Without Restraint

by Angela Knight

  Alex wasn’t far ahead now, moving just short of a run as if sensing he was right behind her, would have her in minutes. He could almost feel her blend of eagerness and that delicious feminine wariness. Not true fear—she had to know he’d cut his arm off before he’d actually hurt her. But the thought of her erotic dread stoked his lust to a crackling blaze.

  She wouldn’t make it easy for him. He couldn’t wait.

  * * *

  Alex could almost feel Frank on her heels, those pale eyes savage in their mask of paint. She thought she heard the tread of a combat boot, the passage of a big body through the brush, but she wasn’t sure. She’d known plenty of hunters, but never anyone who moved with such deadly stealth.

  A man who’d done his killing in a desert had no business being so fucking quiet in an environment where every tree, bush, and dead leaf could give him away. Yet Frank might as well have been a panther. His silence had the effect of winding her up like a watch spring, tighter and tighter with the anticipation of his sudden male rush.

  There. The crunch of dried leaves under a man’s weight. She pivoted toward the sound, tensing, waiting to see him come for her. Waiting. Annnnnd . . .

  Nothing.

  Swallowing a sigh of disappointment, she turned.

  He towered over her, broad as a wall, his gray eyes patient and primal, staring from asymmetrical slashes of black and green.

  Alex froze, staring up at him, her heart vaulting into her throat. One tick of her mental stopwatch. Two.

  She turned to sprint away—one tick too late. He hit her, twisting as he took her down so she fell on him rather than the other way around. Alex attacked as they landed, ramming an elbow into the underside of his jaw. His teeth snapped together with the force of the impact as she jerked free, rolled upright. She was faster than he was, more agile. If she could get any lead at all . . .

  A hand fisted in her waistband and jerked her right off her feet. She slammed into his body on her back, and his arms and legs snapped around her like a bear trap, unyielding as steel.

  He chuckled in her ear. “Now what are you going to do?”

  “Well, I’m sure as fuck not giving up.” Though she wanted to. She really, really wanted to, especially with that tempting erection nudging her ass. Digging an elbow into his gut, she threw herself to the side, levering herself out of his grip and popping to her feet. Almost escaping.

  Almost.

  Dead leaves crunched and crackled in an explosion of moment. An arm swept around Alex from behind, hooking her shoulder as a leg curled between her thighs, jerking one of them out from under her. Frank’s weight came down on her like the wrath of God, crushing her facedown on the leafy ground. Inhaling, she got a breath of mold and loam and hungry male. And heard him chuckle, deliciously menacing.

  “Dammit!” She clawed at the ground but failed to get any purchase at all. He immobilized both her legs by coiling his own around them. Long fingers encircled her wrist, jerked it behind her back and up toward her shoulder blade, sending pain blasting up the bone like a lightning strike. She turned her head and went for his biceps with her teeth, only to have him drag the wrist higher. A yelp tore from her lips despite her best intentions.

  “Now,” he rumbled in her ear, “don’t you think you’d better give up?”

  Oh, God, yes. Especially considering his hard, intoxicating masculinity. And that cock . . . She went limp. “All right, all right—you win!”

  Frank laughed. “Do I look like that big a sucker?” His tone hardened. “Give me your other hand.”

  Dammit. Alex writhed—rubbing herself against that maddening dick while she was at it. He still didn’t release the white-hot pressure on her captured arm. She knew he wouldn’t actually break it, but he obviously wasn’t in the mood for mercy either. “Give it up, Alex,” he growled. “I want that hand.”

  She spat a curse and twisted her free arm back to let him capture it. Sheepskin encircled her wrists, accompanied a moment later by the ring of the buckle and sharp tugs as he bound them, the chain between the two cuffs rattling. He stood and helped her to her feet. Before she could thank him for his chivalry, he spun her to face him, then reached for the snap of her pants. Gray eyes narrowed in a mask of cami paint, he stared down into her face as he unzipped her and caught her waistband. She couldn’t seem to tear her gaze away as he bent to pull the pants down to her mid-thighs. Cool morning air caressed her bare ass; she hadn’t worn underwear.

