Smoke Signals (6 page)

So I dropped to my knees and yanked his pants and boxer briefs down to his ankles. Then I took him in my mouth, swirling my tongue around the head to lick up the pre-come before taking him deep.

He let out a shaky sigh and leaned against the wall as I worked him over with all the skills I’d learned in the porn business. I used my pointed tongue to glide along the ridged underside of his dick, and he swelled in my mouth. I massaged his balls, sucked and licked, and made heated, sexy sounds like I was into it, knowing all of those things would bring him closer to completion. When I felt his hands settle on the back of my head, giving gentle pressure and a hint of guidance, I took him all the way inside me, swallowing the head of his cock past my gag reflex.

“Holy shit,” he ground out.

Holding my breath for as long as I could, I bobbed my head over him, fucking him with my throat. When I came up for air, a stream of saliva dribbled down my chin. I flashed my eyes up to him, expecting to find his eyes closed in bliss, a man on the verge of losing control. Instead, I found him glaring down at me.

“You don’t like?” I asked. If this wasn’t his thing, it was fine. I could figure out what he
did
like. It wouldn’t be that hard. Based on the way his cock had hardened and grown from my efforts, he’d liked it to
some
extent. But maybe he wasn’t a blow job kind of guy. Maybe he liked—

“We’re not filming a fucking porno,” he forced through a clenched jaw. “I don’t want you to fuck me like a porn star.”

Then what did he want? I didn’t know how to fuck any other way. If I had at one point in time, I’d forgotten it a long time ago.

My confusion must have shown on my face.

“Come here,” he said. He reached down and took my hand, and he helped ease me to my feet. Then he placed his hands on my face, one on either cheek, and kissed me.

Only it was different this time. Very different. It was slow and languorous and erotic, and completely unlike the way any man had kissed me before. It was meant to arouse and entice. His tongue slipped alongside mine, gliding and teasing. His lips were gentle, playful. He splayed his big hands over my ribs and slid them up and down my body. There was no sense of hurry to any of his movements. He wasn’t touching me hard or possessively. It didn’t feel as if he owned me and was taking what belonged to him. Instead, every touch was tender, almost reverent.

This was not what I’d planned. Not at all. I didn’t know what to do, what to think, how to feel. His sensual assault was taking over, and I felt as though I were flying. Or falling. I couldn’t be sure which, but either way my feet no longer seemed to be on solid earth.

I grabbed hold of his shirt, hoping to ground myself in some way as he licked a line from my jaw to my ear.

“I want to fuck
you
, Tori,” he said softly, his lips brushing against my lobe. “Not the porn star. Not the actress. You.”

But that was exactly what I couldn’t let him do. It was never
me
. Not since the very early days when I’d let one of my co-stars past my protective walls. I’d allowed myself to care for him, and I’d convinced myself that he really cared for me and would look after me in this strange new world I was in. So when he’d fucked me for the cameras, it had really been
me
. My heart. My soul. All wrapped up in him.

Which meant it had been
me
when he’d tied me up and forced the baseball bat inside me and rammed it home over and over again despite my pleas for him to stop. It had been
me
when he’d used the cane on me so hard it left welts that were still visible a week later—on my breasts, since my contracts always stated I couldn’t have noticeable marks anywhere that anyone could see when I wore my leotards for dance. It had been
me
when he’d straddled my head and fucked my throat until I’d vomited all over his dick and myself, all the while forcing me to come with the baseball bat still deep inside my cunt and the magic wand bearing down on my clit until he burned up the motor. It had been
me
when he’d put a ball gag in my mouth and fucked me, ignoring the fact that I was screaming in pain from the acids leeching into the fresh welts on my breasts after he’d rubbed my bile all over my chest. It had been
me
he’d winked at and smacked on the ass after the shoot, while they were still undoing my bonds, saying,
You’re one tough bitch to take all that
. And it had been
me
when, a week later, I’d had to let him and three other men gangbang me while they held my head under water, listening to him tell me I was one hot slut every time they brought me up for air.

Shoots like those two paid better than others, and since I could only shoot on the weekends, I’d often agreed to go along with unimaginable things. After that first traumatic experience, I’d learned to separate myself. I’d let them use my body, but I’d learned to shut away my mind. It was the only way I could survive it, the only way I could keep going back for more. And I did go back, too many times to count. Those shoots were far from the worst I went through from a physical standpoint, but I’d found a way to keep my head and my heart out of it.

But now, Razor wanted to fuck
me
, not just my body. It didn’t matter that he was now my husband. It didn’t matter that he might have some inkling of what I’d been through since his mother had sold her body for money, or that he seemed like a good man. None of it mattered. I could never allow it to be
me
again.

Not ever.

But the way Razor was touching me would make it next to impossible for me to maintain my distance, to protect the few frayed threads of myself that remained from whatever was to come.

“Come on,” he said. He kicked off his pants and took my hand.

I had to find a way to manage it.
It’s just sex. Only my body. I can do this. I have to.
I let him lead me into his bedroom.

