Unforgettable

by Ann Christopher

  “Daniel!”

  “Not until I’m finished with you.”

  The husky note in his voice made his intentions perfectly clear—not that she’d ever had any doubt—as he opened the door, strode with her into the cocooned intimacy of the bride’s suite, and shot the bolt with a resounding click.

  Chapter 5

  Much as she wanted to embrace her anger at this man—to wallow in it; to live and die in it—it was already slipping away from her. Her fingers had, in fact, found something better to cling to:

  Him.

  She gripped the fine wool of his suit as she bounced along on his shoulder, trying not to feel his body’s heat and strength, but it was a losing proposition.

  He felt so good.

  He smelled so good.

  God, she’d missed him.

  And his hands...

  One was firmly on her ass, holding her in place.

  The other stroked across her bare thighs, inciting electrical currents over her flesh, and would go to work on her panties any second. She knew it.

  Luckily, her anger and frustration didn’t want to give up without a fight.

  “You don’t get to do this to me, Daniel!” She smacked his broad back again, harder this time. “You don’t get to show up here after all this time and do this to me again!”

  His hands tightened. To her agonized astonishment, he turned his face into her hip, breathed deep, like an addict taking a hit off his pipe, and bit her. Bit her. She felt the sharp edge of his teeth—and his iron will—through the layers of her dress and panties, and the pain was exquisite enough to make her cry out.

  More, she wanted to say. More.

  “You have to put me down,” she said as he walked her to the bed, and there was much more plea than command in her raspy voice now. “You have to—”

  “I don’t have to do anything. Except make you come.”

  Yes. Please, God.

  “No, Daniel.”

  He abruptly shifted his grip to her waist and let her slide down until they were face-to-face. By the light of the nightstand lamp, she saw every detail of his features. The heavy black brows. The midnight eyes, flashing with flecks of gold and brown. The flaring nostrils and rigid jawline made harsher by the goatee. The uncompromising set of his lips, which were normally so lush and inviting.

  In that one second out of time, as she was suspended in his arms, with her arms around his neck because they had to go somewhere—everything in his expression was a perfect reflection of everything she carried in her heart.

  He wasn’t any happier about this than she was.

  Anger still seethed between them.

  Nothing was forgotten.

  Nothing was forgiven.

  It never would be.

  Something rumbled low in his chest. A warning vibration that awakened every nerve ending in her sweetly sensitive nipples.

  “You don’t tell me no,” he said. “We’ve never told each other no. We’re not going to start now.”

  All perfectly true.

  Even so, it was humiliating to discover just how much of a lie these last years of her life had been. She might tell herself that other men could get her this hot and wet, but they couldn’t. She might pretend that she didn’t need his smile or his laughter, but she did.

  She hated herself for it.

  Almost as much as she hated him.

  She stared him in the face as she tightened her arms and raked her nails over his scalp, determined to keep hurting him for as long as possible before he won in the end. He shuddered, his entire body tensing against her.

  “This doesn’t change anything,” she said, aware that spite made her ridiculous.

  This, now, would change everything.

  At least for her.

  He laughed bitterly. “I don’t give a fuck.”

  Could having sex be an act of war? Was it wrong to calculate your every movement for maximum destruction? She watched his eyes carefully as she wrapped first one leg, then the other, around his waist, waiting for the moment when his breath hissed and his pupils dilated—ah, there it was. Success.

  She squeezed his torso between her thighs, undulating against him as she licked her way deep into his mouth, and his sounds, broken and greedy as they were, were her victories. He tasted like Scotch and like home, but she wanted to burn this home to the ground so she’d be forever seared in his memory the way he was in hers. So she bit his bottom lip—he bit her a minute ago; fair was fair—and laughed when he gasped and moaned and laughed harder when she tasted the coppery tang of his blood.

  And there was another victory, at least until he broke the kiss and spoke in her ear.

  “You think I care if you’re pissed at me?” His soft laughter burned her cheek. “As long as you let me fuck you, I don’t care what you do, Kitten.”

  Wrong reaction. That was not a win for her, and the wicked grin as he pulled back made her blood boil and made her want to—

  He caught her hand, snatching it down before her palm could connect with his face.

  Also not a win.

  In fact, she’d call that a loss.

  Snatching her hand free, she raised it again, snarling, but he smacked her ass with both hands, hard, and then did something far worse.

  He squeezed both halves of her butt together and ran his skilled fingers between her legs.

  She made an involuntary cry of distress.

  Of ecstasy.

  He stroked her again. And again and again.

  Groaning and desperate, she kissed him again, forgetting about strategies and making him pay.

  None of that mattered when he touched her.

  “I just want you inside me,” she said between kisses.

  “You got it. I’m dying to fuck you again.”

  “Where’d all this crude language come from? Are you trying to shock me?”

  “Why pretend it’s making love when he both know love never entered the picture?”

  “If you’re going to rewrite history, I want you to stop talking right now.”

  “You know what I want? Other than the fucking? I want you out of my head.”

