The Affair: Week 4 Read online

  The Affair Serial

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  Because You Are Mine Series

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  BECAUSE WE BELONG

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  Titles by Beth Kery

  WICKED BURN

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  The Affair

  Week Four

  Beth Kery

  InterMix Books, New York

  INTERMIX BOOKS

  PUBLISHED BY THE PENGUIN GROUP

  PENGUIN GROUP (USA) LLC

  375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014, USA

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  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  THE AFFAIR WEEK FOUR

  An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  InterMix serial eBook edition / October 2014

  Copyright © 2014 by Beth Kery.

  Excerpt from Because We Belong copyright © 2013 by Beth Kery.

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  Cover design by Sarah Oberrender.

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  eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-15086-7

  INTERMIX

  InterMix Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group

  and New American Library, divisions of Penguin Group (USA) LLC,

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  Version_1

  Contents

  Titles by Beth Kery

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Excerpt from Because We Belong

  About the Author

  Chapter Seventeen

  Vanni jerked down his jeans and a snowy pair of boxer briefs at once. His cock sprung free. The shaft was straight and long, the cap succulent and fat. It hung suspended from his body, heavy, flagrantly virile . . . ripe, forbidden fruit.

  “Oh God,” she whispered, staring up at his face, wide-eyed, awe and wariness tingeing her tone. Had she really taken that inside her in the darkness on the beach that night? Or was he perhaps especially swollen and needy tonight with suspended gratification? She stilled when he smiled, her core clenching tight.

  He kicked off shoes and removed his socks hastily, his jeans and underwear disappearing down long, tanned legs dusted with dark brown hair. Sensing his arousal, she wasn’t entirely surprised when he placed his hands around her waist and heaved her back on the bed, ready for business.

  “Lie back,” he ordered tersely. She scurried back on the soft duvet, eager to have all that naked, gilded, rigid muscle and sheer maleness pressed against her at last. Her head fell against an assortment of pillows. Tearing his gaze from her, he opened the top drawer of the bedside table and withdrew a condom. He ripped open the package. She watched, spellbound, air stuck in her lungs when he rolled it on his swollen, ruddy cock with expert haste.

  He came onto the bed on his hands and knees. Emma’s heart began to pound frantically in her ears as he prowled toward her.

  “Open your thighs like I told you,” he said, his voice a low growl. “I want you to keep them spread unless I tell you otherwise.” He positioned himself over her. She couldn’t breathe. Hadn’t he joked that they’d have sex in the missionary position, making it sound like it’d be a walk in the park after the challenge of being restrained? She anxiously eyed his heavy cock hanging between his legs. Missionary sex with Vanni suddenly seemed as erotic and challenging as the most advanced positions in the Kama Sutra.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Emma,” he chided as he placed his hands on her inner thighs and matter-of-factly spread her even wider. He stared at her exposed pussy for a moment, gritting his teeth. “You wouldn’t deny me this moment of pleasure after you’ve had yours, would you?” he asked, pressing back her thighs so that her hips rolled back on the bed.

  “No, of course not,” she managed as she watched, wide-eyed as he used his hand to place the fat, fleshy crown of his cock at her entrance. It wasn’t a lie. The idea of having him inside her again excited her so much, it was like an achy knot at her core. It’s just that he overwhelmed her as well.

  She moaned at the pressure of the hard, swollen head of his sex pressing into her. She was extremely aroused, and very wet, but her channel resisted his girth at first.

  He thrust, holding her hips steady. She gasped loudly. Her tissues stretched around him, finally submitting to the relentless pressure.

  “No. You’re much too sweet to deny me this, aren’t you?” he grated out, coming down over her and seizing her mouth in a furious, possessive kiss. He flexed his hips. She screamed as he filled her, his mouth muffling her surge of excitement and crashing, ruthless sensation.

  * * *

  Sinking into Emma was like piercing heaven . . . or a particularly salacious part of hell.

  He should have been satisfied with the feeling of her squeezing his cock into the sweet lock of her body, but he wanted more.

  Always more.

  Falling down over her, he braced himself on his forearms. His tongue plunged between her lips.

  He sunk deeper into her pussy and she screamed into his mouth. He lifted his head reluctantly, nipping at her lush lips. His cock throbbed furiously in her clasp, demanding more. He resisted with a Herculean effort.

  “Shhhh,” he soothed roughly. He waited until he felt her kissing him back excitedly, her soft whimpers driving him crazy. Her hands moved anxiously on his back, her fingertips sinking into muscle. He groaned and penetrated her to the hilt. He grimaced, his eyes clamped shut.

  “Fuck, you’re a trial,” he said.

