Unless…unless he wasn’t actually wearing anything at all. Wouldn’t that explain things a little better? Wouldn’t that make things more logical? She thought so, but coming to that conclusion didn’t feel logical. Instead it seemed to make all the hairs on the back of her neck go all bristly, followed by a sensation she hardly knew what to do with. It felt as though a hand had clenched around her already swollen clit, so intense she made an actual sound.
She couldn’t hold herself responsible, however. He was hard, and he was leaving slippery trails all over her skin, and to top it off he was possibly naked. Circumstances like those would have probably floored a sexual expert, and she wasn’t even close. She was still in the novice leagues, which apparently meant almost having an orgasm the moment all those ideas occurred. A burst of wetness flooded her already slippery slit and she felt her skin prickle the way it usually did as she neared orgasm.
And that was before another layer of insanity revealed itself.
Not only was he stiff and possibly naked and pressed against her, he was also awake while doing all these things. He wasn’t confused and half-asleep, fumbling into this before he knew where he was.
He was completely conscious. She knew he was. She could hear it in his uneven breathing and feel it in the almost but not quite stir of his body. But ironically it was his lack of movement that really gave it away. His stillness was so fraught, so forced, it had almost become a kind of living thing. It vibrated around him like a second self, negating the lie that his real body was trying to perpetuate.
I’m not really doing this, his body tried to claim. But the other him—the him created out of excruciating stillness—made said claim seem foolish. He did want to be doing this, apparently. He just didn’t want to admit it. He wanted to lie there and pretend as if nothing were happening, as his hips oh so slowly started to roll.
And if she was being honest, she wanted to do the same thing. It was just easier that way. Her mind flew off to some other place where she was not a horny maniac, while her body responded to his real and actual movement. Her clit jerked again, her warm, wet hole clenched tightly around nothing.
Then finally, finally, she let herself move a little in return. Not a lot, mind you. Not enough to raise eyebrows if she’d somehow judged wrongly. But just enough to start up a little back and forth, if he were so inclined. Now all she had to do was wait and see, which sounded easy on paper.
But felt harder in practice. After a while she found herself holding her breath, every muscle tensed for a move he probably didn’t want to make. There was still a chance he might back off, after all—maybe realize the error of his ways, or the error of hers. Anything was possible in that one suspended moment, though even she didn’t expect the reaction she eventually got. She’d hoped for a little hip roll back.
And what she got was his hand on her hip, so firm and insistent it sort of stunned her. His fingers actually found the hollow there and tugged, as though testing out her resistance, and when there was none he went one better.
He hauled her back onto his cock. He hauled her back onto his cock. No frilly, fussy little touches until the end of time. No polite inquiries as to what she may or may not like. Just a rough sort of manhandling that left her breathless, despite everything that said she shouldn’t have liked it. She didn’t appreciate aggressive men. She liked him because he wasn’t one.
Yet that one simple move was like a skein of silk sliding over her stiff bud. Her body bucked, unbidden, and a little sound came out of her mouth—loud enough to put him back on edge a little. His body returned to that shivering stillness for just a moment, waiting and waiting, but of course the waiting only upped the ante. It only heightened her excitement to know that he could be both ways—cautious when needed, desperately aggressive when not.
And the very second she voiced this excitement, he went right back into horny manhandling mode. The pressure of that hand intensified—almost as though he were pinning her, oh God was he pinning her?—and then he just went for it. He rutted against her, feverishly, that hard cock getting slicker and hotter by the moment. She was almost certain at this point that he was naked.
Though she was proven wrong a second later. Oh, she was proven wrong in the best possible way. He just stopped abruptly mid-thrust, breathing hard and obviously in a state way past too-far-gone, and then he just…he just…shoved whatever he was wearing out of the way. She heard the snap of elastic and the stuttery breathing of someone completely out of control, as he attempted something he shouldn’t.
Then just in case that wasn’t arousing enough, he followed it by fumbling and yanking at her clothes too. He actually tugged down her pajama bottoms without even asking, but if she was being honest it was the not asking part that really set her hair on end. It made him seem too turned-on to hold back, which on anyone else would have probably seemed rude, intrusive, unappetizing.
But on him—on cold, aloof Sergei—it was like dynamite strapped to a speeding bullet, aimed directly between her legs. How was he being like this? How was he suddenly so full of lust and desire and all these other crazy things?
She didn’t know, but holy fuck it was making her wet. Oh yeah, it was definitely making her wet. That much was clear, and not just because of her general sense of her own excitement. There was also the evidence, currently easing the way between his cock and her body. Somehow, she’d gotten so slippery it had slid all the way into the cleft between the cheeks of her ass—a fact that should have been embarrassing.
It wasn’t, however. How could it be when he responded so electrically to the feel of it? She felt him stiffen the moment it coated his cock, and oh Jesus the sound he made on realization. She hadn’t known he was capable of a groan like that, so unrestrained and full of feeling. It wavered beneath the pressure of his desire and ended on a guttural note that echoed through her body.
