DRAE COULDN’T HELP the shit-eating grin. “Express Yourself”? His feisty wife might be interested to know he had more than a minor league grasp of the song having seen it performed countless times during the overseas leg of the pop queen’s MDNA tour a few years ago.
On second thought, maybe telling her he’d been involved with tour security wasn’t the smartest of ideas. It was bad enough that some people, Parker Sullivan in particular, the wheezing fucknut, liked to insist they were sure he’d slept with half the celebrities in the world—her Madgesty included.
It was bullshit, of course. The Madonna part—not the sleeping with celebrities part.
The crowd was enthusiastically clapping in rhythm as his adorable wife knocked their socks off. Not only did she have a killer voice and a professional stage presence, she knew how to rock out with every classic Madonna move in the book. It was fucking impressive.
Because he knew the song so well, it was easy to pick apart the lyrics. He didn’t pretend not to understand the message she was trying to convey. Their physical connection was great, but she needed more. Being inside her head had been easy in the beginning, but he’d lost the thread somewhere along the line. And now—well, now things were such a freefalling shitshow, he wasn’t even sure where the thread was anymore.
She brought the house down. Of course, she did. Victoria was hard to ignore when she was in her element. People loved her enthusiasm and her infectious, albeit snarky, humor.
They drank and ate some more as people kept stopping by their table to sing his wife’s praises. He was overcome with pride, and she basked in his approval. He wanted to keep the momentum going. This was who they were. Open. Fun-loving. Joined at the hip.
Was it a surprise that she won the grand prize? Not in the least. The raucous karaoke celebration was recorded for publicity, and he vaguely remembered posing for pictures. By then, they were pretty hammered and feeling no pain.
Out on the Strip, Victoria danced along, twirling as he held her fingertips and stopped every so often to hop up and down with pure delight.
All of a sudden, she grabbed him by the lapels, plastered her body to his, and purred in his face. “We need to get naked.”
“Right here?” he asked with a husky chuckle. “Now, you know I’d have to unholster my weapon and take out any guy seeing you in your birthday suit.”
“Unholster your weapon!” She shrieked with laughter. “You mean like wielding a lightsaber? You alphas and your phallic imagery!”
Her giggles made his dick hard, turned his brain to mush, and transformed his insides to molten lava.
Not long after, they were in the back of a car, heading to their hotel with him desperately trying to make his wife behave. She was incorrigible and had naughty hands. Staring straight ahead from the backseat, she had her hand between his legs and was rather vigorously massaging his manhood. There wasn’t a lot he could do. Not with a driver three feet away. And a woman driver, at that.
So he stretched his arm out behind her shoulders and made a lame attempt to grip the back of her neck. As if that was going to stop her. Never!
It was the longest twenty minutes of his life, and by the time they stepped from the car, she was breathing heavily, and her lips were puffy and red from chewing on them. And him? Well, shit. There was absolutely no disguising the enormous bulge in his pants, so he didn’t even try.
Taking her hand, he led her through the brightly lit lobby and into the elevator. As the doors shut, he drawled, “I will fuck you where you stand if you move so much as a muscle.”
Victoria’s shocked but pleased laughter rang out and filled the small space.
She behaved in the elevator. Sort of. Although keeping still, she squeezed his hand and simpered, “Would you? Fuck me where I stand?”
“Don’t tempt me, baby.”
Her face lit up with a happy smile. When the doors opened again on their floor, she flounced out ahead of him and made straight for their room. He had the key card, so she waited for him, striking quite a provocative pose as he sauntered toward her.
As he opened the door, Drae felt her hand move and then her fingers were tracing the outline of his ear. “I hear these rooms have very nice beds.”
He arched a brow and looked at her. “Is that so?” They’d been having loads of sex since they arrived and never once had it involved the bed. Well, maybe that wasn’t entirely true. There was that time he bent her over the side of the bed and brought them to a mutual orgasm in record-breaking time.
Inside their suite, he dropped the load of crap he was carrying on a table and without missing a beat started to undress.
She was dancing around like a whirling dervish and laughing at his eagerness. “Oh,” she purred. “Is that how it is?”
He flung the sports coat over the back of a chair and began on the buttons of his shirt, starting at the cuffs.
“That’s how it is, wife. And I suggest if you want to keep your clothes in one piece that you start taking ‘em off.”
