Unleashed: Declan & Kara (Unleashed #1-4; Beg for It #1) (25 page)

The hulking corn-fed
dumbass drove off with Kara in his car. I was no nuclear physicist,
but still, I bet that kid couldn’t find Kara’s g-spot with a map
and a compass. I hated that he got to try.

§

A few days later, it
rained. It took me by surprise. I’d been working late, past seven
o’clock mending a fence, and I almost got caught in it. I ducked
into the barn just in time.

A few minutes later,
Kara ducked in, too. She stood there in the dark, drenched to the
bone, watching the storm out the window. All hell was breaking loose
outside. I wondered if it was about to happen inside, too.

She didn’t realize I
was there, standing in the shadows. I knew I could stay in the
darkness and wait it out. A summer squall like that, no looming
clouds or warning claps of thunder, it was bound to pass quick. But
some chances were too good to pass up. I took a step toward her.

I didn’t go in for
grand, romantic emotions, the kind you’d find on a box of
chocolates or a card from the drug store. They struck me as corny at
best, straight-out bullshit when you were honest about it. But seeing
Kara standing there radiant, exhilarated from the storm, her eyes
shining, her hair slicked back from the rain. She took my breath
away.

I took another step
forward into the dim light filtering through the window. “Takes
your breath away, doesn’t it?”

She turned toward me
with a gasp. She hadn’t known I was there. I should have left well
enough alone, I knew that. But then she brought a hand up to her
heaving chest and I realized that her shirt was plastered to her
chest. Soaked through to the skin and completely see-through, her
full, lush breasts were bared entirely to me.

“You’re all wet.”
I drew closer. I could smell her there in the darkness, so sweet like
fresh-picked strawberries, plus something more female, intimate,
drawing me closer. She started to shiver.

“You cold?” I
whispered, just us, alone, in the dark. She bit her lip and nodded
yes.

A good excuse to touch
her. I brought my hand to her shoulder, so soft like silk. Reverent
and gentle, I worshipped the feel of her shivering, smooth skin under
my rough heat. Her breathing started coming faster, shallow.

With one finger, just
one, holding back with every ounce of strength I possessed, I traced
a line across her shoulder up over to the strap of her tank top. It
was a skimpy one, the kind of thing she typically pranced around in,
driving me wild. Usually, I had to turn away and force myself not to
look. Not now, though. Now, I could touch.

It felt so flimsy in my
grasp. I knew I could tear it right off of her.

“What are you
wearing?” I asked, my voice harsh and strained. She quivered
slightly under my attentions, nervous and shy. So inexperienced. But
I could tell she was aroused. Her nipples stood out, pebbled, firm,
pushing against the soaking wet t-shirt.

“A tank top,” she
whispered.

I made a sound low in
my throat, almost like a growl, and in two steps I had her back up
against the wooden barn wall. I pinned her there, one hand at her
creamy shoulder, one at her hip, my gaze fixed on her chest, drenched
from the rain, illuminated by the fading dusk light of the window.

Her breasts looked like
luscious, tantalizing fruit. There she was in front of me, ripe and
ready, but not mine for the taking. Frustration lashed through me.

“Fuck.” I couldn’t
bite back my swear.

“Declan?” My name
came out of her lips, half-question, half plea. Watching her shiver
there, trapped under my hands, I licked my lips.

“You’re soaked.”
Strangled with need, my voice came out choked. I stared at her
heaving chest. She followed my gaze and realized what I saw, every
inch of her revealed to me, the thin cotton of her top soaked
through, the light gauzy lace of her bra offering no cover. Her
breasts were completely on display, the fabric plastered to them,
outlining, highlighting, and her nipples were hard as rocks. The
swollen tips pushed out urgent, erotic, begging for me.

“Why’d you come in
here, Kara?” I growled, not breaking my gaze, pressing her there. I
kept my body tight, coiled, tension lacing through me, trying to hold
myself back. She wasn’t mine. She couldn’t be.

“I… it started
raining.” She squirmed under my stare. “I needed shelter.”

“You came in here to
get shelter.” No shelter here, not at all. I couldn’t resist
dipping my head down to her bare throat and scenting her like an
animal. I drank her in, filling my lungs as if I could sustain myself
on that alone. She started to pant.

