The Darkest Embrace

  It wasn’t enough and it was too much all at the same time. He sent her up and over into orgasm without ever moving faster or changing the pace. Climax rocked her, and Jessie shuddered. His name eased out of her on a long series of sighs she couldn’t muffle and didn’t want to. The world tipped and went unfocused. When she came back to it, she found him still looking at her, though the grin had faded and become a different sort of look, one she wasn’t sure she could identify.

  Before she could think to ask him what was wrong, Max had pulled her mouth to his. Their bodies moved naturally, his cock sliding inside her as easily as if he’d guided it with a hand, though all she’d done was lean forward for his kiss. She shuddered again at the way he filled her. Her fingers dug into his shoulders. The kiss deepened. Max gripped the back of her neck, holding her to him while he moved inside her hard enough to move her entire body.

  The bed shook. Everything shook. Jessie came again when he muttered her name. A moment after that, Max cried out, low. Jessie forced her eyes to open, to focus, to pay attention. She wanted to watch his face when he spent himself inside her, and it was worth every effort, because Max was looking into her eyes until the very last second when pleasure overtook him. When he gave up to it, and her, at last.

  Chapter 3

  If heaven had a smell, Max thought, it was bacon and fresh coffee; if it had a feeling, it was the weight of warm, naked female flesh against his bare back. Turning, he arranged himself against Jessie, who snuggled sleepily against him with a sigh. Burying his face in her hair, he ran his hands down her back to cup her ass and pull her closer against him.

  She murmured something that sounded like his name and wriggled. When she moved against him like that, he was rock-hard in half a second. Max couldn’t stop himself from kissing her when Jessie blinked up at him with one of those sexy smiles that so slayed him.

  She wriggled again, sort of like a protest. “Toothbrush!”

  “Forget it.” He slid a hand between them to stroke a finger through her curls and find her clit. Slow, steady circles, his gaze on hers to watch her pupils dilate. He dipped a finger lower to find her wetness, and when she shivered, decided to keep going. Max pushed a finger inside her. When she moaned, he went a little deeper.

  Smiling, Jessie rolled onto her back with one arm flung over her eyes and lifted her hips to encourage him. Her mouth opened, tongue sliding along her lower lip. When Max bent to take one of her nipples between his lips, she threaded her fingers through his hair, tugging. God, he loved the way she responded to him, like everything he did was...

  Perfect.

  That’s what she’d said last night.

  Sometimes, Max was admittedly an idiot, but not about this. He knew perfection was a lie that twisted itself around people in the beginning and bit them in the ass when they got to know each other. It wasn’t real or meant to last, and anyone who expected it to was more than dumb—they were crazy. But he didn’t want to go there, so he pushed away thoughts of the past and crazy Patty, who’d tried her best to make his life hell, and he concentrated on the woman now shifting restlessly beneath his mouth and hands.

  He’d thought about this since the first time he saw her, that strawberry blond hair pulled high on top of her head, her purple Converse sneakers paired with a long black skirt and a Metallica concert shirt he’d seen right away was genuine and not something she’d picked up at Hot Topic for kicks. Jessie’s blue eyes, her smile and laugh, the way she shook his hand when she introduced herself, had heated him up from the start, but he’d been trying so hard to be careful that he’d sort of made an ass of himself. He knew it. Too much waiting. He was lucky she hadn’t given up on him.

  He’d make it up to her now, he thought, and ran his tongue around her sensitive areola until her nipples puckered even tighter. She was so wet for him he could easily slip a second finger inside her, his thumb still pressing her clit as he moved his hand. Her pussy clutched at his fingers, and she gasped, her hand gripping his wrist to slow him.

  “Wait,” she said with a laugh, not opening her eyes, her voice thick with arousal.

  His own command, thrown back at him. Max waited. Her body pulsed around him. He wanted to be inside her so much that it took everything he had not to dive in. When she tipped her hips the tiniest bit, encouraging him, he moved his fingers again. She went tight around him, her pussy gripping, her clit jumping. Fuck, it made his cock jump, too. Her hoarse cry echoed around the loft. She covered her mouth as though she meant to hold it back.

