When I'm With You Part V: When You Submit

  Contents

  Also by Beth Kery

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Special Excerpt from Paradise Rules

  About the Author

  When I’m With You

  PART I: WHEN WE TOUCH

  PART II: WHEN YOU DEFY ME

  PART III: WHEN YOU TEASE ME

  PART IV: WHEN I’M BAD

  PART V: WHEN YOU SUBMIT

  Because You Are Mine

  PART I: BECAUSE YOU TEMPT ME

  PART II: BECAUSE I COULD NOT RESIST

  PART III: BECAUSE YOU HAUNT ME

  PART IV: BECAUSE YOU MUST LEARN

  PART V: BECAUSE I SAID SO

  PART VI: BECAUSE YOU TORMENT ME

  PART VII: BECAUSE I NEED TO

  PART VIII: BECAUSE I AM YOURS

  Berkley Sensation titles by Beth Kery

  WICKED BURN

  DARING TIME

  Berkley Heat titles by Beth Kery

  SWEET RESTRAINT

  PARADISE RULES

  RELEASE

  EXPLOSIVE

  One Night of Passion series

  ADDICTED TO YOU (WRITING AS BETHANY KANE)

  EXPOSED TO YOU

  One Night of Passion Specials

  BOUND TO YOU

  CAPTURED BY YOU

  When I’m With You

  Part V

  When You Submit

  Beth Kery

  INTERMIX BOOKS, NEW YORK

  INTERMIX BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  For more information about the Penguin Group visit penguin.com

  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 publisher does not have control over and does not have any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  WHEN YOU SUBMIT

  An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  InterMix eBook edition / April 2013

  When I’m With You copyright © 2013 by Beth Kery.

  Excerpt from Paradise Rules copyright © 2009 by Beth Kery.

  Cover design by Sarah Oberrender.

  Photo: Two bottles of perfume © Alex Norkin/Shutterstock.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-61662-8

  INTERMIX

  InterMix Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group

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

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  INTERMIX and the “IM” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Chapter Nine

  When Elise came back to herself, it was to the delicious sensation of Lucien’s chest and abdomen heaving against her back. His head had fallen between her neck and shoulder and she could feel the warm bursts of his breath on her perspiration-damp skin as he tried to catch his breath. She shifted slightly beneath him. His cock twitched inside of her and her eyes flew open.

  Lucien was inside of her. He’d long been inside of her in the figurative sense. Now he was in the literal one.

  He placed his mouth on her spine at the base of her neck. She shivered with pleasure, instinctively tightening around the novelty of his cock penetrating so deeply inside her. He grunted softly and tightened his hold around her waist.

  “What am I going to do with you?” he asked, his low, resonant voice near her damp skin making her shiver. She heard the regret that had started to seep into his tone, and she experienced her own guilt. Why must she be so impatient?

  “Are you mad at me?” she asked cautiously.

  Somehow, she just knew he would understand she meant, Are you mad at my not telling you I was a technical virgin? As embedded in her as he was, as deeply entwined as she felt with him at that moment, she wondered if misunderstanding was even possible. She’d prayed things would go like the doctor suggested they might, but Lucien wasn’t just any man. Not only was he smart and knowledgeable about women, he wasn’t . . . made like other men in the physical sense. Lucien was fashioned more like a god than a mere human, in her opinion.

  “I’m not sure,” he replied gruffly. He pressed his lips against her neck again. How could his warm mouth confer so much delight? “I should be. Why didn’t you tell me that you’d never been with a man?”

  “I have been with men. This part”—she squeezed his cock with her vaginal muscles and a puff of air flew past her neck—“was just semantics.”

  He grunted. She stifled a protest when he raised himself slightly, missing the solid weight of his chest and his warm breath on her neck.

  “It wasn’t semantics. It’s not a ‘sort of’ or ‘maybe’ state of being. You were a virgin in the truest sense of the word.” She cried out when he slowly withdrew and she experienced a sharp burning sensation. He turned her in his arms so quickly, she didn’t have time to hide her wince of discomfort. His expression stiffened. “And here is proof of it. To think of how I—”

  He cut off his own words, looking grim as he examined her face.

  “Don’t look so somber,” she whispered. “I wanted it, Lucien. I wanted my first time to be with you.”

  “I wish you would have told me. Your first time still would have been with me, just not so rough and—” He paused, as if considering what had just occurred. She sensed his regret . . . his heat. “Why did you goad me that way?” he demanded. He closed his eyes briefly when he heard the edge of anger in his voice. “Jesus. I could have made it so much better for you.”

  “I thought it was wonderful,” she said sincerely, thinking with awe of what it’d felt like to have him harbored so deep within her, their heartbeats melding. “It wasn’t what I expected at all.”

  “I can only imagine,” he said wryly. She hated the flat expression that entered his gray eyes. “We’ll talk about it later. Let’s get you home. You should rest.”

