He was silent for a moment. “Whatever.” He undid his buttons, tossed the shirt aside.
She was shocked speechless. His torso was covered with crisscrossing scars.
He looked immensely strong, carved and cut, his massive musculature still somehow lean and economical. But scars marked his smooth olive skin, cutting through the hair on his chest and the trail down his belly. Some were in regular, squared patterns. Some were symmetrical and circular, others puckered and random like knife slashes or bullet wounds. Some looked like burns.
He waited patiently, his face somber and watchful.
Her overheated imagination started to generate images of all the possible injuries that could have caused them. She stopped. Nothing made sense. There were too many scars. They practically covered him.
“How did that happen?” she asked.
“Not all at once.” He shrugged. “Long story.”
“Were you in the military or something?”
“Something like that.”
She trailed her finger over a symmetrical cross-hatch on his upper arm. “This isn’t a random injury. But it’s not a surgical scar, either.”
“So you get to ask me personal questions about my past? With a straight face?”
“Sorry,” she murmured. “Never mind.”
“But there’s the other possibility,” he said.
“And that is?”
“Show me yours,” he said, his voice low and intent. “And I’ll show you mine. I will tell you the whole weird, scary story, I swear to God.”
They stared at each other. She felt so naked, but he still wasn’t satisfied. He wanted every part of her completely bare.
So they had something in common. They both carried the marks of their suffering. His were just more visible than hers. “Never mind,” she whispered.
His big shoulders lifted. “All right. So, do you still want to do this?”
She was confused. “Of course,” he said. “Why wouldn’t I?”
His eyes slid away. “The scars.” He sounded uncertain. “They can be a turn-off.”
“They’re not,” she said. “Not at all. We all have scars, of one kind or another.”
“It freaks some women out. That was why . . .” His voice trailed off. “I just wanted to make you come again, before the big reveal. In case it all ended right there.”
It squeezed her heart to imagine a guy like him feeling insecure. She kissed the jut of his cheekbone. “I’m not turned off,” she said. “Curious, yes. Sorry you suffered all that damage. But not turned off in the least.”
“Good.” He grabbed her hands, kissed them, and placed them on his shoulders. “Then hold on to me. I want to make you come again.”
His erection prodded her thigh through the fabric of his pants. Her hands skittered nervously all over his hot, bare skin, the rough ridges and bumps, afraid to land anywhere, as if he were charged with electricity and every touch was a jittery shock. He stroked her with skill, then got bolder, opening her as he caressed her clitoris with his thumb. A low growl vibrated in his chest as he sank his fingers inside her and found her slippery and drenched.
“All wet,” he muttered against her throat. “Later, after you’re more relaxed, I want to go down on you and do this with my tongue. For hours.”
Her channel clenched eagerly around his hand at his words. He thrust deeper. “Dance over me,” he whispered. “Move over my hand.”
She swayed slowly, undulating over the fingers he was thrusting tenderly inside her. His hand went deeper, in and out. But what she was doing to him was even more intimate. Touching his skin for the first time, everywhere. The supple muscles under the scars felt wonderful. He smelled wonderful. Wood, smoke, spice, salt sweat, man musk. Her fingers slid through his thick hair, over the taut tendons of his neck.
All that powerful male energy was focused on her. His essential self, reaching for her, merging with her. Touching her soul, and her soul responded, opening, brightening, and then a huge bright torrent of sensation, so strong—
It tore through her, wrenching her with a pleasure even more intense than before.
His low voice had been vibrating for a while against her throat before she put her mind together enough to understand spoken language. “. . . so open,” he was saying in a wondering tone. He withdrew his hand from her body and clasped her to him, stroking her back reverently. “Fucking beautiful. How you’re so goddamn open.”
Caro focused on him, still not quite back from where he’d taken her. “Like hell,” she said. “Not me. Not open at all.”
“You are with me,” he said. “Do you come like that every time?”
She shook her head. “Not ever,” she said. “Not once. Nowhere near. It’s you.”
