by Lara Adrian
“Knox.” His whispered name sounded like a plea.
She reached up to him, cupping the side of his face. His jaw was clenched so tightly, it was a wonder his molars didn’t shatter. She coaxed him to look at her.
When the glowing coals of his irises met the unflinching desire in her gaze, he couldn’t contain the growl that boiled up the back of his throat.
Leni pulled his head down to hers. She said his name again, then her mouth was on his.
That spark was all it took.
He had been holding on to his control by a thread. Now it went up like tinder, exploding out of his grasp. Leni’s kiss seared him. She may have been out of practice, but there was nothing untried or uncertain in the feel of her lips on his.
Her fingers tangled in his hair, dragging him closer. He moved his hand at her back under the loose hem of her sweater, craving the heat of her skin. Christ, she was so soft. He couldn’t get enough.
Their mouths joined and urgent, he reached around to the front of her and pushed up the edge of the thin lace bralette she wore. Her breast filled his hand, the nipple as taut as a pearl against his palm as he caressed her.
“I want to see you,” he uttered against her parted lips.
Her moan was all the permission he needed. He bared her from the waist up, the hot amber light of his fevered gaze licking over every perfect inch of her.
The Breedmate mark on her abdomen should have cooled him. It should have slowed him down, at least. But seeing that delicate scarlet symbol on the creaminess of her skin only made his need to possess her burn brighter, hotter.
Dangerously so.
He eased her down onto the mattress beneath him, running his hands over each luscious curve and smooth plane. He needed to see more of her, all of her. Grabbing the soft black fabric at her hips, he peeled her out of her leggings, leaving her wearing just her panties. If he’d been expecting basic white cotton, he couldn’t have been more surprised to find a skimpy scrap of black lace and satin covering her sex.
“Christ, you’re beautiful, Lenora. Sexy as fucking hell.” Glancing up at her, he arched a brow. “That long drought of yours ends right here.”
She sighed, catching her lip between her teeth as he gazed at her. Her dark hair lay in a wild tangle behind her head, her body spread out before him like a feast.
And he meant to savor every delectable inch.
He levered himself up and started with another kiss, taking her mouth possessively, mercilessly. From there, he moved to the tender spot below her ear, then along her throat to the sweet hollow at its base.
She arched beneath him as he continued his sampling of her sweetness, his lips and tongue moving ever downward toward the prize he couldn’t wait to claim.
When he reached the edge of the black lace at her hip, he nipped at it with his teeth and fangs. Leni’s legs scissored, her spine undulating as he stroked her with his hands and played his tongue along the softness of her inner thigh.
Her cleft was wet and hot, the scent of her arousal drilling into his skull, making him wild with the need to be inside her. He drew her panties off with impatient hands, too far gone to pretend he had any patience now.
She was even prettier like this, naked and open for him. So drenched she glistened.
He stroked his fingers along the slick seam of her sex, his cock kicking in response to the tiny convulsions that swept over her under his touch.
“I need to have you on my tongue,” he growled tersely. “I want to feel you come against my mouth.”
“Knox,” she gasped, her pelvis lifting when he lowered his head to her and suckled her. Her voice was tight, strangled with pleasure. “Oh God.”
He wasn’t sure how he found the discipline to keep his own need in check. It owned him, careening toward the breaking point as Leni quaked and shuddered against his mouth.
“That’s it,” he rasped, feeling her climax spiral tighter with each flick and thrust of his tongue. “Come for me, Leni.”
“I can’t.” She moaned, and it sounded as full of anguish as it did pleasure. “If I come, I’m going to scream. I can’t . . .”
Ah, shit. The sleeping kid down the hall.
Knox wasn’t going to let a little detail like that get in the way. He intended this to be a total annihilation of her prolonged neglect. Anything less than her full surrender wasn’t acceptable.
“Go ahead and scream, Leni.” His mouth moved against the molten sweetness of her folds as he drove her toward the peak. “Let it all go, baby. I’ve got you, I promise.”
