by Rhyll Biest
Perhaps she is mean girl, like you, and does not want love. Galenka ran by, arms spread out like an aeroplane.
I’m not mean. She closed the bathroom door.
Ha! You lie about fake engagement. You are mean like bouncing Betty explosive, you fly through air, maim, take limbs and genitals but leave enemy alive.
Not true.
True. Go ahead and cry, soft girl. No one to see here.
Her nasal passages stung but she certainly wasn’t going to cry. Yes, she’d hurt others in her time, but who alive hadn’t? She washed her hands. Would that she could wash away memories as easily as suds. Then she could eat dinner at a table and enjoy it like a normal person instead of seeing ghosts, salt and pepper shakers used as missiles, forks repurposed as bayonets.
If only Stacey didn’t have exactly the same dinner set—Royal Doulton, gold-trimmed white china—as Kat’s mother had once owned before it got smashed in a rip-snorter of an after-dinner fight.
She returned to the table and Luka darted a glance at her. ‘Everything alright?’
‘Of course.’ She was not at all disoriented by the dinner table set for four places. Her parents weren’t around and nothing lurked beneath it. Everything was fine. Just fine. Super-fly fine.
Luka didn’t look like he believed her at all but after a moment’s scrutiny made a rejoinder to some comment tossed his way.
More than wine she wanted to bottle the way his shoulders looked, insanely powerful and domineering. Like they dreamed of locked doors to break down. She sipped her mineral water.
‘So, Luka, are you going to the wildlife refuge fundraising day?’ Stacey asked.
A cautious expression crept over Luka’s face. ‘Perhaps. Are you?’
Nick snatched Stacey’s bread roll from her hand. ‘Of course she is.’
‘Hey!’ Stacey mock scowled and pointed her butter knife. ‘Don’t make me perform a surgical act for free.’ She glanced meaningfully at his lap.
Kat nearly exploded out of her seat to find cover. Instead she drank her glass of wine in one gulp as she repeated to herself over and over that Nick and Stacey were not her parents and that real blood was not about to be shed. It had just been a joke. A stupid joke.
Luka frowned and put his knife and fork down, looked to be about to ask her if she was okay.
Nick gave Stacey an angelic smile, buttered her roll and handed it back.
‘Walgarra has a wildlife refuge?’ Kat kept her voice steady.
‘Uh-huh, it’s held in the outskirts.’ Stacey chewed. ‘Each year they have a fundraiser and we help out, and when we have our RSPCA fundraiser, they help us out.’
‘Sounds great.’ Kat smiled. ‘I’m in.’ She’d get a chance to meet others interested in protecting animals, and hear about what they did.
‘Thanks, Kat.’ Stacey’s gaze shifted to Luka. ‘Of course, we’d really like Luka to help us out with the dunking booth but he’s being a big baby about it.’
‘Hey, I do it every year, and I keep telling you the dam water stinks. Get water out of a hose instead of the nearby dam and I might feel differently about it.’
‘Aw, poor widdle Brick, worried about a widdle dirty water.’ Stacey mimed rubbing her eyes like a crying baby.
‘Hey, be fair.’ Kat eyed Luka, the wine making her bold. ‘He probably gets his hair wet too. You know how traumatic that is for the modern metrosexual.’ That was payback for calling her a relationship coward.
Nick snorted.
Fuck you, Luka mouthed at him.
‘Mmm, I suppose his clothes get wet too.’ Stacey rested her chin on her hand. ‘And then he has to iron his underpants again.’
Luka raised his hands. ‘Fine, fine, I’ll do it. I sure as shit know I can’t take this for another two weeks.’
Nick patted him on the shoulder. ‘You finally worked out Stacey’s M.O., good for you.’
Luka narrowed his eyes at the vet. ‘Did you hold this wine tasting just so you could talk me into doing the dunking booth again?’
Stacey’s eyes widened. ‘Of course not.’
‘Really?’
