Wicked Burn Read online

  Fuck. He had a good eleven inches on her in the height department. The angle was all wrong. He could make it work, but Vic wanted to concentrate on the incredible feeling of being inside Niall, not the awkward positioning of their bodies.

  “Don’t move,” he growled as he placed her toes back on the floor.

  “Vic?” Niall asked in amazement when he abruptly stalked out of the room. She looked thoroughly confused when he returned a few seconds later, carrying an empty crate from downstairs. He tossed it in the middle of the space where her bed would be.

  “Change of set plans,” he said as he tossed his shirt on the plywood plank. “Stand on that, Niall.”

  “Vic . . .” she began when he grabbed her hand and helped her onto the fabric covered crate. He dealt with her uncertainty by leaning forward and lustily kissing her. His hands found their way to her firm breasts without conscious thought, massaging and shaping them in his palms. “There. Isn’t that better?” he asked a few seconds later against her lips. “You’re almost as tall as me now.” He rubbed his lips hungrily against her small grin. His cock batted against her belly.

  “See what you do to me, baby?” he cajoled.

  “It’s only fair,” she murmured in that husky voice he loved. She leaned forward and nipped at his lips with her small front teeth. “I want you to know that you’re the only person that I would ever stand up on this crate for like a circus elephant.”

  “More like a circus pixie,” he muttered as he nibbled her neck.

  “There’s no such thing.”

  He just grinned.

  “You’re going to fuck me while I’m standing up here, aren’t you?” she asked in a voice thick with both lust and amusement.

  “Now you get the idea.” He kissed her sweet mouth once more. “Turn around and bend over.”

  He smiled in pure anticipation when she did, parting her thighs, grabbing her ankles, and arching her back into a position that screamed “fuck me good and hard.”

  His hand spread across her hip and ass cheek, parting her for his penis. Their angle was perfect now for a nice, taut ride. He guided himself to her drenched, clinging sheath, his lungs burning because he forgot to draw air in his excitement. He finally inhaled with a hissing noise when he pushed the plum-sized head of his cock into her and he was surrounded by her heat.

  She moaned shakily. His hands rose to her hips, gliding across the silky skin of her ass, soothing her.

  He bucked his hips slowly at first. The wet, sucking sound that the rim of his penis made every time he drew it almost out of her made him want to skewer her tight little pussy in one stroke. But he restrained, enjoying the sensation too much, liking the way the erotic slurping sounds mixed with Niall’s whimpers and purrs.

  “You’re so tight,” he muttered roughly as he pushed himself another inch into her clinging flesh and began to rock in and out of her. “I don’t think I’d ever get it in you if you didn’t get so wet for me.”

  Niall moaned and tensed her thighs, forcing his cock another inch into her heat. He laughed and spanked her ass once.

  “Hold on, little filly. I’m enjoying the slow pace and the scenery,” he teased, never taking his eyes from her shapely, pale ass and the first several inches of his cock sliding in and out of her body.

  “The scenery will be just as good at a nice hard sprint,” Niall told him in a frustrated tone.

  “It’ll be better,” he corrected. “But for right now, you just hold still.”

  He wished there was a mirror so that he could see her face while he held her hips steady and slowly burrowed his cock into her tight channel. He alternated a good, hard pump that pushed his cock further into her sublime heat with several quick, shallow thrusts that merely stroked the portion of his penis that had already been submerged.

  It continued like that for more than a minute, the only sounds resonating in the empty room being the sucking sound of his cock moving in her tight, wet channel, his grunts of pleasure, and Niall’s sexy, sharp cries. Twice when she tried to push back and increase the pace he gave her rump a brisk slap, making his cock leap inside her tight sheath in agonized pleasure. By the time he pressed to her damp hilt and molded her ass cheeks up with his hands, giving his aching balls some much-needed pressure, Niall shook beneath him.

  “Shhh, baby,” he soothed as he reached around her. One hand pinched the bottom of her swollen, tender labia together. With the other he played her clit briskly in the juicy pocket of flesh he’d formed.

