by Anne Malcom
Keltan grinned, showing no signs of disfigurement, or maybe just hiding it better than the rest. He continued his journey to me, snatching my waist and pulling me into his side easily, naturally, as if such as gesture was something he did all the time in front of my sister, who had just caught us on the precipice of having sex on the sofa.
“I don’t think that surprising two arguing siblings, both of whom seem to be reasonably hungover, is considered a stealth skill. In fact, it’s just called walking,” he teased. His twinkling eyes went down to me, smoldering with more than a little desire as his grip on my hip tightened. “Though I do know how you feel about walking,” he murmured in my ear.
I swallowed the shiver and spent my energy on keeping my face blank. I was still trying to find the excessive strength it would take to pull myself from his strong arms, warm enough to chase away the worst of the chill.
“Sense of humor,” Polly butted in while I tried to get my bearings. “I approve. I don’t want to wear any form of black at the wedding, please. And make sure you pair me up with his brother, if he has one. I’d settle for a second cousin as long as there’s some family resemblance,” she continued, flopping down on my sofa and snatching the remote.
She squinted at the last still of the best movie on earth before giving me a look. “Breakfast at Tiffany’s? Really? Again? You know every line of that already.”
She turned it off and flipped through the channels of my TV.
I scowled at her. “By all means, make yourself at home. It’s not like I was in the middle of something,” I said through gritted teeth. I was still riding the high of what had just happened on that sofa, my body tingling from the touch, and I was still quite prepared to make decisions I’d likely regret in the morning. If my sister stayed much longer, I’d probably start getting sensible. I got that way around her. Someone had to be. Or else she’d likely land herself in trouble that she couldn’t get out of.
And I couldn’t get her out of.
Most of the time I didn’t mind it. Most of the time it amused me.
Right then, I wanted to wring her little neck with her dream catcher necklace.
She smiled sweetly at me. “I know you’re in the middle of something.” She waggled her eyebrows. “But delayed gratification is the best kind. Mom and Dad may or may not be angry with me for staying out all night, so I’m hiding in the bomb shelter to wait it out.” She glanced to the TV, deciding on Vikings.
Apt.
“Plus, you have the fancy TV with Netflix hooked up, and I’m hungry. Pizza?” she suggested.
I pursed my lips, taking a long and measured breath, holding it before letting it out in a steady stream.
Polly glanced at me. “What are you doing?”
“I’m thinking that yoga breathing they taught me at that class you dragged me to finally has a use—stopping me from murdering my sister.”
Keltan’s chest vibrated beside me, the sound and the movement of his muscles with it pleasing, despite my irritation. “It’s okay, Snow. I’m thinking pizza sounds perfect.” He glanced to the TV. “Plus, I love this show, and now I’ll get all the intel on you from your sister.” He winked at Polly.
She gave him a thumbs-up.
I glared at her. “Your loyalty lies with me. I’m your blood. Your only sister.”
She shrugged. “My loyalty lies with whoever gives me pizza. And the hot guy with the hot accent.”
I let out a frustrated sound in my throat that was so not like me. “You don’t even eat real pizza!” I half shouted.
Polly’s eyes widened slightly at my little outburst that so wasn’t me. I didn’t shout. Well, at least not often, or sober, and certainly not about pizza.
Keltan brought me into his body and kissed my head. “Chill, babe. It’s only pizza.”
I glanced to my sister, then to the chocolate eyes and the man whose arms I was in.
Who I was drowning in.
Already.
And he hadn’t even gotten to third base.
It most certainly wasn’t “only pizza.”
It was so much more than that.
“So,” I said, closing the door on the sister who I literally had to shove out. Before I’d threatened to tell Mom and Dad about her tattoos if she told them about Keltan.
Mom may have been somewhat of a free spirit and hadn’t batted an eyelash at me hanging out with outlaw bikers my entire life, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have some rules for her youngest daughter.
