Kat placed one last kiss on his mouth and straightened. Befuddled and exposed, Hunter did what he did best. He tossed up his hands and went for a playful demeanor that’d gotten him through everything else. “Woah! Woah! We didn’t agree on the step and kiss portion of this game. Now you’re trying to change the rules midstream.”
Her knowing gaze darkened. She licked her upper lip and pulled it into her mouth with a small groan of satisfaction as though she were tasting him.
His jovial notion boiled down to pure desire.
She stepped into the spot where his left foot would have been and pressed her body against his. Her lower belly trapped his burgeoning erection between their bodies. Kat wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down to meet her mouth.
Hunter wasn’t happy his leg was gone but, damn, talk about an unexpected perk. Kat’s body fit perfectly to his, filling in the space and leaving nothing between them. Her mouth ravaged his. Sucked and nipped at the places on his mouth not slit by abuse. She sucked his tongue into her mouth and tangled hers around it. Soft moans filtered into his throat. He gobbled them up and readied for more, but she pulled away.
Kat grabbed the railing and panted.
“I guess it’ll work.” Breaths filled and fled his lungs at an accelerated pace. He wouldn’t say he panted, though that was exactly what the hell he did. She said he worked her up, but damn if it wasn’t the other way around.
He turned his back to the railing, rested the crutch next to him and reached for Kat. His fingers hooked inside the waistband of her jeans. When he pulled, she came willingly. The need to pick her up and wrap her legs around his hips used his broken ribs as toothpicks…because, if he followed through, that was what they’d become. He settled for sliding his left arm around her back and pulling her close.
Their mouths met in a heated tangle of lips, tongue, and teeth. Hunter’s left hand slid up her back and threaded into her hair. His right hand smoothed up her abdomen. Smooth skin drove him wild. Firm muscles fought back against the bite of his fingertips as he pinched her tiny waist in his grip and shifted the V of her legs over his throbbing, shorts-covered cock.
“Yes.” She sighed.
Hunter filled his right hand with the underside of her sweet ass and rocked her against him.
Kat’s arms tightened around his shoulders. His ribs screamed, but the haze of lust buffered him from acute pain. Her hips undulated in small circles up and down and around his length. He forgot the world and all their problems with it.
“Kat.” He hissed her name and nibbled a trail down her neck to the little hint of her exposed collarbone. His teeth sank in—not too hard, but enough that she cried to the sky and rubbed her body against his with total abandon. “That’s it, Doc. Let me hear how much you like it. I want to know what gets you wet.”
He dragged his right hand down the seam of her pants to where their bodies met and back again. Her breath hitched. A long, muffled moan followed. His fingers ran the trail harder this time. She bit his neck just below his ear.
“Hunter.”
His name was a plea and a warning. Fuck, he could beat his chest, but he decided to save it for later. He detangled his fingers from her hair and slipped his hand under the hem of her shirt. The smooth cotton of a thin bra met his fingers. The distended peak of her right nipple offered the leverage he needed.
“Oh, Hunter. Oh.”
“I’ve got you, Kat.” He pinched the firm skin lightly between his fingers and rolled. His right hand continued the assault on her steamy seam while he tugged and gently twisted her nipple.
Kat held tight and rocked her clit against his shaft.
He nipped her earlobe. “Sweetest thing. I know you want to come. You know I want to hear it.”
“Yes.” She nodded against his neck and moaned.
When he expected her to blow, she grabbed his face. Their eyes locked in what was his most intense exchange on or off the battlefield. She pressed her lips to his, rode him to the brink, and cried her release into his mouth. Her body shook in his hold. He held tight, fearing she might vibrate right out of his grip.
After more than a minute, she slipped from his hold and hid her face behind her hands. “I can’t believe—”
“Believe it and get used to it.” He pulled her hands from her face. “Until you decide to give me a phone, I intend to make you come as much as possible.”
“You must not ever want to leave.” She gulped.