  He blinked his eyes open, realizing belatedly he’d spoken the
blistering thought out loud. He focused on her lovely face, her delicate features pulled tight with arousal. Glancing down, he saw her small, firm breasts rising and falling rapidly. His cock lurched in her clasping channel.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, regretting her slight wince.

  “Don’t be,” she whispered. “You feel so good.”

  His nostrils flared as he stared down at her. “If you had any idea of what I want to do to you right now, you might not say that.”

  Her lips fell open, the vision of the wet, red depths of her mouth like a lancing spear to his restraint.

  “Just the missionary position, remember?” she gasped softly.

  He stilled, his skin roughening. “Are you teasing me?” he asked disbelievingly.

  “No. Tempting you.”

  “You fresh little witch,” he bit out before he drew his cock out of her and plunged it back in to the hilt. Air popped out of her throat at the hard thrust. Her legs jolted slightly. “Spread your legs again,” he ordered tensely. She widened her thighs, raising her bent knees higher. “That’s right,” he muttered before he began to fuck her.

  He stared at her face as he took her, enraptured by the wild, helpless expression on her face. He thrust harder, smacking into her taut body. God, he was hungry, and she was feast unlike any other.

  She gripped at his shoulders, her expression growing frantic. Her nails sunk into muscle. His cock swelled and pounded.

  “Put your hands above your head,” he grated out, never ceasing in his thrusts. “Do it, Emma,” he said sharply when she just stared at him with dazed, doelike eyes. He drove into her, their skin slapping together.

  Her eyes would be the death of him.

  She finally seemed to understand him. Her hands fell over her head, her elbows bent, the pale, tender underside of her arms exposed. Her hands were open on the pillows, the palms upward, her fingers curling slightly inward. It was a striking image of beauty. Of submission. She’d done it so naturally, never realizing the effect it had on him.

  He cursed, arousal biting at him, goading him onward. He fucked her harder. Her pink-tipped breasts strained upward, bouncing slightly every time he plunged into her. She bit her lip as his cock drove faster. Her pussy was warm and liquid, her nipples erect. Her expression was rigid, her eyes glazed with desire.

  “Why don’t you scream for me?” he bit out, angry at the blatant evidence of her arousal and subsequent silence, for some reason. He despised porn-star theatrics in bed. He was disgustingly used to porn-star theatrics in bed, so it was a strange thing for him to demand Emma to scream her need.

  She blinked. “Do you want me to?”

  “Fuck yes,” he snarled. He sunk his cock and ground his pelvis against her outer sex. He circled his hips, stimulating her clit.

  Her perspiration-glazed face rippled with tension. A cry popped out of her throat. She clamped her eyes shut and stifled a moan. He felt the walls of her pussy convulse. Her whimpers broke free. They fell on his ears like the sweetest of blessings.

  “That’s right,” he muttered viciously. He pushed her knees back onto the mattress, opening her body to him further. He came up on his toes, his feet digging into the bed and finding traction. He fucked her climaxing pussy with wild abandon. The sound of the bed creaking at his forceful thrusts melded with that of her frantic cries and his own pounding heart.

  God it was good.

  He hadn’t meant to take her so ruthlessly, but something had snapped in him when she’d climaxed. He’d been scorched and snagged by the fiery whip of pure lust.

  His roar as he came was triumphant. Savage. His sinews seized as pleasure crashed into him.

  He fell over her a moment later, his lips instinctively finding the sweetness of her neck. He panted wildly for breath, swallowing the fragrance of her skin and her arousal, filling his lungs with it. His nerves buzzed and crackled in the electrical aftershock.

  The stupid, yet compelling thought hit him that Emma had reanimated him, somehow.

  Cristina had died more than a week ago while he stood looking on with Emma. He’d initiated Emma into the world of challenge and passion.

  But Emma, that innocent, unlikely fey creature that stood at the gateway between life and death, had tempted him.

  She’d done the unexpected, Vanni realized. She’d jerked him, raw and exposed, into the bright, blinding light of the light of the living.

  * * *

  Emma stared up at the ceiling, trying desperately to calm her body and then her mind. She understood now, or at least she understood better, what she’d seen that night in the armoire. When she was restrained to that bedpost, and just now in this bed, she’d been the single, focused point of Vanni’s desire. She hadn’t comprehended him earlier entirely when he’d said that he deserved her judgment for making love to Astrid so callously, but she did now. If such methods were to be used, it should only be used in situations of caring and trust.

  But this—what she’d glimpsed of herself beneath Vanni’s hands and cock and focused desire—had amazed her.

  He had.

