The Billionaire's Embrace (The Silver Cross Club) (25 page)

Perfect
.

I held the vibrator in place with my left hand, and slid two fingers of my right hand back into the hot clutch of her body. Her thighs shook, fine tremors running along the muscles, and she had turned her wrists to grasp the scarves tying her to the bed, holding onto them for support, knuckles white. She was so close to losing control, and I wanted to see it happen, to watch her abandon all dignity and throw herself into the mindless pleasure I offered with both hands.

“You’re trying so hard to hold on,” I said, kissing her thigh, fingers working inside her. “Let go. I want you to come all over my hand.”

“No,” she moaned, tossing her head.

“You don’t get to make these decisions, little girl,” I said. I circled the vibrator over her clit again, slowly and firmly, and she arched against me and came, clenching around my fingers and shaking like a leaf.

Oh, she was wonderful. I rolled my hips against the bed, seeking some relief for my throbbing cock. I could wait, of course, but it was never easy. I held the vibrator where it was, working Regan through her orgasm, and as she came down, muscles relaxing, she flinched away from the buzzing, over-sensitive. I didn’t move it.

“Carter,” she whined, drawing her knees up, twisting her hips, doing her best to escape the merciless vibrations, but she was trapped, tied in place, and I had no pity. I left the vibrator right where it was, and began thrusting into her with my right hand, feeling her so wet and hot around me. I saw in her expression the moment she realized that I wouldn’t give her any time to recover: a sweet, overcome grimace, and then she closed her eyes and turned her face to the side, biting down hard on her lower lip, trying and failing to hold back her high-pitched whimpers.

I could only imagine how it felt: delicious torment, the pleasure almost more than she could handle, her body overwhelmed by the powerful sensations. She trembled, toes curling and uncurling, hands flexing compulsively around the scarves.

I turned up the vibrations.

Her knees rose into the air again, thighs closing around my arms, a defensive reflex, and futile. I wasn’t going to let her go. “Please,” she gasped out, and I wondered which she meant: Please stop, or please keep going?

It didn’t matter; I had no intention of stopping.

She writhed on the bed, tossing her head from side to side, moving her pelvis toward me and then away. I increased the vibrations yet again, and her body lifted in a perfect arch, mouth hanging open, and she came again, in long, slow waves.

I didn’t stop.

I held the vibrator where it was, as she came and as she came down, the tremors finally easing, and as she fought against her restraints, struggling to escape the sweet torment between her legs.

She opened her eyes and looked at me, pupils blown. “I can’t,” she said. “Will you—stop.”

“Safeword,” I said. “Safeword and I’ll stop.”

“I can’t,” she said. “Please. Please stop.”

“Safeword,” I insisted, and she turned her head away from me and didn’t.

Fuck. She
wanted
it. My cock throbbed in my trousers, hard as iron. I could have fucked her right then, unzipped my pants and shoved into her, taken her, claimed her.

I didn’t. I wanted to make her come again.

I shut off the vibrator and set it aside. Regan made a relieved noise, and I smiled to myself, amused that she thought this would be any sort of respite. Leaving my right hand where it was, buried deep within her, I bent and set my mouth to her dripping slit.

She moaned loudly, her thighs clamping around my head. She had a heady, musky scent that filled my nostrils and coated my tongue, and I buried my face against her, drinking it in. I couldn’t get enough of her. I licked her with the flat of my tongue in long, languid strokes, tasting the full length of her.

“Carter,” she moaned, straining against me, and hearing her say my name like that made me feel like a god.

I moved my mouth to her clit and sucked on it, teasing with teeth and tongue, and it throbbed in time with her heartbeat. She was so close. She was almost there.

I stayed there, licking and sucking at her, until I thought I would explode if I delayed any longer; and then I turned on the vibrator again, and held it just there, right where she needed it.

She let out a wail and went to pieces beneath me.

It went on for a long time, convulsions rolling through her, her face screwed up in joyful agony, her limbs shaking.

She was magnificent.

She quieted at last, and I turned off the vibrator and slowly, very carefully, drew my fingers from her body.

