by Fox, Logan
“Give me six months.” I hear my voice, understand the words, but I still can’t believe I was the one that spoke them.
She’s unraveling me. Invading my psyche and laying bare things that should never again have seen the light of day.
“I’ve already given you six months,” she murmurs, her eyes narrowing in challenge. “Why the hell do you want more?”
“Six months. That’s all I’m asking.”
She studies me. First my eyes, then my nose, my mouth. There, her gaze is a physical touch that wreathes a phantom caress over my lips.
“Room and board?” There’s the slightest curve to her mouth, but it could also just be the melting shadows as dark clouds occlude the remaining light from the world.
“Whatever you want,” I hear myself saying.
A coy light gleams in her magnificent eyes. “Tell me about the church.”
She puts her hand on my chest, arches her fingers, and urges her nails into my skin. The shirt’s fabric is thin enough for me to feel her digging her claws into me.
I slide a hand into her hair, tangling those silky strands around my fingers and gently arching her neck. “Anything but that.”
Annoyance twists her mouth. Her lips part, and I already know she’s primed to begin arguing with me.
An impossible feat if I’m kissing her.
She stiffens, recoils like a snake. But I already had a hand around her waist and it takes hardly any effort on my part to drag her against me.
I’ve never been this confused in my life.
The urge to shove her away is as strong as the urge to draw her close, and she’s partly kissing, partly biting me, as if she can’t decide how she feels either. Our breathing synchronizes, buffeting each other with every forceful exhalation as I struggle to pull her to the couch and she fights to stay standing.
I hook my leg around hers. She collapses, and I have her under me a second later.
My hand is under her skirt, but she’s clamping her legs closed so tightly that I can’t get an inch above her knees. I grasp her breast instead, breaking our kiss as I let out a sigh. Fuck, but she feels so good in this dress. So sensual, so feminine. I wouldn’t call her a tomboy—I wouldn’t even know where to begin to make that classification—but until I saw her wearing a dress at her graduation ceremony, I had no idea Clover Vos cleaned up so good.
Then again—she spent her time as a high-class hooker before she arrived in Mallhaven. Did I honestly expect her to walk around in torn jeans and a baggy shirt?
Fuck, yes.
But only if it was my shirt; skip the jeans.
I bite her chin, nibble her lip, try to force my hand between her legs.
“Tell me,” she whispers, the words slurred by our mingling mouths.
“It’s not my story to tell.”
She lets out an irritated growl, and grabs a fistful of my hair. It hurts when she tugs it, but I barely feel it.
Woman, you don’t know what I’ve been through. Yanking on my hair won’t do shit. Kneeing me in the stomach isn’t going to set you free.
“Tell me.”
I pull away from her, blinking furiously to clear my vision. She flutters her eyelashes at me, but I have a feeling she’s reeling as much as I am.
“You’ll stay,” I repeat slowly.
She writhes under me. My cock stiffens painfully inside my pants, and I grind it against her.
Clover gives me the faintest of nods.
Her hands slide between us and begin working at the button on my pants.
I put my forehead against hers, lifting myself on one elbow as I stare into her eyes. She touches her mouth to mine.
“I’ll stay,” she whispers, her lips brushing mine.
My button pops open. Her hand glides behind my underwear, gripping my dick and squeezing me so hard I groan against her mouth.
“But only if you tell me.”
I shove my hand between her legs. She’s not wearing underwear, despite the fact that she has dozens of pairs upstairs.
What is it about the blatant challenge in her eyes that makes me want to crush her under me? Could it be that every other woman I’ve ever been with has been both docile and submissive—to the point that, even if I wasn’t paying for her affections in some way, they were all just prostitutes?
With Clover, I feel as if I have to earn her body.
Her lust.
Her complete abandon when she comes.
I have to take it from her, and she won’t let it go without a fight.
It makes me feel dirty. Uncouth. A grunting savage with no concern but my own selfish pleasure.
But if that was the case, she’d be screaming for help. She’d be crying and batting me with her fists.
Instead, she’s fixated on driving me insane as she deftly avoids my touch.
Her mouth twists away from mine, and she pumps me as her thighs clamp together.
Enough.
She wants to know what that church is doing on my land? She’ll know soon enough.
But it won’t be me telling that story.
If she understood what it meant, contacting Kane, she would never ask me again.
Kane would never be as gentle as I am with her.
I grip her chin and wrench her mouth toward mine. For a second, her lips are a hard, impervious line. But I sink my fingers between her jaws, forcing them open as I invade her mouth with the ferocity of a wild animal.
Fuck, maybe that’s exactly what she wants.
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Clover
How can someone this repressed, obsessed, fucking distressed have so much passion inside him?
I feel like a boat tossed on an angry, never ending sea as a storm whips the waves into froth.
Hunter’s lips ravage my mouth. His tongue forces its way between my teeth as if he doesn’t even think for a second I’d bite.
