Wild Card (42 page)

from the corner of her eyes. "You know what, Noah?"

"What, Sabella?" The careful tone of his voice warned her, and she didn't give a damn.

She was doing something that was going to get her spanked, and she wanted spanked.

She took her finger and ran it across his chest. "Perhaps your leaving is for the best."

"You don't say?" Beneath the rough, gravelly tone of his voice was a hint of that sexy, lyrical brogue she had always loved.

She smiled, licked her upper lip, and cast him a look from beneath her lashes.

"Just think. You helped me pull my head out of my ass where my husband was concerned.

Getting over your leaving should be a breeze. It's not like you're going to be here long. Right?"

Did his eyes just darken? Grow wilder?

"You don't want to push this, baby," he warned her softly.

She smiled. A slow, easy smile before catching her bottom lip between her teeth and taunting

him with her look.

"What, you don't want to hear the truth?"

His hands gripped her hips as something wilder, something hungrier, suddenly lit those

supercharged eyes.

"That's not the truth," he growled.

She reached up, caressed his lower lip with her tongue, then nipped it. Hard.

He jerked back, his eyes narrowing as his tongue swiped over the little wound a second before

he jerked her closer, his erection burying against her stomach.

"But you'll be gone, Noah," she taunted him. "Like the wind," she stated mockingly. "Goodbye, so long. Just like my husband." She looked back at the pictures.

Nathan's loving smile mocked her from the frames, his blue eyes, so full of love, so soft with

desire, lied to her every time she looked at them.

That was the hardest part to accept. It made her wish she had never known who Noah Blake

was; it would have been easier. She wouldn't have loved him, this deep she wouldn't have hurt

with the ragged desperation that she hurt with now. She could have let Noah go without a

whimper, because she would have hated him for stealing anything that belonged to her Nathan.

But how could she hate the man Nathan had become?

"Say goodbye, Noah," she told him. "You have tonight to do it. Because if you intend to walk out of my life, then it may as well be goodbye. I won't wait on another man. And I'll be damned

if I'll become a living shrine to another."

It
rose inside him.

He could feel the dominance fueled by her challenge, her defiance, her intention that tonight

was going to be their last night.

He let his gaze flicker over her face, the slight throb on his lower lip reminding him that she

was pushing him deliberately.

Those soft gray eyes roiled with shadows, light and dark clashing together as emotions tore

inside them both. He wanted to be tender. He wanted her last memory of being his woman to

be one of tenderness. But it wasn't tenderness she wanted. It wasn't tenderness rising inside

him.

The lust wasn't tempered, but neither was it mindless. Like the death that filled him when he

hunted, this lust that rose inside him for this woman was patient, determined.

She smiled tauntingly. As though she didn't believe he could do it. Couldn't master her.

Couldn't fight the memory of the man she had become a living shrine for.

His gaze flickered to the pictures behind her, and agony, sharp and red-hot, lanced his soul. He

wasn't that man anymore. A part of him wanted to be. A part of him needed to be. But that man

really had died, leaving only what had risen from his ashes.

He stepped back from her. He didn't touch the chaps, he unzipped his jeans and released the

thick, heavy length of his cock. He stroked his hand from shaft to tip as his hand struck out,

tangling in her hair as she moved to jerk back from him.

"Do you want it all, Sabella?" he drawled then, smiling back at her, daring her. "Do you want it, or do you just want to play games and talk the talk, baby?"

She glared back at him, her lips parting, teeth clenched.

"You came to the bar this evening because of me, didn't you?"

"I did." He lowered his head, bared his teeth. "You're mine. Right here. Right now. As long as that tight, sweet little pussy gets wet for me then you belong to me. Not those jackin' assed

cowboys puffin' around you like a bunch of damned stud horses butting around after a favorite

mare." Indignation ripped through him. "You were dancing with them."

"Where were you?" she asked deliberately, her lips pouting back at him mockingly. "Where

were you, Noah? Were you here? Were you keeping your mare satisfied, or turning her loose to

pasture?"

His eyes widened. "You little witch," he growled.

His fingers tightened in her hair. "Did you find my replacement?"

"I haven't started looking yet. Should I let you know before I do?"

He had to grip the base of his cock to keep from blasting his come. She was more than

challenging tonight. She was standing before him daring him, fucking daring that dark,

deliberate hunger inside him.

"Just waiting on me to leave?" he growled, tipping her head back, feeling her hands against the leather vest he wore over his shirt.

She was peeling it back from his shoulders, tugging at the hold he had on her hair to rid him of

it.

"Do you think one of those jackasses on that dance floor can even come close to this, baby?"

He shed the vest, releasing her and his cock just long enough to let it drop to the floor.

Before she could duck away from him he had her again. One hand in her hair, the other at her

hip, pushing her against the side of the stairs as she stared up at him, lips parted and curled

mockingly. But he saw the pain in her eyes, the tears that were so close.

What was he doing to her? To himself?

Holding her in place, he lifted his hands and jerked his T-shirt off. Her eyes flicked to his chest

and her breathing grew heavier.

My heart beats for yours.

My soul lives for yours.

My body, my hands, my lips.

They love only you.

The words sang through his mind. His vow to her. The night they had married, lost in the

pleasure, the exhaustion of each other's bodies, he had whispered those words to her, and they

surged in his soul now.

They trembled, hovered on his lips.

Noah snarled back a curse, jerked her to him, and his lips burrowed against her, kissing with

the desperation of a man trembling too close to the edge.

Dominance surged and tightened inside him.

Hunger was like a beast, clawing at his balls.

And love, love was a double-edged sword ripping through his soul, reminding him with brutal

efficiency of everything he had lost.

He kissed her like a man who knew it would be the last kiss he ever knew from any woman's

lips. It would be the last stroke of tongues, the last hungry moan, the last time he ever knew a

woman's softness.

