I close my eyes, trying to ignore the ache—the miserable hollow feeling—between my legs. “I want…” I clear my throat and start over. “I want to have sex.”
“Well, that’s not what I’m offering. If you just want to ‘have sex,’ you’re going to have to wait for your hypothetical college boy to—”
“I want you to fuck me, Jai. Now. Please,” I add, when my fleeting confidence fades.
“That flush in your cheeks is so hot,” he whispers as he leans down to press a kiss to my forehead. “I’m betting I can make you flush all over…”
6
JAI
Good god, she’s gorgeous, even only half-lit by moonlight. Tight little body, soft in all the right places. Clear, smooth skin. Thick, healthy hair. Perfect teeth. Her adoptive parents gave her everything—that much is obvious. Yet here she is, in one of the most dangerous places in the galaxy, trying to find the one thing she doesn’t have.
But Rayla’s been missing out on more than just her mother.
I kiss my way down her body slowly, spending time on each breast while I caress her curves, drinking in her sighs and moans.
She arches into every touch, pressing her breasts into my palms, lifting her hips so I can slide one hand over her perfect, round ass. Rayla is an anomaly on Rhodon. A shiny jewel dropped onto a pile of dirt. She stands out like the gem she is, and while part of me wants to pick her up and dust her off—to protect her and preserve her natural state—the rest of me wants to scuff her up, so I can find out who she is beneath this flawless finish she wears like armor. Why a girl like her would risk the rest of her life to find a woman who, in all likelihood, never wanted her in the first place.
I don’t want to hurt her. I want to ride her hard and break her in. I want to light her up, so that she glows from the inside, instead of from a surface polish that will inevitably get scratched up here.
And she’s fucking starving for human contact, as if she really were raised in a glass bubble. As if it isn’t just sex and kissing she’s been missing out on, but touch altogether.
I slide my fingers beneath her waistband again as I lick my way down her stomach. “I think we’re done with these…” I expect her to stop me, or at least ask me to slow down, but she only lifts her hips to give me access.
Still gripping her waistband, I glance at her face, surprised by the sudden lack of self-consciousness from a girl who couldn’t even ask me for a kiss a few minutes ago, and I find her eyes closed. Her head tossed back. And suddenly I understand.
She’s not here with me, in this moment. She’s alone in this moment. Lost in it. Feeling pleasure as if it comes from some anonymous source. As if it’s being bestowed upon her by the universe. As if I’m not even here.
Anyone could be touching her right now, and she wouldn’t know the difference.
Hell. No. She’s going to remember me for the rest of her life.
“Rayla.” I rise onto my knees to give her nipple a light pinch, and her eyes fly open. “Look at me.”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No.” She’s done everything right. Her body is an instrument I desperately want to play. But I want her to know who’s playing it. “What’s my name?”
Her frown deepens. “Jai. Seriously. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I slide her pants over her hips and let my fingers trail down her legs as I pull the material off. “I just want to make sure you remember whose name to scream, in a few minutes.”
“Pretty confident, aren’t you?”
I shrug. “I’m not new at this.”
“Well, I am, so…” She looks a little worried for the first time.
“So I get to set the bar,” I say, and she smiles. I reach down and run one hand over her breast, letting my calloused fingers tease her nipple, hardening it even further. She closes her eyes again, squirming beneath me. “Rayla.”
“Mmm…?”
“Look at me.”
“I…” Her eyes open, her forehead furrowed. “I can’t. Not while you’re…doing that.”
“You can. And you will,” I insist. She gives me a hesitant nod. Her cheeks turn pink as I rub my thumb over her nipple, but she holds my gaze. “Good girl.”
“I’m not a child, Jai.”
“I’m very well aware of that. As long as you keep looking, I’ll keep touching. Deal?”
She nods again, and her eyelids flutter as I give her nipple another gentle pinch, but she rallies and maintains eye contact, despite the flush of embarrassment creeping down her neck toward her beautiful breasts.
