Chapter Eighteen
Clay
They traversed the five-mile trail leading to the other side of the island in silence. Clay had no idea what Harley was thinking, but his thoughts were a steady mantra of don’t fuck this up.
This was the moment when their course would be set, one way or another.
Clay had been involved in enough interrogations to recognize a turning point when he was in the middle of one. By the end of today, he would have either broken Harley’s resolve or she would have double-downed on her silence and committed to seeing it through to the end.
Maybe even the bitter end.
He didn’t plan on using enhanced interrogation techniques beyond what was available with the sensory stimulation cell—that kind of torture didn’t work; no matter what a few idiots in the FBI seemed to think—but even if he did, at this point he wouldn’t put it past Harley to do exactly what she’d sworn to do. She might let herself be water-boarded to death before she gave up Jasper’s location.
She was so fucking stubborn.
That’s why you have to make today count. Push slow and steady. She’s exhausted and vulnerable and worried about Jasper.
This is your shot; don’t fuck it up.
Don’t. Fuck it. Up.
“Turn right,” he said when they reached the third fork in the trail. “We’ll take this loop up around the cliffs by the sea and then back around the other side of the island.”
Harley obediently turned right, but her boots dragged in the dust as they started up the incline toward the cliffs. He’d found several pairs of tennis shoes in an old storage room, along with scrubs in various sizes and female uniform pieces he could have given Harley to wear, but he’d chosen the boots instead. They were heavy and would wear her out faster, and his boxers and tee shirt clinging to her sweat-soaked skin would help remind her that she was powerless. She was under his control, dependent on him for everything from the food she ate to the clothes covering her nakedness.
But she wouldn’t be enjoying the privilege of even humble clothing for much longer.
A part of him hated that it was going to come to this—the fact that he was even considering what he had planned for when they reached the falls on the other side of the cliffs proved he was off the rails. But the other part of him was simply grateful for an excuse to be skin to skin with her again, to take things slow this time and memorize the way it felt to fuck this woman who affected him like no other.
Love her or hate her, Harley got to him. Got under his skin and in his head and drove him fucking out of his mind with wanting her.
He’d been semi-hard all day, just the smell of her drifting to him as he walked behind her on the trail enough to make him ache. It had been hard enough to resist her when she’d been an image on a monitor. With the flesh and blood woman close enough to touch, the temptation to get her naked and underneath him was overwhelming.
Visions of the way she’d looked with her hand working between her legs and her nipples pebbled tight beneath her fingers haunted him, along with fantasies of the way she would arch beneath him as he pushed inside her heat. But this time, imaginary Harley wasn’t crying or fighting or cussing him. She was as eager and turned on as he was and just as relieved for a break in the tension vibrating between them.
The shift in the direction of his fantasy world was a positive sign for his psyche but bad news for the success of this mission. Harley wasn’t the only one weakening. For a split second this morning, he had been tempted to see her side of the situation with Jasper.
The flash of doubt had only lasted a moment before he’d reminded himself that it didn’t matter if she loved Jasper or if she was right about what losing his mother would do to their son. She was a monster who had lived stupidly and dangerously and put her child in unforgivable danger. Now it was time for her to pay the price for her mistakes.
She should have been behind bars years ago. He wasn’t doing anything to her that the American justice system wouldn’t do as soon as she was taken into custody. She was going to lose Jasper no matter what.
At least he was going to give her freedom, and a chance to build a life for herself as long as she stayed away from Jasper. There was nothing else he could offer her. More importantly, there was nothing else he should want to offer her. He couldn’t allow himself to feel pity for a monster. If he did, the monster would only use his empathy against him and Jasper would end up paying the price.
“Can I have a drink of water?” Harley asked, her voice rough.
He’d caught her eyeing the canteen slung across his shoulders several miles back, but she hadn’t said a word and he hadn’t made any offers. He wasn’t here to anticipate her needs or provide for her comfort, something he would do good to remember when they reached the falls.
“In a few minutes,” he said. “There’s something I want you to see about half a mile up when the trail curves back into the jungle. We’ll stop there.”