  He wanted—?

  “Poor Daniel. Sucks to be you, doesn’t it?”

  The taunting note in her voice did the trick. Cursing, he pushed down on her thighs to break her grip on him. Before she knew what had happened, she was standing on the bed and he had his face pressed between her breasts. She rained fevered kisses on his forehead and temples, and they swayed for a minute, wrapped up in each other for one breathless second. God, it felt right. There was something almost tender about being locked in his embrace, as though this was the way she might have greeted him when he came home, if he’d ever bothered to come home to her.

  It was an unspeakable relief to be back where she belonged.

  But then she remembered.

  So did he.

  He pulled free and pushed her back a step. His eyes glittering up at her as he ripped his arms out of his jacket and dropped it to the floor.

  “Take off your panties,” he said, going to work on his belt and zipper.

  She did, watching him watch her as she slid the black lace down her legs.

  He took a shaky breath and reached for his wallet in his back pocket. “Lie down.”

  She channeled her inner stripper for him, taking all the time in the world about maintaining eye contact as she knelt before him and slowly raised her skirt.

  He went very still, his avid gaze tracking every movement she made. Only when she’d bared herself to the air and his heated view did she lean back on her elbows, rest her head on the pillow and stretch out her legs.

  “You get off on this?” He nudged his underwear aside enough to grip his dick, giving himself a rough pump or two while making sure she got a good look at what she could hardly miss. He was huge. Long and thick. Ruddy, with a broad head like a delicious summer plum. He found a condom and worked it on, his movements choppy. “Making me crazy? You like that?�
��

  Her laughter was powered by malice, because yeah, dammit, you’d better believe she’d steal every opportunity she could to bring this man to his knees. When had he ever taken it easy on her? But she’d be lying to herself if she pretended the malice wasn’t mingled with joy. Not just excitement. Not just unleashed desire, or the pending sexual release of a woman who hadn’t been with a man in several long months. Joy. Because Daniel was back, he still wanted her as much as he had back when they were in college, and nothing else existed—nothing else had ever existed—when they were in bed together.

  “Nothing gets me hotter than making you crazy,” she said, her voice throaty. “I just didn’t think it would still be this easy.”

  His laugh was as humorless and bitter as hers was spiteful. “For you? Easy as breathing. Easy as looking at me with those eyes.”

  With that, he planted his hands on her hips and yanked her down until she was flat on her back, spreading her before him. His hands insulted her, roving up and down her legs as she wrapped them around his waist, kneading her thighs like a drunken masseur. It felt as though he wanted to reach through her skin and verify that every inch of her flesh—her muscles and ligaments; hell, even her bones, if he could access them—was still there and still felt the same.

  Much as she would have loved to take the haughty road and tell him he was way too rough and clearly didn’t know what to do with a woman’s body, that would have been as big a lie as the ones she’d told herself all these years. That she was getting over him. That she was happy with her life.

  The truth? All of it?

  Her body sang for him and rasped for everyone else.

  He could touch her any damn way he wanted as long as he never stopped.

  She reveled in his undiluted power and lack of finesse because they announced how out of control he was.

  And there was a great deal of comfort in knowing she wasn’t the only one who couldn’t rein it in tonight.

  He climbed on the bed, looming over her as he hooked an elbow beneath her knee and spread her wide.

  Yes. Finally—

  He hesitated, his attention snagged by the triangle between her legs. Telegraphing his intent with a heated look up the length of her body and into her eyes, he changed course and kissed her.

  There.

  A voluptuous lick. A nuzzle that had her moaning and her hips shifting restlessly.

  Then he was back, stretched out above her with that wild light in his eyes and his lips slick with her juices.

  “I missed this pussy,” he said gruffly. “You have no idea.”

  There was only one response to that.

  “Show me,” she said, rising to meet him.

  With a muttered curse, he entered her in one hard thrust that filled the room with her sharp cries. Anchoring him right where he was with her thighs clamped around his waist and her arms around his neck, she tried not to be so abandoned. Tried to remember they were in a semi-private place, with a wedding reception in full bloom down the hall, that someone could walk by the bride’s room and she therefore should not go full-on porn star just at the moment.

  But this was Daniel so deep inside her, exquisitely stretching her inner muscles the way only he could.

  This was Daniel’s tongue inside her mouth. Daniel’s tight ass flexing beneath her hands. Daniel branding her all over again, as she’d known he would the first second she saw him tonight.

  And she had a better chance of growing feathers out of her nostrils than she did of keeping quiet when he screwed her like this.

  “Daniel. Oh, God. Don’t stop. Don’t—”

  When other men—kind men, decent men—would have closed their eyes and given her a modicum of privacy while they owned her, Daniel’s gleaming brown eyes were everywhere, seeing everything. Every breathless gasp. Every tremble and mewl. Probably every thought (He’s back! He’s back!) inside her ridiculous head. There was nothing he didn’t notice and tuck away to use against her later.

  “You remember this?” he asked between licks, sucks and nips at her mouth.

