Shock Therapy, page 21
I wasn’t turning to him. I couldn’t. During the four hours of his absence the scalpel edge I’d been balancing on had begun to slip, dip, cut through me, slow and deep.
This could be our last night.
Tomorrow we could be dead. We could be far worse than dead. Hacked, mutilated, no longer us, in body or even in mind.
This could be all we had left of each other.
I wanted to cram a lifetime into it. Tear open every second and fill it with him, with us. I wanted to consume him, assimilate him. I wanted him this second. I wanted to wait, to go insane waiting. I wanted every contradiction at once. I didn’t want patient or tender. I didn’t want fast and ferocious. I wanted. Needed. How had he once described me? Oh, yes…
I found my voice, answered his challenge. “I do have plans. A tempestuous, borderline fatal devouring of my lover.”
“Miamor, mi Calista.” His croon was blacker than the silk spilled on my thighs, dipping into the bass reaches of insanity. It hit a chord of blind lust inside me, reverberated it until it snapped. My breasts heaved, my nipples hardened to points of agony. I couldn’t bear the crush of silk over my inflamed skin, the chafing emptiness inside me. Then he made it far, far worse. “Can I convince you to devour me instead? I promise to uproot existence for you. I guarantee to take you to the very edge of survival in one minor death orgasm after another.”
My senses ricocheted within a body that felt hollowed. Every breath, every tremor, electrocuted me. Every heartbeat felt like a wrecking ball inside my chest. And he was coming closer, slow and knowing, cruel and inexorable.
The mattress dipped under his weight. I felt him kneeling half a breath away. He didn’t even breathe, didn’t move the air at my back, yet inside me a tornado tore everything apart. I snatched for air. It screeched down my lungs laden with an elusive scent. Not his. Or his mixed with something—synthetic? I was in no condition to identity it. A phantom touch laden with his intensity moved my hair to one shoulder. Then a kiss hovered just above the other. Another tormented a flight pattern over my neck. Then he breathed. Inhaled me. Drew me whole into him.
I swung around, grabbed him and crushed his nerve-racking lips to mine, to my breast, to my core. I screamed and screamed for him to crush me back, to invade me.
I did it all in my mind. In reality I didn’t even move. There was such a thing as too much wanting it paralyzed you.
Obeying my silence, his hands moved all over me, miming every liberty he’d take, hovering an inch away, creating a field of sensual friction that yanked every desperation from my flesh to the surface to smother itself in his possession, his torment. He leaned one more quarter of a breath closer, brought his lips to my ear. His rumble magnified to thunder. “You think you know what your desire does to me? You think you have the least concept what you are to me? What I’d do for you? You don’t.”
I collapsed against him, buried in arousal. He took me, my back to his chest, his thighs enveloping mine, his erection digging in the small of my back. He kneaded my breasts through the layers of silk shackles, scissored my nipples between fore and middle fingers. They’d never been sensitive until he’d touched them, taught them what they were for. Pleasure. His and mine. Then one hand swept down, pressed into my rigid abdomen, captured my mound, squeezed fresh agony. His fingers rushed to receive it, clearing a path through barriers, delving between my soaking folds. I almost rammed my head back into his.
His laugh scorched me. “That’s what I wanted to do to you after you almost rammed my teeth down my throat that first day.”
Everything frothed over. I was climaxing even before his fingers glided up along my grasping slit, spreading wetness from my core, snapping the brutal tension with one sweep over my engorged clitoris. I shredded my body and throat on pleasure.
His stroking, his ragged “Sí, amor, sí” drove me on, drained me. Then he plunged his fingers inside me, long and strong and knowing, two of them thrusting in my spasming flesh, another beckoning at the spot where all my nerves converged, his thumb echoing the action on its mirror image outside. I writhed under the renewed surge, the need for release a rising crest of incoherence. I thrust against his hand until his “Otravez, mi vida” hurled me convulsing and shrieking into another orgasm.
I subsided against him, a mess of tremors, mute, sated. But his fingers remained deep inside me, soothing, preparing me for the next peak. Then when he had me teetering there, he rasped in my ear. “How would you like your third minor death?”
