Breath on Embers (5 page)

That’s why the room was so warm, Ronan thought. Because at least one person in it would be naked or near-naked much of the time. He flushed, from the heat, from the scent of Thea’s skin and hair, a plain soap and lilacs. He took his time looking at her, studying her breasts and sex, then her slim back and curvy ass in the mirror behind her. The curve of breast and belly in the mirror to the side. She caught his eye in the mirror, then lifted her hands to her hair and tousled it into her face.

He had no idea what a systems architect did, or what an implementation was, but Thea Moretti was burning alive.

“Let’s see the robe first,” he said.

She shook out carefully folded red silk and brown velvet, then slipped her arms into the robe before fastening each toggle at throat, breast, belly and just below her sex. Brown fur rimmed the cuffs, collar, hem and edges up to the fastener demurely hiding her pussy. The robe caressed her curves as if made for her, and now that it was on a real woman he could see the shaping at the back that emphasized her narrow waist and full hips.

“It’s very impractical,” she said.

“I disagree,” he said. “Come here.”

She stepped up to him. Keeping his gaze locked with hers, he clasped her ankles and brought his hands slowly along calf, knee and inner thigh, stopping at the toggle. When he slid both hands around to cup her ass, the robe parted to reveal her pussy.

Her breath stopped. She put one hand on his shoulder to steady herself, but her gaze never broke. He was looking into her eyes when he leaned forward and touched the tip of his tongue to her sex. Delicately he sought her clit, found the nub swollen and waiting for him. A few gentle strokes and the firm muscles under his hands trembled as her fingers fisted in his sweater.

“Think how warm you’d be in this while I fuck you. Imagine the velvet against your skin, caressing your nipples as we moved.”

Based on her low moan and shimmy, her nipples were already hard under the heavy velvet. He pulled back and slipped the first polished wood toggle through the cord, then made his way up her body, exposing belly, ribs, breasts and throat to his hand. Her skin was warm, flushed. He cupped her breasts, pinched the pleadingly erect nipples.

“This robe is a necessity,” he said firmly. “Like peppermint mochas. Or water. Or air.”

Her tongue touched her lower lip, like she was licking away minty chocolate and whipped cream.

“Show me something else.”

He leaned back and interlaced his fingers behind his head, considering and discarding options she held up for him before nodding his head at something that made his heart pound. She offered a white satin corset and a pair of white silk stockings, the seams up the back stopping at a tiny white bow.

“Very nice,” he managed. His throat was dry. “Put the stockings on first.”

She slipped out of the robe, then used the chair to steady herself, giving him a teasing glimpse of her pink cunt as she drew up first one, then the other stocking to the tops of her thighs. Her hair hid her face except for peeks of rosy lips, flushed cheeks and dark-lashed eyes. Her entire body was on display for him, and all he wanted to see was her face. Where was she? Thea could be physically present and mentally a million miles away, and this wasn’t about decorating her in order to fuck her. It was about showing her the heated, living promise of each individual moment in the hopes she’d want to stay there awhile, with him.

“I’ll need help with the corset,” she said, and held out a length of white satin ribbon. Then she turned her back to him.

“Sweet Christ,” he said, transfixed by the length of her back, her ass and the seamed stockings.

She tossed her hair back out of her face as she held the corset to her ribs. He threaded the satin through the first few eyelets running the length of the corset and tightened it with a firm tug.

A small gasp got his attention. In the mirror her eyes were wide, unblinking, and oh yeah, there she was, alive in her eyes, her hands flattened against her abdomen.

“Okay?” he asked.

Dark pink moved up her throat, into her cheeks. “The pressure on my stomach is...arousing,” she said.

He glanced down at the stark line of white satin and stiff corset snugly fitted to her hips, and imagined the increased blood flow to her sex. “So,” he said, purposefully tightening another set of eyelets, “seeing you in this makes me very, very hot, and you extra sensitive.”

She undulated in his grip, almost off balance until one hand flattened on the mirror in front of her while the other settled on her thighs. He tightened two thirds of the lacings, enough to hold the corset in place on its own. With a gentle touch he adjusted the corset so her breasts were mounded above the demi cups, then smoothed his hands over her accentuated hips. Noting how her breasts quivered with each beat of her heart, and the way her breathing shallowed, he finished lacing the corset and tied a neat bow between her shoulder blades.

“I can’t reach that,” she said.

Her twisting attempts to do just that sent a sharp bolt of lust down his spine to his cock. His horizons expanded with every heated moment. “Do what I say and I’ll take it off.”

