Beneath the Beauty

  BENEATH THE BEAUTY

  Skye Warren

  Copyright 2013 by Skye Warren

  Smashwords Edition

  In the long anticipated sequel to Amazon Erotica Bestseller Beauty Touched the Beast, Erin and Blake explore their new intimacy and encounter old enemies.

  When Blake receives an offer to return to his alma mater as an associate professor, he knows this is his chance to reenter the world—and to be worthy of the woman he loves. Erin wants this chance for him to heal…even if it means leaving her behind.

  Beneath the Beauty is a novella in the Beauty serial. Don’t miss the sexy initial installment, Beauty Touched the Beast, available now.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you to every reader who asked for more of Erin and Blake’s story. This one’s for you.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Erin woke up in slow degrees. Awareness tugged at her like a gentle tide. Arousal lapped at her skin. She had been in a deep slumber, both sated and sore, but she came alive again under his touch.

  Blake. Sighing, she might have said his name aloud. Or maybe just in her mind. They were attuned now, so soon after sex. Wrapped up in each other, cocooned in sleep. Past the point of discussions, negotiations, they’d been stripped to the core. Just him, her, and the pleasure they could invoke together.

  Calloused fingers roamed over her hips and lower, lower, to where her curls were still damp from their earlier sex. She peeked at the windows. A faint, eerie light glowed against the curtains, heralding late twilight, the onslaught of night. He was insatiable really. Earlier this evening, then now. They’d do it again in the morning most likely. She loved it.

  When his fingers slipped inside the wetness pooling at her sex, she moaned.

  “Shh. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  Liar. A lazy smile curved her lips. “Is that right?”

  He found her clit and pinched. His breath was hot at the back of her neck, his erection pressing urgently against her from behind. “But now that you’re up…”

  “You have plans for me.” Delicious plans. They always were.

  “You don’t have to do a thing,” he murmured, rolling her onto her back. He nuzzled his way through the valley of her breasts, across her belly, and settled in between her legs. Her knees splayed wide, her whole body spread open to him, encouraged by anticipation and the laxity of sleep. Her hips canted up, an instinctual invitation.

  She’d been given oral sex before, but never by someone as dedicated as Blake. He enjoyed himself there as much as he enjoyed regular sex—maybe more. He could make her come endless times, until she was throbbing and restless, until she had to beg him to come inside her.

  God, she loved it.

  Two weeks wasn’t a long time, but she felt incredibly close to Blake. She trusted him with her body—and hell, with her heart. She had dated her last boyfriend for eight months without feeling this level of intimacy. He certainly had never done this to her, lapping from the bottom to the top, lingering in a lazy circle around her clit, pressing in an instinctual rhythm until her hips took up the beat.

  Before she could climax, he licked and sucked his way lower. His tongue slipped between her lips, sparking tendrils of need through her core.

  “Oh, Blake,” she moaned, lost to the sensations, shuddering on the edge.

  “What is it, baby?” he murmured against her flesh. “Tell me what you want. Take what you need.”

  She fisted his hair and guided his mouth to her clit. He eagerly sucked her there, using his lips and tongue to drive her higher and further until she was taut, stretched out, and ready to burst.

  It was the touch of his fingers to her inner lips that pushed her over, a tickle of a caress combined with the harsh pleasure at her clit, and she came in a sunburst that belied the heavy shadows surrounding them.

  Slowly coming down, she blinked up at the ceiling, feeling energized. “Now I’m well and truly awake.”

  “Shit,” he said, sounding dismayed.

  “It’s not a complaint, mister. That was amazing.”

  “Don’t worry.” He lowered his mouth to her sex. “I think we can wear you out all over again.”

  She would have smiled then, but his tongue curled wickedly and his fingers delved deeper. Her thighs drew up tight, and she came again, smaller this time, in tense, rolling waves. He didn’t give her a reprieve, just set the flat of his tongue against her clit, which was at once too sensitive and exactly what she needed. She grew louder, her body writhing without her control, but each new orgasm sent her farther into the sex-drugged space.

  When her body shuddered in one final orgasm, he knelt between her legs. She noticed distantly that his hands were shaking as he put on the condom, as he angled his cock at her slippery cunt and pushed inside. It was all wonderful but never more than that moment, when she felt so full and watched an expression of bliss soothe his tortured face.

  On the one side, his skin was smooth, aside from the ruggedness and bristle of an active, healthy man. The flesh on the other side had once been burned, ravaged by fire and war, now covered with scar tissue. It hurt to see, but only because she ached for him, for the pain he must have felt in that moment, for the pain that kept him locked up in his immaculate house instead of out in the world.

  To her he was beautiful. In the moonlight, the jagged landscape of his scars was more pronounced. But it was his slack jaw that she admired, his glazed eyes. The signs of his ecstasy brought on by her body. As if he were a god, she offered herself up to him, but it wasn’t a sacrifice to feel the heavy weight of his muscles, the thick pulse of his cock, the tender press of his lips against her when he bent to drop a kiss. He thrust inside her, faster and harder, pushing them onward in a sea of molten pleasure.

