Glow (8 page)

She wanted it so badly, it felt like she'd shatter from the force of her need.

S
he and Dylan didn't speak during the increasingly familiar, dark, furtive trek through the woods, up the slope of the hill and through the terrace doors of Castle Durand. He didn't even utter a word once he'd closed his bedroom door, locked it, led her to the side of his bed and switched on a lamp to a dim setting.

Nor when he silently began to undress her.

By that time, Alice trembled from the force of anxious desire.

She reached to help him unfasten her bra, but he merely grasped her wrists and placed her arms back at her sides. She looked up at his face, seeing his fixed expression as he watched himself undress her. He was still angry with her. She could see it etched on his bold rugged features. She was still angry with him.

But as always, this electrical need, this inexplicable pull they experienced for one another, trumped everything else.

Despite his obvious irritation at her, his touch was gentle as he unfastened her bra. His fingertips lightly skimmed the side of her breasts as he removed the cups. She winced reflexively, her nipples pulling painfully tight, even at that subtle caress of skin against skin. She noticed his gaze on her bared breasts and shut her eyes, embarrassed and aroused by the exposure, knowing he witnessed the sharpness of her need.

By the time he'd fully undressed her and she stood before him naked, her trembling had amplified.

“Lie down on the bed,” he said.

Relief swept through her at his demand. Lying down, perhaps he wouldn't notice her shaking. The sense of relief intensified when she reclined against the pillows, and he reached into a bedside table drawer, lifting out two black cuffs with attached straps.

It both soothed and aroused her, to feel the soft leather against her wrists . . . to feel their strength and solidity. She'd resigned herself to the fact that surrender was her only option when it came to Dylan. It helped, though, knowing that with the restraints, she had no choice but to submit.

He restrained her wrists to the bed. When he was done, she lay naked with her arms above her head, her elbows bent slightly and resting comfortably on the pillows. He straightened upon finishing his task and paused next to the bed, looking down at her bound body . . . taking his time.

Something in his gaze made her eyes clamp tight again.

So hot. So possessive.

He came down over her, still fully dressed, and straddled her hips on all fours. She made a muffled sound of arousal when she felt him plant his hands on the mattress above her shoulders, and knew he towered above her.

“Look at me.”

He said it bluntly, a hint of impatience in his tone.

She stared up at him, trying desperately to even her choppy breathing. He held her gaze as he bent his arms. His dark head lowered. She cried out in helpless, cutting arousal when he sucked an erect nipple into his mouth and laved it briskly with his tongue. He lifted one hand and molded the breast on which he sucked, his actions focused and greedy. Her hips shifted restlessly on the bed as arousal swelled between her thighs.

“Dylan,” she called desperately after a moment, but he was lost in his task of consuming her. He squeezed her breast lasciviously while he tortured her nipple with his tongue. He kissed her flushed skin with gentle, worshipful lips, then sucked on her again
hungrily. Alice writhed beneath him, moaning his name until her cries grew desperate.

“What?”
he asked abruptly, and she realized her chanting of his name had finally breached his single-minded lust.

She unclenched her eyelids, her breath catching at the vision of him. He held both of her breasts in his large hands possessively. His mouth was twisted slightly in a snarl—not one of anger, Alice recognized, but one of interrupted appetite. The globes of her breasts looked pale next to his hands, the nipples reddened and damp. She nearly shut her eyes again at the potency of the vision.

“What is it?” he repeated, his thumbs sliding slowly over her nipples.

She struggled to capture the ends of her fraying purpose.

“I'm not sure I trust you,” she accused in a tight whisper.

She almost bit her lip to still her anguish when his stroking thumbs stilled on her damp nipples.

“What do you mean?” She experienced a blast of the cold sharp anger Sebastian Kehoe must have felt this morning coming face-to-face with Dylan's wrath.

Why had she felt the need to tell him now, in this intimate moment? She was so raw. So vulnerable to him.

That's why you did it.

“Alice?”

She shook her head on the pillow. “I realized it today. That's why I didn't meet you tonight.”

