by Jory Strong
If he stopped strangling his dick, she'd be wearing his come. And fuck if a part of him didn't want to do just that to get rid of the image of her wearing another man's shirt, putting on the bra and panties to get another man interested or to appease him.
Through the shirt, her fingertips brushed the bars in Jax's nipples, sending a streak of white-hot pleasure downward. He tightened his grip on his cock, on her hair, thrust his tongue more aggressively against hers.
She softened against him, trembled like a natural submissive, the kind Rand and Leon always went for, razzing each other about who would break first and ink a woman's name over their hearts or on their cocks.
Raw, violent anger returned with the thought of her with either one of them. He ripped his mouth off hers and stared into her eyes.
She had to understand just how dangerous he was. She had to understand that she needed to be careful.
"You know who I am?"
"The warlord of this warren."
Not good enough. The answer didn't even come close to satisfying him.
It pissed him off that he felt that way. But it pissed him off even more to think that was the only answer she had.
"What's my name?"
Even he heard the growl in his voice, the demand for her to tell him he was more than a powerful stranger.
"Jaxon."
The soft way she said it, the dip of her eyelashes and rub of her palms over his nipples cleared out the messy shit happening in his chest.
Good. She knew his name.
Jax opened her mouth with his, swallowed the addicting sound of her submission.
Her fingertips brushed across the bars in his nipples and electric pleasure pulsed downward.
His cock spasmed. Leaked. Wet the smooth skin of her stomach.
He deepened the kiss. His tongue thrust and stroked.
Hers yielded, making him even more desperate to bury himself in her hot pussy.
She was more potent than white lightning, more addicting than the fuck-all-night drugs the men who lived behind the wall of New San Jose couldn't get enough of.
"Say it again."
"Jaxon."
"Jax."
She tensed, as if resisting the intimacy that came with familiarity. And that only intensified his desire. "Say it."
"Jax."
Pleasure shuddered through him. "What's yours?"
Her lips brushed against his. "Does it matter what my name is?"
Fuck no.
But that was a lie.
He hadn't become warlord by lying to himself.
Or being denied.
"I asked you a question."
He hadn't wanted her name before. He'd thought not knowing it would make her interchangeable with all the others. Now he needed it as much as he needed to tumble her onto the bed and get his cock inside her.
Her stomach muscles fluttered against the back of his hand. Something dark and primitive was born in her not wanting to surrender her name.
The hand in her hair tightened. "I won't ask again."
"Eliana."
He wasn't sure he believed her.
"It'd be a mistake to lie to me."
It came out a sensual threat instead of a violent one. And part of him hoped she'd lied.
"It's Eliana," she repeated.
Her lashes lowered, hiding her eyes and stirring primal urges, filling his head with images of putting her on her hands and knees and mounting her.
He used the hand tangled in silky curls to force her away from his body.
"Take off the rest of it." Before he ripped the light blue scraps of material from her body and shredded them with his bare hands.
Her lashes lifted. Mesmerizing green eyes met his then dipped. Color streaked across her cheekbones.
Her slight trembling had him fighting to remain still. She wet her lips and another bead of pre-cum leaked, this one rolling downward, across his cock head and onto his shaft instead of wetting her stomach.
It was taking longer to get her out of her clothes than he spent from beginning to end with most of the women he took. But fuck, it was worth it.
Her hands reached around her back. His breath caught when the bra loosened.
A shrug of delicate shoulders, the slide of feminine hands over equally feminine arms and her breasts were bared, caramel perfection capped with dark nipples.
He released his cock and it pulled away from his body, strained, trying to close the distance between them.
Cupping her breasts, he rubbed his thumbs over the tight nipples.
"Jax," she said, the soft plea causing hot coils to form inside him.
"Take the panties off, Eliana."
Chapter 3
Need shuddered through Eliana. It didn't matter that she'd given him her real name when she hadn't meant to. It was a small enough price to pay for this, for a night of safety, of ecstasy.
Her hands went to the panties. She hooked her thumbs beneath the waistband.
She wanted to show herself to him. If she somehow managed to escape the city and the warrens, then the memory of him looking at her, touching her, being inside her would help her endure the hardship that would be her reward for survival.
She pulled the silky material downward. Slowly, slowly, revealed the small triangle of hair on her mound, and then her swollen, darkened sex.
She kept her legs together, trapping the heat and hiding the wet evidence of her arousal. Parted them only long enough so the panties could drop to the floor.
The warlord's hands left her breasts. She needed to think of him as that, the warlord, not Jaxon, and especially not Jax.
Using his name in her thoughts was too intimate. His strength was too much a draw and the thought that he could keep her safe from any threat, too much of a temptation.
He might be looking at her as if she belonged to him, as if he wanted her for more than a night, but even if she dared remain in his warren, she would never settle for being one of many.
For him, there would always be another woman, and another, and another. Hadn't his pursuit of her, when he was already in the company of someone else, proved that?
The warlord reached behind him and tugged a gun from his waistband. He thumbed the release and a black, metallic rectangle slid from the bottom of the gun's handle. It hit the floor and she saw that it contained at least one bullet.
