Thanks to my beautiful beta!

Any mistake you see is my own, I re- read and re-read but I always miss something…

Disclaimer: SM owns anything you recognize!

I'm not one to beg for reviews, but I do like to hear your thoughts! (Good or bad)

-Even though I split this thing into a whole new chapter it still came out pretty long… ah well… enjoy! Lemon alert this chapter if it's not your thing skip to the next break in the chapter it's important (:


Ch8: French Laced Rosebuds

A sense of déjà vu overcame Leah when she found herself under the cold spray of shower, berating herself again. "What a tramp!"

There had to be ten thousand ways to say, Forget jazz, Embry, please come to my room and make love until we're ready to pass out.

By the time she'd finished showering, she had come up with twenty lines that would have worked.

She took extra pains with her appearance. Her hair, for one thing, was driving her crazy. There was no choice on what style suited her best, really, but agonizing over it kept her from wondering what she would say when he knocked on the door.

Thanks to Alice, there was a large selection of gowns to pick from. Snug, clinging gowns. Way too small gowns.

Leah tried several on before settling on the plum gown with a high collar and swooping low back. From the front, it looked conservative, elegant, and the butterfly necklace stood out nicely. The gold work of the butterfly trailed around the gems and displayed them beautifully.

From behind, the dress was as daring as she could ever hope to get, sloping against the very crest of her butt.

She only prayed that there was no acquaintance from back home to see her flaunting herself.

Those days of working out before the cruise now paid off with the exception of a couple of stubborn pounds on her hips. Those, she figured, had been handed down through generations and, well, were something she was just going to have to be proud of.

Besides, this wasn't about free milk and a cow, so to speak. It was more like no fence and a bull. I really strong irritated bull.

She grinned before remembering she still hadn't done her makeup. Alice's instructions, which had been so painstakingly taught, only made Leah feel like a clown. So after the third time of removed and applying the makeup, she settled on a swap of lipstick and a touch of eye shadow.

A dab of musk based perfume went on each of her pulse points, from ankle, to wrist, back of the knees, front of the elbows, then the base of her neck.

Don't think. Just do it!

After a brief hesitation, she rubbed a tiny bit on the topmost part of her underwear, and then avoided her reflection as she put her makeup case away.

What next?

Condom. Shopping with Alice had made Leah overly optimistic, so she'd purchased a variety of them. Probably more than she needed. She shoved four into her purse, and then added another one, just in case.

All her swirling, pent up cravings simmered just under her skin.

As if on cue, a knock sounded at her door.

One quick look in the mirror confirmed she was new Leah, sleek and stylish, each hair in place.

Her eyes though, were the old her. Nervous and unsure. Closing them briefly, she eased herself into the role of the cool sophisticate.

"It's just a little jazz, maybe some dancing." She whispered to herself. "And please oh please, a whole lot of sex…" She reached for the knob and opened the door.

Embry had his hand raised as if to knock again. At the sight of him, Leah's heart started double knocking against her ribs. Here was the man who had kissed her the night before, the hunk in a classic suit. The gentleman, who had been considerate and kept a cool head even when she had thrown herself at him. This man, bold, tanned, and beautiful, barely resembled the marine jogger she had seen that morning. Nor did he really look like the lover who had seduced her in one of his wet oral fantasies in a hot tub, a man with almost savage passion.

This man could easily break her heart.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi."

His gaze swept over her, from the straps of her shoes to the loose shift of the plum colored dress where it gathered over her hips. He openly studied the way it draped over her unbound breasts, and his gaze kept going upward, past the dignified collar. The hues of his pupils changed as he looked at her lips, nose, then eyes.

Oh my…

Leah felt the burn of intent clear to her bones. He knew what she wanted and was going to give it to her, pure and simple. Her nipples became hard and tingly, and her mouth went dry.

"Beautiful," he murmured.

