by Jadyn Chase
His hand shot out. His fingers closed around my wrist. “Don’t go, Maya.” His words cut me. “Stay.”
The more time I spent in his presence, the more he exerted his authority with me. He used a more commanding tone of voice, and that hand on my wrist restrained me so I couldn’t leave.
That was ridiculous, though, wasn’t it? I was free to come and go. I was a modern, willful, intelligent, independent woman. I didn’t need a man telling me what to do.
I found myself falling into a well of submission with him. I never would have believed I could feel this way about anyone. I wanted to melt at his touch, at every biting order he gave me. I wanted to cave to his demands and do exactly what he said. How did this happen?
He leaned toward me and I experienced that spinning vertigo that hit me at the door. He was going to kiss me again and I wouldn’t get away this time. If I let him kiss me, I was his for the night—maybe forever.
His hand floated to my cheek, but he didn’t stop there. This time, he glided his fingers through my hair and scooped around the back of my neck. I expected him to kiss me, but he only held me there in that masterful grip.
I swayed in his power. His fierce stare punctured the veil of autonomy holding me apart from him. Whatever he was, he mastered me with his very touch, with his piercing glare.
He rocked me toward him for an instant and then away. He could move me wherever he wanted with that hold. My hand drifted to his arm, but I couldn’t break the seal binding me to him. I wilted into his sway and I couldn’t see any way to escape it.
His fiery eyes questioned me. Did I really want this? If I didn’t, I had only to say so and he would let me go. If I left now, I would never come back. He would never touch me like that or kiss me. He would never try to win me back. I would lose him forever. I would lose all of this, all the incredible torrential sensations of being near him.
At long last, he let go of me and straightened me up. His chiseled visage didn’t soften in the slightest. If anything, it hardened to an impenetrable helm of granite. He inclined his head toward his bedroom. That was all the command he needed to give me.
My vision blurred walking to his room. I obeyed a silent design ordained by Fate. He followed me. His intoxicating presence electrified my nerves. He owned me. He possessed me. He directed me with the slightest inflection of his eyebrow.
He came up behind me. My blood screamed in my ears, and my chest hurt trying to breathe, but I couldn’t move. I dwelt in the eye of a hurricane, and he was the hurricane.
He laid both giant hands on my shoulders and turned me around to face him. I couldn’t look. I couldn’t bear the sight of his face. The intensity threatened to shatter me into a million shards.
He didn’t try to kiss me. He pushed me back until my knees hit the bed. He exerted gentle pressure on my shoulders to sit me down. I fixed my gaze on a spot somewhere on the carpet to one side. That was all I could cope with at the moment.
He cupped my chin and raised my head to look at him. Everything he did compelled me to go along with this, but in my heart, I already agreed to it. Something connected me to him with indelible bonds. He wasn’t making me do anything. In a way, I already did it and I would keep on doing it.
He lifted my face and my eyes drifted to his smoldering features. There I sat, gazing up at him from below, and a crushing wave of soul-shattering emotion hit me like a ton of bricks. His chiseled torso rose above me in a solid wall of strained muscle. The streetlight shining through the window highlighted every curve in stark relief.
I gasped at the sight of my destiny laid bare before my eyes. I was his. I always had been, and I always would be. I couldn’t escape it. Circumstances would always draw me back to him.
I collapsed into a gravitational vortex that sucked my life away. This was where I belonged, bowed and humbled and filled to the brim with nothing but him. He encompassed my everything, my universe, my existence.
He could take my body. I could find release from the physical tension when he brought my body to climax, but I would never find any release from this insatiable hunger in my heart for him. I could long for him until death and never get any relief for that. I would just keep craving him and yearning for him forever.
He cradled my head in both hands and let me feast my eyes on his all-consuming face, but every passing moment only impressed on me more and more how utterly his I had become.
