“You don’t like it?”
Now I’m the one with no answer.
He raises his gaze to mine. “I think you like being made helpless by a savage. Held open wide so that you feel everything, here where anybody could discover us. Tell me.”
“Kiro…”
He sucks in another breath and pushes his nose closer—close enough that the tip of it hits my sensitized bud.
“Omigod!”
He draws his fat, warm tongue through my folds. I start to cry out, and he claps his hand over my mouth.
I feel his breath rush out in a gust. He drags his tongue up the seam of my pussy. He licks again, a long, wicked stroke, and then he sucks what feels like pretty much every available fold and flap into his mouth.
My brain melts.
He sucks me. The force of it pulls me down into a quicksand of sensation. His beard scratches the tender insides of my thighs. He moves his tongue around while he’s sucking, in a merciless, mind-melting movement around my hole.
I cry out behind his hand, shaking my head. He removes his hand from my mouth, seeming annoyed at my interruption. “What?”
“We’re in a dressing room,” I pant.
His look says, You fucking interrupted me for that?
He simply smashes his powerful hand back over my mouth and returns to his wicked and ravenous sucking and stroking.
And then licking. His tongue seems to lift the sensation right out of my core. Lift, lick, lift, up, in…I protest from behind his hand.
My protests are irrelevant. My objections are gnats to a bull. My pussy is his.
He’s taking his time with long and leisurely licks, using the flat part of his tongue now.
I’m helpless in his hold. He takes me. He enjoys me. He moves mercilessly on me with the pointy part of his tongue now. My heart pounds as I realize he’s chasing my orgasm, like it’s prey or something.
The sparkly sensation peeks up and hides. He finds it, chasing, bearing down. I whimper behind his hand. I squirm.
My squirming makes his chase turn ruthless.
I swallow, face hot, body electric. He’s holding me still, licking me, pushing me onto the knife edge of feeling. There’s nowhere to hide, suddenly.
I’m trying to hide, trying to draw back, as if on instinct.
He grunts and jerks my hands, as if to shake me into submission. It feels so good, I don’t know what to do. All I can do is go still.
He licks again, and it’s as if he knows I’m close, because he’s flicking his tongue across my bud, evilly, mercilessly. He knows he has me. He knows.
He goes for the kill.
I break apart under his power. He grunts softly as I come. He changes his grip. He’s cradling me through the tremors that rack my body.
Still he won’t stop licking me. It’s gentle. It’s harsh. It’s un-fucking-believable.
I’m dizzy, panting.
He slows and grunts. He takes his hand from my mouth and slides two fingers into me, nearly sending me into the stratosphere. My hips undulate as if of their own volition.
He brings his slickened fingers to my lips. “Suck.”
“Wh-what?”
He gives me a dark look and squeezes my cheeks with his other hand, forcing my mouth open. “This is mine, too.” He pushes in his fingers. “Suck.”
I suck, trembling.
“This is how beautiful you are,” he says. “How you taste. How I know.”
Know what?
He pulls his fingers from my mouth and pushes them into his own mouth.
I watch him dazedly.
He shoves my legs wider and slides his giant fingers into me. I try to snap my knees closed. He pushes them wider.
“Again.” He resumes licking, this time with his fingers lodged thickly inside me.
“I can’t take it! I’m too—”
He presses his hand back over my mouth and continues to lick and fuck me with his massive fingers. It feels amazing, but my clit is so sensitive—too sensitive.
I writhe and beg him to stop, which eventually takes the form of moaning behind his hand. I try to push his head away with both hands.
He removes his hand with a sigh that seems to travel all the way into me.
“What?”
Put your fingers back in me is the only thought I can form. “Um…” I say.
He presses my hands to my belly. “I will always find you, I will always take you.”
“Uh,” I breathe.
He smiles wickedly, then he pushes his fat tongue into my hole. I whimper. He draws it up over my clit. Down and up. I shudder with every pass. I’m raw, exposed.
He chases, and I retreat—bewildered, breathless. I don’t care about anything. Are people walking past? I don’t even care.
He’s chasing down that silvery feeling. I can’t hide. I’m shaking my head, ragged and weary. This is what it’s like to be at the mercy of a true predator, I think vaguely. He feels everything, uses everything. He doesn’t give me a chance.
At some point, my cries and protests turn to whispered begging. He claps his hand over my mouth again.
He has me. He will always take me. He’s toying with me, mastering me.
He seems utterly aware of this fact, just the way he seems to know everything.
He pushes his tongue into my hole. It feels giant and alive. He curls it, licking inside me. I imagine it’s his cock. I want him to stretch me, fill me, take me, use me, have me.
He pulls it out and drags it along my clit again—harshly.
I shudder ecstatically.
He has me, and he’s going to make me come again.
I can run, but I can’t hide. It seems unfair. Maybe it is. It doesn’t matter—he’s dragging his tongue over me yet again.
I can no longer take it, but I have to, over and over. I’m a creature dwelling in pure potential. I’m stranded at the tip of his tongue.
He stills and pulls away, turning his golden eyes to me.
He looks almost smug.
