His voice sent heat dancing up her spine, and she shivered as she turned to meet his gaze. “I tried.”
“Come on.” He gathered her into his arms, gentle and strong. “We can go to the bedroom, and eat later.”
“I’m sorry.” Even as she said the words she couldn’t keep herself from pressing her lips to his bare shoulder.
He shivered under her lips, and his hand stroked over her hair. “For what?”
“For not being able to control it like I should.”
“And who said you should be able to control it?”
It had never occurred to her that she shouldn’t be able to. “I’m supposed to be strong.”
His voice dropped to a husky whisper. “Sometimes, that makes it worse. The need.”
She couldn’t help herself. She bit his shoulder and groaned as that very need became too much to contain. The wolf wasn’t interested in control, unless it was a prelude to losing it. Oliver had a power and strength in him that matched her own, and that was all that mattered now.
He nudged open a door to reveal a sparely furnished bedroom dominated by a large bed covered with a dark quilt. “We might be here a while, Hazel.”
She barely heard him. She wanted to be on that bed, naked. She wanted him behind her or above her, whichever way would get him in her. Her breathing was too fast as she forced herself to look up at Oliver’s face. “I need you.”
There was something gentle in his eyes as he laid her down and started undressing. “I know. You will for a while. Then you’ll feel better.”
Then I’ll feel worse. But she didn’t say it out-loud. Admitting the truth now might make him stop, and her body felt too warm and too needy for that. She rose to her knees and tugged at his shirt. “Just tell me you want me for now.”
He moved her hands and freed the buttons. “I want you.” He kept his eyes lowered, almost as if ashamed of the words. “I want everything from you, and there’s not a damn bit of it I should be thinking about taking.”
Her heart pounded. The shirt fell open and she caught his hands. “Tell me what you want, then. And you won’t have to take it. I’ll give it to you.”
He told himself not to do it, not to tell her a goddamned thing, because it wasn’t right. It wasn’t right to ask her to be a mate to him, not when he was only serving as temporary relief. But she held his hands close to her naked skin, and his resolve faded into nothingness. “Let me have you.”
She just smiled and tugged until his fingers came to rest against her ribcage, just under her breasts. “You already have me. All you have to do is claim me.”
Oliver reached up, just until his thumbs skimmed the bottom curves of her breasts. “It wouldn’t be like before, Hazel. You sure?”
“I don’t know what it will be,” she whispered, but her voice held such yearning. “But I think it’s what I need.”
He spun her around and bent her low over the bed. “Probably.” His hand trembled as he smoothed it over the swell of her ass and down to grip her thigh. “It’ll be rough, honey. Wild.”
Her whimper sounded like pure desire. “I’m strong,” she whispered, and he knew she wasn’t talking about physical strength anymore. “Noah wasn’t. Most of the men in town aren’t. They’re weak. I hate weak.”
“I’m not weak.” But it was a lie. He was weak enough to lift the tail of the shirt she wore as he unzipped his pants. She arched a little, through desire or instinct, and he slid his cock into the heat of her pussy.
Hazel panted and curled her fingers around the quilt. “You don’t have to be so gentle.”
“I’m not,” he promised. “I haven’t even started yet, that’s all.”
She snarled. “So start.”
“No.” Oliver moved his hand slowly up her back and caught her hair in his hand. “Don’t be impatient.”
Her back arched more sharply as she tried to rock, to move their bodies together. He curled several shining locks of her hair around his fingers and tugged lightly. “Be still.”
Power rose between them, and the scent of her arousal with it. “Why is this so fucking hot?”
“That strength you were talking about.” He rocked into her. “Dominance.”
She trembled beneath his hands. “You’re strong?”
Oliver leaned over and spoke low in her ear. “Are you asking me?”
“I don’t know…” She twisted her head and bit the line of his jaw with a soft growl. “Maybe.”
He bit her back. “If you didn’t already know, one little round of careful fucking wouldn’t have satisfied you. Not even for an hour.”
