Promises Keep (The Promise Series) (36 page)

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

He cocked a brow at her, put the soap and brush on the floor, and said, “I know so, now scoot forward.”

She eyed the straight razor as he dragged it across the strop. “What do you think you’re going to do with that?”

“I’m going to shave your pussy.”

She grabbed a pillow in front of her and dropped all pretense of obedience. “No.”

He put the razor down. “No?” he queried softly. He took two steps to the settee. “You’re telling me no?”

He caught her arm as she made to fly past him. After that, it was simple to turn her over his knee.

“We had an agreement,” he drawled conversationally as if the plump cheeks of her ass weren’t tempting him as they jiggled with her struggles. “My touch. Anyway I want it.”

He brought his palm down on her right cheek. She jerked and screamed. He brought it down on her left one before she’d recovered from the first. There was more screech than howl in her cry, letting him know he wasn’t really hurting her. As she jerked on his lap, her stomach rubbed against his aching cock. One of these days, he was going to spank her until they both came, but not today. He delivered four more hard slaps to her ass, before he asked her, “Are you ready to give me what I want?”

She wiggled on his lap, her pinkened ass tempting him into one more slap. Her moan of satisfaction was immediate.

“Well?” he prompted.

“Can’t I do it myself?”

He blanched at the thought. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m damned good with a knife and you’re not.”

“How hard can it be?”

He cupped his hand protectively over her tender pussy. “Hard enough you’re not going to be trying it.”

“Why does it have to be done at all?”

That was easy to answer. “Because I don’t want anything between you and my mouth.”

“Oh.”

He drew her up by her shoulders, her face red with embarrassment. Her chest was flushed with excitement. Her nipples stood proud and hard on her breasts. Damn, she was beautiful. He put a finger dead center of each breast and pushed her back until she plopped on the couch. He scooted her to the end where he’d stacked the pillows. This time, instead of her head dangling over the edge, he draped her legs.

She covered her face with her hands. “I can’t believe I’m letting you do this.”

“You’ll be letting a hell of a lot more than this.” He dipped the brush in the water on the side of the stand and then rubbed the boar’s head bristles on the soap, whipping up a lather. The scent of bay rum filled the room. He pushed her right thigh wider and whisked the lather across her pubic area, pausing to linger on her clit as he moved side to side. Her hips jerked, ruining his aim. He filled the brush, and did it again, stroking her flesh over and over until she was tossing on the couch, moaning with the need for more. When she was on the edge, needing just one more flick on her clit to come, he put the brush away. She opened her eyes in time to see him angle the razor.

“Oh my God!”

He shook his head at her and sighed, “Cougar.”

She started to struggle back. He stopped her just by putting the lethally sharp blade near her pussy. She froze.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” she gasped, her lips barely moving.

“Trust me, Angel, when it comes to a knife in my hands, you have nothing to worry about. Now hold still.”

He placed the blade at the base of her pubic bone. “Are you sure?” was a high squeak as he began to drag the blade up in short, even strokes.

He wiped the blade clean with a towel, caught her eye and said, “I’m sure.” As he bent back to his task, he added, “But if you ask me again, I’m going to have to punish you.”

It was a good thing he’d paused after that pronouncement because the purely involuntary, violently eager jerk of her hips would have had him nicking her for sure.

He pulled his hand back. His “that was a close one” had her freezing all over again. He smiled and removed another strip of hair. She was a handful, but a damned fun one.

Things got a little more complicated as he got to the outer lips. He pinched the slippery inner lips between his fingers as he stroked the outer ones. She moaned and her hands clenched at the soft fabric of the couch.

“Don’t come,” he warned her just before he pinched her clit between his fingers to protect it.

By the time he finished shaving her pussy, she was dripping in sweat and gasping with need. He wasn’t much better, his cock was dribbling a steady stream of ejaculate, and if he didn’t bury it in her soon, he was going to come on the floor.

He put the razor and the soap under the couch. With the towel, he wiped her clean.

“Now you can come,” he told her, taking her clit in his mouth, and sucking hard as he thrust a finger into her tight cunt. She burst against him, screaming, drumming her heels on his back, yanking at his hair. He held on tight, riding her climax to the end, lapping at the juices gushing from her cunt, wincing as she yanked particularly hard, smiling in satisfaction when she screamed again. He’d just known she’d be a screamer.

When she lay quietly beneath him, limp, he pulled her hips further over the edge. She cracked her eyes, too drained to care what he did.

“Now, Angel, let’s make you mine.”

He probed her cleft gently, settling his cock into the opening of her vagina, fighting for the control to take her gently. To let her adjust to his size as she slowly, reluctantly, parted for him. As wet as she was, she was still incredibly tight.

Her body tensed as he pushed the head of his cock past the ring of muscle into the heat beyond. “Relax. Just a little at a time until you have it all.”

She whimpered and her muscles clenched against his intrusion.

He looked down. “Open your eyes, Mara.”

When she did, the fear in them almost broke his heart. “It’s just me, Angel,” he whispered, dropping his forehead to hers, cupping her cheek in his palm. “Just Cougar. You trust me never to hurt you.”

She bit her lip and nodded.

He nudged a little deeper, holding her gaze, using little pulses that he timed to her panting breaths. Her muscles first clenched in resistance, pulling her whole body tight, but eventually she began to relax. Deepening his thrusts, he worked a quarter of his length into her sheath.

