Out Run the Night

by Leah Ashton

“You know what’s an honour?” Beth said, finally finding the zip at the front and tugging downwards. “Getting to take this giant onesie off you.”

  Zip fully down, she pushed the navy-blue fabric downwards, revealing he was wearing only his T-shirt and boxer briefs beneath, his erection obvious beneath the cotton fabric.

  He bent down to slide off his boots, and then he stood in only his boxers and T-shirt before her.

  “These off too,” she said, pointing at his remaining clothing.

  She didn’t have to ask twice, and a moment later he was totally naked in front of her.

  “Much better,” she breathed. He reached for her, but she stepped away. “Nope,” she said. “Your turn to go first.”

  She reached out and gripped his cock with her hand, and he groaned. “Beth …”

  She smiled. Then she slid her hand up and down his length, learning his girth, then shaping her thumb over his tip, spreading the moisture that she found there before sliding her hand up and down again. And again.

  He reached for her, dragging his hand from her hip to her waist, but she moved away again, this time dropping to her knees in front of him.

  She looked up to find him watching her, his hands in fists at his sides, his eyes dark with need.

  She leant forward and tasted him, a simple lick and swirl of the tip of his cock as her hand gripped him at the base. He nudged against her lips, and she acquiesced, opening her mouth for him. She took him as deep as she could, laving the underside of his cock with her tongue as she sucked him.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d given a guy head, but it was the first time it had felt like this – more than just her giving him pleasure. She was getting something out of this too, as her mouth began to move up and down him, her other hand following the path of her mouth in unison. It turned her on how much he wanted this and how powerful she felt giving it to him. She may be on her knees, but the way he looked at her when she looked up at him, it was – it was like back in the desert, beside the lake. He looked at her with desire, and reverence, and respect.

  His hands slid into her hair, pulling out her pony tail so her hair fell down her back. He gripped her head as she moved, guiding her speed as he sighed and groaned.

  “Beth, Beth …”

  He pulled her mouth away and then reached for her hands so he could pull her to her feet.

  “I want to come inside you,” he said. “Please …”

  She nodded and stood on her tiptoes so she could kiss him.

  And damn, he kissed her back. None of the softness of before. This was almost brutal in its intensity and need. He kissed her with lips, tongue, teeth – it was overwhelmingly hot and sexy. Then, he was backing her towards the bed as he reached for her clothes, unsnapping her jeans and shoving them downwards, but only getting them halfway down when her knees hit the bed. He broke their kiss to take a step back and then to tug her jeans off all the way, her plain cotton knickers off a moment later.

  Then, it was his turn to kneel on the carpet.

  He placed a hand on each of her knees and held her gaze as he spread her legs wide apart, then hooked his hands behind her knees as he tugged her butt to the end of the bed, again murmuring all the praise she was becoming familiar with. How hot she was, how sexy.

  And every word when he said it, she believed. She didn’t feel shy, she didn’t feel awkward.

  In fact, as he put his mouth between her legs to lick her clit – she didn’t think she’d ever, ever felt this damn good.

  She fell back into the mattress as he licked and sucked and circled her clit, the muscles in her legs quivering against the powerful planes of his back as he took her to the brink of orgasm.

  But then, as she was raising her hips against his mouth, her body undulating beneath his touch, he moved his mouth away.

  “I’ll finish that later,” he murmured against her belly as he kissed his way up her body, shoving her T-shirt upwards as he went. “I’ll make you come a hundred different ways tonight, honey, but this first time, I’m being fucking selfish.”

  Honey. He hadn’t called her that since the bar, and somehow now it felt nostalgic. An echo of how they’d met and how far they’d come together.

  And of how much she was going to lose when he was gone.

  Suddenly her eyes prickled with tears, but she furiously blinked them away. She only had this night, and she was not going to spend it wallowing in regret. Tonight was the opposite of regret, it was about desire and indulgence, and everything else she had with this man.

  Damon had pushed her shirt all the way up to her armpits, but he didn’t bother removing her bra, and instead he put his mouth over the lacy cup and sucked on her nipple – hard. She gasped, coming up off the mattress in shock and with pleasure – any hint of tears forgotten.

  He did the same to the other breast as his other hand reached behind her to unclip her bra, and then it was finally off along with her T-shirt – and for the first time they were both totally naked together.

  He rested with his forearms on either side of her head, his big body looming over, his cock nudging against her belly.

  “I want you to come with me the first time tonight,” he said, holding her gaze.

  “Yes,” she said, “I want that too.” She hooked a leg around his hips and rubbed herself up against his hardness. “I want it now.”

  He kissed her again as she wrapped her other leg around his waist, opening herself up to him, feeling all hot and liquid but empty. She needed him inside her. Needed him desperately.

  He shifted, aligned their bodies and finally, finally – he pushed inside her. And she felt stretched and full and so, so good.

  “Damon,” she sighed, sliding her hands up his back and digging her nails into his shoulders. He began to move, and she moaned.

  It was different to the lake. This time there was no talk of fucking, and he was slower – there was no rush. She’d loved what they’d done in the desert, loved all of it, but she loved this just as much. She loved how close to him she felt, how intimate this was.

