Unchained Read online

  Drugged from her alluring scent, he straightened and drew back in surprise when she reached for something on the nightstand. Intrigued, he tried to focus on her movements. What did she grab?

  Lipstick? Drae blinked. And blinked again. When she puckered her fantastic lips and applied the lush red color, he nearly fell at her feet. When finished, she pressed her lips together, and then licked them as she pushed the tube of color into its cap with a snap.

  Mistress St. John was in the house, and he was a dead man.

  Slipping the tube of lipstick into the front of her bra, he wondered what she was up to.

  Running a polished red fingernail down the center of his chest, Victoria pouted like the princess she was and snickered when he shivered from her touch.

  “Imagining you in the shower got me thinking.”

  He didn’t say anything. Shit, he wasn’t capable of forming words, so he didn’t even try.

  She was stroking his chest and biting her bottom lip. His nipples hardened, and she rubbed her thumbs lightly over the prominent nubs.

  “You have such a beautiful body,” she murmured with a sexy drawl. “A body I want to mark like a canvas.”

  Oh, yeah? He found some words pretty damn quick. Pushing her hair behind her shoulders so he could more fully enjoy the shameless bra, he let her know with a pointed leer that she was free to do whatever she wanted.

  “I’m all yours.”

  “Are you?” she shot back.

  “Always.” His answer was just as fast. Just as vehement.

  Seeming satisfied with his response, a sly smile returned to her face. “Good. Then you won’t mind if I do a little drawing on your skin. Mark you as mine.”

  Jesus. He was more than game for whatever artwork she wanted to create. Was he a dumbass for expecting her to actually draw on his skin? Yep. That was him. D.A.D. Dumb Ass Drae.

  First, she delicately nibbled his chin then began pressing her puckered lips down his neck. Feeling Victoria’s warm breath on his bare skin awakened the sleeping wild man inside him. Shoving aside the civilized guy he’d been using as a shield, his wild man took over, encouraging his wife’s pleasurable offensive with an earthy grunt of approval.

  With her hands reverently stroking his torso, she continued moving side to side across his collarbone—leaving a trail of hot kisses wherever her mouth landed.

  He was going with the vibe, enjoying the attention, when she stopped and stepped back. She was eying him with a hunger his wild man approved of.

  “Very nice.” Lifting the tube from her bra, a motion he followed with avid interest, he finally understood what his naughty lover was up to. Uncapping the red stick once more, she applied more color, repeated the lip pucker, pout, and lick, and then smirked like the vixen he knew and loved so well.

  Without missing a beat, she leaned in again; only, this time, he grabbed hold of her arms to signal his enjoyment of her sexy assault. After that, it was kiss, nibble, and kiss some more. All over his chest—side to side, neck to navel with occasional pauses to apply more lipstick.

  When she was finished, a step back followed by a short, husky chuckle got him looking down to view her artwork.

  Her eyes twinkling with playful delight, she tossed the lipstick tube onto the nightstand where it landed with a clink. “Fuck Me Red. It’s a good color for you.”

  Witch. He snorted his amusement. And arousal. Thinking he was all big and bad now that wild man was on the scene, Drae put his hands on his hips, gave the erection pushing out the front of the towel a sardonic glance, and drawled, “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  The last thing he expected was her amused snicker. Oh, yeah—right. He almost forgot. She had her mistress act set to high. In the driver’s seat, he most certainly was not. Like a reflex test, his cock surged with approval.

  “Oh baby,” she simpered with a finger under his chin so he’d look her in the eyes. “That’s not how this is going to go.”

  Let the games begin!

  “Ah,” he growled. “So it’s a big old NO to baby girl, kitten, and slave.”

  She nodded; her eyes twinkled some more, and she laughed. “I think you’ve got the picture.”

  Slipping to the side, she circled behind him and took a moment to caress his ass, and then moved to the other side of the bed. His side—where she opened the bottom drawer of his nightstand and pulled out two wrapped coils of purple silk shibari rope and tossed them on the bed.

