Читать книгу Anything but Ordinary - Madelynne Ellis, Madelynne Ellis - Страница 6

Three weeks earlier

‘No, no…Don’t you dare!’ Kara screeched as Zach crashed into her, knocking her off balance. She landed with a splash amongst the surf, with pebbles digging into her bottom and salt water in her eyes. None of that seemed to matter a second later, when Zach’s mouth closed over hers and he proceeded to drown her with hungry kisses. Their hips aligned perfectly, and the hillock between them hinted at pleasures still to come. Eager for all of it, Kara stopped squirming and hooked her legs around his thighs.

‘Nice…Oh, yeah, very nice…’

Shut up, Ric, she mentally chastised. Using her actual verbal skills was out of the question given her tongue was sparring with Zach’s and there was no point in objecting to Ric photographing them. That was what he did – all the time. The camera was a natural extension of him. He always snapped first and waved the consent forms around afterwards. She’d signed so many of them now, he had to have a drawer full of them.

‘Wet T-shirt, love it. Just hook your thumb in the back of his shorts, Kara.’

Obviously hoping they could make out without a running commentary was too much to hope for.

Ric moved in close. As always when he was in the zone, his face was drawn into seriousness, lips sealed, blue-grey eyes gleaming.

‘Just roll with it,’ Zach whispered, having momentarily broken them apart in order to breathe. ‘You know he gets off on ordering us about.’

Yeah, and she got off on groping Zach’s arse, so she supposed there was nothing to get her knickers in a twist over. It would be different if Ric insisted she couldn’t touch, and that it had to be all smouldering looks, but the man had dirty engrained in his every cell. Actually, scratch that, he went beyond dirty, all the way to filthy and well on the way to whatever it was that came next. She’d yet to find a consensual sex act that Ric got squeamish over: toe sucking, if you insisted; bondage and discipline, he preferred to give but was up for taking too; gay sex; threesomes or moresomes; DP; nipple clamps, absolutely, bring it on. He’d never expressed an opinion on fisting, but hell, it wasn’t as if she wanted to go there. She’d bet he’d photograph it though. It was just what he did.

‘Now inch them down a bit. Come on. I want to see nails biting into his flesh, and sea spray clinging to his skin.’

‘I want to see you tied to that rock.’ There were even convenient metal rings attached to it. ‘Doesn’t mean either of us is going to get what we want.’

Ric cast a brief glance at the old iron bands bolted to the cliff face. ‘If anyone is getting tied up, it’ll be me doing the tying.’

He’d once suggested that he liked to shackle wayward tenants there in order to pay their tithes. It didn’t take any imagination to figure out what that might involve. Alaric ‘Ric’ Liddell was the most sexual being Kara had ever met and, as the owner of Liddell Island, he’d been born to the role of master. If she pushed him, he might well chain her up. That was if Zach didn’t volunteer in her place. Not because Zach especially liked being restrained. It was more that he enjoyed the energy that power differentials generated. Oh, and he definitely got off on the idea of her and Ric drinking down the visuals of him all hot and horny and unable to do anything about it.

Kara defied anyone to look at Zach and not get turned on, want to rough him up a little and then get down and dirty. There was a reason he was Ric’s muse. Zach wasn’t classically handsome, but his wing-like brows and soft, melting brown eyes certainly made him arresting. He was big-boned too, in an oddly wiry way that gave the impression of youth. Most importantly though, he was a giver, and that fact was written into every inch of his being. He radiated that warmth.

He was heating her this very moment with it.

His hand slid under the bottom edge of her bikini top and claimed her right breast. Kara sighed a welcome. The heat of his hand made a sharp contrast to the chill of the sea. It crinkled her already steepled nipple, which he rubbed with the centre of his palm, while he used his teeth to lift the other side of her bikini. That nipple he claimed with his mouth, sucking it deep, sending sharp pulses of pleasure down through her abdomen.

Where she had been wet, now she was sopping. Zach wound a teasing pathway down to her pussy, pressing a kiss here, another there. He flipped up her skirt and teased the top of her thighs, tantalising her with his nearness, letting the tension inside her build until all she wanted was to grab hold of his hair and guide him into place. When he relented and sucked her, he did so through her panties, which only served to amplify her need. Kara softly moaned and pinched her own nipples, kindling further sparks of pleasure that connected and formed a circuit with her pussy each time Zach’s tongue flicked across her clit.

