The Price of Pleasure Read online

  “I hope you’ll let me pamper you for a little while.”

  She nodded because she couldn’t speak. Her breath caught in her chest when she looked into the depths of his eyes. In them, she saw more than a man who wanted more than just to sleep with her. In the swirl of green and browns was a conflagration threatening to break free.

  “Jesse—“

  “Here.” He picked up a strawberry and let it rest gently against her lips. “Take a bite.”

  She sank her teeth into the soft flesh of the fruit and pulled it into her mouth. The sensual sweetness and the floral fragrance sent her senses on a joyride. “That’s heavenly.” Her eyelids fluttered open, and she stopped chewing when she saw his face. “What’s wrong?”

  He swallowed hard. “You’ve got the most beautiful lips I have ever seen in my life. Here. Take a bite of this too.”

  Eden ran her tongue over her mouth and noted with some satisfaction that Jesse looked as though someone had just stolen the oxygen from the air. If nothing else, the man knew how to make her feel desirable. Perhaps he deserves if I purse my lips just a little more when I bite into the fig…

  “Fuck,” he whispered after she pulled the fruit from his fingertips. His gaze traced her lips. She could almost feel the heat trail. Jesse picked up a piece of pineapple. “And this.”

  “Wait!” She giggled, and then swallowed. “I’ll choke if you keep shoving things at me. Why don’t you eat something too?”

  He shook his head, pushing the succulent fruit to her mouth. “Bite.”

  Her heart pounded as she accepted piece after piece from him. The way he picked over the morsels, always seeming to find the best pieces sent her pulse racing. She all but had to force him to take some of the food for himself. He ate quickly, his attention always returning to her needs.

  He seemed content to just feed her all night if she let him. She almost could. The way his fingers grazed her chin to wipe runaway juice held more promise than anything he could say.

  Had she actually been scared of what tonight would bring? She’d set herself up to experience this man in ways she’d fantasized about since that first brief encounter via teleconference, of all things. Something about the gentle voice, punctuated by his assertive outbursts of cursing made her laugh and her heart soar.

  Sure there had been a brief moment of hesitation over whether he would be interested in a woman of a different race, but the way he watched her intently right now chased away any doubts. Jesse Englund was hers for the night. She only had to step up and claim him.

  Eden pulled the strawberry from his fingers before he could offer it to her. Closing her eyes, she sucked him into her mouth and swirled her tongue slowly, seductively over the tips of his fingers. The moan he emitted was so soft she almost thought she imagined it. When she looked at him again, she smiled. There was nothing imagined about the heat in his eyes.

  “Why don’t we take this upstairs?” she asked.

  Chapter Five

  Never before had he realized that watching a woman eat could make his cock as hard as it was at this moment. The way her lips moistened from escaped juice. The way her pink tongue darted out to catch the drips. Every movement was a walking ad for sex.

  She probably didn’t know it, but the cute little skirt she wore rode up on her thighs every time she leaned forward. It never went high enough for him to glimpse her hidden treasures, but the sneak peak of her toned thighs made his heart thump.

  Christ. Who was he kidding? Everything she did either made his erection pulse or his heartbeat race. Eden kept him mesmerized. Not just the promise of great sex, but the innocence of her expressive eyes. He had a feeling she hadn’t meant for her proposition to go as far as it had. When he told her she wouldn’t be allowed to back out, the prompt had been for shock value. Now that she followed him upstairs to his bedroom, the urge to possess her body just once consumed him.

  He walked to the lamp by his bed and turned it on. She stood in the doorway, not entering, watching his movements. The deep breath she took didn’t escape his notice.

  He asked, “Are you okay?”

  “Fine.”

  Eden’s gaze trained on his hands when he loosened the top button of his shirt. She tracked him opening the next one and then the next.

  Her fingers gripped her own clothing like a lifeline. The vice-like grip and her wide-eyed glances around the room oddly calmed him. She was anything but okay, but he would change that right now.

  “Come here.”

