Dani’s eyes flew open as Rand’s hand smacked against her backside, the pain immediate and startling. It flared out to clear the fog of sensation that had crowded into her brain, dropping her into a haze of pleasure. Within that cocoon of sensation, all she’d had to focus on was the feel of his shaft filling her, taunting her most sensitive points, the elusive game of cat and mouse that was driving her slowly and sensually toward eventual climax….
Now all that was gone.
“Hey!” she cried out, but she found herself moaning on the very heels of that word, her world turning inside out as Rand’s hand immediately began massaging the very spot he’d just slapped, kneading it deep and hard, the caress somehow transforming the pain into something very different, very intense and in the moment. Her climax was no longer a faraway, elusive possibility, but right up on her. She drew in a shaky breath to issue a request, a demand, an idea for the suggestion box, but no words came—it was as if she were incapable of speech for another precious moment, her focus going deep within herself to where there was only sensation.
Another slap pulled her out sharply once more, followed by the harsh sting of pain and the sweet swell of pleasure as Rand rubbed away the ragged edge of shock and she dropped further, further down.
“God, you are so wet,” he moaned, and the sound of his voice fractured her even more—it wasn’t meant to titillate or arouse her, it was a simple statement of fact, but a fact that was buried in its own layers of wonder, as if Rand somehow hadn’t expected the intensity of her reaction, hadn’t fully thought out how it would make him respond in turn. His shaft seemed to grow even thicker within her, and she yearned for him to go yet further, to take her completely outside of herself, so that she didn’t have to think, or plan, or do…just simply be.
The pain that came this time was more alarming because it wasn’t in the same spot—he’d moved to the other side, smacking her ass twice. The strike was sharper, harder to take, but the resulting sensation of pleasure as he softly caressed her backside dropped her down again…
She didn’t even realize what he was doing until the bed shifted and she felt Rand’s hand snake around her waist, his fingers reaching down to find her clit with unerring precision. She didn’t want to explode this quickly, didn’t want to go, but she had no choice. In mere minutes, her body seemed to come apart in his embrace, her shout of release buried in the pillow. Her body bucked against Rand in quick, percussive bursts as he rode out her orgasm, timing his movements to draw the waves of release out until she sagged beneath him, still pinned by his shaft but no longer able to process each separate sensation. It was just them together, and then the rest of the world.
Rand let her draw one breath, then a second. Then he slid deeply into her, his hands once more hard upon her ass, pulling her back to awareness. This pain was different, his fingers squeezing into the soft flesh as her mind instantly cleared and he laughed, exultant, at whatever shift he was feeling in her body. “That’s right, that’s so, so, so good,” he said between gritted teeth. He swore something under his breath, and Dani felt his hand suddenly at her shoulder as he slipped out of her. He flipped her easily onto her back, and then he was above her, his beautiful face staring down, his cock once more hard up against her entrance.
“I want to see you when I come inside you,” he said, and he slid into her again, his eyes raking over her face, her breasts. He stared at the point where their bodies joined for a long moment, then his hands somehow shackled her wrists into the deep, plush pillows as his gaze roved up her body again until it met hers. They stared at each other silently as he drove up into her, Dani allowing herself to smile at the ragged need in his face, the tightness of his jaw, the sheen of perspiration as he fought against his body’s own desperate reaction to her.
“Come for me, Rand,” she whispered. “I want to feel you letting go.”
His glare turned to one of almost desperation, and Dani’s own eyes widened in response, unable to tear herself away from the war of emotion flooding behind Rand’s eyes. He shuddered against her, his teeth clenched together as he muttered a curse. Then, as he sagged, her arms went naturally around him, pulling him into her body as his heart raced against her breasts and her fingers flattened against the myriad faint scars that lined his back. She forced herself not to trace the map-lines of his past abuse, to keep all of the harrowing images that her mind had served up for her at bay, instead picturing the tormented agony that she’d just seen in his eyes.
Rand’s control hadn’t broken; if anything, the glimpse of the pain he’d allowed her to see had given her merely a hint of the vast reservoir of anguish that he kept tamped down. She had seen just a single shred of evidence of that anguish trapped behind the glass of a photograph that Rand had probably forgotten was even still in this room. Had he ever let anyone see it all?
Rand shifted, then lifted his head. He looked down at her. “What are you thinking?” he murmured.
Her response came out too quickly for her to stop it, her mind still filled with images of that photograph tucked not twenty feet away, hidden in the bottom drawer of the antique bureau. “I saw the photographs on the dresser, Rand. All the children.”
“All the—” He looked over into the shadow-hung corner. “Ahhh…Yes. I keep meaning to clear those away.” His lips twisted. “Then again, I set my father’s prized toy train on fire when I was twelve years old. So I do have a bit of a sentimental attachment to that photo.”
