FOURTEEN

Moving into his bedroom, Graham fully expected to find Lyrica stretched out in his bed. Furious, but in his bed where she belonged. Instead, he found her in the sitting room, the lights extinguished as she stood at the window and stared out into the early morning fog blanketing the land.

“You know you’re not protected just because the room’s dark,” he reminded her as he moved slowly to the window.

Turning, she watched silently as he closed the heavy curtains before staring back at her.

“How long will this take?” she asked, pulling the robe Kye had brought to the room earlier tighter around her body. “How long will I be here, Graham?”

The thin silk did nothing to hide the tempting curves it covered or the matching violet silk gown she wore beneath.

“In a hurry to leave?” he asked, feeling a hint of anger at the thought.

“In a hurry to no longer feel as though I’m a danger to everyone I care for,” she retorted rather than answering his question.

The fear that she would be the reason someone she loved was hurt, or killed, weighed on her. It tormented her and left her filled with a searing guilt she couldn’t rid herself of.

“You’re no danger. The danger is to you. Those you love, those who love you, won’t see you hurt by this, Lyrica.” God, he couldn’t keep his hands off her.

Before thought and action coincided, his arm slid around her waist. He pulled her to him, flush against his body, the little gasp that fell from her lips causing his to quirk in amusement.

“You knew this was going to happen.” His voice sounded too dark, too rough. “We’ve both known for years that you were going to end up in my bed.”

“I knew,” she whispered, the pulse beating heavily at the side of her neck, drawing his gaze before it slid back to hers.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” he asked, determined to let her go if it wasn’t. “If it isn’t, now is the time to tell me.”

Her soft, pink little tongue swiped over her lips, reminding him far too well of how it had licked over his cock that first night she had spent in his room.

“If it wasn’t what I wanted, then I wouldn’t be here, Graham,” she assured him.

“Then god help both of us.” Because he was too damned hard, too damned wild for her to do anything but give in to him.

—

She shouldn’t have been surprised by the immediate pleasure that suffused her body, Lyrica thought distantly. She should have expected it—it happened every time he touched her.

His lips touched hers, rubbed against them, and her breathing became hard, her heartbeat racing out of control as his hand slid beneath her hair to cup the back of her head. To hold her to him as he parted her lips and began sipping from the hunger that raged through her.

She didn’t just want him, she realized, she needed him. Her body came to life as it never had before, her flesh tingled in anticipation, the swollen bud between her thighs aching as her moan whispered between their kiss each time he touched her.

She didn’t know what to expect. She had no idea what to do. Until the spiraling storm of sensation began to rage inside her. Only then did instinct overcome shyness and hunger overcome trepidation.

Sliding her hands up the powerful breadth of his chest to his wide shoulders, she held them with desperate hunger as Graham’s head tilted, his lips slanting over hers with a groan.

The feel of his hands sliding down her back to cup her rear and lift her into the cradle of his thighs stole her breath. His hands guided her knees to his hips as she found herself pressed against the wall, the hard wedge of his cock pressing firmly between her thighs.

His kisses were hungry, deep, his tongue flicking over hers, tasting her as she tasted him, a haze of heat and need enveloping them as his kisses became harder, hungrier.

Even that first night it hadn’t been like this, this powerful, the pleasure rising so fast she felt herself teetering on the edge of mindless desperation.

The silk of her robe fell around her hips and thighs as she felt him tugging at the shoulders of it, sliding it against her skin. Terrified of losing his kiss, she lowered her arms long enough for him to jerk it from her, the silk forgotten as it fell away from her body.

His groan vibrated against her lips as her fingers slid into his hair, feeling the heavy warmth against her flesh. As though in retaliation, his hand slipped beneath her gown, cupping the bare curves of her ass before slowly, destructively, parting the globes and sending a flash of forbidden fire to attack the hidden entrance they protected.

Lyrica cried out as his head jerked back, his lips pulling from hers as he palmed her rear again and repeated the caress. That heated, swift spike of sensation at her anus had her juices spilling from her vagina, saturating her pussy and sensitizing the swollen folds.

He moved as his lips covered hers again. Holding her to him, he strode from the sitting room to the bedroom, the journey barely registering until she felt her back against the bed and his lips sliding along her jaw to her neck.

The rasp of his short beard and mustache created a prickle of heat that sent a shuddering hunger for more echoing through each inch of flesh he touched as he kissed his way to her shoulder. There, he nipped at her skin, rubbed his lips against it, then delivered a sharp, heated kiss.

