by Alexa Riley
“Lainey!”
“Carver?”
My heart hammers back to life in my chest as she comes stumbling through the trees, her arms wrapped around herself to stave off the cold. Without waiting, I scoop her up into my arms and begin rubbing warmth back into her limbs. “Princess, you should not be out here on such a cold night.” I search her for injuries—didn’t I hear her sob before? “Are you safe? Did they come after you? I should not have spared them—”
“I’m okay.” She clasps my face between her hands and I notice the tears in her eyes for the first time. “I was worried about you. I left as soon as the girls were asleep to warn you they were coming, b-but they’d already left. Oh God, I’ve been so scared something happened to you.”
“You are crying for me?”
My question seems to make everything worse. “Of course I am.” She wiggles until I set her down. “What happened? Did they—” Her breath leaves her in a rush as she prods my side. “You’re hurt. Oh God, you’re bleeding.”
“I feel no pain,” I say honestly. How can I feel anything but pleasure when this girl cries for me? “They brought only five men. It wasn’t much of a challenge for me.”
Her laughter is watery. “This is all your fault, you know. You just had to abduct me in front of everyone. Couldn’t you have waited until nighttime, at least?” She peels up my shirt, wincing at my injury. “No one would have known and you wouldn’t be bleeding right now.”
“I apologize, princess.” I brush hair away from her tear-stained face. “It was my first kidnapping.”
She peers up at me through her eyelashes. “If they took the time to know you, they wouldn’t think you’re a-a—”
“A monster?” I tilt her chin up. “I only care what you think of me.”
“I think you’re beautiful.” I’m still reeling when she says, “I want to know how you got your scars. Will you tell me?”
A sound leaves my throat, images of glinting silver assaulting me. “It’s not a pretty story. It doesn’t belong in your beautiful head.”
“My story isn’t that pretty, either. I can take it.” She takes me by the hand and I let her lead me away. “But first I’m going to bandage you up.”
I don’t know where Lainey is taking me, and I don’t care. I’ll follow her to the ends of the earth, so I’m content to watch her cute backside swish back and forth in the moonlight and marvel over the fact that she’s mine. The solitude I’ve known for so long in the woods has come to an end as of tonight, but that’s a problem I will solve tomorrow. I’ll do whatever I have to do to keep Lainey, though. That is a fact set in stone.
After about ten minutes of walking around the camp perimeter, we reach a small cabin, with a sign on the door that reads INFIRMARY. Lainey pulls a key ring out of her pocket, unlocks the door and goes inside, turning on a dim lamp that fills the room with a glow. I duck through the tiny doorframe behind her, taking in the room full of beds, the shelves full of medicine and supplies. Without sitting on one of the beds, I know they will not hold my weight easily, so I pull my shirt off and lean back against the counter. Lainey has been collecting antiseptic and bandages from the shelf, but when she turns and sees me naked from the waist up, she gasps and freezes.
“I’ve never seen you in the light before.” She rolls her lips together. “You have so much hair.”
“There’s a lot of me to cover.”
Her laughter is halting. “You don’t say.” When she comes closer, I see that her nipples are in tight peaks, causing my cock to lengthen, preparing to fuck my mate. “Oh, wow. Okay,” she says, watching the front of my pants tent. “I guess your injury isn’t that bad?”
“I could hack off a limb and still get hard for you while I’m bleeding out.”
Her mouth forms an O. “How…romantic.”
I grunt, trying to decide if she’s being serious. Her nipples are still hard and her thighs won’t stay still in those tight, black shorts, so I don’t think she minded what I said. Still, the reminder about being romantic reminds me of something. “I brought you a gift.”
She sets down what she’s holding on the counter. “You did?”
Nodding, I pull the present out of my pocket, holding it up. “For you.”
“Is that hair?” Her nose wrinkles, but it’s not long before understanding dawns on her face. “Is that…Manny’s ponytail?”
