Burn for Cowboy (Stampede Sizzlers) (8 page)

He held out his other hand for the bill, his attention never wavering from Meri. “Did he say anything, little love?” Dark lashes lifted and she met his gaze.

“No.” She looked embarrassed as if she had been caught doing something she should feel ashamed of.

“Did he do anything?” The man shifted, waiting for Mike to sign the bill. The waiter would wait until Mike didn’t want to punch his face into the next room.

Her head shook negatively.

“But clearly something happened.” He stopped her hand from tugging on the shirt again. “I want you to remember what I told you that night at the club. What was it?”

Her cheeks went pink and he fought a smile. He scrawled his name over the paper. He felt the slight adjusting of her body. Her spine grew a little straighter, and her hands settled down to rest on her thighs. “That I’m beautiful. I’m yours. And that anyone who looks at me a little off is jealous of both of those because they know they’ll never have me.”

He tapped his pen against his mouth and she leaned into him, her lips soft against his. It was sweet and gentle, like her. He bit her lower lip, licked the spot then turned his attention back to the bill, filling in the tip. “I’m going to give you a tip, kid, that will help you survive being a douche another day.”

“Sir?” The waiter straightened, his eyes snapping away from Meri’s ass.

“Every glorious one of her sixty-one inches will never be yours. I know, it’s hard to ignore how beautiful and sexy she is, so I’ll let that go. But if you happen to serve us for a second time in the next week, and you look at her like that again, I will personally remove your eyes from this planet. Then I will kill your job. Not only will I kill it, but I will be sure it’s a rotting corpse that no one will want to touch. Am I understood?”

The waiter’s cheeks were now red but his face was pale. He swallowed and took the bill. It was habit that had him looking down. His eyes widened when he saw his generous tip.

“A reminder,” Mike said, his fingers stroking up Meri’s back, “of what to do when you come here again. I will not be so generous with my money or my warnings. Go.”

“Sorry, sir. Sorry, ma’am.” Then the kid made for the door, fast as hell.

He was already forgotten, until the next time he stepped over a line. He turned his attention to Meri, whose eyes were downcast but a little smile curled her lips. “As for you, Miss Heaven…”

“Me? What did I do?”

He shook his head and unbuttoned the shirt. “One dumb ass arrives and what happens? All that lush willingness goes away.” He spilled her onto the couch and picked up her hand. He kissed her knuckles then drew her middle finger into his mouth. “I want you wet and begging to come. Then we’ll talk about dinner.” He set her finger against the dainty piercing that teased him. “As you were, little love.”

There was a bottle of wine on the desk. Yes, it was over-priced, but he didn’t care. He had worked hard to be able to afford the nice things in life. And drinking a glass of wine while he watched her masturbate was a very nice thing indeed.

Chapter Eight

The fingers lightly traced her scars while her leg was bent and rested on Mike. There were times when Meri was sure he wasn’t even aware of doing it. The first time he had touched the spot, she had pulled away. How could he want to touch something so horrible and ugly? It wasn’t just the skin that was damaged, it was the muscle below, leaving her once smooth leg a maze of caverns.

That mess on her leg was why she couldn’t do the jumps she loved to do so much. That grotesque area was why she had to re-learn how to walk, how to learn to skate again, and she had to reprogram her brain in order to do her spins. Her injury and the accident haunted her dreams. She hated the ugliness of it. She hated that because of this she couldn’t skate. And if she hated it, Mike should. Only he hadn’t reacted that way.

He hadn’t liked being denied any part of her. On their next date he had done some painfully erotic things to her leg and he had kept it up until she was completely and utterly aroused, and then he stopped. All she had wanted at that point was for him to return to his wicked touches on the very spot she wanted him to avoid.

Clever man.

“And what has you smiling?”

She slid her leg over his other thigh, rolling until she lay on him. His touch continued to draw on the back of her leg. “Remembering.”

A dark brown eyebrow arched up while he looked at her beneath his lowered lids. He looked like a lazy cat, sated from food and sex.

“My scar.” She answered the unspoken question.

