Steal Me

by Riley Rollins

  I never saw the warm sopping cloth travel down my belly. My only awareness was the look in his eyes and the feeling of his hand as it travelled the length of my body. When it reached my naked center he pressed the cloth against me, lightly at first and then harder so the water ran warm over me and into me, penetrating me as his black eyes did the same. He held my eyes, heating my body with his look while he dried me, the thin towel a fragile barrier between his hard fingers and my tender folds.

  “My name is Abby,” I said softly, my breath catching, suddenly wanting nothing more than to reach up and pull this dangerous man even closer.

  “The pleasure is all mine, Abby,” he said deep in his chest as his fingers lingered and then moved away from me. “My name is Dane.” A long moment passed as we held each other’s eyes. Then the fire between us somehow shifted, almost imperceptibly. He took a deep breath and dragged his eyes from mine.

  “You’re not badly hurt, but you’re exhausted,” his voice not so gentle as before. “You’ll have your strength back by tomorrow, but now what you need most is sleep.” He pulled my blanket back up over my hips, my breasts.

  This was a man who could have done anything. He could have raped me but he was taking care of me, encouraging me to sleep. He’d hunted and cooked for me. He’d held me in his arms to feed me and let me drink. I’d seen him kill, but he had not killed me. He had saved me. My thoughts spun in circles. The sheer intensity he exuded was the only thing this man seemed to have in common with the brutal killer of last night.

  Dane stood up still watching me, towering over me. His tight shirt revealed a hard broad chest of muscle. His eyes locked mine and I knew why I was not yet dead. He wanted me. And in spite of the confusion and fear I felt, I knew I wanted him too.

  But everything I’d been through in the last few days was catching up with me and all my thoughts gave way to weariness. The bath and the food in my belly were working like a sedative. My eyelids fluttered and the starry sky above us started a lazy spin as he laid down gently next to me and pulled me, still wrapped in my blanket, against his chest.

  “You’re sleeping with me…?” I asked in a fading voice, melting into exhaustion and the warmth of his touch.

  “I don’t want to freeze to death,” he said dryly. “Go to sleep.”

  But as I sank down, surrendering, thoughts rose up from a deeper place. He’d taken care of me and I could feel his desire, but I was still the only witness to the murder he’d committed. Would he have told me his name if he ever intended to let me leave this place alive?

  3

  Dane

  Truth was I had no idea what the fuck I was going to do with this girl. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to strip that blanket off her again and finish what I’d started.

  I imagined her underneath me straining those luscious breasts against my chest, her delicate ankles wrapped around my hips, moaning my name until everything she’d seen and everything she’d been through in the last few days was burned from her memory. Everything except for me and what I was doing to her. Bathing her had nearly killed me and I was fucking hard to kill. Shit, I was fucking hard. I had been since I’d first laid eyes on her. She was blonde with enormous blue eyes framed with thick long lashes. Her body was thin, almost waif like although she seemed about average height for a woman. Her breasts were round and so fucking ripe, far too full for such a delicate body. Even with everything she’d been through, she responded to my touch and I could see in her eyes that she needed me to fuck her into mindlessness. The memory of washing her made my cock ache...

  I’d intended to spend a few weeks out here, living off the land and coming down from the kill I’d just made. I’d anticipated that hit for so long that I needed time to let the adrenaline in my body subside. It was always like that. I made the kill, informed Lazar it was done and retreated. Fucking Cutter went in to clean things up and take care of the body. It was the routine and it meant something to me.

  What I had not planned on was her. I sure as hell never expected I’d leave a witness alive, let alone take one with me. But there was something about her, a strength under the fear. Fuck, I’d seen experienced men who’d gone through less than she had and been broken by it.

  Abby moved against me, still asleep and pulling at the blanket, “no…you won’t…I won’t let y…”

  “Easy girl, take it easy. Sleep for now,” I said, unwrapping the tangled blanket from her naked body and covering us both. I pulled her head to my chest and stroked her silken hair. In the moonlight its color had changed from blond to the color of rose gold. Even through my pullover I could feel the weight of her tits pushed into me, those fucking hot nipples hardening as they brushed against me. My cock was straining against my jeans, throbbing to push its way into hot, wet oblivion. If I was half the sick fuck Arseny was I’d have done just that. But she needed to recover, if I was going to let her live. And if I was going to fuck her the way I needed to, I wanted her strong and willing. I like a girl who can hold her own in bed.

  Since I likely wouldn’t be sleeping any time soon, my thoughts turned to the problem at hand. The kill was done, but I hadn’t reported back to Lazar yet and that would soon be a problem. I needed to get far enough out of the wilderness to regain cell coverage and tell him…tell him what? Bad enough there’d been a witness and worse still I hadn’t just put a bullet in her and let Cutter deal with them both. But she was the only innocent in all this fucking shit and didn’t deserve to die. I’d never killed a woman and I sure as fuck did not want to start with this one.