I was the practice kid, where they figured out what rules they needed for the main event.
That’s what I teased them with, anyway. But honestly, I was glad they were somewhat tougher on Polly than me. Even though she was almost twenty-one, she still lived with them while finishing her last year of college. Hopefully her last year. She kept changing her major as her boyfriend changed. For however long, she was with Mom and Dad. Under their roof meant their rules.
And because she was yet to hold a job for more than a month, she didn’t have a choice.
“You’re not running for the hills,” I observed once Polly was gone, turning to stare at Keltan who had been standing in the living room gathering pizza boxes. But now he was there, right there, in my space.
I backed up so my back pressed against the wall.
He stalked me.
Like a panther.
David Attenborough could also narrate this, though only if he wanted to diversify into something a little more R-rated, if Keltan’s midnight gaze was anything to go by.
“You think I’m gonna run from you, Snow? Thought we established this. I was running. Before. Now that I’m in front of you, I’ve got nowhere else to go. Nowhere else I want to be. I’m starin’ at the thing I was runnin’ to,” he murmured, putting both hands on either side of my face, boxing me in.
I swallowed, tasting him in the air before he’d even touched me. Drowning in him.
He stroked my jaw. “I’m more worried about you runnin’,” he rasped. “And that, my beauty, is one thing I’m likely to use all the training I’ve accumulated over the years to prevent. But for now….” He bent his head to run his mouth over my neck.
My knees quivered at the contact, threatening to give out from the touch.
“For now,” he continued, his mouth lifting so it brushed mine as he spoke, “I’m gonna make good on the promise I made you last night. Considering I’m a man of my word, and it’s all I’ve been able to think about for the past twenty-four hours.” He paused, running his tongue along the seam of my lips. “No. The thing I’ve been thinking about for the past two months. I’m gonna fuck you so hard we won’t remember our names, I’m gonna fuckin’ drown in you, Snow.”
And then he kissed me.
Owned me with one simple kiss.
But then again, kisses weren’t simple from him.
Not when they came with everything else.
But they were only complicated afterwards. When the world came back in.
Now, there was only his body pressing against mine, the taste of him claiming me with a kiss. The fire of arousal spreading through my entire body, skipping the ice around my heart.
I surrendered, happily.
He let out a growl. “Never tasted somethin’ so good in my entire life as your mouth, baby,” he murmured against my mouth, running his hand along the side of my body. It slipped into the waistband of my shorts, cupping me gently, right there.
I forgot to breathe, the light touch owning me, pulling me further into him.
“Though I’m thinking once I get my mouth around that pussy, that might change,” he growled.
Then he tortured me by pulling his hand out of my shorts and moving it to my ass, where he lifted me to straddle the hardness of his jeans.
I wrapped my legs around him without hesitation, my hands at his neck and yanking him in for another kiss like a junkie with a fix.
He was that.
A drug.
One that spirited me away from re
ason, logic, the real world.
It was the rush he gave me that I craved, to stave off all of that for a little while longer.
“Bedroom,” I ordered in a hoarse voice, pointing down the hall.
“Oh, fuck yes,” he growled back, moving so he somehow continued kissing me while walking down a hall in an unfamiliar house.
His steps echoed on the wood floors as his mouth ravaged mine, and I rubbed myself against him frantically, desperately needing the friction.
“You gotta stop that,” he growled, “or I’ll lose patience for the few seconds it takes to get you into your room and fuck you on the floor.”
My stomach dipped. “I don’t care. Floor. Bed. Sofa. Hood of a car. I just need you. Now,” I demanded.
His eyes were black as I lazily opened my own. We were crossing the threshold of my room, and the light flickered on.
“No, Snow. I’m fuckin’ you in a bed. Because I plan on bein’ inside you for a good long while and not coming up for air.” He kissed me before throwing me onto the soft mattress. He stood above me, face like a predator. “And I need you comfortable for that.”