  She began to stammer. “Jesse… I don’t…I’m not…”

  “Second thoughts?” His body tensed for her reply, and he sent a quick reminder to himself to breathe.

  “No, that’s not quite it.” She shook her head. “I just don’t want you to think…”

  He approached her slowly. “Think what?”

  “I just blurted it out, okay?” Her gaze dropped to the floor. “I didn’t start out with the intention of making this ludicrous proposal. And now that I’m here, as stupid as it will sound after I offered you half a million dollars for an orgasm…”

  Just as he suspected, then. She got caught up in her own invention and, too late, realized she couldn’t back out. Or, maybe she didn’t want to back out? Still, she started it. He would finish it.

  “For a total of five orgasms,” he interrupted. Jesse could reach out to touch her now, but the move could be interpreted any number of ways, and she was already spooked. He needed to calm her some other way for now.

  But he would touch her. All over. Explore everywhere.

  “What?” Her head snapped up again. “Right…Whew. Five of them. Listen—it’s just that…I’m not a slut, okay?”

  The distance that separated them irritated him. He needed to get closer. This just wasn’t close enough. Not yet. Not until he could inhale her cherry blossom fragrance again. Feel the warmth emanate from her skin.

  The shame in her voice tossed aside his original plan of maintaining a separation. He stepped closer and slid a hand over her cheek to cup her face. “I never thought that for a moment.”

  “But Jesse…” Her eyes widened even further and he slid his other hand over her slender neck.

  “Shh. Just kiss me, okay? Kiss me.” Because if she didn’t, he would combust from the need to taste her.

  Her eyes were compelling and magnetic, but the draw of her lips consumed him. For a moment—just a brief instant—he let Eden have the opportunity to pull away. To deny him. He lowered his head, and her big, brown eyes closed.

  It gave him all of the encouragement he needed.

  Soft. From this moment, he knew the true meaning of the word. Her lips against his spoke to him of gentleness, tenderness. Before today, his imagination would have needed years of schooling to come close to predicting how she would feel beneath him. And it would have still been dead wrong.

  He drank in her taste, breathed in her air. His fingers ached with the need to travel over her, and memorize her details but he didn’t dare move them. He couldn’t chance ending this kiss. Wouldn’t let anything interrupt his mouth over hers.

  When she wrapped her arms around him and pulled him closer, Jesse’s heart stopped. It must have stopped. One minute it beat a thousand thumps a minute, and in the next, the world stood still. He willed it into action again because men didn’t feel like this. Not because of a kiss. Not because of one woman’s touch.

  Oh fuck. That little sound she made? His cock ached to distraction already. If she made another little noise like that, he wouldn’t be able to help himself. He needed to slow down. Return the focus to her and seal their little proposition right now, but too much clothing separated him from her. He wanted so badly to make her come. A long, drawn out, toe curling orgasm that forced her to scream from the ecstasy of it. Oh yeah. He could do that and he would.

  Eden pressed herself against him as a shudder of delight washed over her. The man tasted wild and sweet all rolled into one. The soft curls on his chest tickled her skin, and she
reached up to him, snaking her fingers into them. The insistent beat of his heart vibrated beneath her palm. If his erection making its presence known against her abdomen didn’t exist, the rhythmic beat shared his secret: Jesse wanted her.

  His tongue teased into her mouth. She met him boldly. Distracted by his mouth, the movement of his lips over her, and his fresh taste, somehow, her clothing left her body one piece at a time. The goosebumps prickling her skin as his hands trailed over her naked flesh aroused her consciousness.

  “Why am I the only one without clothes on?” Her swollen lips curved into a playful smile.

  “Because, this is for you. All of it...just for you, beautiful.”

  She tugged his shirt from his waist. “I had something else in mind though. It involved you, me…” she jerked her head to the bed, “…and that.”

  “Later,” he muttered before swooping in for another heart wrenching kiss.

  Eden pulled away slightly after a moment. Her lips grazed his as she spoke. “You’ll give me a complex.”