She laughed. The sound was warm, low, and sexy. Kicking off her shoes, she twirled a long curl around her finger and gave him an innocent pout that he reacted to instantly.
“I was very bad earlier. Are you going to spank me?”
Drae tossed the shirt aside and went for the buckle on his belt. Giving her a meaningful leer, he slowly removed the belt from his pants and held it in a big loop.
“Will spanking your ass mean you’ll watch your mouth?”
“No,” she sassed. “That’s a lost cause, I’m afraid.”
She eyed the belt, and a deep blush shot into her face. He’d never use the belt on her. Ever. He wouldn’t cross that line, but he wouldn’t mind experimenting with some alternatives. He knew right then he’d be making a couple of paddles out in his woodshop. Swatting her pretty little ass while she squirmed and dripped with need was all kinds of hot.
He dropped the belt. It landed on the marble floor with a thud, and she flinched at the sound. Her body language was a study in arousal. Eyes dilated. Nostrils flaring as her breathing got heavy. Her fists were clenched, and there was no mistaking Victoria’s delectable nipples as they bloomed to life. Girl could be wearing a fucking shroud, and he’d still be able to make out the outline of her sweet puckering nubs.
When he pulled the zipper down on his pants, she looked at him wide-eyed and then took off at a fairly fast clip as she headed for the bedroom.
“You have five minutes,” he growled. Toeing off his shoes, he quickly rid himself of the rest of his clothing.
Drae liked being naked. Liked the freedom and the way the air felt on his skin. In a way, nudity was a knee jerk to the years he spent weighed down in military gear. Not a lot of opportunity to be butt-ass naked in a war zone. Not if you wanted to stay alive. Something about being on alert around the clock altered his view of what relaxing could be and that included clothing.
Grabbing a bottle of Cîroc from the bar, he quickly mixed up a batch of Kamikaze shots, strained out the ice after a vigorous shake, grabbed two shot glasses, and went after his wife with his unwavering hard-on pointing the way.
Oh.
Oh, my.
Oh, my god.
Her head felt like it was going to explode. Groaning, Tori fumbled around until her hand managed to navigate up to her forehead where it flopped palm up as another rumbling groan rose from her chest.
She licked her lips as she pried open her mouth. Eww. Why did it feel like they were glued shut? Rolling to her side, she opened one eye and quickly closed it. The room was dancing with sunlight. What she needed was her sunglasses.
Gotta pee, her brain complained sharply. Shit. That would require moving. Huffing, puffing, groaning, and sighing, she managed to sit upright but made sure to keep her eyes closed. With numb hands moving awkwardly to push a tangled mass of hair off her face, Tori swayed from the effort and struggled not to crumple into a heap on the floor.
Slowly and carefully inching down off the high mattress, she prayed for her foot to connect with the floor. When it finally did, she found her footing while her butt rested against the bed, and she experimented with opening her eyes again.
A telltale rumble in her belly made her jolt with alarm. Moving forward, she managed two steps before her feet tangled and she went down on her knees.
What the?
Searching for the problem, she felt a second jolt when she found her bra wrapped around an ankle. Why the hell was her bra tied around … Oh. Right, right. At some point the previous night, she’d had her ankles tied together.
Plopping onto her butt, she struggled to remove the damn thing and ended up winded and exhausted from the effort. The rumbling in her stomach suggested a sort of urgency. Where the hell was the bathroom?
Crawling toward the doorway, she managed to stumble to her feet in time to make it safely to the toilet before all hell broke loose.
Finally empty from both ends, she gave up the struggle once the embarrassing episode passed. She was never drinking again. Remembering the several ice-cold Kamikazes putting her over the edge, she shuddered with revulsion.
Moving to the sink, she turned on a slow stream of water and gave half a glance in the mirror. That half glance gave way to a triple take.
She looked like shit.
Naked and her hair a complete disaster, she was devoid of makeup but clearly sporting evidence of some filthy activities. Looking more closely, she moaned with dismay and not just a little twinge of excitement. He’d come on her face. And her chest too, judging by the look of things.
“Victoria,” she muttered out loud. “You slut.”
Both breasts bore other evidence. It appeared as though her wickedly oral husband had all but tattooed a pattern on both tits.
It all came rushing back with skin-prickling clarity. After an initial round of naked Kamikaze shots, he’d spanked her but good and fingered her to a mega climax that left her shaking all over.