  Alex licked her lips. Was he going to fuck her now? Here, in the leaves, where anybody could happen by . . .

  Frank straightened and picked her up as easily as she’d have lifted her cat, then swung her across one shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Frustrated hunger drove her to try to knee him in the jaw despite the encumbering pants that bound her thighs.

  “Alex,” Frank growled, low and rumbling. Her nipples tightened. “I’ve caught you. Now, what are you?”

  Stubbornly, she refused to answer. A broad palm came down on her naked rump in a swat hard enough to make her yelp. “Answer me, sub!”

  “Yours! I’m yours, you son of a bitch.”

  “Is that what you call me?” Another swat, even harder.

  “Master! I’m yours, Master!” God, she loved his snarls.

  “And don’t you fucking forget it.” He started through the woods, carrying her like Tarzan making off with Jane. If anybody came along, they’d see her bare ass, the plump swell of her pussy lips . . . Oh, God, the thought made her even hotter.

  To distract herself from the clawing need rising in her belly, she asked, “Where are we going?”

  Another swat. “You’ll find out—eventually.”

  Dangling head down over Frank’s broad shoulder, Alex felt her arousal grow, thickening like sugar water coming to a boil. “How the hell do you do this to me?”

  “Do what?”

  There was that growl again. “Make me so damned hot, even when you’re beating my ass and generally being a dominant asshole.”

  He laughed, low and rough. “We want what we want. Pussies aren’t politically correct.” His palm hit her ass again. “God knows dicks aren’t.”

  She kicked at the sting, but couldn’t get any force with her pants down around her thighs, binding her as effectively as the leather cuffs around her wrists. “What the hell was that for?”

  “My amusement. Just like this.” His palm slid over her burning ass, a finger sliding between the petals of her pussy. With a growl in satisfaction at the cream he found there, he sent a second finger to join the first. His hand pumped in a delicious sliding friction that made her groan in raw need. “Jesus, you make me hot. I can’t wait to fuck you.”

  She closed her eyes as the rough words, tongue flicking out to lick dry lips. “Do it now. Right now.”

  “You making demands, sub?”

  She couldn’t resist. “Oh, hell yeah.”

  Frank gave her precisely what she was angling for. The next swat was followed by five more, all of them so hard she had to grit her teeth against the need to squall like a two-year-old. His voice was low and dark when he finally finished. “Any demands, sub, come from me.” Another stinging slap, even harder. “Got that?”

  “Yeah. Oh, yeah.” Panting, Alex went limp over his hard shoulder, trying to distract herself from her clawing hunger by listening to the sound of his even breathing and the sigh of the cool wind through the pines. Birds sang as her ass stung. He was moving faster now, as if spurred by hunger, his boots crunching through dry leaves. No longer taking the slow care that silence required. “God, Frank,” she sighed, savoring the burn in her butt.

  Damn, she was kinky. And fuck if she cared. Frank was right; she had a politically incorrect pussy.

  He turned his head and gave her bared hip a promising lick and the slow glide of two fingers into her sex. She groaned.

  By the time he finally stopped, she was so wet she wouldn’t have been surprised if she dripped. He swung her down to stand on a sleeping bag spread
over some kind of padding, her pants still at half-mast around her thighs. “On your knees.” The savage heat in Frank’s eyes was enough to weaken her legs; kneeling was the only way to avoid falling on her face, so she obeyed. “Don’t you move,” he growled, and reached over her head. Looking up, she saw some kind of complicated arrangement of straps hanging from a pulley, in turn attached to a thick tree limb by another wide leather strap. A rope ran from the harness to thread through the pulley, then down to a second, lower limb. He untied it and lowered the strap arrangement, which she realized must be some kind of harness. “Arms up.”

  When Alex obeyed, Frank attached the leather belt of the harness to her waist. A thick strap led upward to another set of bands, which he buckled around her upper arms. He clipped the cuffs around her wrists to the belt with a carabiner.

