by C M Wick
“He was a lonely god if I remember my Greek mythology,” she said, her voice not much louder than her earlier whisper. “A warden of ghosts, really.”
Yes, that summed Trent Kane up perfectly, she thought, once more on the verge of tears from being in his presence. What was wrong with this beautiful man? At first, she had thought he was reacting to her, that she was too poor, too heavy, too “provincial” to elicit anything other than a quiet disdain.
Now she realized this was who he was. She could have been the President of the United States and he wouldn’t reveal himself to her.
“It’s settled,” he said, retreating behind that hard shell of his. “You won’t be leaving. Lindsey will take care of making you more comfortable here and I’ll have a car and security-trained driver for you if you need to do any shopping of your own. As for groceries, just send a list down to the concierge. We’ll plan on a few extra days so the bungalow will be exactly as you need it. In the meantime, I’ll be at a hotel.”
He moved to leave.
She placed her hand on his shoulder, halting him. Voice breaking up, she shook her head.
“No, Trent. I won’t chase you out of…where you keep your things.”
8
Trent
Trent unraveled at her touch, at the sweetness in her voice. His hand covered hers where it remained on his shoulder. He turned into her, lifting her fingers to his lips then pressing his mouth against the open palm.
He heard the deep breath she drew in, the sound vulnerable and surprised.
Don’t get involved, he warned himself. From the second he had opened up her envelope and read the papers, his job was to protect her—not bed her.
His fingers denied the direct order from his brain to let go of her hand. Instead, they pulled her closer, folded her voluptuous frame into his arms.
Tilting her head back, he placed his second kiss against her bare neck.
She exhaled, body shaking.
He waited for the protest, the outrage.
Daniella moaned, her body pressing into his, her knees weakening.
“Don’t faint on me, Daniella,” he whispered against her ear before sucking the delicate lobe into his mouth. “There’s so much I want to do with you.”
Certain he could feel her heart banging against the back of her ribcage despite the full, luscious breasts molded against his chest, he pressed his lips to her flesh again, this time at the pulse along the underside of her chin.
The heavy thump-thump filled his balls with an aching need. Trent took a step back, pulling her with him. Her hands clutched at his arms, her fingertips digging at his biceps.
“Wh-at…wh-ere?” She jerked with each word, shaking hard against him.
“Does it matter?” he whispered into her ear then stopped breathing until she answered.
The emotions battling their way across her face carved furrows of desire, anxiety, fear, uncertainty, need…
He passed the minute mark of no air leaving or entering his lungs. Three was his max—when he could beat back the surge of adrenaline rushing through him. Holding her in his arms, feeling the soft, warm press of her body, watching each twist of indecision in her expression, he couldn’t control the chemicals coursing in his blood.
The room threatened to spin and the floor fall out from under him when her lips finally parted.
“No,” she answered. “It doesn’t matter.”
He inhaled, then crushed his lips against hers, his tongue more demanding than it had ever been as it slipped past her yielding teeth. His fingers threaded through her thick hair, tugging her head back, extending her neck and leveraging his height. He backed her against the island, tongue probing the wet cavern of her mouth.
Dropping one hand lower, Trent cupped Daniella’s mound, squeezed roughly then broke the kiss.
“Lift it up,” he ordered, not wanting to release his grip on her hair and the way it allowed him to control her head while he played with her pussy.
With a rough swallow and a slow blink, she obeyed, her hands clutching at the fabric of her robe and nightgown. Trent slid two fingers underneath the bottom trim of her panties, his bare foot tapping lightly against her ankle.
“Wider,” he rasped.
With a hot groan, she obeyed, her slick pussy lips parting so that he could slick his fingers with her cream and run the pads along her swollen clit.
Daniella jerked, released a shaky breath, but kept her legs spread and her nightclothes lifted high.
“I need you in my bed,” he growled with a nip at her throat. “Tell me ‘yes.’”
“Yes,” she whispered.
She released her tight grip on the clothes. He bent and scooped her up, his mouth bearing down on hers, his tongue probing as his cock protested its need to be buried deep inside the hot folds he had just fingered.
Down the hall he carried her, past the guest room to the master suite. He pushed the door inward with his foot, his speed increasing with each step until he had Daniella on her back, a shocked laugh escaping her as she bounced and then he landed on top of her.
He jerked her clothes up over her hips, one hand kneading and caressing her thighs as he kissed her again.
“You’re staying,” he ordered, asking her to agree to more than she could understand at that moment—to more than he could put into words.
He wanted her, not for the night or the weekend or the week.
“Yes,” she answered. “And so are you.”
He smiled then bit gently at her lip, his teeth keeping hold and tugging before he released her and soothed the small dent in her flesh with the tip of his tongue.
Pulling back onto his knees, he stripped her panties away then moved forward to press his torso against Daniella’s and whisper in her ear.
“I want to see you.”
He felt the hesitation, remembered the anxiety he had seen in the kitchen.
“Don’t you want to see me, too?” he teased, his lips playing along her throat.
