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“God, you’re so beautiful,” I murmured. “So beautiful. And all mine. ”

  “Say it again, baby. Tell me I’m yours. ”

  I stood at the foot of the bed, drinking in her beauty, thickening into erection as I stared at her. “You’re mine, Kyrie. ”

  “Yes. I’m yours. ” She reached for me. “Come here, Valentine. ”

  13

  FILLED

  Valentine climbed onto the bed and knelt between my knees. I brought my heels flush against my thighs, opening for him, staring up at him. His skin was coated in a sheen of sweat, his abs tensing with each gusting breath. His huge, strong, gentle hands rested on his knees, and his blond hair was damp and tangled, his beard thick.

  With the beard he looked even more like a Norse god, six feet, four inches of toned muscle and bronzed skin. Although, in the months since we’d left for our world tour, he’d put on weight and lost some of the carefully honed perfection of his physique, not having regular access to a gym. I liked him better this way, though. The too-long, unkempt hair loose just above his shoulders with the untrimmed beard made him look even more rugged, and the loss of tone made him softer to snuggle against, made him seem even bigger. He was still a ripped and bulky giant of a man, but one less perfectly presented. More of a real living and breathing man with flaws rather than a polished and meticulously sculpted paragon of male beauty.

  Now, naked, sweaty, breathing hard, his cock growing huge and hard and still gleaming with the essence of our lovemaking, he was a different kind of perfect. The obvious emotion in his eyes, the way he passed his hand through his hair with careless roughness, the way he stared at me as if nothing and no one else existed…it made my heart melt.

  He still wasn’t totally okay. He wouldn’t be for a while, I didn’t think. But he was here. He was with me. He loved me.

  “Okay” was a relative and often meaningless term, I was learning. Had I been okay during the years following Dad’s death? Not really. I’d been the farthest thing from okay the day I’d walked into my dark, empty, cold apartment with a handful of overdue bills and one mysterious check.

  Was I okay now? Not really. Nothing was solved. Nothing was fixed. I’d seen things I’d never forget, things I knew I’d dream about, nightmares from which I’d wake up screaming. But I had Valentine, and he was refusing, as I was, to let it bury him. He’d pushed through his doubts and fears, refused to succumb. He’d taken back the part of himself I was worried he’d lost.

  “Kyrie. ” His voice was low, a rumble of distant thunder in the darkness.

  “Love me, Valentine. Just…love me. ” I reached for him, wrapped my fingers around his thick cock, rubbed my thumb over the broad head, and stroked him until he was pushing into my touch.

  I pulled him toward me, a gentle urging. He let me guide him, shuffling forward on his knees until I could feed his massive erection into myself. He surged forward, filling me, and I fought the urge to close my eyes, needing instead to see into him, to watch him, to know his every expression and reaction. He caught my heels in his hands and lifted, fitting my feet into his underarms, hands resting on my shins. A thrust, then, slow and soft, a long inward glide to bring our bodies flush. Another. A third, and then he was moving into me with increasing speed, and I felt his huge hardness inside me, filling me, stretching me, and I kept my eyes on him, watched his muscles tense and flex and go slack, watched his belly tighten as he thrust, watched his face morph expressions: need, hunger, focus, desire, appreciation, lust, love. He was going slow, holding back. I held still and let him move for both of us.

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  Silence, except for the background of Manhattan, a wash of sound I didn’t even register. Just us, together. Him, breathing and moving, the wet sound of our sex, his eyes hooded and fixed on me, moving from my eyes to where we were joined, watching himself slide into me, pull back, slide in. I slid my heels up and over his shoulders, urged him closer, used the power in my legs to pull at him until he was leaning over me.

  He growled at me, and leaned over me, leaving me no choice but to be curled in on myself, or let go my hold on him with my legs. I released him and let my legs fall to the bed, and he leaned back, burying himself fully inside me. His palms skated over my thighs, down the length of my legs and back up, smoothing along my calves and the tender underside of my knees and then the backs of my thighs. He wasn’t thrusting, but held himself motionless, pulling back from the urge to climax.

  He wrapped his hands around the backs of my knees, held me there, my knees slightly bent, feet flat on the bed. I watched him, saw the determination in his eyes.

