Hidden Fire: Fire, Book 2: Red Hot Weekend (6 page)

Got it!

He found the knot as Jenna’s gasp echoed through the room.

“I’ll taste you where no one’s tasted you before.” Jealousy rammed into him sideways. What if someone had tasted her there before? The very thought made him want to commit murder. “I’ll lick you until you cry out my name. Pleasure you until you can’t remember your own name. Make you come so hard, you’ll wonder why you ever refused me in the first place. Wonder how you ever will again.”

“Garreth…” Her voice was a breathless whisper.

It did his head in. Made him crazy. Jesus, he had to get these ropes off.
Now.
Had to hold her, touch her.

His fingers found the end of the knot, and tugged.

“You want it too, Jenn. I can see. You want it as much as I do. You always have.”

“I… I…”

“You love me. Like I love you.”

She shook her head, helplessly.

“Say it, Jenna. Tell me you love me.”

Stop tugging. You’re just making the knot tighter.

He took a deep breath. Forced his hands to work more gently. Pushed rather than pulled. “It’s easy to tell someone you love them. Listen, I’ll go first. I love you, Jenna Brooks. I have since the moment I met you. I love everything about you. I love how you stick to your beliefs and your scruples. I love how you put your friends and family first. I love how you love them. I love how you try and make sure everyone’s eating healthily. I love the way you tilt your head to the left when you’re thinking, or frown when you disagree with something I say. I love how you can’t walk past a dog without patting it and how you know the names of every bird in Australia. I love how hard you try and control your environment, how you’ve made it work for you. I love how determined you are to put your trauma aside, how you triumphed in spite of it. And I love how hard you’re trying to deny you love me.” He stopped, grimaced and shook his head. “Uh, actually no, I don’t love that part. I hate it. But it’s making me horny as the devil, knowing you love me, knowing you’re making me work to prove I love you. You’re making me chase you, and believe me Jenn, I love a good chase. Especially when the prize is you.”

He took a breath. Gazed at her. Lost the very breath he’d just taken.

She looked half parts utterly smitten and half parts utterly terrified.

But she remained silent. Stoic.

“I know you love me, and I know you’re aroused now, sweetheart. You’re like me. So fucking horny. So needy. You want my tongue in your pussy. And in your ass. You want me to fuck you. So hard and so thoroughly neither of us would walk for a week afterwards.”

His fingers began to cramp. His wrists ached. Jesus, this wasn’t natural. Prying a knot open, sight unseen, with his hands tied together. But then it also wasn’t natural sitting tied to a chair, with an erection the size of a lamppost, the love of his life sitting panting opposite him, also tied to a chair. Just not the same chair.

Christ, he had to hold her. Touch her. Kiss her. Lick her. Fuck her.

No, he just had to love her. Like he’d wanted to love her for the last twenty-four months.

“Tell me you want me, Jenn. Put me out of my misery. Tell me you love me like I love you. That you need to fuck me as I much as I need to fuck you.”

She stared at him, her eyes filled with panic—and lust.

Always fighting with herself. Always striving for control, denying her true feelings, her true needs.

“Tell me those juices I want to taste aren’t oozing onto your panties right now.” He had to stop and gasp for air because he wanted to taste her so badly.

She swallowed.

Garreth began to sweat. “Jenn,” he coaxed, “tell me you love me.” He poked the edge of the rope beneath a loop and pushed. To his amazement, the loop gave and he freed one knot.

She shook her head.

“Say it, Jenn.” He
needed
to hear the words. “Say ‘I love you, Garreth.’”

“I…” She broke off. Shook her head again.

He pushed the rope through another loop and almost fell off his chair in surprise. The whole damn thing unraveled from around his wrists.

He caught himself in time, schooling his features, not letting on for a second that he was free. “Tell me you love me, Jenna.”

Finally, finally, she spoke, and the words lodged in his heart like an arrow. “You fucked my best friend.”

He saw red. And for the first time ever, lost his cool with her. He lost it in a spectacular fashion. “Yes, I did.” He roared. “I fucked your best friend. I met her, I seduced her, and I fucked her. I got her into my room, I got her naked, and I fucked her. And guess what? She fucked me too. We fucked each other.”

She stared at him, aghast.

“I knew who she was too. Knew she was the love of Jackson’s life. Knew she was your best friend. And guess what? It didn’t stop me. It encouraged me. I fucked her, and I let Jackson know I fucked her.”

“Bastard,” she spat at him.

“You know why I did it?”

“Because you’re a moral-less, son of a bitch who doesn’t care who gets hurt?”

Had her opinion of him always been this high? Garreth tried not to let the words sting, tried to remind himself this was the very reason he goaded her. So she’d lose control. Say things she wouldn’t usually say. Behave in ways she usually refused to let herself behave in. “
Bong
. Wrong. I did it for you. For you and for your fucking coward-assed brother.”

He tugged at the ropes around his waist, freeing those in mere seconds. Jackson tied knots like a pussy, he thought vaguely. Couldn’t even get the ropes to hold.

“Well, gee, give the man a hand,” Jenna cheered sarcastically. “What a hero. Fucking a woman for the sake of his best friend and the woman he loves. A real hero all right.”

“A real hero knows what he wants and goes after it. I want you, Jenna. I love you. You love me too. I was sick and tired of your excuses. Yours and Jackson’s. Using the pact as an excuse. Putting it before your own happiness. Someone had to make you see the pact had outlived its usefulness. It wasn’t protecting either of you. It was making you unhappy. It was making us all unhappy. You, me, Jackson and Rachel.”

