Ian's Way Read online

  She hadn’t come like this in years.

  Actually, she had never climaxed like this.

  “Ian, come with me,” she cried.

  He obliged instantly, tensing and releasing, flooding with his cum, all that pent-up power, as though it had been months since his last release.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew there would be repercussions, things to figure out between them but for now she could only feel. Her orgasm and his too, echoed through her every sense—exquisite, ineffable twisting, sweat dripping, thighs clenching, teeth grinding, bed quaking, world shaking.

  Everything shook to its moorings. There was no stopping her now. Nikky’s first orgasm had barely faded when it was followed by a second and then a third.

  She could feel him throbbing the whole time. How was he staying hard so long?

  When at last his cock began to flag, she fell down on his chest. “I could sleep a hundred years,” she murmured.

  She heard Ian laugh. “Oh, I don’t think so. Not by a long shot,” he countered, half lover, half drill sergeant.

  Not by a long shot, indeed, Ian thought.

  “But Ian…” her voice was a sweet pout in reply to his challenge. “I don’t think I can take any more. I need a break. Please?”

  “Sorry, I’m taking charge now. We’re going to kick this up a notch. Wouldn’t want to waste all that time I spent reading, would we?”

  Nikky groaned. “Can’t you just write me a paper or something?”

  Ian laughed and kissed her on the mouth, silencing the debate with an enticing nibble of her full lower lip.

  Nikky’s sudden whimper stirred his cock, against all odds, he was erect again, almost no recovery time.

  Excellent.

  “I would be nicer to me if I were you,” he informed her, feeling his confidence growing by the second. “You’re about to get very needy. And depending on your attitude, I may or may not give you any relief.”

  “What happened to my being a goddess?”

  “You changed up the program and so can I. For the next segment of our program, you may consider yourself my sex slave, Dominique.”

  “Give me a break.”

  Ian sat up on his knees and bent to kiss her belly. “Don’t think I didn’t fantasize about you this way in high school—powerless, dying to obey me.”

  “Do tell,” she murmured, giving in to the inevitable as he peppered her flat stomach with hot stings of his mouth.

  “Most of them would start with me being a hell of a lot stronger than I really was. I would have muscles and the balls to use them.”

  “Kind of like now.”

  “Yep. Oh damn, I was good in my imagination. Remember Chad?”

  “I would rather forget him, thank you.”

  “Well one time he had you pinned up against the lockers. He was kissing you, his hands on your waist. It was all for show, to let everybody know you were his property.”

  “I didn’t see it that way at the time, but you’re right.”

  “In my fantasy, I walked right up to him and tapped him on the shoulder. He asked me what the fuck I thought I was doing and I answered him with a punch to the solar plexus. He bent over, groaning. I told him that was for treating you like a whore. He laughed and said you were one. So I lifted him by the shirt collar and gave him a stare-down, ordered him to take it back.”

  “And did he?”

  Ian chuckled, running his fingers along Nikky’s inner thighs, gradually urging her to open for him. “It was my fantasy, so hell yes, he did.”

  “My hero.” She sighed dramatically.

  “Not exactly,” he rasped. “As soon as Chad skulked off I told you that you belonged to me now and that you would do anything I wanted. You were totally mesmerized. Your eyes melted. Right there in the hall with everyone watching you sank to your knees and took out my cock. You licked it and sucked it, your sweet tongue working me, bathing me in saliva. I came in your mouth and you swallowed every drop.”

  “What a naughty mind you had, Ian Hamilton. And to think I let you sit next to me and do algebra.”

  “Remember that table at the library where we used to study?”

  “Yes. Dare I ask what about it?”

  Ian paused to build the suspense, trailing his tongue over her hip and dispensing maddening little kisses to her inner thighs. He could smell her surrender, the fragrance of sweet juices, lubrication for the penetration he was going to make her beg for.

