Night Hunter Page 4

  “What do you mean, fate?” she repeated. The skin at the back of her neck felt crawly and speaking came hard.

  Only birds and insects responded. She heard highway sounds behind her, but this dense world, whether she was ready for it or not, had become her existence.

  “You’re making me crazy, you know.” She tried a conversational tone. “If I had half the sense of a goat, I’d be on a shrink’s couch right now. He’d take me through past lives, check for multiple personalities, make sure I hadn’t been dropped on my head.”

  It wasn’t her head that was—suddenly and unexpectedly—making its presence known, but he didn’t need to know that.

  “I understand erotic fantasies,” she continued. More than I’m going to admit. “But I’m—all right—I’ll admit it, I’m used to controlling them, plugging in certain triggers such as a little leather and lace and indulging in some mental kinky fun, but knowing how to get in and out of the mood, playing it safe and in control, not the other way around.”

  “I told you. I had no choice.”

  “Is that what you said?” She squinted and stared. Had something changed about her surroundings? A darker-than-before hue to the area in front of that low-growing tree? She fought to concentrate. “I’m sorry. Of course you did.”

  She felt something feather-light on her cheek and brushed away what she hoped was a spider web. A not-too-subtle heat snaked through her groin and demanded a damn lot of attention. She pressed her thighs together and struggled to think about something, anything, except that sensation.

  “When this is over, how about we both get on that shrink’s couch,” she blithered. “He could write a whole book on what we tell him, make his fortune and be awarded the Pulitzer or something.”

  Laird must not have thought she was funny because she didn’t sense his response. Maybe she’d done a piss-poor job of hiding her arousal, and he was waiting to see what she’d do next.

  “What?” she pressed. Lordy, it was hot and steamy back in here. “You think we should get our fifteen minutes of fame and to hell with him? Book ourselves onto talk shows, get on the cover of those tabloids?”

  “What do you want out of life?”

  “What?”

  “I never asked myself that before. Wouldn’t allow it.”

  Giving herself a mental shake that only partly deflected her focus on the area between her legs, she mulled over what he’d said. “You wouldn’t allow it because you were too busy growing up, riding motorcycles, chasing women—not that you’d have to throw a net over them.”

  “Something like that.”

  If he hadn’t sounded so reflective, she would have teased him. Or maybe she wouldn’t. She’d been keeping a light tone because the whole insane scenario was easier to accept that way, but that approach wasn’t getting her anywhere. Neither did it address his damnable mastery of her body.

  “You’re questioning the meaning of life now?” she asked.

  “Something like—yeah.”

  “That’s good, I think. Only, was it necessary for this to happen?” Unwilling to confess to what she meant by “this”, she gnawed on her lower lip. Her surroundings hummed and hissed, and the warm, damp ground steamed. So did she.

  No way about it, that one section over there was darker and denser than the rest of the leaves or whatever they called that stuff. She didn’t want to stare, and yet she did.

  After a few seconds, she could no longer call the object of her attention an anomaly or a reason to make an appointment with an optometrist. A shape was taking form—a man’s shape.

  Only, it wasn’t a man. Not really. The size was right and what she concluded were shoulders were more than broad, thank you very much. A head, yes, a head. Except that he—she decided it was him—didn’t have the traditional face. Instead, he was all eyes. Eyes with the power to hypnotize.

  Energize.

  Gentle and searching, maybe unsure or even lonely beneath it all. No, she thought, I want you to be all-powerful, not human like the rest of us.

  Forget the business with leather and lace. In her fantasy of fantasies, she imagined herself being thrown naked over a savage’s shoulder and carted off to become his sex slave. Despite the erotic image, she didn’t really want that, because she’d never been able to figure out what a sex slave did when her services weren’t needed, except die of boredom.

  “You’re doing it again,” she accused as her cunt whispered back to life. She wanted to explore and encourage the sensation, not fight it. “I’m here, all right! You got me to do what you wanted.”

