by Jory Strong
"No." He captured and sucked her earlobe, stroked a hand down her spine and held her tightly against his erection. "Stay here with Tekoa, Jess. I want whatever happens between the two of you to be your choice. I want you to go as fast or as slow as you want without me being here to interfere or make it awkward."
She buried her face in the crook of his neck and shivered. How could one day make such a difference?
Her heart sped with the image of Clay after the car crash, with the fear she'd carried as she left him and ran for help. That's how.
"I'll stay," she whispered, stomach fluttering at the same time her nipples tightened and her sex grew more swollen. She pulled away. "I'd better hurry up and take my shower."
She escaped, huffed out a laugh as the water striking her skin drove her hands to her breast and pussy. She'd just take the edge off…
She was fooling herself if she really believed that. The rub of her fingers over her clit became Clay's tongue, Tekoa's tongue.
Fire streaked down to her toes and her buttocks clenched. She pinched her nipple, tugged and her fingers became their mouths and there was no stopping the fantasy.
She went up quick, quietly, and had to wait several minutes before the blush subsided though it returned when she slipped on Tekoa's red flannel shirt and left the bathroom without panties.
Clay's heated, knowing glace said he knew that there was nothing underneath the shirt. His smile said that if brought up for discussion, he'd approve and claim Tekoa was a man after his own heart.
Anticipation shivered through her. Clay was a master at bedroom games and she suspected that when it came to her, Tekoa would be too.
Breakfast was on the table, but it was hard to appreciate it when every step made her hyperaware of her flushed pussy and the arousal on her inner thighs.
She claimed the seat she'd taken the night before. Clay plopped into the one he'd been in and her heart gave a hard knock at the familiarity of it, as if these were already their normal places.
The phone rang as Tekoa was about to sit. He sighed. "Go ahead and start without me."
He went to his desk, leaned against it and took the call, listened for several minutes then said, "They're here with me now. Found them last night. I was going to call in and tell you I'm now on vacation."
His eyes met hers. His smile sent her heart soaring. But as quickly as he'd smiled, he frowned and straightened away from the desk. "You've contacted the others? Good. I'll be here if the situation changes. Call me with updates."
He hung up and joined them at the table. Clay finished smearing blackberry jam on a biscuit. "Work?"
"One of my deputies. A bus carrying convicts hit a slick spot and went over a bank. The driver and guard were taken to the hospital. Two of the convicts stuck around. The other ten ran."
"Dangerous?"
"Most of them are doing time for nonviolent crimes. But a couple of them are extremely dangerous and most likely armed by now."
"Are they close?"
Tekoa shook his head. "Not close enough that we need to worry about them showing up here."
Clay glanced at her, then at Tekoa. "Okay if I borrow your car so I can grab our stuff?"
"Can't let you have the cruiser, but I've got an old truck parked behind the cabin. It's got a police radio in it if you run into trouble."
Tekoa reached over and tucked Jessica's hair back behind her ear, sending a spike of heat straight to her sex. "By trouble I'm talking about getting stuck in the mud, not joining the search for the convicts."
"Got it. No hunting convicts. No fun with guns."
Tekoa snorted and dug into his eggs.
They finished breakfast and Tekoa said, "Truck keys are in the ignition."
A heated look passed between him and Clay, and her heartbeat became erratic, her palms damp. At the cabin door, Clay pulled her into a hug, brushed his lips across hers. "Whatever happens—or doesn't happen—I'm good with it."
His mouth crashed down and took possession of hers in a kiss that stripped her of breath, that said he desired Tekoa, but she was his world.
He pulled away and stared into her eyes. "I'll be back."
Seconds later he was gone, leaving her feeling as if she was plugged into an erotic current that had turned her nerve endings into a race track for her heart to zip around with each pounding beat.
She gripped and released the edge of the borrowed shirt. Arousal trickled down her inner thigh.
