by Lili Valente
There was antivenin in the infirmary back at the installation, but it would take at least ten minutes to get there. They would never make it in time.
If Harley didn’t do exactly as he said, chances were she would die.
It wasn’t until right now, seeing her facing down a snake longer than the both of them put together that he realized he didn’t want her to die. He wanted his son and he wanted to never have to see this woman, who made him so aware of his own capacity for ugliness and evil, ever again, but he didn’t want her dead.
“On three, Harley,” he said, slowly drawing back his arm. “Just do exactly as I said and you’re going to be fine. One.” He stepped a little closer. “Two.” His entire arm tensed, ready to throw the shirt far enough to the left that the snake wouldn’t be able to shift directions easily. “Three!”
Everything happened at once—he threw the shirt, the snake leapt into the air, its powerful body flying at the scrap of cotton with fangs bared, and Harley made a break for the other side of the cliff, running in the opposite direction from where she’d been told to run.
But Clay was ready for her. She barely made it two steps before he grabbed her around the waist, hauling her against him as he turned and ran.
It was an awkward position—Harley dangling from one arm as he pumped hard with the other—but the knowledge of how fast cobras could move lent him the adrenaline rush to make it work. He kept running, ignoring Harley’s grunted shout to be put down and the uncomfortable strain on his muscles until he was on the other side of the grove of thorn bushes. Only then did he glance back, his grip on Harley relaxing as he saw the cobra fleeing in the opposite direction, up into the mossy stones of the cliff.
“No you don’t,” he said as Harley squirmed free and made a break for the top of the ridge. He caught up with her easily, grabbing her hips and spinning her around before bending low enough to flip her over his shoulder. “No more running away.”
“Put me down,” she panted, pummeling his lower back with her fists.
“Not a chance, now behave yourself,” he said, swatting her bottom hard enough to make her flinch and cry out. “If you bruise my kidneys on the way back, I’ll take it out on your ass later.”
She stiffened but stopped hitting him and a few moments passed in silence as he circled the brush and started back toward the trail, doing his best not to think about Harley bent over his knees with her bare ass in the air. He had never been into that sort of thing, but he liked the idea of reddening Harley’s ass as punishment for running away from him.
He could imagine the way her muscles would lock tight from a combination of shame and discomfort. He could almost see the red welts his hand would leave behind and hear the way she would cry out as he took her punishment further, sliding his fingers between her thighs, playing with her until she was wet and squirming and hating herself for responding to his touch.
“You can put me down,” Harley said, interrupting his fantasy. But it was too late. His cock was already hard, trapped at an uncomfortable angle by his boxer briefs. “I can walk. I won’t try to run away again.”
“How dumb do you think I am?” he asked, tightening his grip on the back of her legs.
“I don’t think you’re dumb,” she said. “Honestly, I’m too tired to run anymore. I haven’t had any food since lunch yesterday and I—”
“Speaking of dumb,” he interrupted, quickening his pace, hoping physical exertion would help banish the carnal hunger pumping through his veins. “I can’t believe you would rather take your chances with a king cobra than do what I told you to do.”
“You shouldn’t be surprised,” she said in a weary voice. “You already proved that you might kill me. The cobra’s intentions were still up in the air.”
“If I hadn’t grabbed you, you would be dead right now,” he said, but her words sent a fresh burst of self-hatred rushing through him.
He had lost control and then lost his focus, forgetting that leaving someone like Harley tied to a bed wasn’t nearly enough to ensure she would stay put. He had to pull his shit together and treat her the way he would treat any dangerous suspect during an interrogation. She wasn’t a pretty, helpless, petite woman; she was a sociopath, and he’d been a fool to forget it, even for an hour.
Harley’s breath rushed out in a sound that was almost a laugh. “So you want me to thank you? Is that it?”
“Of course not,” he said as he stepped back onto the trail and the cottages came into sight. “I know you’re incapable of gratitude. Or any other normal human emotion.”
“Fuck you,” she growled, her fist slamming into his ass. “You don’t know what I’m capable of. You don’t know me anymore!”
Rage rushing through him, Clay flipped her back onto her feet, grabbing her around the upper arms and leaning down to whisper his next words into her flushed face. “And you don’t know me, and don’t you forget it.”
“I won’t,” she said, eyes glittering as she held his gaze. “I’ve got plenty of bruises to remember the new you by.”
“You can always have more,” he snapped.
Her lips stretched in a mean smile. “Lovely. That’s just what Jasper needs, a father in his life to teach him how to abuse women.”
“You’re not a woman, you’re a criminal.”
“So are you!” she shouted, standing up straighter, her arm muscles flexing beneath his hands. “You kidnapped me and nearly strangled me to death.”
“Keep talking,” he said through gritted teeth, fighting the insane urge to shove his tongue between her lips and silence her with a kiss, “and I’ll rethink the pain reliever I was going to give you.”
“Fuck your pain reliever. And fuck you.” Her breath rushed out as her gaze flicked from his eyes to his lips and back again.
That hint of awareness was all it took to send him over the edge.