  Pointing, she gave him a saucy look and laid down her pleasure.

  “I want you.” The pause was deliberate. He knew this ‘cause she winked for emphasis. “Middle of the bed. On your back. Arms out.”

  He arched an eyebrow, looked at the silk rope, and arched his brow even more. They hadn’t played any games in a long time, and she wanted to be in charge. Planning to tie him to the thick spindles on the wooden headboard, she wanted him restrained.

  Drae liked this game but hesitated. Would he be able to keep some sort of control over the proceedings? With every passing second, he highly doubted it.

  They engaged in some mild eyeball combat. She never backed down, so eventually, he shrugged and gave a deep sigh.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing … mistress,” he added with silken mockery.

  Her amused laugh filled the room. “Well, we’re going to find out, now, aren’t we? Stop stalling. On the bed. Chop, chop,” she added with a clap of her hands.

  Yeah. He was going to fuck the boldness right out of Mistress Victoria the first chance he got!

  “Towel on or off?” he asked sarcastically.

  Tapping a finger on her lips, she stopped to think about it a second and then wagged her brows. “Off. Definitely off.”

  He shook his head and rolled his eyes.

  “Come on!” she encouraged. “Show me what ya got.”

  If a huge bed wasn’t between them, he might have jumped on her right then and there.

  With a flick of his wrist, the towel fell away and dropped on the floor. With as much St. John arrogance as he could pull together, he stood there with his hands at his waist while his very hard cock jutted straight out.

  “Will this do?”

  A warm rosy blush that alerted him to her arousal bloomed on her cheekbones. Victoria was a connoisseur. Of his dick. She liked looking at it and said so quite often at the start of their relationship. He missed this. Missed that look of lust and longing he saw on her face.

  Her gaze devoured. The ache in his balls was messing with his head. Climbing onto the bed on his hands and knees, Drae crawled to the center, aware of his swinging manhood with each movement. Punching a pillow, he flipped onto his back and shimmied into place. All of this he accomplished while his cock hardened even more and lay heavily on his groin.

  With none of the seriousness he expected, his naughty wife skipped happily from one side of the bed to the other—using the purple rope to secure his wrists. He pulled tentatively on the restraints. A thudding boom went off in his chest when he realized Victoria had done some bondage homework. Usually, he was confident of being able to quickly get out of her normally flimsy knots. This was different.

  Whatever unease he experienced vanished quickly when wild man spoke up. ‘This is hot. She’s hot. Let’s see where this goes.’

  She dimmed the lights. The room fell into darkness except for the warm glow of a single lamp. Approaching from the bottom of the bed, she ran her dainty hand softly up his leg from ankle to hipbone. His cock surged to full attention.

  She continued her heady caress, then stopped suddenly and retreated. Her fingers wrapped around his hardness and moved up and down. The fierce squeeze she left him with before letting go drove him to the brink of madness.

  Standing at the side of the bed, she told him to keep his eyes on her and then proceeded to slowly make him certifiably insane with a slow, seductive striptease he’d remember to his dying day.

  Her foot up on a stool. The way she lazily rolled each silk stocki
ng down her delectable legs. When she unhooked the garter belt and tossed it next to him on the bed, he moaned as one of the ribbon garters landed on his thigh.

  And then she climbed on the bed and straddled him still wearing her sheer bra and panties. Sitting on his stomach with heat pouring from her pussy, she slid her fingers into his hair, grabbed tight, and fixed him with a fearsome glare.

  He savored all of it. Her body. The way her legs straddled him. The no-nonsense way she held his head. The wicked glimmer in her eyes.

  “Do you need a safe word, my husband?”

  He heard the challenge in her voice. And the humor. They both knew she’d turned the tables and taken control.

  “No.”

  Two seconds of worry accompanied by a full-blown, “Fuck it,” followed his answer. Sense and caution abandoned, he put himself willingly in her hands.

  Permission sought and given, she took them on a slow, worshipful voyage of such deep carnality that Drae easily succumbed as her desires consumed them both.

