My cock throbbed, pulsed, burned as I continued to strain every muscle in an effort to hold it back for one more second. And then, in the moment that I knew I couldn’t keep it back any longer, I crushed my mouth to hers in our first kiss in three months. She moaned at the meeting of our mouths, a tearful whimper.
“Tell me you love me, Kyrie,” I growled through clenched teeth. “I need to hear that.”
She lifted up, drawing me out of her, fluttered her hips to roll my cock through her thick wet lips.
Her cerulean eyes met mine, wet with tears. “I love you, Valentine,” she whispered, and sank down.
I came then, and the words were torn from me as I exploded. “Kyrie…oh, god, Kyrie. I love you. I love you so much.” Her palms clutched my face, keeping our gazes locked as we came together, detonating at the same moment. “I love you so fucking much.”
I felt her walls squeeze me, milking every drop of come out of me.
Her mouth moved against mine, both of us gasping as wave after wave of climax washed through us, fading to leaving us both limp and exhausted.
“I love you, Valentine,” she whispered once more.
A few moments later, after I’d cleaned her up and we’d adjusted our clothes, she settled into the seat beside me. “So now what?”
I shrugged, glancing out the window to see the private airfield coming into view. “Now? Now I’m taking you somewhere far away, somewhere I can keep you tied to my bed and make you scream.”
SNEAK PEEK
A preview of BETA
Chapter 1: WAKING UP
* * *
Waking up has turned into one of my favorite games. The first question is always who’s awake first, Roth or me? If it’s me, it’s my job—self-appointed—to make sure he wakes up in the best possible way. In other words, with my hands and mouth around his morning wood. And if he’s awake first, he pretends to be asleep, so I can wake him up that way.
The second question I ask myself every morning is where in the world are we? Because it’s different every week or two. Two weeks ago, I woke up in Vancouver. I still had one of Roth’s neckties knotted around one wrist, the remnant of a long and scream-filled night spent tied spread-eagle to the bed. Roth didn’t untie me until I’d come…god, like six times? Seven? And when he did finally untie me, well, let’s just say I don’t think he’ll play the “torture Kyrie with multiple orgasms without letting her touch him back” game again any time soon. I literally attacked him. The claw marks raking down his back are still healing. I fucked him so hard I actually think I nearly broke his cock. I think that’s possible. Pretty sure it is, and I’m pretty sure I nearly accomplished it.
This morning I woke up and took stock. A little sore between the thighs, but nothing too bad. Roth was snoring, so I knew I was awake first. I breathed in, sighed, stretched. I blinked my eyes open, catching a whiff of salt sea air and the sound of waves crashing. The bed rocked gently from side to side. We were in a small, wood-paneled room with low ceilings and an open window. There was just room enough for the bed and a small chest of drawers. But the room was moving. Why was the room moving?
Where were we? It took a few minutes for memories of the preceding weeks to bubble up. A week in Vancouver…a long, long flight to Tokyo. A week in Japan. God, what a week. So many tours, so much hiking, so much sushi and sake. I’m not sure I’ll ever drink sake again, that’s for sure.
Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Kyoto…. I remembered the flight out of Kyoto, the flight attendants all dressed identically, down to their hairdos and the little scarf-tie thing knotted just so.
Then where did we go?
A seagull cawed, and I heard voices off in the distance, chattering rapidly. But they were not speaking Japanese.
“Nhặt nó lên!” The angry voice echoed across the water, faint and distant.
Vietnam. That’s where we were. Hanoi.
Roth had bought us a houseboat, paid for it in cash, and then piloted it himself up the Red River all the way to Hanoi from a little village on the Gulf of Tonkin. We took it slow, stopping often to take on supplies and admire the scenery. We ate, drank, slept, and fucked. We checked out temples, hiked out into the farmlands and up into the hills, hiring an interpreter/guide to show us the best places off the beaten path. That’s the thing about Roth: He never behaves like a tourist. He always seems to belong wherever we are, and he always makes sure we’re safe.