She looked up at me with her dark eyes, her face soft, body limp with lassitude. I couldn’t resist. I bent and kissed her, and she returned the kiss eagerly, opening her mouth to mine, our tongues sliding together.

I had to have her. Waiting any longer was impossible. My need was suddenly urgent, overwhelming all rational thought. I unzipped my trousers and drew forth my aching cock, dark red and wet at the tip from waiting so long. I fumbled in my pocket for the condom I had stashed there earlier and rolled it down my cock. And then I lifted one of Regan’s thighs out of the way, my hand hooked beneath her knee, and plunged into her in one smooth stroke.

We cried out in tandem, her at the intrusion and me at the feeling of her around me, tight and hot. I rolled my hips once, experimentally, and knew that I wouldn’t last long. Regan had that effect on me. Everything about having sex with her—the way she smelled, the sounds she made, the way her body opened around me—seemed designed to make me lose control as quickly as possible.

I lowered myself so that I lay directly on top of her, our bodies pressed together. I wished now that I had taken the time to remove both of our clothing, so that I could feel her bare skin against mine, but it was enough to be close to her, to kiss her neck and rock against her, thrusting slowly, making it last as long as I could.

It wasn’t long. I was too aroused, and she kept making small, contented noises that utterly did me in. I buried my face against her neck and let go, and my orgasm poured over me like a rising tide.

I came back to myself several long moments later and reached up to untie Regan’s hands. Then I staggered off the bed and into the bathroom, feeling like I had been hit by a truck. Death by orgasm. I discarded the condom, and washed my hands and splashed some water on my face

Regan was lying where I had left her, stretching luxuriously, hands clasped together over her head. She gave me a sleepy smile and moved her legs so that I could kneel on the mattress.

“You left me,” she said, mock-pouting.

“I did,” I said. “And then I came back.” I lay down on my side, in the tiny sliver of space between her body and the wall, and turned her so that she was spooned against me, her back to my front.

“So did I,” she said.

I frowned, confused, and then realized: she wasn’t talking about tonight.

“I won’t do it again,” she said.

“You’d better not,” I said. I wrapped my arm around her waist and held her against me, my face buried against her hair. Maybe I shouldn’t have believed her, but I did. If I was being naive, I didn’t care. The joy that I felt, holding her and feeling the warmth of her body, left no room for doubts.

I knew, then, that no matter what happened, there was no turning back for me. Regan was everything I wanted, and I was all in.

I
spent the next two weeks on cloud nine. Regan and I saw each other constantly, every chance we had. She spent more nights than not at my apartment, and would even come over in the evenings after her night classes to have a late dinner with me and watch television. We told each other all of our secrets, both good and bad. We screwed like rabbits, we cooked meals together, and every morning that I woke up with her in my bed, I said a silent thank you to whatever power in the universe had returned her to me.

At first I was afraid that my work would suffer, but instead it benefited from my high spirits and abundant energy. Once, I even caught myself whistling while I did paperwork: truly an indication that the end times had arrived. I finalized a merger in record time, invested in three promising start-ups, and crushed a small firm that was attempting to poach one of my best executives.

I didn’t, however, have time to maintain my personal relationships as much as certain parties would have liked. Namely Carolina and my mother, both of whom eventually resorted to calling my office phone in the hopes that I would pick up. I didn’t; I had Nancy take all of my calls. If there was one thing I hated, it was having my train of thought interrupted by the shrill ring of the telephone.

It wasn’t that I was deliberately trying to avoid them. It was simply that I had a finite amount of mental processing power, and the portion of it that wasn’t dedicated to work was currently fully occupied with Regan.

I did manage to maintain my weekly appointments with Nelson. The weather was finally getting warmer, spring inexorably rushing in, and I took him to the batting cages on Randall’s Island. He wasn’t particularly athletic—I sympathized; neither was I—but he seemed to enjoy swinging his bat around and yelling, and I was more than willing to indulge him. I was less than pleased, though, when he squinted up at me and said, “You’re acting all happy. You got a new girlfriend?”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re ten, Nelson. What do you know about girlfriends?”

He rolled his eyes right back. “Yeah, I’m ten, not
two
. And I have a TV, and my cousins tell me stuff. I’m not a baby.”