‘I’m wounded by the suggestion.’ Stacey laid a hand over her heart. ‘I thought everyone realised that tonight is all about matchmaking, which is why I’ve put you in the bedroom next to Kat’s and left the adjoining doors unlocked. Go for it, kids.’ She jiggled in her seat, eyes bright with mischief.
Oh, shit. Kat met Luka’s eyes.
Chapter 15
Holy half-chewed chicken feet in a carry-on bag, the room was spinning. Oh, boy, was it ever.
Kat lay on the double bed, her arms and legs spread out like a starfish, and let the room do its thing.
Everything was cream, white, distressed wood or pale blue. All tasteful and shit. But Kat’s focus on the door adjoining the next room had nothing to do with the brass door knob or the twig wreath adorning it, and everything to do with who was sleeping in there.
Curse Stacey and her matchmaking.
But Kat wasn’t some panda at a zoo, and just because zoo keeper Stacey had metaphorically dumped a boy panda in Kat’s enclosure, plied her with panda wine and played panda mood music, didn’t mean Kat had to get with the reproductive program.
Plus, where was her wooing? Her box of assorted bamboo bonbons? Her panda lady business deserved a little respect.
Okay, that was definitely the wine talking.
Want hot Serb cop.
And that was Galenka talking.
A breeze sent the white window curtains billowing apart, revealing a figure on the verandah silhouetted against the moon.
Luka, of course, tall and built like no other man she’d met. Perhaps he was an alien. An alien who never slept. Unaware of her scrutiny he leaned one shoulder against a thick timber column, his back turned to her, searching the sky for alien relatives and friends.
A sultry impulse seized her.
Lately she’d been seeing penises everywhere—in the shapes made by crumpled bed sheets, the clouds, even her risotto lunches—and it didn’t take a genius to work out who had her all worked up, wearing penis-stencilled glasses so to speak.
She quietly undid the window latch and climbed through. Despite her tipsy state she remained light on her feet as she crept up behind Belovuk.
Hopefully he wouldn’t shoot her. He didn’t appear to be carrying.
She slid her hands around his waist, felt his abdominal muscles tense through his shirt as he inhaled sharply. He turned his head to look over his shoulder at her. ‘If you’ve come to push me down the stairs I’d like to point out that there are only three steps.’
His chest vibrated under her hands as he spoke, a sensation so delicious she gave a light shudder. She traced a pattern through his shirt with her nails. ‘If I wanted you dead I’d have done away with you by now.’
He drew a sharp breath. ‘Is that so?’
‘Why are you out here? Can’t sleep?’ She muttered the question against his back. Lightning flashed in the distance, further charging the air between them.
He hesitated before answering. ‘Just loitering in the hope that a hot RSPCA inspector might sneak up and ravish me.’
‘How’s that working out for you?’ She ran her nails down his sides, enjoyed his shiver and the twitch of muscle beneath her wicked hands.
‘Not too bad, actually.’
She smiled, pressed her nose against his back, breathed him in, his unsophisticated soap, his unmistakable maleness.
Dinner had been tortuous, like swimming through earth, but now she was free to glide through time and space however she wanted.
Oh, yeah, she was drunk alright.
‘That’s a strange plan, waiting out here in the dark hoping some RSPCA inspector might happen by and stick her hands down your pants.’
‘Down my pants?’ His breath hitched as she wrapped her arms around him to reach his front and ran her nails down his length, from sternum to stomach.
‘That’s right, straight into your pant
s.’
‘No sweet talk first?’ He struggled to get the words out and she loved his struggle.
‘Screw that shit.’ She was in charge, in control. A lot of that was the wine talking but plenty of it was her.
He turned his head, his face so close to hers she caught the faint sheen of moonlight on his eyelid. There was no walking away from his heat, his fresh, clean smell overlaid with sharp testosterone. At least she knew how to dance this dance, knew how to take a tumble in the sheets and then act like it meant nothing, or to pretend like it did mean something. And all the variations in between.
He turned to face her but her face only reached his chest. Awe slammed into her, introduced her to big. He really was a steer of a man.
‘Swap places.’
The words gave her a thrill, served up as they were in a voice turned subterranean deep, its edges rough and raw.