When she mewled her consent, he reached over and tapped the base of the lamp once so that a soft glow lit her body. Meeting her sparkling gray gaze, he stared and read the vulnerability and shyness. Dipping his head, he brushed his nose along her cheek, near her mouth, then ghosted his lips over hers.
Still trapped inside his pajama pants, Trent’s cock tapped against the material, eager to emerge. Realizing there wasn’t a single condom in the penthouse because he never brought women home, Trent buried his face against Daniella’s neck, his rough beard producing a shiver and a delighted giggle from the woman beneath him.
The sound steamrolled across his body.
Don’t want a condom, his cock proclaimed as the fat crown bullied its way past the waistband of his pants.
What about what she wants?
Convince her, it argued around the dribble of pre-cum that beaded at its tip. Convince her, drive her crazy, make her go wild.
The tightness in his chest easing, Trent looked at the woman whose simple presence had him ready to break all his rules.
“Daniella, baby—I need you naked.”
9
Daniella
Arms extended over her head, Daniella let Trent strip the nightgown from her body. Not counting her doctor, she hadn’t been exposed to a man like this in almost three years. And only once before, her first time, had she felt so vulnerable or excited.
Her body managed to tingle and shake simultaneously until she met Trent’s gaze and melted onto the mattress.
A gentle smiled played across his face. She would have labeled it loving but she wasn’t delusional. There was some attraction between them, she couldn’t deny that. But she would go back to believing in Santa Claus before she would accept there was such a thing as insta-love.
Seeing that he was just looking at her, his unbuttoned shirt and his pajama bottoms still hiding most of him from her, she tugged at the cuff of his sleeves. He rolled his shoulders, his smile widening, and the shirt came off. His chest
was smoother than silk, not a strand of hair on it.
Her forehead wrinkled and she amended her silky smooth assessment. Reaching up, she ran a finger along a scar that was thin, white and almost as long as her hand.
“Courtesy of an Iraqi insurgent,” he said. “That was also the day I met Reed.”
She trailed a finger lower to another long line that started about an inch to the right of his navel and ran a straight line over to his hip.
“Moscow, rusty end of a broken pipe on the day I met Nazarov for the first time.”
She cocked a brow. “Do you have a scar for every friend you have?”
His mouth puckered and he pushed his pajama pants down his lean hips. She lost track of what his hands were doing with the material as his cock bobbed into view. She sucked her bottom lip in, rubbing it against the ridge of her top teeth as her jaw tightened in appreciation.
That was definitely as smooth as silk, but she better touch it to make sure.
Capturing her wrist, Trent pulled her hand forward and brushed her fingertips against his inner left thigh instead.
Her expression turned dead serious as she saw the ragged, star-shaped scar. “You were shot there?”
The spot was close to the femoral artery.
“You…this could have…you…” she gulped in more air.
“Almost bled out,” he confirmed. “But Stark was there, although it wasn’t our first meeting.”
He lifted his left arm to display a two-inch gouge on his inner bicep. “This was.”
Her face collapsed around itself, the beautiful cock forgotten.
“Shh,” he coaxed, pressing his torso against hers, the hard muscles forcing her soft flesh to yield. He kissed along the edge of her chin. “Just in case you’re starting to think I’m incompetent, I’ve saved their asses often enough.”
“I wouldn’t think you’re incompetent,” she promised, her fingertips running along his back, discovering new scars. Her lips began to quiver but Trent covered her mouth with his, the too clever tongue licking a faint line until she opened to him, all the damage to his beautiful body forgotten for the moment.
He gnawed at her bottom lip, licked a line against the center of her upper palate. Opening up space between them, he skimmed his fingers down her curves and across her thigh to find her poor, neglected pussy, its exterior hot and wet with need. His smile was a shifting mix of carnal and tender that pricked her nipples and lifted her hips.
She had a warrior in bed with her, a man who ran a multi-billion dollar security or paramilitary company. And, at that moment, he was looking at her like she was the most beautiful woman in the world.
None of it made sense.
“What questions do you have bouncing around that busy head, love?”
She blinked then told him quickly, “No questions. Just…enjoying the sight before me.”
That much was true enough. The man was beautiful. In a dangerous way.
And if she didn’t quit with all her insecurities, this time she had with him would pass without her giving it the attention it deserved. Daniella circled one of his small, dark nipples with a fingertip, then slowly crisscrossed her way, scar by scar, down to his cock, now pressed firmly into the swell of her stomach.
His eyes drifted shut, but not before his hand slid down between her legs.
She lost all track of what she was doing the second he began stroking at the line of her clit.
She squirmed, wanting to give him pleasure, but knowing the more he teased her, the less control she’d have over her own actions.
Before she could stop it, her lips parted, a moan escaping.
Trent growled, and told her gruffly, “I need more of those out of you.” Planting his knee between hers, he coaxed her to spread her thighs. When she followed his lead, he wedged his lower body between her legs and began a slow cascade of kisses that began with her mouth.
Goodbye, swollen, tingling lips.
