by S. R. Jones
How dare you leave when we were just getting back together again? When our love was beginning to rekindle once more? You like to play games, little one? We will play. My game. My rules.
You won’t like it.
I’ll take this little act of defiance out on your flesh.
Until I find you, beautiful
Yours. An admirer.
Fury surges through me so strong it’s an electrical current singing in my veins.
My body vibrates with the need to act, to do something to stop this, but I can’t. I don’t know who this fucker is. For the first time in the longest time I feel…impotent. Useless. Powerless.
It brings back other memories.
A room, a man’s screams, loud and terrible as I sit there, my eyes closed to block it out. Trying to pretend it’s simply a training exercise. My heart speeds up, and something close to panic closes its icy fingers around my throat.
Holy hell. I stand up and start to pace, needing to move before the panic turns into a full-blown attack. Something I’ve not experienced in ages.
I learned to outrun my demons by pushing my body to the limits. I’d run or go climbing until my lungs burned and my legs screamed but my mind quietened. No one knows that I had a period where I thought I might lose my mind. Where things seemed so bleak, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Thank God, it didn’t last. I quickly figured out that physical exertion would knock the panic on its head. Make it recede until it became a whisper not a roar.
The vines of anxiety wrapping themselves around my insides right now are a horrible reminder of the time I spent staring into the abyss of full-blown panic disorder, or worse.
Shit. I can’t lose it now, I need to keep it together for Kate. She’s the victim in all this. The target. But it’s hard. I’m used to acting, to doing things. And even if we were waiting something out, we had orders, a plan of action. This? I’m lost, not knowing what to do to make it right.
“Reece?” Kate is next to me, and I hadn’t even been aware of her getting up.
I stop pacing and turn to face her.
“Just how bad is it?” There’s real fear in her gaze.
I get my shit together and force a smile on my face, one I hope is reassuring.
“Not too bad. The usual stuff he likes to say.” And it’s true. Although his tone is angrier, the actual content isn’t as bad as some of the stuff he’s sent her way.
“Oh. I’ll look then…later. I thought…from your reaction…” She’s nervous. Of him? Of me?
“It’s not that it’s any worse, it’s me. I’m not used to sitting around like a…a sitting fucking duck.”
She laughs. “I love the way you insert fucking in between words to make a whole new phrase.”
Something about the way she says the word fucking makes me think of fucking. Of fucking her. How good it was, how I want to do it all over again. How at least then we’ll be doing something instead of being trapped here waiting on some maniac to find us.
It’s as if she reads my mind because she steps closer and says one word.
“Reece.”
My name falls from her lips like a prayer. As if she thinks I hold all the answers. I want to tell her I have none, but I don’t speak, instead I act. I pull her to me and claim her mouth. I don’t gentle it or control it. Not this time. I take what I want, and she gives it. She whimpers and arches into me and it feels like a victory. The best victory I’ve ever experienced.
The blinds are down in here and I take her to the floor in one fluid motion. Again, she lets me, and it burns bright within my chest. Her trusting me in this is huge. For her. For me.
We’re kissing, and she’s got her arms wrapped around me, then she wraps her legs around me, too, and somehow, I’m right where I need to be. At her core. My hardness pushing through my soft cotton sweatpants hits her center and she moans and arches up into it.
We’re kissing again, and I have my fingers in her hair, twisting her head so I can gain access to her neck to taste the skin there. I’m almost mindless with the need to touch her, taste her, be in her. I pull myself out of the moment, forcing myself to slow down. She’s been terrified, violated by a campaign of harassment, stalking, and vile sexual threats. With supreme effort, I rein in my lust, and focus on her.
“I’m okay,” she whispers. “You don’t need to slow down. After what we did before…I’m okay. I trust you. I want you. Want all of you, Reece. Give me everything. Don’t hold back.”
Her words flick a switch in me, and pull her up, before taking her t-shirt off in one smooth motion. She’s wearing a sports bra and the clasp is at the front. I unhook it, letting her gorgeous tits fall free. I capture them in my hands and palm them, squeezing them, feeling their weight.
