Night Hunter (16 page)

“Who?” she asked because she had no choice.

“My people.”

His people.
“H-how do you know? Maybe—it’s been a long, exhausting day.”

He pressed his hand to his chest. The gesture flattened the pouch against his throat. “I feel it—here.”

She stood beside him and wound her arm around his waist. As she expected, that was all it took for her desire to return. Wrapped in with longing was the fear he might disappear.

“What does it feel like?” she managed.

“Warmth. And Osceola’s tears.”

Osceola, she remembered, had been the Seminole’s bravest and most famous chief, but beyond that, she knew pathetically little about the man.

“You feel his tears?”

“He placed this around my neck.” Laird fingered the necklace.

He couldn’t have!
she wanted to scream.
He’s been dead for decades.
“Did—did he say anything?”

“Soon he will no longer be able to lead. He has already felt the chains and bars of prison.”

“But—”

“That imprisonment lasted only a few days before he was freed and became head war chief.” Laird spoke unemotionally as if reading from a text. “He now hears the footsteps of the American troops even in his sleep. Soon he will have to meet with the enemy to negotiate for the freedom of one of his chiefs. He has no choice, but his freedom is at stake. He does not trust their general. He needs someone to take his place.”

“He—he’s chosen you?” She felt dizzy.

“Yes.” Laird pulled free, then pressed his hands over his eyes. “I look at my chief and see an ill man.”

My chief.
She might not have been particularly interested in history, but she did remember that Osceola had been sick when an artist had come to the prison where he’d been placed and painted a portrait of the chief—and that Osceola had died shortly after posing.

“Laird? Do you believe he’s alive right now?”

Laird straightened and stared at her. “Now and then are like a river to me. Sometimes it flows one way. Then I step into the Everglades and much changes, but the river still flows.”

Although she wasn’t sure she understood, she didn’t ask for further clarification. After all, her own perception of reality had undergone a profound change.

“You can’t go to him tonight,” she insisted. The longer she kept him from the Everglades, the greater her chance of breaking the tie—maybe. “Tonight is for us.”

She waited, hoping he’d take the hint, but he only continued to study her—or maybe he wasn’t thinking of her at all. Wishing someone somewhere had developed guidelines for keeping a man from being sucked into the past, she took his hands and placed them at the sides of her neck.

“Can you feel my pulse?” she asked. “I’m alive. Real. So are you. You—when we were in my studio, you said I belonged to you.”

“One of his wives was the descendant of a slave,” Laird whispered. He gave no indication he’d heard her. “They had a daughter. One day Chechoter was captured by slave catchers and sold into slavery.”

“Hush, hush,” she muttered, although what Laird had just said sickened her. How horrible. “You can’t return her to her parents.”

“I feel Osceola’s tears. A father’s tears.”

“So do I,” she admitted. She drew his hands over her unrestrained breasts. “Laird, Osceola had—has women in his life. You deserve the same. Me. Make me yours tonight. Brand me.”

Perhaps that made an impact on him, and maybe he was simply responding to her invitation to explore her. At any rate, he knelt, took hold of the hem of her shift and unceremoniously drew it over her head, leaving her naked except for the thin nylon panties. She shivered as a breeze from the fan teased her breasts and puckered her nipples. Although there was little chance anyone could see them, she felt a little uneasy being stripped while out in the open. Uneasy and intrigued by the possibilities.

Before she could suggest going inside, Laird turned her so her back was to him. His warm breath on her nape made her shudder. Ignoring her reaction, he ran his fingers under her panties. Although they already left her navel exposed, maybe he thought they were too modest because he deftly rolled them down to the apex of her legs.

“You…” She tried again. “You aren’t much into foreplay tonight, are you?”

“You do not want this?” He cupped his hand over her crotch and pulled her roughly against him. His swollen cock pressed into her buttocks.

“Yes,” she moaned. “Yes, I do, damn it.”

If anything, the pressure over her cunt increased until it became almost painful. Needing distraction, she planted her hands over his imprisoning wrist and pulled. Instead of releasing her, however, he pushed up with his fingers, probing at her labia. Her cunt loosened, softened, readied itself for him.

