It would have been fine too, just peachy, except when she opened the door, he was waiting for her, his top half totally bare.
He barked when she halted, “Why did you not retrieve a bucket of snow?”
River just stared, forcing herself to only look at his eyes, acting just as stupidly as he had only twenty minutes prior.
Annoyed, he reached past her to grab the empty bucket. Even stepping into the frigid night to fill it and stomp back inside while she crushed herself to the doorframe to stay out of the way.
The beast disappeared back into the bathroom to bathe accumulated sweat away with the powder, leaving River to clean up all the snow she’d let blow into the house.
When it was done, she went to her chair and felt her back begin to ache again. Darting glances to the still vacant couch, frustrated and vengeful toward the jerk who’d put her in a constant state of tension, she slipped from the recliner and reclaimed her bed.
He didn’t want pity? Well, his ass could sleep on the floor.
The cushions didn’t smell right, or the pillow. They smelled of a man with more physical definition than a Greek god and the personality of mud... mud with very pretty lips she had kissed because she was foolish enough to rise to a taunt.
Mud that threatened subtly and often to murder her.
Mud that was coming back into the room, grunting to see her in the sleeping place of honor.
Eyes still closed, speaking into the pillow, River grumbled, “If you think I am moving from this couch after you fixed my back, you’re stupider than you look.”
Stephen settled on the rug. “Your contrary behavior is predictable, ascertaining the pattern was simple.”
Turning her head so she might grin down at the man, River cooed, ready to make him as uncomfortable as he made her, “Disappointed I didn’t swoon like the maiden in the book?”
Arm behind his head, he replied to the ceiling, “I heard you outside.”
He wasn’t supposed to have answered that way. “Yeah, well I heard you inside.”
Those odd, pale eyes darted right to hers. “You enjoyed it, knowing I imagined fucking you, just as I enjoyed knowing you were listening.”
River was not sure what shocked her more, the bluntness of his declaration or the fact the oversized cretin had used foul language. “You... you can’t say things like that.”
She could not look him in the eye. In fact, it was the first time the female had demurred. To make his point and seal his victory, Stephen affirmed, “I can.”
Chapter 5
River woke cautious, the same way condemned men, those who had begun to comprehend the new darkness they lived in, woke. It was that in-between place of disbelief—that place where things could not possibly be as they seemed—where one thought memory was all some grand ruse.
Stephen almost imagined she could smell her fate in the air… or maybe she could hear it now that the wind had died down.
When River uncurled from the ball she’d slept in, back cracking as the female groaned, she too seemed to notice a palpable change. Wiping the back of her hand under her nose, she looked to Stephen… utterly confused.
“What are you looking at?”
He’d waited. He’d watched for hours, as the woman slept far too much. “I’m looking at you.”
Something buzzed far more than his general nearness, and River was determined to unsettle things back to their grating status quo. She purred at him, eager to earn his irritation, “Planning to finally thank me?”
“Yes.”
These new, uncustomary answers were setting her off-balance, altering what had been days’ long tension to replace it with uneasy familiarity. “Then get to it, you ungrateful dick.”
Something was going on in that mind of his. “You saved my life.”
“I did.”
“You dragged me up a mountain.”
“That too,” River confirmed.
“And treated my wounds, my illness. You fed me.”
“You brought in wood. You cooked. You’ve carried your reasonable share of the burden.”
“You won’t last in this world, River.”
And suddenly it all seemed far more funny than supernatural. She glowed, her smile one-hundred percent genuine. “Between the two of us, Prince Charming, you are the one who is hopelessly doomed. But there is something about you, so I’m going to give you a hint.” The shine of obsidian eyes dimmed. Her smile wavered. “There’s a lot more to the world than what you know. Seek things that make you uncomfortable, that challenge you, and you’ll see I’m right.”
All through her lesson, Stephen’s eyes had grown fiercer. She was the one who needed to learn. “You need to put a lock on your door. Men are dangerous!”
Something else was going on. River cocked her head, asking, “What of women?”
“There is no other woman I know more dangerous to me than you.”
“Why?” She shook her head, disappointed but unsure why. River stood, went to the well-worn maps and guides, pulling them from the shelf to throw at the titan’s feet. “Leave. Get out. The storm is breaking.” She pulled blankets from the sofa, tribal blankets her grandmother had woven. “Wrap in these and go.”
“Have you no compass?”
Stalking toward another shelf, River dug through some accumulated junk. An instant later, she pitched black plastic toward her guest. He caught it so fast, so flawlessly, she faltered. The way he stared, how he didn’t get angry, only inspired more rage. Reaching into a carved wooden box, she pulled out a wad of small bills and threw those at his feet, tossing it in a way the bastard could not catch it with all his skills for quickness, could not do anything but watch currency scatter and flutter down.
River went nearer the door, pulling on her jacket, grabbing her pack and rifle, and reaching for snow shoes.
“It is painfully obvious you flee this dwelling every time you grow uneasy. ‘Seek things that make you uncomfortable, that challenge you, and you’ll see I’m right’.”
