“I’m sure,” she said, nodding.
He nodded in return and pulled his fingers free, making a show of sucking on them for a moment, eyes closed as if he was savoring the way she tasted.
Honestly that was such a turn on that Holly was worried she was going to come before he even got in her at this rate. But apparently, she needn’t have been concerned.
Clearly, Artemis was hell bent on making up for lost time because he pushed into her right then and there in one hard stroke, seating himself fully into her body. Her cry at the slight pain and delicious pleasure echoed around them, and Artemis stroked the skin of her hips with his fingers as he waited for her to adjust to his size.
Moments later he was sliding out of her in a slow drag, setting her nerve endings alight with sensation and pleasure.
Holly dropped her head down and moaned softly, letting him have control.
His fingers dug into her hips and he pulled her back into each thrust, their bodies slapping against each other with a quick rhythm.
“You have no idea how you look, do you?” Artemis panted, leaning in to kiss her shoulders, her back, the nape of her neck. He licked water from her skin as he pushed into her body over and over again. “How beautiful and tempting you are. God.”
“Tell me,” Holly gasped out, and it was nearly a plea.
“So gorgeous,” Artemis complied. “So beautiful. When you smile, it lights up your whole face. Sometimes I just want to bend you over the counter in the diner and have my way with you right there. Just to watch you fall apart again and again.” Each word was punctuated by a hard thrust that Holly could feel to her core, and she cried out and writhed for him, heart swelling and body going taut with pleasure.
“Don’t stop,” she moaned, pleaded. “Please don’t stop.” He was hitting that spot deep inside of her with each push inward, and the heat and pleasure of it was building to a breaking point. She could feel every inch of him inside of her, filling her up and stretching her walls, pushing her closer and closer to the edge.
“Won’t,” Artemis promised breathlessly. He pressed his mouth to her shoulder, one arm going around her waist so he could hold her up as he moved faster, slamming into her hard, sparking the rush of sensation that set her orgasm off and had her nearly screaming his name as she came.
The waves of pleasure crashed over her dragging her under and then sweeping her up again as she fought to keep breathing, eyes nearly rolled back into her head. She sucked him heaving breaths, and still Artemis was moving inside of her, his groans and growls proving that he was close as well.
When he found his release, he whispered her name and bit down on her shoulder, making her wince and shake with another tiny orgasm that left her knees weak, energy gone.
They cleaned up in silence, Artemis making sure she was clean and then dry before he scooped her up and carried her to the bed. She smiled at the display of chivalry, cuddled close to his chest before he was pulling the sheets back and tucking her into bed. When he got in beside her, she reached for him, humming contentedly when he pulled her to chis chest and kissed the top of her head.
Once again, it was easy to pretend like there was nothing else but this, nothing else but them and how good this was, and Holly let that thought ease her off to sleep because it was easier than worrying, and she couldn’t bring herself to let the guilt ruin this moment.
Chapter 7: Closing In
Waiting wasn’t something Dante was good at. When he wanted something, he wanted it right then and there, not three weeks after the fact, and counting. He growled and paced his living room, restlessness that he hadn’t been able to shake since Holly’s leaving clawing at his insides.
His phone vibrated in his pocket, and he snatched it up, answering the call without even checking to see who it was first. “What?”
“Uh...boss?”
“Jamieson,” Dante said, recognizing the voice. “You got some good news for me?” He phrased it as a question, but they both knew there was a demand there. After so many dead ends, Dante was on his last nerve, and he could feel and smell how agitated it was making his pack. Well, good. Maybe some fear would light a fire under them and stop them from wasting his time.
“Uh...no,” Jamieson replied. “Sorry, no. No one here has seen anyone like Holly, and her scent’s nowhere to be found.”
He very nearly threw his phone. Nowhere. How could she be nowhere? Everywhere they searched, no one had heard of Holly. No one had seen her. And her scent was lacking. Dante would have thought that the people were just lying or stupid, but scents didn’t lie. If her scent wasn’t there, then neither was she.
But she had to be somewhere, and Dante wasn’t giving up. The longer it took him to find her, the worse things were going to be.
“Keep looking,” he snapped, and was about to hang up, when Jamieson’s voice stopped him.
“Boss, I don’t mean to tell you about your business, but…”
The man’s suddenly meek nature was getting on his nerves. “But what, Jamieson?” Dante retorted. “Spit it out.”
“But maybe she’s just gone? She could have gotten on a bus or a train or even a plane and gone anywhere at this point. Maybe we should just...let her go.”
Silence followed those words as Dante struggled to keep a lid on his rage, and it was several seconds before he trusted himself to speak without yelling. “Let her go?” he asked. “You want me to let her go. Let me tell you something, Jamieson, since you’ve obviously gone and forgotten your brain somewhere. Nothing and no one that belongs to me just gets to up and leave. Holly, you, the rest of the pack, you’re all mine until I decide otherwise, you get me? Mine. Now keep. Looking.”
He ended the call before Jamieson could say something else that would just piss him off and sighed, rubbing at his forehead.
