She was silent for long moments, staring into the darkness.
“I didn’t want you to see those pictures,” she said then. “I wanted to forget they existed.”
She felt his arms tighten around her and realized in that moment that she had never been held when she had cried. She had never been held, period, other than the few times her grandmother had hugged her.
“They won’t exist much longer,” he promised her. “The video was destroyed, though, years before. Jordan made certain that all the videos that were confiscated were destroyed. There’s no video out there, Risa. And I promise you, there won’t be any pictures much longer.”
She nodded, her lashes drifting over her eyes.
Sleep came over her swiftly. She should have slept for hours. She slept dreamlessly at least. There were no nightmares plaguing her as they had in the past nights. She slept, warm and comfortable against Micah’s chest, and came awake as morning light filtered through the bedroom curtains.
She was warm, cuddled close against his chest, her leg thrown over one of his as he wrapped himself around her.
Protecting her.
Her hand rested against his heart, just below her cheek. The slow, steady beat soothed her, relaxed her.
She had always wondered what it would be like to have someone to awaken to every morning. It should have cut at her, knowing he wouldn’t be there any longer than it took to catch a killer, and the pain was there. But it resided with weary acceptance.
Yes, he would be gone, but she knew now what it meant to love. She might not know what it meant to be loved, but loving was almost as good.
And loving meant wanting.
She could feel her body, each nerve ending awake and pulsing for his touch. Hunger gnawed at her senses, the memory of his possession heating her until her clit became swollen, her pussy wet and aching.
“You’re awake.” Micah’s voice wasn’t in the least drowsy. It was dark and hot with need. His cock was a thick wedge of flesh pressed against her stomach, throbbing with the same heady pace as his heartbeat.
Was that what had awakened her? The knowledge that he was waiting for her, hard and ready to pleasure her?
“I broke the mirror,” she whispered, horrified that she had done such a thing. “Grandmother is going to cry. She gave me that mirror when I was a little girl.”
As she spoke, she couldn’t help but rub her fingertips against his flexing abs, to feel the strength and the power that resided there.
“We don’t need the mirror.”
The sheet shimmied over her flesh, dragged carelessly from her body. A shudder rushed through her.
She couldn’t resist his touch, not when she needed it so desperately. When the pain and humiliation, the lies and the fears, twisted in her stomach like a feverish fist.
“Ahuvati,” he whispered, the desert-dark heat of his voice stroking over her as his palm caressed her stomach to her swollen breast. “My Risa. How I hunger for you.”
He rose over her, his head tilting, his lips settling over hers in a butterfly kiss that sent waves of heat shuttling through her body.
“Kiss me, Risa,” he crooned against her lips. “Take me.”
A whimper left her lips. Her arms circled his neck, her fingers burying in the short length of his hair to pull his head to her.
Her tongue stroked over his lips as an earthy male groan met the caress. He tasted of male heat and dark desire, an ambrosia she craved.
As she moved closer to the warmth of his body, her breath jerked in her lungs at the feel of his cock, heavy and hard against her thigh.
“My beautiful Risa,” he groaned against her lips as his head lifted from their kiss. “Sweet love. At yafa. You’re beautiful.”
She shivered beneath the midnight cadence of his voice, and the feel of his palm curling around her breast, his fingers moving to the distended peak of her nipple.
“The taste of you heats me.” His head lowered, his tongue stroking over the opposite nipple as his fingers plucked at its mate. “You make my blood heat with my hunger for you.”
She arched, the sound of his voice almost a physical caress over her senses before his lips parted farther and he drew the tight bud into his mouth.
As she pressed her head back into the pillow, her eyes flared wide at the feel of his teeth raking the tip, then closing on it, tugging it gently.
Little flares of pleasure that bordered pain tore through her and raced to her sex. Her vagina pulsed and spilled its slick dampness, while her clit swelled and throbbed with imperative need.