She cut him a look that was part vixen, part virgin, and all Thea. Now he had her attention. He snagged the plain wood straight-backed chair by the door and set it down in front of the chaise, then sprawled back on it. “Sit.”

She eased down, knees primly together, back perfectly straight, her breasts elevated and offered like a sacrifice. She looked like a pinup girl from the fifties. Her pulse pounded at the base of her throat.

Time to put her through her paces. Eyes narrowed, he studied her, as if determining whether or not to buy the ensemble. “Do that thing with your hair again.”

Slowly, teasingly, she complied. He watched in the mirror as blond strands lifted then tumbled against her cheeks, her open mouth, her neck, her shoulders and breasts.

“Nice,” he said. “Model it for me.”

She blinked once, heated and slow, then one corner of that perfect lush mouth lifted just enough to let him know she found this amusing as well as arousing. Well, good. He already owned her body. Now he was after her soul, and laughter was as good a way as any to gain entrance there.

Her gaze locked with his, she tipped her chin down so her hair tumbled into her face and spread her legs to either side of the chair’s hard seat. She braced her hands between her opened thighs and leaned forward. The position was pure
Playboy
coed and thrust out her breasts and ass, emphasizing curves but hiding her sex from view. Her pink nipples stood out between the pale corset and her blond hair. The colors of innocence wrapped around pure sin.

“I’m still not sure yet,” he mused.

She got smoothly to her feet and turned the chair so the seat faced the mirror to his left, then put one knee on the seat, her hands on the straight back, and arched her back. In the mirror to his left he saw her ass, teasing glimpses of her pussy and the long seam hugging the back of her thigh and calf. The look she shot him through her messy hair made his cock throb in his jeans. He shifted, and cleared his throat.

“You look warm,” she said. Then she dropped to her knees in front of him, tugged his shirt free from his pants, and pulled shirt and sweater over his head. “Better?”

Getting naked wouldn’t relieve the heat pumping through his veins. The view in the mirror held his full attention, the swell of her ass below the laced-up corset, the white stockings and those pert little bows. “Keep going.”

She smoothed her hands down his chest and abdomen to his belt. Each restrained breath lifted her breasts until he didn’t know where to look. Plumped breasts. Curvy ass. Wet mouth.

Thea, on her knees for him, again.

She had his belt undone, zipper down, and her hands in his jeans to work them down when he took her chin between thumb and forefinger and tipped her face up to his. He searched her gaze, alert for any sign she’d disappeared, leaving only her body behind. Her dark eyes glowed like a hot spot after a fire. Electricity jolted through him, bent him forward to kiss her.

It was hot and wet and supercharged. His tongue stroked over hers before he pulled back to tease her. He soothed each sharp nip to her lower lip with a deft swipe of his tongue, making her mouth swollen and wet. When he pulled back her eyelids drooped, but she tugged his jeans down enough to release his shaft.

“Slow,” he said.

Her red, wet mouth captured the tip of his cock, then she took him at his word, moving up and down his shaft. His heart pounded against his sternum as he shamelessly watched her suck him, pulling her hair behind her opposite shoulder for an unrestricted view of her on her knees, mouth and body working together to pleasure him. Saliva slicked his shaft as she went down, down, down, swallowed, then hollowed her cheeks on the trip up.

He thought he might go out of his mind.

“You know what would make this better?” he said, working really, really hard to sound like a dispassionate observer.

She paused, and rather than looking up at him, turned to the mirror. Her eyes widened as she took in the sight, then she wrapped pale, slender fingers around his shaft, shook her head no, and licked the tip.

“A little more white ribbon,” he said, and waited until her gaze met his. “Around your wrists.”

He watched the image burn through her consciousness. Eyes widening, pulse picking up at the base of her throat, a little hip shimmy that let him know the idea aroused her, too.

“I’m sure we can find extra ribbon somewhere,” Thea said, and closed her lips around the tip of his cock.

“Good ribbon,” he said, rendered nearly voiceless by the steady, swirling pressure of her tongue. “Strong enough to hold you.”

She gave a little hum that vibrated through his cock, and her stance widened. He loved the involuntary movements that showed him exactly how turned on she was. Spreading her legs a little more, tipping her ass back like he was behind her, ready to plunge in...

“That’s enough,” he said. She blinked in surprise, her mouth wet and soft. “Come here.”

He pulled her up to straddle him on the chaise. Her breasts rose and fell with her soft, panting breaths as she worked to get air into her confined ribcage. “Ronan, take this off,” she pleaded.