He flipped on the lights and reached behind his head to tug his shirt up and over from the back. The fabric hit the floor in a gentle
swoosh
, but my eyes were on him. Without his clothes, he looked even bigger and stronger than I’d already known him to be. The tattoo on his arm was of a kneeling angel, but he had more ink I hadn’t realized—something tribal along his side that spanned his rib cage, words in a language I couldn’t read on his ribs, and it looked like there might be something on his back and coming across his shoulder, too.

“You like tattoos,” I said, trying to calm my pounding heart and put the focus back on him. Anything I could do to move this along.

He smiled, the expression landing squarely between cocky and sultry. “A bit. Do you?”

“I’m ballerina. Can’t have tattoos.”

Closing the distance between us, Razor reached for my hand. He flattened my palm over his chest. The steady
thump, thump, thump
of his heart was strong beneath my fingertips. Almost electric.

“I didn’t ask if you had any. I asked if you liked them.”

“I like yours.” I licked my lips again. But no matter how hard I tried to seduce him, to hurry him along, he kept moving at the same deliberate pace.

With hands that had clearly done this many times before, he inched the material of my dress up my thighs until it gathered at my waist. Then he eased his hands under the fabric, gliding them over my skin as he pushed the dress up and over my head. I reached behind my back to release my bra, but he stopped me with one hand enveloping both of mine. He shook his head.

Frustration mounting, my breathing grew shallow.

Then he dropped his head so his lips could press kisses along my collarbone.

I fought the urge to pull away. “What are you doing?”

“It’s called foreplay, sugar.”

I let out a huff of air. “I know that. Why you do this?” I tried to tug my hands free, but he didn’t release them, instead tightening his grip and using gentle pressure to draw me closer to him. He dipped his tongue into the hollow at the base of my neck, and I squirmed. “I need no foreplay.”

“Everybody needs foreplay.” He teased the top of my bra with a finger from his free hand, and I shivered.

“I don’t want foreplay. I want you to fuck me.”

“I’m getting there.” Hooking that same finger under the top of the cup, he dragged it down and freed my breast. His hot mouth came down over it, and I fidgeted to get out of his grasp. He brought his head up and gave me a heated look. “How long has it been since you had sex with a man just because you wanted to, not for money?”

I could only blink at him in response.

“That long, huh?”

I shrugged. I couldn’t imagine ever
wanting
sex the way he talked about it. I might have wanted it once upon a time, but those days were far in the past. These days I just wanted to survive it.

Razor steered me backward toward the bed. When my knees hit the mattress, I sat, instinct guiding my movements. Releasing my hands, he nudged me onto my back and came up over me, his big thighs on either side of my waist as he hovered above me, bracing himself on his elbows.

Finally, he was going to get to it.

“Let’s get one thing straight, Tori,” he said, looking down in my eyes. Through me, almost. “When I fuck you, it’s not just about me getting off. It’s not about what I want and what feels good to me. It’s about you, too. I have no intention of taking from you without giving in return. If you don’t come, I don’t. Got it?”

I gave him a curt nod, but in my mind, I thought,
Good luck with that
. I’d spent too much time and effort building up my walls to let him or anyone else get through them so easily.

He bent his head down to kiss the side of my neck, and I found a spot on the ceiling to focus on until he was done, hoping it would be enough to keep my tears locked up inside along with my heart.

THERE WAS NO
way of knowing how long it had been since Tori had been with a man who’d focused on her pleasure as much as his own. She didn’t seem inclined to talk about it. I understood her need for secrets. Understanding didn’t stop me from wanting to convince her to open up to me, though. It’d been a hell of a long time, at the very least. Maybe she hadn’t ever had a good, positive sexual experience.

I didn’t know much, but I knew this: her view of sex was skewed, distorted, and I’d be an ass if I didn’t do anything and everything I could to change it.

Granted, I
was
an ass, something Babs was all too keen to remind me of every chance he got. It was one of my calling cards, something that guys had come to expect of me. I’d developed a tough, sarcastic exterior, borne of so many years spent with the kinds of knowledge kids should never have. But that didn’t mean I had to be that way with Tori. I’d always been different with my mom than I was with the rest of the world. There wasn’t any good reason I couldn’t be different with Tori, too.

Her skin smelled like vanilla and tasted like a slice of heaven.

I kissed the spot right behind her ear before flicking my tongue against it. No reaction. This spot wasn’t one of her erogenous zones, then.

She lay flat as a board, hardly moving other than the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed.

That meant I needed to work harder.

I slipped my hands beneath her to unclasp her bra. She lifted herself up on her elbows to help, not that I needed it. She hardly weighed a thing. Her ballerina’s body was slim and lithe. Her breasts were one of the few areas on her body with much cushion, actually. Every part of her was toned and in perfect shape.

She collapsed back against the mattress as I tugged her bra free.

I traced a circle around one of those perfect mounds, trailing the tip of my finger in a soft caress. No reaction. “Tori?”

“Yes?” Her eyes were focused overhead. She didn’t even blink when I said her name.

“Tell me what you like. What feels good.”

“I like to make you feel good.”

Hmm. Not getting anywhere.

“What makes you come?”

This time, her gaze flickered to meet mine, and she shook her head. “It’s too hard,” she said, point blank. Like it was a fact. Like there couldn’t possibly be another way. “You come. Don’t worry about make me come. You’re big, strong man. Let me make it good for you.”