The feel of him, his lips drawing at her nipple, his hands stroking over her body, was life. It was the essence of pleasure. He touched more than her flesh, and she wondered if he knew. Did he know that when he touched her, he touched her soul?
“Micah,” she whispered his name, desperate to give voice to the sensations as they washed over her like a warm, silken wave. “Touch me. Let me feel, Micah. Just for now, let me feel.” Feel his body, his heart, his soul.
Just for this moment she wanted as much of him as she was giving him. She’d return it, she promised silently. She wouldn’t hold him prisoner to the needs or the emotions rising inside her. She’d give him the freedom he needed to walk away from her.
“Please.” Her head lowered until her lips could caress the hard muscle of his shoulder as his lips drew at her breast. “Let me feel you.”
“Ahuvati.” My love. The words slipped from Micah’s lips again as the throb of her need speared through his senses. He could feel the power of her desire, not just her sexual desire, but the bond he’d always sensed, even before he’d touched her. The desire to feel it, to touch it, even as they touched physically.
He was reminded of those visits to Atlanta when he would only glimpse her coming or going from one of the Durango team’s homes over the years. Her head had always been down, her hair shielding her face. But he’d felt her. He’d felt the glow of her spirit, a part of her reaching out to him even as he’d held back from her.
There was no holding back from her now. He was giving himself to her. He was aware of it. He couldn’t stop it.
She was his heart. She was every emotion he had never allowed himself to have. She was every touch he had never given another woman.
Silk and satin, heat and longing. All things he had never thought he would ever possess.
He cupped her breast in his palm, his mouth suckling at the hard tip of her nipple as his other hand caressed down her stomach, feeling the ripple of response just beneath her soft skin.
His fingers met the bare flesh between her thighs and he groaned at the sensation of heated, slick silk. Like syrup, sweet and hot, spilling from her body to coat the swollen folds of her pussy.
Micah groaned at the feel of her response. So unabashed, so innocent. She arched to him, obviously lost in the pleasure he brought her.
He sensed no fear, and the knowledge of that dug restless claws into his soul.
She gave to him without reservation. She came to him without motive, with emotion and with pleasure.
“I could spend eternity here, touching you,” he groaned against her breast as the need to taste her grew overwhelming.
Risa felt pleasure and need as it restricted her breathing. She stared into his dark eyes, mesmerized by the subtle flames that lit the black depths.
Her hands shook as she clenched her fingers against his shoulder and watched as his lips smoothed between her breasts, dropping little kisses along her flesh as he worked his way down her body.
“Micah,” his name sighed past her lips. “Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.” For eternity. She wanted his touch always.
Flares of searing sensation rocked her body as his fingertips glanced over her clit. He parted the sensitive folds, caressed through the narrow slit, and drew a startled cry from her lips as her womb flexed in response beneath his lips.
Their breathing was ragged. Risa could hear their breaths, her strangled moans as well
as his. The room heated until perspiration seemed to drench her body.
“Micah.” She twisted beneath his hold, her hips arching as he rimmed the entrance to her vagina. His fingers were wicked, knowing, as they stroked the flexing entrance.
“Easy.” His teeth nipped at her thigh as he eased her legs farther apart with his free hand. “Let me taste you, love.”
The endearment had an involuntary cry leaving her lips. It seemed to stroke inside her, to stoke the flames of response burning through her system.
“I want to taste you,” he whispered against her thigh. “All that sweetness spilling for me. I want my tongue on you. Inside you.”
She shook her head desperately as she fought to hold on to enough of her senses to remember every touch, every sensation.
Her hands fisted into the sheet beneath her body as she strained to be closer to him.
His head moved, his tongue licked over her clit, at the same moment that he pushed two broad fingers into the needy depths of her body.
Risa arched and screamed with the pleasure. It was a bolt of lightning striking in a never-ending pattern, firing tiny explosions through her system as his fingers filled her, his mouth possessed her.