  I sucked in a sharp breath as he pulled out with excruciating slowness and then fluttered the tip of his cock against my clit, rubbing against me in a way that sent sun-hot waves of wildfire scorching through me, making me curl forward and lift my hips off the bed.

  “Oh god, Valentine. I’m—I’m gonna—”

  “What, Kyrie? You’re going to what?”

  “Come…. ”

  “Good. Come for me, love. ” He gripped his big shaft in one fist and pushed the head of his dick against my throbbing clitoris, rubbing in slow forceful circles. “Come for me, Kyrie. Come…right…now. ”

  I came. I had no choice. The low growl of his command, the feel of him against my sensitive little bundle of nerves, the look on his face, and the need in him to be in control…he owned me. He commanded me, and I obeyed. I came hard, writhing up off the bed, and in that moment he pushed into me, eliciting a scream from me as my tensed and squeezing pussy was speared open and filled by him.

  “Oh, fuck, Kyrie. Fuck, you feel so good. So fucking good. ” He pulled back slowly and thrust in hard, the way he liked to do, and I screamed again, my climax burning hotter and hotter within me, leaving me no choice but to fuck against him and scream and scream and scream as he moved inside me. “So tight. So perfectly tight around me. ”

  “Please, Valentine…please come with—with me,” I begged him.

  He groaned and fell forward. I wrapped my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck, holding his nape with one hand and his head with the other, clutching him to me and rocking into his thrusts. And then, without warning, I rolled us so I was on top of him, straddling him. He tensed, his eyes flicking open, and I watched him fight the memory of being restrained in this position. I looked down at him, rocked my hips and ground my ass against him, burying him deeper.

  “Feel me, Valentine,” I whispered. “You feel that?”

  I lifted my hips until he was totally free of my body, bracing my weight with a palm on his chest. His eyes moved, sought mine, and his hands fisted into the sheets. I slipped him into my opening and slowly slid myself down around him, groaning a sigh as he filled me, feeling each inch of his thick, hard cock.

  “I feel you, Kyrie,” he growled, and his hips moved, thrusting himself up and into me.

  I writhed on him, seating him deeper, and then rose up, fluttered my hips to feather his tip just barely inside me, teasing him, daring him to move more, move harder, to take this, to take me.

  I felt him break through the pain and fear that came with being straddled and begin to fuck me in earnest. For himself now, rather than for me. I was still crazed with the aftershocks of my climax, and each thrust made me gasp and shriek, caused me to involuntarily grind against him, meeting him thrust for thrust. His fucking became wild then. He lifted my breast to his face and sucked my nipple between his teeth, his hips driving hard and fast, relentless, crazed.

  He suckled my tit and fucked me hard, and I held him against me and clutched him with my legs and took it all, loved it all. I wanted to feel him come apart above me and in me and all around me. I needed to feel him take his pleasure and milk it all from him.

  “Kyrie, I’m there. I’m coming, Kyrie. ”

  “Yes, Valentine, come for me. Come inside me. Shoot your come in me. I want it. Right now, baby. Right now, m
y love. ” I leaned over him, rocking back and forth as hard and fast as I could, wild myself now with his breaking orgasm. I felt his rhythm stutter, felt him let my nipple fall from his mouth, then heard his groan against my breasts, his face buried between my tits, his hips drilling against mine with crashing force. I urged him on, whispered his name over and over.

  He shook beneath me, stared up at me, all the universe shrunk down to this one moment. “Kyrie…. ” he breathed.

  I kept my eyes locked on his as he exploded inside me with a shout, jetting hot wetness deep inside me, over and over. He filled me with his come, and the sensation of him losing control inside me had me quaking and shaking, an orgasm of my own rocketing through me, a slow, deep, burning pulsation that began in my bones and my gut and spread through me like wildfire.

  “God, yes, Valentine, yes, I love you, I love feeling you come. Give it all to me. Give me every drop. ” I crushed my tits between us and bit his shoulder, kissed his temple and ground myself against him, needing him deeper and deeper so I could come with him. “Don’t stop yet, love. Come inside me some more. ”

  He palmed both globes of my ass and moved with me, our bodies pressed together from head to toe, merged and enmeshed and tangled together, our legs twined. Buried inside me, he could only grind his hips to milk his climax, in so doing drawing more from me.

