The Highwayman (23 page)

He still didn't meet her eyes. Instead, his entire being focused on the golden-covered folds of her body. He kept his hand secured over her mouth as he lowered his lips to her ear, watching the trembling of the flat plane of her belly.

“I tasted your cunt,” he warned her. “And I'm hungry for more.”

Her breaths became manic, heaving her breasts apart with each desperate expansion of her ribs. The nipples trembled like little pink confections atop the pale mounds. He was as shocked as she at his words, and yet, not surprised.

An hour ago, the very thought of any human contact repulsed him.

But this was Farah. And he'd made her a promise.

His body responded to her as it had to none other. The sight of her release nearly drove him over the edge.

If
only
she'd not touched him. If only his skin didn't feel like it was on fire, and every wound he ever had ripped open again, the sensation of blood trickling down his gashed flesh warring with the intensity of his body's need.

Someday he'd tell her that he wasn't angry. That she was tied up for her own protection. In case, in her pleasure, she clutched at him again, and he couldn't control his reaction.

The thought was enough to turn his veins to ice, but scent was a powerful sense, and hers now entrapped him as no other had.

In order to reach her sex, he had to release her mouth. “Don't say a word, or I'll gag you, as well.”

Christ, he was a monster. But Dorian knew that he couldn't deny her if she pleaded for mercy. That he couldn't face her if she rebuked or rejected him. And so he could allow her none of those options.

He'd warned her, hadn't he? Before she demanded this night.

Her nod beneath his palm was enough. He let her go and she didn't make a sound.

Thank God.

Heart pounding, mouth still watering, and cock pulsing with need, Dorian was glad she offered little resistance as he parted her knees.

She glistened.
So. Fucking. Beautiful.
He smoothed his wide hands down the insides of her thighs, pushing them open all the way, fingering the garters of her stockings and wondering if her skin was as soft as it looked.

His hunger was a ferocious thing as he lowered to his elbows and let the yearning clench deep in his belly. The slickness of her desire beckoned him. He split her cleft with his gloved finger, coating the tip with her nectar.

She trembled, but remained silent, as she'd agreed to do.

Curious, he rubbed his thumb and finger together, testing the glossy consistency. Soon his cock would be coated with this, slick and wet and—

Christ, if he didn't get his mouth on her soon, he'd go mad.

Dorian had no fucking idea what he was doing, but her scent lured him down until he pressed his lips to her sex.

Her hips flinched beneath him, arched a little, and he could tell she fought to remain passive, but her body betrayed her.
Good.
Because his betrayed him, as well.

She tasted like heaven. Like desire and release. Like want and fulfillment. Like woman.
His
woman. The predator in him was going to dine until he'd had his fill.

And he had a lifetime of hunger to satiate.

The frantic need to struggle against her bindings had leached away from Farah the moment her husband's mouth had closed over her fingers.

When he'd issued his vulgar threat in her ear, arousal had raced through her with crippling strength. Now his wide shoulders overflowed the space between her parted thighs, and his mouth was doing things that made her bite her lip so hard she tasted blood.

His tongue split her in one long lick. He growled against her, and Farah whimpered in reply, unable to stop herself.

But she didn't say a word. Not. One. Word.

Blackwell had become that jaguar she'd evoked the first time she'd laid eyes on him. His shoulders rolled and bunched just so as he settled in for a feast. He left no part of her unexplored. His bold tongue found places she'd never known she possessed. He parted her with his fingers, exposing her in a way so absolute, she could barely stand it. And yet, she read the veneration on his face as he looked at her, as he tasted her, as if he committed every single crevice and protuberance to memory. He learned very quickly what made her gasp, what caused her to arch or retreat. He played like a man who'd only just learned how. Testing her reactions, re-creating sensations, enjoying a bit of cruelty as only the Blackheart of Ben More could. Driving her to the edge of her wits and then pulling back, leaving her groaning, straining, and sweating.

She jerked as his finger found its way inside her slick channel, and the vibration of his groan against the soft hood of flesh he'd sucked into his mouth with a flattened tongue shattered her composure.