Wanting her completely nude under me, I slide it off her shoulders and down her arms, and then I move down her body, roughly pulling her skin-tight workout pants from her legs. She’s wearing a pair of high cut, plain white panties.
“Turn around,” I order.
I want to taste the skin of her back. She does as I instruct, flicking her hair over one shoulder, her back is a beautiful arc with her arse slightly raised. Bending my head, I run my tongue down the dip of her back in one long swipe. Her flesh goosebumps where my tongue travels and she shivers.
Reaching her gorgeous arse, I kiss both cheeks, mapping her curves and hills. Too tempted, I give a soft bite to one. She gives a small squeak of surprise.
“Nice, or no?” I ask.
“Nice,” she breathes. “Very nice.”
I bite down again, a little firmer this time and she wiggles under me, making a mewling sound. I want to spank her so bad, turn her cheeks pink, but I won’t. Not yet. Not when that creep’s words are in her head, and he’s still out there making her feel vulnerable. One day though, when this is all sorted, I want to put her over my knee and spank her until she’s breathless and squirming, and then I’ll use my fingers to make her come before I fuck her.
I’m so hard from letting my little fantasy play out that I grab myself for a moment and try to ease the ache.
Kate turns over, under me, and starts to pull my t-shirt up. I get with the program and tear it off, followed by my sweatpants. I don’t have any underwear on, and her eyes widen as my dick bobs out, hard and straining.
Thankfully, my wallet is on the side, so I don’t have to go anywhere to grab a condom. I take one out, rip the pack open and sheath myself.
I line myself up at her entrance as I settle back down between her legs. “Are you sure?” I ask her.
She nods. I need to her to be safe though, in this, in us. “You need to stop, anytime, say the word.” I kiss her lightly when I finish speaking and she nods at me but doesn’t say anything.
“Cupcake. I wouldn’t normally push it, but you’ve been through hell, and you’re not giving me your words. Do you want this?”
“Yes,” she says firmly. “Yes, I want this. I want you.”
Hitching one of her legs up over my hip, I take hold of my cock and rub it around her entrance, and she’s wet and glistening. Pushing into her is as fucking perfect as it was the first time we did this. She cries out and pulls me into her, arms around me, fingers raking my back. I don’t thrust in hard and deep like I want to, but I don’t baby her either. I push slowly but firmly in, pull out, and give another, harder thrust.
“God, yes.” Her head falls back onto the carpet and she closes her eyes for a few moments before opening them to look at me.
I want to climb inside her, to be so deep in her I don’t know where I end and she begins. I want to fuck her over and over, and I don’t know why. What makes her so different from all the women before?
I can fuck like a porn star when the occasion calls for it and have gone all night with a few rests in-between before, but I’ve never experienced this level of need and desire. She makes me feel like a teenager.
We’re moving together now, in a perfect rhythm, and we fit. Perfectly. Two messed up p
eople who together make a flawed whole.
I kiss her neck, up to her ear where I nibble on the shell, and then down again to the hollow at the base of her throat.
Feeling my orgasm building, I bite my cheek. I don’t want to come before she does. I reach down between our warm, sweaty bodies, and find her clit. I rub gentle circles around it with my fingers, and she opens her mouth on a soft cry, so I keep it up, speeding up some but keeping my pressure light. The way I saw her do it before.
“Oh, Reece.”
I love my name falling from her lips as she works for it, chases that final high. And then she’s crying out, making these gorgeous sounds I want to eat up and clenching around me.
She rakes my back again, squeezing me tight with her thighs and she’s wild under me. Nothing like I expected. A little rough too.
With a groan and a curse, I come like fucking crazy, shooting deep and hard inside her.
I drop my head to her neck and breathe in her sex-damp scent as she gives a satisfied, totally feminine sigh below me.
