Eyes of Ice (Eyes of Ice Erotica Series) (16 page)

Cecelia choked off a scream, arching her back as he filled her completely. The rocking continued as he worked his way further against her – one final stroke and he was inside her to the hilt – Cecelia felt the rest of his body pressed warm against her, and bit her tongue as she fought off disbelief as to the situation.

The actions from there were a blur of his superhuman motion and skill. He fucked her against the wall until her legs trembled and she gasped for air through rolling waves of pleasure. When she screamed his name and dug her nails into the green paint of the wall, he turned her around to face him and gazed deep into her eyes as he came inside her. At that expulsion, she thought that the fucking might come to an end, but he guided her to the floor.

Pressed between his warm, ridged chest and the oak floorboards, Cecelia saw the room spin the instant Andrew’s mem
ber stabbed into her rear. She held her breath and then collapsed into shuddering shouts and groans as he brutally took her. From the rigid expression of his features and the sweat on his brow, Cecelia knew that each of her cries excited him more than her movements ever might. Which was just as well, because she couldn’t help being vocal when he pinned her wrists above her head with one hand and skillfully slipped out of her ass and into her womanhood, then repeated the motion on odd and alternating thrusts.

With each jab, Cecelia cried Andrew’s name,
staring into his all-consuming eyes, though the world seemed to be darkening as her pleasure reached the highest pitch. Continuing the assault of both of her holes, Andrew was rubbing at her left nipple with his thumb while sucking hard at the right. Andrew’s eyes, the world, all dissolved, and she could only hear her supplications for
more, God, harder, oh, please …. Andrew ….

Everything abruptly stopped. The ecstasy ceased, the world snapped into sharp and blindingly brilliant focus, Cecelia lay alone on the floorboards.

“What …?” she asked numbly, struggling to her feet. She felt as if she had been drugged. Her eyes found Andrew standing at the edge of the room.

His face was dark, his brows knitted together, and his h
air tangled over his forehead as if to mimic the internal battle within him. He kept repeating something furiously under his voice, so low that Cecelia could not hear it, but she supposed from the motions his lips were making that it was still:
I did this.

“What happened?” Cecelia asked again.

He raised tortured black eyes to her face, his shoulders high and protective. “I
glamored
you. Didn’t you feel it? I
glamored
you without meaning to. We do that to
prey.
”

“I …” Cecelia gaped at him. “If you didn’t mean to … it was an accident. It’s okay.”

He said nothing. His lips kept making the motions of accusatory murmurs.

Feeling helpless, Cecelia collected her clothes. It wasn’t hard – she put on her underthings, slid into her dress and pulled on her boots in a matter of seconds, keeping her eyes on Andrew the entire time.
She needn’t have bothered, as he appeared not to see her. His hands were raised to his head to grip the back of his neck as his lips continued to move, his eyes (still completely consumed by blackness) fixed on some spot on the wooden floorboards without actually seeing anything. Hesitantly, Cecelia moved toward him, though she wasn’t sure what her intentions were – to embrace him, to soothe him somehow – but Andrew stepped back, hands raised as if he was fending off some dangerous animal.

“Stay away from me!” he shouted, face averted.

He doesn’t want me to see him like this
, Cecelia thought, panicked more by the outburst than by the reality of the situation.
He doesn’t want me to see him as a monster.

“Do you …” she began, her hands feeling useless at her sides. “Do you want me to leave, or … Andrew, tell me what you need?”

When he didn’t answer, she took one step forward, but he took another back.

“Yes. You should go.” He said, his voice controlled to a strained evenness.

Cecelia cast about for something to say, and opened her mouth, but no words would come out. Slowly, she backed away from him. She didn’t take the elevator but ran down the many flights of stairs and reached the bottom panting and out of breath, dizzy more from emotion than exhaustion. Standing on the sidewalk, she turned and looked up at Andrew’s windows, then down at the entrance, half-expecting him to dash out, to stop her and needlessly apologize.

Gasping for air, she stood there for at least five minutes more, sweat beading and mingling with the water that soaked her dress. Eventually she was chilled to the bone by the gusting wind and falling snow, so she turned and trudged home, her thoughts now complicated by a thousand more questions and an overwhelming concern.
After you’ve convinced someone that they’re a monster, what else is there to say?

Then:
So much for being the best for him.

Eight

             
The next week passed with no word from Andrew. Cecelia texted him at least five times a day, variations on the same message
of I haven’t heard from you. Are you okay?
But as each day passed, her texts became more insistent:

I’m more worried about you.

Andrew, I told you I was okay. What’s wrong?

If you weren’t already dead, I would think that you were. Please tell me you’re okay?

I miss you. I know you must miss me, too. Where are you?

Please text. I need to know you’re all right.

There was never an answer. So Cecelia struggled through her schoolwork and ate food that turned to ashes in her mouth and replayed her memories of the past days over and over again. She couldn’t work on her problematic news story, because it only made her think of Andrew and long for their most intimate times together. She could barely stand the eroticism of shower’s hot water on her skin for imagining that each pulsing stream was a finger belonging to him.

One afternoon i
n desperation, she drew on the limited amount of information she possessed and tried to imagine herself as Andrew.
What would I do if I felt I’d hurt someone or endangered someone I’d just been starting to feel close to?
The answer came too readily.
I’d try and make sure they knew it was an accident
, she thought, then corrected herself. Andrew knew it hadn’t been an accident – and so he was blaming it fully on himself, which only reinforced what he already knew; that he was dangerous and evil and could not be trusted with goodness any more than he  could trust to begin with.

