Fearless Read online

  She caught his shoulders as they fell together against his work table; catching a fistful of her hair, he unleashed himself in kiss after hungry kiss.

  She mewed; forget measure, he just plain lost control.

  He clawed his shirt off, his mouth leaving hers only long enough to whip it over his head and cast it away. Hers had buttons; both their shaking hands torn down the line of them until he finally ripped the remaining two off in his haste to bare her. He barely heard the pattering rain as they scattered across the barn floor at their feet. In the next instant, he had her bra unfastened and her breasts were in his hands.

  Hello, my darlings. His palms welcomed the jut of her budding nipples, her flesh molded to his kneading touch, and her head fell back, casting her sigh to the ceiling when the heat of his mouth claimed the first. He nipped, suckled, matching the motions of his lovemaking with that of his fingers as he teased both nipples at once. She arched into his pulling tugs. Her small hands kept trying to touch his hair, as if to weave her fingers through the short, sandy strands and guide his head to stay where she needed to feel him most. Each time, she caught herself and her hands returned to grip his shoulders. Accepting whatever pleasure he chose to give without demanding anything.

  That became his instant goal. He was going to make her forget not just herself, but the selfish ass who had taught her that. He wanted her to demand.

  He wanted her to demand him.

  Catching her throat in his hand, the heady beating of her heart teasing his fingertips, he ordered, “Pants. Get them off.”

  She was kicking out of her shoes almost before he finished the command. For all that he could see, she was damn near fearless as she shimmied out of her remaining clothes. She let her loose jeans fall and the white cotton underwear that had stood between them earlier that day, followed, crumpling into a heap around her ankles. She stepped out of both and with her heel, nudged them under the table and out of the way.

  “Now mine,” he directed. He cupped her jaw, his thumb caressing one cheek, his long fingers so brown against the pale of her skin. Her swallow bumped his palm, and he could still feel the beating of her heart, which quickened as she unbuckled his belt. “Give that to me.”

  He watched carefully, but still there was no fear, not even as she pulled the supple leather from his pant loops, folding it in half and handing it to him.

  He lay it upon the work table near her hip. “Continue.”

  She unfastened him, her fingers slipping between his jeans and skin, gliding in under the elastic of his underwear. Her hands roved hot over the skin of his buttocks as she pushed all layers of clothing that still remained between them down his long legs. She licked her lips again, but she did not look down. His cock ached for her to look at it; his nerves fired with every awareness of her as her hands came back to rest on his ass. That was where she stopped moving, and that was okay. He couldn’t wait to touch her ass either.

  Bending slightly, he caught her cheeks in both hands, squeezing once and prizing her legs apart as he lifted her in a single, strong heft and deposited her on his work table. She gasped when her butt made contact, but the minute pain—if such it could even be called—was already vanishing from her eyes and she pulled him closer.

  She was at the right height now, eye to eye with him, hip to hip. A nudge of his hands parted her knees, letting the rest of him push between as he shifted his grip to her waist. He massaged, pulling her right up to the edge of the table. And him.

  Instinctively, she leaned back, bracing her weight on her arms.

  “You know your safeword,” he said, but she was already shaking her head.

  “I don’t want to use it. Not right now.”

  A corner of his mouth lifted. Moving his hands to the insides of her thighs, he pushed them open wider. “That’s your choice. I just want you to know you have one.”

  That she fully expected him to move in closer, angle his cock to the heated furrow of her sex and drive himself into her body was written in the way she tried so seductively to wrap her legs around him. She bit her bottom lip, taking her weight on her arms in an effort to make entering her that much easier. Her entire body jolted though, her eyes widening and her mouth rounding, when he bent to hook her thigh over his shoulder and dove mouth-first between her legs.

  There were no more barriers, no cloth to dilute the taste of her, no fabric to conceal the sheer thrill with which his tongue lashed between her folds, drinking in the milk of her arousal as he sought the straining nub of her clit. She gasped and grabbed his shoulder, her nails digging into him, but he’d already found her. His arms tightened, locking her in place no matter how she writhed. She was in his mouth, between his lips, captured greedily between his teeth while he flicked and rolled and licked her with his tongue.