His head tilted to the side. “Hmm. I like that.”
The look in his eyes hit her hard someplace very deep and unexpected. She didn’t so much burst into tears as disintegrate into them.
Noah’s arms circled her. “What is it? Did I do something wrong?”
She shook her head. His neck was wet from her tears. His hand wound into her hair, massaging her head, slow and soothing. Hugging her tightly.
She finally managed to calm the storm. He held out a handful of tissues.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“Don’t apologize,” he said. “I want you to feel safe. I want you to relax.”
“I don’t think that’s up to my conscious mind,” she told him.
“Don’t think about it,” he urged. “We’ll just take this one juicy, earth-shaking, world-rocking, life-altering orgasm at a time.”
She wiped her eyes. “That’s some big talk, buddy. You have a lot to live up to.”
He undid his pants, and let his penis spring out. Large and long, thick and heavy, flushed a hot red. “You have a lot to give in to,” he countered.
She stared down at it, taken aback. “Oh, my.”
He took her hands, and wrapped her fingers around his thick shaft. Velvety smooth, supple skin, and pulsing vital heat beneath her clutching hands.
He maneuvered her off his body and set her on her feet, and leaned to yank the bedcover down. “Get into bed.”
She slid between silvery-toned sheets. They were crisp and fresh and fragrant. The tears on her face felt cold, but her face burned. Noah pulled condoms out of a drawer in his bedside table, and tossed one onto the bed. He shucked his pants and underwear, tossing them on a chair, and just stood there, letting her look.
Yeah. His abs were flat and hard, his flanks lean, his ass tight, his thighs thick and taut, corded with hard muscle. His big phallus jutted proudly from a thatch of dark hair, flushed and thick. The blunt head gleamed with precome.
He ripped open the condom, and smoothed it over himself. Then shoved the covers aside, and climbed into bed. He was so big, so burning hot. He gripped her knees, tugging gently until her legs opened, and rolled on top of her, between her legs, resting on his elbows.
Her face got hotter, legs clasping him, panic slowly rising as she imagined this big, intense, overwhelming man, all over her. Inside her. Watching her with those weirdly attentive eyes while she fell apart. Drawing his own mysterious conclusions.
It was too much.
He sensed the tension gripping her, human antenna that he was. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t,” she said. “Not with you looking at me like that.”
“I have a beautiful, fascinating woman naked in my bed,” he said. “You think I’m not going to look at you?”
“I’ve been trying really hard for a long time to avoid being noticed, Noah. Now there’s you. A spotlight, an X-ray machine and a microscope rolled together.”
He frowned thoughtfully. “Do you want to be on top?”
She shook her head. “Same problem, different angle.”
He caressed her hip, a soothing massage. “Do you want to stop? If I’m, you know. Too weird for you.”
She slid out from under the cover and tu
rned away from him. “No,” she blurted. “I love being with you. You’re the most generous lover I’ve ever been with. I’m just really tense. A basket case.” She crawled toward the edge of the bed.
Noah lunged to catch her, in a gentle grip. “Wait. Let me work this out. You don’t want to leave. You want me to have sex with you. And you don’t want me to look at you. It’s like a riddle. Just please don’t suggest that I cover my eyes.”
“As if,” she said wryly.
Noah scooted until he was kneeling behind her. He swept her hair to the side, pulled her back against himself and began kissing her neck and shoulder.
She started melting, gasping. Tension inside her released with every skilful caress. She was so primed, so wound up, so needy. It was a brutal twist of fate that this panic held her back. His hand lingered over her breasts, sliding over her belly, then venturing lower. He nudged her forward. She caught herself on all fours.
He rose up, holding her hips. Stroking her ass, tenderly. Patiently.
He wanted her from behind.
“Give me your hand.” He wrapped her fingers around his penis. “Touch yourself,” he said. “And get me nice and wet.”
She did as he asked, pressing his stiff, hot rod against her slick divide. Sliding it up, down. His shudders of pleasure echoed her own. She thudded down onto her elbows. Ass in the air, wide open.