How could she so desperately want to be with another man? Tekoa stood in the space carved out as an office, studying something on his desk and leaving the first move up to her.
She'd counted on him coming to her as soon as she closed the door behind Clay. She'd imagined him seducing her. Clay had been relentless right from the start. He'd made her crave his touch and want to please him sexually. He'd ruined her for any other man—until now.
Her sex grew plumper, slicker. Her nipples tightened to the point she wanted to unbutton the flannel shirt and play with them to relieve the ache, or beg Tekoa to do it.
She tried to calm the too-fast beat of her heart but memories of the night flooded in. Her own husky cries and hoarse pleading echoed in her thoughts.
She bit her bottom lip to keep from whimpering. Heat flickered in her chest like a small spark ready to flare up and become a wildfire.
A sense of being on the precipice reminded her of what she'd experienced when she'd swallowed the contents of the cup Clay had given her on the porch. For a brief, shimmering moment she'd felt as though she was close to something so vast and powerful that it couldn't be truly understood. While at the same time, the warmth sliding through her body had been sensuous and welcoming.
She inhaled on a shaky breath. Just do it. Go to him.
She took the first step, wiped dampened palms against soft flannel, her eyes lowering, catching on the engagement ring. Her steps faltered.
Her happiest childhood memories were the years after her sister was born, when her mother had stopped forcing her to compete in beauty pageants and campaigned Ashley instead. While they'd been on the road, she'd been her father's shadow. He'd read to her, bought her a small leather satchel for her colored pencils and tablets. He'd taken her to work with him, bragged about her talent and showed off the art that would one day lead to her illustrating kid's books and then writing them.
And then he'd caught her mother in an affair.
And nine months later, seeing him was reduced to once a year and a flight to Florida where he had a new wife, a woman who'd come with three boys to coach and take with him everywhere.
Her heart spasmed with ache. She rubbed her fingers over the diamond.
This isn't the same thing as my mother having an affair.
Clay wants this. He expects this. But that didn't mean it couldn't end the same way. Separation. Loss.
Could she take that risk?
Looking at Tekoa studying something on his desk, the answer was yes. But marriage meant something to her, and she couldn't dishonor the vows, either before or after they'd been taken.
She slipped the ring off her finger, closed her hand around it and closed the distance between her and Tekoa.
It took all Tekoa's control to remain at the desk and pretend to be occupied by work. A phantom drum beat and his heart swelled with each of her steps. And when she finally reached him, the scent of her arousal nearly dropped him to his knees.
He wanted to shove the shirt upward and bury his face in her pussy the way Clay had done the night before. He wanted to inhale her, consume her, pleasure her. But he was trying to be good. He was trying to keep from pouncing when his Thunderbird spirit demanded that he mount her.
She was his mate. With her they'd create children of The People.
Desire charged through him with the force and power of a lightning bolt. The Thunderbird's spirit urged him to take her to her hands and knees and breed.
He was both the Thunderbird and the man, and one was far more ancient than the oth
er, far more primal. It simply was, something to be delved into by those with a philosophical bent.
He fought the demand to swoop and mate and paid a price for it. His cock burned. His balls were heavy and tight. His heart thundered. It took everything he had to remain standing next to her and act unaffected.
She lifted a framed picture off his desk, him standing between Erik and Hunter when they were fifteen, his arms across their shoulders.
"Who are they?"
"Boys I mentored a few years ago."
She set the picture frame down, stroked a finger along the back of a carved grizzly cub. "You've got animal figures everywhere. Did you make them?"
"My brother Ukiah did."
"Younger or older?"
"Younger."
"Just the two of you?"
He laughed. "My parents would say two turned out to be plenty of trouble. You an only?"
"It felt like it growing up. I was five when my mother had Ashley."
"So you're not close."
"We're opposites. She competed at the Miss Universe level."
"Then you can't be opposites. You've got to know you're beautiful."
