Sweet Isabel
Hunter and I stumble our way to his bed, leaving a trail of disregarded clothes and shoes. His muscular body forces mine down on the mattress. My breath quickens as Hunter looms over me, dressed in only his boxers. His dark eyes slowly run down the length of my naked body. I feel myself flush, but I bravely hold his steely gaze. Something in the atmosphere shifts and changes between us; it’s as evident as predator and prey, male and female, strong and weak. Vulnerability exudes from me while power emits from him.
Instinctively, I sit up and cross my arms over my bare chest. His eyes narrow in a disapproving way. “You like it rough, Isabel?”
I turn my head, staring at the white drapes.
I’m startled when Hunter speaks. “Answer me!”
“Yes,” I whisper almost too low to hear.
“Look at me, baby,” he orders in a softer tone.
My eyes hesitantly lift to his. “Yes, I like it rough, Hunter.”
A slow and sexy smile plays on his lips. “Rough is how you’re going to get then.”
My breath hitches. “Are you going to tie me up?”
His index finger runs the length of my arm, causing me to shiver. “I don’t think my baby is ready for that.” I’m oddly a little disappointed.
“I like it soft and gentle too.”
“Is that right?” he whispers, grinning down at me.
“Yes.”
Can this be any more embarrassing?
“I’ll see what I can do then.” He cocks his head to the side, intently gazing at me. “How sore are you?”
I stretch and most of my joints protests and there is also a distinct ache between my legs, but now I can’t differentiate if it’s from sex or from longing. “Sore.”
“Too sore to play?”
My eyes fall to the floor, my face flaming. “I would be very much appreciative if you would take it easy on me,” I whisper, feeling my entire body immensely heat under his gaze.
His hand grasps my chin, tilting my head so I can stare him directly in the eyes. “We don’t have to do this, Isabel. I can tell that you’re afraid of me. It hurts but I can deal. I know you don’t completely trust me yet—you are absolutely right to do so—but maybe with time I can earn what I discarded long ago. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t expect the world from you. I love you, Isabel.”
My arms dropped from my breasts to my sides as I shut my eyes shut and savor his words.
“I love you, Isabel.”
I feel his knuckles skim down my cheek as his other hand weaves through my hair. My eyes flutter open to Hunter’s soft baby blue eyes on mine. “I love you, too.” I lie back against the mattress and spread my legs to him, for him. It takes him no time to settle between them but not inside me yet. “I can never say no to you.”
He smiles down at me, all pure and all genuine. “I better take care of you then.”
I press kisses all over his face and neck, not caring where or how desperate I am for him, I just want to savor and relish in this moment. I kiss everything I can: his eyebrows, nose, lips, cheeks, ears, chin, and along his jaw and neck. I am greedy and impatient and I’m too happy to be concerned about it. Wrapping all four of my limps around him, I crush him to me, never wanting to let him go.
“Baby,” he breathes, running his hands down my body.
“I never want to let you go,” I confess, tears spilling down the sides of my face and into my hairline. “I want to wrap you inside of my heart where you can stay forever and ever. I want to hold you there for-ever. I love you so much.”
“There is no place I’d rather be, Isabel. Keep me there, in your heart, and never let me go no matter what, okay?” He commands, kissing my tears away.
“I will never let you go,” I reply.
“Promise me, baby. No matter what happens or what I do, promise to never ever let me go…even when I’m unworthy and you want to,” he orders solemnly.
“I promise, Hunter,” I vow, teary-eyes.
“Good girl,” he praises, kissing and sucking his way down my neck. His hands sift through my hair, cupping the back of my head and holding my face against his. “My beautiful, sweet Isabel. How I love to love her.”
My body turns into liquid underneath his as I shut my eyes.
He kisses both eyelids. “You are the only one who has ever counted.”
Moaning, I tilt my hips up. My wet and aching sex is pressed into his hardness, but Hunter doesn’t enter me.
“You mean everything to me,” he whispers, bringing my hands to his mouth and kissing each of my fingers. He shoves his face in my neck and inhales deeply.
“Just fuck me already,” I beg.
I feel him smile against my neck. “My baby needs me. I should get busy.”
I cross my ankles around his waist. “Yeah, you should.”