If she obeyed—and how could she not obey a tone like that?—she’d be the one at his mercy, covered by his slab of a body, his hands manipulating her. And yet for once she wanted to be played—by him, at least.
Moonlight kissed the aggressive jut of Belovuk’s cheekbones and she had the mad, mad urge to lick one.
Few things in life lived up to expectation, she knew.
But, hey, fuck it.
She pulled his head down to her level and had her way with his face. And for once, reality did live up to expectation.
He wiped his cheek. ‘Did you just lick my face?’
‘I did. What are you going to do about it?’
His answer was to twirl her around so that she faced away from him, her butt resting against his upper thighs.
Now she was the one staring at the sky.
One ridiculously large hand found her breast, the other her hip. Fuck, he had her now.
He licked her nape. ‘No hand sanitiser in the bra today?’
‘I used it already.’
‘I should’ve guessed.’ He gently traced the curve of her breast. ‘Want any sweet talk?’
The gruff words, the rasp of stubble against her nape and his teasing hand whelped a storm of need in her. She held her breath as his hand slid from her breast to the hem of her t-shirt, played with it.
How had the tables turned so quickly? A second ago she’d held him—literally—in her hand, now he was peeling her like a grape.
‘Do you actually know any sweet talk?’ She gasped as his hand slid inside her drawstring pants, the other remaining possessive at her hip.
‘Not really.’
As his hands explored, slow and deliberate as if he were studying a map—a map of how to make her come—his erection pressed into her back so hard it was in danger of leaving a permanent imprint. The hot kisses on her nape, her shoulders, had her struggling for breath almost as badly as the deadbeat dad’s attack with a lad mag. Typical that she compared a rousing kiss to assault, a battle of wills, a fight.
She should probably slow things down—they were, after all, making out on the deck of Stacey’s house and Kat’s reputation might never recover if caught with Luka’s hand down her underpants.
Worst dinner guest ever. No more invitations to wine tasting for her.
Luka’s fingers circled just below her navel but she knew that wasn’t the final destination they were seeking, no, that spot was the thudding pulse between her legs that felt brighter and louder than a homing beacon, more vital than her racing heart.
One part of her burned for him to take everything, turn her inside out. Let her flare bright as a supernova and fuck it if her life burned down around her. Just the thought of those big fingers moving to the aching spot a couple inches further south turned her mouth dry.
It took her by surprise when he took her hand and guided it lower. He wanted her hand to do his dirty work? Was he worried about leaving fingerprints? Some other form of evidence at the scene of the crime?
A part of her whimpered caution, the need to guard herself from her mother’s fate. If she allowed him in her pants, what else might he go after? Her freedom, her secrets, her independence?
She resisted his grip on her hand.
His heated lips paused their exploration of her nape. ‘Second thoughts?’
And third and fourth. ‘No,’ she muttered, head foggy. ‘Don’t stop.’ See, I don’t always play it safe.
A sharp indrawn breath and his hand drove her fingers deeper, slipped inside her underwear and found her swollen lips and clit. ‘Is this what you need?’
Oh, god, yes. Her body, a tattle-tale eager to reveal how hot she was for him, had already produced a slick mess for his fingers. When he made a sound of approval, a sigh escaped her—she couldn’t help it, not with his powerful body covering hers from behind, pinning her between the post and his hips, and that bossy hand dictating how fast and firm she should stroke herself.
He was cunning, left her teetering on the edge but unable to come. Several hard, long strokes and then he’d back off, leaving her dangling.
It was all designed to get her hot for what she couldn’t have, couldn’t have because she couldn’t reach it—his prick, thick as a riot baton against her back.
Blood pounded so hard in her ears that she had to strain to hear the nasty things he hissed in her ear.
‘Thanks for getting yourself so wet for me.’
The words were pure provocation, mean and deliberate, and her response was entirely predictable—a jolt of protest. Except she hadn’t predicted that his taunts would also excite her. Hurry, she wanted to shout, get your cock out already.