Farah screamed with the force of it. The need to grip, to knead, to flail seized her, and she tested the strength of her bonds. The harder she struggled against them, the more potently the bliss ripped through her blood and out her throat in desperate screams. He stayed with her, riding the frantic thrusts of her hips as she ground her heels into the mattress and arched. For a moment, she thought the release would break her in half, but he was there, pressing her hips back down and forcing her to experience the devastating finish. She closed her eyes, but light still burst behind her lids. She could feel the muscles of her sex gripping and releasing his gloved finger. Pulling him deeper.

And then he was gone.

Farah collapsed, panting and shivering with exhaustion. Feeling trapped and yet released.

Her head lolled to the side, and she looked down at him from beneath heavy lashes. What she saw made her eyes peel wide.

Dorian had undone his trousers, and knelt between her quivering knees palming his turgid erection. The act they were about to commit hadn't intimidated Farah until now.

His dark features both ruthless and almost apologetic, he bent and prowled up her body, stopping to slick a bit of moisture from his glove on one nipple and then proceeding to lick it off.

“God, the taste of you. I'm drunk with it.” He moaned, his eyes alight with accusation as he held himself above her, still fully clothed but for the arousal now pressing against the slit of her body. “What have you done to me?”

What had
she
done to
him
? “I—I—”

His glove covered her mouth again, stopping words she never would have found.

“I never wanted to hurt you,” he whispered against her ear. “I'm sorry.”

Farah didn't have time to contemplate just which of his many offenses he was apologizing for before he surged inside her, breaching her virginity.

His glove muffled her cry of pain as Dorian branded her with hot, hard flesh, searing all the way to her womb, or so it seemed.

He cursed, spewing blasphemies Farah hadn't even encountered in all her years at the Yard. Though her flesh stretched and bled, his scarred face contorted into what appeared to be a mask of pain.

Farah strained against her bonds, against his hand, wanting to escape the pain, wanting to soothe him, wanting control of her limbs back.

But control was something the Blackheart of Ben More would never allow.

Dorian forced himself to look at her. To witness the pain in her eyes. The pain he inflicted. How cruel was a God that made entering her body the sweetest pleasure for him and the sharpest torment for her?

She wanted this,
he reminded himself.

Not as much as you,
whispered a dark voice.

I never wanted to hurt her,
he argued.
And never like this
.

You wouldn't have stopped until you claimed her. Until you'd tasted her like this, until you'd invaded her like this.

She'd never deny me,
he thought frantically
.

Then take your hand off her mouth.

He didn't.
He couldn't.

So locked in a battle with himself, Dorian almost missed the gradual give of her intimate flesh locked so tightly around his own. In warm, slick little pulses, she accepted him into her body. The fight and fear drained out of her muscles until they were soft and pliant beneath him and the pain and panic leached from her gray eyes until they were pools of silver again.

He remained motionless, his every sinuous muscle wound tight as a coil. He was on the edge of a precipice, one he couldn't bring himself to leap from.

If he'd learned anything, it had been that reality never lived up to a memory, or even worse, a fantasy. But that long-held belief shattered as he held himself inside of his wife. Her body only sheathed a part of him, but her warmth suffused him, surrounded him, until he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, that once he lost himself inside her, he'd lose himself
to
her, as well.

She let a soft sigh of relief through her nose and her lashes fluttered as her hips flexed, testing the feel of him inside her.

A hot ripple of lust tore through him, followed by a tidal wave of pleasure. Instinct won over intellect, and Dorian lifted his hips, only to sink again, and again.

Ecstasy crawled over the pleasure, clawing at his flesh, ripping him apart, draining the very essence from him, and bathing her womb with it. Rendering him an empty vessel, a dark void of bliss and hunger, sated but not satisfied. He was a powerful man swimming against a riptide, realizing too late that he battled a force of nature stronger than himself.

And he was lost.

