The sensations were too much already, and she couldn’t handle them. He laughed and just kissed and played harder, bringing her closer and closer to something, as his two fingers pushed all the way up inside her, swirling and driving her insane.
“You said you wanted to come,” he growled, reminding her of her choice.
“Oh, fuck,” she moaned, trying not to shake any harder.
His mouth felt amazing.
It felt incredible.
She was losing her mind.
“You like that?” he chuckled between licking her. “Damn, you have the sweetest pussy. I could do this all day.”
She tried to respond, but every time she opened her mouth, he fucked her harder and harder with his fingers, making her cry out his name again and again.
“Carrick, please,” she pleaded, not even knowing why. She just needed to get there—wherever that was.
“I like hearing my name on your lips,” he grinned as he slowed down the speed.
She was panting and hot, popping up onto her elbows to look down at him.
“Did I come?” she asked.
Then he laughed, blowing a line of air on her pussy. “Not yet. You’ll know.”
With that, he attacked her harder, faster—more intensely. He twirled and danced his fingers inside her, lapping up every drop that came out of her with his tongue and working her clit in the most exquisite way. Slowly, she felt something strange rising in her like a wave—like electricity or she had no idea what.
Then it started happening.
Her legs involuntarily started twitching and her back arched as something flowed through her veins, shooting massive amounts of pleasure from her head to her toes and back again. She couldn’t explain it. It made no sense. It was like nothing she’d ever experienced before.
It was a slow burn and lasted too long for her to keep her sanity.
And he is making it happen.
As she came, sending rushes of sweet orgasmic juice out of her all over his hands and the sheets, he grinned at her and licked his fingers, groaning like he was eating some delicious gourmet dessert. She closed her eyes as he finished, kissing her gently on her mound and down her thighs, then back up to her taut abdomen.
“Time to sleep, Dani,” he commanded, rising to stand, all business—like he was just going to leave her.
She shot out her hand and held on to his long, thick arm, gently urging him down onto the bed. He fell behind her and held her to his body, kissing her shoulders like a thousand promises.
Promises I want to believe.
Holding his arms against her chest, the last thing she was aware of feeling was the fresh bandage wrapped around his forearm from where the mountain lion had bitten him. The sacrifices he had made for her… The danger she’d put him in…
And she fell asleep with him to the distant sound of the ocean soothing her troubled mind.
Chapter Fifteen
Danica
Five years before
“Miss Petrova.” An older nurse in blue scrubs spoke to her.
Danica jumped out of her chair in the waiting area of LA General Hospital’s emergency room and stood face-to-face with the nurse, desperately trying to glean any information she could.
“Are Mama and Papa okay?” Danica asked quickly, stumbling over herself in the nurse’s wake.
The nurse exhaled slowly and ignored her question, instead asking, “Do you want someone to wait with you?”
“I just want to see my mama and papa!” Danica shook her head and begged the nurse. “Please!”
“We need to let the doctors do their jobs, dear,” the nurse replied calmly, obviously trying to assure her. “You need to stay here and wait. I’ll find someone to come sit with you.”
“Are they going to be okay?” Danica sobbed, falling back into the uncomfortable chair in the waiting room.
Why isn’t anyone telling me anything? Why are they leaving me in the dark?
The gray-haired nurse looked at her with sympathy in her eyes, but left without saying anything more, obviously unwilling to make false promises.
Danica vibrated in the chair where she sat, whipping out her crappy hand-me-down phone. No cell service. Hospitals were like bomb shelters.
Tears were falling from her face onto the floor when she heard the footsteps of a man walking toward her. Gazing upward, she rose before her uncle.
“Danica,” Petrov stood, snarling down at her, “they are dead. Now, come with me.”
Dead.
She sank back. “No.”
“Did you just say ‘no’?” His voice grew livid, his eyes wide and crazed. “You will do as I say. I am your father now.”
Danica shook her head again and again, feeling the burn of hot tears down her cheeks. She found the edge of the chair hitting the back of her legs, and she wished she could turn and run—to be anywhere but there.
“You will listen,” he spat, switching between English and Russian, “you insolent brat. Ne oslushaysya menya.”
Before anything could leave her lips, her uncle had raised his hand high in the air, ready to crash down on her, but then he backed down—as if realizing they were in a public space. In that moment, Danica could see the pain in his eyes. The loss. The hurt.
He wanted to hurt someone. He wanted someone to feel his pain.
It was something she understood.
Because she felt it, too.
Mertvykh.
Petrov stepped to the side and motioned fiercely for her to follow him.
“They are dead, but you are not. You will learn one thing very quickly. There are rules in this family,” he said, straightening himself. “If you want to survive, you will obey my rules.”
“No—I want nothing to do with you or your business,” Danica cried out. “That is how Papa died.”
Petrov shot her a threatening look. “You have no choice. You were born into this family. The only way out is…death.”
Danica’s vision went black, and she cupped her face in her hands as she sobbed. The last thing she heard was her uncle’s final threat.
