by Lora Leigh
He was a warrior, a conqueror, and he was stealing her soul.
“You like this.” He shifted, moved, drawing free of her body slowly before pushing heavily inside her once again.
Mercy. It was too good. Her back bowed as she arched to it, driving him inside her as she felt the muscles of her pussy stretch again. Burning, searing pleasure.
“Tell me you like this, Crista.” His voice was filled with wicked knowledge as he began a slow, heavy rhythm, fucking her as though he had all the time in the world when she knew that if she didn’t orgasm soon, she was going to die.
“Come on, honey,” he urged, his voice insistent, almost gentle. “Tell me you missed feeling me inside you, fucking you slow and easy, making you burn for me.”
Her head shook desperately. She couldn’t miss what she hadn’t had, could she? He had taken her hard, fast, in a variety of ways and positions, but he hadn’t taken her like this. Like the act mattered. Like she mattered.
“Look at me, Crista. Come on, open your eyes, honey.”
His voice was too gentle, too rough with passion. Her eyes opened, and she felt the first tear fall. A stupid tear, because he was taking her too deep, stealing too much of her.
Dawg almost stopped at the sight of that single tear easing down her cheek. And he would have, if he hadn’t seen much more than that in her eyes. Shimmering damply, they were filled with such tormented need, a hunger that he recognized, one he knew went clear to the soul.
It was a hunger he recognized because it was the same hunger that had tormented him for too long. So many years dreaming of her, and she was better than the dream. Sweeter than passion, hotter than lust.
Silky wet with the juices gathering inside her, coating his dick with syrupy heat and lubricating each heavy thrust inside her.
Delicate muscles clamped on his cock, stroked over him with a tight-fisted grip, and nearly destroyed his determination to go slow. To take her easy. To relish every fucking minute inside her when he wanted nothing more than to pound into her pussy with greedy, harsh strokes.
He was a hard lover. He had always known that. Sometimes, he hated that part of his sensuality, because going slow and easy had always taken thought. He had to think his way through each thrust to keep his head. Until Crista. Taking her slow and easy was—damn, it was easy. He wasn’t thinking, he was relishing, enjoying, burning alive in her heat.
“I shouldn’t have taken you so hard yesterday,” he crooned, suddenly wondering if he had been too rough with her after all, if he had hurt her.
She was delicate, tender. Not like the other women he had been with, women who knew and anticipated that hardened side of his sexuality.
“Dawg.” She was panting. Those stiff little nipples were pushing closer to his face as her lips parted to drag in more air. “Please…” her head tossed on the pillow. “Not like this.”
Not like this?
He pushed inside her, deep, forcing himself to stop, to make her feel as his dick throbbed inside her.
“You’re wrapped around me like a fist,” he gritted out. “Feel it, Crista. I can. Your pussy is working over my dick like a hot little mouth starving for satisfaction. Deny you want this. Just like this.”
He flexed inside her again, feeling the head of his cock stroking her, the crown positioned just right to notch the flared, stiffened edge into her G-spot. He stroked her internally, watching her eyes darken, her face flush a delicate pink as the pleasure began to build higher, hotter.
Damn, she was making him high just from the feel of her. The blood was pounding in his head, adrenaline and lust clouding his vision as he shook his head and breathed in roughly.
Just a few more minutes. God, he had to feel her just a few more minutes. He couldn’t come yet, not yet, not until those little ripples around his dick began to clench and spasm in release.
Crista felt her legs lifting, felt her body melting, and she whimpered at the surrender that rushed through her mind. She couldn’t fight this. He was buried inside her, fiery hot and thick, pulsing and stroking internal muscles that even after all this time hadn’t forgotten the pleasure he could give her.
She bit her lip as she stared up at him. Her wild man. That was what he was, a wild man. Maybe not hers, but here, buried inside her, for this moment in time, he was hers. And he was every inch a primal, sexual male.
