by Celia Sweet
Damn it. The witch with a capital ‘B’ wasn’t supposed to cry but she couldn’t stop.
Duncan moved so quickly she had no idea how she’d wound up in his arms, cradled like a child with her face buried in his neck.
He felt marvelous. The smoothness of his skin barely contained the strength in the man. His potency didn’t stem from his muscles. It radiated from his being.
"Causing my woman to break into tears the minute she sees my face isn’t good for my ego." He waited a moment. "You should probably stop," he said, his voice more thrilling in life than in any recording.
"I can’t." His neck muffled her words and his scent, aromatic wood and mountain air, muddled her brain.
"How much time did Teeny say we have?" he gruffed.
"More than two hours, less than four."
He shifted, burying his nose in her hair. Breathing deeply, he nuzzled her ear. "If I know her at all, she meant roughly three hours."
Dawn tried to merge her body into his. She curled more tightly around him and squeezed his neck to breathe in his natural cologne. "Not enough time."
"No," Duncan said. "Not enough time for me to love you as a man of Clan Craig does his beloved. No time to pamper you. To cook the foods you like most and watch your eyes light up." He slowly released her legs, letting her body skim down his. "I won’t have the chance to cuddle up with you in my lap while we read your books, or to take you hiking and carry you home afterward because you’re too tired to walk back."
Her feet touched the rooftop, but Duncan kept his arms wrapped firmly around her waist. Dawn laid her head against his chest and synced to his rhythm, breathing in and out with him.
"Dammit, Dawn, open your eyes." The softness of his voice belied the command. She did as he wanted.
Her breath caught. He looked so damn good. His blue-grey gaze blazed a trail over the features of her face, lingering over her lips and rising to meet her eyes.
"There will be no date nights. No romantic movies I hate or rowdy Craig cousins you can't stand because they come over too often and stay too long." He laid a kiss on her forehead. One of his hands slid into her hair at the base of her neck. Inhaling deeply, he rested his face near her temple.
"Three hours isn’t long enough to love a woman like you properly, my jewel." His sudden growl shocked her and Dawn pulled back to stare at him. He took her face in his hands and kissed her quick, his expression ferocious. "But fuck it. I’ll take it. I’ll take it and thank whoever I have to for the best damn three hours of my life."
Joy leaped into her throat, but she only managed a short cry of elation. Duncan gently shook her. "Are you hearing me?"
"Yes."
"Good, because there’s only one way to show you how much I love you in the time we have." He leaned in and nipped the tip of her nose. "And you are fucking up my timetable."
They laughed together.
Their romance had started with laughter. The sound filled Dawn to bursting. She’d always thought ‘filled to bursting’ sounded corny, especially when she’d read it in books. Now she understood. Duncan had taken over her entire world. His feelings for her and hers for him filled her until anything else would bust her at the seams.
Gradually, Dawn noticed the heavy bulge pressed into her belly and liquid lust fueled the glow of love. Duncan sniffed the air. Dawn caught a glimpse of his wicked smile before he spun her around. Closing his chiseled forearm across her belly, he held her in place, pressing his erection into the small of her back
All breath escaped her. His voice licked the curve of her ear. "Should I tell you what I’m going to do to you?"
Dawn exhaled slowly. "Yes, but first--," she said, turning to reach for the fly of his jeans. She wanted to free him, to lick and suck him into oblivion. Duncan grabbed her hand and firmly planted her backside against him. She protested deep in her throat.
“First,” he said, growling the words into her ear. “I’m going to punish you.”
“For what?” she whispered.
“One, for sexually harassing me while I slept the stone sleep. Two, for practicing on a surrogate Duncan.” He ground his hard body into her. “I consider that cheating.”
“He was you.”
“Not quite. If you want lessons, I’ll teach you.” He nipped her earlobe with a sharp edge of teeth. “Lastly, you’re going to pay for making me waste time explaining why I’m punishing you.”
Duncan’s tone allowed for no argument. His command of the situation titillated her and once again she didn’t refute him.
