50_shades_ultimate Page 21

  He licked up my come, and then eyed me with his icy, penetrating gaze from his place between my legs. “You may have had an unfortunate experience with a man in your past, my lady, but I hope you will not think of all of us as thoughtless cretins.”

  I gasped for breath, my fingers aching from the way I was seizing the headboard in a death grip. “Oh, God, no. This more than makes up for it.”

  “Good,” he laughed, sounding pleased. Then he took me by the waist and rolled over so I was astride his hips. He nested his hands in my hair and dragged me down so he could kiss me, softly, warmly, passionately. Again he kissed my eyes and licked at my eyelashes until I laughed at his silliness. “Twice I’ve had my way with my lady,” he growled against my lips. “I think perhaps it’s time my lady witch has her way with me.”

  I giggled against his soft, all-consuming kiss. “Are you serious?”

  “Never more so.” He released my hair to offer up his wrists.

  No one had ever let me “be on top,” never mind “have my way” with him. I shook my head and my breasts jiggled with the motion, something that kept his hungry attention centered on me—and them. “I wouldn’t know what to do to you, Harry.”

  He arched one blond eyebrow. “Can my lady not use her imagination?”

  I thought about what I could do, what I wanted to do. I was developing a very fertile imagination because of the magical bed—and a naughty one, I decided. I took his strong wrists in my hands and guided them to the headboard so he could grip it the way I had. After that, I used some of the veils from the bed to fasten them there with a series of tight knots. He watched me intently as I worked, and I finally said, “I’m not hurting you?”

  “You’re not hurting me,” he said.

  “I don’t want to irritate your wound,” I said, brushing my hand over his bandage.

  “It doesn’t hurt.” He arched up under me, a kind of snakelike ripple that caused the enormous bulge in his breeches to brush against my belly. “It hurts more not being inside you, my lady.”

  I tapped his nose. “Well, you’ll just have to wait.”

  Harry smiled. “As my lady says.”

  I leaned down and rubbed my tits and engorged nipples against his bare chest. He tried to catch my mouth in a kiss, tried to catch a nipple as I brushed them against his face, but I withdrew too quickly. I kissed the side of his neck, blew into his ear, and worked my way down to his clavicle, licking over the battle scars I found in abundance there. He moaned at the sensation and the entire bed groaned as he tested his binds.

  I swirled my tongue down over his pecs and around his nipples, savoring his musky male taste, nipping at his flesh gently until my lover grunted at the sensation. I followed the matting of soft blond hair down the middle of his body until I reached the edge of his breeches. They were well-tented by this time and the leather looked painfully tight. I undid the flap and his impressive erection burst free, the crown already weeping thickly with precum and leaving a sticky trail over his lower belly.

  I dabbled my fingers in his wetness and took him in my hand. He felt like velvet over steel. I slid his foreskin back over the swollen purple glans and his stomach muscles contracted and I heard him suck in a deep, trembling breath and mutter the name of some deity as I bowed my head and licked at the syrupy drops. He tasted good, wild and sweet. I licked faster, swirling my tongue around the crown while Harry groaned and his hips lifted up off the mattress.

  “Oh, my lady…” he grunted and tugged harder at his binds. “Let me go.”

  “No,” I told him archly. “You said I could have you, and so I shall.” I finally took him into my mouth, just the tip, and ran my teeth around his bulbous head. I didn’t have much experience pleasing a man this way, but I read a lot of romance novels and Harry seemed to like what I was doing. I took him deeper into my mouth and sucked hard, trying my best to deep-throat him as long as possible. I cradled his warm, heavy balls in my hand while I sucked the precum from his crown. I ran my tongue under the ridge and down the underside. I licked along his perineum and circled his asshole briefly before racing my tongue back up to the crown.

  Harry grunted as if I had really hurt him, grunted and cursed that god that he had been calling out for, and I decided then that he had suffered enough. I slid up his body, took his cock in my hand, and guided it past my folds, seating him deep inside my wetness. I gripped Harry’s shoulders and leaned down to tease my tongue over his half-parted lips while I rode him. I undulated my hips up and down on his ramrod hard shaft and he sighed with relief and met each of my thrusts with a thrust of his own.