“Yes.” Just thinking of the way he looked at her this afternoon tightens bolts in my temples until red bleeds into my vision. It took all my willpower not to crush his skull on the banks of the lake, but I knew murdering him in front of the campers would displease Lainey. “He will not bother you again.”
Finally, she accepts the ponytail, laying it down on the counter. “Is he…did you…?”
“He is alive, but in considerable pain.” After not touching Lainey for so long, I’m starting to grow restless, so I snag a finger in her tiny shorts and pull her close, sighing when she lays a cheek on my belly. “He lusted for what is mine. His consequences were well deserved.”
I’m alarmed when her body begins to shake, until I realize she’s laughing. “Some guys show up with roses. You bring me hair.”
“Roses are more traditional, are they?” My mouth feels unfamiliar. I’m…smiling. “These are things I will learn.”
“Don’t. Don’t learn anything. Don’t…change.” Ducking her head, she pulls away and prepares a bandage before coming back and pressing it to my wound. I can’t take my attention off her, she’s so beautiful in her concentration, a little line running down the middle of her eyebrows. My dick is still firm and pulsing with blood, but now I’m torn between wanting to fuck her and rock her like a baby. “Will you tell me about the scars now?”
Pressure eases down on my chest, my throat closing. “I was always bigger than everyone. Much bigger. It was…hard. Whenever someone new moved to my neighborhood in Detroit and wanted to prove themselves, they picked a fight with me. I never lost and people started to hate me. Fear me.” I swallow and focus on the sensation of her fingers on my side. “I thought things would be different when I joined the Marines. Thought they might have some value for my size. And they did.” I pause, recalling the title I haven’t used in a decade. “Lance Corporal Carver Shade at your service.”
“The name suits you,” she breathes.
My nod is jerky. “They sent me overseas. For the first time in my life, I was part of something. I had…friends.”
Lainey wraps her arms around my waist, careful to avoid my injury. “Oh God. I’m afraid of what’s coming.”
“Do you want me to stop?”
“No.”
I hold Lainey close, dropping my nose to her hair and inhaling her aloe vera and pineapple scent. “We were ambushed one night on patrol. My friends were going to be taken, probably killed. I couldn’t let it happen after what they’d done for me.” Lainey begins planting kisses on my belly, and I shudder, pleasure piercing through the pain of my memories. “I didn’t realize there were so many of the enemy. Not like tonight. They had forty, maybe fifty men…and even I couldn’t win that fight. My friends escaped to the truck, though. At the time, that’s what mattered.”
“They captured you.” She traces a scar in my back. “And this is what they did to you?”
“Yes. Before I got free.” I clear my throat, but the discomfort remains. “When I returned to camp, slashed and bleeding…the looks on their faces. If my friends could look at me like that, I couldn’t imagine how a stranger would see me. So I found this place. I found a way to stay away from everyone.”
“Carver.” Lainey looks up at me, her eyes shining. “They were forced to leave you behind. They were probably looking at you with guilt. Not fear or disgust.”
Could she be right? I was half delirious in the time leading up to being shipped home, bandages wrapped around my face and body, I only remember flashes of my men’s expressions, their clipped words. “I don’t know.”
“I do. And if the
y looked at you any other way, they didn’t deserve the sacrifice you made. You shouldn’t be ashamed of those scars. You should be proud of them.” She shakes her head. “And you definitely shouldn’t be hiding yourself away in the woods.”
The crowded feeling in my chest moves higher, into my throat. “I can’t imagine walking down the street like this.”
“I would hold your hand, my king,” she whispers, unzipping my pants slowly and tugging them down over my hips. “I’m not going to push you before you’re ready. I’ll be here when that day comes.” She guides me over to one of the beds, and I sit, wincing when it creaks long and hard under my weight. But when her knees land on the floor between my splayed legs, I think of nothing but her mouth. Watching it, my cock surges, moisture bubbling from the slit and dripping onto my stomach. This can’t be happening in real life. “In the meantime, you’re going to get the hero treatment you deserve.”
Chapter Eight
Lainey
Lord, he seems twice as massive from this perspective.
