Surrender to Temptation (9 page)

“You have a smart mouth, my little minx.” He withdrew his fingers completely.

I could have cried. I was beyond frustrated.

“I told you to hold still because I wanted to take care of your pleasure first.” His voice was a quiet admonition, and his words made my heartbeat skip.

He sounded so matter-of-fact, his words so simple, that I felt foolish for my earlier actions.

“You must trust that when I give you a command, there is a reason behind it.” One finger teased back underneath the elastic of my panties. Though I understood his words, and heard the importance in them, in that moment I would have done anything, said anything, to feel his touch.

“Now, do you agree to these terms, or shall I get the paddle so that we can discuss it some more?”

I squeaked again. Even though I heard the wry humor in his voice, I wasn't entirely sure that he was joking.

“I agree.” My voice was soft, and as I spoke the words aloud, I felt my muscles go lax. It felt surprisingly good, this conscious decision to cede control to Zach, who so clearly wanted it.

Needed it.

“Devon.” My name was whispered like a prayer. Clasping me around my breasts and behind my knees, Zach lifted me from his lap. Cradling me in his arms—arms that I couldn't help but notice were rippling with muscles as he carried me—he placed me back down on the bed on all fours.

“Don't move.” The fabric beneath me was cool to the touch. I burrowed my cheek against its softness, suddenly shy and with no clue what to do next.

I felt the tickle of one finger, tracing down the length of my spine and into the cleft between my buttocks. A delicate, teasing touch smoothed over the heated skin of my ass. A finger ran underneath the elastic along either side of my bikini underwear.

Snap
. One hard tug and the elastics snapped. I reared up, but Zach's hand on the small of my back pushed me gently back down.

“Hold still.
Feel
.” With one hand on my belly, one on my back, Zach began to glide the fabric back and forth through my cleft. Without the elastic attaching the sides he could move it more freely, targeting every sweet spot between my legs, which he did without mercy.

The fabric caught, tugged, pulled at my sensitive flesh. My breath began to come faster, my heart beat to speed up. A flush of arousal settled over my entire body, and my hips began to rock in time with the movement.

“Come for me, Devon.” I shivered all over, feeling something dark and needy coil low in my belly. Zach continued to manipulate my flesh with the taut fabric of the panties that he had torn right off of my body, and I pressed back against the pressure.

“Oh. Oh, I . . .” My words caught in my throat when the cloth pressed against the edge of my clit. The sharp, quick tug from Zach's deft touch made me cry out loud, and then the pressure that had coiled was springing free, flooding my body with bliss.

“Fuck.” Dropping the panties, Zach's hands slid over my hips and up, cupping my breasts where my torso hung over the bed as I shivered. Clasping the nipples in his fingers, he pinched, adding another shock wave to my release. “You have the most beautiful fucking breasts, Devon. Everything about you is beautiful.”

“What?” I couldn't think, wasn't sure that I had heard him properly. With another pinch to the erect peaks of my breasts, Zach moved back, climbing off the bed. I groaned, the edge taken off my hunger, but not even close to satiated.

I heard the rip of a condom wrapper, and then the drawn-out hiss of his breath as he rolled the latex over his length. I squeezed my eyes shut and pictured his talented fingers sliding down the length of his own cock, and felt my pussy clench in response.

“I want to be inside you.” Standing behind me, Zach clasped my hips in his hands and drew me back until my ass was snug against his pelvis. I pressed back, savoring the sensation of his cooler skin against the fire of my bottom.

“I want you inside of me.” Pressing my breasts against the bed, my palms flat on either side of my shoulders, I raised my ass up to give him easier access. “Please, Zach. Now.”

“Look at that pretty cunt.” Without warning, he bent and swiped a tongue through my wet folds. I moaned, wriggling to position myself closer.

“I want to bury my face between your thighs, little minx. I want to savor the taste of you.” His breathing was ragged as he stood. Parting the cheeks of my ass with his hands, his cock slid through the division of my ass; then he positioned himself at the slick entrance to my pussy.

“I'm too eager to be inside of you to take my time right now. But soon I'll fuck you with my mouth, with my tongue.” I had never been spoken to like this, never been treated as if my body was something that could so delight another person.

I thrilled to it.

I loved it.

“Brace yourself.” I had a moment to remember that he wasn't gentle, and then he was balls deep inside of me, his length and girth stretching me to the point of pain.

“Fuck!” I had cursed more since meeting Zach than I ever had in my life. There was no other word to describe the sensation of being filled so deeply.

“Devon.” My name was spoken gutturally, and I reveled in it. I fisted my fingers in the bedding as Zach pulled nearly all the way out of me, and then slammed back in, demanding that I take him entirely.

“You're so fucking tight.”

