40. June 19th

JUNE 19TH

TB

He looked at her quizzically,then followed her eye line to the button panel. "Oh, for fuck's sake. I'm gonna kill him."

Nemo had pushed every button on the panel. All ten of them.

Then he groaned. Not only that, but the elevator was actually going up first, not down. "Definitely going to kill him. Slowly."

The lobby was on floor two, so when the doors opened at floor three, they saw Midas standing there. Unexpectedly, there was an explosive pop. TB automatically sheltered Flame in the corner of the elevator with his body while multi-colored paper showered around them. "Goddammit, Midas!" he thundered.

He felt shaking in his arms, so he quickly turned to the woman he held there. "Princess, I'm so sorry, my team—" He stopped short.

Instead of cowering in his arms, she was actually giggling. She looked up at him, a pink rectangle of paper caught in the top of her hair. "Guess you should be more careful of what you're thankful for."

The doors had closed and were now opening at floor four. Waters stood there. Explosive pop. More confetti.

TB felt Flame peek out from around his arms, and then looked over his shoulder just in time to see Waters wink at her. "Just for that, I'm not coming in tomorrow," TB growled.

"Wasn't expecting you to," his boss replied as the door closed.

Floor five. Doors opened. Steel. More confetti. He saluted TB as the door closed.

Floor six. No one was there.

Thank fuck that's over.

Floor seven. BANG! Demon. "Seriously? He got you in on it?" Demon just shrugged and waved to Flame as the door closed.

By this time, tears were streaming down Flame's face, and she was holding her sides in pain from the laughter.

Floors eight and nine were open doors with no one there.

Floor ten was the penthouse. The elevator moved to the tenth floor and stopped, but the door didn't open.

"No telling what the Big Boss would have done if the door had opened at his apartment."

"It wouldn't have been confetti," came the dark voice over the speaker in the elevator. "I'd have been much more creative."

TB rolled his eyes. "Figures you'd be watching. Just so you know, I'm not cleaning this shit up." The floor was covered with paper, as well as sticking in places to both of them.

"Oh, no. That's Nemo's job."

"You're paying him too much if he can afford all of this crap all the time."

"He doesn't pay for it. I do. We have it built into the annual budget. It amuses the hell out of me to watch his war with you."

"Shithorn. I quit."

God laughed hard at that. "Yeah, right. I'll see you on Monday. Don't you dare come back before then."

He should have known it wasn't over, but he'd forgotten about Nemo. When the door opened in the garage, there he stood with two canons that he let fly. Flame was clinging to him, and she was laughing so hard she could barely stand. TB swept her up in a bridal carry and brushed past his nemesis, heading straight for his Humvee. He grumbled silently in his head, but secretly, he was a little bit amused. His team sure knew how to inaugurate a new person into the fold.

Thank fuck Kubrick isn't here. She would have had Silly String.

Sylvan's housewas only about twenty minutes from the office, but for whatever reason, those twenty minutes felt like an hour. He couldn't even blame it on rush hour. It clearly had everything to do with needing to be alone with the woman next to him in the truck.

Fuck "with" her. I need "inside" her. Now!

When they finally arrived, he barely had the vehicle in park in the garage and the garage door down before the vehicle was turned off, and he was sliding out of the seat onto the pavement. He stormed around the back of the truck, yanked her door open, unbuckled her seat belt, and had her over his shoulder, ass in the air.

"TB," she hissed. "You're being a caveman!"

"Don't care," he grunted. "Your steps are too tiny, and I don't want to pull your arm out of the socket."

"Well, if you weren't so Frankenstein-huge, it wouldn't take three of my steps to keep up with one of yours," she shot back.

Swinging the inner door open, he hustled her through, closed the door, locked it tight, put her down, then rearmed the alarm panel. Once he had, he turned to her with an index finger pointed at her. "Upstairs. Now. Clothes off. I'll be there in three minutes, so you had better be ready."

Eyes wide, Flame didn't even hesitate. She turned and flew up the stairs.