He was marking her, she thought, dazed. Marking her flesh for anyone to see. But no one could see the mark he’d already left on her heart.

“Get this off.” The growl in his voice had flames licking at her breasts as he pulled back and hurriedly tore the gown over her head.

Staring up at him as he tossed the material away from her, Lyrica shuddered at the look on his face. It was pure lust, hunger at its sharpest, but in his eyes flecks of gold gleamed with something that had her heart clenching in response.

“God, you’re beautiful,” he groaned as his hands cupped the weight of her breasts, his thumbs brushing over the hardened tips of her painfully sensitive nipples.

A whimpering cry fell from her lips at the touch of his callused thumbs, the ache radiating in the tight tips and echoing in the tingling bud of her clit.

“Here.” Reaching out he gripped her hand, pulling it to the outside curve of one breast. “Hold them for me, Lyrica. Give them to me.”

Oh god.

He was serious.

Lifting the opposite hand he cupped her fingers around the other mound, his expression tightening as she cupped her own flesh, seeming to offer her nipples up to his hunger.

And he took clear advantage of it.

His head lowered, his eyes locked on hers, his lips covering the nearest tip and suckling it into the heat of his mouth. The rasp of his tongue licking, stroking the violently sensitive nub had a fiery wave of exquisite pleasure shredding her control.

Heat suffused her entire body. It was burning through her thighs, pulsing in her pussy, and throbbing around her clit. Her hips moved against the hard wedge of his cock as it pressed against her, his lips drawing on her nipple, his tongue stroking and rubbing it until her fingers tangled in his hair to hold him closer to her.

Each lick, each draw sensitized the tender tip further until the raking sensations shuddering from her nipple to her clit had her gasping with each surge. Only then did he move to the opposite breast, his lips covering it, sucking it inside, and devouring her there as he had its mate.

Arching to him, whimpering cries fell from her lips, need becoming a fiery demand, a racing imperative she couldn’t fight. His teeth raked against her nipple as he moved back, his lips moving down her torso, his tongue licking at the sheen of perspiration that covered her body. He tasted her flesh, each stroke of his tongue a lash of sensation that radiated along her nerve endings to tighten around her clit demandingly.

Then his lips were there.

Her eyes flared open, her gaze moving down her body, focusing on the movement of his tongue against the swollen, sensitive folds of her sex. Long, slow licks swiped through the narrow slit, circled the aching bud above, then he sucked it in slowly between his lips.

“Graham,” she whispered, the broken cry torn from her as pleasure sang through her body.

Her hips jerked against his hold and she writhed beneath the caress as he pushed her thighs farther apart. His hands slid beneath her knees, lifting her thighs, parting her farther as his tongue moved wickedly lower.

Lyrica’s hands fell from his shoulders, her fingers clenching in the blankets beneath her as the licking strokes rimmed the clenched entrance of her pussy. His mouth flickered over the entrance, licking around it, laying heated, suckling kisses to it as she gasped at the pleasure.

“So sweet,” he groaned against the swollen folds. “So incredibly sweet, Lyrica.”

His tongue speared inside the trembling tissue of her vagina, licking and thrusting inside her as she cried out at the sensations. Pleasure raged through her. It tore through her senses, stronger, brighter than it had been before. Her thighs tightened against his hold, the internal muscles tightening as well, as his tongue pushed inside, licked and separated, her body growing more desperate as ripples of response began to spread outward.

“Graham, please . . .” she cried out desperately as the suckling heat of his mouth returned to her clit.

The need for release was burning inside her, a fiery, maddening ache that was impossible to control.

Hips lifting, pressing tighter to the hungry draw of his mouth, she pulled at the blankets beneath her, her head grinding into the mattress, hard, brutal pulses of incredible sensation building, clenching in her womb until the resulting explosion whipped through her senses like a blinding, overwhelming cataclysm.

The orgasm imploded inside her, jerking her into the possession of his lips and mouth, around the shuddering bud of her clitoris as he held her hips in place with powerful hands.

Groaning, he pulled back, his lips moving up her body as he came over her, one hand tearing at his jeans as he fought to undress without releasing her.

“Lyrica, sweetheart.” His voice was tortured as she lifted closer to him, the need building higher rather than easing at her release.

“Graham, please.” Gasping breathlessly, she was willing to beg. “Oh god, I can’t stand it.”