Fisting his hand in her hair, he crushed his mouth to hers, making a sound somewhere between a groan and a growl as she opened for him and her tongue darted out to wage war with his own. Their tongues writhed against each other, fighting for supremacy, as their lips pressed so tight together he could feel her teeth bruising his lips as they fell to the grass. He rolled on top of her, grinding his erection between her legs as she bucked into him, both of them making animalistic sounds of rage and lust that drove him even wilder.
Her fingernails clawed into his bare skin, leaving scratch marks behind as he gripped her breast through her shirt and squeezed hard enough to make her gasp into his mouth.
“No, fuck you,” he mumbled before pulling her bottom lip between his teeth and biting down, summoning a pained, pleasured sound from low in her throat as he released it. “I’m going to fuck you, you evil bitch. And you’re going to come on my cock knowing you spread your legs for the man who is going to ruin your life.”
Chapter Ten
Clay
Clay pulled back, reaching for the top of her shirt, fisting his hands in the gauzy fabric and ripping it in two. She was wearing some sort of tank top underneath, but before he could rip it free, she slapped him—hard, her hand connecting with his jaw with enough force to make it ache.
“You don’t get to do this,” she hissed. “You don’t get to decide how I pay for what I’ve done!”
She reached clawed hands for his eyes, but he captured her wrists, pinning them above her head. He slammed his mouth over hers, fucking her with his tongue as he kneed her legs apart and settled between them, riding her hard through their clothes. He shifted control of both of her wrists to his left hand and used his right to pull her tank top down, freeing her breasts.
He continued to ravage her mouth, refusing to give her any spare breath to use against him, as he pinched and rolled her tight little nipples. He waited until he felt her begin to grind against him, seeking relief from the maddening tension building between them, before he reached for the close of her shorts with both hands. He ripped the fabric in two, popping the button and tearing the zipp
er, not caring that he was destroying the only thing she had to wear.
He didn’t care about anything but getting his cock inside her and fucking her until she knew that he owned her—body and soul.
He shoved his hand down the front of her shorts and panties and drove two fingers in and up, pulse spiking as he felt how wet she was. “Fuck, Harley.”
She cried out, arching into his hand, her body gushing fresh heat onto his fingers even as she raked her nails down his chest. “Get off of me!”
“You don’t want me to get off.” He captured one of her dangerous hands and pinned it to the ground, holding her gaze as he fucked her with his fingers. “You want to get off. You’re about to come on my hand. You’re hot and wet and dripping for me because you know this is how you deserve to get fucked. You deserve to get taken here in the dirt.”
With an incoherent sound of rage, she slapped him again. But it was her left hand this time and she was too distracted to put much force behind the blow. Her breath was coming so fast her breasts were rocking on her chest, her tight nipples pinching even tighter in the breeze blowing in from the ocean.
She was going to come any second and it was going to make her furious. The knowledge was enough to make Clay’s cock throb.
“Come,” he said, smiling at her as he brought his thumb to her clit, rubbing her as he continued to fuck her with his hand. “Come you worthless bitch.”
Crying out in what sounded like agony, she came, her pussy squeezing his fingers tight. She came gasping for air, sobbing and cursing as her cream gushed out to coat his hand until he could smell her salty sweetness on the air and the last of his capacity for rational thought left him in a rush of raw hunger. He needed to be inside her, needed to replace his fingers with his cock and ride her until she screamed.
“Stop,” she shouted as he pulled her shorts and panties down her legs. “We don’t have protection!”
She rolled over, trying to crawl away, but he was on her in a second, pinning her, belly down on the grass, as he shoved his shorts down far enough to free his cock.
“Pull out before you come,” she snapped. “Do you hear me?”
He growled low in his throat in response. He was beyond words or compassion. He needed his dick in her, needed it like he’d never needed anything in his life. He was wild with it, bestial, ravenous.
He was drowning in his own lust and there was only one thing that could bring him back to the surface.
His bared teeth pressed against Harley’s neck, he roughly kneed her thighs apart. She squirmed beneath him, rocking against his cock, feeding the madness. He threaded his hands under her arms, gripping her shoulders from the front, holding her in place as he drove frantically between her legs. He missed her entrance the first several thrusts, but finally his cock found her wet heat and he rammed home.
She moaned as he plunged to the end of her, but he moaned louder, a sound of deliverance that echoed through the air as he began to fuck her like an animal. His arms were iron banded around her body and his spine curled tightly as he thrust deeper, harder, crying out through gritted teeth as he pistoned in and out. He was no longer a man; he was a beast filled with the primal need to fuck the woman beneath him.
“I hate you,” Harley cried out, the words ending in a sob. “I hate you!”
“I hate you, too,” he said in a ragged voice he barely recognized. “Now come for me again. Come for me.”
Clay took a mouthful of her shoulder muscle between his teeth and bit down, grunting around her flesh as her pussy convulsed around his cock. Her entire body vibrated as she tumbled over with a wild cry, the feel of her trembling in his arms only making him wilder. Abandoning his grip on her shoulders, he clutched at her hips, squeezing tight as he rammed home again and again, driving his cock into her as she clawed the ground and her pussy continued to pulse around him, pushing him to the breaking point.
