Looking Inside

“Why are you reading it, then?” she demanded, backing away slightly.

“Because all you women take it so seriously. I was just trying to figure out the secret to it, that’s all,” he said, unable to pry his gaze off her lips and highly aware of how soft and curvy and firm she felt against his stroking hand. He lowered to her ass, shaping a buttock to his palm. Incredible ass . . . the things he’d like to do to it. He liked her soft gasp of pleasure, and then her obvious attempt to look serious again.

“There’s no secret to Pride and Prejudice. It’s funny . . . and it’s fun. Elizabeth was making fun of herself when she said that line I just quoted. You said you were interested in something light right now,” she reminded him with a remonstrative glare. “Well Pride and Prejudice can be downright froth. You shouldn’t be approaching it so seriously.”

He considered what she’d said for a minute.

“Maybe you’re right,” he conceded. “I told you I was having trouble concentrating on the book. You were the one who was responsible for me being distracted. You have no right to be pissed for me not getting the nuances,” he said before he nuzzled her ear, inhaling her scent. He cupped a breast and ran his thumb over a beading nipple. She shivered against him. “Quote some more to me, Eleanor,” he growled next to her ear before he kissed it.

“I will not,” she said, but her arms encircled his neck. He pushed and she rolled onto her back. He came down over her. She smiled that witch’s smile up at him. “Why should I bother? You’re a heathen.”

“At least I don’t deny it,” he said, nibbling at her succulent lower lip.

“At least?” she mumbled.

“Yeah. You got all defensive when I called you a witch,” he reminded her, lowering his head to her beautiful breasts. He leaned down, anticipation building in him, and glided his lips against the silky skin at the top of one globe. She whimpered and dug her fingers into his hair. Was her hand shaking? Could she really be that excited, just from chatting in bed? Maybe it wasn’t that much of a shock she was aroused from talking, because God knew he was. Her fingernails scraped his scalp. His skin roughened in excitement.

“See, unlike you,” he explained gruffly as he brushed his mouth over her breast and kissed the sweet tip, “I’m just heathen enough not to bother denying it when I’m called one,” he finished before he firmed his hold on her rib cage and lifted her breasts to his feasting mouth.

EIGHT

Eleanor awoke while it was still dark outside. She was turned on her side facing the floor-to-ceiling windows. Instead of being disoriented upon waking up in a strange place, she immediately knew where she was. It was strange, to be looking at her condominium from a whole new angle.

She’d gone through the looking glass. She was inside Trey Riordan’s world.

Her sex ached, but pleasantly. She hadn’t had sex for over a year before last night, but that didn’t fully explain her tender state. Trey was a passionate, skillful, demanding and . . . potent lover. They’d had sex three times before they’d finally fallen into an exhausted sleep. Each time had been more exciting than the last.

There was no precedent for her, no prior experience that had remotely prepared her for him. Just thinking about what he’d done to her in this bed—about the things he’d proposed they do in the future—made her shift her hand beneath the sheets. Carefully, so as not to awake him, she cupped her sex and closed her eyes, drowning in the memories for a moment.

Trey embraced her from behind. He was like a subtle furnace. She wanted to curl farther into him like a content cat. The exciting memories, his long, solid male body pressed to her backside, and the pressure of her hand on her sex created a languid state of sensual arousal in her.

After their second round of scorching sex, where he’d again owned her body and soul, he held her against him in the darkness for a while. Neither of them spoke, but she sensed he was awake from his stroking hand on her hip. She found their silence strangely full. Relaxing. Comforting. Before she’d drifted off to a satiated sleep, he’d spoken gruffly next to her ear. She recalled every detail of that exchange now in the early morning darkness, her heart and her senses waking up before her brain fully did.

“Eleanor?”

“Yes?” she whispered.

“Before, when you told me I should read Born to Submit because you thought I’d like it . . . were you hinting that you’ve seen something before, when you were looking into my bedroom?”

Her heavy eyelids sprang wide.

“What do you mean?” He stroked her thigh and then her ass in the tense silence that followed.

“Did you ever see me restrain a woman . . . spank or paddle her?”

Shivers rippled down her spine.

“Yes,” she finally admitted, intensely aware of him caressing her bottom. She waited tensely for him to reply, but for a moment, he only stroked her.

“Did you know in advance I’d be at the event, because you work at the museum? Is that why you chose the book you did?”

“I thought it might get your attention,” she confessed breathlessly.

Another silence, this one swelling with unsaid things.

“Do you like to do those things? From the book?” he asked her after a pause.

She hesitated. Of course she knew she was supposed to be playing the part of the sexually liberated, bold woman with him. But she increasingly longed to be honest with him, as well.