by Luis, Maria
“Then why haven’t you—”
“Because us fucking again will lead to nowhere good.”
I know, deep in my soul, that he isn’t talking about orgasms.
So softly that I can barely hear myself speak over the roar of anticipation thundering through me, I tip my head back. “You care too much.”
“You’re wrong,” he grunts, but his eyes remain entranced by my lips, “I don’t care at all.”
Kiss me.
Want me.
Touch me.
I rub my lips together, just to tempt him further, before parting them to utter a challenge that will bring us both to our knees: “Then prove it.”
28
Saxon
Trouble, trouble, trouble.
With each word that tumbles from Isla’s mouth, my resolve to stay away cracks a little more. She’s purposely baiting me, her blue eyes wide with false innocence, my shirt fisted in her grip, keeping me close. So close that there’s no ignoring her dilated pupils and the blush warming her cheeks. Beneath my fingers, her neck quivers.
She likes it.
The cast of fear.
The chase of being caught, then submitting to my every demand.
She admitted as much that night in my car, and I can’t deny the effect that her lust has on me. My hard cock strains the confines of my joggers and my heart—the damned thing that’s done me no good since I first laid eyes on this woman—thumps erratically in my chest.
I want this.
No matter how I promised Guy that I would be done with her for Holyrood’s sake.
For once in my miserable, gray-stained life, I plan to keep something for myself.
I want to be selfish.
I graze my thumb down the length of her throat before sweeping it back up, in a caress that tantalizes more than it soothes. Her breath hitches. Satisfaction curls through me, a black ribbon of pleasure wrought from the darkest depths of hell. I press closer until it’s only my grip on her neck that’s keeping her from collapsing to the sofa.
“Prove it,” I scoff, mocking her. “You’re a total glutton for punishment.”
Her fingers tighten their grip on my shirt. “Or maybe I’m just a glutton for you.”
I hiss out a breath at the coy flirtation.
This woman . . . Christ, she provokes me something fierce. Strains the limits of my patience, never backing down until she steals a reaction from me. I feed off the challenge as much as I want to own it, own her, and do everything in my power to hear her lust-filled moan announcing defeat.
My free hand splays across her back, sinking south to the base of her spine. “Don’t think you’re working me around your little finger.”
“I wouldn’t dare try.”
At her sarcasm, I squeeze her ass, just enough to lull her into complacency—before reminding her of who I am. Cold. Callous. Savage. I turn her around, yank down her joggers, her knickers, and—
Crack!
Her cry shatters the otherwise still room.
And her ass cheek . . . it pinkens as I dig my fingers into the tense muscles, relieving the sting from my hand. Her shoulders tremble when I lean forward, draping my front over her spine. By her ear, I husk, “You were saying?”
“Again.”
My chin jerks back. “What?”
She twists her head, until her mouth is hovering close enough that if I dared, I could brush my lips with hers. She knows it, too. The dare burns in her blue eyes. Kiss me, that look reads. Ruin me.
The temptation to do both is like liquid heat in my veins.
“Don’t make me repeat myself,” she repeats, throwing my words back in my face. “Again.”
Bloody fucking hell. “Isla, you—”
She cuts me off by thrusting her ass backward into my crotch. “I’m tired. I’m tired of running, tired of lying. But, most of all, I’m tired of pretending to want things I don’t and crave in secret what no one will give me.”
My brain empties of every comeback.
The skin across my back tightens and my toes curl reflexively into the carpet and my cock, Christ, it lengthens. Thickens. Leaks from the tip. I could come, just with my fist and the visual of my handprint on Isla’s sweet ass.
She glances over her shoulder and tears down the last of my defenses with a softly uttered, “What are you tired of? The truth.”
I give it to her, on a hoarse rasp, unable to restrain the words and keep them under lock and key: “Being cold, down to what’s left of my soul.”
Her blue eyes darken. “Then burn with me, Saxon.”
Fuck.
