Alison's Wonderland (13 page)

“…coffee?”

Zeke blinked. Confusion, exhaustion and horniness all at war within his skin. “Sorry?”

She smiled. An odd kind of predatory smile that made his heart beat faster and his cock grow hard. “I said, it’s kind of early. Would you like some coffee?”

He nodded and soldiered on past her. “That would be great. I’ll just go and untangle the chain.” In the bathroom, he froze. The tank lid was off, the flapper was stuck up like it was giving him the red-rubber-toilet-tank version of the finger, and she came in right behind him. He could hear music playing. Nothing he recognized. But it was good in a heavy-metal sort of way. And he didn’t peg her as a heavy-metal kind of girl.

“Sorry.” She handed him a coffee mug. Long thin fingers brushed his and he felt the touch shoot straight to his crotch. Zeke pinned the toilet with his gaze. Had to focus.
Don’t molest the tenants.
“It’s a demo tape. Not my cup of tea…or coffee.” She laughed. Where was the former stern redhead with the pinched frown? he wondered. “But I have to listen. Musical taste aside, they have talent, don’t you think?”

Zeke felt a bit poleaxed. Open toilet tank, coffee, niceties and music discussions. Had he died and this was the afterlife? Now if she got naked… He laughed nervously. “Yeah. They’re pretty good. Especially the drummer. Wicked rhythm.” He swigged the coffee, burned his tongue, hissed and nearly dropped the mug.

Pine winced in sympathy and took the mug from him. There were those fingers again. Soft and somehow electric on his skin. He sighed without thinking and covered with another wince. “It’s so hot. I should have said.” She leaned in, touched his lip and that was it. Zeke threw in the towel. He had an erection and they were just going to have to deal with it. He was a breathing human male being touched by a stunning warm woman and he had wood. The end.

“I…yeah, let me get that—” Trying to move to the tank.

“Shh,” she said, and pulled his lip out a bit. Green eyes flashed with concern and she licked her full pink lips which brought to mind the pale pink bud of her nipple which made his cock even harder. He was going to die. Or she would have him arrested.

“But I need to get that water to stop running for you,” he babbled.

Pine released his lip but not before dropping one single gentle kiss on the lower lip alone. In his mind, he took her then. Right there up against the wall. Yanking down her little white pants and whatever (God, maybe nothing) lay underneath. Spreading her legs, draping her knee over his arm, ramming home until he just couldn’t stand it and they both came in a simultaneous explosion of orgasmic glee. That happened in his head while his tired eyes watched her walk to the toilet, reach in, jiggle the lead, release the flapper ball, return the tank lid and rinse her hands. She watched him, silent and intent, in the vanity mirror.

“You…know how to do that?” His brain was trying desperately to unravel just what the hell was going on. The charley horse that erupted in his left calf didn’t help. Zeke started walking in circles and panting through the pain.

“Are you angry at me?” Her eyes were wide.

“No. I’m in pain. But you knew and you made me do those steps.” The step-induced cramp grew worse and he bit back a groan.

Pine came at him, fingers out, and he flinched. God only knew what this woman would do. But she pulled at his mouth and ran her finger over the still-stinging burn. Then her lips. Then her tongue. He grabbed her shoulders, kissed her, pushed her away and started to pace some more.

“You are angry,” she said.

“No. I have a cramp. The granddaddy of all fucking cramps, I’d say.” He moaned, walked. Watched her small shapely ass as she bent to examine his calf. She touched the muscle that now resembled a rock and he hissed.

“I’m sorry. It’s my fault.” Her fingers dug into the muscle and he swore he saw spots. In the living room the CD player erupted with
Kill, kill! Die, die! Love, love. Bye bye!
Zeke wanted to throw his head back and wail with the pain but couldn’t. Wouldn’t. “Every time I called you up…” She trailed off, dug in harder with those fingers.

