by Angel Payne
He clenched his jaw. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I want you to.” If she was heaving caution aside, then why not have the aching legs tomorrow as a sweet memory? “I…need you to… I…just need you. Filling me. Fucking me. Hurting me. Please! Oh, pl—”
She cut herself off with her own scream. As Kellan drove his cock all the way into her, she didn’t think she’d ever felt so stretched, so raw…so complete. Yes, it hurt. Yes, it was invasive. Yes, it blocked out everything for a long moment except for the certainty of his body, massive and rigid, inside hers. But even the pain was perfect for what she needed from tonight—and what she sensed he needed too. His features, now intense and feral, channeled the untamed force of the downpour itself. As the wind whipped higher, he seized her hips, syncing their pace with his fevered thrusts. The rain pounded faster as if to drive him on, ramming into her, emitting loud thwops as their soaked bodies collided again and again.
Lani thought she screamed but couldn’t be sure. Her blood roared in her ears. Rain ran down her body. The grass burned her back as Kellan drove harder, faster, deeper…
Until he stilled.
Lani dragged her eyes open to have her gaze filled with the burnished beauty of his face, hovering inches over her again. As their breaths tangled, he lowered her ass to the ground. While the grass cooled her thighs, his cock pulsed against her walls. His gaze never left her face. Lani shivered and battled to break the contact. It was too much, this stare of his. Giving her too much. Asking too much in return. This was just supposed to be sex. That was all it ever could be.
But her inner war surged on, turning into torment as he used his hands to inflame her body all over again.
With his gaze still locked in hers, he circled one hand beneath her body. With the other, he found her clit again.
“Kellan!” She shuddered as he pressed a finger against that perfect, tiny button.
“No.” His countermand was quiet but firm. “Not yet.” He circled his hips, creating a new friction between them. The rain pummeled. The wind pushed. The storm in her sex was sweet and perfect and unbearable. Dear God, she needed to come.
“Kellan, please!”
“Not. Yet.” He shifted the hand beneath her. Slowly, he probed the edge of her back entrance with a rain-soaked finger.
“Kellan!”
He slid in a second finger.
As he intensified the pressure on her swollen, needy clit.
As he taunted her with the slow rolls of his hips and the thudding girth of his cock.
As he took her to the brink of ecstasy but refused to yank her over.
She was in hell.
“Now, sweetheart.” He pushed hard on the center of her pleasure as he plunged deep with the length of his cock. “Now.”
She was in heaven.
Nirvana crashed over her with blinding force, searing her senses, scalding her sex, blinding her mind. Her shriek gained harmony from Kellan’s groan, long and violent against her neck as she felt his balls harden, blasting come up his shaft. As he climaxed, he ground harder against her, igniting her passion all over again. The second orgasm shot her out of nirvana and into another dimension. Her eyes went wide, staring in awe as the moon gleamed through the storm, turning the raindrops into stars and the clouds into satyrs.
All except for the one who continued to rock inside her, nuzzling her shoulder with a dark growl. Only when he bit a little harder did she turn her head and realize he was watching her.
“That smile looks damn gorgeous on you, Starshine.” He rose over her again, fingering wet strands from her face. “I hope this means you won’t toss me out of bed right away.”
Though they laughed together, solemnity lingered in his gaze, bringing the feeling that the question wasn’t entirely a gibe. It was a little unnerving. A touch confusing. But brought a few tingly butterflies too.
And…she was being a ridiculous female, making more out of all this than she should.
He was a soldier—a well-hung, gasp-worthy one, at that—and no doubt had a woman for every forward base he frequented. Well, she had no problem being his “Kauaˋi cutie.” The fringe benefits were nice. Really nice. If she had nothing but a body full of interesting aches and a head full of hot memories when he left for duty again, that would be just fine.
“Tell you what,” she murmured, trailing a fingertip over the alluring hills of his top lip. “Why don’t we consider getting into a bed first?”
He rumbled through a chuckle. “It’s a novelty, but I might be persuaded to try it.”