  “Sir! Oh!” Her head fell back. Something else fell too, clattering off the table and onto the floor, but he couldn’t have cared less what tools got knocked aside. She flailed for something, anything to hold onto. But time and again, her hands came back to him, gripping, pulling, once even clawing as her hips bucked up into the lashing fury of his tongue. “I-I’m s-sorry—”

  She tried to stop, but her body had no interest in apologies. Her hips ground to the motions of his mouth, and he rewarded those mini demands with a three-fingered thrust, as deep into her pussy as his palm would allow. Her fingers locked in his short hair. Her silken walls clamped onto him, quivering as he found that smooth spot no bigger than a dime inside her. The one that with a flick of his finger made the whole of her pussy spasm and her hips jerk.

  Noah filled his work room with her ragged moans and the wet slapping of his palm against her pussy as he fucked her with his hand and his mouth. She shouted and he sucked at her pussy lips, scrubbing the tiny pebble of her swollen clit with all the roughness of his tongue and the stubble on his chin. There was a time for gentleness, but every buck and shout she gave in to told him this wasn’t it.

  She almost fell off the table; his arms tightened, locking her safely into place. Her straining movements turned wild. The milking spasms of her pussy quickened as her breath caught and held, caught and held, and suddenly every line and muscle of her fragile body seized. Her fingers in his hair became claws, but he only laughed at the pain when she pulled. Her high-pitched mewling cries turned shuddery as her thighs quaked, her sheath spasmed, and a flow of sultry pleasure flooded his mouth. Noah laughed again, loving every minute of it and he didn’t stop flicking, stroking, or licking until he’d wrung from her every last convulsion.

  If not for his arms around her waist, she’d have wilted down flat on her back on the table, but as he straightened, savoring her taste on his lips, he made her stay upright with him.

  “I’m s-sorry,” she whispered, dazed. She blinked, not quite focused on him. That was a victory too. One he could have gazed on every day for the rest of his life and never tired of seeing. “I’m s-s-sorry.”

  “You’ve nothing to be sorry for.” He looped his belt around her throat, letting the length of the leather tail dangle along her spine, an impromptu collar and the leash by which he now owned her.

  “I-I’m sorry,” she whispered again.

  “Don’t be sorry with me.” He wrapped his hand in her hair, pulling her head back, forcing her dazed gaze to lock on him once more. His thumb hooked between his belt and her neck. He gripped the buckle, preventing the belt from either tightening or loosening on its own. She was his now, she could look nowhere but right into his eyes as he brought his cock to the slick mouth of all her luxurious heat.

  Her lips parted. She shivered an indrawn breath as he dragged the crown of his cock up through her folds. Up, then down. Parting her open to him.

  “What do you have to say to me, love?” Noah coaxed as sultry as the flesh of her body, trembling there at the end of his dick.

  Her whole body shivered. Her light brown nipples were hard as pebbles, scraping his chest as she breathed. “I am a good girl.”

  He di
pped his cock into her, a slow invasion that sank only far enough for her heated flesh to engulf him. “And?”

  “I am safe.” She moaned, her brow buckling into a mask of the most exquisite pleasure as he sank into her as deep as her body would allow. There was no space left between them, no more ribbons between their bellies, no air apart from the breaths they shared.

  Noah gave her collar a shake, and she obediently opened her eyes and locked on him again. “And?”

  “And I’m loved,” she whispered to him.

  “Yes, you are.” He withdrew only to thrust again, long, slow, and deep, forcing her to relive every nuance of his invasion and the grind at the end as his pubis pressed once more to hers. Her thighs locked around his hips. “In a minute, you’ll be very well loved, because I’m going to fuck you until I come. I want you to come with me; you’ll do it on my command.”

