Wicked Burn(20)
Author: Beth Kery

“God, yes,” she whispered breathlessly, barely able to speak as he pummeled her.

Vic’s eyes glowed with manic lust. He abruptly pushed her legs back, making her scream as he fixed her feet beneath the horizontal wrought-iron post of the bedstead.

“Keep ’em there,” he ordered before he rose over her, supporting his body on the bedstead. He pounded into her. The angle of the position that he forced her to take was as uncompromising as it was wickedly arousing. She couldn’t have maintained it for long, as hard as Vic drove into her, but Niall could tell by the fierce, wild expression on his face that his orgasm loomed.

“Fuck yeeaaahhh!” he grated out as he hammered into her one last time. He clenched his eyes shut and groaned in agonized pleasure.

Niall felt a genuine level of discomfort as she felt him swell inside her vagina. But by the time she felt him throb in climax within her, the angle making the sensation of him coming even more potent than ever before, her lust overcame her pain. She pressed against him tighter, tilting her hips up rhythmically to get the pressure she needed.

And she was exploding right there with him.

“Ah, baby, that’s so good,” he muttered. He pumped her hard throughout his orgasm. Finally, his upper body sagged against the bedstead as exhaustion overcame him.

Niall blinked her eyes open and took in the expression on his face. She released her feet. “Untie me, Vic,” she whispered. “I want to touch you.”

“Sorry,” he grunted sheepishly.

“Where are you going?” Niall asked in stunned disbelief when he suddenly got off her and stood.

“Hold your horses. I’ll be right back,” he assured her. He came back a few seconds later, carrying a large pair of scissors.

“Vic, what the hell . . . ?”

“Calm down,” he muttered with a grin. “It’s the only way I’m gonna get you loose. I tied off a tight fucker.”

She gasped when he matter-of-factly cut his belt in half, freeing her wrists and making the buckle clank loudly as it fell on the iron bed.

“Your belt is ruined,” she murmured huskily. She held out her arms for him. He tossed aside the scissors and clambered onto the bed.

“You think I care? That was a damn better use for a piece of leather than holding up my pants any time,” he said through a widening grin that he pressed repeatedly to her neck. She chuckled softly and lifted her hands to touch the smooth skin over his solid shoulder muscles. She closed her eyes and inhaled the sublimity of the sensation. A satisfied lethargy pervaded her. Because he let her indulge so infrequently in touching his beautiful body at her leisure, she appreciated doing it exponentially.

She sighed deeply.

Vic raised his head at the sound. She watched him through the narrow slit of eyelids that grew heavier by the second. She registered that he smiled . . . not wide, but enough for her to see his crooked front tooth.

And then she succumbed to a deep, profound sleep.

It should have been you, Niall. It should have been you!

The sharp, staccato cracking noise of gunshots followed by a muffled cry of terror—

Niall started into hyperalertness, knowing immediately that the sound of distress had been her own. She experienced this too frequently to think otherwise. Instinct told her that she lay alone in Vic’s bed. A beam of light glowed through a crack in the bedroom door. She rose and fumbled for her shirt and panties on the floor.

She noted her perspiration-glazed face when she looked into the mirror in Vic’s bathroom. This, too, came as no surprise. The nights that she didn’t awaken with her heart pounding in fear and her body drenched in sweat were becoming less frequent.

Still, good nights were the exception, not the rule.

She wet a washcloth with cool water and used the soap at the sink to repair the aftereffects of her nightmare and several rounds of phenomenal sex.

It was nice to think of their lovemaking while her body still tried to recover from the bad dream. Her hand slowed as she washed her thighs. The slight soreness and tingling sensation at her breasts and sex strangely satisfied her instead of striking her as unpleasant.

A few moments later she padded barefoot into Vic’s living room. She paused next to the end of the couch when she saw him. She studied him while he worked, completely unaware of her presence.

He wore only a pair of black sweats tied low on his lean hips. His dark brown hair fell on his forehead as he leaned over in deep concentration. What looked like a typed manuscript lay in his lap. Other pieces of paper and tablets were scattered on the coffee table in front of him. He occasionally wrote on the pages with quick, almost angry movements of his pencil or turned a page briskly.

His glasses intrigued her. How could such a big, masculine man who looked like he would thrive in the brisk outdoors doing hard manual labor look so natural wearing glasses while he worked at his art with total focus?

A strange, unwelcome feeling overcame her. At that moment Vic Savian seemed so vast to her. She’d come to know only the tiniest part of him . . . the outer limits of the universe of his character.

Niall didn’t think that she’d moved or made a sound, but suddenly his chin shifted and his eyes pinned her. A feeling overcame her that took her a moment to recognize.

Shyness? She laughed at herself for that. Why would that feeling overwhelm her at this moment and not when he’d tied her to his bed and had his way with her as he had earlier?

“I’m sorry, I saw the light. I didn’t mean to bother you,” she said in a hushed voice that paid tribute to the early morning hour.

“Come here,” Vic said after a moment of silence.

Niall came around to sit on the sofa. She’d just seen something in his usually impassive expression that amazed her.

“You’re nervous, aren’t you? About the opening of your play next week?” she asked as she sat and folded her legs beneath her.

He yanked off his glasses and pressed his fingers into his clenched eyelids. Niall could almost feel the burn he must be experiencing. Had he slept at all?

“I always get nervous, but this fucking monster is gonna flop hard enough to give me whiplash. Forget about the damage it might do to the unsuspecting public,” he muttered after a few seconds.

He glanced up sharply when Niall chuckled.

“What’s so funny?” he asked sourly.

Niall refused to be cowed by his scowl. She’d been around artists since her undergraduate days, which meant she had plenty of exposure to the artistic temperament. “I just had this image of you madly flipping switches at a control panel behind the eyes of some kind of raging Godzilla monster. I have a feeling the citizens of Chicago will survive, Vic.”