“I can’t wait,” he muttered, burying his lips in her neck as the crest of his cock pressing at her entrance had her breath catching.

Easing back, he caught her gaze with his, the brilliant gleam of golden flecks holding her mesmerized as she felt the press of his shaft parting her flesh, working against it until the head lodged inside her, throbbing within the tightened clench of her flesh.

Pleasure-pain racked her body as she cried out with the sensations.

“You’re so fucking tight, Lyrica,” he groaned, the slow movements of his hips working him against the stretched, sensitive inner flesh.

Withdrawing partway, he then eased inside again as his lips lowered to hers, their breath mingling, panting and rough as she felt him tense above her.

“Hold on to me, baby,” he whispered against her lips, drawing one of her arms to his shoulders as she lifted the other. “Just hold on to me.”

She could feel the rasp of his jeans against her inner thighs, the throb of his cock as it lodged just inside her. Pulling back again, his lips covered hers, his tongue pressing inside, tasting her, distracting her . . .

She screamed into his kiss.

The sudden, striking blaze of fiery sensation tearing through her vagina should have been pain. The feel of him thrusting past her virginity, only to draw back then push deeper inside her, should have dampened her response.

But she could only feel her flesh growing slicker, wetter, her response raining down on the slow, deliberate strokes that burrowed his flesh deeper inside hers. Each slight withdrawal and deeper penetration had her crying out his name, arching to him, and begging for more.

The feel of his hips working against her, his flesh shafting inside her, tore through her senses as each stroke raked over nerve endings never before caressed, never before subjected to such a brutal, fiery caress as the one invading her now.

Pulling back, Graham’s lips stroked over hers once again before he leaned back, kneeling between her spread thighs, his gaze going to the point where his flesh impaled hers. Following the look she whimpered at the sight of his erection pulling back, impossibly wide, slick with her juices, heavy veins throbbing and pulsing with the flow of blood racing through them.

A hard thrust of his hips and he buried himself to the hilt inside her.

“Ah fuck,” he snarled as brutal pleasure slammed into her senses. “That’s it, baby. Clench on my dick. Milk it with that tight little pussy.”

The explicit demands had her womb clenching in response, her vagina tightening, flexing around the hard flesh as he began moving inside her again.

As he leaned over her once again, Lyrica felt the tight rein he’d kept on his lust until now break. Growling against her neck, with one hand he gripped her hip, the other burying itself in her hair as he moved against her.

Long, deliberate strokes stoked the burning pleasure building in the tissue rippling around his shuttling cock. He kept his pace even, deliberately rhythmic, without speeding into the crashing race for release. And it was killing her.

Tightening her knees at his hips, she sobbed beneath him. The hard rake of sensation at her clit combined with the powerful thrusts inside her was throwing her headlong into a storm she didn’t know if she would survive. Who and what she was would be changed, she thought desperately, her fingers clenching on his shoulders now.

She couldn’t survive a pleasure this brutal and still be the person she was before it began.

She arched desperately against him as the waves of sensation began growing, burning hotter, higher. The sensitive muscles of her pussy rippled and shuddered around his cock with each stroke, his erection burying deep, each thrust moving faster, harder, filling her, stretching her with such a calamity of sensations that it pushed her headlong over a precipice she hadn’t seen coming.

She was thrown into the maelstrom.

Everything around her, inside her, her very senses exploded with such a fiery release of ecstasy that it jerked her taut beneath him, stealing her breath and her ability to scream. All she could do was shudder beneath him as spasms of violent response rippled through her cunt, exploded in her clit, and sent pulse after pounding pulse of rapture to dissolve her senses.

“Ah god, that’s it, baby,” he groaned as he buried deep, held still, and let them both feel the rippling response stroking over his cock. “That’s it, just come all over me, Lyrica. Give it all to me, baby.”

She collapsed beneath him, fighting just to breathe, to find some semblance of sanity as she felt him slowly pull free of her.

“We’re not finished yet,” he growled as she began to relax. “Not yet.”

Forcing her eyes open, her lips parted in shock to see him working a condom over the dark plum-colored, mushroom-shaped crest of his cock. He was still impossibly hard, incredibly thick, and ready to take her again.

Graham felt as though a vise were tightening around his balls, the tortured need to spill inside her, naked, without the latex between them, making him crazed. He’d never wanted to take a woman bare, but forcing himself to roll the condom over his flesh was like a bitter dreg of resentment.

