Devil's Mark

by Megan Crane

  That made his little shack pretty much paradise.

  The dirt road that led out to this bit of iffy land without much in the way of an official address ended on the high end of a little slope that hurtled straight down into the swamp. Uptown parked his bike at the top, near the wooden boardwalk his ancestors had built. He wasn’t quite as crazy as Roscoe, with his deep bayou shack hidden somewhere out in all those dark, mysterious waterways, accessible only by pirogue and only if you knew where you were going. This part of the bayou was more or less accessible by wheeled vehicle, depending on whether or not the roads flooded, the way they liked to do when the hurricanes hit. It was just far enough away to keep the world—and his mother—out of his face.

  Holly climbed off the bike behind him—more gracefully every time, he noted, which made him uncomfortably hard. Who was he kidding? Every time she inhaled it made him so hard that he hadn’t been comfortable at all since she’d sauntered into Dumb Gator’s that first night. It was long past time he dealt with that. He’d decided at some point tonight—watching her through narrowed eyes as she moved around the bar with that sweet smile on her face that made him want to break things—that it was the denial that was making him crazy. He wasn’t used to it. He’d built her up in his head, that was all. He needed to get in that pussy to get over it, something he was sure would happen pretty naturally once he’d sated himself on her.

  But then he’d brought her here. He hadn’t even thought about taking her anywhere else. She’d climbed up behind him and settled herself against his back, and he hadn’t wrestled with where to take her or what it would mean. He’d lost himself in the road, the sweet air on his face, the warmth of Holly behind him and her lean, strong arms wrapped tight around his waist. She was like a drug.

  And he’d been dodging cypress trees down the old dirt road that led into the swamp before he thought about it again. That was the kind of sweet oblivion she offered just by riding with him. She was potent as hell.

  Uptown swung off his bike, taking her helmet from her and looping it over the handlebar with his. He didn’t say a word, letting the bayou chatter all around them instead, and listened to her pull in a deep breath, then let it out. He reached over and wrapped his hand around her slender wrist, then tugged her along with him as he started down the wooden walkway he knew as well as he knew the shape of his own hand or his face in a mirror. After a moment or two he figured her eyes adjusted to the dark, because she moved less hesitantly. She stayed close without his having to tell her to do it, because whatever else she was, she’d been born and raised in and around these bayous. She knew better than to charge down an unfamiliar path in the dark. He liked that in ways he didn’t want to analyze. Instead, he let himself trip out a little on the scent of her so close behind him. Fresh and clean and sweet, it poured through him like that bottle of whiskey Chaser was downing tonight. Except better.

  Much, much better.

  One thousand proof and he was already drunk on it. On her. And he hadn’t even started.

  I want you, she’d said.

  Uptown felt as if she’d used those words to brand him. And he liked the burn, if he was honest.

  His shack was built in the usual Cajun style, up on stilts where the small hill behind it sank down into the bayou. It was sturdy, but not pretty, so a man could sit and contemplate the nature of life and the enduring truths of the swamp in any kind of weather and without needing anyone else around him except the sort of critters who thrived out here. The thick, still bayou murmured against the dock down below, the narrow little boat tied up there groaning and stretching with every shift of the water. Uptown led her into the house instead of down the wooden steps to the dock, aware as he slapped on the lights that this wasn’t what Lagrange’s favorite princess was used to. It was simple. Matter-of-fact.

  Basically, it was him.

  And it pissed him off that he wanted her to like this place. Or at least not recoil from it in horror. He hated he’d put all that on what should have been a fuck, nothing more. Even if it was a good fuck, since when did that shit matter to him?

  He didn’t have an answer for that.

  And that didn’t keep him from wanting her to like it, did it?

  You fucking dumbass.

