Zurlo, Michele - Two Masters for Samantha [Awakenings 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (34 page)

Stefano returned. He rested his hands on her shoulders. “That camera can record, but we don’t keep a memory card in it. I’ll take you in there and you can take it apart and look if you want.”

Sammy shook her head.

“Nervous?”

“Yeah.”

Stefano moved closer, pushing Sammy so that her ass perched on the edge of the table next to the monitor. His hand nudged her knees apart and his body slipped between her legs. Her dress slipped up, exposing her to his view if only he were looking in that direction.

He kissed her. His teeth nibbled at her lower lip, teasing and tasting. Then the tip of his tongue ran along all the places that stung from his kiss. Molten blood rushed through Sammy’s body, heating every cell. By the time he claimed her mouth completely, plundering her with his tongue, need pressed everywhere.

Sammy reeled at the fact that he could do this to her with one demanding kiss.

His hand traveled along her inner thigh, smoothing over her skin and pushing the hem of her dress out of the way. He broke the kiss. Determination gave his face a hardness that the desire blazing in his eyes didn’t dampen.

He watched her face as his fingers found her wetness. He caressed her folds as gently as he had caressed her cheek earlier. Sammy shivered. Her pussy clenched, and she struggled to stay still.

His touch was too light, too reverent. She whimpered, so close to begging for more.

Stefano pushed her back, forcing her to lean on her elbows. Kneeling down, he wrenched her legs apart as far as they could go. Sammy watched as best she could from the angle he had required her to assume. She could only see his thick black hair between her legs.

His tongue teased as lightly as his fingers had. Then he licked her with long strokes of his tongue. The heat pressed to her, further igniting her need. Then he clamped his lips around her clit and sucked hard.

Sammy’s eyes rolled back, and she gave up trying to watch. As if he sensed the moment of her surrender, he sucked harder, pulling at her clit with his teeth and tongue. She moaned, and he increased his tempo. The urge to orgasm came on much faster than she expected.

“Sir, please, may I come?”

He stopped sucking and Sammy groaned. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes. She knew he had no intention of tying her up or of whipping her. This was all he offered. She wanted it, all of it, so badly.

“I’m going to put some things inside you, Sammy. You’re going to need to clench around them to hold them in. Don’t lose them, Sammy, or I’ll stop and you won’t get to come.”

She felt her entrance stretch. A round object slid up her sopping channel, guided by his fingers. When he had it where he wanted, Stefano slipped in a second one. Sammy had no idea what they were or what they were supposed to do to her, but she clenched around them. They were fairly large and a bit heavy.

When Stefano finished positioning everything the way he wanted, he resumed licking and sucking. In moments, Sammy was read to come. Her pussy clenched around the objects. They vibrated when she thrust against Stefano’s face, intensifying her pleasure.

“Oh, God. Sir, please. I need to come.” She whimpered and moaned, begging with sounds and words.

He stopped long enough to give permission. “Come for me, Sammy.”

She did. Her body arched and tensed. She cried out loud, not caring if her cries woke Alexei. He was more than welcome to join them.

Strong arms encircled her, pressing her against Stefano’s chest. He stroked a soothing hand down her back and smoothed her hair away from her face.

“Sammy?”

“Yeah?” She was coming down from her orgasm. She was ready for anything he might throw her way.

“When my mouth is busy and I squeeze just above your knee, that’s permission to come.”

She nodded. This was why having another person around was helpful. If one Master was busy, the other could give her the verbal responses and directions. That didn’t mean she didn’t like being alone with Stefano. On the contrary, she found she liked him a lot.

He released her, jerking his head toward the long couch that dominated the center of the room. “I have the computer hooked up there. Go get your website up on the screen.”

She shifted, putting weight on her feet. The objects inside her pussy vibrated, sending a jolt through her hyper-aware tissues.

Stefano grinned. “Don’t lose those, honey. You will be punished if those come out before either Alexei or I take them out.”

Sammy breathed through the pleasure. She knew he wasn’t going to let her come again so soon. “What are they?”

He moved away from her, heading for the door. “Smart Balls or pleasure balls. They’re a pair of balls with weights inside that respond to your movements. Any time you move, you’re going to feel them.” He pointed to the keyboard on the coffee table in front of the sofa. “I’ll be back in a minute. I want that up when I return.”

Samantha made her way across the room by taking very small steps. Holding the pleasure balls in place while walking was challenging. She smoothed her dress down and sat on the Italian leather sofa in front of the keyboard. There didn’t seem to be a computer.

As soon as she moved the mouse, half of the wall in front of her lit up. She gaped at the size of his monitor. He was going to see her work in larger-than-life size. Though she was nervous, he had alleviated the worst of it. Samantha clicked on the internet button and typed in her web address.

It was a free website, the kind that had premade templates and came already formatted. All that was left for her to do was to plug in the content. Samantha had more or less dumped it all there. She was searching through the thumbnails for one to show Stefano when he returned.

The couch dipped as he sat. The balls inside Sammy hummed as the new angle caused her to lean toward him. She didn’t bother to adjust her position.

