Billionaire Bad Boys of Romance Boxed Set (10 Book Bundle) (13 page)

Chapter Seven

Dubrovnik, it turns out, is in Croatia. I did not know this. I didn't even really know where Croatia was. I only stopped long enough at my apartment to grab my passport before running back down the stairs and throwing myself into the car. Malcolm smiled to see me frantically buckling up and throwing my hair out of my face. My little blue book, unstamped but for a trip to Barbados I'd taken with Felicia last fall, sat in my hand, its slick cover slightly slippery with the nervous sweat that I didn't want to acknowledge was seeping from my palm.

“You didn't pick up clothes,” Malcolm said. “Good.”

“You told me not to,” I said. I would do anything he asked of me, frankly, as long as he didn't ask me about the scars beneath my tattoos. I was happy to go wherever he wanted. I was happy to run away from the feelings he had stirred in me. Very mature, I know, but sometimes you have to run away so you can live to run away another day.

“I did,” he mused as the car pulled away from the curb and jetted into the city streets. “I just didn't quite expect you to obey.”

I scowled at him. “I'm not obeying, I'm taking your suggestion. Although I don't know what I'm going to wear in Dubrovnik.”

“You will wear what I dress you in,” he replied. “I require it for my art.”

I suspected that he actually did not require it for his art, but I wasn't really going to argue with him. I didn't want to ruin the illusion that we were lovers jetting off to a romantic getaway, leaving behind the hustle and bustle of the city to lose ourselves in each other's arms.

Then Malcolm did his part to continue the illusion by reaching over, unbuckling my seatbelt, and pulling me into his lap. He spread my thighs over his hips and buried his hands in my hair, drawing my lips down to his.

I sighed, letting the warmth of our attraction chase away the cold that had settled in my gut. His lips and hands traveled over my body, here and there until I was gasping and sighing at his touch, my pussy rubbing against the bulge of his cock in his jeans. I still hadn't given him an orgasm, except for one messy hand job beneath a restaurant table, and I wanted to give something back to him. The car seemed like as good a place as any, squeezing it in before we clambered onto a plane. I didn't know if we were taking a commercial flight or a private flight. I didn't know
anything.

I didn't want to know anything. I wanted to forget. I wanted to lose myself in the moment with him. Glancing over my shoulder, I checked to make sure the privacy window was up between the back seat and the driver's seat. It was. I slid out of Malcolm's lap and wedged myself into the space between the driver's seat and his hips. He gazed down at me, his dark eyes growing wider and darker with desire.

I smoothed my hands over his thighs. I wanted him naked. I wanted to see him. Reaching out, I began to work the button of his pants, my mouth watering in anticipation.

His hands closed around my wrists.

“Stop,” he said.

Seriously? He was asking me to stop? I almost flashed him a sly glance and kept going, but remembering how he stopped immediately for me gave me pause. I raised my eyes to his, trying to gauge how serious he was.

A muscle leaped in his jaw as he stared down at me, but his hands were firm on my wrists. Warm and large. I wanted to curl up in the palm of his hand and let him warm me through and through.

“Why?” I asked. “Don't you want me to?”

He used my wrists to draw me up and set me on the seat beside him. “I don't know,” he said after a moment.

Stung, I scooted away from him, the leather of the back seat making it easy. I wished it weren't so easy. Again the distance, again the strangeness from him. Malcolm Ward intrigued and frustrated me. I wanted nothing more than to peel away his layers and figure out what made him tick, but for every layer removed, it seemed he scraped away ten of my own. I was too pliable towards him, all because I wanted him to get in my pants. And yet I hadn't even achieved that yet. And maybe I never would because he didn't even know if he wanted to do so.

His tongue on my clit, tenderly probing my quivering inner core, and the huge, aching cock that resulted from those activities weren't enough to tell him he wanted to fuck me. What was?

Perhaps I could be forgiven for what I said next. Perhaps not. But I tell you this: it came from a very honest place.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I demanded. “Why can't I suck your cock? I suck great cock. What the hell?”

