His hands settled on her hips, fingers slowly stroking back and forth, teasing her skin beneath the leather mini-skirt. What would it be like to have his hands on her bare flesh? Fingers exploring between her legs.
“Tell me what you’d like, Sophie.” Emery leaned his head down, his brow touching hers, eyes still locked on her face.
She gulped, her mouth dryer than the Gobi Desert.
“What would it take to make you lose control? Do you want a hard fuck? A desperate pounding? Or would you like to have your hands bound, lying face down on a large bed, softness against your belly and my hardness above you, in you?” His erotic whispers were so soft, so low that no one nearby could hear what he was saying to her. The images he painted were wild, vivid, yet blurry—like a strange combination between Van Gogh and Monet. Sweet and sensual, then dark, exotic and barely comprehendible. Emery was an artist in his own way, an erotic painter of words and pictures.
“I’d take you slow, so slow you’d lose all sense of time. You’d focus only on me, on my cock gliding between your thighs, possessing you.” His words were slow and deliberate, as though he’d given them years of thought, but the slight breathless quality to the whisper made her realize she was not the only one affected.
The first quiver between her thighs was inevitable. She shifted, restless on his legs, despite his command not to move.
His breath fanned her lips. “Oh, god,” she murmured.
He smiled, unblinking, and licked his lips. She wanted that tongue in her mouth, tangling with her own. She craved his hands on her bare flesh.
“Please…” she moaned. He moved his hands down from her hips, to her outer thighs, barely exerting any real pressure. That made it worse. The hint of his touch, the promise of the pressure she craved. Sophie wanted him digging his fingers into her skin, holding her legs apart as he slammed deep into her.
“Take a deep breath,” he issued another command.
She obeyed. Her heartbeat seemed to expand outward from her chest until the pulse pounded through her entire body so hard she swore he could feel it beat through her skin wherever he touched her. The throb between her thighs nearly stung now—her need so great, his effect so potent.
“When I take you, no matter the position, you will like it. I’ll bend you over a couch.” He stroked one finger on her outer thigh, made circular patterns. “I’ll push you up against a wall.”
With little panting breaths she wriggled, trying to rock her hips against his lap, but he held her still. She nearly screamed in frustration at being denied what her body frantically needed.
The finger moved higher, past her hip, up to her ribcage. “Spread and bound open on my bed.” His fingertip quested up past the laces of her corset. “You’ll twist and writhe, unable to get free. At my mercy, Sophie, my mercy. You will beg and when I’m ready, I will grant your every desire, just as I take mine.”
She couldn’t breathe. The orgasm was so close. She could feel it, like a shadow inside her body, breathing, panting, waiting to be set free. She was ready; she wanted to climax in his arms, wanted to forge that connection which would tie her to him. Terrifying, shocking, intimate, but damn if she didn’t want it more than anything in the world at that moment. Wanted it more than her story, more than the interview, more than easing her pain from the past. She needed pleasure. His pleasure.
The feathering touch of his fingers, Emery’s erotic murmurs now incoherent with breathless anticipation against her neck as they both strained toward the great cliff, eagerly craving the fall back to earth. Why wouldn’t he touch her where she needed it? The slightest pressure on her inner thighs, the rhythmic stroke of his hand against her clit, anything would do it if he could only…
“Time!” Royce’s triumphant call shattered the glass bubble that had cocooned them for the last two minutes. Murmurs of shock from the surrounding crowd broke through.
“Damn.” Emery’s eyes darkened. Anger, but not at her, flared at the lines of his mouth. He bent to press his lips against her ear. “You were close, weren’t you, darling? So close I almost had you.” His body was trembling beneath hers, the little movements wracking his arms and chest. The press of his arousal beneath her bottom far too evident. He’d been there, right alongside her, dying to come. Together. And it hadn’t happened for either of them; two minutes hadn’t been enough time.
Sophie’s legs shook as cold reality slashed through her. The climax her body had been prepared to give Emery faded away. In its wake little tremors reverberated along her limbs, made worse by the tension in her entire body that hadn’t found release. She tried to breathe, to let her shoulders drop and her muscles relax. It was going to take a while to come down from this.
Almost had her? No. He definitely had her, practically wrapped up with a bow on top, totally and completely his. No question.
Chapter 3
The kitchen is now the official crime scene where the abduction is believed to have occurred. The crime scene was littered with broken coke bottles, blood, and half-eaten sandwiches on the boys’ plates.
—New York Times, June 10, 1990
“So, my best case of bourbon?”