Head pounding—the both of them—I slip my hand, fingers spread wide, over her throat. Angle her head to the left, so I can work my mouth over the sensitive skin behind her ear. A nip of my teeth, followed by the glide of my tongue to erase the sting. A shudder tears through her, and her head falls forward, giving me access.
I take full advantage.
Grinding my fabric-covered cock against her ass, tugging her earlobe between my teeth, then lower, a bite to the juncture of her throat and shoulder. She releases a tormented sound that’s a cross between a scream and a moan, and her hands fall to the sofa’s armrest, her hips rhythmically rocking backward.
Needy. Wanting.
For me.
“Don’t move,” I order.
Isla will always be Isla, though, and she flicks her hair over one shoulder and meets my gaze with fire and excitement dashing across her features. “Or what?”
I catch those candlelit strands in my fist, tugging her so close that her lips part beneath mine. Deliberately, I linger in the moment, baiting her, tempting her, torturing us both, before growling, “Or I’ll bend you over my thigh and turn your ass red.”
Her lips curve in the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen. “All you had to do is ask. No argument over here. Shall I just”—she waves at the sofa, scooting out from under my arm—“sprawl and wait? Maybe a little something like this?”
Mouth dry, I watch as she climbs onto the cushions, hiking up her shirt around her waist so that her round ass is on display. Swaying. Tinted pink. To say nothing of the glistening wet folds between her legs that have me pressing a hand to my cock, just to relieve the mounting pressure.
I open my mouth. “You—”
“Yes?” Isla flops over, settling into the corner of the sofa. One leg falling open to the floor. The other bent, toes pointed into the cushions. Her cunt mine for the taking.
And I will take it.
Instead of answering, I head for the door to close it. I don’t know where her brother and sister are but this moment, it’s for me and Isla. The woman who needles her way under my skin. The woman who ought to take one look at me and run the other way. The woman who’s rapidly destroying what’s left of my tattered heart.
She asked me to burn with her and I’m going to do just that. Nothing held back. No desire left untended. Either we survive this together or not at all.
I twist around, reaching for the hem of my shirt to pull it over my head. The material lands on the floor, abandoned. Forgotten. I’m already rounding the sofa, my gaze latching onto Isla’s, as though we’ve always been fated to land here in this crossroads together.
The devil in disguise.
A fallen angel with broken wings.
The two of us—ruined, untamed, and desperate to feel alive.
I sit on the sofa, spread my legs wide, and cut my gaze to hers. “Come here.”
She doesn’t need to be told twice. With an elegant sweep of her feet onto the carpet, she approaches. Her fingers dance along the collar of her shirt, contemplation furrowing her brows as she visually traces my naked chest for the first time. The raised scars she felt beneath her fingers. The tattoo over my left shoulder: inked swirls of blue and green, abstract in perception—a maze of my own life, with no way to escape. Stuck. Cornered. Saxon Godwin never made his way out.
Licking her lips, as though she’s desperate for a taste, Isla dr
ops to her knees before me at the same time that she draws the shirt over her head and throws it aside, exposing small breasts and dusky-rose nipples that beg to be worshipped.
Perfection. Fucking perfection.
Her hands land on my thighs.
“No,” I grunt, gripping her upper arm, “not there.”
Head jerking up, her mouth parts. “No? I thought—”
“I made you a promise.” Still holding her, I pull her off the floor. Frame her hips with my hands and turn her around, so that her ass is all I see. And that fading handprint. Christ, knowing that I’ve marked her—however temporarily—calls to something inside me that I’ve never allowed to crest the surface.
Possession.
Hope.
Right now, Isla Quinn belongs only to me. Mine to pleasure, mine to take, and mine to ruin.
Manhunt be damned. Holyrood be damned. The queen be fucking damned.
Keeping my legs spread, I drag her onto my lap. A small gasp flies from her mouth when her rear collides with my rock-hard erection, but I don’t let her get comfortable. Sweeping my hands down the length of her smooth legs, I tug them sharply outward, so that she’s forced to loop them over the backs of mine.
