, bumping her breast further into my hand. I pinched the
nipple and relished the sound she made when I did that. I knew
where this was leading, or where I wanted it to lead.
Me moving
inside her, making her come, her getting that soft, gorgeous look
in her eyes after she climaxed.
I lived for that look in her
eyes. That look drove me into behaviors I had never even considered
before with a woman.

She started to grind on my lap. Her hips
rocking over my now very aroused cock under the thin fabric of the
joggers, making me envision all sorts of kinky things I could try.
And man did I want to try out some kink with her.

I snaked my hand up through the leg of the
silk boxers she had on and right to her cleft.
Easy access
.
And so fucking wet for me I could only forge ahead for more. She
made sounds when I touched her quim and started circling over her
tight bud of a clit that wanted my cock knocking against it. She
wanted me. I made her want me sexually. If it was the best I could
do with her for now then I would take what I could get. I wanted
more from my Brynne though. So much more.

I dragged my mouth away from her neck and my
hand from her pussy and lifted her off my lap to stand before me. I
stayed in the lounger and flicked my gaze over her. “Strip for
me.”

She wobbled on her feet a bit, looking down
at me, her expression unreadable. I didn’t know what she would do
with the command, but I didn’t care. I was about to find out and
the thrill of the challenge hardened me to iron.

“But we’re outside…” She turned to look off
the balcony and then back to me.

“Get naked and climb back on top of me.”

She started breathing heavier and I still
wasn’t sure what she would do, but I told her anyway. Brynne liked
it when I was blunt.

“No one can see. I want to fuck right here,
right now, under the stars,” I said.

She stared me down with those eyes of hers
whose color cannot be named and brought her hands to the bottom of
her t-shirt. She swept it up and off in a blink, but held it in one
hand for a moment before releasing the fabric and letting it drop
to the floor of the balcony. That delay, that look she gave me was
pure unadulterated sexy. My girl knew how to play this game. She
also had the most gorgeous tits in the world.

She moved to the waist band of the shorts
next. Her thumbs dug in under the elastic. My mouth began to water
as they started down. She bent gracefully and stepped out of my
silk boxers. She stood utterly bare for me, legs slightly parted,
her hair wildly mussed from sleep, waiting for me to say what to do
next.

“God, just look at you. There’s nothing you
could tell me that would change how I feel about you, or make me
want you less.” My cock pounded with its own heartbeat, dying to
spunk her up. “Believe me,” I told her, my tone carrying a bit of a
sting.

She got a look on her face that suggested my
words relieved her. Brynne still had so much doubt in her about how
her past might change my feelings for her.
I have to work on
showing her that it’s inconsequential to me
. “Come here,
beautiful.”

She came to me and crawled onto my lap
again, folding her legs and settling right over my cock with only a
layer of soft cotton separating our skin. I went for her tits
first, cupping one in each hand and squeezing. They filled my hands
exactly, not overflowing but a soft weight that tantalized with the
promise of claiming another part of her body for my own.
Perfection
.

She arched back when I bit over a nipple.
Not hard, but enough to give her a little twinge and then a
glorious moan when I soothed it with my tongue. I wondered how
she’d do with clamps. I bet I could get her to orgasm. In fact, I
pretty much knew I could. She would be something magnificent to
watch when it happened. I worked over the other breast and felt her
stiffen, curling back in my arms, all splayed out and warm…and
gorgeous.

I had to be inside her. To feel Brynne
orgasm around my fingers or tongue or cock was an indescribable
sensation, one I had become addicted to. I moved my hand down her
back, sliding over her bum in a trail, going further down and
underneath to meet her wet slit from behind. She gasped a soft
sound when my fingers touched her quim, and moaned when they
penetrated her wet heat in a deep grip.

“You’re mine…” I told her in a whisper, just
inches from her face. “This pussy is mine. All the time…whether
it’s my fingers…or my tongue…or my cock.”

She flared her eyes at me as my fingers went
to work. I took her mouth and buried my tongue as far as I could in
tandem with what my fingers were doing between her thighs. Those
gorgeous thighs spread open over my lap because I’d told her to do
it.

I was so sexed out I’m sure I was too rough
with her, but I couldn’t seem to rein it in. She didn’t protest,
and if she had, I would’ve stopped. Every response, every sound and
sigh, every undulation over my cock, told me that, in fact, she got
off on it. Brynne liked me dominant when we fucked and I loved her
exactly how she was with me.

Holding her this way, with my arm down
behind her ass, forcing her ever closer against me was something I
had to do. I wanted her to understand that I couldn’t let her go
again. I wouldn’t let her go.