At His Mercy (4 page)

"Are you running from? Or running to?"
He buried his face in her hair that smelled of summer fruit.
Berries, he thought, sliding a hand up her side to her breast where
her nipple pouted.

"Who says I'm running?" she asked, then
gasped as he pinched and twisted.

He moved down her body, sucked her
nipple into his mouth, stayed there until he crossed the line from
pleasure to pain and she begged him to stop.

"I changed your tire, Lise." He bathed
her bruised flesh with his tongue. "I helped pack your things back
into your SUV." Her skin was so soft, her nipple tight, sweet. "No
one travels for fun with everything they own."

She gave a soft snort. "I own a lot
more than that."

He raised his head, looked down. In the
room's golden light, her eyes appeared mossy, a green ring around
pupils wide with arousal. "And you left it behind?"

Frowning, she slapped him on the ass.
"Is this really what you want to talk about? Now?"

"Why not?" He lifted his hips, leaving
only the head of his cock inside her. "We're as connected as two
people can be, but I know nothing about you."

"Here's something." This time she dug
her fingers into the muscles of his backside. "I don't like sex
used as a weapon."

He waited, one heartbeat, two, then
made up his mind, and instead of rolling away, he filled her,
pushing into her until he had nothing left. "Is that what you think
I'm doing?"

"Aren't you? You want answers and are
threatening to stop until you get them." She pushed up, gripping
him, tugging him down with her, grinding against him until she had
to draw breath. "I'm not here to share the story of my life any
more than you're here to share yours."

"Mine's pretty much part of the public
domain."

"Wayne said you don't like people
knowing who you are. I think that makes us even."

"No. It doesn't. I'm not hiding, Lise.
And I'm sure not running away."

She shoved at his shoulders, pushing
him, adding physical distance to the emotional gulf opening between
them. "Move."

He remained on his knees, her thighs
draped over his, her pussy glistening with moisture around the base
of his cock. Gorgeous. Fiery and hurting intensely. He could see
all of it. He didn't have to hear the words.

She glowered. "Get off."

He shook his head. "Not until you tell
me what's wrong."

"Get. Off." She said, struggling up
from the mattress.

He pushed into her, forced her down.
"Look at me, Lise."

Her gaze snapped to his,
angry.

"What did I tell you in the bar? I'm
not going to hurt you. You say stop, I stop."

Her chest continued to rise and fall,
but she quickly gave up the fight, her eyes closing as the tension
between them unwound.

"That wasn't fair," she finally said,
and he waited, his erection beginning to soften, and Lise desperate
as she added, "No. Don't," fucking him slowly to keep him from
slipping free.

He gave up. She was hungry and willing,
and he was being a dick. His need for answers could
wait.

He settled his full length over her,
his elbows above her shoulders on the bed. His cock thickened, and
she wiggled beneath him as if scratching an insistent
itch.

"Better?" he asked, and she
nodded.

"Much. But can we table the
talk?"

"Will you answer my questions later?"
he asked, and when she stiffened, he rushed to add, "I'm curious,
Lise. That's all. I'm not bargaining."

She exhaled the deep breath she'd drawn
in and nodded. Then she reached up to hold onto his wrists and
began to move, her hips, her fingers, as she wound their hands
together, her feet, as she slid her arched soles up and down his
calves.

Nice. So nice. But he kept silent. And
until he could bear it no longer, he kept still. There was
something here she needed, and he didn't want to keep her from
finding it.

She held his gaze, lifting to rub
against him, lowering to put distance between them she just as
quickly closed.

This was the best kind of sex,
head-to-toe contact, breath shared and labored, gazes fused. Lust
thrummed with emotion, with the rush of skin-heating blood, with
the synced beating of hearts.

They rocked together, a perfect rhythm
of male and female, his cock stroking into her pussy, her pussy
tugging on his cock. She worked him, she fit him, she made him
ache.

The ride was slick, from her juices,
from their sweat. Her legs hooked over his to hold him in place.
Her hands roamed his back, her fingers digging into his flesh, her
palms skating, her nails scratching, her fingertips tiptoeing down
his spine.

And then her breath hitched, and the
sounds she'd been making grew frantic. Her upward thrusts increased
in tempo, and he shoved back at each one until they were nothing
but motion, up, down, up, down, the headboard knocking the wall to
their beat.

He watched her when she cried out, her
eyes closing, her chin lifting. She thrashed beneath him, all limbs
and tremors and tight milking grips. He waited … He waited
…

He couldn't wait anymore. He gave into
the needs of his cock and exploded, a burst of sensation and semen
that grabbed his balls and squeezed until his toes
tingled.

He shuddered, collapsed onto his elbows
to keep from crushing Lise with his weight. When she mindlessly
stroked the side of his face, he nearly fell asleep. And when he
saw satisfaction play over her features, he knew he'd done his job
well.

But that didn't mean he was through
getting what he wanted.

Chapter Six

Lise woke in the middle of the night.
The soft glow from the lamp hanging in the room's corner allowed
her to see that the other side of the bed was empty, but something
told her she wasn't alone.

She waited before turning over,
listening, remembering, feeling a new rush of heat as the night
came back. Feeling, too, less than sure of herself, and that
surprised her.

If she'd been alone the morning after
the bar and Donovan's bedroom, she could relish the memories the
rest of the way to New Orleans. But he was still here, there was
music to face, and she knew he was waiting.

She pushed up, glanced toward the
corner with the lamp, found him in the large wing chair done up in
a navy and red country plaid. He sat on the clothes he'd tossed
there earlier, and he was as naked now as when he'd stripped them
off.