His eyes were so light now they seemed to glow within his face, his lips tight with the fight for control. She didn’t want his control. She wanted what she had before. Wild, primitive. Maybe, just maybe she could survive the fallout later.
As she watched, a smile tugged at the taut line of his lips, and he began to move again. That slow, destructive rhythm that forced her to feel every blazing inch of his cock.
Oh, that was good. Her breath hitched; a hard, jerking shudder tore through her body as her hips jerked upward to hold him inside her as long as possible.
“Oh yeah, you like that,” he muttered, his voice becoming thicker, rough. “I like it, Crista. I like it a lot.”
Of course he liked it. He was winning. Triumph glittered in his gaze as her hands tightened on the wrists beside her head.
“Let’s see if you like this.”
The rhythm stayed the same, but his head lowered, his lips surrounding a hard, sensitive nipple and drawing it into his mouth.
“Oh, God. Dawg, please, don’t…” Don’t make her feel this. Don’t make her lose her senses to him.
Her head twisted against the mattress, though she arched closer, pushing the peak deeper into his mouth.
His lips, teeth, tongue. They all played with the hot nerve center of her nipple. Licking, nipping, suckling with male greed as he continued to thrust inside her slow and easy.
Her pussy was clenching around the length of his erection, spasming with brutal need and desperate lust. Her hands moved from his wrists to his head, trembling fingers sinking into his long hair, holding him closer as her hips moved beneath him.
“Harder.” The cry shocked her. It came from her in a voice strangled with furious need. “Fuck me, Dawg. Please. Please, like before.”
The desperation rose inside her. The need for more, the need for racing bolts of electric ecstasy tearing through her rather than zipping teasingly around her.
“How was it before, baby?” he whispered, his voice a guttural rasp now. “Tell me what I missed, Crista. Tell me how I took you.”
“Hard.” She was panting, shaking. Sweat dampened both their flesh now as her juices built along her thighs, easing from around Dawg’s cock with each movement inside her.
She was so wet, so hot, and becoming violently sensitive to each touch of his mouth against her nipples, each stroke inside her.
“How hard?” He nipped the sensitive curve of her breast before stroking his stubbled cheek against it.
Crista felt the breath tear from her throat.
“So hard. Please, Dawg.”
“Did I pound inside you?” Tortured, hungry, his tone stroked her senses just as his cock stroked inside the burning center of her body.
“Yes,” she hissed, writhing beneath him.
Crista could feel her response blazing out of control now. Her senses were overwhelming her common sense. She knew it; she couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t force it back inside her now that Dawg had released it.
“Do it!” She jerked beneath him, her legs rising, her ankles clasping at his hips as she shoved upward, then cried out at the feeling of him delving deeper, stretching her farther.
A hard male groan tore from his chest then. Hard hands pulled her legs free, pushed them back as he rose to his knees in front of her and gave her what she demanded.
Just as he had the first time.
He rose over her like a sex god come to life. Hard hands held her behind her knees, forcing them to bend, forcing her legs back as his hips began to move.
A bed pounder. The headboard would have been striking the wall behind them if it weren’t attached. The ma
ttress shook, and Crista felt the tender tissue of her sex quaking in rapture as he began to fuck her with hard, driving strokes.
Burning strokes.
Pleasure and pain that combined inside her and had starlight bursting in front of her vision as she exploded beneath him.
Lightning tore through her veins. It licked over her nipples, her clitoris, then ruptured forcefully inside her womb as she felt the wet, hot force of her orgasm frothing inside her, around Dawg’s pounding erection.
Within seconds, it was joined by his release. His teeth clenched, his lips pulling back as his gaze caught hers, held it, and the feel of his semen spurting inside her triggered another forceful, screaming, sheet-clawing orgasm inside her.
“Fuck yes!” he snarled. “Come for me, Crista. Like that—fuck yes, milk me with that sweet pussy. Take it. Take it all.” He jerked spasmodically inside her before his head tilted back on his shoulders, and a harsh tremor shook his hard body.
