Deadly Sins

by Lora Leigh

  Being careful of his lovers was his uppermost thought, but Skye had a way of making him so fucking hungry he feared hurting her. A part of him wanted to raid the hot, clenched little pussy wrapped around his fingers. Made him want to feel every sharp sensation of it bearing down on his cock, sucking him inside as it stretched to accommodate his width.

  God, she made him crazy.

  Sucking at her hard little clit, he felt the little bud pulse harder beneath his tongue and he knew she was close.

  Too close.

  He didn’t want it to end yet. Once she climaxed, this interlude would be over and he would have to send her back to her own house. To her own bed.

  He couldn’t keep her, no matter how badly he wanted to.

  Pushing his fingers farther inside her and feeling each contraction that attacked the heated channel, Logan could feel his balls tightening in response.

  She was slick and wet; she was soaking his finger. The taste of her against his tongue was like summer itself. Hot as hell and filled with life. And he wanted nothing more than to release his tortured cock and—

  Hell, it was already released.

  When had he managed to undo his jeans and release the pulsing, straining flesh?

  Holding the thick shaft with one hand, his fingers massaging the sensitive head, he fought, tried, prayed to hold back and hold on to the control he could feel slipping through his fingers.

  He wanted the feel of that hot flesh wrapped around his dick so bad it was about to kill him.

  If he didn’t let her come, if he didn’t finish this now, then he was going to end up finishing it with his cock buried, unsheathed, so deep inside her that neither of them would know where one began and the other ended.

  Capping his lips over the throbbing bud of her clit as he worked his fingers inside her, stretching her further, easing the tender tissue as her slick fluids gathered further, Logan knew he was riding an edge that was fast approaching meltdown.

  Pulling his fingers back, he used his lips and tongue and the suckling of his mouth on the hard bundle of nerves as he thrust both fingers inside her and began working her flesh with quick, hard little strokes that had her exploding in seconds.

  Rapture surged through her.

  Skye’s eyes flared open as the shift of his fingers and the movements of his lips and tongue changed. Between one breath and the next he was sucking her clit with a force that had it sensitizing to the point of exquisite pain just before his tongue tucked against it and began rubbing in quick, rhythmic motions.

  His fingers pulled back, then surged inside her in a series of hard, rasping strokes inside the clenched tissue, then tilting upward and stroking against a spot so sensitive she immediately lost her senses with the explosion that detonated inside her.

  He didn’t stop with the initial release. Just because she had tightened and cried out, he didn’t ease in the demanding, dominant strokes of his fingers or the rasp of his tongue against her clit.

  He increased it. Kept it going and rumbled a moan of pure male hunger against her flesh to send her racing higher.

  It seemed never ending.

  Her thighs clenched as they fell to his shoulders, her hips arched and trembling as shudder after shudder tore through her body. The waves of sensation jerked up her spine and crashed into her senses with a violence born of desperation and tore another ragged cry from her lips.

  Wave after wave of blissful rapture tore through her, exploding inside her pussy with a power that left her crying out breathlessly, weak and still riding an edge that only he controlled.

  And he controlled it ruthlessly. Drawing every sensation out to its highest peak before allowing it to peak. Pushing her higher, further than she’d ever known a release could be pushed.

  With his lips, tongue, and heated mouth, his thrusting fingers, and the deep, internal stroking of hidden nerve endings buried against the walls of her pussy he took her to a realm of pleasure she was loathe to leave.

  He pushed her to an edge of complete ecstasy, held her there, kept it vibrating inside her, then gently allowed her to begin to descend.

  It was a descent she fought with everything inside her. Because it wasn’t enough. It was violent, encompassing, so sensually destructive that she knew for a fact she’d never been even close to such pleasure. Still, there was a pulse of need, a completeness that she knew was missing. One she knew her body was greedy to experience.

  Still, he eased her back to reality until he finished her with a last, gentle lick to her violently sensitive clit as he held his fingers still inside her.

  Her muscles were shuddering as they continued to grip and suck at his fingers. Her juices didn’t ease from her; each inner convulsion had copious amounts of fluid spilling in rapid succession to his fingers and her thighs.

  When that last ecstatic shudder rippled from her pussy, it was to the feel of him easing his fingers free and the knowledge that there was still so much to come.

  There was still more to experience, because she wasn’t quite satisfied yet.

  Far from it.

  “It’s not enough,” she whispered as she felt him moving away, and she tried to sit up, tried to touch him, to caress him and fulfill all those pent-up fantasies racing through her veins.

  Some sense, some hidden intuition, warned her that it was over. Her chest tightened with it as her eyes opened and she glimpsed the tightness of his expression, the regret in his gaze.

  As he helped her sit up he caught her hands, holding them between their bodies as she stared back at him in surprise.

  “Logan?” She could feel her chest tightening, a realization that even though it wasn’t enough, in his eyes she could still see it was finished.

  “It’s enough, baby.” With his free hand he stroked back the hair that had fallen over her face, his gaze tortured, the hardened length of his cock free of his jeans and throbbing fiercely against her thigh.

  She looked down at the thick, heavy shaft before lifting her gaze again.