There was no keeping the want out of his voice. She blushed, ducked her head, hiding behind luxurious blonde hair.
She was a fascinating mix of strength and shyness, innocence and unconscious seductiveness. Even without knowing she was meant to be his mate, she would have drawn him with her vulnerability and inner spirit.
Focusing on the map taped to a cabinet door, she asked, "Your territory?"
He tapped his finger to a blue line. "This is where it stops."
"Isn't that a lot of area for a single sheriff?"
His finger glided to the map's eastern edge, where Hohoq was marked within a smaller enclosure of jagged, roughly connected red lines, though the map didn't contain the full truth about the town that had sprung from an encampment in the days when his ancestors had made a pact with the Creator and become Thunderbird.
"This is my official jurisdiction. But our people are spread out and where they are I go when called."
He tapped a spot to the south. "This is where the bus carrying the convicts crashed. I doubt any of them will get close to us. Criminals have a habit of returning to familiar places."
She chewed on her bottom lip in a worried gesture he found endearing. He caught himself before he could lean over and kiss away her concern.
She touched a dark blue line near where his fingers rested. "Will you have to go look for the convicts if they're spotted on this side of the line?"
"There are others to do it, my cousin Tenino, included. He's one of my deputies."
She glanced at him, a quick look before she turned her head so her glorious blonde hair shielded her face. She was nervous, aroused, shy from having made love with Clay in his presence.
His heart turned over. Some of his resolve to wait until she initiated physical contact melted.
She'd made the first step by coming to his side. He wouldn't insist she do anything more, at least right now.
He turned toward her and cupped her cheek. "Jessica," he said, letting her hear the longing as he tipped her face so their eyes met. "Last night was beyond any ecstasy I've ever known. I loved every sound of pleasure. The only thing better would have been my joining you and Clay in bed."
Not giving her time to retreat, he captured her mouth, moaned at the softness. A thrust of his tongue parted her lips and pleasure seized him. She was a dream come true, a prayer answered.
She pressed against him and he could have shouted with joy. He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her tighter, the pleasure intensifying with the press of her breasts to his chest.
He deepened the kiss, his tongue no longer gently exploring but claiming, and she softened, so naturally submissive that he had to fight against freeing his cock and taking her on the desk.
He'd waited a lifetime for her. And a lifetime spent with her wouldn't be enough. He swept her into his arms and carried her to the thick woven rug in front of the fireplace.
He lay her where Clay had lain the night before, then stretched out next to her. "You're beautiful," he said, thinking he couldn't get any harder but her whimper proved him wrong.
He rolled onto her, moaned when she wrapped her legs around his waist. Crazy. He had to be crazy to torture himself by lying between her thighs wearing clothes. "You're testing my control."
"I don't want you to have any control."
He caught her bottom lip between his and sucked, reveled in the tremor that went through her, in her being as responsive to him as she was to Clay.
Her moan lit him up. He was amazed by his own restraint.
She was telling the truth. She wanted him to lose control of himself but take control of her. And he ached to give her what she was asking for. His cock screamed for him to let go and pound into her until they both cried out in release. But he wanted more.
This was their mating day. He wanted to savor her full surrender, not because he'd taken the control but because she'd willingly shared her body, her heart, her soul.
"I'm not taking control today." And unable to stop himself, he thrust against her. "Damn, you make me feel like I'm back in high school."
Her laugh was sultry, knowing, confident and that sent another surge of need through his cock. "Really?"
"Really, only better. I'm not a boy anymore."
"No one could mistake you for that," she said, hands gliding over his upper arms, caressing and admiring the muscles beneath the flannel shirt.
He covered her mouth, rubbed his tongue against hers and had to fight the urge to hump against her. He cupped her cheek in a gesture of protective desire, thrust his tongue against hers more aggressively.
Mine! She wasn't ready to hear the words, but that didn't make them less true.
