“A tank top,” she whispered.
I made a sound low in my throat, almost like a growl, and in two steps I had her back up against the wooden barn wall. I pinned her there, one hand at her creamy shoulder, one at her hip, my gaze fixed on her chest, drenched from the rain, illuminated by the fading dusk light of the window.
Her breasts looked like luscious, tantalizing fruit. There she was in front of me, ripe and ready, but not mine for the taking. Frustration lashed through me.
“Fuck.” I couldn’t bite back my swear.
“Declan?” My name came out of her lips, half-question, half plea. Watching her shiver there, trapped under my hands, I licked my lips.
“You’re soaked.” Strangled with need, my voice came out choked. I stared at her heaving chest. She followed my gaze and realized what I saw, every inch of her revealed to me, the thin cotton of her top soaked through, the light gauzy lace of her bra offering no cover. Her breasts were completely on display, the fabric plastered to them, outlining, highlighting, and her nipples were hard as rocks. The swollen tips pushed out urgent, erotic, begging for me.
“Why’d you come in here, Kara?” I growled, not breaking my gaze, pressing her there. I kept my body tight, coiled, tension lacing through me, trying to hold myself back. She wasn’t mine. She couldn’t be.
“I… it started raining.” She squirmed under my stare. “I needed shelter.”
“You came in here to get shelter.” No shelter here, not at all. I couldn’t resist dipping my head down to her bare throat and scenting her like an animal. I drank her in, filling my lungs as if I could sustain myself on that alone. She started to pant.
“You thought you’d found someplace safe.” My lips traveled the length of her throat, so close to her skin, but not touching. But Adam couldn’t resist Eve, and he had to have been a much better man than me.
So slowly, such a light whisper of a touch, I flicked out my tongue to taste. I pressed it against her skittering, racing pulse, licking her there. Marking her.
She gasped, tilting her chin back, baring her throat. Giving herself to me. The deep, primal urge to claim her flooded my senses as I licked her soft, warm skin. Her breasts heaved with her breathing, her nipples straining and aroused.
“Instead, you found me,” I said, gruff.
I wanted to make her wild. All at once, I brought my mouth down, hot and full, around her aching, needy breast.
“Ah!” she cried out, her eyes closing as my mouth claimed her, sucking, licking right through her thin, wet shirt. Finding her sensitive, aching nipple I sucked hard, bringing my teeth down lightly, right on the tip. She gasped, clutching my shoulder.
At her other breast, I sucked and licked, bringing my hands up to cup and massage, bringing her tip right into my mouth.
“Oh! Declan!” She cried out. She liked it. I started to tease her, licking, trailing my hot tongue in a circle around her nipple. She writhed under me as I tortured her, not touching her aching, swollen bud, not giving her what she needed.
“Declan!” she nearly screamed, until I closed my mouth directly over her nipple, pulling it between my teeth, harder than last time.
Shocked, she smacked her head back against the wall. I’d never seen anything more gorgeous than Kara swept away with lust, mouth open, eyes closed, her tits in my hands, in my mouth. I could tell she was eager and ready for anything I wanted to do to her. And I’d fantasized about doing so very many things, so many filthy, nasty, dirty things she’d beg me to do to her.
Only she wasn’t filthy, dirty and nasty. She was a sweet, naïve, innocent girl who had the shit luck to stumble into the den of a beast like me. And she wasn’t mine to take. She was my boss’s daughter, explicitly forbidden in every way.
I pulled away. I don’t know how I did it, but somehow I battled myself off of her, away from her. Infuriated, impotent rage coursed through me. I turned away, desperate for what I couldn’t have.
“Get out of here,” I barked at her, striding back into the shadowy depths of the barn.
“What?” she asked behind me, breathless and confused. “Declan?” she called after me.
“Now!” I bellowed, leaving no room for questions, no opening for discussion. Commanding, firm. Brutal.
She did as I told her, leaving me alone in the cold, dark barn, my hands clenched in fury. With an explosion of rage, my fists found a bale of hay and tore into it, punching, pummeling, grinding it into the ground. Consumed by hunger, longing, fury at being deprived.