He released her legs slowly. They melted back to the bed as he came over her, still buried inside her, his cock jerking weakly now as he covered her.
“I came like that inside you the first time,” he panted at her ear. “I remember that, Crista. Over and over again I came inside you.”
He had. Her lashes lifted to stare at the ceiling, to force back the bitter memories.
“Tell me.” His voice was insidious, low, dangerous. “Were you pregnant when you left Somerset? And don’t bother lying to me.” His head raised, his gaze spearing into hers. “Did you have my baby?”
She stared back at him, the bitterness rising inside her like a cancer she couldn’t rid herself of.
“There’s no baby,” she whispered harshly, wondering why the hell she even bothered. “I didn’t have your child.”
His eyes narrowed as fury began to light the depths.
“Did you abort my baby, Crista?”
God help her if she had. Crista could see the murderous rage lurking in the depths now.
Her lips twisted mockingly. “There was nothing to abort, Dawg. And if you can ask me that question, then you have no business coming inside me. Tell me something now. How many of your bimbos have you double-fucked with your cousins and not worn a condom? Maybe I should be checked for STDs rather than a pregnancy.”
A snarling smile pulled at his lips now as he leaned close, nearly nose to nose, his gaze flaring, heating, lightening, then darkening again.
“I marked your pussy eight years ago, and I marked it today. And trust me, sweetheart, no other has taken my seed. I’ve made damned sure of it.”
Her eyes widened in a parody of joy that didn’t hint at the anger running through her. “Oh wow. Dawg gave me his seed three times now.” She fluttered her lashes. “How lucky am I? Well, just let me up right now so I can jump for joy and tell the world my accomplishments. I have finally arrived in life.”
A grin quirked his lips. Bastard that he was, he was amused.
“There you go, sugar, you’re getting the idea,” he murmured as a slight grimace twisted his features as he pulled free of her.
And her stupid, traitorous body tried to hold on to him. Clenching around his flesh, her hips jerking upward as though to relish that final stroke of heat and pleasure.
She flung the sheet over her as he rolled from the bed, pushing his fingers through his hair as he glanced back at her.
“You’re a smart-ass,” he grunted.
“Just figuring that one out? And here I thought I was being less than subtle for the past year.”
Twelve months of trying to keep him at arm’s length, of trying to hold back the bitterness and the memories that tormented her, and what had she done? She’d twisted and mewled beneath him like a bitch in heat. Apt, considering his nickname, she told herself cruelly.
She was setting herself up for heartbreak again, and Alex wasn’t here to save her. Mark wasn’t here to comfort her, and his lover wasn’t here to make her laugh and help her rebuild herself once Dawg was finished with her.
For the first time in her life, Crista could feel how very alone she was.
“At least you were smart enough to use protection that first time.” He sighed, though she fooled herself into thinking she heard an edge of regret in his tone.
Fooling herself. Just as she had fooled herself those months before he took her to his bed that first time. Fooled herself into thinking he cared about her, that she mattered.
“Yeah, that’s me, intelligent to a fault,” she bit out as she wrapped the sheet around her and moved from the bed. She needed to find her clothes. She needed to shower and wash the smell of Dawg from her body. The scent of sunrise and a storm. Wild and hot. He should bottle it. He would be a millionaire. Hell, she should bottle it, but she would be too stupid to sell it. She would hoard it all for herself.
That was her. Greedy as hell when it came to Dawg.
Too greedy, she imagined, for the lifestyle he had chosen years before.
“I need a shower,” she told him, furious with herself and her emotions.
It had been eight years since she had left Somerset. Eight long, exhausting, completely unproductive years, because all she thought about was coming home, returning to the mountains she loved and the man she couldn’t forget.
And he had forgotten her so easily.
“Go ahead. I’ll hop downstairs and shower. The two bathrooms have separate hot water heaters. You’ll have plenty enough for a bath or a shower.”