Once more, his sarcasm was laced with a strange erudition, like the words were humorous versions of the truth.
And again, she mentally slapped herself for caring. Like she could afford to “care” for anyone right now—not while being both parents to Leo and battling Benson at every step he made to claim Hale Anelas. But more profoundly, not in the way she’d always dreamed of caring for someone. Not with the devotion she’d witnessed every day growing up, the mau loa love that bound Mother and Father every day they were alive and surely united them even tonight.
Mau loa. Forever love. She would settle for nothing less.
But there was more to that truth. She simply wanted too much. She was the first to admit it. Love like that didn’t just “happen by chance,” despite what the movies propagated. And it certainly didn’t tumble onto a woman’s beach one night, dressed in nothing but khakis, a wrinkled shirt, and a shit-eating grin.
Even if that grin turned into kisses she’d never forget and two mind-gouging orgasms.
They made their way back to the house dressed in nothing but their laughter, clutching their drenched, muddy clothes. Lani stopped Kellan on the back lanai, listening for a long moment in case Leo had skipped the fencing team’s typical postpractice trip to Puka Dog. If that was the case, her brother would still be in the kitchen, having come in the back in his haste for food. All was silent. Seemed the lure of a lava sausage with papaya relish had snared her brother again, so they were in the clear.
Once they were upstairs, she headed straight for her bathroom and turned the shower to a pleasant temperature. Kellan watched her, wrapped in strange silence, as she grabbed two towels from the linen closet. “I give up,” she finally admitted. “What’s going on in that head of yours, Sergeant?”
He stood in the middle of her vanity area, all her things looking tiny and fragile compared to his imposing nudity, especially as he rammed hands to the ridges of his obliques. “A moment ago, the answer was I’d control myself from getting inside you again, considering we’ve expended my sole condom on hand. But looking at you like this may force me to get creative.”
Thank heavens she’d moved to stand at the counter. Though the towels fell out of her grip, it appeared like she’d purposely plopped them there. “Cr-Creative? Why?”
He pivoted toward her, pulling the bathroom door back open as he did. With another step, he was braced totally behind her, twining her gaze with his in the mirror. Those dark gray depths were right at home against the steely set of his features, which tightened further as he leaned forward. With a low, feral growl, he slid his jaw against hers.
“Spread your legs,” he ordered in a whisper. Like she had a choice. He used his feet to nudge hers apart, instantly filling the crevice between her thighs with an erection that had gone from half-mast to full-sail in three seconds. Lani gasped as his cock pushed through the V at the bottom of her ass cheeks and past her intimate entrance, letting his broad tip part her pussy from behind. She watched him do all of it in their reflection, making everything feel more surreal…and sinful.
“Oh, my God,” she rasped.
He wrapped an arm around her waist. “You’re wet, sweetheart. But so am I.” With his other hand, he snared hers and pushed it down. “Feel me. Squeeze my cock. Wipe off my juice with your finger then suck it off.”
Holy shit. He really was a satyr. A half-demon warrior sent here from some fantasyland to tempt her down t
he path of completely nasty acts and wanton ways…because he knew she’d willingly follow.
The thought sang through what was left of her mind as she caressed the knob of his shaft. She whimpered as she found the slit that leaked hot milk at her touch. After collecting the juice as he demanded, she thrust her finger deep into her mouth, prompting a guttural groan of encouragement from behind.
“Good. So damn good, Starshine.”
He shoved harder, and she whimpered at watching his swollen red crown surge from the valley of her legs. She reached down and grabbed him again, stroking his throbbing tip. At the same time, he swept up his other hand and pinched one of her nipples. A high yelp burst from her. Kellan quickened his thrusts.
“Look at me again.”
She quickly obeyed, filling her vision with his face in the mirror, so dark and intense, twisted in erotic agony. In response, her body shook and wept, engulfed by lust, on fire with need.
“Now touch yourself,” he directed. “Do it, Lani. Rub your hard little clit for me.”
