HiddenDepths (11 page)

He smiled. “I don’t mind.”

“Then make love to me.”

He ran his thumb along her lower lip, causing her to shiver.
“I don’t suppose there’s any use in pretending I’m not dying to.”

She nipped his thumb. “Good. That settles it. Because I’m
getting cold.” Backing toward the bed, she pulled him with her.

“But you’re hurt, Andrea. Maybe not thinking straight.”

“Believe me, I always think straight. And I’m strong, Evan.
Stronger than you could imagine. I want you. You know I do. I’ve never wanted
anyone but you.” That last part just slipped out, but it was true and he didn’t
make a big deal about it, so she hurried on. “You won’t hurt me. You’ll be
careful. I know you will.”

Scooting back on the already turned-down bed, she was
tremendously gratified that he climbed in beside her. Her hands went to his
sweatshirt, pulling it over his head until his hard, tanned chest was bare and
then untying the drawstring of his sweatpants. His cock twitched as she slid
those off too and she pushed him onto his back, climbing over him. “When you
undressed in that bedroom at your father’s party that first time, I couldn’t
believe how beautiful you were.”

He snorted. “Hardly.”

She ran her hand along his rock-hard stomach, feeling it
clench as she gently prodded each defined muscle of one exquisite six-pack. “I
was mesmerized. I knew I should tell you who I really was and feign
embarrassment and back out, but I just couldn’t. I wanted you.” She clenched
his cock, sliding along the smooth, hard hot surface. “I wanted
this
,
inside me.”

“Yeah, well, you got it. In about two seconds flat is my
recollection. I’m not sure I was at my best, I was so horny.” He untied the
drawstring to her own loose sweatpants, three sizes too big and rolled up at
the bottom. “And you were, you are, so incredibly lovely.”

“Am I?”

He slid her bottoms off, carefully, and then her T-shirt,
looking at her naked body. “God, yes.” He sucked in a deep breath. “I want you
so much I’m afraid I won’t—”

“Stop. Just take what you want.”

She lay back, opening her legs, and he touched her gently,
rubbing her clit, sliding a finger up her wet pussy, swirling it inside before
coming up on his side beside her. He leaned down and kissed her hip, her belly,
the little tuft of hair that protected her clit, her mons no longer waxed and
smooth. She didn’t even know why she had kept it waxed in her Stepford secretary
days. It was as if it kept her in character somehow. She felt more like herself
now. Whoever the hell that was.

Scooting down, he pushed her thighs wide open and his tongue
lapped at her clit and the opening to her pussy, prompting a sigh as she sifted
her fingers through his hair.

How could some men bring so much pleasure and others so much
pain? Was this man even the same species as men like her uncle and his kind? It
was hard to fathom.

She moaned and bucked her hips and he reared up quickly
above her. “I would love to eat you out, all night as a matter of fact, but
first I have to be inside you.”

Rolling off the bed, he went into the bathroom and came back
quickly with a pack of condoms. “Thank God I had these left from last time I
went chasing after you.”

Her eyes slid closed as she heard him rip a condom open and
then he held himself above her, kissing her neck gently and whispering, “You
sure this is okay?”

In response, she brought her hands to the hard planes of his
ass and tugged him into her. As the pulsing, full length of his cock filled
her, she blanked her mind of everything but this man. God, he felt so good
inside her. She groaned.

Unlike the other times they had made love, so many months
before, he didn’t give her his weight as he slid his cock in and then out of
her. He held himself above her, in deference to her wound presumably. He had
to, she knew, but she missed the feel of his slick, hot body flush against
hers. And yet still, she felt as if he was made for her, so thick and hard and
pleasurable in what he gave her.

Her hands wandered along his hard shoulders as she opened
her thighs wider, tipped her hips up more, gave herself over to his slow, long
thrusts, filling her and then that slow, pleasurable slide out again.

“Your pussy is drenched,” he muttered, his pace going a
little faster, and she smiled.

“I think you have a little something to do with that.”

His half-smile stopped her heart. “Little?”

His thrust that time made her feel as if she couldn’t
breathe. “Everything,” she amended as he reached one hand down to her clit,
flicking lightly while his cock worked its magic.