I’ve got his cock in my hands, but I could be squeezing his arm for all the response I’m getting.
God, it’s so fucking hard. So smooth. I want it inside me so bad I’m tempted to hitch up my dress and shove it in there myself.
But that’s not how we play this game, is it, Hunter?
Oh no.
I make you fight for it.
I’m not sure if that pisses him off or turns him on, but he turns into a fucking champion when I do.
I have never been fucked with this much intensity before in my life.
A wolf in a suit.
An animal that talks and even has a Ph.D in whatever the fuck Hunter has.
But that means nothing when it’s just me and him. He wants in, I keep him out.
It’s a fight I know I’ll lose, but that doesn’t stop me trying.
I will never stop fighting.
If Hunter doesn’t know that by now, then he’s pretty fucked.
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Hunter
Clover makes an angry sound when I finally get her legs open an inch. I shove my knee between her thighs, making sure she can’t slam shut like a prison cell.
Fabric rips under my fist.
My eyes flutter open to the ruins of her dress. The angry red marks on her shoulders and arms.
But instead of pain, or fury, I see only lust gleaming in her eyes. Her mouth parts, and I know she’s about to call my name.
Which will be my undoing.
I slap a hand over her mouth, and use the other to drag my palm over her cunt.
She’s wet and hot as the jungle in midday.
I can hardly keep myself back from sinking into her.
But something as exquisite as this creature quivering under me deserves more than a five-minute fuck on my sofa.
I want her begging me to end her suffering. I want to hold back until I can’t anymore, until I destroy her just to come.
Her back arches. Breasts still clothed in cool, silky fabric press into me.
She bites my fingers, and I pull away my hand with a hiss. I drive my mouth ag
ainst hers, distracting her as I gather my shirt. It takes me less than a second to rip the fabric over my head. I’m stare at her as she bucks and arches under me, unable to lower myself over her glorious body.
Instead, I grab the front of her dress and rip her up to me. Our mouths crash into each other, and I turn so my legs can slide off the side of the couch. She straddles me so easily it has to be instinctual, but getting her dress over her head seems to be another matter entirely.
I tug it free. A twist at the last moment traps her hands in the fabric, and I use those satin manacles to keep her hands behind her as I graze my teeth over her breasts.
Her skin is as silky and as smooth as the fabric of her dress. I lavish her nipple with teeth and tongue until she moans and arches into my mouth.
That gesture grinds her cunt against my dick.
It’s already as stiff as it’s going to get, but she’s so fucking wet all it would take is a shift of my hips to fuck her.
As if she knows, she begins sliding her hips back and forth. Dragging her cunt over me. Lubricating me.
Clover ducks her head and puts it by my ear. “Never once?” she murmurs, her lips sending a wave of shivers through me.
I groan as she drags her wet cunt over me.
“Never?”
“Fuck,” I mutter, nipping the side of her neck hard enough to leave a mark. “Never what, Clover?”
“You didn’t watch me in the shower? Not once?”
“No.” I fist my hand, keeping her hands trapped in her dress so I can grab her jaw and make her look at me. She stops grinding me, but at just the right spot because the tip of my fucking cock is right against her cunt. All I have to do is lift my hips, and I’ll be inside her. Owning her. Making her scream my name as I fuck her.
“Never?”
I’ve known for a long time that Clover isn’t just any run-of-the-mill addict. Her past forged her into brittle steel. She knows nothing about compassion, or kindness.
Or love.
Fuck, neither do I. I was never given the chance, was I? Every time I thought I could love, the devil tore that prospect away with blood-drenched claws.
I’ve seen shit no one else has. I know things no one in their right minds would want to know.
Clover knows nothing.
She thinks I’m a scientist. Maybe a good lay — but she’s had so many, I find that hard to believe.
But I’m just a scientist like Clover’s just a junkie.
We have so many fucking layers, it would take someone a lifetime to peel them all away.
Fuck it — I’m not getting any younger.
Neither is she.
If anyone deserves to be there when that last layer is peeled back, it’s her.
Chapter Eighty
Clover
Christ, this man can tease like the fucking Joker in Batman, can’t he? I’m balanced on a razor edge of sanity and pleasure. Every time I look into his eyes, I wobble.
Sanity.
Pleasure.
I can’t have both, but who the fuck would even hesitate to choose pleasure?
Sanity is for those that can afford it.
I’m poor as fuck.
After all, sanity does nothing when you’re surrounded by pain. But pleasure is pleasure, whether you’re on the spectrum or not.
Sorry, not fucking sorry.
He must know how close he is to being inside of me. Else why would be looking up at me with such zealous expectation?
This started out as a contest of some kind. He had something I wanted, and I knew what he’d take as payment.
Something I’ve been giving away since I was thirteen.
My body.
