Owning Beauty (Taking Beauty Trilogy 3)

“I’m your husband,” I reminded her. That gave her pause, one I took a bit more pleasure than intended in. “That’s who I am—the man you decided you wanted so damn badly that you just had to tie me down. Besides, don’t pretend you haven’t been thinking about this ever since you ran out on me that morning…”

Liz shook her head at me. Her smile had softened a little. “You’re the worst,” she teased. And that was the thing—I could tell it was a tease this time. She didn’t actually mean it. And that meant the world.

“I could be,” I admitted, completely subverting the intention of what she’d said. “But there’s only one way to find out.”

Tentatively, instead of pushing her with my leg this time, I laid mine against hers. I felt her tense, but she didn’t move away. She merely looked down, a grin on her face as she said, “This is a terrible idea. You know that, right?”

“Those are the best kinds,” I countered, grazing my thigh past hers. She tensed again, but I swore she moved against me a little, pressing nearer. I felt like a schoolboy all over again, butterflies in my stomach and jitters in my hands. “You always end up with the most interesting stories afterwards.”

“We tried this once,” she protested weakly. “It didn’t exactly work out.”

“You don’t know that, and neither do I. Didn’t you say you wished you could remember?”

“I…” she bit her lip. “Well, yes, but…”

“So…” I leaned a bit closer to her, slowly allowing my gaze to slip from her eyes to her mouth. “Why don’t you let me have a go at jogging that memory of yours?”

Liz swallowed hard. I could see the flutter of her pulse in her neck and watched as it quickened. Lifting my hand, I brought my fingertips to her cheek and softly traced from the hollow of her cheek to just under her jaw. Her pupils dilated and a sharp intake of breath followed as I brushed my palm down over her collar bone.

“Do you remember anything?” I asked her.

Slowly, she shook her head. “No. Not yet…”

One after the other, I let loose the buttons of her blouse. Her stomach trembled when I caressed a trail up to her breasts with my knuckles. “Now?”

Liz made a small noise I took to be an answer in the negative. Smirking, I bowed my head and pressed my lips to the dip in her throat, eliciting another sound. I parted my lips, the tip of my tongue laying flat against her skin to savor the taste of her.

She squirmed. “That feels…”

“Familiar?” I asked, kissing her sternum now, just above the twin swells of her breasts.

Liz’s pulse quickened again. “No. It feels… good.” When I nipped at the top of one breast, she gasped. “So good…”

Taking her ribs in my hands, I laid her on her back upon the bed, my affections drawing a line that led down past her navel. The temperature of her flesh flared beneath my ministrations, burning my mouth. She lifted her knees to make room for my body between them and I groaned at her acquiescence, hardening against the mattress.

It was hard to believe there was a life inside her right this moment, just a few inches below where I was kissing her. When she arched for me, I looked up to see she’d tossed her head back, pretty hair fanning over the pillow behind her. I smirked. Perhaps there was one way in which I could tell Liz was pregnant—she certainly did have a glow about her.

“You’re not playing fair,” she whined, looking down at me as I began to unzip her jeans. I tugged them down from her hips, dragging my nails very lightly over the backs of her knees in the process, then threw the offending denim to the floor.

“All’s fair in love and war,” I told her, lowering myself even further to feather my attentions along the center seam of her panties. When I reached the expanse of cloth shielding her slit from me, I took a nice, deep breath of her and blew it back out across the dampness there. Liz moaned.

“Oh, Jesus.” The sheen of her lust had reached her inner thighs, glistening in the dim light of the room. I chuckled low, letting the vibrations of it tease her.

“Remember anything yet, love?”

Liz bit her lip and looked down at me, threading her fingers through my hair. I leaned into her touch, savoring the tingling sting of her nails in my scalp. “No, goddamn you.”

I laughed again, lightly pulling aside her panties to slip my fingers inside them. With all the lightness I could muster, I brought my finger down from the apex of her cleft to the bottom of it, testing her center. I found her hot and soaking. “Relax. It’s no fun unless you actually let go a little bit.”

“Easy for you to say,” she breathed, moaning as I teased open her inner folds. “You’re not worried about the consequences.”

For just a moment, I stopped touching her and looked up the line of her body, raising my brows. “Just what is there to lose, love? Worried I’ll get you more pregnant than you already are? I know I’m quite the virile male, but I don’t think I’m that virile.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sakes,” Liz groaned. “Shut up, Julian.” And then she grabbed the back of my head, pushing my face between her thighs.

I offered no complaints. This was exactly where I wanted to be. Though I was a bit surprised by her forwardness. I wasn’t sure she’d had it in her, until now.