Leah felt it. Natural and womanly, alive in her skin the way no man had made her feel before. His gaze shifted to a place over her shoulder and she heard his groaned intake of breath. She turned to look, and their gazes collided in the mirror that revealed her naked back.

"Truth or Dare?" she managed, turning to face him.

If possible, the heat in his eyes doubled. "Dare."

"Come in here…"

He waited.

"…and give me…" my fantasy.

Without a word, Embry stepped inside, slowly took the knob from her hand, and deliberately closed the door. He stood behind her, unmoving, and she simply couldn't make herself turn around to face him.

Embry's breath brushed over her skin, and peripherally she could see the mirror reflect his image as he lowered his head to place a raspy soft kiss on her shoulder.

It was like lightning and frost on her skin, both sensations trapping the breath in her lungs and sending a shiver of pleasure spiraling down her back.

"Say it." He whispered the words and they danced there before fading into the unbearable silence of the room.

She breathed, inhaling his cologne, his very presence, hearing him shift closer. "I want you to touch me."

Another kiss touched her, this time closer to the back of her neck. She shuddered and a soft moan escaped her.

"And?" he pressed.

"More." She barely could speak, why was he asking her to say it?

"Say it."

"I want to..." Make love. Have sex. The only word that defined her need seemed too crude to be uttered. It faltered on her mouth, tangled up in embarrassment.

"Fuck," he finished for her, breathing it into her ear.

Yes! She shivered again, wondering if her made love in the same way he delivered the hard word on such a soft sound. "Yes."

"Look at me," he coaxed, his deep voice sounding even more gravelly with need. His hands slid over her hips, over the shifting dress, turning her until she faced him. There was no way she could pull together the barest air of cool sophistication now.

"I won't do anything you don't want me to," he promised.

"I know."

Embry raised her right hand to his lips and placed a tongue flecked kiss in the hot center of her palm.

Leah swallowed audibly.

The look in his eyes damn near smoldered. He pulled her in for a kiss that was nothing like the night before. There was no soft prelude, no gentle control, just mouth plundering, neck bending kiss that left her weak. He invaded her mouth with his tongue, making her aware of every luscious bit of contact.

There was decadence in the way he kissed, taking and teasing her for more, for angles of his mouth, for breath, for licks, for lips. Deep within her, the sexual ache expanded, driving her to pull her body tighter against his, fitting her pelvis against his blatant erection just as he gripped her hips and held her fast against him.

Oh, dear Lord, he felt so very hard… In that wordless, timeless moment, she knew she was out of her element. What happened, she wasn't drunk, wasn't irrational. She desperately hoped she could give him as much pleasure as he was giving her.

Embry's hands roamed her bare back, caressing the exposed skin so that she felt already naked in his arms. Leah held on to his shoulders, the world tilting behind her eyes as his kisses grew more urgent, sucking her breath away.

"Oh," she moaned. "Em…"

"I want you naked," he breathed against her ear. "I want you hungry for me. Wet. With me deep inside you."

His teeth sank into the earlobe, and then his tongue licked and whispered in her ear. "I want to feel you wrapped around me. Feeling me…" His mouth trailed along her jawline in tiny heated kisses.

Oh yes, yes, yes…

Embry's arms moved away momentarily and Leah opened her eyes just in time to see his jacket slide off his shoulders. The scent of his fresh starched shirt blended with his deodorant and body heat.

In the soft light, his devilish smile was twice as sexy, his voice as deep and gruff as she had ever heard it. "Undress me."

Her fingers shook with the novelty of it. She unbuttoned an onyx button by his Adam's apple, the pristine white of his shirt a sharp contrast against his dark skin. A second button followed, and she impulsively kissed the flesh she revealed, unwrapping him, button by button, like a gift, reveling in the heady power of hearing his unsteady breathing.

Embry's chest was all sinewy muscle with only the happy trail leading to the fantastic surprise of the night. She touched him with her hands, tasted with her tongue, exploring as she saw more.

Embry groaned and abruptly cupped her head for another hard kiss. By the time it ended, she realized he had undone her gown and it now sagged as if prepared to faint to the floor.