“Throwing my words in my face? That’s the best you got? Come on, stranger, I prefer your ignorant ravings and silly assumptions.” She didn’t even look to see what his response might be. The door shut, River explaining herself through the wood for reasons she couldn’t quite grasp, “I’m out of fresh meat and we’re not the only animals on this mountain that have been trapped in their dens, eager for a break in the weather.”
When she returned, having used up all the short daylight gathering more rabbits than one woman could eat, she was hardly through the door before Stephen was on her. The rifle was ripped away, slid out of reach, her snow laden jacket pulled off flailing limbs so quick she hardly knew what hit her. Hand to her throat, he pressed her back against the shutting door, his arm long enough River could do little more than hiss and thrash, unable to reach the man with clawing fingers.
He growled, “Do you understand now?” He wasn’t hurting her, not really, but there was no way she could move from his control. He seemed so level, so unaffected by the fact he had her life in his hands. “Men are dangerous. Do not pull them from lakes.”
Swallowing under the constriction, River tried not to let her eyes water. “I get it. You wanted to die. Because you’re terrified, and you’re in pain.”
His voice almost broke. Not in tears, or in pain, but in utter puzzlement. “Why do you refuse to learn?”
River countered, “Why are you still here? You think I don’t know that you’ve studied the trail guides, my maps? I spent hours in a bathroom colder than a witch’s tit so you could find your way. LEAVE!”
Stephen dragged her to the fire, ignoring the dead rabbits she dropped, ignoring that she was practically chewing on his wrist. Atop the rug, he forced her down, pinning her hips and watching until she grasped what was coming.
Patting his chest, trying to signal he was too close, River stammered, “Just cook the rabbit.”
Stephen shifted his knee to settle it between the woman’s legs, so he might c
ontinue to look down at her. She seemed uncomfortable. Her positioning was fixed with one sharp yank on her thigh, a tug that brought her prostrated fully underneath his crouch.
In the last days, the man had hardly touched her, had always kept an almost laughable distance, and now he was hauling her around. River was not happy about it. “You’re making me very nervous...”
He’d read the entirety of the terrible romance while she’d slept. He’d studied. “Why? Is this not the way the woman was handled in that book?”
Oh dear god, he was actually teasing her... “It’s just a book.”
The man smirked. “You claimed that was the desire of lonely women.”
Her brows drew down, offense obvious in her voice. “I said no such thing, and I am not a lonely woman!”
Agitated, Stephen growled, “If the book was incorrect, then tell me the custom for initiating.”
“Initiating?” River repeated the word slowly, seeing the man was staring at her mouth again. “You’re holding me down.”
Blue eyes snapped up, met hers, and were far too intimidating. “I would not force you.”
Then why had he dragged her to the fire? “You forced me here.”
Not knowing the proper words when propositioning a female, he said, “I see no more point in playing games when you know I want to touch you and you want to be touched.”
He was so blunt, even River was not sure what to say.
“And I want to see your body,” Stephen added, carefully noting the minutia of her reactions so he might continue in the correct direction. “I want to feel your mouth again. When you are naked, and I am hard, I want to fuck you.”
He began lifting the hem of her sweater, his hand sliding quickly until her breasts popped free. She gaped at the way the stranger looked at them—as if he wanted to eat her. Considering their positions, she was pretty certain he did.
Stephen did as he claimed, and just looked, tentative fingers tracing over something soft and unknown—tawny skin and dusky areolas, nipples that puffed under his view. Lower lip caught in his teeth, he leaned in to smell, and River made a noise.
As if he was going to feast, he lined her up, pulling her closer to his mouth. Warm lips skimmed her nipple so lightly it was almost as if he were not there, like being kissed by a ghost, until he chose to latch on, to suck as much of her flesh into his mouth as he could.
His brashness, the way his knee pressed right against her mound. Unsure what the hell was wrong with her, River rolled her hips in search of friction.
Stephen came up for breath, but he was far from done. River didn’t squeak or shy when he gripped that swollen breast, when he pinched the nipple to see if it might grow more flushed. The woman let out a pant, one single wracking shiver, and he found he wanted to make her do it again.
Pale eyes darted up to a face he’d memorized, only to find River’s lips parted, her cheeks flushed in an all new expression. “You enjoy this?”
Breathless, she spoke nonsense, “If I say yes, it will only prove that I have lost my mind.”
That was confirmation enough. Stephen began tugging the bunched sweater fully over her head. “You will spread your legs for me.”
Raking his face over her to hear more of that mewl, feeling himself swell large in his pants, he wanted to show his girth to her, so she might know she’d inspired such a reaction. He wanted to put it in her, and do what males were designed to do. Most of all he wanted her to reciprocate. “Touch me.”
“Where?”
Would she dare to tease? “Everywhere.”
Palms settled right at his collar bones, and smoothed lower, fisting the fabric of his thermal to pull it up as he’d done to her. He helped her, shedding it quickly. His body was grand, he knew it was—the woman should see, as she’d seen when she gaped at him from the door the previous night.
His trainers had complimented his physique, River would too.
But she remained silent, that nervous tongue darting out again at the view of so much mass. Stephen was on the border of ordering her regard, but the woman leaned forward, and she flicked her tongue in the soft hollow of his throat.
