by Stacy Gail
“I am.” He pulled her toward him, her back sliding effortlessly along the hardwood floor until the backs of her thighs touched the side of the bed and her feet were propped up on his shoulders. “There’s nothing more serious to me than a habit I can’t break—a habit I don’t even want to give up. I know the seduction of addiction. I know how desire can turn into hunger. And how that hunger evolves into need. Need is the worst. It becomes the explosive fuel behind everything you do, or say, or imagine. It keeps you up at night. It’s the thought you can’t get out of your head. It’s your obsession and your curse, and it’s why you keep yourself breathing, all in the meager hope that this need will one day be fed. Don’t tell me I’m not serious about my addiction to you. Of all the screwed-up facets of my life, this is the one thing I’m absolutely clear on.”
Chapter Fourteen
As far as Nikita could see, her options were limited. On the one hand, she was handcuffed. Clearly she was going to remain that way for however long Kyle wished it. On the other hand, the hold she had on her sanity was slippery at best. Even now, safe on Kyle’s houseboat and in his custody, the mental foundation on which she’d built her world—her very self—was about as stable as gelatin, and it quivered alarmingly whenever he pushed her to talk.
She didn’t want to talk. She didn’t even want to think about it. If she did, her foundation would dissolve, and then so would she. She would cease to be, vanished forever inside herself if she allowed herself to remember...that.
So she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t remember it, wouldn’t even think about it. But in order to escape the inner demons trying to claw her to bloody pieces, she needed to get away from the one man who wouldn’t leave her alone.
“I always had you pegged as the type who liked to experiment with the more exotic aspects of sex.” As she spoke she tested the hold on the restraints around her wrists. Solid. Naturally. “Bondage and a foot fetish is probably just the tip of the iceberg with you.”
“I deny nothing.” One of the hands holding her ankles loosened to slide down her leg, past her bent knee to her inner thigh. “Except maybe the foot fetish thing. I promise you, I’d never be so shortsighted as to limit myself to being obsessed with just one part of your body. With everything I am, I worship everything of you.”
Nikita’s pulse stuttered to a near-stop at the admission. Then a wave of humble gratitude and something far deeper flowed with infinite beauty through her soul. How amazing he was to simply accept her, even after she revealed the ugliest part of who she was. There was no revulsion in him, no judgment. Just honest acceptance. Until that moment, she’d never known that something so intangible could be exactly what she needed to feel complete.
Needed...
Alarm derailed her unfamiliar train of thought, and all at once a single word filled her mind—escape. The rabbity need to hide until she stopped needing him warred with the alluring magic of his touch. This wasn’t some hot seduction scene, she reminded herself grimly, struggling for an indifference she was light years from feeling. He wanted to dig into where her head went wrong. Even now he was looking for chinks in her armor. It was how Kyle operated. The sit-back-and-wait approach had always been his personal method of hunting. No one knew better than she did that the man was infinitely patient when it came to getting what he wanted. Waiting for her to weaken—or worse, come to him of her own free will—was vintage Kyle. Using her body’s reactions to his touch was just icing on the cake.
And she was reacting, damn it. Sweet warmth seeped into each nerve ending, his caresses as potent as a healing balm to the gouges carved into her soul. The tension drained out of her bruised body muscle by muscle, and the sigh that escaped her sounded as loud as a moan in the stillness of the room.
“I don’t deserve kindness.” Her conscience forced her to say it, even as her body stirred to life. But it was the truth. Her guilt-driven psychotic episode indicated as much. “You now know everything about me. You know what kind of person I am.”
“I know you’ve been screaming inside for so long you don’t know how to be at peace. But if you’ll let me, I’ll find a way to give that to you. You just have to trust me enough to let me in.”
She didn’t know what more he wanted from her. It had torn a gory hole inside her to share her most shameful secret with him. There was no corner of her now that wasn’t exposed like a raw nerve. It was small consolation that at least he knew what a train wreck she really was. If he was smart, he’d run a country mile away from her. She wouldn’t blame him one bit if he did.