  Her pussy flexed around him like a fist, warm, soft, and milking.

  “Put your fingers on your clit,” he ordered. “I want you back on edge, right now.”

  She wasn’t multi-orgasmic. She winced through those first few strokes, her wince telling him her body found more pain than pleasure in having to rouse again, but she did it.

  “Good girl,” he sighed, feeding her submissive needs as tiny twitches in the walls of her sex began twitching again. It was so much better with that pulling, squeezing, sucking motion moving all around his cock instead of his fingers. He watched her face, her heavy-lidded eyes as she gave in to the allure of her own fingers, rubbing slow circles around her swollen clit. He watched the circles getting smaller, tighter, more frenetic until he could see the shivers moving through her belly as well as dancing along his cock as he thrust.

  His pace quickened. His breathing fell into cadence with hers and his blood roared, pounding through his veins, in his temples and his cock. The tightening of his balls drove the rhythm of his hips until he found himself pulling her closer so he could pound her harder. He shook the work table. He shook her, his grip on her impromptu collar keeping her face right in front of his. Her siren’s stare pulled him in to drown alongside her. Her tiny broken breaths fed him with all the air he needed, and she never disobeyed him once. Her fingers, smashed between their wet slapping bellies, rubbed so fast now they were barely wriggling.

  She mewed, near panic flooding her features as her pussy clamped down hard around him.

  “No.” He yanked her head back, keeping her centered on him. He was sweating. She was sweating; God, she was beautiful, gasping her squeak-high mews of orgasmic distress. “Not yet… not yet…”

  Not that he wasn’t there. Every shuddering pull of her body milked at his cock. Her arms clung to his shoulders, her ankles were locked and digging into his ass, pulling him back into her. As if she could not stand to let him get away.

  He didn’t want to get away either. He always came surging back, harder. As hard as he could, his strength unchecked, because every thrust and shove burrowed him deeper into the welcoming well of her body. It was his new home. It was where he belonged. They weren’t even two separate people anymore, but one heartbeat, one fiery pulse, one unit pushing and pulling and straining toward the same shuddering goal, and it went so very much deeper than the orgasm twisting his balls so high and tight he thought he might explode.

  He could have held her like this forever. He could have fucked her, made love to her, been inside of her, deep and hard and surging like this, for forever.

  His flesh had other ideas.

  “Come,” he growled, the spasms of orgasm ripping through him even as he felt the first tickling spasms of her own dancing all along the length of his shaft. He slammed home, pressing as deep as he could reach, the undulations of her body as she writhed in the grip of her own climax the most beautiful thing he’d seen in years.

  Eventually, those undulations ceased, but still he held her fiercely close until Kitty fell limp and still. Draped and panting against him, her arms and legs both dangled.

  He didn’t move either. At first, he couldn’t, not until he got his breath back, not to mention strength enough to lift his arms and unbuckle his belt from around her neck. It fell on the table and he let his hand glide down the slick heat of her back. He checked to make sure there were no chafe marks, but the worst he found was around her lips. Swollen by kisses, he could see the tiny marks her teeth had made while she’d been trying so hard not to come.

  He stopped himself from leaning in for one last kiss. He had no self-control when it came to stealing tastes of her from those flushed and swollen lips.

  “Be careful.” His softening cock fell out of her when he lifting her off the table, letting her slide down him until her feet found the floor. They were both unsteady.

  He gathered his clothes, she gathered hers, and somewhere in the aftermath, the pleasurable silence in which they re-dressed turned to just plain silence. By the time he realized it was growing awkward, it had been between them for so long he wasn’t sure how to break out of its weighted grip.

  “I won’t kill my baby.” Down on her hands and knees, probably so she wouldn’t have to look at him, Kitty searched the cracks in the floorboards for her two missing buttons. “I don’t care who the father is. That’s not its fault.”

  Hands pausing on the fastenings of his jeans, Noah’s chest tightened. “I would never ask you to make that decision.” As much as it grated on him to hear Ethen referred to as her baby’s father, he stopped short of volunteering himself for that particular job. So really, what right did he have to complain?