“You thought you’d
found someplace safe.” My lips traveled the length of her throat,
so close to her skin, but not touching. But Adam couldn’t resist
Eve, and he had to have been a much better man than me.

So slowly, such a light
whisper of a touch, I flicked out my tongue to taste. I pressed it
against her skittering, racing pulse, licking her there. Marking her.

She gasped, tilting her
chin back, baring her throat. Giving herself to me. The deep, primal
urge to claim her flooded my senses as I licked her soft, warm skin.
Her breasts heaved with her breathing, her nipples straining and
aroused.

“Instead, you found
me,” I said, gruff.

I wanted to make her
wild. All at once, I brought my mouth down, hot and full, around her
aching, needy breast.

“Ah!” she cried
out, her eyes closing as my mouth claimed her, sucking, licking right
through her thin, wet shirt. Finding her sensitive, aching nipple I
sucked hard, bringing my teeth down lightly, right on the tip. She
gasped, clutching my shoulder.

At her other breast, I
sucked and licked, bringing my hands up to cup and massage, bringing
her tip right into my mouth.

“Oh! Declan!” She
cried out. She liked it. I started to tease her, licking, trailing my
hot tongue in a circle around her nipple. She writhed under me as I
tortured her, not touching her aching, swollen bud, not giving her
what she needed.

“Declan!” she
nearly screamed, until I closed my mouth directly over her nipple,
pulling it between my teeth, harder than last time.

Shocked, she smacked
her head back against the wall. I’d never seen anything more
gorgeous than Kara swept away with lust, mouth open, eyes closed, her
tits in my hands, in my mouth. I could tell she was eager and ready
for anything I wanted to do to her. And I’d fantasized about doing
so very many things, so many filthy, nasty, dirty things she’d beg
me to do to her.

Only she wasn’t
filthy, dirty and nasty. She was a sweet, naïve, innocent girl who
had the shit luck to stumble into the den of a beast like me. And she
wasn’t mine to take. She was my boss’s daughter, explicitly
forbidden in every way.

I pulled away. I don’t
know how I did it, but somehow I battled myself off of her, away from
her. Infuriated, impotent rage coursed through me. I turned away,
desperate for what I couldn’t have.

“Get out of here,”
I barked at her, striding back into the shadowy depths of the barn.

“What?” she asked
behind me, breathless and confused. “Declan?” she called after
me.

“Now!” I bellowed,
leaving no room for questions, no opening for discussion. Commanding,
firm. Brutal.

She did as I told her,
leaving me alone in the cold, dark barn, my hands clenched in fury.
With an explosion of rage, my fists found a bale of hay and tore into
it, punching, pummeling, grinding it into the ground. Consumed by
hunger, longing, fury at being deprived.

Panting, my knuckles
bloody from pounding the rough floor planks, I stopped myself. It
didn’t do any good to scrounge around in the dark like an animal.
I’d had enough days like that in my life, fighting for survival,
scrabbling through foster homes, a brute resorting to my fists.

That wasn’t me, not
anymore. I was on the cusp of something bigger and better. I didn’t
know what it would be yet, not exactly, but it was so close I could
almost taste it. And I needed this job to make it happen. I couldn’t
screw up and get in trouble. Harlan would badmouth me and who knew,
that standing offer from the other ranch to come back and work in the
fall might dry right up. There I’d be yet again, stranded and
empty-handed.

It was too big a risk.
I still had a whole summer ahead of me on Harlan’s ranch, a summer
of long, hot nights. But I had to spend them away from her. Kara
tempted me like no other, but this wasn’t going to happen. It had
to be that way.

§

A couple of days later
I was packing up the truck. Harlan and I were leaving for a two-night
trip. He wanted to check out a ranch in Wyoming, buy some new steer,
talk to a guy about a grain swap. He had a whole list of things. I
was happy he’d asked me to come along. I’d been hoping to get a
chance to talk to him. He was sitting on a gold mine if he’d only
open his eyes to it.

Right now, I could see
the writing on the wall. His ranch was going belly up. But he had a
great property, set right in the middle of a perfect patch of
wilderness, creeks and trails and all sorts of shit city folk would
love to come enjoy. He could turn it around, open his place up to
tourists. They’d pay, I knew they would. I didn’t know how it
would go, whether he’d be up for it, but I’d try to talk to him.
He might just go for it.