  But I also intended to keep my job. Allowing her to live made that fucking near impossible. I knew I should finish her and just leave the body. We were a good four hours away from the nearest small town and in thick, mountainous woods. Several miles from an unused dirt road to get in this far, no one else much bothered. Weekend hikers and campers stuck with the more civilized state park lands. It would be years before she was found here, if she ever was. I’d continue as the right hand man of Lazar Petrescu, the boss of our branch of the Romanian crime family working out of Chicago and there’d be no one to know she’d ever been an issue…

  The moon had long worked its way across the night sky when she woke from what sounded like a horrifying dream.

  “You’re here, you’re still with me,” she whispered hoarsely.

  “I’m here. It’s the small hours of the morning yet. You should sleep again if you can.”

  “I dreamed about that bastard, that he’d raped me and was going to kill me…” She spoke the words into my chest. I could feel her lips moving against me and my body tightened in response.

  “He’s dead Abby, and by now nothing of him even exists anymore. He’ll never hurt you or any girl again. I have you now.”

  “Don’t let go of me tonight?” she whispered softly into my neck.

  “No Abby, I will not let you go.”

  She pressed the length of her naked body against my fully clothed one and fell back to sleep while my hard cock pounded its heartbeat in between our bodies. I stared up through the treetops into the night sky for long hours before dawn broke.

  4

  Abby

  I awoke to the delicious smell of something roasting. Dane was tending it on the fire, sitting on his haunches, his back to me. For the first time in as long as I could remember, my head was clear and there wasn’t any pain. Sensible would have been to try to make a run for it, but as I was still very naked and had no idea where I was…

  “Good afternoon,” he said, turning his head to the side, not even needing to look to know I was awake. “The fish is done and there are some berries to go with. We’re lucky, the season isn’t quite over yet.” He stood and turned to look down at me, “You slept deeply. How do you feel?”

  “Much better than…well…than in days.”

  “Good.” His eyes lingered on me and my heart beat faster. “There are clothes for you in there,” he said, indicating a small knapsack next to the trunk of the tree
we’d slept under. “And a few other things you might need. I’m going to get more water,” he said, turning his back and picking up a bucket.

  Ordinary conversation like we were just a couple out camping, not a killer and his hostage. But was I a hostage? That’s not how I felt last night in his arms, with his hands gently roaming my naked body. Still, I was hardly free to leave.

  Now, in daylight I could see he was walking toward a stream about a dozen yards away. One with fish it would seem. There was something primal about him, this rugged outdoorsman. He could hunt and fish like he belonged out here. Yet I’d seen another side of him too, something dark and brutal. I couldn’t seem to fit the pieces together.

  Those same hands had fed me, washed me and been so gentle, so arousing. The memories of the night before flooded back and I felt myself growing warm and wet. The sight of him, all long legs and narrow hips made me want him on the ground with me again…

  I shook my head and took a deep breath, trying to shake off the confusion of feelings I had toward this man. I was a good girl from Nebraska. I’d never even slept with a man before. Nothing very exciting had ever happened in my life…until a few days ago. I’d grown up on a small horse farm and moved out on my own only a few months ago. I was studying art history and working part time. Then I’d been stolen off the street walking to work from a late class and my whole world had changed in an instant. My life was in terrible danger and I was attracted to a killer. I couldn’t trust anything I was feeling. This was all too screwed up.

  With shaky hands, I reached for the knapsack and pulled out a pair of black sweats and a thin white tee with long sleeves and hastily put them on. Obviously his, I swam in them, but managed to roll the waist and sleeves until they stayed put. I found a hairbrush at the bottom of the bag and worked to smooth thick, tangled hair that normally fell in soft waves down my back.

  The movement helped work out the stiffness in my body. It was the first normal thing I’d done in damn near forever and it felt good. My stomach rumbled, growling at its emptiness. Leaves rustled and I turned to see him, still and watching me, bucket in hand. His eyes slid from mine down to the thin white shirt I wore, hardly concealing full breasts and traitorously stiffening nipples. Why could my body feel his eyes like a touch?

  “You look damn near as good clothed as you do naked, girl,” he said softly, his black gaze boring through me and the shirt. He looked back to my eyes and swallowed. “Are you hungry? You must be. Can you eat something?”

  “Oh please, I’m starving. What is that cooking?” I asked, stepping closer to the campfire.

  “Brown trout,” he said, kneeling down to the fire and pulling crisp steaming chunks from a wooden skewer. “It’s plentiful out here.” He sat down easily in one movement, handing me a tin plate with fish and a handful of berries. I took it and sat with the fire between us.

  “And you just happen to know how to pluck a fish from the river with your bare hands?” I asked. I ate faster than I should have, the delicate flesh too hot against my lips.

  “Something like that,” he said, watching me intently as I ate. Tiny flames from the campfire reflected in the dark pools of his eyes, as if the fire was burning from the inside. “I can do a great many things with my hands…”

  I remembered them on my breasts, sliding, moving, soapy… I watched him roll a red berry in his fingertips before putting it in his mouth. His lips were full, his mouth wide and generous…his movements deliberate and tantalizingly slow.

  “My grandfather was Rom,” he said. “My dad died when I was very young. We still lived in the old country then and my grandfather raised me along with my mother. He taught me how to live as a part of the land and I learned well.” He swallowed from his cup and passed it to me.