  His cock jerked viciously inside her muscular channel when she came. He’d never wanted to move so much in his life, never wanted to fuck until he found the mindless nirvana of sexual bliss that he knew Niall could give him.

  But she was so sweet. Every time he exploded in her he almost immediately wished he was back at it, riding her sweet little pussy hard and fast. His desire to draw out the pleasure just barely outweighed his need to succumb to it, adding a sharp spice to his already potent lust.

  Bent over as she was, he couldn’t resist the lure of her pink, puckered asshole. He slid his thumb along her slick perineum, accumulating some of the juices that had gathered there. He grabbed her hip, holding her steady while he pierced that tiny opening. Niall still panted and moaned in the aftershocks of her orgasm, but when he penetrated her asshole, she stilled beneath him and caught her breath.

  “What’s wrong, baby?” he rasped. Her pussy rippled and squeezed at his cock, making it throb and swell uncomfortably in her tight confines. Still, he drew on the last vestiges of his control and kept his hips immobile. “You’re not used to ass play, are you?” he asked, remembering how she’d reacted similarly even when he put just the tip of his finger into her snug little hole several weeks ago. Currently he’d pushed his entire thumb into a channel that already would have been tight without the added pressure of his near-to-bursting cock in her vagina pressing in on it.

  She just shook her head. His lips formed into a snarl when she tightened around his thumb and cock at once.

  “You’ve got such a hot little hole. You’re going to give it to me some day. Aren’t you, Niall?” he asked her in a lust-thick tone as he began to pulse in and out of her asshole at the same time that he rocked his cock a mere two inches back and forth in her pussy. Her gasp of pleasure echoed his peaking excitement. Her sleek vagina pulled on his cock with each outstroke like a sucking little mouth, making the thrust back into her exponentially more rewarding.

  Christ, he’d never get enough of her pussy. You’re never going to get enough of her, period, a voice in his head taunted him.

  “Answer me!” he said as desire clawed at him painfully, demanding its due.

  “Yes,” she answered in a desperate, choked voice. “Everything I have is yours, Vic.”

  He snarled in crazed lust. He grabbed both hips and began to pound into her. A growl of pure animalistic pleasure rose from his throat as he pumped her from tip to balls again and again, striking their flesh together in a fierce tempo. A continual wailing sound exuded from Niall’s throat, surging louder every time he smacked his pelvis against her ass. His arm muscles bunched tight, keeping her in place for his ramming cock.

  The friction was taut, perfect . . . too fucking good to last for long.

  When Niall screamed in release and her muscular walls began to convulse around him, he shifted his hand below one ass cheek and lifted. His subsequent slam into her giving flesh struck deeper than any of its predecessors.

  His jaw vibrated as he roared and his body shuddered in the throes of a violent storm of pleasure.

  Niall loved the feeling of Vic leaning down over her and holding her body to his while they both fought mightily to be the first to inhale the air that surrounded them. Eventually, however, her legs began to tremble slightly from Vic’s added weight and her own body’s desperate attempts to find balance after orgasm had shattered her equilibrium repeatedly.

  Vic must have noticed her quivering, because he suddenly hugged her to him and b
rought her back with him as he collapsed to the floor. They laughed breathlessly as they fell in a heap of sweaty, intermingled limbs. When Niall tried to move off his big, long body, he used his hands to keep her in place.

  “Let me go,” Niall insisted, laughing as she squirmed on top of him.

  “You’re keeping me warm up there.”

  She snorted. “I wasn’t put on this earth for the purpose of keeping you warm.”

  He brushed his grin along the skin of her neck, making her shiver. “Maybe not, but I’m beginning to think you might have been put here for the express purpose of making me hotter than hell.”

  Niall twisted around abruptly at the tone of his voice. His dark hair was adorably mussed. His light eyes sparkled with amusement. He looked younger than usual, less intense . . . wonderful.