  Primal, possessive kisses devoured—escalating to a fevered pitch. Victoria moaning, groaning, clawing, and wiggling all over him, while their tongues dueled, was like an exquisite torture. Struggling against the restraints, his frustration gnawed at his composure.

  He tried to roll his hips, but she just rose up to discourage the contact, which only frustrated him more.

  Oh, my god. She was killing him.

  At some point, he must have become a mindless knot of throbbing flesh because he didn’t remember her taking off the bra and panties. Shoving both hands beneath his head, she yanked him up and fed him a nipple. A nipple he enthusiastically lavished with attention.

  She ground against him, and he could feel her warm silken wetness coating his cock.

  “Victoria,” he growled. He meant it to be a warning, but she paid him no attention. He’d seen her like this before. Engulfed in a fever of animalistic passion so smoldering, she couldn’t stop.

  Drae had no memory of how they got from him worshipping her tits to his wife bobbing on his cock as it nudged the back of her throat. That was when it all got to be too much.

  His wild man roared and bucked, his hands pulling vigorously on the restraints. Digging his feet into the mattress, he shook from head to toe from her tempestuous sucking and tried to shake her off.

  Finally, in a voice he knew she’d hear, Drae growled sharply, “Victoria!”

  Her head instantly snapped up. Licking lips puffy and swollen from their exertions, he yanked again on the restraints and roared.

  She reacted instantly—crawling off him and quickly loosening his bonds.

  He lost no time grabbing her by the head—the purple rope still wound around his wrists—and kissing the holy hell out of her. All while flipping them till she was underneath him with her thighs spread wide.

  It was a short trip from tongue fucking to the wild man fury of the robust coupling he relentlessly pursued.

  It was savage and glorious at the same time. Overcome with a power he’d never known, Drae kept up a brutal rhythm—pounding, grunting, grinding.

  She was his. Completely. A madness came over him. When she cried out and came, he rode her orgasm to the end and simply started over again. Her guttural cries and husky grunts drove him on. She came again. Harder than the first time.

  “More,” he demanded. “More.”

  How she survived the pounding, he’d never know. Clinging to him as she sobbed her pleasure, he felt her sharp fingernails score his back when an explosive climax threw them together off the side of the highest mountain. Suspended in midair, he emptied while thrusting wildly when her pleasure drenched them as she squeezed him dry.

  It took a long, long time to float back to earth. When they landed safely, and he was sure she was okay, Drae pulled out and collapsed on the bed next to her. Drawing her close, he cradled his precious wife and kissed her softly on the forehead.

  “I love you,” he heard her murmur in a small voice.

  This time, he kissed her softly on the lips. “I will always love you.”

  As they fell asleep, his last thought before the day drifted away was, ‘Not a condom anywhere in sight.’

  “I HAVE TO go to the potty.”

  Heather looked down at Bella and searched her face. She detected a slight frisson of unease in the child’s voice and sighed. They were asking a lot of the little girl, and though Brody’s daughter was handling most of the changes in her world like a champ, there were times like these when she was just a baby. And needed the love of a parent to help her through.

  Shutting the magazine she’d been reading, Heather smiled and made a comical face.

  “Me too!”

  Glancing at Brody where he stood talking to Captain Sawyer, she had to smile at the well-mannered way Georgie sat by his feet.

  “How about we hit the ladies’ room and then maybe take the pup for one last run on the grass so he can go too.”

  “Yes, yes,” Bella agreed enthusiastically. “Can I hold the leash?”

  “Well, he’s your dog, so the answer would be yes.”

  It hadn’t taken but a hot minute after Bella’s arrival for the little girl to claim the pup as her own. Seeing how her daddy reacted and being aware of the kid’s instant attachment to the canine struck her at the time like destiny.

  Waving to Brody when he looked their way, she communicated with him by sign language and trotted off with Bella to the ladies’ room. Peeing accomplished, bum wiped, hands washed, and after a final mirror check, she looked down at her mini-me and chuckled.

