Into His Keeping

by Faulkner, Gail

  Holdin stared intently into her face and gritted his teeth. She apparently had no idea how she moved him with these glimpses into her soul. How painful it was for him that she’d had to fight so many battles alone. “Baby girl, I’m all for you getting damp,” he told her softly, hoping his response hid the flash of pain and fierce possessive rage her statement had triggered in him.

  Jill managed to blush and look totally wanton at that. “Oh damp is not a problem.” Her hips slowly flexed into his cock, rubbing up his fly. “But I was hoping you’d do something for me,” she added in a husky whisper.

  “What?”

  “Take your shirt off.” Her fingers curled into claws as she drew them down his shoulders and over his pectorals.

  His grin turned wolfish. “Anything you want. But you have to lie still. Got it?”

  He pulled the T-shirt up over his head and dropped it beside the couch. Jill could only moan her agreement with his demand as her hands landed on his hard chest.

  He remained still as she explored him, but only for a minute. A pelt of golden hair lay over amazing ridges and valleys that were male muscle and tendons. He’d been perfect as a young man. Now he was ripped. She’d had no idea how primitive that term was until now. Saying something like he was built or muscled was too tame for this body. Power moved beneath his skin and there was nothing civilized about it.

  Jill had almost forgotten her own exposed chest but Holdin hadn’t as he leaned down to nuzzle the fragrant valley between her breasts.

  His mouth moved over her in lazy licks that had Jill humming with sensations. Warm, sensual embers of constrained passion burst into flame with each touch. He kept the touches tender as he moved across her.

  His hands molded her rib cage and slid down to the snap of her jeans. Pleasure burned her with his every touch. More than physical, it enveloped her mind with a heat that had been burning a long time. This was Holdin. Past and present melted together as he took what had always been his. Even when she hadn’t known it, her body had been his. Waiting for him, needing him, needing this. Nothing had ever been more right than this.

  She wouldn’t have cared if she’d felt the snap of her pants give and the zipper slowly slide down. But she didn’t. All her attention was consumed in the lick of his clever tongue over her sensitive nipples until suddenly a large, warm hand spanned her lower abdomen and hard fingers strummed back and forth over velvety skin.

  Her legs slowly fell off his hips to extend down on either side of him. “Ohhhh,” Jill moaned.

  “Mmmm” was his agreeing noise as he sucked a nipple into the hot cavern of his mouth. Her hips tilted and his hand smoothly slid down to comb his fingers through the soft curls guarding her mound. At the top of her damp slit, he stopped to gently finger the sensitive crevice opening. Circling the spot she wanted him to touch.

  Jill’s hands fisted in Holdin’s hair. She’d not even realized she was cradling his head to her breast. “More.” Her moan was a demand.

  Holdin’s teeth clamped around her nipple in a small punishment and her fingers relaxed in his hair. A growl of approval rumbled around them and he was again sucking her abused flesh gently. Between her legs, slick fingers sank inside the folds she offered him. He still hadn’t touched her clit and the tension singing up her belly was a trembling combination of excitement and frustration.

  He sawed those fingers up and down, separating plump folds but not increasing the stimulation, carefully not touching the swollen bundle of nerves that would give her the push she needed to reach the next level.

  “Head still,” Holdin murmured as her mews increased.

  “Yess…but I need more,” Jill hissed back at him.

  “I know what you need, Jilly-girl. Do you know what I need?”

  “Tell me,” she pleaded as her body moved on his hand.

  “Your trust. That’s all I ask. Give it to me.” The deep bass of his voice drowned her as she sank into consuming sensations. It was difficult to make sense of that one.

  “Holdin. I don’t know what you’re asking. What you want me to do?” Jill groaned in confusion. “Just tell me what you want.”

  Funny thing was, Holdin wasn’t sure he knew what he wanted from her. Anything he told her to do would be worthless as proof she trusted him. She had to want to on her own. He needed her tied to him emotionally, physically, any way he could get her. Getting her back to the hospital was important. Not losing her to the prick with a stethoscope, imperative. Sealing his claim on her with her surrender was a primitive drive he had almost no control over.

  His hand left the liquid heat between her legs and Jill opened her mouth to protest but let it out in a sigh of relief when he gripped her jeans and panties together and pulled them down her legs. He had to stand to slide her shoes and pull the clothing off. Already at her feet, he knelt on the sofa between them and, holding the leg on the edge of the couch, started kissing and nipping his way up it.

  As he moved, he was spreading her wide, bending her knee and exposing her private flesh in the relatively bright office. He couldn’t miss the changes of time on her lower belly, thighs and hips and she almost didn’t even care anymore.

  His maddening mouth moved over her inner thigh in stinging little bites that were injections of fire to already sensitized nerve endings. He was trying to drive her crazy. She knew it and loved it even more than she had in the past. Now, in this moment, as he finally licked the fold between thigh and cunt, she realized how unbearably erotic it was to know he would drive her nuts and control her in the same moment.

