“Faster. Please. More.” Ume was begging, unashamed that he’d brought her to this state so quickly. Teasing her with exquisitely slow strokes. Gripping her hips with his strong hands, controlling her body.
His seductive v
oice was raspy with desire. “What makes you think begging will help?” He thrust deep, laughing at her groan. “I’m enjoying this too much. Too damn much.”
She curled her fingers, digging her nails into his biceps and clenched her inner muscles around his cock, making him shout, his hips jerking against hers. “Don’t tempt the devil, babe. You may not be able to handle what comes next.”
Ume stared at the character on screen through a red haze of passion. “I can handle whatever you dish out.”
Plum sent Sinner a siren’s smile. “I can handle whatever you dish out.”
“Oh, poor girl. Now there really is no going back.”
Her cries echoed through the empty living room, and her back arched hard off the daybed. This. This was what she wanted. She was drowning in sensations—the smell of him, the feel of the heat rolling off his body, burning her skin. The noises emerging from his throat as he powered into her, jarring her body with the strength of his thrusts, sounded animalistic. Wild.
She loved it all. He didn’t treat her as though she were fragile. As though she would break. He claimed her as his equal. Demanded everything like a conqueror. Trembled like a lover.
Her climax took her by surprise. A bonfire. A raging, burning conflagration rushing through every cell in her body, leaving nothing behind but ashes. He’d destroyed her. He joined her with a roar of satisfaction, and in that moment she knew she would never be the same.
Ume tasted the salt of her tears, mingling with the salty taste of his skin in her mouth and she realized she was biting his shoulder. She blinked, forcing herself to focus. Her character was biting his shoulder.
He was looking at the screen, directly at her. “More, Ume. Give me more.” His guttural voice shocked her completely back to her senses.
She slammed down the laptop cover, unplugging it for good measure before placing it on the table beside her as though it had just turned into a poisonous snake.
Ume. The computer-generated character that had just made her climax had called her by her real name.
And she could have sworn she’d seen his eyes flash red.
She was trembling, and pretty sure she was never going to play Demon Saint again. Hell, she might never open that computer again. And she was definitely going to talk to her doctor about those pain meds.
She ran a shaky hand over her face, pushing her damp hair off her forehead. It had seemed so real. Her body was convinced it was. Her sex was still pulsing from the most intense climax of her life. And no one had actually touched her.
Playtime was over. From now on, she’d stick to the real world.
Chapter Three
It had been two days. Two long, difficult days. Ume threw her pen and the book of crossword puzzles she’d been trying to focus on across the room. Nothing was distracting her from what she’d done, what she’d seen on the computer the other night.
The physical therapist had come by yesterday, and Ume had nearly exhausted him, unwilling to stop until she’d been covered in a cold sweat, collapsing before having to listen to his lecture on going slow and taking it easy. But she didn’t want to take it easy.
She’d wanted to be so exhausted that she didn’t relive Sinner’s touch. The touch of someone who didn’t actually exist, or so she told herself over and over again. He couldn’t exist. And it had just been her imagination that he’d spoken to her, that his eyes glowed.
Any other explanation was crazy. Instantly a memory of her mother tucking her into her bed filled her mind.
“Beware the Oni, Ume-chan. They know your desires as well as they know your fears. They will use both against you if they discover your existence.” Her mother reached down and held the necklace she’d made Ume wear since she was a baby, watching the single pearl glimmer by the light of the small bedside lamp. “This should protect you from our Oni. It has always kept me safe.”
But it hadn’t. Not from her early death. Not from her own fears, that had grown to such paranoid proportions before she died that her teenage daughter had been embarrassed by her. Embarrassed…and cruel. That had been the hardest thing for Ume to accept. That like her father, she’d left her mother alone with her terror. And the last conversation they’d had before she died could never be taken back.
The one where she’d told her mother there was no such thing as kitsune, as Oni. The one where she’d called her mother crazy.
Maybe losing her mind was Ume’s punishment.
“I know. I was just here, but my mother made her famous dumplings and she knew you would want some, so here I am again.”
Ume jumped, swiping her palm over her damp eyes to hide her tears. “Dumplings, huh? Sounds delicious.”
Julie stopped in the middle of pulling out a plastic container full of pork-filled goodness and stared hard at her cousin, making Ume squirm. “Have you been crying? You sound like you’ve been crying.”