He really just wanted to lie down and cry, it hurt that bad. Or stick his fist through a wall. Or scream until his head cracked open. Instead, he tried to breathe through the pain. Whatever she was doing was helping a bit. “You made me come up those steps a million times,” he accused. He wanted to be angry, but that sweater had gaped open and there was that pink nipple again and dear Lord, a perfect replica to the left of it. Wonderful, small, perky breasts completely displayed to him as she stroked and kneaded and frowned.

“Well, you’re not very bright, are you,” she said, glaring up.
She caught him looking and twin spots of rose-red heated her pale cheeks. But she didn’t stand.

“What!”

“You are not every bright. I would think after the tenth trip up here you’d make a…you know.”

“No. I do not know! A what? I thought it was just some bizarre punishment from the universe or my uncle Dominic for my being into music instead of finance or travel or construction!”

“Dominic is very proud of your music. He’s the one who told me to pay attention to you. And I did. And I liked what I saw. And heard. But again, you’re not too quick on the uptake.” Her fingers bit into his muscle and he did finally howl. Goddammit, she had done that on purpose.

“He what? Why should you pay attention. What the hell—” And then it clicked. The odd hours, being home all the time, “demo” CD. She was in the industry. She was…what?

“I’m an agent. But that isn’t the point. I think that you’re, you know…”

He clenched his jaw and tried not to get angry. “No. I do not know, Ms. Sheridan. Sorry. Pine.”

“I think you’re very…attractive,” she said to his calf.

“Oh.”

Genius.

“I thought that possibly, if I got you up here enough times—”

“That I would catch on.”

She nodded, worked her magical finger and suddenly the cramp let go as quickly as it had come. Zeke moaned again, but this time from relief and pleasure. Blood. He had blood back in his calf. Unfortunately, it was still in his dick, too. “But you didn’t.”

“No. Instead, I trudged up the steps a billion times.”

“And didn’t notice me.”

“Oh, I noticed.” He let out an ironic snort and when her eyes found his hard-on, it bobbed like a tuning fork. Her fingers followed, tracing him over the fly of his khakis and he thought he might just snap right there. Make his mental movie a reality. She smiled, stroked. Waited.

“You noticed what?”

“That you are infuriating.” He closed his eyes, absorbing her touch but reliving every god-awful ascent up those horrible, steep, concrete steps. Her fingers slowed, probably stricken, he thought. “And beautiful.” They sped up.

Her fingers moved like liquid silver over him and he felt her lips brush his jaw. He reached out, eyes still closed, found that red flaming hair. It was softer. Softer than he’d even imagined. “Go on,” she said against the hollow of his throat. Zeke could feel his pulse jumping rapidly under her lips.

“And you had the most cursed toilet in the history of plumbing.” She gave a soft laugh, but Zeke smothered it with a kiss. He allowed in only a slice of reality by barely opening his eyes. He took her face in his hands, pulled her in. Her lips tasted like lemon lip balm and coffee. He licked her slowly and pulled her to him. Now the silly white pants were crushed to the front of his work pants and he could feel her soft shape mold to him. His cock pressed to the indentation between her slim thighs and he knew he was a goner.

“It’s fine. The toilet. I was kinking the lead with a pin,” she confessed. Her bright green eyes were filled with mischief as she pulled at his worn leather belt. “Are you angry?”

He laughed. A long, loud laugh that shook him from his insides out. “God. You have put me through seemingly endless punishment with a pin?”

She nodded. Her fingers had maneuvered the buckle and the snap and the zipper. He frowned, caught somewhere between grateful and furious. Then her long gentle fingers
closed over his cock, squeezed and Zeke said, “I forgive you. God. You are so very forgiven.”

“I thought you would know. I thought we’d have been here much faster, Zeke. I thought by now I’d be listening to your music, at least.” She had dropped to her knees and he struggled to keep his eyes from going wide. Shocked and gob-smacked were not the emotions he wanted to exhibit.

“And at the most?”

“I’d have had you in my bed by now,” she said, pink, pink lips wrapping around the tip of his cock. She took him in and then she took him in more. Her small hand tickling at his balls, her breath tearing in and out of her nose. Zeke let his head fall back and it rapped against a small Manet print on the wall.

