“No, I don’t!” For the second time she tried to wrench her arm from a man’s grip, but Byron wasn’t nearly as easily displaced as Derek. His grip wasn’t painful as Derek’s had been, but it was completely solid. No matter how she twisted, his hand didn’t budge so much as a millimeter.
When he brought his face down until it was only an inch from hers, she would have shrunk from the rage in his eyes if she hadn’t been just as angry as he was. She was getting damn sick of men manhandling her and telling her what was good for her. Sick enough of it that if Byron didn’t let her go, he was going to wish that he had.
“What the fuck are you doing down here, dressed like that?” He looked over her short skirt and tube top with derision.
“It’s none of your goddamn business what I’m doing down here.” Again she tried to wrench her arm away; again he held fast, his grip unbreakable. “Maybe I was just asking for directions. Shouldn’t you have waited to see what was going on before you came barging in like some jealous moron?”
“Don’t pull that shit with me, Lacey. You look like a damn hooker, and that guy was no Good Samaritan. So you’d better start talking, and quick.” His hand tightened infinitesimally on her arm—not enough to hurt, but more than enough to serve as a warning. As did the look in his eyes: dangerous, demanding, determined to learn the truth, no matter what he had to do to get it.
As the realization washed over her, she flashed back to any number of conversations she’d had with Curtis through the years—conversations where he’d used his strength and attitude to try to intimidate her into doing whatever he wanted. Conversations where she’d been forced to give in to him, just to keep the peace.
Her old feelings of anger and helplessness came back, making her even angrier. Making her even more frightened, and she went crazy—struggling to break free of him even if it meant hurting herself. “Get off of me! Right now.” She pulled against Byron, more determined than ever to get back control of her own body.
“Lacey, stop it! I was only trying to help.”
“You stop it!” She continued to wrestle with him, desperate to get free of his grip. Desperate to free herself from the memories and feelings of inadequacy that were circling her like wolves.
“I didn’t ask for you to come down here and get involved in this! I didn’t ask you for a damn thing!”
Byron glanced around, and for the first time seemed to notice that they were attracting more than their fair share of attention. He started walking back the way he’d come, his grip on her wrist ensuring that she would follow.
“I don’t want to go anywhere with you.” She tried to dig her heels into the scarred pavement, but he just kept walking—as if her resistance was of absolutely no consequence to him.
“Tough shit.”
Overhead, thunder boomed, right before the sky opened up and started to pour on them.
“Byron, this is kidnapping.”
He paused, once again got in her face. “No, Lacey. This is me taking you—my lover—to a quiet place so we can talk like rational human beings, without half of New Orleans looking on.”
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
“At this exact moment, I don’t really give a shit what you want.” He paused beside a big maroon truck with blacked-out windows while he pressed the unlock button on his keychain.
The second the locks disengaged, he whipped open the door and all but threw her into the front seat. Then he slammed the door and headed around the truck to the driver’s side.
By the time he’d opened his door, she had hers open again and was scrambling to get out of the truck, not caring how wet she got.
“Don’t do it!” His voice was low, tough, and she was struck—again—by the difference between this man and the one she’d slept with for the last two nights. Gone was the playful Byron with the sweet kisses and gentle lovemaking. Gone was the man who teased her, touched her, made her laugh. In his place was this commanding, dictatorial hard-ass who seemed more than willing to fight dirty if it meant getting his way.
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Goddamn it, Lacey!” he roared, obviously a man pushed past his limits. “I just want to talk to you for a few minutes.”
“You want to order me around.” She stared at him with smoldering yes. “You don’t have that right.”
He reached across her and slammed her door before starting the truck and pulling onto the road with barely a look in his rearview mirror. “I’m your lover; that gives me the right to be concerned about you.”
“You’re a one-night stand that got a little out of hand.” She didn’t know who she was hurting more with her words—him or herself. Still, as her wrist throbbed from where he’d held her, his implacable resolve blended in her head with Curtis’ cruelty, until she couldn’t stop the words from pouring out. “That doesn’t make you my lover.”
As soon as she’d spoken, she knew she’d made a mistake. Knew she’d thrown down the gauntlet to this fire-breathing alpha male.
The look on his face only confirmed what she’d just begun to figure out. He glanced at her with eyes that shot sparks, his sensual mouth curling into a snarl that could only be described as predatory.
She knew she should be frightened—of the look and the man. After all, it was more than obvious that she’d pushed Byron right up to the edge of civilized behavior. But she wasn’t frightened, wasn’t concerned, as they barreled through New Orleans’ rain-slicked streets.
Instead, much to her dismay, she was relieved. Exhilarated. Aroused. He was furious—certainly more furious than she had ever seen him—and he hadn’t laid a hand on her in anger, hadn’t said one word to tear down the fragile self-esteem she was still in the process of building up.
“I am your lover.”
The cockiness of the statement set her teeth on edge, had her answering with a snarl. “You’re the guy across the courtyard. We’ve had fun these last few days, but—”
She never got a chance to finish the sentence, as he slammed to a stop outside their apartment building. His mouth crushed down on hers with all the finesse of an out-of-control freight train, hard and hot and unforgiving.