At this moment, he didn’t want to go anywhere. The world wasn’t the same one he’d known before the accident, but the one he was getting to know intrigued the hell out of him. “Must not.”
She held her fingers to her lips. A smile peeked out of either side. “I don’t know whose question it is.”
“Me neither.”
Their chests rose and fell for a full minute without a word. They stared. Was she as befuddled as he was? Cross his heart and hope to die, he’d never used that word before. Befuddled. Yet it perfectly described the feelings colliding inside him.
“Are you hungry?” Kat adjusted her shirt.
“Famished.” Hunter let his gaze drag from one side of her to the other and then from bottom to top. “And I just had a taste of something exquisite.”
She cleared her throat, straightened, and motioned to the house. “I think we’ve gone far enough today.”
When he looked around, he realized he’d walked a flight and a half of stairs. He was farther from the house than he’d been since their arrival. His gaze returned to the most beguiling woman he’d ever encountered. More than any meal, he wanted to devour her, but she wasn’t his usual fare. She left him vulnerable, and vulnerability in his current state—hell, ever—wasn’t a great idea.
“You’re right.” Hunter picked up the crutch she’d made him and wedged it under his arm. “Do you want me to cook tonight? I have an itch for steak.”
“They have MRE steaks?”
“Bet your fine ass they do.” He winked.
They headed inside, and he got to work in the small kitchen. Kat pulled up a chair at the table. She held a thick book and leafed through the pages for a minute before clearing her throat.
“Hypernova...a type of star explosion with an energy substantially higher than that of standard supernovae and is one of the most catastrophic events in the universe.” Kat shrugged. “So see, all this stuff we’re dealing with, it’s small potatoes.”
“When compared to a hypernova, yes.” Hunter ripped open two beef steak packets.
“Hypocaust...a hollow space under the floor of an ancient Roman building, into which hot air was sent for heating a room or bath.”
“Okay, wait. Is that a dictionary?” He set aside the MREs, propped his hip on the counter, and studied her.
“So?” Kat stole her gaze and flipped the thin pages.
“So you’re just reading the dictionary?”
“What else is there to do?” She huffed.
He stepped toward her.
“That doesn’t make me feel like I’m jumping out of an airplane without a parachute?” she quickly added.
Pride puffed his chest. He stopped at the table and scooped up the book. It was a Norwegian-English dictionary. The little genius had just managed to pick two words pronounced the same way in both languages. “You read the dictionary a lot?”
“I didn’t have friends. I had tons of time. So, I read.”
“The dictionary?” he asked again.
“I like learning the meanings of words.” Kat tossed up her hands and bobbed her shoulders.
“Did you ever learn the meaning of ønske?”
She looked at him as though he’d lost his mind. “No,” she breathed.
“I have.” He set the book down on the page for ønske. The word meant desire in English. He returned to his meal prep with a huge smile on his face.
20
Kat felt like a teenager. Scratch that. She felt how she expected a normal teenager felt when in the throes of t
heir first all-out obsession with a boy. Had she any idea that over the clothes make-out sessions were so mind altering, she’d have done it as a teenager—screw her hang-ups and in-a-bubble raising. She closed the car door, locked it with a twirl—a freaking twirl—and headed for the house.
What did you get the man who’d given you more orgasms in three weeks than you’d had in your life? Something equally life changing. Kat clutched the box to her chest, pushed through the front door, and hoped she hadn’t miscalculated the gift or the actual measurements.
The house was quiet. Instantly, she longed for the healthy bass beats from the radio she’d given Hunter a hard time about only two weeks ago. The lights were off. Stunning sunlight poured in through the windows. She tiptoed down the hallway but found all the rooms empty. Her heart dropped to mid chest, very near her stomach.
“Hunter?”
Hollowness echoed through the space that up until this morning had been rife with conversation, laughs, the tumult of her orgasms, and irritation of him not letting her return the favors. She hurried to the back porch, lugging the large box along. He wasn’t on the porch or the stairs he’d worked himself on each day. A twinge of panic settled in her heart, pressing it deeper still.