  Maybe he read her mind, because he lifted his head from where he’d been kissing her neck to meet her gaze.

  As he moved, as he slid in and out of her slowly, he held her gaze. He watched as she sighed, and moaned, and bit her lip. Then, as he reached down between their bodies and rubbed her clit, still slippery from his mouth, he watched as her moans grew louder, then louder still. He watched as tension pooled in her body, and as pleasure grew tighter and tighter. Until, with one last thrust, he pushed her over the edge and she exploded beneath his fingertips and around his cock as he came too – as they both came together.

  He stayed inside her for long moments afterwards, looking down at her. His gaze traced her eyes, nose, lips, and jaw – as if he was studying her. She did the same, gazing up at him, trying to remember everything about this man and about this moment, about how she felt.

  And she felt satisfied. Revered. Loved.

  Loved.

  Her heart twisted as she realised that couldn’t be true. His career made a relationship with him difficult, but – she knew – not impossible. If he loved her, if he truly wanted her in his life, he’d find a way.

  Damon Nyhuis would always find a way.

  But he wasn’t prepared to do that. She’d had to guilt him into being here tonight, and no matter how confident she was in his lust for her, if it was love he felt, she would never have had to fight so hard for this one last night together.

  He met her gaze again. She had no idea what she revealed in her eyes, but he immediately lifted himself from her body and murmured something about having a shower. Then he was gone.

  She watched him walk out of the room and blinked back more damn tears.

  Because she loved him.

  She’d found the love that life was too short to not experience.

  But Damon didn’t love her back.

  Chapter Fifteen

  When Beth joined Damon in the shower five minutes l
ater, what he’d seen in her gaze had gone.

  She smiled as she slid across the shower curtain and immediately stepped into the spray to give him a kiss. A casual, nothing-out-of-the-ordinary-just-happened, kiss.

  But the thing was, something had just happened.

  Sex with Beth in the desert had been unbelievable. Sex with her in a bed had been equally so.

  But what had changed was that it didn’t feel like just sex any more.

  She’d been right before at dinner when she’d told him she knew more about him than anyone else. He’d never told anyone about the car accident, or about what happened afterwards – yet he’d told her.

  At the time, he’d thought he was proving a point, proving her wrong – but now he wondered at his motives.

  What’s the point of us pretending that what happened over the past few days didn’t change us? Didn’t mean something?

  He heard Beth’s words in his head as he watched her wash herself, her back to him as she soaped her body.

  Was that what he’d been doing? Pretending his time with Beth hadn’t changed him?

  But then, how had he changed?

  Tomorrow he would go back to work at Elite SWAT HQ, and his life would carry on as normal. He was still the same man he’d been two days ago.

  Except, if that was the case, what had just happened between him and Beth in bed? Why did it feel like something more, something bigger than sex?

  Beth turned around, tipping her head back so that water sluiced through her hair. She met his gaze, and for a second – just a second – she looked at him just as she had minutes ago. Her gaze was raw, and vulnerable, and intense.

  He couldn’t read what she was thinking, he just knew that it was more, the same way that the sex they’d just had felt like more.

  Then she closed her eyes and turned her back to him again.

  His instinct was to step out of the shower. To dry himself off, then take Beth back to bed and ignore the confusion in his head. But to do that would be to do exactly as she’d said: pretend.

  So he didn’t get out of the shower. He didn’t get out of the shower, because he didn’t want to. He wanted to be with Beth. He wanted to feel the way she made him feel when they had sex, but also all the other times he was with her.

  She’d told him that when she was with him, she could believe she truly was magnificent. And he was glad, because that was true.

  But when he was with her, he could almost believe he was the man she was so determined to believe he was. That despite his flaws and his terrible past mistakes, that he was a good man.

  She turned around beneath the spray again, and smiled as she met his gaze.

  She was so beautiful. So smart, and strong, and perfect.

  He stepped out of the shower.

  He had no business feeling more with Beth. Imagining more. Because for all her pretty words, he knew the truth.

  He’d never be good enough for her. She deserved so much more.

  After their shower, they went back to bed.

  Beth had done her best to mask her emotions, but she didn’t think she’d done too good a job of it. It was just too big, and too painful to discover she could feel this way but know Damon didn’t feel it in return.

  In bed, they simply fell asleep. There was no discussion, nothing – except for Damon reaching out for her and pulling her tight against his body – her back to his front. And like that, they slept.

  She woke, hours later, to Damon kissing her neck, his hand flat on her belly. She turned her head so she could kiss his mouth, but moments later he had her on her back, and his mouth was between her legs, where he made good his promise to finish what he started.

  The next time they woke up he was still behind her, but this time his hand slid down between her legs, and then, still on her side, he made love to her from behind. Whispering hot words in her ear, his hands on her breasts and her clit as he leisurely made her come again.

  She went to the bathroom after that, dragging on her T-shirt and knickers and leaving Damon in bed. It was an old house, and the main bedroom didn’t have an ensuite, with the single bathroom down the end of the hallway.

