Darkest Night

by Megan Erickson

  He slowly uncrossed his arms and settled one around her shoulders. Fiona’s lashes fluttered, and she pressed into him deeper. His heart rate sped up, right there in public, and he willed himself to be cool, to calm down. But Fiona smelled so good, and she was so damn warm, and soft.

  An elderly couple walked by and the woman turned toward them in the gazebo. She smiled and then said to her husband loud enough to hear, “What a sweet couple.”

  They kept walking, and while something settled in Jock at those words, some sort of puzzle piece slotting into place, Fiona quickly jerked out of his arms.

  He frowned at her but she wouldn’t look at him, busying herself with throwing away her half-empty smoothie cup and fixing Sundance’s tangled leash. Finally she looked at him, and he didn’t miss the wetness pooling in her eyes. “I think…I’d like to go back now. I’m not feeling well.”

  He rose to his feet quickly. “Are you okay?”

  “Just tired,” she said, but she wouldn’t look at him. “Headache. I just need to lay down.”

  He didn’t believe her and wondered what had made her jumpy. He didn’t pry, though. Fiona deserved her privacy, and if there was something she wanted him to know, she’d tell him. They walked back to the motel in silence, and when they were safely secured inside the room Fiona washed off her makeup, revealing the livid bruise that made his teeth clench. She stripped out of her jeans and slipped under the covers, pulling them up to her chin. Her breaths evened out almost immediately, and he was embarrassed at how long he watched her sleeping form, the way her hair lay around her in a blond waterfall.

  Then he turned away and lifted the lid on his laptop. He and Roarke needed to get back on the forums where women like Fiona were bought and sold to see if there was chatter. That man at the dog park hadn’t killed Fiona—he’d wanted to take her somewhere, to someone. This time, Jock and the crew weren’t just after the ringleader—they were after the whole damn operation.

  CHAPTER NINE

  When Fiona awoke, she heard the sound of muffled voices, and she tensed for a moment until she realized the talking was coming from the TV. Jock was in the other bed, legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles, feet bare.

  He was shirtless again. Bastard.

  She stared at him for a long time, admiring the curve of his biceps, the shape of his short beard, even the perfect curl of his long golden eyelashes. When had she ever noticed a man’s eyelashes?

  Jock turned his head slowly to face her, as if he sensed he was being watched. He didn’t speak and neither did she. Her heart hurt because, for a moment in that gazebo, she’d believed in them. She’d been able to have the fantasy that they were a couple, that Jock wasn’t only with her to watch over her but because he wanted to be. I wanted to be near you. Those words echoed in her head, made her want things that he’d told her not to want. When that woman had walked by and made that comment, she’d shattered the illusion, made Fiona remember they weren’t any of that.

  Her life was in danger, her cheek hurt, she was scared out of her mind, and yet all she could think about was Jock. Her mind was consumed with his presence, his small smiles, his rare laughs. The way he looked at her, his gaze now altered from one of protection to one of grudging attraction. It might have been a long time, but she knew the difference.

  “Jock.” Her voice was raspy with sleep, and her brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders. All she knew was that she was tired of this tension between them.

  He didn’t say anything. His steady gaze on her was his only response to his name.

  “Jamison,” she said, softer this time, enjoying the way his name fell from her tongue.

  His eyes went liquid, less blue ice and more gentle waves. “Yeah.”

  Her hand crept out from beneath the sheet and curled around the edge of the mattress. She wasn’t sure she was this brave anymore. Freshman year of college Fiona? Oh yeah, she’d been brave. She’d flirted and kissed and made out. She’d done all of that because she liked the attention and knew she could get it easily with a smile. But now…it’d been so long. She was curling her toes around the edge of the cliff and debating whether she was going to jump. All she needed was a strong breeze to convince her. “If I…If I came over there and got into bed with you, what would happen?”

  He didn’t say anything, but his chest hitched—she saw it just as he swallowed. His one hand she could see was fisted on his thigh.