She’s splayed wide, vulnerable.
Just the way I want her.
“Saxon?” comes her hesitant whisper.
“Fulfilling my promise,” I return, just as softly, while circling her wrists with my fingers and tugging her arms backward. I crisscross her wrists behind her, at the base of her spine. I can only imagine the visual that she must paint—breasts thrust out, lean body arching, her clit throbbing while her legs tremble atop mine. I keep one hand fisted around her wrists, restraining her, while brushing the other along the outer swell of her breast. “To own every one of your cries. To steal the taste of you right off your cunt. To make you remember who it is that does this to you.”
My fingers make direct contact with her peaked nipple, pinching the sensitive nub, and she moans, low and throaty. Squirming in my lap, she yanks at my ironclad hold. I drop my mouth to her shoulder blade. “You can’t run, Isla. Not until I’m done with you.”
Her answering whimper emboldens me.
This is the first time a woman has ever begged for my touch and I’ll be damned if I rush the moment. No. I plan to sample every bit of her, to memorize what makes her grind her hips, seeking my cock. What makes her scream and come back for more. And then, masochist that I am, I’ll do it all over again.
She’s made an addict out of me.
Flicking her nipple one last time, I flatten my hand and skim the length of her stomach. I follow the shallow grooves of her abdominal muscles then the curved flare of her waist. Her desperate gasp is my only soundtrack when I bypass her pussy and trail my fingers down the inner slope of her thigh instead.
I smirk against her back when she releases a frustrated groan, her muscles flexing within my grasp.
“Isn’t this what you craved?” I murmur, tracing my fingers up, up, up, so close to where we both want them, before veering south all over again. “You like the push, the pull—the fear of the unexpected that comes with the pleasure.”
“I-I—”
“Cat got your tongue?” I brush my mouth over her skin, the center of her spine. “Maybe I should help with that.”
Before she can speak, I move my hand from her thigh and slap her—there, between her thighs, right over her clit.
She screams my name.
I feel her entire body shudder, even her toes that are hooked around my calves. She shudders and I burn alive and I will never—never—forget this moment for as long as I live. Isla Quinn, warrior that she is, crying out my name. I cup her core, easing the burn. Already on my fingers I can feel how wet she is.
Wet and wanting and waiting to be fucked.
I dip my fingers through her wetness, capturing the essence of her, before grazing my fingertips up over her belly button, up over one hard nipple, up to her soft, plump lips. “Taste yourself.”
She obeys immediately. The tip of her tongue flicks out against my fingers, a gentle caress at first. But then she seems to realize that there’s no judgment here, not between us, and she wraps her lips around me and sucks them deep. One knuckle, two. Like it isn’t my fingers she’s tasting but my cock.
A groan reverberates through my chest, unchecked. “Christ.”
She grinds down, her ass circling over my crotch. Lips still staking their claim on my fingers, licking them clean. Giving as good as she’s getting.
I’d expect nothing else from this woman.
Pulling myself free of her mouth, I don’t wait for what I know will be a sarcastic remark before rendering her speechless all over again. My wet fingers go to her clit, applying pressure, then dance away when she grows stiff in my arms and tries to wrestle back control. Because I’m a starved man with no qualms about stealing what I need to survive, I plunge two fingers deep inside her.
“Saxon,” she whimpers, “oh, God. I can’t. It’s too much.”
“Wrong.” I regrip her wrists, keeping her captive. “It’s not enough. It won’t ever be enough, not with us.” Tension lines my body, winding me so tight that I might splinter. “Tell me what you see,” I growl into her back, my voice thick, “and leave nothing out.”
“Please, I need to—”
“Tell me, Isla.” I curl my fingers within her. Press my thumb down on her clit. “And I’ll consider putting you out of your misery.”
A cry wrestles with a frustrated hiss. She struggles in my embrace, seeking more, her hips churning. I let her have her moment. For a second. And then I’m pulling away, flipping her over until she’s flat on her back, her ass lined up with the edge of the sofa, and I’m the one on my knees.