Hello, chin.
Goodbye, gently curving neck with its hummingbird pulse.
Hello, collarbone.
A cry escaped when he reached her nipple and sucked it roughly into his mouth. Two thick fingers loaded up with her juices before slowly pushing into her, their length buried down to their base knuckles. Her muscles gripped at the invaders, milking them with a desperate greed as her hips began to roll.
Trent groaned, released her nipple. Kisses turned to light bites as he moved over the swell of her stomach. His fingers emerged wet from deep inside her pussy. Wrapping a hand around each thigh, he opened Daniella up wider and then his mouth fastened around her clit.
Cream pulsed hot and thick from her core.
Curling her fingers around the back of his head, she held him in place, her hips cresting like a mare that had never had a rider before. He had her there, so close, so, so close.
His mouth abandoning her pussy, he bit at her thigh, one thumb returning to press hard against her clit. A frustrated scream beckoned. She would have released it if they had been alone in his home.
Instead, she offered a soft, begging “please, Trent.”
A growl rumbled against the slick flesh of her thigh.
“Ask me again.”
“Please,” she mewled. “Please put your mouth back where it was.”
Twisting, he kissed her knee then licked a line near its bend. “Here?”
Oh, he wanted to play dirty.
She could do dirty.
“I need you to lick my pussy, Trent. You made it all hot and ready to burst before you abandoned it.”
“Hell,” he rasped. “Ask and you shall receive, beautiful.”
Her shoulders shook, the first bounce amusement at the raw need in his voice, the second bounce pure pleasure as his mouth made contact with her sex again, the sucking and licking relentlessly harder.
Daniella’s lips parted. Her eyes closed. Her fingertips tap danced against the back of his head.
With his whole mouth working her clit, Trent pushed a hard triangle of fingers into her pussy. Muscles contracted, knotted and coiled. Her clit jerked up and down beneath the rough, scraping caress of his tongue and teeth.
Turning his head, he offered a teasing chuckle as he began to knead her already swollen flesh with his lips. In and out his fingers slid, slow, twisting, taunting.
Her body shook, breasts bouncing as she twitched with need. Her labia swelled thicker, the flesh becoming hypersensitive, every bristly hair along his chin and cheeks an erotic torture.
“Trent,” Daniella begged when she thought she really wouldn’t be able to hold back a scream if he didn’t finish her quickly. “My clit needs you.”
Her pussy wouldn’t stop contracting around his fingers. Its swollen muscles pulled upward with each inflamed pulse of her nerves.
Ever so faintly, he touched just the tip of his tongue to the small pearl hidden in the hood of her clit. From there, just as softly, he licked upward. When he reached the top…
Oh, when he reached the top…
She sucked a deep breath in and exploded.
Her hips shot toward the ceiling, spasming. His hands dragged her back down to the mattress, his feasting no longer that of a master in control but a long famished man as he licked and sucked and gnawed at her pussy, the contractions filling his mouth with her juices.
He swallowed, kissed, nibbled until Daniella’s eyes rolled up and she cried out.
“Please, mercy…oh…”
Trent swiftly sailed forward, his lips at her ear, his rough voice demanding she yield completely.
“Tell me you want my cock.”
“Yes,” she groaned. “I want your cock.”
“Filling that sweet pussy,” he demanded.
“Yes, yes,” she begged. “I need all of it in me, in my pussy, please, Trent, now.”
She threw her legs wide, her knees bent and pressing against his lean hips. He lifted up on his arms and looked down to where their bodies met. She stared with him, saw his cock thick and
swollen with blood, pre-cum pearling at the tip, saw the tip disappear inside her, then felt the fat shaft as it stretched her pussy.
Trent began to rock against her with long, confident strokes. He caught her gaze, held it as he drove into her, her soft tissues swelling on the inside to make everything tighter, the ache so sweet she thought she would go blind.
“Dani…” He shifted so that his forearms pressed against the bed, his chest pushing at her tender breasts. He kissed her, repeated her name, then kissed her again, his tongue as insistent with its firm strokes as his cock battered her insides.
She couldn’t breathe, didn’t care. She was cresting again, a raw, keening moan scratching inside her throat. Trent’s hips started to grind, his breathing as erratic as her own.
He moaned her name, told her she was perfect, fucking perfect, and then they seized together, his cock jerking inside her, the thick jets it released flooding her pussy.
Minutes would pass before he pulled out, then more minutes as he gently cleaned her swollen, pulsing flesh before pulling the covers over them.
Cradled in his arms, Daniella fell asleep, never imagining she would wake to her world on fire and the hard slap of reality that Trent wasn’t the man she thought she had come to understand.
10
Daniella
Waking to an empty bed, Daniella hurriedly put on her robe and went into the hall. Hearing the sound of Christine slurping on a bottle, she tiptoed down the hallway.
“You’re not as good at that as I am,” a deep baritone teased before she made it to the open door.
She stuck her head in the guest room to find Trent sitting in his big office chair, Christine dwarfed in his careful embrace.
