by Denise Agnew
She was in the bowels of a crypt, but the man holding her would protect her against evil. Clarissa knew he would guard her with his soul, his heart and mind. A restlessness grew inside her to put out this conflagration that heightened by the second. Ronan Kieran wanted her in all ways a man could want a woman, and she felt the hard press of his erection against her stomach.
He pulled back and stared into her eyes and she thought about moving away. Instead his voice whispered in her head. Stay with me.
With a deft movement he reached between their bodies and unzipped her coat. He slipped his arms under the coat and brought her into his warm embrace. Against his hard, hot body, safety and comfort enveloped her. Since his long coat lay open, she felt the hardness of his chest and the solidness of his thighs. Everything about this puzzling man spelled unbelievable strength and willingness to use power. His force, his essence was infused by a living inferno she didn’t understand.
As he kissed her again, she succumbed to the overwhelming desire to remain close to him, to caress and cherish and thank him for finding her. She slipped her hands into his chocolate dark hair and caressed the thick strands, then touched his face.
His voice whispered deep in her mind. Touch me. Feel me. Know me.
He cupped her ass with a gentle but exploratory grip. She moaned in delight as he kneaded her flesh, testing and shaping. As his fingers brushed and cupped, she cherished the erotic need building deep in her belly, urging her to let go. Let go and discover what sensual delights this dangerous man offered.
He released her mouth, and his lips traveled over her ear. Clarissa kept her eyes closed, wanting to remain in this desire-filled world. Without restraint she caressed his hard arms and broad shoulders, needing to experience more than what she could through his leather jacket.
His breathing, heavy and rasping with a desperate desire, fueled her senses the way nothing else could have. “Sweet colleen, you have no idea what you do to me. You’re the fire in my body I cannot erase. If this was the right time and place, I would show you how much I want you.” He groaned softly against her neck, his frame racked by a fine shivering. “I’d take you to my lair.” His hands traveled from her back to her butt again and he cupped her ass cheeks, kneading softly. “We’d drink champagne and taste each other.”
“Taste each other?” she said, her voice shaky.
“Mmm.” He licked her ear. “Caress.” Warm and hot, his tongue darted into her ear, then out. “Taste.” Ronan palmed her ass with long, soothing caresses. His mouth traveled to her forehead where he planted a warm kiss. “We’d connect. I’d do anything and everything you wanted to bring you to ecstasy. I’d feast on your luscious body until lust overwhelmed us. Then I’d take you.”
A delicious shudder rippled over her. Deep between her thighs the ache built, hot and moist and desiring what he could give her. “Take me? As in make love?”
He chuckled a low, soft rumble against her ear. “It would be more than making love. It would be…mating.”
“Mating,” she whispered.
“Sweet, tender mating.” His tongue lingered on her earlobe. “Or hard, hot, fast mating.”
Wild shivers overtook her. “Yes to both.”
Clarissa forgot the darkness around them, the strange fear she’d experienced and the trauma of falling down the hole. Instead she snuggled into Ronan’s incredible, intoxicating embrace and accepted his wanton words, his mental lovemaking.
He brushed the curling fringe away from her forehead and his lips toured her skin. “Do you want to know how I’d feel inside you?”
It sounded so forbidden. “Please tell me.”
He murmured against her temple, “You’ll be so hot, so warm and dripping with sexual need that I’ll slip inside easily.”
To her immediate surprise and delight, she could feel a hard cock pressing between her legs. She knew it wasn’t happening now, but the images, the feelings inside her head were there nonetheless. As the imaginary cock eased inside, spreading her walls, she groaned with the desire, the heavenly sensation.
“That’s it,” he said softly. “Take me inside.” Mentally pushing, he progressed, parting her sex with steady pressure. “More, Clarissa. Open to me.”
She shuddered and writhed as the sweet feeling continued as she opened wide to his intrusion. He pressed as high as he could go.
