His face surged closer and then he snapped his teeth at me. "Believe it."
Tears stung my eyes. Whatever love Cayce once had for my father clearly didn't extend to me. His words told me as much. We weren't blood. I was Frank's daughter and Frank was dead. Ergo, I no longer meant anything to Cayce.
My hand flew up before I had a chance to realize what I was doing. My fingers clenched into a fist half a second before I connected with Cayce's chin, the diamond ring Howard had put on my finger that night cutting into his skin.
"I..." Gasping, I shook my head. I hadn't meant to strike. It all just hurt too bad to keep listening or feeling him against me. "Cayce...I--"
Cayce didn't give me a chance to apologize. He grabbed my wrist, yanked the ring off and tossed it across the room.
"Hey, that's--"
"Shut it, princess." Cayce scooped me up, tossed me on his bed, then sat down and dragged me across his knees before I could scamper away. He lifted my skirt. Cold air caressed my ass and then I felt the sharp sting of his open palm across my butt.
Lord how I wanted him to touch me, but not like that!
"Cayce Gerard, you let me up this instant!"
His only response was another sharp smack to my ass. It hurt like hell, but, worse than that, I realized as the sting subsided that I was aroused by what he had done. My flesh was exposed to his view, and -- no matter how briefly -- he had touched me someplace that only a lover could claim access to.
Another two smacks turned my pussy into an inferno, squeezing in on itself to make my clit pull up tight and begin to ache with an unbearable sweetness I had never experienced. When the next smack came, I knew I had to stop him before I embarrassed myself.
"You're hurting me!" I glared at him over my shoulder as I struggled to free myself from his iron hold.
Cayce froze for a second, his attention on my face. Then he hiked my skirt up higher and returned his gaze to my bottom. He traced the visible outline of his palm print with one fingertip. "Yeah, I am."
I bit down on my lower lip. Feeling the slow slide of his skin over the enflamed area, I wanted Cayce to trace the entire outline, to have his fingers move under my panties and follow the curve of my plump flesh down to my equally achy pussy.
Starting to shake with a desperate need, I grew more frantic. "Let me up!"
"No, princess. You need this." He shook his head, his gaze never leaving my exposed flesh. "We both do."
We both do?
Down his hand came. My hips jerked, my pussy tightened. I bit out a cry as another twitch ran through my cunt. Another spank, every bit as hard, and the sound in my throat twisted into something else. Something that didn't sound anything like a protest.
Faster than he'd laid me over his knees, Cayce tossed me on my back. His face an inch from mine, his gray eyes drilled into me. "Was that a moan?"
No fucking way would I admit that or how close his so-called lesson had me to coming. "You're a brute!" I cried out. "An absolute beast!"
Eyes smoldering, he gave me a little shake. "Was-that-a-moan?"
"It doesn't matter what it was!" I pushed at him, desperate to get him off me before I did something stupid like wrap my legs around his hips and start pumping against his crotch. He didn't want anything to do with me as it was. How much more poorly would he think of me if he knew I was beyond turned on?
Cayce started to move and I thought for a second he would relent. Instead, he slid down my body, pushed my skirt up and my legs wide apart. His shoulders filling the space between my thighs, he focused his attention on the silk front of my panties. "It matters, Ash."
Hooking his thumbs under the sides of my waist band, Cayce tugged my panties up until they molded against my flesh. I didn't want to think about the image presented to him. It wasn't just the ample flesh that always made me uncomfortable with my lovers tearing at my heart. With his intense gaze on me, my muscles jumped, my thighs flexed, and my labia twitched as lust relentlessly squeezed my pussy. With all that hot, wet rolling and squeezing, I knew the fabric of my panties would be dark with my juices.
Horrified by my body's betrayal, I lowered my trembling hands to cover my mound, my fingertips instantly finding the cloth warm and soaked through. Unable to control the quiver in my mouth, I closed my eyes.
Why was Cayce doing this?
To embarrass me?
I couldn't believe that was it. He may have ignored me for most of the last year, but I hadn't known Cayce to be cruel to anyone.