  “Fiona.” Her name was a warning. A yellow light. She planned to speed right on through.

  “What would happen, Jock?”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Why aren’t we doing this?”

  His nostrils flared. “I don’t know how to—” He stopped abruptly.

  Her heart was pounding in her ears and heat was pooling in her belly. She shifted her legs restlessly beneath the sheets, and he watched the movement. “You don’t know how to do what?”

  “Handle you.” He said the words rapid-fire. “I don’t understand what you see in me. Why you think I know how to do this…with you…after all you’ve been through.”

  Oh God, that was it. He was worried about fucking this up. She’d avoided touch for so long that she thought she was used to going without, but a couple of careful skin-to-skin contacts with Jock and she realized how damn touch-starved she’d been. She knew in her heart, though, that it was him. No other person could have reminded her how good it felt to be held. She didn’t want to be touched by anyone else, just him, and the fact that he was worried about fucking it up only proved her point. So she jumped off the cliff.

  She slowly slipped out from under the sheet and dropped her feet to the carpet. She sat on the end of the bed, needing to gather some emotional strength before she stood and crossed the foot to Jock’s bed. Only a foot. One. Foot. But she knew that one foot would change a lot. Everything. Jock wasn’t pushing her away, not yet, and the flush on his chest, slowly rising up his neck, told her he didn’t want to.

  He cared. He cared about touching her wrong, dredging up bad memories, making her feel unsafe. Didn’t he know that she’d never felt more safe in her life?

  She stood, and his eyes immediately dipped to take in her body. Her T-shirt brushed the top of her underwear as she shifted her weight. When his gaze once again met hers, the swirling blue was no longer gentle waves—it was white water rapids. She brushed her hands on the outside of her thighs and took one step. One step was all she needed to bring her to the side of Jock’s bed.

  He breathed rapidly, his chest expanding and contracting as he kept his hands pinned to the bed with a grip on the sheets. “Fiona.”

  Another warning, so close to red that she thought for a moment he’d say stop or no, or worse, he’d get up and walk away. But all he said was her name. So she blew out a breath and placed a knee on the edge of the bed, swinging her other leg over him until she settled into his lap, straddling him.

  He was hard. She hadn’t looked before, hadn’t dared, but she could feel it, a steel rod nudging up, seeking her heat. She’d thought when she felt this again that she’d bolt in terror, but right now, it was…okay. Non-threatening. Because of Jock.

  “You do know how to handle me,” she said. “You’ve been doing it for weeks. And you’re doing it now, letting me have control.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t do this. Don’t make me feel like I’m throwing myself at you,” she pleaded. “If you don’t want me, then tell me, but don’t hurt me just to be noble. If you have one care about me, don’t do that.”

  He shuddered beneath her, and his eyes closed briefly. The veins in his neck stood out, and she longed to run her finger down them, to feel his pulse beat beneath her touch, sure and strong. Finally he lifted his hands from the sheets and laid them on top of her thighs. He squeezed her flesh once, and she could see when he stopped fighting, when the clench of his jaw eased, and he let his big body give in to what he wanted. “You know I care. And you k
now I want you.”

  “Do I?”

  “You do,” he said, his fingers once again tightening on her thighs. Other than that, he didn’t make any other moves to touch her. And God, it’d been so long that she wasn’t sure how to do this anymore. She’d been sexually active before that awful night she’d been taken, but that had all been teenage fumbling. She’d lost out on those formative years where she learned what turned her on, how to study a partner.

  She began to panic a bit. “I want to do this, but I’m not sure…It’s been…”

  He slowly raised his hands from her thighs, closed his fingers around her wrists, and brought them to his chest. She placed her palms flat on his pectorals, covering the tattoo that said Loyalty in script over his heart.

  “It’s been long for me, too,” he said, in a voice that was more gentle than she’d thought he was capable of. “We don’t have to do anything. Up to you. I won’t touch so you can just…explore. Take your time. That what you want?”

