AURORA LEADS me down the hallway towards double doors with fancy square grooves carved into the polished dark wood. She pushes the long silver handle down and steps inside, holding the door open for me. ‘You should sleep in here tonight, Fawn. Don’t be nervous.’
Immediately, I know whose room it is as the intoxicating scent of his cologne, sweet cigars, and warm male flesh wraps around me in a carnal way. My heart picks up pace. I stare at the wooden four-post bed, standing royally in the centre of the expansive space. A large private lounge area with black leather couches and a desk are in opposite corners.
My breath catches at the window, splaying the entire length of the west wall. It is too clear. I fear I may throw myself off the edge and land three storeys below.
I force my feet forward. ‘Why?’
‘Your room is too far away from him. He requires you to be in here tonight.’
‘But this is…’ I blink at his room, all dark, all masculine, all very Clay Butcher. Twisting to face her as she holds the door open, I say, ‘But you’re his wife. Don’t you—’
‘I’m his business partner and, I like to believe, his friend. But we are not lovers, Fawn. Our relationship is based on the archaic truth that I am a woman and without Clay, I am nothing but a bargaining chip for the Cosa Nostra. With him, I am his partner. And I get a say in this empire my father loved more than me and my sisters.’ She sighs, shaking her head a little, seemingly exasperated by her own words. ‘Go to sleep. I wouldn’t wait up for him.’
Her words make me sad for her. ‘Why does he want me here?’ I say before I can retract the question. Usually, I would just take the crumb that I’m offered, but for some reason, I know a crumb won’t be enough this time. I know I want him. Waiting for my father or not, I want to stay here—with him. I don’t have the luxury to entertain the idea that there may be a commitment on his end. Intimacy, yes. So much more than I ever knew existed, but this is another level now. Sleeping in his bed… it terrifies me.
Because… I think I love him.
‘Perhaps you should ask him yourself,’ she says as she leaves, closing the door behind her.
Left alone, I strip off my clothes and change into my new white silk nightgown. It feels like heaven on my skin. When I switch the light off, the small downlights immediately glow to provide the perfect light-to-dark ratio.
I crawl into his bed—his bed—fanning my fingers out to touch the smooth black material, the mattress barely moving beneath my weight. All I can think about as I curl into a ball on one side, knowing it is his side, the scent of him on the pillow giving it away, is that this means something. Being in his bed, without him, means something big.
Suddenly, I bolt up, remembering my dreamcatcher. I’ve never slept without it. Jumping off the bed, missing its comfort immediately, I rush back down the halls and up the stairs. The passages seemingly go on and on, but when I finally get to my room, I pluck the dreamcatcher off the bedpost and rush back to his room, not analysing why I’m running.
In his room, I dangle the beautiful web on one of the posts and nest above the covers on his side of the bed. The ambient air is the perfect temperature. I close my eyes slowly, blinking the unfamiliar corner of the room from my sight until…
THE SPLASHING of water wakes me from my dreamless slumber. I bat my eyes open to find the same unfamiliar room, the same sleek sheets, the same perfectly firm mattress, but I’m not alone. I flip over to see a glowing rectangle around the bathroom door. The sound of water rolling off a body sails from the shower, hitting the tiles beneath.
My lungs fill with an anxious breath as I slide off the mattress and walk over to the door. I just want to test it. Twisting the handle to see if it is locked even though I am sure it— The handle twists in my tiny grip, and I push the door open, not allowing myself time to rethink this.
As I walk into the elaborate ensuite, the scent of sandalwood and citrus cloaks me. Candles, set up in threes on a deep ledge running the span of two walls, dance in the light breeze from the exhaust fan. His house staff must spend a lot of time creating this perpetual scene of luxury for him because I don’t see a man like Clay Butcher wasting his time on lighting candles if only for himself.
The steam parts to reveal him under the faucet. Feeding his hands through his hair, dragging them down his face, his back to me, he is yet to notice me. The thick strands look longer and darker under the spray, deliciously so.
I should make a noise.
Look away, even.
But I can’t.
I stifle a toe-curling moan at the sight of his taut round arse and his long, strong legs, compactly carved into valleys around each muscle. He’s tall. Athletic. His muscles pulse as he washes himself, and mine tremble to behold him.
‘Did I give you permission to come in here?’ he asks without turning to look at me. When I don’t immediately answer, he turns to face me. Icy-blue eyes find mine, his expression shifting from dark to outright carnal, as he strokes the inked grooves at his eight-pack. His abdomen twitches as he lowers his attention. My eyes pan down to watch him wash the length hanging between his thighs.