And still the whirr of Ric’s camera melded with the birdsong and the noise of the ocean lapping at the shore. She didn’t mind him taking pictures. Ric could turn even her into a spectacular work of art, but she did fantasise about him discarding the camera on the sand and it being washed away by the tide. With his hands free, he’d then kneel by her head, jeans glued to his skin by the weight of the water, fly undone, and press his cock to her lips, and Kara would lose herself between the two men.

‘Put down the camera and come kiss me,’ she mouthed, vocal cords so tight from mewling in response to the tickle of Zach’s tongue that they didn’t seem to want to function.

Ric pursed his lips. ‘And why would I want to do that?’

Despite their commitment to one another, he still insisted on maintaining an air of detachment, as if by doing so he could deny he was as emotionally entangled as she and Zach had become. The truth was that he was every bit as devoted.

‘Don’t look at me to twist your arm,’ Zach muttered. He breathed hot air onto her skin, and traced his tongue along the lacy edge of her panties. ‘Less of you means all the more for me.’

‘As I see it, all you’re doing is toying with her. Why don’t you suck her properly? Rip that scrap of lace off and show me and that pussy some red-hot loving. Prove you’re not just a big fat tease.’

Kara groaned her agreement. Yes, please. She relished the idea of Zach’s tongue running along the split of her sex, then making direct contact with her clit. He’d make her ache so good that when he sucked, she’d be so desperate with need, even an earthquake wouldn’t move her as much.

Instead, Zach sucked her through the lace, driving her into a state of frenzied desire, where everything was overwrought and hypersensitive. She ached with the need to feel him get closer, push his tongue inside her, fuck her with it and then with his cock. She reached for him, tangling her fingers in the longer brown strands of hair that normally flopped over his brow. What she really wanted was for him to shimmy up over her again, drive his cock against her mound, push inside, and make them both so hot they cried out, demented and desperate, as they strained together, strove together, until they were right there, hanging on the brink of orgasm just a finger’s breadth away from total collapse.

For some reason she opened her eyes at that moment, perhaps needing the connection to Ric that proved they were a threesome before dying in Zach’s arms.

Ric was intently focused upon them, brows subtly furrowed, blond hair tickling the tops of his shoulders and that magic gleam still in his eyes.

‘Come,’ he mouthed to her, tracing his tongue over the tip of one canine. ‘Keep looking right at me and come. Let me see it all, Kara. Everything. Don’t hold anything back.’

He might as well have asked her to give him her soul. Sex stripped away barriers. By its very nature it was up close and personal. You couldn’t hide when you were riding a tide of bliss towards orgasm. She knew everything she felt would be right there on her face, scored into every line, written into every millimetre of skin. Ric would capture that and print it for the world to see. Her agony and ecstasy all rolled into one.

Perhaps she had become as enamoured as Zach of being immortalised, because she did look at Ric. Stared straight at him, and might even have come if it wasn’t for a shifting shadow that made her turn her head.

Subconsciously, she’d been aware of the niggling sound that didn’t make sense for a minute or so. It was the gentle whirr of gears turning, and the repetitive ping of digital wizardry being made by something that wasn’t Ric’s stupidly expensive camera.

Conclusion – there was a second photographer.

‘No!’ she shrieked in alarm, on glimpsing the figure. ‘Oh, God. Fuck, no. Get off me, Zach. Get off me now!’

Obedient to the core, Zach raised his head. ‘What?’ His eyes had been closed, but they flickered open now. His pupils were widely dilated and riddled with confusion. ‘What is it?’

He had his back to the intruder. In all honesty, that was probably a godsend, given the kid had to be all of eight. He was posed, mimicking Ric, right down to the angle at which he held his camera.

Kara tugged her bikini top back into position, while Zach dragged his shorts up so they covered his arse.

‘Stop him, Ric.’

‘Hey, kid.’ Ric made a vague swatting motion, as if to chase the boy away, but the little blighter kept on staring at her and Zach through his camera lens. ‘Stop that. You can’t go taking photographs without permission. Where are your parents?’

