Runner: The Fringe, Book 3

by Anitra Lynn McLeod

  “Yes.”

  When she tried to touch him, he pushed her hands away and dropped to his knees. Nudging her open, exposing her to the tender mercies of his tongue, Foster reveled in the tart, sweet taste of her and the ever-increasing moans of pleasure that shook her lovely body. Pushing her right to the edge, he stopped and grinned up at her.

  Frustration made her eyes dark amethyst. Her mouth worked slowly open and closed. Even though he was on his knees before her, she had no doubt who was in charge. While she watched, he slipped his tongue to her clit with one long, slow swipe.

  Her head rolled back as she moaned. “Oh—my—Foster.”

  “I’m ready to paint you now.” He stood, tore off his shoes, socks and his jeans, and tossed them away, then pushed the ripped T-shirt from Jynx’s shoulders.

  “Stand here.” He placed her on a fabric tarp on the floor. Still wearing his hunter green silk boxes, he hummed as he searched through the boxes of paints for one in particular. A very special paint. “Ah, here it is.”

  Jynx gave the bottle a curious, somewhat leery gaze. “Where’s the canvas?” She looked around the studio.

  Dipping a brush into the oddly sparkly, iridescent paint, Foster stroked a broad swath of it down from her chin to her navel. “You. You’re the canvas.”

  Jynx thought he meant paint her as in paint a portrait of her, not actually paint her body. Standing still, letting the slide of the brush along her flesh remind her of his mouth, she couldn’t stop trembling. Sharp desire flared.

  Decorating her with curlicues and intricate designs, he covered her with the shiny paint. He even stroked some through her hair and across her cheekbones. She had no idea what she looked like, but if the straining in his boxers gave any indication, he seemed pleased with his work.

  He considered her with a discerning gaze. “Just as I imagined. Your skin is a wonderful canvas.” He handed her the brush, slipped off his boxers and ordered, “Do me.”

  “Do you?” She held the brush in her hand as she considered his demand.

  He flashed her that biting grin. “With the paint.”

  Obviously his nudity did not make him feel vulnerable in any way. He stood tall, waiting for her to paint him.

  Considering his powerful body, she swept the brush across his face, like war paint, then used it to further accentuate his muscles. Dripping and draping it around his pectorals, his biceps, even down along the powerful ripple of his quadriceps. She stroked glistening paint on his back from the muscular thrust of his gluteus maximus to his hamstrings.

  He chuckled as she ran the brush up his obliques. “That tickles.”

  She thought about stroking the brush along his penis—that would stop his chuckles—but she noticed he’d been careful to avoid certain places on her body, so she did the same.

  She stepped back to consider her work. Foster looked like a Greek statue defaced by vandals. But as she looked closer she realized the iridescent paint enhanced his body and made him seem magical. All his beautiful muscles defined. Looking deep, Jynx saw his marshmallow heart, hidden far below his powerful body.

  “Done?”

  “Yes.”

  He took the paint and brush from her and set them aside. “Lights.”

  Darkness fell.

  She gasped. “The paint glows in the dark.”

  He let her look, even turned slowly for her.

  She did so for him.

  “Watch this.”

  Foster stroked his finger from her chin to her navel. Flashing sparks flew from her body. A small electrical charge followed the shimmers, trailing down, from her chin to her clit.

  “Oh—my—Foster—what is this?” It felt wonderful, magnifying the pleasure of his touch tenfold.

  “Do you like it?” Running his hands along the dried paint sent sharp electric bursts across her skin.

  Jynx couldn’t answer, let alone stand up. She reached out, hoping to steady herself against him, but when she made contact, the paint shimmered and electricity charged through her hands. She threw herself against him. Blinding sparks so bright she winced her eyes closed, but it was the burst of pleasure that literally floored her.

  “Ah, God.” Foster fell with her to the tarp. As he caressed her paint-smeared body, the multicolored sparks generated greater electricity. “I discovered this paint by accident. Never showed anyone but you.”

  “Why me?”