My heart pounds hard. My lips are suddenly arid. ‘I can’t believe that was inside me,’ I whisper to myself more than to him, pressing my thighs together as I feel myself weep from my core. Clearing my throat, I say, ‘Are you turning me away, Sir?’
Something irrevocably sad passes over his gaze, a brief disturbance, a slight interruption to his otherwise controlled mien. ‘Take that little dress off. Come here.’
Ignoring my body’s predisposition to obey him, I ask, ‘Did you find the—’
He raises a finger, effortlessly wielding the control over my tongue, silencing my question. ‘I don’t want your words right now, sweet girl. But I do need you in here with me. Agree or leave.’
I don’t want my questions blocked, but I want even less to leave and exponentially more to be what he needs. ‘Yes, Sir.’
Gripping the hem of my gown, I slip it slowly up my body. The scorching heat of his gaze follows the seam’s path over my thighs, pussy, stomach, and breasts, causing me to moan. The silken fabric caresses my flesh, putting a tangible sensation to his predatory watch.
I pull it free, flicking my hair free also. Standing naked in front of him, I focus on breathing through my endorphins, ignoring the damn butterflies.
Glancing down his body, I swallow as he grows until his cock is thick and bouncing by his navel. The pink head pokes out from his foreskin. It looks so smooth. Menacing.
I glance back, finding his eyes hovering on my beading nipples as I move to stand with him in the large shower. I used to joke I could hang a coat on my nipples, but truthfully when they pebble, they ache and buzz with discomfort. More so since getting knocked-up.
As I join him, he steps backwards, allowing me access to the downpour. The water glitters on our bodies while the steam hangs in the air.
Although he is the epitome of smooth, effortless control, his eyes flash with pain and need and something that twists my stomach. Something that makes my eyes burn. What could have affected him so?
I touch his cheek, and he closes his eyes.
I think I love you.
Taking the opportunity, I drag my fingers down from his cheek to the hard, flat planes of his chest and then caress the rolling slab at his abdomen until my fingers touch the tip of his cock’s pink head. I gasp as it pulses, and I slide my hands back up and over the ridges and dips that form each muscle. He opens his eyes and watches me explore him.
There is very little youthful about him, in the sense that he is all hard edges, defined lines, every inch of him a machine of a man. Just another way Clay has utter control over every aspect of his life.
My hands slide in the soap at his abdominals and follow the thick muscles carving an angle down each hip. I trace the images laced in ink above his caramel skin. Three legs fanned out around a face, a heart and a gun at his right hip. In a straight line from his left pectoral to his left hip, words are written in another language. Across his collarbone, a subtle scar that looks old is weaved with an ink vine as if to make the mutilation beautiful, as well as draw attention to it.
I wonder why.
A tattoo was something I had never thought about. I might get one… maybe a butterfly, only because they live so erratically within me whenever he is around. Their presence will be a constant reminder of the weeks I spent being his…
When his big hands travel up my sides, I quiver under the all-encompassing attention. He is so much taller than me; he reaches right over my shoulder and retrieves a bottle of shower gel from the sill behind.
He lathers the gel into his hands, creating fragrant foam, before caressing my throat and chest with the suds.
He’s washing me…
As he cups the lower curve of my breast, I tremble with emotion and yearning. With desire. Leaning into his palms, I urge him for more pressure. He works both handfuls. His thumb and forefinger flick my pointed nipples, and I cry out as the sensation overwhelms me.
‘Fuck it,’ he hisses through his teeth. Then he drops to his knees, takes a nipple into his mouth, and sucks on it, long and thoroughly. I grip the dark wet hair on his crown, holding him to me as he gently treats my nipples, switching from one to the other. He is so tender tonight; tears sting the backs of my eyes, wanting to announce my emotions.
As he stands, his hands trail the length of my sides, stopping under my arms so he can lift me effortlessly. Placing me on the ledge inside the shower, he opens my thighs wide.
His gaze lingers on my body, and mine is on his heated, chiselled features as he concentrates on cleaning me. Rubbing soap into my thighs, his hands cover the entire breadth of each soft column. He is all hard. I am all soft and pliable, and it feels so right.
As his fingers near my pussy, I shuffle on the tiled ledge, tilting my hips slightly, invitingly. His fingers touch my lips, and then he strokes between them. I arch my neck back, my chin to the ceiling, moaning, the sound bouncing off the glass shower casing.
He slides a finger inside me, and I buck, clench.
‘That’s my good girl. Fuck…You’re sucking me in, sweet girl. Have you been thinking about me?’ He slides another long finger in and moves them in unison, stealing my breath with each rhythmic stroke. I join the motion of his skilled hand. ‘I asked you a question.’