The lamp cast a pool of light over his
shoulders, and his skin glowed as if sun-kissed, and strands of
hair a nearly blue black caught the light and gleamed. His face was
shadowed, though his eyes sparkled, and the stubble along his jaw
gave definition to the hard lines of his face.

She swallowed, taking in the breadth of
his chest, the muscles there, the dark hair cropped close. His abs
flexed as he breathed, and the arrow of hair trailing down his
center drew her gaze lower where his thighs were spread
wide.

His penis rested on a thatch of dark
hair, and as she stared it twitched and thickened. She wet her
lips, returned her gaze to his. She didn't know how much of her
story to tell him. Or if she owed him anything at all.

They were ships passing in the night,
and a few short hours from now she'd be gone, leaving him here,
leaving a piece of herself with him. She wanted him to think of her
fondly, yet found herself blurting out the truth.

"I'm married."

He'd been looking at her. He hadn't
been moving. But it seemed as if he grew even more still, more
focused. Or maybe it was the air in the room that quieted, allowing
the heavy shift of tension to squeeze.

"I see," he finally said.

She shook her head. "No. You don't. You
can't. The marriage is over."

"Officially?"

In her mind, in her heart, yes. And for
months. "The papers were being delivered to … him, to Mark, at the
same time I was leaving Atlanta."

Another minute passed. A second. A
third followed. The vein at his temple throbbed, and his fingers
made dents in the plush chair arms. "Did he know they were
coming?"

Did it matter? "He's a bit of a control
freak. No. He's a major control freak. It wouldn't have worked if
he'd known."

"You needed to be gone when he got
them."

Nodding, she pulled the sheet to her
waist. "It was the only way I had to get out of there."

A new silence settled around them.
Donovan took a moment, then leaned forward, elbows on his knees,
fingers tightly laced. His eyes, when he looked at her, conveyed a
frightening wealth of anger.

And his voice, when it came, scraped
her nerves with its painful calm.

"Did he hurt you?"

Tears welled and burned. Her eyes, her
nose, her throat. "Physically, no."

She left the admission at that, hoping
it was enough. Thinking it should be easy to explain those
tumultuous years to a stranger. But Donovan had stopped being a
stranger, and baring her soul to him hurt in ways she couldn't have
expected.

He gave a single nod. "Are you okay?
About all of it?"

"About the marriage dissolving, yes. It
was over a long time ago." She could admit it now. Then she'd been
too blind, too naïve. "About the rest of it … I will be. Time will
help. So will New Orleans, new friends, a new life."

"What's in New Orleans?"

Smiling, she wound the sheet into a
knot she held between her breasts. "My brother. He owns a
restaurant there and he's promised to put me to work in the
kitchen."

"You cook?" he asked, a brow arching as
the suffocating mood broke away.

"I do. Not professionally, though I'd
put my food up against that of any chef any day. It was the one
contribution I made to the marriage that Mark couldn't
fault."

"But he tried."

"Oh, yeah." Boy, had he tried. "Our
guests, most often his partners and their wives, told him he was
insane. My dinner parties were always a hit."

While she'd talked, he'd slouched back
in the chair, relaxing as he'd listened. And she didn't know if he
was even aware that his right hand had strayed to his
cock.

She watched as he touched himself,
cupping his palm over his glans, tugging down on his growing
erection. He stroked, fisting his shaft until it stood thick, the
bead of moisture that oozed from the tip making up her
mind.

She left the bed, walked naked toward
him, and dropped to her knees between his legs. She placed her hand
over his, mimicking, learning, slid her other beneath his cock to
his balls.

He budged his hips forward, slumping on
his spine and closing his eyes, giving her permission to do as she
pleased.

As she pleased meant licking away the
moisture and teasing his slit with the tip of her tongue. As she
pleased meant ringing her fingers beneath the ridge of his head and
tonguing the underside seam.

Groaning, he reached down to lift a
lock of her hair and sift the strands between his fingers before
tucking it behind her ear. And she held his gaze as she opened her
mouth and took him fully inside.

He was heavy and warm and a mouthful,
the veins on his shaft distended, the skin of his glans stretched
smooth. She sucked him and released him, then closed her lips
around him and slid to the base of his shaft.

He bobbed against the roof of her
mouth, against the back of her throat, and she held him wrapped in
one hand as she drew her pressed lips along his length in reverse.
When he groaned, she repeated the process, stroking and squeezing
and breathing him in.

He smelled like sex, tasted like sex,
clean and salty, a musky, earthy warmth. Arousal coiled in her
belly, and she clenched her pussy in a rhythmic fucking motion that
heightened her hunger.

She wanted more, not of sex but of him,
of Donovan True, and she released his cock, lifting it, licking her
way down the underside of his shaft to his balls. She licked them,
too, taking them gently into her mouth then letting them go and
moving to his thighs, to his belly, rising to kiss her way up his
chest and meeting his gaze as she did.

She felt small, there on
the floor on her knees, felt strangely submissive when he hadn't
asked her to do a thing. And for all his size and strength, she
knew she had the power here.
He
was at
her
mercy, and that aroused her more than anything at
all.

"What do you want?" she asked him,
waiting, willing to do anything.

He laughed, a humorless sound of greedy
want, low and harsh and raw. "You give me a choice like that, you
better be ready."

Hands braced on his thighs, she leaned
forward, caught one of his nipples between her teeth and tugged,
swirling her tongue around and around, gouging the surrounding
muscle with her chin, blowing on the dampness she'd left
there.