He cupped her breasts over the gown, and the exquisite imprint burned clear to Leah's bones. His thumbs trailed over her sensitized nipples as he watched her with a look full of carnal anticipation. When she moaned, he slanted his mouth over the sound and swallowed it.

She had never felt so molten inside, like she would implode if he didn't kiss her again.

Little by little, her gown shifted beneath his palms, gravity taking it down.

"Please." Her weakened knees threatened to buckle.

"Yes," he agreed, and released the gown so that she stood before him in nothing but heels and plum colored French cut panties.

"You're so beautiful." He looked awed, yet fighting himself from savage action. She found herself tumbling with him onto the bed, his mouth swooping down for another kiss.

Leah yanked his shirt from his pants, and he made short business of taking it off and flinging it into the air. His belt buckle jingled in midair and then, to her nervous delight, his shoes made two dull thuds as they too hit the floor. His trousers followed. She kicked her heels off.

Time froze as they looked at each other. Leah surprised herself by not wanting to cover her breasts. It was powerful and intoxicating to watch his desire so openly revealed in his face.

The flat of his hand spanned over her belly button and with a circular movement began a clockwise trail. The fluttering in her gut turned to simmering honey with each caress. Embry lowered his head and kissed her left nipple in a thorough, open mouthed kiss that left it feeling tight, moist, and achy.

He returned the favor to her right breast but stopped when his nose bumped into the butterfly pendant. He paused to look at her, the depths of his eyes dark as shadows.

"Don't stop." She told him.

"Tonight I want you completely naked." He whispered. "For me."

Her fingers fumbled to remove the necklace and she carefully placed it on her nightstand.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome…oh!"

Embry's mouth went back to work on her breast again. His hand explored more freely as it circled south. She tried to endure the pleasure without embarrassing herself but ended up moaning like some creature in heat, the sounds escaping of their own volition.

The feel of his fingers cupping her sex was intimate and jarring. Despite her firmly pressed thighs, he persisted, massaging over her skimpy underwear and murmuring against her moans.

"Open."

"Embry…" Her thighs quivered as prudish instinct momentarily took over.

Leah could've sworn he whispered, "Carpe diem," before slipping his hands farther underneath the lacy trim with determined presence. Any remaining shyness dissolved when his fingers invaded her wetness, stroking as if he were sampling the texture of satin.

Leah was locked in the gaze of his maple dark eyes, panting when his fingers delved again, deliberately skimming the folds of her sex before slowly, slowly, slowwwwly… returning to surround the sensitive bud of her clit.

"Oh my…" she squeezed her eyes shut, but that only intensified the sensations when he did it all over again… so very insanely slow.

With more control than she'd expected, he explored her sex, maintaining a shallow contact but using every one of her reactions to perfect the rhythm.

"Leah?"

Don't stop! Don't talk! Don't make me beg…

"Protection?" he breathed.

"Birth control shot." She managed.

"Condom?"

God, if he had to move, she was probably going to scream. She opened her eyes to look into his eyes. Knowing she had to. "Yes."

"In a minute." His fingers invaded. "Do you like this?"

"Ohhhhh, Em… yesssss!"

He dipped his head and a gust from his staggered breathing warmed her neck, his fingers never stopping. "Good."

She squirmed.

He eased off.

"Please."

His words were gruff. "So polite, who would have thought?"

The need kept feeding on his touch, burning through her. "Embry…"

"Tell me what you like," he whispered hotly.

"I-I…" She stalled and rode the pad of his thumb as it brushed over her clit.

He kissed her chin, and then nibbled her lips his fingers halting.

"No!" she all but screamed.

"Harder?" he asked.

"Yes…"

"Like this?"

"Oh…please yes…" it was getting harder for her to talk.

"Soft then hard?"

"Mmmm…." She managed a breathy moan.

"Tell me."

She couldn't words escaped her.

