“No!” she blurted out, and had to cover her mouth with both hands again, to keep more words from flying out. “Don’t go,” she added, from behind the tightly pressed fingers.
Stop crying. Stop, stop, stop.
He sidled in, staying close to the door. Poised for a quick escape. He held a plastic shopping bag in one hand, and a fragrant, steaming plate of food in the other. Her nose identified meat, vegetables, rice.
She wiped her face, gave him a shaky smile. “You made the bed?”
He looked wary. “Hope you don’t mind that I came in while you were in the shower. I figured it was safe while the water was running. I would have beat hell out of here if I’d heard it switch off.”
“But where’s the chocolate for my pillow?”
He honored her lame attempt at a joke with a sexy flash of white teeth. Her heart bumped in her chest. “Next time,” he said. “I’m a little short on housekeeping supplies today. Sorry.”
“Thanks for the shirt, too,” she offered.
“You can thank Connor for that. He keeps a change of clothes stowed in his vehicle. Always prepared. Those McCloud dudes.”
Miles had showered, too. His hair was combed straight back off his square forehead. So handsome. He smelled like the same shampoo she had used. He wore a clean shirt. Flannel, gray and blue plaid. Half buttoned, untucked. A wedge of his amazing chest showing.
“You cleaned up,” she said, inanely. Conscious of how bare she was beneath the oversized shirt. Like she’d always been in that filmy white dress she wore in her fantasy trips to the Citadel.
“Yeah.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “We were both filthy.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
It felt like they were conducting a conversation on another level, and these words were a thin front for the real conversation.
“I came upstairs to bring you these.” He held up a plastic shopping bag and the plate of food. “Aaro picked up some stuff for you. And they cooked some food downstairs. I figured I should bring you up a plate. Unless you’d rather go down and eat with the rest of us.”
The last thing she could face was the idea of a table full of guys watching her eat. But having her meal brought up to her made her feel like a cowering invalid. She played for time by checking out the shopping bag, which was full of clothing. Three shoeboxes, too.
“Aaro had to guess on the sizes, so he got three,” he said.
To her starving artist mentality, that seemed like reckless extravagance. “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll pay for them as soon as I—”
“Don’t worry about it, for God’s sake. Oh, yeah, and Aaro picked up a burner phone for you. I went ahead and charged it up. Programmed all our numbers into it. Not that you need mine.”
She stared at the little red and black telephone as if she’d never seen one before. She couldn’t even imagine what she might use it for, right now, but what a sweet thought. They were treating her like a real human being. With normal needs and impulses.
What an amazing, mind-boggling concept. It moved her.
“So, you want to eat up here?” Miles prompted. “Or downstairs?”
She pressed her hand to her mouth to quell the trembling. “I don’t think I can face dinner downstairs yet.”
“Okay, then, I’ll just leave you this plate, then—”
“No,” she blurted.
A quick, questioning frown twitched his brows down. “No what?”
“Don’t go,” she said, baldly.
His mouth settled into a tight, cautious line. She felt that tingling awareness. Pressure, slowly building. “Lara?” he said softly. “What?”
“I just need . . .” The words trailed off. So stupid, so inadequate. Thick and heavy. Clumsy as big rocks in her mouth. She couldn’t express how badly she needed to know if he felt it, too.
“I dreamed about you,” she announced, her voice husky. “When I was in that place. I dreamed about you for months.”
He cleared his throat. “Me, too.”
“Were they, um . . . the same dreams?” she asked.
His big shoulders lifted. “I guess we’d have to compare them, point for point.”
She took a deep breath. “Do you have any interest in doing that?”
When she finally dared to look up, there was a red stain across his cheekbones. “I’d be embarrassed,” he said, huskily. “I thought I was alone, in the privacy of my own head. Who the fuck knew.”
Relief flooded through her. So she wasn’t alone in this aspect of the weirdness. “So it wasn’t just me. When we . . . you know.”
He shook his head slowly. “Nope.”
She could finally breathe again. “Okay. So. If a tree falls in your head, and someone is there to hear it, does it make a sound?”