I thrust back into his erection, made him growl and snap his teeth over my robed shoulder. His fingers twisted inside me, making me grind into him. He ground back, his chuckle into my neck unadulterated sensual evil. “I take only verbal requests. And I’m a bit slow. I need graphic explanations.”
I’d give him graphic. I swayed to my knees, mounted his thighs, spread mine over them, bore down with my crotchless get-up over his rock-hardness. “I want my third minor death all over your erection.” His breath hissed in his throat as said erection lurched. “I want to bury you all the way to my womb. I want to ride you until I wring your life essence from you. Then I’ll resurrect you, do it to you all over again.”
His tore his hand from inside me, fumbled for his zipper. The sound of it sliding down, so slowly, screeched down my nerves. It had to be slow to free the enormous obstacle no pants designer ever thought of making allowances for. Moistness gushed from my eyes and core when his erection thudded against my back, hot and heavy. Damian. Alive. Whole. And mine.
He thrust against me, up and down, burning a furrow in my buttocks and back. “Here it is. Here I am. Take what you want from me, Calista. Make me die, mi alma, make me live.”
Something crumbled to ashes inside me as I scrambled up to scale his length, opened over the head of his shaft. With the last heartbeat left in me, I sank on him. A burnt cry of welcome rose from my core outwards. His erection felt as big as a fist plowing inside me. Filled beyond capacity, I writhed against him, pain and pleasure bleeding into an indecipherable mess. I should be used to him. I wasn’t. Would never be. Thankfully.
I told him how he felt inside me, reached beneath him, took his sac in my hand, squeezed my demand. He obeyed, thrust up, meeting my grinds, forging new depths inside me, panted his own confessions. The pressure built in my loins with each word, each abrading slide and thrust, spread from the point he was hitting deepest. I rode him harder, insane for my release, for his.
Then it started, like shockwaves heralding a detonation too far to be felt yet. Ripples spread from the outside in, pushing everything to my center, compacting it into a pinpoint of desperation. I took him in one more perfect fusion and it came. The spike of shearing pleasure, followed by slam after slam after slam of spreading damage and satisfaction. And he pitched me forward, crammed a pillow beneath my stomach, angling my hips upwards, the he plunged into my wracking convulsions, ramming them with his, with his long, hard jets of release.
And I receded, replete, complete.
Next thing I knew I was making myself more comfortable beneath him. I knew I only could because he’d adjusted his position to remain inside me but keep most of his weight off me. He now showered me in what I craved more than all that came with the frenzy, the post-frenzy cherishing. I’d done us the ultimate favor when I’d resorted to long-term protection. The idea of not having him like that, no barriers, his flesh, his release mingling with mine, was inconceivable. Though it was probably time to check on the little sucker, just in case…
I smiled smugness and wellbeing into the mattress beneath my cheek. “Your promises stink, as usual. You promised minor deaths. The first two were major then massive and the last one was cataclysmic. What’re you trying to do? Kill me for real?”
He turned my face, my lips to his, and his tongue thrust into my mouth, feeding me his moans. “Look who’s talking. I almost had a stroke just hearing what you want to do to me. And then you went ahead and did it.”
I keened around his taste and feel. “I gave you only one. You got many more coming on the way to the edge of survival.” I opened my eyes to flay myself with the passion and satisfaction in his up-close eyes—his brilliant blue eyes…? Wha…?
My focus snapped wide, and a flare of silver blond filled my visual field. I jerked, wrenched my lips away, dislodged his still intact erection from my depths. I heaved beneath his pinning weight, impossibilities slashing me wide open. Blue eyes, long silver-blond hair, Damian’s voice. And Sir Ashton’s words. The only way Ed got me was through imitating Damian.
He tried to restrain me. “Calista, what’s…”
“Get off me.”
That got him off me. I lurched around, my eyes slamming into him. And I collapsed back, paralyzed, gaping.
His lips curled in derision. “Surprise. On both sides. This sure wasn’t on the list of reactions I expected. I should give up trying to anticipate anything you’d say or do.”