On seeing that his words weren’t evoking a response, Ric skipped in front of the lad, so as to block him from taking any more shots. The lad didn’t seem to notice, given his camera kept on whirring away, presumably capturing some epic shots of Ric’s abs.

‘Give me that.’ Ric snatched the camera from his grasp, and held it out of reach.

‘Nan…Nana!’

Christ the kid had lungs.

‘Nana, the rude man’s taken my camera.’ The little dynamo aimed a kick at Ric’s shins, missed and targeted a punch towards his groin instead.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ Ric planted a hand on the boy’s head and held him at arm’s length, while he browsed through the illicit images with his thumb and repeatedly hit delete.

Kara curled her hand around his bicep when she noticed the kid’s grandmother appear from around the curve of the bay. The old woman saw them huddled around her still flailing charge and hurried over, chiffon scarf waving in the breeze.

‘What on earth are you doing to my grandson? Get your hands off him.’ She inserted herself between Ric and the boy, whom she sent scuttling towards a line of young relatives who’d just appeared from the same direction she had come.

‘Nan?’ they enquired.

‘I’m fine, dears.’ She flapped them towards the shore. ‘Go…play…’

Gentle with her charges, her gaze turned cold as she turned it upon Ric. ‘Who do you think you are, laying a finger on him? You’ve no right, none at all.’

‘He was taking pictures of things he shouldn’t have been.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ The woman’s sun-browned face scrunched into a web of lines. ‘Is that his camera? How dare you take it off him? Give that back.’ She snatched it out of Ric’s hand. ‘And you’ve been deleting his pictures. Oh, my God.’

‘Would you rather I’d left the topless shots on there?’

‘Well…’

Ric scratched the faint golden stubble around his jaw. ‘Or the ones of them shagging?’ He shot sidewards glances at both Zach and Kara, who had positioned themselves at either side of him. ‘Maybe you’d prefer it if I’d just allowed him to carry on.’

Mouth slack, the woman seemed momentarily lost for words. She blinked at Ric.

‘Preposterous. He would never do such a thing. You meant to steal his camera. It was a birthday present, I’ll have you know.’

Somehow she seemed to have missed the expensive camera hanging from a strap over Ric’s shoulder, and hence had failed to realise how ludicrous her claim was.

‘My phone has a better lens than that thing,’ Ric scoffed. ‘Stealing? You’re off your rocker, lady. Instead of casting aspersions, maybe you ought to go and ask your grandson why he felt it necessary to take pictures of strangers. And maybe you’d like to ask yourself how he was allowed to wander off without you knowing where he was or what he was up to.’

‘I did know where he was. Just ahead of me. And there’s only your word to suggest he was doing anything wrong.’

‘Not only my word.’ Ric tapped his index finger against the viewscreen of the boy’s camera. ‘Don’t think I quite got them all, if you’d care to look.’

The woman’s gaze dropped from his face, travelled along the length of his arm to his finger. ‘How am I supposed to know what button does what?’

Ric helpfully tapped the back button.

A blush fanned across the woman’s cheeks. Yet again her mouth fell open.

‘Well…I…never…That’s…Are you?’

She flicked a hurried glance at Kara, clearly appalled.

‘This is disgusting.’

The remaining few images only consolidated her outrage.

‘What sort of person films this filth on a public beach, or performs it?’

Ignoring Ric a moment she levelled another glance at Kara. ‘I suppose it’s too much to hope that you’re married.’

Kara wiggled her fingers, displaying the absence of any sort of ring.

‘You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, the three of you.’ She shut off the camera and deposited it in her cream-coloured handbag. ‘Nasty, that’s what it is, and clearly what you are.’

‘This isn’t a public beach,’ Zach pointed out, but the woman wasn’t listening. She was staring at the sunlight dappling Ric’s naked torso, and the spray slowly trickling over his abs. One droplet clung to his stomach just above the waistband of his extremely low-slung jeans. Kara had to clench her fists and dig her feet into the sand to stop herself from falling onto her knees and licking him. The old woman would probably faint dead away if she did that. Well, perhaps after she’d given them another lecture on propriety.