***
Hunter does “get busy.” He gives it to me soft and gentle and fast and rough. I loved all the ways I get to have him but it’s much more than that…I love him. That means I love any way and every way he decides to give it to me.
After we come countless times, I lay my head to his chest, marveling at the sound of his heart. He reaches out and tags a black handheld flat device from his stand. “What is that?” I ask as it powers on.
“A Kindle. I have over four hundred books on here.”
“Really? Let me see.” He holds it out to me and I snatch away, smiling impishly. I am way too interested in what kind of literature Hunter Knight reads. I swiftly scroll through the books, surprised at what I find. There are a lot of fantasy and mystery and thriller books, less love stories but there are a few sappy romance novels and even a lot more darker versions of sappy romance novels, when I say darker I mean depressing. Then there are very kinky S and m novels.
“That’s my favorite as of now,” he murmurs pointing at a black cover with crushed waffle cones bits, candy sprinkles, and blood smeared across it.
It’s just tilted, “Sweet?”
He nods, staring down at the Kindle in my hands. “It’s about this man named Lenny who never craved for anyone or anything. He owned and worked at a little ice cream shop in the French Quarters of New Orleans. He had features of a handsome gentleman but he was anything but. He didn’t date or charm women. He didn’t find them useful—not even for sex. He jerked off almost every night thinking about the only girl he ever cared for. Her name was Sweet. She died in a hit-and-run when she and Lenny were nine. It happened right in front of Lenny’s house and he was watching from the comfort of his living room window the entire time. Lenny did eventually go to Sweet and get aid for her.
“She took her last breath and died, staring right into Lenny’s eyes. He blamed himself, because maybe if he went to get help sooner she would probably still be alive. He lived every single day with the guilt and shame of it all, lived that horrid scene of Sweet getting hit by that red truck every night, never truly moving forward. Twenty-five years later he opens up a yellow painted ice cream shop and names it Sweet in honor of her.
“Well, one late August afternoon a woman strolls into the shop in a loose white sundress and he froze when he laid eyes on her. She had the same green eyes as Sweet and the same long, thick hair as her. She even had the same exact smile as Sweet. Lenny remembered her face to perfection and she fit it perfectly. But could it really be her? After all those years could Sweet really be alive? When the woman smiled it seemed heaven’s doors opened for him. She looked at him across from the glass barrier of the rows of ice creams and asked, ‘Why Sweet?’ He swallowed and released a small and strained, ‘What?’ ‘Why did you name your store Sweet?’ the woman repeated. He smiled back and told her that nothing is sweeter than ice cream. The end.”
“What? You’re lying,” I whisper, pinching the skin of his ribs.
“Yeah, I am,” he laughs, grinning down at me.
“How does it really end?”
“Sure you want to know?” he teases.
“Yes. Hunter.” I give him a harsher pinch but it doesn’t affect him.
“Okay…Well he finds out that the woman that looked unerringly like his beloved Sweet was not. Her name was Summer. She visited the shop every Sunday. They, in a way, became friends. He asked her out once and she denied him. She told him she was happily married to a husband she truly loved. Summer became his new obsession. But in a long story short, Lenny kills Summer’s husband and holds her captive in his basement for months.
“He rapes Summer numerous times and sees a pummeled and bloody nine-year-old Sweet bleeding out into the street each and every time he does it. In the end he becomes more delusional and blames Summer for Sweet constantly haunting him and kills her with a hatchet. He chops her limb from limb and puts pieces of her into the red cherry sauce for the ice cream he serves to his devoted customers. There are four more victims, each time younger, and each time he kills them and serves them to the blissfully brainless people, who keep coming back for more. He’d been in misery for so long that he wanted other people to actually taste it too…But they never did. They told him his cherry sauce was sweeter and better over the years. It was all over for Lenny when he adducted a nine-year-old girl who looked just like Sweet. She was anything but, though. He confesses to everything he has done: all the killing and such. One day she somehow undoes the restraints and creeps from his basement and kills him with his own hatchet in his bed. She finds peace within his death and grows up to be a contract killer.”
“Oh my God, that was intense and depressing as hell. There isn’t even a happy ending.”
“But there is,” he whispers, delicately tracing my eyebrow with is index finger. “The girl that escapes falls in love with her first target. They go on to have a happy and full life…until her husband wants to open a yellow ice cream shop.”
