Descended (The Red Blindfold Book 3) (22 page)

But I had control of
myself – barely. Raising a hand to her cheek, I stroked her velvety
skin. She closed her eyes and kissed my palm, making my blood roar
and my possessive instinct erupt.

This was intimacy. A
woman giving herself to me. A woman with nothing left to hide.

What I usually got was
nervous, dolled-up girls telling me what they thought I wanted to
hear. Turning themselves inside out trying to impress me, when what I
wanted was something real. What I wanted was this.

Maybe Jane belonged to
somebody else. A woman of her caliber wasn’t usually single for
long. But every day that passed, I felt more like she belonged to me.

Her breath was hot
against my hand. “Thank you for coming with me tonight,” she
whispered.

I kissed her, soft and
slow. “Of course,” I said. “I’m here. You know that.”

“Yes, I do.”

I knelt down on the
carpet in front of her. “Good,” I said. “Now, lie back.”

With a long, quivering
sigh of surrender, she stretched out on my bed like a sensual little
cat. Lifting her dress around her thighs, I hooked my thumbs over the
strings of her panties and pulled them off over each pretty high
heel.

“Stay open for me,”
I said, positioning her feet wide apart on the edge of the bed. “Just
like that.”

Unbuttoning my shirt, I
yanked it out of my waistband but left it on. Let her peel it off me
once she’d come all over my face. If I could manage to drag myself
away from her perfect little pussy.

The room was lit only
by a low-wattage lamp, but I could still see her tight lips
glistening with wetness. Our kiss had done this to her, just as it
had made me insanely thick and hard.

“So wet,” I
murmured, kissing up her slim, silky thigh. “Why?”

“I love the way your
mouth tastes,” she said. Her fingers were delicate in my hair,
stroking, tracing my ear and the back of my neck.

“Pretty soon it’s
going to taste exactly like you.”

“I can’t wait,”
she said.

“You won’t have
to.”

I parted her with my
middle fingers and inhaled, smelling how delicious and female she
was. Every woman had her own unique scent, but
this
woman had a scent that hit me like a drug. It went straight to my
brain in a nanosecond and switched on every primal impulse.

I teased her with the
tip of one finger, running it lightly from her clit through her
swollen inner lips and back again. Her juices flowed, covering my
finger and dripping onto the sheets like sweet, sticky honey.

“Drex, please,” she
begged, writhing under my touch.

I grabbed her hips in
both hands and held her still. “It feels too good, doesn’t it?”

“Way too good,” she
said, fighting my grip. “I need…” She voice caught on a sweet
little sigh.

“What do you need,
Blue Eyes?”

“Your tongue.”

“Please,” I said.

She whimpered.
“Please.”

“Where do you need my
tongue?”

“On my pussy. Inside
me.”

“Oh,” I said. “You
want me to fuck you with my tongue, is that it?”

She arched her back in
response. Tiny goosebumps appeared on her legs as she shivered with
pent-up desire.

“But I fucked you
hard five hours ago. Wasn’t that enough?” I breathed against her
skin, letting her feel how warm and eager my mouth was.

“Not even close,”
she said, pulling up the hem of her dress even further. I loved
seeing her open and needy, wanting me in spite of everything that had
happened tonight. Maybe because of it.

“You’re mine, you
know that?” I asked, and lightly pressed the tip of my tongue to
her slick little clit.

She gasped and moaned
softly. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Yes, what?”

“I’m yours.”

“You’re mine even
if you’re someone else’s. Is that clear?” I lapped the velvety
skin of her outer lip, tasting its delicate, womanly perfume.

“Yes.”

“You’re not his
anymore. You belong to me. You know how I know?”

“How?”

I licked her, long and
slow, from her entrance to her clit. “Because of the way you
respond to me. Your body knows what it wants, and it knows who.”

Though my mouth was
slick from her juices, I wanted more. I wanted to drink her, eat her
until she was begging for mercy after too many powerful orgasms. “I
don’t care what happened before. No man ever wanted you like I do.”

“I know,” she said,
and lifted her hips. Right now, I was the luckiest man on Earth.
Somehow this angel had crossed my path, and she deserved to get the
best pussy-licking of her life.