Wanting to stay close, I pull out and tie the condom before snuggling back with her, taking her into my arms. “I’m pretty sure we shouldn’t be doing this,” I tell her.
“Perhaps we ought to stop?” She turns to me and I can see something vulnerable in her gaze.
Christ, she still doesn’t get how much I want her. “Do you want to stop?” I ask her, sure she doesn’t. Hoping she doesn’t because she’s fast becoming my new addiction. Screw climbing for a stress relief, I think fucking Kate has become my new escape valve.
“No.” And there it is, the guileless honesty I love about her.
“Neither do I. Technically though, I’ve crossed a line. I’m supposed to stay cool, calm, and in control. Rational, and I’m not sure I can keep being rational.”
“Really?” The surprise in her voice is clear.
“Yeah. I want to kill that motherfucker in a way that’s not healthy.”
“Why?”
“Seriously?” I stare at her for a moment. “The shit he’s done to you, cupcake.”
“My knight in shining armor,” she says. “Do you always want to rescue the maiden?”
“No.” I dip my head, unable to say the truth of my feelings while looking at her. “Only you. I want to go out, kill the bad guy, and come and claim my prize, taking you back to my castle. Make you mine.”
Her sharp intake of breath doesn’t surprise me. I’m off the reservation with this. Maybe falling for women you shouldn’t, too hard and fast is catching or something? Maybe Liam has passed it onto me like a virus.
“You want to make me yours?”
“Yeah, right now in this moment, yeah I do. I know it’s too soon, and I’m not asking you for anything, but it’s how I feel.”
“I like it,” she says snuggling closer. “I’ve not had anyone look out for me for a long time.”
“Well, you have now.”
“Until he’s stopped,” she says.
I don’t reply because I don’t know if we can be anything after this.
How would it work? She’s a big-name author who lives in the Highlands and I’m a minder in Yorkshire who travels all over. Do I want something serious with her? It’s too soon to tell, other than this base biological need riding me, screaming at me to make her mine. To take possession of her and keep her safe. Safe from the big bad wolf, but I’m a bit of a wolf, too.
I’m no gentle lover. I have been, for her, sort of, but already I want to spank her. To mark her as mine. To see my fingerprints on her flesh where I’ve held on too tight. I’m probably the last thing she needs.
I shouldn’t have done the biting thing, it was only gentle, but talk about being a sick fuck when she’s dealing with one man who wants to hurt her, and here she is lying in the arms of another. Not that I want to hurt her in any harmful way, but I want to hurt her a bit, in a good way. And she can hurt me right back. I like my sex a little wild, a little rough.
She props her head on her hand, arm bent at the elbow and looks at me. “I can hear you thinking from here. Talk to me.”
“I shouldn’t have bitten you.” I blurt it out.
“I liked it,” she says simply. Then she frowns a little before speaking next. “I used to like sex a bit rough, you know? I like to play a little. Nothing heavy, but I like being tied up. Spanked even. My favorite was the hot pink riding crop my ex bought one day. It gave a lovely, sharp lick of pain but didn’t leave any lingering hurt. At least, not the way we used it. I’m not into everything being boring and vanilla. It’s one of the reasons I hate Stalker Boy so much. He’s taken something away from me, by making me terrified to trust anyone. I couldn’t meet a guy and let myself be sexually vulnerable with them because they could have been him.” She bites her lip as I struggle not to wrestle her legs apart again at her words.
She likes it the same way I do.
She glances away and then looks back to me. “Somehow, over time, his sick words ate into my soul so much they took away my ability to fantasize, to even pleasure myself most of the time. He stole my own body from me using only words and threats.”
“By letting me take control our first time, kind of because you totally topped from the bottom.” She winks at me. “You’ve given me some of that back, let me trust you enough for us to have this. And I can’t thank you enough.”
She leans over and gives me the sweetest kiss. Soft, wet, and gentle.
“I need to pee.” She laughs and heads upstairs.
I lie and stare at the ceiling, wondering what the hell I’m getting myself into.