  He let go of her when the screen door slammed behind her. He moved farther into the comfortable living room, aware that she followed him, then stopped in the middle. She let out a small sound. When he turned back to look at her, gritting his teeth to keep from saying something fucked up to divert attention from the fact he wanted her approval like some kind of masochistic puppy, kill him now, she was turning around in a circle.

  And he could not possibly begin to describe the look on her face.

  “Oh wow.” Her voice was hushed. “Do you really live here? All the time?”

  “I do.” He sounded stiff. Wooden. Nothing like himself. “Not really your style, is it, princess?”

  Holly laughed, a little ruefully, and he just…ached. She threw that smile of hers around so indiscriminately. It was like she didn’t care what happened to people when it landed on them. Or like she had no idea how it lit up even the darkest of corners, whether they wanted it or not. Including him.

  “I have to tell you something, Uptown. If you’d asked me to describe a place you might live, I never would have thought you’d be so…”

  The only other people who’d come out here were a few of the brothers. They’d asked where the fucking beer was and told lies about fish they’d caught and gators they’d wrestled. This was excruciating.

  But she was still smiling at him. Wider now.

  “Neat,” she was saying. “I never would have imagined you’d be so neat. It looks like you were in the military.”

  Uptown found his hand on the back of his neck. He didn’t think of himself as neat. Life in the shack was simple, that was all. Everything in it was his.

  “I don’t like clutter,” he muttered.

  More of her smile, like she was actively trying to kill him. “I can see that.”

  And this was the girl who’d offered him her virginity in the back hallway of Dumb Gator’s. Then let him take her way the hell out into the bayou, where she was stranded and stuck with him and certainly not anything like safe. All this after he’d made it clear that he was using her to get at her jackass of a father. There were any number of ways a girl in her situation should have behaved. He’d been ready for all of it. Screaming, threats. Tears. If she’d shown up at Dumb Gator’s at all, that was. If she hadn’t, he’d accepted that he would have gone looking for her.

  Well. “Accepted” might be a strong word. But either way, he knew he would have hunted her down.

  Holly, apparently oblivious to the narrow way he was watching her, wandered over to his couch and threw herself down on it, still smiling at him and the room and the whole damned world like he’d taken her to some fancy-ass five-star hotel and was about to present her with room service and a bottle of something disgustingly bubbly on top of it.

  She tilted her head back toward the slowly spinning ceiling fan, and her smile took over her face. Again. “My daddy hates the bayou. But not me. I love it here.”

  It was too much. Uptown was only a man, and not a particularly good one. He couldn’t take any more of this.

  He needed to be inside of her. Now.

  Whatever animal was clawing at his insides, whatever it was in him that wanted her the way he did, heedless and insane with desire when it should have been nothing more than a fuck or two he’d forget after he came—snapped its chain.

  Uptown had to remind himself that she was a virgin. That he couldn’t just rip off her jeans and slam himself into her with no prep, no care, no skill, the way he could have done if she was just another club groupie. But then, if she was, she wouldn’t be here. He set his teeth. He ordered himself to calm the fuck down.

  Because he wasn’t going to be satisfied with just having her once, up against a wall. If he was, he could have done that
in Dumb Gator’s. He wanted her to scream his name so loud they could hear her an hour or so away in New Orleans. He wanted her coming so hard that this time, when she marked him up with her fingernails the way she had this morning, it was for a far better reason than her douchebag of a father.

  There were so many things he wanted to do to that hot little body of hers that he thought it really might kill him if he didn’t start. Now.

  “Holly,” he said, and he saw the way her smile faltered.

  Because he sounded pissed and he didn’t do a thing to temper it. Or, to be a little more precise, he sounded something close enough to pissed—only much, much dirtier. He saw the exact moment she realized what was happening. What the way he was looking at her meant.

  She swallowed. Hard. It should have been impossible for her sweet brown eyes to look that wide, but they did. And she was focused on him like there was nothing else in the entire world, just the way he wanted.

  Uptown’s mouth curved, much too intent to be a simple smile. “Take off your clothes.”

