All the Rules of Heaven (All That Heaven Will Allow #1) - Amy Lane Page 0,20

his feet, panting.

“That was—” He caught his breath. “—really fucking unpleasant. Is the whole house like this?”

“I gave Ruth the easy ones,” Angel confessed, too rattled to dodge the question. “She… I felt bad for her.”

Tucker regarded him with unfriendly resignation. “Wonderful.”

“You’ve had a chance to live somewhere else besides Daisy Place,” Angel responded defensively. “She started doing this as a child!”

Tucker straightened from his half crouch over the drawer and ran his hands through his wild hair. “Poor Aunt Ruth,” he said grudgingly, and Angel sensed that beautiful empathy in him. The emotion was almost as compelling as Tucker’s bare chest.

“I was trying to start you off with something easy,” Angel said, thinking of a flowered paperweight in a room three doors down.

Tucker grimaced. “Well, I actually appreciate the thought,” he said on a sigh. “Now can you make yourself useful and get over here? Tell me if there’s anything nasty in the damned drawer.”

Angel waited until Tucker used his shirt to open the drawer wide and then hovered over the contents.

“Letter opener is clear,” he murmured.

“Surprise!” Tucker pulled it out and ran his thumb over what seemed to be a still-sharp edge of a long, tarnished stiletto of silver.

“The fountain pen is clear—but still messy.” Damn.

“There goes my shirt.” The blotch was surprisingly large.

“Maybe wait until I clear the whole drawer?” Angel suggested testily. “Besides, you’re intruding on my space!” This last was absolutely true—if Tucker was any closer, he’d be wearing Angel like skin, and that would be unpleasant for them both. The human fear of ghostly possession was based on an uncomfortable amount of truth.

“Fine.” Tucker huffed and folded his arms. “Keep going.”

“Okay, the scissors are… uh, no. Don’t go there.” Bad things. “The, uh, glass bottle—” Angel’s entire body was washed with heat. “Not relevant.”

“Bad?” Tucker asked curiously.

“No, just, uh, not relevant.”

“Here, let me be the judge of that.”

Oh dear.

Tucker’s long-fingered hand darted into Angel’s vision and wrapped around the bottle. Angel made a little sound of wanting in his throat, and he found he was helpless to resist watching the story as it unfolded in Tucker’s head.

BRIDGET WAS helpless—when she was never helpless. She lay sprawled on her back, naked in the daylight, at her mistress’s mercy.

“Oh Lord, Sophie girl….”

Sophie, who was so lost, so fragile in their lives outside this room, was smiling at her wickedly, the sort of carnality in her eyes that had repulsed Bridget in the men who had taken her, reeking of entitlement, using her body because it was convenient and disposable.

With Sophie it filled her, warm and syrupy, with the kind of desire that women dreamed about when yearning for their prince. Bridget had found it in her princess.

Slowly Sophie dripped raspberry syrup from a slender green glass bottle over Bridget’s bare breast. Bridget gasped as it cooled her nipple and fought a moan and a laugh both as it drizzled down the underside of the pale, freckled swell.

“Oh, my darling,” Bridget breathed. “You have made a mess!”

“Then I’d best clean it up, hadn’t I?” Sophie asked, mischief dancing in her eyes.

“Oh aye….”

Sophie’s tongue, neat and pink as a cat’s, darted out and licked, and Sophie’s shoulders, bare like the rest of her, covered Bridget’s body as she knelt by the side of the bed and followed the trail of the sweet red syrup.

“Oh dear,” Sophie whispered, her voice a guttural purr. “We seem to have run out of syrup.” She was licking the mouth of the bottle, sucking the thick, smooth glass into her mouth and hollowing her cheeks as she cleaned it of everything but her spit.

Bridget’s mouth went dry. “Whatever will we do?” she asked, half serious. Sophie’s laugh, filthy as a dockworker’s, sent a warm gush of fluid from Bridget’s sex, and she writhed, her core swollen and aching with anticipation.

“We’ll find something,” she promised, pushing at Bridget’s thighs until she lay, bent at the knees, legs spread wantonly.

“Oh dear Lord. Ah, Sophie!” Her voice broke as Sophie’s lips, tongue, and fingers began to move in concert within Bridget’s plump folds. Sophie was skilled at this, finding the tiny knob of sensitive flesh with her tongue and tormenting Bridget until her hips arched off the bed.

Sophie stilled Bridget’s flailing body with the flat of her palm right under Bridget’s navel.

And then, with the cool pressure of the smooth glass bottle easing into her sex….

THE THUNK of the bottle hitting the top of the desk broke their trance.

“Oh my,” Angel whispered, looking wildly around the