  Just as he controlled his own strength, he mastered her need. A massive, powerful animal, he was careful not to mark her. With each touch she felt the tension in him and as it built, he became a lightning rod of concentrated energy. His control of that deadly need within himself drove her higher. It manifested in her as a euphoric rush. She was in the embrace of a feral beast and safer than she’d ever been before.

  His tongue circled in the cream melting from her body. He licked it in as if it were his due, and it was. Then his wicked muscle invaded her and his lips sealed around her to suck hard. Jill bit her lip to stop the scream. Her hands fisted beside her on the sofa. He was eating her taste as carnally as it could be done. His hands held her thighs open with barely contained savagery and he was sating his taste for her. Her eyes closed and she panted, though from her shoulders up, nothing moved. Humming growls vibrated deep into her womb as Holdin took her intimate flavor and made it his possession.

  Her thighs trembled under his hands and he knew she was close. But he wasn’t about to cut this short. His head lifted as his hands moved to frame his prize. Pink and swollen, he marveled as his thumbs gently pulled her outer folds back to bare her to him. It was more than looking at the perfection of the female sex. This was Jill. She lay beneath him swollen and dripping and she was his. All his. Her distended clit told him how much she needed and he suspected she might be close to knowing how badly he needed this from her.

  His hunger for her always had been more than sexual. The relationship between them had been more. It was more now. It made him and destroyed him. He’d taken it for granted once in the ignorance of youth. Not that he’d been lazy about it, but it had never occurred to him that this woman could be taken from him. This time he could see the thief at the door waiting to snatch her from him again. He’d thought it would have been better to know it was coming but he’d been wrong. Knowing was hell.

  This could not be taken from them. Nothing could change this. His mouth lowered to drink her. He needed this moment more than he needed breath. To feel her fly for him. Only for him.

  “Come for me, Jilly-girl,” Holdin commanded.

  His tongue flattened over her opening and slowly licked up to land on her clit. Then he took it into his mouth and gave her what she needed. Sucking gently at first, he absorbed her shocked jerk as her hips thrust up. His hands came up under her ass to hold her to him, he worked her most sensitive spot with concentrated in
tensity and she flew for him.

  Jill’s body suddenly combusted as flames shot up her body and exploded. It had been so long and she couldn’t hold on. His wicked mouth took more as she gasped through the explosion. He sucked her clit in and rolled it gently then holding it between his lips, he lashed it with his tongue in hard, fast strokes that drove her into oblivion.

  He didn’t stop as she writhed beneath his mouth. Fully engorged, her contracting pussy only became more sensitive as every touch dragged her along the razor edge between pleasure and pain. She crashed into a second orgasm before the first had let her go and she couldn’t hold back a low scream. Her hands clawed at his shoulders and he ignored them.

  Gasping for air, Jill tried to shove him away. Her hands were ineffectual and his tongue a demanding beast that had made it clear he was not done with her. Her legs clenched around him, wrapping around his head and trying to arch her hips away from him. He held her in a vise grip and there was nothing she could do. She gave up and let her legs fall open as widely as possible while her body trembled once more in the fires he created for her. Release could only drag mewing moans out of her and then two fingers entered her in a hard thrust. He stretched her in a demanding invasion that shocked and drove her as nothing had before.

  The finger-fuck was so dominant. He took her response, manipulating her while she knew he was not feeling a corresponding stimulation. His awareness of her reactions was unbelievably animal as his mouth worked her clit. He snarled and moved with her, never letting that screaming spot out from under his tongue. She rocketed into that place only Holdin could take her. Each hard thrust into intimate folds forced her pleasure to staggering peaks. Her body gushed and clenched, taking him greedily. Hot shots of sensation speared through her with each deep penetration and yet she knew it would soon be more. He always took more than she thought she could give. His snarling excitement vibrated up her and Jill doubted she could stand it.

  Holdin felt her surrender and growled into the heat of the cunt he owned. She may not have realized this surrender was to the primitive male who’d claimed her once before and never given up his position on her. That bastard had hunted her, driven him to become who he was for her. Now he had her back and no power would take her again. Well, that’s why the bastard was primitive. He fucking didn’t care what else occurred as long as he had Jill.

  Reluctantly he let her spiral down. His fingers remained buried deep in her tight pussy as he licked around them, lapping up her taste greedily. He moved them lazily in and out and she clenched weakly every time he did. Watching for a moment, he smiled. Yes, this was his.

  Finally his eyes traveled up her body. Over a trembling belly, tracking the mounds of her exposed breasts still half captured in the severe bra, to her face. He pulled himself up so he sat with one of her legs draped over his thighs, the other behind his shoulders on the back of the sofa and drank in the sight of her sprawled open to him. His fingers still moved in her and he enjoyed the slow fuck.

  Her eyes half opened, sensing him looking at her.

  “Roll your nipples for me, Jilly-girl,” Holdin directed as he continued to slide his fingers in and out of her.

  She tensed as her eyes focused on him, slowly surfacing from the fog of release and becoming aware of his view and his command. He was breathing heavily as his eyes moved over her, his jaw clenched and sweat glistened on his wide, bare chest. The damp evidence of her passion covered his face. His continued invasion of her body was gentle but insistent as was his hold on her leg across his thighs. She’d tensed and his grip tightened warningly. She was to remain as she was. No words were required, just the savage look on his face to tell her that.