I scrunch my face up. “I don’t like that story very much. Who would write something so dark and twisted? When you were telling me about it, I couldn’t breathe. I felt trapped like someone was suffocating me, like I was slowly wilting away.”
“Maybe those feeling aren’t such a bad thing to feel from time to time. You made it out the other end okay to me,” he says softly, his finger moving down the bridge of my nose.
“Only because your arm is wrapped around me,” I mutter. “Who wrote it? They have to really be fucked in the head.”
There are several beats before he answers, “Me.”
I feel my lips part and my eyes widen in shock. “What?”
He shrugs nonchalantly. “I self-publish all of my work. I have a huge following that love my novels almost more than I do. You should read them when you get the chance, because you are my biggest inspiration.”
“Am I Sweet?”
He smiles a smile so lethal it stops my heart. “You are everything, my sweet.”
I gasp and scoot away but he curls a hand around my bicep and drags me over the mattress and back to his side. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to chop you up into little pieces and mix you in with ice cream if that’s what you’re thinking.” He laughs cheerily and buries his nose in my hair.
“I would never think that. Don’t be silly, Hunter,” I assure breathlessly. “It’s just a lot to take in…that’s all. You wouldn’t own an ice cream shop, anyway. You’re more of a bakery kind of man.”
He shuts his eyes and tosses his head back, laughing so hard my body shakes with him. “You should have ran when you had the chance. I am never going to let you go now.” Though he’s laughing, I sense that Hunter is one hundred percent serious.
“I’m going to keep you to that.”
Hunter reads me more of his work as my hands explore his magnificent body. He is truly a talented author. I can vividly imagine everything he says. He’s brilliant and terrifying but beautiful all in the same.
“I love you,” I blurt out, interrupting him midsentence.
“Love you more.” He gives me a closed-mouth smile and presses his fingers to my lips and then caresses my face.
“Show me how much more,” I whisper seductively, and I watch as his gaze darkens.
Hunter lays his Kindle on the stand and moves between my legs. His finger slips into me, causing my back to arch off the bed. “You are always wet, Isabel. You never disappoint.” He finger disappears as he makes his way down my stomach. I gasp and jolt up when his hot mouth is on me. He presses a demanding hand on my belly and harshly shoves me back down. He licks me savagely, intentionally missing my clit. My fingers thread into his silken hair as I tug.
“Hunter,” I mew.
“Right here, baby.”
“Baby,” I moan. “I need you.”
He growls, then his tongue dips inside of me and his fingers pinch my bundle of nerves, instantly paralyzing me. My eyes screw shut and I explode inside his mouth. Hunter plants wet kisses on my stomach as he crawls up.
“I love the taste of you,” he says, sliding his nose down mine.
“Yeah, you’ve mentioned it before,” I pant, breathlessly. I roll him—and he is reluctant—on his back. “My turn.” But as I begin my descent down his chiseled body, Hunter reaches down, tangling his fingers in my hair. He presses my face into his hard abs, smothering me with his scorching skin. “No, baby.”
“But I want to.”
“I don’t want you to,” he replies quietly.
My hand moves down to grip the colossal hardness of him. He sucks in a sharp breath. “Why not? You’re beautiful down there, Hunter.”
He looks conflicted but it’s only momentarily. “I said no, Isabel.”
“But—”
“Isabel, get your ass up here. Now.”
Bending my head, I kiss his abs and his chest as I move up his body. His muscles tense and then relax underneath my lips. Staring into his eyes is so much of a contradiction right now. They are soft but somehow hard and cold with an endless depth of mystery I can’t begin to unravel. I don’t know what I triggered for him to get upset with me.
Leaning forward, I press my lips to his, not to kiss him but to talk and feel them against mine as I do so. “What have I done now?”
I watch in utter awe as his eyes go soft. “Nothing.” He captures my bottom lips in his mouth and nips it with his teeth, soothing the sting with a caressing lick of his tongue.
My breath catches in my throat and squirm on top of him. He only releases my lip, chuckling darkly. Hunter tucks my head under his chin as his fingertips trail up and down my spine. “Sleep now, my sweet.”
Listening to the magical lullaby of his heart, it takes me no time at all to fall under the spell of his command.