‘Remind me—’ his breath was hot and heavy on her nape, and the sound of his tongue wet as he swallowed, ‘—to demonstrate back control next time we’re at training.’
She gasped when he forced her own fingers inside her. Determined to rescue self-control from the tree it had climbed up, she swallowed. ‘Okay, I’ll bite, what’s back control?’
‘I’m glad you asked.’ Wet heat bloomed on her nape as he kissed an obscene trail from shoulder to ear. ‘It’s where one person gets behind the other—’ he ground his iron erection against her back, ‘—and controls them by wrapping their legs around the other’s back and placing their heels, also known as ‘hooks’, inside their opponent’s thighs, while also controlling their torso and arms from the back.’
‘Oh, I think I remember that from sex ed class at school.’
A puff of air stirred against her nape as he gave a soft snort. ‘I doubt it.’ He released her hand.
Was that it? Was everything over?
The purr of his zipper suggested it was not. ‘Having back control is considered to be very advantageous.’
She swallowed as his hands fumbled with her drawstring, tugged her pants and underpants down lower.
Am I really doing this?
She wasn’t running away, or putting a stop to it, so the answer had to be yes.
‘Why? Why’s it so advantageous?’ She gripped the column next to her hard, pressed her cheek against it as a big hand parted her folds, traced her slick heat, smeared her own wetness all the way up to the small of her back.
‘It’s because the person being controlled can’t defend well, especially if the person with control is on top of the other person, both facing downwards.’
So she was safe, right? Because they were both standing up.
One hand at her hip, he nudged the cleft of her buttocks with his warm, hard cock.
Okay, not so safe, maybe.
She gasped as the length of him slipped between her legs, nudging her aroused sex. Her gasp melted into his hiss of sharp pleasure and the possessive grip on her waist tightened to the point of pain.
This giant was going to nail her on the balcony. What was she going to do about it?
She gave a start when something sharp grazed her cheek. ‘What’s that?’
He held it up beneath the moonlight and she made out a condom wrapper. ‘Oh.’ How could she have forgotten the need for a pecker poncho?
‘Stacey ki
ndly left me one on my pillow. She didn’t leave you one?’
While she gasped, breathless at the audacity of her hostess and Luka’s manhandling, his hand left her hip to roll on the condom. Her straining senses caught the sharp bite of latex in the air, the wet sound as he swallowed, the heat he radiated.
Desire cocooned her, tautened every fibre of her body.
When he ran the head of his cock along her seam with a low, dirty sound of satisfaction she sighed, sagged against the wood post. But her belly and everything else inside her tightened as he took her body in a bruising grip to fit himself snugly against her back and line the head of his cock with her channel.
‘Ready for my cock?’ His breathing was ragged.
‘Really, Officer Belovuk, this is no time for poetry.’
A blunt finger on her clit shut her up, and he made a cocky sound at her sharp intake of breath.
‘Ready?’ His breath scorched her ear. Without waiting for an answer he guided himself in, gave a shallow thrust.
She hissed as he reached a point of resistance.
‘You need a bigger vibrator,’ he whispered against her ear.
‘I don’t own one.’ The words slipped out.
‘You don’t?’ His tone, gruff with need, held a tinge of surprise.
‘It’s not a legal requirement, you know, for a single woman to own a vibrator. Some of us find our fingers perfectly adequate to achieve orgasm through clitoral stimulation. It’s not all about the cock.’ That was telling him.
He laughed. ‘Let’s see if you still feel the same way in an hour.’
‘Good lord, the egotism.’
His response was to withdraw before driving deeper.
F-u-c-k.
The bump of his hips against her rear had her reaching back to mould a hand to his side, to feel the sweat slick coil of muscle tightening there. She closed her eyes as she pictured those hips hammering against hers, his beautiful spine flexing and rounding as he strained to get deeper and rolled his hips to find the right angle. Buttocks taut as he pumped deep, whispering dirty, filthy things in her ear all night long.
She moaned.
He put a hand over her mouth. ‘Shhh. You’ll wake Stacey and Nick.’