  Now the low-timbre command was pushing her. Taking her. He wanted her compliance and it had very little to do with sex. He was taking possession of her body. Her response to his command was overwhelming and immediately clear to him. His fingers deep inside her felt her body shudder and then liquid acceptance gushed around those digits.

  He didn’t smile. He bared his teeth and hissed as her fingers moved to the sensitive peaks of her breasts and slowly rolled them for him. Even though the act was surrender, sensation zipped straight down to her womb and shook her with little tremors. Jill’s mouth opened in a silent gasp at the intensity of her response. Her body arched into his fingers and she reveled in the surrender he required. Everything else fell away and there was only this man in her world. He burned through her with his elemental control of her base responses.

  A wicked cord of fear whipped up her body as he looked at her. It wasn’t bitter. It was sweet seduction. He would have her as he wanted her. She knew he would. He’d make sure she loved his possession too. For this man it would be almost effortless. The fact that he understood the power he wielded was overwhelming. But not as frightening as the sure knowledge that he also knew how badly she needed it from him.

  Suddenly there were three fingers in her and he was fucking her with them in hard thrusts.

  Her hips lifted helplessly and her fingers pinched engorged nipples hard, pulling her breasts up to send drugging spikes of pain into the enveloping pleasure of submitting to Holdin. Looking into his eyes, Jill felt the whirlwind coming. His consuming need coupled with her desperate desire created such an overwhelming vortex of emotion and sensation. The power of it washed over her body with a roaring intensity that she couldn’t control, couldn’t resist.

  “Help me,” she gasped in panic. Fear and surrender crashed together and the storm of this moment was about to carry her away.

  He heard it in her plea, saw it in her trembling body and immediately he was over her, the weight of his body holding her to the sofa as his other arm wrapped around her head and held her cheek pressed to his. The fingers in her cunt thrust into her with greater force and she gave herself into his keeping. The release erupted in what would have been uncontrollable abandon as she flew into the universe. He took her there and protected her from the power of it at the same time.

  His low voice in her ear drove her higher and gave her an anchor to cling to. “That’s my girl. Yes, let it go. So beautiful, baby girl.” She convulsed repeatedly and he held her still. The world spun away and he guarded her soul with his body. His rigid control released her to abandonment and she was safe.

  The full-body contractions finally began to quiet and his fingers in her slowed to gentle caresses as reality crept back into the room. Jill lay panting beneath him, afraid to open her eyes. The overwhelming pleasure she’d just experienced was as frightening as it was wonderful. It’d been about them, Jill and Holdin, in the most elemental way possible. Her pleasure had only been complete when she’d been willing to surrender even her life into his keeping.

  Jill was still trembling as Holdin pulled his drenched fingers from her body. His cheek was damp with her tears as he turned to gently kiss them away. “Don’t cry, baby,” he crooned softly. “Don’t be sorry this is who we are.”

  He was kissing her face with tender desperation as Jill opened her eyes to gaze at him in glazed amazement.

  “Doesn’t this scare you? Do you know what you did to me?” He’d shattered her and held her together in ways she couldn’t even put words to. Her release had been as bound up in the symbolism of surrendering to him as it was about the sensations.

  “I know what we just did and no, it doesn’t scare me. What scares me is that you don’t trust me now,” he told her softly. “That is how we are. Tears on your face terrify me.”

  He knew she’d been completely his. Once again he’d held his Jill and given her everything he could. But now he needed to hear her say it, acknowledge that unique merging of souls that only she and he could achieve.

  Jill closed her eyes again and tried to let their embrace calm her. He held her tenderly and again rested his cheek beside hers.

  “Tell me why you’re so afraid, Jilly-girl. You trusted me for a moment and then it was gone. What happened?”

  “Reality happened.” Jill dragged in a de
ep breath. “The past, the future, all of it. I’m afraid of going to a hospital again. Cutting into my brain is just piling on the terror factor. I’m so worried about Drifter and so afraid I can’t help him deal with this. He’s such a little man. He doesn’t show me his fears anymore. He’s too busy trying to protect me. Oh God, Holdin. Everything! I have to take care of everything and it’s so much harder to remember that when you show me how it feels to…to not worry about anything.” Jill turned her head into his neck as tears flowed again.

  “Shhhhh. No, baby, no. Don’t cry. Honey, how about you let me worry about a few more things for both of us? I’m trying to get you to see that you can do that. I’m the one you can lean on. I’ll take care of you. I’ll take care of our son. Your only job is to get through the surgery. That’s it. Everything else is mine to worry about. Let me have it, Jill. Give me your trust.”

  Jill shuddered beneath him and the tears stopped flowing. He couldn’t see her face but he didn’t need to. Her body was tense. She was thinking about it but not really getting what he meant. She was withdrawing the gift of her soul. Somehow she couldn’t take that step in the cold light of logic.