His brows drew together. “Don’t get mysterious on me, Lara.”
“I’m not,” she said. “Just answer the question. Was it real?”
He pondered that for a moment. “Yes. It was pretty damn real for me.”
“Okay. Good. Me, too.” She was so relieved, she teetered on the edge of tears again. “Hold me, then.”
Suddenly he was there, steadying her. “Lie down,” he scolded. “Calm down, for God’s sake.” He nudged her until she lay on the bed, shoving the comforter down.
“Would you lie down with me?” She couldn’t believe this was her. Begging. Shameless.
He froze in place, and swallowed several times. “My pants are filthy. I’d mess up the sheets.”
“So take them off,” she said, rashly.
The flush burned into his cheeks deepened. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I think it’s a great idea,” she said. “And so did you, all those nights, when I came to you. You didn’t seem to mind.”
His face tightened. “Not fair. I didn’t know it wasn’t a dream.”
“I wasn’t complaining,” she whispered. “Not in the least.”
His breath was coming harder, rasping in his chest. His erection was quite notably back. She noticed it. He noticed her noticing it.
He gestured at his crotch. “Yeah. This is exactly why it’s not such a good idea. I don’t trust my self-control right now, for a whole bunch of complicated reasons that don’t have anything to do with you, so don’t take it personally—”
“If you don’t want me, just say so,” she said. “Don’t come up with a bunch of lame excuses.”
“That’s not it!” he said, savagely. “My dick’s been hard since the moment I saw you. I’ve been rock-hard for you ever since you sneaked into my head. Don’t manipulate me. You’re gorgeous, and you know it.”
It was sweet of him to say so, considering her bedraggled state, but she let it pass. “And? This is a problem exactly why?”
“I just pulled you out of a dungeon! You’re bruised, hungry, exhausted. You don’t need me on top of you, hammering away at you with my combat hard-on! No matter what crazy erotic scenarios we dreamed up together. I will not do that to you. It’s not right!”
The thought of wrapping herself around that gorgeous creature and his combat hard-on made her body hum. “Let me decide what I can handle,” she said. “I’m not as fragile as I look.”
“You’re in no condition to decide. It would be taking advantage of you, and I won’t . . . oh, sweet holy Jesus, Lara. Not fucking fair.”
She yanked the shirt off over her head, and tossed it to the floor. She shook her damp, cool mane of hair back over her shoulders. “I don’t know what’s fair,” she said. “I don’t care. I just want what I want.”
His eyes were hot as he stared at her naked body, but still he stubbornly shook his head. “I might hurt you,” he said, hoarsely. “You’ve been hurt enough.”
“You never hurt me in our dreams.”
“That’s because they were just dreams,” he said, with unexpected savagery. “Don’t expect reality to be like your dreams. You’ll be in for a real let-down!”
“I don’t think so.” Her gaze slid slowly down over his body. She grabbed his hand, tugged it until he stumbled closer to the bed, and then laid her hand gently on the bulge of his crotch. “Is this for me?”
He flinched away, but she held him fast. “Huh?”
“This.” She squeezed him, making him gasp. “Is it for me? Or is it just a non-specific hormonal glitch? Just a random mistake of nature?”
He pulled in a rasping breath. “For you,” he said. “Just you.”
She’d always had an uncanny ear for lies, even before she’d been flooded with a psi-enhancing drug. He was utterly sincere. Thank God.
“If it’s mine, give it to me,” she said. “I’ve been close to dead for months. Buried in the dark. Please, Miles. Make me feel alive again.”
13
M
iles hissed an obscenity between his teeth. He must look like an eggplant, his face was so hot. Squeezed between her emotionally manipulative come-on and his own dick-throbbing lust.
The part of him that knew right from wrong, and actually gave a shit about right and wrong, was getting ever smaller and farther away.
Weee
, it was action figure-sized now, with a whining little mosquito voice that had no authority, nattering preachy self-important shit about timing, responsibility. And essential, basic practical stuff. Like latex.
