Stolen and Seduced - Christine Pope Page 0,8

pleasure, and yet you do so much to deprive yourselves of it, surround it with taboos, subscribe to a puritan — to borrow a phrase from your history — notion of what is acceptable and what is not.”

I wanted to argue, but I knew he was right…partly, anyway. No one in my circle of friends was what I would exactly call straight-laced…far from it…but I’d still never been able to indulge in casual one-nighters, easy as that option sometimes seemed. And the couple of times I’d tried to throw caution to the wind, I’d just felt wrong the next day. Guess you could take the girl out of St. Mary’s Catholic School, but you couldn’t take the St. Mary’s out of the girl.

“And that’s what you’re all about?” I asked next. “Aliens just want to have fun?”

Of course, he didn’t catch the reference, and instead appeared to carefully consider my question. “That is not all we do. Pleasure is a part of experience, of learning.”

“So, what have you learned so far?”

“That you, Blake D’Ambrosio, like to give up control.”

I blinked at him, wondering where the hell he’d gotten that particular tidbit from. “I what?”

“Last night, you derived a good deal of your pleasure simply from being bound, of being able to surrender, since you could do nothing else.” He paused there and gazed at me, head tilted slightly to one side. His eyes were nearly the same inky dark blue as his hair. “Or was my analysis incorrect?”

It crossed my mind to tell him exactly what he could do with his analysis, but then it occurred to me that he might be right. Well, partially, anyway. It had always been my idea to play with the handcuffs, to get the coil of smooth nylon rope from the garage and have some fun….

The alien nodded at my silence. “So, I think you will enjoy this.”

And something pulled at me, drew me, gasping, backward until I was pinned against the wall. My wrists and ankles likewise were held against the cool surface, and somehow, I hung there a few inches above the floor. I couldn’t see what held me in place, but it didn’t hurt, even when I wriggled against the force that kept me stuck to the wall like a piece of iron to a magnet.

He moved closer to me, placing his hand on my bare thigh where it emerged from the slit in the caftan I wore. His fingers were warm, almost too warm, as if his regular body temperature was higher than a human’s. And that heat seemed to spread out from his hand, radiating upward, as I felt the familiar throbbing begin between my legs, the delicious ache of desire.

“There is nothing wrong with wanting to surrender,” he murmured, bending so his mouth could touch the sensitive skin of my throat. Another gasp escaped my lips as he tasted me, his tongue a delicate flicker on my neck, moving lower, tracing its way over my collarbones, down the exposed flesh of my chest, pushing the deeply cut neckline of the caftan off to one side. His mouth found my nipple, teasing my flesh, and I couldn’t hold back the moan that forced its way from my throat.

Maybe I should have protested. If I cried out, would he stop?

Based on what he’d said earlier about letting “candidates” go if they weren’t receptive, I thought he probably would.

However, I didn’t want him to stop.

Apparently sensing my need, he moved his other hand up my thigh, brushing over my mound, then descending, sliding his fingers in so he could begin to stroke me.

I was instantly wet…so, so wet. My breathing quickened, and I shut my eyes, concentrating on the sensations flooding my body. How he knew to touch me exactly there, at that extra-sensitive little bud at the top, I didn’t know and at the moment didn’t care. I could only let myself melt into his touch, moaning as he slid one finger up inside me, then two, as he continued to stroke my clit with his thumb.

And somehow to have him doing it as I hung here like that, unable to move, unable to do anything except focus on the delicious ripples of ecstasy that flooded through me as if every nerve ending had gotten an extra jolt of energy, made it feel that much better. Nothing had felt like this, not even the little alien vibrator. That device couldn’t compete with his fingers, or the sensation of his tongue