Panting, my knuckles bloody from pounding the rough floor planks, I stopped myself. It didn’t do any good to scrounge around in the dark like an animal. I’d had enough days like that in my life, fighting for survival, scrabbling through foster homes, a brute resorting to my fists.
That wasn’t me, not anymore. I was on the cusp of something bigger and better. I didn’t know what it would be yet, not exactly, but it was so close I could almost taste it. And I needed this job to make it happen. I couldn’t screw up and get in trouble. Harlan would badmouth me and who knew, that standing offer from the other ranch to come back and work in the fall might dry right up. There I’d be yet again, stranded and empty-handed.
It was too big a risk. I still had a whole summer ahead of me on Harlan’s ranch, a summer of long, hot nights. But I had to spend them away from her. Kara tempted me like no other, but this wasn’t going to happen. It had to be that way.
§
A couple of days later I was packing up the truck. Harlan and I were leaving for a two-night trip. He wanted to check out a ranch in Wyoming, buy some new steer, talk to a guy about a grain swap. He had a whole list of things. I was happy he’d asked me to come along. I’d been hoping to get a chance to talk to him. He was sitting on a gold mine if he’d only open his eyes to it.
Right now, I could see the writing on the wall. His ranch was going belly up. But he had a great property, set right in the middle of a perfect patch of wilderness, creeks and trails and all sorts of shit city folk would love to come enjoy. He could turn it around, open his place up to tourists. They’d pay, I knew they would. I didn’t know how it would go, whether he’d be up for it, but I’d try to talk to him. He might just go for it.
Kara came out to the barn, all honey and sugar, pretty little flowers on her dress. She had a package she was delivering into the cab of the truck, some corn bread wrapped in a tea towel and a thermos. Like she was carrying that night she had come down to my cabin.
“For me?” I had to ask.
She nearly jumped out of her skin, whipping around with a hand up to her chest. Guess she hadn’t seen me.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, like it was strange for me to be in the barn.
“I’m getting ready to head out with your daddy.”
“On the two-day trip?”
I nodded my head, watching her. She looked so pretty when she flushed up, startled, her eyes wide, her breathing fast.
“I didn’t know you were going with him.”
“Gonna miss me?” I couldn’t resist teasing her. She looked so skittish, like I might eat her up. She was right about that.
“Bet you are,” I continued. Her eyes widened. I liked getting her riled up. She sure did it to me.
She looked down, blushing now, the pink rising up into her cheeks. And spreading down along her collarbone, up to the top of her halter dress. No sleeves, no straps. A man could pull that elastic right on down and gain full access to paradise. I stepped closer.
“I didn’t know you were going on the trip,” she repeated.
“You already said that.” I stepped closer.
“What are you doing?” she asked, jumpy, her eyes darting over to the entrance.
“What do you mean?” I wasn’t going to touch her, not with her father about to come down to the truck any second. Hands-off, that was my policy. But it couldn’t hurt to look, up real close, nose pressed against the window.
“Why are you walking over to me?” She loo
ked pinned, trapped, though I wasn’t holding her there. I’d like to.
“Can’t a man say goodbye?”
“What are you going to do?”
“What do you want me to do?” I knew I was playing with fire, but who could resist it when it burned so bright?
“Declan.” She glanced away, down, anywhere but right at me though I was pretty close now. Close enough that I could close the gap real fast, reach out and pull her to me in the blink of an eye.
“Yes, Kara?” I liked saying her name. Even more than that, I liked her saying mine. I wanted to hear her whisper it into my ear real close in the dark, breathe it out needy, scream it out loud when she came.
The screen door slammed up at the big house. I knew Harlan would be by real soon. He’d want to get on the road.
“Guess I’d better get going,” she said. She didn’t move.
I brought my hand up over her head against the wall of the barn. I leaned over her. She wasn’t a tiny woman, she had real womanly curves and long legs, but right next to me she felt small and fragile. I could tell she was trembling. I could smell her strawberry hair, so soft. Her eyelids flickered closed for a moment, like she was about to swoon.
