Primal Bargains

by Raleigh Davis

  He rumbles deep in his chest, and it vibrates through my aching pussy. “You want to be ravished.” One thick finger hooks in the waistband of my panties. “Don’t you? Come on, admit it.”

  “If you want a confession, you’ll have to earn it.”

  Heat flares in his gaze, and then there’s a massive ripping sound. Cool air ruffles the curls between my legs, licks over my damp, hot pussy lips.

  Thank God I got my bra to safety.

  “Never, ever dare me.” The dark warning has me widening my eyes. And then he lowers his head between my legs and I realize he’s deadly, fucking serious.

  I’ve never had oral sex like this before. The nice guys were okay, enough to get me off, but they’d either be too hesitant, like they didn’t really enjoy it, or too sloppy, like pretending they really, really liked it would help.

  Gideon is a fucking master. Precise, controlled, but with a hungry edge that says he enjoys it. Loves it. It’s his reason for being. He’s a genius sculptor of orgasms, and he’s chiseling a work of art out of me with each sweep of his tongue.

  The buildup starts deep within, nestled at the base of my spine, then radiates out in a gush of release that shakes the roots of my hair. My climax is so beautiful it should hang in the Louvre.

  Once my body comes back down to earth, I pop open my eyes. Things are still blurry. “Wow.” I blink away the last of the fuzziness. “Wow.”

  “You’re not finished yet.”

  I gasp as he climbs up my body, the fabric of his pants scraping my sensitized inner thighs. He kisses me deep and fierce, pulling me up off the bed and into him. My nipples are pressed hard into his chest, and my pulse starts to race. Again.

  “The noises you made when you came…” He buries his face into my neck, nips at the soft skin. “I can’t even…”

  It sounds like he wants to punish me for being so hot. He rocks his erection into my belly, thick and hard as steel. I can guess exactly what he wants to punish me with. My pussy clenches at the thought of being filled by him.

  “It was so good.” I start to pull at his shirt, desperate to have it off. To have him inside me. “Better than anything before.”

  Triumph flares in his expression, and then he gets to work helping me tear off his clothes. When the last of them come off, I catch myself at the sight.

  Ace bandages are wound around his ribs. The splints on his fingers gleam cruelly in the low light. And the new cuts on his arm, the ones I cleaned out only two days ago, are covered in stark white bandages.

  He’s battered, my beast. But no less fierce because of his wounds.

  “I swear to God,” he mutters, “if you ask if I feel up to this…”

  I glance down at his cock, rising proud and demanding from the nest of hair. “No, I’d say you’re very up.” I look into his eyes. “I was going to ask if I should be on top.”

  “Hell yes,” he grits out. With his good hand, he helps me straddle him. I reach down to steady myself, avoiding the bandages. I don’t want to break his ribs all over again.

  He looks up at me. “Jesus, your breasts from this angle. God shouldn’t have made such perfect breasts. It’s a crime that I can’t be touching them all the damn time.” He thrusts his hips up, making my chest bounce. “Oh God. So fucking gorgeous. You’ve got all this hidden under those ugly-ass clothes.”

  “Hey.” I push gently. “Those work clothes are functional. I need those.”

  He reaches up and tweaks one of my nipples. “No, it’s good. You’ll be in those shitty cargo pants and that erection-killing polo shirt, but I’ll know that hiding beneath is all this. I’ll know.”

  He would. His eyes would run over me and strip off all those clothes, revealing the nakedness beneath. And he’d do it every time he looked at me.

  My clit pulses at the idea. I’m going to be trying to work from now on, and he’ll be looking at me, and my clit will be going crazy.

  “Condom.” I look around wildly as if one will magically appear.

  “Top drawer.”

  We reach together for it, but I get there first. I roll it on with quick motions, because I’m shaking inside I’m so ready. His cock is insistent, so hard I imagine he’s shaking with need too.

  With one thrust, he’s in me. So deep. He doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t take his time, just pumps into me. All beast-like.