She didn’t last more than another moment.
And when the jolt of her release hit its crescendo, he moved up her body and caught her broken cry with his kiss.
~ ~ ~
Leni’s world splintered apart behind her closed eyelids, ecstasy rippling through every cell and nerve ending. She had no choice but to let the pleasure come. Her shout tore out of her, jagged and unhinged, swallowed up by the heat of Knox’s mouth on hers.
True to his word, he caught her. He let her break against him, held fast by the surrounding strength of his arms.
Her moan when he pulled his lips away from hers sounded like a protest, but she couldn’t help it. She wasn’t ready for him to stop kissing her. She wasn’t ready for him to stop anything he was doing to her body right now.
What she wanted was . . . more.
His eyes blazed as he lifted his lids and stared down at her. The pupils were so narrow the amber all but engulfed them. His dark brows were heavy slashes, the golden skin over his cheekbones seeming to be stretched taut over the sharp angles of his face. The pointed tips of his fangs gleamed white and sharp behind the broad line of his sexy mouth with every hard breath he drew into his lungs.
Fierce and unearthly, that’s what he was. The most formidably attractive male she had ever seen.
He kissed her again as he reached between her legs. “I love the taste of you. The feel of you. Christ, Leni . . . you’re so soft and wet and sweet. I shouldn’t have let this happen, because now I’ll never get enough.”
Leni could hardly fathom it. She wasn’t the kind of woman who inspired this kind of lust in a man. Yet he was staring at her now as if she were the only woman he wanted. Vibrating with the intensity of his desire for her.
She felt that same unbearable need drumming through her. She ached with an emptiness that demanded to be filled.
Reaching for him, she fisted her hands in the fabric of his shirt. “I want to feel your skin against mine, Knox. Now.”
His eyes flared brighter at her breathless order. Rearing back, he pulled off his shirt and tossed it aside. His dermaglyphs churned with dark colors, twisting vines of indigo and burgundy and deep gold. Their changing hues made them seem alive on his skin, captivating her gaze and making her want to chase the pulsing patterns with her tongue.
A low growl built in his throat as she devoured him with her eyes. “Holy fuck, that look on your face is burning me up.”
“Hurry, Knox.”
He chuckled, working swiftly to strip out of his jeans. She licked her lips when she saw he wore nothing under them. His cock jutted out proudly, thick and heavily veined.
She couldn’t hold back her moan. If the glyphs on his torso and limbs made her womb clench with yearning, seeing the swirls and flourishes twisting around his immense shaft nearly make her climax on the spot.
The sight of Knox like this awakened something inside her, a yearning that had been dormant until now. Unrealized.
It had nothing to do with the length of her self-imposed dry spell. She craved him on an elemental level. The way she needed air to breathe and food to survive.
Right now, she had never wanted anything more than to feel him pressed down upon her, inside her.
“Knox.” She writhed with that need, unable to conceal the depth of her hunger for him.
Undressed, he stood at the edge of the bed and drank her in. His searing gaze heated her flesh everywhere it touched
her, as hot as a live flame.
His strong hands clamped around her ankles and he yanked her toward him, until her backside nearly slid off the bed. Then he knelt down between her parted legs, his hands rough against the sensitive skin of her inner thighs as he spread her wider, until she was fully open to him.
“So fucking beautiful,” he uttered thickly. “Sweet as honey and cream.”
He scooped his palms under her ass and lifted her to his mouth. Leni gasped at the scorching heat of his mouth on her again. He showed her no mercy at all, every hard tug of his lips and tongue on her clit igniting a fresh fire inside her.
Every graze of his sharp fangs over her tender flesh shot molten lava into her veins. When he drew the swollen bud of her sex between his teeth, the cauldron in her core boiled over.
Her orgasm streaked through her, white-hot and electric, as jagged as lightning.