She reached around and put both hands on her bottom. Ouch. Oh, that smarted.
He’d also feasted on her pussy until she was sure she’d died and gone to heaven, praising her smell, her taste, and how turned on he was by her bare lips.
The first time he took her was a glorious slow motion mating. Primal but loving. She was his puppet. He said grind and she did. When her legs were over his shoulders, and he stroked her deep and hard, Tori remembered her eyes rolling back in her head and a low keening wail she had no power to silence.
After that, there were more shots and more unchained wickedness as they played out their insatiable desires. She told him they needed a sex swing. He promised to take her anal virginity—one of these days. She begged him to let her deep throat him—and that was when he released on her face. He used her gently, roughly, sweetly, and with a vigor that made her cry out. He’d also quite drunkenly torn through her bag until he found the vibrating silver bullet he enjoyed torturing her with and then got serious about doing exactly that. Her poor clit. It was a wonder she and it survived.
And she looked every inch of all that and then some.
Turning off the water in the sink, she sighed with resignation and stepped into the large tile shower. This required more than a quick washcloth and some toothpaste.
Why was there a freight train moving through the room? And what the fuck was that sound?
One eye cracked open and then the other.
The sound happened again. Drae’s head turned slowly toward the racket and saw his phone vibrating as it rang.
“Fucking piece of shit,” he muttered. Fumbling, he eventually grabbed hold and picked it up. He peered at the screen, but his head was too muddled to make sense of anything. Switching the damn thing off, he tossed it away and heard it slide across the carpet. Then he slumped back down and flung the crook of his arm over his eyes to block out the light.
After a minute or so, his free hand moved to the empty space beside him. He turned his head, moved his arm, and peeked at the pillow where he expected to find his wife’s head.
She wasn’t there. Drae took a deep breath and tried to focus. Listening intently, he noted the silence and then heard the faint sound of the shower running. Oh, good. She was up and getting dressed. That meant he had a few minutes to get his shit together.
As he lay there contemplating how to go about doing just that, Drae effortlessly fell back to sleep, oblivious to everything except how exhausted he was.
No sense in pretending. She was a little bit shaky at the moment. That’s what you get for being a sloppy drunk, her inner dialogue scolded.
Word.
Putting something simple into her stomach was priority one. Right after getting dressed. Pulling a slinky sundress off a hangar, Tori slipped it over her head and watched in the mirror as it fell to her knees in a fluid ripple. Thin straps and a sweetheart neckline gave the clingy fabric a feminine edge she liked. Draegyn might grumble about going braless, but he’d just have to suck it up. He’d done a real number on her boobs. Even the thought of slight constriction anywhere near her chest was a no.
Bending forward, she used a towel to vigorously massage her scalp and wring as much water from her hair as possible. Since handling a hair dryer seemed like way too much effort, she opted instead for the loose curls she’d end up with just by using her fingers and scrunching it up as it air-dried.
More digging in her bag and she pulled out a sensible pair of panties and her favorite perfume. Her mama always said there was nothing like a healthy spritz of some lush and feminine scent to straighten out a gal’s mood. She positioned the spray and let loose with a cloud of Dolce and Gabbana’s Light Blue. It was the perfect summer scent and went a long way to making her feel halfway normal.
Plodding barefoot from the dressing room after sliding on some underwear and giving herself a quick mirror check, Tori almost face planted when she tripped and did a circus dance to keep from falling after her foot encountered Draegyn’s cell phone. What the hell was it doing on the floor?
Jumping a half-mile when it vibrated in her hand, she turned it over and glanced at the screen. Carol was calling.
She took a couple of steps toward the bed and then stumbled to a halt.
Carol. Was calling.
She glared at the phone through narrowed eyes.
Who the fuck was Carol?
Sorely tempted to hurl the damn thing at Draegyn’s head, she stopped the rash act but stood there frozen as anger and humiliation made her shake from head to toe.
They were off the communication grid for the long weekend. It was one of her absolutes—one of the things she laid down as a condition before they left for the airport. Nobody in Family Justice would bother them unless it was a total emergency. Whoever this Carol was, she wasn’t part of Justice. And if she wasn’t, then this was a personal call.
Someone named Carol was calling her husband while they were off having a romantic getaway. The hunger and need for food she felt moments earlier was replaced by a sick feeling roiling about inside.