I slide my hand slowly back down her stomach, and her muscles tense in anticipation. She bites her lower lip, and I can see the effort it takes for her to keep her eyes open. To keep from retreating into that mental space where pleasure just comes to her, and she doesn’t have to acknowledge either her role in that or mine.
She’s not scared of sex. She’s ashamed of wanting it.
Has someone told her she shouldn’t?
“Rayla, it’s okay to want this,” I whisper as my fingers trail toward her neatly trimmed mound, and my cock begins to truly ache. How the hell did she manage personal grooming on a prison transport?
“I…I know.” But her beautiful flush says she doesn’t truly believe that.
“Open your legs for me, princess.” I could open them myself, but I don’t want to do things to her. I want to do things with her.
“Oh my god, this is real.” Her eyes close, then they fly open again as she remembers my rule. “I…okay.” Slowly, she lets her knees fall apart, her thighs trembling, and my cock throbs as I watch my present unwrap itself. Then I recapture her gaze as I run my hand over her sex, feeling her heat without prodding.
Her mouth falls open and her next breath is more of a gasp. I stroke her a couple of times, and she sucks her lip between her teeth, biting so hard I’m afraid she’s going to break the skin.
I slide one finger into her folds, opening her further, and she’s…oh, god, she’s wet. She’s beyond ready, at least in that sense. As if she’s been waiting for me for years. But she’s never been touched. In that sense, she’s going to need a little more prepping.
I trace light circles around her clit, avoiding direct contact, and she sucks in a breath. But she holds my gaze, and the intimacy of that eye contact, while I have my hand in a place no other man has ever been, makes me so hard my cock actually throbs.
My finger trails lower. “You good?” I ask.
“So good,” she breathes, as I recline next to her.
I plunge my free hand into her hair, tilting her head toward me so that I’m kissing her when my finger slides into her. She moans into my mouth, and I pump into her gently, until her hips start rising to meet my hand. Then I add another finger and curl them both up as I stroke into her.
“Oh!” She breaks away from my kiss, her lip trapped between her teeth again, and I can feel her tighten around my fingers. “Jai!”
“Well, that’s not a scream, but I’ll take it.”
“Jai. Please. I need…” She doesn’t seem to know what she needs. But I do.
“Not yet.” I stroke her a little harder, a little faster, with my thumb pressed to her clit. When I lean down and take her nipple into my mouth, she bucks beneath me.
“Please… Jai, I need to come. I need to.”
“Oh, I know, princess. You’ve probably needed this for years. What difference will a few more minutes make?”
She groans and arches into me again, but I pull my hand back, lightening the pressure on her clit. Keeping her right on the edge, writhing beneath me. Desperate and soaking wet.
“Please. Jai. Please.”
“Oh, okay,” I relent with a laugh. “But that doesn’t mean we’re done. Understood?”
“Yes!” she gasps.
I circle harder around her clit and pump into her faster as I take her nipple into my mouth again, sucking gently, in a rhythm that matches my strokes into her.
“Oh god,” she moans as her body clenches around my fingers, her thighs trembling against my hand. “Oh.” Her head falls back and she makes a series of soft gasping sounds as she falls over the edge.
I’m so hard I can hardly stand it. I have to have her. Now. But…
“Rayla, have you ever touched yourself?” I ask as her tremors finally begin to fade. As she looks up at me with an unfocused smile.
“That was kind of my only option. But it was never like that.”
“I mean, have you touched yourself inside?” I ask, as I slowly withdraw from her slick heat. “With anything bigger than my fingers?”
Despite the fact that she just came on my hand, her flush deepens in the moonlight. “No. Why?”
“Okay, then, this might hurt for a minute.” I lower myself over her, settling my weight between her thighs, and I kiss her. “Do you still want the rest of me? Or was my hand enough?”
“Well, you haven’t—”
“Don’t worry about me. What do you want?”