"Lower?" God, why was he still asking questions?

"No, don't… oh, wait… oh… yes…" And yes…and yes again… and yes some more…

"Higher?"

"No!...Wait…oh…" Perrfect!

He whispered over her, his words streaming, implicitly blending with his actions. "When I saw you in the spa, I wanted to take you right then and there."

His fingers edged into her sex more possessively. "To bend you over the edge of the spa…"

His fingers cleverly slid farther into her sheath. "And ease myself between your sexy thighs…."

She arched.

"Next time… I'll blindfold you." He kissed her cheek and jaw, licking when he strategically paused. "Would you've done that for me?"

All the answers seemed to be "yes!" He kept the murmur of words as he moved to her collarbone, until the meaning of his words blurred and she could hardly think.

"Please Em..."

"Shift like that… yes… trust me." At the time, his lips hovered right over the valet of her breasts, above the region of her heart.

Trust him. Oh yes I do, I do, I doooo…

"Open for me," he whispered gruffly.

Leah parted her thighs even wider for him, and his fingers surged deeper, causing Leah to clutch his shoulder in one hand and the bed sheet in the other, arching against the steady magic of his touch in an attempt to ease her body's cravings. He prolonged the torture, memorizing the flower of her sex but touch alone, dipping, trailing, circling…

Every time his mouth suckled her breast, it tugged urgently at the tremors in her guy, linking fluidly to the intimate place his fingers touched. He was like a cellist, his fingers pressed, playing her through all the fine noes, stressing and fine tuning the sounds in search of her perfect strokes.

She wanted to shred his clothes off his body, wanted to shred something… anything…

Leah gasped, involuntarily clamping her thighs together and trapping his touch there. The action caused a quiver that drowned her ever so slightly in lightning and weakness. Leah licked her parched lips and opened her eyes to find Embry's taut face watching her closely.

Without stripping her underwear, he used his fingers in a slow outward drag until only his fingertips touched her, then he resumed his upward massage to the topmost ridge of her sex, focusing solely on the clitoris.

"Now!" she breathed.

His fingers slid inside her slick passage again.

She heard her underwear rip. The new freedom allowed him more access, and Leah suddenly felt off balance, teetering on the brink of a new, edgier kind of release than she had ever experienced.

"Oh no you don't," his voice rumbled like warning thunder. "Not yet."

She cried out when he removed his hand. "No! No, no, no—"

"Shh, hold on sugar." He kissed her and she finally realized he was striping off his remaining clothes. "I have to feel you, skin to skin, remember?" he whispered urgently.

She shimmied her torn underwear off her hips and kicked it down and off her feet, visually taking her fill of Embry's muscular naked body. His blatant erection thrust out, a damn fine specimen of primal maleness.

Tentatively, she touched and he hissed as if in pain. When she would have pulled her hand away, his own covered hers, the scent of her wetness still in his hand and blending with his distinct male arousal.

Leah palmed the length and breadth of him, fascinated by his size and shape, her weakness turned into control in a shift of power.

Although her heartbeat seemed to have lodged between her thighs, she planned to torture him with the same open handed, circular motion he had used on her body, getting bolder with each of his groans.

She experimented with hand movements, stroking him more thoroughly, making it last the same way he had worked her just moments before. Not too tightly. Just snug enough. Back and forth, gliding.

His body tensed with each movement. She could see he was clenching his teeth, watching her through half open eyes, his hand in sync, over hers, guiding, yet trapped. When he tugged her hand away, she knew he had about enough.

"Hold up," he whispered, then kissed her hard, rolling a condom on.

He tried to wrestle control back with the kiss, but she refused and turned her head against his shoulder, gasping and kissing the faint perspiration from his collarbone.

She worked her mouth up the muscular column of his neck, his heartbeat pulsing beneath her tongue, matching the throbbing in the center of her palm where she defiantly continued to stroke him.

Every inch of skin was alive, anticipating the friction of light swear and need. She held the back of his now messy fallen hair for another kiss, her breasts against his, putting their bellies into closer contact.