On top of Cecelia’s renewed introversion, or perhaps because of it, Mags constantly asked her
if she was okay, if Andrew had done something. Cecelia gave her no answer but “I’m not talking about it” or “I can’t,” practically the same answers that she gave when Mags  suggested she call her parents. Eventually, Mags either believed her or got tired of asking, because after the second or third day of Cecelia’s despondent behavior, Mags was capable of ignoring her.

On the seventh day with no
communication, Cecelia followed her feet to Alexandra’s apartment. There was a voice screaming in her head that this was ridiculous –
what are you, a stalker now?
Countered by,
this is what normal people do when they’re concerned, this is normal.
Then the further justification:
besides. This is professional. I’m just following a story.
But she knew that she wasn’t merely playing the part of a concerned lover, she was living it.

When she pressed the button to buzz Alexandra’s room, the front door opened. As she stood in the elevator, Cecelia tried to reassure
herself that at least Alexandra would be as kind and gracious as ever, and would probably even pretend to be happy to see her.
And I’ll be able to read the truth of whatever Andrew’s up to on her face
, Cecelia reminded herself. However, as she stood and waited for Alexandra for the elevator doors to open, her fear deepened and crushing reality threatened seemed to thin the air she breathed.

I’m knocking at the door of a vampire. A dangerous vampire, and who knows how much of a strain it was to be around me the last time – what was it she said? That she missed looking at someone and not having her first thought be devouring them?
Her stomach turned over.
This
was
a bad idea.
She took a step to the elevator’s array of buttons, meaning to quickly but quietly escape.
She buzzed me in, but maybe I can just ask if Andrew’s here and then escape.

The doors hissed open
and she froze with her hand halfway to the “Lobby” button.

It wasn’t Alexandra. It was Devon,
his features sketching surprise rather than betraying his typical malevolence. Not that it made him any less frightening.

“Is Alexandra there?” Cecelia squeaked, terrified. It was like making a phone call to a friend’s house and getting their angry parents instead, only about a million times worse.
She was dimly cognizant of the fact that she was motionless with her hand was halfway to the “Lobby” button.
I probably look like a statue of an idiot.

“No,” Devon answered, some of his former terseness returning to her as he looked her up and down. Still, his eyebrows were arched in question.

“Oh, okay,” Cecelia said, attempting (and failing) to sound innocent, as her voice quavered slightly. With a sudden burst of confidence, asked: “Do you know where Andrew is? Is he okay? You must know.”

Devon leaned against the doorframe, maintaining
his studious inspection of her. After several long seconds, he took a measured step backwards, and answered: “Come in.”

             
Cautiously, Cecelia obeyed, endeavoring to hide and deny the fear that made her blood pound in her ears. The apartment, she realized, was exactly the same as the last time she had visited, yet with a single variation – the peonies were no longer there, replaced by white roses. The familiarity was comforting. She hadn’t been expecting the penthouse to turn into a dark, dripping dungeon since her last visit, but still, it calmed her that Alexandra’s apartment had such lightness and consistency.

Devon
walked in a semicircle, about her, then retraced his steps, concluding: “I’m in the kitchen. I don’t want to leave my caramel for long.”

As soon as the words had left his lips
, Cecelia became aware of the heavy, sweet scent of caramel lingering on the air. As if in a dream, she followed him to the kitchen. Alexandra’s a chef, she recalled, blinking at the bright stainless-steel countertops and shining, black marble floor. Of course it’s state of the art.

Devon had moved to stand
by the stove, and begun to furiously whisk the contents of a small saucepan on the stovetop. Meanwhile, he appeared to speak to the glowing burner rather than to her. “You heard how Alexandra disdains my cooking abilities. Well,” he glowered at the caramel. “The truth is, I’m intimidated. Yes. One can’t stand up to Alexandra the three-Michelin-star chef or Andrew the rising sous chef. But do you know where neither of them have a speciality?”

“
Um … dessert?” Cecilia guessed, watching spitting butter subsume a small mountain of white sugar.

“Affirmative. You can take a seat.” He nodded toward a stool a few feet away from the sink. Then he paused, and seemed very intent on watching bubbles rise to the surface of the quickly liquefying mixture. With a grimace, he inserted the whisk once more to continue stirring. “I admit it seems ludicrous.”

It was precisely what the stunned Cecelia had been thinking. This image of Devon, collected and domestic, did not align with her previous assessment of his predatory, deadly nature. “I was just going to say out of character,” Cecelia said.

“You’re not wrong,” Devon said sourly, casting a fleeting glare at her, and then at the caramel, whose bubbles were now snapping angrily. He appeared wrapped up in his own thoughts for several moments, and Cecelia watched the mesmerizing circles of his whisk in the caramel, incapable of forming the question on her mind.

“You came here about Andrew,” Devon said abruptly, having reached the correct conclusion that Cecelia was tongue-tied. “Not about my emasculating attempts to reengineer a relationship with Alexandra. He’s doing fine. He’s surviving. He hasn’t mentioned you. Perhaps that’s all I should say.” This curt assessment was made during a bout of energetic whisking as the bubbles threatened to escape from their saucepan.

“It’s not all you want to say, though,” Cecelia said, pushing back the pain of rejection.
It seemed at the moment so unthinkable that Andrew could ‘do fine’ and survive without her when he had somehow become so crucial to her own existence.