“You OK?” I whispered, real low in her ear.
“Mmm,” she murmured, swaying slightly toward me.
Still in that low whisper, I told her, “I’ll be thinking about you while I’m gone. How you tasted in the barn. And that moan I heard you make when you watched me get my cock sucked.”
Her eyes flew open, wide. I pulled back, shoving my hands into my pockets and taking a few steps away.
“You do the same now, y’hear?” I flashed her a grin like it was no big deal. Like I’d told her to say hi to her grandma for me.
She stayed pressed against the wall, breathing fast, her breasts heaving up and down, her tiny waist below. I just about rushed back and crushed her against me, pressed my lips to hers, the hell with it all.
Instead, I tipped the brim of my hat to her. Such a gentleman. Then I climbed into the truck with her father and drove off with a raging hard-on for his daughter. Not such a gentleman after all.
§
We came back from the trip early. Some meeting had fallen through, something else had come up back at the ranch. I didn’t feel like being out on the road with Harlan anymore anyway. He’d shot down my idea for wilderness tourism like I was an idiot. He didn’t see the point in it, didn’t believe anyone would ever pay to come out and do ranch work.
When you put it like that, it did sound stupid. Who would pay to do hard manual labor? But that wasn’t the point. You had to sell the idea of it, the lure of the wild. I’d seen it work at the other ranch where I’d spent my winter. I knew the idea had legs and I was pissed off that Harlan didn’t see. He was going to drive his ranch right into the ground and Kara’s future along with it if she didn’t get out in time. That’s what he was determined to do, but he was too blind and stubborn to see it.
Down at my cabin, the door was ajar. I didn’t like that. I’d spent one too many nights in mixed company, crashing in places where I didn’t have my own space and I couldn’t lock anyone out. Now that I had it, I was never going back. My place was my own. No one messed with it. I had a Swiss army knife in my back pocket. Slowly, I worked it into my palm as I silently eased open the door.
There, on my bed, lay Kara Brooks. She had her shirt pulled up and a full breast in her hand, kneading and stroking it. Her jean shorts were unbuttoned and wiggled down her hips. Her panties were pulled down. She had her hand on her pussy, her fingers deep up inside of her folds as she moaned and gasped and writhed on my bed.
“Uh! Oh!” she called out in need, pleasuring herself with fast, urgent fingers. Tossing her head to the side, she played with the aroused, erect point of her nipple while she turned her face into my pillow. She breathed deep, taking in my scent.
I thought I might explode. I stood there, unable to move, not believing what I was seeing, my cock as hard as a rock.
“Declan,” she exhaled, eyes closed, completely unaware that I stood there watching. Her fingers feverishly circled her clit and she moaned. She was getting close. So was I, standing there watching my deepest fantasy coming to life right before my eyes.
It couldn’t be happening. That was the bed I touched myself on, the bed I’d spent long nights with my hard dick in my hand wanting her. I couldn’t be watching her pleasuring herself on that same bed, my bed. Kara, the untouchable, innocent farm girl, the one I’d want but never have, playing with her own tits and gliding her fingers in and out of her slick, needy pussy while she fantasized about me. Holy shit.
She writhed on my bed, arching her back up. Her fingers worked in and out of her slit, fast, urgent, rubbing her slippery clit like she’d die if she didn’t come. Then she jammed her fingers up inside of her, deep. And she called out my name. “Declan!” Her body jerked and shuddered, her fingers way up inside of her, milking herself as she sighed and shivered, coming down from what looked like a spectacular orgasm.
“Kara.” I stepped into the room.
Flushed, breathless, she looked up at me. Then she panicked. She jackknifed up, pulling her shirt down and starting to button her jeans.
“What are you doing here?” she choked out.
“I live here.” I strode over to her on the bed.
“I didn’t think you were back. I just came in to—”
I was on top of her before she could say anymore, nervous excuses tumbling out of her gorgeous mouth. I grabbed her wrists and stretched them out above her head, trapping her hot little body beneath mine. She gasped under my assault.