  “Not entirely. Not yet.”

  But he was determined to change that. Wasn’t the simmering, the hot hunger, proof of that? “What are you trying to prove?” she demanded. It took every bit of willpower in her not to clamp her hand over her crotch. Despite her efforts to the contrary, she began contracting and releasing her pelvic muscles. The rhythm wasn’t doing anything to decrease her arousal. In fact, exactly the opposite was happening.

  “Imprinting. So you never forget.”

  As if that was the remotest bit possible. Her feet slid forward a few inches before she could order them to stop. Now she made out his legs—his naked legs. Unfortunately, he reminded her of the famous old picture of Adam and Eve with the fig leaves.

  “Are you shy?” She indicated the haze where his genitalia belonged. “Keeping your assets hidden?”

  “Let your imagination take care of that.”

  No problem. After a moment during which she unsuccessfully tried to remind herself of the fragile line between sanity and out-and-out nuts, she walked closer on legs that felt equal parts numb and deeply alive. Her feet sank into the spongy earth, allowing moisture and muck to seep up around her toes. The sensation reminded her of a cautiously penetrating penis. The analogy would have been stronger if she hadn’t suspected Laird didn’t know the meaning of the word cautious, not that she’d want him to be. What was the analogy she’d come up with yesterday? It had something to do with a stallion and a mare in heat. The way he’d made her feel, it just might take a stallion with a several-foot-long cock to satisfy her—a thought that both shocked and thrilled her.

  There he was. Not quite real, but with a hell of a lot more form than before. Making a lie of everything she’d ever believed about self-control.

  “What are you doing?” Her nails dug into her palms. She hadn’t realized she’d been so tense. “How can you do that, be not quite real?”

  Not me. Something—more than me.

  “Well, that makes no sense,” she muttered, suddenly finding it hard to breathe.

  He was forcing her to come to him. He stood there magnificently, savagely naked, his limp cock challenging her to change its condition.

  “I don’t want to be here,” she told him. Her tone didn’t carry enough weight. The weight was in her, between her legs and deep in her belly. Gnawing at her and growing ever stronger. “I don’t want—damn it, I don’t want you doing this to me!” Her hand fluttered near her crotch. “And don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  She thought he might make fun of her. If he did, she’d punch out his lights and be done with it. Instead, she felt—kind of felt—a brush-stroke across the upper swell of her breasts. Startled, she looked down, spotted the reassuring presence of her nightgown, no hand. Yet she had no doubt that his fingers had fondled her boobs.

  “I mean it! Don’t.”

  “I don’t believe you. I don’t dare.”

  She gasped. “You’re—I can hear you talking.”

  “Yes.” He sounded as surprised as she did.

  He still hadn’t moved so much as a muscle. She wasn’t sure he was breathing. His arms hung at his side.

  Fingers—damn it, she knew what fingers felt like—slid under her garment without so much as a “by your leave”. The argument could be made that she should have slapped away the intrusion, yelled about privacy and rights, threatened to call the cops, but she’d done none of tho
se things. In truth, she couldn’t think of a strong enough reason to put an end to what was happening. She’d have to be fourteen kinds of a fool not to want to play out this…this whatever it was. Only she and Laird were here, only they would ever know what took place between them. Just maybe there were no limits. If that was the case, it was possible they’d go at each other until neither of them could lift a finger. Well, she amended, maybe one well-directed finger.

  Shaking off the image of two utterly exhausted people twitching their fingers at each other, she checked to see if she was still wearing anything. Yes, but for how long?

  “How—” She swallowed and tried again. “How did you do that?”

  “You have a woman’s breasts.” Proving his point, he lifted her top and cupped his phantom hands around her breasts. She stared at his buck-naked and motionless body, then down at her own. Her nightgown was bunched under her armpits, and her boobs stuck out there for the world to see. No hands covered them and yet she felt—lordy, did she!

