Beast Master Read online

  He stood only inches away. Standing on the boulder did nothing to lessen his impact and the conviction that today would always stand apart from all others. She licked her dry lips. She’d no sooner done so than the stickiness between her legs reminded her that she’d already revealed everything.

  They’d passed a point. There’d be no turning back.

  “You asked if I’m afraid,” she replied. “No more than you are.”

  “You think I have anything to fear from you?”

  Despite her uneven perch, she spun around and faced him. She started to rock back but caught herself in time. Her dress had slipped into place, granting her modesty that didn’t matter.

  “Words don’t matter,” she told him. “We both know the truth.” At least about what’s happening between us.

  “A truth neither of us expected.”

  Smiling a little, he killed the distance between them so he could grab her dress and pull it up over her buttocks. Not content with exposing that much of her, he continued the upward journey until the deerskin reached her armpits. Although he obviously wanted to strip her, he had to content himself with pulling it over her head and then tangling the fabric around her wrists. She looked down at what he’d accomplished, admitting that instead of resisting, she’d ducked her head and made his task easier for him.

  “There,” he said as he stepped back. “Finally.”

  She wanted to return his frank gaze, wanted him to know she wasn’t unnerved. Instead, she now stared straight ahead while trying to ignore the pull from her breasts and fresh moisture blending into what was already on her legs. He wasn’t touching her so why did her pussy muscles keep tightening?

  Because of his expression and magnificent male body? Maybe because of everything he and this mountain represented.

  “Incredible. Beautiful,” he muttered. “And just the way I want you.”

  Despite her warning not to give away too much, she arched her back so her breasts lifted. Doing so caused her buttocks to stick out more than before, and after a moment of indecision, she deeply bent her back.

  “Damn you,” he hissed.

  “For what?”

  “Reminding me of a female puma in heat.” He trailed the side of his thumb over her spinal column. “All fierce energy and insistence.”

  “I’m no animal.”

  “Aren’t you? I’ve become one today because of you.” His free hand engulfed his cock. “I have no reason to hide your impact on me.”

  “How could you? I’ve seen—”

  “This.” He indicated his cock. “Just as I’ve felt this.”

  She was trying to comprehend what he was talking about when he ran his hand between her legs from the back. Blinded by the fever washing over her, she nearly screamed.

  “There might not be a Puma woman for me,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t understand certain things about their bodies. This wet heat—there’s no denying it, is there?”

  A touch had turned into movement and she could no longer think. Her mind swirled. Her lips turned numb, and she gripped the rope to keep from swaying. A proud Deer woman wouldn’t open her legs the way she was doing, but pride couldn’t survive in the wake of a system on the brink of falling apart. Strong warm fingers again captured the breast closest to him as he continued his exploration of her so-receptive sex.

  Being physically helpless had only a little to do with this melting sensation, this crying need for his touch. Unable to remain still, she swayed from side to side. Her movement wasn’t enough to dislodge his hands, not that she wanted to. This thing they were doing was a dance, sensual and new and dangerous.

  But danger belonged to later because only the present and the two of them mattered. Right or wrong, she was content as his prisoner. Granted, she wouldn’t feel this way if he was cruel. Fortunately, he’d already shown her his capacity for gentleness.

  Gentle? Yes, contrary to what she’d been told about the Pumas, this man at least had compassion at his core.

  “You say you understand much about a woman’s body.” She forced the words. “If that’s true, you know what I want.”

  He ran his tongue over her ear, causing her to shiver and lean away. “What’s this? You hate my touch?”

  “That…tickled.”

  “Hmm. Tell me, what do you like the most about sex?”

  Hadn’t he already asked her something like that? How could he expect her to answer? To think.

  “Silence?” He punctuated his question by again bathing her ear.

  Gathering herself, she stopped her side-to-side movement only to repeatedly bend and straighten her knees. Although her movement wasn’t the same as fucking, the way his fingers now worked her core came close. He could have denied her her pleasure and left her needy and vulnerable. Instead, he held firm, increasing the grinding sensation.

  His breathing had lost its earlier rhythm and now reminded her of an erratic wind filled with sudden stops and starts. Air whistled through his nostrils.

  “You’re not—you can’t do…”

  “What can’t I do?” he demanded.

  Did I say something? Despite the cost, she fought to regain control over her senses. She could see and yet everything ran together, colors and images blurring into an unimportant whole. The hand on her breast had become part of her, firm pressure reaching past sensitive flesh to her hammering heart. Even more distracting was the hand caught between her legs. Perhaps she could free herself from the hot, ever-moving pressure. Fight to regain ownership and sanity. But the need for those things was nothing in the wake of a deeper and more powerful hunger.

  Her body had become both wonderful and frightening. Whether he understood that he’d taken her to a place she’d never been didn’t matter. Only his flesh on hers did.

  One moment his thumb filled her. The next he’d pulled free only to run a long finger into the place he’d claimed for his own. His touches were shallow and deep, side to side, whisper and harsh, all of it wanted. And when he treated the front of her core to long, slow strokes, she became blind again.