I gaped still. Until all horror and revulsion and outrage subsided and the ridiculous fears dissipated. Then I blurted out, “God! First a ponytail and now you’re a bleached blond. You even bleached your beard. And you got contacts!”
“Last time I checked a disguise included such things.”
“But—a blond!”
“What? I don’t make a good one?”
The unbelievable thing was, he made a stunning blond. His bronze skin had that copper glow to it that the best sun-tanning efforts never achieved and the blond hair and blue irises offset it, made it smolder. I shook my head.
His gaze sharpened on me. “Why were you so alarmed?”
“Uh—nothing really.” He caught my chin, demanded an answer. “Hey, I sleep with a Latin lover slash Native American warrior and found myself beneath a Viking. Excuse me for freaking out.”
“You didn’t know me? Even for a second?”
“I wasn’t all there. And it was a hell of a surprise. And it’s a good thing, if even I can be fooled for a second.”
“It crossed your mind I was someone else.” Ed was heard loud and clear. “I wouldn’t only kill him, I’d vivisect him.”
“Listen, this is just too stupid for words. I didn’t expect you to come back to me a blond but I wouldn’t have been surprised for even a second if I’d taken one frontal look at you. I’m jumpy and my mind is infested with nightmarish scenarios…” Something vicious slithered in his eyes, the inanimate contacts augmenting it. “And stop right there. Leave the poor guy alone. Ed never even looked at me funny.”
“Like you thought I never looked at you?”
“How about I knock you out and end this ridiculous conversation? And just why the hell are you in disguise now? And why a dye?”
Our gazes warred. It was his that relented as he exhaled. “I’m nowhere as good as you at wearing wigs and the bleach job will serve our tactical maneuver. I also like to break contacts in 24 hours in advance or I tear up on the job. And it’s not ridiculous having you screaming for me to get off you. Seems I’m human, after all.”
A valve in my heart must have melted. I reached for him, poured all my love and apology into his lips as I rid him of his clothes. Then my fingers sank all over warm chiseled flesh ready for my pleasure, for his. He smelled of passion, of aggression and invincibility. And peroxide. Now I realized what the scent that had baffled my olfactory centers was. I tugged him to me by his blond tresses, opened my mouth over his flesh.
He tasted like everything worth having.
And I had him. And I had to have him, now.
“Damian—I love you, God–how I love you…” He snatched the confession from my lips, ground his litany of answering adoration into me, his declarations as usual putting mine to shame. I needed the rest of him, demanded him. His hands reached for my pleasure centers and I knocked them off. “No foreplay. I’m taking you—now.”
He groaned, tore his robe off me—and collapsed on his back. I had my own surprise for him. Though I admit, his reaction was way better than mine. I straddled him and his hands shook over me, following the design of the scrap of silk encasing me, the one he’d bought for me, the one that matched my hair. I still couldn’t believe what it made of me. An ethereal being and a voluptuous bombshell, all at once.
“Looked your fill?” His now-blue eyes moved to mine, the contacts not the reason they were glazed. “Remember your promise a few days ago? Fulfill it. Take me out of it as I take you.”
He half rose beneath me as I descended on him, engulfing him within my heat. I lost all sense of self watching the explicitness of his response, feeling him expanding me, inhabiting me. I didn’t know how my made-for-many-stages-of-unwrapping get-up was halfway off me, spilling my breasts in his palms and lips. Need keened for more of him and I fed it him, over and over, flesh in flesh. Pleasure scorched me on cries of frenzy. And it was only beginning. Each plunge layered sensation until I was buried, finished, witnessing his equal devastation. Calista, the human being and doctor, lived for so many things, so many people and goals. Calista, the woman, lived for this.
We spiraled down, fused, sated.
I lay there on top of him, feeling like I had the whole world in my possession. Then a deep confession reverberated beneath my cheek. “Mivida, every time with you is—everything. The exhilaration and frantic greed of a first time and the sureness, the knowing just-how of an enduring relationship.”