  “Shit,” he muttered. “I can’t—I can’t—”

  “Don’t hold back.” Then she repeated his earlier words. “Take what you need.”

  They seemed to release him. He picked up speed, slamming inside her so hard it took her breath away. He pressed his lips to hers, moving his tongue to the same rhythm as his hips. He invaded her at both places, her mouth and her sex, and held her down in all the rest, but she wouldn’t have moved for the world. She longed for him to take her, to use her. Anything she could do to bring him pleasure. Anything to bring him peace.

  His hips lost their steady motion, jerking up against her like waves on a cliff, crashing until he let out a hoarse shout and held still for his climax.

  Gingerly, he pulled out. She whimpered slightly at the loss.

  He stroked her thigh. “I’ll be right back. Have to take care of this.”

  He disappeared into the bathroom to dispose of the condom. The water ran in a quiet rush. She stared at the glowing yellow edges of the door, resolved to wait until he got back into bed. But his clever tongue and determination had done their job, and she was too exhausted to last. With a sigh of defeat, she drifted off to sleep.

  * * *

  Blake returned to stand beside the bed, admiring the smooth cheek and dark eyelashes of his lover. Her dark blonde hair looked like spun gold in the night, her skin pale as the moon. His gaze roamed lower, to the sweep of her neck and below. The sheet bared one breast—gorgeous and round, topped with a dusky nipple. He hadn’t paid enough attention to her breasts this time, but then he always felt like that. He wanted to lick and suck every part of her body and then do it again.

  He didn’t fool himself about the ever-present tinge of desperation, as if he needed to hurry, as if she’d slip through his fingers like sand in the wind. He had realistic expectations. He was ugly as sin. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. It was only a matter of time before she never came back.

  Though it wasn’t just his looks. They were
a symptom of the root problem. Regular people could lock away their wounds and their weaknesses. Blake’s hung like a sign on a storefront. A label on a map. Here Be Dragons. Wisely, no one had ventured near him—until Erin.

  He was fundamentally changed after his tour. Not just the explosion, although that had messed him up but good. For those long months overseas, he’d turned into something subhuman. Something with instincts, with power—something animal.

  And the things he’d seen still haunted him. He didn’t much feel like being around people at all, and when they jerked away from him in fear it didn’t help matters.

  Maybe they should be afraid of him. Maybe the explosion had truly changed him, honed and sharpened him into something only useful for fighting—not living.

  He’d existed in a world of darkness and palpable hellfire since the explosion and his return. So much for a life in the public spotlight. The well-planned career on a political stage was ruined. His parents were disappointed. His fiancée had been disappointed too, until she’d left.

  Hell, he was getting depressing. He tried not to do that, especially when Erin was around. She had changed all that. He wasn’t fixed—not even close. Hope was a small blade of green poking up from the hard, cracked earth.

  As she’d said, he was well and truly awake. If he stayed in bed with her, he’d only end up waking her again with his restlessness. Despite his pensive mood, his dick was ready for round two—or was it three or four? A steady state around her. He couldn’t keep badgering her like this. He may live like a hermit these days, working at odd hours and all through the night, but she had to leave early in the morning.

  Treading quietly, he slipped out of the bedroom to his study across the hall. The answering machine blinked red like it had all afternoon, but he ignored it. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. Instead he flipped the screen up on his laptop, suffusing the room with a dim blue light that comforted him. Here he was in his element. Here he was treated as an equal.

  There were six new emails today, each several pages long, dense blocks of text he’d sift through, dissect, and debate. Four from professors and politicos in the U.S., one abroad, and the last from a Jain monk in India. Well, the man’s assistant, technically, since he didn’t use a computer or even prepare his own food. The topics varied from domestic politics, global events, human rights, anything they could discuss passionately and endlessly, spinning his intellectual wheels in the rut of rhetoric. A network he’d built up over his years as a young, ambitious soldier with his eye on public office, never realizing he would one day need them as his sole link to humanity.

  He lost himself in the words. Only here, he didn’t have to be himself. The subjects tested him intellectually, but he didn’t have to think about his own life and the lack of it. Not about Erin and when she might realize what a loser she’d hooked up with. Not how he’d feel when she walked away.

  Hours slipped away with only the clean, crisp notes of logical arguments, falling one after the other in a melody he could play in his sleep.

  “You’re awake.”

  He looked up to see Erin standing in the doorway. Her arms were crossed, her slender body leaning back just inside the doorframe. He wondered how long she had been there.

  “Oh man, I’m sorry.” He stood up quickly, and pain shot down his neck. Partly it was the position he’d been in, but his neck had been stiff ever since the explosion. Months of physical therapy and rehabilitation visits had only helped so much. The explosion had damaged more than his skin. “I didn’t realize how long it’d been.”

  She shrugged, wandering closer. “It’s okay. You can work whenever you want.”

  Like a beacon, her presence shone light on things better left dark. She brushed her fingers over a dusty pile of papers. He’d told her to skip this room on her first visit here, and despite everything that had happened between them, he’d never changed that. Her first time in this room, the one place he’d felt alive in those dim hours, and her presence somehow felt more intimate than the sex they’d shared.