God, he was so fucking close, the precipice was looming. He knew there was something he needed to remember, but he couldn’t think straight, couldn’t regain control.
He was lost in her—her heat, her smell, the way her cunt clutched at his thickness, coating him in her heat—and this was the only way to get free. He came with a roar, pulsing inside her body, his balls aching and his cock jerking and a pained, tortured feeling spreading through his chest as he felt the thick jets of come gushing inside her.
Shit. Holy shit.
Even as his body flushed with the bliss of release, misery and regret crept around from behind to sucker-punch him in the gut.
He’d come inside her. He’d fucked her bare and God only knew if she was on birth control. Considering he was pretty sure she’d told him to pull out, the answer was probably no.
What the fuck had he been thinking?
You weren’t thinking. She destroys your capacity for rational thought.
Admit it and take appropriate measures before you get her knocked up again and have to spend nine months with this psychopath, waiting for your second child to be born.
The thought made his throat lock up as he pulled out of her, sitting back on his heels with a ragged sigh. She could be pregnant already. It could already be too late.
Unless…
“Get up,” he said, swallowing hard as he stood, hitching his shorts up around his hips and jerking the waist tie tighter. “We’re going to the infirmary.”
She staggered to her feet, clutching the remains of her shirt around her as she turned to face him, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Get your shorts.” He met her angry, tear-filled eyes, willing his heart to stay locked safely inside the walls of stone he’d erected years ago, after waking up in the hospital and learning his fiancée had been killed in the car wreck that had nearly claimed his own life. “I’ll find a sewing kit and you can try to fix them.”
“I hate you,” she whispered, making no move to reach for her shorts.
“You said that,” he snapped. “It didn’t keep you from coming.”
Her jaw clenched. “I told you to pull out! I didn’t want this.”
“Are you saying I raped you?” His eyebrows drifted up his forehead.
He sounded like he couldn’t care less, but inside his blood had gone cold. She had obviously been consenting at one point—hating him as much as he hated her, but consenting—but had something changed along the way? He honestly couldn’t remember. It was like he’d gone out of his mind, losing every bit of the control that had made him one of the best agents in the field.
“Obviously not,” she finally said, swallowing hard, as if it sickened her to say the words. “But if I’m pregnant, I will kill you. I swear I will. I won’t let you anywhere near any of my children.”
“There were female operatives on this base at one point,” he said, forcing a bored note into his tone, even though he was so fucking relieved his knees felt weak. He hadn’t crossed that line and now he had a second chance to do this right. “There might be morning-after pills in the infirmary. I suggest we go look for one because the last thing I want is to curse another one of my children with you for a mother.”
Harley’s eyes narrowed as she shook her head slowly from side to side. “You’re the curse. I will die before I tell you where Jasper is. He’s better off with no parents than ending up with a monster like you.”
Clay reached down, snatching her shorts from the ground before grabbing her by the elbow. But he held her lightly. He wasn’t going to lose control again. He would make sure of it, by putting Harley where he should have put her in the first place—in a cell, with steel walls to keep her in and a steel door to keep them from getting too close to each other and igniting the dirty bomb that lived between them.
“You think I’m bluffing,” she said, allowing herself to be led along beside him, through the clearing and toward the main operations building beyond. “But I’m not.”
“I don’t think you’re bluffing,” he said. “I made the mistake of underestimating you. But from now o
n I’m going to treat you very seriously.”
She glanced sharply up at him, but he didn’t turn his head. He kept his gaze on the simple white and brown building ahead of him and his eyes empty, giving Harley no warning that she would be spending the rest of their time together in one of the CIA’s sensory stimulation cells.
There would be no deals; there would be no easy out.
He had proven that he lacked the emotional distance to interrogate her and she had shown him that she would rather take her chances with a cobra than give him her trust. And why should she trust him? He’d proven he had no control, just like she’d proven she had no heart.
The best thing for both of them would be to let the cell do the work and keep interaction between them to a minimum.
But as he resigned himself to never touching her again, something deep inside his bones howled in protest. That animal inside didn’t want to do the right thing. It wanted to pick her up, set her on the counter of the infirmary, and get back between her legs. It wanted to fuck until all the hate was gone and it could finally burst through the bars of its cage and be free.
That mindless creature insisted that sexing Harley out of his system was the only way to put the past behind him.
But that wasn’t going to happen. As soon as he had taken care of her wounds, found the medicine she needed, and given her something to eat and drink, they wouldn’t touch again until the day he let her out of her cell. And by that time, Jasper would already be safe at Clay’s house in Maryland. He would have his son and a second chance at life waiting for him across the sea and no reason to want to waste another second with the monster who got away.
He opened the door, letting Harley precede him into the darkened facility, keeping his gaze on her shoulders instead of the bare cheeks of her ass peeking out from beneath her shirt, ignoring the stirring in his shorts as his cock insisted he wasn’t finished with Harley.