  “Is it?” she asked then, feeling a vein of pain-filled anger beginning to unfurl inside her.

  “It has to be.” Stone-hard, his emerald eyes like green ice despite the ragged sound of his voice, he denied what they both knew for a certain fact.

  They were both still desperate, aching for the completion.

  He stepped away from her, fixed his jeans, then bent and picked his shirt and her nightgown from the floor.

  Skye didn’t say a word as he pulled the nightgown over her head and helped her arms into their places. Once he pulled the material over her breasts she realized it was all she could do to keep from crying.

  Her lips were actually on the verge of trembling.

  How long had it been since she had cried?

  Surely not since she was an adolescent. She’d always fought not to cry, because her father had always told her that big girls didn’t cry.

  Well, she was a big girl now, and all she wanted to do was sob as Logan turned away from her and pulled his own shirt over his head.

  His back flexed, the muscles clenching with hard ripples as he jerked the shirt on, then pushed the strands of hair falling over his rugged face.

  Turning back to her, he stood silent and still, watching her, his breathing as harsh and uneven as hers.

  Drawing in a hard breath, Skye slid from the counter slowly before he crossed the distance to help her down. She didn’t want him to touch her again. She was terrified if he did, then she might weaken from the force of the emotions racing through her.

  Who could have known that he would have superhuman self-control? For damned sure he had more than she. Because there was no way in hell she could have denied him after experiencing the power of the need racing through both of them.

  Her stomach clenched as emotion and ragged regret swelled inside her. And anger.

  Damn him. He might be a glutton for self-punishment, but she sure as hell wasn’t.

  And she’d just fucking had enough.

>   She was here for a reason, and it wasn’t to torment herself over a man who wanted nothing as his own. Not a truck, a house, a puppy, or a lover. He sure as hell obviously didn’t want a future with anyone or anything and had no dreams of sharing his life outside whatever fucking bond he had with his cousins.

  Fuck him.

  Fuck him and fuck destroying herself over something, someone, she should have known from the beginning—hell, she had known from the beginning—could never be hers.

  Bending, she snatched the robe from the floor, pulled it on and tied it quickly, clumsily as she held back her tears.

  Turning on her heel, she moved quickly from the darkened kitchen and all but raced to the patio doors.

  “Skye, goddamn it, wait!” he snarled behind her, his voice barely loud enough to hear despite the fury she could feel throttled inside it.

  She didn’t wait. She couldn’t.

  She would end up either sobbing on the floor in front of him or begging him to fuck her and finish it.

  Sliding open the patio doors before he could reach her, she bent, scooped up the little Chinese pug puppy, and all but ran across the short distance to her own patio, then into the house.

  Skye was tired of listening to the baby cry alone. At least she would have someone to cry with now, she thought as the puppy’s whines became more pitiful as Skye closed and locked the patio doors behind her.

  She flipped the curtains closed without turning around.

  She was too frightened that if she turned, then she would see Logan. If she did, she would definitely end up begging. And if she didn’t, then the pain might actually bring her to her knees.

  Holding the little scrap of fur to her chest, she moved through the house to the other side and the small in-law suite she had taken for her bedroom.

  Closing the door behind her, she breathed in roughly and stared down at the sad, damp eyes of the puppy as she stared up at her. The pug’s expression was puzzled and hurt, as though she, too, simply couldn’t understand why Logan couldn’t love her.

  Why Logan refused to love her.

  “It’s okay, little baby,” Skye said roughly as the puppy whined sadly once again. “It’s okay; I’ll just cry with you.”

  Because for some reason, for one insane moment last week beneath the sheltering branches of the old oak tree, she’d actually believed Logan Callahan might want, just a little bit, to consider a lover, a puppy, a future.

  And she had never imagined just how wrong she was.

  She’d never realized just how serious he’d been when he’d told her it couldn’t happen, that he wouldn’t let it happen.

  She would be no more than a one-night stand. And that was something she knew her heart wouldn’t survive.

  It was something her reason for being here couldn’t accept.

  For the first time since her parents’ deaths, the first tear fell, and the puppy whined against Skye’s chest again.

  For such a small, young animal she was unnaturally attached to a man who didn’t want him. She didn’t want to leave Logan’s property. As though leaving might steal a chance of her seeing the man she had already decided was her owner.

  “It’s okay, little girl,” Skye murmured as the puppy whined again.

  Skye put the puppy on her feet before picking up a newspaper on the bedside table and spreading the pages across the floors.

  “I’ll get you a blanket,” she told the puppy as she bent and ran her fingers down the soft apricot fur as the pug lay down slowly on the floor next to the door.

  Dark brown eyes stared up at Skye despondently.

  “You’re not the only one he didn’t want,” she told the puppy softly. “Evidently, he didn’t want me either.”

  Unfortunately, it seemed she wanted him far too much.

  “Get some sleep.” She sighed deeply before moving to the bed and sitting down.

  Reaching out, she opened the drawer on the small bedside table and drew out the photo she kept there.

  Amy was leaning, her head against Skye’s, her brown eyes filled with laughter.

  God, what would she have done without her foster family, her foster sister, in those first years after witnessing her parents’ deaths?