  “Yes, yes!” Her mouth sagged open, and her grip on the rope increased. “Oh yes!”

  “What? Have you come?”

  “Soon,” she admitted because she was too far gone for anything except the truth. “Yes, soon.”

  “Not without me,” he announced in a harsh tone and pulled out. That done, he pushed her roughly away. Off balance, she scrambled to remain on her perch.

  What are you doing? she silently demanded. You can’t do this to me. You can’t! Even a Puma can’t be that cruel.

  By the time her legs were under her again, he’d moved behind her and had started lightly running his hands over her hips. Fighting the tremors brought on by the latest slide of flesh against flesh, she looked behind her and repeatedly blinked until she could make out his features. His mouth moved and then stilled. He pressed his lips together until color bled from them.

  “I’m losing my mind because of you,” he whispered. Settling his fingers over her belly, he drew her back toward him.

  Taking me again. Becoming my world again. “What…”

  “What am I going to do?” He shook his head. “Damn it, can’t you guess? What we’ve both needed from the moment I captured you.”

  Yes, finally. No! I can’t handle it.

  Dismayed by her conflicting emotions, she straightened her head and stared at the wilderness. Of course she wanted sex with Ber, she couldn’t lie about that. But fucking would join them in ways she wasn’t sure she could handle.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what you want to hear.”

  “The truth.” His expelled breath bathed her face in heat.

  “Do it then! Get it over with.”

  Not telling her what he had in mind, he guided her into position. She now stood with her legs separated and her ass high in invitation. When he spread her buttocks, she arched toward him even more to let him
know she didn’t mean what she’d just thrown at him. Again she was put in mind of the way a wolf in heat presented herself to a receptive male. Sex between wolves was all instinct, and in the ways that counted, she’d become one of them.

  His cock, gliding over her pussy! Shaken, she again strained to look behind her only to have him grab her hair and force her to stare up at the sky. Her body was taut and waiting, akin to a rapidly building storm. When he released her hair, she remained in place, her mind on his hand stroking the length and breadth of her sex. His gentleness nearly had her crying.

  “In me,” she whimpered. “I need you—in me.”

  “No more than I want to be there, but I must be sure. This is truly what you want?”

  Thank you for asking. “Yes.”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  “Maybe. It doesn’t matter. Ber, please.”

  He must have changed his position while drawing back because when he came at her this time, his cock found her opening. His hot weight filled her. She bleated. For the first time, his cock was inside her, making inroad after inroad to her body and sanity, plunging deep and full and wonderful!

  “Yes,” she mewed. “Oh yes!”

  Everything stilled as her words fell away. She felt as if she’d slid past her body’s contours and might flow out over the land. Her mind still worked in a disjointed way. Everything else revolved around the unmoving force that had claimed her. They were no longer separate but had become what?

  She wanted and expected what?

  “You’re a witch, a damnable dangerous witch.”

  “And you’re the devil.”

  He was nestled inside her with barely controlled energy rolling through him. Even with his body at rest and his arms gentle on her, she sensed the coming attack. Craved it. Anticipation gave way to movement. One arm now pressed against her mons while the other cupped her jaw. She couldn’t move. He’d all but immobilized her.

  Nevertheless, when he rammed into her, she pushed back. Fear clawed at her only to be swept away by the surge of sensations accompanying his fierce thrust.

  He had where he wanted her, where they both wanted. His cock now claimed and plundered her inner cave, the exploration rough and wild.

  “I’m not a witch,” she managed.

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  He’d stopped moving. His arms, legs, chest, his cock even, put her in mind of great trees capable of withstanding the fiercest wind. She’d become windlike and flail at him with her weaker strength while he’d remained immune to her desperate pleas.

  “Yes it does. You can’t call me a witch, you can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re the one with all the power.”

  “Power you don’t want?”

  “Yes, I do,” she admitted.

  “There’s more to me than strength, Luann. I can also be gentle.”

  “That’s not what I want now.”

  “But later?”

  “Maybe,” she admitted. Yes, she silently added.

  His groin pressing against her buttocks momentarily distracted her. Then he drove into her again, and she no longer cared about anything else. The useless garment wrapped around her wrists and the length of leather holding her in place added to a helplessness she embraced with every ounce of her being. Sometime, maybe later today, she’d have to face what she’d become. Maybe she’d simply remind him that he’d said he was capable of gentleness. Now, however, she rode the sex waves.

  “Damn you, damn you,” he repeated as he pushed so deep she half believed his tip had reached her throat. She again twisted from side to side without knowing why or when, or if she’d ever stop. Her leg muscles were on fire, but that was nothing compared to the heat burning her breasts, belly and buttocks.

  Halfway through a thrust that lifted her off her feet, he released her groin and chin, and she hung on him as he raked his nails over her flanks. Her faint mewling built in volume. She was back on her toes, tense and melting at the same time, waiting for what she didn’t know.

  He stopped moving again, tense stillness sparking from him to burn her.

  “What?” she whispered.

  “Quiet.”