Chapter Eight
Kate
The next week passes in a total blur. I’m happy. Not content—it’s not deep enough for that. There’s too much uncertainty and fear in the background. The dark presence of my stalker out there presses in on each minute of my day. Like a dark shroud hanging over me, stopping me from truly feeling the sun of what is happening between Reece and me.
Not that I know what is happening. It’s somewhat of a whirlwind. We talk, read in companionable silence, go for walks, and to the beach. Mostly we have sex. I can’t call it making love because it’s rawer than that, baser.
He takes me with a fierce passion, and he likes to leave marks on me. A small nip here, love bite there, the tiny bruise where his fingers gripped my hips.
I stretch in the bath and look down my body to where a couple of bruises mar my thigh. I love them. Love these stains on my body. Does that make me sick? I love the marks I give him in return too. Scratches on his back. Tiny crescents on his chest where I dug my fingernails in. The love bite I gave him on his neck.
Even now, aching after a marathon fuck, I’m wanting him again. The only reason he hasn’t joined me in the bath is because he’s doing some stuff on the computer, trying to find out more about my lurking friend. Except, it isn’t easy because my stalker isn’t stupid. He doesn’t send emails or do things that leave a digital footprint. The bastard.
I hate him, and I want him caught, but part of me strangely yearns for this to linger. This foggy limbo I am stuck in, so long as Reece is caught in it with me. The outside world has faded, become a surreal place I venture out to every now and again, and this life, in here, is my new reality.
As the days have slipped by my hunger for Reece hasn’t burned out as I thought, it has only grown. Not only do I want him, but I like him, and enjoy being with him. I tell myself it’s only because I’ve been alone for so long, and any company would be good, but I know it’s a lie. I know I’m falling for him.
We went for a walk around the nearest village yesterday, and I popped into a small store that sold local craft items. I bought him a wooden lighthouse that reminds me of the one we can see from the upstairs landing window here. He’d been on the phone and waited outside, giving me the perfect opportunity to get him something. I’d stashed it in my bag, and not said anything. The woman at the till had given me a conspiratorial smile, as if she knew I’d bought it for m
y lover, but that was probably fanciful thinking on my part.
I want to give it him tonight. The water is cooling around me, so I stand and reach for the towel.
Skin dripping, I pat myself dry but don’t take all the moisture off. Then I reach for my fig scented body mist and spritz it all over. I’ve shaved in the shower, every nook and cranny. The first time we did it, I had auburn hair on my vajayjay, now I’ve shaved it all off, liking the extra sensitivity of the bare skin.
Smiling, I grab my one pair of fancy panties and matching bra and put them on. The bottoms are French knicker style and a creamy silk, the bra is matching and a balconette, which gives me a wicked cleavage.
Not putting anything else on, I leave the bathroom and go to my bedroom, where I take the perfume that matches my body mist and spritz some on my wrists. I feel wanton, lustful, feminine. All things I’ve not experienced in ages.
I had planned to seduce Reece later, once we went to bed, but suddenly, I don’t want to wait.
Heading back out of the bedroom, I pause at the top of the stairs and listen. Reece isn’t on the phone and I can’t hear the loud tapping of him on his laptop, I swear he must go through a lot of them because he hammers the keyboard.
With a small smile, I head downstairs, and hope he’ll like my surprise. When I turn toward the lounge area, I see he’s lit the fire and is on the rug in front of it, coffee on the low coffee table by him, his phone in hand as he reads something.
Keeping my steps light, I approach, but he looks up before I’ve taken four steps. Damn military hearing.
He smiles at me, looks back to his phone, and then does a classic double take. On his second look back, a slow smile spreads across his gorgeous face.
“Well, well, well, look at you, all clean and shiny.” His words are deep but not mocking.
My skin has a soft sheen from the oily body mist, and in the low light of the room, I feel sexy for once, not worried about my cellulite or any stretch marks. One of the advantages of being in hiding in this house is that we live in a perpetual twilight, with the shutters down and soft lighting inside.