  After seeing her nanny and her father’s bodyguard shoot her mother and father in the head before searching the house for her.

  Amy had kept her sane.

  She had made Skye laugh.

  She had made her want to get up in the mornings.

  And she had held the younger Skye when brutal nightmares had brought her awake screaming and crying.

  A tear landed on the picture.

  Wiping it away, Skye bent over with the pain that struck at her stomach, her chest. The agony of the loss had never broken her. She hadn’t had Amy nearly long enough to heal before a killer had taken her away.

  “Logan Callahan is a baby doll, Skye,” her sister had sighed. “He’s cute as hell, and so sad. Something’s going on there, and I have to find out what. He and his cousins are good men. They don’t deserve this.”

  Amy hadn’t told her what was going on. She hadn’t told Skye she was chasing a killer. But Skye had known, whatever it was, it had darkened Amy’s eyes and left her filled with worry for Logan.

  “One day, maybe I can find a good man like Logan,” Skye had said somberly. “Someone who won’t get killed like my daddy and mommy did.”

  Amy had smiled and brushed her hair back from her face. “I’m much too old for Logan, Skye. Maybe, when you’re a little bit older, we’ll find him again so he can fall all kinds of in love with you. I want you to have someone who will protect you, little sister. Someone who will love you with all his heart and soul.”

  That had been their last conversation.

  Days later, Amy had gone missing. Two days after that, a hiker had found her body, beaten, broken, horribly molested, and bled out.

  “Oh, God!” She hadn’t realized sobs were tearing at her chest as she clenched the picture, or that tears were falling from her eyes.

  She’d only been fifteen. Her parents had died five years before and still the nightmares had tormented her, terrified her.

  Finding her way in life after witnessing their brutal murder wouldn’t have been possible without Amy. Then, she had been taken from her, too.

  A soft whine had her staring down.

  The pup sat at her feet, head tilted for a second before moving to lick her ankle as though in consolation. A second later she jumped up, placing her front paws against Skye’s legs, obviously wanting up.

  And Skye needed the comfort, she admitted.

  She needed Logan. Needed his touch, and needed that something she had seen in the pictures Amy had shown her twelve years before. That spark of laughter that hadn’t been extinguished then. That hint of a smile that had stolen her fifteen-year-old heart.

  She needed the man she had claimed when she had been no more than a teenager. And she needed vengeance for the sister stolen from her.

  And Skye promised herself, she might not be able to hold on to the man, but she would have the vengeance.

  Daylight was beginning to edge through the curtains now. She’d conquered another night. If she didn’t sleep in darkness, then she found the nightmares didn’t visit.

  Skye walked through the house to the back bedroom she’d taken.

  The house was far too large for one person, just as the one Logan Callahan owned was.

  Four large upstairs bedrooms, plus what was more commonly called an in-law suite at the back of the first floor.

  That room worked perfectly for Skye.

  The small sitting room, bedroom, and roomy bathroom with its garden tub, full-sized shower, and wide vanity cabinet was the size of her apartment in D.C.

  The upstairs rooms were nicer but, still, upstairs, and she’d found herself feeling isolated and too damned alone there.

  Moving to the bed, she picked up her gown and robe before heading to the shower. Dawn was already edging across th
e mountains. It was her bedtime. She hadn’t been able to sleep at night for far too many years. She was too aware that often evil used the cover of night to strike.

  By the time she had showered and moved back to the bedroom, the sun was peeking through the opened windows and spreading its warming rays across the bed.

  The little bundle of fluff was sitting at Skye’s bedroom door, her low, almost-imperceptible whines breaking her heart.

  For over a week she’d watched that baby scratch at Logan’s door and sat on her patio and listened to the dog whine.

  Closing the curtains securely, Skye left the bedroom to check the house one last time.

  The puppy followed her curiously. She whimpered at the front door as Skye checked it, then followed her up the stairs until she picked her up on the fifth step and just carried her with her. The puppy was too small to try to climb those stairs. Holding the pug close to her chest, Skye checked the windows and the balcony door that led to the balcony straight across from Logan Callahan’s.

  There was no sign of him in the bedroom. No sign of him outside.

  The puppy whined again.

  Shaking her head, Skye moved back downstairs. Giving the puppy a drink of water, she set her on the paper and praised her when she did her business. Giving in to a moment of weakness Skye hoped she wouldn’t regret, she placed the pup in the bed next to her. The pug moved to the middle of the bed, the pillow, then to Skye’s side, and finally found a spot she seemed to be able to live with, if not comfortably, at least quietly.

  “What is your story, little girl?” Skye asked as she ran her fingers down the apricot fur of the puppy’s back. “What makes you think you belong over there rather than here?”

  Skye had never had a puppy before. It hadn’t been allowed after she’d gone to live with her foster parents, because her foster father had been allergic to both cats and dogs.

  Before her foster family …

  She stared up at the ceiling for long moments before turning her gaze back to the puppy as she whined once again.

  “At least you’re welcome here.” Poor little baby. Skye knew how it felt to be an orphan, to beg to be one place while being forced to live in another.