  “The old country?” I asked, noticing again the slight hint of accent in his voice that I couldn’t quite place.

  “Romania. My mother brought me here when I was about ten. My father was an American and she wanted me to know where he’d grown up.”

  “You…that man that you…killed. What…why were you there? Why did you kill him?” It came out in a flurry. But he was talking to me now, opening up, and I jumped at the chance he’d tell me more. I had to make some kind of sense of this man. Right now, he was all I had.

  “I killed him because he needed to be killed. That’s what I do.” He paused, considering his next words and running a big hand along his jaw. “Arseny worked for the same organization I do. He’d been stealing from us for a while. Money and goods are one thing, but that stupid fuck had developed a bad habit of stealing innocent girls off the street. It’s what he did with you. He’d take his twisted time breaking them, training them to eventually work as whores in his kennel, as he called it.” His eyes darkened. “My people don’t go in for that fucking shit.”

  Organization, money, goods he’d said. Mafia is what he means. I’m in the middle of nowhere at the mercy of a mafia hitman. It took a long moment for my chest to relax, for the next breath to come… I worked trying to pull myself together. I was still alive and this man had saved me from a future I couldn’t even imagine.

  I locked eyes with him. “You took me and you brought me here.” It came out more of a challenge than I’d intended.

  “Would you have preferred to be left where you were?” he asked dryly, lifting only his black eyes to look up at me, dropping then to linger on my mouth.

  “No…no I wouldn’t,” I said quietly with a shudder at the memory of Arseny, alive and then dead. This man hadn’t killed me but I was clearly still in a great deal of danger. He was both the reason I was still alive and the greatest threat I faced. I saw how he looked at me and felt the strength of my own reaction. Perhaps the responsiveness of my own body was the greatest threat of all. I couldn’t take my eyes off his face, his lips. What if he could tell…?

  I flashed to a self defense class I’d taken last summer. Talk to your attacker, the instructor had said. Let him see you as a human being and he’s more likely to let you go…

  “I have a family back in Nebraska and I want to go home. I’m a student and I waitress in the evenings. I have a life and friends and I want to go home...and I don’t want to die out here…”

  “I can think of far better things to do to you than that Abby. And so can you,” he said, the words a soothing rumble that stopped me in an instant. He stood, reaching down to pull me to my feet beside him. He wrapped his arms around me and held me, my cheek against rock hard pecs. I felt weak with desire, to feel his lips on mine. I knew it was crazy for my body to respond to this dangerous man, but every time he put his hands on me…

  He lifted my face to his with one large hand, his fingertips curving into the delicate hollow under my ear. His thumb pulled at my tender bottom lip and stroked it slowly side to side. Pushing and pulling its fullness until everything inside me went hot and wet and I trembled inside as he began to speak.

  “You want my hands on you again and this time you want me to show you everything I can make you feel,” he whispered into my ear, still holding my head in his hand. His lips brushed my earlobe and my knees went weak. “You’re very beautiful Abby and your body tells me it wants to learn what I have to teach.” He brushed his full lower lip against mine and bit gently. “You have a body that aches to be used for your pleasure…and for mine. You want to know how I’ll touch you, what it feels like when I push my fingers into your tight velvet pussy and stroke you until you come in my hand. You want me to fuck you Abby and you want me to fuck you deep. I can see it in your eyes.” Pushing my thin shirt out of his way, his lips trailed a hot line from my neck to my breast. I was swollen with need by now and even his large hand couldn’t encircle all of my tit. He lifted its weight, squeezing until the hard rosy nipple was thrust forward. That full sensuous mouth moved far too slowly…down, until finally he pulled my nipple into his mouth, swirling circles with his tongue.

  “Oh god, Dane. Yes, oh god...yes.” The intensity of the last few days coalesced
into pure hot desire. “I want you to touch me… I need your hands and your mouth and…and…” I put my fingers through his thick jet hair holding his head to me.

  He pushed my breasts together with his huge, hard hands. Holding them tight and dipping his head low he took both nipples at once into his mouth. It was almost more sensation than I could endure. He sucked me then, licking and teasing me inside his mouth. My body and all rational thought were consumed by what this man made me feel.

  His hands moved down from my breasts, holding me beneath them, spanning my ribs. It was only his mouth holding my breasts together then, the hard suction pulling my nipples long, stretching them… They lingered in his mouth for a moment more and then sprang free. The suddenness was a shock of sensation as they bounced apart, the hard wet buds going from hot mouth to cold air. His black eyes burned up into mine and I knew he could do anything to me. And I needed him to.

  “I want you,” he said deliberately, straightening to his full height to tower over me. His eyes held mine hostage, watching my response to his words. “I want you on your knees. Now.”

  His hands moved to the waist of my too-large pants and slipped them down. I stood in only his tee shirt, bunched up and resting atop swollen breasts that pushed wantonly out from underneath. I felt more naked than when he’d bathed me the night before and my heart was pounding its rhythm between my legs.

  I knew this moment might decide my future as I watched his face. If I did what he told me to, was it hopeless surrender? He could fuck me and then kill me, and I’d have helped to choose the path. But what if I stood up to him, if I ran or resisted...