‘Yes,’ I pant.
‘And what thoughts have you so deliciously wet that you are dripping all over my fingers?’
‘Your mouth on my pussy…’ I moan as he rocks his finger within my clenching walls. ‘The ice. The…’ The way you say ‘mine.’ The way you called me ‘your belonging.’ Your smell. Your lips. God, I want your lips.
God, I think I love you.
‘You are going to be a very addictive little thing,’ he says, watching me crumble under his attention. ‘You remember what I told you. You belong to me. Nothing in your past matters. I will be making sure you are spoilt rotten. The way you deserve.’
God, his words…
The peaceful finality to his declaration ratchets up too many emotions. The tears I was withholding blink from my lashes, and I grip his hair as he focuses on my pleasure. Dipping to mouth my pebbled nipples again, his tongue laps gently, provocatively. The feel of his wet solid muscle on my sensitive beads rushes to where his fingers work at a methodical pace. I have never felt anything like it. Comfort and calm. Safety and bliss.
All about me.
Every act. As though he can read my body, my heart, what I need and didn’t know. He understands the primal desires that I barely recognise myself, attuned to every shudder, every buck, all the rolling motions drifting me out to a place of overwhelming sensation. I close my eyes and swim in an ocean of pleasure, moaning loudly.
Then my pussy grips his reverent fingers, causing him to wrap his arm around my waist and cradle my rolling head moments before my orgasm pours through my cells. ‘What do you say, sweet girl?’
My head rocks back into his palm as I cry out, ‘Sir.’
He holds my small trembling frame to the hard slab of his, enveloping me in the safety of his powerful arm. As his fingers twist and roll against the muscles inside me, I am so consumed by him, by his words, by the throes of my orgasm, that I start to sob.
I think I love you.
SOMETHING IS DIFFERENT. He’s different. Resting my head on the thick swell of his bicep, I struggle with the emotional turmoil inside my mind. I want to dive headfirst into this blissful moment that is him and me, but lurking under the surface is utter fear and the lingering sense of my impending rejection.
Grab opportunity by the balls.
On our sides, my small body in the long commanding cocoon of his, I can feel his heart on my spine, beating away like a powerful, sturdy drum. Slung over my waist is his thick arm, banding me to his torso, and over my calves is his long heavy leg, while his hand cradles my barely noticeable swollen stomach. The emotion hurts. What happens when my dad comes? Will he care that I’ve been intimate with his associate?
A man twice my age?
Slut. Slut.
Grab opportunity by the balls, slut.
I clear my throat. ‘Can I ask you a question, Sir?’
His breath warms the top of my hair as he murmurs, ‘What would you like to know?’
I twist to face him, coming within an inch of his lips, the same lips I am dying to feel again. ‘Do you think my father will help me with the baby?’
He blinks slowly, a mask of indifference setting firmly on his handsome features. ‘It matters little.’
My brows pinch in. ‘It matters to me.’
‘It shouldn’t.’ His nose touches mine, and he draws small circles on the tip. It is so tender. So sweet. ‘Work on that.’
A man like him couldn’t possibly understand the weight of poverty, of having no skills to offer the world. ‘I can’t look after him alone.’
He leans back, eyes like blue diamonds, flashing seriously at me. ‘I have already confirmed that you will be looked after. I don’t make idle comments.’
My heart grows, but I want to take a pin to it, to deflate the hopeful naivety with which it expands. My head hasn’t forgotten the past eighteen years of lackless offerings turned betrayal. ‘By you?’
‘Yes.’
‘But what about my dad?’
His eyes narrow. ‘As far as I’m concerned, I’m your everything. Your teacher. Your lover. The only person responsible for you. For your health. For your happiness. For your orgasms. Do I make myself clear?’
Lover… The word sings in my mind. ‘My lover?’
He sighs roughly while I’m seemingly missing some point, a petulant child chanting, ‘But why.’ The tiny sea-foam-blue freckles in his irises seem to glow as he says, ‘It isn’t as romantic as it sounds, little deer.’
I touch his cheek, the small bristles coarse under my palm but undeniably virile. ‘No?’
‘No.’ His large hand swallows mine before removing my palm from his face, and it feels like an icy wall is being erected between us. Is it to keep me out? Or to keep him in? ‘I won’t be yours, but you are mine. That is already settled. You will handle this better if you forget about your father all together. The man is not worth your consideration.’
I frown, thrown by the way his teeth gritted around each syllable in that last sentence. ‘Wait? I thought you were friends.’
‘I said nothing of the sort. We are associates.’
‘So you don’t like him?’