  “You used to surrender to me on that table. I would whisper in your ear and you would bend over, pressing your breasts against the smooth, shellacked oak. If you had jeans on, you would unzip them for me and pull them down. If it was a skirt, you pulled it up. I always did your panties for you. Sometimes I would imagine coming into the library and you would be waiting for me at our table, spread on top of it, totally naked. You could fly too. You liked to come in my window and crawl into bed with me.”

  “I was a busy girl.”

  “You have no idea.” Ian extended his tongue, delivering a sizzling lick across the surface of her pussy.

  Releasing a mild curse, writhing in reply, she grabbed hold of his hair. “Wait, I’m not ready.”

  “You seem ready to me.”

  “But you have to tell me first— Why are you doing this?”

  “I told you I was going to because I wanted to and now I am. Did you think I was bluffing?”

  “Most guys do.”

  “I’m not most guys.”

  “No shit.”

  Unperturbed, Ian brushed her labia ever so faintly with his tongue. A slight strategic redirection and he felt her clit quiver and swell in response.

  He let the sensations build. He did so just long enough to shut down her conscious mind, leaving her a single motivation.

  Abruptly he denied her, leaving her wet and empty, untouched, horny as hell.

  “Ian, don’t stop.”

  “Are you telling me you enjoy this after all?”

  “Yes, you pompous know-it-all ass,” she snapped. “Now finish what you started.”

  “That’s no way for my sex slave to talk. You’re my property, remember?”

  “I want Chad back.”

  Ian used a single finger, his little one, to demolish her completely. She arched her back panting as he applied the very lightest touch to her clitoris.

  “Are you ready to cooperate?”

  “Yes,” she moaned. “Oh god, anything. I’ll do anything.”

  “Put your hands on your breasts.”

  Nikky whimpered. Clearly she hadn’t expected to have to pleasure herself.

  He blew a little stream of air over her sex as a means of enforcement. Cool breeze over red-hot flesh.

  “Oh god.” She moaned, quickly cupping her breasts for him.

  “Massage them.” He pressed his advantage. “Show me what you like. Show me what you would do if you were all alone.”

  Closing her beautiful bright eyes, Nikky complied. He watched, mesmerized as she massaged, using her fingertips, her nails, her palms. Her face lit with passion, sheer ecstasy.

  “I want you to pinch your nipples for me.”

  She sucked in a breath. “You don’t ever stop, do you?”

  “Do you want me to?”

  She said nothing.

  Ian turned his attention elsewhere, for now. He thrust his tongue deep into her pussy. The sudden erotic invasion made her shudder with unmet need. It took barely a moment for her to start pushing against him—eager, greedy, right back on the edge of climax.

  Again, he denied her.

  And waited. Without another word she took hold of her nipples, carefully rolling them between thumbs and forefingers.

  “Harder,” he said.

  Nikky cried out, arching her back. “I want to come again, Ian. Take me there.”

  “Tell me you’re my slave,” he said impulsively, as he licked and sucked, the sudden need catching him off guard.

  What the hell game am I playing
? Nikky wasn’t meant to be his, not then and not now.

  “I’m your goddamn slave,” she spat. “Just…just do it.”

  Ian smiled. She was hardly submissive material. Good for her.

  “I want you to scream when you come, you little wild thing. Call me whatever you want.”

  “Not a problem, buddy boy.”

  She cried out now as he pressed his lips to her throbbing sex, kissing her sweet vulva. The juices ran over his face. He tasted her—pungent, exotic honey.

  Clearly she had suffered long enough. Rolling his tongue, he pushed it up inside her. Immediately he followed with a searing graze across her clitoris.

  The move was designed to end her frustration in one fell swoop. Nikky began to shudder at once. He could only imagine the experience she was having, sharing intimacy with a man, absolutely no responsibility for his pleasure.

  That was why he had played with her, teasing her so long. He wanted her to let go…of everything.

  Every muscle in Nikky’s body went stiff. She pressed her heels into the bed, digging them into the mattress. He heard the sound of air expelling from her lungs but he could swear it was like she wasn’t breathing at all. Her nails dug into his shoulders as she held on for dear life.