My soul quaked at the terrifying brutality of that ultimate confrontation. I couldn’t make up my mind whether to burst into tears or to drop dead from the agony or to explode in catastrophic climax then and there.
Did he know? Did he see it written all over my face? Did he see it branded on my brow like the mark of Cain?
He stroked my hair back from my cheeks and dragged his touch down my neck to my shirt. I shuddered in exquisite despair when he flicked the buttons apart one after another with excruciating slowness.
He draped the shirt over my shoulders and unhooked my bra. He proceeded to undress me with methodical businesslike determination.
He sank down on his knees to pull my jeans over my feet. I couldn’t bear that. He shouldn’t kneel to me. I was the one who ought to kneel before him. That was the way it should be. Only kneeling before him would make sense of these tempestuous emotions crashing through my being.
He laid my clothes aside. I sat naked on his bed for his inspection, but the procedure exposed my heart more than anything else. My whole soul bowed before him in utter capitulation.
His hands rested on my knees and his fingers dug into my thighs. His wicked eyes suggested so many things that I couldn’t comprehend them all. Scorching jets of heat licked my sex as he pried my legs apart.
He cracked me open and my juices immediately gushed. Christ, I needed him so bad! He made me so cravenly hungry for anything he could do to me. I needed him in me and on me and around me and on top of me in every possible way.
My thighs melted before his touch. I gasped for every breath. He crawled his fingers up my legs to the secret nest of lust smoking for him. He got halfway up my thighs and folded forward at the waist.
His ravenous mouth closed on my thigh and his teeth nicked me with a sharp spike of desire. I whined in delicious agony at that bite. My essence oozed and tingled against my petals, and I squirmed on the bed.
He nibbled up my leg, higher and closer to the steamy nest crying for his mouth. He pressed my thighs farther apart, and I leaned back on the bed to invite him in. Oh, if only he would sink his teeth into my swollen gash, I would die of ecstasy right here.
Before he got there, he passed one hand across my mound. His fingertips trailed through my wetness. I wanted to scream in ragged bliss, but the sound caught in my throat as he fingered down my hip to the blistering hole yawning wide to let him in.
In a second, his fingers plunged to the knuckle in foaming wetness. Holy Jesus, oh please, yes! I wanted him so bad. I wanted his hands and his mouth and his whole body in there stirring me to my limit.
I contorted on those penetrating digits. Volcanic lightning smashed me apart. I hovered there on the brink of insanity. Then the tsunami hit me and catapulted me into an orgasm from which I could never return.
The next thing I knew, he dove between my legs and his tongue burned my tender flesh. I seethed in torment on his fingers twisted through my insides, dripping pearls of golden syrup into his palm and quivering to my innermost anatomy on one cataclysmic surge following another.
I couldn’t bear the power of it all. I seized the back of his head and crammed him into me. I shoved my pelvis against his mouth in rapturous climax, but he didn’t seem to care.
He devoured my sex in greedy mouthfuls until I couldn’t take any more. I couldn’t survive these upheavals hurling me to the ends of the Earth. I had to get away, but I couldn’t. He hooked both arms around my thighs and hauled me into his face.
How long could this go on? All night? All year? All century? It couldn’t. I couldn’t. My rational mi
nd floundered for a way out, a getaway hatch to bring me back to the status quo I could understand.
The cosmic essence of my being wouldn’t let that happen. I rode the never-ending peaks and valleys of bliss without end. It would never end as long as I was with him.
He sat back, and his haunted, monstrous face glared at me from between my knees. My nectar stained his lips and chin. He never looked more ferocious than in that moment. I shook to my very core at the sight.
The next minute, I collapsed back on the bed, completely spent. I needed to regroup, to collect myself, to let all the shattered particles of my being reform into a person I could recognize.
My eyes drifted half-closed. The orgasmic tidal wave lapped through me in ceaseless eddies of delight and vacuous completion. I touched a lifetime of fulfillment in a few seconds. It would take me years to process what happened to me that night.