He touched his other hand to the top of the gun. Jerked it backward. A bullet ejected, landing on the wooden floor with a ping.
His eyes met and held hers. He tossed the gun onto a dresser to the right then grasped the bottom of his shirt and tugged it up and off.
A wave of heat washed through her. His chest and arms were exquisitely inked.
Covering his heart were the words NO MERCY. But even that tattooed warning wasn't enough to keep her hands from going to the silver bars piercing his nipples.
He trapped her eyes with his. Where her fingertips and palms made contact, heat spiked into her and arrowed to her sex.
"Jax." His name came unbidden, curling through her and escaping with her breath.
His hands speared through her hair and her mouth willingly met his. Her tongue eagerly greeted his.
Heat and need and want were tangled twines around her heart. She brushed her fingertips over his nipples, feminine satisfaction blooming in her chest with the buck of his hips.
His cock pressed against her stomach. The wet tip licked her skin and her sex reacted, clenching on emptiness.
She stroked his nipples again, her own aching for Jax's hands and mouth.
He deepened the kiss, tightened his grip in her hair.
Her hands slid downward over ink-covered skin, over firm, muscled stomach. Brushed against a cock that was thick and hard and satiny.
She grasped him, thrilled at the raw sound he made, at the speed with which his hand covered hers, preventing it from moving.
His mouth tore away from hers, his breathing harsher, the look in his eyes harder. "Get on th
e bed, Eliana."
She trembled. Obeyed, stepping away from him and turning, conscious of his eyes on her.
With him, she could embrace her sensuality. With him, at least for tonight, what she looked like brought pleasure instead of the dread and revulsion that came with imagining Stefan touching her, the fear that came at what Stefan would do to her when he realized that despite her looks, she was nothing like the wife he'd lost in childbirth.
At the bed, Eliana turned to face Jax. She sat, slid backward, reveling in the way he devoured her with his eyes.
He tugged off boots and socks. Pushed his jeans downward and stepped out of them.
Need engulfed her. Hot, heady need. He was strength and confidence and contained violence, a man unlike any she'd encountered in New San Jose.
Dangerous want intensified with each of his steps toward her. She'd been drawn into his bar by curiosity, and now she was drawn to him by desires that weren't only physical. If he'd been born into one of the tribes, she would have ached for his notice, dreamed of one day being his mate.
The same way you once did Ansell, a tiny, unwelcome voice reminded. Prompting a second reminder, that it would be foolish to trust the warlord with her future. This was her only chance to escape and return to her family. There wouldn't be another, not after having successfully gotten out of the walled city once.
Jax got on the bed and she pressed her legs together, not to deny him but to capture the exquisite heat just being with him created.
Muscled thighs straddled hers and she flushed at the sight of his testicles. Couldn't help but recall the times she'd witnessed one of the tribe's stallions breed a mare.
Jax used his upper body to take hers down to the mattress and the feel of him on top of her was everything she'd fantasized about when she'd dared to dream about one day trusting a man enough to bind herself to him.
His legs trapped hers, holding them closed, the heat pouring off his skin adding to the burn in her sex. This time it was her hands that went to the back of his head, her lips that lifted to his.
His mouth was as satiny soft as his penis. She licked along the seam of his lips and felt starved for more of him.
Her tongue penetrated his mouth, rubbed, coaxed. Her heart swelling at the rigid tension in his body, as if it was taking all his control to keep from thrusting his tongue into her mouth because that would lead to the thrust of his cock into her channel.
His restraint obliterated hers. Just for tonight she wanted to feel safe enough to drop her guard, safe enough to allow herself to feel, to lose herself in sensation.
She pressed upward, ground her stomach and pussy against his hard cock. She pushed her thighs outward, against his, asking him to yield and allow her to spread her legs for him.
He made a dark, guttural sound and took charge of the kiss with the hard thrust of his tongue, the crush of his mouth. And she welcomed his aggression.
NO MERCY. The words were inked into his skin and that's what she wanted from him when it came to this. No mercy.
Her hands moved to his back. Her palms glided over ridged skin, her heart spasming at recognizing the damage done by a whip.
He'd suffered. He'd survived. He'd become strong enough to rule a warren.
Muscles rippled beneath her hands and he rocked against her. His cock throbbed between them and wet her stomach with sensual licks, making her desperate to experience the very thing she'd dreaded since being brought to the city—a man's penetration. His thighs parted hers, widened the spread of her legs in a dominant display.
A fireball of want exploded in her pussy. Her breath locked in her throat and her hips canted, her body enticing, seeking, finding.
The touch of his cock head to her opening had her eyelids fluttering closed.
"No," he said, his voice harsh. "Open your eyes, Eliana."
She opened them and found his blazing with a fierceness that promised to punch through any barrier she managed to erect.
He levered himself onto his elbows. "Watch me take you."
She trembled, slick and swollen and needy, anxious to get beyond the flash of pain that would come with the loss of her virginity. Her hands curled around his inked biceps. Her eyes went to the place where their bodies joined.
He pushed the very tip of his penis into her. Stopped.
"Please," she whispered, gaze flicking to his face long enough to see the flare of satisfaction in his eyes.