She sighed, but didn’t protest and after a few moments her feet began to move faster, making a grim smile stretch across his face. She wouldn’t be so eager to reach their destination if she knew what awaited her there. But he was all for speed. He was past ready to have her bared to him, her nipples pebbling beneath his fingers, her head falling back as arousal flooded through her veins.
And what if she says no?
Clay dismissed the thought. She wasn’t going to say no; she wanted him as much as he wanted her. It was in her eyes every time she looked at him—hate and hunger in equal measure, proving he wasn’t the only one infected with this sickness.
Ten minutes later, Harley turned a sharp corner on the trail and froze, her breath rushing out. “Oh my God.”
“Pretty, isn’t it,” he said, coming to stand behind her, gazing up at the narrow falls trailing down the side of the grassy rocks to the wide, peaceful pool below. “I thought you might like a swim.”
She glanced sharply over her shoulder but turned back to face the falls just as quickly. “I would like a swim. My feet are on fire. I don’t suppose it’s safe to drink that water, is it?”
“Doubtful, but you can have some of mine.” He circled around her, uncapping the canteen as he moved. “Open your mouth.”
She held his gaze, watchful as she tilted her head back and parted her lips. Clay moved the canteen an inch from her mouth before he tilted it, sending a thin stream of water trickling from the opening. Her tongue slipped out, instinctively helping guide the water down her throat. Some of it dribbled down her chin, but she didn’t move to wipe it away. She drank greedily, her throat working as she swallowed. By the time he shifted the canteen, stopping the flow of water, he was hard enough to club a baby seal to death with his cock.
Needless to say, he would have to wait to join Harley in the water.
He didn’t want her to realize how much power she held over him or that watching her drink had been one of the sexiest things he’d seen in recent memory.
“Should I swim in my clothes?” She held his gaze, her chest rising and falling and her nipples poking through the thin fabric of her shirt.
“You could,” he said, “but that would make for an uncomfortable hike back. Wet clothes tend to chafe.”
“Then I guess I should swim naked,” she said, bending her knees with a graceful, sensuous movement that had Clay’s cock twitching in his pants.
So much for hiding his hard-on. There was no way Harley would miss the bulge behind his zipper, not when she was squatting right in front of him.
“Boots first. I’ve been dying to take these off.” She began to work open the laces, keeping her head tilted back and her eyes trained on his. “But I bet you knew that, didn’t you?”
He inclined his head but didn’t respond. He was too busy admiring the way her shirt gaped at the neck, granting him peek-a-boo glimpses of her tits. She was the perfect handful, with nipples that tilted up, practically begging to be kissed, sucked, trapped between teeth, and teased.
She nodded knowingly. “I bet you chose the heaviest, most uncomfortable pair of shoes you could find, didn’t you?”
His lips curved without his permission. He couldn’t help himself. He should be angry that she could still read him so well—not long ago he would have been enraged by that smug grin lilting across her full mouth—but sometime in the past two weeks things had changed.
There was an intimacy in holding another human being prisoner. It was an ugly, unbalanced breed of intimacy, but intimate nonetheless. He felt closer to Harley than he had before, close enough that the memory of his fingers wrapped around her throat made his gut twist every time it drifted through his head. If he had damaged her or, God forbid, killed her, he would never have forgiven himself. Those blue eyes were nothing but trouble, but he didn’t want to watch them close forever.
“Are you coming in?” she asked, tossing her boots and socks to the side of the trail and sitting back on her bare feet.
“I will,” he said. “But I’ll wait for you to get in first and stay between you and the trail. Don’t want you to get any ideas.”
“Too late,” she said with a sultry, feline grin. She brought her hand to his thigh before letting her palm skim slowly up until her fingers molded around his erection, squeezing him gently through his shorts. “This is already giving me ideas.”
“Is that right?” He kept his expression impassive, determined not to show her how good it felt to have her hand on him. “Anything you’re willing to share with the class?”
“Well,” she said, bringing her other hand to the close of his shorts, slipping the button free of its hole, making his heart beat faster. “I am already down on my knees. It seems a shame not to take advantage of it.”
