Being Emerald (16 page)

Tears streamed down her face. She groaned, vibrating the head of his cock as he paused at his deepest advance yet before pulling back again.

“Touch yourself, Laila. I want you to come with my dick in your mouth.”

She was reluctant to remove her hand from cupping his balls.

He encircled her wrist with a hand. “Do it,” he rasped.

With the first wisp of the pad of her index finger over her clit, she quivered. She was primed, ready to explode. Tensing her muscles and controlling it as much as she could, she locked her orgasm down. He wanted them to come together, and she could give him that. She whimpered and knew he was well aware what her issue was.

Rock gripped her hair harder, sped up his thrusts. “I’m going to finish. Just stay like this, baby.” He growled his warning before the first spurt of come landed on her tongue.

Laila dragged her fingers over her clit hard and fast. She teetered on the brink, barely able to continue pleasuring herself as she determinedly sucked, and then swallowed. The smooth plane of his abdomen clenched with his release.

Rock was beautiful, with his head tilted to the night sky, brows furrowed, lips parted in a silent shout. When his eyes opened, he sought her out immediately. He beheld her kneeling before him, and then pulled out of her mouth.

She teetered, a bit dazed. Rock scooped her off her knees and laid her on the bedroll. He covered her, holding his weight on his forearms. His face hovered inches above hers. She found herself in this configuration almost daily. Her head buzzed a little as she looked up at him through slightly unfocused eyes. Their quick breaths mingled.

“I need more from you tonight, Laila.”

“Okay,” she breathed.

“You trust me?”

With a slight movement, she nodded. “I do.”

“If you let me do what I wish, I’ll bring you to a glorious place where your soul sings and your mind has no troubles. Where I am your world and you wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Who would say no to that?” she whispered.

Leaning over, Rock kissed her. His lips were hot and gentle.

A new emotion flared to life from the man who had her caged with his massive body. She’d felt flashes of this alter ego before, but now, it was as if he’d opened a part of his heart to her, releasing the darkness inside.

Rock rolled to her side and propped himself up on his elbow. His touch was a butterfly kiss between her legs, bringing tiny twitches in the muscles of her thighs. She was still coming down from her orgasm.

When he slipped two fingers inside her, his gaze flared. The sticky, wet cadence of his finger fucking sounded in her ears. A corner of his mouth kicked up, giving her a peek of his straight, white teeth against the shadows. “Yeah, baby, you’re wet.” A third finger joined the first two. She gasped, tensed then moaned as his rhythm included a steady pattern of his thumb circling her clitoris.

Laila lifted her ass off the ground, seeking more of his nimble manipulation. Coiled with tension, she reached for her release, stretched, taut and straining.

“Give it to me,” he growled. “Every bit of your attention, every thought. I want it all.” He didn’t skip a beat as he raised himself up and shifted slightly. “Put the soles of your feet together.”

Her knees fell open as wide as they would go. He slipped a fourth finger into her. Her breathing neared hyperventilation. She clenched her ass, trying to raise it, trying to make room, trying to get more. “Please,” she panted, her gaze never leaving him. The satisfaction he felt from that one word washed over her.

“Yes, baby. Give everything to me.”

He fucked her with his hand, ignoring the attention her clit needed. His avoidance of it made her crazy. Again, she cried, “Please,” as she teetered on the precipice of pure rapture, clenching and unclenching her rear and raising into the air, seeking more.

Slowly, gingerly, he slipped his thumb into her. She thrashed her head from side to side. Her body convulsed. Her vision tunneled.

She was in a frenzy when Rock leaned over and suckled her clit. Her muscles flailed as sweet, warm relief rolled over her swollen, hyper-aroused skin. The orgasm was a nuclear bomb, and she wailed at the violent pleasure. His rough hand covered her mouth, muffling the sound.

She shattered into a mindless collection of flesh and feelings, responding to the only thing in her world—him.

Rock slipped into the locker room, switched out his T-shirt and splashed some water on his face. Preoccupied when he returned to the hallway, realizing Laila wasn’t where he’d left her took him longer than normal. He turned a full circle, looking for her. There wasn’t a soul in sight.