“Nikita. Come back to me.”
Surprised, she opened eyes she couldn’t remember closing and felt tears leak into her hairline. A sharp sound escaped his throat, as if he’d been stabbed.
“It’s almost criminal how you steal my breath, even when you’re crying.” With an economy of movement he plucked up a pillow and slid it under her butt, tilting her pelvis upward. “But I don’t like to see tears of sadness coming from you. All I want from you are tears of pleasure, or joy. Or that extra-special jackpot, a combination of the two. A totally attainable goal, if I do this right.”
“I told you, I don’t deserve—”
“Unless you’re ready to tell me what went on this morning, you can shut the hell up about what you think you deserve.” When she didn’t respond, his mouth tightened in a surprisingly grim parody of a smile. Then he pulled her legs up until they were draped over his shoulders. “I don’t know whether I’m happy or irritated with your usual stubbornness, but what the hell. I’ll just have to take one for the team.”
“What are you...?” His words made no sense, but her bewilderment sank into a distracting haze as he dropped his head and skimmed his mouth along the inside of her thigh. It never ceased to amaze her, how electric his touch was along her sensitized skin. Every nerve jangled in excitation, while the blood surged to the surface so that she felt covered in an all-over body blush. His tongue drew a moist path toward the edge of where the gauzy yellow cotton of her sundress had pooled, while his palms roamed the length of her outer thighs. They didn’t stop their relentless progress until they were under the thin lace of her panties and cupping the curve of her ass. He kneaded her there, tilting her pelvis up toward the inexorable descent of his head.
The anticipation of his touch sparked off a wave of heat, intensifying that tingling warm sensation wherever she came into contact with him. Without hesitation she lifted her legs off his shoulders as he slid the panties from her body, and she couldn’t stop a sigh when he tossed them aside. Naked beneath the dubious veil of cotton, she reveled in the caress of the tips of his fingers stroking along her thighs, feather-light yet somehow setting her alight with invisible fire. Wet heat unfurled between her thighs as a voluptuous hum coursed along her nervous system, and her toes curled and nipples tautened against the material of her bra. A broken breath rushed from parted lips as desire shivered to the point of vibration through her suddenly hyper-aware body.
Whatever his touch sparked inside her, it was glorious enough to wipe away even the worst nightmare.
“Those noises you make, Nikita... They’re enough to break me.” Apparently satisfied with her position, his hands slid back down her legs. The sweeping caresses didn’t stop until one hand cupped a breast, while the other paused at the curls at the juncture of her thighs, the heel of his hand pressing in a slow, circular motion designed to tease her into madness. “You’re feeling more relaxed now, aren’t you, Nikita? You’re feeling safer?”
She rocked her hips against the pressure of his hand, riding it to find more than fleeting glimpses of pleasure. “Yes. Yes.”
“Then tell me what happened.” He dropped his mouth to the place where leg met body and gently bit the fragile flesh. “Tell me.”
“Ah...” A sliver of frustration at his tenacity worked its way through the red haze trying to engulf her brain. “Drop it, Kyle.
”
“Don’t you trust me?”
Really, when did this get to be about him? “It was a hallucination, or...or something. That’s all.”
“That’s not all.” When she remained silent, his hand stilled. “Tell me now, Nikita. Or this is going to become unpleasant.”
“Who are you to tell me what to do? I don’t want to talk about this, and that’s that.” She’d rather bite out her own tongue than tell him the shameful truth—that she had to be losing her mind. Desperate, she began to lift her legs from his shoulders and tried to remember in what direction he’d thrown her panties. “Let me up.”
“No.”