Kara came out to the
barn, all honey and sugar, pretty little flowers on her dress. She
had a package she was delivering into the cab of the truck, some corn
bread wrapped in a tea towel and a thermos. Like she was carrying
that night she had come down to my cabin.

“For me?” I had to
ask.

She nearly jumped out
of her skin, whipping around with a hand up to her chest. Guess she
hadn’t seen me.

“What are you doing
here?” she asked, like it was strange for me to be in the barn.

“I’m getting ready
to head out with your daddy.”

“On the two-day
trip?”

I nodded my head,
watching her. She looked so pretty when she flushed up, startled, her
eyes wide, her breathing fast.

“I didn’t know you
were going with him.”

“Gonna miss me?” I
couldn’t resist teasing her. She looked so skittish, like I might
eat her up. She was right about that.

“Bet you are,” I
continued. Her eyes widened. I liked getting her riled up. She sure
did it to me.

She looked down,
blushing now, the pink rising up into her cheeks. And spreading down
along her collarbone, up to the top of her halter dress. No sleeves,
no straps. A man could pull that elastic right on down and gain full
access to paradise. I stepped closer.

“I didn’t know you
were going on the trip,” she repeated.

“You already said
that.” I stepped closer.

“What are you doing?”
she asked, jumpy, her eyes darting over to the entrance.

“What do you mean?”
I wasn’t going to touch her, not with her father about to come down
to the truck any second. Hands-off, that was my policy. But it
couldn’t hurt to look, up real close, nose pressed against the
window.

“Why are you walking
over to me?” She looked pinned, trapped, though I wasn’t holding
her there. I’d like to.

“Can’t a man say
goodbye?”

“What are you going
to do?”

“What do you want me
to do?” I knew I was playing with fire, but who could resist it
when it burned so bright?

“Declan.” She
glanced away, down, anywhere but right at me though I was pretty
close now. Close enough that I could close the gap real fast, reach
out and pull her to me in the blink of an eye.

“Yes, Kara?” I
liked saying her name. Even more than that, I liked her saying mine.
I wanted to hear her whisper it into my ear real close in the dark,
breathe it out needy, scream it out loud when she came.

The screen door slammed
up at the big house. I knew Harlan would be by real soon. He’d want
to get on the road.

“Guess I’d better
get going,” she said. She didn’t move.

I brought my hand up
over her head against the wall of the barn. I leaned over her. She
wasn’t a tiny woman, she had real womanly curves and long legs, but
right next to me she felt small and fragile. I could tell she was
trembling. I could smell her strawberry hair, so soft. Her eyelids
flickered closed for a moment, like she was about to swoon.

“You OK?” I
whispered, real low in her ear.

“Mmm,” she
murmured, swaying slightly toward me.

Still in that low
whisper, I told her, “I’ll be thinking about you while I’m
gone. How you tasted in the barn. And that moan I heard you make when
you watched me get my cock sucked.”

Her eyes flew open,
wide. I pulled back, shoving my hands into my pockets and taking a
few steps away.

“You do the same now,
y’hear?” I flashed her a grin like it was no big deal. Like I’d
told her to say hi to her grandma for me.

She stayed pressed
against the wall, breathing fast, her breasts heaving up and down,
her tiny waist below. I just about rushed back and crushed her
against me, pressed my lips to hers, the hell with it all.

Instead, I tipped the
brim of my hat to her. Such a gentleman. Then I climbed into the
truck with her father and drove off with a raging hard-on for his
daughter. Not such a gentleman after all.

§

We came back from the
trip early. Some meeting had fallen through, something else had come
up back at the ranch. I didn’t feel like being out on the road with
Harlan anymore anyway. He’d shot down my idea for wilderness
tourism like I was an idiot. He didn’t see the point in it, didn’t
believe anyone would ever pay to come out and do ranch work.

When you put it like
that, it did sound stupid. Who would pay to do hard manual labor? But
that wasn’t the point. You had to sell the idea of it, the lure of
the wild. I’d seen it work at the other ranch where I’d spent my
winter. I knew the idea had legs and I was pissed off that Harlan
didn’t see. He was going to drive his ranch right into the ground
and Kara’s future along with it if she didn’t get out in time.
That’s what he was determined to do, but he was too blind and
stubborn to see it.