“Stop it! You’re hurting me.”

“Is that it?” He relaxed his grip a little. “Or are you afraid to give yourself totally to me? Become mine?”

Even as she lost herself in the heated sensation of having her cunt trapped by him, she continued to pull on his wrist. “Too much,” she sobbed. “I can’t keep on top of what you’re doing.”

“I will remember that,” he said, and released her. The sudden loss of pressure forced her to cry out and sag forward. She broke into a sweat, and a climax hummed just beyond her reach. She would have told him that and begged him to help her into and through it, but she was afraid. Afraid of her own body.

Just the same, she hoped he’d complete the stripping he’d begun a few seconds ago. Instead, he closed his right arm over her breasts and once again pulled her hard against him. Once he had her imprisoned, he slid his left hand under the nylon and over her crotch. As before, her response was instant. No way wouldn’t he notice her flooded cunt.

Chuckling—or maybe growling—he worked his middle finger between her throbbing lips and deep inside. She couldn’t tell whether he was being less possessive this time, thus keeping her from feeling trapped, or she’d simply become accustomed to his brand of foreplay. Lightheaded, she attempted to steady herself by reaching behind her and grasping his thighs. It helped. It also left her even more exposed to his exploration.

At his silent prompting, she widened her stance. Beyond caring about anything except the intimate search, she threw back her head so it rested against his collarbone and shut her eyes.

His woman, his possession.

His finger—his magical finger—curled so it now rubbed the so-sensitive front of her passage. He reached and stroked, danced right and stroked some more, tiptoed left to repeat the exquisite torture. Her consciousness narrowed until nothing of her existed beyond the charged channel.

She could barely breathe, would have fallen if he hadn’t clamped her against him. She wished to hell he was as naked as she.

Didn’t matter.

Already on fire, she felt the inner flame grow even hotter. Something shifted inside her, and it took a moment to realize he’d straightened his finger and was pushing it even further inside her. His finger wasn’t large enough to completely fill her pussy. Otherwise, maybe she would have already come.

Already?

Damn, what had happened to her? A simple finger job and—

Oh God!
His nail teasing her super-charged clit, igniting swollen flesh, bringing her—bringing her—

Climax was a breath away. One more grazing motion and—

No!

“What—what are you doing?” she sobbed. Frustration made her crazy. He’d withdrawn his finger, leaving her on the brink.

“A lesson, Mala,” he said in an impersonal tone. “You took advantage of me earlier today, pulled me away from my people when I was too weak to know what you were doing.”

Hating him, she pulled out of his grasp and whirled on him. Another push of wind slid over her naked flesh, and her clit continued to boil.

“So you decided to torture me?” she demanded. She couldn’t stop trembling.

“Call it what you want.”

“I don’t give a damn about word games!” On the brink of telling him to get the hell out of her life, she glanced down. He had an erection. “Foreplay,” she said. “And now that you’ve had your turn, it’s mine.”

“Is this a fight?”

“I don’t know what it is. Damn it, Laird. You’ve turned my life upside down and inside out. You care about me. I know you do! At least you do when
they
let you. We’re going somewhere neither of us has ever gone before. If you think I was taking advantage of you—I wasn’t. I wasn’t!”

“Then what was it?”

If she had the rest of her life, she wasn’t sure she could answer him. All she knew for sure was that he’d deftly brought her to the brink of ecstasy only to rob her. Now, somehow, she’d make it her turn. Let him know what it felt like to be trapped and a prisoner of sexual need. Fight for the human being she knew he could be.

Putting thought into action, she strode toward him, unzipped his shorts and yanked them off. When she reached for his briefs, he captured her wrist. “Are you afraid?” she taunted. “No turnabout?”

“I may be afraid of certain things, but not of you.”

“I’d never do anything to hurt you, Laird,” she told him. “I’d like to believe the same of you, but you might not be able to help it.”

“You think that?”

“You’re on a journey—a journey with an end neither of us can anticipate. If I get in the way…”

“What if you get in the way?” he prompted.

“I don’t want to go into that now. And I don’t believe you do, either.”