“Not yet,” he said ruthlessly. The sight of her astride him, poised and ready to take him stripped away what was left of his nice guy veneer. He held his cock away from his abdomen, at the right angle to slide into her, put his thumb in her hip crease and gripped the soft flesh of her ass with his fingers.

When his tortured, straining erection found wet heat, she resisted. “Ronan,” she said quietly.

Reality slapped him hard. No condom. “I don’t have one,” he said, a shocking lapse on his part.

“I’m on the pill,” she said. “I haven’t had sex with anyone since Jesse except you.”

“I’m safe,” he said. That was all he could manage. His throat was vibrating too hard to get out a sensible explanation involving annual checkups, blood tests and the good, old-fashioned common sense that dictated condom use.

Until now.

She lifted one hand from the back of the chaise and tucked her hair behind her ear. The move was so sweet and endearing Ronan’s heart stuttered in his chest. Her hand paused at the curve of her jaw, and she held his gaze as she slowly, so fucking slowly sank down onto his cock. Helpless against the onslaught, his eyes closed, the better to feel her slick, swollen walls give way for him, the clinging heat engulf him millimeter by millimeter until there was no him, no her, just them.

Chapte
r Five

Nothing like the loss of something absolutely crucial for survival to focus her attention on the present.

It was the tightly laced corset limiting her air that made her sound so breathless, so little girl-ish, or perhaps the thought of wearing this innocent little outfit with ribbons binding her hands as she obeyed Ronan’s explicit, erotic commands. It was the atmosphere in Idylle, soundless, beautifully lit, unambiguously sexual without being the slightest bit tawdry. The message was crystal clear. Sex was part of the human experience, and what you wear next to your skin could be sensuous, luxurious and a moment-by-moment reminder of pleasure.

It was
not
watching pleasure surge across Ronan’s face as she took him, skin to skin, into her body.

Don’t make this more than it is. You’ve had unprotected sex before. It’s not a declaration of trust, a demonstration of vulnerability.
It’s no big deal. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just Ronan.

It’s Ronan.

She let the thought drop into the void and turned to the matter at hand. “I don’t think you saw that,” she said innocently.

His brilliant blue eyes opened and became the brightest spark of color in the muted room. “You’re right.”

Something in his rough, masculine tone made her clench around him. “Should I do it again?” she asked, continuing with the subtly submissive theme.

“Yes.”

She lifted herself, the thick drag of his cock against her sensitized inner walls a torment, then paused when he was just outside her. She had one hand braced on the back of the chaise, the other tangled in her hair as she turned to look over her shoulder. The frankly carnal image made breathing even harder than before. To avoid passing out she turned back and watched him watch her take him deep. Red flags stood high on his cheekbones, and dark stubble covered his lower face. Utterly absorbed as he was in the graphic mirror-show, he looked hard, ruthless and hot as hell.

Once again he stretched her to the limit. Her clit pressed against his pelvis, sparking another series of tremors in her pussy she heard echoed in Ronan’s stuttering breathing. The scent of his skin and cologne rose into the air, along with the musky smell of sex.

“This time you watch, too.”

The experience grew no less intense for repetition, and seeing his fingers grip her ass, his cock disappear inside her, layered sight upon sensation, added depth and complexity to an already overwhelming moment. The next time he turned her head to watch in the side mirror, and her awareness splintered. Her body, bound in white. His starkly muscled torso. Her nipples, so red and hard, both perfectly positioned and submissively awaiting his hands and mouth. His jeans and boots next to her stocking-clad legs and bare feet.

No more.

She turned back to him and gave him a steamy kiss. “The corset makes it different,” she said as she set a slow rhythm. “I feel you more deeply, more closely.”

He shifted restlessly under her, both feet bracing on the floor to give him leverage, his hands holding her hips for his upward thrusts. His abs flinched as the pleasure built, a sight that sent power coursing through her to twine with the heat. A seductive combination, that.

With a little growl he wrapped one arm around her hips and rolled them. The move trapped her against the chaise and flattened the corset against her belly. The next time he stroked in, a helpless little cry escaped her.

“Shhhh.” He ensured her compliance by laying a big hand over her mouth. Not quite gently he turned her face so she could see them in the side mirror. The sight overwhelmed her, Ronan’s hand over her mouth, her body spread and defenseless under him. His jeans trapped around his hips, boots braced in the carpet, hips and knees flexing as he powered in. Her eyes, wide and startled and saturated with lust.