“I don’t have any condoms,” he blurted.
She just stared at him, blinking. Like she’d forgotten such an issue even existed. Who could blame her, what she’d been through.
“I came to bust you out of jail, Lara,” he said. “Not to get laid.”
“Oh. Well. I, um . . . I don’t have any diseases, if that’s what you’re wondering. I haven’t had a boyfriend in a while, so I—”
“That’s not the issue.” He had to struggle not to stare at her naked body. “Neither do I. They tested me up the wazoo when I was in the hospital a few months ago. I’m clean. That’s not the point.”
She shrugged her hair forward, as if afflicted by a spasm of shyness. “I wouldn’t get pregnant.”
“How do you figure? Been keeping your calender up to date in your prison? You’re totally on top of it?” He was almost yelling, which was stupid and wrong, but she was the one herding him toward a cliff.
She shook her head. “My cycle stopped months ago.”
He cut off the rant he’d been winding up to, mouth open, and tried in vain to process that. “Come again?”
“You have to eat a certain amount of food to make that happen,” she said. “And the stress, the drugs, the dark, whatever it was, it pretty much killed my appetite. So, ah, I’m not fertile right now.”
“They starved you?” His voice was getting louder. He was whipping himself into a frenzy.
“Not exactly,” she said, gently. “There was food. But it sucked. And I was tense, and miserable. So not much of it would go in.”
Miles clapped his hands over his ears. “Jesus, Lara. This is messing with my head.”
“Forget about your head.” She snagged the waistband of his jeans with her forefinger, dragging him in a drunken stumble, right up next to the bed. “I’m not asking you to use your head.”
Her scent intensified into a humid cloud. He wanted to wallow in it. The shampoo, which would have made him nauseous only half a day ago, mixed with the scent of her skin, her hair, transforming into something intoxicating, verdant, full of hot yearning. He dragged in greedy lungfuls of it. Dick throbbing with each thud of his heart.
He didn’t even remember reaching out, before he was touching her. First her face, as she tilted it back with the abandon of a kitten being petted. His fingers slid into that thick fall of damp, silken hair. She shivered as he lifted it, stroking pale, soft skin, the fine muscles over her ribs, the curve of her spine. Delicate, feminine. Fragile.
Fragile.
She was fragile, damn it, and he was big and thick and helpless, jacked up with raw animal hunger. He’d fuck it up, be clumsy with her, and she’d regret it. And he’d have to throw himself under a bus out of sheer embarrassment.
He pulled his hands away, but she snagged them, pulled them toward her and placed them on her breasts.
He shook, but his hands went on without him, already exploring, stroking, cupping, hefting the velvet soft weight of her tits, the pert, puckered dark nipples. Tickling his palms, filling his hands.
Her head dropped back, eyes closed. He was so lost in the perfect sensation of her tits, he didn’t even register the tugging on the buttons of his jeans until they were sliding down his hips.
His cock sprang free.
Thwang,
in her face.
She stared at it, and then reached out with a soft sigh, gripping and petting him with her soft hands. A sound came out of him like‘ air wheezing from a pricked balloon. “Lara.”
He was embarrassed by his cock, which was engorged and beet red. Blatantly willing and ready to serve, belying his protests. Locked into full-out battering ram mode. “You, ah, don’t have to deal with that.”
“Mmm.” She gripped him, stroking. “You’re beautiful. And so big. Like the dreams. I thought it was just my extravagant imagination.”
“I told you this was a bad idea,” he said, his voice strangled.
“Shhh.” She leaned forward, as if she were about to kiss his cock.
His muscles tightened in protest, and he grabbed her, held her still. Not that the idea didn’t make him practically explode, but Jesus, not tonight. “No,” he said.
She covered his hands, stroking them. “Don’t you like it?”
“Fuck, yes, but not now. It’s not the right vibe. I have to treat you like blown glass.”
“I’m not fragile!”
“I don’t care,” he said. “It’s that way, or we stop.”
Her radiant smile dazzled him, until what he had said sank in. What a chump he was. Committing himself like that. So snookered.