  She went to the toilet, then washed her face and stared at herself in the mirror for a while, hoping – for what? – she didn’t really know. Maybe that she’d come to her senses, and stop wanting a man who was all wrong for her.

  Nothing had changed. He was still too young, and he didn’t want babies. As she’d known all the way back at that bar in Northbridge, he was all wrong for her.

  She tried saying it out loud to her reflection, a whisper she couldn’t make herself believe. “He’s all wrong for me.”

  She shook her head at herself. Nope. Made no difference.

  I’m in love with him.

  She didn’t say that out loud, but she didn’t have to. She knew it was true.

  She took a deep breath, and prepared herself to walk back to their room – when she heard something.

  It wasn’t much, and maybe it could’ve been dismissed as a branch brushing against the roof, or a neighbour’s cat – but there was no way she was taking that risk. She ran down the hallway to find Damon awake, in his boxers – his witness-protection provided phone to his ear, the glow from the screen the only light in the darkness.

  “You heard that too?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “If it was anything sinister, we would’ve been notified,” he said, trying to reassure her. But then he pulled the phone from his ear and threw it to the bed. “No service,” he said.

  “That makes no sense,” she whispered.

  Another noise. Down the hall – in the room where the witness protection officer would’ve been sleeping.

  Damon’s expression changed, and he opened the top drawer of the bedside table on his side of the bed and retrieved his firearm. She’d had no idea he’d brought it into her room, and she was intensely grateful. She’d had quite enough of only the bad guys having the guns – although, with any luck, she and Damon were simply jumping at shadows.

  But her gut told her they weren’t.

  “I need you to hide,” he said, in a tense whisper. “I’m going to check this out. Take your phone, and keep trying to call witness protection.”

  She did as he said, stepping into one of the wardrobe cupboards that lined one of the bedroom’s walls. But she left the door open, just a little, so she could see the bedroom door.

  She could see little else, although she’d left the bathroom light on in her haste, and that spilled enough light down the hallway for her to see Damon’s silhouette as he stood to the side of the bedroom doorway, his gun held straight in front of his body, pointed down the hall.

  There was another sound, closer this time.

  Then a shot. A single shot fired by Damon followed by a thud – then silence.

  Damon didn’t move. He kept his gun up ready to fire, as if waiting for a second threat.

  But a minute passed, then two, and eventually Damon lowered his gun. He swiftly crossed the room and retrieved a set of handcuffs from the belt from his overalls, his gun still in hand.

  “Stay here,” he said. “I need to make sure he was alone.”

  Beth nodded, even though she knew he couldn’t see her in the dark of the cupboard. He wasn’t waiting for a response anyway – he was in super spy mode – off to use his special set of skills once again.

  There was a sound – a muffled shot – a gun with a silencer?

  Beth was out of the wardrobe before she could think, because all her brain knew was that Damon’s gun didn’t have a silencer.

  Then another shot – Damon’s gun? – and a shout of pain.

  She ran to the door, then paused, trying to think. She couldn’t just run out there, unarmed and unprepared. She ran to his boots, although would he have a concealed knife if he was in uniform, not undercover? She had no idea. Her heart was beating in her ears as she searched.

  Please be okay, Damon, please, please, pl
ease …

  “Beth?”

  She leapt to her feet. “Damon!”

  She ran to him, running her hands over his chest, his arms, his back – searching for bullet wounds.

  He laughed. “I’m okay,” he said. “There’s a hole in the wall, not me.” He leant down and kissed her quickly. “I promise, I’m okay.”

  She nodded, her legs getting wobbly and her eyes misty.

  This couldn’t be happening again.

  “It is,” he said, and she realised she’d spoken aloud.

  “How?” she asked. “We should be safe here.”

  “We’re not,” he said. “Get dressed, quickly. We can’t stay here. Witness Protection will be here soon, as I can’t imagine whoever did this allowed for the surveillance system to be down for long, or our phone reception. The fact they broke in despite you having the bathroom light on tells me they had limited time.”

  She did as he said, pulling on jeans and sneakers. Damon put on his overalls.

  “Shouldn’t we stay here until Witness Protection arrive?” Beth asked. “Why go?”

  “Because Witness Protection has been compromised. No way the Notechi could have got in without the cameras being down. No way could the Notechi have known what room the Witness Protection Officer should’ve been sleeping in without inside information. They clearly didn’t know I was here, so maybe the officers on the ground aren’t involved – but we can’t risk it.”

  She picked up the phone she’d been given. “So, I leave this too?”

  “Yes,” he said. “We’re only talking to people I trust now. But first, we need to get away from here. Now.”

  She nodded. “Let’s go,” she said.

  Damon hurried out to the hallway, and she followed, watching as he searched through the pockets of the dead men. They lay only a few metres from each other, both dressed entirely in black, with black balaclavas covering their faces. He’d handcuffed them both, but they both looked very dead to her. She did wonder, briefly, at what point violent death started feeling normal to her?

  He found a set of car keys, then they headed for the back door. Outside, Damon had her wait as he checked if the way was clear before coming back for her, then together, they ran for the street. Damon pushed the ‘unlock’ button on the car keys to find the Notechi’s car – and a beep and a flash of lights on a black SUV told them where to run.