“Oh,” she groaned, inarticulate with it as the pad of his
middle finger rubbed lightly, perfectly.

“Harder? Or softer?”

“Perfect,” she murmured, not at all embarrassed to say it so
plainly out loud. “Perfect. Are you going to try to make me talk dirty again?”
she asked with a little laugh. “Because remember, I’m not that good at it.”

“You don’t have to talk, baby. You just…”

He ground his lips into hers, his tongue exploring and she
came, letting it fill his mouth. But he kept thrusting, and when she came
again, she wrenched her mouth away, determined to bring him with her, squeezing
his very fine, very hard butt cheek as he thrust into her, and with a groan he
came as well.

“You were a great deal more controlled this time, Evan, than
you were the last time we slept together. Been keeping your appetite in check these
past few months, have you?”

On his elbow, his other hand draped lightly across her
torso, below her bandage, he looked down at her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you’ve been—how do they put it—
getting some
?
Been taking plenty of trips into town to take the edge off, I guess?”

He showed no reaction. Then he said, “Would that matter?”

“Of course not. I’m just remarking.”

He dropped down to kiss her, running his tongue along her
lower lip, and she shivered with it. “Not desperate enough for you, Andrea? Is
that what turned you on with me that first time? Do you like a man only when
he’s on his knees, dying for you?”

“I don’t recall you on your knees, Evan.”

“No? Let’s try it, then.” He slid down the bed and came up
on his knees between her legs, pulling the cradle of her pussy toward him.

“Oh, literally, you mean,” she breathed, trying to stay
flippant, which was rather difficult when he was carefully opening the lips of
her cunt with his thumbs and bringing her clit up to his mouth, tasting her.
Okay, that felt…okay, incredible. She bit her lip as he sucked her lightly,
tormenting her until she was panting. She was the one dying for him now, her
fingers tangled in his hair. Her first orgasm from his mouth came quickly,
sharply, and he didn’t allow her to come down, sliding two fingers up her slick,
puffy pussy, working her while he continued to kiss and suck her clit,
relentlessly urging her toward another orgasm.

When she came again, she dug her heels into the bed, arching
up into him, crying out, shattered, floating down as he pulled his fingers out
of her and rubbed her own wetness against her sensitive nipples, bending to
lick it off them, then fiercely sucking each reddened tip. His hard cock pulsed
against her thigh.

“God, I want to fuck you,” he muttered against her breast as
he flexed into her inner thigh, so evocative it felt as if he had entered her.

“You just did, a few minutes ago,” she pointed out.

“I want to fuck you barebacked. Nothing between us,” he said
in a low voice.

Not sure if he was asking or not, she admitted, lamely, “I’m
not on anything.”

He kissed her, filling her mouth with his tongue. “If you
were,” he said, “would you let me?”

“Do you like that?” she asked and he laughed, low.

“Wouldn’t know. I’ve never done it.”

He eased his fingers inside her again, thrusting, pushing
against the tender walls of her pussy, but not hurting her. On the contrary, he
was inciting. “I want to feel you clench around me like this, with my cock,
without the latex. God,” he breathed, “I want it.”

“I want it too,” she murmured, not even sure she would be
able to tell the difference, but wanting it because he did.

“Don’t tempt me, Andrea.”

Tempt him? He was temptation itself. He rotated his hips
slightly and she felt the burning head of his cock at the entrance of her cunt.
She opened her legs wider and he groaned.

“Have you been careful?” she asked, her voice sounding
impossibly husky to her own ears.

“Mmm?”

“With other women you’ve always worn a condom?”

“Always.”

“Especially recently?” For a woman who had been celibate
most of her life, she was willing to throw her carefulness aside rather
wantonly, rather spontaneously. She knew she should be asking these questions
in the context of safe sex, but she wasn’t. She was asking it in some screwed-up
way, as if he was proving some fealty to her or something. When in fact she’d
never cared about fealty. She had thought it a ridiculous illusion.

He groaned again and the head of his cock, just the pulsing,
scorching-hot head, was at the entrance between her legs, dipping in for a
second and then pulling back. “There’s been no one recently.
No one
. No
one but you ever since I saw you at that party. And for a long time before that,
as a matter of fact.”

Talk about temptation. What woman wouldn’t be tempted by
that admission?

