Wreck the Halls

“But? I hear a but.”

“I don’t know how to do this without holding myself back. Keeping sex impersonal.” Beat shook his head. “I could ruin this. I could hurt you—and that’s unacceptable.”

“Do you really think we can keep ourselves from trying?”

“It’s getting harder to answer questions when you’re sitting on my lap.”

Maybe it was her elevated position that boosted her confidence or perhaps it was the intuition she possessed when it came to Beat, but she gripped his hair and twisted slightly, murmuring against his panting lips. “Starting now, you aren’t allowed to finish.” She kissed him sweetly, in direct contrast to her words. “Not until I say you can.”

His eyes grew unfocused, his fingers digging roughly into her thigh. “Jesus, the irony. I could finish just hearing you say that to me.” Conflict and lust warred in his expression. “I don’t know if I’m good for you, Mel.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Melody shifted her hips, slowly turning in his lap until she was facing the front of the plane. She looked back at him over her shoulder and gave a slow roll of her lower body, memorizing the way his eyes darkened. “Are you going to let us find out?”

They remained there for several moments, Melody rocking in his lap, his chest rising and falling with more and more urgency. That battle between yes and no still waging itself on his handsome face. Until finally his right arm shot out, banding around her collarbone and drawing her back firmly to his chest. “Do you think I have a choice when I grow more obsessed with you by the fucking minute?” He sunk his teeth into her ear, reached for the coat draped on the seat beside him and covered them with it hastily, hiding their actions from view. “You made it hard, now grind on it. Tease me. Give me that good pain.” Beneath the coat, his big hands palmed her breasts, teasing the buds in the center with his thumbs. “I want to be the one hurting, Mel. But God, I don’t want to hurt you . . .”

Him stroking her nipples was making her anxious, desperate for friction. The importance of his words sunk into her subconscious to be unearthed and studied later, but just then, all she could do was embrace the new, exciting power tripping through her bloodstream. All she could do was give their needs a dose of oxygen and she did that by sinking down low against the V of his thighs, then riding back up, roughly, his strangled groan raising goose bumps on her skin. “Is that what you like?”

“From you? It’s what I love,” he said, struggling to breathe against her neck. “Keep going. Good girl. Fuck me through my pants. I’ll tell you when I’m getting close.”

“So I can s-stop?”

“That’s right. So you can stop and leave me pussy-starved.” He licked her, neck to cheek. “Only for yours.”

That intense quickening she recalled from last night started in her midsection, sinking lower and lower until the pulse between her legs became impossible to ignore. She could have an orgasm like this. Denying him. Being praised for it. His hands were beneath her shirt now, thumbing aside the cups of her bra, making sweeping arcs against her bare nipples, but that wasn’t supposed to be enough to give her an orgasm, was it?

Didn’t matter. That’s what was happening.

Just like last night, she was going to hit her peak hard and early—

“Five minutes until we land,” called someone from the front of the plane.

Melody blinked her surroundings into focus, peeking up and over the seat in front of them. Danielle stood at the front of the aisle, speaking with the copilot, laughing at something he said. And indeed, Melody could feel the plane beginning to descend gradually, that telltale weightlessness making her stomach hover in the air. But their progress toward land wasn’t the only thing filling her with that ticklish rush. It had a lot more to do with the man.

Without turning around, she could sense Beat attempting to gather himself. He palmed her breasts a final time, cursed, tugging her bra back into place. His sex was full and long beneath her bottom, his hips still tilting up, up, up slightly as if he couldn’t help it.

“I should . . .” Leave this incredible warmth? Cut herself off from these singular sensations that only he could coax to life inside of her? Not high on her list. But what choice did she have? “I should go back to my seat. Before we land and he starts filming.”

“Yeah,” Beat said thickly, pulling her shirt down, before reaching up to smooth her hair. One stroke, two, then a light gripping of her strands. “Peach?” His teeth grazed the nape of her neck. “No one sees you turned on but me.”

Melody was surprised how much that possessiveness gratified her. She leaned back and whispered in his ear, “You stay like this,” riding the hard ridge of him one final time, listening to him swallow a moan, before standing up on shaky legs and returning to her seat for landing, filled with a lot more anticipation than she had been during takeoff.





Chapter Seventeen




An hour later, when they reached the compound, they did not find a cult worshipping a statue of Chester Cheeto. Arguably, the sight that greeted them was worse.

The SUV that had met them at the small airfield pulled up to a three-story house that stood in a cluster of trees at the edge of an expansive field, the ground of which was frozen and stark looking beneath a gray sky. None of them made any move to leave the warmth of the still-running vehicle. Instead, they all leaned to the left in unison to stare up at the haunted-looking Victorian, searching for indications of life on the inside.

There were none. There was, however, a painted, wooden sign over the door that read The Free Loving Adventure Club.

And Beat already wanted to take Melody back to New York.

This morning, when Melody voiced her fears of finding a cult, instead of the innocent-sounding Free Loving Adventure Club, he’d thought she was exaggerating. Now he wasn’t so sure. He could easily see the Manson family dropping acid on the porch of this place.

Beside him, Melody fell back against the seat, chewing her lip. That soft, beautiful lip. Beat had to curl his fingers into his palm to prevent himself from reaching over and saving it from getting teeth marks. Damn. He’d barely kissed her on the plane. That had to be why he was now starved for the taste of her. That—and the ungodly blue balls she’d left him with.

A lot of men would be miserable in his current state of suffering. Not him. His blood pumped, heavy and hot. He could feel every breath that entered and exited his lungs. Everything was heightened. His hearing was sharper, the textures encountered by his fingertips became more interesting. Sensual. Running them over the slight perforations of the leather seat made his muscles contract, because it reminded Beat of her nipples. Her goose bumps.

Man, he was in deep lust with Melody. Really, extra deep.