  From Ian’s view, it was like lying with a woman possessed. Except it was an orgasm that had taken her over, not a demon.

  It went on, seconds ticking by like hours, her teeth chattering. He could almost hear her heart slamming against her ribs. Her belly tightened and contracted, releasing over and over.

  Ian wished he could feel it too, crawling into her brain with her to share the experience.

  Actually he wanted to share everything. Yet another strange thought for what was supposed to be a one-night stand.

  Was he as in control as he supposed?

  Time would tell.

  Everything was such a blur for Nikky, like a whirlwind of sexual fire, burning her, cleansing her, consuming and leaving nothing in its wake. She felt so weak afterward, so totally at peace.

  Nikky let Ian hold her for a long time, stroking her hair, letting her rest her head on his chest, giving her his heartbeat as a beacon to orient her to reality. No one else could bring me back from such bliss, she thought. Then again, no one else could have taken her out so far and deep in the first place.

  Another one of life’s ironies, she mused as she lay there trying to think of something to say. Here she had just had the best sex of her life and it had been a one-shot deal with a guy she hadn’t seen in ten years and likely wouldn’t see for ten more—a friend, not a lover, not in the real sense.

  Then again, what was real anymore?

  Nikky doubted there was a formula to figure it out. Not even in those old textbooks of Ian’s, the ones he used to carry around all the time, along with hers of course.

  Ian, apparently, had nothing to say either and so presently they both fell asleep. The next thing Nikky knew, she felt cool air on her exposed back. Cool air wafting over half-dried sweat.

  She was cold. Ian was asleep, half snoring, half muttering under his breath, very soft and kind of cute. She couldn’t make out what he was saying. She might have tried harder but it felt like an invasion of his privacy.

  Nikky had never enjoyed this part of sex, the waking up afterward. Even in the so-called relationships she had been in, there was always that dawning doubt, that nagging fear on her part. Inevitably it was reinforced by the subtle changes in her partners, who never quite seemed to know what to do with her once their dicks were spent.

  Oh, they talked a good game but at the end of the day it was all about waiting for the next hard-on, coordinating the next available day, providing they could sneak away from whatever they were doing, or whomever.

  Nikky would never willingly date a married man. She tried to be careful but there were some pretty damn good liars out there. She swore again and again that she wouldn’t be fooled, not by sob stories of half-assed separations or skillfully disguised ring-finger tan lines, but it kept on happening.

  Right down to Trent, her latest on-again, off-again beau who swore he was no longer fucking his ex, though Nikky had her doubts.

  Dear sweet Ian, she thought, pressing a kiss to his lips as she got up gingerly from the bed. If only he knew the mess she had made of her life over the years, he would never have lit all these candles or spread the rose petals.

  Some goddess she made.

  Feeling more dejected by the moment, she gathered her clothes. She had felt this kind of thing before and the more her panic rose about wanting to go, the more it confirmed that she wasn’t a worthy person.

  In this case she had allowed Ian to deceive himself where she was concerned and that made her complicit.

  Talk about self-damning logic. She could almost hear her father’s voice, the hushed but very intentional tones in the next room as he grilled Nikky’s mother and later her big sister Lil. His questions were always the same. Where did you go? With whom? Why are you wearing that new perfume?

  They were all whores in his mind, every woman who walked the earth. Nikky must have been the worst of all because the old man hadn’t even been able to bear to stay under the same roof with her once she had become a teenager, or so Nikky’s fourteen-year-old brain had told her the summer her father had left the house for good.

  “What do you expect?” he had growled at Nikky’s mother as though it were the most natural and appropriate thing in the world for a man to leave his wife and take up with his twenty-something secretary.

  Apparently Gerald Neill’s own behavior was exempt from any moral examination though.

  Go figure.

  Nikky gently closed the door behind her. Goodnight my sweet prince, sleep tight.