“Will you—”

He groaned, the head of his cock inside her again, but
didn’t push himself in any farther. “Will I what?”

“Will you pull out?” she gasped. “When you come? Promise?”

He kissed her without answering and then slid fully into
her.

“I promise,” he finally whispered in her ear, the hot, hard
length of him embedded in her. “I promise. I promise.” He moved as he
whispered, slowly, as if savoring the sensation, and she was sure he was. She
sure as hell was.

God, he was a pig. Not only fucking her but fucking her
without a condom at the mere hint that she would let him. After she’d admitted
she wasn’t even on anything.

“I promise,” he whispered again, as if that made up for it.
She was scalding hot and whether it was the actual feel of her or just the symbolism
of it, taking her barebacked, he found it wildly satisfying. So satisfying that
as he slid in and out of her, listening to her little pants of pleasure,
feeling her inner muscles clutch his cock, he wondered if he would even keep
his promise.

Some wild, impossible impulse was upon him now, a weird
claiming thing. He wanted not only to fuck her without anything but to come
inside her body, deep, like an animal marking his possession.

She wrapped her legs around his waist, prompting him to
thrust faster. “I promise” quickly became a tortured “I shouldn’t be doing
this.”

He pushed deeper anyway, but when she planted a heel in his
butt and squeezed her pussy muscles some way that made him gasp, he only just
had time to pull out, ejaculating over her flat, heaving stomach as she grinned
up at him.

“Next time, you can come on my breasts,” she whispered,
rendering him rock-hard in just that second.

He groaned. “You’re actually not half bad at that talking-dirty
thing.”

And he gathered her close.

* * * * *

Andrea Prentiss was a mirage. And Athena Bennett Stavros was
a survivor.

She hadn’t meant to fake her own death on that hazy summer
afternoon when she was eighteen. She had just been lying on Stavros’ private
beach, alone with the two bodyguards who followed her everywhere, staring out
at the waves. She had tentatively touched her midriff exposed by her swimsuit,
confirming her broken ribs had healed, and stood up on the sand, stretching.
Her collarbone was fine now too. Of course Stavros had been gone on business
for a few weeks. It wouldn’t be long before he was back and using his meaty
fists and powerful backhand to prove his “love” for his little angel. Usually
after he’d pounded down a couple rounds of ouzo to deaden whatever inhibitions
he still possessed.

“I think I’ll go for a swim,” she told her bodyguards in her
flawless Greek. Raised as a diplomat’s daughter, she supposed she didn’t really
have a mother tongue. Her father had been Greek. Her mother…not. And she
was…nothing.

How nice it would actually be to be nothing. At the thought,
she glanced sideways at her bodyguards. Actually, they weren’t really
bodyguards
,
or rather they weren’t really guarding her body for her. They were guarding her
body for him, their boss, Fredrico Stavros.

The two men nodded politely—they were new—and one of them
started to strip down to his boxers to accompany her. But he’d barely gotten
his belt unbuckled when she took off at a run into the pounding surf and swam
as if her life depended on it. Swam so far, she began to believe perhaps she
had died and hell was perpetual motion and exhaustion. After a while it was so
dark, she couldn’t see one meter in front of her, but still she swam. And when
she could swim no more, she stopped, willing herself to sink into oblivion. But
instead of oblivion, she got a bright pink foam lifesaver suddenly tossed her
way, hitting her in the head. She grasped it automatically and felt herself
tugged toward a small wooden boat and lifted over the side. She was crying,
hysterical almost, thinking her captors, er, bodyguards, had caught up to her
when she realized that it was an old man who had pulled her from the sea. He
spoke to her in a dialect she didn’t recognize at first, but like all languages
picked up soon thereafter, and patted her on the back and rowed his boat to
some nearby rocky shore, bringing her to his cabin.

When she saw the reports of her disappearance on the old
man’s tiny black-and-white television a day later, she knew she really did have
a chance to escape.

She wanted no part of Fredrico Stavros or the Stavros
fortune, which was all her uncle wanted in the end. It was why he had married
her mother when he was really in love with Aunt Frannie. It was why he had
done
what he had done to her mother.