Dani heard the resolution in Rand’s voice, the acceptance of a past he couldn’t change. But she couldn’t accept it, dammit. And he shouldn’t have had to accept it. “Why did he do it?” she asked, hearing the strain in her voice as Rand glanced back at her. “You were so young—”
“Shhh.” Rand’s perfectly arched brows lifted, but his gaze had turned wary. Still, he didn’t refuse the question, and after a moment he spoke, his eyes never leaving hers. “When William was born a twin, and worse, second to Catherine, Father decided to wait for a second son to carry on his name. He got that son, finally. Only I was a failure in every way.”
“But how is that even rational?” Dani protested. “You couldn’t have helped—”
“No,” Rand said, his words calm, detached. “I couldn’t have helped my mother dying, and I couldn’t have helped growing into a little boy who looked so very much like my father’s cousin instead of my father.”
“The boy in the photo.”
Another smile ghosted over Rand’s face, and he looked over at the collection of photographs once more, the silent march of Winston children atop the polished wood surface. “A mystery that was never solved, at least not to his satisfaction, or so my grandfather delighted in telling me. Thankfully for us all, however, my father could never bring himself to do a DNA test—and of course my mother wasn’t around to defend her innocence…or accept her guilt. So I remained my father’s son. And a constant, irritating thorn.”
“Good,” Dani snapped. “I hope you made his life miserable.”
At her words, Rand’s gaze shifted back to Dani’s face. Only now his eyes had changed completely. Gone was the almost desperate need she’d spied before, gone was the pain and torment. Instead, he looked at her with an expression that was almost as unnerving. It was soft and unguarded, or as unguarded as Rand ever got. His eyes searched her face, and she held herself very still, not wanting to do anything that would alter the moment, or shorten it.
Rand didn’t speak, but gradually he must have become aware of her stillness, because his smile deepened. He looked at her as if they’d just met for the first time, as if he’d just discovered she was pretty, or smart, or that he liked her smile. Dani felt curiously shy under his gaze, but before she could become too embarrassed, he leaned down to kiss her once again. She parted her lips at the brush of his, but he did not rush the kiss, did not press down on her as he had before, as if he were trying to brand her with his mark. This kiss was different.
This kiss was dangerous.
Rand breathed against Dani’s lips, touching her, tasting her, exploring her mouth with the same wonder and quest for truth that she’d just felt in his gaze. He asked instead of demanded, explored instead of pushed, and unaccountably, Dani felt the panic rise up within her even more desperately, a kind of panic that she hadn’t felt in a long time. Trapped beneath Rand’s body, her breathing suddenly grew short, her heart rate picking up. Perspiration formed on her skin and the air between them became too hot, too oppressive. She pushed against his hands and his grip on her broke easily, allowing her to shift up against his chest.
He pulled away from her, looking dazed, and Dani smiled into his eyes, drawing on every inch of training and discipline she’d developed over long and brutal years of holding herself apart. Separate.
Safe.
“Let me up?” she asked, her manner guileless. Just a girl in need of a breather, nothing to look at here.
Focus returned to Rand’s expression and he shook his head slightly. He rolled off of her, allowing her to breathe again, allowing her heart to stop its desperate hammering. “Of course. Sorry.”
“I’ll be right back,” she murmured, kissing him again. She slipped off the bed and padded away, unsure of whether he was watching her depart. She only knew that when she stepped out into his sumptuous sitting room once again, her lungs had stopped seizing and her hands had stopped trembling. In fact, she was almost normal by the time she entered the bathroom and flicked on the light.
“Holy fuck.”
She’d expected it to be palatial, of course, but Rand’s bathroom was as lavish as everything else about him. Rich mahogany wood cabinetry, granite countertops, slate-tiled floors with thick rugs. The room curved around and she saw the toilet off to the side in its own separate chamber, but her eyes were transfixed by the enormous tub that dominated one corner of the room, and the even larger walk-in shower stall, with jets that lined the wall and ceiling.
She didn’t know how long she stood there, but it must have been awhile. Because suddenly, Rand was behind her, his hands brushing her hair aside to kiss her neck. “Like what you see?” he murmured.
Dani nodded. Don’t get used to this, Dani, she informed herself sternly. And don’t let down your guard. Not here. Not now. And especially not with him. Rand didn’t wait for Dani to answer, but moved behind her to turn on the shower before gesturing her inside. Her eyes wide at the pounding water, she stepped forward as if driven by her own sensual needs, the needs that had pulled them together so many times already since they’d met. He opened the door and she glanced at him briefly, then her gaze was drawn inexorably back to the shower.
He chuckled, again feeling that strange kindling of joy inside him at surprising her. “I’ll give you a minute to enjoy it,” he said, her dazed look only serving to reignite the need inside him that never seemed to be fully sated when she was around. Still, he let her enter the shower alone, her head lolling back as the full intensity of the water pounded down on her from above.