His brows rose at my crude words. I didn't care. I wanted to shock him. “Sadie...” he said. I saw him searching for the right words, and I crossed my arms, waiting. I suddenly didn't want it to be easy for him. I'd been easy for him for the past two days. I wanted him to be easy for me for a change. Or at the very least throw a wrench in his works.

Stop playing with me,
I wanted to say.
Stop running hot and cold, you enormous fuckstick tease.

Even I knew that saying something like that was probably beyond the pale, so I bit my lips together and waited for him to tell me why he didn't want to fuck me.

“I don't know,” he said again. He drew back, his shoulders straightening, his face smoothing. He seemed puzzled, and then a strange look passed over his face. It was almost... sad. “You do things to me, Sadie,” he said at last. “I don't know if I'm comfortable with them.”

I knew what he meant, but I said it anyway. “I don't do anything to you,” I replied. “That's the point. When am I going to get to make
you
happy?”

His brow smoothed, and a small smile tugged at his lips. “You do make me happy,” he said, and then the smile faded, replaced by shock. “You
do
make me happy.”

“Well don't sound so surprised by it,” I said crankily. “You're going to give me a complex.” I tossed my hair and looked out the window, meaning to stare out at the cold February day in a huff to let him know I was really totally mad at him, okay?

His hand on one of mine, warm and uninvited, shattered that resolution. Before I could stop myself, I was gazing at him from the corner of my eye.

“Sadie,” he said. “I want to fuck you. I want to fold you up and fuck you until you scream. But I won't yet. I don't want to ruin it.”

His words made me dizzy. “Ruin what?”

“My masterpiece,” he said. “You will see what I have in mind when we get to Dubrovnik. It will be perfect. And I will give you everything you want when we get there. Until then...”

He trailed off and drew my hand down into his lap, mere inches from his straining erection, but he kept his hands between my fingers and his cock. Gently, insistently, he stroked the back of my hand with his thumb, reminding me of how he had plunged into my core with that very thumb during our photo session. “Until then what?” I asked finally.

“Until then, I want to keep you coming.”

I wavered.
Just accept it,
I thought.
When are you going to find another guy who just wants to give and give?

“Fine,” I said. “I grudgingly accept.”

His eyes met mine. “I don't want you to accept,” he said. “I want you to submit.”

I swallowed. Submitting. The idea was strange, foreign to me. I didn't lie down and die for anyone. I didn't lie down and take it.

And yet there was a trembling note of need in his voice. Vulnerability. He
needed
me to submit. I didn't need to be his puppet, his plaything, his far-off muse come to earth to inspire him. He
needed.
it.
I
wanted
it.

“All right,” I said.

He ran his fingers over my cheek, sending shivers down my spine. “You will be the most brilliant thing I have ever done,” he said as we pulled up to the airport. “You will see.”

*
* * *

He had a private jet, of course. And the moment we took off, he had me standing in the middle of the floor, taking my ruined, paint-stained clothes off. Smears of color covered my skin, making me look like I'd rolled in a Jackson Pollack painting. Malcolm sat in one of the leather-bound swiveling chairs, watching me. “You are startling,” he said when I finally stood before him, completely nude except for his own markings.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Don't speak.”

I licked my lips.

“Lie down on the floor,” he commanded.

I glanced down dubiously at the fine carpet. Wouldn't the paint ruin it? But hey, I wasn't a freaking billionaire, what did I care? I did as he bade, stretching out, my arms above my head, my toes pointed towards him.

“Open your legs,” he said. Then he reached down and opened a bag I hadn't seen there, withdrawing a familiar-looking tin. A box full of charcoal sticks.

“Where'd you get that?” I said.

“What did I say about speaking?” he asked me.

I clammed up.

“Spread your legs,” he commanded again.

God. I'd never known how much I liked to hear a man talk dirty to me. My breathing picked up as I let my thighs fall open, exposing my inner flesh to his gaze.

“Yes,” he murmured. “Like that.” And he left his chair and knelt down between my legs as he opened the tin of charcoal.