His thighs are stretched out on either side of my head, thicker than my torso, bulging with muscle and covered in hair. I’ve been so distracted by the rest of him, I failed to notice the ridges of his stomach. Is that a twelve-pack? Yeah. It is. A mountain range of swells, powerful and flexed in anticipation.
His erection stands waiting, veins pulsing from root to tip, moisture seeping from the head. Begging for my mouth. And after that story he told me, my heart is still trapped in a vise. He needs and deserves this. I won’t make him wait.
I take his shaft in two hands and begin stroking him, sucking in a breath at his extreme reaction. A bellow is trapped between his teeth. His arms almost go slack, sending him falling back on the bed, but he catches himself at the last minute, seeming determined to keep his view of me. His legs spread wider and begin to shake—all of this from one stroke. When I trail my tongue up the side of his arousal, he lets out an agonized moan, reaching down to twist his balls in a rough fist.
“You’re going to empty me, princess,” he rasps. “Go easy.”
“I’m only licking.” My loins flood with heat at the evidence of my power over this man. He might be a veritable giant, but one flick of my tongue can turn him into a shuddering mess. Moisture pools between my thighs, excitement buzzes in my blood. I tilt my hips back, giving Carver a nice view of my upturned bottom, well aware that the shorts only cover half of my cheeks. Looking up at him with an innocent expression, I circle the tip of his erection with my tongue. “Is this another new way to tickle, my king?”
Carver’s head falls back, his throat muscles prominent. “Christ. Oh Christ. I might come just from having you look at me like that.”
I suck his swollen, salty head into my mouth, humming in satisfaction as his fists pound the bed. “Like what?”
“Like we’ve got a very bad secret,” he pants, his hips rolling toward my mouth. “It’s more than that, though. You’re looking at me like I’m your man. And you know I won’t fuck up again and trap you beneath me. No matter how badly you torture my cock, I’ll stay strong and keep my princess happy.”
A riot starts in the center of my chest, my pulse galloping in my limbs. This man gets me. He’s right about me trusting him, too. I don’t know how it happened so fast. Maybe it’s the way he proved how fast he could listen and adapt to my needs. Or maybe it’s what he’s been through. Whatever the cause, my heart knows it’s right. “Who says I won’t let you trap me?” Relaxing my throat, I slide my lips halfway down his length, choking despite my preparation. It’s worth the discomfort, though, when his lower half jerks off the bed, his giant hands ripping at the sheets. With a lick at the milky substance beading on his tip, I murmur, “Would you like to use your big body to hold down my smaller one?”
“Yes,” he pushes out between clenched teeth. “Yes, princess. Please.”
I give him a final hard suck, taking as much of him as possible, before using his thighs to climb to my feet. “Let’s see how bad you want it.”
Carver watches with lust-crazed eyes as I walk past him, snapping my hips side to side, reveling over the feel of his hot gaze on my backside. I move two of the hospital beds across the floor until there’s a total of three lying side to side. We now have a king-sized bed’s worth of space—still not enough for Carver, but better than a single bed by a mile. I circle back around to him and stand between his outstretched legs, stripping off my shirt and scratching my nails along his brawny shoulders. “Show me how you’d take me,” I whisper against his mouth. “I want to stand here and see how it’ll look first.”
His eyes are glazed and fastened on my breasts. Those heavy lids droop even more at my request and he wets his lips. “You want to watch me rut like an animal?”
“Yes,” I breathe, my body flushing from head to toe. “And then I want you to rut your little princess like one.”
With his pupils dilated he appears almost hypnotized by me, but he takes one final longing glance at my bare breasts and turns over on the bed, lying on his stomach. His knees plant on the mattress, lifting his hips to accommodate the enormous flesh between his thighs. His corded forearms support his upper half, the position sending muscles roaming across his back. And then he starts to fuck the bed, treating me to the most spectacular view of the century. A view of his flexing ass and thighs. His damaged back ripples with every movement, grunts tearing from his throat.