Had her father found their hideout and taken him away? Had he left on his own? She didn’t know which would hurt worse. Lord, she was sick in the head. Of course, if he were abducted, that would be worse. If they took him… Her mind wandered down a dark path but stalled. If they’d taken him, there’s no way Hunter would have left without a fight equating to broken furniture and body parts left behind. Not his.
The house looked neat but lived in with his coffee cup, the largest one she’d grown to think of as his, still on the railing. He’d won it in a fair rock, paper, scissors war. Where would he have gone? Why wouldn’t he tell her? Just when she was about to lose all control, her gaze caught movement in the lake. Even at this distance, she could tell it was Hunter. His arms slowly, gracefully churned the water, propelling him from one side of the bank to the other. Instantly, the pressure holding down her heart lifted.
“Oh Kat, what are you doing?”
She was getting gooey over a guy, one who had no intention of getting… anything with no matter how many times he insinuated it. The man hadn’t made a move. He’d gone so far as to outmaneuver her advances with excuses about protecting her. He had in so many different ways. It was about time he saw her as something other than his mission. She hurried to the back and leaned the box against Hunter’s bed.
“Just planning to have the best night of my life.”
Kat hurried out the house and down the long series of stairs. She eased to the end of the pier, hoping not to distract him from the laps he swam in front of the wood outcropping.
A pile of clothes laid to the side. She sat near them, removed her shoes, set them to the side and hung her feet over the edge. The chilly water stole her breath for a second. Watching such a thick man move through the water so effortlessly diverted her attention from the temperature. He moved his face out of the water only enough to suck a quick gulp of air, and then he was under again, pulling and pulling until long past the time Kat’s lungs would have demanded air.
Hunter reached the other side of the lake, straightened with his back to her, drew one deep breath, and then dove beneath the surface. He left hardly a ripple in the water, and soon those settled, leaving not a whisper of the man who amazed her more and more every day. Their daily steps and questions always challenged her boundaries. She put up with it because, though uncomfortable, it helped to discuss things. Plus, they usually ended the session with an orgasm. Hers. Today would be different.
Kat’s gaze scanned the surface. Bubbles—heck, even a ripple—would soothe her anxiety, but an eerie quiet settled over the water as though the birds even held their breath in anticipation of his return to the surface.
Silently, with barely a ruffling of the surface, Hunter’s head broke through the darkness an inch from her left foot. A smile beamed, showcasing his white teeth and beautifully healed lips.
“Kat.” He winked with his left, no longer swollen shut, eye and leaned forward. His lips warmed her cold big toe before easing back and between her legs.
He warmed her through and through with the slightest gestures. Only they weren’t slight at all. Last week, he’d taught her how to break an attacker’s hold and return a shocking blow to the face. The eyes and the nose made small, but effective, targets.
“Aren’t you cold?” she whispered, afraid to break the still.
“No. I’m…” His shoulders bunched as he swept his hands through the water, keeping himself afloat. He pressed his wet lips together. The whites of his eyes revealed a track of thought he didn’t share.
“You’re what?” Gorgeous. Kind. Protective. Off-limits.
“Ah, it’s dumb.”
“I’m a huge fan of dumb. Dumb keeps me in business.” She gave him a smile.
“In the water, I’m…” Hunter huffed. “I’m…normal again. I don’t have to hop or crutch around. I just swim…like I have since I was a kid.”
“That’s not dumb.” Her chest ached for him. “It’s wonderful.”
Hunter tried to hide his smile, but the joy was etched all over his face.
“You don’t want to get out, do you?” She laughed, beyond thrilled with his excitement.
“Nope.” With one crank of his arms, Hunter propelled himself back, revealing his rebounding chest, etched abdomen, and the V pointing at the spot that almost peeked from beneath the surface.