The Nauti Dawg had all the comforts of home, she remembered. Including a sinfully deep tub large enough to hold even Dawg.
The thought of soaking in that tub, easing the aches and pains from her still-bruised body, was almost irresistible. Almost. Unfortunately, she had things to do. Things like finding a newspaper to begin job hunting. Again.
It was Friday, so actually hunting up a job wasn’t going to happen today. But she needed to return to the house and get organized.
The waitressing job had been okay for a while. It kept her going while she finished the tests for her business degree, but she had no intentions of staying there, anyway. She had been marking time since completing her advanced degree three months before. Something she had put off when she had landed the office manager job in Virginia.
It had been a good job. Until her boss married, and the wife decided she could save her husband’s money by doing the job herself. Crista had received two weeks’ notice and a very small severance package, and then good-bye.
“I need a ride back to the restaurant to pick up my car,” she told him as she gathered her clothes from the floor and headed to the bathroom.
“I’ll drive you back,” he said behind her. “Then we can go to the house and collect the rest of your things. Did you have any furniture you have to bring back with you?”
Crista froze at the bathroom doorway before turning back to him slowly.
“Why would I need to bring my furniture? You just said until the end of summer.” She kept her voice calm. When dealing with Dawg, one had to learn to stay calm, or he would drive one insane.
He pulled a pair of shorts over his naked hips before straightening without answering.
His gaze pierced hers. His arms crossed over his chest in a stance of pure power, and he looked straight down that arrogant nose of his as though he were lord of all he surveyed.
Her calm slipped, just a little bit, as she stared back at him incredulously, her fingers fisting in the sheet she held around her. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Do you have furniture that needs to be moved?”
“No, I don’t,” she replied with sugary sweetness. “Because I’m not moving in here with you indefinitely. As soon as I can, I’m returning to the house.”
The house she shared with Alex was small and located farther outside of town than she liked, but it was nice. It was home.
It was nothing like the nice apartment she had shared with her roommate Mark and his lover Ty: the two-bedroom, ultramodern, brightly lit apa
rtment with a balcony that overlooked the beach. It hadn’t been home, though. Somerset was home.
“Tell me, Crista, do you want to die?” he asked her then. “Because you will. Those men at that warehouse weren’t playing games with those bullets, fancy-face. They were serious. And now, someone else could possibly believe you have their money. How long do you think it will take them to find you and slit your throat in your sleep?”
Crista felt the color leech from her face.
“But I didn’t have anything to do with that,” she argued weakly, feeling the stupidity in her response even as it came out of her lips.
“You were there.”
“Accidentally.” She shook her head at the futility of her own argument. “Money’s involved, right? They won’t just kill me.”
“No. They’ll torture you first.” He nodded with mock sobriety. “They’ll tie you down, cut you a little, let you bleed some. Rape you, most likely.” His gaze flickered over her with a flare of inner rage. “And when they realize you don’t know anything, they’ll really start having fun. You’ll pray to die before they finish. Is that what you want?”
She was shaking by the time he finished, knowing he was right, knowing her life had just taken a very serious turn for the worse.
She breathed out wearily. “I don’t have furniture. Just some clothes.” And not a lot, at that. Most of her stuff she was still waiting for. Mark and Ty had been good enough to hold it for her until she had a place for it. She just hadn’t found a place yet.
The same furniture and small items that she thought had been waiting for her at that warehouse. They hadn’t been there. Her earlier call to Mark had confirmed that he hadn’t sent anything.
A year.
Had a year really gone by since she left Virginia?
A year that she had been steeped in the memories she had deliberately pushed behind her when she left home. Memories that had the power to break her if she didn’t get a handle on them. Getting a handle on them hadn’t been easy.
He nodded abruptly. “Get your shower and get dressed. We’ll pack the rest of your stuff and bring it here. You can keep your car in the private marina parking that Uncle Ray lets us use.”