by Rise of Hope
Oh God.
“Noah, what…” Was it possible? “Are you—”
“Later.” He swallowed and she shuddered at the emotion she saw in his gaze, at the longing. Because she felt it too. “There’ll be time for it later. We’ll have all the time in the world. Okay?”
She nodded, unable to speak, terrified to hope, scared to trust in what she knew in her heart because all she’d ever wanted was connection, real, honest connection. And to belong. Somewhere. To someone.
She drew in a deep, shuddering breath. Micah, Noah, Christian. These men hadn’t risked themselves only for Seth, they hadn’t gone to incredible lengths just to “reacquire” her. She wasn’t merely a pawn in some game she’d barely begun to understand, not to them, never to them. They’d done it for her, because of who she was to them. She was part of this too, was one of them, part of them. Just as they were a part of her.
Noah gave her a long look before he released her and turned to Micah, his voice all at once business.
“What did you learn? Anything?”
“No, except…” Micah frowned. “They searched me for something.”
Noah stilled. “What do you mean?”
“Seth too,” she added and frowned. “Before Micah got there, they searched Seth as well.”
“They were looking for something.” Micah motioned to his ruined shirt. “They would have been able to tell I had marks, but that wasn’t it. It was as if they already knew and didn’t care about that. They were looking for something else, something specific.”
“And they didn’t find it,” Noah finished.
Micah folded his arms across his chest. “You know something.”
“I…” Noah’s mouth tightened. “I’m not sure. I have a theory.”
He had the look Devon had already come to recognize. He may know something, but he wasn’t going to share it. Not yet anyway.
“If I’m right,” he continued. “We need to make sure we know why they want it. Before they find it.”
Chapter Seven
Devon found Seth in his room, standing under a raging shower in the private bath, his head bowed under the heavy stream of water. His fists where clenched against the tile above his head and his chest rose and fell in deep, heavy shudders. He’d kicked off his shoes and rid himself of the ripped shirt, but still had his jeans on. And the water was cold. She could tell by the lack of steam and the chill in the air.
“Devon, you shouldn’t be in here.”
His voice was low, rough and sounded as if it was forced out of him. He didn’t look at her, didn’t acknowledge her presence in any other way.
She swallowed against the lump in her throat. “You—you came for me today, you risked—even after everything, you—”
“Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“I… Seth, I’m sorry, so sorry. If I could take it all back I would, every bit of it.”
“Sorry?” He closed his eyes, clenched them tight. “Dammit, Devon, you don’t want to be with me, you don’t want me touching you, fine.”
She frowned. “Seth—”
“But you tell me, straight up. You don’t run, putting yourself in danger, without so much as a fucking word.”
Devon had thought she knew what pain was, but she didn’t, she’d had no clue. Until now. She put a hand to her churning stomach. Because of her, he could have been hurt, killed. They all could have been. He had every right to be angry. She got it, she did, because as long as she lived, she’d never get that image of Seth out of her head—on his knees, helpless, a gun to his head.
She’d thought it best for everyone, safer, that she left. She hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone, any more than she already had. They’d risked so much to free her. She should have known they wouldn’t have let her go. Now she had so much to be sorry for, it was hard to know where to even begin.
“I meant last night.” Her throat felt like sandpaper, but she forced the words out anyway.
There was a pause for a heartbeat, two. “Yeah, I don’t need to hear again how you regret letting me go down on you, how much you’re sorry you ever let me touch you. I got that message loud and clear the first time.”
“No, I meant for forcing you to.”
“Forcing me?” He turned his head then. Water dripped from his hair, beaded and ran off his face. His lashes were clumped together, his eyes dark and glazed. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I made you.” She glanced down at her hands. She kept expecting there to be some sign of what she was capable of, but they looked just like they always had. Normal. Whatever the hell that was anymore. Maybe it would have been better if there was some visible sign, some kind of warning perhaps, a warning to everyone. To stay away.
“I made you,” she said, her voice barely audible over the shower, but she couldn’t force more sound from her constricted throat, could barely speak for the ache at the back of it. “I made you touch me and—and everything else.”
Touch me.
Harder.
Make me come.
The words taunted her.
She swallowed. “I commanded you to do things, intimate things, and—”
“That’s why you ran? Because you thought—” Seth turned off the water with a savage twist and held out a dripping hand to her. “Take it.”
She stared at it. She’d sworn to herself she’d never touch him again, not on purpose, that she’d never risk it again.
“I—”
“Take it,” he snapped.
She steeled herself as she put her hand in his. She’d meant to keep the touch light, but he gripped her hand in a hold she wasn’t likely to break. His palm was wet, clammy and she shivered. She raised her gaze to his. Despite how cold he was, there was heat there—molten heat—when he looked at her.
“It doesn’t work on me,” he bit out. “At least it hasn’t. Go ahead.”
“No.” She tried to yank her hand out of his grip, but he held fast. “Seth—”
“Do your worst.”
“I can’t.”