  As she stared disbelieving—but not what by any stretch of the imagination could be called unwilling—he increased his hold on her breasts until trying to pull free would hurt. They were swelling, growing ever more sensitive. Licking her dry lips, she rocked forward. He squeezed, controlled, captured. Needing to test the extent of that capture, she leaned away from the hands that surely existed only in her mind. A mammogram had nothing on this.

  “You’re hurting…”

  He pressed his calloused thumbs against the inside of her breasts and forced them apart. At the same time, he brought the heel of his hands into play so her breasts were being lifted at the same time. “No, I’m not,” he said.

  He was right. Damn him. Another of her frequent fantasies had been to find herself bound and helpless while a man—always a faceless, voiceless man—roughly claimed her body. In her hallucination, she fought ropes and gag in a not-quite-desperate attempt to retain some measure of dignity, but there was no freedom from the man’s mastery over her, or her carnal reaction, the powerful climax ending in unconsciousness. She tried to tell herself that today her damn imagination had gotten away from her.

  But it wasn’t that.

  She knew it.

  At least wise enough not to risk actually feeling the pain he’d called her on, she concentrated on trying to regain self-control through a series of quick, deep breaths. She succeeded only in nearly passing out from hyperventilating.

  Or something else.

  “You want this. Don’t tell either of us that you don’t,” he said.

  “What about you?” she challenged. He slackened his hold a little. She still felt a world away from being free, or desiring freedom. “What do you want?”

  He sighed. The sound came from low in his throat, maybe as low as his belly. She looked down at him. His penis hadn’t stirred.

  “Want and need are two very different things,” he told her. “And I’m not sure they parallel anything either of us has ever felt before. What drives me.”

  “That—doesn’t make sense.” Her words were running together. Her muscles were turning into butter. And her breasts—

  “It isn’t the only thing that doesn’t make sense,” he mused. “I think…”

  “What?”

  Instead of answering, he slid his fingers to her breasts’ underside and lifted until her cleavage equaled the finest cosmetic surgery. His shadow-lips brushed and covered first one and then the other nipple. He sucked, drawing her nubs between his teeth.

  She gasped. Molten heat flooded her. She couldn’t have felt more helpless if her arms had been staked above her, legs forced apart by knotted rope. Her cunt throbbed, begged to be filled.

  “I’m learning,” he whispered, “that control comes in many forms. You’re my link to…to freedom. I don’t dare lose that.”

  “By—” She was shaking. He sounded far away, as if he was speaking from the other side of a tunnel. Her thighs quivered, and her cheeks felt flushed. In her mind, she saw her labial lips swell and redden. The message was clear: I’m ready. Take me any way and any time you want. I’m too far gone to want anything else. “By taking—advantage of me?”

  In her mind—damn it, just in her mind—he released her breasts only to slide his hands between her legs with enough strength that she was forced to spread them. The quivering intensified, and she couldn’t have drawn away if her life depended on it. Her shorts—who knew what happened to them? He probed between her cunt’s swollen lips and feathered his nails over her hot, wet clit. She gasped and panted.

  “Call it what you want.” His voice held at a hypnotic whisper. “I know what you need, Mala. And what I believe I must do. I just hope you can understand.”

  She couldn’t think anymore. Nothing existed beyond his smooth, short nails and what they were doing to her. She threw back her head and raked in as much air as possible. Lifting her too-heavy arms, she flailed about until she managed to clamp them over his powerful shoulders. Gripping them for support, she widened her stance and arched her back to increase his access to her.

  He toyed with her, played her like a tightly strung guitar. Or she would have called it that if she hadn’t heard his own deep and none-too-steady breathing. With nails and the pads of his fingers, the base of his palms even, he left his mark, burned and branded her clit and sheath. Using his middle and forefinger, he repeatedly spread her aching folds and worked his way inside her. She rode each journey. The precipice was there—there! And then, damn it, he’d retreat, leaving her insane.