Her head tilted to the side in blatant invitation to leave a mark even as she challenged him with her words. “Well if you don’t get around to fucking me soon, I’m going to fuck you.”
“You could try.” Her words urged him to move, to drive his cock deep inside her pussy. But his next thrusts were easy. Languid. And quite obviously driving her crazy.
She snarled and broke free of his grip with his next thrust, driving her body back to meet his, hard. His cock ended up buried in her pussy as she ground back against him with a triumphant noise.
The sensation -- the satisfaction -- almost cost him his control. “You learning to take what you want instead of always waiting?” he rasped.
“Yes.” She did it again, driving his cock as deep as she could with a desperate sounding moan. “You should be worried.”
Oliver tightened his hands on her hips and held her still. “Worried about what?”
“About me.” She looked back at him, and her golden eyes held nothing but hot, possessive need. “Do you really want me to take what I want?”
“You have to test yourself.” He pushed the loosened shirt up and leaned forward to lick the spot between her shoulder blades. “You have to test me. That’s what this is all about.”
She looked away, and her hair spilled forward to hide her expression. Her panting breaths filled the room as she squirmed in his grasp. “If you don’t start moving again I’m going kill you.”
He urged the shirt over her head and down her arms. Then he brushed her hair back, guiding it over one shoulder as he trailed his tongue over the bare expanse of the other. “Don’t talk, Hazel. Act.”
A moment later she did, wiggling free of his body. She moved fast, with a hoarse growl working its way free as she twisted on the bed and rose to her knees. Then she pounced.
Her body collided with his and he barely had time to grasp her hips again before they hit the floor. He held her above him and grinned, pleased by her show of strength and aggression. Maybe she needed more than the sex, the mating. Maybe she needed him. “Feel better?”
“No.” Her fingernails dug against his chest and she rubbed against his cock, her movements inexperienced but determined as she tried to find the right angle. “Not until you’re inside me again. Not until you’re fucking me. Until we’re fucking each other.”
Her words fanned the flames inside him even more than her impatient squirming. He helped her move and groaned when she started to slide down around him. “Jesus.”
She was panting before she’d taken more than half of him, her mouth open and her face slack with pleasure. Her body trembled and she stopped for several seconds before lifting and rocking down again, working his cock into her with tiny, choked sounds of need.
The floor was cold under his back, and the rough wood scraped his skin as he arched up, thrusting into her. “You want slow?”
A shudder wracked her, and the clenching heat of her body tightened impossibly around him. “No. I don’t know.” She leaned forward, and her hair tumbled over her shoulders to tickle at his chest as she dragged her tongue across his nipple. “I just want you.”
Oliver shifted her a little, just enough for every rocking motion to rub her clit along his shaft. “You want slow,” he repeated, the words a declaration this time instead of a question.
Her teeth closed on his chest. She whimpered and lifted her head agai
n. “I thought mating was all fast and hard and crazy.”
“Not once you take the edge off.” She stared at him with eyes the deep, rich color of well-oiled leather. Those eyes were too big and round, too filled with a soft fascination he barely recognized… or remembered. “It can be easy. Good.”
“Is the edge off?” Her mouth dropped to his neck this time, and he held her there as she licked over his pulse. “Part of me wants to do this forever, but the rest of me…”
Oliver sat up with a smooth, controlled movement, his other hand keeping her hips tight with his. “Fast and hard and crazy?”
She bit him without warning, marking his neck with a possessive noise. “I want you to do things to me that I don’t even have words for. It’s a little terrifying.”
The quick little bite sent a shiver of pleasure rushing up his spine, and Oliver turned his face to hers with a low moan. “I can teach you the words,” he murmured hoarsely, “or you can just show me. I’ll do them, Hazel. I’ll make you scream.”
Her hips moved, and she was rocking against him again, faster this time. Needy. She spoke between rough pants with her eyes fixed on his. “What about you? You said -- said you wanted things. From me.”