His expression darkened. “What happened? Did someone say something to you? Jim Sheridan? Kehoe?”

“No. It's nothing like that. No one said anything to me. Why did you have to act like a paranoid Neanderthal today in the woods? Don't you trust Jim Sheridan? I thought you were friends.”

“We are friends. And I do trust him. I had my reasons, Alice.”

She waited for the rest, her brow cocked. She sighed in frustration when he remained silent and implacable.

“There.
That's
why I don't trust you. You keep things from me.
Still
. Besides . . . I'm not sure I trust anyone. Not completely.”

Her defiant words sounded feeble to her own ears. They seemed to hang in the air between them, inadequate and limp.

“Do you want to be here? With me?” he asked.

“You know I do. I'm just so confused.”

“Do you think I don't know what it's like? To be told to trust, just because an authority figure tells you to?” He shook his head. “I'm even more accomplished at doubting than you, Alice.”

His gaze lowered over her throat and chest, to where he held her breasts in his hands. Her nipples prickled at the weight of his gaze.

“Your body trusts me. Even if your mind doesn't,” he said grimly after a moment. “For someone like you—for someone like
us
—trust doesn't come wholesale. It comes in stages. And this”—he nodded at her flushed, naked body—“is a start.”

She knew what he meant. He'd had it every bit as rough as Alice growing up. Both of them had learned the hard way that to trust was to eventually hurt.

To
not
trust hurt, too, though. Dylan was teaching Alice that lesson for the first time in her life.

“I'm sorry,” she said miserably, because she'd seen the flicker of pain on his face when she'd said she didn't trust him, despite his tough response. She'd caused him pain, and that knowledge hurt her, in turn. “I just thought I should tell you. It only seemed fair.”

“But you came tonight. For this?” he asked, and his hands on her breasts tightened slightly.

“Yes.” She bit her lower lip when he resumed massaging her breasts and stroking her nipples with his thumbs. He was crouched over her, his strong thighs spread, his crotch suspended less than an inch above her lower belly and sex. As he resumed caressing her breasts, she felt his cock come into contact with her skin as
the weight of his erection mounted. She moaned, the elusive touch of his desire tormenting her. “I came for you,” she confirmed in a heated rush. “I came because I need you.”

“Even if you don't trust me?” he asked in a hard, dry tone, still molding her breasts to his hands and teasing her nipples with his fingertips.

Heat swept through her chest and face. “Isn't it enough? That I'm here? That I let you tie me to this bed. That I'd let you do anything to me here?” she asked desperately.

His magical hands slowed. Holding her stare, he lifted his hand and pushed his blunt fingertips against her flushed lips.

“Anything?”

“Anything,” she whispered, arousal swelling in her.

“And you say you don't trust,” he said so quietly, for a moment Alice thought she hadn't heard him correctly.

His head lowered again, and her thoughts splintered as he kissed her breasts and ribs and heaving belly, pausing to taste her with the tip of his tongue or bite gently at the curve of her hip. Her skin roughened. She pulled on her restraints, squirming on the bed, but the straps remained secure—holding her in place for pleasure.

Making it impossible to run. She loved him for knowing she required that. Especially tonight.

There was no teasing or build-up to ecstasy—or at least very little of it, anyway. One second, Dylan was feathering his tongue across her hipbone, and the next, he was dipping it between her labia and laving her clit hard. Alice's body tightened and jerked. Her shout of surprise segued to a moan. The pleasure was hot, flooding, and intense. She twisted her hips, not wanting to escape necessarily, but instinctively flinching from such an onrush of sensation.

Dylan captured her hips and held her down on the bed, demanding a steady target. He turned his head to find a new angle with which to torture her with the firm mastery of his tongue. She lifted her head
from the pillows, watching him. He lashed and agitated her clit, his actions bold and lewd one moment, gentle and soothing the next. His mouth applied the most concise, yet subtle suction. Her entire body seized in pleasure. It felt like he filled her with it, every movement, every second that passed, mounting the unbearable friction

Finally, she broke and shuddered in his hold.

Even as she struggled to recover from her orgasm, she felt him slide a finger into her slit. She clamped him without thought, still in the clutches of her climax.