She was imprinted into his very spirit. Before the night was over, he would imprint himself, as

he was now, not as he had been, into hers. He would take the memory of Nathan Malone and

replace it forever with the memory of Noah Blake.

And then, he would leave.

He was a bastard. The worst sort of son of a bitch and there was no way out of it. No way to fix

what had been broken, no way to remove his name from the papers he had signed or to

overcome the fears that he knew, knew, she couldn't accept him as he was, rather than the man

she had lost.

So he took what was his now. Here, amid the pictures of all she had lost, his lips bore down on

hers, nipping, sipping, kissing until he felt immersed inside her.

His cock pressed against her stomach, full and thick, the heavy blunt crown throbbed, spilling a

minute amount of come against her bare flesh where her shirt had risen.

Noah jerked back, staring down at her fiercely before he simply gripped the edges of the shirt

and ripped it loose from the buttons.

Damn her!

She should have shown fear. She should have gasped in alarm.

Did she? Hell no. Her eyes lit up like Christmas and the arousal that flooded her face almost,

just almost, matched his lust.

"Like that, baby?" He jerked the pieces over her shoulders and watched the flush that climbed

the rounded flesh of her breasts that the bra she wore didn't quite cover.

"Hated it," she mocked him, but her eyes said otherwise. Her hard, spiked nipples proved

otherwise.

"You're hot," he drawled, unclipping the bra between her breasts and dragging it off her

shoulders. "I bet you're so wet I could drown in your juices."

"As wet as you are hard."

His breath jerked in his chest as her fingers curled around his cock. Not all the way. He looked

down, seeing the space where her fingers wouldn't meet, then glanced up at her and grinned.

"I'm hard, baby. Real hard."

"You are, aren't you?" She stroked the length as his hand tangled in her hair again.

"You're going to find out how hard," he growled. "Go down on me, Sabella. Suck me. Show

me how bad you want to be fucked."

Her eyes flashed back at him. Hunger and defiance. But the hunger won out. She wanted him in

her mouth just as damned bad as he wanted to be there.

"Fuck, yeah," he groaned, almost shaking from the need as she began to kiss her way down his

chest, his hard abs. Son of a bitch, he was going to explode before her lips ever touched him.

"God, Sabella. Sweet baby. Your lips."

He jerked. He felt as though liquid fire were enveloping the crest of his cock, stroking over

him, vibrating with a moan.

He looked down at her, watched his flesh stretch her pink lips, watched the head sink inside her

suckling mouth, and felt himself break apart.

Sabella watched his face. She watched the emotion that suddenly contorted it, and felt the pain

that struck inside her. Pain and hunger, twisted hopes and shadowed fears that she couldn't

hang on to.

Oh God. Like before. A part of her. She sucked him deeper, eagerly, watching the wild fire in

his eyes, watching his face, the dark lust that filled it, the agony that creased it, and she fought

to fill him with pleasure. He loved this. He loved the total dominance he was releasing against

her, he loved her need to buck against it, her need to feel that power, that force inside him that

urged her to fight it, as well as to submit to it.

Conflicting pleasures and urges that she knew would leave the memories of his past dominance

a pale shadow. He was going to take her tonight. Tonight, she would have everything he had

ever held back from her. Tonight she would know, finally, the man she had held but whose

dark core she had never been given a glimpse into.

And she loved it. She loved the sense of struggle between them, of being able to assert and to

submit.

And he was making sure of the submit part. Both hands dug into her hair, clenched and held

her still as his cock pushed past her lips in short, hard strokes.

"Fuck. You love it." He held her head still, dragged his cock back slowly before pressing back

in in a series of short, hard strokes. "You love it, baby. Your mouth filled with my cock, your

body burning for me."

She gripped his thighs, her nails digging into the chaps, so turned on by the sight of his cock

jutting out from leather and denim that she was creaming furiously. She could feel her juices

washing to her panties, slick and hot, tormenting her clit as the folds of her pussy became

saturated with the heat of her moisture.

She clenched her thighs together, her vision dazing as his head tipped back, long hair rippling

around his face, and his hips moved. He fucked her mouth as she tightened around his cock.

Rippled her tongue over the underside and moaned at the taste of him.

Could anything be sexier? Hotter? Total and complete dominance. He was going to push her,

and she knew it. He was going to crawl so deep inside her that she didn't have to worry about

being free of him.

"Damn you," he panted, staring down at her again, pausing, then pulling back slow and easy,

seeing the moisture of her mouth glistening on his cock before he pushed back, lost control for

fragile seconds, and fucked her lips like a man dying for the sensation.

Ragged pleasure, sensations sharp and hot, wrapped around the head of his cock, struck his

balls, and then raced up his spine to sizzle in the base of his brain.

Damn, he had never known pleasure like this. Never before Sabella.

He forced himself to pause, his breathing harsh, heavy.

He jerked back, pulling his cock from her lips before he could spill his come in her mouth.

Pulling her to her feet, he spun her around, gripping her wrists and forcing her to wrap her

hands around the cherry spindles of the stair railing.

"Stay there." He nipped her shoulder as she arched her back, her denim-clad ass rubbing

against his cock.

Reaching around in front of her, he jerked her belt loose, unsnapped and unzipped the shorts

and pushed them over her thighs.

Sliding his hand between her thighs, he cupped the humid heat of her pussy through her

panties, felt the damp need, the roll of her hips as his fingers played over her clit.

The fingers of his other hand cupped her breast, rolled her nipple.

"God, your nipples are so hard. So tight."' He raked his lips over her shoulder, glimpsed her

profile.

Closed eyes, lashes feathering her cheeks, her face flushed and dazed with pleasure. Her lips