“Oh. Oh my goodness,” I breathe, my fingers sneaking down the front of my shorts to graze my underwear before slipping inside. “Carver, don’t stop. You’re…so hot.”
His movements grow uneven at my words, but then he keeps going, his hips pumping against the bed harder than before. Is this incredible man really indulging my every thought and fantasy? Yes. And looking incredible while doing it. The harder he humps the mattress, the more his thighs slide apart, showing off his tight pair of ruddy balls, the up and back swing of them as he punches his hips forward.
“Lainey,” he growls, looking back at me over his shoulder. “I hear your fingers slipping through your pretty cunt. It’s making me hurt.”
“You want it for yourself?”
“Yes. Yes.” Coming to a kneel on the bed, I reach between his legs to cup his heavy testicles, whimpering when he grinds down, trapping my hand between him and the mattress, fucking it with harsh pants. “Give me that taunting pussy. It has been bad. Very bad. Give it. Going to suck your little nipples while I fuck your hole again and again and again. It’s mine.”
I’m burning up with an incurable fever, slickness sliding down the insides of my thighs. My breasts are full and aching, and I need, I need. Is that desperate, whining sound coming from me? “Yes, I’m yours,” I say in a rush. “You can have me now—”
“Mine.” Like a predator who has been waiting for the right moment to capture his prey, Carver’s muscled arm shoots out, taking hold of me and dragging my body beneath his sweating, male bulk. My power is stripped immediately. Anyone’s would be with this man above them, his obsession radiating from every inch of his body. His erection juts out, crude and pulsing between us….and my thighs spread of their own volition. I’m claimed. I’ve already been claimed by this man, I trust him and I’m his source of release.
My shorts are ripped straight down the middle with a slash of his hand, my panties meeting the same fate. Teeth bared, shoulders flexed, he doesn’t even need to guide himself to my entrance. One savage drive of his hips and he’s buried to the root, his mouth swooping down to swallow my startled scream. Then down to my nipples to suck each of them with hollow cheeks before returning to my mouth. My feminine flesh begins to spasm in reaction to his invasion, my hand slapping at his face and shoulders without being commanded by my brain.
“Carver,” I wail against his lips, writhing to escape the soreness. “Carver.”
“You’re going to feel like a virgin every damn time, aren’t you?” He punctuates his next words with tight thrusts. “Like a bratty…little…unf
ucked…girl. Just waiting like a good princess in her bedroom for that king cock.”
There’s a sweep of pleasure through my middle, centering where our bodies join. Some of the discomfort subsides, leading to a sensation of being full. Pinned. I don’t realize my eyes have been closed until I open them, finding Carver’s expression slack with bliss, hunger. Seeing how good I’m making him feel eases a little more of the pain, more and more until it’s gone.
“Y-yes.” I arch my back, sending him a coy glance from the veil of my eyelashes. “Tickle me, daddy.”
I didn’t plan on addressing him by that title, but the use of it makes me wet enough to handle the full power of him. Makes him fall on me like a slavering beast, his hips attacking me in a blur. That huge part of him parts my flesh, stretching me again and again, the smacks of his balls and grunts filling the room. “You’re going to get daddy’s come good and deep, princess. This is what you get for taunting me. You get a seed planted in your flat, young belly.”
I’m beginning to tighten up low—so low—in my stomach, my legs trembling with the climax he’s giving me. I can’t stay still. Excitement collides with anxious need inside me, blood pounding in my ears, my fingernails buried in Carver’s wide, rippling back. There’s a spark of danger and mischief left inside me, though, because I’m still hungry to exercise a little control over my giant. The control I only recently discovered with him, because he understood my need for it. “Don’t finish. Not yet.”
He drops his head, releasing a wounded roar into the crook of my neck. After one more shuddering pump, though, he does stop, poised above me with a face contorted in pain. “You test my limits,” he slurs, sweat dripping down his forehead. “You test my sanity.”
“One thrust only,” I murmur, drawing my knees up to my shoulders. “One and stop again. Like you know you shouldn’t be inside me, daddy, but you couldn’t help a little taste.”