Her mouth watered. She’d tried to get him naked or catch him masturbating for three weeks now. The man was a master of getting up and dressed before she stirred. He was the master of many things, and she wanted to get deeper firsthand experience. She stood, yanked the cotton shirt over her head, dropped it next to his pile, and unfastened her jeans.
“Kat. What are you doing?” His voice rumbled off the water like a warning roll of thunder.
“Taking a swim.” She shoved her pants to the decking and stepped out of them.
“I’m naked.”
“I know.” Kat unfastened the soft underwire bra, slipped it from her arms and hooked a finger in her panties.
“I don’t think you should do that. We haven’t crossed that line…yet.” He spoke as though he didn’t want her to go any further, but his intense gaze told an entirely different story.
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re a bad liar?” She pulled all the strength, confidence, and determination she’d gained over the past several weeks and slipped her panties down her legs.
In the beginning, Hunter had been sans clothing in front of her more times than she could count. Even with all her orgasms, this was the first time she’d been naked in front of a man in years.
“Never.” He cleared his throat. His head shook. “Christ, Kat. Are you trying to kill me?”
“That’s the opposite of what I’m trying to do.” She walked to the edge and assessed the depth. Three feet from the dock and Hunter treaded water.
“What are you trying to do?”
“Swim.” Kat dove to his left. Cold wasn’t the right word to describe the pin prickle down her spine and the icicles in her veins. The water enveloped and shocked every inch of her skin while also invigorating her. She flipped and whirled under the water as she never had. Freedom. It made everything sweeter. Especially the anticipation.
Her head broke the surface. Sunlight poured down, competing with the water. Hunter split the water in a direct line for the ladder up the side of the dock. Kat put her legs and arms to work, and they answered the call rather easily after all her running and body-weight exercises at the house. She cut him off several feet away, placing herself between him and the dock.
“What are you trying to do?”
“Escape and evade.” Hunter’s gaze narrowed to her breasts peeking through the clear blue water.
“A big man like you shouldn’t be scared of
me.” She gave him her best I’m innocent eyes.
“I’m not scared of what you’ll do to me, Kat.” He churned the water between them.
The large motion moved currents across her belly and pelvis. “You’re scared of what you’ll do to me?” Kat scoffed. “You wouldn’t hurt me.” He continued toward her, and she continued back. The wood brushed her shoulders. She reached for the rungs above her head and blocked his path.
A small growl brewed in his throat. His hand grabbed the ladder on either side of her breasts. Hunter pressed his body to hers. The contrast between cold and hot shorted out her brain. Her nipples pressed against his. The full length of his cock brushed the inside of her thigh. Kat swallowed and resisted the urge to roll her hips. Just barely.
Hunter’s face lowered so close, but his eyes remained fixed on hers. “I’d never intend to hurt you, Kat, but when I’m inside you, I won’t get out. Not until I mark you.” His head shook. “There’ll be no pulling out. And I don’t think either of us is ready to be responsible for another human life.”
That was his holdup the whole time? Why hadn’t he said so? She’d have gotten them the box—at least, the little one inside the big one—weeks ago. “That’s all you’re worried about?”
“I refuse to play around with a kid’s life because I want to bone the fuck out of someone, Kat.”
“And you shouldn’t. That’s not what I meant. I think it’s wonderful that you take it so seriously. So many people don’t.” She leaned forward, connecting their mouths.
The contact of their mouths set off a spark that ignited a frenzy. Hunter pressed closer and pulled higher. His thick length wedged against the V of her thighs. He shoved higher still, strumming her clit with the ridges of his penis. It stunned a moan from her lips, which tried their damnedest to eat his mouth whole. Her finger tightened on the ladder’s rungs to keep from putting too much pressure on him, which seemed ridiculous. He was a bulldog of a man. One leg or two, he could hold her high and do mad things to her body. He had only days ago. That somehow didn’t compare to the current onslaught he poured over her.
Captor Mine (Base Branch Series Book 13) Page 13