  “I want to hear you,” Max said, surprised he could find his own voice.

  “Oh, God. Max.” She moaned. Then, louder. “Oh, yes.”

  He couldn’t hold off any longer—he had to taste her. Max slid down the bed to center his mouth on her clit. He lapped at her sweetness, suckling gently while still moving in and out of her with his fingers. Shit, he wanted his cock inside her, but he had to make her come first. Had to make her lose her mind for him.

  When she came, her taste flooded him. Her pussy clamped against him in slow rolling flutters that sent echoing shocks all through his dick. Pain in his scalp flared, just a little, and he realized she was pulling his hair to get him to move upward. He wasn’t going to resist, not any longer. Max moved up Jessie’s body to capture her mouth. She opened for him. Her fingers dug into his ass as he moved between her legs, guiding himself into her slick heat.

  He wanted to make love to her for hours, but there was no way he was going to last that long. He was already shaking from how good it felt to be inside her, balls deep. At the scratch of her nails down his back, Max let out a low yell. Pleasure swept him. He was the one losing himself. He lost himself in her and didn’t even care.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, Jessie kissed his shoulder, prompting him to roll to the side. “How’s your hand, honey?”

  Truthfully, he’d forgotten all about it. It stung a little when he poked at the bandages, but it wasn’t bad at all. “You fixed it right up. It’s okay.”

  She took a peek under the bandages, then kissed him again. “You must heal fast. God, breakfast smells amazing. I didn’t even hear you get up.”

  “I didn’t get up.” Max looked at her. “I thought you made breakfast....”

  Both of them were up and out of the bed, snatching up clothes, shoving legs into jeans and arms into shirts, in thirty seconds. At the top of the stairs, Max motioned for her to stand behind him. He listened, craning his neck to hear any movement from downstairs. At the clink of silverware on porcelain, he took one step down the stairs with Jessie close on his heels.

  “You stay here.”

  Both her brows went up. “And let the serial killer get you? Um, no.”

  “I doubt a serial killer would be making us breakfast.” Something like that would be reserved for crazy ex-girlfriends, he thought grimly, remembering the time Patty had let herself into his apartment and cooked him dinner, then thrown a pan of hot pasta at his face when he told her she needed to leave.

  But downstairs, all they found was a breakfast table set with two plates, a pot of coffee perking merrily on the counter and eggs and bacon in a covered pan on the stove. Jessie looked at it, then him.

  “Is this a bed and breakfast maybe?”

  “It’s not supposed to be.” If anything, he’d picked this place because it was out of the way and they’d have plenty of time to be totally alone. “But it smells good.”

  Jessie went to the window to look out. She twitched the red checker curtain to one side and smiled bemusedly. “Someone’s in the backyard. A woman.”

  Swiftly, Max crossed to the window and yanked at the curtain, a sour taste in his mouth, all ready to see Patty’s signature cloud of pale hair. The woman by the shed was blonde, all right, but golden. She looked too much like Freddy Romero to be anything but a relative, from the plaid shir
t to her towering height. The top of her head was even with the shed door, and that was with her shoulders hunched. She had her back to the cabin, her attention focused on something in front of her.

  “You think she made us breakfast?” Jessie asked. “You think she was in here this morning...while we...”

  Frowning, Max opened the back door. “Hi!”

  The woman turned, and the shock was enough to make him step back. From behind, he’d guessed her to be in her late twenties by the length and style of her thick blond hair, and the curves of her body. Her face, on the other hand, belonged to a much-older woman. Fifty, at least, and that was being kind. Deep lines bracketed her mouth, which hung open to reveal yellowed teeth that were curved inward. Her hands, too, were ancient, gnarled and thick-knuckled, with long curved nails. Something moved and writhed in her hands, something black and white and gray, furry. It squealed, briefly.

