Bound Hearts 07 - Shameless (5 page)

Such supreme confidence in a woman and her effect on the male sex?

He forced himself to move, to walk to her, to keep from throwing her across a table just to see if she was wearing panties under that tiny skirt. He had a feeling she wasn’t.

Did she shave or wax? he wondered. If she were his, she would be bare, pierced, screaming as his dick stretched her wide.

He gritted his teeth, forcing back the thoughts. Dane would fucking kill him. And rightly so. There was little enough innocence left in the world, he would be damned if he would be the cause of so much as a single virgin losing hers. And she was a virgin.

Innocence shrouded her, glowed from inside her despite her sensuality. There was no possibility that she was anything less.

“You don’t ignore the rules here, Courtney.” Touching her was going to be hell.

“They’re here for a reason. Get back to the main part of the house. Now.”

Her brows snapped into a frown as the flush on her cheeks deepened.

“Do I look like a child to you?” She waved her hand down her upper body as she cocked a hip and faced him in challenge. “Excuse me, Ian, but I haven’t been a child for quite a while, and I don’t appreciate being spoken to as though I were one.”

His hands itched. They fucking itched to feel the soft, sweet flesh of her well-rounded ass burning beneath them. Damn her, he had never, ever wanted to possess anything as desperately as he wanted to possess Courtney now.

“You know what this club is, Courtney.” He crossed his arms over his chest, fighting to instill derision, censure in his voice. “How would your father feel if he saw you here?”

“How many times has he visited?” She smiled knowingly. “I know my parent’s lifestyle, Ian. Just as I know my father is indeed a member of your very elite establishment. As I have already explained to you, I am not a child.”

“You are not a member of this club,” he snapped then. “Members only, Courtney, for a reason. Now get your ass out of here.”

“So, how does one go about receiving membership?” She seemed to ignore the harshness of his voice. Even her eyes hadn’t dimmed, nor sparkled with pain or anger.

As though the cruel words hadn’t even registered. “I will assume some of your women are allowed in here?”

“Our women.” He smiled tightly. “You do not belong to any man here. You are exempt.”

Her eyes narrowed, though the smile that tipped her lips was almost frightening.

Knowing. As old and as knowledgeable as Eve herself. She licked her lips slowly, her gaze flickering around the room.

“Then I need a patron of sorts?” she asked softly. “I think that could be arranged.”

25

Lora Leigh

Like hell.

Touching her was the worst mistake possible, but every damned man in the room was ready to stand up and offer their services. His gaze hardened as he followed her look, warning them all. It didn’t sit well with any of them.

“Such force,” she murmured in amusement, aptly deciphering his look. “Very well, Ian. I’ll leave your very lovely club and return to the main portion of the house. It’s obvious I’ll find no entertainment here…” She paused before staring back at him, her look direct, determined. “But there are other places I’m certain I’ll be welcome.”

She moved around him slowly, obviously not in the least intimidated by either his anger or the tension pulsing between them. Sexual tension, so fucking hot his skin prickled with it.

He turned, watching her leave, the swish of her skirt just beneath the rounded globes of her ass, her luscious legs moving with an inborn, natural grace. She passed through the doorway, looking neither right nor left, nor glancing behind her. She knew every man in the room was watching her, she didn’t have to check to be certain. Finally, blessedly, Matthew closed the doors, leaving him to face the condemning stares of the men now watching him.

“Virgins are off-limits,” he snapped, reinforcing his past rule. “Especially this one.

Most especially this one.”

“And what makes you so certain she’s a virgin?” The argument came from the one person he hadn’t expected to speak up.

Cole Andrews lounged lazily on the barstool, a drink cradled in his hand as he watched Ian closely.

“Does it matter?” he snapped.

Cole shrugged. “Not to me, but it might to the others.” He indicated the men now watching with single-minded focus. “The rules don’t give you a right to select the women they choose to share. Just because she’s the daughter of a friend doesn’t make her exempt.”

Ian clenched his fists, fighting the need pounding through him. Damn Cole to hell and back, he had no idea just how much Ian wished he could make her exempt.