Once his anger had faded a bit, he could admit that Jamieson had a point. By now, Holly could be anywhere. He knew she wouldn’t, and couldn’t, go back to her parents, but there were a million other places she could be at this point.
Something told him that she hadn’t gone too far, though. Dante knew Holly. They’d been together for five years, after all, and she’d gotten downright predictable. She wouldn’t go somewhere far away where she would be out of her depth, no matter how much she wanted to get away from him.
Being along was one of the things she hated the most, and he knew she didn’t have any money. She wasn’t ambitious enough to have stolen any, either. No, she was somewhere not far away, he just had to narrow it down.
And maybe get better people looking for her, if his pack were all too busy questioning his authority to do their jobs right.
Dante sighed and crossed into the kitchen. He reached into the cabinet for a glass and stopped short when he saw that all the dishes were piled in the sink still, dirty. That made him grit his teeth in frustration. He never used to have worry about stuff like this. When he came home, Holly had the house clean and food on the table, and all he had to do was eat. Now he could hardly remember to clean up after himself, and he snarled under his breath as he washed a glass and then slopped a generous measure of gin into it.
When he got her back, he was going to make sure she never left again, even if he had to chain her to something to remind her where she belonged.
After all he’d done for her, how could she just leave?
It didn’t make any sense, honestly, and he had a long list of questions that he wanted to ask Holly when he got her back. Because it was definitely a matter of when and not if. Dante wasn’t going to stop until she was back where she belonged.
His phone rang again, and he huffed with irritation, considering ignoring it before he rolled his eyes and answered. “What?”
“I think I found her.”
That made him stop, glass halfway to his mouth. “What?” he said again. “Patrick?”
“Yeah,” Pat said. “I think I found her. I was in this little podunk town just passing through on the way to this other place, righ
t? And I got hungry and went in this diner. Best patty melt I’ve ever had, by the way, but anyway, her scent was all over the place.”
“Did you see her?” Dante wanted to know.
“Nah,” said Pat. “Wasn’t there for too long anyway. But her scent was fresh. It wasn’t like she’d passed through once. She’s probably working there or something.”
Fierce joy leapt in Dante, and he smiled, sipping from his glass before he spoke again. “Good work, Pat,” he said. “Now paint me a picture.”
Patrick knew what he wanted when he said that. “Okay, so she leaves your house, right? Walks down to the seventeen bus stop. Takes the bus from your place to Coldbrook or Park Mills, depending since either one of them is the end of the line for the seventeen. This place, Honey Ridge, is about a twenty, twenty five minute walk from either place. She talks to the owner, tells him some sob story, he gives her a job.”
As Pat spoke, Dante was picturing it in his head. He could see Holly, little and meek, making her way through the streets. Some diner owner with no life stopping to ask if she was okay. Holly pouring out her poor, sad tale, and the owner offering her a job until she had enough to get on her feet.
It was easy to picture, and Dante nodded.
“Good work,” he said again. “I want confirmation before I come out there, though. Talk to the owner.”
“Sure thing, boss. I’ll let you know what I find out.”
When Pat ended the call, Dante kept standing in the middle of his kitchen, phone in one hand, glass in the other. In his head, he could see the reunion: him sweeping in to save his poor Holly from a life of small town work and life and bringing her back home. It was a beautiful image, and he couldn’t wait.
Chapter 8: Backfire
The employee bathroom at The Golden Horde was small and cramped, barely big enough for one person to stand and move about in comfortably.
For two people to have enough space to do more than breathe, they would have to be pressed right up against each other and stay very close for the whole time they were inside of it.
Fortunately that wasn’t proving to be a problem for Holly and Artemis.
“If my employees found out about this, I’d never hear the end of it,” Artemis whispered against Holly’s lips and dragged her closer to him with large hands on her bottom, groping and squeezing a bit just because he could.
“We’d better be quiet then,” Holly whispered back, and she gave a soft noise of pleasure and ground against Artemis’ thigh between her legs.
He laughed softly and kissed her silent, mouth seeking to claim hers all over again. It was sort of absurd how fond of her he was already, and how it made his inner beast give the dragon equivalent of a purr when she was pressed against him like this, warm and smelling sweet and tempting.
Already, he could tell that she was aroused, just from the kissing and grinding, and he pressed his thigh more firmly between her legs, rubbing it back and forth over the heat of her sex. When she whimpered into the kiss, he grinning, sliding his tongue past parted lips to taste her and tease her tongue with his own.
She always responded so eagerly to his attentions, leaning into him and making those pretty noises that were as good as her begging for more. It made him want to lavish more attention on her, and he moaned into her mouth, letting her know that he was enjoying this just as much as she seemed to be.
The thrill of having to not get caught only added to the appeal of this, and there was something delicious about the clandestine coupling in the bathroom that would probably be second only to one in the pantry or somewhere else that someone was likely to walk in.
After all, Holly had made sure the bathroom door was locked, though Artemis had no doubts that his staff would easily be able to tell what was happening when they noticed that both of them were missing.
Worrying about that was the last thing on his mind, though, when he had a pretty, gasping girl pressed up against him, nearly humping his leg with how much she apparently wanted him. And while they didn’t have a lot of room to maneuver in the tiny bathroom, Artemis knew exactly what he wanted and how to use the space to their advantage.
