Unleashed: Declan & Kara (Unleashed #1-4; Beg for It #1) (26 page)

Down at my cabin, the
door was ajar. I didn’t like that. I’d spent one too many nights
in mixed company, crashing in places where I didn’t have my own
space and I couldn’t lock anyone out. Now that I had it, I was
never going back. My place was my own. No one messed with it. I had a
Swiss army knife in my back pocket. Slowly, I worked it into my palm
as I silently eased open the door.

There, on my bed, lay
Kara Brooks. She had her shirt pulled up and a full breast in her
hand, kneading and stroking it. Her jean shorts were unbuttoned and
wiggled down her hips. Her panties were pulled down. She had her hand
on her pussy, her fingers deep up inside of her folds as she moaned
and gasped and writhed on my bed.

“Uh! Oh!” she
called out in need, pleasuring herself with fast, urgent fingers.
Tossing her head to the side, she played with the aroused, erect
point of her nipple while she turned her face into my pillow. She
breathed deep, taking in my scent.

I thought I might
explode. I stood there, unable to move, not believing what I was
seeing, my cock as hard as a rock.

“Declan,” she
exhaled, eyes closed, completely unaware that I stood there watching.
Her fingers feverishly circled her clit and she moaned. She was
getting close. So was I, standing there watching my deepest fantasy
coming to life right before my eyes.

It couldn’t be
happening. That was the bed I touched myself on, the bed I’d spent
long nights with my hard dick in my hand wanting her. I couldn’t be
watching her pleasuring herself on that same bed, my bed. Kara, the
untouchable, innocent farm girl, the one I’d want but never have,
playing with her own tits and gliding her fingers in and out of her
slick, needy pussy while she fantasized about me. Holy shit.

She writhed on my bed,
arching her back up. Her fingers worked in and out of her slit, fast,
urgent, rubbing her slippery clit like she’d die if she didn’t
come. Then she jammed her fingers up inside of her, deep. And she
called out my name. “Declan!” Her body jerked and shuddered, her
fingers way up inside of her, milking herself as she sighed and
shivered, coming down from what looked like a spectacular orgasm.

“Kara.” I stepped
into the room.

Flushed, breathless,
she looked up at me. Then she panicked. She jackknifed up, pulling
her shirt down and starting to button her jeans.

“What are you doing
here?” she choked out.

“I live here.” I
strode over to her on the bed.

“I didn’t think you
were back. I just came in to—”

I was on top of her
before she could say anymore, nervous excuses tumbling out of her
gorgeous mouth. I grabbed her wrists and stretched them out above her
head, trapping her hot little body beneath mine. She gasped under my
assault.

Taking my time now, I
wrapped her fingers through my own, twining myself around her.

“If I smell these
fingers,” I asked her, low and secret, just between us, “will I
smell that sweet pussy of yours?”

She gasped and twisted
beneath me, caught.

I breathed deeply,
inhaling her scent, the strawberry mixed with musky need. “I can
smell you right now.” My head down, along her neck, under her chin,
I scented her like an animal savoring its prey. Sweet, hot, juicy.

“I know what you’ve
been doing, Kara. I watched you. I heard you call out my name.”

“No,” she
protested, struggling beneath me. Her breath came hard, her eyes
half-closed with desire. The war within her raged.

“You know what
happens when you play with fire, Princess. You get burned.” Still
pinning her wrists with one hand, I trailed my fingers down her side,
searing a path along her curves, stopping at her waist. I parted her
legs with my large, powerful thigh and pressed the full, steel length
of my cock down against her sex. She bucked underneath me, half
trying to escape but also wanting more. A throaty groan escaped from
her parted lips. Right after an orgasm, she still had to be so
swollen and sensitive.

“Worst thing is,” I
continued, rocking my hardness against her, knowing she’d be wet
and slick for me. “I’m going to make you love it.”

“Oh!” she cried
out, tossing her head to the side, nearly wild with it already.

“Declan. I need you,”
Harlan called from outside.

I need you. Got that
right. Panting, we looked at each other. I cursed and rolled off of
her. I ran a hand through my hair, pulled my shirt down and headed
out to be of service.