The pleasure was violent. The need for release was a driving, overwhelming sensation all its own. She strained toward it, fought for it.
“I love the taste of you,” he groaned before he licked around the throbbing bud of her clit again. “So warm, so sweet.”
He was patient. He took his time. He licked as his fingers stroked inside her slowly, stretching her, parting her until the wicked bolts of pleasure raced through her with unrelenting sensations.
She wanted him. She wanted more than simply lying there and taking her pleasure. She wanted to give pleasure.
Her head lifted, her eyes took in the sight of him, his eyes closed, his tongue working around her clit with delicious strokes.
“I want to touch you.” She struggled against him, the need destroying her. “I want you, too, Micah. I want to touch you, taste you.”
His forehead touched her lower belly as he took in a ragged breath, his head shaking slowly, his fingers pausing inside her.
“Please.” She pushed against his shoulders. “Show me how to touch you, too.”
“Risa,” he groaned. “Let me love you. Lie beneath me, love, and let me pleasure you.”
She shook her head. She wanted it all. This morning, as the room brightened around them, she wanted all of him. His touch, his hunger, even as she touched and hungered. She wanted to spill as much into him as he gave.
“No.” She shook her head. “Please, Micah. Show me. I want to touch you, too.”
Show her how to touch as she was touched.
His fingers slid from her snug grip. Eyes narrowed and glittering, he lifted himself from her.
“Are you sure, Risa?” His voice was dark, sexual, as he stared down at her with a dominance in his expression that should have frightened her. “The pleasure can get out of control, love. You can lose yourself in it.” His voice dropped to a whisper as the need for it seemed to glitter in his eyes. “You could get more than you may be comfortable with.”
It was a dare. A male-centered sexual challenge that filled her with excitement rather than fear.
“What will you do that you haven’t already?” She let a teasing smile tip her lips as she gave her own challenge.
A rough chuckle washed over her. “Your pretty ass will be bare to my hands, my fingers.” And hunger tightened his expression. “Give me a taste of power, Risa, and you may be surprised at the animal you release.”
Her lips parted. She drew in a ragged, rough breath. “Show me.”
She hungered to know. She craved each touch, each adventure she could find in his arms. She craved the man she could sense he held back.
“You’re going to steal my mind,” he groaned, but he moved, lifting himself along the bed until he lay back as she moved to sit beside him.
“Come to me, love.” He lifted his arms to her. “Take me, and I’ll take you.”
Could she? Did she dare not? These were the memories that would sustain her when he left, when it was all over. And if the worst happened and Orion won, then she would have her memories in death. She wouldn’t die regretting that she hadn’t taken every touch, every adventure.
Rising to her knees, she swallowed tightly, pushed back the hesitancy, the instinctive fear of the unknown. No matter how powerful the sensations, she knew Micah would ground her.
“Like this, baby.” He guided her. His hands on her thigh, her hip, until she straddled his face and stared down along his body.
Risa shivered at the unfamiliar position. Longing, excitement, and wariness surged through her at the sight of his erection, fully engorged and heavily veined as it rose along his lower stomach.
Exhilaration surged through her as well as tingles of awareness that not only had he opened himself to her touch, but she was more fully exposed to his as well.
“Go slow,” she panted as she leaned over him. “Let me pleasure you, Micah.”
His hips shifted, lifting to her as she gave in to her first impulse and licked down the long shaft.
“You’ll destroy me.” His arms curved over her hips, his hands gripped the cheeks of her rear and pulled her lower.
But he was destroying her. When she had asked for “slow,” she meant to ask for mercy, because his caresses had the ability to steal her mind. She should have asked him to have mercy.
She should lift her head and ask for mercy now, but each time her tongue stroked beneath the crest of his cock, she could feel the response of his body. His tongue grew bolder, his hands clenched her rear, separated the cheeks, and she felt a flare of response in nerve endings that should never be responding.