Lacey told herself to pull away. Told herself she didn’t want this. But the truth was she was already wet, and at this exact moment, there was nothing in the world she wanted more than him.
In a last-ditch effort at self-preservation, she threw herself at the truck door and slid out onto the slick pavement.
He was around the truck in five seconds flat—angrier than she’d ever seen him. More enraged than she thought a man could be without lashing out with his words or his fists. “Go home, Byron. I don’t need—”
He cut her words off with a kiss—his lips, his tongue, his teeth working in concert to devour her lips. He tasted like licorice; smelled like sandalwood and wet, wild rain. He kissed her like he meant it, like he wanted to absorb her into his body, into his soul. The anger and sense of betrayal that had been riding her drained away, leaving only desire in their wake. Cupping his face in her hands, she gave him everything she’d been afraid to give to anyone for far too long.
Ripping his mouth from Lacey’s, Byron trailed his lips across her cheek and down her throat. She moaned softly—though it could have been the wind—and he lifted her until she was wrapped around him. Her arms encircled his shoulders while her ravenous mouth covered every inch of his face, every centimeter of his neck. It was his turn to groan when her tongue found his collarbone and began licking the water off it; he’d never have guessed it was an erogenous zone, but then again, with Lacey, everything turned him on.
Her legs were twined around his waist so that she was completely open to him, and his cock hardened to the point of pain. Her energy was explosive—passion, desire, need poured from her and enveloped him as the storm continued to rage.
Pulling back from her grasping hands and seeking lips for a second—just a second—Byron stared at her. Mesmerized by her. He wanted to be a
ble to remember her just like this: soaking wet, desperate for him, the elements around them as frenzied as she was.
Tears were streaming down her face, sobs wracking her body, but he didn’t stop. Somehow he knew she needed this elemental connection between them even more than he did.
“Baby, you have to stop.” It was his turn to run his lips over her face, sipping the cool rain and hot tears from her cheeks as he did so.
“I can’t.”
“You have to. You’ll make yourself sick.”
She simply wrapped herself more tightly around him, until her hot, wet center was pressed directly over his aching cock. Whimpering, crying, she rode him, her hips lifting again and again as she tried desperately to find surcease—and oblivion—in his arms.
He wanted to give them to her, even if just for the moment. He didn’t know what was tearing her apart, but he knew that he would do whatever it took to get her through it.
The realization hit him hard, and the sudden, urgent need to be inside her hit him even harder. Carrying her, he stumbled around the side of the building and into the heavily shaded courtyard.
“Byron!”
“I know, sweetheart.” They weren’t going to make it upstairs, so he pulled her into the darkest area and shoved her back against the wall.
He tore at her flimsy underwear like a man possessed, and it gave way with one powerful jerk of his hand. Her skirt was bunched around her waist, and the only thing that separated them was the wet, clinging material of his jeans. He ripped at them until his zipper was open, and then he slammed into her with one powerful thrust.
Joy. Ecstasy. Need. And a hunger he was afraid would never be satisfied. He thrust into her again and again, a powerful slamming of his body that he would have worried about any other time. But she was taking it, taking him, as if she craved his unrestrained desire. As if she needed it. Needed him.
“Harder. Harder. Harder.” She repeated the words again and again, her hips rising and falling with every thrust of his. He tried to hold back as he usually did, worried about hurting her with his unrestrained strength.
But she was having none of it, her body moving over and above his in a way designed to make him completely insane. He groaned, tried to hold her still until he could regain some control.
“No,” she gasped, struggling against his restraining hands. “I want it all. Give it to me.”
Still he hesitated. “Lacey—”
Her inner muscles suddenly clenched around him so tightly that he saw stars, the movement like a velvet fist over and around his highly sensitized cock.
“Fuck, Lacey,” he groaned before he could stop himself. He didn’t say anything more, couldn’t say anything, as he waited for her to do it again.
She did and the stars grew brighter in front of his eyes, spinning and turning in an unconstrained pattern unlike anything he’d seen before. He grew longer, bigger, heavier as emotions he’d never felt before ripped through him.
She belonged to him, and he would kill anyone or anything that tried to take her from him. She was his, and he would protect her with the last breath in his body.
His thrusts grew harder, less restrained, more animalistic, and she took them. Took him—in a way no one else ever had before or ever would again.
The need to come rose inside of him—urgent and intense, a painful ecstasy raking him with sugared claws. But even more intense was his need to make sure Lacey came first. Slipping a hand between their bodies, he stroked his thumb over her clit once, twice. Then again and again as he leaned down and took her nipple in his mouth, right through her sodden tube top.
She screamed and bucked against him. Because of his rough penetration, she was swollen and more sensitive than she had ever been before, and he felt fully every shiver of her body. It made him even crazier, until he was biting her, slamming into her, bruising her with the power of his need. Her sobs grew louder, more violent and finally—finally—he felt her inner contractions pulling at him. Milking him. Taking him somewhere he’d never been before. Finally he gave himself to her, flooding her with all that he had, all that he was, while he took all that she was inside him and sheltered her close to his soul.