Anger flared. “Kyle—”
“I’m sorry it has to be this way.” The genuine remorse in his tone struck a chilling chord, but it melted under the most enervating, magnificent sensation she’d ever experienced. It came out of nowhere—one second he was holding her down, one hand pressing against her lower abdomen while the other slid under the small of her back. Then they moved, heating up, kicking off a spectacular muscle contraction that mimicked the sensation of closing in on orgasm so closely it tore a ragged gasp from her. Her hips flew off the pillow in helpless undulations, as if he were already deep inside her. Her head arched back against the floor, even as the ephemeral bliss drifted away almost like it never happened.
“I...I...” All thought scrambled into abject chaos in her mind, short-circuited by a frenzy of need. Every cell in her body screamed in unsatisfied frustration, the lava-hot slickness of her cleft throbbing with pressure.
What in the world...
“The human body is a tremendous thing, capable of so much. Yet it can be so predictable if you know what buttons to push. Which isn’t really all that surprising, if you think about it. After all, it’s like any other machine that works on electricity. Electrical impulses excite muscles and nerve clusters to react in a pre-programmed way.” That grim smile was back, more like a grimace as at last she dragged her dazed and confused gaze back to his. “There’s the sacral nerve cluster that, once given the appropriate stimulation, tells your brain it’s time to secrete lubricant because you’re nearing an intense orgasm. But you’re not. And that lack of satisfaction can be quite uncomfortable, can’t it?”
“This...” She couldn’t seem to catch her breath, any more than she could hold still. It was unfathomable, the way her hips bucked, as though pleading with him to be inside her. “What are you doing to me? I’ve had deep-tissue massages before. And I never felt...” Orgasmic heaven.
“I told you once before that I’ve got something of a magic touch. I know just the right amount of stimulation to give you to make you beg me to listen to what happened to you this morning.”
A glimmer of pride surfaced. “Fuck you. I’ve never begged anyone for anything in my life.”
For an answer he pressed deeply into her pelvis and into the small of her back. The muscles deep in her pelvis rippled, kicking off a frenzy of pleasure so intense she screamed, every nerve jangling as if touched with a live wire. But it was too fleeting, and a dry sob of mindless fury burst from her clenched teeth at being denied fulfillment yet again. By God, she’d kill him for this. If she ever managed to control her body again, she’d kill him for this if it was the last thing she did.
“The sad part is I can keep this up indefinitely. You can’t, though. In the end you’ll give in, but neither one of us will win if this gets dragged out.” A soothing sound murmured from him as her body twitched helplessly with an overload of stimulation, and he smoothed a calming hand over her stomach before returning to the juncture of her thighs. “I want you so much, Nikita, you have no idea. You’re my ultimate fantasy, and to see you so eaten alive with hunger now...it’s killing me not to give you what you want. You’re not the only one suffering, I swear. End the torment for both of us, baby. End it now.”
He dipped his head, his breath teasing her intimate cleft that was now so swollen and wet that even the beat of her heart was a shuddering stimulation. Her restrained hands fisted in his hair as he parted the throbbing, veiling flesh and suckled on that most sensitive point, his tongue laving against it without mercy until the muscles in her legs quivered with each stroke. Feverishly she tried to stem the cries pulsing out of her with each gasping breath out of fear that he’d stop, that he’d leave her with this terrible emptiness aching inside her, that he wouldn’t alleviate the tension spasming deeper, deeper...
Nothing in the world could have stopped her near-shriek of anguish when cool air hit her skin.
“I know.” His voice was rough, almost unrecognizable, though that may have been due to the fact that she was drowning in such exquisitely agonizing need she couldn’t make sense of most of what he said. “I know you feel like you can’t take much more, and you don’t have to. You want relief, yes?”
Ah. She understood that. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes...”
“So do I.” There was movement, and then he was down on the floor with her, spooning against her back and holding her bound hands in his. His skin burned into hers, and she realized he had removed his clothing, with the rigid length of his erection pressing against her butt.
“Show me you trust me, Nikita. Show me you trust me to handle every last secret inside you, and I’ll give you a release so intense you’ll never forget it. Just tell me why you were talking about your mother. Did...did you see her this morning?”