He sees everything. He sees that I’m right there, waiting for him, open and helpless as any being can be. I try to pull my wrists from his grip, wanting to grab his hair, make him come back. I need him. I’m crazy without him. I can’t beg him with my words or my hands, so I beg him with my eyes.
He seems satisfied with this. He lowers his face to me, applies his tongue back to my madly sensitive nub—knowingly, wickedly.
Pleasure erupts over me. He keeps me going, spinning. I’m crying behind his hand. He’s crossed so many lines. I can’t count how many. I don’t care.
I come, shattered and spinning.
He’s broken me somehow. And I like it. I want to be broken by him over and over. He rises up and kisses my neck, my cheek.
Eventually he untangles himself from me and stands, towering over me, darkly. “Everything about you is so beautiful to me,” he grates out.
I sit sprawled below him, barely comprehending his words. I don’t know what anything means; I just have this nameless surge of affection for him. My affection for him feels a little bit like madness.
It’s out of this that I reach up to him. Both hands, reaching to him.
I need him back with me. Touching me.
He regards me in the strangest way. He doesn’t take my hands; instead he bends down and lifts me in his arms.
I feel weightless, treasured.
He puts his nose to my hair, breathing me in. I’m a thing in his arms in the middle of some rural mall in Minnesota at the edge of a great primeval wilderness under the vast spray of stars and planets and solar systems. And everything is different.
He puts me down and smoothes my hair. Points at my clothes. “We have to go.”
My gaze falls to his pants, the massive bulge in his pants. “Don’t you want…” I reach out to his cock. He catches my hand before I make contact, sliding his thumb along the inside of my wrist, along where the blood runs, like he’s checking my pulse.
Like I’m his pe
t or something. Like I’m his.
“I want to go,” he says.
I look up into that ineffable gaze, so full of harshness and affection. It’s here I dare to think it—that maybe he is different. Wilder, somehow.
I can still feel his massive hands on me, the way he held me down and smelled me, as though he was animated by some primeval force.
This is a man who can fight like he has eyes in the back of his head. I’ve seen men fight. I’ve looked out of slits in tanks and seen the most deadly men in the world in full battle mode. I’ve seen even more than that on videos that will never be released to the public in a zillion years.
But never have I seen anyone fight like Kiro does. It’s possible he literally did want to rip apart the store. Guys hate shopping, but they usually don’t have the urge to destroy the store. And the way he just took me over…
I’m different, Nurse Ann. He’s said it to me enough times. I feel the truth of it in the way that I suppose he feels seasons, predators. The implications seem huge, ancient.
He gazes down at me. My heart pounds. What does he think when he sees me? What does he think any of this is?
I try to pull on my wrecked jeans, feeling wrecked myself. And unaccountably sad.
He scowls. “What’s wrong?”
I don’t know what to say. Everything feels so tragic suddenly. The way he sees the world, the way the world wants to use him. “We can’t hang round in this town this long, but we can’t go without getting you supplies.”
I fold over the top of my wrecked jeans. It’s the best I can do now that the metal buttons are off. This is how Kiro takes off a girl’s clothes.
“You have to pick out the stuff you’ll need to live up there,” I say.
“You’ll help me.”
“I’ll help.” Though I don’t see why he needs help. Who’d know better what he needs than him?
I buy an extra pair of jeans on the way out and quickly change into them at the camping and hunting supply store. When I come out of the dressing room, I find him at the knife counter.
I come up behind him, knowing he knows I’m there. He inspects a series of hunting knives, evaluating and discarding one after another, superpredator that he is. What is he imagining as he turns them over in his fingers? I should get pictures of this, too. People will want to know what he chooses.
Fuck, the endorsement money off just a shot like this could buy him a thousand acres of wild land to have as his own. Because who wouldn’t want the knife Savage Adonis chooses?
I pull out my phone as if to check my mail and discreetly take a few photos. I’m starting to question this whole process, but the thing about photos is that once the moment’s gone, you’ve lost the shot.
He settles on one large knife and one with a small grip. The small one seems too small for his hand. What’s the small one for?
While they’re boxing up the blades, he inspects the contents of a box on the counter. Keychains in the form of different animals.
Suddenly he yanks one out and holds it in his massive palm, staring at it with a mixture of shock and reverence, like he’s discovered a rare and precious jewel.
I draw near and see that it’s just some howling wolf figurine attached to a keychain. Just some cheap molded plastic thing from China. Practically worthless.
But apparently not to Kiro.
It’s the one thing he’s shown true interest in on this whole shopping trip.
Wolves. Family.
All this time wanting to get home. The realization dawns on me that it’s not about the wilderness—it’s about the wolves. They’d said he’d been raised by wolves. Could it be true? The way he holds the stupid little keychain tells me it is. Like Kiro’s version of coming upon a photograph of your long-lost mother.
I nod at it. “Let’s get that.”
“What for?” he asks, not letting it go. “It’s for keys. I have no use for keys.”
“Liking it is reason enough to buy it. Welcome to shopping.”
He closes his massive fingers around it. It makes me feel every kind of feeling, watching him hold onto that thing.
