Eyes Wide Open (The Blackstone Affair 3)

Tensing in anticipation of what he would do, I moaned when he plunged into me hard and deep, filling me so full, bringing us so close together, my mind flashing back to what he’d said to me earlier in the night. We’ll get married. Not a question posed, but a directive as only Ethan could state and get away with, just as he’d done so many other times since we’d met.

Ethan held my wrists in one hand and roamed with the other as he rode me hard. In and out at a furious pace, almost angry in his method. I knew he wasn’t angry with me, though. It was the dream he battled. He needed to get the thing out of his head. I totally understood what was going on. Didn’t matter to me. I was a complete willing participant in his form of self-discipline.

He pushed me open wider and worked my sweet spot with his cock so perfectly it didn’t take very long before I was striving for an orgasm, feeling the tightening of my muscles readying for the blast that would take me to heaven on a supernova of heat and light.

He pinched my nipple, much more sensitive than usual, and the pain blinded me for an instant.. I cried out as the climax started to roll through my body. He soothed the tender flesh with his tongue and spoke: “Say my name! I have to hear it.”

“Ethan, Ethan, Ethan!” I chanted against his lips as he plunged his tongue into my mouth and swallowed my words. I shuddered and clenched my inner muscles around his cock, pinned down and fully taken. And never more satisfied than I was in this moment. He took charge of my pleasure and never let me down.

But he wasn’t done. I remembered what he’d said to me before.

Ethan growled a very primal sound and pulled out of me. I protested the loss, but welcomed the jerk down the bed and the hot head of his penis filling my mouth as he readjusted his point of penetration. I could taste myself mixed with the taste of him and the eroticism was blatantly explosive. Gripping his hips, I pulled him deeper and sucked him to the back of my throat. Just a few strokes of my lips along the shaft before I felt the spurt of semen splash down. The sounds he made were carnal and oddly vulnerable for such a dominant act. It always made me feel powerful when Ethan came. I made it happen.

He was staring at me, watching the whole thing as he liked to do, our eyes connecting us deeply beyond just the physical act.

“Oh, God,” he whispered as he slid out of my mouth and drew back down my body to press us close. He covered me again, gently this time, sliding inside me in a perfect fit of his body to mine before his erection faded. I could feel the thudding of his heart blending with mine.

I held on to him and let him have his way. For a long time he kissed and touched me, needing to be inside me for a while longer, telling me he loved me and making me feel cherished. I understood so much about this man and what made him tick. So much . . . except for the one thing I wanted to know, and didn’t know at all.

Ethan’s dark place was still as mysterious to me as it had ever been.

“I love that you brought me here.” I felt myself start to slip away into drowsiness again, determined to talk to him tomorrow about the nightmares, knowing that he wouldn’t like it, but screw it, I was going to anyway. I wondered if he sensed what I would do. Ethan had the uncanny ability to predict my intenti

ons. “And I love you.”

He settled me in his arms and stroked my hair. I breathed in his spicy scent mixed with all the sex and his cologne and let myself go, knowing I was in the arms of the only man who had ever gotten me to stay there.

As morning dawned I disentangled myself very carefully from the body wrapped around me. Ethan just sighed into his pillow and rolled deeper into the blankets. He had to be worn out from last night’s stressful show at the National Gallery and then the three hour drive up the coast late afterward. I couldn’t discount the time spent on sex once we got here either. Or his bad dream. And the fucking after that. The look in his eyes and the silent domination was a replay of his nightmare that other time. I knew what I knew. The resulting encounter had not been as intense as before, but I sensed Ethan had been working very hard to control his response so he didn’t lose it quite as badly as last time. My poor baby. I’d never tell him that, but it pained me to see him hurting; even more so that I couldn’t do anything about it because he refused to share it with me. Men were frustrating as hell.

With the soap in the shower, I scrubbed at my skin in annoyance and hurried to finish, determined to be dressed and out of the room without waking Ethan from his much-needed sleep in.

I tucked my phone into my jeans pocket and tiptoed out of the room, closing the door softly behind me. I just stood and looked down the hall from the wing where our room was situated at one corner of the estate. This place was something else all right, shades of Mr. Darcy’s Pemberley with a dash of Mr. Rochester’s Thornfield Hall thrown in. I couldn’t wait to get an official tour, still enthralled with the fact that Ethan’s sister and her husband owned this place.

I took the stairs halfway down, stopping on a dramatic landing. There on the wall was the most stunning painting. Larger than life and most definitely an artist I knew well. A portrait created by none other than the hand of Sir Tristan Mallerton hanging on the wall in a private home. Wow. I’m so out of my league with this family.

I pulled out my phone and dialed Gaby. “You won’t believe what I’m staring at,” I spoke to a thick sounding “hello” that could only be my roommate but didn’t sound at all like her usual confident self.

“Oh? What would that be? And it’s a little early, isn’t it?”

“Sorry, Gab, but I couldn’t resist. You would be drooling if you could see this . . . oh . . . midcentury Mallerton looming not a foot from me. I could rub my hands all over it if I wanted to.”

“Better not do that, Bree. Tell me,” she demanded, sounding a bit more like herself.

“Well, it’s probably about seven feet by four, and gorgeous as hell. A family portrait of a blonde woman and her husband, and their two children, a boy and a girl. She’s wearing a pink gown and pearls that look like they belong in the Tower’s crown jewels collection. He looks like he’s in love with his wife. God, it’s beautiful.”

“Hmmm, I can’t place it offhand. Can you ask if it’s all right to take a photo so I can see?”

“I will, as soon as I meet someone I can ask.”

“Can you make out his signature?”

“Of course. It was the first thing I looked for. Bottom right, T. Mallerton in those distinctive block letters of his. It is, without a doubt, the real deal.”

“Wow,” Gaby said, in a very unwowed voice.

“Is everything okay with you? Last night was insane and I never saw you after that alarm went off. I wasn’t feeling well and Ethan was in high stress mode from some other stuff that happened.”

“Like what?”