At that moment, Roman launched to his feet. He took hold of my hips and flipped me over on my stomach. What was he doing to me? He strapped his thick, muscular arms around my waist and yanked me upward to prop me on my knees.
No. I couldn’t. I couldn’t take anymore. I needed time to recuperate from that first brutal session. I climaxed more in a few minutes than I ever had in all the rest of my life combined. I couldn’t possibly do any more.
He didn’t seem to notice. He certainly didn’t hear that voice in my head saying I couldn’t. He towed me backward so my knees teetered on the edge of the mattress. Something hard touched my slit.
The next instant, a rocket went off inside me and blasted me into outer space. I couldn’t, and yet I did. His powerful shaft slotted into my channel, and the atoms that made up what was left of my human form exploded in a supernova of heat and power.
He took hold of my hips and plunged to my very center, but I was already too far gone. My head spun out of control on a dizzying trajectory of devastating eruptions. Nothing made sense anymore beyond the dazzling ruthless truth laid bare before my staring eyes.
The room became a thin veneer of illusion hiding the ultimate reality. Why didn’t I see it before when it was always there before my eyes? I needed Roman to rip that veil aside and make me see the world as it really was.
He hammered into me with every inch of his rigid shaft. My juices poured down his nuts and spattered my thighs. This was the only truth, the only life. Never let it end. Never release me. Never let me go back to the hollow dream I lived before. This new world offered too much love and joy and pleasure ever to let it go.
14
Roman
Anna snatched the paper sack of peanuts out of Maya’s hand and bolted away. “Come on, Maya! I’ll race you to the Monkey House.”
In a second, she vanished around the corner beyond the orangutan enclosure. Maya sighed. “I guess I better go after her. She might get lost in here.”
I slipped my arm around her waist. “Not yet. Let her explore a little first. It will take her hours to get rid of all those peanuts.”
I kissed her and felt that luscious melting sensation when her body softened against me. Fuck, she made me want her so bad! I could take her right here on the sidewalk, but I had to satisfy myself with kissing her.
Her bottomless green eyes floated before my sight. A stray wisp of her hair fell against my nose and I pushed it behind her ear. Her tongue magically slithered into my mouth, and I felt my prick stiffen in my pants. Would it always be like this? Would I ever get used to the shivering feeling when I touched her?
“We should stop by your apartment on the way home,” I whispered. “You probably want to pick up some stuff before you spend another night with me.”
She dropped her eyes, but she didn’t pull away. She sheltered in my arms. “I shouldn’t. I have to work tomorrow.”
“So what?” I asked. “You can go to work in the morning the way you usually do, especially if you have everything you need. What do you need—your scrubs?”
“No. I change into them at work.”
“So what’s the problem?” I jerked back a little to get a better look at her face. “You’re not going cold on me again, are you?”
“It’s not that.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. I didn’t like where this was going. “I need to sleep and we both know I won’t if I stay at your place. We’ll stay up all night the way we did last night.”
“We can sleep,” I told her. “There’s nothing stopping us. You just tell me when you’re ready to sleep, and we’ll both roll over and that will be that.”
She snorted. “You know it won’t happen like that. We both know it won’t.”
“What are you suggesting?” I pretended not to know what she meant.
She glanced around the zoo at nothing, but she didn’t answer.
“All right,” I murmured back. “Can you blame me if I can’t keep my hands off you?”
“I wish I could stay over,” she replied. “I really do.”
“Well, we have to do it sometime. We have to get used to sleeping and not doing it all the time.”
A cloud darkened her features. “What do you mean?”
“I mean if you’re going to move in with me, we better get some practice sleeping together—I mean really sleeping, not screwing around. If you have to work, you need to sleep. I understand that. I won’t bother you. We’ll need to exercise some self-control and we can do that now as well as later.”
She gaped at me with her mouth open. “Move in together? Are you serious?”