It occurred to Kara that her own sense of decorum had skipped out of town some nine months ago, right around the time she’d arrived on Liddell Island, and definitely by the first time Ric had fucked her in the arse in the open air. It’d happened on the cliff top, just above this cove. The memory put a hugely inappropriate smile on her face that she struggled to hide. Thankfully, there’d not been an audience that night.

‘For heaven’s sakes, cover yourself up. There are children about.’

‘They shouldn’t be here.’

Kara cast her gaze along the shore. Several kids ranging in ages from approximately seven to seventeen were now splashing about in the waves.

She didn’t need to see Ric’s expression to know his thoughts. Ire was radiating off him.

‘Really, it’s not appropriate. At least pull your trousers up.’

‘This is private property.’

Kara quickly inserted herself between Ric and the woman, just in case he did anything rash. She’d never known him to deck a total stranger, or strike a woman – discounting occurrences during consensual sex – but everyone had their breaking point and Ric had seemed alarmingly close to his for weeks now.

His mouth formed a nasty scowl.

‘Let’s go, Ric. We don’t need to hang out here,’ she counselled, tactfully failing to mention that it wouldn’t kill him to cover up a little under the circumstances. It wasn’t necessary for him to stroll around half naked, even if the fact he did meant she got to drink her fill of his stellar body.

‘Go where? I shouldn’t fucking need to go elsewhere. And no, I won’t put a fucking shirt on, and neither will he.’

Clearly he’d forgotten that Zach was technically dressed. It was an easy mistake to make, given that their roll in the surf had left him sodden and his cotton T-shirt see-through. Kara could see Zach’s nipples, puckered by the cold, quite clearly, along with the ridiculously pleasing cut of his abs, and those cute lines that formed a V either side of his hips that drew the eye downwards to…

She stopped herself looking, aware that the belligerent old woman was still present. The only reason her own clothing wasn’t as transparent as Zach’s was that she’d worn dark colours.

‘Let’s head up to Kara’s place,’ Zach suggested. Beachcomber Barn was only a little way along the cliff top, and at least there they wouldn’t be interrupted.

‘Why should we?’

Ric had a point. A valid point. This was his island. His property. Liddell Island had been owned by his family for centuries. The woman and her charges were only here because he chose to allow it. If he wished, he could force every one of the island’s visitors to leave immediately without giving any reason at all.

‘Come on, Ric.’ Zach clapped a hand on his shoulder. ‘It’s not worth it. Let the kids play in the sun. I can live without sand in intimate places and sunburn on my arse.’

He was rewarded with dual withering glares: one from the tourist, presumably over his language, and the other from Ric, who clearly considered it a matter of pride to stand his ground.

‘Really, man? It’s so not worth it.’ Zach half turned him and gave him an encouraging little shove in the right direction, which at least got him moving.

Ric grumbled under his breath all the way up to the top of the cliff and the way-marker stone. ‘It’s my fucking cove!’ he yelled back at the holidaymakers, giving them a two-fingered salute.

Kara doubted the folks on the beach heard him. The wind was blowing in the wrong direction and they were all too busy enjoying themselves to worry about a strange man prancing about on a clifftop.

Oh, well, so much for them chilling out on the beach together for the afternoon. Still, the day wasn’t done, and there were other places they could cosy up together.

‘First man to the barn gets a blowjob,’ she said, tapping Ric on the shoulder. That would hopefully get his attention. She didn’t wait to find out, but took off along the narrow track, agile as a mountain goat, despite the headland wind roaring in her face.

Zach followed, easily matching her pace with his impressive stride. He slowed a little as they neared the wood and wire fence that encircled her property. ‘I think I’d better let grouchy bear win. He looks as if someone stole his porridge.’

‘I’ll blow him. You can rim him,’ Kara suggested. ‘If that doesn’t lighten his mood nothing will.’

Zach stuck his tongue into his cheek. ‘Somehow I don’t think we’re going to get to dictate terms. He needs to reassert his authority, and you can bet we’re about to feel the full force of it.’

Kara let a grin stretch across her face. ‘Sounds good to me.’ She always enjoyed herself when Ric got masterful.