Dread trickled down his spine. This feeling was a common occurrence, a kind of automatic fear that surfaced when he didn’t know where Laila was. With her, a residue of foreboding always clung to him. He recognized it as a symptom of his shame. His failure was tremendous, his scar too deep. It drove his every action.

He froze in his tracks, and those feelings intensified.

She stood on the far side of the gym engrossed in a conversation with Garret. Their heads were close together. They were having a deeper conversation than polite niceties about the weather.

Rock’s anger flared. Hell fucking no. She hadn’t learned a thing. He stalked through the gym doors, heading in their direction. They didn’t notice him until he got within earshot, and when they did, they stopped talking. Funneling every negative emotion into an eye lock with Laila, he said, “Come on. This is not social hour.”

She glanced at the National Guardsman standing next to her, and then back to him. “Well, I guess I’m done,” she said.

She pulled her hand-held out of her pocket and handed it to Garret. “Put yourself in.”

Those three words sparked disappointment. After all this time, she didn’t get it, didn’t hear his repetitive warning to avoid the Guard at all costs. It took every ounce of restraint to keep from picking Laila up, throwing her over his shoulder and carrying her out of there.

While they waited for Garret to punch in his digits, she scowled and mouthed. “Quit.”

He sent his feelings of fury at her, and she blanched.

She got his message. Taking her unit back from Garret, she said, “I’ve got to go.”

Garret grabbed her forearm, stopping her pivot in Rock’s direction. “Wait. Is everything okay, training with him?” Garret glowered, baring his teeth and wrinkling his nose as if he smelled something offensive. “I mean…he hasn’t hurt you or anything, has he?”

“Laila!” Rock barked before she had time to answer the idiotic question.

Laila turned to him and lifted her eyebrows. “I’ll be there in a second.” She waved at him. “Go!”

Rock straightened and crossed his arms over his chest. He wasn’t going anywhere.

She pulled her arm from Garret’s grip. “I’m fine. Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ll shoot you a com soon.”

By the time she’d said the last word, her focus was back on him. “What is your problem?” she grumbled, marching past him to the exit.

He followed, his long strides easily eating the distance between them. “Are you kidding? After all the bullshit you had to endure with Sydney, you’re making yourself accessible to this guy?”

“It’s not the same thing. Sydney wants in your pants.”

“And you are naive if you don’t think your friend Garret wants the same thing.”

He grabbed Laila’s arm and whipped her around. “Every time you talk to someone, especially a guardsman, you’re exposing yourself to scrutiny. You don’t want anybody looking at you too closely or thinking about you too much. It’s better to just keep to yourself.”

“You’re the only person I’ve talked to for two weeks. It’s not like I’m some kind of social butterfly or something.” She yanked her arm out of his grasp and headed for the exit.

Rock waited until they were outside before he spoke again. “What were the two of you talking about?”

“Just trip details.”

A lie, plain as day. “Then why wouldn’t you continue to talk about the details when I approached?”

“Well, uh,” she stammered.

“Don’t.” He opened the driver’s side door and slid in.

She looked at him with sad eyes. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t lie to me again.”

“Rock, I…” She hung her head and took a steady breath to calm herself. “Garret is not going to do anything to me. He’s nice.”

He pounded the steering wheel. “No! That’s where you’re wrong. None of them are nice. They’re deadly, every last one of them.”

Their respective doors to Rock’s truck slammed simultaneously, and the drive home was silent. It wasn’t their usual silence when they slipped from training to home, but the kind of tense silence that made two people feel a million miles apart.

They walked into Rock’s house and headed to the bathroom as they did every day. He turned on the shower spray and tried another approach as he undressed her. “I love you, Laila. Any chance you take is unacceptable to me. You lie. You keep secrets from me. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“Really? You wouldn’t lie or keep secrets?” she yelled. Her face reddened and the tendons in her neck protruded. “Who’s the Emily tattooed on your chest, Rock?” She jabbed his sternum. “And while we’re at it, why haven’t you fucked me yet, Rock? Because if you’re not keeping secrets, I’d love to hear the answers to those questions.”