Uncle Freddie was a monster and not coincidentally a crook.
Languages weren’t her only skill. She was pretty good with computers as well,
helping herself to funds from the Stavros coffers to make her escape possible
and taking a little extra to make sure money would never be a problem, all
without leaving a trace that she was the one who took it. Once free, she
anonymously sent Interpol some coded bank information that led to a score of
arrests in the Stavros organization for money laundering. Never up to the top,
but she had done what she could, eventually landing in New York in the position
at Reynolds Industries. And Andrea Prentiss was born.

Until Tottingham recognized her.

Her memory of her mother had faded with the years and, truth
be told, she had not realized how much she resembled her. If she had, she would
have made more of an effort to disguise it. But she had gotten careless with
her past and all she could try to do was not let it haunt her present. If she
hadn’t disappeared again, Tottingham’s recognition might have come to nothing.
Maybe she had caused her own doom. She didn’t know.

But all things happened for a reason.

And waking up in the arms of Evans Reynolds, sticky with his
cum on her belly from that last time he had shuddered against her, his legs
tangled in her own, was like nothing she had ever experienced. Maybe everything
had just brought her to this.

Evan’s lips lightly pressed along her temple.

“No bad dreams?”

“None.”

The kiss on her lips to seal it was too brief.

“Then get up, sleepyhead. I want to really show you around
the island. And don’t try to use the excuse you’re not well enough.”

She grinned at him as he leapt out of bed.

“I happen to know every delectable little bit of your body
is in full working order.”

“And then some,” she agreed easily, rising at her own
languid pace, stretching her arms high above her as she did so. There were no
blinds on any of Evan’s windows or sliding-glass doors. No curtains. No shades.

No reason to have any, she supposed. And yet decadently
satisfying privacy all around them.

Rummaging in his dresser, he threw her yet another of his
inevitable tees and sweatpants. She glanced at the slogan on the shirt, which
proclaimed
If you got a warrant, I guess you’re gonna come in
and
laughed, slipping it on. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a Deadhead, Evan.”

“I wouldn’t have pegged you for recognizing that line.”

When she would have gone to roll up the bottom of the
sweatpants after putting them on, he stopped her, crouching down with a pair of
scissors he’d pulled off his desk. “It’s too dangerous going where we’re going
today with the possibility of you tripping over these.” He cut four or five
inches off of each pant hem efficiently and then stood. “You can tuck what’s
left over into the top of your boots.”

Although she had taken over his sock drawer, she still had
her boots. She didn’t know what had happened to the other clothes she had come
in and she didn’t ask, since presumably the blood had rendered them useless.

But today was not a day to think about blood.

“I should really pop over to the mainland and get you some
clothes that fit.”

Today was not a day to think about that either. “No,” she
said in a rush. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

He nodded. “Afraid someone will think I have a woman here?”

“Of course not,” she lied. “I’m sure you have women here all
the time.”

“You know that’s not true.”

They dropped the subject of his possible female companions
and her possible wardrobe and ventured out hand in hand into the sunshine of a
perfectly glorious day. On her few forays around the island so far, they had
headed down to the beach, where the sound of the pounding Atlantic gave her a
proper sense of her own perspective. But this time, Evan steered her in the
opposite direction, toward the cliffs at the top of the island.

They climbed jagged rock upon jagged rock. The sea below
them seemed to magnify in its wildness the higher they got, the vantage showing
them how hard the surf beat against the cliffs, how insistent its rhythm. From
on high, perspective wasn’t what this tableau spelled to her. Majesty maybe. Wild
power perhaps.

By the time they were at the highest point, hand in hand,
both breathing hard and grinning with their exertion, she felt she understood
the meaning of the phrase “Rocky Mountain High”. Even though she knew it referred
to a region far away and probably not very similar in topography, the point was
the same. How easy it was to be high on nature or something to that effect.

Glancing at Evan’s wind-ruffled hair, in his fisherman’s
sweater and boots, she realized there was something very sexy about this man-and-nature
thing too.

Or maybe it was just this man.

Sidling up to him, she went for a kiss and a toot from
somewhere caused her to spring back and look toward the sound in alarm. Silence
had a way of growing on a person. She hadn’t realized how much she had come to
value it until the sound ripped it apart and she felt that same sense of unease
she had felt virtually since her mother had married Fredrico Stavros.