She obeyed him—with a twist. Instead of using her fingers, she kept her hold on his shaft and rammed it against the ridge of her arousal as a flesh-and-blood vibrator. He gave an approving grunt while his massive thighs quaked against hers. With his eyes still on her in the mirror, he openly bit into her neck. She yelped as her sex came alive, pinged by a million more jolts of awakening. Her vagina clenched. Her pussy pulsed.
“Kellan!” She struggled to keep it from turning into a scream, all too aware they weren’t exactly alone.
He answered with another possessive bite, this time on her ear. “My name on your lips turns my cock to stone, sweetheart.”
They weren’t empty words. His erection was a wand of pure heat against the stiff ridge of her need, coaxing it into higher peaks until there was no way to go but into the hottest fire her body could generate. She gasped and started thrusting back against him. “Ke ˋale ne ke kai. Kellan, I’m— I’m going to—”
He took the hand at her breast and swiped it to her forehead, keeping her cheek pinned to his jaw, burning his glorious scruff into her skin. “And I’m going to watch, Starshine. No closing your eyes. Let me see. All of it.”
As the waves of euphoria slammed her and pulled her under, a breathtaking smile took over his face. A second later, the look turned into a passionate growl. His teeth clenched as he lifted her a little, high enough for him to release thick white streams of his seed into the sink.
For a long second, their stares held in the mirror while their bodies heaved in unison. For an extended moment, Lani still didn’t move. She didn’t want to. Her limbs and gaze were tethered in place, locked to him in that steam-clouded make-believe of the mirror. She was bound by the intensity of him. Riveted by the effortless strength of him. Spellbound by the burnished beauty of his form…and the fathoms of feeling in his eyes…
What the hell are you doing? “Fathoms of feeling?” What kind of poetic garbage is that? You don’t have time for poetry. Or intensity. Or thinking of this as anything beyond what it is: a pleasant distraction for you both. End of story, Hokulani.
If only he wouldn’t keep staring at her like they’d suddenly turned into the last two people on earth.
“I…I need to get into the shower. I still have some work to do tonight.”
It wasn’t a lie. Before she’d patrolled the beach and found him and Bommer playing the sand flea hustle, she’d sequestered herself in the office trying to determine how to get the bust in the north fence fixed, pay for Leo’s next semester at school, and refile the permits to reopen the B and B. She’d been pondering a hitch over to Honolulu with Jean-Paul on the sea plane. Maybe the authorities there weren’t in Gunter’s back pocket, and she’d be able to bypass the mess that the man had created for her with the hospitality-permits office here. Dear God, she hoped so…
But that meant jerking herself away from stupid mirrors and the beautiful satyrs in them and forcing herself back to real life again.
Luckily—perhaps eerily—Kellan seemed to understand that. “You got coffee around? I’ll be looking after T, so it’ll be a long night for both of us. I can brew a pot.”
“Thanks.” She smiled in lieu of kissing him again. Gods only knew where that would lead. Being around the man was starting to translate into a deep need to touch him—and more.
Dangerous thoughts. Tendencies she couldn’t germinate for another second.
Yep. Time for office sequestration again. A dose of reality would do her good, at least until the next time she could let Kellan carry her off into a perfect pretense of happiness for another treasured hour or two.
Chapter Seven
Tait groaned. It hurt. Well, no shit. When one’s mouth had been turned into the Sahara, vocal action of any kind was doomed to be torture. That didn’t excuse the camel who’d decided to stomp on his head. To make things feel better, he fantasized about pulling out a rifle and blowing the animal’s head off. Which would do nothing, because camels were malicious sons of bitches who would survive the nuclear holocaust along with cockroaches and reality-TV stars.
A sound seeped into his senses, flipping his daydreams like card tables. A voice…feminine yet a little feral…throaty and sultry threaded into a music he longed to hear better. He’d recognized it, didn’t he? How? From where?
The woman laughed. More sexy-husky. Lots more. Fuck. He had heard that sound before.
You going soft on me, Weasley? Seriously?
His eyes flew open. Sunshine blinded him. His chest imploded on itself.