She unbraided his hair and a tremor went through him. His hand left her cheek, stroked down her neck and over the flannel shirt.
"I like seeing you in my shirt." Not that he didn't intend to strip her out of it. Not that he wouldn't prefer her naked.
Her small smile might as well have been her fist around his cock. His hand slid lower, to her bare thigh. He caressed the silken skin, admiring sleek muscles by stroking down to her knee and back to the shirt's hem.
He'd never been a leg man but she'd made him one. The sight of hers created a constant, looping stream of images: those legs wrapped around his waist, those legs draped over his shoulders, those legs spread with her ass in the air and her pussy glistening with desire.
That image had him fighting not to unzip and plunge his cock into her. Thunderbird spirit and human body needed to claim her, but the part of him that she'd probably laugh and call the big head held out—barely—waiting for her to take them to the next step.
Spasm after spasm rippled through Jessica's sex. She ate at his mouth. She needed him to touch her. She needed him to fill the aching emptiness with his cock.
Until now Clay was the only other man who'd ever been capable of doing this to her. Until now Clay had been the only man who could make her hunger desperately and reduce her vocabulary to a single word. "Please."
Sliding her hand down Tekoa's arm, she covered his hand at the edge of the borrowed shirt. "Please," she whispered.
He moved off her, and she whimpered at the loss of his cock pressed to her clit. Shivered, glad for the lack of panties, as she guided his hand beneath the shirt and to her wet, swollen sex.
He moaned and took her mouth, his kiss dominant, possessive, his fingers gliding over her slick folds.
It felt so good. So right. It shouldn't but it did.
He pressed her erect clit and ecstasy pulsed into her. With each slide of his fingers over the sensitive head she shivered and her hips arched off the thick handmade rug.
She couldn't contain the whimpers, the tremors, the jerking movements of her body. Each one of his touches sent pleasure burning from her swollen clit to her toes, to her breasts
and into her heart.
Need built, became a tightening ball of fire between her thighs, a knot that would burst and become exquisite ecstasy.
He abandoned her clit. "No," she cried. "Please don't stop."
He pushed his fingers into her and she clamped down, inner muscles rippling, but it wasn't enough to send her over.
His mouth moved to her ear. "I'm not going to rush," he said, his breathing as fast as hers.
The quick fuck of his tongue into her ear sent shivery pleasure downward. He took the lobe between his lips and sucked in time to the rhythmic thrust and retreat of his fingers in her channel.
She clamped her legs together in an effort to trap his palm against her clit so she could press into it and gain release. He laughed, a purely masculine sound that stroked down her spine and flooded her channel with additional arousal.
He bit down on her earlobe in warning. "If this wasn't our first time together, I'd punish you for trying that. You know I don't want you to come."
Heat scorched through her at his dominance. Until Clay she hadn't known how much she'd enjoy submitting.
Tekoa's mouth returned to hover above hers. Their eyes met and held. His palm rubbed over the head of her clit in tiny circles that had her hips jerking and her breath coming in small, sharp pants.
"You're so beautiful, so desirable, I bet Clay has to punish you to remind you who you belong to and who's in charge. Doesn't he, Jessica?"
"Yes." It came out shaky.
"Do you like it when he punishes you?"
"Yes."
"Good, because sometimes I'm going to punish you too."
Her thighs tightened on his hand. Her channel gripped his fingers. Her hips canted and moved.
She rubbed her clit against his palm in blatant defiance and temptation, a thrill spiking into her at playing this game with him. "But no punishment today?"
His smile was dark and feral. His unbound hair fell on either side of her face. "No punishment today. Open your legs."
There was a hard edge to his voice and everything inside her responded to it. She parted her thighs, the submission deepening her desire, deepening her connection to him.
She shivered at reading the pleasure in his eyes because of that submission. His hand move to her inner thigh. Dark eyes silently commanded her to bare herself, offer herself. More arousal slid from her opening. But instead of obeying, she undid his top button.