  Because I trust you. “Because you’re my lovely servant.” He’d discovered the magical qualities of this paint when he’d spilled it on himself, and he’d longed to use it like this ever since. To use it with Jynx filled him with such a great and powerful lust, he could barely control himself. His desire took on a softer edge as love filled him. He wanted to bury his face in her hair and beg her forgiveness for what would come. But he didn’t. Instead, he rolled her until she lay facedown on the tarp.

  “What—”

  “Hush. Lie still.” He traced his hands along the paint of her back and bottom. She moaned and writhed below him as he slowly parted her thighs. Carefully, balancing himself along his arms, he lowered his body to hers. Nudging his penis between her legs, he entered her as slowly as he could from behind. Jynx helped by angling herself up, opening to him, helping him inside. A sharp vulgar expletive involuntarily came from his mouth as Jynx lifted, rocked her hips, impaling herself on him. Every new angle of her hips altered the sensations along his penis until he had to withdraw almost entirely or he’d lose control.

  “Don’t stop.” Jynx lifted her upper body, resting her weight on her elbows as she turned her head to him.

  Angling her chin, drawing her back, he kissed her sideways until he found it wasn’t enough. He couldn’t kiss her as deeply as he wanted. He slid off her, rolled her to her side, then lifted her leg to his hip as he pushed her legs apart with his thigh. Face to face, as she lay back, he leaned into her.

  “Wrap your lovely legs around me. Cradle me with your body.” Kissing her deeply, he lifted his thigh, pressing it to her bottom as he rocked her slowly onto the full of his cock. Bit by bit deeper. She had to accept or they could not snuggle this close.

  Paint shimmered each time they touched. Foster wanted to scream out how much he loved her, how much he would sacrifice for her, but he held his tongue as tightly as he held her body.

  Never wanting the moment to end, Foster kept his strokes slow, taking deep breaths between to hold back the ensuing critical mass. Touching her, tasting her, feeling as if he consumed her with the flaring sparks from the paint, Foster fought the primal need to ravage her. He wanted to take her hard and fast and banish that painful need forever.

  “I love you, Foster,” Jynx said, brushing her fingers to his face, lighting it up with sparks. “I will always love you. Even knowing what you will do to me. Because I know you have no choice.”

  Foster couldn’t bear to hear any more and smothered her mouth with kisses. In his heart, he knew he would never banish his need for Jynx. No amount of sex would ever quench his thirst, because it wasn’t sex he craved. It was love. What he needed could never be fully sated. But her lovely mouth whispering such forgiving words would shatter his resolve. He’d never be able to free her if he thought too much about what he would do to her in the coming days.

  Increasing his pace, he carefully stroked her clit with a matching beat until she tightened around him. He came in a torrent that shook his body so hard, he cried out. A groan erupted as Foster buried his face in her hair.

  Breathing of lingering strawberries, it was the stunning forgiveness of her that made him fall against her and hide his face. So she would not see the tears that filled his eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Jynx did not need to see his face. She felt drops along her neck and knew Foster cried as he held her desperately. Empathetic tears flowed down her cheeks. He could play at being a ruthless bastard all he wanted. He could say the most vulgar and hateful things. He pretended to care nothing more for her than a willing partner
in a game of sex. To use his vernacular, Jynx simply didn’t buy it. Why he did it, Jynx didn’t fully understand. Perhaps to keep himself emotionally distant from the pain of what he had to do, because she knew he was going to take her to Roberts. There was no truth other than that.

  “I forgive you, Foster.”

  “Don’t,” he moaned, wrapping his arms in almost a crushing hug about her. Whatever had made the paint spark abated. It hardly even glowed in the dark now. “I’m a very bad man. You should hate me.”

  “Yes, I know. Because that would make it so much easier for you if I hated you. But I don’t. I know there is nothing you can do to save me, even though you wish you could.”

  “It’s just a game, all a game. I’m just using you.”