A shudder went through her, the ravenous desire warring with the abrupt cold front of the madness she’d experienced. It was so much for her to bear that she didn’t even think about how he could have guessed the source of her madness. “Yes.”
She felt him nuzzle his brow into the back of her neck. “Okay. Who was with her? Who bled?”
“Paul. Hardy. He’s crazy.” Like me.
“I see. Why was he bleeding?”
She told him everything then, her skin cooling until she shivered as she exposed just how insane both she and Paul were. Everything inside her that was proud and strong, crumbled. She cringed in anguish at how raving mad she sounded when she described her mother’s metamorphosis into Floyd Hardy, who was supposed to be newly murdered and buried by his son in the backyard. By the time she revealed how she escaped death by Paul’s throttling hands and fled down the beach, all that she’d once been was irrevocably shattered. Destroyed. She was so broken she barely felt his arms lock around her with such ferocity it was a struggle to pull in a breath.
“I’m sorry.” His mouth was buried against her neck, and she wasn’t sure if it was her heartbeat shaking them, or his. “I’m so sorry, Nikita.”
She couldn’t make heads or tails of his words when her insides were such a mess. “For what? My being crazy?”
“Don’t say that.” Thunder suddenly rumbled overhead, underscoring the harshness of his tone that sounded nothing like the laid-back Kyle she knew. For a moment he was a Kyle that was shockingly unfamiliar, a vicious tiger beneath the casual smile. “Don’t even think that. You’re not crazy.”
“What else can you call it when the mother I killed when I was eight suddenly shows up to tell me she hates me and that I never should have been born?”
“You didn’t kill anyone, do you hear me? That’s survivor’s guilt, and you’re too strong to allow it to be used against you.”
“Used against me? Who would use it against me?”
“No. Not now, Nikita.”
The taut strain in his voice made no sense. It was almost like he was hurting. “But—”
“I promised I’d give you what you wanted, remember?” He talked over her until she stopped, more confused than ever by his strange behavior. Was he in denial? Had her story of insanity shaken him so much he couldn’t face the truth—that she didn’t know what reality was anymore? “You might not believe me when I say it’s my only goal in life to please you, but it is. All I care abo
ut now is you. Your pleasure. Your happiness. Your safety. I won’t ever let you get so close to danger again.”
If only he knew how ridiculous he sounded. No matter what he did, he couldn’t protect her from herself. “It’s not up to you. And forget it—the last thing I want now is sex.”
“I told you,” he murmured, kissing her shoulder, “all I want is your happiness.”
“Then leave me alone.”
“So you can destroy yourself with misery? No, my love.” With surprising speed he was on his feet, sweeping her up as if she were some fragile little girl instead of a towering Amazon, and depositing her back on the bed. “There’s no way I’m going to let you dwell on death and madness when there’s so much life to be lived. Starting now, that’s all I want you to think about. If you’ll just let me love you, you can get through this.”
Chapter Fifteen
For the first time in his life, Kyle was enraged. Not angry. Not pissed off.
Enraged.
He’d always been thankful for his upbeat personality and penchant for a good joke—traits that were supposedly handed down from the original Barakiel. If he’d been born with more of a tenuous temper, that would have been a bad combination, considering what he was capable of. As a result, rage was pretty much an unknown element, and he’d never been anxious to become acquainted with it.
Strobing flashes through the windows and an unbroken chain of sullen thunder rumbling overhead were enough of a reminder to cool down. The last thing he wanted was to drag the storm he could feel raging off the coast to where he was, like a magnet attracting steel filaments. If he did something that big, he’d no doubt catch the attention of a higher power and find out firsthand what it was to suffer a heavenly smite.
Yeah. A guy like him had every reason in the universe to stay away from rage.
On the bed, Nikita curled up into a little ball barely veiled by the scrap of yellow she wore, her arms tucked close to her abdomen as if freezing from the inside out. “I mean it, Kyle. Leave me alone. Just stay away from the crazy lady if you know what’s good for you.”
