It Stings So Sweet (12 page)

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Clara,
look at me.”

“No,” I say, twisting my head away, even as my hips press forward against his
hand.

“You’re scared of two things right now, Clara. The first thing you’re scared of is that
I’m going to let someone else watch your stag film. The second thing you’re afraid of is that I won’t.
But you don’t have to be afraid of either of these things because it’s out of your hands.”

“You don’t seem to understand how blackmail works,” I manage to choke out, even as the ache between
my legs feels heavier and more insistent by the moment. I dig my fingers into his arm to make him stop
stroking me, but his touch only intensifies. Dear god, does he mean to make me come right here?

“You don’t seem to understand how
I
work, Clara. Look at me.”

“No,” I murmur. I should
make him stop. I should make him stop right now. But his touch is the only relief against the burning
heat searing through my body.

I’m undone by him.

Lifting my eyes, I’m met by a gaze that
burns dark as coal. “Clara, I’m going to do it whether or not you give me that key. I’ll build my
own projector if I have to. It’s going to happen . . . and what I want to know is, would you rather
that I show it to a man or to a woman?”

The idea of Leo in a darkened room with another woman
sends a stab of jealousy through me so sharp that I gasp, “A man.”

My admission forces a moan
past my defenses and I snap my eyes shut. Too late, though. His finger slips into me and his thumb
takes up the task of tormenting me. Twin spirals of pleasure coil up into my belly and now all I want
is to satisfy my hunger.

“You’re close, aren’t you, Clara?”

I nod, wordlessly.

“Give
me permission to take the key.”

Rocking against his hand, biting my lower lip so hard I think
I taste blood, I whisper, “Take it!”

At his triumph, he smiles against my bare shoulder and
fetches the key into his hand. Then he trails his fingers wetly down my thigh, leaving me shaking and
unfinished. I writhe in misery at being left empty. Then I’m furious. I’d batter him with both fists
if it wouldn’t attract an audience. “You bastard.”

“I’m going to show your stag film to someone
else, Clara. Then I’m going to tell you all about it. When I do, I’m going to make you come harder
than you’ve ever come before. I’m going to turn you into a quivering mess. And the only thing that’s
going to turn you on more than knowing that I did it is knowing that you gave me this key.”

CHAPTER

Six

The critics hate the studio’s latest Clara Cartwright
movie. Nevertheless, it’s a box office smash. Good thing, too, since I’ve snubbed my financier to
take up with a sadistic aviator who seems intent upon ruining me. Maybe I want to be ruined, I decide.
It’s what I deserve. Mama always said that everything I had was the wages of sin; maybe I’m trying
to pay it all back with interest.

The night Leo calls, I give Pops enough cash to go on a bender
at
the speakea
sy. I ought to feel guilty giving that much money to a drunk but I can’t bear to have
anyone here while I wait, pacing back and forth in a satiny robe with feather trim. Leo promised
me he’d make me shiver. Make me tremble. Make me afraid.

He’s certainly giving it a go.

I try to work, making notes. I’ve been making movies in my head all my life. But I can’t concentrate
tonight. All I can think about is two men ogling me in my stag film. Not that being ogled has ever
bothered me, mind you, but there’s something more perverse about this. Something more objectifying.
As much as I said I enjoyed being a glorious object of pleasure, I can’t shake the baseness of it.

Maybe they’re sitting in silence. Maybe they’re talking about me. Maybe Leo is saying something
about the way my breasts felt in his hands; maybe the stranger is talking about the curve of my
ass . . .

The stranger.

I’m dying to know who he is. I ought to drive over to the lot
right now to see who leaves my studio, but that’d be too risky. I remind myself that rumors about this
stag film have been circulating for years. Leo Vanderberg isn’t the first man to get his hands on
the reel. The idea that there are countless men out there who may have seen it makes me shiver—and
not with revulsion. So what’s one more?

The phone doesn’t ring until ten o’clock and by then,
I’m jumping out of my satin slippers. “Send him up, Charlie.”

My doorman sounds rueful. “Miss
Cartwright, I don’t think I could stop him if I tried.”

Leo walks into my penthouse like he
owns it then takes off his overcoat and hat. He hangs them on the hooks by the door, just as casual
as you please. But I’m a trained actress; I know when someone is faking. He’s strung tight, shoulders
squared, sexual need rolling off him like some kind of nectar I want to catch on my tongue.

His skin is so hot I can feel it even before he catches me by the waist and pulls me against him. “Do
you want me to tell you about it, Clara?”

“You didn’t do it,” I say, breathless. “Tell me you
didn’t do it.”

He backs me against the wall. “I told you before that I don’t bluff. I did it
and you know I did it. Which is why you’re shaking like a leaf.”

I’m so grateful to be trapped
between the solidity of the wall and his body, because I feel as if I’m going to shake apart. Leo’s
erection is hard as steel, painful where he grinds it against my hip. And I can’t seem to get enough
air. Winding my fingers through his hair, I keep gasping. I think I’ll drown if I don’t get him
inside me.