“That's right. I can feel you coming for me.”

Alice opened her eyes to find him staring at her face. His eyes shone with lust. His sensual, firm lips, chin, and nose glistened from her juices. She whimpered at the sight of him, another shudder of pleasure rippling through her. He stroked her higher with his finger, his mouth slanting with arousal. He had lowered over her, and now knelt between her spread thighs. She suddenly felt a pressure behind her knee. He rolled her hips back, urging her to bend her knees, her feet hanging in the air. At the new angle, he plunged his finger into her more firmly. She whimpered at the sound of him moving in her aroused sex. He growled roughly.

“You hear that, don't you? You're soaking wet.” He leaned down again between her spread thighs and kissed the damp hair above her clit, the slight pressure and the promise of more flooding pleasure making her moan and pull on her restraints. He continued to stroke her deep with his finger.

She became so lost when she was with him. Alice had fought against the feeling of helplessness her whole life. She couldn't imagine why she craved abandonment so single-mindedly when it came to Dylan.

He withdrew his finger and rose onto his knees, still positioned between her thighs. She watched him closely, holding her breath, anxious for his next move. Craving it. He slid his forearm between her calves and thighs to the back of her knees and pushed back
slightly, exposing the backs of her legs and buttocks. He lowered his other hand and again slid a finger into her sex, his actions deliberate and firm. As he finger-fucked her, he used his thumb to press little circles on her slippery clit.

“Oh,” she groaned, because her clit began to burn again beneath his sure touch.

“Feel good?” he muttered.

She pressed her hips rhythmically against his stroking thumb and plunging finger. “Better than good. Fucking fantastic.” His small smile was sex distilled.

“Do you want to come again?”

“Are you kidding?
Yes
.” She circled her partially suspended hips more strenuously against the divine pressure of his fingers.

“In a minute, then. First, I want you to do something for me,” he murmured.

Her gaze flickered to his face when he slid his finger out of her and stopped the delicious circling on her clit.

“What?” she demanded, a little sharp at being deprived of such sweet, building pressure. He moved his lubricated finger to her ass.

“Trust me in this,” he said quietly.

Alice went entirely still, her focus narrowing to the sensation of his fingertip pressed against her ass and his four words. A moan escaped her throat. Had he just applied a firmer pressure? The stimulation felt good to her aroused body, a different, forbidden kind of friction. Her cheeks flooded with fresh heat and the burn in her clit became a sizzle.

Little slut,
said an amused voice in her head.
You're hungry for even this with him.

“Alice?”

She blinked at the edge in his tone. It struck her that he was as tense and anticipatory as she was at that moment—maybe more so. She met his stare.

“I told you I'd trust you to do anything in this bed,” she whispered.

Without altering his expression in the slightest, he pushed his fingertip into her ass. She gasped.

“It's more than a majority of women would trust, even after spending years with their husbands,” he said, watching her face closely. “You realize that, don't you?”

“What can I say?” she asked shakily, because he'd just pushed his finger into her to the first joint. It felt strange, having him touch her there. Having him penetrate her ass at the same time that he pinned her with his stare was almost overwhelmingly intimate . . . although she'd never tell him that. “I'm not most women.”

“You're not as tough as you act sometimes.”

“Neither are you,” Alice defended.

He pushed his finger farther into her. Alice suppressed a whimper. A muscle leapt in his cheek.

“You're hot and tight.”

“Are you going to fuck me there?”

His mouth slanted at her attempt at bold flippancy. “So determined to prove your point, aren't you? So determined to be fearless.”

“Are you saying I should fear you?”

“No. I'm saying you should trust me. It's
you
who finds that prospect frightening.”

He withdrew his finger and came down partially over her, reaching and opening the top drawer on the bedside table. Alice just laid there, his reply silencing her soundly. He straightened and opened the cap on what she recognized as a bottle of lubricant. His expression appeared hard and focused as he liberally lubricated two fingers. Alice found the vision of his long thick fingers shining from the fluid both intensely erotic and intimidating at once.