He wanted her screaming his name. He wanted her so badly it felt like a body blow. He didn’t give a shit why she’d sought him out, only that she had.
“You’re mine,” he told her, fierce and sure.
He leaned forward and simply pressed his mouth against the center of her heat, black lace and woman, all Zoe and all his.
And then he feasted.
Chapter Seven
It was like dying.
Dying and then coming back to life, dressed all in fire, and Zoe couldn’t catch her breath. There was only Hunter and that mouth of his, wild and demanding against the heart of her need. She found herself lolling back like a drunk, her arms over her face, panting desperately against the salt of her own skin.
He simply...took her. He kissed her, hard and intense through the lace of her boy shorts. He used his teeth, his tough jaw, that perfect mouth of his. She rocked against him, away from him, not sure what she wanted or what to do with the sensations that swept through her, each more overpowering than the last—
“Stop fighting me,” he ordered her at one point, and her blood was rocketing so hard through her body, singing or screaming in her veins and she couldn’t tell which, that she wasn’t sure she heard him right.
“I don’t know how,” she gritted out. But she relaxed against him anyway.
Then he pressed his mouth against her again, harder, a gift and a discipline, and she splintered into a thousand pieces.
She was sobbing something incoherent, and he still didn’t stop. She lost his mouth, but felt his hands at her hips again, and then a rush of cool air against all that heat, and it took her long moments to realize he’d stripped her panties from her without her noticing.
It occurred to her that even if the world was still spinning, even if she wasn’t sure she knew her name or if she’d ever breath normally again, she should do something. Because somewhere beneath all of that shuddering, confounding pleasure that still stormed in her would be a price to pay. She knew that.
Too well.
Zoe struggled to move, to sit up, but found her limbs were far too heavy. As if they were his to command, not hers. She could only lie there, flushed and open and utterly destroyed, and watch him as he drew her legs back up over his shoulders, his blue gaze brilliant like diamonds, hot and hard on hers, and that look of sheer, male delight and satisfaction that made her chest hurt and her core ignite.
“I want...” It was too hard to speak, and that dangerous lassitude that had made her legs and arms feel so leaded was everywhere now, as if a great hand pressed her down into the bed from above, forcing her to lie there before him with such wanton abandon. “Let me...”
“I don’t want to let you do anything,” he told her. “I want to drown in you. I told you.”
Then he slid his hands beneath her, propping her up before him like an offering, and she understood with a distant part of her brain—the only part that was still functioning—that the strange keening sound she heard was coming from her. But it didn’t make sense, and he was looking at her, up over the length of her torso, his breath an intimate caress against the part of her that was the slickest and most sensitive, and she couldn’t seem to stop shaking.
And there was too much calm certainty in that blue gaze of his, too much triumph in the crook of his mouth, and everything seemed to contract around them, inside her, until she thought they’d both gone electric.
Only then did he bend his head and lick into her.
And everything dimmed. Then exploded.
It was like being struck by lightning. Hit by it, torn wide open, then set afire again and again.
He teased her and taunted her. He used her own fire against her, growling into the molten core of her as he tasted her, so she could feel that wolf in him, feel it echo in every part of her. He pushed her and he adored her, worshipped her and taunted her, holding her right where he wanted her so there was no possibility of escape, as if he was prepared to force pleasure upon her if necessary.
And Zoe simply...surrendered to the storm.
To him. To Hunter.
As if she trusted him.
And when she flew apart this time, she could hear the dark sound of his laughter, the erotic triumph and the sensual delight, as if she was bathing in it.
Drowning, and she didn’t care.
She was still fighting for breath when he moved, that terrible, wonderful mouth of his making its way over her hip, her belly. Lazy and knowing, building the fire in her all over again even as she still shook with the leftover flames of the previous blaze. He licked his way across her navel, climbing his way up her body as if he was committing every inch and every curve of her to memory, shifting her as he climbed, rolling them both toward the center of that massive bed.
He lifted her again, stripping her bra away and then worshipping her breasts, taking one hard nipple between his teeth, then sucking it hard into his mouth, shocking her with the intense shot of need that stormed through her all over again.
Impossible, she thought, and realized she’d moaned it aloud only when she felt laughter rumble through his big body.
“Not only possible,” he said, insufferable and delicious at once, “but necessary.”
“I’m very bored,” she replied when she could form words, arching into him. “Will this take long?”
She didn’t know why she felt compelled to tease him until she felt his teeth against her flesh, the little nip a punishment and a reward at once, and she smiled.
“You were right,” he told her, his mouth against the tender side of her breast, his tough hands spread out over her back, keeping her arched up before him, his to feast on as he wished. “I use my body as a weapon. And you like it.”
She felt his smile against her skin, then he turned his attention to her other breast, going back and forth between them with exquisite patience until she was writhing beneath him, as desperate and wild as if he’d only just begun. As if he hadn’t thrown her over that cliff twice already.