  “Suspension?” She’d never enjoyed that particular kink, mostly because her previous Dom had never been all that good with knots. Gary’s idea of Shibari—Japanese rope bondage—had mostly been an exercise in frustration while he struggled to straighten tangled ropes, cursing the whole time. Then there was the very real fear that the hook he’d screwed into the ceiling would tear free as she hung helplessly from it, resulting in broken bones. Or worse.

  Frowning, Frank stared into her face and broke character. “You need to use your safeword?”

  Alex hesitated. He was a hell of a lot more competent than Gary; even after such a brief acquaintance, she knew he’d make damn sure anything he did posed no threat to her. She relaxed. “No, I’m good.”

  “You sure? Because I’m not going to be pissed if you’ve got a problem.”

  She glanced at the leather cuffs around her waist, arms, and the tree overhead. They all looked thick and well cared for, as did the rope that ran through the pulley to the tree. “Everything looks good.”

  He eyed her. “That dumb son of a bitch dropped you, didn’t he?”

  She knew he’d be seriously pissed if she lied and he found out about it. And he probably would; she’d told Joanna, Cap’s wife, about the accident. “Yeah. Hook came out of the ceiling. Luckily I didn’t break anything.” Had suffered one hell of a sprain, though, not that she intended to tell Frank that.

  “Okay—red.” He reached for the harness belt around her waist and started unbuckling it.

  “Wait,” Alex said. “What are you doing?”

  “Using my safeword, since you’re evidently too proud to do it yourself.” He straightened and looked down at her. There was absolutely no anger in his eyes. “You don’t know me well enough to trust me to do something that injured you with a previous Dom.”

  “No, don’t safeword.” Ignoring her instinctive protest, he went back to unbuckling the harness. “I don’t want to ruin the scene. Look, if I really had a problem with suspension, I would have included it on my hard-limits list.” During their e-mail “courtship,” they’d sent each other the lists of things they wouldn’t even consider doing—at Cap’s suggestion—before they’d even formally met at his house. Like safewords, exchanging hard-limits lists let kinksters avoid misunderstandings and outright injury.

  Having freed her arms, he folded the harness and turned to put it in his toy bag. “Alex, whenever we play, I want you driven half out of your mind with lust, not worrying if I’m going to hurt you by being as careless as that stupid motherfucker Gary.” Reaching up, he unbuckled the pulley from the tree limb, wound the chain around it, and stuffed the whole thing back in his bag. Straightening, he gave her a wicked grin. “And you haven’t ruined the scene. I’m still going to bang your brains out.”

  “But . . .”

  “You know the rules, Alex. Once somebody safewords, that’s it. You don’t argue. Everything stops.”

  “But that’s subs!”

  “Applies just as well for Doms. Yeah, it’s rarer that we do it, but if a Dom thinks his sub is endangering herself—physically or psychologically—he’s got a duty to call a halt. Which I just did.” He cupped her cheek in a big, warm hand. “I take care of my subs, Alex. Whether it’s making sure a hook is properly embedded in a ceiling joist, or using my safeword. That’s what good Doms do.”

  “Yeah, I know—but you put a lot of thought into this scene, and I—”

  “Alex, shut the fuck up,” he growled in his Big Bad Dom voice. His mouth crashed down on hers in a kiss that had her grabbing his brawny shoulders to keep from falling on her ass.

  Which was basically a waste of time, because his boot hooked around her ankle and jerked left. She toppled, but he caught her, carrying her down on the padded sleeping bag. An instant later, she found herself pinned by well over two hundred pounds of horny Dom. Judging by the bulge she could feel against her belly, safewording hadn’t done a damn thing to kill his libido.

  His tongue slid between her gasping lips in a thrusting demand that reignited her own need. When she yielded, he eased up to lick and swirl along lips and teeth and tongue, suckling and playing until she went limp under him. One hand promptly swept up under her tee to discover her breasts. “No bra,” he groaned against her mouth in obvious approval. His fingers pinched and tugged, sending delicious little sparks through her system.

  “God, Frank . . .” she moaned. “You drive me insane!”

  “Good.” Straightening away from her mouth, he used his free hand to jerk the tee up over the curve of her breasts, baring her nipples to his flaming gaze. “You fuck up my head, too.”