“See, Angel. You can take me.”

A bit of wonder replaced the fear as she wiggled against him. “You’re in me.”

“Yeah.” He couldn’t prevent pushing harder as she wiggled again. Her gasp pulled him up short of the thrust his body craved. “Am I hurting you?”

She appeared to think about it. “Just a little.”

“How little?”

“I don’t understand.”

“A little you need me to stop, or a little I can go on?”

She tested his presence with a pulse of her hips. He stretched her too far for her to squeeze him with her inner muscles, but that was just as well. He was about two strokes short of coming. Being inside Mara was about as close to heaven as he was ever going to get.

“You can go on.”

The way she said that, so prissy, shook a smile out of his agony.

“Good.”

He pushed deeper, feeling her flesh drag along his cock as she took him one inch at a time. He pulled back and surged in again, keeping his hand on her cheek, making sure she kept her gaze locked on his. With every inch he gained, a measure of fear slipped from her eyes, until, finally, he was seated to the hilt and her cinnamon-brown eyes were full of wonder.

“Okay?” he asked as his balls rocked against her buttocks.

“Oh my.”

“
Oh my
, good? Or
oh my
, bad?”
Damn, it had better be good
.

Her lip sucked between her teeth. He pulled out and forged back in, her pussy grasping him with incredible tightness, the friction an agony of hot pleasure that speared outward from his cock.

“Good,” she sighed, her nails digging into his forearms and her eyes closing as he withdrew.

Jesus
. He wasn’t going to last one minute more if she kept sighing like that.

He took his hand from her cheek and placed it on her pubic mound. He applied pressure to her abdomen while his thumb rubbed her clit. As she moaned and rubbed back, he drove his cock into her pussy, releasing his hold on his control as she began to arch against him. Her cries built to a scream that echoed off the walls as he came in her, the hot spurt of his seed ripping a cry from his own throat as she climaxed around him, milking him dry, taking every drop he had to give until there was nothing left. Nothing held back, just the two of them burning up together.

The crackle of the dying fire was the only sound in the dark room.

“Is Cougar your real name?”

“Yes.”

“That’s it. Just yes?”

“Curious cat. What will you give me to go on?”

Bodies shifted, lips brushed, fingers explored.

“A mountain lion screamed the entire two days my mother labored with me. Dad was from Kentucky. They’re a suspicious lot. When he thought Mom was going to die, he took it as a sign and thought to protect his family from the spirits by giving me their name.”

“What’s your middle name?”

“If you tell another soul, I’ll—”

“Yes?”

“I’ll never be hungry again.”

“I’m sworn to silence!”

“Witch. It’s…”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear that.”

“It’s Horatio.”

“Horatio?”

“You can stop laughing now.”

“That tickles!”

“Hmm.”

“Why Horatio?”

“My Mom was newly Christian at the time and she was so scandalized by the heathen name my father chose that she named me after the most upright person she could think of in the hopes of counteracting my father’s decision.”

“Dare I ask?”

“Five-foot-four at the best. So slight, a breeze would blow him away. Thick glasses, always squinting, and a handkerchief permanently glued to a runny nose.”

“Let me guess.”

“Yup. The town minister. A paragon of everything a boy spends hours on his knees praying he won’t grow up to be.”

“You poor baby.”

“Yeah. I’m definitely in need of sympathy.”

“Here?”

“Ump-hmm. And there. And there.”

“What about here?”

“Oh damn! Especially there!”

“Wake up, Mara.”

“Not again. I’m too tired.”

“So am I, but it’s time to get reacquainted with our bed.”

“I don’t want to.”

“That’s fine with me if you don’t mind Clint strolling in on us in about two hours.”

“Oh heavens! I forgot about him!”

“Hmm. Up you go.”

“Do you think he heard us? Me?”

“I’m sure he had the good taste to stuff socks in his ears.”

“I’m never coming downstairs again!”

“Angel, first you have to get up the stairs.”

“I can’t. I’m too stiff.”

“What will you give me if I carry you?”

“An apple pie?”

“You’re learning.”

* * * * *

“Mara not coming down this morning?” Clint asked.

Bleary eyed, Cougar smiled at his cousin over the rim of his coffee cup. “If Mara is to be believed, she won’t be gracing the ground floor with her presence ever again.”

Clint smiled knowingly. “Couldn’t make it upstairs, huh?”

“Nope.”

Clint eyed the unappetizing lumps congealing on his plate. They were supposed to be scrambled eggs. “Think she means it?”

Cougar chuckled, remembering Mara’s burning face and adamant refusal. “Yup.”

Clint pushed the plate to the middle of the table and tried to fill the void in his stomach with another cup of thick coffee. “Do you suppose if I ever so circumspectly mentioned that I didn’t hear any moaning and screaming when I stopped over last night, would it make a difference?”

Following Clint’s example, Cougar shoved his own uneaten breakfast out from under his nose. “I suspect if the subject ever comes up, I’ll never see my wife again.”

Clint looked heartbroken.

“Cheer up,” Cougar said. “Eventually, she’ll have to come downstairs to use the water closet.”

“In that case, I’ll get a move on putting up the rest of that fence, though I think you’re inviting disaster to start closing off the range.”

Cougar shrugged. “People around here can bitch all they want. If I’m going to improve my stock, I’ve got to be able to control the breeding. Sooner or later, the rest of the cattlemen will come to the same realization. They just don’t like change.”