Easily I found her clit, pushing her panties all the way to the side so I could flick my tongue against it in earnest. Liz arched, toes curling as I plundered the most sensitive parts of her, coaxing from between her lips the rasping moans I’d been looking for. Wantonly, she bucked against my mouth, and I hummed with appreciation for the flavor of her desire. Seemed as though once Liz got going, she transformed into quite the wildcat. Spreading her wider with my fingers, I doubled down on the pleasure I applied to her sweet little bundle of nerves.

“That feels so good,” she said, running her tongue over her lips. “I remember this…”

“And you had your doubts,” I murmured, withdrawing from her soaked pussy and undressing myself in short order. Liz’s eyes went right to my tattoos, admiring them in a way I hadn’t really experienced before. There was a sort of reverence in her gaze, a real appreciation for the art rather than just a pretty young thing getting visual confirmation she was about to have her bad boy fantasy fulfilled. She reached out, stroking along the outside edge of my abs where the gigantic koi curved toward my hip.

Using her feet, she slid my boxers down. My dick throbbed eagerly as the fabric slid over it, and Liz gasped when she saw it.

“You… you have a piercing?”

I laughed at the wide-eyed look she was giving me. “I guess you really don’t remember, huh?”

She blushed fiercely. “If I said ‘yes,’ would you still finish trying to remind me?”

As I removed my boxers completely, I worked next on getting Liz’s panties onto the floor. “Hmm. I suppose I could.”

Sitting partway up, she reached for me, one bra strap falling down her shoulder as she did. “Then I remember a few things, I think. Like this…” And she oh-so-lightly ran her fingertips from the base of my shaft to just below the tip, ghosting her touch across the stainless steel ring there in a way that made my cock throb in anticipation.

“Oh, hell,” I groaned, hissing in a gulp of air through my teeth. “Now who’s not being fair?”

“I thought you said all was fair in love and war?” she replied, making the same motion with much the same result. The low, aching pulse she inspired was so intense it resonated in my balls. I sank my teeth into my lower lip as I ranged over her, using one hand to pull the cups of her bra down and expose her perfect tits.

“It is,” I told her, “but only when I have the advantage.” She wrapped her fingers around me completely, stroking my length, and I bowed my head to take one of her nipples between my teeth and gingerly pull.

I thought perhaps I was starting to remember, too—that being so intimate with Liz again had finally activated my sensory recall. Vague images of her fingers twined with mine, her ankles locked high around my back, and those gorgeous breasts heaving as I thrust into her flashed through my mind’s eye. The sound of her breathless panting echoed in my head. I knew with absolute certainty that we’d been here before.

That made this experience entirely new to me, but in a different way. I wasn’t the sort of man who slept with a girl more than once. It just seemed easier for everyone that way—we parted ways with smiles on our faces, not nursing broken hearts. Liz would be the first woman in many, many years I’d taken pleasure in ravishing a second time. Then again, she was the

first woman in many, many years I actually wanted to.

“What’s wrong?” she asked me as I hovered above her, hesitating. I raised my gaze to meet hers and found a heady mix of both lust and concern there. “Julian?”

I shook my head, putting on a smile for her. “Not a damn thing, love. You’re just bloody perfect. That’s all.”

And that was a little intimidating—the idea that a woman like Liz wanted to fuck a man like me. That twice now, I’d talked her into bed when she should have been with someone who wasn’t such a colossal fuck-up. Oh, how I wanted her—how that brilliant light inside her appealed to me—but putting my hands on her divine curves reminded me of how filthy I was.

Still, I wasn’t about to disappoint. And so I rose to the occasion.

I kissed her, and time stopped. With some guidance from her hand, I’d positioned myself at her entrance and could feel each shiver she gave in prolonged fashion, my world slowed by virtue of the solace I found against her lips. For a moment, there was simply nothing that existed outside of her save for me. She, and the sensation of breaching her, became my entire universe.

Her lips were scorching upon mine, heated through by the passion and elation coursing through us in equal measure. It took me several moments of breathless wonder to realize I’d slid into her all the way to the hilt, that I’d left no quarter within her for anything else but my cock. As I drew away, Liz looked up at me with her bruised and bitten mouth slightly agape, like she’d never been so full before. Grasping her hands and fitting her fingers through mine in hopes she would remember, I angled my hips and drew a steep breath as I plunged again, my spine tingling with a craven shudder.

“Julian,” she whispered, rolling her hips to meet mine. The rendezvous wrested a snarl from deep in my throat. “Slow… slow…”

I nodded to her. Usually, that was not a word in my vocabulary—it wasn’t that the act was ever quick, per se, but it was never gentle. It was always a flurry of motion, a locomotive churning. Fucking, not making love. Just sticking my dick in something over and over until we were both satisfied enough to call it quits.

Once again, things with Liz were going different. For so long, every day of my life had seemed exactly the same. I grunted and swallowed the unbidden lump of emotion in my throat as I obeyed her command, rocking into her in a slow, methodical rhythm, ensuring neither of us lost even the slightest sensation to the blur of somatic bliss a less patient pace wrought.