  —

  It didn’t occur to Holly to disobey.

  Her heart was hammering wildly in her chest, but she ignored it. She stayed where she was, the little house fading as the look on Uptown’s hard, beautiful face became all she could see. She reached down and eased her shoes off, tossing them aside with a loud thunk against the wood floor.

  She stood up then, feeling much smaller than the few inches she’d lost without those heels. Uptown was so much bigger when she was barefoot. He crossed his arms over his chest and he watched her with a very male, very possessive gleam in his dark eyes. It made her think of chocolate, bittersweet and to die for. It made her think that here, with him, she liked being the kind of small that felt like its own kind of strength next to all of that hard, muscled power of his, wrapped up in denim and leather. And hers to touch, surely. Soon.

  Holly kept her gaze fixed on him—not that she could think of anything she’d rather look at just then. He looked carved from stone, tough and unforgiving, and it melted her. He melted her. She felt too hot and wildly molten straight through. He turned her into a marshmallow just by staring at her—what would happen when he put his hands on her? She shivered at the thought, then unbuttoned her jeans and shoved them down her hips, shimmying the rest of the way out of them. When she leaned down to tug them off her ankles, she thought he let out a ragged breath. It could have been a curse. But it only spurred her on.

  She reached down and found the hem of her tank top, then tugged it up and over her head. That left her in nothing but bikini panties and the ridiculously little almost-bra she was wearing tonight. It was pink and lacy with demi-cups to frame her barely there curves. It offered exactly zero support for her complete lack of breasts. It was window dressing, nothing more.

  “Stop.” His voice was rough. Low. It made her break out in goosebumps. “I want to look at you a minute.”

  She couldn’t tell if she was shaking now, or just breathing so hard she might as well be. Holly wasn’t sure she could survive all that blazing heat in his gaze, but then it didn’t matter, because he was drinking her in. His eyes seemed to sweep over every bit of exposed skin. Every curve, every limb. And all he was doing was looking at her, letting his hungry gaze roam all over her body as he liked, but she could feel it as if it was his hands, a little bit rough and so big.

  What would happen when he did put his hands on her? Would she survive it? Kissing him had shifted everything. It had changed her from the inside out and it had only been last night. Did she want to survive Uptown?

  Holly couldn’t quite answer that. She already felt like a completely different person than the one who had graduated from Ole Miss a few short weeks ago. How could she possibly imagine what she’d feel like tomorrow? The next day?

  “You gonna get naked?” he asked a few million years later, when she thought she’d stood there forever, trying to control her half-panicked, half-excited breathing.

  “I think you need to prepare yourself,” she told him. Apologetically.

  “I don’t know what you think you’re hiding, babe.” His mouth curved up in one corner. “I can pretty much see everything already.”

  “Not everything.” She reached up behind her, grabbing onto the closure of her bra, but didn’t pull it open. “Not the very serious lack of everything, I mean.”

  She paused, but Uptown only stared back at her, implacable. He looked as if he could wait like that forever.

  Holly sighed. Then she unclipped her bra and pulled it off in a single, sleek sort of movement, dropping it on the floor next to her tank top and jeans.

  He drew in a sharp breath that made his cheekbones look even more feral. Like he’d been sculpted into harder, harsher stone at the sight of her in nothing but a pair of panties.

  “I know,” she said, though her voice was tiny. And kind of strangled, because she wanted so desperately to be a woman here. For him. A real woman. The kind of woman she knew he liked. “They barely exist. I’ve been jealous of Katelyn since she basically woke up with breasts one morning when we were twelve. I kept waiting for mine to come along, but they never did.”

  “Jesus Christ, shut up.” He growled that. Then he lifted his head and settled that glittering, too hot gaze of his on hers. “Come here, Holly.”

  She was moving before she even processed the words. She drifted toward him, gasping when he reached out and hooked a big hand around her neck. He tugged her the rest of the way, hard, and let her slam straight into him.