“Her virginity makes her exempt,” he snarled, hating it, despising that veil of innocence that held him from her. If he were a lesser man, he would allow one of the others to have her, to bring her in, then take her. It would ease the lust, but not his conscience. He had known her too long, helped Dane protect her too many times. He wouldn’t be party to seeing that light inside her extinguished. Not him, and not those within this room.

“She’s not a virgin.” Cole’s confident conclusion had heat swirling through Ian’s body, pooling in his dick and torturing him with the demand that he go to her, fuck her, pound the hunger out of his system.

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“And you know this how?” he snarled. “Should Tessa be making an appointment with her lawyer?”

Cole laughed. A low, amused sound that grated on Ian’s nerves.

“You’re a fool, Ian.” He shook his head slowly. “That girl is no more a virgin than Tess is. But you do what you want to. I’m sure, that as she said, she’ll find entertainment elsewhere. Beautiful women like that have no hardship finding what they need.”

He lifted his glass, tossing back the last of his drink as he rose from his stool and moved to leave the room.

“Too bad she only got aroused when you walked in the room,” he said as he passed Ian. “That’s one woman who shouldn’t be wasted on a cynical prick such as yourself.

Maybe Tess can try her hand at matchmaking…”

Maybe Tess could try her hand at matchmaking…

He didn’t bloody well think so, Ian snarled silently as he stalked up the main staircase, turning down the hall to Courtney’s bedroom. The little vixen was pushing him, and she knew it, she was doing it deliberately. He wasn’t a fool. He had watched the subtle signs she had put off for the past week, the heat in her dark, sexy eyes, the way her body seemed to soften, and arousal flushed her face.

He could feel that same heat growing in his body, a hard, steady simmer that he feared would boil out of control with the least provocation. She had no idea what she was tempting. She couldn’t understand the sexuality that drove him, the need he had to dominate—sexually—any female he bedded. It wasn’t just a need, it was a hunger, a driving, lascivious greed he had no intention of denying himself.

He clenched his teeth at the thought of her, so small and rounded, screaming in pleasure and pain as he spread the perfect curves of her ass and watched his cock invade that sweet, tiny hole. Or holding her thighs wide, her mouth filled with his dick as he watched another take her, fill her. Sharing her, seeing pleasure suffuse her body as she was driven past any limits she could have imagined.

Damn her. He wouldn’t take her. Not him.

He deliberately chose women who knew well the games they were facing. Women with experience, who knew the trick to taking two men at once, or accepting the more depraved hungers that drove the men who inhabited the club he ran. Courtney couldn’t know, she couldn’t understand. The sweet innocence that glowed from some inner core and lit every cell of her body couldn’t have survived such wicked knowledge.

As he reached her door, he curled his lip at the thought of knocking. The hunger rushing through him fueling the anger of self-denial had him opening the panel forcibly and stepping into the room.

“Your entrances leave something to be desired, Ian.” She faced him, as pretty as an angel, all that beautiful dark hair flowing around her back and shoulders as she turned 27

Lora Leigh

from the closet, a soft white jacket trailing from her fingers as she faced him in that siren’s outfit she wore.

Dear God, could anything be more tempting than all the bare, perfect flesh she was displaying?

Ian crossed his arms over his chest, fighting for control as he frowned down at her, using his most intimidating scowl as he fought to regulate his breathing. His cock was already a lost cause. It was fully engorged and throbbing in demand.

Her gaze flickered down, heated, glowed with hunger.

Son of a bitch.

“Stop tempting me, Courtney,” he snapped furiously, surprised at the roughness of his voice as he fought to keep from shaking her. “You don’t want what you’ll get.”

She propped a slender, graceful hand on her cocked hip, her eyes languorous, her cheeks flushed.

“And who decided that?” she asked him with an arched brow. “You know, Ian, I really prefer to make my own choices, rather than having them made for me. Perhaps you should remember that before you work yourself into a fury.”

Patient, amused. Her voice stroked his senses as her accent seemed to give the tone an almost lilting quality. It was driving him mad. How would she sound screaming his name? Begging for his dick?

“Stay out of The Club.” He refused to argue with her, to tempt his self-control further. “It’s no place for you.”

“Shove your club, Ian.” The haughty tone and cool mocking expression had his blood boiling. “I don’t need it to entertain myself.”