  “No,” I told him, breathing softly in his ear. I held him down, not permitting him to move while I angled my hips and pumped him, and this time he obeyed me.

  “You really are a witch,” he groaned as he struggled against me, struggled to obey. His eyes had turned dark and feral, the way they had been when we met that first time, with Harry in battle. “Now let me come, witch.”

  “Not yet. Not till I say.” My inner muscles gripped him tight, milking his shaft even as I dragged his hips up and down, letting him go ever deeper inside me but denying him the release he so wanted. His groaned and panted, his fingernails clawing at the headboard while the whole bed shook under the force of his lust. The veils seemed to shift and take on forms around us, sensuous forms, and the bed sighed and groaned along with our lovemaking.

  My climax built and built, a surge of warmth seeking release. “Yes, that’s it,” I told him, and it exploded in a flood of electricity that filled me as completely as his cock did. “Now, Harry. Come now.”

  Harry threw his head back and roared as he trembled and finally came within me, filling me with his seed and his lust and his love. I trembled and screamed with release, dragging every last drop from him before dropping down upon him, kissing his face all over. He told me what a wicked witch I was and how much he loved me. And the bed seemed to agree with that.

  * * *

  I woke with the sun in my eyes and my cheek lying on Harry’s chest, breathing in his scent. His arm was around me, his hand possessively clutching my ass cheek. We were sticky and sweaty from our lovemaking, but I was never happier to be back in my own bedroom in Chicago. With him. With my prince.

  I sat up and Harry slowly stirred beside me. He looked so beautiful in sleep, and I realized I could watch him for hours and never grow tired of the sight. I could sleep beside him for the rest of my life and never grow weary. He squinted at me from under his sleep-tousled hair and I leaned down to lay a kiss on his lips. When he glanced around, his eyes suddenly filled with panic. “What place is this?” he said, sitting up and looking around.

  “Welcome to my world, Harry,” I told him, glancing around my pretty little apartment and listening to the familiar sounds of traffic on the street outside. I didn’t have dragons, or dwarves, or Ogres, or knights in shining armor, but I still thought my world was pretty special. Maybe more so, now that Harry was here with me. Then, seeing his expression, I added, “You aren’t afraid to explore a brand new world with me, are you?”

  Harry turned to me and seized my chin for the best wake-up kiss I had ever gotten. “My little witch,” he said, “I shall never be afraid with you by my side.”

  * * *

  THE LITTLE MERMAID

  By Madeline Apple

  “Nadine, you really need to loosen up,” my best friend Lauren said as she jostled me for space in front of her grand, Hollywood-style makeup mirror hanging over her dressing table. “You act like you’re going off to your execution.” She hip-bumped me and I bumped her back as we carefully fixed our hair before Lauren’s big night out—her last one as a single woman.

  “This place sounds like a dive,” I said as I sprayed flat my long, frizzy locks—or tried to, anyway. “Neptune’s Palace? I mean, really? Could the place sound any cornier?”

  In the mirror, Lauren shrugged a thin, sculpted shoulder. “Hey, Patti found the place. She says it’s one of the hottest ni
ghtclubs in Miami.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” I sighed, looking at us side-by-side, Lauren all tall and leggy and blonde, with a perpetual Baywatch-style tan, and me…well, short and pale and way too curvy for my own good, with carroty hair, a snub nose and loads of freckles that made me look younger than my twenty-one years. Lauren’s mini was short and white and sparkly, whereas mine was more conservative, more like a purple sari that I hoped would hide, rather than hug, my curves. I had never been a big fan of my body, my wide hips and heavy breasts. “Wasn’t she the one behind that beer kegger we wound up at in high school with all those college boys? My mom just about killed me!”

  “Your mom did not kill you!” Lauren grinned. “We blamed Patti, remember?”