“When I’m deep, your warm pussy will grip me.”
“Oh, yes. I can feel it now.”
“You’ll feel my heart beat in my cock, you’ll shiver against my hardness. I’ll feel every ripple of your hot walls.”
More feelings darted into her system, as forceful as a blizzard, as incredible as anything she’d thought in her wildest dreams. She could feel him pressing deeper between her thighs, his hungry cock inserted fully into her hot passage.
Her head feel back, offering him her throat. “What will you do then?”
“I’ll fuck you. Moving inside you with deep pumps of my cock.”
His graphic description fired her libido higher than she could have imagined, and the sensation of his hardness sliding into her and then drawing slowly out made her quiver in his arms. “Oh. Oh, my God.”
As she made the breathy sounds, his lips touched the hollow of her throat. “You’ll feel me parting your sex time and again. Deep and slow.”
When she issued another soft, “Oh, my God,” he continued his assault on her crumbling defenses.
“Your heart is beating faster as your channel drips with your need. With each thrust you draw me tight against you as your pleasure grows.”
At his words she felt the heat climbing from her groin all the way up her chest into her face, everything inside her responding to his words of seduction. Somewhere, in the part of her brain that could still reason, she wondered if his words were designed to lure, to make her weak. She wanted to struggle against him, but found she couldn’t.
“No,” she managed to push through the fog in her thought processes.
Immediately the sensations of him fucking her stopped.
It was if she’d never felt him inside her.
A warm laugh came from Ronan’s chest as he nuzzled her cheek. “You try my control, but I would never force myself upon you.”
She didn’t know what to say, and with effort she opened her eyes. He stared down at her; the fire remained high in his remarkable gaze. Then the fire winked out, as if he forced it to disappear. “What did…? How did…?”
At her confused rambling he brushed his fingers over her forehead. “We came together mentally.”
Sarcastic humor rose to forefront. “In other words, we just had a real mind fuck.”
He chuckled, and the sound almost made her forget she stood in a dark hole with a man bent on seducing her. “Sure, and you could say we had quickie, but we didn’t finish.”
Finish. Now that would have been interesting. She shook her head, amazed beyond belief. “I must be insane standing here with you.”
“Why? Because you allowed desire to overrule your fear of this place and of me?”
“Yes. I should be afraid of this place, just as you said. I’ve felt strange things here.”
“You have the sixth sense to see beyond what many others do.”
She nodded, at least assured he wouldn’t ridicule her for the talent. “Sometimes. I saw you on more than one occasion in what might be another life.”
He drew in a deep breath. “You see me as I am. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“But you’re not like most people. You can do things. Your power, your amazing agility—it defies sanity. You haven’t explained the strange light in your eyes. This is all crazy.”
His grip on her loosened. “There’s nothing sane in Pine Forest anymore. Not I, not you. For you’re crawling around in graveyards looking for ghosts. There are many worse things here to be found. Much worse.”
His tone, almost harsh, made her ease from his arms. His hands clutched into fists at his side, but she didn�
��t see anger in his eyes, only passion. This man wanted her, no doubt about it, but she felt him retreating from her, too.
When he took a deep breath, his trembling appeared to stop. “You’re putting yourself at risk being in Pine Forest.”
“No kidding. I walked right into this crypt and straight down a hole I had no way of knowing was there.” She looked around. “I’m stuck here with a man who drives me nuts and who speaks in riddles. And apparently he has telepathy as well. Do you?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Okay, so she’d intentionally misinterpreted his meaning. With the serial killer loose any woman could be in danger. Yet she knew the first danger came from Ronan.
I won’t lie to you, Clarissa. Yes, I have telepathy. Very strong telepathy.
“All right. So we’ve established that you can read my mind and send thoughts to me.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You take that knowledge calmly.”
She shrugged and the sore muscles in her body protested. “Because I believe in the supernatural. Why do you think I take photographs of haunted places?”