  Finally he rolled with me, cradling me against his chest and drawing the blanket over us. “I love you with everything that I am, Kyrie Abigail St. Claire. ” His words were a low murmur.

  I was already nearly asleep, but I heard him. “I love you more than that. ”

  “More than everything?”

  “Yep. ”

  A silence as we both drifted toward sleep. “I believe you,” he mumbled.

  * * *

  I woke up on my side, Roth’s hands roaming my torso, cupping my tits, and then digging his fingers down and down into my core. Before I was even fully awake, he was pushing into me, and I was murmuring a sleepy protest of surprise. But then he was in me and I was waking up, and his fingers were skillfully bringing me to life. He surged into me, and I reached behind my head to hold his face against my neck, gasping as he thrust into me with a steady rhythm.

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  No foreplay, no drawing it out. No multiple orgasms. No words exchanged. Just dawn flushing the shadows from the corners and alleys and glass-and-steel canyons, horns blaring and voices shouting and laughing, engines revving, and Roth deep inside me, fingers on me, mouth on me. Just our lazy morning love, his breathing coming in pants and gasps, mine in whimpers.

  We came together, hard and fast, less than five minutes after he entered me.

  I fell back asleep with him still inside me.

  I woke up with the sun high, the sheets rumpled at my hips, Roth’s eyes on me from where he sat on the balcony, dressed in shorts and nothing else, a mug of tea in his hands.

  “Hey, baby,” I said, sitting up.

  “Good morning, beautiful. ” He gestured at the bedside table. “There’s coffee for you there. ”

  I grabbed the mug and sipped greedily at the still-steaming coffee. “How’d you know when I would wake up?”

  He grinned. “If we have dawn sex, you always wake up again around ten, ten-thirty. You think I don’t know your patterns by now?”

  I smiled at that and wrapped the flat sheet around my chest, moving to join him on the balcony. He snagged me as I passed in front of him, making me giggle and hold the mug away from us as coffee sloshed over the side. “You’re making me spill!”

  “What a tragedy. ” He pulled me down onto his lap, and I wiggled my bottom against him to find a comfortable position, and then we settled in to drink, neither of us needing to speak, just enjoying the morning and each other’s presence.

  Once I’d finished my coffee, he stood up with me, parting the sheet and patting me on the ass. “Go take a shower, my lovely, sticky girl. ”

  “You made me sticky,” I said.

  “Yes, I did,” he said with a grin.

  “Why don’t you join me?” I suggested, looking up at him with an innocent expression.

  “Because if I do, we’ll never leave this room. And as much as I would like to spend the next few days fucking you until you can’t walk, we have an enemy looking for us. ”

  I sobered at that thought. “And this is the first place she’ll look. ”

  He shook his head. “She already knows we’re here, no doubt. ”

  “What are we going to do?”

  He nudged me toward the bathroom. “Go take a shower. I’ve got some ideas, but I need to run them by Harris. ”

  Worry had me frozen in place. “I’m scared, Roth. ”

  His expression darkened, and he held my shoulders in his hands, eyes going hard. “She fucked with the wrong man. Kidnapping me was a mistake. Trying to have you killed? Threatening you?” His voice was razor sharp and ice cold. “That was the wrong thing to do. ”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Finish this. ” The malice in his eyes made me recoil in fear.

  I touched his bare chest with my palm. “Valentine…just don’t—please, don’t do anything rash. Be careful. Okay?”

  His brows lowered. “I think we’re past that point, my love. Well past it. ”

  “Just make me one promise, then, please?”

  “If I can. ”

  “Don’t try to hide me, and don’t leave me behind. No matter what. ”

  He didn’t answer for several moments. Eventually, he backed away, out of my touch. “There will be blood, Kyrie. ”

  I swallowed hard. “I know. ” I refused to let him retreat from me, no matter the circumstances. I circled my arms around his neck and put my cheek to his heartbeat. “Promise me, Valentine. ”

  Minutes passed. “You have my word. ”

  14

  THE VIPER STRIKES

  I stepped out of the shower, dried off, and wrapped the towel around my chest. Roth wasn’t in the bedroom, so I assumed he was in his office. I dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, brushed my hair out and pulled it back in a ponytail, not bothering with makeup.