“Yes.” The word came out as more of a growl, and she tightened around him. “After you come again, I’ll show you. So many things I want to do.” He coaxed her into a faster pace, watching her face as she moved over him. “I want to lay you on the bed and put your legs over my shoulders. I could fuck you so deep that way.”
She moaned and dropped her head back, revealing the smooth, graceful arch of her throat and the pale skin that already bore the rising mark of his teeth. “How else? How else do you want me?”
He licked the faint bruise and hissed against her skin when she ground against him. “I like having you in my lap like this, and I liked bending you over the bed. Any way I can look at you, feel you.”
She caught his gaze with her own. She scratched her nails against his chest with a smile. “What if your cock was in my mouth? Would you like that?”
Oliver growled and bit her again, his teeth sinking into the unmarked side of her neck. “Can’t deny you that when I fully intend to put my tongue inside you before I let you out of this house.”
She cried out, going tense in his arms. The tiny little rocking movements of her hips turned hard and unsteady as she rode him in earnest, chasing the orgasm he could already feel tightening her body around him.
And then she came. Her mouth dropped open and she choked on his name as she came apart for him, gorgeous and wild and so damn hot around his cock that he gritted his teeth against the urge to follow.
It didn’t matter. The wet, pulsing heat of her body pulled him after her, and his forehead dropped to her shoulder as release took him. He wrapped his arms around her and rocked up until the last waves faded, leaving him trembling and exhausted. “Are you all right?”
“Mmm.” Her head tipped forward until her face nuzzled the side of his neck. “Do you have food in the kitchen? I could make us something to eat. You must be almost as hungry as I am.”
Almost on cue, his stomach rumbled insistently. “Maybe hungrier,” he admitted. Still, he didn’t want to move, to lose the intimacy of her skin against his. “In a minute.”
She giggled, a soft sound with a wicked edge. “Oliver? If we stay like this I’m going to lose my self-control and start wiggling, because I’m pretty sure I’d just have to look at you and I’d come again. I’m that riled up.”
He laughed. “Your horny ass is going to kill me, woman.”
Hazel curled her fingers around the back of his head and inched back until she was straddling his thighs. Her other hand slid down the front of her body as she looked up at him. “Watch,” she whispered, and the teasing glint was gone from her gaze, replaced with something hot and intense.
Then her eyes drifted shut, leaving him to watch her face as she slipped her fingers between her legs and rubbed them over her clit. “This is what happens when I think about you.”
Incredibly, lust heated his blood again. He slid his hand over hers and nipped at her chin. “You start fingering yourself?”
She nudged his fingers lower until they brushed at her entrance. “I didn’t think you’d ever touch me, so I had to do it myself.”
Oliver teased her with two fingers before pushing them into her. “It’s hard to do this right without a good angle,” he observed. “Like… this.” He curled his fingers inside her.
“Oh --” Her eyes popped open and she panted as she ground down against his hand. “Oh, God. God, touching myself is never this good.”
“It never is, honey,” he whispered. “Come again. I want to feel it.”
She leaned forward and caught his mouth in a desperate, tongue tangling kiss, clumsy with need but perfect all the same. Tiny noises escaped her, choked and desperate and lost in the depths of his mouth as she kissed him.
His cock stirred between them, and he bit her lower lip. “Let it go, Hazel. Come on.” He moved his fingers faster and hummed against her skin.
A keening moan escaped her lips as she came. It was soft and quiet, just her open mouth pressed against his cheek as she panted and rocked with him. He caught her mouth, entranced by the pleasure he’d coaxed from her.
Entranced by her.
He swept his hands slowly over her back. “Food, or we’re both destined for the grave.”
“I can cook.” The words whispered against his cheek as she nuzzled her way toward his ear. “I’m actually good at it. Haven’t got the patience for baking, but I like to cook.”