By way of answer, he lifted her captured hand, brought it to his mouth and kissed it. She nearly melted at the gesture and might have told him how much it meant to her if she’d been able to ignore the moist heat between her legs or the sense that he wasn’t in complete control of himself.

After standing on tiptoe and kissing him full but briefly on the lips, she again turned her attention to his briefs. This time he let her finish disrobing him. She heard a radio playing in the distance and guessed they weren’t the only ones in the neighborhood to take advantage of a summer evening.

Let them have their late barbeques, their lawn games. She had something much more important to accomplish.

When she turned him so his back was to the mattress, the dim porch light placed him in silhouette. No longer being able to clearly see him gave her the uneasy feeling that he might disappear. She had to take advantage of whatever time they had together.

Sexual frustration still made it impossible for her to completely disregard her body, but she concentrated on him to the best of her ability. She’d called his titillation of her foreplay. Well, that worked both ways.

Dispensing with preliminaries, she slid both hands under his cock. With her right, she cradled the turgid length. She cupped the other around his balls and pressed them together, rocking them back and forth against each other at the same time. He reached for her.

“No,” she warned, although she ached with the need to feel his hands swarming over her. “I didn’t stop you when you rammed your finger inside me. When you brought me to the brink only to rob me. I deserve the same.”

The same and yet different, she amended because her full intention was to force a climax out of him, not that she thought he’d object. She stroked and kneaded, then crouched down and sucked the tip of his cock into her mouth. The moment she did, he thrust his pelvis at her. Although she hated to, she turned her head to the side, releasing him. He tried to lean away from her, but she still had hold of his balls.

Quick and sure, she again captured his cock. She slid her palm up and down its length, fantasizing about feeding it into her cunt. Instead, she let go of his balls and took the hard, dripping spear in both hands. She pressed and twisted, duplicating as best she could having him inside her.

Faster and faster she stroked. As she did, she squeezed and released her buttocks, squeezed again, further stimulating herself. He thrust and retreated, thrust and retreated, harder and harder.

Wild to bring him to climax, she exerted what she hoped was just the right amount of resistance. She’d nearly let him pull his cock free only to reestablish control by sliding her hand down to its base and squeezing down first with thumb and forefinger and then the rest of her fingers. Pinpricks of sensation hummed along her fingers, spread to her palms, over her wrists. Her nipples had become so swollen that they pulled her entire breasts upward. Juices had already leaked from her core and now ran down the insides of her thighs, the smell blended with their sweat, further filling the space with the heat of sex.

“Come,” she muttered. “Come. Let go.”

He did, his come spilling out of him and over her fingers.

She sobbed, bucked away from him and jammed her wet fingers deep inside her. Unmindful of her strong nails, she prodded and tickled, pressed, released, then pressed again. Her head felt as if it might explode. She took noisy, ragged breaths full of his scent.

Suddenly, he shoved her onto her back. Spreading her legs and pulling her fingers out of her at the same time, he then bent her knees and slipped a pillow under her hips. Through a watery film, she saw him lower his head toward her exposed and waiting cunt.

“Yes!” she gasped. “Please, yes!”

He briefly licked at the juice clinging to her inner thighs, but she was too far gone, too close to the brink for that.

“Now! Please! Damn it, please!”

Oh my! Oh my God!
His tongue kissing her clit! Now his teeth rubbing the swollen and sensitive flesh, making her sob. Heat consumed her.

She’d already started to come when his tongue probed between her nether lips, pushed her clit deep inside, held it there.

She exploded.

Came again as he buried his warrior’s tongue deep inside her core.
I belong to you! Don’t—don’t forget that. Please.

As consciousness faded, she reached up and pressed her hand over his throat. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she heard him sigh. Felt tension seep out of him.

Chapter Twelve

Mala lay on her side under Laird’s outstretched arm and leg. She’d fallen asleep almost immediately after they’d collapsed onto the mattress. At first she wasn’t sure what had awakened her, then thought it might have turned too cool for them to comfortably sleep naked. Taking inventory of her skin, she found no cool spots. Neither was she in any discomfort from the weight of his limbs. Despite the darkness enveloping her, her thoughts settled on his earlier sigh. The soft and vulnerable sound had been a gift.