“Your entertainment?” He felt like pulling at his own hair. What the hell was he supposed to do with this woman? “And exactly what kind of entertainment are you looking for, you little minx? Are you out to get fucked? Or just out to see how crazy you can make me?”

Her lashes drifted over her eyes, giving her a sleepy, lust-filled look that had his balls tightening as she strolled closer. Stopping within a breath of him, she stared up at him, her little pink tongue running slowly over lips, making his mouth water.

“How crazy could I make you, Ian?” she asked him then, her breathing escalating, her hard nipples nearly brushing his chest. Damn, he wanted to feel them—in his mouth, between his fingers, burning into his flesh.

Oh, she could make him crazy, he thought silently. Too crazy.

“Crazy enough to call your father and inform him it’s time you headed home,” he growled, nearly biting his own tongue.

She laughed. A low, devilish sound that sent flames licking over his body.

“Poor Ian, you must truly be desperate to threaten me with Daddy.” Knowledge, as ancient as sin itself, echoed in her voice. “I haven’t been under Daddy’s thumb for 28

Shameless

many years. Your only chance is throwing me out, period. Perhaps finding a patron wouldn’t be so hard under such circumstances.”

“Are you so desperate for a sugar daddy, Courtney?” he snarled. “Doesn’t Dane provide you with enough?”

A smile curved her lips. “Daddy can’t get me into your bed, Ian, otherwise I would have tried that route already. I refuse to lie about the reason I’m here any longer.” She laid her hand against his chest. He watched her breath catch, the way she swallowed tightly as pleasure tore through him. From such a small touch. How would he survive feeling her, bare flesh to bare flesh, burning beneath him?

“I won’t take you to my bed, Courtney.” He hated the words that slipped past his lips, hated the fact that he couldn’t allow himself to possess her.

She lifted her shoulder in an elegant shrug. “Then another will. Perhaps the nice Middle Eastern gentleman. He seemed to have promise…”

Khalid. Ian fought back his instinctive response, and it wasn’t anger.

He gripped her arm when she would have slipped past him.

“Don’t make decisions you’ll regret, little girl,” he warned her harshly. “You’re too young to know or to understand what he’ll ask of you. And it’s nothing compared to what I would demand.”

“Or perhaps, nothing compared to what I would demand,” she said then, causing his blood pressure to escalate, his cock to harden to impossible degrees. He felt as though the thickening shaft would rupture from the hunger filling it. “But—” She shrugged again as she moved away from him. “As you have decided to deny yourself as well as me, I will leave you in peace, Ian. But I refuse to lay here and masturbate to sate the needs. I will see what other entertainment your fair city has to offer me.”

She swept from the room as he turned slowly, watching the little skirt swish around her upper thighs, nearly baring her ass as she left the room. His eyes narrowed as he clenched his fists, leashing the almost violent response rising inside him.

She was pushing him. Pushing him too far, straining what little control he had left.

What the hell was it about her? Why did she tempt a part of him that no other woman had ever touched, even Kimberly? Why did she make him hunger for things that he couldn’t even put a name to? And why the fuck was he letting her do it?

29

Lora Leigh

She was shaking inside. She was nearly shaking on the outside.

Courtney could feel the nervous energy racing through her body, pulsing nearly as furiously as the arousal flaming across her nerve endings. Her pussy felt swollen, intensely sensitive, her clit rasping against the silk of her thong as she walked sedately down the stairs and headed for the front door.

Not that she had any true plans for the night. She would allow Ian’s chauffeur to drive her to a few clubs, perhaps dance a few hours as she drowned her sorrows and her arousal in a few stiff drinks, since Ian wasn’t volunteering his stiff cock.

And how stiff it looked beneath his slacks. Thick and long, mouthwateringly tempting. She wanted nothing more than to go to her knees and release the engorged flesh to her hungry mouth. She could almost feel it, so hard and thick her lips would feel bruised, so hot she would feel blistered. And she wanted it. Longed for it.

As she reached the foyer, she was aware of Ian moving down the steps behind her, almost stalking her as though she were his prey. A shiver worked up her spine, part trepidation, part satisfaction. Finally, his reserve was faltering. If she had known that visiting The Club would bring such a reaction, she would have done so the first week.