“Where’s the bedroom?” he asks.

“It doesn’t matter.” I’m the kind of girl he
can lay down on the floor. The couch. Anywhere.

But he hoists me into his arms, carrying me
into the hall, trying each door until he finds the room with my four-poster canopy bed. He drops me
down on the glamorous blue and gold damask bedspread, knocking tasseled pillows to the floor as he
crawls over me. I love the weight of him as we sink into the softness of the mattress, the long arms
that pin me down as he kisses the base of my throat.

My heartbeat leaps under his lips.

“My friend and I started the night with drinks,” he murmurs between kisses. “He had too many. He’s
in love with a woman who doesn’t love him back, so I offered him a little distraction. I invited him
to your studio for a smoke and a movie.”

“Oh god,” I say, arching my neck as his teeth graze
my collarbone.

“My friend didn’t recognize you on the screen at first, Clara. You were just
some bright young thing with a talent for living, eager to get naked for anyone who wanted to watch.
Then he realized it was you.”

I whimper. “No. No, he didn’t.”

“Of course he did. You’re
the most famous woman in the country. He said your name. He asked me.”

I moan, stricken with
equal parts humiliation and lust. “Did he touch himself?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

I close my eyes, imagining it. Leo strokes my thigh and catches my nipple between his teeth,
biting it through the fabric of my robe. The sensation is electric. “I can’t think when you do that,
Leo.”

“Good,” he says, with immense satisfaction. “And to answer your question, no. My friend
didn’t touch himself during the film but he’s probably stroking himself now, thinking about you.
I’d wager that any time he sees you on any movie screen, he’s going to be thinking about your naked
body.”

Between panting breaths, I whisper, “That doesn’t make you jealous?”

“It makes
me hard, Clara.” He presses his erection against my hand to prove it. “It makes me feel like a goddamned
god. Because I gave him that sexy image of you like a gift. I gave
you
to him. And you don’t even
know who he is.”

I moan again. I clutch at him. I’m dying for him. “Tell me . . . tell me his
name.”

“Not yet. I wanna keep you like this for a while. Nervous. Unsteady. A little thrill
in your belly every time you meet a man on the street, wondering if it’s him. Wondering if the twinkle
in a stranger’s eye is because he knows how you like to get fucked and he’s seen you do it. I like
having that power over you.”

“Bastard.”

“You like it, too.”

It’s true. It’s so true
I don’t dare deny it. I never liked anybody using me or trying to tell me what to do, but with Leo
everything has changed. He’s making me feel things I didn’t know I could feel and I wonder if there’s
anything,
anything
, I won’t do to have him inside me. I reach for his shirt, popping the buttons
in my hurry to get it open. “I can’t keep my hands off you, Leo.”

He levels me with a heated
gaze. “You’re going to have to, because you turned me into a thirteen-year-old boy the last time you
touched me. You’re a force of nature I’m not ready to unleash, so keep your hands over your head.”

I don’t pay him the slightest heed, reaching to unclasp his belt. He lets me do it, but when
I pull the leather free, he takes it from me and uses it to bind my hands to the headboard. I cry out,
kicking at him in sudden frustrated rage. When he’s got my wrists fastened good and tight, he asks,
“Do I need to tie your legs down, too?”

“Leo!”

“I like to drive, Clara. Just enjoy the
ride.”

Now that sounds more like it. “Fuck me, Leo. Just do it before it kills me.”

“It’s
not gonna kill you,” he says with a wry smile. “I know a survivor when I see one.”

He opens
my robe, blowing the feathery fringe away from my skin. I spread my legs so wide, so eagerly, that
they ache at the stretch. I catch the scent of my own arousal as he dips his head to trace a hot wet
trail down my belly with his tongue. When I realize where he’s going, I try to twist my hips away from
him. “No, Leo. I don’t like
that
.”

His breath caresses the soft thatch between my legs. “You
liked it in the movie. When the girl did it to you.”

“That’s different.”

“How so?” he
asks, petting the vulnerable spot.

If my hands were free, I’d shove him away. I’d break out
of his grasp. But now I pull against the belt that restrains me until my arms tire from the effort.
“I don’t know. It just was. I don’t like men doing it.”

“Good thing you don’t have much choice
in the matter.” Defiantly, he dips his head for a long lick. “Mmmm. Do I taste something floral?”

“It’s the gardenia from the soap in my bath,” I say, nearly spitting the words.

If he notices
that I’m furious, he doesn’t seem to care. “I have a new favorite flower.”

“Stop teasing me!”
I cry. I know that he’s aroused. I can see the flush of it on him. His skin is burning with it. So
why won’t he take off his pants and thrust inside me?

“You’re right to scold me,” Leo says,
strong fingers with short, clean nails, scraping lightly over my skin, leaving gooseflesh in their
wake. “It wasn’t right of me to leave you unsatisfied last night in the restaurant, was it? Well, let’s
see if I can make up for it.”