“I need to taste you everywhere,” he told her, that smile in his voice, in the press of his mouth to her flesh. “I can’t get enough.”
She felt the dangerous scrape of his teeth against her neck, the magic of his tongue. She explored his chest with shaking hands, the glorious strength in his cut shoulders, each taut ridge of his wonder of an abdomen she’d first seen rise before her from the water in that hot tub, sleek and warm. He smelled of something spicy and tasted of salt and man, and she couldn’t get enough of him. When he crawled all the way up and settled himself between her legs, so hard and so big and so impossibly perfect, she almost toppled over that edge again, simply from the slick sweetness of the way they fit.
As if you were made for this, a little voice sang in her head. For him.
He propped himself above her, moving his hands to either side of her head and holding them there, and there was no sign of a smile on his beautiful face now, no trace of that laughter. There was only the stamp of need, a ferocity she felt deep within her. There was only that searing blue gaze, serious and intent.
Zoe’s heart stuttered, then began to beat low and hard and long. She was cradling his tough, hard body with hers, and it turned her to liquid, molten and scalding.
“You want to be in control, don’t you?” he asked, and everything about him was too dangerous, so dangerous it very nearly hurt. She could feel the press of him, pinning her to the bed, the hard thrust of him still in his trousers, but flush against her heat. Her need.
She’d had no idea it was possible to need anything this much. She wouldn’t have thought she was capable of it. And yet it scalded her. It poured through her. It made her feel like someone else. Someone as strong as he was, and as dangerous.
As unbroken.
“Always,” she managed to say, scraping together what r
emained of her bravado—but it came out sounding very nearly wistful, and she saw he felt that, too. In the way his blue eyes darkened. In the way he shifted against her, a roll of his hips that sent a delicious lightning bolt of a promise stealing through her, making her breath tight and erratic at once.
“I want to be inside you,” he said. Like an invocation. “So deep you can’t tell which one of us is which. So hard that when I come, you’ll think it’s you.”
Heat coursed through her, pooling between her legs, making her shift and roll, anything to feel that length of him hard against her softness, the next best thing—
“Zoe.” It was a command. “Make it happen. Now.”
She blinked, almost insane with wanting him. Understanding took a long, breathless beat, then another, as if her brain didn’t want to work.
“You want me complicit.”
“Absolutely no plausible deniability,” he agreed, his gaze even hotter, making her restless beneath him.
“And if I don’t do it?”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen.” The wolf was in his eyes then, that hard curve of his mouth. Then in the way he moved his hips against hers again, making her breath hitch, sending more of that lightning crashing through her, flooding into all those dark places she’d locked away. “But if it does, you’ll get to sleep empty and lonely and cold and alone. And in complete control. Is that what you want?”
“What if I can’t decide?” She moved her hips with his, meeting him in that ancient dance, wrapping her legs around him and indulging herself in his steel length, pressed so hard against the part of her that needed it the most. Flames licked over her and she needed. She wanted. “What if this is enough for me?”
Hunter laughed, and then he dipped his head, and kissed her.
But it was better than a kiss. It stripped her bare. It was a carnal taking, a slick domination, and she thrilled to every slide of his tongue against hers, every hint of his teeth, the knowledge that he had the kind of willpower to hold them like this forever, slowly unraveling her. And that he would do it, if that was what it took.
He was using her body against her, and Zoe found she didn’t care. She wanted him too much to worry about what that made her.
When he lifted his head, his eyes were so blue it hurt, and Zoe’s hands were clumsy at the zipper of his unbuttoned trousers. She shoved and pushed and finally freed him, sighing when she wrapped her hands around the silken hardness of him.
But they were both too close to the edge. When he handed her a condom she noticed she was shaking again, and she could feel the slight tremors that moved in him, too, where he still held himself immobile above her.
She’d never wanted anything more. She sheathed him carefully, quickly, and then she guided him to her entrance.
“Say my name,” he told her fiercely, the way he had before, with that curious intensity and that serious look on his face.
“I don’t want to say your name,” she threw at him, and she surged up before he could argue, impaling herself on the length of him.
It was slick, terrible, perfect.
Unreal.
“Why don’t you say mine?” she managed to gasp, as if that might save her. As if anything could.
She understood she was doomed, and she didn’t care anymore.
“Have it your way,” he whispered, his mouth at her ear, and she was already shivering, already melting. Already his. “I’m going to make you scream it, Zoe. I’m going to make you beg. And then I’ll do it all over again, until my name is the only thing you know.”
“Promises, promises,” she whispered, and laughed at the dark look on his face.
But then he began to move.
* * *
She was exquisite.
And she was his.
Hunter wanted to imprint that on her skin, tattoo it on the silken perfection of her flesh. He wanted to mark her, again, so there could be no doubt.