Of course when I got
back she was gone.

Now

5 a.m. I’d spent the
night tossing and turning on my looked-good but hard-as-a rock black
leather couch. Kara was sleeping soundly, alone in my sumptuous king
size bed.

She’d been a virgin.
A fucking virgin, like in medieval tales of chastity. Were there even
24-year-old virgins in the world anymore? Apparently I’d found the
one and only. Like a unicorn.

Crazy thing was, last
night had felt like my first time, too. That sounded like bullshit,
but taking a woman had never felt like that before. My mind had this
funny way of keeping going all the time, at night, while I worked,
even during sex. I always had 10,000 things milling around up in
there. But not with Kara. With her, all I did was feel. I’d been
100% locked-in on her and her alone, completely mesmerized by the
heat of her, the sounds she made, the way she fit me so tight and
perfect.

She hadn’t told me
she was a virgin. She should have told me. But would it have made a
difference? A beast like me? The animal in me liked that I’d been
her first. No one else, I’d taken her. It satisfied something deep
and primal inside of me, to claim her and mark her as my own. I never
wanted her with anyone else. Now she was mine.

Only she wasn’t, not
really, just for the week. And this wasn’t a medieval tale of a
knight and his lady. I was just the guy with a large bank account,
large enough to lure the one that got away into playing out every
dark fantasy on my list. I had a long list.

I tossed on the hard
leather, that sofa not giving an inch. I’d never been a big
sleeper, the kind of guy who got his regular eight or nine hours
every night. But I’d learned over time how to force sleep to come
to me. Body-breaking physical exertion worked pretty well, first as a
ranch hand and then, after I’d gone from hired help to bossman, I’d
taken up working out. The adrenaline, the full-body discipline, the
soaked with sweat exhaustion I felt after an intense workout, that
usually got me down for the night. And if that didn’t do it, some
raw, nasty sex did the trick. Sometimes it took both.

Yesterday, I’d done
both. The sex had been through the roof. With Kara Brooks. I wasn’t
big on nostalgia. Honestly, I’d devoted way more time to erasing my
past than dwelling on it. Who wanted to sit there crying into your
soup about how your daddy had run off and your mom…well. It wasn’t
right to badmouth the dead, now was it? The addictions that had
hounded her her whole life had finally caught up to her a couple of
years ago in an overdose. So, no, the past wasn’t something I liked
to think about all that much.

But Kara Fucking
Brooks. She’d been a difficult one to forget. And now she was back.

Sleep wasn’t going to
happen. I finally gave up and headed to my home office. I glanced
through the day’s news, watched a couple of market analysts’
podcasts, replied, filed and mostly deleted emails.

6 a.m. Time to hit the
gym. I grabbed my bag from the closet. Sleeping beauty didn’t move
a muscle. After pounding it out for two hours, sweat dripping off of
every pore, every muscle in my body screaming out, I returned to my
penthouse. She was still asleep.

She lay perfect in my
bed, her long golden hair splayed out across the pillows, her pink,
full lips slightly parted, the ultimate Disney princess awaiting her
prince to kiss her awake. Only I was the beast who didn’t become a
prince. I stayed lurking in the darkness, fucked her senseless for a
week, then turned her out again into the cold, harsh forest.

I stepped out of the
room. What was going on? Was I having some sort of problem with my
conscience? Was that guilt rising up inside of me? I didn’t do
that.

That was the fun of
being the guy in the black hat in the classic Western. You didn’t
worry about all that right and wrong crap. You grabbed what you
wanted, drank booze, screwed lots of women, piled up whatever money
you could get your hands on and didn’t worry about the rest of it.
You knew it didn’t matter because either way it was all going to
end the same. You were going to die bleeding out in a gutter
somewhere one day. The only person crying over you would be whatever
girl you happened to currently be paying for her services. She’d
miss the money.

That’s all this was
with Kara, anyway. I shook off the rest of it. I hadn’t come that
far in life being a worrier. I went after what I wanted and I got it,
simple as that. Right now I wanted Kara Brooks. I wanted her so bad
my teeth hurt. So, I was going to have her, every way I could come up
with and then some. For one week.