Taking my time now, I wrapped her fingers through my own, twining myself around her.
“If I smell these fingers,” I asked her, low and secret, just between us, “will I smell that sweet pussy of yours?”
She gasped and twisted beneath me, caught.
I breathed deeply, inhaling her scent, the strawberry mixed with musky need. “I can smell you right now.” My head down, along her neck, under her chin, I scented her like an animal savoring its prey. Sweet, hot, juicy.
“I know what you’ve been doing, Kara. I watched you. I heard you call out my name.”
“No,” she protested, struggling beneath me. Her breath came hard, her eyes half-closed with desire. The war within her raged.
“You know what happens when you play with fire, Princess. You get burned.” Still pinning her wrists with one hand, I trailed my fingers down her side, searing a path along her curves, stopping at her waist. I parted her legs with my large, powerful thigh and pressed the full, steel length of my cock down against her sex. She bucked underneath me, half trying to escape but also wanting more. A throaty groan escaped from her parted lips. Right after an orgasm, she still had to be so swollen and sensitive.
“Worst thing is,” I continued, rocking my hardness against her, knowing she’d be wet and slick for me. “I’m going to make you love it.”
“Oh!” she cried out, tossing her head to the side, nearly wild with it already.
“Declan. I need you,” Harlan called from outside.
I need you. Got that right. Panting, we looked at each other. I cursed and rolled off of her. I ran a hand through my hair, pulled my shirt down and headed out to be of service.
Of course when I got back she was gone.
Now
5 a.m. I’d spent the night tossing and turning on my looked-good but hard-as-a rock black leather couch. Kara was sleeping soundly, alone in my sumptuous king size bed.
She’d been a virgin. A fucking virgin, like in medieval tales of chastity. Were there even 24-year-old virgins in the world anymore? Apparently I’d found the one and only. Like a unicorn.
Crazy thing was, last night had felt like my first time, too. That sounded like bullshit, but taking a woman had never felt like that before. My mind had this funny way of keeping going all the time, at night, while I worked, even during sex. I always had 10,000 thin
gs milling around up in there. But not with Kara. With her, all I did was feel. I’d been 100% locked-in on her and her alone, completely mesmerized by the heat of her, the sounds she made, the way she fit me so tight and perfect.
She hadn’t told me she was a virgin. She should have told me. But would it have made a difference? A beast like me? The animal in me liked that I’d been her first. No one else, I’d taken her. It satisfied something deep and primal inside of me, to claim her and mark her as my own. I never wanted her with anyone else. Now she was mine.
Only she wasn’t, not really, just for the week. And this wasn’t a medieval tale of a knight and his lady. I was just the guy with a large bank account, large enough to lure the one that got away into playing out every dark fantasy on my list. I had a long list.
I tossed on the hard leather, that sofa not giving an inch. I’d never been a big sleeper, the kind of guy who got his regular eight or nine hours every night. But I’d learned over time how to force sleep to come to me. Body-breaking physical exertion worked pretty well, first as a ranch hand and then, after I’d gone from hired help to bossman, I’d taken up working out. The adrenaline, the full-body discipline, the soaked with sweat exhaustion I felt after an intense workout, that usually got me down for the night. And if that didn’t do it, some raw, nasty sex did the trick. Sometimes it took both.
Yesterday, I’d done both. The sex had been through the roof. With Kara Brooks. I wasn’t big on nostalgia. Honestly, I’d devoted way more time to erasing my past than dwelling on it. Who wanted to sit there crying into your soup about how your daddy had run off and your mom…well. It wasn’t right to badmouth the dead, now was it? The addictions that had hounded her her whole life had finally caught up to her a couple of years ago in an overdose. So, no, the past wasn’t something I liked to think about all that much.
But Kara Fucking Brooks. She’d been a difficult one to forget. And now she was back.
Sleep wasn’t going to happen. I finally gave up and headed to my home office. I glanced through the day’s news, watched a couple of market analysts’ podcasts, replied, filed and mostly deleted emails.
Unleashed: Declan & Kara (Unleashed #1-4; Beg for It #1) Page 19