The grin on his face was that of a predator who knew his prey was a given. He set his watch for five minutes just to make her wait a little, then began to do a perimeter of the interior of the house, verifying that everything was locked up and the curtains were drawn. Once done, he headed to the kitchen and grabbed several bottles of water because when he was done with her, he knew she would need hydrating.

Just as he closed the refrigerator door, his watch alarm beeped. Turning it off, his smile turned even more wolfish, and he stalked to the stairs, purposefully letting his heavy tread be heard as he climbed.

Navigating the wrought iron spiral staircase to the third floor, he made sure to hit each stair with a heavy step and made sure to climb slowly to increase her awareness of his arrival. His mouth was watering in anticipation of what he was going to find. A small part of him hoped she wasn't quite ready so that he could mete out a little punishment.

The saliva in his mouth dried up in a single second.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

Late afternoon sunlight shone through the skylight in the center of her sanctuary. In the middle of the pool of light it created, she knelt, completely naked. She was sitting on her heels, hands clasped behind her, gripped at the small of her back, the position forcing her generous breasts forward. Around her eyes was a white silk blindfold, knotted so that she couldn't see a thing. Lying on the floor in front of her was a skein of white silk rope in a loose coil.

"Sylvan," he whispered.

He watched her chest rise and fall, saw her body tremble, and heard the slight gasp that she couldn't contain at hearing him call her by name, something he had never done before.

He crossed over to the bed and set the water bottles in the alcove above the pillows. Then he moved to stand in front of her.

Her braid lay over the front of her shoulder, the end tied with a pink silk ribbon. He fingered the end of it. For a heart-wrenching moment, it reminded him of what he'd found in the box. Five red hair braids and one blonde braid neatly chopped from a young woman's head. Mentally, he shook himself, collecting his wits to find the Dom within.

"Remove my boots, Flame."

She let go of her wrists behind her back and began to undo the laces on his left boot. After loosening them, she gently raised his foot to pull and remove it. Setting it off to the side, she repeated the process on the right foot. Then she returned to her position to await his further instructions.

"Stand." She unfolded her body and stood before him. His hand reached out to touch her side and slid down to her hip. "I'm going to move to the bed. Follow my lead." She did. When he sat on the bed, he spread his legs. "Take two more steps forward, princess." Once she had done so, he closed his legs slightly so that she could feel him hemming her in, the denim coarse on her knees. "Take off my shirt."

Unclasping her arms, she bent at the waist to reach for his tee, and she pulled it free from his pants. The position brought her face perilously close to his, and he struggled not to turn just slightly so that he could kiss her. Instead, he took a deep breath.

Roses and arousal. There is nothing better than her scent. Well, except hearing her soft cries when I'm buried inside her.

As she pulled the tee clear and up his torso, she began to straighten, the material dragging his arms up so that she could pull it free from his body. Once it was off, she turned it right side out, folded it, and stood with it on top of her open palms. He took it from her and tossed it onto the floor at the foot of the bed, uncaring that her neat folding was now wasted in a heap on the floor.

As he stood up, he clasped her backside and hauled her up the front of him. Automatically, her arms wound around his neck, and her legs around his waist. Cradling her close to him, he walked over to press her tight against one of the bookcases. "Hold on tight with those pretty legs, princess."

With her pressed up against the spines of her beloved books, he was able to remove his hands from underneath her. Reaching behind his neck, he took both of her hands in his, stretching them up above her head. His mouth swept down to her ear, nipping the lobe with his front teeth, causing her to hiss. Then he gathered the lobe between his lips, his tongue stroking the bitten area with tenderness, and gently sucked the wounded flesh.

She moaned.

His mouth drifted down her throat, open-mouthed kisses with his tongue flicking against her pulse point, sucking hard on the tendon where her neck met her shoulder.

"Oh, my," she breathed out.

He placed both of her small wrists in the grip of one hand above her head, then he slid his other hand to grasp a breast, kneading it with strong pulls, making sure to pull on her nipple as he narrowed his touch. Afterward, he smoothed over the nipple with his fingertips before grasping her breast fully in his hand again.