It’s not me, after all. I’m my mind—nothing more, nothing less. My body is just some vessel that sends me signals now and then.
Hot.
Cold.
Pain.
Pleasure.
Pressure…
…nothing.
That’s the extent of my body’s influence over me. I learned early on that I didn’t even need to be present all the time.
I think Buddhists do it.
Buddhists and psychopaths.
They disassociate.
Mind is no longer attached to body.
That’s what the dark taught me.
That’s what life taught me.
My body is what everyone else sees, but I’m not my body.
Not even close.
My body changes and grows while I’m stuck inside, equally slave and puppet master.
I came downstairs thinking I could tie him around my little finger.
Instead, he has me so entranced, I don’t even see the strings on my puppet body anymore.
If this was a game, he’s won.
If this was war, then he’s busy rewriting history just the way he fucking wants.
Because right now I don’t care how long he’s been watching me. I don’t care that I’ve only been part of some experiment. I don’t care that he’s part of something so demonic, I can’t even wrap my head around it.
I. Don’t. Fucking. Care.
Why? Because, right now, the shattered thing that I used to be is whole.
He glues me back together.
Even if it’s just so he can break me apart.
Chapter Eighty-One
Hunter
The day grows dark. If I wasn’t a man of science, I’d say something sinister stirs outside. But it’s just a thunderstorm.
Just a thunderstorm.
The fact that I have this goddess on my lap, spread and waiting for me to defile her has nothing to do with the weather.
Why would it?
We’re mortals, Clover and I.
Our sexual attraction would never have an effect on the weather. What we do in the privacy of this glass-walled house of mine has no bearing on the outside world.
How could it?
But our gazes lock. Our bodies meld. I can’t tell where I end and she begins. I couldn’t give less fucks, because I no longer feel the need to define myself.
Just like I never felt the need to define Clover.
I lied to myself.
To her.
She was never a test subject.
Never just a mentee.
I saw myself in her. My addiction. My pain.
Our betrayal.
I’m no anarchist. Clover’s probably never put graffiti on anything in her life.
But we both abhor authority in the same way that we both fight against its control.
Even now, neither of us will submit to the other. I mean her no harm, and she knows it. But she’s been betrayed so many times she can’t tell good from evil.
I don’t just want to cure her, I want to teach her how to trust again.
If I can’t accomplish that, then no one can.
Chapter Eighty-Two
Clover
I’m kissing Hunter.
No, he’s kissing me.
Fuck it—maybe we’re kissing each other.
Somehow, it doesn’t matter anymore. Which I can’t wrap my head around, because it always—it always— has.
There’s always an instigator.
A dom.
A sub.
The person on top.
The person below.
But right now, it doesn’t feel like we’re competing in a race.
We’re both in the same fucking canoe, and our little boat keeps spinning, because we’re rowing against each other.
Left versus right.
Up versus down.
Neither of us will submit. We can’t both dominate.
Maybe we’re just too similar and, in this world, only opposites attract.
Something we both know. Something we’re both trying to fight.
Unless I stop fighting.
Or he does.
But will he?
Or must I?
Chapter Eighty-Three
Hunter
Clover and I both stop moving.<
br />
We both stop fighting.
I have her face in my hands. She has her hands in my hair. Our mouths are less than an inch apart.
We’re both panting, and our breath paints warmth on each other’s lips.
It’s noon. We’re on some dusty, sun-drenched street in the middle of fucking nowhere. Hands hovering over our pistols. Ready to draw. Ready to decide the outcome of this duel.
I buck my hips, and she lets out a breathless “Fuck,” as I spear into her.
Her core clings to me, refusing to let me ease out. She fists her hands, sending a spark of pain through my scalp.
I grab her throat in one hand, slide the other between our bodies. We watch each other like soldiers across No-man's-land as I stroke her clit with my thumb. She rocks into me with her hips, driving my cock even deeper inside her.
A groan escapes me, in spite of how hard I’m clenching I’m jaw.
I grab her hip, forcing her to ride me again as I squeeze her throat.
Fury sparks in her eyes, but instead of wriggling free she grinds herself harder against me. Her cunt—scorching and wet—coats me with her arousal.
Her breath is coming as hot and fast as mine. Lips open, beckoning my mouth like a flower beckons a bee.
I sit forward, crushing my mouth against hers as I thrust so deep into her that her entire body stiffens in response.
Spreading my legs, I force her thighs further apart. I swipe fingers over her clit until she bucks into me, and then slide my fingers around her ass, gliding fingertips along the seam where we meet.
I’m barely moving now. She’s pinned on my cock like a witch to a stake, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I feel her undulating over my dick as her body responds—either willingly or not—to my invasive presence.
She stretches so deliciously tight around me that I can barely pull out the inch I need to ram back inside her.
Our lips come apart, and she gasps, “Hunter,” into my ear.
That sound unhinges something in my brain.