  “Oh yeah,” I said with a grin, though the memory made me sad. Those days of us being wild, giggly high school girls and letting Patti get us in trouble seemed so long ago. And my mom had died just over a year ago, I reminded myself. I would never get in trouble with her again. The idea made me want to snort back the tears in my nose.

  I owed Lauren so much. She was there for me when my mom got sick, sat up with me all night long the night she died, and even helped me with the funeral arrangements. In fact, were it not for Lauren, and to a smaller extent, Patti, I would have been the lonely high school geek with her nose always in a book. Lauren and I even went to the prom as a couple when our respective boyfriends dumped us only days before the big dance, and we would up dancing together and giggling and drinking way too much in the parking lot—again, thanks to Patti. The whole school thought we were crazy.

  Now here we were.

  Lauren, my best friend, was getting married tomorrow and then taking a week-long Caribbean cruise with her new husband Miguel, a man so rich he’d bought them a massive, beach-front neo-Colonial home in Boca Raton, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Florida. I was Lauren’s Maid of Honor and I’d agreed to housesit for them while they were on their honeymoon. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now the thought just depressed the hell out of me, like window-shopping when you couldn’t buy.

  One day soon, Lauren was coming home, and she was going to have this huge, palatial home, and a husband, and a life, and probably kids one day. I’d be back at the library where I’d been working since I graduated high school, eating cold pizza for breakfast, and looking forward to the next Neil Gaiman novel, the highlight of my week. I’d been voted the smartest girl in school, the one most likely to succeed, and yet I felt like the world’s biggest loser.

  Outside the house, I could hear Patti pulling up the drive in her sexy, vintage Mustang, laying on the horn big time.

  Lauren put her hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go out and make some big memories and big trouble tonight, Nadine!” she grinned. “It’s our last night!”

  Our last night together, I thought. Our last night as two girls gone wild. I forced a smile and said, “Absolutely! Neptune’s Palace, here we come!”

  We giggled together like we were teenagers again and then rushed for the door.

  * * *

  “Here we go, ladies!” Patti said as we got our hands stamped by the shirtless beefcake at the door and ducked into Neptune’s Palace. Patti, who looked like a Caribbean queen in her white sarong mini, was grinning like a madwoman, a sure sign we were going to get into deep trouble tonight.

  I was honestly impressed. From the outside, the place had that stony-grey penitentiary look that so many buildings on the coast of Florida have to make them hurricane-resistant, but inside the place was jumping like mad.

  “Holy shit, this place is great!” Lauren exclaimed as she scuffled across the dance floor in her four-inch slingbacks, trailing behind the short white veil attached to the fake tiara I had given her in the car. She also wore a hot pink sash across her dress with the words I’M THE BRIDE BITCH emblazoned on it in silver glitter. Patti had made the sash, in case you haven’t figured that out already!

  Normally, I found Patti’s taste in clubs—and men—dubious at best, but this time I had to agree with Lauren. The place looked huge, with most of it made up of a massive dance floor with touch-sensitive tiles that went off when you stepped on them so the whole place lit up like a giant arcade as club hoppers gyrated and back-danced across the floor to the intense techno beat throbbing through the hidden speakers. Fishnets covered the ceiling, full of blacklight starfish and seahorses, while neon pulsed across the walls in squiggles and scripts that almost looked like some foreign languages. One whole wall as made up of nothing but video screens showing various swimsuit-clad models swimming and showing off, meanwhile, the center of the floor was occupied by a gigantic dais where, presumably, a live band could play.

  Tonight, though, there was a famous local DJ in the loft, and the dais was a showcase for four massive but narrow aquarium tanks that must have each stood at least ten feet tall and held thousands of gallons of water apiece. You would have expected fish in the tank—many restaurants here on the coast made that their centerpieces—but instead of fish, each of the four tanks held what looked like professional swimsuit models. There were two girls and two guys. Each had been costumed to resemble mer-people, and it was obvious they were professional swimmers as they hovered in the water effortlessly, their mechanical costume tails slapping the glass and their long hair streaming through the water like veils over their heads.

  “Oh wow,” I said, couldn’t help myself. “Is that like a real job?”