I knew my tongue could
work magic, but this was ridiculous. As soon as I flickered it over
her clit and sucked the tender sliver of flesh into my mouth, she let
out a high-pitched cry that was music to my ears. Already she was on
the brink of coming and I’d barely touched her. We should spend two
frustrating hours getting interrogated more often.

“Don’t tell me
you’re that easy to please,” I said.

“With you, I am,”
she whispered.

“I’ve just
started.” She shivered under me as I lapped her. Pushing my fingers
inside her, I lavished her clit with hungry kisses.

“Oh, Drex,” she
breathed. I smiled at the hitch in her voice. A hot mix of rough and
gentle was key to her pleasure, and it just so happened that was what
I did best.

This was the ultimate
high-end male fantasy – a gorgeous woman in a form-fitting gown,
panties pulled to her ankles, offering her drenched pussy to devour.

I licked her until her
legs quivered and her moans were hoarse. Two orgasms less than five
minutes apart, but who was counting? I’d have been happy to go on
like this all night.

And that was exactly what I planned
to do.

It was the middle of
the night before I was finished with Jane. Or was it she who was
finished with me?

All I knew was that she
was on top of me and naked except for stilettos. I had fucked her
senseless and come twice, and she – well, I’d lost track. In the
last three hours, we’d probably broken some of noise ordinances and
damaged my bed frame in the process. I’d never fucked so hard I’d
busted the furniture, and I was damn proud of it.

When I could walk, I
got a cold bottle of wine and a pint of chocolate ice cream from the
kitchen and brought both to the bedroom with one glass and a spoon. I
liked sharing with Jane, tasting her lips and her candy-flavored
tongue.

Smiling as if there
were nothing she’d rather do than eat ice cream and sip wine with
me, she kicked off her heels and sat cross-legged on my duvet. Never
had a woman looked so sweet, innocent, and sexy.

“Open wide,” I
said, holding up the loaded spoon.

“Haven’t I been
doing that for the last two hours?” Her voice was husky and her
hair gorgeously disheveled. I guided the spoon into her mouth and
watched, fascinated, as she slowly licked it clean.

“Yum,” she said.
“This is fun.”

“Isn’t it? The
whole town is asleep and we’re up indulging ourselves.” I took a
bite of ice cream and washed it down with a swig of Pinot Gris. “I
wish I didn’t have to work in the morning. I’ve never been an
early riser.”

“Maybe it’s habit,”
Jane said, snuggling against me. “All those late nights playing
pool.”

Leaning back against
the leather headboard, I wrapped an arm around her. “True. Even
though I haven’t played competitively in a long time, I’m still a
nighthawk at heart.”

“How did you learn?”
she asked. “Did your father teach you?”

I never liked admitting
how rough a start I’d really had, but with Jane, it didn’t feel
right to gloss it over. “It’s not a glamorous story,” I said,
feeding her another spoonful of ice cream. “I started going to bars
with my dad when I was nine years old. My mother worked the night
shift as a nurse, and the bar was like my babysitter.”

“Not exactly the best
place for a kid,” she said, her voice quiet.

“I thought so, too,
for a while. I got so bored listening to these drunk clowns spout off
about their jobs and their marriages. I used to throw darts until I
couldn’t see straight, and when I was nine I started messing around
with a pool cue. The tables were all beat up and the cues were cheap,
but as soon as I picked one up, I knew. This was something I wanted
to do well.”

She looked at me, her
eyes wide and interested. “So you’d go to the bar with your
father and practice?”

I nodded. “Nobody
took me seriously at first, and for good reason. Thanks to my
father’s example, I was used to skirting the rules and doing things
my way. With pool, that didn’t fly for long. This old guy named
Henry used to watch me from his stool every night and yell at me when
I tried to cheat or cut corners. Once in a while he’d get up and
show me a couple of tricks, and that’s when I realized how damn
good he was. He’d never made money at it, he wasn’t a pro, but he
understood the nuances. The little things that helped me perfect my
stroke.”

“I must say you have
your stroke down,” she said with a barely-suppressed smile. “It
has to be all that practice.”