Noah positioned himself behind her, nudging her thighs wider. Caro’s hair hid her face like a curtain. She moaned, breathless and aching with anticipation as he pressed himself against her, but he just rocked the blunt tip of his shaft at her sensitive opening. Up and down. Teasing and tantalizing.
She pushed against him, trying to take him inside.
“Not yet,” he muttered. He caught her clitoris between his fingers as he rocked and stroked. One of his hands clasped over hers, clenched and rigid. Muscles locked with the effort of holding back. Waiting for her.
A secret chamber of her heart opened wide and a deep swell of emotion lifted her in one great toppling wave. She was engulfed.
When her eyes fluttered open, he’d thrust deep inside her and was still waiting. His fingers tightened over hers. “I love when you come around me. Do it again.”
He moved inside her slowly. Deep, gliding thrusts. His big penis stroked heavily against a glowing place inside that melted for him. He kept gliding over it and over it and over it, right where she needed him to be, making her whimper and gasp and sob. Feeling so free. So connected. She never wanted to be alone again.
No. Don’t go there yet. Don’t ruin this for yourself.
She’d thought she could just take what she needed and go when it was time to go. But it wasn’t happening like that at all.
She was the one being taken.
* * *
Fuck. Holding her too tightly. Couldn’t make his fingers relax. Grab a hook.
Couldn’t. He was lost in it. Swept away. Noah was aware, through the pounding roar in his ears, that his fingers were sunk too deep into the smooth roundness of her hips. Hard enough to bruise. He’d promised not frighten her, to be gentle. To not be the latest scary dickhead parading through her life.
But he’d never had sex with AVP raging before. It rode him hard, and did not care about the vows he’d made to himself. He couldn’t stop now if she were begging him to, if the sky were falling. His body was locked into frantic motion as he sensed where she needed to go, and pursued it. Ferociously.
He was no better than the psycho tool that Midlands tried to turn him into. They hadn’t been able to control him with meds or implants. Nothing could, except for massive knock-out drugs. Or chains.
Or euthanasia. Their final solution. He’d been scheduled for disposal, like a rabid dog. A waste of food, a failed investment, like the rest of his Midlands rebels. Almost all of them had been on the discard list. Examples of gene vectoring gone wrong.
He’d somehow convinced himself that he could prove them wrong and regain self-control. But he was losing it now.
The memory intensified the red haze of fury generated by the AVP. Twelve years of struggle every day and night to find his balance, his control. Now, fucked in an instant, with his dick slamming heavily into her, getting harder and longer with every aggressive stroke. Gleaming a hot, angry red. Her rich smell maddened him.
He’d been hijacked by AVP. The wild buzz of combat programming, channeled into sex. Scary combination. Caro was vulnerable, fragile. She’d trusted him, and look how he was treating her. Jesus.
She let out shocked, whimpering gasps at every deep stroke. Having the lights on made it worse. Light was a constant AVP stimulus, amplifying the feedback loop in his mind. He stared hungrily at every pink detail of her slick, flushed folds, clasping him, shiny and luminous. Her hot sea smell. Sweat stung his eyes. He was shoving her forward by the force of each thrust, her face pushed in the pillows, her throaty cries muffled but not by much. Her sig was crazy now, her colors blinding, incandescent.
And he came. Oh God.
The mountains did a vast, slow-motion lift-off into the sky . . . and fell back down on top of him. A thousand tons of broken rock.
He floated back, disoriented. Limp, soaked with sweat. His throat was dry, from panting. The thickness in his throat indicated that he’d been shouting. Who knew what.
He wanted to remember. The effort was beyond impossible.
Caro’s lithe body vibrated beneath his. He’d collapsed onto her, still rammed deep inside her. Still stone hard. Pulsing with aftershocks.
He was too big to stay on her, weigh her down. Let her breathe.
He lifted himself, felt her inhale. She lay there, flattened on her belly, cheeks flushed poppy red. A flower that had been beaten down to the earth by rain.
