by Lili Valente
This time, he silenced her with a kiss, his tongue pushing between her lips, demanding entrance to her mouth. He tasted of something smoky, hard cider, and the ocean on a day when it isn’t safe to go into the water. His kiss was dangerous, wild, and unlike anything Hannah had experienced before. He didn’t tease or test her; he fucked her mouth with his tongue, the thick muscle mimicking the movements of his fingers between her legs, bringing her to the edge faster than she’d imagined possible.
She’d had trouble tumbling over in the past. But her former boyfriends had always been sweet men and often too-tender lovers.
This man might be sweet—she had no way of knowing what he was like outside the bedroom—but he wasn’t tender. He was demanding, controlling, the type of man who didn’t hesitate, didn’t change course, didn’t stop until the job was done. There would be no easy escape from this bed, she knew it even before he hooked his fingers inside of her, coaxing her into an orgasm that had her bowing off the bed, screaming into the hot, hungry mouth still devouring her own.
Her body clenched down, liquid heat gushing out to dampen her thighs as pleasure rocketed through her core and his tongue continued to fuck her mouth, building her need again even as her pussy still throbbed and clutched at his thick fingers.
By the time he grabbed her behind the knees, forcing her legs up and out—until her knees were in her armpits and she was bared to him, from her ass to her dripping sex—she was beyond words, beyond identity, beyond awareness of anything but the blunt head of his engorged cock hot at her entrance.
Fear flashed through her for a moment—she was on the pill, but she’d never had sex without a condom before—but then he was gliding into her, shoving through her swollen flesh, stretching her so wide she wasn’t sure she’d ever be the same again.
She moaned, pain and pleasure warring within her as he claimed her in one long, slow stroke. He was enormous and so thick her body fought to eject him, to banish the burning sensation he caused between her legs. But he kept coming. And coming and coming, until she swore she could feel him in her belly, in her lungs. He was everywhere, his hot thickness filling her up until there was no room for anything but him.
She tried to breathe deeper, to center herself, to hold on to that sacred, hidden kernel of her soul no man had ever touched, but she couldn’t find it.
There was only him, his heat, his rain and campfire smell, and his need, spearing her in two, insisting she take everything he had to give.
“Look at me,” he said, holding still inside her, his voice demanding she obey. “Look at me.”
She lifted her eyes to his, a ragged sob escaping from her strained throat. At this angle, the light from the bathroom hit his face and she was granted her first good look at him, this stranger who was buried inside her, and it all but stopped her heart. He was beautiful—strong, rugged features softened by full lips and dark eyes that burned with passion and intelligence. He was as stunning as all of Harley’s men, but there was more to him than a handsome face or a gorgeous body. There was something in his eyes, something that made her want to know him, to please him.
“I know what you want,” he said. “But I can’t go there until you tell me that you’re mine.” He paused, looking so deep into her she couldn’t believe he didn’t see that she was an imposter.
But in the long, breathless moment that their eyes held and all of Hannah’s secrets and fears seeped into the air between them, his gaze only gentled.
“Because you are mine,” he said softly, his voice as tender as his cock was merciless. “Your pleasure belongs to me, your pain belongs to me. I want it all, Harley. All of you. Don’t fight me anymore. Give it to me. Give it all to me.”
Hannah’s breath rushed out through her parted lips, but she didn’t know what to say, how to tell him she was a liar when this moment felt so real, so right.
“You can trust me.” He flexed his buttocks, forcing his cock impossibly deeper, making her groan in pleasure. In pain.
Pleasure-pain. They were one and the same with this man and she wanted nothing more than to give him what he wanted, whatever he wanted so long as he would never stop hurting her, healing her, possessing her in a way she’d never realized she wanted to be possessed until this stranger had claimed her for his own.
But she wasn’t his and he wasn’t hers.
He belonged to her sister and this was so wrong that “wrong” wasn’t a big enough word to describe it—this betrayal, this sacrilege, this terrible, terrible thing she’d allowed to happen. She should have fought harder, screamed the truth until he understood she wasn’t playing games.
Now it was too late, and she hated herself for it.
“Please,” she said, tears filling her eyes. “Forgive me.”
“For what, princess?” His warm palm cupped her cheek with a sweetness that threatened to break her heart all over again.
“I can’t…” She swallowed, searching for the strength to tell him the truth, but she couldn’t, not when she was exposed, so vulnerable, and so intimately connected to this man that she couldn’t tell where he ended and she began. “I can’t tell you. Not now.”
“Now is the time to tell me anything,” he said, leaning down, his lips hovering above hers as he shifted his hips, pulling out until she was acutely aware of all the places that ached in his absence before pushing back into her again, summoning another hungry sound from her throat. “Everything. I’m ready for your secrets.”
“No, you’re not,” she whispered, shuddering as he began to roll his hips, nudging her clit with his pubic bone again and again, building the need swelling inside of her.
“I’m not a fool.” He captured her nipple between his fingers, tugging it in time to the undulating rhythm of his hips. “I know you’ve been hiding things from me. It doesn’t matter. What matters is right now. Tell me you’re mine and we’ll figure the rest out together.”