She blinks up at me. Then she pulls me down for another kiss. “Jai, I want you to fuck me.”
“I was really hoping you’d say that.” There is nothing in the world—in any world—hotter than a girl who still blushes while she begs for pleasure.
I position myself at her entrance, and she blinks up at me with the most trusting expression, her eyes still glazed with satisfaction. I kiss her as I slowly slide into her, and she stiffens a little just as I feel resistance from her body.
“Pleasure will outweigh the pain,” I promise as I slide one hand between us. She nods, her lip trapped between her teeth again. I gently rub her clit until I feel her relax. Then I hold her gaze as I carefully push past that bit of resistance.
Rayla flinches, and I try not to be obvious about the fact that she feels amazing clenched around me, when she’s still in pain.
“Give it a minute,” I whisper as I slowly slide deeper. She nods, and when I’m all the way in, I lean down for another kiss, fighting the urge to pull out and thrust in again while she gets used to the intrusion.
Rayla’s hand slides behind my neck, her fingers curling in my hair, and I plunge into her mouth like I want to plunge into her body, until I feel her start to relax again. Then I begin to move. Slowly at first, pulling out and sliding back in as I tease her clit with my finger. And just as slowly, she starts to respond. Her legs wrap around my waist and she begins arching up to meet me, clutching at my arm with one hand.
I fight to hold back. It’s been a long time for me, and she’s so beautiful. So tight and wet. So…perfect.
“How you doing, princess?” I whisper, aching to slam into her. But I don’t want to hurt her.
She answers with a moan, and I nearly lose control.
“Can you handle a little more?”
“Yes, please.”
Those manners… So hot.
I thrust faster, harder, in an arcing motion that should create friction against her clit. She gasps, and her legs clench around me. “You like that?”
She groans, and I slide one hand under her ass, directing her movements so that I hit her just right inside. In seconds, she’s panting into my ear, her hand tight in my hair, lost in the moment. “Jai,” she gasps. “I think I’m going to come again.”
“That’s the plan, princess.” I move a little harder, a little faster, and her mouth falls open in a series of soft breaths. “Look at me, Rayla. Let me watch you come.”
Her gaze locks onto mine, and this time when she spasms around me, groaning softly with every pulse of pleasure, I watch the orgasm roll over her features, and I know that this feeling—this first for her—will forever be associated with my face. With looking into my eyes.
“Jai,” she moans, staring up at me, and I come so hard I can’t even remember where I am for several seconds. All I know is that I’m buried inside the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, and I want to do this with her—give this to her—over and over again.
But she’s leaving.
At least, she thinks she is.
“Oh my god.” Rayla laughs, and her body clenches around me again with the motion, triggering blissful aftershocks. “That was… That was…”
“I will accept anything in the vein of ‘amazing’ or ‘incredible.’ Or, if you’re feeling particularly well-served, you might consider ‘life changing.’”
“I know you’re joking,” she says as I reluctantly pull out of her, then roll onto my back. “But that was life changing for me. Literally.” Rayla props herself up on one elbow and looks down at me with her hand draped over my chest. “I…thank you. Even if nothing else comes out of this—even if I never find my mother—I will always remember this. And you.”
A strange disappointment lingers like a bad taste in my mouth when she sits up and reaches for her shirt, but it has nothing to do with the fact that she’s covering herself, when I’d rather sleep next to her in the nude. And maybe do that again when we wake up.
It’s the thought that she’s leaving.
An hour ago, I was convinced that her plan would fail. That she’ll be stuck here, no matter how much she’s paid some guard to ferry her off this piece of shit red rock. But now, just the sliver of a possibility that she might actually go makes me want to do something horrible.
Something even more horrible than what I’ve been doing to her for the past two and a half days.
I want to keep her. I want to take her someplace this corrupt guard can’t find her.