With that, he pulls my knees up over his shoulders, and then
I’m there again in that stag film. Lying on that floor behind the bar. Naked and splayed and exposed
and vulnerable. He strokes me softly, my cunt, my belly, my thighs. Then he drops little kisses between
my legs as if to soothe me. “How curious . . .”

I groan, no longer wanting him to stop. “
What
?”

He pauses, drawing the moment out interminably. The amusement in his voice makes me feel
even more exposed. “It’s just that all the women I’ve been with are darker here than on their heads,
but these very wet curls of yours are fair.”

“I’m strawberry blonde by nature,” I snap. “I
dye my hair to make it a richer red.”

“Why?”

Trembling with unfulfilled need, I whimper.
“Do we have to talk about this now?”

Mercifully, he presses his hot tongue right where it aches.
He wriggles it a little bit until I sink deeper into pleasure. Then he stops again. “Actually,
now seems like as good a time as any to talk about it.”

“Damn you!”

He laughs. “Why do
you dye your hair?”

“I never liked the way fair hair looks on film.” Maybe if I say it all
quickly, he’ll touch me where I need to be touched. “You can’t see much variation in color on the screen
so those blondes always look all angelic like Garbo. That’s not me. So I put henna in my hair.
I never thought to do it down there as well.”

“Well, your pussy is hot enough without the fiery
red hair,” he says, mischievously. Then he presses his tongue even harder. I try to pull my hips
back to escape the unexpected assault of his mouth, but there’s no resisting him. Every time I shift
away, his tongue finds me again, flicking in ways that arouse me as much as surprise me.

He’s
not sloppy or overeager. He has a dry, dexterous tongue that teases and tortures the swollen little
button at my center. He pokes. He prods. He’s learning me, just like he said he would. And when he
finds just the right way to circle his tongue, he drives me to a place of utter, helpless surrender.

Then he stops again. “Have you ever heard of an Immelmann turn?”

“Oh, I hate you, Leo.
I hate you!”

He grins, his fingers doing the work his mouth leaves undone. “In a dogfight,
after an attack, the pilot takes the plane straight up to the sky, climbing higher . . .”

He’s very slow with his fingers, circling around the swollen pearl until I moan.

“You take the
plane higher and higher . . . until the whole craft is shaking around you.”

It’s coiling inside
me, the pleasure, tightening until I do start to shake. I think I’m going to fly apart.

“Do
you know what happens then?” he asks. “To the plane I mean? It stalls out. It hangs there, nearly motionless,
as if the whole world has frozen.”

I feel that way. Suspended. Lost. The rest of the world
no longer any concern at all when he lowers his mouth to lick me once again in earnest. It takes only
a few moments before a scream of pleasure tears itself from my throat, and then I’m bucking underneath
him. He stays with it, he stays with me, laving me until it’s so intense I can’t stand it, then
easing off into little kisses that trail all the way to the edge of my stockings.

I go limp
in my release, my head lolling to the side, luxuriating in the little spasms that slowly fade away.

But Leo keeps going.

“No, Leo, I—I can’t. Not so fast . . . I need . . .” Every bit of
me is oversensitive to the touch. What was so deliriously pleasurable before is now too much. I can’t
stand for him to keep rubbing, but he doesn’t listen. He doesn’t stop. He refuses to let me come down
from the high. Not even when I’m thrashing. “Oh god, Leo stop . . . I can’t . . .”

“You’re
close, Clara. Try riding it out and maybe I can get you there again. See, when the plane suspends in
the air, that’s the point of maximum vulnerability. After the stall, the plane starts falling. Plummeting
really. But a good pilot has already applied full rudder to yaw the plane in a new and unexpected
direction.”

His palm comes crashing down between my legs, and the sting of it shocks me. It
stills me. And before I can even yelp out a protest, his kisses soothe my stinging flesh, the pain
alleviated by the pleasure of his soft tongue.

“
What
are you doing, Leo Vanderberg?”

He lifts his head again, one finger pumping very slowly inside me. “It’s a difficult trick to do properly.
It involves precise control of the aircraft at low speed. But with practice and proper use of
all of the fighter’s controls, the plane can be positioned for a second attack.”

Then he does
it again.

Again.

Again.

Spanking the damp thatch between my legs, then licking it
until some sort of floodgate inside me crashes open. He’s going to make me come again. And I’m going
to let him. Even if it’s like this. The sound I make isn’t one I recognize. It’s pure animal need
as Leo uses his mouth to exert new pressure, eliciting unusual sensations that make the heat rise. I’m
climbing again to climax, higher and higher, until my back arches. My arms go rigid, and I undulate
under him. My hips feel like a wide expanse of need and my skin is burning up. He keeps doing it
until an explosion of ecstasy makes me blind to the world.

My sweat-damp hair flies wild and
I call out his name. I scream it, really, almost a keening wail.

When I’m done, he looks up
at me from the cradle of my quaking thighs with immense satisfaction. “That was two.”