  Wonderful? Niall turned around and forced her body to relax along his length despite the tension that had just leapt into her muscles. She stared at the newly painted ceiling but saw nothing.

  When she’d had that seemingly random thought just now, she hadn’t meant it in the everyday sense of the word. Not like I’m having a wonderful day today or The weather’s been wonderful, let’s go for a stroll. No, she’d meant it in the truest sense of the word—awesome, marvelous . . . astonishing.

  Anxiety warred with amazement for her full attention. She’d never had this reaction to a man before, not even in the full, flush excitement of meeting and dating Stephen.

  She blinked and forced her dazed vision to clear. Did a woman who carried so much emotional baggage really have the right to be harboring such feelings?

  Or worse . . . what if it was because of her emotional and psychological stress that she was having such a powerful reaction to Vic in the first place? That was certainly possible, wasn’t it? Being with Vic might be the equivalent of a drinking or gambling compulsion . . . a shot of adrenaline and euphoria to an otherwise lifeless existence.

  The charging train of her anxiety was derailed by the sensation of Vic hugging her more tightly to him with his encircling arms at the same time that he wrapped her up with his long legs until she was encapsulated in a divine cocoon of male muscle and vibrant heat.

  “You’re so little.”

  Her eyes fluttered closed at the feeling of his rumbling voice vibrating into her neck. “I’m five foot four.” She’d meant to sound defiant, but was too sexually sated and mentally confused to sound anything but dazed.

  The smug sound in his throat made Niall think she’d just confirmed what he’d said.

  “That’s average for a woman,” she insisted petulantly.

  “Ummm.”

  That was all. Nothing else.

  “I can’t wait to see one of your plays,” she informed the ceiling.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Most actors talk on the stage, don’t they? With you as their creator, I’m wondering what your characters are going to do up there. Emote with stares?”

  For a few seconds she’d thought she’d offended him. Then he hugged her even tighter in his warm, safe embrace. “You forgot method grunting.”

  Laughter erupted from her throat. “Right. Brando would have been the perfect actor for one of your plays.”

  “You’re right. He would have.”

  She continued to laugh, knowing that he shared in her mirth even though she couldn’t hear or see it.

  “Are you going to stand me up again if I ask you to opening night?” he asked, making her laughter quiet and then still.

  “I thought not even your mother could stand to be around you on opening night.”

  “She can’t,” he said absentmindedly as he ran a hand along her flank, making her skin pebble. “But she never misses an opening anyway. She loves the champagne. She usually talks about the spread at the buffet for the opening night party until even the worst gossips at the Avery Bingo Club duck around the corner when they see her coming.”

  Niall chuckled. She felt like her body melted like candle wax into his heat. “She still lives in Avery?”

  “Yep.”

  “What about your father?”

  “Wouldn’t know. He took off when I was four.”

  He must have sensed her unnatural stillness.

  “It’s hard to miss what you never really knew. My mom always had more than enough energy to be both mother and father to Meg and me. She took it pretty hard when my dad ran off. Meg and I went to stay with my uncle on the farm here in Illinois for a while. But she got over it and ended up being sassier than ever.”

  “Don’t you wish she lived closer?”

  He sighed, making Niall’s body rise and fall with his own. “Both Meg and I have tried to convince her to move closer to us, but she’s got all of her clubs and her friends in Avery. She’s too busy and too ornery to be thinking about moving in with one of her kids.”

  “I can’t wait to meet her,” Niall said as she smiled at the ceiling. She liked the sound of Vic’s mother.

  “My sister, Meg, will be here for opening night, too.”

  Niall moaned in appreciation when Vic ran the hand that had been tracing her sensitive side up over a thrusting breast. Her thighs pressed tightly together when he pinched her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, then soothed her with his rough fingertips. “The three of us together should be able to survive your opening night wrath, don’t you think?” she asked breathlessly.

  “The three of you together could probably survive the apocalypse,” he commented dryly. “Niall?”

  “Yes?” she asked, her voice sounding husky with rising sexual tension when she felt him stir and harden against her sensitive flesh.