Farah felt him swell inside of her, stretching her already taut flesh. It only took a handful of movements for him to find release. He ducked his head against her neck, silent, not breathing for longer than she thought possible as each shudder racked his powerful body in unrelenting waves. He held his weight on one hand, as he had all night, his wounded palm still fixed over her mouth, the pulses echoed in the clench of his fingers.

When the storm subsided, he released his captive breath on a gasp against her hair. She hadn't known what to expect after he'd found his pleasure, but what he did was absolutely not it.

Blackwell didn't pause, or even abate. He maintained a slow, rippling rhythm, his manhood just as hard and unyielding as that first thrust. His gasps became pants that melted into groans.

He lifted his torso to look down at her, disbelief a foreign expression for his sharp, unsettling features. The fine wool of his jacket abraded her sensitized nipples. The leather of his glove, a buttery-smooth reminder of his fortunes, trailed from her mouth to her jaw, her throat, and her breasts. His seed further eased his way as he slid into her untried body with long, deep strokes.

Farah had thought her part over, that he'd coaxed from her body all the pleasure it had to give. But, to her ultimate surprise, a tight, aching heat bloomed low in her belly, starting in her womb and reaching for the shaft of branding heat plunging and retracting from inside her.

Her lips parted of their own accord, and a small sound of delighted surprise escaped.

Blackwell's eyes sharpened. Questioned.

Farah's body answered without thought. A lift of her hips, a press of her thighs, and a soft moan of encouragement.

It was all he needed.

Blackwell didn't kiss or taste her. Instead he watched her face with an intensity that abashed her. Every flutter of her eyelid, or intake of breath, the way her lips parted or pressed together. His body again became a conduit of her gratification.

It shocked her how he could support his heavy frame all this time on one powerful arm, but the thought dissipated as he used his other hand to explore her, rendering her mind useless and directing her awareness like a symphony conductor. He traced the line of her jaw, the curve of her cheekbones, as though committing her to memory, or visiting one, she couldn't be sure.

As the slow pressure mounted, her moans became mewls, her mewls became cries. His finger drifted along the outline of her lips, slipping past her teeth and leaving the taste of sex on her tongue. Sex and leather. She closed her lips and rolled the glove between her tongue and the roof of her mouth, feeling the hard ridge of his finger beneath.

He hissed, growled, and pulled his hand away, drawing it down to her hip and gripping the curve of her ass, spreading her wider for his accelerating thrusts.

Farah's head tossed against her pillow, her eyes rolling back into their sockets, retreating from sight, as her other overwhelmed senses demanded her attention.

Leather and sex. Darkness. Spice. Chilly air. Hot Blood. Textiles. Smooth, slick flesh. Wide, hard male.

A mouth on hers. A tongue thrusting inside, tasting the essence of her he'd left there, lapping at it.

Farah could feel the waves of sensation pressing against her spine. She feared it, like the first stirrings of an earthquake, or the silent breath after a lightning strike.

She waited for the answering thunder which was certain to resonate through her bones. Straining against her bindings with weak and trembling muscles, she wasn't sure she could survive another earth-shattering release.

But there was no escape. It rushed over her helpless body like a rogue wave, drowning her in crash after crash of sensation. Blackwell swallowed her frantic cries until abruptly, he ripped his mouth from hers and reared back, letting loose a deep, hoarse roar, and then another. Calling his second release to the sky like a prisoner set free.

A languorous satiation turned her bones to liquid. Farah would have wondered if she were still connected to her body if not for the ties still binding her wrists to the headboard, or the small, errant twitches of exhaustion pulsing in her limbs.

Dorian Blackwell, her
husband,
lingered over her as they both fought to regain their breath. Peering up into his mismatched eyes, she shared an unspoken moment of awe with him.

Something in their world had shifted. Some sort of cosmological knowledge, or a secret thought lost at sea floating to the surface. In this quiet, unfettered moment, she
knew
him, truly saw him for what he was. Hard, ruthless tyrant. Abused, wounded boy. An empty heart full of promise, and a soul of shadows in need of sunlight.