We arrived in Hanoi last night, and Roth found some little old lady to cook us a huge dinner on the houseboat. He paid her enough U.S. dollars that she left looking slightly faint from shock.
After dinner, he uncorked a bottle of some local wine or liquor—I wasn’t sure which—that was insanely strong. After a couple of small glasses, I was hammered. Roth took full advantage, laying me on my belly and drilling me from behind until we both came. That was it, because I passed out after that.
Once in a night isn’t anywhere near enough to sate my Valentine, so I owed him this morning.
Roth was lying on his side, facing away from me. The sheet was low around his hips, showing me his broad, rippling back. His blond hair had grown out over the last few months, enough that it brushed his collar when he had a shirt on, and it hung down past his cheekbones. He’d grown a bit of a beard, too. Being fair as he was, he didn’t grow a thick beard, just a fine coating of blond hair on his cheeks and jaw. Sexy. Oh, so sexy.
I hadn’t realized it was possible to feel this strongly about anyone. I’d realized pretty quickly that what I felt for Valentine was love, and that had been scary enough by itself. I wasn’t prepared to fall in love. Especially not with a man like Valentine. But as the weeks turned into months and I saw the world at his side, I realized what I’d felt for him back in Manhattan had really only been the beginning. The tip of the iceberg. The tiniest scraping sample off the top. The longer I spent with him, the more I realized how deep and intense my feelings for him were. I wanted to be with him every second of every day. I lived for the moments when I could make him smile, when I could see the soft, tender side of him that existed only for me.
Valentine was the best thing that had ever happened to me.
I cuddled up against him, pressed my lips to the back of his shoulder, and kissed, running my hand down his thick bicep. I found his hip and pushed the sheet away. I peered over his shoulder to watch as I cupped his balls in my hand. That, I’d found, was the best way to get him hard if he was still asleep. Massage slowly, gently, maybe a little pressure to his taint, and the sleeping giant would respond. Sure enough, within a minute or so, his cock was engorged and his breathing was changing. He groaned, his abdominal muscles tensing, arms raised over his head. He rolled to his back, stretched, and flexed his hips to drive his dick into my fist.
I glanced up at him, finding his eyes on me. “Morning.”
He grinned at me, a slow, sleepy smile. “Good morning, my lovely.”
“I passed out last night, huh?”
“Yes. Snake wine does you in rather quickly, it seems.” He watched as I stroked him slowly, one hand sliding from root to tip and back down in a smooth glide.
“Guess so.”
“You passed out before we got to do the one thing I’d been wanting to do to you on this boat,” he said between yawns.
“Which is?”
“Mmmmm.” He closed his eyes and lifted his hips. “Would you like to find out?”
I just gave him my small, secret smile, the one that meant I wasn’t going to argue either way. The do as you wish grin.
Roth growled low in his throat and sat up, pushing me off him. He grabbed the blanket, a large, thin piece of dark green fleece, and draped it from his shoulders, wrapping the ends around both of us as I stood in front of him. He gestured at the door leading from the cabin up to the deck, and I ascended, squeaking as Roth’s fingers traced a line up my ass crack. He just chuckled and kept fondling and fingering me, making the trip up the ladder a little difficult, but fun. On the deck, Roth kept the blank
et around both of us and guided me to the bow, which curved up elegantly to about waist height. Hanoi was spread out before us, dim in the early morning haze. There was another houseboat some two hundred feet away, and a third the same distance away on the other side, but there was no motion from either. A fishing scow plied the water about a thousand feet up-current and drifted toward us with fishing nets being hauled in, voices echoing now and again.
“Grab the bow,” Roth whispered in my ear. I took hold of the bow with both hands, then turned my head to watch him, but he made a negative sound. “Act like you’re just staring out at the city. And try to keep your voice down.”
I took the edges of the blanket and held on to it for him, keeping it pulled around us as Roth’s hands slid around my belly and descended between my thighs.