“Do it,” he hissed.
“Please—”
“Just fucking do it.”
“Let go of me,” she spat and then immediately regretted the impulse. God, she’d never have a hope of learning to control this thing, not if she let her temper get the best of her.
He didn’t move a muscle.
“That’s the best you’ve got?” he asked quietly.
She frowned. “But—”
“Your Darce is powerful, Devon. You must have planted something with that guard when they first grabbed you, yet it held all that time you weren’t touching him. Am I right?”
“Yes.” How could she explain that it had been her out, the only one she could think of at the time? Options. She’d wanted to give herself some options, even if she hadn’t deserved them. She hadn’t considered Seth might come after her or that he’d even have a hope of finding her once they’d grabbed her. He hadn’t even known she was gone.
“But with me?” Seth added, dropping her hand. “It doesn’t work. At all.”
Devon let out a shaky breath. “So I didn’t…”
“Force me? Is that what you thought? For Christ’s sake, Devon, as if you’d need to.”
She glanced down as he stepped out of the shower and her heartbeat kicked into high gear. Water beaded and ran down the smooth slope of his chest, his abs, down into the waistband of his jeans. He seemed bigger in the small space, more powerful. And he was hard, all over. She couldn’t miss the bulge straining the front of his jeans, not with the way the wet fabric was plastered to him.
Knowing she hadn’t compelled him to touch her, hadn’t coerced him, that the things he’d done to her—the hot, intimate, incredible things he’d done to he
r—had come from him, that he’d wanted to do them, caused a wash of heat to course through her, centering low down in her abdomen, pooling in a liquid fire between her legs. His muscles bunched as he grabbed a towel and swiped it across his chest, over his face, his dripping hair. All the while he kept his gaze locked on hers.
“And don’t you ever pull a stunt like that again.” He forced the words out through clenched teeth. The look in his eyes made her pulse jerk and then race.
“Stunt?”
“Using yourself in that way, risking yourself. Christ, Devon—”
“They’d gotten you too. They were holding you, hurting you and—”
“Yeah, that was part of the plan.”
Plan? It hadn’t looked like any kind of plan to her.
Seth’s lips tightened. “We had it covered,” he ground out. “I had it covered. You should have known I wouldn’t have let anything happen to you—none of us would have.”
Yeah, except she hadn’t known that. Not then. Not really. And she’d run, because of what she’d done. To him. What she might do to others.
“I’m all I’ve ever had, Seth. Me, just me. I’ve never been able to trust a single person, I’ve never had anyone to rely on. I couldn’t wait for someone to ride in and rescue me because I never even allowed myself the luxury of fantasizing about someone like that. I stopped wishing and hoping for that a long time ago.”
Until I met you. The words reverberated inside her, the rightness of them battered at her.
Seth leaned down, looked her full in the face. “Know this, Devon. Regardless of what happens with us? I’ll protect you with my last breath. Not because you’re a job, not because I feel obligated, but because you’re…” He moved back from her, clenched his jaw, shook his head. “You shouldn’t have followed me. I don’t— I’m pretty much all out of control here.”
He was hurting, needing. She could see that, could see it in the searing heat of his eyes, in every tense line of his big body, and it called to her, yet he made no move toward her.
“I’m yours, Seth,” she said, her voice soft, quiet. “That’s what you said, wasn’t it?”
“Devon, this isn’t a game.” He threw the towel down with a savage flick of his wrist. “Don’t push me. Not now.”
She steeled herself as she stepped to him, put her hands flat against his hard chest and gasped at how fast and how hard his heart thundered under her touch. And how quickly his skin had heated.
He closed his eyes briefly, swallowed. “You don’t want it like this, you don’t want me like this,” he warned. “Not with what’s inside me right now.”
Her nipples hardened, ached as the flesh between her legs softened, began to throb. She wasn’t sure where the courage came from, but she trailed her fingers down the ridges of his abdomen to the waistband of his jeans, plucked at the button and gloried at his sharp hiss.
“I want it,” she whispered. “And you, however you need it, anything you like, any way you want.”
Take me. Please. Now.
“Devon,” he groaned, putting his hands over hers, stilling her movements. “Unless you want to get fucked—hard—you need to leave because I couldn’t do soft and gentle right now even if my life depended on it.”
Liquid heat scorched through her at the crude language, at the images that filled her head and the flesh between her legs became instant, burning, molten fire. Her body remembered his touch, reveled in it, his fingers against her there, and his mouth, oh God his mouth.
“I want you, only you, Seth.”
He groaned again and closed his eyes briefly. She felt a tremor in his fingers over hers. “Did you mean what you said?” he rasped.
“Of course.”
“No. Before. At the warehouse. About…”
“I know.” She’d thought to never see him again then, but… “Yes, I meant it.”
His fingers clenched around hers, the color high on his cheek bones. He swallowed. “Be sure, okay, because I can’t hold anything back right now and I don’t want you to be sorry. Ever again. About anything, but especially about this.”