Before it could shatter her completely, Knox rose up. He entered her in a long, slow thrust, filling her until she felt she might split apart from the bliss of his body invading hers. The pleasured scream that rose up her throat left her lips as a wordless sigh as Knox began to move inside her.
Sensation overwhelmed her, swamped her. It was too much. Too much bliss. Too much intensity after such a long period of emptiness. Not only her body, but her life. Her heart.
Knox had stormed in only days ago, yet being with him felt like coming home.
Tears pricked the backs of her eyes as she clung to him. She held them back, but he must have sensed the stillness that washed over her.
“Hey.” His voice was rough, his expression taut with concern as he ceased moving. “Am I hurting you?”
“No.” She shook her head, swallowing against her parched throat. “I’m not hurting at all. This feels good, Knox. I didn’t realize how much I needed it.”
The corner of his mouth quirked. “Six years is a damn long time.”
“Yes, it is.” She let go a quiet laugh, her hands stroking his bare shoulders, her fingers tracing the intricate lines of the glyphs that rode the bunched muscles. “But I’m not talking about how long it’s been since I’ve gotten off without having to use my own fingers to do it.”
“Christ,” he hissed, heat flaring in his eyes. “Just hearing you say that makes me want to see it in person sometime.”
He started rocking inside her again, his strokes slow and deep. Leni moaned, sinking into his rhythm, savoring the fluid glide of their bodies in perfect tempo.
“Tell me what you it is you needed, sweetheart.”
“This. You,” she said, sighing as the pleasure bloomed into something wild again. “I just needed to feel safe tonight. I needed to feel connected to something solid and warm and unbreakable. Just for a little while.”
“Then hold on to me.” He lowered his head and kissed her, unrushed, soul-searing.
When he drew back it was on a harsh sigh. His Breed irises radiated like a furnace. His pelvis rolled hard against her, stretching her to the limit.
He ground out her name as savagely as a curse, and maybe it was. He powered into her now, his thrusts hard and unforgiving. Her control seemed to snap its tether at the same moment his did. She held fast as he buried his face in the curve of her neck and the hard jolt of his mounting release rippled through his big body.
She had no choice but to hold on to him as he began to move with the ferocity of a storm. He pushed her higher, then higher still, toward the peak of a steep cliff that seemed to have no end.
She wasn’t afraid of getting close to that sheer drop. She wasn’t afraid of the tempest of Knox’s need as he chased his own release. She held on to him, ready for the fall.
Welcoming it.
They tumbled over the edge together.
CHAPTER 14
Lowering his head under the cold spray, Knox braced his hands against the shower walls and let the water needle his shoulders and back.
He’d come back to his attic quarters a couple hours before sunrise, realizing the only way he was going to let Leni sleep in peace was if he put some healthy distance between them. Considering the rampant hard-on he sported under the icy punishment of this third shower since he’d returned, he didn’t think any amount of miles or time would be enough to chill his desire for her.
He had spent almost all night making love to her, some dim part of his brain trying to rationalize that the sharpness of his need would smooth out once he’d had his fill. Problem was, feeling her beneath him, feeling her body respond to his, shatter with his, only honed that need into a razor-sharp hunger unlike anything he’d ever felt before.
Not even with Abbie.
That admission clawed at him. It shamed him, but he couldn’t deny it. He had adored Abbie for her free-spirited nature and her seemingly endless capacity to love people and bring them into her world, her life. A shameless flirt, she had been impossible to ignore. Her irrepressible light had drawn him and every other male in her orbit as easily as moths to a flame.
Leni couldn’t be more different. Calm, steady, responsible. Reserved and cautious, yet caring. When she opened herself to someone, it was a true gift. A rare one, from what Knox had observed.
And she had given that gift to him last night. In fact, she’d allowed him in from the first night he’d arrived in Parrish Falls.
Her kindness and quiet strength had attracted him even more than her fresh-faced beauty and sultry curves. Her fear for the welfare of an innocent child had all but guaranteed Knox couldn’t walk away and leave her to deal with her problems on her own.