“We’ll see what we can come up with.” Oliver pulled her tighter to his chest and stood. “I’m going to go check on the stock again, make sure they’re set ’til morning. I’ll come help you in the kitchen when I’m done.”
She laughed and nipped at his ear. “Bad idea. You’ll be fucking me on the table while the food burns.”
“Nope. I may not have shown it so far, but I have a little self-control.” He set her down by the bed, kissed her cheek and pulled up his pants. “See you in a minute.”
He made it out of the bedroom before his hands started shaking, and Oliver sucked in a deep breath outside. For a moment, he’d forgotten Hazel didn’t belong in his house. Didn’t belong to him. Her presence there had been as natural as his heart beating, and it had been a long time since he’d felt that.
Not since Marissa, a little voice whispered, and his hands shook even more. Hazel didn’t remind him of his wife, not really. Marissa had been quiet, reserved. A little more like him. But they both carried the same air of innocence, though he had no idea how Hazel had maintained hers for so long.
He cursed and strode toward the barn. That innocence called to him even as it held him at bay, afraid of the risk involved with the responsibility of taking it. But he had, and now he had to figure out how to do right by her. Jack had told him Hazel was infatuated with him, and taking her to his bed was the last thing to help her get over that.
But I had no choice. The truth of the words didn’t make him feel any better. Even now, she was probably in his kitchen, planning their future together.
Would that be so bad? The thought stopped him cold even as he reached for an empty feedbag. Would it? It was a simple, logical question. There were worse things than having someone to talk to or sit with, someone to warm your bed. Needing companionship wasn’t a crime. Hell, in ranch life it was more of a necessity than anything else.
He filled the bag with oats and reached for the next, his mind whirling with the possibilities. Hazel was pleasant and interesting. He liked her. No reason not to ask, see if she’d consider it.
No reason at all.
Hazel attacked the potato in front of her with a vicious determination, chopping it into haphazard pieces as she muttered angrily under her breath. Oliver’s big, manly hands and low voice and the way he felt inside her were a combination that made it all too easy to forget why she was here.
Because he didn’t want you to die. Letting herself get swept away in the moment was dangerous in so many ways. She was already starting to forget -- the scene in the bedroom made her cheeks burn. To tell him about her fantasies, to tell him that he was her only fantasy… No wonder he ran.
And then she’d offered to play house with him. The stupidity of that had settled in on her after he went outside. She should be building up the walls around her heart, not puttering around in his kitchen in his shirt, cooking for him as if she belonged here. If there was one thing Oliver had made clear over the past few weeks, it was that she most certainly did not belong here.
She slammed the knife down through another potato and yelped when the sharp tip of it caught her finger. She jerked her hand away before she could bleed on the food she’d chopped up. “Damn it!” The dishtowel next to her wasn’t exactly clean, but she pressed it to her finger anyway and swore again as her injured finger ached in protest at the rough treatment. Tears of frustration filled her eyes, and she shoved the chair back from the table to rise unsteadily to her feet.
And, of course, that was when Oliver chose to enter the kitchen. His nostrils flared, and his brow furrowed. “Are you bleeding?”
“I cut myself.” She clutched her hand and the dishcloth against her chest and took a step back. “Where’s the bathroom? I can go clean up if you finish cooking.”
“Let me see.” He pulled the towel away from her hand and grimaced. “That’s not so bad. Here, hold it like this. It’ll heal faster.” He wrapped the dishtowel around her finger and caught her gaze. “Are you all right?”
He was staring at her like he cared, like he was worried. Her chest felt tight and it took every scrap of self-control not to melt into his arms. “I’m fine. I was going to stew some potatoes.”
He brushed a stray lock of hair from her forehead. “Knife slipped?”
“Yes.” She hated how breathless she sounded. “I didn’t get much else started. I wasn’t sure what you wanted to eat.”
“I’ll put the potatoes on, and we can have sandwiches. I’ve got some roast beef I need to slice up.”
Down & Dirty (Bundle) Page 9