Could he have secretly loathed me all those years? Had every kindness been an act?
His lips brushed my knuckles. I cracked my eyes open the tiniest bit, afraid to meet his gaze. It was a needless worry, his eyes were closed. He gnawed gently at my fingers, pulling the tip of one into his mouth to chew and suck.
Pleasure spiked through my pussy, spreading like wildfire and tweaking my nipples to rock hard points. For the second time that night, I moaned.
He didn't seem to hear. Opening his eyes, he pulled the front panel of my panties to the side and stared down a second before his thumb stroked along one edge of my parted labia. My heart stopped while he traced up the other edge then started down the middle.
Hitting that center line, my clit felt like Cayce had just touched a live wire against it.
My heart lurched then thumped wildly at the knowledge Cayce was touching me. Not just anywhere, but down there. He had kissed my fingers, sucked at them. This wasn't a mere smack or four on the ass anymore. If Cayce didn't stop immediately, his actions were a prelude to sex. The kind of sex I'd been dreaming about for a good many years. The kind of sex I had to pretend I was having with Howard so I could climax.
"We...we need to talk about this." Lifting my head, I looked across the swell of my clenched stomach and saw Cayce Gerard dumbstruck for the first time in all the years I've known him.
His expression lasted half a heartbeat before he gave a dismissive shake of his head and refocused his gaze on my throbbing wet pussy. "Love, a hungry man doesn't talk about eating -- he eats."
I had less than a second to register Cayce calling me
love
before his mouth descended onto my sex. His lips and tongue catching and sucking at my clit, he explored the perimeter of my pulsing cunt with his thumb. Each contraction found me wetter and tighter than the last. I sucked a ragged breath in -- sucked and sucked and sucked to keep from exploding all over Cayce in a creamy mess of excitement.
The air released with a sharp cry.
Cayce froze then he lifted his head. His gray gaze darkened as tears slid down my cheeks. Hastily, he lowered my skirt then surged up my body.
"Ash, love. Shh." He smoothed his hand along my arm, trying to calm me. "I'm sorry, baby. I stopped. I won't touch you again--"
"Don't you dare..." He had no idea why I was crying or that he'd stopped just a few licks shy of my climax.
"I won't, baby, I promise." His hand cradled my head, his thumb stroking my cheek as he buried his face against my neck. His breath blew hot against my throat, his voice issuing raw and cracked as he tried to reassure me. "I love you. I promised your dad I'd look after you, not do something like this...I just lost it thinking you might get engaged to another man tonight."
"Just how did you know where I would be?"
"Your post." Lapsing in his promise not to touch me, he lightly nipped the side of my jaw and growled. "You put your status as 'Ice at Uchi's?' What the hell else could that mean?"
"The post was supposed to go to Carol," I whispered. "Not to my entire timeline."
"I wish to hell it had." He buried his face against my neck again. "You would have decked that jackass all on your own and I wouldn't have..."
He swallowed hard, the motion detectible against my flesh, and then he roughly squeezed my shoulder as his body started to vibrate with tension. "I'll take you home, baby girl. You don't have to worry about my doing something like that again."
I curled my arms around his head and knotted my fingers in his hair. I couldn't believe he was trembling against me. Cayce, who topped six feet and was packed with muscle. Cayce, who had once wrestled a sick bull to the ground because no one could land a tranquilizer dart in the beast's thick hide.
Shaking.
Because of me.
"You don't understand girls very well, do you?" I teased with a broken laugh, still unable to control my breathing.
"Just parts." He lifted his head, his gaze dead serious.
Smiling, I blinked away fresh tears. "I was saying, don't you dare stop."
Understanding crept across his face. His cheeks flushed. Nostrils flared and pupils dilated to crowd the gray irises. Sucking his bottom lip in, Cayce blinked once…twice.
"You mean..."
"Yeah," I whispered, my body starting to shake again from so much male arousal hovering on top of me. "Please continue."