‘Fawn,’ he warns. ‘One lesson you need to learn, sweet girl, is that there is pleasure in acceptance and submission. You came to me. You trust me. So let me decide what is best for you.’ His irises become thin blue rings around a consuming dark pupil. ‘Now, you need something in your mouth to stop those lovely lips from asking questions you don’t need to worry about anymore. Lay with your head towards the foot of the bed and suck my cock.’
Air locks in my throat. ‘What?’
‘Your ears work perfectly fine.’ His thumb comes up to my lower lip, folding down the flesh while his gaze skims the inner pink depths. ‘You are overthinking. Anxious about things that you don’t need to be—not anymore. I need to redirect your troublesome thoughts. Suck my cock until you don’t feel the need to ask so many questions. Until you stop worrying. Until you understand that I am here to take care of you. I will do the worrying for you. Let me protect you… even from yourself.’
He doesn’t mean… like… to calm myself down by sucking his dick… surely that can’t be a thing. My eyes widen with realisation. A provocative curve plays with the corner of his mouth. ‘Do you trust me?’
I nod slowly. ‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Then do as you’re told.’
‘Yes, Sir.’ Pulling the sheets back, he reveals his semi-hard cock. As I move around the bed, he lays on his side and I lay down on mine with my knees curled up and my head in line with his beautiful, engorged erection. ‘I don’t know how to—’
‘I didn’t tell you to make me come, little deer. I told you to suck until you feel better about your place with me.’
I open my mouth, taking the clean, salty tip between my lips without any expectations to actually perform. He hisses his satisfaction, and a warm pool of sensation rushes through my entire being. It’s nice pleasing him.
Mouthing the tip clumsily, I flick my tongue around the knotted base of his head to the smooth curve at the top. I suck lightly, close my eyes, and breathe through my nose. When a little salty fluid comes out of the tiny slit on top, I moan my enjoyment. I play with him, focus on him, and the questions just… stop.
‘You are such a good girl.’ His fingers nestle into the blonde strands at my crown, gently combing through them. ‘You belong to me. I take great care of my belongings. I know you’re stressed about the baby, sweet girl. I am very proud of how seriously you are taking this responsibility. There will be things in your life that only you can control. For everything else, trust in me. I will make sure you never go without. You never just survive.’ He strokes my chin as I work the tips of his head. ‘You can come up here now.’
The hard, smooth tip of his cock slips out from between my lips, and I turn, then slide up the bed to face him again, immediately hit with lust-filled blue eyes.
I shuffle slightly, feeling his cock knocking at my stomach almost like he is demanding further attention, screaming his neglect. ‘Does it hurt when you… get hard?’
His lips twitches with a grin. ‘What a sweet question.’
‘You haven’t… you know.’ I avoid his calculating gaze, forcing the word out. ‘Come.’
‘It does,’ he groans, in a way that seems to stifle a powerful, primal urge, ‘hurt to be anywhere near you, sweet girl, and not be inside you.’
I smile a little. ‘But you operate best under a level of duress, right, Sir?’
‘What a promising addition your mere presence will be to my peak condition.’ A full-blown charismatic smile sweeps across his breathtaking face, and I think my heart just ballooned to the point it will need a new body to reside in. I wonder if he’ll share his.
‘Well, I am glad to be of assistance to you.’ I laugh while willing my heart to regain a steady pace as he looks at me with that stunning smile and those soft eyes.
He chuckles once, but the moment of easiness, a slip in his typical calm unaffected demeanour, dissolves as he narrows his eyes on me, as if everything about me is a puzzle and if he squints hard enough, the pieces he can’t quite place will slot into place. ‘Tonight,’ he says, smoothing a piece of hair down my head, ‘wasn’t about me. Now, I’ve already let you stay up and ask questions. Don’t get used to it. Roll over and go to sleep.’
As I turn to face the other way, he pulls me back into the cave of his body. I try desperately not to let that bliss, contentment, and safety flood me. A little is okay. A whole ocean of it, though, will probably result in my head submerged and my reality saturated in everything Clay Butcher.
I failed. I am already drowning in him.
I know nothing about relationships. Of love. From a mother or father or lover or friend. I am a blank canvas without appropriate conventions and healthy dynamics to measure my experiences by… but I know whatever is going on between us isn’t what everyone else has.
It is more.
It is everything.
He is everything.
He is walking, talking sin. He is patronising and controlling and has emotional amour so comfortable around him it has formed another layer of skin. Condescending. Dangerous. Secretive. Lethal, most definitely. He has blatantly told me he isn’t mine but promises me a future with security.
And I am in love with him.
Irrevocably in love.
Invincible.