“I’m an idiot.”

“You’re a gentleman,” Pine said, changing her tune.

“I’m a moron.”

“You’re a talent. Holding down two jobs, walking up…” Her lips touched the base of his penis, her nose buried against the thatch of pubic hair, her throat a molten nirvana. He fucked her mouth slowly, watching it now. Each inch sliding into her, his anxiety and exhaustion falling away from him.

“A million steps to fix your toilet.” Zeke put his hands in her hair as she sucked him, watched them tangle in the mess of red and gold and burgundy locks. Her hair was fascinating, he thought, thrusting faster into her mouth. Her hair and her eyelashes, long and dark, dark red, sweeping her white cheek when she closed her eyes. She looked like a painting. An artist’s rendering of what a beautiful woman should look like.

“Pine,” he said, remembering it meant suffering. He smiled then, and pulled her up. They had time for that later. Much later. He wasn’t facing those stairs for days if he could help it.

She smiled when he pulled her in and parted her lips for his kiss. Lips that looked much better on his dick than in an
angry scowl. Zeke played out his movie then. Dropped the tool belt, let the pants fall and pulled hers down, too, on the way. Bare under the capris, she was shapely and pale. A thatch of red between her thighs. He kissed her belly, her thighs, tested her pussy with his fingers and she gasped.

Ready. Perfect. Wet.

Up against the wall and under her Manet. Some woman on a beach with an umbrella. He lifted her leg as he’d imagined, planted her small foot on the basin and separated her with his fingers. Pushing into her slick wet cunt until her blush deepened to raspberry and her chest was flushed with arousal. “Zeke. I think you’ve caught on now.”

He made a noncommittal noise, comfortable now. In control. He fucked her with his fingers with agonizing patience. Watched her face, watched her eyes grow darker like sea glass.

“Please,” she begged. Gone was the command and demand and annoyance he had heard on the phone and in person. Now he got it, she was annoyed at his ignorance. He smiled. Pressed to her. Pressed into her and started to move.

“Sorry it took me so many trips.” He wouldn’t last long this time. She was a tight, wet fist around him. A velvety clamp on his cock that rippled and tightened as he moved. He wouldn’t last long, but she was right there.

“It’s okay,” she said, coming just like that. Her fingers locked behind his neck and her head fell back against the wall. Her hips pushed up to meet him, riding out that first orgasm. Her lips opened and closed until he kissed her. Then she pulled at him tighter as he thrust. Her hips rammed the wall and Zeke gritted his teeth to hang on. “I think you’ve finally got it.”

Her pussy tightened around him and he pulled the sweater to bare the breasts that had starred in more than one masturbatory fantasy. His lips found her, suckled one nipple, the
other, until she arched up under him. Clutched. Pulled. Came again. “Please come,” she said in his ear.

He heard her saying it at the front door in the dark blue nightgown. “You said that to me,” he growled. His body in control now, hips moving fast. Too far gone to find finesse.

“Yeah.”

“I thought I heard you wrong.” He bit her throat and she sighed. Pulling him flush and cinching up her inside muscles so he lost the battle.

“I know.” She laughed.

Zeke rested his forehead to hers as he came. Her red hair a fire in his peripheral vision as he emptied, moving his body to soak up every flicker of their coupling. “God, you are cruel. You are more cruel than the universe.” But he laughed when he said it.

“Sorry.” They stayed that way. Locked together. Tangled. Eventually, she let her leg fall and he pulled her to him, kissing her at his leisure.

Pine stuck a finger in his coffee, tasted it. “Cold. Will you stay? I can make more.”

“You bet. I’m not doing those steps before I absolutely have to.”

She grinned. “That could be a very long time. My toilet appears to be fixed.”

“Good thing, too. But it might be broken again soon. Which would require my attention.”

“An in-depth project.”

“An uphill battle. Keeping a place this old working.” He kissed her. “Could take me days,” he said.

“Or longer.” She sighed against his lips.

