Fortune Annabel Joseph (life books to read .TXT) 📖

ecstasy reflected in her breathless pants. She did look up at him then. Her gaze dropped lower, to where he joined with her. The ache inside him broke wide and ambushed him. He climaxed with explosive force, emptying himself, jerking wildly in the harbor of her lovely, welcoming passage. He felt connected to her completely—mind, soul, nerves, organs, bodies. He fell over her, gasping.

“Holy fuck,” he burst out against her shoulder. It was all he could think of to say.

He helped her up shortly afterward. They didn’t speak right away, not about anything important. She tiptoed around as she prepared for bed. He haunted her space and she haunted his. They were both spooked.

“Should I… Do you want me to sleep here or in the other room?” she asked.

“Here. Naked. Just as you are.”

She crawled under the covers and he slipped in beside her in the low light of the bedside lamp. She curled into a ball but he still pulled her against him. He held her so she couldn’t scoot away. She stared off at something, her eyes distant and he watched her, wondering how she felt. She finally met his eyes. “It’s so quiet here,” she whispered. “I’ll never be able to fall asleep.”

He thought of her house, the crowded living areas, the room she shared with her nieces. He thought of his own quiet, sterile life.

“I’m so glad you’re here, Kat,” he said. For a thousand reasons, I’m glad. He turned off the lamp and held her close in the darkness. He thought he could hear her heart pounding away beside him. He heard her breath lengthen and grow even in sleep long before he so much as closed his eyes.

Chapter Eight

Kat was slogging her way through a horribly boring text on animal husbandry, trying to put thoughts of Ryan out of her mind. She had it bad for him. After two solid weeks of hedonistic pleasure, even translating passages about pigs fucking gave her a little thrill. She tried to focus, puzzling over a trick of phrasing. She hoped whatever Russian pig-farmers-in-training read this text appreciated her attention to small idiomatic detail.

She closed it right at five o’clock and headed home. His home. Her temporary home, where she felt more and more comfortable. He would be another hour at least, maybe later since it was Friday. She might do a half hour or so on his treadmill while she waited for him. Well, maybe twenty minutes. She’d get plenty more exercise later in bed.

He called when she was just finishing up to tell her he was bringing dinner home. He sounded pleased to hear she was exercising. He had an endearing preoccupation with her health, her eating and exercise habits. Well, it was kind of endearing but mostly exasperating. At first she’d pouted and resisted a healthier lifestyle. To her horror, his house was a no-junk-food zone. No chips, no cola, no candy, no coffee, not even any chocolate. Actually, he’d allowed her a little chocolate the week before when she was on her period. Otherwise, she’d told him bluntly, she would cut off his nuts while he was asleep. And she sneaked junk food at work for a while to get her fix, bought chips and candy out of the vending machine. He would never know, she thought.

But he knew. When he questioned her, she cracked and confessed. He spanked her, she cried, they fucked. Afterward he held her and caressed her, pouring warnings into her ear about the dangers of too much fat and high-fructose corn syrup. She heard nothing. She could only focus on his touch, his smell, the deep tone of his voice. Well, she heard something, she supposed, because his lectures were working. Just yesterday at lunch she found herself craving salad. Salad!

Last week, one day after work, she’d found herself snacking on haricot verts dipped in hummus. Hummus, for fuck’s sake. And what the fuck was an haricot vert anyway? Some kind of rich doctor French green beans he’d turned her on to. She was always grabbing them out of his fridge.

There were other lessons, too, really intimate lessons about attention, pleasure and discipline. He touched her, grabbed her, stroked her and manipulated her. He tied her up regularly, practiced his “art” of shibari. She didn’t totally get the art part or what he got out of it. She just knew it made her feel strange and nervous. She liked the fucking a lot more. She was even getting into stuff like going down on him. She was getting past her selfish impatience and starting to get into the ways she could make him react. He said anal was next. She was dubious but that never stopped him. If anything, it drove him on.

And he folded cranes every day. Sometimes just a few, sometimes a lot of them. Every time he did it she thought of that first night two weeks ago, when she’d crawled at his feet and fetched them one by one with her lips and teeth. He still strung them on lengths of fishing line, counting out groups of forty. He hung the completed strands in the corner, like a colorful waterfall. She didn’t ask why. She knew why. He believed in wishes, fortune, fantasy. No wonder he got on so famously with her mother. They were two of a kind.

But not her, Kat thought as she ran on his treadmill. She didn’t believe and she had no interest in learning how to fold them herself. But she still liked to look at them, the riotous colors, the way they moved and rustled slightly whenever the heater turned on. She was finding it easier to sleep in the silence. She was finding new, quieter noises to listen to just beneath the hum of her lust.

She was just getting out of the shower when he came to find her. She loved to see him after work, all doctor-y and businesslike. He would