I groaned and pushed back against him. He was right—I was tight, and he was large, larger than I could comfortably fit inside of me. I found that the edge of pain that sliced through me as he seated himself again and again, demanding that I open to him, was surprisingly delicious.

“More.” My vision blurred, and my world narrowed until all I was aware of was the sensation of his body, riding inside of mine. “I want more.”

“Devon.” This time my name was an oath, and I again felt that I had done something to please him. He began to move faster, slamming himself into me again and again, the heavy weight of his testicles colliding with the still-heated skin of my ass with every thrust.

“I'm going to come.” He moved faster, harder. My pussy was burning, clenching—I wanted more.

“Yes!” I wanted it all. Need pulled my skin tight.

“Get on your knees.”

I obeyed without thought. Zach clasped me around the waist, one arm banded over my belly, holding me tightly to him, my back to his front. His other hand slid over my hips, between my legs. Slowly, still thrusting inside of me, he worked one finger along the edge of his cock, working it inside of me, making my pussy burn.

“Oh. Oh!” I was full, so full—full of him. Widening my legs to take as much as I could, I bent at the waist, bracing my palms on the mattress. Zach still held me around the waist, but now he worked his finger in and out with the thrusts of his cock, his knuckle rubbing against my clit with every plunge.

Though I had already come, the sensations assaulted me, and I ricocheted off the edge of release yet again, crying out loud and not caring who heard.

As my impossibly full pussy spasmed around him, Zach seated himself inside of me, as deeply as he could go. I tried to push my legs even farther apart, giving him access to my very core as his body was racked with pleasure and his heat warmed me inside.

“Devon.” He buried his face in my hair, and his voice was very nearly desperate. “Perfect.”

Even through the aftershocks of my climax, I felt myself tremble at his words.

I had never felt perfect. Not even close.

His orgasm finally receding, Zach stilled, holding me tightly against him. I savored the sensation, the heat, until I felt his release, combined with my own, begin to trickle down the insides of my thighs.

“Lie down.” Gently he pulled out of me, and I winced, though it wasn't the discomfort I minded as much as the feeling of emptiness. I did as he told me, curling into the fetal position, my head on a pillow. I watched through heavy eyes as he moved into what looked to be a bathroom, holding the used condom to his cock.

I couldn't help but lick my lips at my first view of his naked, hard, perfectly muscled ass.

His bare feet made soft noises as he padded about on the tile. The toilet flushed—he had disposed of the condom. The faucet turned on, and then he returned, moving toward the bed where I was curled, with a white cloth in his hand.

“Lie back.” Suddenly shy again, I rolled onto my back, knowing that he would be content with nothing else. Still, I felt exposed—vulnerable, even.

It was a strange time for me to feel that way, after what I had just let the man do to my body.

Zach pressed the cloth to my cheek. It was warm and wet. He massaged it over my cheeks, my lips, and the heat helped to ease the ache in my jaw from having him thrust so hard inside of my mouth. “You did so very well.”

I didn't know what I had done, besides give him access to my body, but nonetheless the praise buoyed me up, as did the near-reverent expression on his face as he massaged the cloth down over my torso.

When he reached the skin of my labia and began to clean me I hissed, sore from his attentions.

“Hold still.” He pressed more firmly, and the sting dissipated as the warm cloth soothed my abused flesh.

The skin that he had dampened cooled in the air when he returned the cloth to the bathroom. I sat up, clutching my knees to my chest in an attempt to ward off the chill.

Zach sat on the edge of the bed when he returned, staring down at me. Those cerulean eyes of his seemed to hold so many intense emotions, but I couldn't read a single one of them.

What did we do now? I had no experience in this sort of thing. Tom and I had dated for months before we'd been intimate, and an adult sleepover was expected by that point in our relationship.

Zach had asked me to spend the night.

But we'd also argued.

I was the first woman that he had brought to this house.

“Is it . . . may I . . . should I stay?” It was ridiculous to be so awkward with someone who had just played my flesh like a virtuoso, but I felt that I couldn't just assume, no matter how we desired each other.

It reminded me that no matter how well this man now knew my body, he was still a virtual stranger to me.

“Yes.” He paused before speaking any further. I watched as he pulled back the duvet and the flat sheet of the immaculately made bed and slid beneath the covers, somewhat discomfited by the awkwardness he displayed.

This was Zachariah St. Brenton, the control-freak billionaire. He was supposed to know what to do, all the time.

He held up the covers, gesturing for me to clamber beneath them. I balked for a moment—it was so strange to be in bed nude. I slept in baggy T-shirts and flannel pajama bottoms, as a rule.

Well, we were both uncomfortable then.

I settled back on the pillow. I was hyperaware of Zach beside me, both of us staring at the ceiling, not touching.

This was ridiculous. He had just been inside of me.