"That feels so good," she moaned.

His mouth drifted further down, his hand pushed her breast up toward his mouth, and his lips reached to capture her nipple between his teeth. He bit lightly, causing the flesh to distend further.

Again, she gasped, then sighed as he immediately swirled his tongue around and across the flesh to soothe the stinging.

He pressed up with his hips, her body not moving against the shelves so that she could feel how hard he was for her. "You feel that, little Flame? You do that to me," he murmured against her breast, then moved to give the other the exact same treatment. "Do you know how much I want to fuck you? How much I want to make you scream for mercy as I edge you over and over toward orgasm? I want to hold you down and pound that pussy of yours with my hips so hard I leave bruises on the insides of your thighs, marking you as mine. I want to make you come so hard you pass out with my name on your lips. And then, when you wake up, do it all over again.

"I want to take you from behind, holding onto these beautiful hips so that you feel my balls slap against your clit, triggering it while my cock rasps against your G-spot at the same time so that you flood me with your cum. And then I want to take all that silky fluid and spread it on your asshole, slide my huge dick inside you there, and make sure you know exactly who owns this body. Who owns your orgasms."

He could feel her body shaking at earthquake levels and swept away by a maelstrom of sensations. It was time to blow up everything between them.

He let go of her hands, then allowed her to slide slightly down the front of the bookcase as he kneeled on the floor. Her pussy was lined up exactly to his mouth. "Arms above your head. Do not touch me."

"TB—"

"Please, Flame. If you touch me, I'll never be able to lick this sweet pussy. And I need to do that more than I need air to breathe."

A groan issued out of her mouth, and he waited until she complied with his request to put her hands above her head before he focused his attention back between her thighs. He reached for her leg and put it over his shoulder, opening her further to him. Before she even registered what he was doing, his tongue was swiping between her lower lips, teasing her hole and her clit by brushing from one to the other without stopping. The tang of her fluids on his lips and tongue, he used his hands to press against her pelvic bones, his thumbs stretching her lips open to reveal both spots.

"Need your flames, princess. Need your heat again."

Eyes on her from below, he buried his tongue inside her channel, tasting her straight from the source.

Flame began to beg in earnest for him to hurry up and bring her over the edge. His tongue would pulse in and out of her, mimicking the actions his cock would later use inside her. He swirled it around her insides, pressing the tip against the top wall, then dragging it out hard. As his tongue returned to push back inside her, it met with a powerful flood of her fluids, and at the same time, her body shook so hard that she'd had to grip the shelves as supports in order to stay upright.

Soft swipes of his tongue along her skin helped to ease her body back down, as well as remove most of the stickiness from her orgasm off of her thighs. His hands began to slide up her curves, which eventually forced his mouth to move up the front of her body as well. Kissing the soft skin just above her belly button, TB made sure to do an extra hard pull with his lips, leaving behind a red love bite to mark her as his.

His hands framed her body, his thumbs caressing the undersides of her breasts, watching the skin pebble and flush at his touch. She was still shaking from his attention, so he worked to relax her again. He smiled evilly against her side as he pressed a kiss to her hip.

All the better to make you explode again, my dear.

One hand reached for her shoulder, gently pulling on it to lower her arm, turned so that the underside was toward his face. He pressed a kiss to each of the permanent bruises it presented. When he reached the top one, he helped her place her arm over his shoulder and around his neck. He repeated the process with the other arm. Once both arms were around his neck, he lifted her up and took her back to the window bed. Gently, he lay her down on tousled sheets and kneeled between her legs as they hung over the edge of the bed.

"Ready, princess?"

She fisted what portion of his hair she could and shoved his head down between her legs with a strength he hadn't known that she had.

"No talking. More licking," she managed to whisper.

"Just licking?" he teased.

"Licking. Sucking. Kissing. Touching. Fucking. You made a to-do list for yourself earlier. Get to it."

He chuckled. "All the better to pleasure you, my dear."