"Did you bring the mirror and the blanket?" he asked. She panted and gyrated her butt into his muscular thighs. She loved the forceful edge to his voice. It turned her on. She could only point across the rooftop.
The mirror had slipped her mind. It leaned against the far wall where she’d left it, like Duncan had directed in one of his text messages. He gently pushed her away from him, slapping her ass when she’d gotten a couple of steps away. "Lay the blanket out in front of the mirror."
Dawn glanced over her shoulder, giving him a sidelong look on a slight pivot.
"Now." Duncan crossed his arms in expectation.
Chapter Five
Duncan watched his jewel sashay across the roof and spread the blanket out in front of the mirror. She had an ass he wanted to sing about, and her sway showed it off to perfection.
He forced himself to remain motionless while she did what he’d demanded. A foreign cocktail of emotions bombarded his system and, yeah, he’d admit it, overwhelmed him. He’d known lust before. Hadn’t every Craig man? Lust and Craigs were peanut butter and chocolate. They went well together. But love. Love, he didn’t expect. He couldn’t have known how much that unforeseen emotion would amplify his desire to the point his dick felt like a fire hose, not one to put out flames but instead would burn this fuckin’ building down.
Love was an eighteen-wheeler. It had run him over and backed the hell up for a second pass.
But he hadn’t admitted the most important thing, not even to himself. He realized it as he watched her obey him. All this time he’d been driven by an overriding need to possess her, to take her over more completely than any man ever had. Or could ever hope to. He’d blamed the compulsion on the ancient warrior in him. But no, his need to bend Dawn to his will came out of dread. He secretly feared that if he didn’t prove himself her equal then his brilliant, powerful woman would judge him lacking and leave him behind. Duncan could never allow that. Dawn belonged to him.
Before he realized, he’d closed the distance between them. She rose from laying out the blanket and he encircled her waist with one arm, pressing the tantalizing softness of her body to his once more. She gasped and sighed in contentment as he bent to her ear. Duncan shuddered at the sound. He relished her joy and planned to sustain the sentiment for as long as possible.
"After your punishment, I’m going to take you down on all fours and fuck you like an animal on the prowl. Tell me you understand."
"Yes, Duncan. I understand." She trembled.
"After that, maybe I’ll let you give me head."
"Let me?" Her voice rose dangerously at the end and her eyes narrowed in their mirrored reflection.
"Did I stutter? Or did you forget who I am?"
She bowed her head. "As you wish." A smile played at the corner of her lips and his erection jerked at the sight of it. "And after that?" she asked.
"That," he said, fitting his knee into the back of hers and pushing her down until they were both on bended knee on top of the blanket, "is a surprise."
Dawn would’ve said more if he hadn’t reached under her dress and torn the thong she wore free. She gasped. He took hold of her chin and placed the small scrap of material in her mouth. While she looked on in bewilderment, he ripped a strip of cloth off one side of the blanket and used it to gag her.
Her eyes rounded in objection but he looped his hands beneath the shoulders of her dress and pulled her bra straps down until the C-cups rolle
d under and pushed her breast up high.
The growl he emitted surprised him, his fingers were deft in removing the necklace obstructing his view. "You’re so pretty, Dawn." he said, filling his hands with her satiny softness.
Duncan’s many fantasies hadn’t prepared him for how good she felt, how her throaty moans behind the gag fueled his ego. Or how much he ached to fill her, to make her moan, to watch her face in orgasm. His fingers rolled her nipples. His nails teased them into even tighter peaks. "Everything about you is too pretty."
He placed a kiss at the base of her spine, while he rubbed the curve of her sweet ass with his right hand. With his left he slipped under her dress and pulled the gift he’d given her free. Her body made a sexy sucking sound as the dildo slid out and she arched her back.
The feminine scent of her arousal caused his body to buck unwittingly. He clenched her hips with the sex toy still in hand and counted to fifteen, allowing the painful rush of blood filling the head of his cock to fade to a dull ache. Duncan’s heartbeat pounded inside his head and the rhythm steadied him.