He might have yelled that she was his, but he was hers as well. He just might not know it yet.
“I’m sure.”
* * *
Seth’s gut jolted at the look in her eyes, at the feel of the fingers she’d tucked into his waistband and at the images crowding his head—hot, dirty, explicit images. Anything he wanted, anyway he liked it.
Fuck.
Did she know what that did to him? Did she have any idea? Because all he wanted to do was reach out, pull her against him and lose himself in her.
He brushed her hands aside and jerked open his jeans. The shower had seemed a good idea at the time—he’d needed to cool down and fast. Now he cursed as he struggled with the wet denim, jerking and yanking at the stubborn fabric, not able to rid himself of them fast enough.
And then he was naked, in all his freakish, marked-up glory.
“Touch it. Feel it,” he rasped, when her wide eyes dropped to his cock. “Be sure this is what you want inside you.”
She swallowed. He flinched at the contact when she clasped him gently, without any hesitation at all, without any of the morbid fascination he’d come to expect from women. Hell, it was an effort to keep his eyes from rolling back in his head. The pressure wasn’t nearly hard enough, not the way he liked it, but it didn’t matter, his knees almost buckled with the pleasure all the same. And from the look in her eyes.
“You’re magnificent, Seth, especially here and… I want you inside me,” she whispered, her gaze steady on his. “You, just you, with your beautiful markings, our markings.”
He released his breath in a rush. Hadn’t even been aware he’d been holding it and he trembled, fucking trembled. He’d never had to seduce before, never had to coax. The women he’d been with had been experienced, always more than ready and as eager as he was to get right down to it. He hadn’t lingered, hadn’t ever wanted to. The risk of being a disappointment to Devon, especially in bed, made him shake like a teenager. Yeah, that and the way she kept trailing her fingers up and down his length.
The realization slammed into him as he dropped his gaze to her soft, full lips—he hadn’t kissed her before, not once. He’d gone down on her, licked and sucked on her gorgeous clit, made her come with his mouth, but he hadn’t kissed her. Now he felt as if he’d deprived himself of something. He’d never really been into it, had never understood the fascination before, but in that moment he wanted her mouth under his with a force that staggered him with its intensity.
Seth clasped her jaw, tilted her head at the angle he wanted, needed, and lowered his mouth to hers. He licked along her bottom lip roughly and smiled savagely to himself when she gasped. He swallowed the sound, reveled in it, and then went deep.
At the first touch of his tongue against hers, he went rigid. At the taste of her. At the sensation that lanced through him. His cock jerked against her palm and he flinched when her hand contracted around him, not in pain, but with a pleasure so intense it almost lifted the top of his head off.
A groan was torn from him at the tentative way her tongue met his, the way she opened her mouth to him, so eager, so sweet. He thrust his tongue against hers, trying to keep the touch gentle, when all he wanted to do was take her, claim her, dominate her. Completely.
Her hand grazed his balls and he fought to drag in enough air in a futile attempt to steady his out-of-control heartbeat, the need that roared through him, stronger, more savage than ever before. Whether she’d meant to do it or not, the slight touch almost made him come right then. It was going to be over, he was going to be all over, unless he got her to the bed. And under him. Fast.
He walked her backward, into the bedroom, straight for the bed until the backs of her legs hit the side. Her lips were r
ed and swollen from their kiss and his dirty mind already had them opening for him, wrapped around his cock, taking him into her mouth. Sucking him.
Christ, he was going to combust. Now, it needed to be now.
“Seth…”
He rifled through the bag he’d dumped on the floor earlier until he found what he was looking for. He’d never had sex without a condom before. Never. Was surprised he even thought of it now, but who the hell knew how all this worked for them? They were fated. There was no way he wanted even a thin layer of latex between them, but he’d never risk her. Ever.
He flinched as he rolled on the rubber, his gaze glued to Devon as she moved back onto the bed, watching him, her eyes wide.
“I’m sorry, Devon. I’m sorry,” he groaned as he rolled on top of her, used his thighs to spread her legs wide and settled against her. He hadn’t touched, kissed her body, hadn’t taken any time to explore. He hadn’t gone down on her again, hadn’t done any of the things he’d tormented himself with. “I can’t wait. I can’t…” His hand shook as he guided himself to her already slick entrance.
Thank God she was wet because all he could think about was being inside her, pushing against her and lodging himself in her hot, snug heat, as far as he could go.
He tried to call forth some inane data he could run through his head, tried to recall something, anything that would piss him off, distract him and drew a blank. All he could see was her and all he wanted was to thrust, pound, fuck.
“Hold onto me,” he bit out, knowing he was in danger of losing control and hoping like hell he wouldn’t. Except she didn’t grasp his shoulders, didn’t dig her nails into his ass or hold onto his hips. No. Almost as if she knew, she cupped his cheeks instead, her palms soft against his face, forcing his gaze to hers and he felt everything in him still. And center. On her, just her.