He yanked his shirt off, once more treating me to the marvel that was his torso. I fumbled with the bottom of my cami, desperate to be rid of the clothes keeping my skin from touching his. He was on me in a minute, hands at my wrist, stopping me and kissing my hipbone.
“No, babe. I’m gonna be doin’ that,” he informed me darkly. “Hands above your head. Now.” The cold order amidst the fire in his eyes had me obeying his command immediately.
He grinned wickedly. “Good girl.”
His hands settled on my hips for a moment, then gripped the bottom of my cami, lifting it from my tingling skin until my breasts were exposed.
He let out a hiss between his lips before finally doing what I was aching for him to do, fastening his lips over them.
I cried out when his mouth created more fire and tension in the bottom of my spine.
He could bring on an orgasm just like that if he didn’t stop.
Who was I kidding? He could bring on an orgasm with a wink. Or a flash of dimples.
Cold air kissed my nipples as he released them. Then my top rolled over my head and was history in one quick motion. Keltan’s eyes were fastened on me.
“Now I get to test my theory, Snow,” he growled, hand snaking down the flesh of my stomach and toying with the waistband of my shorts. “That you taste even better in the place I’m gonna be drowning in for the rest of the night.”
I didn’t speak. I couldn’t, really. I was paralyzed by him. By the touch, by the collection of moments that slowed my breathing and stoked a fire in me I didn’t even know I had.
Keltan’s lips worked their way down my stomach agonizingly slowly, toying with my aching core that yearned for him.
Then he gripped my shorts, pulling them and my panties quickly down my legs and off my body. He threw them off the bed so I lay naked before him.
Another hiss of breath as his eyes focused on the spot between my legs.
“Jesus, every part of you is beautiful,” he grunted.
Such an intense perusal of my most intimate part should have made me uncomfortable, but considering I was half-delirious with desire and waxed regularly, I didn’t care. In fact, the reverent gaze, the way his muscles bulged in his neck in response, it made my heart thump quicker, and my hands move from atop my head to clench my comforter in anticipation.
Keltan pushed my legs apart as far as they would go, settling between them so I was open to him.
Then he fastened his mouth around me, and I let out a strangled scream.
The reverent gaze and careful kisses leading up to this gave me the impression that this act itself would be slow and careful. Oh, it was far from that.
His mouth assaulted my core, in a furious intensity that had me barely able to see anything. I almost ripped the sheets in my hands with the abrupt wave of pleasure consuming me.
It took what seemed like seconds and years all at the same time for an orgasm to rip me away from reality and thrust stars in front of my vision as I rode the wave, not caring if I ever came down.
But I did.
And when I did, it was to Keltan’s mouth on mine, the taste of me bitter and sweet at the same time and somehow intensely erotic.
“I was right,” he growled, one hand biting into my hip, the other circling on my collarbone. “Your pussy, baby? Best thing I ever tasted.”
I blinked through my haze of desire, half-insane with need. “Need you inside me. Now,” I rasped, my voice near unrecognizable.
His eyes turned dark as I reached down and damn near clawed at his belt. He shifted slightly and made quick work of it, leaving his jeans on, the same desperation I felt in my soul dancing in his eyes.
He held himself up on an elbow, the veins in his neck pulsing as he poised at my entrance.
I writhed on the bed in frustration.
“You on something, babe?” he asked, voice tight.
I blinked twice. Birth control. Right. I hadn’t thought about, or even considered, such things. Luckily the past me had it sorted since I was sixteen.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Good,” he growled.
Then he plunged into me, filling me to the hilt with a brutal intensity that had me actually black out for a second.
Or maybe that was just the grip of his eyes, fastened on mine as he moved. Long, strong, hard strokes that rubbed against my sensitive flesh, building another orgasm at an alarming speed.
“Keltan,” I moaned as he owned me, possessed every inch of my skin.
“Fuck, Lucy,” he ground out, hand at my neck.