She drew his zipper down before curling all eight fingers around the top of his boxer briefs and tugging them up and over his cock. His swollen shaft bobbed free, already thickly veined and flushed with need.
He wanted her lips wrapped around his cock more than he could express in words. He wanted to cradle her head in his hands and fuck her mouth until he blew down the back of her throat and watch her swallow him down, moaning the way she always had before, like the taste of him was better than chocolate.
But he wasn’t a fool. For better or worse, he remembered everything Harley Mason had ever said to him.
So when she moved her lips closer to his cock, he drove his fingers into her hair and made a fist, taking control, making sure she didn’t get close enough to do any damage.
Her eyes rolled up to meet his, an unspoken question in their depths.
“Teeth,” he whispered softly. “Because blow jobs should involve a subtle reminder of who is in charge.”
Her smile burst across her face—unexpected and…beautiful.
She was so fucking beautiful when she smiled like that. There had been a time when he’d lived to make her smile. He’d spent the hours he was away from her thinking of things that would make her laugh, stories to tell her when they were curled together under the covers, exhausted from making love, but not ready to go to sleep, not wanting to let unconsciousness take hold and tear them apart.
“You remember,” she whispered, her smile fading.
“I remember everything,” he said, his throat tight. “Everything you said that made me love you when I thought you were someone else.”
She held his gaze for a long moment while his cock bobbed lightly between them, like a dog too stupid to know that the moment had soured and the time to play had passed.
Finally, she said, “I won’t bite your dick off, okay? I promise.”
“Your promises mean very little to me.”
“But I want to taste you,” she said, her gaze darkening with a hunger that made his balls ache. “I want to suck you until you explode between my lips. I want it hard and fast until I’m drowning in you.”
He took a deep breath, ignoring the voice issuing from the general vicinity of his groin that urged him to trust her, just this little bit, just enough to give him the chance to fuck that beautiful mouth.
But he’d learned to ignore that voice a long time ago. Listening with your dick was pure stupid and he didn’t have time for stupid today.
Or any other day.
The realization that he would never know the bliss of a Harley blow job again—she truly was a master of the art—made his chest tighten, but his grief was short-lived. There were still so many options left on the table and it was past time to start exploring them.
“Take off your clothes,” he said, loosening his grip on her hair. “And get in the water.”
“You’ve gotten bossy in your old age,” she said, but she obediently reached for the bottom of her tee shirt and drew it over her head, revealing her perfect, teacup-sized breasts. “Is that just for me or are you an alpha-hole with all the girls?”
“Now the shorts.” He stripped his own shirt off and tossed it to the ground. “Stand up and take them off. Slowly.”
She stood, a faint grin curving her lips as she hooked her thumbs beneath the elastic waistband of the simple navy boxers and drew them down, inch by torturous inch, revealing the thatch of brown curls between her legs. When the fabric reached her thighs, she shimmied her legs, sending the boxers sliding to the ground to puddle at her feet.
“What’s next, boss man?” she asked. “Since you seem to get off on being in charge.”
Without a word, Clay stepped closer, slipping his fingers between her legs and driving into where she was already slick and swollen, drawing a soft, and extremely satisfying, moan from her lips.
“And it seems like you get off on being told what to do,” he said, fucking her with his fingers—long, slow, strokes that made her head fall back and her lips part. “Or have you been wet for me since this morning?”
“Who says it’s for you?” she asked, her voice breathy. “Maybe I’ve been thinking about someone else, someone with a friendlier dick than yours.”
“My dick is plenty friendly.” He brought his free hand to her breast, brushing his thumb across her tight tip. “It’s the rest of me you have to worry about.”
Harley’s eyes slid closed. “You brought protection this time?”
He lowered his face to her neck, inhaling the sweat and flowers smell of her, a combination that made his cock throb with its own desperate heartbeat as he pressed a kiss to where her pulse raced beneath her skin. “Assuming things go that far, yes. But I won’t lose control again.”
Her lids slitted open, her eyes glittering in the sun filtering through the trees. “Why does that sound like a threat?”
“Get in the water,” he said, his voice husky.
And I’ll show you, he added silently.