  The woman calmly wrenched its neck, and the thing went still.

  “Coons,” she said with a smile that would have been charming on a wolverine. “Baby coons in the shed, got to get rid of ’em or else they make a mess of the garbage.”

  Behind him, Jessie let out a low cry. Max backed up a step to keep himself between her and this weirdo with the dead raccoons, but the woman didn’t try to run at them or anything. Instead, she casually tossed the tiny corpse into a burn barrel next to the shed. Wiping her hands on the hem of her shirt, she gestured at the house.

  “Made breakfast for ya.”

  “Thanks,” Jessie said from around his shoulder. She grabbed his hip.

  The woman nodded and gave them both an assessing look before showing the entire crooked picket fence of her smile. “I’m Carrie.”

  “Freddy’s...sister?” Max guessed.

  Carrie made a one-two pow-pow with her fingers, like guns. “You got it! Youse need anything else while I’m here?”

  Max glanced at Jessie, who shook her head. “No, thanks. We’re good.”

  Carrie grinned again, inching closer. “If you do, just let me know. I’ll be back later to check the traps.”

  “Traps?” Jessie squeezed his hip, then moved forward a little and rubbed her arms against the morning chill.

  Max had thrown on a flannel shirt, but she wore only a thin tank top. Now he shrugged out of the shirt and slung it over her shoulders. She gave him a grateful smile.

  “Oh, yeah.” Carrie nodded, and then gave a long, lingering and totally creepy look toward the woods beyond the small patch of grass surrounding the cabin. “Got ’em all baited up.”

  Max, his arm around Jessie’s shoulders, followed her gaze but could see only trees. Nothing even rustled there. “What are you trying to trap?”

  “Whatever I can get,” Carrie told them both without even a hint of a smile.

  * * *

  “I’m sorry,” Max said for about the fifth time as he swiped at numbers on his cell phone—the one without even one bar of service.

  Jessie took the phone from his hand and turned it off, then set it carefully on the kitchen table. She put her hands flat on his front and hooked her fingers into the front of his shirt to pull him closer for a kiss that she purposefully kept lingering long enough to border a little on ridiculous. Only when she felt him relax against her did she pull away just enough to nip at his lower lip, then brush another kiss over it.

  “Shut. Up,” she said. “I told you already, it’s fine.”

  Max wanted to call Freddy and tell him not to have his sister hanging around the place. Jessie didn’t disagree—she’d dumped the food, no matter how delicious it smelled, after watching Carrie strangle a raccoon and then wipe her hands on her shirt. But she also didn’t want to spend their day worrying about it. Not when there were so many other ways to occupy their time.

  “Oh, hey,” Max said when she slipped her hand down the front of his jeans and gave him a careful squeeze. “Um, okay.”

  “I love the way you kiss me,” Jessie told him matter-of-factly, pushing onto her toes so she could look into his eyes. “Love it.”

  Max laughed softly and pulled her closer. “Good, because I love kissing you.”

  She steadied herself with her hands on his shoulders, brushing another kiss against him but not letting it go deeper. Somehow, her face found a place in the hollow of his shoulder. His hands on the small of her back. They moved slowly together to inaudible music while she pressed her hand flat to the comforting beat of his heart beneath the flannel.

  This, Jessie thought, felt like falling in love.

  She could have stayed like that for a long time, but her stomach was growling. With another kiss, she nibbled gently at his jaw for a second before slapping him on the ass. “Breakfast,” she said. “I hope you packed more bacon because it hurts my heart that we had to throw that all away.”

  An hour later they’d both eaten and showered in the charming claw-foot tub that wasn’t big enough for two but managed to fit them both anyway. Max had packed a picnic basket. Bread, cheeses in a cooler bag, an unbroken bottle of wine and even glasses. Also, in a touch that made tears prickle in the back of her eyes, a bunch of flowers with a matching vase.

  “Romantic,” Jessie told him.

  Max grinned. “There’s a waterfall.”