  He reaches between us, circles my clit. He’s panting, but his touch is gentle, like he remembers that things get sensitive and tingly after an orgasm. “What do you need? Because you’re coming again, all over my cock this time. Tell me how to get you there.”

  “Like that.” I shift, helping his fingers find just the right spot. “Quicker. Firmer. Unghhh…”

  I get lost in the rising wave of pleasure. Gideon pumps into me, his fingers working magic.

  “So beautiful,” he chants. “So gorgeous. Like a fucking goddess.”

  My pussy starts to clamp around his cock. The climax is coming on harder, faster than the last. And it’s going to be so much better than the first one, if that’s possible.

  “That’s right.” He’s working at me now, with fingers and cock. “Come so good, baby. You come so sweet.”

  Jesus. I orgasm with my entire body. Like even my toenails are overwhelmed with a tide of pleasure.

  Gideon grunts, and then he’s coming too. At last we’re collapsing together into a sweaty, limp tangle of limbs.

  I feel like I’ll never catch my breath again. I don’t want to, not if it means letting go of this feeling.

  He wraps his arms around me. I can feel the splint on his fingers pressing into my back. We breathe together for long moments.

  “How are your fingers? And ribs?” I ask after a while.

  “Fine. You’re the best kind of painkiller.”

  I smile into his skin. “Good. I don’t want to have to move.”

  “You’re not.” His arms tighten around me. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  Chapter 23

  I never knew the morning after could be so… nice.

  I’ve had nice mornings after before, with all the nice guys I’ve dated. But a morning after with a total beast of a man who turned me inside out sexually is another kind of good. Like I was at level-five nice before, but this is level eleven.

  My body is pleasantly overstretched, my limbs still limp with remembered release. My hair is snarled around my face, and I’m totally naked. I must look like the best kind of mess.

  Gideon is yawning like a lion next to me, all soft and sleepy. Well, his face is. The cock pressing into my leg is half-hard. His cock is coming awake faster than he is.

  But he doesn’t grab me right away. Instead, he smiles. It’s like a slug to my heart because it’s so… happy.

  “Hey.” I can’t help smiling back even though sleeping with him was not the best idea. It’s too late to go back now though. “Morning.”

  “Morning,” he mumbles back, still smiling, still sleepy. God, he should not be this adorable first thing in the morning. It should be illegal how he looks right now.

  I have to get up, get moving, get back to work. I have to finish this job he’s hired me for. And then… I’ll leave.

  My throat closes. I’ll have to leave then, but I can stay now. So I do.

  “What are you up to today?” I’m impressed with how casual I keep that.

  “Going into the office. It’ll be fine,” he says when my eyes widen. “I’m leaving Rustem here, and he’s not to leave your side. And Gage is sending out a team this morning.”

  Rustem’s going to love that. I can already see him scowling down at me all day. “I was thinking about you, not myself.”

  “You should be thinking about yourself.” His voice deepens. “But I’ll do some of it for you. I have to go in though. The place is going to fall apart without me.”

  “You have to go crack the whip?”

  He nods.

  I shake my head. “You pretend to be cranky and crabby, but Raven told
me last night how you helped that man in your R&D division when his wife got sick. A nurse on call twenty-four seven, a nanny for the kids, and a driver.”

  “I never said that was me.” His mouth flattens.

  “Who else would it have been? You try to hide your kindness, but it won’t work. People see it.”

  He makes a scoffing noise in the back of his throat. “More rumors. You can’t prove anything.”

  Maybe not, but Raven had other stories like that one. Employees and their families at Wolfe Medical Industries getting special perks from anonymous sources. One employee getting an all-expenses-paid trip back to Iran to see his dying grandmother. Another employee having his kid’s traveling soccer team entirely funded until the kid turned eighteen.

  And then there’s Rustem, saved from a dictator’s wrath.

  “How did you meet Rustem?” I can’t imagine Gideon just ran into him on the streets of Ashgabat one day.