Ne slushaysya menya, ty umresh odin.
Chapter Sixteen
Carrick
Present day
Carrick woke up too early. It was still dark out. Half of him wondered if he was in the bowels of a naval warship. He opened his burning eyes. They were dry and he was too tired to be awake. It was damn relieving to feel Danica’s soft, warm body beside him, breathing rhythmically. At least she was okay.
He fumbled for his phone on the side table, realizing it was barely five in the morning. Still, he damn well knew he wouldn’t be falling back to sleep. There was too much on his mind.
So, he moved off the bed—careful and calculated. The notifications blowing up his phone warned that he had far too much shit to do to lounge around crying over lost sleep. He made his way in silence down to the main floor to refresh himself, then into the office to start up his laptop. If the messages Delta had been sending him overnight said anything, it was that Carrick needed to read something as soon as fucking possible.
Carrick sank into his leather office chair, turning on the desk light. As he let his laptop boot up, he read the last message Delta had sent him just thirty minutes before. What the fuck is that guy always doing up all night? Something is going on with him.
Left something for you on your desk.
Carrick looked down at the folder in front of him, black and unmarked. It looked like something that had been smuggled. He curled his lips in distaste, wondering where the hell Delta was getting all the information from.
I have a strong guess.
He found the edges of the folder, opening it and revealing a printed-out report marked ‘highly sensitive’ from LAPD. Carrick nearly snapped the folder shut then and there, but he wouldn’t stop reading once he’d started.
A confidential source has come forth with information pertaining to the death of Ivan Petrov, the intelligence report read.
Carrick’s mouth dropped open as he read on, realizing that there was someone snitching from Petrov’s organization…to the cops. And it wasn’t a nice story.
Under the condition of anonymity, the source has disclosed that Kosta Petrov murdered his younger brother Ivan Petrov because Ivan disagreed on business matters with his older brother, threatening to leave the family business. No one can leave the family. The car accident was staged. Petrov has threatened family members with death if they disobey him. The report concluded, This source has intimate knowledge of Petrov’s organization but refuses to testify in open court due to fears of reprisal and his-her own personal safety.
Carrick took the report in his hand, trying to understand it all. It was no surprise that Petrov was the real culprit behind the deaths of Danica’s parents. The only question was, why was he trying to ruin Danica’s life?
As he leaned back in his chair, studying the report, he realized that the question he really needed to answer was—should he tell Danica or not?
They were making progress, and she was learning to trust him. It had been a rocky start, but he felt like they were working toward a position where she might start listening to him. That alone was reason enough to tell her the truth. He needed her trust.
I need her to fight.
But then again, there was something at the back of Carrick’s mind that gave him pause. What would this information do to her? Cause her more pain? Scare her into submission? And would these facts just send Danica down a spiral to rock bottom, knowing that her parents’ killer had gotten off without punishment?
There was a reason why LAPD hadn’t charged Petrov yet. Sure, there probably wasn’t enough evidence, but Carrick suspected that there was a darker one.
Grabbing his cell, he shot a text to Delta.
Awake?
Within seconds, Delta was calling him.
“Do you ever fucking sleep?” Carrick grunted into the phone.
“I’m a monster,” Delta replied, an amused tone in his tired voice. “You reading the report?”
“Yup. Got it right here.”
“Look…” Delta began, his voice lowering. “There’s a hit out on you and demands for anyone to bring her back to daddy. They’ve bought and paid for too many cops to count.”
“Fuck,” Carrick snapped, running his hand down the black folder with the intel report. “How much shit would we get into for having this information?”
Radio silence.
“Matteo,” Carrick urged, using his friend’s Christian name.
He heard a dog starting to bark in the background of the phone call.
“I’ve got to go,” Delta said quickly. “Lie low. I’m going to keep digging. You need to figure out how the fuck you’ll crawl out of this dumpster fire. Someone needs to deal with the girl.”
“I’ll deal with her.”
“I’m sure you will,” Delta replied a little too smartly before ending the call, driving Carrick’s ire through the roof.
The phone call left him with more questions than answers, but one thing was damn clear. This wasn’t going to be easy. Now, he had some serious decisions to make. What to do with Danica?
Carrick knew one thing about himself. He was a fighter. He was aggressive, dominant and didn’t take shit from anyone. And her? That wasn’t her. She was the opposite—and he knew it in his core. She had to be the one to stand up to her uncle. It was the only way.
He glanced again at the report in front of him. Her uncle had killed her parents. How much did she need to know? He played through the conversation in his head—imagining himself telling her the bad news, imagining her breaking down and crying, reliving all the pain of losing someone she loved. Carrick knew how that felt. And he knew he couldn’t do that to her, not when she was just starting to strengthen up. His job was to help her be strong—strong enough that she’d be able to fight for herself…
When I’m gone.
And that was why Carrick folded up the report, deciding to tuck it away somewhere secret, somewhere safe.
Chapter Seventeen
Danica
The early morning came, and beautiful sunshine washed across the sky. Danica opened her still-tired eyes enough for her to see tender waves on the deserted beach—quiet even for a Sunday morning.