Going with my gut, I curled onto my side, shuffling over until my head rested on his shoulder. He stiffened for a moment with surprise, then wrapped one arm around me, seeming to relax into the embrace.

In the now-dark room, I smiled. I inhaled deeply, enjoying the scent of myself on his skin.

“Good night, Devon.” I thought back over my day briefly, wondering if I would wake up and find that it had all been a dream.

At that moment, I didn't care. I snuggled in, drawing warmth from his embrace.

I
couldn't sleep.

When I had first rolled into his arms, Zach had been stiff and as uncertain as I was. I knew he wasn't in the habit of asking the women he entertained to sleep in his bed with him. The tension soon melted from the arms that held me, though, and it was mere minutes before he sighed into the strands of my hair and fell into sleep.

It was hours later now, and sleep still eluded me. It made me unaccountably happy to be nestled in his arms as he breathed evenly beside me, but I just wasn't used to being skin to skin with someone as I tried to sleep. Tom had rarely been happy with the prospect of my staying over, and I hadn't been brave enough to press the issue. Now I found that even though it was Zach's bed that I was in, I was jealous of my own personal space.

Besides, I was too hot, pressed right up against him as I was, and I had to pee.

Rolling onto my back, I looked at the iridescent blue numbers of the clock mounted on the wall across the room. At first I thought that the clock was mocking me, but I blinked several times to clear the sleep from my eyes and found that the number didn't change.

It was four thirteen in the morning. I groaned as I realized that I had to work that day. A frisson of uncertainty snaked through me when I realized that I still had to shower and get ready for work . . . and I had to go home first to do it. I could call a cab, I supposed . . . except that I wasn't entirely sure of where I was.

It was a really good thing that so far Zach didn't seem to be an axe murderer, because I kept making ill-advised decisions around him.

Sighing, I shifted slowly, trying to extricate myself from Zach's embrace. He rolled over and moaned when I slipped out of his arms. I was tempted to smooth the furrows from his forehead with my hand. They were at war with the otherwise peaceful expression on his face.

The enigmatic billionaire seemed much more vulnerable in sleep . . . much more human. It was strange to be a witness to it.

My bladder again called, and I shuffled off to the bathroom. I took care of my personal business before standing and taking a good look around the room with tired eyes.

My stomach did a slow roll as I surveyed a bathroom more opulent than anything I could ever have dreamt up. I had known Zach was rich, had heard the term ‘billionaire' applied to him, but . . . wow.

It was slightly amusing that it had taken a bathroom for me to fully understand how wealthy the man who had been inside of me only hours earlier was.

Uneasy and in awe, I circled the room. The floor was made of tiled river rock trapped in a clear, thick varnish. Warmth seeped from the surface into my chilled toes as I wiggled them. The floor seemed to heat beneath me as I walked, cooling where I had already been, and I assumed that it was controlled by some kind of motion sensor or weight detector.

I had never even heard of such a thing, and I had grown up in a family that was well-off. The realization had me staring down at the beautiful floor, at the pale white of my skin against it.

My life was so incredibly different from Zach's. I didn't know what, exactly, there was between us, but whatever the term, I knew in that moment that it couldn't last. Our lives were so different.

I was way out of my league.

Feeling slightly sick, I shook my head to rid myself of the depressing thought. Since I was up, I decided to take a shower—I would bathe, then dress in the clothes that I'd worn the day before. Well, minus my now-shredded bikini panties. By then perhaps I could find Charles, and be driven back to my hotel room to change.

Even if Zach had been taken out of the equation entirely, I really liked my new job. I liked the city of San Francisco. I was fairly certain that I wanted to stay, wanted to find a home here, and to do that I had to be ready to work, even if the big boss himself would know I hadn't exactly spent a restful evening alone.

The innermost part of me didn't want to leave. I wanted to bathe my sore muscles in hot water, and then return to Zach's bed and the protection of his arms.

But I knew I was already feeling more gushy emotions than was wise. A man who could afford a house like this, who owned a corporation like Phyrefly, wasn't going to have any feelings for me anywhere outside of the bedroom.

I began to shiver, despite the heat from the tiles at my feet. Padding across the floor to the shower, I slid open the clear glass door and stepped inside the walls that could have comfortably enclosed a horse, or maybe even two.

Wow
. I turned in a slow circle, surveying the shower that was bigger than my hotel room. The very air itself seemed to echo off the cavernous space.

I tilted my head up, and saw not one, but four, showerheads that were bigger than dinner plates. I thought of the measly spray from the rusted head back in my hotel room, and my sore body clenched in anticipation of the rainfall of warm water. It might have been shallow, but I thoroughly appreciated Zach's wealth, or at least his taste in bathrooms, as I bent to turn the shower on.

The only thing that would make it better would be if he were to join me.