It nearly made her come. Everything was nearly making her come. And when she couldn’t quite get there—when she hissed in frustration—he did something even more electric than all his groans and urgent thrusts combined. He got hold of her thigh, sudden enough to be shocking, solid and sure enough to thrill, then simply spread her legs around one of his.
Just like that, no warning, no buildup. And now, now, he was definitely going to fuck her. God, she was aching for him to fuck her. That sudden bare and open space between her thighs was kind of frightening, but so full of delicious tension at the same time. So poised on the brink, so ready.
Go on, she thought at him, go on go on go on. He could if he wanted to—there wasn’t even any need for condoms. They were both cleared and clean and oh Lord that thought was exciting. Her mind immediately flooded with a thousand images of him bucking and spurting into her spread pussy, and all of them made her shiver.
But not as much as the thing he actually did. She’d thought fucking was the most intense conclusion to this, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t. His intentions were better. His words were better.
“No, no, like this,” he said, and everything became stunningly clear. He wasn’t trying to maneuver her into a position where he could get his dick into her pussy. He was trying to help her get off. He absolutely was. He tilted her hips until the meat of his thigh connected with her spread pussy, and then once she was in this glorious, magical, perfect position, he started to slowly work her swollen clit against that smooth, hard plane.
Oh, it was…it was…
She didn’t know what it was. She had no words for the sensation. She just had moans and gasps and fumbling gestures, all of them inadequate to the task. Then to top it off, she found herself touching his arm. She didn’t really mean to. Her hand sort of flailed out in response to a particularly large burst of pleasure, and suddenly there it was. Her fingers curled around one of his thick, tree-root wrists, almost entirely against her will.
And probably against his will too. He wasn’t the type to be into hand-holding, she knew, but after another couple of seconds of intense bliss she was kind of doin
g just that. She needed something to squeeze, and the hand on her hip was there. It was there.
Would he really hold it against her? He was squeezing a part of her, after all. It felt kind of like he was trying to grind her hip bone into paste, so she wasn’t sure he could really say anything about this. Maybe neither of them would ever say anything about this. It could just be one of those things done in the heat of the moment, feverish and frantic and entirely meaningless.
God, how she wished it were meaningless. She knew it wasn’t, however. That one point of connection burned more intensely than any sensation she was currently feeling, no matter how hard she tried to reframe it. And the longer she held him there the harder it got to ignore, until finally she had to face it head on.
She wanted to hold his hand.
She wanted it, because she knew what would happen once this was all over. She could feel it coming even as he groaned long and loud against the side of her face, that glorious cock of his jerking and stuttering as he went over. And as she followed him in a hot, blissful rush, moaning his name in a way she would never do again, the whole thing became so much clearer.
It was sort of like the dawn on a day after an apocalyptic party—everything so beautiful and exciting and brilliant, until you woke up and realized why you clung to it so tightly. Oh, she knew why she’d clung to him so tightly. She probably still had the impression of his knuckles, ground right into her palm.
But that was good, that was okay.
That was the whole point.
She had to make a mark, because oh he was never going to do this again.
Chapter Six
She was sort of hoping he’d up and surprise her, after the cringe-inducing finish to their bizarre tryst. He’d practically exploded out of bed the second it was over, then locked himself in the bathroom for what seemed like a thousand years. Surely things could only get better after that? Surely he would come around.
But naturally, he hadn’t. In fact, he seemed to go to even greater lengths to avoid her than he had prior. At one point, she actually suspected he’d found an attic that didn’t exist, and was spending his days in some dark corner of it, sporadically whipping himself while wearing a hair shirt.
She just didn’t know why.
Before their little sexual encounter, she’d simply suspected he wasn’t interested. But clearly he was interested, if he was willing to grab her by the haunches and rub her pussy all over his thick, hard thigh. That just wasn’t the sort of thing you did for a passing acquaintance you barely liked. It was more the sort of thing you did when you liked someone so much you kind of held their pleasure in higher esteem than your own—even though that fact was just as mystifying as the initial question.
It had meant something to him to make her come, she thought, even though she’d never known it to mean anything to anyone before. Most men didn’t even seem to notice if she was there or not, so occasionally she doubted. But then she remembered how he’d moved her, and heard an echo of that almost exasperated note to his lust-choked voice, and suddenly she felt special all over again.
Though she didn’t particularly like that she felt special. The word kind of reminded her of drippy people who honored their inner snowflake and other nonsense like that…yet still the feeling remained. It set up home in her insides, all sweet and glowy and ever so slightly sickly. Sometimes it made her want to barf a little bit, but that was okay too. He probably didn’t like a woman who refused to barf over sentimental things. Sentimental things likely gave him hives.
It was why he was hiding in an imaginary attic, she suspected, though the strangest thing happened when the idea occurred. Suddenly, she didn’t really feel like waiting around to find out. She didn’t want to sit in her lair gawping at monitors, or hover around in some room waiting for him to stumble across her.