For most of the time since he’d laid eyes on her, Knox had been telling himself he regretted his decision to stop at Leni’s diner. Last night blew that lie to pieces.
He was never going to regret seeing her lost to the pleasure he had given her. She had surrendered herself to him completely.
She had trusted him. Skin on skin, not a single barrier between their bodies or their connection to each other.
It humbled him, that she would accept him after such a long time without anyone else. He was far from deserving of a gift that precious. Just one more thing he’d taken from her and could not regret enjoying, bastard that he was.
Now, every gasp and moan, every shuddering tremor that had rocked her, was seared into his mind. Every ecstatic scream he swallowed with his kiss echoed in his blood, in his marrow. What they shared last night would never leave him, no matter how much time or distance he was determined to put between Leni and him.
Knox cursed as he closed his eyes and cranked the shower temperature from cold to Arctic.
He’d barely left her bed and all he could think about was getting back into it with her. If he’d thought a single taste would sate his hunger, he was realizing the depth of his mistake this morning. How he would manage to stay under the same roof with her now and not want to get her naked again was beyond him.
He didn’t even want to consider the added complication of the boy.
Staying in Parrish Falls wasn’t in the plan when he’d arrived there. Staying any longer than necessary was only going to make things worse—as if he needed to bury himself inside Leni in order to realize that.
Fuck.
He turned off the water, then stepped out to hastily towel off. His skin still felt overheated despite the cold, his cock still stubbornly refusing to back down. He stuffed it into the jeans he pulled on, hoping like hell he could get his thoughts—and his libido—under control for the rest of the day.
The upcoming night would be a battle he’d have to fight once he got there. It would be a mistake to let things get any more complicated or involved. A momentary weakness was bad enough. A repeat performance would not only be unfair, but cruel.
Leni had warned him not to make promises to Riley he couldn’t keep, but what about her?
She obviously wasn’t the kind of woman who took a new man into her bed whenever the whim struck. Lenora Calhoun was the kind of woman who put down roots and nurtured them. She was the kind of
woman who would put her life on hold to look after a motherless child.
The kind of woman who deserved white picket fences and a life free of struggle or pain. Not to mention an eternal blood bond with a male who was worthy of her. One whose hands weren’t already stained with a lifetime of blood and violence.
Christ, what the hell was wrong with him?
One night of spectacular sex and he was mentally waxing on about picket fences and blood bonds? If that wasn’t evidence enough that he needed to get a grip on the situation—rein things in hard and fast with Leni—then he didn’t know what was.
Impatient now, he yanked on his dark T-shirt and stalked out of the bathroom on bare feet.
Clamping a lid on what he was starting to feel toward Leni was imperative, but that wasn’t going to solve the other issue he hadn’t yet addressed.
She’d made it clear she wasn’t willing to leave town if things turned any more dangerous with the Parrishes, so that left the problem in Knox’s hands. He had to ensure he had somewhere to take her and Riley if their safety depended on it—even if that meant taking them there against her will.
She would despise him for it, he was sure. But her life was more important than how she felt about him, and he wasn’t willing to leave it to chance.
He had been putting off making the call for long enough.
Walking over to the small closet near the bed, Knox reached inside the zippered chest pocket of his black parka for the burner phone he’d been carrying with him all these months on the road.
How many times had he been tempted to toss the damn thing and really disappear? Too many to count. Now, he was glad to have it. The battery was long dead, but he willed it back to life with a mental command.
He didn’t know how any of his brothers would respond to hearing from him after all this time, but he’d deal with that as it came. There was only one male he trusted to help.
As the Florida Darkhaven’s resident surveillance and tech expert, Razor had both the skills and the connections to put a plan in motion on little to zero notice.
He would have questions, of course. Razor dissected every problem with the acuity of his chosen name. It was simply his brother’s nature, just as Knox’s nature was to keep all of his shit locked up tight.