With a smirk he pulled back from the messy kiss and turned Holly so that she was facing the sink and the small mirror above it. He could see how flushed her face was, the way her eyes didn’t meet her own gaze in the mirror.
He pressed himself in tight against her back, mouth on her neck as he kissed and nibbled the soft skin there and then smiled, trailing his lips up to her ear to whisper in it. “Look at you,” he breathed. “Look at how much you want this.”
Her eyes widened and she glanced at herself and then away. “Artemis,” she protested, but he just shook his head.
“Look,” he urged, fingers sliding up her hips to her sides and then around her waist to the front. She was wearing a button down shirt, which was perfect for what he had in mind. Slowly, teasingly, he began to undo the buttons one by one, slivers of soft skin showing in the gaps in the fabric.
Her breasts were small enough that she didn’t have to wear a bra under the shirt, and Artemis smiled, thumbing one of her nipples and humming with pleasure as it darkened and hardened from his attentions.
Holly’s breath was coming in quick pants now, and Artemis liked that. He pinched and rolled the nipple between his fingers, bringing his other hand up to play with its twin, pulling and teasing until she was making soft, whimpering noises for him. If he put his hand in her pants right then and there, he was fairly certain of what he’d find, and he did just that, letting one hand slide back down her stomach to dip under her waistband and slip into her underwear.
And yes, he’d been right. Holly was wet with anticipation, folds slippery with her own need and Artemis reveled in it, stroking her lightly before he let his fingers find her clit and toy with it idly.
“Oh my god,” Holly panted, trying to keep quiet and not quite achieving it. “Please, Artemis. Please.”
“Of course,” he whispered back. “But can you be quiet through it?”
She nodded, eyes large in her pretty face, and he smiled at her, working her pants down over her hips and thighs just enough so that he could pull her underwear down, too. With one hand he pressed on her back until she bent over the sink, body held in a lovely curve that had her back bowed inwards and her bottom on display.
If they had more time, Artemis would have dropped to his knees and kissed and nipped at her lovely rear end, but for the moment, speed was of the essence, and he rather thought he was up to the challenge of getting them both off before they were missed too terribly.
With his fingers, he rubbed at her sex, spreading that wetness and working her open a bit, as always making sure that when he pushed into her it wouldn’t hurt, though he was learning that she didn’t really mind the way he stretched her.
That was more appealing than it had any right to be, and Artemis forced himself to focus before he got too distracted.
He undid his own pants and pushed them down enough to free his erection, stiff and hard and ready. His eyes were on their reflection in the mirror as he pushed into her slowly, savoring that tight heat and the way Holly moaned and pushed back to meet him. Every time he worked himself into her, it felt amazing, like she was made for him, and he let out a soft noise of pleasure.
She looked lovely like this, bent over the sink, pants down around her knees while she took him in, and the sight spurred him into movement, sliding in deeper and then pulling out. If he went too fast, the sound would alert someone outside, surely, so he made up for the slower pace by pushing in as deep as he could go and making sure that each drag of his cock inside of her body was as pleasurable as possible.
Judging from the way she had to put her hand over her mouth to hold in her noises, Artemis was going to go out on a limb and say that he was doing a good job.
The thrill of it, combined with how good things always were between them had him reaching that peak in no time, holding her hips firmly and leaving finger
shaped bruises on her skin that would show for days that she belonged to him for the moment.
Part of him thought he should feel bad about that, considering what she’d been through, but she never seemed to complain about it, and until she told him to stop, he would just assume it was alright
At any rate, he was too caught up in how good she felt, how she yielded to him him, how even her hand couldn’t completely muffle those mewls of pleasure, and soon enough he was coming with a hiss, hand dipping between Holly’s legs again to tease at her clit until she followed him over the edge.
Excusing himself from the bathroom with one last smile at Holly once they’d cleaned themselves up and put their appearances back to rights, Artemis made his way back out to the diner proper. It was full, as it usually was around this time, so close to dinner, and he took in his employees and the customers, trying to see if there was somewhere he could be of service. It was nice that his diner could be run without him there all the time (especially since it allowed for pleasurable distractions), and a warm bubble of pride settled in his chest next to the contentment and satisfaction from what he had just done with Holly.
Whistling under his breath, he grabbed a rag and started wiping down the counter, mostly just to have something to do.
“Why are you so cheerful?” Carmen asked as she passed him with a tray loaded with dirty dishes in her arms. “Have you been doing something you shouldn’t have been doing?”
Artemis snorted, amused that his employees were all a good five to seven years younger than him and still delighted in teasing him whenever they had the chance. “No,” he replied. “And anyway, I’m in charge. There’s nothing I shouldn’t be doing.”
“If you say so, bossman,” Carmen laughed and used her hip to bump open the kitchen door. Artemis already knew that as soon as she got back there, her and Carlos and whoever else was in the kitchen would be gossiping about him and his good mood, but he couldn’t really bring himself to care all that much.
Hakona: Dragon Warrior (Scifi Alien Dragon Romance) Page 23