His gaze calmed, the fire retreating to a slow, intermittent burn. Fascinated, she couldn’t seem to resist looking into his eyes. And that frightened her in the most elemental way possible, deep down where lust and desire couldn’t cloud her senses.
She backed away a bit, and he held his hand out. “Don’t. Don’t go far.”
To her surprise his voice sounded a little scared. “What are you afraid of?”
His desperate look disappeared under a hard veneer, the heat retreating from his eyes like a banked fire. “I fear nothing.”
Somehow she couldn’t believe that, but she decided not to challenge him. “Were you following me, Ronan? Is that how you knew where to find me?”
“No. An odd question considering I told you I found you by instinct.”
Confusion warred with indignation. “You’re the oddest man I know. You appear at the most interesting times, especially when I need you the most. You’ve kissed the hell out of me, and you have the strangest eyes I’ve ever seen. You can read minds and I can hear your voice in my head—as if that doesn’t creep me out enough.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me. A lot you don’t want to know.”
“Oh, I see. You’re one of those men who gets off on being dark and dangerous. I hope you enjoyed sleeping with me in your mind.”
His perplexed frown almost made her think he didn’t understand until he said, “That sounds like an insult.”
If she hadn’t been tired, aching, and still longing for his touch, she wouldn’t have pushed the issue. “It is. What are you, some kind of cop?”
He stepped forward until once again their personal space amounted to almost nothing. Eyes glittering with insolence, he said, “No.”
“Then what do you do?”
“Prowl graveyards trying to keep foolish women safe.”
“Foolish—why you—”
When she cut herself off, he said, “Whenever you need me, if ever you need me, all you have to do is tell me with your mind. I’ll come for you.”
This gorgeous, intriguing man at her beck and call with one little thought. It sounded like a fantasy come true.
Although she’d seen clear demonstration of his ability to read her mind, part of her couldn’t quite accept the idea. “Why would I need you?”
“For protection.”
“Why would I need protection?”
He grunted. “You do. And you still want me.”
His blatant statement increased her discomfort and her ire. She held up an index finger for emphasis. “I’ve run into enough self-assured-to-the-point-of-sickening men in my life. You’re assuming a lot if you think I’ll hop into bed with you because you saved my life once, possibly twice. And to top that all off, how did you get down here?”
One of his dark brows winged upward, a sardonic expression covering his face. He looked up at the hole she’d fallen through. “I flew.”
Before she could respond to his preposterous answer, a harsh, rushing wind blew cold into their faces. Unease made her shift closer to him, and he put his arm around her waist. She didn’t know what lurked in the strange darkness surrounding them, and she didn’t think she wanted to understand.
The darkness is closer. We must leave.
She glanced up at him. “You’re doing it again.”
He smiled this time, and sensual nuance in his grin and his eyes turned her heart over. “Touching you?”
“You know what I mean. Talking to me in my mind.”
“You don’t like it?”
“You’re invading my privacy.”
“Mmm. There’s more I’d like to invade, sweet colleen, but we’ve got to leave here now. We’ve lingered far too long.” He put his fingers against her temple.
Reassuring and flowing, his voice filtered into her mind again. We’re flying, Clarissa. Flying.
Before she could protest or comprehend what would happen, a strange languor overcame her. Unable to keep her eyes open, she sagged in his grip. Seconds later, the remaining light in the cavern disappeared and with it her consciousness.
* * * * *
Again Clarissa awakened enveloped in a man’s arms. At first she smiled, happy Ronan still held her close. She felt as if she lay on a solid surface, cold and unforgiving.
“Clarissa? Can you hear me?”
The male didn’t belong to Ronan’s husky Irish inflection. Disappointment and apprehension made her struggle against the arms holding her. Her eyes popped open as the man kept her in his grip.
The arms released her as she struggled upright. “Whoa. It’s just me. Jim.”
Leaning back on her palms, she blinked at Jim in mystification.