The thought of spilling inside her, of watching her body bloom with his child, suddenly filled his head, sliced at his chest until he was forced to push it away.

Now was no time for the ever-deepening need for this woman, and it certainly wasn’t the time for a child.

With the condom firmly in place he let his fingers slide through the swollen folds of her pussy, gathering the slick excess of her juices to assure himself she was still ready for him.

Her release had milked his dick until holding back his own release had been next to impossible. Feeling her flesh milking his cock, rippling over the sensitive head, sucking at the cum building in his balls, had been the most pleasure he’d ever known in his life.

“Turn over for me.” Lifting her he moved her until he had her breasts pressed into the mattress, her hips lifted for him, the clenched, snug little entrance of her pussy waiting for him. “That’s it, baby,” he groaned. “Give me that sweet pussy just like this.”

Holding her hips with one hand, he used the other to guide the broad flesh into place. He watched as his flesh parted the flushed, slick flesh and began pressing inside. Watched as she stretched around him, her cries filling his senses as the snug muscles began to grip him, milk him inside her, lashing his flesh with heated ripples despite the covering of the condom.

God, he wanted to go slow. He wanted to ease in. Wanted to relish every sensation.

The hard, desperate thrust inside her tightly clenched cunt shocked him. He was buried to the hilt, her flesh tight around him, stroking his cock, tearing past his control.

“That’s it,” he groaned as her hips rolled beneath him, causing her inner muscles to stroke him tighter, to ripple exquisitely around him. “That’s it, baby, fuck me back. Give it to me, Lyrica.”

The sharp clench of her tissue nearly had his cum shooting past his control.

She liked the raw, sexual words, he realized. Or was it the sound of tortured pleasure in his voice that had her pussy clenching so tightly on him?

Whatever it was, he couldn’t fight the lust pounding through him, the imperative need to pound inside her until he drew her release from her again. Until he could give her his.

Holding her hips, he watched his flesh shuttling fast and furious, penetrating and retreating, fucking into her with desperate strokes as her cries began to fill the air around him. She strained beneath him, her hips rocking back to him, her fingers clenched desperately in the blankets beneath her.

He was too fucking close.

Fighting for breath, for control, he slid his thumb into the narrow crevice of her rear, found the incredibly sensitive entrance there, already slick from her juices as they spilled from her pussy.

“Graham,” she cried out in shock as he pressed his thumb into her, feeling the flesh part, the burning grip on his thumb transferring to his cock as her pussy clenched and spasmed, her body tightening as a wail of ecstasy escaped her lips.

The milking heat of her inner walls tightening around his cock triggered his own release. Her anus clenched at his thumb, sucking at it as her pussy sucked at his dick, her release raining over the latex-covered flesh.

Burying himself deep, he clamped his teeth over the low growl that escaped him, electricity racing up his spine before tearing back down it and striking at the depths of his balls.

The first agonizingly rapturous jerk of his cock shredded his senses. His seed spilled from his body as he pumped inside her, jetting harshly in response to the heated slide of her juices spilling along his latex-covered flesh, the gripping muscles rippling around his cock.

Burying himself deep inside her, he let the steady, hard pulse of his cum spill from him. Each lash of pleasure burned at his senses until he collapsed against her. His breathing was rough, agonized. Sensation still coursed through his senses, rasped over his flesh. Beneath him, the shudders of her own release still trembling through her body, Lyrica’s little sobs of pleasure dug sharp talons of another, unfamiliar need inside his chest.

Never in his sexual history had he known anything so brutally hot, so exquisitely pleasurable as fucking this small, too innocent young woman through the near-violent orgasms that had gripped her.

Nothing had ever affected him more, either.

Drawing from her, his knees still weak, Graham grimaced at the tangle of denim around his legs. Hell, he hadn’t even taken his jeans off, and working them free of his body now was almost impossible.

Long moments later, fully naked, he forced himself to the bathroom, where he disposed of the condom before running warm water over a hand towel and wringing it tightly into the sink.

He didn’t pause to consider what he was doing. He didn’t even think about it until he’d eased Lyrica to her back and gently wiped the perspiration from her body. He was parting her legs, the cloth cleaning the smear of blood from her inner thighs before he realized he was doing something he’d never done before for any other woman.

He was taking care of her. Easing her. Claiming her.

Son of a bitch, he’d had no intention of claiming her when this began.

He had no right to claim her.

Hell, this wasn’t supposed to happen.