He blinked again, more slowly this time, as if he was the one surrendering. His mouth came down on mine in a fierce kiss that sucked the last bit of oxygen from my lungs. Deft fingers unbuttoned my blouse. The kiss grew more languid. His lips sucked at mine. His tongue traced the edge of my teeth.
Cayce hooked my blouse's collar and bra straps to ease them down my arms. Reaching the bra's front closure, he groaned and unsnapped it.
Sucking at his lower lip, he pushed the cups to the side to expose my breasts.
I held my breath. With full Ds, I was at least two cups larger than any woman I had ever seen Cayce with. The two large globes reminded me all over again that his past lovers were petite women and I was…
"Perfect." Groaning, Cayce wrapped a hand around each breast and gave a gentle squeeze before he mashed them together. He nosed the line where they met, his breath leaving him in a shaky moan. "Just perfect."
Nuzzling my flesh, his eyes drifted shut. "I tried so hard not to want you, Ash. Picked women who looked nothing like you so I could forget. But I can't keep you out of my head."
His mouth slid left, found a nipple and sucked it in. He pulled it taut. The achy bud escaped with a wet pop before he covered it again. A few more drawn out sucks were followed by a kiss along its side.
"Monday." Smiling, he moved to the other breast and ghosted a circle around the nipple with his top lip. "Tuesday."
As reverent as he sounded, I had to giggle. "You're naming them? Seriously?"
Cayce shook his head. "No, love. I'm taking Doc Bailey up on his offer and calling in sick."
He took the nipple gently between his teeth, the look on his face so intense it made me shiver. "Taking the whole week off and not getting out of bed except to feed and bathe you."
He swirled and flicked his tongue at the swollen tip, his hands squeezing and tugging at both breasts. His gaze hooking mine, he slid down my belly and pushed my thighs apart. "Wednesday..."
He covered my clit, his tongue warm and wet against my flesh. He trailed his fingers up the inside of my thighs to find and pinch my labia apart. He laved the length of my clit and then his tongue pushed inside my pussy. One hand moved up to stroke the top split of my mound. The other moved lower until the rough pad of his thumb brushed against the quiver of my ass.
A soft whimper of "yes" escaped me and Cayce groaned.
"Two weeks, love. I definitely need two."
It was a long time before either of us spoke again. We descended into noises, moist smacking sounds. The slurp of his tongue along my clit. Sucking. The wet pop of release. Moans, mostly mine, salted the air. Gasps and deep-throated mewls – all mine -- joined them. I knotted my fingers in his short hair, my hips lifting and grinding as his tongue moved along and inside me.
Cayce wouldn't let me come, not as quickly as my body begged him for it. He was intent on teasing -- exploring my tight hole first with his lips and tongue then with his fingers. One sluiced inside me to caress the front wall of my cunt. His mouth worked the other side of my flesh. Lipping my clit, his tongue coaxed the small pearl out from where it hid buried within the hood.
Squirming along the mattress, I tried to control his head, to tug him harder against my pussy in search of the perfect level of pressure to send me bursting into orgasm. He grabbed my wrists and held them tight, showing me who was in control.
Not me -- not with his tongue taking those delicate licks, gently pushing that little pearl around, stroking on its sensitive underside. Helpless and panting, every inch of my flesh aroused, I whimpered, wordlessly begging him to finish me off.
He wouldn't. Pulling the clit's hood back, he continued tonguing its recesses with feathery, wet strokes. Intensely sensual, his licking felt like molasses dripping down a tree trunk, only it kept moving up, deliciously deliberate. I sucked in air, my body arching and my eyes opening wider and wider as, climaxing, I started to vibrate uncontrollably.
My moans sharpened to grunts and still Cayce licked -- licked and licked until I went limp, my juices spilling from me to wet the mattress.
Eyes locked on my pussy, Cayce stood. Wrapping his hands around my calves, he dragged me down the bed and stripped my skirt from me. He reached for his shorts. I sat up, wanting to pull them down his powerful body. Seeing the sideways bulge that ran a hard, diagonal line almost to his hip, my fingers froze.