He held his hands out in a gesture of nonaggression as he sat on the crypt floor with her. “I heard you scream and when I rushed in here and saw you down below in the hole, I tried to use my cell phone to call for help. I couldn’t get a signal worth a damn, but when I rushed back with some rope to try and get down to you, I saw you lying on the floor next to the hole. How did you climb out?”
“Good question,” she said, feeling dazed. “I don’t remember.”
“We’ve got to get you some medical assistance.”
“No, I’m fine.”
When she tried to stand, Jim sprang up and clasped her shoulders for support. “None of this makes sense. It didn’t take me that long to go from the crypt to the car and back and in that time you found a way up here?”
She shook her head. Her senses had cleared and the ache in her head from the earlier fall hadn’t returned. “Maybe this was all a dream.” She reached out and touched Jim’s chest. “Maybe I’m dreaming you.”
A puzzled, worried frown touched his lips. “Damn it, Clarissa, you need to see a doctor. This isn’t a dream, and I think you hit your head, because you’re not making sense.”
Maybe she did need to be looked at, because she couldn’t be one hundred percent certain about what happened in the hole. If Ronan had rescued her, found a way out of the hole, why hadn’t he stayed?
“Maybe I just dreamed the part where Ronan appeared.”
“Who?”
His puzzled expression made her realize she’d made a hash of her explanation. “The man who saved me from the mugger. That Ronan.”
“Ah.” He nodded. “Right. He was down in the hole with you? Then where the hell is he?”
She shook her head. “Beats me. Come on, let’s just get out of here. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this place actually gives me the creeps.” Then she remembered one precious item. “Wait. Where’s my camera?
“It must still be down there.”
“Damn it.”
“We’ll come back for it later. It’s not important now. You are.”
She allowed him to lead her out of the crypt and back to the car. On the way back into town she pondered whether she’d lost her mind, or if she’d rea
lly encountered Ronan Kieran in the graveyard. How much she should tell Jim.
She chose, without being sure why, the avenue of not revealing anything about her encounter with Ronan.
* * * * *
Ronan rammed his toe against the refrigerator door as he wandered into the dimly lit kitchen in Erin’s home. “Feckin’ A.”
Vampire vision or not, he’d managed to be more clumsy than usual popping into her home. He inhaled the delicious scent emanating from the big crock-pot on the kitchen counter. Definitely the smell of meat. His mouth watered. He hadn’t taken mortal food in at least a week, and he was in the mood for it.
Frustrated from his encounter with Clarissa, and sensing that the woman had captured part of him beyond his control, he’d popped into Erin’s home to get a supply of long-needed blood. The entire house sounded quiet. He also didn’t detect Sorley around anywhere.
Just as well. He didn’t want to explain to anyone where he’d been. He almost groaned as he adjusted his jeans, his body still wanting something it couldn’t have. Fire ran through his body, his undead needs roaring and tossing like a tornado. It took everything he had to shove Clarissa’s sweet, beautiful warmth to the back of his mind.
I’ll be feckin’ lucky if I ever get rid of this hard-on.
He wanted and needed relief, and he could take things into his own hands, but he didn’t think masturbating would do the trick. It would take the edge off, but not the longing he’d felt since he first saw Clarissa Gaines in that bloody graveyard the first time.
A little disgusted with himself for trying to seduce her in that horror movie tunnel, he leaned against the refrigerator. She’d tasted so damned delicious, ready to be taken, to feel his teeth along her beautiful skin. His breathing, deep and not yet controlled, rasped from his throat. Denying more than their deep kisses and the sexual feelings he’d given her had been agony. Mentally she didn’t need his help. Yet he sensed she wanted him. Her desire had drowned his senses in a corporeal inferno and demanded he take her away where no one could find them. Only supreme control had kept him from transporting her to a hidden spot where he could have taken her. Supreme control had prevented him from coming in his pants when he delved into her mind and felt what she felt.