  Still no Roth.

  Something in the pit of my stomach churned: something was off.

  I padded down the hall in my bare feet to his office, finding it empty. Not in the gym. “Roth?” I called out. “Where are you?”

  No answer.

  I checked the kitchen, the dining room, the larger industrial kitchen, the foyer and sitting room, and finally, the library. The library was a huge cathedral of a space, shelves lining the walls from floor to ceiling. There were two floors of shelves, nooks and crannies with overstuffed chairs and reading lamps and small tables. I moved through the library, checking each reading nook, and then ascended to the upper floor. My skin tingled, my stomach heavy as lead, blood running ice cold in my veins. Something was very, very wrong. I should go back to the private quarters, remain behind the biometric lock separating the rest of the house from Roth’s rooms.

  Wait for Roth, the thought hammered at me.

  But I didn’t listen. I moved from stack to stack, hands trembling, barely daring to breathe.

  The last nook I checked, in the farthest corner of the upper floor, was one with a huge black leather chair with a matching ottoman. Usually the chair faced toward the library, but as I approached, I saw that it had been turned away to face the corner. A hand was visible, resting on the arm of the chair. The hand was slim and feminine, the nails long and painted cherry red.

  “Kyrie. ” The voice was low and smooth and sultry, lightly accented. “Do join me. ”

  I backed away, two steps, three. But then stopped, frozen, as the visible hand retreated and reappeared, this time holding a compact pistol.

  “Don’t make me end this too quickly, my dear. ” The barrel of the pistol pointed at the other chair, which had been dragged ov
er from another nook. “Now, Kyrie. ”

  On shaky legs, knowing I’d made a mistake, I circled around and sat in the chair she’d indicated. Facing me was Gina Karahalios. I didn’t need an introduction to know it. She was tall and poised and beautiful. Long black hair pulled in a twist over one shoulder, skin naturally tanned and artificially wrinkle-free, eyes dark as shadows and colder than ice, glinting at me in amusement. She wore a green dress, expensive, cut to cling to her curves, the neckline scooped deep, a string of fat black pearls draping her neck and nestled in her falsely enormous cleavage. A Chanel handbag sat on her lap.

  I swallowed my fear and tried to keep the tremble from my voice. “Gina. What do you want?”

  She smiled, a predatory curve of artificially plump lips. “A lot of things. But right now, you. And I have you. ”

  “Where is Roth?”

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  “Val, you mean?” She winked at me. “He’s dealing with a…distraction. ”

  “Do what you want to me, but leave him alone. ”

  She laughed, a bell-like sound of hilarity. “Oh my. How very original of you. I don’t think so, though. I’ll do what I want with you, and then I’ll do what I want with him. I’m afraid much of it will hurt rather a lot. ”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” She peered at me from beneath thickly mascaraed lashes. “Because I always get what I want. I want Val. And I want you to suffer for daring to touch what is mine. ”

  She reached into her Chanel bag and withdrew a small metal cylinder, which she screwed onto the barrel of her gun.

  “He’s not yours, Gina. He never was, and never will be. And if you lay a hand on me, all you’ll succeed in doing is making him even more angry. ”

  Her hand shifted slightly, and the gun popped with a short, sharp bark. A hot, piercing pain slammed into my knee, and I screamed, clutching my leg, watching the blood gush, thick and bright.

  “He’s so very sexy when he’s angry, don’t you agree?” She sounded so calm, as if we were two girlfriends talking about a mutual crush.

  I could only scream breathlessly, the agony blasting through me and stealing oxygen from my lungs, the pulse from my veins, thought from my mind. I heard the click of a cell phone camera, and looked up through tears to see Gina touching the screen of a pink-and-diamond encased iPhone, and then heard the telltale sound of a sent message. She slithered up off the chair, smoothed the front of her dress, tugged the scooped neckline down to better prop up her cleavage, and then moved to kneel beside me. Raising her cell phone, she held it up to get a downward angle, capturing the agony on my face and the bloody wreck of my knee, pressed the barrel of her pistol to my temple, and then—click—took a selfie.

  I watched her send it to Roth.

  I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t even breathe. The pain was excruciating, beyond anything I’d ever even imagined. I couldn’t even sob.