“What are you going to do, James?” she asked him softly.
“You know, Ella.” He pushed his hands into the pockets of his slacks as he watched her, his voice throbbing with an emotion she didn’t want to name. “I’ve waited ten years, and in those years you have refused to take my desire for you, or my needs seriously, let alone your own. Tonight, you will take those needs seriously. You’ll take me seriously, Ella.”
Had she ever seen him look so powerful, so commanding? Suddenly, she felt much younger than him, and definitely much less experienced. His command of his own power, his own control, went beyond age or experience, and entered that unknown realm of supreme self-confidence. He knew what he was doing, she realized suddenly. James had a plan, just as he always had, she knew now. But why and what that the plan was, she couldn’t decide.
“No other men.” She shook her head, her hand trembling as she pushed her fingers through her hair. “I mean it, James. No one else.”
His lips quirked. “You no longer set your own limits, Ella. I do. You’ll learn that tonight. Whatever I want, however I want it, and you’ll love it. Or you can continue to be a coward and deny what I know you feel for me. If that’s the case, my bags are packed. Set them on the porch and I’ll never bother you again.”
She stared up at him, fear suddenly shaking her soul. “So I’m part of an orgy or I’m nothing to you, period?” she asked him, feeling her heart thunder in her chest. But what really terrified her was the clench of arousal that rippled through her cunt.
“No, Ella. I would never put you in the middle of an orgy,” he promised her smoothly. “What I will put you in the middle of is more pleasure than you’ve known could exist. Pleasure I know you want. Need. Even now, after the past three days, you aren’t satisfied. You climax until you nearly pass out with the pleasure of it, but you need more. And, by God, tonight I’ll make sure you have what you need, or I won’t bother trying anymore. I love you, Ella. Love you until my heart breaks with it, but I won’t beg you, and I won’t let you deny either of our needs. Now think about that.”
Shock exploded through her body as he turned and left the room. She could feel her face paling, her body weakening at a knowledge he had possessed, and yet she hadn’t.
It made sense now. James wasn’t a man to chase after any woman, to care one way or the other if his desires weren’t returned. Yet, he had chased her for ten years. Not in an obvious, lovesick manner, but in his own controlled, brooding way. He had made her aware of her own body, her own desires, even as she tried to hide from them, and made her more than aware of him.
She bit her lip, staring at the door, remembering his driving demands, his loss of control the night before. No other woman had managed that. Had it happened, she would have known about it. And his need for her wasn’t diminishing. Like hers, it seemed to be growing stronger.
Even after the excesses of the past days, the fiery heat and lust that flared between them. He was right, she had kept reaching for more. Something, some unknown dark desire kept pushing her.
She shook her head, fighting the awakening realization. For years she had fought Jase, not because she secretly wanted what he offered, but because he didn’t satisfy her. He didn’t bring her to the mindless orgasms James could bring her to. He didn’t make her pu**y drench with a look. His needs hadn’t filled her with this strange excitement and nervousness. She had never wanted to break the control he thought he had.
She eased from the bed and walked slowly to the shower. A cool shower. She needed to think, she needed to make sense of the past and of the present. But more than anything, she had to decide if the desires that filled James were truly a part of her own needs, or just a part of her desperation to keep him now that she had held him. She had to know, before she took the chance of losing him forever.
Chapter Twelve
“I need to talk to you.” Of the five friends Ella had kept over the years, Terrie was perhaps the freest; the one Ella felt would be the most likely to understand her present predicament.
Silence met her request for long minutes. “Charlie called this morning, too,” Terrie finally said softly. “Are you okay?”
Ella closed her eyes. Of course Charlie had called. Terrie, and Marey and most likely Pamela as well. Just what she needed, everyone to know who and what she was doing. Her parents would know, too, if they were still alive. Poor Charlie, she couldn’t keep anything from their small group of friends, no matter how hard she tried.
“I’m fine,” she finally whispered. “I just need to talk.”
“I’ll be right over then.” She could almost hear Terrie’s sharp nod.
Ella hung up the phone, sighing deeply. Terrie would know James the best. She had been married to one of his two brothers, the bastard. Ella, for one, was glad to see his final demise. Thomas Wyman had been a stone cold prick.
As she waited for the other woman to arrive, Ella made sweet iced tea, moved about the kitchen preparing glasses and fought to ignore the heat in her rear. The plug was driving her crazy. Her panties were damned near drenched from the moist heat of her pu**y and no matter what she did her ni**les wouldn’t soften and just go the hell away. The scrape of the light cotton fabric of her sundress over them was about to drive her to distraction.
It wasn’t long before she heard the front door open then close, and Terrie’s voice calling out her name from the hall.
“I’m in the kitchen.” For as long as Ella could remember, the kitchen was the favored spot for her and her friends to talk, to argue, to visit. Either over coffee or sweet tea, it was there they seemed to find the most comfort.
She set the glasses of ice and the pitcher of tea on the table as Terrie swept into the room. She stopped inside the doorway, looking around curiously. “Is the boy toy in residence today?”
Ella winced at the question, though it could have been the tight, erotic tugging of the plug in her rear as she sat down, she thought.
“James went somewhere,” she sighed. “He didn’t say where.”
“He’s meeting Jesse for lunch.” Terrie shrugged as she sat down across from her. “Jesse was supposed to come over to the house and fix the faucet for me but James had some kind of emergency.”
Ella watched her friend suspiciously. “Are you sleeping with him?”