He tossed the toy aside and wiped her thighs dry with a corner of the blanket. “I’ll let your body tell me how much you like your punishment,” he whispered into her hair. Her gaze met his in the mirror. Eagerness and a touch of fear filled her face. He slid his left thumb into her welcoming warmth and her body sagged against him.
She jerked forward when the first smack landed on her ass. He inhaled sharply, watching her sexy breasts jiggle in the mirror. Duncan rubbed her backside with his right hand. The next spank came unexpectedly and landed with more force. He felt the sting in his palm. Dawn jerked again and fresh moisture drenched his hand. She liked it. He knew she would.
Holding her gaze in the mirror he alternated spanking one cheek then the other, and massaged her in between. Dawn moaned with each smack and his erection jumped every time her body convulsed around his thumb. When her forehead dropped to the floor he knew she’d had enough.
“Have you learned not to disobey me? Not to feel me up when I can’t return the favor? And not to suck any dick that isn’t actually mine?”
She nodded, her eyes bright, her expression lusty.
He yanked her back up against him and she nearly collapsed against his body. Her mouth dropped open, her hands caught hold of his hair, her head lolled to one side. The need to brand her overtook him. He nipped and sucked a love bite onto her exposed neck. With his mark made, he bent her forward again.
Pulling her hands from his hair, he laid them on the blanket so she could hold herself up. "Arch your spine a little more, my jewel. I want to watch your breasts jiggle in the mirror on every down stroke." Dawn arched and he groaned. "Right."
Rising to an upright position, he allowed his hands to glide up her thighs, bunching the skirt of her dress up as he moved. When the printed fabric lay draped around her waist he marveled at her fantastic ass, plump and cherry red from the spanking. Duncan already planned to soothe the pain with pleasure. He parted her cheeks with splayed fingers and massaged his thumbs between her creamy folds.
Dawn purred deep in her throat as he licked from her one side of her arousal slickened opening to the other. She wobbled, and he steadied her hips for better access to her sensitive nub. She rewarded him with more silken moisture, and his tongue delved into her body in heated liquid thrusts. He continued until his hands were the only things keeping her from crumbling onto the rooftop. But he didn’t let her come. Not yet. He wanted to feel her body clench again and again around him when she did.
Reaching to his right, he picked up the necklace and fitted the beads against her. As he moved them up and down, he made sure each bead caught on her clit and rubbed deep between her cheeks. Her gyrating hips spurred him on and he picked up the pace.
"More.” Her eyes seemed to say. "Please. More."
Duncan planned to fit the beads inside her second opening, one by one. Then withdraw them tantalizingly slow. He wanted her panting when he came inside her. But he couldn’t wait. The necklace dropped onto the blanket, forgotten. Duncan yanked off his jeans and took the agony of his throbbing cock in hand. Breathing deep, he pressed the bundle of nerves at the base to calm himself.
When he relaxed a bit, he positioned himself behind her. He tapped his tip against her plump buttocks, then began a slow glide down over her anus and through her lips, stopping at her clitoris. He pumped against it. She pressed back, her moans rising through the gag with each sway backward. The sensation unraveled his resolve. He caught his head on the lip of her opening and teased her with a few short strokes before plunging in.
Dawn’s shoulders struggled upward but Duncan held her in place with a hand at her back. Worry pinned him in place and his chest heaved with ragged breaths. He was too hard. They’d waited years for this. He could plow straight through her if he wasn’t careful. He had a big dick. That wasn’t ego, but fact.
"Is it too much?" he asked.
She rolled her hips against him to answer.
Thank the gods. He swiped the back of a hand across his brow, clearing away a sheen of sweat. Having to stop might’ve permanently fucked him up.
Using his knees, Duncan widened the spacing of hers to give him better access. His hands found her breasts on their own volition, and he began to move inside her. Slowly, at first, allowing her body to acclimate to his thickness, then building. He drove into her faster, deeper, stronger. Dawn’s interior walls pulsed around him, sucking him in. So damn good. So damn mutha fuckin’ good. Silken and tight. Plush and molten. He gritted his teeth.