“This is your home page?”

“Yeah. It’s not organized yet.”

Stefano watched her scroll down the screen for a few seconds. His hand closed over hers and she let him have the mouse. She watched as he perused the thumbnails. Some he clicked, blowing them up to the size of the screen on the wall. Sam’s fidgeting stopped when he did that, and her breath caught at the beauty of her work.

Staring up at the wide screen, she realized her paintings and her photographs were meant to be much larger than she made them. The way Stef displayed them, her sunrises filled the room with the promise of a new day or a warning of something yet to come. The gigantic sunsets evoked a sense of fulfillment, of promises kept, of regret. The feelings she sought when she created her works of art were there, filling the room.

Samantha rose from the sofa, her jerky movements making the balls vibrate. It distracted her from the nervousness threatening to make her vomit.

At last, Stefano leaned back, releasing his hold on the mouse. The image of one of her favorite paintings filled the screen. Rose and white shafts of sunlight pierced an ominous purple and black sky. It was a sunset fighting to be seen as the remnants of a thunderstorm cleared away. It was the fight between good and evil at the moment the tide turned in favor of good. Every time Sam looked at it, she saw something new.

“Sammy, you have real talent. Some of these are incredible.” He paused, hesitating.

“But?”

“But some of them are prosaic. Your earlier work shows traces of brilliance, but your later work really captures that elusive quality you find in all great works of art.”

Samantha bristled under the criticism. This was one reason she didn’t actively pursue avenues to show her work. She didn’t like negative feedback. “Not everything I do can be wonderful.”

“No, it can’t.” He turned, twisting his body to face where she paced in the open area behind the sofa. “A writer doesn’t show his drafts to the general public. I don’t disclose details of my negotiations to my stockholders until it’s done. You need to take down the ones that you don’t love, the drafts, the ones that were practice for a later, brilliant piece. Then you need to organize them. I would advise organizing by the feeling evoked, happiness, foreboding, hope. Stuff like that.”

She gaped at him. “So now you’re an art expert?”

“Not at all. If you want to have a discussion about value or about some artist’s impact on modern art, you need to grab Lex. I’m your friend, your lover, and your marketing expert.”

He rose then, and came around the sofa. Sam crossed her arms over her chest, holding tightly to an invisible shield.

Stef gripped her upper arms, his touch so light it was a caress. “Sammy, I like your work. This is your dream, honey, so I’m glad to see that you have real talent. However, nobody is going to wade through the mediocre stuff to find the gems. You have to feature them. You have to make them stand out.”

She could see his point, but the vastness of what stood between where she was now and where he thought she could be seemed insurmountable.

“Sabrina gave me the name of a gallery owner she knows in
Ann Arbor
.” She stared at the floor between them. The edge of the large rug that covered the center of the room ran at a diagonal, severing him from her. “She liked the photograph Sabrina has hanging at her office.”

“I’d work on the website first,” he said. “You can’t take your entire collection with you. I think you’d want to take several of your best pieces, and then direct the owner to your newly redesigned website.”

Fear clenched her stomach, making those waffles seem like a bad idea.

In the silence, Stefano studied her. “You never called, did you?”

Sammy shrugged. “I didn’t see the point.”

His voice took on an authoritative quality that had her thighs quivering. “You’ll tackle the website first. I want you to call your contact by next Wednesday at the latest. It’s Treva Andreas, right?”

Treva was the name of the gallery owner. Samantha didn’t bother to be surprised that Stefano knew her, too. “Let me guess: you all went to high school together and your parents are friends?”

Stefano shook his head. “I’ve bought art from her on several occasions. She dealt art to my parents, too. That’s likely how Sabrina knows her. It’s good to have connections, Sammy. Use them. Favors will get you in the door. Talent will take you the rest of the way.”

His hands played up and down her arms, but Stefano didn’t move closer or attempt to dislodge her arms from the defensive position they had taken over her chest. He wanted to, but he didn’t want her to feel forced or assaulted. He needed to show her that he respected her vulnerabilities and her boundaries.

The photographs and the paintings, even the raw ones, showed pieces of Sammy’s soul. He was awed by her emotionality and by the fact she had trusted him enough to show him the site. She had been shocked when he asked to see her site, like she wasn’t used to directing people there. Stefano would bet his house she had done nothing to promote her site.

“Are you mad?”

Sammy shook her head. The thin straps to her wrinkled dress had slid from her shoulders. Only her soft, round breasts held it in place. Stefano used all of this willpower to avoid staring there.

Gooseflesh broke out on her arms where he rubbed his palms over her skin. She shivered, but she didn’t break his gaze. “It’s all a bit much for me. I don’t think I ever really took this seriously. I guess that’s why my dad is always after me to settle down with one job.”

Stefano nodded. “I think you can, eventually. Don’t give up on your dreams, Sammy. The human soul wasn’t meant to live without them.”

Those big, cornflower blue eyes stared up at him. “What’s your dream, Stef?”

He grinned. “I’m living it, Sammy. I love my job and my house. Now that I have you, everything is perfect.”