But, behind her…cold sheets.
She was immediately awake. She’d survived the night, but she was alone.
Stretching under the bedclothes, she realized that her pussy still ached from what he’d done for her the night before, and her heart sang from how he’d cared for her, how he’d wanted to make her feel so damn good. More questions sprang to her mind. Would he regret it? Would things be different now?
She had no idea. All she knew was that the previous night had been something special altogether. Never before had she met a man like Carrick.
As Danica moved out of bed with renewed energy, she was curious as to where Carrick was. Timid and hesitant, she found herself, still in his white T-shirt, tiptoeing out of the third-floor bedroom and down the stairs onto the second floor. He wasn’t there either. Where is he?
As she snuck quietly toward the staircase leading down to the entry level, she finally overheard Carrick’s voice coming from the office. He was arguing with someone.
“I don’t give a shit,” Carrick growled, then there was a pause.
Danica could only assume he was on the phone, and she cranked her neck to hear better whatever was happening. Listening to his hoarse morning voice float up the stairs, she experienced chills running up her legs. He was just so damn sexy.
“I’m not afraid of him. He can threaten all he wants,” Carrick continued in a heated tone.
Threats. He was receiving threats. Danica gripped the wall, knowing what was going to come next.
Then she heard Carrick grumbling, “Get it to the lawyers. See if we have a legal problem here.”
There was a longer pause and Danica thought the phone call was finally over, until she heard Carrick say one last thing.
“Look… I’m just trying to help a runaway girl who can’t help herself,” Carrick explained. “This is charity, man.”
And Danica’s heart dropped.
That was charity?
That’s what she was? A charity case?
Every negative emotion crashed down on her as she collapsed backward, finding the doorframe of the bathroom behind her. Hearing Carrick moving around downstairs, she grabbed her black backpack that had been lying close by, jumped into the bathroom and locked the door. Tears once again found their way to her eyes, and she bit her lip so hard that it bled.
Turning to the shower, she flipped on the hottest water, ripped off his shirt and stepped in. She couldn’t afford to let him hear her sob. Her question had been answered. Things were certainly going to be very, very different from that point on, now that she knew the truth about why he was helping her.
But why did he kiss me? Why did he put me in his bed? It all seemed like a cruel joke.
After letting it all out, crying under the hot water, she pulled herself back together. After getting out of the shower and toweling off, she pulled on a yoga outfit from her backpack. She hadn’t packed much when she’d run from her apartment, but then again, she didn’t have much to begin with.
Ran from my apartment—Danica thought through the words again, hating how she was starting to feel about herself. A runaway girl. Helpless.
After brushing out her long, wet hair, she wiped a homemade aloe lotion on her face as a matter of habit. She stood back from the mirror and took one long look at herself. This whole misadventure was making her ask a lot of questions. Carrick was challenging everything she’d thought about herself.
Adjusting the tight purple athletic tank top, she exhaled. What type of woman am I? Am I the type to run and cry or the type to shine in the face of adversity? She didn’t know who she was anymore. Turning to leave the bathroom, she peeked out of the door. He hadn’t come upstairs yet.
Good. She didn’t want to see him. His brutal words were still fresh.
Danica reached to pull her clutch, sketchbook and pencils out of her black pack, taking them along with her as she made her way into the living area. Trying to take a breath and pushing down the anxiety that kept rising higher and higher, she took in the stunning ocean view. Carrick’s beachside home broke out onto the long, white sandy beach of Southern California. She still couldn’t get over how much this place would cost as she tiptoed toward the sliding door in the living room.
Maybe he really doesn’t own it? Maybe he doesn’t even live here?
Danica looked around and again found it odd that he had no TV, no personal mementos and no photos anywhere. It was like he’d rented a fully furnished home. Let the past be the past—the words from the housewarming gift on his bedside table rang through her mind.
What’s he hiding in his past?
Danica had no idea, but she knew she was going to have to face him soon enough, so she had to find her center again and stop feeling like a sobbing mess. She reached out and grabbed a pillow, placing it on the little white rug in front of the patio door. It was time to sit and breathe. Just before she did so, she cracked open the door, ending the deafening silence of the house. Seagulls singing and ocean waves crashing emanated through the space, resolving at least a few issues within her, as she could always count on nature to do for her.
She set her sketchbook in her lap and popped on her reading glasses. Looking out over the scenic view, she began sketching what she saw…what she felt. Even from a seated position, it was easy to observe the ocean because the balcony was framed in glass. She allowed her breath to find the deepest parts of her lungs and her soul as she sketched a bird dancing in and out of the ocean before her.
Cross-legged while holding the sketchbook, she inhaled deeply, mindful of how her breath came in through her nose and went all the way down into the back of her ribcage. Repeating this for a minute or two, she tried to clear her mind, focusing only on the bird. She let herself enjoy the ambient sounds outside. Her mind wrapped around the natural world before her, and she drank it all in.
Under Control Page 11