  She lowered her hands and caressed his shoulders and back, wondrous anew at the sensation of thick, smooth skin gloving lean, rippling muscle. Warmth swept through her when she felt him nuzzle her neck and then press his lips to her still-leaping pulse.

  “How do you get so hard?” she asked, amazement spicing her tone as she ran her hands along his sides.

  “Exercise,” he said next to her skin. “It helps me to relax. Reduce tension.”

  If he needed to exercise as much as his hard body suggested, he must carry a mountain-load of tension in him. There was exercise like she practiced it—four or five hours a week at the local gym—and then there was exercise like this, she realized as she touched a rock-hard, curving biceps. She looked down at what she stroked in her hand, focusing on the tattoo.

  “What does it mean?’ she asked, her fingers brushing over the Asian characters.

  “Twins,” he said hoarsely after a moment. “It’s Chinese for twins.”

  Her fingers stilled and then resumed tracing the intricate markings.

  “What was he like? Your brother?” she wondered cautiously. He had told her on the day of Cristina’s funeral that he didn’t want to talk more about Adrian, but that unknown little boy seemed so present at times. Or was that Emma’s overactive imagination?

  He exhaled heavily. She waited, but she didn’t feel the tension leap back into his muscles that she’d half expected.

  “He was dreamy. Sweet,” Vanni added after a pause, not lifting his head from her neck. “We looked alike, but Adrian was slighter. He was fragile. Physically. You’ve never seen two more different kids on the surface. I was fire and force. I didn’t walk anywhere, I ran. I could take apart an engine and put it back together by the time I was seven. Adrian wasn’t interested in cars or engines, but his brain was just as methodical once he focused on something. He’d get distracted by a hundred different things crossing the length of the yard. He’d stop and watch a bunch of ants or some other animal, and then draw them in amazing detail. If there were such a thing as fairies, Adrian would have seen them.” Emma felt his small smile against her skin. “He was strong, just in a different way than me. That was one thing my father never understood. He never realized how much I respected Adrian, or how much Adrian respected me. We were different, but we understood each other perfectly. We even had our own language,” he said with a dry laugh. “Nobody else could understand us.”

  “Two sides of a whole,” Emma whispered, a sharp, cutting feeling rising in her chest, making drawing air difficult. What would it be like, to feel so connected to another human being, to even feel like part of oneself resided in another, only to have that elemental part cut away? Her hands caressed his biceps carefully. She sensed that those things that characterized Adrian were inside Vanni, too. They always h
ad been. Adrian had just been the embodiment of them, that part of Vanni made flesh. Vanni had been Adrian’s strength and fiery focus.

  Now Vanni remained, believing himself to be only a part of what he was, existing in a severed state.

  No child should have been left to feel so much. No man forced to feel so little.

  Cristina’s remembered voice rose into her consciousness. The ache in her chest swelled. Cristina had been talking about Vanni—about his life since Adrian died.

  He rose suddenly and flipped onto his back, effortlessly scooping her into his arms. Her head rolled onto his chest, her cheek pressing to a wall of dense muscle and springy hair. She pressed her lips to his warm flesh, trying to calm the upsweep of emotion she’d experienced. His open hand swept up her spine, making her shiver. He cradled her head in his hand, his fingertips rubbing her scalp.

  “Vanni,” she said, her lips brushing his skin. “How much exactly did you hear Cristina say on the day she died?”

  “Enough,” he said.

  “But there was something she said—”

  “I don’t want to discuss it. I told you. I heard enough,” he said, and she could tell by the cool, clipped finality of his tone that it wasn’t a topic they’d be broaching anytime soon.

  * * *

  He felt her tense slightly in his arms and frowned. He hadn’t meant to sound so sharp. She had no inkling of how raw he felt. How exposed. He needed distance.

  He required it.

  Yet he couldn’t bear to part from her at that moment.

  “I told you that the next time we were together, I’d take you someplace nice,” he said, his fingertip running down the ridge of her pretty nose, caressing the sprinkle of freckles.

  “That’s okay,” she murmured. “You don’t have to.”

  “I know I don’t have to.” He leaned down and kissed her. He’d meant it to be a brisk kiss, but he caught her flavor and scent, and lingered. She smelled like lemons and honey. Even the taste of her sweat was sweet. “I want to,” he said a moment later, looking into her sex-flushed face. His gaze ran down the length of her appreciatively. Unable to stop himself, he caressed a pale breast and delicate pink nipple. Desire flickered in him when he felt her bead beneath his touch. Five weeks? Would it be enough? he wondered idly. When she set the limit, it had initially annoyed him until he realized she’d given him a convenient out. Wasn’t she making it all easy for him, and for her as well? That was important in her case. He didn’t want to hurt her.