“Stop, please,” she said, teeth digging into her bottom lip as she strained against her bonds, but the rough rope against her skin only made her hotter, wetter. “I can’t think. I can’t—”
“Don’t think,” he said, his grip tightening on her nipple as he rode her harder, until she was quivering beneath him, so close to the edge she knew she could go at any moment. “Feel. Feel how real this is and tell me you’re mine. Tell me and I’ll do all those things you’ve been dreaming about.”
He shifted his head, whispering into her ear, his breath hot on her skin as he fucked her with long, languid strokes that completely unraveled her mind. “I’ll spank you and mark you and fuck you so hard you won’t be able to sit down for days without thinking about how I used you.” He pressed a kiss to her throat, where her pulse raced. “Isn’t that what you want?”
Hannah nodded breathlessly. She had never even imagined things like that, but suddenly, lying beneath this man, she wanted all the wicked things he’d promised and more. She wanted to be turned over his knee and punished for the lies she’d told. She wanted him to hurt her for letting him believe she was someone she wasn’t, and then she wanted him to take the pain away with his beautiful mouth.
That exquisite mouth that made her shudder now as his teeth dragged lightly over the skin at her throat.
“Then say it,” he said. “Give yourself to me. Tell me you’re mine.”
“I’m yours,” Hannah said, the words out of her mouth before she could stop them. “I’m yours. Forever. Yours.”
“Fuck yes, princess,” he moaned, thrusting faster, deeper, demanding her pleasure. “Come for me. Come on my cock. Let me feel you.”
Hannah’s head fell back as she came with a sound that wasn’t cute or ladylike. It was wild and base, a cry of animal satisfaction that ripped from her throat as her pussy clutched at her stranger’s pistoning cock, demanding his orgasm with the same assurance that he’d ordered her own.
He came crying out her sister’s name, his thickness jerking hard inside of her, the feel of his scalding heat soaking her ins
ides sending her soaring a third time. Lights danced behind her tightly closed eyes, and somewhere deep inside of her, things she needed to live lost purchase and floated away from their moorings. She was adrift, helpless to defend herself, totally at the mercy of this man who gently untied her arms and kissed the red welts on her wrists.
And she didn’t even know his name.
Hours later, after he’d had her again—this time with his hand fisted in her hair while he took her from behind, his rough use making her feel safer than every considerate kiss from every ex-boyfriend she’d ever had—that’s all she could think about. She didn’t know the name of the man who kissed her like she was his world before climbing back out the window he’d crept through hours before.
And she wasn’t going to find out until tomorrow, when she would be forced to come clean to her sister and confess the nightmarish thing she’d done.
Harley might actually forgive her—she didn’t tend to get too attached to her lovers, especially the summer boys she used to entertain her between epic trips abroad—but the stranger would hate her. He was in love with her sister. He thought he’d been making love to Harley, not a complete stranger.
As Hannah lay in the dark, in sheets that still smelled of sex and sweat, she was forced to admit that she was a terrible person. She wasn’t the good twin, after all. She was weak and selfish and obviously unfit to become a psychiatrist and counsel troubled kids, not when she was so messed up in the head that she’d slept with her sister’s boyfriend.
The first time, he hadn’t given her time to protest, but she could have stopped things before they came together again, before he held her on his chest and promised she would always be under his protection, or before she whispered “I love you, too” as he eased out onto the tree limb beneath the second story window.
Liar. She was such a miserable liar.
She didn’t know if Harley loved the man, but Hannah barely knew him. It was impossible to love a man you had just met and barely spoken to aside from some scalding hot pillow talk.
She knew that, but as she got up to put the sheets on to wash and start a pot of coffee—sleep was going to be impossible, might as well help the insomnia along—she couldn’t help wishing that she didn’t have to tell her stranger the truth. A selfish, wicked part of her secretly hoped that Harley would never come back to her summer apartment, that she would hop the next flight to Paris and disappear the way she sometimes did, usually right when Hannah needed her the most.
And then Hannah could meet the man again, learn his name, and start figuring out what it would take to make him hers.
In the years to come, she would think of that selfish, wicked wish again and again, wondering if wishes like that had a power others didn’t. Wondering if her greedy longing was the reason her sister had been murdered and Hannah would never see her best friend’s face again.
Even when her Aunt Sybil spirited her away from Harley’s very private, very secret wake, insisting it was past time she learned about the darkness that haunted their family, Hannah couldn’t bring herself to blame fate or her father’s enemies for her sister’s death.
She would never forget that one wonderful, terrible night, or that she had wished that Harley would disappear and that hours later she had.
Forever.
CHAPTER THREE
Hannah
Six years later
Freedom doesn’t come for free. Neither does forgiveness.
Every step Hannah had taken from the moment she’d learned Harley was dead, to the morning she awoke to find Aunt Sybil crying on the back steps of their storm-battered bed and breakfast, had been taken with one goal in mind: Absolution.
She wanted more than survival. She wanted release. She wanted to shed her skin and leave the sins of her former life far behind her. But the past has long arms and sharp claws that dig in deep and hold on tight. The past was a monkey on her back. A monkey with an ugly sense of humor she swore she could hear cackling at her attempts to escape the Mason family curse.