He breathed down his jagged nerves, stroking her arms, and a multitude of bruises came into focus. He bent to take a closer look. She shivered, her body going rigid.
“Those are finger marks,” he said.
“I got jerked around a lot,” she said. “They’ll fade soon.”
His jeans were snarled around his knees, so he kicked them off, and knelt on the bed. Held up her arm, cataloging every bruise.
He started kissing the ones at her wrist. She let out a jerky sigh as he lifted it higher, pressing his lips against every mark he found.
He was not going to give in to the urgency. He was taking it easy, slow. Steely self-control. Padlocks and chains.
He kept the kisses gentle, dragging, dreamy. The more bruises he kissed, the more he found. This was going to take a while, which was fine. He didn’t have the least concern about his dick going south. In fact, it might not soften again in this lifetime. Certainly not while her skin was pressed against his lips. The glow of contact made his whole body thrum, like a pulsing drumbeat.
Lara was shivering violently, and he’d only made it up to her elbow. He raised his head. “You cold?”
She shook her head. “No. What are you doing to me?”
“My job,” he said, bending to the task again.
She laughed, but he stopped short when he got a look at the underside of her breast. Bruises, from clawing fingers. Her ribs were shadowed with blue, green, splotches of yellow. New bruises on top of old ones, on top of still older ones. “Jesus, Lara,” he whispered.
“It’s okay,” she assured him. “I’m not feeling it. Your kisses are magic. I am feeling no pain. Really.”
God, how he wished they were magic. He bent down and went at them with the same total, single-minded concentration he would employ if kisses really did have healing power. Caressing her with hands and mouth, no pressure, just petting and tonguing every inch of her.
He rolled her onto the side, to get a good look at the—oh, Christ. Her back, too, her flanks, her ass, her thighs. Everywhere.
He straightened up, found her eyes squeezed shut. Her face was wet with tears. “I should stop,” he told her. “Now’s not the time.”
She yanked him down, fiercely. “Wrong,” she said.
He held himself carefully off her body, afraid of crushing her, and blurted out the burning question that there was just no delicate way to ask. “Were you sexually abused in there?”
She shook her head, to his immense relief. “No. That was just Anabel, being a hag. She was the worst of them. She got angry when I hid from her. Behind your shield. In the Citadel.”
He let out a startled laugh. “That was what you called it?”
“Why? Does it sound strange to you?”
He propped himself on his elbow, settling his hand into the curve of her waist. “Citadel sounds so massive and important. A fortress on a mountaintop. My shield’s just, you know. Encryption. To protect data.”
“It
was
massive and important,” she insisted. “It protected me.”
“I’m glad it was good for something.” He bent to kiss her breast again. Lara curled up around his body, clutching his head. Her fingers wound into his hair, trapping him. He could cheerfully nuzzle those rose-petal-soft, perfect tits for the rest of time, rubbing those tight, puckered nipples against his cheek, his lips. Swirling his tongue around them, a hot, liquid, suckling pull, feeling her arch against him, trembling, like she was trying to give him more of herself, tightening, like she was going to . . . oh,
God . . .
Like light, blazing out of her chest, blinding him, blessing him.
Her orgasm was long and drawn out. Her body shuddered and hitched. He held her as tightly as he dared, amazed and humbled.
“Wow,” he whispered. “I never made a girl come just from playing with her tits, I mean. Except, um . . .”
“In our dreams?” She laughed. “Yeah, I remember that one. We’re still in the same dream. Let’s just keep dreaming.”
“Sounds good,” he said, fervently.
The rays of afternoon light had gotten longer and yellower, slanting in the side blinds. They painted her pale body with stripes that accentuated every graceful dip and curve. His chest clutched with nervous excitement as he let his hand stroke over her belly, and drift lower. Tangling in the dark, silky puff of her pubes.
She dragged in a hitching gasp of air, and opened her legs for him, inviting him to get on with it, but he had no intention of rushing. He just petted with his fingertips. She hid her hot face against his shoulder, moving her hips against his hand.