“Or longer.”

“Let’s do something kinky,” he told her.

She looked at him leaning on the kitchen counter. She looked at the narrow leather band with a tiny gold padlock around his wrist, looked back at him and said, “Are you nuts?”

How does one do something kinky when kinky isn’t even a something, but an unconscious fact of existence, as natural as breathing? What’s kinky to a freak? Especially after seven years. Seven years. She liked that, a nice round, odd number with a middle that she could divvy up into clear stages.

The first odd, awkward years where they tried to adjust their lives around each other and around the lust that pulled them together like a couple of pins dragged by a magnet. Thrown one on top of the other whether they wanted it or not. Confused still about who and what they were.

The middle years where compromises got easier and arguments got less. Where the sex was still hot and it was still so new: this thing they’d discovered about themselves, even if it had lived in them all along.

The security of now. Of this knowledge that they were
adults and could damn well do what they wanted to. That playing house could be anything they wanted. It didn’t have to be the pristine, sanctified domesticity they’d been taught. It could be raw and scary and bleeding.

It was still happiness.

She folded up her newspaper and brushed crumbs from her lap. “What do you mean by kinky?”

He smiled. It still amazed her that she reacted to his smile as she did: heart beating quicker, a blush and a smile rising to her own cheeks.

“Every full-moon night,” he said. And he left it there.

“Every full-moon night,
what?
” she prompted. Impatient and ready to go because she wanted to be at the office early today.

He looked down at the abandoned newspaper and his fingers rubbed the worn leather of the wristband. She could see the hint of a smile still playing around his lips.

After a heartbeat or three where she fidgeted and checked her purse twice to be sure she had everything, he looked up at her from under his brows, fifties-movie-star-style.

“I can’t say what. You’ll just have to agree that we’ll be kinky.” He tilted his head up and looked her full in the face. “Can you agree to that for me, my love?”

She felt her stomach tingle, and at the same time felt her heart thump a little nervously. Unknowns were not a good thing. Whenever they tried something new, she always had to stifle the anxious whine at the back of her mind listing every dire possibility in ugly detail.

Forget something new. She worried each and every time that he would forget to stop her soon enough. She would watch his pale, sweating face like a hawk, trusting her instincts to know when he’d had enough, in case he didn’t. Taking comfort in the fact that if something went wrong, she had a plan, her first-aid training, the phone easily within reach, a
carefully thought-out process to follow, mentally rehearsed a million times over. Just in case.

How could she agree to some new brainstorm of his sight unseen? But time was ticking away. He had a parent-teacher meeting this morning; she had miles of snarled traffic into the city to face. Real life didn’t wait around and she had to make a decision.

“Okay,” she heard herself say. “Every full-moon night. You got it.”

He came to kiss her goodbye, first on her lips, then sinking to his knees and pressing his mouth to the warm triangle between her legs.

“Thank you,” he told her.

She grabbed a handful of his hair, rumpling it, and yanked his head backward. He winced at the same time he smiled.

“You know there’s just barely a week until full moon,” she said.

His smile widened into a grin even as he squinted against the pressure on his neck and spine.

“I know.”

She wasn’t afraid of admitting to nerves; she was afraid of the nerves themselves. Anxiety made mistakes, possibly fatal ones.
Please, Aaron,
she thought as she pulled into the driveway and parked, please don’t think of anything too insane. Did he have any idea how much she worried?

She took groceries out of the backseat, bread and eggs and veggies, weekly replacement stuff. It was Friday, it was payday, and it was full moon. Chewing her lip, she jabbed the doorbell with an elbow because her hands were full, and he opened the front door, came down the step barefoot to take the grocery bags from her with a smile. To give her a kiss on the cheek.

She followed him inside, asking about his day, talking about
ordinary things as she took off her shoes and he put groceries away. Acting as if this was just another afternoon.

Then he came to stand before her and caressed her cheek, studying her face.

“You look tired,” he said. “Why don’t you take a nap and I’ll make dinner.”