He stood watching while the steam in the shower turned the woman inside into a misty vision. She was beautiful and hard and fierce, Dani Michaels. And she was his for this moment. He gave her a few minutes to just experience the sensation of water. When he stepped inside, however, he turned another handle farther up on the wall.
“Oh!” Instinctively, Dani’s hands moved out, blocking the new spray that jetted out from the walls.
“Shhh. You’ll get used to it.”
“It’s just…Who built this for you?” Dani’s laughter rang out in the small space and Rand moved into the barrage of water and pulled her up against his body, tensing slightly until Dani relaxed against him.
“You like it?”
“Yeah. I like it.” She dropped her head against his chest and he stood there, content to let him hug her in the center of the spray. Her body was no longer rigid, the way it had been on the bed; her defenses were no longer engaged. She didn’t sag against him in defeat, but neither was she sinking into his embrace. Instead, she seemed alert, on her game. He wondered at that, but her vigilance pleased him on a soul-deep level. Dani hadn’t given up completely. She was still hiding something, holding back. He didn’t kid himself into thinking she was his just because he had an amazing shower and an alpaca-yarn blanket.
Not that those didn’t have their uses, of course…
Rand kissed her softly on her head, and she slid her arms around him, her hands running over the water-slicked skin of his back and legs. With the sensory overload of the shower, his nerves didn’t prickle with the sensation of unease at someone touching his back. After all, the water was pounding at them both from all angles—what was one more touch, one more caress?
The scene at Darke still teased and tantalized him, the image of Dani’s face as she met his gaze—filled with panic, terror almost, yet a terror leavened with a desire so visceral he was sure she didn’t know it was there. And yet he’d seen it. He’d been close enough to touch it. If only he could coax it out into the open again…
Dani shifted beneath him, and he realized that he was holding her more closely now. He forced himself to relax his arms, allowing her to align her body to his easily. She felt just right in his arms. She hadn’t seemed intimidated by him, or put off by anything he’d shared; neither had she looked too deeply past his careful words about his past to what might lie beneath. And yet her eyes had been filled with such an odd expression….
As if sensing his conflicting emotions, Dani turned in his arms, fitting her long, lean body up against his. Her breasts pressed against the broad planes of his chest, her soft thighs met his. Heat surged between them as his shaft was trapped by the movement, and instantly, his body responded. He breathed out a hiss as he felt her fingers wrap loosely around his cock, and Dani’s low, throaty laugh drew most of his thoughts out of his brain.
Every thought except one, anyway.
Rand pressed Dani back against the wall, the water dancing around them with muscle-melting heat, the nozzles spraying them now at odd angles as they turned the chamber to more intimate uses. His mind chased down dark and twisting paths as Dani writhed beneath him, knocking at the boundaries of where he wanted to go with her, what he wanted to do. Just being with her brought him to a level of wonder and need that was almost intoxicating in and of itself, and then the sexual satisfaction of driving himself into her took it all to a new level. He wanted more than just to guide her pleasure, he realized; he wanted to own that pleasure, to embody it.
He wanted her to need only him.
He could do it, too. She was a lock to which he’d found the key, he was almost certain.
“What are you thinking?” Dani’s voice was deliberately slow and languorous as she shifted against him, letting him sink more deeply inside her. But her eyes betrayed an almost instinctive understanding that the tides were shifting between them, shifting in a way that she couldn’t control.
“I’m thinking this feels really good,” Rand said, leaning down to lick the water off her lips, his hands sliding down the contours of her waist to anchor her to the wall. “I’m thinking you agree.”
She smiled against his mouth. “Guilty as charged,” she said. She met him thrust for thrust, and he didn’t wait any longer, spilling into her as she sighed and braced herself against the shower wall, her eyes glazing over with pleasure. Almost losing herself to the experience, he noticed, but not quite.
She flinched as the angle of his shaft grazed against areas already hypersensitized and twitching with need, and Rand deliberately held his position, drawing back to watch her eyes lift to his. He could see the moment she regained control of her body, sliding back from the precipice toward which he was guiding her, their lovemaking now becoming a subtle game of one-upmanship.
But this was a game he knew very well. This was a game he would win.
Had to win, he realized. Dani had already wormed her way into his every waking thought, and now she was breaching his sleep as well, his fantasies. If he didn’t move quickly, she was going to be in the wind again, just as he would be. He was already overdue for travel: L.A. London. Geneva. Dubai. A lot of places to forget in and to build new memories that would take the place of the ones he was creating right now.
Or at least he goddamned hoped so.
But, first, he had to finish what he had begun. And for that, he needed no distractions, no interruptions. No brother bursting in on him at dinnertime or sister demanding his presence among their blue-blooded friends. No campaign volunteers or statisticians or even his own company on the phone, claiming his attention, his thoughts.
No. He needed only him and Dani, and enough time to burn this need of his to the ground.
He leaned down and whispered into Dani’s ear.
“I have a proposition.”