Oh, shit. Staying quiet was not one of my strong suits.
He had me writhing and moaning within seconds, pressing into his touch and biting my lip to keep from screaming. It didn’t take long before I was coming for the first time, and then he was bending at the knees, fingers of one hand on my pussy, the other around his cock, feeding it into me. I bent forward over the bow, spread my legs wide, and took him.
The fishing scow was getting closer, floating downstream, angled slightly so they’d slide right by us.
“Oh god, Roth. Hurry. I’m so close.”
“Don’t come yet. Not yet.”
“I can’t help it. I’m about to—”
He slowed his pace immediately. “Not yet, Kyrie. Not yet.”
The scow neared. Faces turned to regard us, eyes narrowed, suspicious. Roth just waved, and I heard the fishermen exchange comments, laughing. At that exact moment, Roth flexed his hips and drove into me. I wasn’t expecting it, and I let out a loud whimper, and all the fishermen guffawed. But at a glare from Roth, the helmsman gunned the engine, and they were soon past. Then Roth was moving again, and I was coming apart despite his exhortations to wait…wait.
“Come with me, Valentine!”
He came. Oh, dear god, did he come. So, so hard. He filled me with his come, and then kept driving, coming and coming, and I could only clench around him and bend over farther and keep taking him, gasping in the morning air.
Two weeks later, we were in a chateau in the hills of southern France. I was waking up, playing my game. Taking stock and guessing at our location.
But this time, something was wrong.
I sat up suddenly, totally awake. Roth wasn’t in bed. He never, ever left me alone in the mornings. He never got out of bed before me. I glanced at the bathroom, but it was dark and silent.
My heart was pounding, sweat beading on my forehead.
“Roth?” My voice was tentative, quiet, echoing in the expansive bedroom.
Silence.
The bed beside me was rumpled, still warm from his body heat. The pillow was indented where his head had been. There was a note. A white scrap of torn paper was pinned to the pillow with a long, thin silver knife. The message was written in red ink in neat, feminine, looping handwriting:
He belongs to me.
* * *
BETA
Now available at all ebook retailers
HAMMERED
HAMMERED
Copyright © 2018 by Jasinda Wilder
All rights reserved.
* * *
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
1
“Damn you, Nicholas Irving,” I snarl, heaving at the stuck window. “You lazy, good for nothing, cheating bastard.”
After one last futile heave, I let go of the window and climb down from the kitchen counter where I’d been perched in my effort to get better leverage. The window over my sink was stuck, and I wanted the damn thing open. It’s ninety-five degrees outside, with almost a hundred percent humidity, and there’s no central A/C in the house. Not even a window unit. The summers are so hot here that I’d wanted to at least get a window unit for our bedroom, but Nicholas had refused, insisting he’d spring for central A/C this summer. I’d begged him all winter and spring, to no avail. Well…now it’s August, one of the hottest summers on record, and there’s no central A/C, and no window unit, and the house is like a blast furnace.
To top it off, having survived three brutal months of divorce proceedings, I’m now the ex Mrs. Nicholas Irving. The divorce was finalized about a month ago. And the bastard—the bastard—had spent the six months preceding the divorce helping himself to the money in our joint savings account. Yeah, our joint account, the one I’ve been dumping every penny of my salary into for years, to afford the remodel of this cheap-ass, broken-down, money pit of a fixer-upper he’d wanted to buy. Now, the bank account is all but empty. Zero. He’d spent it all. Our money. My money—my forty to sixty hours a week at Dr. Bishara’s practice, six to seven days a week, no vacations, not even a weekend into the city—gone.
Turns out I’m too trusting, and maybe too naive, and perhaps a little bit stupid. My paychecks were on auto-deposit, and I never bothered to check the account, trusting that my little nest egg was growing each month. I intentionally didn’t look at it so I wouldn’t be tempted to spend it on things like wine, or new scrubs, or new shoes. Or A/C. Or a working dishwasher. Or repairs for my broke-ass, piece-of-shit car.