  “So you keep saying.” She wanted to point out his tears but couldn’t draw attention to a vulnerability that might hurt him further. Things were bad enough. No point in increasing his pain. She couldn’t believe it, but they were right back where they started what seemed a lifetime ago—her accepting her fate and him not.

  “There is a part of me that wishes I could hate you. How easy it would be for me to focus all my rage on you. But it’s not your fault. Nor is it mine.” She sighed and wrapped her legs tightly, drawing him close. “The situation is what it is. Your choices are as limited, if not more limited, than mine.”

  “How can you?” Foster shook his head against hers. “How can you just so calmly accept that I’m going to be responsible for killing you?”

  “Because you’re not responsible. I don’t blame anyone but Roberts.”

  “But I’m helping that sick freak.” Foster’s voice was so low she could barely hear him.

  “You’re doing your job. Again, Foster, if you didn’t take me in, someone else would. It would be an exercise in futility for me to even think I can ever be free.”

  Foster wanted to grab her and shake her and make her as mad as he was. To what end? Wouldn’t change a thing. In a part he barely acknowledged, he despised her for being right. If only he could be ruthless, brutal and vicious enough, he could turn it all around.

  Fighting down a sudden urge to tell her everything, Foster smoothed his face along hers, found her lips, kissed her with just a stroke of his mouth along hers. “Hate to break this up, Sweets, but we have to wash this stuff off. In about two minutes, it’s going to start itching something fierce.”

  He took her to his shower and washed off as much of the paint as he could. Little sparkles still flashed on her skin and in her hair. She looked even more like a sprite. As she carefully washed him, he got hard again.

  “I think we’re clean enough.” Rudely, he pushed her hands away, rinsed off and stepped from the shower. He tossed her a towel. “Dry off. And thanks. I can’t believe you let me have one last ride. You’re a real sport.”

  That comment should have flushed her face red with anger, but she only considered him curiously as she dried herself off.

  He tried again. “Guess you really do like it rough and nasty. Four men? I’m beginning to doubt that more and more. Unless, you took them on all at once. That I’d believe.”

  Unfazed, she only considered him with her intense otherworldly eyes.

  “I keep telling you, Sweets, and you just keep letting me—”

  “Stop.” She shushed him with a finger to his lips. “You don’t have to do this. You get the money, keep your reputation intact, and I’ll continue to be your lover.”

  “You’re giving me permission?”

  “Yes. Just don’t say nasty things to me anymore. I don’t believe it, so stop doing it.”

  “Okay. So, can I do nasty things to you?”

  “If you consider what we just did with the paint nasty, then by all means, Mr. Nash, do your worst.”

  This wasn’t going at all the way he wanted it to. He wanted to make her mad, make her hate him, because he didn’t want Roberts to even suspect that they had something so incredible between them. No matter what he said or did, Jynx just didn’t buy it. She seemed to be able to see right through him and see the truth behind the ugly words and brutal hostility that fooled so many others.

  “I’ll give you a choice. You can sleep in my bed and let me have my way with you again, or I can take you back to your cell.”

  Toweling the last of the water from her hair, Jynx hung her towel up, then ran and jumped into his bed, sliding halfway across the silk before she stopped. Foster stood and watched her exuberant display with a grin he had to forcefully bite down.

  “If I didn’t make my choice clear, I choose to sleep in your bed, with you, and you can do whatever you’d like to me while I’m here.” Lying back, stretching her hands above her head, she gripped the headboard. “You can even tie me up.”

  A surge of mastery swept him. Every time he thought they’d gone about as far as they could, she just pushed that edge a bit further. How far would she actually let him go?

  “Tie you up?” The idea of binding her excited him. “Don’t move.” He left the room and returned with a pair of plastimetal cuffs. “Stand up.”

  She did, and he handcuffed her arms behind her back. When he turned her around, he could see an edge of fear in her eyes. “Are you afraid of me?”

  “Yes.” It seemed to excite her all the more.

  “Do you trust me?”

  “Yes.”

  Raising her up by her hips, Foster leaned back as he lifted her against his body. “Spread your legs around me.” She did. With her hands behind her, she couldn’t move or she’d topple them both to the floor.