What I’d thought before, just put way better.
But—enduring? Could we ever have anything with that label? When each of us invited death about every day for breakfast?
We were inviting it for a gala dinner tomorrow night.
“Get off me.”
My head snapped up. Getting back at me? His smile said he was. But he was spilling me off him, getting up. So he wasn’t?
Even forces of nature need to use the bathroom, stupid.
But he didn’t go to the bathroom. He instead went to the console by the closed door, got a huge, square box in exquisite lavenders and pistachio green with Divina splashed in creative font over it. He brought it back to the bed.
“For you, mi amor.”
I thought I knew what it was. I knew it couldn’t be what I thought. He couldn’t have. He just couldn’t.
So he got me a present. That he bought it in a shop that had the same name as that one in Bogotá had to be a coincidence.
My fingers were useless. He took them away from their futile box-opening efforts, kissed each one and opened it for me. And I moaned.
It was what I thought.
The chameleon-colored, indecipherable-materials evening gown I’d gaped at as we’d sat trapped in traffic for over an hour on our way to the tugurios’ shantytown outside Bogotá. And it was all hand-embroidered. What there was of it.
God! He had seen what had filled my eyes as I’d looked at it in that window shop. The longing, on so many levels, to experience, if only once, something so luxuriant and artistic and frivolous. Something so indulgently feminine.
That he’d understood, that he’d remembered, that he’d gone to the no doubt considerable trouble to fulfill my longing!
I threw myself at him. He blinked in surprise, received my agitated gratitude in a restraining embrace. “I’m all for near-death experiences, amor, but I draw the line at enucleation.”
I looked up in confusion—and realized his meaning. He looked like one of those odd-eyed cats. I’d poked out one of his contacts in my enthusiasm! “Oops.” And I burst out laughing
Still spluttering, I went down on my knees searching for the missing contact. He was behind me at once, holding my hips, thrusting against me. “Don’t mind it. I still have my black contacts. I can always pull a Marilyn Manson. We have another problem on our hands here. We’re both still nowhere near dead with satiation. I’m still way under-dosed on you.”
I twisted around, charged him, had him sprawled beneath me on the Oriental carpet-covered hardwood floor. Our gazes melted over each other then fused. The hours were ticking down to the showdown that might mean the end. We had to make them enough.
What was that adage? Live each moment as if it was you last? Sounded like a plan. One I should follow for as long as we both shall live. And the time to start was now.
My need bunched in his bleached hair, yanking it back, making him arch his neck backwards and his hips upwards. My teeth sank into his corded vitality as I sank on his erection.
Sometime, much later, I was lying curled on my side with him wrapped around me. I thought we were on the bathroom floor. I thought this had to be death. This cessation. This completion. I thought I heard myself whispering, “I think we overdid it. I think we’re really dead.”
His whisper floated down my face, as spent, as sated. “At least now you can’t say my promises stink.”
EIGHTEEN
“SO THIS IS WHAT’S called stinking rich, huh?”
My gaze moved to our surroundings at Suz’s comment. An accurate one it was, too.
We were walking into Desideria’s mansion and the affluence I’d experienced in the light of day had turned into a thousand-and-one-night atmosphere with all the extravagant trappings of festivities in the descending night. We were being preceded and followed by some of the world’s most corrupt elite.
I went back to contemplating Matt’s and Suz’s linked hands, clung to Damian’s and smiled. This sure looked way more than playing their parts for tonight.
My smile widened as I heard the sheer indulgence in Matt’s deep voice as he answered her. “Yeah. The mingling scents of power and decadence are stinking all the way to high heaven. Or in our present conditions, high hell. It’s about time we took care of some serious deodorizing.”
She giggled her appreciation of his wit. He pressed her closer as he bent to make a comment for her ears only and she burst out laughing and plastered herself to his side. There was no doubt the woman would appreciate anything from Matt’s lips, vocal or any other nature. And he was appreciating right back. Seemed she didn’t need my advice after all. Phew. Their show seemed to be well on the road. Now for it to get anywhere, all we needed to do was survive the night.
