Cougar didn’t deny it. He met the helpless anger in her gaze with honesty. “Do you know what it does to me when you respond to me like that?” He cupped his hand behind her neck, and arched her mouth to his. When he parted his lips from hers, his voice was raw with his need. “It tears me up, humbles me, and sends me out of my mind.”
Mara stiffened beneath him. “You’re not going to stop tonight, are you?”
“No.”
“No matter what?” she asked.
“No matter what.”
Her breath shuddered in her chest and her face leeched a pale white.
Cougar snorted in exasperation. “What would be the point of waiting? Look at you.” He motioned to her face. “Two minutes ago, you were crazy for me. Your breasts are still peaking for my touch, but now you’re terrified out of your wits. Do you think that’s going to get any better with time?”
“Yes.”
Cougar shook his head, keeping her from leaving by holding onto her hands. “The longer we wait, the worse it will become.”
Mara tugged at her hands. “If you’d give me time…”
“I told you from the beginning, time wasn’t part of the deal.”
She turned her face from him, staring at the fire. He could see the battle she waged with herself. He could order her to submit, but that wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted her to come to him. He wanted this proof of her trust.
He waited two minutes before she turned her head back to him. Her eyes were wide, the pupils dilated. Her breath hung in her throat as she reached for the front of her dress. With fingers that trembled imperceptibly, she undid the buttons on the bodice of her dress. “Are you still hungry?” The shakiness of her voice belied the hard determination in her eyes.
“Ravenous,” Cougar answered solemnly, knowing how hard this was for her. Reaching up, he stopped the dress from shimmying off her slender shoulders. “But for right now, why don’t you kiss me?”
The lips that touched his were aggressive but cold. Oh, so cold. Holding Mara’s head still, Cougar gentled her with butterfly touches of his mouth on hers. Suddenly, her breath escaped in a harsh expulsion that Cougar drew into his mouth along with the tears that had pooled at the corners of her lips.
“I’m so afraid,” Mara confessed in a fragile whisper. “So deathly afraid.”
“I know.” He stroked a tear from her cheek. It wasn’t a rational fear, but he knew it was real to her.
Her lip slid between her teeth. He pulled it free with his thumb. Her breath shuddered over his skin. Her gaze skirted his. Mara’s chest pulled tight against his as she took another breath and held it. He counted to three before she blurted out, “Can we just get it over with then? Can we just do it?”
Cougar smoothed the tangle of hair back from her face as he sat up. A few strands twisted around his hand, tangling with his fingers. “Yes. We can just do it.”
Taking a quilted throw off the back of the chair, Cougar shook it out. It flared in a colorful sprawl over the plank floor before the fireplace. Taking Mara’s clammy hand in his, he pulled her over and down until they were lying on the center of the broken star pattern. When she immediately rolled onto her back and spread her legs, he was unprepared for the rush of tenderness that surged through him. He stroked his fingers down her face. “Open your eyes, Mara.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He smiled at her frown. “Because I want to talk.”
“It’ll go faster if we skip conversation.”
Her eyes were still closed. “I can work and talk at the same time.”
That had her cracking an eyelid. “Work? This is work?”
He shrugged. “You’ve pretty much taken all the fun out of it.”
Her other eyelid cracked open. “You’re not serious.”
“I’m always serious.”
Her gaze collided with his, bounced off, and then came back to focus just to the left of his nose. “Compared to whom?”
“Asa MacIntyre.”
“Who?”
“He married up with my neighbor, Elizabeth Coyote, a year or so back.”
“What does he have to do with anything?”
“Compared to Asa, I’m as serious as a damned judge.”
“Oh.” A long pause and then, “You sound as if you like him.”
“He has a way of growing on you and Elizabeth finds him tolerable.”
Her eyes opened all the way now. “You like Elizabeth?”
“Yeah. I like her.”
If her frown was anything to go by, she wasn’t too happy to hear that. “It’s impolite to speak of another woman while in bed with your wife.”
“This something you picked up in that etiquette book?”
Her gaze shifted from his. “Maybe.”
“Or would you just be making this up as you go along?” She shrugged, the quilt bunched under her shoulder.
“What if I am?”
He leaned over her to tug the crease flat. “Then I’d want to know your reason.”
A log popped in the fireplace. Mara jumped, her chest colliding with his forearm. Her muscles immediately pulled tight again.
So much for distraction. One accidental touch and they were back at square one.
“Was there a fire in the fireplace that night, Mara?” he asked quietly.
“Wha—” she gasped.
He cupped her face in his hand and forced her to look at him. “That night at Cecile’s. Was there a fire?”
“Yes. No.” She frowned. “I’m not sure.”
“What do you remember?”
“Darkness. A man’s voice.” She frowned. “Maybe more than one. Oh God!” She grabbed his wrist, panicked. “What if there was more than one?”
He resisted her tugging and held her still. “Then there was. It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters!”
“Why?” The question did what his muscles couldn’t. It got her attention. Her hand froze on his wrist. Her eyes locked to his.
“Why?”
“Yes. What difference does it make if one or twenty men had you?”
“How can you ask that?”
“Because it doesn’t matter.”