  Kaity was lying in the dark, pretending to be asleep, when Nikky got back to their room.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered as Nikky climbed onto the other side of the king-size bed after a quick shower.

  Nikky was tempted to ask why she was sorry. It could be anything. Take your pick. From pilfering lip gloss to using all the towels at each and every hotel stay. Kaity was the queen of annoyance.

  And that didn’t begin to cover the s’mores nightmare Nikky had just discovered in the bathroom—burnt marshmallows and melted chocolate stuck all over Nikky’s hair dryer and tweezers.

  “It’s okay, we can make more s’mores next weekend,” Nikky said groggily.

  “No, not that, silly. I mean about me telling Gretchen about you and Ian. I don’t know why I open my mouth half the time. I’m such a bitch.”

  “It’s cool, Kaity.” Nikky reached across to hold her friend’s hand. “I’m sorry too, for calling you a bad friend. You are a hot mess sometimes but you have always been there for me.”

  Kaity was sniffling, laughing and crying at the same time. “We deserve each other, huh? So what about Ian? Was it off the charts?”

  “It was the best sex I’ve ever had. No strings attached. What more could a woman ask for?”

  Kaity was obviously thinking about that. “I don’t know. But for a woman who supposedly just had the time of her life, you sure sound miserable.”

  “It’s nothing,” Nikky lied. “I’ll be fine in the morning.”

  Chapter Three

  Ian growled, the veins in his forehead popping as he leaped straight up and swung the racquet one more time.

  It was game point, the small blue rubber ball reverberated off the wall with the violence of a gunshot.

  “That’s two games for me,” he announced to his partner and best friend Nathan Kane. “Want to go for best three out of five?”

  Nathan was working on catching his breath, hands on his hips. Like Ian, he was in top shape though there was no keeping up with Ian today. “The way you’re playing? I would rather go up against Damien from The Omen. Wait, maybe you are possessed. I’ll call an exorcist. In the meantime give me your tickets for the big game, you’ll be busy floating around spewing green vomit for the foreseeable futu
re.”

  “It I do spew anything, it will be all over your office. Face it, man, you’re just getting old,” Ian dismissed.

  Nathan slapped him on the back good-naturedly. “I’m old enough to know something’s up with you. It can’t be business because we are kicking ass in the profit department, thanks to everyone needing our services in a bad economy. So that leaves woman trouble. Buy me a drink and I’ll help you out.”

  “I don’t have woman trouble and why the hell should I buy you a drink? You’re the one who lost.”

  “Because you’re the one needs the advice. It’s simple logic.”

  “Logic, my ass,” Ian muttered, though he was secretly happy for a chance to unload a little.

  The truth was, he had been badly shaken this morning when he’d woken up to find Nikky gone. It wasn’t as if they were in a relationship but she could have at least said goodbye. According to the front-desk clerk, she and her friend Kaitlyn had checked out bright and early.

  That’s what he got for sleeping in until eight. When was the last time he had done that? Usually he was up by five-thirty. Making love to Nikky had chilled him out completely. He had slept like a baby. Talk about a perfect experience. For him. He wasn’t sure he had given her everything he’d promised.

  It had been like a virgin climb, all the excitement and thrill of a new mountain, placing the spikes, making the calculations, working the ropes, balancing adrenaline against cold, steely reason—the perfect mix of man against nature. And the excitement had overcome his resolve and his plans for a slow night of lovemaking—just for her.

  Climbing had been Ian’s life and on one fateful occasion it had nearly taken that life. Since then he had never fully let his guard down—not in business, not in play, and certainly not in his love life, what little of it there had been these past few years.

  Tracking down Nikki had been something he had thought of many, many times. But Ian had come to believe very strongly in fate. There was a deeper peace to things, a deeper meaning than could ever be seen on the surface. His time in the Himalayas had taught him that. As had the courageous silence of the Buddhist monks. Their tenacity and ferocious oneness with the butterfly wings of eternity had served as his guide.