Without a word he delivered slow, relentless thrusts that flooded her nerves with pleasure. Each one drew her legs a little higher until they were folded back, her toes curling as if a spring of hot gold wire coiled tighter and tighter deep inside, drawing everything in on itself. Spots danced behind her eyes as her confined lungs failed to deliver the oxygen her taxed body demanded.

Her awareness shrank to the edges of her skin as her vision closed to pinpricks. She felt a little tug at her back. The corset loosened just enough that her next breath sent oxygen flowing into her body, lighting up millions of nerve endings. The next thrust lit her blood on fire. She bowed, arching into Ronan’s body, the corset still tight around her hips. Another gentle tug loosened the stiff upper portion a little more. Greedy for air and the heightened sensation, she inhaled just as he stroked in again.

Orgasm detonated like a supernova, pulsing outward from her core with the slow, unstoppable release of air. It was like dying, she imagined, that last breath shuddering from the body along with life itself. Her sheath convulsed around Ronan’s cock as he moved in and out, the motions gentle but firm, drawing out her release until she subsided back into her body.

“You didn’t,” she started, then found she didn’t have air for more.

“I can’t,” he said, the words taut with restraint. “No condom.”

While the store’s owner obviously expected shenanigans in her dressing room, the slippery aftermath of unprotected sex kept Ronan in his right mind. A hint of regret sidled through her that they hadn’t shared that intense experience, perhaps how he felt when she showed up dressed like a holiday-minded hooker with no intention of give-and-take. She shoved the thought aside and gave his broad, muscled shoulders a push.

He sat back on his heels on the floor, then pushed himself up and onto the straight-backed chair to scrub at his face with both hands. “Just give me a second,” he said. His cock, straining away from his abdomen, gleamed with her juices. “Maybe a minute. Maybe two.
Fuck
.”

She knelt between his legs and licked a path from his balls to the tip, thin skin over steel. Such need. Such restraint. A long, low sound vented from his lungs as she went down, and she risked a quick glance up. There was no sexy watching in the mirrors. Ronan’s eyes were closed, his jaw clenched as both hands threaded through her hair to clasp her skull.

“Thea, I can’t...” he said, the words directly contradicting the demand pulsing from his fingers.

In answer she took him to the back of her throat and swallowed. The muscles tightened around the head of his cock. His abdominals jumped once, hard, then with a low, stuttering groan he came. She swallowed again, again, until he sprawled limp in the chair, his hands trembling against her head.

“Jesus,” he said. “Holy Christ.”

She sat back on her heels and rested her head on his thigh, then closed her eyes as his hand stroked over her hair. They stayed that way for a heated stretch of time, until the scent of sex, the way her body pulsed with light, both faded. Thea got shakily to her feet. Ronan put one hand to her hip and turned her back to him to unlace the corset.

“I’m buying this,” he said firmly when Thea stepped out of it. “Those, too,” he said with a significant glance at the stockings. In the time it took Thea to pull on her underwear he’d tugged his sweater over his head, zipped up and snagged the corset and stockings from the chaise.

“Ronan,” she protested softly, uncertainly. She didn’t want to insult his admittedly flexible sense of male prerogative, but this wasn’t dinner or a drink. The items had no price tags, only labels, and buying her expensive lingerie was something lovers did, not hookups.

Or maybe he’d stow it away in a dresser drawer, and bind his next lover and fuck her breathless.

The thought rendered her as airless as that molten moment when she was nothing but blood afire and his cock inside her.

“Thea,” he said, but his voice held a hint of challenge.

She held her sweater in front of her, remembering the mirrors only when his gaze flicked from her face, over her shoulder and back again. “It’s too much,” she said.

“It’s an experience. A shared experience, and right now it’s the only kind of experience you’ll share with me.” He set his hand to the doorknob.

“That’s not true,” she said, stung. “We went skating. We looked at the windows at Macy’s.”

“And both times you used me to avoid coping with something that troubled you.” His voice was noncommittal, not judging, but his eyes were guarded. “I know you’re grieving, Thea. But grief doesn’t have to be the only thing you feel.”

“I don’t feel anything,” she said. “Why do you think I walk around with music blasting my eardrums? I can’t feel anything anymore. Something broke when Jesse died. I’m numb.”

He considered her as she wriggled into her pants. “You’re wrong.”

“And you’re such a man, telling me what I feel is wrong,” she retorted.