I wanted to ask what he was going to do. I didn't think he'd be so amateur as to stick charcoal inside me, but you never knew with some people.

He didn't though. Instead, he took one stick of charcoal out and held it lightly, poised to draw on my skin. Tilting his head to one side, he took me in.

“You aren't finished yet,” he said, more to himself than to me. “But how will I know when enough is enough?”

I could have told him that sometimes you never do, but then he lowered the charcoal to my belly and began to write. Not draw. Write.

The tip of the stick tickled me, and it was all I could do to stifle my giggles as he dragged it over my stomach, dipping it inside my navel, letting it wander and swirl around my hip. Swift cursive letters flowed into each other as he scrawled something across my flesh, branding me with who knew what. Then his other hand alighted on my pussy and without preamble he pushed his way inside. I was slick and wet and ready, but it still surprised me, and I gasped.

“Don't move,” he said. “You will make the letters all wobbly.”

Curling his finger inside me, he ran the pad over the sweet, aching spot at the top of my tight passage that I knew could make me come. Technically. I technically knew that. I'd never had an orgasm from that before. I wanted to see if he knew how to do it.

“'I have gone out,'” he said suddenly, his voice rich and dark as he rubbed his finger in circles over my g-spot, making my toes curl and my back arch. “'A possessed witch, haunting the black air, braver at night.'”

Something began to build deep in my belly. A heaviness that I had never felt before. It was almost uncomfortable, a dark, lurking experience, waiting to be released, and I couldn't stop it. The circling of his finger inside me was relentless. I quivered and quaked around it, knowing that he could give me things I'd never known.

The charcoal continued down my thigh. “'Dreaming evil,'” he murmured slowly, and I realized he was writing the words on me. I could barely concentrate on his voice. The thunder of blood in my ears was almost too much for me to bear. It was a poem I had never heard before, but it sent the hairs on the back of my neck on end even as my body twisted and thrashed, out of my control. The terrifying feeling in my belly mounted, growing larger and larger. I didn't know how much more I could take.

“Malcolm,” I pleaded, my voice shuddering in my chest. My arms had come down, of their own volition, and crossed over my breasts. I cupped them in my hands, rubbing my palms absently over my nipples as my lower lip found its way between my teeth.

His hand stilled and I cried out, bereft. “No speaking,” he commanded. His dark cherry wood eyes had fixated on the flesh of my inner thigh and the tip of his charcoal stick poised there. I bit down hard on my lip and waited, trembling, for his indulgence. The hum of the plane was all around us, under my back, in my bones. At some point we had broken above the clouds and sunlight poured in through the windows, spilling across the cream and gold and mahogany interior. Warm light touched my shoulder, and I realized that I had finally escaped the cold. I was surprised my skin wasn't incandescent with the fire Malcolm stoked in me.

At last he began to write again, and his finger picked up its magical rhythm. “'I have gone out,” he repeated, his eyes wandering over my nude body, marked and branded as his own, “'a possessed witch, haunting the black air, braver at night. Dreaming evil, I have done my hitch over the plain houses...'” My release began to coil within me again, hard and tight, and I struggled to hold my body still, the way he had asked me to. The charcoal left off suddenly, then alighted on my elbow where it lay against my ribcage as I cupped my breasts in the palms of my hands. “'Light by light,'” he whispered, and another finger slipped inside me, “'lonely thing... twelve-fingered...'” A third inside, and then he picked up the pace, slamming his fingertips into the soft yielding mound inside me, and I tried not to cry with the unbearable delight of it.

He crawled over my body, let the charcoal reach my forehead. “'Out of mind,'” he murmured. Then he dropped the charcoal stick on the carpet by my head and moved his newly freed hand down to my pelvis. There he laid a heavy palm across me and began to work my tight cunt as vigorously as if he were feeling the same mounting pleasure and needed it just as badly as I did. Faster and faster he went, and my body left me behind in the dust. My brain became blank as every muscle within me tightened and coiled around his fingers, a dark wave swelling up inside me, threatening to take me over, wash over me and drag me out to sea.