  “Yes.”

  “You missed it, didn’t you?”

  She hesitated, distracted by her sluggish (but still present) self-protective instincts as much as by his relentless thrusting against her sweet spot.

  “Didn’t you?” he asked again, thrusting harder.

  “Yes.”

  “You fucked other men while I was gone?”

  This was the kind of information she had no problems sharing. Anything that would prick his enormous ego, if not his heart? She was so there.

  “Yes,” she said defiantly.

  His sweat-slicked features tightened. “You think that’s okay with me?”

  “You don’t get a vote,” she said with all the venom in her body.

  “You better believe I do.”

  With that, he stopped moving.

  Zoya, who’d been teetering on the brink of an orgasm that would blow the roof off this party way better than the music could, squirmed beneath him and tried not to throw a tantrum.

  “Don’t stop, Daniel.”

  “Don’t fuck with me.” He eased back just enough to get his hand between them. The next thing she knew, his thumb was pressed against the hard bud between her legs, keeping her just this side of insanity. “Are you with someone now?”

  Unadulterated rage swirled into the mix with her lust, making such a poisonous combination that she didn’t care how irrational she sounded.

  “It’s none of your business. You don’t own me, Daniel!”

  “I think I do.”

  That thumb began to circle.

  She faltered.

  “Don’t,” she said, but her hips were swiveling with him and her back arched involuntarily.

  “Zoya,” he purred, against her lips. “Don’t fight me. We both want you to come. Don’t fight.”

  “You don’t own me,” she said again, but her resistance, which had only been pitiful at best, was gone. As was her determination to set boundaries and refusal to be managed. He’d changed tactics. She knew that. If he couldn’t get an answer via a direct question, he’d just seduce it out of her. It was all as clear as the luscious lips on his face.

  She just didn’t have the will to fight him now.

  “This pussy belongs to me, though,” he said, killing her with those soft kisses and nuzzles. “Always has, always will. Right?”

  “No,” she whispered, but the pleasure was spiraling low inside her, tightening around the point he kept torturing with his thumb.

  “You think I don’t know when you’re lying to me?”

  There was the angry flash of those dark eyes, followed by the swift removal of his thumb.

  “Daniel…”

  He pumped his hips, and pumped hard.

  Zoya flew apart, coming just as loudly and violently as she’d feared. Her body jackknifed as the spasms overtook her, and the only thing that saved her from complete humiliation was the way his features crumpled into ecstasy as his body stiffened and he called her name.

  Over and over and over.

  It sounded like a prayer when he said it.

  It also sounded like a curse.

  She clung to the unrelenting strength of his body as she recovered and caught her breath, wishing this one moment out of time could last forever.

  Daniel was back. They could still do this to each other.

  But if he was back, so was her animosity, and there was plenty to spread around.

  Already her father’s voice was yakking away in her head (Be a good girl, Zoya. Do the right thing. You know what that is), which meant that she hated herself for being so susceptible to his charms.

  Daniel, she hated for reminding her that she hadn’t progressed one inch from that foolish girl-woman of fourteen years ago.

  Nothing ever changed, did it?

  Daniel was still the worst thing in the world for her and, by the way, he could still screw her into oblivion.

  “Let me go,�
�� she told him.

  While she had the pleasure of issuing the order, it was no real victory because he was already climbing off her and turning his shadowed face away.

  With his thrilling weight and body heat gone, it didn’t take long for the humiliation to swallow her whole. She stood as quickly as her jellied legs would allow, yanking the bottom half of her dress back into place and doing a fast search and retrieval of her panties.

  Daniel, meanwhile, kept his gaze lowered as he hitched up his pants, went to the bathroom and came back.

  He stood in front of her, a million miles away, with a face like granite.

  Still not looking at her, he started to say something.

  “We’re not doing this again,” she said quickly. “Nothing’s changed.”

  His features tightened even further.

  Granite with intent to kill.

  And then he shot her a pitying look.

  “Poor Kitten,” he said silkily. “You didn’t think I was going to propose again just because I want to fuck you every chance I get, did you?”

  While she was standing there, bleeding out from that verbal sword thrust to the center of her heart, Daniel did what he did best:

  Turned around and, without a backward glance, walked out on her.

  Chapter 6

  Daniel managed to avoid Sean until just before ten the next morning, at which point he ran into him in the gravel driveway of the Harper family house. One of those rambling white New England farmhouses with black shutters, the thing was surrounded by mature trees and sat at the end of its lane on a hill overlooking the river. Under normal circumstances following his first night back after so long (best he could recall, he’d snuck in and out of town for Christmas five or six years ago), Daniel might have taken a second or two to admire the fall colors, which ranged from vague yellow to violent red, or to soak in the crisp air and scent of wood smoke coming from one of the house’s many chimneys.

  But nothing about his return had been normal. Not his almost complete lack of sleep, or the way Sean currently eyeballed him as though Daniel had farted in a crowded elevator.

  In other words, Daniel didn’t have time for any damn scenery.