Why be timid when he was the one who’d done some of those things? He’d crossed the line and now she was going to run over it too…literally. She put on the closest thing she had to exercise gear—a t-shirt with an octoshark on the front, and pajama bottoms that didn’t look like pajama bottoms if you ran in them—and darted out into the low morning light.
It was a good day for it, really. The air was too crisp to work up any kind of embarrassing sweat, but not so sharp that it burned her lungs. And though the forest was just as creepy as always, the hint of frost gave everything a certain prettiness. It turned the bleak, black trunks silvery and disguised the mulchy floor beneath her feet. Why, she could have almost believed she was running on icing sugar, if it hadn’t been for the squelch of mud as thick as tar.
A few times she came close to losing a shoe. But it wasn’t until the third occasion that she really started to get a little frustrated. Had she come in the right direction? She was sure she’d seen his dark parka in quadrant thirteen, only there wasn’t any sign of him here. Maybe she’d taken a wrong turn and ended up in twelve instead…but she didn’t think so. She didn’t make mistakes like that.
No, it was far more likely that he’d heard her coming. She’d blundered in here with her size nines and he’d whispered away like the black ops badass he was. Likely as not he was right next to her, and she just couldn’t see him. He’d painted himself to look like a tree or a rock, nothing visible unless he blinked his eyes.
But he wouldn’t.
She was convinced he wouldn’t. He was the type of person who’d just let her wander on, searching and searching until she felt like an idiot. She’d run out so full of vim and vigor, certain of what was going to happen. They were going to talk. But instead she was probably wandering in the wrong quadrant, surrounded by men disguised as trees. She even found herself whipping around once or twice in case he was sneaking up on her, and she didn’t feel that bad about it.
Those were just the natural, normal consequences of being around someone so still and strange and secretive. Really, you didn’t know what they were going to do next. They could suddenly jump out at you, or grab you by the hips, or hide in an attic that didn’t exist.
Or maybe just say hey.
Yeah, they could also do that.
“Hey.”
It was sort of like being grabbed, anyway. Her heart kicked into her mouth at the sound of his voice and she jerked around before she could stop herself. How had he snuck up on her like that? She hadn’t really thought he was as stealthy as he seemed to be. Her mind had just been freewheeling away with itself, but now this was a reality.
He was practically a ninja, only without the mask and the outfit and the little booties. Instead he was just in that parka she’d seen, black and nondescript, and trousers that could have been the combat kind but easily passed for ordinary. He looked ordinary, she thought. He looked like a normal man, out on a hunting trip.
Except in all the secret chambers of her heart.
In there he was always beautiful, and always strange. He could never pass, not even when she wanted him to. Not even when she really needed him to—like now, now, now. If he had been just another guy she would have answered him already, but he wasn’t. He was the guy who stood there like some ancient stone, immense and impassable, and looked at her with those pale, pale eyes.
And all those things conspired to strike her dumb.
She couldn’t even start the conversation she wanted to have—mainly because she could see he was already having it in his head. His gaze was almost pained, or at the very least unsettled, and underneath all there was a kind of yearning she couldn’t fathom. It felt as if he were reaching out to her, only he was doing it with something too hard and too sharp.
That gun over his shoulder, maybe.
Why did he have a gun over his shoulder?
“You’re not supposed to patrol with a weapon,” she said, then wished those weren’t always the first kinds of words she managed to get out. She knew why they were, however. They came from a cold place of company protocols, rather than all the other mixed-up parts of her.
Not that it mattered. A moment late
r the real reason for the weapon became apparent, all on its own. Something snapped in the distance, loud enough to make them both turn their heads, and when she glanced back at him to see what he thought of the sound she saw he’d shouldered the gun.
He actually was out here hunting. She could see the deer he’d trained the weapon on, stepping tentatively into a clearing between the trees. Ears pricked, black eyes fathomless, one leg almost lifted as though primed to dart away. It was a beautiful animal, but she didn’t stare at it for long.
Something else had her attention.
Something else always had her attention, now. She turned her head just to watch him work, and was not disappointed. He looked as if he’d become a part of the gun, focus so tight and sharp she could have used it to pare an apple. Was he going to do it? She wasn’t sure why she imagined he might not, yet this odd tension was there anyway. His finger seemed to tease the trigger, always promising but never quite fulfilling. And just when she was certain he wouldn’t, fzzzt.
A splash of paint appeared on the flank of the animal, so red and garish she thought it was real for a second. She thought he’d really taken it out, until it quite suddenly bucked and bounded away.
After which, embarrassment flooded her. He was out here doing target practice. It wasn’t even a real weapon, for God’s sake—it was one of those taggers people used to keep track of wildlife, or else something very similar. At a push it could probably fire darts or maybe small rounds, but it wasn’t deadly.
It just seemed deadly in his massive manly hands.
Hell, anything would have seemed deadly in his massive manly hands. She watched him pop out the shell and put in another, and even that had a certain brutal ballet about it. He was just so brusque and efficient, snapping and locking things into place with a speed that mesmerized her.
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