“This scar?” His fingers caressed up her hip to the one on her ribs. She shook her head in answer. The light meandering touch moved back down to behind her knee while his other hand slipped behind her left knee. He pulled on her legs so she was straddling his waist. Fingers flowed up her spine and tangled into her hair. He gently pulled until she sat up.

She gasped out in pleasure when his right hand flattened on her stomach, his middle finger tracing the tidy line beneath her belly button. Her skin prickled beneath his touch. She had ceased being surprised at how easily he could arouse her with a simple touch. The man could look at her and she’d want him. A text could have her body aching for him.

“This scar?”

“No,” she whispered.

He caressed down to her pussy; his fingers gave the stud a little twist that made her thighs tighten on his hips. The corner of his mouth twitched in a satisfied smirk before he began to work his finger back and forth. Oh God, she thought as she rested her hands on his chest.

“Then you must mean this little wound.” His finger was warm and damp from touching her. He painted the scar with her arousal and she nodded. “I think when we get home, you need a reminder on what is beautiful.”

Reaching up, she traced his own silvery line from where surgeons repaired his rotator cuff. Leaning down, she kissed his scar. With the tip of her tongue, she followed the mark. Hands caressed along her back until he cupped her ass, while she pressed kisses along his collarbone.

She loved how big he was. The thick muscles, the simple broadness of him. Her fingers spread over his chest, feeling his strength beneath skin and the dark hair. His cologne was still faint on his skin, the last vestiges of the day. He rocked her hips over his flat belly. She tasted him: the sweat dried on his skin, that musky manly flavor that was all Mike.

She followed the tendon to his neck then found the scratchy whiskers. A tiny scar beneath the dark stubble was flicked by her tongue before she sought out his mouth. Tongues met and tangled as he continued the slow tempo of her hips. A finger brushed over the tight entrance at her ass and a little moan escaped at the touch.

“Let’s get you situated.” His free hand caught her wrist and drew it beyond him, under the pillows until the edge of the mattress brushed her fingers. Her breasts brushed against his face, her nipples tight and needy. Meri shifted, feeling his lips on her skin but he ignored the offered nipple, driving her mad with wanting to feel his mouth. She gripped tight, needing something to hold on to as that one finger went round and round. Her other hand moved on its own accord, finally earning a slow brush of his tongue over her nipple. Like the finger at her ass, the tip of his tongue drew teasing circles. “How wet you are, greedy for my dick.”

“Michael,” she whispered.
Fuck me, suck me.
The words crammed her brain, because she didn’t know which one she wanted more: his mouth or his finger.

“Michael’s not here at the moment,” he practically purred. “Please leave a message at the tone, and he’ll get back to you when he damn well feels like it.” His finger pressed in and she cried out, her hands clutching the bed. Oh so slowly, he eased his finger back and forth, his other hand caressing her ass and hips.

Meri gazed at the man sprawled beneath her and felt something hot clench in her chest. The expression in his eyes shifted slightly. This was the man she had first met, who had told her they were having dinner, who had grilled some steaks on his deck with the view of Lake Ontario hours later. Then that night, he had taken her into that room upstairs with the windows that looked out over the lake.

“Tell me what you’re thinking of,” he demanded in a low voice that made her toes curl. The finger in her ass kept up its slow, relentless rhythm. Each time she rocked back into the glide, her breasts rubbed over the hard wall of his chest. The contact against her swollen nipples made it hard to concentrate. Oh, who was she kidding? The entire man made it hard to concentrate.

“You,” she said, struggling to keep her eyes open on his face. “Our first dinner.”

“When we sat out on my deck drinking wine? Where you were nervous and turned on and my cock was hard as hell for you. Do you mean that dinner?”

Her lashes lifted and she gazed into his dark eyes. “Yes. You scared me.”

His smile was a little cruel as he pushed his finger deep into her and made her gasp at the sensation. “I know.” He slid his other hand between her legs and she cried out when he found her aching clit. “I liked that I did because I knew you were aware of me. My little inexperienced submissive who hadn’t even known she had walked into my lair. I loved watching the dawning awareness. The realization of the dominant in me. And how that turned you on. Fuck, how you responded to me without even a touch. Just the truth in your head that I was the dominant to your submissive.”