I scratched at his back, my nails sinking into his skin, needing to be closer, needing respite from the brutal wave of pleasure he was building.
“Harder,” I hissed.
He complied immediately, not worrying if I couldn’t take it; he watched my eyes and knew I could.
He slammed into me brutally. The headboard clanged against the wall in a far-off place, but that wasn’t where I was.
I was about to drown in the wave that was roaring up to me with every stroke.
“Come, now,” he ordered hoarsely.
I cried out as his command coincided with a thrust that rubbed right against my magic spot.
I did. Then I lost all control, all sense of anything but him and me and the fire and the waves.
From then I was ruined.
Or I had been since that night at the club.
Afterwards, neither of us seemed eager to go to sleep, to welcome unconsciousness or the harsh light of day.
Being tangled up in each other and the comfortable shadows that only the middle of the night offered to lovers was much more preferable.
Especially since the moonlight illuminated the sculpted body I was lying atop.
We had been silent a while, my mind working over everything we’d said so far that didn’t seem like a lot, but at the same time was too much.
One thought stuck with me, tangled with my own memories.
“Your dad, how did he die?” I asked.
The question was blunt, for sure, but in my experience, bluntness was the best way to deal with death. Death was the starkest, most unadorned fact of life and trying to dance around it did little help to anyone, especially the one touched by it. Beaten by it.
Keltan’s arms flexed around me, but his eyes didn’t harden; if anything, they glowed with something akin to approval, swimming around the grief. He didn’t hesitate in his answer.
“Heart attack. Forty-one years old. Never smoked a day in his life. Had a couple of beers on the weekend but wasn’t a big drinker. Lived clean. Cleaner than most. Took him while he was fencing. My sister was there when it happened. Nothing she could do. And by the time she sprinted back to the house to get us and the paramedics, who were twenty minutes’ drive away, there was nothing anyone could do.” He shrugged, and my body moved with the motion. “If your na
me is on the bullet there’s nothing you can do, I guess.”
I glanced up at him. “You believe in that kind of stuff?” I asked, slightly surprised that a manly, now ex-soldier believed in something that sounded a lot like fate. The wording of it was distinctly male, but the crux of it seemed the same.
He didn’t break eye contact with me. “Yeah, babe. Gotta have some belief as to why this world throws us copious amounts of shit. Gotta have at least a bit of faith that the universe is doing it for a reason. ‘Cause to get through the shit, there’s something at the other side. Something worth it.” Those eyes burned into my soul with the weight of what he was alluding to.
Me. He meant me. I was worth it.
But are you really?
It was a small, shaking, scared voice that asked that. The eight-year-old me who asked if I was worth it, then why did my father leave without a flinch? Why did he do that to mom without an ounce of… anything?
“Kismet,” I whispered.
He traced my jaw. “Exactly.”
I sucked in a breath at the meaning behind his words and searched for escape. I found it in truth, in the demons of my past, the only time they’d helped me out.
“Yeah I believe in that too. That’s how my mom met my dad. Kismet.”
Keltan tilted his head. “Meant to be, to create what I’m holding?” he said lightly, eyes clearing of some of his own demons.
I shook my head. “No, they met after this was created.” I waved my hand down my naked body.
Keltan frowned. “Not entirely sure that’s possible. And”—he glanced down at my bare belly—“you’ve got a belly button, so you’re not some kind of alien. Need more of an explanation.”
I smiled despite myself, then sobered. “My sperm donor, the one who made me, he’s not my dad. Not the one I have movie night with once a month, who introduced me to Audrey and Tarantino. Not the one who tied my hair up for me until I was old enough to do it myself, and who loved doing it.” I gazed into his eyes. “My biological father left us in our trailer when I was eight years old, and Polly was two.” I paused, swallowing against the roughness of the memory closing up my throat. “That was, of course, after beating my mother within an inch of her life,” I added in a flat voice.