  That sounded great. Access to Jock’s body without worrying about her own reaction to being touched? Heaven. He was so damn warm and hard, silky skin stretched over muscle. He had a spattering of light hair across his chest and a small trail leading from his belly button down into his waistband.

  She nodded eagerly. “I’d like that a lot.”

  He smiled then and folded his hands behind his head, where he reclined on a pillow. “Whatever you want, babe.”

  She started by brushing her hand over the coarse hair on his chest, feeling it rasp along the backs of her fingers. His nipples were tight beads, and she thumbed one, halting when he sucked in a breath. He let it out slowly and didn’t take his eyes off her. She continued her exploration, tapping on his ribs like they were piano keys and tracing the grooves in his abs. He was so beautiful, his body a work of art.

  She was getting used to the hard feel of him between her legs. He didn’t move at all, didn’t buck his hips, although there was some tension in his thighs where her butt rested on them. He was holding himself in check, for her.

  He’d said his nickname meant brute force. Was that how he fucked? With unbridled power? Or did he maintain control the whole time like he did the rest of his life? Could she get him to let go?

  She leaned forward, wanting her lips on his skin, needing to taste his salty flavor. She ran her mouth along his collarbone and then slipped up his neck. She darted out her tongue to taste that vein, the one that pulsed with his lifeblood. At the feel of her wet tongue, he jolted beneath her. When she opened up her lips to suckle on the skin, he made a small sound, a brief moan he choked off.

  He was worried about scaring her. That she knew. But God, she craved his noises, she wanted to know how she made him feel—it was a power trip to have access to him, to know she could break through that stoic façade.

  She ran her lips along his jaw line, nipping at his short beard. Then she planted her hands on the bed and leaned down, so close that all she could see was the swirling blue of his eyes. She licked her lips. “I like touching you.”

  “I like you touching me.” He was looking at her lips.

  “Should I kiss you?”

  “Do you want to?”

  She nodded and chewed the inside of her cheek.

  The corner of his mouth tilted up. “Then yeah, babe. You should kiss me.”

  What if she was a shit kisser? What if she knocked his tooth out? Bit his lip? Sucked on his tongue too hard—

  “Thinking too much. I can practically hear it.” He placed a hand on the back of her neck and drew her forward until their lips touched. That was it. Then he stopped, only to mumble against her, “Don’t think. Just kiss.”

  She closed her eyes and pressed her lips against his. For a moment, there was no movement, just this chaste kiss. Jock moaned and opened his mouth and then swept his tongue across the seam of her lips. She felt like a virgin as she gasped, and he surged inside.

  He plundered her mouth, conquering it, taking everything she had and making it his, and she loved every single minute of it. She curled her hands into his shoulders, pressing closer, losing herself in the kiss, in their duel of tongues, in this wonderful man who made her feel so fucking precious.

  Her head spun, her clenched stomach unfurled, and those butterflies that had been locked inside flew away. She felt…open. Gutted. Uncaged.

  He broke the kiss first, breathing hard, and pressed his forehead against hers. She lifted her fingers and placed them on his damp, swollen lips, wanting to confirm that that had happened. They’d kissed. He’d owned her.

  He pressed kisses to the tips of her fingers, blue eyes boring into hers. “That was some kiss.”

  It was, but that had probably been beginner’s luck. She had no idea how to do any of this, and her inexperience shamed her. She tried to cover it up with a joke. “I’m sure that’s what you say to all the—”

  “Don’t,” he barked out firmly. “Do not bring anyone else into this. Do you understand? There is no one else here. It’s just you and me. And Sundance in the bathroom.”

  She swallowed. “Okay.”

  “Okay.” He folded his arms behind his head again. “You want to keep on exploring, you go ahead.”