  * * *

  When they reached the penthouse, Elise headed down the hallway, feeling raw and uncertain. Lucien had been so subdued on the drive home. She kept detailing the memory of her impulsive decision to climb onto Jax’s back, the harrowing ride through the dark woods on the bolting horse’s back, and Lucien’s fury at her for putting her life at risk so foolishly. He’d known perfectly well she’d done it all to get his attention . . . to drive him into doing precisely what he’d done.

  Elise couldn’t regret their passionate lovemaking in the stables. It’d been an amazing, eye-opening experience for her. She only regretted pushing Lucien until his control had snapped. She regretted his regret. How long would he be furious at her for what she’d done?

  He caught her hand as she started to head into her room. She turned to face him. His features
were cast in shadow as he looked down at her.

  “I’ll help you get your things,” he said, his voice so quiet that for a split second she didn’t register what he’d said. When she did, her heart began to pound in her ears.

  “Are you kicking me out?” she asked shakily.

  His brows slanted and he tightened his hold on her hand. “No, of course not. But there’s no going back. I won’t be able to deny myself, now that I’ve actually been inside you. You’ll sleep in my bed from now on. Come on,” he said, pulling her into her room and flipping on a light. Neither of them spoke as they worked together to gather her things from the bathroom and bedroom. Lucien’s mood was solemn, Elise’s bewildered and wary.

  She’d been the one to push this. So why now did she feel so much disappointment in herself for her lack of control? No—for her insistence upon taking control of the situation.

  Lucien went ahead of her with her suitcase and an armload of items. Elise finished packing up her toiletries from the bathroom and followed him a few minutes later. That feeling came over her as she quietly walked through the partially opened door to his private suite and looked around for the first time, the feeling she’d never really experienced before beginning this thing with Lucien.

  Shyness.

  He glanced up from his task of placing a lacy camisole in an opened drawer of a massive wardrobe cabinet.

  “Come in,” he said. “This wardrobe will be yours. I have another in my dressing room where I’ve moved my things.”

  “Thank you,” she said, feeling awkward as she stepped farther into the large suite. His addictive scent tickled her nose—a combination of his skin and his soap and his cologne, Clive Christian 1872. It was a masculine room, a luxurious delight to the senses. Maria, his maid, hadn’t been there that day, with the result that his enormous king-sized bed wasn’t made perfectly. Instead, Lucien himself had obviously pulled up the thick, feather-filled comforter and draped the sheet back over the top of it. The multitude of dark brown, caramel, and ivory colored pillows were slightly askew. She liked the hint of disarray. His bed looked sinfully soft . . . extraordinarily sexy. She pictured Lucien rising from it just this morning, gloriously naked, and fluffing and straightening the duvet absentmindedly before padding away to his shower.

  He touched her upper arm and she looked up at him, guilt rushing through her as if he could read her covetous thoughts about him.

  “I’ll show you the bathroom and you can put your things away. Perhaps you’d like to take a bath afterward?”

  She searched his gray eyes but found no hint of how he was feeling about all this. She’d feel more comfortable with his anger than with this cool, aloof Lucien. Perhaps it’d always been that way. She’d been trying to peel back his distant façade since she was a child, so eager to connect with him.

  So desperate.

  Several minutes later, she stood alone in the huge bathroom, which featured a step-up marble spa bath in the center of it in addition to a steam shower. She set her bottle of perfume next to his cologne on the granite countertop, a surreal sensation going through her at the vision of the bottles sitting side by side. She was living in Lucien Sauvage’s home . . . sleeping in his bed.

  It had to be a dream.

  “Do you want me to draw you a bath?”

  She stared over her shoulder, awe spiking through her when she saw the man who came with that low, sensual voice. He leaned in the doorway, his hands bracing himself on either side of the frame, all lean, sexy male power. It really was him. This really was happening to her.

  “I . . . I’ll just get my things and take a quick shower,” she said throatily.

  He nodded once and was gone from the entry. Again, regret spiked through her. A tantalizing thought sprang into her mind’s eye of bathing and scenting her skin . . . of walking into the suite nude and intent upon seduction, of goading Lucien into taking her again and again.

  She could do it. The stables had proven that to her.

  But it had been a hollow victory.

  When she walked into the suite, Lucien was gone. She grabbed some items from the wardrobe he’d designated as hers and returned for her shower. Ten minutes later, she left the bathroom wearing a loosely fitted pair of soft cotton men’s-style pajamas. They were serviceable, not sexy.

  He stood by the far side of the bed wearing nothing but a pair of dark blue sleep pants that rode low on his hips, fully exposing his ridged abdomen and defined oblique muscles. He was so beautiful to her, it caused an ache to expand in the area between her chest and belly. It was overwhelming, this swelling, intimidating feeling. She had a ridiculous urge to turn and walk back into the bathroom. Instead, she just stood there awkwardly. He glanced up in the task of pulling back the luxurious comforter and met her stare.