  Again and again, she thrust her pelvis at him, denying him nothing. His penis would have penetrated deeper, filled her more, but this wasn’t bad. Not bad at all. With every assault, her body spasmed. A climax hummed and promised. So close. On the brink. Just—just one more invasion.

  “Don’t,” he commanded. “It isn’t time for that.”

  “Speak—speak for yourself,” was all she could manage. Her entire being centered around what his fingers ignited, fingers made slippery by her wet response.

  “I’m not immune,” he hissed. “I feel.”

  Only half conscious, she was nevertheless glad to know that. Maybe she should check his cock for verification, but she didn’t dare loosen her grip on his shoulders. Couldn’t think beyond being impaled, this wonderful invasion, even the damnable teasing. He couldn’t possibly respect her in the morning, but what the hell did that matter? From the time she’d become sexually mature, her libido had kicked up a notch when she was ovulating, but she’d learned to accept her heightened interest in the opposite sex for the primitive signal it was and conduct herself with a semblance of dignity, not command the nearest male to ride her. But this was control lost.

  “But much as I want to be part of this ride, I don’t dare,” he said, startling her. “I must remain in control.”

  Control? What the hell was that? “Whatever.” She thought she had more to say, but it melted under her body’s heat. Continuing to stand was more than awkward, but he was using his fingers, not some cold steel instrument. As long as his life touched hers, she’d endure.

  To hell with endure. This was unadulterated torture. Sweet and strong and overwhelming, but torture nonetheless.

  With two hard fingers extended as far inside her as they would go, he now spread them and tested the size of her opening. She felt swollen. Hot. Nearly boiling. Barely aware of what she was doing, she clamped down, trapping him inside her.

  They breathed together. Rocked to the same rhythm, fingers pumping, clit convulsing.

  No stopping. No wanting to.

  Her body seemed to roar. She felt as if she was expanding and contracting at the same time, pulsing even. If he’d asked, she would have turned herself inside out. Maybe it was happening anyway. She lost the ability to breathe or focus. Blood pounded in her head. Heat flooded her cunt. Any more and she might explode. Instead, she grunted and groaned, felt a scream rake up her throat before bursting free.

  Off like a rocket.

&nb
sp; Once. Twice. Three times.

  Chapter Five

  Maybe upscale motels had something going for them, but as Mala sat on the side of her bed with the chunky phone on her lap and the receiver to her ear, she couldn’t find a single thing to compliment about this one. It had been cleaned—sort of—and the sheets had been changed while she was gone, but she couldn’t get her mind off who might have used it before her.

  If it had been a couple taking advantage of time away from home and responsibility or two strangers in for a quickie, she didn’t want to know about it. However, not wanting to think and shutting off the old brain were two entirely different things…especially with memories of her powerful and noisy climax still fresh in her mind. She might not remember the drive back here, but she’d never ever forget being turned into a skyrocket.

  The phone’s persistent ringing finally registered. No matter how long she sat here, no one was going to answer at the Clint Jaeger residence in Naples, and there was no answering machine. Muttering something she’d never want her mother to hear, she hung up, then dialed the number for Jaeger Boats. After four rings, Laird’s disembodied voice informed her that he wasn’t here and to leave a message. Although she was delighted to have “found” him, she didn’t bother. However, she did listen to his message three more times.

  Lordy but the man had a sexy voice.

  She got up, wandered over to the minuscule closet and grabbed the outfit she’d chosen for her meeting with the man interested in carrying her line of jewelry. It seemed a lifetime ago that she’d given herself a headache trying to decide on the perfect ensemble. Now she couldn’t care less. However, when she’d told Laird why she was here, he’d encouraged her to keep her appointment.

  “I can’t take over your life,” he’d said as she fought, less than successfully, to bring herself back to some semblance of sanity following her powerful climax.