  “I’m really into MMA,” he says. “Just like you guessed. There’re a lot of great MMA fighters who are Turkmen. Rustem was training some of them in grappling techniques based on his wrestling training. They raved about him, so one day I went to meet him.”

  “Was this before or after the infamous dictator incident?”

  Gideon chuckles. “So he told you about that. It was before. We kept in touch, and when the dictator tossed him in jail—”

  “Wait.” I sit up suddenly. “He was in jail?”

  “Yep. Gage and I had to get a team together to bust him out.”

  My mouth goes slack. “You broke Rustem out of a foreign jail?”

  “It wasn’t foreign to him,” Gideon points out. “But yeah. We had to get his mom out of the country too.” There’s a sadness to his tone. Like he regrets it.

  “They can never go back, can they?” I ask.

  “No.” His tone is stark. “But it’s better than being locked up, I guess.”

  “Is that why you trust him when you couldn’t trust anyone else?”

  Gideon twists a lock of my hair around his finger. I’ve never been a girl with the kind of hair that’s good for that. It’s too straight and limp and brown. But Gideon makes me feel like that girl. All sexy and seductive and gorgeous even though I’ve got sleep creases on my arm and God knows what else I can’t see.

  He releases my hair, then twines it up again as if he just can’t help himself. Or he’s avoiding my question.

  “You and Rustem?” I prompt.

  He releases a long, almost regretful breath. “Rustem feels like he owes me a life debt. I don’t feel that way, but he does. When a man like Rustem feels that way… he means it. So.” Gideon shrugs like he doesn’t deserve that kind of loyalty.

  Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe no one does, but he also helped Rustem escape, which is something most people wouldn’t have done. Maybe loyalty can’t be measured like a ledger book—I owe you, you owe me—but it’s more like a web, catching each of them deeper with every good deed.

  “You don’t think you have that kind of bond with the rest of them?” I ask. “It certainly sounded like you’d done a lot for each other.”

  I sense a dark mood come over him, stiffening his body under mine. “It’s complicated.” There’s a wealth of emotion in his tone, not all of it bad.

  “Hmm.” I walk my fingers up his torso, avoiding his bandaged ribs. “If you want to talk about it, I’m here.”

  So I hadn’t been imagining some undercurrent running through their interactions last night. Something’s going on, beyond the attempted theft. I wonder if it has anything to do with losing Ira.

  But I won’t pry. When he’s ready to come to me and tell me, he will. I can let him stay in the shadows on this a while longer.

  “I know.” He captures my hand, presses it flat against his heart. “But you don’t have to worry about it. You don’t have to worry about anything, not anymore.”

  I wrap myself around him, trying to give him some comfort with the force of myself. “Now who’s trying to be responsible for everyone?”

  His chest rises and falls under my cheek. His skin is almost hot, as if too much burns inside him. He runs his hands down my back. “Thanks for going with me last night.”

  I recognize that he’s not trying to change the subject—he’s appreciating that I feel responsible for him. And if I’m reading him correctly, he feels responsible for me too.

  “It was great,” I say. “I got to hear all about Young Gideon, before he became… you.”

  His expression goes a touch smug. “I was always this impressive.” He shifts, and I fall a little more into the crook of him. “What did you want to be growing up?”

  The blush comes on me so hard my ears buzz. It’s such a stupid, silly thing, not even an ambition really. “I wanted… All I wanted was to be happy. And for my family to feel safe. All the other kids would write down being president or a football star or a princess, and I felt so dumb when that was the only thing I could think of.” I clear my throat so he doesn’t think I’m about to cry. “Anyway, I’d usually say a superhero or something even though it wasn’t true.”

  “You said you were doing this job for the money.” His hand runs slow and calming down my back. “Why did your parents have the second mortgage? And all those legal bills?”

  I lean into his touch. “We never had a ton of money. I don’t know, my family just never seemed to be able to get ahead. There were always the debts to worry about, and any unexpected stuff could send my mom into a tailspin, but somehow we always made it through. I think—although I don’t know for sure and never asked—that my aunt helped out a lot. Until Nick came along and even my aunt’s patience and money ran out.”