Always so gentle, so utterly devoted, so addicted to suffering for her sake. And she
was
tired. She needed rest before tonight, so that she’d be alert and aware and not prone to make mistakes.

Upstairs, she wriggled out of her clothes and lay down on the bed in her underwear, staring at the drowsy flutter of thin curtains in the afternoon breeze until her eyes grew heavy. Only briefly she wondered once more what he wanted. Kinky. But how? Unable to think of any more possibilities, of anything that they could do, that he could want that they hadn’t already tried, she gave in to the lulling motion of the curtains. She slept.

She was sweating. The breeze had died, stifled under the navy blanket of evening and she opened her eyes to a world of shadows and silver and heat. She began to sit up, to roll over because she’d been sleeping on her stomach, and found she couldn’t. Her arms and her hands were tied behind her back. And what had woken her was a gentle stroking along her spine, gentle fingers exploring between her legs, rubbing the thin material of her panties against the already wet flesh between her legs.

“Aaron?”

“Yes, my love?”

She didn’t ask the obvious question, didn’t ask why. She only lay still, her heart beating so hard her throat hurt, and enjoyed the touch of his fingers while she came to terms with the fact that her ankles, too, were tied. Loosely. Enough for
her to walk, but not enough for her movement to be her own. She had learned to tie those knots, to gauge that length, and he had learned with her. He knew it all as well as she did.

Tonight, all the worry, all the responsibility was in his hands. She had given it to him, knowing deep down when he asked that this was perhaps what he meant and giving it anyway.

“I’ve been thinking about the moon. And about werewolves,” he said in his schoolteacher’s voice. Still stroking, still playing, while her sweat and her juices soaked the sheet beneath her and her nipples throbbed, caught between the cups of her bra and the weight of her body.

“They change by the light of the full moon. Werewolves,” she said softly because she couldn’t quite trust her voice not to squeak. She could feel him nod, his approving scholarly nod. Without seeing him, she knew his breath and his body and his mind almost as well as she knew her own.

“Yes. Change.”

He fell silent and his finger slid under her panties, slid into her wet opening and then slowly out. She shuddered and clenched her muscles, wanting to feel his touch in her again. Not daring to ask.

“The moon is all about change. It affects all life on earth, the tides, the cycles of life. And, if you believe in the werewolf myth, it changes the very nature of things.”

His breath was hot on her neck as his lips touched the skin over her shoulder and his finger twirled around her clit before invading her again. Moving hard in her.

“But always—whether you believe in science or magic—the power of the moon always maintains the balance.”

She swallowed hard; she couldn’t speak, but she was thinking. “Yes. Yes and yes and yes.”

She felt his hand withdraw and knew from his satisfied intake of breath that he was sucking her juices from his fingers.
She shifted in her bonds. Her panties were a torment and she wanted them off.

“Restless already?” he asked, laughing.

“Damn it, yes. I’m uncomfortable!”

He laughed even more. Then he rolled her over and helped her to sit up. She squinted up at him while he sat next to her, his back to the window and the moonlight. A male shadow, broad shoulders and strong arms. He was naked, all except for the cuff that she saw was still on his wrist.

He reached for something on the bed behind her and then began to cut her bra straps with all-purpose scissors nicked from the kitchen. He peeled the material away and her nipples puckered in the air, seeking touch, but his attention and his scissors only moved to her panties, slicing the thin material so that he could pull it away, rubbing painfully on her flesh before he threw the knickers on the floor. She winced and swallowed and watched him stand.

His cock was erect, deliciously so, and she longed to capture him in her mouth. Wrap her tongue around his musky salt-sweet taste. But as if guessing her longing, he shook his head and smiled. He stood before her and she tried to keep her eyes on his face, half in shadow, half in moonlight, but her eyes kept straying to his cock that she so wanted in her mouth, in her pussy.

“Up here,” he said, amused reprimand in his tone, and blushing, she raised her gaze.

“I know, I know. Sorry.”

“No, you’re not sorry one bit. But that’s why you’re my love.”