Gripping the heavy length of his erection with one hand, she lifted it until her lips could cover the throbbing cock head. He retaliated. His tongue speared inside her vagina, flexing and licking as a startled cry tore from her lips.
His fingers eased the dampness spilling from her pussy back along her rear crevice to the tiny entrance there. They caressed with diabolical precision until Risa became lost in the sensations, mindless to anything but the pleasure consuming her, even as she consumed him.
Risa filled her mouth with the heated male flesh, suckled the broad head, and caressed the shaft with her fingers. She worked her mouth along it, feeling him tighten, hearing his groan as his hips shifted sharply, burying a fraction more between her lips.
She felt the first clench of the hard flesh and knew he was close. She was affecting that amazing control he had.
She could have broken it, but at the moment she sensed he was ready to break, his hand landed on her upturned rear in a heated, heavy caress.
Her mouth jerked back to draw in precious oxygen as a cry tore from her throat. Every muscle in her body tightened as his lips covered her clit, sucked it inside with devastating results as his hand landed again.
Dazed, motionless, she let the sensations wash over her, through her. She accepted the results for the striking pleasure-pain now tearing through her.
As the fourth light slap sounded against her flesh, and fire poured through her senses, she heard the muted wail that fell from her lips. Ecstasy was so close. She could feel it pulsing through her veins, building in her womb.
“Damn you.” His lips jerked back from her clit as one hand slid up her back and pressed at her shoulders. “Suck me, Risa. Take my cock back into your sweet mouth, love, or we stop this here and now.”
Stop? If he stopped, she might die.
Her head lowered, but her hips did as well. She pressed the too-sensitive folds against his mouth, writhed her hips, and cried out around the flesh filling her mouth as his tongue sank inside the greedy depths of her pussy.
She was awash in sensations now. Waves of them rushed over her, through her. His hand landed against her rear again and sanity became no more than a memory of who and what she h
ad once been. Frightened. Untouched by pleasure. She wasn’t the woman she had been then. She was Micah’s woman. She belonged, in this moment, for eternity, to this man.
Her hips churned into his caresses as her mouth sucked at the throbbing cock head. She tasted his essence as a sharp burst of it filled her mouth. She sucked him deeper, harder, and as he eased more of her juices back, she felt the tip of his finger enter her, working inside her even as his other hand landed on the cheek of her rear again.
Too many sensations rushed through her at once. His tongue pumped inside her in hard, driving strokes. His chin caressed her clit, his hand landed against her rear, and a finger slid inside the tiny untouched entrance he had found between the cheeks of her ass.
Her screams were muted around his cock. She tightened until she felt as though she were going to break. When she was certain she could bear no more, it exploded inside her.
Her hips bucked until he wrapped one arm around them, holding her to his mouth as his tongue pumped harder inside her and his finger delved deeper. Explosions of fire, sensations so sharp, so violently pleasurable, tore through her until Risa swore she felt her soul explode with the ecstasy of it.
Her mouth was filled with the taste of him. His release spurting inside the suckling confines as his hips arched to her.
She was lost in the wonder of him. Lost in the sharp, mindless explosions that tore through her own body until he finally eased her free of them and left her limp and panting as he shifted his hips and drew the still-engorged flesh from her lips.
She moaned as he moved her.
Opening her eyes, Risa watched as he laid her back against the pillows, his black eyes gentle and still filled with heat as he spread her thighs and moved over her.
A sharp inhalation jerked through her as the head of his cock pressed inside her pussy. His expression tightened, a grimace covering it as he worked his erection inside her.
This was more than simply pleasure. Watching him, feeling his hunger meld with her own, feeling his body become a part of her. The sensations wrapped around her, flooded her senses, and left her gasping with the sheer power of it.
“Just a little more,” he groaned, his hips thrusting slow and easy as he filled her with his cock. “Sweet Risa. I can’t get enough of you. I’ll never get enough of you.”