When it was done, when the raging conflagration between the two of them had cooled to a reasonable level, Lacey fumbled her panties up her legs with unsteady hands. She didn’t know whether it was the leftover desire that was making her shake, or if she was trembling because of what she’d done. All she knew was that the ramifications of what had happened tonight couldn’t be denied.
“Hey, are you okay?” He grabbed her hand, but she jerked away.
How could she have done that? How could she have made love to him when she was so furious with him? How could she have enjoyed it so much, when he’d made love to her in an effort to dominate her rather than because he wanted her? When Curtis had done that, she’d always hated it. Always felt violated and angry and hurt.
But with Byron it had been wonderful—sexy, sizzling and erotic as hell. But what did that make her? When she had set out on her quest for self-discovery eighteen months ago, she’d sworn to herself that she would never be with another man who tried to bend her to his will. Who didn’t want her to be herself. Who manhandled her.
And yet here she was, in love with a man who had just done all of those things. So the new question was, What was she going to do about it?
How could she have fallen for him and not seen the similarities to Curtis? Oh, Byron didn’t fight dirty, didn’t try to control her with words and pinches and little slaps the way Curtis had, but that only made his dominance all the more frightening. Byron didn’t have to resort to petty threats to get his point across, to see that his will was enforced. All he had to do was smile in that unamused, implacable way of his and go forward, full speed ahead with no consideration or worry about what she wanted. What she needed.
As she stood with him in the rain, his warmth seeping through her, she realized that she had made a huge mistake. She wasn’t ready for this—wasn’t ready for him. Not by a long shot. She wasn’t strong enough yet, mentally or emotionally.
Because when he looked at her with those smoldering eyes, all she really wanted to do was to give in to him. To let him have his way.
She shuddered as she realized she hadn’t come nearly as far as she thought she had in the last year. Just because she’d kicked Curtis out, just because she’d been determined to rebuild her life one small step at a time, didn’t mean she was ready to face off with another dominant male. Didn’t mean she’d gained enough of herself back to risk losing it to a guy—no matter how sexy and charming he was.
No, she thought as she started backing away, I’m better off on my own. Better off fighting the loneliness and the desire than trying to resist the advances of a man hell-bent on controlling her.
She flew across the courtyard as fast as she could go, determined to reach the safety of her own apartment before Byron could catch up with her. It was stupid, childish, but she knew she couldn’t fight him tonight. Knew, after that brutal and mind-numbing lovemaking they’d shared, that she was more likely to tell him everything than she was to tell him to go to hell. And that, considering the circumstances, was far from acceptable.
“Lacey, wait.” She heard Byron’s voice behind her, heard his footsteps as he pounded the pavement after her. But she was almost to her door, almost to freedom, and she wasn’t giving that up for anyone. Not even Byron.
Especially not Byron.
Putting on one last burst of speed, she slammed into her apartment on the fly, shutting and locking the door behind her like the hounds of hell were on her heels.
Which they were, in a very real way. With her past rearing its ugly head—and her fantasies scattered around her feet in ruins—she needed time to regroup. Time to strengthen her defenses. Time to convince herself that her heart wasn’t breaking wide open for the last time.
Chapter Twenty-one
Mr. Alexandrov?” Jim’s obsequious v
oice drew Gregory from his contemplations of Lacey Adams’ blog and her young, dumb and full-of-cum lover. A carpenter, for God’s sake. She let a carpenter take her, let him put his hands all over her, like he had that right. Like they weren’t dirty and calloused and far, far beneath her.
He slammed a fist down on the desk, ignoring Jim’s startled look. She would pay for letting that laborer touch her, for letting him come inside her. What was wrong with her, with her self-esteem, that she would sell herself so cheaply? This carpenter wasn’t the only man she could get—not by a long shot—so why would she choose him? He could give her nothing except sex, and surely that alone wasn’t good enough for a woman like her.
Then again, judging from the way she looked as he fucked her, she really enjoyed the sex. Which was yet another bonus in his mind; he liked a lover who was as into physical pleasure as he was himself. It made things so much more interesting, especially when he introduced her to a few of his acquired tastes.
But what kind of man let his woman post sexually explicit fantasies for the whole world to see? Gregory reread the day’s blog for what had to be the fifth time since he’d pulled up What a Girl Wants. Despite the ridiculous title, the blog was the sexiest thing he’d ever read, and reading it was getting to be the best part of his day.
Imagining Lacey spread out before him while he did all the things she described had become his favorite pastime; thinking up new ways to keep her satisfied became his greatest pleasure. When she was his, there was no way she’d keep writing that stupid blog. No way he’d allow it. No way she’d need to do it anyway.
Spinning away from the computer, he glanced down at the photos that littered his desk. Photos of Lacey looking content. Well pleasured. Satisfied by the day laborer and his pedestrian lovemaking.
Rage, shocking in its intensity, trembled through Gregory at the thought. He never let himself get angry, never let himself get upset. What was the point? All anger did was dull the thinking and increase the odds that one would make a mistake.