Nothing had ever felt so moving.
He was the one panting, reaching to take the rest of her clothes and stripping her naked so fast fabric tore.
“Careful.” River was nervous, and one word seemed to mellow her would-be paramour.
Stephen stripped himself much more cautiously, pressed her legs apart, and answered her apprehension. She’d hardly had more than a glimpse of what bobbed, kissing her opening. The tentative strokes were gone. Instead he rose up over her, beholding where he longed to push forth, just to see what she looked like where she quivered and was expectant of him.
There was no silly slapping of her pussy with his girth, no spitting on his hand as others had done before him—things, River was certain, some third-rate seventies porn had glamorized and every man who’d seen it since thought was some spectacular bedroom move. No, he braced, tense, with a look in his eye as his cock nested. It turned her on... because that look was hers and had never belonged to another.
But she had to warn him. “I don’t... protection—”
Stephen cut her off, head racing up to glare. “There is nothing that could protect you from me.”
Chuckling at his inability to grasp that she referred to a condom, River found her mouth silenced when he surged full inside and stole her breath. All laughter forgotten, her hole spasmed when a flurry of neglected internal muscles shut her up. A throat noise, her heart beating in her ears—she felt so full.
He held her there, gauging the slippery grip for himself, soaking in the woman’s reaction to him. “Do I feel good inside you?”
Fuck, he felt like something else entirely. Mute, River nodded and breathed out a soft moan, the nearest thing she could create in verbal affirmative. As he flexed to withdraw, she made her tongue form words, “You need to take it slow... it’s been awhile for me.”
“I move at the pace I choose.”
The Neanderthal growl and man’s hoarse demand should not have made her cream around his dick... but it did. She was dripping for him, feeling it seep when he pulled out so slow it was deliberate—a reminder that no matter the tempo, he was in charge, she was to follow, and all would be satisfied should she obey.
She almost came at the thought... more than willing to admit she might have been a little fucked up in the head.
His second penetration mirrored the withdrawal. Slow—infinitely slow—as if he wanted to feel each separate nerve of his cock learning a cunt... so he might imprint it onto his person. It would have been clinical had his eyes not widened in awe.
The man fucking loved it just as much, if not more, than she did.
Raising her legs to hook at his back brought a growl of warning from the stranger hovering over her, until he felt the angle and squeeze, recognizing her heels dug into his glutes because her body craved more. He drew it out, three more slow plunges, grinding in when she willingly sucked him fully inside her belly.
The noises he could inspire when he did that... Stephen wanted to know just what other response he could create. It became a game. Hard, forceful thrusts made him groan and her squirm. Steady pacing, teasing at her mound with his pelvis and her head rolled back, River’s loud moans making his balls clench.
Under him, being his experiment, River found herself more than happy to let him play... relieved he didn’t just hump away like most virgins overexcited by the opportunity to nut-off for the first time in actual lady parts. Her stranger was the pirate, she the captive damsel... he didn’t even need to outline the fantasy in words—it was in the grip of his hands that already seemed to know her, that had memorized from those few strokes he’d offered before ripping off her clothes.
He controlled to the point of obsession, tilting her hips, thumbing her clit until she squealed, spreading her wider when the mood hit so he might watch. All obedience was rewarded and the first time she came
, twitching and shuddering at his manipulation of nerve endings, he took in her every reaction and sought to outdo them.
It was unnatural the control he had over his own body. His sack was already high and tight, it had to ache from need of release, but he was mesmerized in the act. She took advantage, dug her nails into an ass most women would die to feel clenched pleasuring them and reared up. Using the foul mouth he claimed to hate, River trilled out a list of dirty talk that would make an old perv blush. The second she told him to, “fuck that needy pussy,” he came, jerking, trying to get as deep as possible while moaning like a ten-dollar whore.
Never had she had it so good or been in so much trouble with the man who wasn’t quite done spilling. He looked like he could strangle her, like he wanted to fuck her again, like she might have been the most amazing thing he had ever seen.
Her hand skimmed over his growing stubble of brown hair, wiping the sweat away as she grinned, owning up to her naughtiness in one wicked leer.
Punishment was coming for unsettling his plan. Panting, he threatened, “Again. We will go again. Every way.”
She wasn’t off the hook and Stephen still had much he wanted to experience. After he prepared the rabbit, after he’d fed her to shore up her strength, he kneeled over her chest and hung his cock near her mouth, quieting her complaints at being shoved down... or so he thought... by thrusting between pretty lips. River hummed around him, made obnoxious sucking noises, gagged when she let him go too deep... and he found the sounds better than the silence he thought he wanted. He supported her skull, pleasure unmasked in his eyes, fisting a handful of braid each time her vulgar tongue traced the veins in his cock or flittered across the slit where he leaked.
He came in that warm, velvet mouth. With hollowed cheeks, she drank him up like a good girl, batting her eyelashes in a way that felt far dirtier than her previous vulgar speech.
“You must angle the blade away from your body, foolish woman, or it will slip and you will cut yourself.”
Hero Undercover: 25 Breathtaking Bad Boys Page 143