Her eyes shut tight. “It matters.”
“Not to me.”
Her fingers bunched in the loose quilt. “It matters to me.”
“Because you think a man forcing himself on you somehow makes you dirty?”
She jerked herself free of his hand. He was left staring at her profile. The violence of the move sent strands of her auburn hair flying across his forearm.
“I am dirty. Filthy.” It was a flat statement of fact.
“When there’s nothing you can do to stop something, Mara, you do what you must to survive.”
“And that makes it all right?”
“It makes it what you had to do. It takes courage to survive.”
“If I had any real courage, I would have killed myself.”
Son of a bitch! His hands fisted in the loose strands of hair as he fought the rage. The guilt.
Somehow, he kept his voice even. Calm. “It doesn’t take guts to die, Mara.”
Her lips pulled thin before she whispered, “Then why couldn’t I pull the trigger?”
He never knew a whisper so soft could tear his heart out. He couldn’t believe that she’d even considered trying. “Because nothing’s happened that’s worth dying over.”
She said nothing. Just stared at the fire, as isolated from him as if she were behind a barred door. Isolating herself in a way that scared him.
“Dammit! Look at me.” When she still didn’t turn her head, he grabbed her chin and forced her gaze to his.
“You will not kill yourself.”
“You can’t order that.” Her chin jerked in the clamp of his fingers.
“Like hell I can’t.” He stilled the movement by simply tightening his grip. “You’re my wife. I can do whatever the he
ll I please.”
“There are limits as to what even you can control.”
The rage came out of nowhere, tearing the growl from his throat. “You won’t defy me in this.”
“It’s my life.” Her continued mutiny stirred the black rage into a cold knot of resolve.
“No, it’s not. It’s mine. You gave it to me the day you left Doc’s and came here.”
She stared at him, defiance in every line of her body.
He shook her chin, leaning into her chest, uncaring if he was too heavy, wanting nothing more than to crush her will in this.
“I don’t care if a hundred men ride onto this ranch tomorrow and have their way with you,” he continued. “You’re mine and you will not, will not take yourself away from me. For any reason.”
She stared at him while his breath came in harsh rasps. Seconds passed and she didn’t respond. Didn’t move, just stared at him with those big eyes as she weighed his words. Then, one by one, her muscles relaxed until she lay soft and compliant under him. Very slowly, as if she were afraid of startling him, she reached up and pushed his hair away from his eyes. Then with that same cautious movement, her eyes locked to his, she closed her fingers around his wrist. Her strokes to the tense inner muscles were soothing. Almost apologetic.
“I won’t leave you, Cougar.”
Only a small portion of the cold knot in his gut relaxed. It still took extreme force of will to gentle his grip, to pull away from her so she could breathe. “I know.”
One thing he was good at, it was holding onto what was his.
“Do you know how arrogant that sounds?” she asked, experimenting with freeing her chin.
He let her go to spread his hand over her throat and then to slide it to her collarbone. “It’s only arrogant if I can’t follow through.”
And he would follow through. He wouldn’t let anything take her away from him, especially a misplaced sense of shame.
He spread his hand across her upper chest. Her heart beat against his palm as he measured the span of her shoulders. He was able to touch one of her shoulders with his pinkie and one with his thumb. Damn. She was built so small. How had she ever managed to take him?
“And you always follow through?” she asked, breaking into his thoughts.
“Yes.” He eased the dress over her shoulder. To his surprise, she lifted up when he tugged.
“And you’re still going to follow through tonight?”
“Yes.”
Her chin came up. “Good.”
He pulled the other sleeve down, watching as it slid over the delicate curve of her shoulder. “Why good?”
He was surprised when she didn’t stop him as he bared her breasts. Right up until she gave him her reason. “Because I’m tired of being afraid.”
That was so like Mara, he felt the last of his panic slip away. As long as she kept leading with her chin, he had nothing to worry about.
Chapter Sixteen
Leading with her chin got Mara down to bare assed naked, but when he came over her, her bare flesh melting into his and his cock brushing against the soft curls of her pussy, she froze, her fears stifling her good intentions.
He held her still with his hands, his softly murmured “Steady”, seeming to calm her.
“It’s not going to happen all at once,” he elaborated as she took long, deep breaths.
“But you promised we could get it over with.”
He ignored the dismay he heard in her voice.
“I’ve changed my mind.”
“To what?”
“I’ve decided I want to play a bit.”
“With what?”
It was a measure of her fear that she uttered such a stupid question.
“You.”
“Oh.”
Clearly, she didn’t know how to take that. What to expect. But he did and as soon as he told her, she’d relax, falling into his orders like they were part of her. She was just on edge because he hadn’t prepared her. He was on edge because he was so hungry for her pussy, he was afraid he’d come at her like a green kid, ruining everything. He knew exactly how to take the edge off both of them.
He touched her mouth with his fingertip. “Are you willing to try something different tonight?”
She licked her lip, thrown off balance by being offered a choice. He followed the path of that tempting little tongue with his eyes. When it retreated into her mouth, his finger was close behind.