In the past six years, The Mahana Guesthouse had been damaged by gale force winds, lost three cottages in an electrical fire, suffered through two Dengue fever outbreaks that scared the tourists away for months, and nearly been reclaimed by the sea when Hurricane Isra swept through last week.
The morning after the storm, the Laurents, their only neighbors close enough to reach the guesthouse on foot, had come to check on Sybil and Hannah. The sweet older couple had wept with relief when they found the women huddled in the cottage farthest from the beach—the only structure not falling in on itself—soaked to the skin but safe. The Laurents had taken them to their home, fed them fresh French bread and guava fruit salad, and spent the rest of the day telling them how lucky they were to be alive.
But life was fragile, especially when you were a Mason.
Their savings had finally run out after the last Dengue fever outbreak. Now, if Sybil and Hannah couldn’t find the money to repair the main house and guest cottages, their income would disappear, and their lives not long after. They could never return to the states or reach out to their family for help.
They were dead to the world they’d known before. This was their safe place, their one chance to carve out an existence far from the people determined to destroy them. But if Hannah didn’t figure something out soon, their safe haven would be a thing of the past. She had to pull it together, get creative, and whip up a miracle with nothing but her hands, a dash of hope, and an abundance of determination.
But first, she had to make sure her aunt didn’t hurl herself into the sea in despair.
“I come bearing gifts.” She held the steaming cup of coffee beneath Sybil’s nose, grateful when her aunt reached up to take the mug instead of staring zombie-like at the horizon the way she had for most of the week since the storm.
“I’m going to figure out a way to get the money today,” Hannah added, curling her hands around her own warm mug. “I promise.”
She had promised the same thing yesterday, but so far she’d come up with nothing. Their tiny Tahitian island was a paradise, true, but it was also a place where jobs were few and hard to come by. And even if Hannah could manage to land a job as a maid or bartender at the luxury resort on the south shore, she wouldn’t be able to cover basic expenses, let alone the cost of repairs, and the burden of raising the money sat firmly on her shoulders. Sybil could sell her homemade banana bread and other baked goods, but she couldn’t hold down a job. Her aunt’s arthritis made for days where she could barely get out of bed, let alone work ten hours stripping beds and cleaning toilets.
“I had a dream last night.” Aunt Sybil swept the tears from her tanned cheeks with a trembling hand.
“Not a good dream, I’m guessing.” Hannah sat down beside her on the steps leading down to the beach.
“No, it was,” Sybil said, her gaze trained on the waves lapping at the sugar-white shore. “Aaron, Ezra, and Matthew were alive. We were at the old house eating dinner on the lawn the way we used to in the summers when we were young. But in the dream, we were all grown up and there were children and grandchildren everywhere.” She smiled. “Dozens of dirty bare feet and popsicle sticky hands. It was lovely.”
Hannah sighed, knowing the sound would be masked by the wind rustling the palm leaves.
They hadn’t lost all the trees. Or the pool. That, at least, was lucky.
She was determined to stay positive. She couldn’t think about all the things that had been lost. She couldn’t think about the dead uncles she’d never met or that Harley might still be alive if Sybil had embraced her conspiracy theorist side sooner. Before Harley’s car crash and the series of “accidents” that had picked off their first cousins one by one, Hannah wouldn’t have believed that there was a contract killer out there somewhere determined to kill off their entire family. She would have thought her aunt was paranoid at best, delusional at worst. She never would have dropped out of grad school and fled the country without saying a
word to anyone—even her mother and father—before the day she was forced to pick out her twin sister’s coffin.
No, there was nothing to be gained from the “what could have been” game and dreams like her aunt’s only made the waking world seem like more of a nightmare.
“I’m going to head into town to talk to Hiro this morning,” Hannah said. “He said he might have some good news for me from his friends on Moorea. Do you need anything from the store while I’m there? Flour? Sugar?”
Sybil frowned but didn’t turn her gaze away from the shore. “What kind of good news? You told him we weren’t selling, right?”
“I did.” Hanna ran her fingers idly back and forth across the wood beneath her. The planks still smelled of fresh stain and were one of the few parts of the guesthouse she’d been able to rebuild herself.
She was handy, but she wasn’t a trained carpenter or a roofer or a plumber or any of the other endless skilled laborers they’d need to hire to make sure their tiny resort was ready to receive guests.
Still, she understood why her aunt didn’t want to sell. After the hurricane, property values were in the gutter. They’d never get what the resort was worth and it was dangerous for them to conduct any business with a paper trail. Both she and Sybil had fake passports with assumed names, but anything that made people pay attention was a bad idea. That’s why they had kept to the tradition Hannah’s father had started long ago and never posted pictures of themselves on the Internet. They didn’t have host photos on their website, refused to be photographed with their guests, and conducted all of their transactions in cash.
Cash that was growing perilously low.
“I’m not sure what he had in mind, but he seemed hopeful,” Hannah said, forcing an upbeat note into her voice. “And if anyone can be trusted to help us wiggle out of this, it’s Hiro. You know how much he wants you to stay on the island.”