  Oh goody, yes, she wanted to do this. She wanted…She shifted so she sat on his thighs, and his eyes darkened a bit as she ran her fingers down his stomach, his bellybutton, to that trail of hair leading into his pants. “Can I—?”

  “Whatever you want.” His voice was strained, veins in his arms bulging.

  This was hard for him, she realized, to lay back and let her do what she wanted. He probably liked control in bed, but for her, he was allowing her to lead as best as he could. “Are you sure this is okay?”

  “Babe, I’m good. I’m lying in bed with your hot body straddling me. I just had the best kiss of my life. And if I’m reading you right, you’re about to free my dick that’s threatening to tear through my fly. I’m fucking good. Trust me.”

  Okay, well that said it all. She pursed her lips together and tried not to laugh, but the giggle burst out anyway. He rolled his eyes, but she could see he was amused, too, his face flushed, his lips curved upward. “Great, now you’re laughing.”

  “You’re funny.”

  “No one has ever called me funny.”

  “Well, maybe they never saw you like this.”

  And just like that, his smile froze and then his face softened. “Ain’t that the truth,” he said under his breath, so low she barely heard him. Then he nodded. “Go on then. Explore.”

  She scratched his lower stomach with her nails, just to get him back for rolling his eyes at her. He grunted softly but, other than that, remained still. He wore a pair of jeans with a zip fly. She unbuttoned them and then slid down the zipper. He wasn’t wearing underwear. She raised her eyebrows at him.

  “Didn’t have anything clean,” he said, but there was a wicked glint in his eyes.

  All she saw were tufts of coarse hair, blond like on his chest. His dick had lengthened down his leg, and she tried to figure out how to reach down and pull him out without hurting him.

  He must have figured out her dilemma because he said softly, “Slide back a bit, babe.”

  She did, and he shimmied his jeans down past his hips until the root of his cock was visible. She got distracted by his V-cuts and missed that he had reached inside of his jeans. She shoved him away and slipped her hand inside, wrapping her fingers around the hot, hard length of Jamison Bosh.

  How had she gone so long without this? Memories flew at her, but they were good ones. That first fumbling at a high school party with a member of the soccer team. He’d been tall and lithe, so handsome with brown eyes and long, dark lashes. They’d found a closet, and she’d touched him, felt a hard dick in her hand for the first time.

  This was better. Jock was thick and so damn hot, like if she held him too long he’d burn her hand. She pulled him out and kept her grip on him. She’d always vowed cocks could be pretty, and Jock
’s was, long and flushed red from blood, the tip leaking a bit with pre-come.

  She stroked him a couple of times, and his hips jerked until he settled. When she glanced up at him, his teeth were clenched shut, eyes like a foamy waterfall.

  The only time she’d had a dick in her mouth, she’d been forced to. She shoved that thought away just as Jock’s hand closed around hers. He stroked with her a couple of times, showing her the pressure he liked, the speed. Except…she wanted to bend down and lick the liquid at the tip, to feel her lips wrap around the spongey head. To suck and lap at him on her own terms. Because she wanted to.

  She scooted back farther and planted a hand on the bed, leaning down.

  “Fiona,” he said, another yellow warning that she ignored.

  She stuck her tongue out and licked the head. His hand smacked the bed, a loud thump that made her flinch.

  “Sorry,” he guttered out. “That…shit, it surprised me.”

  She relaxed and grinned at him. “You said I can do what I want, right?”

  “Yup,” was all he said.

  “Tell me what you like and don’t like.”

  “Not much I don’t like about this. Just don’t bite my dick off, and it’ll be fine.”

  Right, watch the teeth. She took just the head in her mouth, laying her tongue along the underside, and reveled in the groan Jock made, followed by the swift inhale of his breath. That was it; she’d done that. She’d made him feel this good.

  She lowered her head as far as she could go, which wasn’t much, just until her lips met her fist, and then she pulled back, sucking as she went.

  “Fucking—just like that,” he said between gasps. “Just like that.”