I swallowed a sip of
wine. “Some of it’s just natural talent. And it helps to be
playing with a worthy opponent.”

“Opponent, huh? You
mean, there can’t be two winners?”

“When you’re
playing with me, losing is just as fun as winning.”

“If not more so,”
she said.

“Right.” Her smile
faded as a shadow crossed her face. “What is it?” I asked.

“Nothing. It’s
just…” Her breath came out in a huff. “I can’t tell you what
happened when I was nine. I can’t describe the people I knew.
Sometimes I feel like an empty shell.”

I pulled her closer.
“You’re not. You’re still you.”

“But it’s like I
was born ten days ago in this body, with this mind, and I have no
idea how I got here.”

I was about to blurt
out something sentimental as hell, but I couldn’t help it. “Think
about it, though. If this hadn’t happened…we’d never have met.”

She was quiet for a
minute. “I can’t imagine that.”

“Unfortunately, I
can.”

I remembered way too
well what my life was like before Jane, and the memories weren’t
worth the brain space they occupied. Nights out with the guys, doing
shots and hitting on anybody who looked passable from twenty feet
away in dim lighting. Working even when I was home, and working all
weekend. Politely asking girls to leave at three in the morning when
I was finished with them and disgusted that I’d fucked them in the
first place. Giving the real part of myself to my dogs and a few
close friends.

How long could I keep
that up? Or was I done with it, thanks to Jane?

In two weeks, she’d
shown me what my life could be. And all I’d given in return was
some new clothes and a lot of smokingly hot sex. Pure selfishness,
Cougan-style. I was so good at taking what I wanted from a woman, and
really shitty at knowing what she needed. And what Jane needed now,
more than anything, was to know who she was.

Fun as it was, she
deserved a lot more than earth-rocking orgasms and pretty evening
gowns. She deserved to have her life back.

Even if it took her away from me,
goddamnit, I would do everything I could to give her that.

The next morning, I
spent my first three hours at the office trying to find news about
Jane.

I called police
stations all over the Southwest, and when that turned into about
twelve dead ends, combed the internet. Jesus. How had so many women
gone missing?

There were news reports
from Seattle to Savannah, but none of the photographs looked remotely
familiar. Some stories were about young girls, gone for months or
years. This one kidnapped, that one a runaway, another one gone
without a trace.

A lead weight settled
onto my chest. There were a hundred head-spinning things that might
have happened to Jane, and not one was good.

Giving Blue Eyes her
life back might be even harder than I thought. In fact, it might be
impossible. I could build a booming business from nothing but some
barroom skills and my wits, but I couldn’t whip up information that
didn’t exist. It was fucking infuriating.

I was staring blankly
out the window behind my desk when I heard a knock. “Yeah,” I
called. I spun around in my chair as the door opened. It was Brooke
in full resting bitch face, wearing a sleeveless purple pantsuit that
looked like nightclub gear.

“Can I talk to you?”
No greeting, no smile, no how-are-you. Just pure entitled Daddy’s
girl.

“Yup.”

Looking determined, she
stepped into my office and shut the door. Maybe, just maybe, she was
finally starting to take her job seriously. She might finally be
taking the initiative on something – hopefully the mall project in
New Orleans. Or working with Stef and Thomas had inspired her a
little bit, and she was ready to start earning her place in the
company.

A gust of dark, spicy
perfume came in along with her. I pinched my nose to keep from
sneezing. “Take a seat,” I said.

“I’d rather stand,”
she said. “This is…this is difficult.”

Holy crap, she was
going to quit. Do what I’d wanted her to do for three years and go
do something else with her life. Something she was cut out for, like
fashion or television or marriage.

She stood at the
window, her profile pointy and her mouth tight. Wait a minute – she
wasn’t going to quit. This was about something else. Something
personal between her and me.

“Listen, Drex…”

If this was going to be
yet another conversation about getting back together, I wasn’t up
for it. I didn’t want to hear about what a great power couple we’d
make, or how happy her father would be, or the beautiful kids we’d
bestow upon the world. We’d gone over it and over it,
ad-fucking-nauseum.