Because I didn’t do
more than that. More simply wasn’t an option. If she was a
more-than-a-week type of girl, that was her problem. She knew enough
about me to know I wasn’t playing around. I didn’t actually have
a ring under the pillow, about to shout “surprise!” and release
the doves with a marriage proposal. She wasn’t 18 anymore, the
child circled by the wolf. She was 24, a full-grown woman, walking
into this with her eyes open.

But the question
remained—if I could have any woman I wanted, why would I mess with
the one who could mess with me? Kara was the one woman who’d ever
gotten under my skin. And she’d been a goddamned virgin. I should
avoid her like the fucking plague.

I took a shower, hot
water pounding over my strained muscles. Clean and dry, I dressed in
fresh laundered sweatpants and a crisp, white t-shirt. And I got my
head screwed on right.

This was a transaction,
nothing more. Kara was just like the rest of them. She was into me
for the money, like every other girl. I was a cold, calculating
bastard and I knew how the world worked. Kara needed something and I
had it. I wanted something that she had. That’s how bargains went
down.

So what that Kara made
it feel different? It didn’t matter that she still smelled of
honeysuckle and strawberries and her smile lit me up. Six years later
she made me feel like a 21-year-old kid again, tough on the outside,
but yearning and hopeful within. I hated that shit. It was a waste of
time and it was weak. And it was 100% on me if I fell for that roses
and rainbows shit.

I needed to keep this
clean. Simple. Clear-cut. I was taking a girl with me on a business
trip to New York. We were going to have a week of hot, nasty BDSM
sex. I’d get the rush of training a neophyte, a woman with a body
for sin and the mind of an innocent, bringing out the sub within her
responding to my dom. And then I’d say goodbye.

My bedroom door stood
open. I walked back in.

Kara still reclined
against a mountain of pillows, her hair framing her face in a mess of
golden wisps and tendrils. Her bare shoulders peeked out at the top
of the covers, hinting at the creamy paradise below.

With a yawn, she turned
to me, her eyes fluttering open. “Morning.” She gave me a slow
grin, looking as content as a cat in a patch of sun.

“If you can still
call it that,” I had to tease.

Her eyes widened. “What
time is it?”

“Don’t worry about
it, there’s no reason to be up early.”

“But you’re up and
I never sleep in,” she protested, still sleepy. “Except for
yesterday.” I loved the flush that stole across her face. I
wondered if she was thinking about how well she slept after the
orgasms I’d given her. I grinned with pride.

Back in the living room
I called room service and ordered most of the menu. I didn’t know
what she liked and I was starving. Then I made some coffee. Carrying
two mugs into the bedroom, I told myself it wasn’t strange that I
still remembered how she took her coffee six years later.

“Thanks.” She gave
me a shy and grateful smile, taking a sip.

Breakfast arrived. That
had to be one of the best perks of being the owner, you never had to
wait for a thing. I took the large tray myself and carried it back
into the bedroom. No pimply teenage delivery boy got to check out
Kara. She was mine, all mine.

“Ooh!” She sat up a
bit, the down comforter still up and keeping her maddeningly modest,
covering far too much. I’d have to do something about that. She
surveyed her options: waffles, eggs, bacon, sausages, scones and
fresh fruit. I set it all down on a low table by the window.

“That looks amazing.”

“What do you want?”

“All of it.”

“Atta girl.” I took
a plate and fixed her a sampler.

She took it from me,
hesitantly. “Are you sure I should eat on the bed? What if I stain
the comforter?” She gestured at the expanse of pure, snow-white
fluff.

I shrugged. “Not a
problem. I don’t clean it.”

She took that in,
clearly not accustomed to a life in which others cleaned things for
you. I’d gotten used to that pretty quick. I made myself a plate
and sat on the side of the bed as we ate. She obviously liked bacon.
I smiled at her and she giggled a bit, acknowledging how she was
relishing her food.

“I always say, never
trust a person who doesn’t like bacon.” She shrugged.

“So true,” I
agreed.

Finally placing her
plate to the side after doing some excellent work, she took her
coffee mug into her hands and settled back onto the pillows. She
looked comfortable. Too comfortable.

“We have some things
to discuss,” I told her.