But if she has a way out, I can’t take that from her. Yes, technically she’s a thief, but she’s not a violent criminal, and no matter what she stole, she doesn’t deserve the kind of life she’d have here, fighting for every bite she takes and every scrap she wears. Selling herself when she can’t find food and shelter any other way.
But it wouldn’t be like that if she were with me. I could protect her. I could feed her. I could—
As long as I’m fantasizing, I may as well dream up a shuttle to get us both off Devil’s Eye. If I kept Rayla here when she could have escaped, she would never let me near her again. And it would be my fault if she wound up some asshole’s whore, just to keep from starving.
“What’s wrong?” she asks as she pushes her arms through the sleeves of her shirt, and the motion pulls the end of her bandage loose.
“Nothing.” I grab my pants and stuff my legs into them. “What did you do to your hand?”
She glances at her right palm, then tightens the bandage, but the motion seems designed to give her something other than me to look at. That’s her tell. I don’t know what she’s going to say, but I know it’s going to be a lie.
She reaches for her underwear. “I hurt it during the crash.”
But I’ve grabbed her hand several times over the past two days, tugging her down out of sight of the loners we’ve come across, and she hasn’t even flinched. And there couldn’t have been enough time for her to find a bandage and treat her own wound in the minutes between the moment her shuttle went down and the moment I found it. “No, you—”
“Oh, shit.” Rayla’s still holding her underwear, sitting cross-legged on the mattress, but she’s staring at a dark, wet spot on the sheet.
“A little blood is common the first time,” I tell her. “And if you’re worried about the sheet, don’t be. It’ll wash out.”
“No, I… It’s not the blood.” She frowns and pulls a clean rag from her pack, then opens her canteen with her mouth. “We didn’t… I mean, we didn’t take any precautions.” She pours a little water onto her rag, then caps the pouch and stands. “Could you…turn around for a second?”
I turn to give her privacy while she cleans herself up. “Rayla, are you sick?” She doesn’t look sick, but that doesn’t really mean anything. Some diseases linger for years, dormant, before they roar out of hibernation and kill you. “Is that why your hand’s wrapped?” But that doesn’t make sense either. How could she have an STD if she’s never had sex?
&nbs
p; Of course, some STDs can be transmitted other ways. Through blood. Dirty needles. In vitro.
“Shit, is that why you’re looking for your mother?” I turn around, struggling to control my escalating anger, and find her stepping into her underwear. “Were you born with something communicable?” Did she just give it to me? The only thing that could make life on a prison planet even more miserable than it already is would be having a fucking communicable disease and no health care.
“What? No. I—”
“Give me your hand.”
“No!” She clasps her hands behind her back, and I’m up in an instant. “Jai, I don’t have anything.”
“Then show me.”
“No! You’re going to have to trust me.”
“The fuck I am. You’ve been lying to me since you got here.” I reach for her, and she backpedals until her spine hits the countertop. “Princess, please don’t make me do this. Just show me your hand. You owe me that.” How could I have been so stupid? The first thing they tell us—the men, anyway—during in-processing is never to stick it in anyone whose prisoner number is circled.
Always check the number. Even that’s not a sure thing—shit happens to people after they get here. But anyone with a circled number is an absolute hard pass.
“Is it… Will antibiotics help?” I ask, trying to remember whether I have any left. “What are we talking about here?” Itching and burning, or a slow, miserable death?
“Jai, I don’t have anything. I swear on my life.” She edges to the left, toward the door, but she’s not going anywhere. I’m standing between her and the bag with her gun in it, and she’d never leave that behind.
I lunge for her, and she screams as I grab her arm. I feel like an asshole as I haul her toward me, but if she’s sick, I have to know. I have a right to know. “I’m not going to hurt you.” I would hope she’d know that by now. “I just need to see—”
She slaps me across the face with her left hand. Hard.
For a second, neither of us moves. We’re both shocked. I breathe in and out, fighting for control of my temper.
Dirty Lies Page 8