I laughed. “You’re right. You’re not a baby. And you’re also right about my girlfriend.” Why lie? I was too happy to keep it to myself.

“I knew it!” he hollered victoriously, and jumped around the batting cage like a manic dog while I laughed.

So Nelson was pleased with me, at least, and Regan, even if I was busy alienating everyone else in my life. I wasn’t particularly concerned about my mother—genetic ties meant she would have to forgive me no matter what—but I felt a periodic twinge of guilt when I saw that Carolina had sent me yet another text message.

It was guilt that motivated me to answer when she called my cell on the one day I had forgotten to silence it. I was in the middle of reading some extremely dull investment reports, and so I allowed myself to be distracted enough to glance at the screen. When I saw Carolina’s name, I sighed, shook my head at myself, and answered.

“Carter, my darling!” Carolina said. “You have been avoiding me.”

“Now why would I do such a thing?” I asked, leaning back in my desk chair and turning to gaze out the window. It had been raining all day, and the upper floors of the building were completely clouded over, so that my view was a blank gray haze. It was like being inside a cloud.

“I cannot possibly think of why, but I have been calling you for two weeks, and nothing,” Carolina said. “You have not totally succumbed to despair, have you? I’ve been worrying about you.”

I couldn’t think of what she was talking about, and then remembered: I hadn’t spoken to her since I got back in touch with Regan. She must have thought I was still licking my wounds. “No despair,” I said. “So, what’s on your mind?”

Carolina laughed. “No time for chit-chat! All business! Let’s go out tonight. A new club just opened, and I hear only good things about it.”

“Hmm,” I said. “I’m afraid I can’t.” I had plans with Regan: we were going to try a new restaurant she had heard about, on the Lower East Side. I was trying to be more conscientious about avoiding the upscale places that made her nervous, and she, in turn, was exposing me to a side of the city I had never experienced.

“You are seeing someone new,” Carolina said immediately, and I closed my eyes, silently cursing myself. I should have given her a concrete excuse. She knew me too well, and knew that I was at my most vague when I had started seeing someone and wasn’t ready to talk about it.

And if I denied it, she would simply keep prying until I spilled all of the details—or, worse, she would call my mother, and they would both set to work on me. It wasn’t worth the grief. “Fine,” I said. “Yes, okay, I admit it. I’m seeing someone.”

Carolina made a delighted noise. “Who is she? Do I know her? Not Jenna, because you never called her, you bad man—”

“No, you don’t know her,” I said, and sighed, succumbing to the inevitable. “Remember that woman I was seeing back in the fall?”

“Oh, Carter,” Carolina said. “Don’t tell me—”

“Yes, I’m back together with her,” I said. “And it’s going well, and I’m happy, so please don’t spend too much time berating me.”

“Carter, she
left
you,” Carolina said. “You were so sad for so long. How do you know she won’t leave you again?”

“Don’t you think I’ve already asked myself that question? I’ve decided it’s worth the risk. I spent so long being bitter after I broke things off with Spencer. I don’t want to wake up one day and realize that I’m old and I’ve spent my entire life being afraid to take the chance to let someone in. There’s no point to life without love.”

“Is that what this is?” Carolina asked. “Love?”

I drew in a breath. “I love her,” I said, and as I spoke the words, I knew they were true. I hadn’t admitted it to myself yet, but I did: I loved Regan, whole-heartedly, without reservation, and she was worth it. She was worth the risk.

“Well,” Carolina said. “How can I berate you, then? You are a grown man, I suppose. When do I get to meet this woman?”

“Soon,” I said, smiling. I had a feeling that Regan and Carolina would get along all too well, and that the quantity of female conspiracies centered around me would drastically increase. “I don’t want to scare her off.”

Carolina gasped. “Scare her off? Me? I would never do such a thing!”

We talked for a few more minutes, Carolina telling me all the details of her latest modeling job, and she extracted a promise to have brunch with her that weekend. I ended the conversation with a sense of relief: Carolina wasn’t angry with me for my neglect, and now I could return to my work with a guiltless conscience.