“Luna.” Why was it just a scrape on the air? He swallowed, struggling for moisture to blurt it louder, but his jaw and mouth really hurt. Everything hurt. Goddamn, that light was bright. Maybe it wasn’t the sun at all. Maybe he’d finally succeeded at drinking himself to death and was now locked in some weird ether between heaven and hell. Maybe his crazy little woman was taunting him, just to get him moving again. And damn it, she was right.
You’re asking for one hell of a red ass, aren’t you, beautiful? Believe me, it’ll be my pleasure to deliver, once I catch you again…
The woman, beyond the pale blue walls that met his gaze, had the nerve to laugh louder. She was instantly shushed. The silence police had a man’s timbre. “Slash?” He forced his head up. Damn it, someone needed to turn off the room’s spin cycle. Hardwood floors, potted plants, and wicker furniture mashed together in his vision. “Fuuuck…”
“T?” Kellan appeared, though he was sideways. Tait blinked, fighting to keep focus as his friend crouched down. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” He lowered his head, realizing that it sank against a pillow that smelled like verbena and coconut. Some compassionate soul had draped him in a blanket that smelled the same. Kell would do a lot of things for him, but the tuck-tuck action with the great-smelling linens? Not a chance.
“Where am I? This isn’t Franz’s place.”
Kellan chuckled. “Were you that obliterated last night?”
He managed to wobble his head, hoping it passed for a shake. “Just hurts to think.” After a coarse grunt, he muttered, “We were on the beach. You threw my bottle away. And then we wrestled and—”
Fuck.
The memory gutted his voice. Filled his mind. Drowned him in desire. The cascade of black hair kissed by lavender lights. The wildcat-bright eyes. The body a man would commit major crimes for. But more than anything, the flame of inner spirit his soul recognized at once…a fire he hadn’t experienced since one intense week in LA, during one of the most life-changing missions of his career…
A spark that flickered, hesitant but bright, deep inside him once more…
Especially as she walked into the room.
Tait swallowed hard against a mix of anguish and exhilaration. She isn’t Luna, you hungover dickbrain. His mind rammed it as a command, and his gut finally, reluctantly obeyed. He’d scattered Luna’s ashes over Puget Sound himself, for fuck’s sake.
Nothing—nobody—was going to magically nullify that fact.
Hokulani. His mind made it past the haze of last night to recall her name. He’d fiddled around with enough of the South Pacific dialects during language training to realize the last half of it meant “heavenly.” Though that little tidbit had escaped him last night, he still remembered thinking how he’d stared at her with dreamy fixation, considering the word perfect for her.
Bommer, you’re a fucking cheese bag.
Funny, how much fortitude a man could get from booze in one moment—and how much regret a few hours later.
Okay, maybe more than a few hours.
He glanced out the window next to the couch. The palms and banyans swayed in a gentle breeze. Cotton ball clouds lazed in the sky. The squalls of yesterday had given way to golden sunshine, though the shadows indicated it was somewhere between sunrise and noon.
“Shit,” he mumbled. “How long was I out?”
“About thirteen hours,” Kellan supplied.
“What the hell?” He shoved to an upright position. The room played shake, rattle, and roll again, but that didn’t stop him from whacking Kell’s shoulder. “Why the hell didn’t you wake me up, asswipe?”
“Because I wouldn’t let him.”
The assertion came from the woman who now stood at the other end of the couch, arms folded and lips pursed. Her hair was piled into a cute bun with chopstick thingies poking from it, and she wore a flowery sundress with a built-in bra that pushed her breasts into better position than her damn bikini had. T tried not to fixate on how those incredible mounds were positioned in the scoop of the dress, so perfect for someone to just reach in and coax them into erection, before pinching hard and delighting in her squeal…
He dropped his line of vision to her knees, but even those were beautiful. Though the dress covered her to midthigh, he saw more than enough to remind him of the cocoa cream curves beneath…especially if a guy could envision those gorgeous legs wrapped high around his waist, encouraging him to go deeper as he sank his dick deep and—