  Nick. What a goddamn useless jerkwad. And still a huge problem for my sister and my family. Gideon’s made the debts disappear, but sadly he can’t do that for Nick. Nick’s eventually going to cause more trouble and cost more money. But this time I’ll have my bonus from this job.

  “Who’s Nick?”

  I raise my head. “You didn’t snoop into that? You found the mortgages and paid those but didn’t find Nick?”

  He looks exasperated. “Financial shit is easy. People take more time, and I did it all in a few hours.” He runs his thumb over my lower lip. “So who is he?”

  Am I imagining the jealousy in his voice? Possibly. But there’s something lurking there.

  “Nick’s my sister’s ex-husband, former business partner, and the father of my niece and nephew. Whenever he gets pissed about anything, he likes to take my sister to court. For all kinds of things.”

  “You don’t sound as angry as I’d expect.”

  “I’m more tired than anything. It’s like… It’s like the hurt he caused is more like a bruise now. It still aches, it still needs to heal, but it’s not acute.”

  He shifts as if he’s the one feeling angry suddenly. “So that’s what the second mortgage was for: legal fees.”

  “Yep. Nick has the money and the time to set up frivolous lawsuits, and he knows we don’t. So that’s what he does to hurt her.”

  Gideon is silent for a long time. I wonder what he’s thinking about, but his hand is tracing the line of my spine, lulling me into drowsiness.

  “Anyway,” I mumble, “the debt stuff is taken care of. Thanks to you.”

  “Yeah.” His voice rumbles out of his chest. “Don’t worry about it. And let’s make you some breakfast.”

  Chapter 24

  I’m feeling kind of dreamy, which isn’t the best mental state to be in when assembling electronics. But I can’t help it after last night. The real world is too mundane to stay in, especially when I’ve got fantasies of Gideon to get lost in.

  Which means when my phone rings, I jump like I’ve been zapped. Hell, I completely forgot I even had a phone. It’s probably Victoria, giving me an update on the parts I sent her out for.

  Except the caller ID says it’s my mom. Oh crap. I totally forgot about Gideon paying off both the mortgages yesterday. She m
ust have gotten some paperwork and is freaking out.

  “Mom, everything’s okay,” I say when I answer.

  “What is going on? There’s all this new stuff on the mortgages, and it says they’re paid off. I have no idea what it means.” She’s almost in tears.

  God, I’m a shitty daughter. I should have called last night. Except there’s the problem of exactly how I’m going to explain this. Gideon paid off the mortgage before we slept together, but it isn’t going to sound great no matter how I spin it. Especially not to someone as prone to worry as my mom.

  I could try the truth. Somehow I don’t want to lie about anything involving Gideon. I want it all out there, no matter what others might think of it.

  “You remember that client I’m working for?”

  “The tech billionaire?” Mom’s tone crackles with suspicion. “He’s involved with this? Oh God, you took a loan from him. He’s going to charge terrible interest.” There’s a beat of chilled silence. “Wait, you’re already staying there. Oh God, oh God, oh—”

  “Mom.” I don’t wait for her to catch her breath. “I’m not doing anything in exchange for paying off the mortgage. I swear to God, I’m not selling my body.”

  She makes a small noise. “Can you just start from the beginning?”

  “Sure.” I rub my hand on my thigh and inhale. “Look, Gideon Wolfe is just a… a good guy to his employees. I mentioned I needed this job really badly, and he went and found out about the mortgages and took care of them all on his own. It’ll come out of my bonus. He does stuff like that all the time for his employees.”

  Like saving Rustem and his mom from a dictator, retrofitting a family’s home when their grandfather came to live with them so that it was wheelchair accessible, and a dozen other stories like those that Raven told me last night. She was determined to paint Gideon in the best light, and it turns out she had an awful lot of paint to work with.

  “That doesn’t make any sense.” Mom’s voice is hard. “He wants something. He’s a billionaire. Men like him don’t get rich by being nice.”