"Enough." He reached down to extract her hand but she fought him.

"No, Em. I need—"

A split second later, he had her pinned to the bed arms by her head, his body hovering over hers. His eyes gleamed with passion. "I know exactly what you need."

"Then give it to me!" she shimmied her hips and parted her thighs, giving his body no choice but to settle more intimately against hers. Oh, so close, so close…!

"Not yet," he breathed. She moaned and squirmed to maneuver a more strategic closeness. He groaned, rocking gently in mock intercourse. "Don't rush me.

"Don't make me wait!"

He kissed her again, then with a careful thrust, the tip of his erection slid inside of her, more virile, and thicker than his fingers had been, but still not enough! Dammit!

"Don't do this to me," she pleaded.

His chuckle was a half broke, half strangled sound. And when she least expected it, another of his kisses smothered her lips, her breasts cushioned his weight, and another inch of his length slid inside of her.

She tried to arch her back for more, but he was too heavy, too in control. She felt desperate and light headed. "Now!"

Embry licked the slope of her breasts, the dip at the base of her throat.

Another inch slid in.

She cursed between broken breaths, wrestling with desperation.

"Sweetheart—"

"Now!" she demanded.

Two inches that time. She wasn't sure if it was his body shuddering or hers. It didn't matter. All that mattered was knowing she was infinitesimally closer to exploding and close enough to kill him if he denied her again.

This time, their mouths didn't even touch. The kiss was a shared breath between them, a place to gasp when he settled farther into her, sliding in thickly.

Oh, so perfect! There! Yes, yes, yes! That was it! She clutched him. "Do it… oh!"

He flexed his hips, initiating the oldest, most intimate dance of time, docking in the rest of the way, until he was filling her to the hilt.

Quickly releasing her hands, he used his own to hold her closer, to thrust deeper again, slicker.

Leah wrapped her legs around his hips, his thighs hard and sure against her inner thighs, grinding against her sensitive clit. His rhythm was controlled slowness itself; the moist sounds of sex came together to the tempo of racing heartbeats…

Behind her eyes, the world dimmed, and as Leah struggled for breath, the sharp orgasm suddenly overtook her from deep inside, ripping through her like an explosion. It stripped her mind of though, of sound, of everything but the feel of Embry gripping her, rocking deep inside of her, impaling the small, fiery shudders in her womb.

Even his name was trapped in her mouth without breath. There was only the moment frozen in time, her soul bared to him.

Complete.

An endless moment later, the muscles of his inner arms trembled where they brushed the sides of her breasts, and his forearms flexed against her shoulder blades. His fingers twitched where they cradled her head, and from that cherished position Leah inhaled and felt the heat of Embry's ejaculation inside of her.

He whispered her name and buried his face on the side of her neck.

For an eternity it seemed to Leah that there was only the sacrament of skin on skin and the jumbled rhythm of breathing.

Nothing felt so right as his weight on her. Nothing felt so safe as falling asleep in his arms.

Nothing had ever felt so perfect.


When Leah finally awoke, nestled in the warm bed sheets, she felt like she had endured a marathon. Her muscles were warm and hummed with latent energy. She felt completely seduced and lazy. Half awake she tried to nuzzle Embry's chest, but she found empty bed sheets instead,

"Embry?"

She looked around the room, seeing her gown neatly draped over a chair and not on the floor as she had expected. All traces of Embry however were gone.

Her smile faded.

Suddenly apprehensive, Leah wrapped the bed sheet around herself as she got up from the bed.

Her hand went to her neck for her necklace before she realized it wasn't there, and turned to the bedside table.

Instead of the necklace, she saw the remains of her underwear, which had been turned into a French laced rosebud. The pit of her stomach tightened and as she lifted the makeshift rose, the first tendrils of dread began to unravel, raising the possibility that perhaps her magnificent lover had been nothing more than a clever, seductive thief.