  “Let’s go back in the bedroom.” His voice came out hoarse. “I can think of something better to do.”

  “Not sleep, though, I guess.” Something seemed different about her, a diffidence. A chill in the air between them. She ran her fingers along his desk and gently blew the dust off her finger. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were hiding something from me.”

  He wasn’t, not like she meant, so why did he suddenly feel guilty? Because she didn’t know the extent of his injuries and PTSD. Because she didn’t know how much he longed for her. Because she didn’t know how lost he was when not anchored to her. He couldn’t divulge any of that without losing part of himself—without losing her.

  “Ask me anything you want to know,” he said. His voice sounded raw, because that was how he felt. Exposed here, vulnerable. For her, yes.

  She swiped a finger across the top of his glowing laptop—of course that one came away clean. One of the few things disturbed here. “Is there another woman in the picture?”

  Shock mingled with relief as he laughed. “What? No.”

  “I mean, our relationship was pretty sudden. I’m not saying we have to be exclusive or that I expect that from you.”

  He spoke bluntly to put a stop to that. “There’s no one else for me, Erin.”

  “Then why do always come in here when you think I’m asleep? I know you already work in here all day. When do you rest?”

  He opened his mouth to respond and then realized he didn’t know the answer. She hadn’t stayed over every night in the two weeks they’d been sleeping together, but dawn usually found him right in that leather swivel chair, eyes bleary from staring at the screen. He’d gone from being active in graduate school and in the military to…nothing. He still felt that drive, that ambition, but he had nowhere to put it, nowhere to go.

  Seeming to assume he’d refused to answer, she wandered to a shelf piled high with books—academic journals that were probably years old, highlighted and dog-eared.

  Her hand stilled over the answering machine. It blinked red up at her. She turned to him in question, asking if she should press it.

  He shrugged. He had no idea who it was nor did he care, but if it would help ease her mind that there wasn’t some other woman, some secret plot, then he’d rather she listened.

  Instead she faced away, speaking to the door. “I didn’t mean to snoop or…or accuse you of things. I never wanted to be that girl.”

  “They’re reasonable questions. I want you to ask them. No, I’m not with anyone. You. I want only you.” And he didn’t want her to be with anything else either.

  She made a small gasping sound, like a sob pulled up short.

  “I’m so sorry,” she breathed. “It’s not that I don’t trust you.”

  He waited.

  Her laugh was breathless. “Okay, I guess it does mean that. I just…have some trust issues. The last guy I dated…well, let’s just say it didn’t end well, you know?”

  Yeah, he understood that she’d been hurt, and he hated that. He also figured he would be lumped in with that asshole. Which normally wouldn’t bother him except he already had enough flaws at this point and couldn’t afford to pay for another man’s sins too.

  “So I’d like it if—” She spun to face him, her eyes glistening in the dark. Her lips trembled. “If we could take it slow.”

  Slow? That was the opposite of how he felt about her. Every part of him wanted to claim her, to take her as his own so no other man could ferry her away when she went out into the world while he was trapped here.

  “No problem,” he said, achieving some level of casualness. “That’s what we’ll do.”

  If it killed him, that’s what he’d do.

  The goddamned red light was still blinking, mocking his inability to communicate with the outside world. Distracted, and maybe needing to prove something about his trustworthiness even if she wasn’t ready to believe it, he pressed the but
ton to play while she looked on.

  “Hi, Blake, this is Jeremy. Jeremy Mosely, Dean of Social Sciences. You remember we spoke about the Associate Professor’s position? I know you turned me down then, and we went ahead and hired some bigwig advisor from Washington to come down for the summer semester. But wouldn’t you know, his guy got elected and now he’s backing out of the contract. Can’t change his mind and we’ve got a class without a professor. We’d love for you to reconsider…ah, who am I kidding? We’re desperate at this point. It’s only a six week class. Name your terms, Blake.”

  Jeremy rattled off some phone numbers, but Blake didn’t move. Damn. He hadn’t really wanted Erin to know about that. It would only serve to highlight his uselessness. His brokenness. Of course, the cat was out of the bag now, and if he tried to backtrack in any way, she would only look at it like he was hiding something.

  A smile spread over her pretty face. “They want to hire you at the university? Associate Professor?” She laughed happily and launched herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck. “That’s amazing, Blake.”

  Shit. He hugged her back and then gently set her away. “Erin, it’s not going to work out.”

  “But he said you could name your terms. You think you could get an office with a window in it?”

  “I don’t care about the office. I mean, there’s not going to be an office.”

  Her head jerked back at his sharp tone.

  He softened, pleading a little. “It’s just not a good time.”

  She looked around the small cluttered space as if she were seeing it for the first time. After a long moment, she said quietly, “I see.”

  Goddamn her, she probably did see. She saw the thick walls that separated him from the rest of the world, shielding him from their sight. And then what? Would she walk out and never return? Would he wish that she had, knowing some stronger, more functional man could better care for her?