  Now, he was irritated. He stuffed his shirt back into his pants and began feeding his belt back through his pants loops. Of course, he wasn’t going to volunteer. He wasn’t the sort who made promises he couldn’t keep, and marriage wasn’t any old promise, it was a commitment. Not only to her, but to the child she was carrying just under her heart. Commitments that big should never be made on the spur of an emotional moment, or while her sweat was still drying on his skin and his cock still felt the phantom twitches of being inside her. He needed to wait, and think.

  Unfortunately, Kitty wasn’t waiting. “The longer I stay here, the more I start looking like an illegal immigrant instead of someone on vacation. I can’t risk having my baby in a country where I am not a citizen.”

  So… she had been thinking clearly after all.

  And there it was again, springing right up into the back of his throat again, that ill-thought out urge to say: Well, let’s get married then.

  Noah choked it back. What he heard himself say instead was, “Give me one month.”

  Having found the last button, Kitty raised her head and looked at him at last. “Why?”

  “Because I like you.” A man couldn’t be more honest than that. “Maybe it won’t be enough. Or maybe it’ll be the start of something more, I don’t know. But I do know I want the chance to find out. One month, love, thirty days.” It was surprisingly hard for him, but he made himself add, “We’ll treat it like a scene at Black Light, and you can say red at any time. I promise, I’ll stop and drive you straight to the airport.”

  And he always kept his promises. No matter how much it hurt, he would keep this one, too.

  Chapter 12

  “No, really,” Noah said, laughing as he cut his breakfast eggs apart. “It’s Zechariah. Noah Zechariah Carver. Real New Testament stuff. My parents were big believers. Deliberately drove my grandfather bonkers when they joined a different church from him.”

  The morning sun was up. Coffee was hot on the table and she’d made breakfast—eggs and toast, with disgusting green stuff for him and plain butter for her with strawberry preserves on the side to tempt her appetite. It had worked, some. So far, she’d managed to put away two eggs, half a sausage patty, and most of a piece of toast, thanks to the jam.

  “That was too easy a question.” Noah knocked on the table. “Come on, now, love. Let’s really get to know one another. Ask me something else.”

  “Something else,”
Kitty said, with a smile and a sigh, even though she hated games like this. She wasn’t any good at coming up with questions. It felt subversive, somehow, and when questions led to other questions, it only made her more uncomfortable. But how else were two people supposed to learn about the other if not by asking questions, as Noah had quite sensibly argued at the start of this game. She cast about the table, as if she might find a random question lying among the breakfast dishes. “Okay,” she finally said, glancing into the living room. “I’ve got one. You told me you don’t like spanking, so what made you choose the whip?”

  Caught between a smile and surprise, Noah blinked twice. “What makes you think I don’t like spanking?”

  “Because you said so.”

  He arched both eyebrows. “Oh no, no, love. I love all forms of impact, including spanking. You lay yourself down across my knee, young lady. I’ll show you a man what loves his work. What I told you was I don’t spank for punishment.”

  “Fine.” Ignoring the way her belly quivered at the thought of being taken across his knee and held, tucked right up close to his body, she said, “I’ll change my question: Why don’t you spank for punishment?”

  “Because it’s not effective.”

  “It’s not about effective.”

  Noah arched both eyebrows. “Oh no? What’s it about then, love? You tell me.”

  A touch of warmth flushed her face. She wished she had a way to avoid the question, but that would have violated the newest rule, Rule Number Ten: Quid Pro Quo. Put on the spot, Kitty picked at her toast and shrugged. “I don’t know…”

  Noah refused to accept that. “Nah, you don’t, me girl. You’re not getting off that easy. Question ball’s in my court now. Why spank if it’s not effective? And I don’t care how small you shred your toast. I’ll bring you a spoon if I have to and add a good-sized dollop of Vegemite to hold it all together, but you will eat it.”