He settled for that simple, life-altering slide inside her, the clutch of her thighs, the sharp sting of her fingernails into his back. That complicated rhythm, that beautiful dance.
The animal in him wanted wildness—but he wanted to savor her, and so he did.
He set an easy, deliberate pace, stunned by the fire that roared inside him, drunk on each and every one of the noises she made, the motion of her lithe hips, the scent of lavender warm between their bodies, the taste of her and that sense of belonging, of rightness, that surged inside him, claiming him with every stroke.
Making him the man he should have been, as if this was a baptism and he would never be the same when it was done. He believed it. He believed he could be anything for this woman. He wanted that as fiercely as he wanted her.
She tilted back her head, arched into him, and her eyes were dark with the same passion that he could feel in him. The same enormity. As if this wasn’t sex, but a sacrament.
“Please,” she gasped, and he smiled.
“I told you you’d beg.”
“It’s not polite to gloat,” she said, and he didn’t know how she did it, how she managed to sound so prim even now, when he was deep inside her and he held her on that quivering edge.
When the world felt new with every slick stroke, every glorious slide. Every shiver, every sigh.
It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.
“Say it,” he told her. He lost himself in the taste of her breasts and toyed with those proud nipples, never changing his relentless rhythm, direct and deliberate, keeping her in that shaking frenzy beneath him but never quite tipping her over. “My name, Zoe.”
And he felt her melt. Fire chased by lightning, soft and strong and his, and she cried it out at last. To the glass above, to the night around them, to the sky and to the world.
Again and again and again, until it sounded like a song. Like a vow.
His name. His possession. His.
“Hunter,” she cried, “I’m going to kill you if you don’t—”
“Didn’t I promise to serve you? Have a little faith.”
“Then do it, for God’s sake!”
He laughed, reaching down between them and rubbing his fingers against the hard little heart of her, gathering her to him as she made a desperate noise that he felt in every part of him before she shattered all around him.
And only then, when she was in pieces again and he was drowning in her the way he wanted, the way he thought he might have to do for the rest of his life, until it killed him and he didn’t think he’d mind if it did, did he let himself follow her over the edge.
* * *
Later, he woke in the stillness of the night in a sudden rush, but she was still there. She hadn’t slipped out while he slept, while he wasn’t paying attention. She hadn’t disappeared. She hadn’t walked away from him, never to be seen again.
His heart was pounding hard, as if he’d been running flat out for miles, and some part of him thought that he had been, one way or another, for the past ten years.
Not this time, he thought, with a solemnity that might have worried him in the light. But it was dark in his great cavern of a room, and the night wasn’t nearly over, and he could pretend, for a moment or two, that he was the man he’d wanted to be while he was inside her.
Zoe was curled up against him as if they’d slept a thousand nights together exactly like this, and Hunter loved it. He loved the sweet scent of her hair and the fall of it through his fingers, the soft weight of her body against him in the dark. Her head pillowed on his arm and the way the delectable curve of her bottom fit so snugly against him in the middle of that vast bed, making it seem cozy.
She was smart and prickly, gorgeous and sexy, and she fit as if she’d been made to his precise specifications. She wasn’t another groupie whose name he’d never learn. This hadn�
��t been one more empty form of exercise. He’d wanted her. He still did. He felt it inside him, that ravenous burst of flame and something like wonder, and had the strangest feeling it wouldn’t fade with the dawn like everything else.
He’d felt a pale imitation of this kind of rightness a long time ago, when he was young and callow, life was still golden and he hadn’t the slightest idea what it was like to lose something irreplaceable. In the dark, he could admit to himself that this was different. This was better, if more complicated.
Because he still didn’t know her plan. Why she’d hunted him down in that strip club and used Sarah to make him do what she wanted him to do. He still didn’t know what she wanted from him.
Tonight, he didn’t care.
She smelled of lavender and she’d tasted like sweet cream and hot, aroused woman, and he couldn’t seem to react the way he ought to do. He couldn’t seem to do anything but pull her closer, press a soft kiss to her temple and hold on to her as though he might not let go.
He moved behind her in the dark, tasting her all over again in the deep shadows, his hands exploring her, worshipping her as if it was the first time while he held her to him in that same position. He could trace the thrust of her breasts beneath her raised arm, kiss that sensitive spot behind her ear. He could smooth his way along her side, her thigh, her femininity warm and inviting beneath his hands. He could feel it when she transitioned from sleep to full alertness, and could feel, too, the delicious little shiver that moved in her then. When she thrust back against him with a small moan, pressing her bottom against him, making him that much harder.
When she whispered his name, he came inside her, making them both sigh. He rolled with her, holding her hand in his as he pressed her into the mattress. Like a dream. Hot like silk. Sweet.
And then he rode them both to that shattering end, slow and quiet and something like reverent. Like hope, he thought, losing himself in her.
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