  “They’re great, aren’t they?” Patti cried over the music, eyeing up the male models like she wanted to eat them whole. In her defense, they were, indeed, yummers. “I’ve been here twice and I still can’t figure out the trick.”

  “What do you mean?” Lauren asked, finally noticing the swimmers.

  Patti shook her head, her teased spiral afro sparkling with glitter. “They stay down there so long I keep expecting one of them to drown, but they never do.”

  “Maybe they oxygenate the water,” I said, even though I didn’t think that would save a person.

  “Or they can just hold their breaths a really long time. Some Olympic swimmers can do that, right?” Lauren asked like we would know that.

  We continued to debate how the swimmers did it even as Patti led us up to the VIP lounge she had rented for the night. It was spectacular, decked out in sexy neon and glittery curtains. A whole buffet was laid out for us—all seafood, of course. There was barbecue shrimp, oysters on a half shell, lobster in butter, caviar, steamed mussels, and tons of wine, margaritas and daiquiris to choose from. We even had our own waiters, huge, oiled beefcakes in little scaled loincloths that told us they were at our beck and call, literally.

  Lauren sipped at a strawberry daiquiri and rolled her eyes. “Patti, do you have compromising pictures of the owner or what? This is unreal!”

  She was probably half-serious. Patti was a junior partner in a local law firm.

  Patti laughed as one of the beefcake/waiters served her a dry martini. “My business partner Karl owns shares in this place. I get a discount.” She grinned widely at this. We all knew that Karl was more than just merely her “business partner”. He’d been bedding Patti for months—or, rather, Patti had been bedding him, at least according to her.

  I sipped a white wine and tried to feel good about Patti’s situation. Another girlfriend of mine was probably going to marry within the next year, start her family, start her life.

  For the next hour we drank, ate and talked about our lives together, laughing about all the stupid shit we had pulled over the years and commenting shamelessly on the waiters, and how pissed Miguel would be if he knew Lauren was spending her bachelorette party here.

  “That means you too, Miss Sally Sad Face!” Patti suddenly shouted over at me, and I realized she had been talking to me but I hadn’t been paying attention. The VIP lounge faced out over the club floor, and from here I could see the swimmers in the tanks. I was watching some college girls in too-short dresses and too-high heels oohing and
ahhing over the model in the aquamarine fish tail as he hovered in his tank, making seductive come-hither gestures. Like us, the girls were trying to figure out the trick.

  I looked over and said, “What’s that?”

  “I said we’re going down to dance. That means you!” Patti said as she stood up. “Tonight you are absolutely going to get laid, Nadine, and wipe that sad look off your face!”

  I blushed at her words. All my friends knew I hadn’t had a boyfriend since my mom had passed away. It was like her death had sucked all the interest I had in guys right out of me.

  We gathered up our drinks and started for the stairs just as a strange woman stepped into the lounge. She was older, but beautiful and flawless in that strangely fabricated Hollywood way. She wore a long, shimmering mermaid dress and her silvery blonde hair was piled high on her head. She looked at me with piercing Caribbean blue eyes. She had such an air of authority I found myself staring at her like a simpleton.

  “How are you enjoying the lounge?” the woman asked in a smoky voice that seemed to carry even over the music.

  “It’s great!” Patti exclaimed. “Thanks again for letting us use the lounge!” She turned to us and said, “This is Marissa, Karl’s partner here and half owner of the club.”

  Marissa nodded a greeting to all of us but kept staring at me like she knew me from somewhere, though I was sure we had never met before tonight. I felt a sting along my spine, like someone had run the blade of a knife up my back. I suddenly wanted to get out of there very badly.

  We exited the lounge posthaste, but as I was sliding past Marissa, she boldly reached out and took me by the wrist. Her hand felt like cold steel. I felt a jolt and nearly dropped my glass of wine. “Hello there, little one,” she said and smirked at me in a nasty way, like she was contemplating whether to eat me with gravy or butter.

  I pulled my hand back. “Excuse me,” I said and raced after my friends.