No, I trusted my husband. “We’re saving for the remodel,” he said. “We’ll start this summer,” he said.
Nope.
I was saving—he was helping himself. While I was working my ass off to pay for the remodel, he was tapping the ass of the local science teacher, and then he moved on to his secretary—and spending our money on presents and dinners and wine.
Now I’m flat broke, stuck with a mortgage I can barely afford on a house with no A/C, a stuck window, no dishwasher, and at least a hundred thousand dollars worth of other repairs I can’t afford and can’t do myself.
I stare hard at the window, cursing it silently, willing it to budge. Even an inch! One inch, just enough to get the tiniest bit of air circulation in here, that’s it. I’ve got all the other windows open—all of them that will open, at least—and six box fans running, but this house has zero airflow because it’s ninety years old. Open-plan design was not a design concept in the early 1900s.
All I want, right now, is to open this damn kitchen window so I can feel a little bit of air stirring in the kitchen while I wash this sink full of dishes. That’s it really. One open window. Not so much to ask, is it?
Apparently it is. I’ve pounded on it, I’ve checked the lock, I’ve even gone around outside with a stepladder to see if it’s nailed shut, but I can’t see any reason it won’t open. It’s just stuck, and I’m going crazy.
To top it off, today was a day from hell.
On the way to work, three songs into my favorite playlist, my car audio died. Just…dead. No AM, no FM, obviously no XM, not even my aux cord would work.
Then, about ten minutes after clocking into work, with a waiting room overflowing with patients, the computer system crashed. The whole system— throughout the whole office. Computers, iPads, phones, everything—kaput. Dead. All our appointments, patient notes and records, prescriptions, everything, gone. Yeah, we had the paper records obviously, but that adds about ten to fifteen minutes per patient. And we were slammed with appointments from open to close, plus all our walk-in slots were triple-booked. The waiting room was a zoo from the moment we unlocked the doors and it never slowed down. And, oh yeah, Jackie called in sick; leaving me to pull double duty on the busiest day I can remember.
And then, when work was finally over, I dropped my phone on the way to my car, shattering the screen.
Did I mention that my car is twenty years old—the same car I bought thirdhand for five grand the summer before my freshman year of college? It was
a piece of shit then, and that was fifteen years ago. The A/C is broken, and has been for years. The windshield wipers spazz out randomly, switching from low to high gear by themselves, whether or not it is raining. The transmission sounds like a garbage truck, the muffler has a hole in it and there’s a spiderweb crack in the windshield which is gradually getting larger.
And now the radio is broken.
And my phone is on life support.
And there’s no A/C at home either, and it’s hotter now at six o’clock in the evening than it was at noon.
AND THE FUCKING KITCHEN WINDOW WON’T OPEN.
I fight the urge to cry as I fail yet again to get the damn thing to even budge.
Screw it. Just screw it. Now I’m mad. I’ll get that thing open if I have to pry it open.
I hop down from the sink, lose my balance, and fall flat on my ass on the warped laminate floor. Good thing I’ve got plenty of padding back there, huh? I stand up, brush the dirt off the butt of my scrubs, and march out the back door. The backyard is one of my favorite places, and one of the reasons I agreed to buy the house—there’s a giant spreading oak tree that shades most of the yard, with a white-painted porch swing attached by two huge ropes to the lowest, thickest branch. Flowerbeds run around the perimeter of the fence line, planted with colorful, easy to maintain perennials, filled in with rocks instead of mulch, which keeps the maintenance even easier. There’s a cute little shed in the back corner of the yard, painted red with white stripes in an X on the door so it looks like a miniature barn.
I head over to the shed to get some tools. In it are an ancient push mower, a weed whacker, some pruning shears, a few trowels and buckets and spades, and a fifty-year-old Craftsman toolbox handed down from Nicholas’s grandfather, full of equally old tools. I open the toolbox and find a screwdriver and a huge, heavy hammer.