Naughty Bits Part IV: The Highest Bid (15 page)

“If you were taken,” he said, a sexy, rough edge to his voice, his hand tightening on her sensitive neck, “I’d see him, smell him. There’d be a hint of his aftershave on your breasts, where he started the day by suckling your nipples, or razor burn where his jaw scraped your tender flesh. Your lips would be swollen from his kisses.” When she tried to turn her head, he dragged his jaw along the side of her neck, then placed his mouth there, spoke against her tingling skin. “Or I’d have smelled him on your cunt. Because if he doesn’t mark you as his every morning before you walk out the door, he’s insane.”

Hadn’t she compared this man’s initial approach to that of an animal? After a statement like that, he was pure animal for sure, stating possession in terms understood by beasts of the forest. As well as alpha males with a primal code like this, an undercurrent that she knew women sensed but most could never truly understand. Even as they were hopelessly drawn to it.

Still, women had their own code to survive such a devastating assault. Drawing her head back, she managed a cool smile reflected by no other part of her quivering body, but it was a starting point. “I said I’m taken. I didn’t mean by a man. I’m taken by the demands of my life, and you’re not part of it. Nor am I inviting you. Only into this moment.”

“So that’s what this is about.” He dipped his finger into the crevice between her breasts, tugged at the corset.

“What?”

“You wear it beneath your clothes. It’s not fashion. Control is very important to you.”

“It’s important to everyone.”

“A woman in a corset has to be constantly aware of the state of her body,” he observed. “Never getting too flustered, stressed. It’s an armor of sorts, but a paradoxical one. Because while the parts so tightly laced inside it lose some sensitivity to a man’s touch, the parts above and below become far more sensitive because of the constriction. The trail of a finger along the buttock, just below the corset hem. Or the lightest kiss on the pillow of a breast. Or even the nape . . .” His hand passed there again. When he put his lips back on her shoulder, she had to ball her hands into fists to keep from sliding her hands down the curve of his bare back, feeling the ridges of spine, how low those shorts came on his hips. Whether she could slip her hands beneath the band to explore the design of his lower back, the rise of his tight ass.

“Let me go down on you again, sweetheart. Let go of your precious control. Give me the bliss of eating your sweet pussy and hearing you scream for me.”

She closed her eyes.
I really, really want to, which is why I can’t.
“I need some water first. Do you have any?”

A pause. Raising his head, he studied her. “I do. I left my bike just over there. But playing the coward doesn’t seem to be your style. If you’re going to leave, you’re the type who’d just knock a man fl at on his ass and walk right over him, not look for a running head start.”

“And you’re the type who wouldn’t get out of the way.”

“Not if the fight is worth winning.”

I can’t say no to you.
She’d had her twenty minutes, and that was all she could afford. “I’m out of time. I’ve got to go.” Moving away from his intoxicating proximity, she grabbed up her jeans, pulled them on while he leaned on her bike seat, watched her silently. She tied on the chaps, fingers trying not to fumble beneath his gaze as she performed the intimate task. When she found her T-shirt, she looked down, realizing she needed to tighten the corset laces. Her breasts were in danger of coming out entirely. It was possible she’d even given him a glimpse of her nipples once or twice in her haste. Well, she’d call it just compensation for taking off on him.

“Allow me.” He’d shifted when she’d been pointedly ignoring him, hoping he’d just vanish, and so now he was right behind her. “Stand still.”

As she stiffened, uncertain whether to move away or not, his hand snaked around her waist and up, lifting the corset so the underwire was more fitted beneath her breasts. While he almost impersonally ran his hand over the cups, her nipples hardened from the passing heat of his touch. The liquid pooling between her thighs increased. He adjusted the laces, tightening, tightening again, until a breath escaped from her, a hint of a moan to it.

“You like that, don’t you? You like it when a man binds you.” His voice had lowered, animal urgency to it, his hands starting to slide downward, taking her resolve there as well.

She jerked away, knowing if he pulled her back so she could feel the hard line of his cock, she’d be lost. She’d let him plow her like a field. Yanking on the T-shirt, she turned, found her boots, and yanked them on as well. A quick grab at the handlebars and she had the twist for her hair she’d left there, whipping it up into a tight bun on her neck.

“Transformation. All armor in place now.”

She ignored him, pleased when she managed a flippant tone. “The room’s yours. If you want to continue.” Though she really didn’t want the provocative image of him stripping off his shorts to lie naked in the grass as God made him, his hand pumping what appeared to be an impressively proportioned cock. All muscles straining as he thought of her, as come spewed from him, wetting his thighs, his smooth ball sac, that hard belly where she could lick it off . . .
Sweet Mother Mary.

“Don’t cheapen it.” He stepped forward, but surprised her when he didn’t reach out to touch her. Even so, she felt the need to pick up the helmet, hold it as a casual barrier between them, trying to give him a diffident look.

Finally, when she thought she couldn’t stand his silent scrutiny another moment, he leaned in. His body pushed against the helmet, brought the pressure of it against the churning in her belly. Despite herself, her lips parted, her eyes seeking his. “My mistake was in giving you a choice,” he said. “Next time I get you alone, I won’t do that. I’ll restrain you the way you wanted to be, and then I’ll make you come so hard you’ll think you’ve died. You won’t run away from me again. And I’ll have the truth about why you feel you need to run now.”

Unclogging vocal cords glued together by aching lust was not easy, but she managed it. “To the next time then,” she said. A taunt, because of course they’d never see one another again. Moving around him, she strode to the bike.

She wished she could let him know how much she wanted to stay. She was sorry that she’d turned it into this. But he’d managed to kick in the door to her darkest needs in less than twenty minutes, and she couldn’t afford to get lost there. It was for the best.

No, the best thing was to let him sate them both, spend another volatile hour together, and then go their separate ways as two strangers who’d enjoyed the novelty of an unexpected sexual encounter. Leaving a challenge in the air like this wasn’t good. But he was right. She was being a coward, because if she stayed, she might just want to take him home. And she wouldn’t embarrass herself, wouldn’t reveal she was so desperate for this type of intimacy she would cling to a stranger. That was almost as pathetic as losing her perspective, making this about more than sex, and ruining it for both of them.

Because she wanted to apologize to him for that, she thought instead about clipping him, enough to make him stumble backward. She didn’t, but he did something worse to her. As she passed him at a slow idle, her booted feet balancing her, his hand closed on her arm, so she released the handlebar. He didn’t do anything to bring her to a halt, just followed the line of her arm down to her elbow, the tender skin of her forearm, and closed briefly on her fingertips before he let her hand pull free.

She could escape him, but not the irony of it. In his grasp, under the tantalizing hint of his control, she’d felt freer than she had in a very long time.

No, she definitely couldn’t afford a man like him in her life.

Joey W. Hill
  is the author of the Knights of the Boardroom series, including
Honor Bound
and
Controlled Response
; the Vampire Queen series, including
Taken by the Vampire
; and the stand-alone novel
Unrestrained
. Having received multiple Top Reviewer Picks from RT Book Reviews, Night Owl Romance, ParaNormal Romance Reviews, TwoLips and others, she has also been awarded the RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award in Erotica.