Something clinked in his hands and she saw what he was holding now. He fit the key into the gold padlock and turned it. The cuff slipped off and he set it on her lap, on her bare, slightly sticky thighs, before he stepped back.

She looked down at the symbol of his love and obedience and pain discarded.

“According to some legends, all one had to do to take the form of the werewolf was wear its skin.”

She glanced up, searching for him in the shadows.

“It won’t fit,” she said, thinking of the cuff, but he shook his head.

“You aren’t paying attention, love. The skin, not the bonds.”

The skin. The wolf’s rough, broken skin. Her nipples tightened and even in the heat, she shivered. She felt like a snared creature in her binding ropes as he helped her to her feet; steps unsteady as he led her to the window.

In the heatless silvery light she felt her skin burn and she turned wildly to look at him; saw the same feral light in his eyes, the same excitement. They had changed, as surely as the tides, as the wolf. They were, tonight, creatures of the moon, and she was his to tame.

She looked out the window at the trees bathed in shimmering pearl-white, at the fields beyond the house where rabbits and raccoons roamed, restless under the moonlight.

Her heart was pattering again.

“How much does it hurt?” she heard herself ask. “Wearing the wolf skin.”

She was proud at least of the fact her voice stayed strong.

For a minute, he didn’t answer. She felt him move away and then return, felt his gentle hand on the back of her neck and his kiss on her shoulder.

“There is no change without pain, love.”

She turned to look at the strands of braided cord dangling from his hand, at the long handle burning in the moonlight, reflecting silvery fire. She’d never seen it before; it wasn’t one of hers. Something new; something he’d bought just for her.
A laugh, strangled, burst from her throat and she turned away, shaking her head in disbelief. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. She closed her eyes and tensed her body, still shaking her head lightly from side to side.

Her hearing picked up the whisper of motion, the whine of air sliced through by leather and metal. She thought, with humor, of what that sound meant to her. Normally. On any night but tonight. Tonight where it meant something entirely the opposite. In the fragment of a second between sound and impact she wondered at herself for allowing this. What had he said? It all maintained the balance.

Then she knew pain.

She gasped and staggered, but his hand was under her elbow, his body was there for her to lean against. He made sure she could stand before he stepped away again. But then he gave her no quarter. Before she could make sense of the line of pain burning across her ass, the second blow came, and the third, each harder than the one before. She whimpered and ground her teeth, but she stood firm, legs planted as far apart as the rope would allow. Far enough for her to keep her balance.

The blows came soft, and then hard, raining pain on once-smooth flesh, transforming her as she wobbled and concentrated on standing, on taking deep breaths between each blow. Listening to him reminding her to stand still, to breathe. Laughing through tears of pain in the moonlight that made everything upside down. That took her words and gave them to his deep, strong baritone. That took his cries and shuddering gasps for air and gave them to her frightened voice.

She was afraid; the terror of a wild animal trapped and in pain. Her heart beat hard, sweat wormed its way down her skin, her ears rang and her limbs trembled. She pictured red lines hidden by shadows and moonlight. Livid and raised on the shivering flesh of her ass, crossed by other lines and yet
more lines. Etched deeper with every blow; flaying control and thought.

Yet her body fought the pain, desperately pumping desire between her legs, into her throbbing clit. Desire jiggled heavy in her breasts and nipples with each hit, every time she rocked precariously forward on tiptoe and fought to maintain her balance. Her cries were longing as much as they were fear, and she was on fire.

But she didn’t worry. For not even one instant did she think about what she should do or shouldn’t do or what made sense. She had become nothing but instinct and lust and agony, and beneath it all, her anxiety, her need to be sure, slept like a beast finally tamed.

They lay in the bed, in the dark, her welted ass touching his soft cock, both sticky from their juices. The pain throbbed dully, broken now and then by a stinging twinge from a deeper bruise. She could feel strength of muscle and bone against the back of her head if she pressed it hard against his chest.

“Are you all right?” she heard him say, and she smiled again to hear him asking her questions.