  “What are you—”

  Without any preliminaries, Foster impaled her, settling her captive body to his thick, straining cock. “So wet, so sweet, so tight.” Grasping her under her bottom, bending his knees to balance her slight weight, Foster pinned her to his body. “Utterly at my mercy.”

  Jynx trembled with his hot words spinning in her mind as he filled her. She’d never made love standing up like this because she never had a partner as strong as Foster. He balanced her weight easily as his massive arms and legs held her up.

  All she could do was lock her legs together and hold on to him with her thighs. Arms cuffed behind her back, she realized she couldn’t move or she’d upset the delicate balancing act. As he slid her body against his, her clit rubbing against the rough edge of his pubic hair, she felt critical mass building to a fever pitch.

  “Do you like this?” Keeping his face low, he peered at her with a grin, bit off by his upper teeth against his lower lip. Boy-next-door grown up with an adult erotic curiosity.

  “Very much.”

  He gripped her tightly and walked from his bedroom. Each step made a delicious swipe against her.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Don’t know yet. I like looking at you.” He angled her back so he could look. “I like feeling you around me. I think I’ll walk around with you like this. It feels good.”

  So he did. He walked rather aimlessly around his ship, stopping occasionally to press her against a wall, or a table, thrust gently into her, look deep into her eyes, tease her to the edge, then continue to walk around.

  Heaven help her, it drove her crazy. “Take me to the bridge.”

  He caught her gaze. “Yeah? Want to get back in my chair?”

  “Yes. Your seat of power.”

  His eyes widened. “You figured that out, did you?”

  “It’s where you feel most powerful.”

  Striding along the hallway, he took her to the bridge. He settled himself in his chair, tapped at the keypad, and a soft lavender light made the bridge glow. A crash of thunder shook the ship as a flash of blue lightning rippled down the sides of the bridge. Plinks and plunks of rain against the ship rang softly metallic.

  Foster spun the chair away from the main console, stood, turned around and sank slowly to his knees until Jynx sat in his pilot chair.

  “Give you a little taste of that power, lovely lady.”

  Balancing her b
ody by using her bound hands against the seat of the chair, she stretched her legs out, toes pointed, barely able to reach the floor. “Little taste is right. I can’t do much.”

  “Yeah. A tragedy.” Foster gripped her hips and gave a hard thrust to her curiously bound yet free body. “Can’t give you too much power. You might go mad with it and take over the ship. Make me your slave.”

  “You mean like you have to me?” Jynx accepted his thrust by holding her arms taut behind her.

  “Haven’t even shown you but the tip of the iceberg of my madness. You really don’t want to push me that far.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I might very well hurt you.”

  “I can take it.”

  “Sweets—”

  “Like you said, you’ll make me take it.”

  She felt his body surge up with power. His hands tightened on her hips with his fingers digging forcefully into her buttocks.

  “Don’t play this game with me. Don’t.”

  “Tap into that anger in you, Foster. That anger that you have against the situation you’ve been forced into. Batter me with that anger. Thrust into me like a mad man with it. I want you to.”

  “No, you don’t.” Shaking his head, pulling back, Foster groaned when she wrapped her legs tight around him and pulled him back to her body.

  “Yes, I do.”

  Tight, sharp breaths expanded and constricted his chest. Gritting his teeth, fighting against himself, he shook his head. “I don’t want to hurt you or—” He dipped his gaze her belly.

  “You won’t.” Jynx pulled him with her legs.

  Foster closed his eyes, determined to resist.

  “I want the animal in you. If this is to be my last time, I want you primal and raw.”

  Clutching around his shaft, she continued to beg him, and just when she didn’t think he would or could indulge her, he growled and lunged, forcing her legs even wider as he thrust into her. Jynx submitted to him instantly. She offered her body up to a furious, pounding assault that made her howl with sublime pleasure. Despite what he thought, he wasn’t hurting her. His rough lovemaking felt so good, she wished it would go on forever.