“I’m not telling you what you feel is wrong,” he said, far more calmly than her husband had handled arguments like this. “You said you don’t feel anything, and that’s a guy’s area of expertise. We’re the unemotional ones. You’re anything but unemotional.”

“It’s a mirage,” she said flatly. “It’s pain from a ghost limb.”

“You are not a mirage. It’s there,” he said, once again ruthlessly contradicting her personal experience. “Know how I know? You fight too hard to push it down. The music, the way you try to cram what’s happening between us into
just a fuck
. You don’t pour thirty thousand gallons of water into a stone cold building. You pour it into an inferno.”

Impatient, she swept her hair into a twist at the base of her neck. “Why do you keep doing this? Why can’t you just use me?”

“I’m not doing anything, Thea.
We’re
doing it. Have you given any thought to the possibility that what happens between us just happens? That you can try to stop it, or mute it, or drown it out, but it won’t go away?”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ve been a fuck before, and I’ve used other women as one,” he said.

She considered him. He knew grief, had been brought to his knees by unimaginable tragedy, and yet he stood in front of her, living proof that people did somehow find a way to bear it, carry it while they moved on. So why couldn’t she? What hadn’t she done, what price hadn’t she paid, what ritual must she perform to find the peace he’d found?

“I’ve been where you are,” he continued. “Twice. Had good reason to use a woman like you’re using me. Never, not in grief or good times, has sex felt like this for me.”

She twisted away from his vulnerability to pull on her turtleneck and sweater. “Twice?”

“A couple of years ago we lost a man when a building collapsed. Lucas Murphy. We went to school together, grade school through college. He was a good friend.”

Guilt and shame swept through her. “You didn’t tell me about him.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t feel like talking about it when we met. He died in early April. When we met on St. Patrick’s Day I was just coming out of the second year. I needed what happened between us as much as you did.”

“To fill the void?” she asked, confused.

“No. To feel alive.”

“That’s not how it is for me,” she said as gently as she could.

“Your body doesn’t lie,” he said just as gently.

“You’re wrong.”

“Fine. You keep trying to drown this out, but I’m not going to help you go under.”

He opened the door, stepped out and closed it, leaving Thea to finish dressing alone.

* * *

December 21st

A steady north wind whipped little pellets of sleet and snow past Thea’s living room window. Her apartment was on the twenty-third floor of a building at Ninety-Sixth and Lexington. Between the natural elevation of Carnegie Hill and her upper floor apartment, she found herself living in a silent world of low clouds, rain, fog and wind more than she did the traffic and street noise below.

The weather matched her mood as she alternated between checking a job applying a patch via her work laptop and opening and closing cupboards, searching for a cookbook and ingredients. Avenged Sevenfold blasted away in her ears. She had flour and butter, but probably not enough for shortbread, and no powdered sugar. And no recipe. Her grandmother had taught her cooking allowed for some creativity. Baking, however, generally required precision. Making Grammie’s traditional holiday shortbread in a half-assed fashion would have her grandmother spinning in her grave all the way back in Columbus.

She tugged her earbuds from her ears and picked up her cell phone. Erin answered just before voicemail switched in.

“Hello? Thea? Are you there?”

“Hi,” she said, trusting Erin could hear her over the racket of her four-year-old niece and six-year-old nephew.

“Guys, I’m on the phone with Auntie Thea,” Erin said, half command, half plea. The noise continued unabated, then dropped to background static.

“Where did you go? Bathroom?” The only way her sister could get any peace was to lock herself in another room.

“Pantry,” her sister said wearily. “Jamie’s still at work at seven o’clock on a Friday night. Something about switching servers. Why does this stuff always happen around the holidays?”

“Because nothing else does,” Thea said. She’d met Jamie in new employee orientation at Nationwide and introduced him to her sister at a work event. Jamie and Jesse ended up playing in the same softball league and going fishing together. She wasn’t the only person devastated by Jesse’s death. “People are on vacation. Offices close. It’s a good time to do infrastructure changes.”

“It sucks for the rest of us,” Erin said, aggrieved.

“It could be worse,” Thea said. “You could be married to a cop or a firefighter. They work 24/7/365.”

“Somehow that’s not helpful,” Erin said, a little tremor in her voice.

Her sister’s normally cheerful attitude seemed in short supply today. “The kids driving you nuts?” she asked gently.

“No worse than usual. I’m just...” Another trembling sigh, then, “Don’t pay any attention to me. What’s up with you?”

“I’m in the same boat Jamie is, but thirteen hundred miles east,” she said dismissively. “I called because I need Grammie’s shortbread recipe.”