When it felt right, he teased his finger inside, found her slick seam. The scent of her made him crazy, but he reined it in. Time enough later to mount up and ride off into the sunset.
His world narrowed down to that intimate contact, that tender slit, the tightly furled folds inside. His mind was clean of everything but the secret details of her body. He memorized her, marveling at her perfection. Poetry made flesh. Shades of pink shading into crimson, a glowing, shining contrast with dark hair, pale thighs.
He had so many shifting memories of touching her, tasting her, fucking her, in their shared dreams. Hard and juicy and unchecked. Front, back, sideways, all ways, there had been no limits in their erotic dream world, but somehow, this careful, anxious petting was more raw and momentous than all those scorching episodes combined.
She grabbed his shoulders and tried to tug him down on top of her. “You’ve teased me enough,” she said. “I’m out of my mind.”
He held his weight off. He outweighed her two to one or more, right now, although he fully intended to improve that ratio, soon. But he poised himself so that he didn’t pin her down, and reached down again, to heaven’s gate, teasing his fingertip inside . . .
She heaved, pressed herself up against him with a moan.
Hot, wet, slick. Plush and tight. Incredibly tight. He had to force it deeper. Just his finger. Oh, man. This was not like the dreams at all. In those, they’d been perfectly matched, like a key to a lock.
“Lara,” he said gently. “You’re so small. Are you a virgin?”
“No,” she said, breathlessly. “Don’t stop. Please.”
“But it’ll hurt you.” He kept his voice gentle, though it came out through clenched teeth.
“No! Seriously? What would hurt me would be you chickening out on me, leaving me high and dry! Don’t do that. Don’t you dare!”
“Calm down,” he soothed. “The madder you get, the more you clench around my finger. Your muscles are really contracted. Relax.”
Her bark of laughter sounded bitter. “Oh, wow.” Her voice shook. “That’s a wee bit of a tall order for me right now.”
“Get inside,” he said, on impulse.
She looked dubious. “Huh?”
“You know. Inside the Citadel. Like you did in the woods.”
Her eyelids fluttered. “I . . . I don’t know if I . . . that was a life or death kind of thing.” She wiggled, clutching her pussy muscles deliciously tight around his finger. “I’m, ah, distracted. You know?”
“I know,” he rasped, and caressed her breast with his mouth again, sucking as he thrust his finger deeper inside. Twisting, thrusting, slick and slow. “Try,” he urged.
It took a while, but he put every second to good use. The stripes of light that had painted their bodies slid on up the wall as he petted, nuzzling, caressing her slick opening. She clutched him, her thighs clamped around his hand, shaking with strain. Her fingernails dug into his shoulder. He waited, listening in the silence . . .
And there she was. A light, blazing on inside him. Her radiant presence. He didn’t see the images, because his eyes were too busy with the visual stimuli coming from her physical body, and he couldn’t be bothered to look inside at a waking dream. But the inner contact felt as great as it always did. That glow. So close. So intimate.
The words scrolled, on the screen in his head. happy now?
getting there, he replied. i go 4 this. u inside. makes me hot.
She vibrated with laughter. ur hot already. like a kiln.
He wound his hand full of her hair, and forced her to lift her face away from his chest.
She was smiling, eyes lit up. Crazy beautiful.
He kissed her. Ravenously, like it was life or death, and that inner place where they were linked went off like fireworks blasting. Color, heat, noise, and movement, like a dancing, singing flash mob. She made a shocked sound and kissed him back. Opening to him.
She tasted so good. His tongue in her mouth, hers in his, dancing, melding. She squirmed against his hand, which was slippery with lube, softening against the onslaught of that devouring kiss.
They came up gasping for air a time or two, but dove back into the kiss as soon as they replenished their oxygen stores. After a few breathless, desperate minutes of that, he was seriously in danger of losing control and coming all over her. She worked herself against his hand, desperate jerking thrusts. His hand shone, wet and hot. He thrust two fingers in, following the trembling, the gasps, the heat. Urgency built in both of them. He drove her like he was driving for his own release.