He deepened the penetration. Panted.
"Fuck you're tight," he said, pleasure in his voice as his cock retreated then pushed deeper. Retreated then pushed deeper.
His muscles bunched beneath her palms. His breathing grew harsher. He slowly worked himself into her and the pain never came, only pleasure. So much pleasure. More than she'd thought possible when she'd dared touch herself in the night.
He stilled and her body protested, inner muscles squeezing, rippling, sucking. "Jax," she begged, craving the return of his weight, the touch of his mouth to hers, the rub and twine of his tongue, the movement of his body.
He lay more heavily on her. "Am I the first man you've been with?" he asked, dark savagery in his voice.
Her channel clenched on him. Fluttered against his cock.
"Yes," she whispered, allowing herself to see possessiveness in his gaze, to read the silent claim, Mine, you belong to me in his expression.
She touched her mouth to his, wishing those words were real, wanting to feel them against her lips despite the impossibility of it.
His tongue thrust into her mouth. His hips pumped and she gave up thought for the obliteration of the moment, the ecstasy his body promised hers.
She wrapped her arms around his neck. She wrapped her legs around his waist.
She met him thrust for thrust, each press and rub to her clit taking her closer to the place she so desperately needed to reach.
Her tongue rubbed and twined with his, begged him for more, more, and more. And he gave her more. Plunged into her, each powerful thrust a demand that she surrender. That she give him everything, that she hold nothing back.
Release came in an explosion of pleasure centered in her pussy and rocketing outward, forcing a cry ahead of it and into his mouth. And that cry fed Jax's desire.
He thrust harder, faster. Pushed through the lips of her swollen sex and the clench of her channel.
His mouth ate hers. His tongue dominated hers, demanded that she climb again, peak again.
And she did.
She gave him a sob with her release.
And he came in a frenzied pistoning, flooding her channel with hot semen.
Realization eradicated immediate afterglow. Panic swelled her heart so that it filled her chest and inhibited her ability to breathe.
He hadn't put on a condom.
In New San Jose, sexually-transmitted diseases were rare thanks to the work of scientists before the Final War, to the survival of the fittest that had come immediately after it, and then the culling that had once been a dark, horrible truth during the time of The Civilizing and building of walls.
But it wasn't the possibility of disease that iced her skin and sent shiver after shiver through her, that had her fighting against trying to force Jax off her so she could flee, it was the possibility of getting pregnant.
Think. Count. Panic wouldn't help her. Panic would only make the situation worse.
She mentally created a calendar. She wrote in the activities that separated one day from another and found the day she'd last bled.
Some of the chill dissipated. It should be okay.
There were no guarantees she wouldn't become pregnant, but there was a greater chance of it not happening than happening.
If she was wrong, she'd worry about it after she managed to escape the city and the warrens. It wouldn't matter if she rejoined the tribe her parents were part of, or was accepted into one of the others.
Fertility was valued by those who roamed the wild lands. And though it was preferable that there be a bond i
n place between couples first, evidence of fertility meant there was no shunning if that bond didn't exist.
But if she was caught, if Jax found out who she was and traded her, she'd be whisked to a doctor well paid by members of the elite to keep secrets and end the pregnancies of mistresses or daughters.
She was neither. She was meant to be a wife, and the lack of birth control was meant to keep her a virgin.
If Stefan found out she'd given herself to another man—
She shuddered and Jax shifted his weight onto an elbow while leaving their bodies joined. His eyes bored into hers. His lips became a savage slash. "Who is he?"
Her throat closed. She couldn't have answered if she'd wanted to. She wouldn't answer no matter what he said or did.
His hand lifted and she flinched.
His teeth bared. "Who is he?"
"No one." She forced strength and conviction into her voice. "There's no one."
The warlord's hand fisted in her hair. Tightened. "Don't lie to me, Eliana."
Longing swept in. That she didn't have to lie to him, that she wasn't solely responsible for her safety and freedom. That she wasn't alone.
She pressed her palm to his warm chest and wished she could draw from his strength and count on his protection. But she couldn't.
She couldn't afford to love. She couldn't afford to trust. She couldn't afford the truth. And yet she felt compelled to give him something more of herself than her virginity.
With her index finger, she traced the tattoo over his heart. NO MERCY.
"I'm running from my parents."
Acid burned its way up her throat at calling the couple Stefan had paid to transform her into an intelligent companion and a woman who could interact with the elite without causing embarrassment.
"Why?"
She shied away from admitting Stefan's existence, though she wasn't convinced that anything she said would truly allay Jax's suspicion that she was running from a man.
"I'm not who they want me to be," she told him, thinking of the couple who had ruthlessly, relentlessly tried to make her into Stefan's first wife.
Mention of tribe and life in the wild lands earned her days of solitude in a closet lit by a gas lamp. Mention of the older brothers she'd once tagged along with, the younger brother who was forever asking her to read to him, or the little sister only just starting to walk, of the parents whose faces were lined by hardship, and that solitude became unrelenting darkness and hunger beyond anything she'd known before living in the spacious house with its sprawling lawn.