  There certainly was. A small one that had been fed to greatness by last night’s storm, set back a mile or so from the cabin at the end of a winding path that had turned to thick mud from the rain. It cut through the trees that got increasingly thicker the farther into the woods they got. A jutting wedge of rock made the water gush out far over the rest of the cliff, leaving plenty of room to walk beneath it to the other side, where they found a soft patch of still-damp grass and leaves and spread their blanket. Their morning lovemaking had eased some of the edge, but that didn’t mean she didn’t pounce him as soon as she could.

  “You’ll spill the wine!” Max protested, but held the glass away from him so she could straddle his lap.

  Jessie took his face in her hands. “I am crazy about you, Max Arnec. You know that, right?”

  For an embarrassing few seconds, she thought she’d gone too far. Said too much. It wasn’t like her to be so open, but something about Max had always made her that way. Honest.

  She stopped worrying when he inched her closer to kiss her mouth. “The feeling’s mutual.”

  She’d just settled into a sweet, lingering kiss, when something flashed through the woods just out of sight behind them. Startled, Jessie pulled away to look over Max’s shoulder. He frowned.

  “What?”

  “I saw something.”

  There it was again, the push and rustle of something in the leaves. Jessie squinted, trying to catch sight of it, but the shadows were too deep...and Max’s mouth too delicious for her to worry herself too much about it. At least, not until the rustling got much, much closer.

  “What the hell is that?” Jessie eased herself from Max’s lap, the memory of yesterday’s close call on the road still fresh.

  Max stood, looking into the woods. Nothing happened but the whisper of the wind through the branches, and he turned to look down at her with a bemused smile. “A deer maybe.”

  A chill skittered down Jessie’s spine that had nothing to do with the sweet fall breeze. The scent of something sour and rotten tickled her nose and left a bad taste in her mouth. She covered them both, shaking her head as she stepped back.

  “Let’s go back to the cabin.”

  They hadn’t done more than crack open the bottle of wine, but Max nodded right away with an uneasy look over his shoulder. “Yeah. Sure. Okay.”

  “We can hit the hot tub,” she offered brightly, bending to pack up the basket even as she kept a wary eye on the trees all around them. Now she heard noises from the opposite side of the clearing. Then the other.

  The t
hing was circling them.

  Together, she and Max shoved everything into the basket and folded the blanket, which he slung over one arm. Jessie took his hand, the wine bottle in her other one. She meant to kiss him again, but before she could, something so big and loud crashed in the woods behind them that both of them jumped.

  “Let’s go,” Max said.

  But Jessie, mesmerized by the bending, breaking trees, didn’t move. Something big moved in the shadows, and it wasn’t a deer. Something with gangling limbs that stood upright, tall enough to push aside branches that would have been a good foot above Max’s head. Something strong enough to snap the branches right off the trees instead of just pushing them out of the way.

  “Jessie,” Max said calmly, matter-of-factly, without a tremor in his voice, “run!”

  They both launched themselves at the same time, dumping blanket, basket and bottle. The path that had seemed so charming before now tripped her up, though Jessie kept her feet and didn’t fall. Max grabbed her by the elbow to help her and tripped over a root. He stumbled forward, but he didn’t fall either. It slowed them, though, this clumsiness, and the waterfall was still burbling unseen in the distance.

  Jessie risked a look behind them, expecting to see some shaggy, shambling thing on the path. All she saw was the tops of the trees around the bend shaking. The tops!

  Around another bend, and the jutting outcrop of rock with water pouring over it was directly in front of them. Going beneath it had been fun and silly, slippery, a good excuse for her to cling to Max as they crossed it. There was no time for that now, and without talking about it, the two of them headed straight for the stream itself.

  Max reached it first and turned at once to hold out a hand to Jessie. The bank wasn’t high, but slick grass and mud made it impossible not to fall down unless she jumped. She didn’t hesitate, just leaped. One foot hit the water first, the other a second later and connecting with a large boulder. Pain, instant and infuriating, knocked the breath out of her.