“Why not? I told you that’s what I wanted. I told you if you hung around with me that’s where we would go with this. Why are you acting so surprised now?”
“I thought you meant eventually,” she exclaimed. “I didn’t know you meant now—like, today.”
“What’s wrong with today? We’re going to do it eventually, so why wait?”
She looked around again. I hate to say she looked scared, but she sure did. She looked like I asked her to amputate a finger or something awful like that. “Don’t you want to discuss it with Anna first?”
“She loves you. You know that. She would jump at the chance to get you to move in.”
She shook her head for no particular reason, but I sensed a wall of resistance rising to block her off from me. I took her by surprise with that suggestion and now she was running for the hills, so I let it drop.
I leaned back and took her hand. “Come on. Let’s catch up with Anna.”
We sauntered around the corner. As I expected, we discovered Anna parked in front of the Monkey House tossing peanuts through the bars. The monkeys howled and shrieked and swung from branch to branch in a frenzy. They dove and fought for every peanut.
Maya and I watched from behind her, but neither of us joined in the entertainment. After the catastrophe of getting together with Maya, I learned my lesson not to push her. She had to arrive at these transitions in her own way. If she wasn’t ready to move in with me tonight, she would get used to the idea and do it later. Fate brought us together. Nothing could convince me otherwise.
Anna finished her bag of peanuts. Her shoulders sagged when she gazed into the now-empty bag. All the staring in the world wouldn’t put more peanuts in there. I moved in and touched her. “Come on, sweetie. Let’s go sit down on the lawn over there and have a picnic. I’ll get us some burgers and Cokes. That will pick you up.”
She didn’t say anything and she didn’t look at me. She let Maya take her hand and lead her onto the grass. The two of them settled themselves near some trees. Maya nodded to me and I hurried away to the hotdog stand to get something to eat.
I dug my wallet out of my pocket while I waited my turn in line. I scanned the menu and made up my mind what to order when someone bumped me from behind. I whipped around to confront the person and came face to face with Carlos.
The instant I saw him, I faced front. He wouldn’t show up here unannounced during my family time if the situation wasn’t critical.
He murmured into my ear. “The Longtails invaded
an hour ago. They attacked the house on Guerrera Street and killed ten people. They planted explosives around the gas cylinder and blew it to matchsticks.”
I stiffened, but when the guy in front of me paid his bill and left, I strode forward to order. I called up to the guy flipping burgers. “Three cheeseburgers, three large fries, and three large Cokes.”
I waited until he turned away. Carlos leaned in again. “We found the ten bodies. Zander and Rico got hit. The rest were familia, but we couldn’t find Rita.”
This time, I spun around to stare at him. “Kane’s wife?”
He nodded. “She’s missing and unaccounted for. She was there with the two kids—both dead—but she’s gone. No body, no nothing.”
“You think the Longtails took her?” I didn’t even want to think about that.
“Logan and the other scouts are out searching for her, but they could have taken her into their territory by now. We couldn’t find her there without mounting a full-scale counterassault.”
The burger guy came back to the counter. I gave Carlos a clipped shake of my head to silence him. “Ten-fifty,” the burger guy told me.
I paid him and took the food. Carlos shadowed me away from the stand. I halted a few paces away and fixed him with a hard glare. “I don’t want to hear any more about this right now. I’ll take Maya and Anna back to the house. I’ll meet you at the warehouse in half an hour. Bring all your intel there and give me a full report.”
His eyes darted sideways toward the field. “What do you plan to do about her?”
I followed his gaze to where Maya and Anna sat talking under the shady trees. “You leave her to me. I’ll handle it.”
“You know what I told you about her,” he warned.
I wheeled around to spit in his face. “You do your job and let me do mine. Now get the fuck out of here.”
I whirled on my heel to march away from him. I didn’t need him nagging me about Maya at a time like this. I had to get these two back to the house in a hurry without them catching wind what was afoot.