  The statement got his attention, and his eyebrows narrowed together. “No, not you. You have a bit of an exhibitionist in you.” He let out a soft laugh. “Don’t bother to look at me like that. I know it’s true, and I’ll prove it. Sit on the bed for a minute. I’ll be right back.”

  When the bed released a soft sigh after she got on it, heat crept up her neck. Exhibitionist? Is that what he really thought? She could barely manage to stay still on the bed while uncovered. The urge to slide beneath the sheets until he returned wreaked havoc on her agitated nerves. She settled for crossing her arms over her bare breasts.

  With his hands behind his back, Jesse stalked back into the bedroom with a glint in his eyes. She tried to peer at what he hid, but he kept whatever it was protectively covered.

  “Turn around.”

  Her eyebrows arched, but she complied. Something that rattled met the top of the nightstand, but that was the extent of her knowledge. “Should I be scared?”

  “No.”

  “Can I ask what you’re doing?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to tell me eventually?”

  “Can you trust me for a little while?”

  She shifted as she mulled the question over. To stall, she replied, “Can I?”

  His reply was quick. “Oh, yeah.” The bed dipped behind her as he positioned himself. “Close your eyes.”

  Cool, silky material dropped down and covered her eyes and the bridge of her nose. Instinctively, she brought her hand to her face and held it in place as Jesse tightened the strip behind her head. Opening her eyes against it, she blinked several times. Nothing but darkness greeted her.

  “Now,” he said. “I want you to kneel. Mmm…just like that. Spread your thighs a little farther apart. Clasp your hands together behind your back, now. Oh, Eden…that’s perfect.”

  Heat flushed over her neck straight to the tips of her pebbled nipples. The position made her breasts thrust out so they must have screamed ‘wanton’ to Jesse. Like this, her ass couldn’t help but proudly display itself too. The mental image overwhelmed her.

  “Jesse—” Uncertainty crept into her voice.

  He grasped her shoulders, then slid his large hands down her arms. “You’re not bound. Not this time…If anything becomes too much for you, if you want to stop, take off that blindfold. We won’t do anything you don’t like, I promise.”

  The flick of his tongue over her earlobe was so sudden and—oh, God—delicious, she shivered.

  “Nothing, beautiful, that you can’t handle.”

  Somewhere deep in her mind, she recognized that her breathing labored in her chest. Blindfolded and on display before him, she knew she could trust him and that he sought only her pleasure.

  The bed shifted and her eyes flew open behind the cloth. Unaware she’d even closed them in the first place, Eden turned her head, trying to capture the sounds of his movements. She knew he no longer sat on the bed with her, but that was all she could determine.

  “Don’t move.” His voice floated to her from the right.

  She started when something stroked softly against the side of her neck. Eden turned into it and followed the trail it created as it traveled her body by arching toward it. Every move she made attempted to anticipate its path.

  It moved from her neck, slowly traveled over her collarbones. When it circled the fleshy curve of her breast, she swallowed hard.

  “What is that?” she whispered.

  He didn’t reply. The tortuous trail continued uninterrupted. She couldn’t help herself when she shifted toward him again. She jutted her breasts out, and sought more of the feather-light stroke. The soft sound of Jesse’s chuckle sent another blush of heat that led straight to her pussy.

  The man knew what he was about. He teased her breasts with maybe a feather or some kind of fur, ignoring her aching nipples and focused on the outline of her curves.

  She sucked in her stomach when the trail slid over her belly button. It must have been knowing that he was heading south, heading to where she ached most, that did it. Her sex perfumed the room in a rush. Cool air between her thighs tickled the gathering moisture.

  His husky voice dropped close to her ear. “I bet if I touched you right now, you’d be so wet. Wouldn’t you, Eden?”

  She licked her lips and nodded. Successfully stifled a moan when the strokes snaked over her hip and followed the join of her thigh.

  “Do you think I should? Should I touch you there? Right where you want me to?”

  Her mouth was parched. She licked her lips again. “Please.”

