Page 54 of Carnal Wagers

“And if I want one?”

I chuckled. “Saucy thing. Two of my fingers shove into you for that. But you like that, don’t you?”

“More…”

“You’re nothing but a wanton little slut.” Bloody hell, saying that out loud cursed me. The edge was right there. I had to grip myself hard to curb the building ball of tension with pain. Because, fuck that, she didn’t get to see me come when I wasn’t seeing her first. “I remove my fingers. My erection presses against you, hard and warm. I rub myself through your lips and press up against your pussy. All you have to do is drop your weight, and all of my throbbing, hard cock will fill you.”

“Yes,” she whimpered again, her breathing erratic.

“You’re close.”

“I am.”

“All you need is me inside you. Slowly, I fill you. You can feel me everywhere. I’m all you can think about.”

“Oh, putain. Tu parles trop,” she nearly growled between moans. I had no idea what the exact words meant, but I got the meaning from her annoyance.

“Come for me, mo síbhean. Come on my cock like the bad little slut you are.”

A filthy, strangled cry left her. It was the sweetest thing I’d heard in years. I tightened my hold on my dick. I wasn’t about to spill where she would see. Not where she would win.

Her quick breathing smoothed.

“That was…” She tittered. “Did you…You didn’t.”

“Weren’t you watching?” I spread my legs wider. My cock stood out, proud yet angry, and not spent. “Too busy being selfish?”

“We should meet for the real deal. I’ll take very good care of you.”

My mouth ticked up in one corner. Now she was exactly where I wanted her. Needy and on the verge of begging.

“Like I said, I don’t do easy.”

I hung up and zipped myself up as best I could. My shaft rubbed against my pants. My balls ached, heavy with need, and I dug my fingers into my thighs. I refused to give her power over me. I counted the seconds. At ten, I stood and walked out of my bedroom with measured steps.

The moment that door was shut and she couldn’t see or hear me anymore, I rested the back of my head against a wall and took myself back in hand. No soft strokes. No intermittent squeezes. I needed the release fucking now.

The memory of the sounds she made spurred my squeezing pumps up and down faster. I visualized her splayed out for my viewing pleasure. Her fingers dipping in and out of her tight heat. The way she’d beg for me. The way she’d cry out when I finally gave in. The warm squeeze of her as I sank my cock in. Heat zinged down my spine. My length hardened further. My balls tightened with the perfect ache as my heart pounded, and nothing else mattered but that peak, the one I hadn’t sought in far too long.

I raced through it into blinding euphoria. Cum spurted into my hand and onto the tile. My legs shook. My head spun, and I shrank down to the floor. I thunked my head against the wall as my body cooled and my heart rate slowed.

What the hell had that been? That was the type of high I got during sex, not while giving myself a hand shandy.

After months, even years, without a single spur of arousal, she’d managed to get me harder than a metal cannon in seconds. Just knowing she’d gone to these lengths, that she was watching, and that I’d stolen her power and made it my own had ratcheted my heartbeat to an extreme few other things had managed. I knocked my skull harder against the wall and pounded the floor with my fist.

This was all it could ever be because I knew if I got a real taste of her, I wouldn’t stop at just once. I’d risk her life to fuck her twice, then thrice. Before long, she’d become another one of the Love Knot Killer’s victims. Another bloody statistic. Another dead-ended future, and one more wake-up call to the reality that I, Cillian Donal O’Leary, had no legacy to look forward to. Only money, danger, and more money.

Chapter 16

I checked my phone for the umpteenth time and huffed. There were still no new messages, so I went back to making some last-minute touches to my makeup. It had been the best phone sex of my life, and he’d been into it. I know he had, but two days later, he was still blocking every phone number I messaged him from.

Oddly, though, he hadn’t removed the camera in his bedroom. I still watched him, and every time he passed beneath it, he glared up. I wasn’t sure what that meant, and it was driving me crazy.

A plate clattered on the entranceway console below the vintage mirror in front of where I stood. Maeve’s entire brownstone was filled with vintage pieces she’d picked up from antique shops over the years. Old with the new fit her style, like the way she matched her strawberry-blonde hairstyles to different decades from the 1900s, compared to her modern tomboy outfits. Today, she’d gone with the Gibson girl look, with a knoll of voluminous wavy hair tied up in a knot atop her head, and paired it with a loose crop top, suspenders, and ripped boyfriend jeans.

“Enough. Eat,” Maeve said, sliding a piece of toast with a chocolate-hazelnut spread my way. “Before you drive me into a nervous breakdown with all that heel tapping.”

God, it looked delicious. The smell was addictive, but the sticky spread would smudge my lipstick, and I couldn’t meet up with husband dearest looking less than perfect. My hair and makeup were my armor and a way to capture his attention.