She nodded, her voice getting trapped in her throat when he began to toy with the piercing. When she had revealed her birthday present to him, he had tied her to his headboard and spent the night admiring it. So many orgasms that night.

“How wet you are now,” he said as a finger teased her, lightly teasing back and forth over the spot she wanted him to fill. “This gorgeous pussy that hungers for my cock.” Both of his hands disappeared and she whimpered at the loss. She wanted his hands on her, needed them. He lifted her hips and slipped out from beneath her.

A sharp slap landed on her ass after he repositioned her: arms stretched above her, head lowered and her ass in the air. She listened to his bare feet on the carpet, her body screaming with awareness of the man. The bed dipped and she looked between her legs to see him brace a knee between hers. A hand caressed her ass then down to her pussy. She cried out as he slowly pressed the egg into her. Another slap on her ass and he thumbed the toy onto a low setting. The soft pulsations inside her made her back dip more while the orgasm he had begun to stir throbbed hotly, just out of reach.

“I want you to remember that night, little love.” Another spank and he walked away, the remote between her knees.

How could she not remember it?

Halfway through dinner, he had taken her hand and turned her wrist over. While he had scraped his fingernail back and forth over her racing pulse, he asked,
“Do you know what I am?”
All night, Meri had become more and more aroused and aware of the dynamic man before her. His dark eyes, the way he looked at her, the way he touched her: hand on the small of her back as he guided her through his spacious and expensive home. Fingers tucking back a strand of hair the wind would catch, his legs on the outside of hers beneath the table when they sat outside.

How could she not know what he was when every inch of her had wanted to submit to this man? She had answered the only way she knew how to answer him, truthfully. Yes, she knew what he was. Yes, yes, yes.

“I fuck downstairs but I play upstairs. I have a St. Andrew’s cross. Do you know what that is?”
Even when she had nodded yes, he had continued in his low voice, his finger on her wrist. He drew an X that made her belly tighten and her panties wet.
“It’s a cross that the willing are bound to.”
She was shaking as he seduced her on his patio.
“I will stretch you wide, my little submissive, with your arms bound.

“And as you stand there, arms in iron shackles, legs spread apart and your ass taking a fake cock deep, I’ll eye my shelf. Want to know what’s on my shelf, my little submissive?”

She had nearly come right there as his words painted a picture and his finger traced the racing pulse in her wrist.
“Yes.”

“Master,”
he whispered against her wrist.
“You call me Master when we’re up there.”
Then with her hand still in his, he left their half-eaten dinner outside and took her up to that room with the large wooden M and the walls decorated with erotic pictures, whips and paddles. She was shaking as he stripped her out of her dress.

There had been no logical thought that she had just met him that morning and now she was naked. Need. That’s all that had been pulsing in her body. Need for what he had told her, need for what he was. He braced her hands on the two inward slants of the M and before she could process that she was naked with a stranger, he spread lube on her ass and pressed a dildo deep inside her. She orgasmed then. At the erotic penetration but also at the fact that she was in the presence of such a dominant, sexual force.

“I’ll give you one,”
he said against her ear,
“but the next one is mine.”
Then he shackled her to the wood, leaving her there with her ass filled for the first time ever. He returned with his dinner and wine and he sat on the leather couch, eating and watching her. Dominating her without a touch but with the strength of his will.

“Do you remember now?” His voice drew her out of the memory and she stared at the bed beneath her, almost expecting to see his bed instead of this anonymous bed they were using for the week.

She nodded, her fingers aching from the grip they had on the mattress.

“You were mine the minute you walked into my home,” Mike said beside her. Fingers caressed along her arm and she quivered at the touch. “And you will stay mine until you walk out. Are you walking out, Meredith?”

She shook her head as his touch slid down to the wrist he had claimed that first night. “No.”

“Even though I want more from you? Even though I want everything from you? Are you mine?”