“Close you lips around my finger,” he ordered softly, watching her carefully. Some of the tension left her muscles as she obeyed. He slid his finger slowly in and out of her mouth, over her lips, over her tongue.
On the fourth pass, he ordered, “Suck it.”
She did, instinctively swirling her tongue over the pad of his finger as he pumped it in and out of her mouth, her eyes as they met his, wide with questions he was willing to answer. He shifted until he was on his hands and knees. He reluctantly pulled his finger free of her mouth, smoothing her saliva over her full lips on the retreat.
He held her gaze as he walked his hands up her body, coming over her, dragging his cock over her soft belly and softer breasts until it hovered beneath her chin. He saw the understanding dawn in her eyes as he shifted that little bit necessary for his cock to tap her lips. He held it there as her breath fanned over the sensitive head in searing little gasps, waiting for her to gather her control before saying, “I’m going to fuck your mouth now, Angel. All you have to do is part your lips and do just what you did to my finger. Nothing scarier than that.”
She glanced at his cock, her eyes crossing with the strain of seeing that close, and then her lips parted the barest of measures.
“But first,” he qualified, “I want you to kiss it. Nice and gentle on the tip.”
Her gazed flicked to his before she gently did as he ordered, the feel of her lips on his flesh agonizing. A bead of pre-come leaked past his control, spreading against her lips. She paused in one of those hesitations he was coming to recognize.
He pushed against her lips. “Go ahead, Angel. Taste me.”
Her tongue came out slowly to touch him, gathered his essence, and then retreated. Damn, she was something with her eyes all sleepy and considering as she took his come into her mouth. His cock jerked and leaked again as her cheeks and lips flexed around his seed. Her eyes closed slightly and her muscles relaxed. She brought her hands up to touch his shaft, almost undermining the shreds of his control with tiny, delicate flutters.
Her fingers stole the next bead of come and transferred it to her mouth, her eyes drifting closed as she sucked her finger clean. The groan erupted from his toes. He collapsed on his elbows, barely able to remember to keep from crushing her.
“Do you like it, Mara?” he asked on a harsh gasp, fighting his need to come with every fiber of his being. “Do you like the way I taste? The way I can’t control myself around you?”
She did, Mara decided. Especially the last. She absolutely loved that he wanted her so much, that he found whatever she did arousing. That just by being herself, she stole some of his control.
She swallowed the last of his come, the salty flavor diluted by saliva until it was only a memory, but his cock, that huge cock still rested in front of her lips, fully loaded. Ready to give her whatever she wanted. Above her, his body arched, taut with tension and the desire for her mouth. But she wanted it, too. She wanted to give this to him, to be the one to please him, to forever erase from his memory the women he’d had before. Women like Nidia. Experienced women. Women who did this with ease.
She opened her mouth and arched her neck, capturing the thick head between her lips. She misjudged his size. His big body jerked above her, his cock scraped hard on her teeth, and his curse tore through the room. He’d said all she had to do was to lie there, but there was obviously more to it than that. She wanted to creep away and hide.
His hand came behind her neck when she would have dropped back, supporting her when she would have quit. “It�
��s okay, Angel,” he whispered from above her in that dark drawl that went straight to her pussy. “Just let your lips cover your teeth and relax. I’ll do all the rest. Just relax.”
She did, letting him support her neck, opening her mouth for the shallow thrust of his cock, finding that it went smoother if she let her head fall back a little more.
“That’s it,” he whispered, feeding her another inch. “That’s the way. Just a little at a time.”
Her mouth stretched to accommodate his width, his cock filling her to the point that her jaws ached, but she kept her lips over her teeth, and strained to catch glimpses of his expression as he steadily increased the depth and power of his thrusts.
“Ah damn. That’s a pretty sight.”
He was watching her, she realized. Watching her take his cock into her mouth, enjoying the view as much as the sensation. The knowledge set off explosions of need in her belly. She stretched her jaws a little wider and bobbed her head to take a little more.
“Steady,” he whispered when she gagged. “There’s no rush. You’ll learn to take all of me eventually.”
She wanted him now. She tried again, meeting the same humiliating limitation. Before she could try a third time, he pulled his cock from her mouth. She curled on her side, embarrassed and wanting to find a hole to crawl into. She couldn’t even give him what Nidia did.
His big hand wrapped in her hair and brought her face around. Her body had no choice but to follow until she was on her side facing him. She kept her eyes closed, unwilling to see his disappointment until she got herself under control.
Even that small comfort was denied her as he tugged on her hair. The small darts of pain flickered from her scalp to her womanhood, tempting her pussy with the enticing possibilities.
“Look at me.” The softness of his drawl belied the expectation of obedience couched in the command.
She toyed with the idea of keeping her eyes closed, but a sharp slap on her ass had her pussy humming and her eyes flying open.
He held her gaze while he slapped her again. His expression knowing as she gasped first in stinging pain and then in stinging pleasure, the two sensations coming so close together, she couldn’t separate them.
He touched her lips with his finger. “You don’t need to be embarrassed, Angel. All you have to do is tell me what you need.” He slid his finger across her lower lip. His drawl became low and husky. “I’ll always give you anything you need.”
Promises Keep (The Promise Series) Page 25