This is the killer detail I’d hang the story around. Kiro, ripped from the only place he was ever happy. Caged, imprisoned, drugged.
He just wants to go home—to the only true family he ever knew. The one place he felt loved.
And he latches on to this fucking keychain.
“We should definitely get it,” I say casually.
We move on to the sleeping bag section. He feels inside each one, asking my opinions, finally choosing the largest, softest one of them. I smile, amused that Kiro likes a little comfort after all.
He looks at me and catches me smiling.
And he smiles.
Chapter Twenty-One
Kiro
I’ve seen many beautiful things. Unexpected, startling beauty on misty mornings. In the deepest nights. Inside the bloodiest of battles. Sunny, lazy autumn days.
Nothing like Ann, half-naked back in that dressing room. Reaching up to me like she thinks I’m someone good.
I run my fingers over the fabric of the sleeping bag Ann chose, as if to check its softness, but really I’m living back in that dressing room with Ann below me, reaching up to me.
I remind myself I can’t trust her. That she’s only with me for my story.
Still I had to take her in my arms.
Even fake things can make you feel good.
Like Ann, reaching up to me.
Like the wolf in my hand.
It’s just a plastic thing, but it looks like Red, one of the best friends I ever had. My heart twists when I hold it. I’ll see Red again. I can almost feel his warm, coarse scruff. And Sally, with her pointy black muzzle. Fierce eyes. The rest of them, all so distinct.
I used to lie in that bed imagining the moment of scenting my old friends, seeing them, feeling the happiness shiver through them. I never imagined it would come true.
Ann walks through the store with me, pointing out all the things she imagines I might need. “What about rope? A camping water purifier? That would be good, right?”
I say yes to them all because these are the things she thinks she’ll need.
A woman like Ann is fragile and unused to the wilderness. Having these things will make her more comfortable.
The wolf toy is the only thing I want from the store. And a canoe, because a canoe will get us home faster. She chooses a Kevlar canoe.
Our cart is full to the brim before we get to the tents. She’ll come to see that we need only the den, or maybe the cave if we want a fire. But the wolves are better for warming cold fingers and toes than any fire. Still, we pick one up.
She’ll be frightened at first, but the wolves will remember me, and if I carry her to them, they’ll accept her as mine.
Eventually she’ll feel happy there the way I did.
“We’ll go there in a canoe, drop all this stuff at your home for you, and you’ll canoe me back to the car,” she says.
I understand from the way she says this that she’s imagining our trip will take a day, maybe two. She has no sense of the vastness of this wilderness. She has no sense we’ll be travelling for many days.
I touch the hem of her shirt, thinking about the way she tasted. I smile.
She enjoys when I smile. People have always wanted me to smile, told me to smile. I never would. But Ann is different. I want to smile around Ann.
We unwrap the things we’ve purchased, which are in maddening plastic containers, and load them into the backpacks right there in the store. We sling them on and carry the canoe over our heads. We’re only a few steps out the door before I stop.
They’re here.
“What?”
“Back in the store. Now.” I turn us, canoe and all, back into the store, as though we forgot something. We put the canoe down.
“What?” she asks.
“They’re here,” I say.
She widens her eyes. “Who?”
/>
“The ones who attacked the Fancher Institute.”
“The canoe was over your head…how did you see them?”
“I didn’t see them, I smelled their chemical scent. They’re out there waiting for us near our car.”
“The rental car? How could they have found us?”
Ann cares about details. I don’t. “You wait here while I kill them—”
“No.” She puts a hand on my arm. “They’re waiting for us at our rental car. Let’s let them wait.”
“Go on foot?”
She looks around. “We’ll borrow a car.”
“Borrow?”
“We’ll go out the back and find something…to steal-slash-borrow,” she says.
“You need keys.”
“I don’t,” she says. “We just have to be fast. I’ll get one started while you get the canoe fastened to the top with the bungees. Will you be able to tell if anybody is back there?”
“Of course.” I leave her and go to the back door. I take a whiff and return to her. “They’re not out back. Only in the front.”
She smiles as though I’ve performed a trick. Collecting facts for her article. I pick up the canoe and carry it myself this time. It’s what I wanted to do before, but Ann insisted on helping. I allowed it because it seemed important to her, but now the men who attacked us are here.
She leads me to a blue truck parked at the far end of the lot, hidden behind a larger truck. She breaks the window and an alarm sounds out, piercing my ears. Quickly she slips in and gets to work, doing something next to the wheel—pulling, prying. The alarm stops.
She moves with confidence.
Her confidence makes her even more beautiful to me. It makes me feel sad, too, because she really isn’t with me. She really isn’t on my side. She’s my natural enemy. A reporter.
For a second, though, I allow myself to imagine her coming home with me as a true partner, wanting to be there.
The engine starts.
I tie the canoe onto the top. Ann sits behind the wheel, taking apart her phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Just in case,” she says mysteriously. Soon we’re on the road.
“You can start a car without the key,” I say. “How do you know to do that?”
Savage Mafia Prince: a Dangerous Royals romance Page 14