But her sig glowed around her, soft and diffuse. It looked happy.
He rolled to his side, fumbling for the cover. Pulled it up over her. Best he could do. It wasn’t cold, after sex that hot. But the AVP hadn’t totally burned away what gentlemanly gallantry he could lay claim to.
He got up and headed to the bathroom to get rid of the condom. When he returned, Caro rolled over and watched him as he grabbed another one from the bedside drawer. He suited up again, hard as rock. It had been forfuckingever, and no woman had ever wound him up like Caro did. She gazed, nonplussed, at his unflagging hard-on before he dimmed the light to make the AVP ease down.
“Seriously?” she said, with a quick smile. “After that?”
“Yeah. Just won’t quit.”
Her mouth curved in a quick smile. “I see that.”
“You OK?” he asked. “I got a little carried away.”
“Absolutely fine,” she assured him. “It was intense. But great.”
“Did I scare you?” He hoped not.
“Not at all.” She propped herself up and brushed dark wavy ringlets off her face.
Data scrolled in his head as he assessed her. She didn’t seem traumatized. He pulled down the cover and clambered onto the bed, settling between her legs.
She looked startled. “Uh, Noah—”
“Just let me look,” he coaxed. “I was a little too rough with you. I lost control. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. I told you I was OK. Why don’t you just believe me?”
“Maybe I just need an excuse to put my face between your legs. Stop wiggling.”
“But—”
“Shhh. I’m concentrating.” And so he did, holding her graceful thighs wide open, staring at her muff. He needed no light to see every detail. He lost himself in rapt, horndog contemplation. She looked beautiful. Hot and rosy and fuckable.
Temptation overwhelmed him. He spread her lips gently with his fingers, holding them open, and thrust his tongue deep into her.
She cried out in startled pleasure, arching. She was so lithe and strong. Noah stilled her with his hand, resting it on her belly until she lay back with a gasp of fresh pleasure and submitted to his hungry lavish licking.
He lapped upward,
trailing his tongue lazily over her slit up to the hood of her clitoris, caressing the taut, pearly bud with his lips and assessing how her sig reacted. A hot pink glow edged with violet pulsed with delight as he tongue-fucked her. Oh, yeah. More of that. Give it to him. He got back to the clit, suckled it. Long, gentle pulls. She convulsed, with a gasp. He could do this for hours. Cheerfully.
She shivered and gasped, whimpering with pleasure at each eager plunge of his tongue into her tight, slick hole.
Didn’t take long. In fact, it was over way too soon. After just a couple of minutes she went rigid as a long, violent orgasm throbbed through her.
He drank it in. Waited for the pulsing shimmers to ease down.
“My turn.” He settled between her legs. “I want to look at you while I’m inside you.”
Her muscles tightened. “Noah . . .”
He froze. “You still can’t bear for me to look at you while we have sex?” he asked. “After what just happened?”
“I . . . I don’t know why. I can’t—”
“I want to see your eyes. I want to watch your tits bounce, I want to play with your clit and watch the colors change on your skin. I want to tongue kiss your mouth while I fuck you. I want it all.”
“I don’t understand why you’re suddenly so angry,” she whispered.
“I’m not.” He ran his hand through his sweat-dampened hair, frustrated. Tempted to just mount up, push her past the fear barrier, deal with the aftermath later. He was confident he could make her come again.
But even as the thought flicked through his mind, she sensed it. He saw it in her eyes, her sig.
He’d promised that she was safe with him.
He lifted himself off her, fists clenched. “Roll over then,” he said harshly.
Her eyes widened at his tone. “I don’t respond well to orders.”
Shit. Asshole alert. Grab a hook.
He closed his eyes, latched on. Counted slowly down from ten. Frigid waves, lapping on the icy shore. Glacial ice caves. Sea birds. Cold. Numbing cold.
“What are you doing?”
“Chilling . . . out.” After a brief pause, he added. “Hoping for a second chance.”
“Dick move,” she said.
Right Through Me (The Obsidian Files #1) Page 12