She
was angry at
him?
Steam billowed out of the stall, hazing the bathroom as Laila opened the glass door and entered, leaving him standing there.

* * * *

Rock joined Laila in the shower stall a few moments later. Her magnificent man stepped forward and pulled her into his arms. He held her close with a broad hand to her back. They stood together under the spray while he adjusted the temperature so it was comfortable and cool enough to feel refreshing after a long hot day of exertion. His tanned chest and nipple rings were in her line of vision. His heart pattered double time beneath her ear.

Even with her naked and in his arms, he was furious. She fell into his black, disapproving gaze. His Rock wall was up, but he couldn’t block it all. The interior of the shower, which always seemed so tiny when she was in there with him, was charged with barely leashed restraint. She felt his anger and his lust. Her stomach flip-flopped in the same way as when she’d been a girl and known she was going to be in trouble when her mom got home. She was so emotionally dependent on his approval, it was ludicrous.

He turned her so her back was against his chest. “It’s new,” he said, holding a bar of soap under her nose and leaning forward to smell it with her. He placed it in her hands, and then positioned his over hers, rolling the bar and creating suds in their joined grasp.

He washed her first with economical and decidedly non-sexual contact. When it was her turn to wash him, she took her time, massaged the bubbles from his neck, across his broad shoulders and down to his narrow waist. She re-loaded with soap and slid her slippery fingers over the rock hard curves of his ass. To escape his focus and maybe get a glance at the cock and balls she washed, she dipped her head.

She didn’t know if she could soothe the savage beast or if she even wanted to try. There was something magnificent about Rock when his worry escalated and righteous indignation ruled him. He wouldn’t budge from his prime directive, keeping her safe. It was his best and worst quality. Laila stroked her slick two-handed grip to the bulb at the top of his cock. And down again, starting a slow, double-fisted rhythm.

What remained of his Rock wall crumbled piece by piece, and she merged with the man behind the facade more intimately. Her blood pressure rose and her face heated with the influx of his feelings. He was tied up in knots, crushed by her behavior and burdened by tension only gaining in magnitude. She would liberate him from his burden, give whatever he needed to ignite what he bottled up and rid him of the explosion building inside. She wasn’t a hundred percent sure how to do that, but he wasn’t complaining about her pumping fists gliding over his soapy erection.

“Turn around. Put your hands on the wall and take a step back.”

She reluctantly obeyed, flattening her hands against the glass in front of her.

After the soul searching she’d done only that morning, she knew only one response would make either of them happy. “Do what you have to do.” Before the last word left her lips, Rock swatted her ass. She yelped her surprise.

“Secrets between us are unacceptable.” His palm connected again.

“Okay.” She closed her eyes and hung her head. The sharp crack of flesh against flesh echoed inside the glass walls of the steamy cubby.

“I haven’t been tough enough.” Her legs trembled as his next blow connected. “I haven’t given you the consequences I should have.” His words sounded as if they were coming from a great distance. “I’m not going to make that mistake anymore.”

His disappointment hurt more than any spanking ever could. “I’m sorry, Rock. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Not thinking is going to get you killed.” He continued to pelt her rear and the back of her thighs. Her skin was on fire. Her ears buzzed. She was high. She closed her eyes and the rest of the world fell away. There was nothing except her jumbled thoughts, and the man who stood behind her. She’d gladly withstand whatever he dished out. Then they could move on from that afternoon. She groaned into her dark world. The rhythm of the swats faltered.

“Yes, peanut. You’re there.” Her punishment ended. She attempted to straighten, but he closed in behind her before she could. His hard body skimmed the back of hers. A bar of soap thudded to the tile floor. Rock inserted a soapy finger into her ass and twisted it around. “I’m not going to allow you to get yourself killed, Laila. It’s just not going to happen,” he murmured next to her ear. “You ready for me, peanut?”

Laila moaned and then cried out as he added another finger, scissored them and stretched her while gliding his fingers in and out.

He withdrew, wrapped a forearm around her and pulled her farther away from the wall. He kicked her feet apart and nestled his cock at her anus.