  He continued over her thigh and stroked softly over the inside. He came close, but not nearly close enough to her wetness. “No. Not yet.” Then the touch left her, and she could have screamed her frustration.

  Every nerve ending she possessed was a howling, jumbled mess. Her mental assurances to herself that he would not just leave her hanging on the brink of a precipice brought her little comfort. When one minute of nothing happening stretched into two, she became uneasy. Another minute of silence passing had her straining to hear a sound from him. Anything.

  “Jesse?”

  She heard it then. The soft rustle of clothing as it dropped onto the carpeted floor. Then without warning, his warm erection pressed against her thigh as he dropped a kiss onto her shoulder.

  A hundred carnal thoughts swirled in her mind, each trying to beat the other one for supremacy. She ended up focused on two things: how hard he was and his size. His incredible size.

  Too quickly, he took himself away. Eden almost reached up. Almost took the blindfold away. She wanted to see him. Touch him. Taste him.

  He seemed to sense her thoughts, and another low chuckle peppered the air. “It’s gonna be worth the wait.”

  If her heart could stand the wait. Yeah. It would be fantastic.

  Even now, her moisture made her thighs slick. Her clit was so hard it almost hurt. Still outthrust, her breasts ached for attention. She needed to take control of this situation.

  “Jesse?” She kept her voice low and submissive. “Can I have some more, please?”

  Chapter Six

  He had worked quickly to remove her clothing item by item. If not for the promise of participating in much more, he would have taken the time to revel in the beauty of her nudity. The blindfold had been inspired. The resultant pose a work of art. He couldn’t get over the chocolate tips of her upturned breasts or the way her brown thighs hummed, taut with expectation.

  Jesse made a decision and reached for a nearby item on the tray. He held the item to her nose. “What’s this Eden?”

  She shifted her head from side to side. Her hands reached out blindly.

  “No, beautiful. No touching. Hands behind your back again, please…Good. Now tell me, what is this? Smell… “

  Her smile was infectious. “Cherries.”

  “Right.” He dragged the column lightly over her cheek and neck. “Now tell me what it is.�
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  He licked his lips and watched with anticipation. She would be stumped by its perfect smoothness. He moved it over her chest and circled a puckered areola. He wouldn’t touch it or her nipple. Not yet.

  Her chest expanded toward him as she took a shuddering breath. His gaze followed the curve of her breasts and memorized the details. The urge to bend down and take her into his mouth screamed at him.

  He fought his urges and his hand continued its journey further down. He stopped to circle her bellybutton, then forged a trail through her dark, glistening curls. A single stroke over her swollen lips caused her to tilt her pelvis towards him. The moan that accompanied it made his heavy cock throb even harder and he didn’t think that possible.

  “Any guesses yet?” He cleared his throat. Even to him, his voice sounded strangled.

  “Can I get a hint?”

  “Well, I can use it for something it’s not intended for.” He took a deep breath. This was it. “It might give you a hint.”

  “Okay.”

  Her guileless reply and the knowledge of what he was about to do almost made him come right there. And that would have been a real shitter on the night. Thank God for a memorized list of batting averages.

  He closed his eyes and counted to ten. With a more reined in sense of control, he dropped to his knees before the bed, in perfect sight of her beckoning nether lips. Careful not to touch her clit—not yet—he circled the entrance of her beauty.

  When he pushed upward, he watched her face. Her hissed inhale of breath and the slow exhale drew out into a moan of rapture. He slid into her wetness with ease and her mouth parted. Eden’s hips rocked gently with him, matching the rhythm with which the item in his hand fucked her.

  Her head lobbed back and she released two quick panting breaths. “Oh, God.”

  He could have stayed like that for hours. Sliding it in and out of her slick heat. Listening to her ragged breathing.

  The torture of unfulfilled need drove him. Her breaths came faster. The trembling spread over taut limbs. With a wicked grin to himself, he pulled out all the way. Too overheated just wouldn’t do. Not yet.