  The waiting went on and on with her blood close to boiling and her body shaking from his relentless attack. Perhaps he was giving himself time to acknowledge their union and ponder what that meant about their future. Perhaps she wasn’t the only one accepting that now was about more than sex.

  He raked her thighs again, and she knew he’d left thin furrows in her flesh. The sting collided with her almost-there climax, and she screamed, low and long and wild. She started to fill her lungs only to gasp because he was rolling her clit between his fingers. She let loose with what should have been another scream but came out broken and raw.

  “I hear you!” His spent breath soaked her hair. “Hear you losing control.”

  Don’t let him win! Keep some part of you where he can’t find it.

  No matter how fiercely she struggled to break free of what might drive her insane, his fingers remained on her clit, pressing and propelling her onward. Into a vast cave. Her scream faded, replaced by endless whimpers she could have listened to for the rest of her life.

  All fear had died. She now loved what was happening to her, his strength and knowledge. She fought to hand him the same gift by locking her body in place and giving him something to work against.

  “There! That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t speak,” he commanded.

  Time after time, he thrust into her, spreading her pussy and undoing her at the same time. He stopped torturing her clit just long enough to for her to start clawing her way back to sanity. Then he again caught the overwrought nub.

  Make him work for it. Keep pieces of yourself, somehow. Don’t—damn it, don’t lose—

  Too late.

  Her pussy muscles spasmed and held on. A part of her relished the way his cock jerked and his body felt as if it might shatter, but she was falling apart, sliding into a place where escape was impossible.

  Where she might never want to leave.

  Her climax hit and hit again. It pummeled her so she didn’t know whether she was crying or thanking him. Maybe he heard her, maybe he was making too much noise for anything else to penetrate, again lifting her off her feet and flooding her channel even as her own body added to the flood.

  He was climaxing! At the same moment she was. Was there something magical about the joint release, some witch-magic involved perhaps? Maybe the Beast.

  Beast? Could he…

  The last she knew, her toes were trying to grip the boulder.

  Chapter Six

  Hugging her limp form to him, Ber closed his arm around Luann’s waist to keep the leather from biting into her wrists while he frantically worked at the ties. Had she died? By the spirits, had fucking him killed her?

  Despite his need for rest, he managed to free her and carefully lowered her to the ground. Kneeling beside her, he brushed her sweat-coated hair out of her eyes with trembling fingers. Her cheeks were deeply flushed, and he wasn’t sure her climax was fully responsible for the sheen gleaming on her flesh. What he had no doubt of was that she shouldn’t be this hot.

  Sex with her had overwhelmed him. He needed time to replay his assault on her pussy and her seeming delight in what he was doing. Even as he finished releasing in her, he’d been thinking ahead to letting his muscles regroup and recover, asking himself whether he dared cradle her freed body against his while they fell asleep on land that was mother to him. There’d be no thinking in sleep, no facing the future, only her softness in his grasp and their hearts slowing and settling.

  But those things weren’t going to happen.

  After taking a deep breath, he looked around for a more comfortable place for her to lie, but given her fever, he concluded it was better to leave her in the shade.

  A fever? Where had it come from?

  Grabbing a chunk of bark from t
he tree trunk he’d tried to lift earlier, he started fanning her. Her lids weren’t completely closed, and he could see that her eyes had rolled back in her head. The thought that he must have done this to her terrified him. What if he’d killed her?

  “What’s wrong?” Although he didn’t expect her to answer, he waited awhile before continuing. “Why didn’t you tell me what was happening? I could have—it didn’t have to come to this.”

  It might be his imagination, but had her fingers curled before going slack again? After fanning her a little more, he set down the bark so he could rub her hands. His body felt disconnected from his mind, and he would have given a great deal to focus on sex’s aftermath and maybe ask her if her satisfaction mirrored his. If he’d pleased her.

  Lifting her arm, he flattened her hand against his chest. Her fingers felt small—and overly warm.

  “What’s causing this fever?” He positioned her so her head rested on his thighs. “You should have said something, told me to stop.”

  Her fingers curled again. This time they stayed that way. Because he hated seeing the marks on her wrists that he was responsible for, he concentrated on her face. Her eyes no longer showed too much white, but they still weren’t focused. Much as he hated this feeling of helplessness, he wanted to keep on looking at her.

  “Is this what happens to you whenever you have sex?” The moment he’d asked, he felt embarrassed. Then embarrassment turned into anger. “If you have something wrong that will make me ill, you will regret it.”

  “You…sick?”

  “What?” he asked. “I can hardly hear you.”

  “I should have— I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “Putting you…in danger.”

  He’d continued to support her while they talked, but at the word danger, he pushed away, causing the back of her head to strike the ground. She didn’t seem to notice but lifted her hands and stared at them as if trying to comprehend that they were no longer bound. She might be waiting for him to apologize for the indentations the rope had made, but the words, if they were in him, refused to come.

  “What do you mean, I’m in danger?” he demanded. Despite his sharp tone, when she returned his gaze, he couldn’t help but think how much he’d enjoyed brushing her silver hair off her face.