  Uptown made a sound that was too hungry to be a laugh, and it danced all over her bare skin, kicking up a commotion, before it settled between her legs. Then he moved. He slid one strong arm around behind her, then tipped her back so she arched against him, basically shoving her tiny breasts into his face.

  “Fucking unbelievable,” he muttered. “You’re perfect.”

  Then he bent his head and closed his mouth over one of her nipples, bold and sure.

  And everything seemed to explode, catapulting her straight on into a searing white-hot light.

  Uptown devoured her.

  He kept her bent back like that, off balance and splayed out before him. Putty in his hands, and she loved it. He licked at her, not confining himself to her taut nipples, but applying the same teeth and tongue and ferocity to both of her breasts. All over them.

  Holly simply held on to his shoulders as best she could and rode out the storm. Sensation pounded through her. She was wild with it, alive and greedy in his arms. He seemed to know that there was a direct line from her nipples to her pussy, and that every tug of his talented mouth made her ache and shiver and melt all the more.

  And then she knew that he had to know, because he reached down and slid his hand beneath the elastic band that held her panties in place on her hips. His big, tough hand, covered in those huge, hard rings that she could feel against her skin and the tattoos she could only imagine. Vividly. He touched her as if he knew exactly where the fires inside her burned.

  “Small tits are more sensitive,” he told her gruffly, his mouth in that space between her breasts that she hadn’t known, until this very moment, was perfectly spaced to hold his mouth. His chin. His beautiful face. “I could make you come from this alone.”

  But he didn’t. He cupped her pussy for a moment, and she found she was panting. Like she was running flat out. It all felt like too much, too big and too fast, but it didn’t occur to her to pull away from him. It was like taking off on his bike. That impossible lurch, making her think she’d catapult straight off and fall to her death—then nothing but Uptown and the road and the ride. She shuddered, and as if he’d been waiting for that, he started to play with her. Instead of merely cupping her, his fingers slid through her folds and around her clit, like he was learning her as he toyed with her.

  It was as if he had all the time in the world. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t care that she was…lost in this crisis. He traced the wet seam of her pussy lips, up and dow
n and up again, until she couldn’t tell the difference between her pounding heartbeat and her wild, desperate hunger. He still kept her bent over his arm, his big body over hers while he held her to his chest, and something about the fact that he was fully dressed while she was almost entirely naked made her breath go shallow. Even more shallow, that was. She lost touch with herself then. She splintered, she burned, she disappeared, but this time, Holly knew that Uptown was holding her in his big hands.

  She had no qualms about letting herself fall off into all that delicious, delirious need. He would hold her up. She knew he would.

  He played with her pussy the way he played with her breasts. Slowly. Methodically. With devastating accuracy, as if he could predict every last one of her reactions before she had them. He knew exactly what he was doing as he traced her pussy lips and then plunged between them to take her clit between two fingers. He pressed, then released. Then pressed again, and her head fell back of its own accord. She surrendered to him completely. All she could do was move her hips while she held on to his cut like it was a lifeline. She heard a strange, rhythmic sound that it took her long moments to understand was her own voice.

  “Please,” she was saying. Sobbing, really. “Please, please, please.”

  She felt her cheeks get a little crispy when she realized she was begging him for things she couldn’t even name, but she didn’t stop him. She didn’t even try. What she tried to do was meet the wicked little swirls and twists he made with his clever, dangerous fingers, so blunt and talented. She tried to press her aching clit deeper into his hand. She tried to make him throw her over that edge, but he only laughed and continued doing exactly as he pleased.

  He toyed with her, holding her exactly where he wanted her as he did as he liked. He’d lifted his head so he could watch her face, and Holly had the strangest notion that he was memorizing her every reaction. That only made it all hotter. Then he twisted his hand, sending a finger deep inside of her, and everything seemed to screech to a halt.