  With a satisfied growl, he engulfed her nipple, suckling so hard, the pleasure damn near blinded her. He gave her pull after delicious pull even as his tongue circled and danced over the tight little peak. Christ, he’s good.

  By the time Frank pulled away, Alex was panting. Cool air blew over her wet, liberated nipple as he went to work on her boots, untying them with hands that weren’t quite steady, then pulling them off and pitching them over her head. They hit the leaves with a rustle and thump. As soon as they were gone, he grabbed her pants and stripped them off, then sent them sailing after the boots. Bracing on her elbows, she sat up to watch as he shoved her thighs apart and dove between her spread thighs. His mouth covered her pussy with delicious gluttony.

  Alex threw back her head with a gasp at the sensation of his hot tongue working between her vaginal lips. Its agile wet tip circled her clit skillfully, not quite touching it, then swept down to swirl around the opening of her cunt before trailing down over her perineum. Then up again for another maddening circuit.

  As if that wasn’t enough to drive her out of her mind, two fingers slid into her pussy and went straight to the hidden bundle of nerves that was her G-spot. She panted, tossing her head, teeth gritted as she fought a scream that would have the neighbors calling 911.

  “Jesus, Frank!” Gasping, she hunched against his face, all control blasted to eggshell fragments.

  His eyes flicked up at her, possessive and pale in their demonic mask of cami paint, now smudged by contact with her body. She was probably wearing most of it by now, not that she cared.

  All she cared about were those wicked fingers, that clever tongue. And the lust that blazed in his eyes like a torch in the dark. He went on licking, alternating his tongue work with gentle, arousing nibbles and deep finger-thrusts. Until he pulled his hand free and slid a slick forefinger up her ass.

  “Frank!” Alex cried, writhing at the ferociously intense sensation.

  Lifting his head from her pussy, he watched his finger glide in and out. Added a second one, scissoring the two apart to make her stretch and sting. She tossed her head on the sleeping bag.

  “You’ve got a nice tight ass, baby.” He dropped his voice to a growl. “I want it.” His gaze flicked up to hers, took in her stunned, anxious expression. He grinned. “But I think I’ll save it for later. I want pussy now.”

  With that, he sat up, pulled his hand away from her body, and unzipped his pants to pull out his cock. She stared at it like a hypnotized rabbit as he found a condom in his toy bag and sheathed himself. Grabbing
her thighs, Frank hauled them over his shoulders—she assumed so he could get at all sorts of pink territory down there. Instead he grabbed her ass and slid onto his knees, lifting her butt well off the sleeping bag. An instant later, he fed the endless length of his thick cock into her slick, swollen opening, and thrust hard and deep. Alex sucked in a breath at being so mercilessly stuffed.

  “Give me your hands,” he snapped, once he was in to the root.

  She obeyed. He caught them and pinned them beside her head. Teeth bared, Frank shifted his bodyweight, rolling her up onto her shoulders. Sliding his thighs up behind her back, he braced her into position and began to fuck, grinding his cock even deeper. Alex was completely pinned now, unable to move. Impaled on Frank’s thick shaft.

  “God, this is hot,” she moaned.

  Frank’s only response was a flash of white teeth in the mask of paint—and a deeper thrust that seemed to send his dick past her bellybutton. She could only writhe in blind pleasure, loving the way he used her so ruthlessly.

  Frank fucked her hard, making her breasts dance and waves of dark pleasure/pain ripple up her spine. “You know,” he gritted through his teeth, “I think I’ll fuck your ass like this. Good and deep.”

  Her eyes widened. She’d done anal sex a couple of times with Gary—he’d demanded it—but she’d never really enjoyed the act. Yet the thought of Frank taking her like that . . .

  He bared those teeth at her again. “Yeah, I knew you’d like that idea.”

  Deliberately, he circled his hips as he entered again, raking his dick over her G-spot in the process even as his pelvis pressed hard at just the right spot to stimulate her plump clit.

  She came, bucking at the savage delight of it, screaming like her car’s siren. Somebody was definitely going to call 911.