  Dressed alike, they were wearing jeans, sneakers, and Justice hoodies with plain t-shirts underneath. Not very glamorous, that was for sure, but Bella developed this thing for copying whatever Heather did. So she wore the clothes they wanted the little girl to be comfortable in. The Justice branded shirts, hoodies, and baseball caps became touchstones for Bella once they explained how they were all a part of Family Justice.

  She needed to belong.

  So Brody lavished all his attention on his only daughter, sometimes earning a strong scolding from Heather when he went too far. Bella tried not to show it, but she found it funny when Daddy got his butt chewed for yet another run to the ice cream parlor or the time he lost his shit completely and bought out half the mall during a shopping excursion with just the two of them.

  It all seemed so achingly normal.

  Leaving the East Coast behind several days before they’d originally planned wasn’t anywhere near as traumatic or wrenching as she had feared. Bella’s appearance in her life delighted Heather’s parents to the point where they’d jumped on the train and come straight to Maryland the minute they learned of the child’s situation.

  At the time, poor Bella was so overwhelmed that each day was a struggle. But her mom was a pro and arrived with a very special one-of-a-kind present that changed everything.

  Explaining to the frightened, lost child that she was just the little girl to adopt Heather’s favorite childhood doll, she made a production out of unwrapping the original Cabbage Patch Kids doll named Kelly Anne that had been Heather’s most prized girlhood possession.

  Bella was entranced from the get-go. The adoption papers, the whole deal, were a thunderbolt of inspiration. To Bella, Kelly Anne was a lot like she was. A little girl hoping for a place to call home.

  Her parents took the news of them relocating to Arizona with an enthusiasm that pleased Brody and which she found bemusing.

  “Trying to get rid of me?” she’d teased her mom.

  “Oh, god no,” was the answer. “Daddy and I are just so thrilled to see you happy at last, honey. Brody is a good man, and that little girl needs you. And besides, Arizona isn’t on Mars. Even Travis thinks this is a great move, and believe me—he won’t hesitate to come visit with the kids.”

  The memory invoked the feeling she’d had earlier—that everything happening now just felt so completely normal.

  “How about some lip balm?�
� she asked while fishing around in her bag.

  Bella enthusiastically nodded.

  Finding the collection of round eos spheres she collected like pennies, Heather pulled out a purple and a pink one and asked, “Which?”

  Fiddling with her ponytail, Bella considered the choice. “Can I be purple and you be pink?”

  Dropping to her knee beside the child, Heather winked and said, “Sounds good to me.”

  Making a smooching noise through puckered lips that Bella copied, she swiped the fruity smelling balm on the child’s lips. “Give them a smack,” she teased.

  Bella giggled and blew a kiss. “My turn.”

  Heather handed over the pink eos, puckered up, and let the adorable five-year-old smash the balm onto her lips.

  Her mom handled the Chapstick ritual for them the same way when she was growing up, so that was what Heather did with Bella.

  After finishing and handing the balm back, Bella looked at her in all seriousness and asked, “How come Daddy doesn’t wear lip balm?”

  The child had a thousand questions. Maybe she should write an article, a thought she quickly dismissed. Bella wasn’t a client, and she wasn’t working a case. They were establishing a parent-child relationship, and though she wasn’t married to Brody and wasn’t sure she would ever be, the bond they were developing had Heather feeling like a mother.

  With a soft laugh, she took the child’s hand and started walking back to the terminal. “Daddy would look silly in makeup. He’s a boy, and boys don’t do what girls do.”

  “But he has long hair.”

  True. The long hair was one of the many changes she’d been adjusting to in the man. By her count, it must have been a year since he bothered with more than a trim. The first time he put it in a ponytail, she had lectured him for half an hour about how the ponytail was sexy but that he was never, ever to even think about a man bun. She had to put her foot down where that was concerned.

  Hmmm. The girl was smart and asked challenging questions, but she had an easy answer.

  “You know how sometimes we play dress up?”