Though the idea made my pussy clench, I thought better about waking him up and inviting him to a shower for two. His mood swings were varied enough that, tender as he had been the night before, I wasn't certain which side of Zach revealed his true nature.

Scowling now, I reached for the knobs of the shower only to discover that there weren't any. Confused, I looked up and down and found nothing but a control panel of buttons.

They weren't labeled. I picked one at random and jabbed at it. I jumped when, a moment later, a glass-covered fireplace roared to life at the back of the stall.

My mouth fell fully open as I stared. The man had a
fireplace
in his shower. Well and truly unnerved, I hit the fireplace button again, quieting the flames, before scurrying out of the stall altogether.

My sore body protested.

“Dammit.” I furrowed my brow at the shower, then turned toward the bathtub. It was the size of a small lap swimming pool, and appeared to be carved out of some kind of silvery gray rock. There were steps leading down into it.

Apart from the size and extravagance of it, though, it seemed to be nothing more than a bathtub. I was fairly confident that I wasn't going to be unnerved by a fireplace in its depths.

Perching on the edge of the tub, I turned the hot faucet all the way, and the cold a half turn. The cool stone nipped at my buttocks as I waited for the tub to fill, my knees clenched to my chest.

When I looked up from the swirling, crystal water I was confronted with the same visual that had blown me away the night before. The bathroom jutted out over the ocean, giving me the impression that I would be bathing in the blue-gray water of the sea.

I stared out the wall of glass as I sank into the tub, my eyes wide with wonder.

The heat felt wonderful, though I hissed when the tender flesh between my legs was submerged. Zach hadn't been gentle, and though I'd loved it, I was incredibly sore this morning.

Memories of how he had handled my body made me flush all over. Despite the warmth of the water, I shivered.

No matter what the rational part of my brain told me, no matter that we'd been together only hours ago, I wanted him with a ferocity that I hadn't known I was capable of.

I couldn't do this again. Shouldn't do it again. Wincing as the thought pained me, I reached for the bottle of body wash that sat on the edge of the tub, and began to hastily wash myself.

The soap smelled like Zach.

Scrubbing it through the long strands of my hair, I leaned back to rinse it away. Even stretched out lengthwise in the bath, it was so big that I couldn't touch the sides. I floated for a moment, enjoying the way the warm water buoyed me up when my thoughts wanted to weigh me down.

Sitting up, I slicked my dripping hair from my face. At first I thought the sound was just my sense of hearing readjusting after my ears had been submerged in the bath.

“No! No!” The words sounded almost strangled, like they were wrenched from someone's chest.

I straightened, my body suddenly tense. My senses weren't playing tricks on me . . . what I heard was Zach, in the throes of what sounded like a terrible nightmare.

“Slower . . . go slower . . .”

My heart ached as I clambered out of the tub, water sluicing off my naked flesh in streams. I had had nightmares myself for a long time after my parents' death. I still did once in a while. I knew how very real they could seem, even after waking.

The sounds from the other room quieted, and I was relieved. Still, I groped for a towel. I'd decided to just go check on him before I got dressed.

Though I didn't know him well, I knew that Zach wouldn't thank me for catching him at such a vulnerable moment, no matter what it was that he was dreaming about. But I also knew that being alone when horrific images were playing in your mind like a movie could make a person sick.

I heard a rustle, the sound of a body shifting over bedsprings, and then the padding of feet over carpet. He was awake.

My concern swung from wanting to make sure that he was okay to trepidation.

I'd never had a morning after quite like this one.

The heavy wooden door opened, and Zach burst into the room. He was still fully naked, and I could see that every muscle in his big body was tensed as if anticipating a blow.

One look at him told me that he wasn't fully awake yet—his eyes were open, but they searched the room as if he had never seen it before. I stood, mouth agape, uncertainty playing over my features as his stare roamed the room, finally settling on me. I felt as though that stare sliced right through me, a hot knife through soft butter, as he glowered at my naked, shivering self.

“Are you okay?” He blinked, clearly trying to focus on me through the haze of sleep that still fogged his consciousness. Though he had seen every part of me the night before, I felt so exposed, wishing that I had had the time to pull a soft bath sheet to me, to hide my nakedness.

Zach's eyes narrowed as I watched him, wide-eyed, and he looked furious. I didn't know what I had done to provoke him, if anything—I couldn't tell if the nightmare was still clinging to him, like a sticky spider's web—couldn't tell if this was his reality, or if he was still caught in the dream.

Crossing the room in three long strides, he caught me by the shoulders and shook me. As his fingers dug into my shoulder blades, the fury was still apparent on his face, but it was mixed with the slightest hint of confusion. My heart melted, even as nerves skittered through my veins.

A clammy chill settled over me when he finally spoke, his voice still husky from sleep.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”