  “Come here,” he said gruffly once his gaze had run over her from head to toe. He strolled around the bed as she approached. Confusion mixed with rampant longing as she watched his sleek muscles flex as he threw back the comforter and sheet. He nodded at the bed and she got in, sighing as she sunk into the decadently soft sheets and feather-top mattress. He came down next to her, stretching his long body. Suddenly the light went out and he was rolling her into his arms against him.

  It’d happened so quickly, she went from anxiety to amazed arousal in a manner of seconds. He must have gone and showered in another bathroom. His smooth skin smelled wonderful and there was still the trace of humidity in it when she touched it with her fingers.

  “Lucien?” she whispered into the darkness, her cheek pressed against a dense pectoral muscle.

  “Yes?”

  “Are you still angry at me?”

  She felt his fingers move in her hair. Pleasure rippled from her scalp to her neck and lower, tightening her nipples against his ribs.

  “No,” his deep voice resonated into her when she pressed her ear to his chest. “I’m angry at myself. I always have prided myself in understanding you—reading you, even when you were acting at your finest. But I failed in this, ma fifille. I’m sorry.”

  She lay there, stunned by what he’d said in his quiet, deep voice.

  “What do you mean?” she whispered. For a moment, he didn’t speak. Ripples of sensation cascaded down her neck and spine when his long fingers moved in her hair.

  “I had told myself I wouldn’t flinch at anything you ever pulled. But this?” He laughed harshly. “I would have never guessed it—that you’d never been with a man.”

  Tears stung behind her eyelids. “I have been with men, Lucien. Plenty of them. I’m no innocent.”

  “Yes you are.”

  He sounded so starkly sure, she lifted her chin.

  She felt him exhale.

  “You’re a paradox, Elise Martin. A virgin siren. I should have known not to make assumptions about you. I should have reminded myself that you wouldn’t make things simple for me.”

  She turned her face into his chest, sighing as he ran his hand down over her back. Emotion swelled in her, as it often did at his deft touch. “I just wanted you so badly,” she whispered, her lips brushing against his skin.

  “You almost got yourself killed in order to show me,” he said. “It would have been better if you’d just told me what you were feeling . . . what you wanted.”

  “But you already knew how I felt, how desperate I was getting. You were being cruel by withholding yourself from me,” she blurted out against his skin.

  He cupped the back of her skull. She lifted her head, even though she couldn’t see him in the darkness. “I wasn’t being cruel. I was waiting.”

  She stilled. “Waiting for what?”

  “For you to tell me what you desired. What you needed.”

  “But I have been telling you!”

  “Have you?”

  His rich, quiet voice ran over her in the darkness, making her skin tingle. The question kept ringing in her head. Hadn’t she been telling him? She’d made it clear she was sexually available. She’d agreed to this
arrangement. Lucien couldn’t possibly deny that, could he?

  “I have specifically told you I wanted us to be lovers, even agreeing to this unorthodox relationship you’ve suggested.”

  “That isn’t the desire I’ve been waiting to hear,” he said, his fingertip rubbing the base of her skull in a manner that lulled her, despite her pique and confusion. She opened her lips to demand more information, but then he spread his large hand across her cheek and jaw, and his mouth was closing over hers in a melting kiss. By the time he lifted his mouth, her greatest desire was right on the tip of her tongue.

  “Go to sleep,” he said.

  “But—”

  He pressed her head back down to his chest and gathered her closer in his arms. She bit her lower lip when she felt his cock stir against her thigh. “You showed discretion by wearing these pajamas. You’re respecting my wishes instead of flaunting yourself, when you know how difficult it would be for me to resist.”

  She just lay there, part of her brain busy absorbing his words, the other portion focused on the sensation of his growing erection.

  “You’re going running with Francesca very early, aren’t you?” he murmured.

  “Yes,” she mumbled. With all the tumultuous events of the day, she’d forgotten about that. Suddenly, her muscles felt too weary to even consider moving, let alone running for miles. “I’ll have to set an alarm,” she said sleepily, nuzzling Lucien’s skin with her nose appreciatively.

  “I already set it for you.”

  “Thank you,” she said, sincerely grateful. It was sweet of him, to have thought of her.

  “Go to sleep. It’s been a long day for both of us. I rode you hard and rough in those stables. Any woman would need a night to recover from that, let alone a virgin.”

  “A once-virgin,” she corrected drowsily. “And I’m perfectly well.”

  He made a sound of rough irritation and amusement, which caused regret to soak into her awareness yet again. Despite his tone, his long fingers trailed down her spine, caressing her, making her limbs go heavy with exhaustion. How could he be annoyed and yet touch her so cherishingly?