  “Turn around. I don’t think the house christening is finished quite yet.”

  Vic started into wakefulness, surprised to see the gray light of dawn peeking around the blinds in his bedroom. It gratified him that he’d slept for a good majority of the night. The reason for his profound sleep was enfolded snugly in his arms.

  He’d never really had to convince Niall with words to sleep in his bed that night. After they’d finally left her new condominium, exhausted and completely happy from their multiple rounds of phenomenal lovemaking, they’d ducked into a Thai restaurant for dinner. Vic had guessed from Niall’s heavy eyelids after she’d drunk a glass of wine and devoured almost her entire portion of chicken pad thai that she wouldn’t be long for the waking world. So he’d suggested they watch a DVD together at his place, and sure enough, within forty-five minutes he had an armful of soft, warm, sleeping woman.

  He nuzzled the hair at her nape and inhaled her scent. Maybe it was the dampness he found at her neck, or maybe it had been the sensation of the tremors that periodically shook her body that had awakened him in the first place. Or perhaps the primitive part of his brain recognized the scent that mixed with the residual fresh, floral scent of Niall’s perfume.

  It was the smell of fear.

  His fingers skimmed along her neck and back. Sweat soaked through her shirt. She moaned in her sleep. The sound pained Vic on some deep, indefinable level.

  “Niall. Wake up. Wake up, baby,” he murmured as he stroked her sides and pressed his lips against a flushed cheek. She whimpered, the noise reminding him of a trapped animal, both mournful and panicked at once.

  He couldn’t stand it.

  “Niall.”

  She jumped in his arms.

  “Vic?”

  “You were dreaming,” he muttered close to her ear. He continued to rub her body from her thigh to her ribs, attempting to soothe her. She moved restlessly in his arms and finally sat up. For a few seconds she just sat on the edge of his bed as her breathing slowed, her face shadowed by the dim light and her huddled posture. Neither of them spoke when she finally rose and went to the bathroom.

  She returned to the bedside a minute later. “I’m sorry for waking you,” she said in her low, smoky voice that seemed perfectly suited to the muted, gray light of dawn.

  “I slept better last night than I have
in weeks. You’ve got nothing to apologize for,” Vic told her when she perched on the edge of his bed. He wanted to reach out and pull her back into his arms. He wanted to keep her safe from whatever plagued her dreams. But something in her tense posture made him wary about touching her.

  “Maybe I should just go,” she whispered.

  “Don’t.”

  He saw her head fall forward, sensed her uncertainty . . . her vulnerability.

  “I’m all sweaty.”

  “So we’ll take a shower in a little bit,” Vic stated with more ease than he actually felt. His jaw clenched when she still didn’t move. This dawn encounter with Niall struck him as heavy . . . even threatening, although why that should be, he couldn’t say. The eerie mist of dreams must be clinging to him as well.

  “I’m leaving for Manhattan later today,” he heard her whisper.

  “You told me you’re not taking off until four o’clock. There’s plenty of time. Niall?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come here,” he said softly.

  It was only after she’d slid back into bed and was fast asleep in his arms that he finally exhaled the burning air in his lungs.

  NINE

  Three nights later Niall followed the hostess at The Art, still breathless from her sprint from the museum. She’d landed late at O’Hare and gone straight to her office at the museum without dropping off her suitcase, so that she could make an important conference call. The call had gone frustratingly long. She hated to be late for the dinner that she’d planned with Vic, knowing how little time he had, given his frantic schedule during these last few days before opening night. She knew he could get away for only a limited time tonight for dinner, so she regretted not being able to spend every second of it with him.

  She’d missed seeing him these last few days—more than she cared to dwell upon. She’d been busy in meetings with a curator at the Metropolitan Museum, but she’d always been all too glad to receive Vic’s phone calls in the evenings. The fact that he’d hardly said anything during those phone calls only endeared him more to her. She felt more connected to Vic in the silence than she did with most people after an extended heart-to-heart chat.