Dawn fell forward when she forgot herself and reached back to squeeze his ass. He caught her around her waist but didn’t miss a stroke. The reflection of sheer ecstasy she cast in the mirror stunned him—her eyelids had lowered to bliss-drunken slits. It undid him. Duncan freed her from the gag and pulled the thong out of her mouth with one hand. Her tongue darted across her lower lip and she smiled in an utterly sultry way. Her expression, combined with her heat and the slap of their bodies parting and coming together, milked his sac and he pressed a thumb against her nub to bring her with him.
She gasped loud and sharp, but his roar swallowed the sound as he throbbed in bliss drenched release.
When his body stopped jerking and hers convulsed lightly, he rolled onto his back, pulled her on top of him and wrapped the blanket around them.
His witch curled into the crook of his arm and whistled softly alongside his chest. First, she ran a fingertip around his nipple, then lifted the same digit and pressed it to his lips. Dawn’s exhale turned into a jagged intake of breath as he suckled her finger. When he began to mock chewing it she giggled.
Duncan took her hand from his mouth and held it to his heart, tapping her knuckles gently. "I don’t want time to run out without me telling you." He kissed her, his tongue cajoling hers to come out and play with him. He remorsefully broke the kiss minutes later, nipped her lower lip, and continued. "I love you, Dawn Granger. More than you can comprehend. It’s only because I adore you that I demand so much. I can’t go back to nights without you, with no hope other than maybe seeing you on All Hallows Eve."
Dawn caressed the line of his jaw, her eyes shining. " I love you, Duncan Craig. So much that tomorrow without you feels like going to my death. There must be a way to free both our people from the curses."
They kissed again, losing themselves in it.
"I’ll talk to Teeny again as soon as night falls," he said, wrapping her more closely to him. "We’ll find a way."
"Good," she said. "But for now, there are other matters to attend to." She rose, throwing off the blanket and shifting her body to straddle his thighs. Her hand found his semi erect shaft and she used her thumb to prop it up. Bringing his tip to her nipples she encircled each of her areolas. The unexpectedly erotic act sent blood rushing to reinvigorate his lust. Dawn smiled and bowed to lick the cleft in his engorged head. Duncan bucked into her mouth, and she teased him with the edge of her teeth. A warning
. He paused, amused.
Her flickering tongue bathed the sensitive ring of flesh below the head and it took an effort of self-control not to shove further into her mouth. Every nerve he possessed stood at attention, throbbing until he’d stretched his legs as far as they could go in response.
Nothing should ever feel this good.
No woman should enjoy each lick and suckle as much as Dawn appeared to. Her expression amped up the sweet pulsing ache in him to teenage-boy levels of glee. Damn. Fuck. Shit. Sharing control with her felt so much better than when he’d dominated her as a magical surrogate. Her equal contribution to their sex play made the moment sweeter.
Maybe he didn’t have to prove himself a man to this woman, or to rule her like he’d thought. He realized he could relent, just a little, and trust her to stay by his side purely because she wanted to be there.
Not that he’d ever submit. Some things were never going to happen. But he enjoyed letting her have her way. Shit, he craved it.
He almost pushed Dawn away more than once. He couldn’t figure out what to do with his hands. The molten wetness of her ministrations overwhelmed him. Dawn had a celebration in her mouth. Everything in him sang, his muscles taut, and just as his control began to fracture, she pursed her lips and ran the tender undersides down his length. The smooth fronts of her teeth, rippled over his veins, adding to the rampant sensations.
He palmed the top of her head. Drew back. Then curled his fingers into fists. He waved them in the air before he grabbed at the floor. His fingers clutched the blanket.
A self-satisfied smirk swept her face.
Duncan tensed, trembling with expectation and knowing he’d soon embarrass himself to wet dream proportions. When she licked the indent creasing his scrotum, then took one of his balls into her mouth and hummed. He couldn’t take any more.