I spread her legs wide, forcing her to hold her knees against her chest.
A breath away, she’s soaked. Dripping. It’s a view I’ve never been privy to before, but one I have no doubt that I’ll enjoy.
I lift my hungry gaze to hers. “Uphold your end of the bargain.”
It’s all I say before I palm her inner thigh, bow my head, and feast.
29
Isla
The first touch of his tongue to my clit is heaven-sent.
Knees clutched within my hands, there’s no stopping the cry that rips from my throat. The feel of him, the strength with which he pins me, holding me in place, is as much a turn-on as the sight of him between my legs.
Midnight hair in disarray. Green eyes burning bright, determined and narrowed. That surprising, unexpected tattoo of his fluttering with each hard contraction of his muscles. Mouth wet and glistening as he swirls his tongue and brings me to what must be Dante’s undiscovered tenth circle of hell.
Nothing has ever felt so good.
Nothing should ever feel as good as this.
I breathe out his name. Sink my nails into my shins because it’s either that or claw the sofa cushions to shreds as I writhe under his persuasive mouth.
Uphold your end of the bargain.
His husky demand pervades my consciousness and I lick my lips, desperate for words to give him when all I seem capable of is begging for more. His thick stubble scrapes the inside of my thighs and his tongue causes chaos with each and every flick. And then he ups the ante by sliding a finger inside me.
No, two fingers.
They stretch me, circling in time to the rhythm of his tongue lapping the tiny bud of need at the hood of my sex.
I cede all control. Release my knees and crank my body up on the sofa so I can sink my fingers into his hair and scrape my nails down the back of his skull. He wraps a big hand around my thigh, splitting me wider. From this angle, there’s nothing but the top of his head and the muscles playing in his back as he kneels on the carpet, his face still buried between my legs.
He’s winding me up like a mechanical toy. Torturing me with every drive of his tongue and every sure thrust of his fingers. Never have I felt this way. Never have I felt so w
anted.
“It’s too good,” I moan, swaying my hips forward to chase the pleasure. “Saxon, please—”
Another finger. It’s a tight fit, almost too tight, but then he eases the pressure by withdrawing, then slipping his tongue against my entrance. Crude. Vulgar. Clutching his head, I feel my entire body vibrate around him.
I need him to know what he does to me. I need him to know that there is no other man who has ever made me feel this way, like I’m coming out of my skin.
“Touch yourself.”
The words come from me, dirty and desperately hoarse.
He pauses. Lifts his head. “You want to watch.”
It’s not a question, and I wouldn’t do him the disservice of lying anyway. There are too many already—or, at least, one really, really big one—and isn’t this what I asked for? The truth? His and mine?
I dip my chin. Then, “I want to watch.”
Nostrils flaring with lust, Saxon grasps my legs and plants my feet down on the carpet. He shucks off his joggers as he stands, kicking the material away. Yes. Yes. My gaze is rooted on his hard-on when I hear him mutter, “Then I’ll give you a show that you won’t soon forget.”
One second I’m sucking in air and the next Saxon’s hand is cupping the back of my neck, his other choking the base of his erection.
He stands so close that the tip grazes my mouth.
My eyes go wide, darting up to his. Feral. Demanding. That pale gaze sears me alive. And, as though he’s demanding that I repay the favor, I plant my foot on the sofa. Place my fingers between my legs to find myself throbbing and achy, just as Saxon’s tight grip slides up his length and twists the plump crown.
As his hips pulse forward, I lick the head.
Because it’s there.
No, because it’s Saxon.
My heart races in my chest and my fingers delve between my folds to sink in deep. I thrust them in time with the way he fists his cock with angry, aggressive strokes that leave me panting. His abdominal muscles tighten, and a groan wrenches from his throat as I watch come leak from his slit. I want to lick it away. Before I’m given the chance, he runs his palm over the head, smearing it, and then dragging his fist down to the root.