“Ah, so you slept with Rachel to cheer her up? To cheer yourself up?”

“I slept with Rachel because someone had to open your eyes. Yours and your brother’s. Someone had to make you see clearly. I knew Jackson would be jealous as hell. Jealous enough to make him act, finally. Jealous enough to make him break the pact. Because if he didn’t break it, you never would. If
he
didn’t free you from it,
I
could never have you.”

Garreth was standing, marching towards her. He had no memory of even getting up, no memory of freeing himself from the rest of the ropes. He was too damn incensed.

“I did it so you could be free to love me, openly, freely and as much as I love you. I did it for you. All of it. For you. And for me. For us.” By the time he stopped to take a breath he was stooped over her, his nose pressed to hers.

“Y-you did?” Jenna stammered, the warmth of her uneven breath a caress on his cheeks. Her body shook, the tremors vibrating through him.

“Yeah, Jenn, I did.” The words came out softy. He couldn’t have screamed then if he wanted to. The scent of apple and mint had filled his nose, her proximity a drug to the rest of his senses.

He never could think straight when he stood this close to her. His brain overloaded, turned to mush. His body hardened—an instinctive response—and his breath deserted him. “So, what do you have to say about that?”

“J-just one thing,” Jenna puffed. She inhaled loudly, let her breath out in a long hiss. “I love you too.”

And with that, his ever-disciplined, ever-controlled Jenna crushed her mouth to his, kissing him with so much fervor, so much passion, Garreth was temporarily stumped.

She kissed him in the exact same way he wanted to fuck her. Hard, insistent, determined, as though burning him with her mouth. Branding her taste on his lips, marking him as her own.

It worked. He was hers. A million times over. Burned, branded and marked. But then he always had been. Since that first meeting.

Her kiss was wild and uninhibited, as though she gave no thought to technique and merely gave in to her instinct to make him hers.

Garreth let her. Let her lead him with her gluttony, consume him with her voracious appetite. Let her take forceful command of his mouth. His body, his senses, his soul. She was the one tied to the chair, yet he was the one who couldn’t move one damn muscle.

Not while her lips took, demanded, plundered. Stole his very heart.

He surrendered it willingly. Surrendered everything he was. To her.

Her kiss was brutal, punishing, unexpected from a woman so petite. Garreth would have let her glorious assault continue for an eternity, if she hadn’t groaned deep in her throat. If she hadn’t torn her lips from his, stared straight into his eyes…and said it again.

“I love you, Garreth.” Sincerity and love rang through her melodious voice.

This time when their lips met, it was he who took control, he who molded his mouth to hers, caressing her lips, urging her to relax into the kiss, appreciate it, enjoy it. He whose tongue traced her plump bottom lip before seeking entry into the warm, moist cavern of her mouth. He who nearly came when she parted that mouth for him, accepting his tongue, welcoming it, stroking it with her own.

He sunk his hands into her hair, holding her head, angling it so he could deepen the kiss. He poured his heart and soul into the kiss, loved her fully with it, accepted nothing less than her complete surrender in return.

Her body relaxed below him. She seemed to melt back into the chair.

Oh, yeah. She was his.

All neatly tied up for his entertainment.

Chapter Four

Molten lava ran through her veins, burning her from the inside out. Or maybe the heat came from his touch, from the hands that moved from her hair, down her arms and up her stomach, skimming over the ropes that bound her and settling just below her breasts.

Settling there. Not moving. Not an inch. Not one damn inch.

She shoved her breasts outward, as far as she could, silently begging for his touch.

Dear God. He’d done it for her. For them. Slept with Rachel to make Jackson jealous.

Jenna had been so sure he’d done it to hurt her. An if-I-can’t-have-you-I’ll-have-your-best-friend move.

Never. She should have known better. That wasn’t Garreth’s style. Never had been. Garreth was straight up and down the line. He’d been straight up and down the line with her from the beginning. Told her he’d fallen for her. Told her he wanted her. Told her, in graphic detail, everything he wanted to do to her.

And she’d rejected him. Time and time again. Fought for control over her emotions. Backed away from him—no matter how much she’d wanted him.

She’d had no choice. The man terrified her. Threatened everything she was, everything she’d become since the incident in high school.

He brought things out in her she’d tried to repress for the last twelve years, made her feel things she didn’t want to feel. He made her feel like a wanton, sexual being, intent on finding physical release, physical satisfaction. Intent on using her body—and his—to gain that release.

Like now. She wanted—needed—him to do every dirty thing he’d just said to her. Lick her pussy, lick her ass, fuck her over and over again. Make her come, over and over again.

She shouldn’t feel this way. Shouldn’t acknowledge her sexuality. People noticed if you were sexual. Cut you down for it. Accused you of hideous sins.

As a seventeen-year-old, she’d discovered she loved sex. Did it with her boyfriend whenever they could, however they could. She’d even confessed her love of sex to her friend at the time.
Simone
.

And Simone had taken her confession and stretched it into something it wasn’t. She’d turned Jenna into a sexual pariah. Made her the girl who slept with her brother.

If that experience had taught her one thing, it was to deny her sexuality. If she didn’t acknowledge her physical desires, no one else would notice them.

And she’d managed too. For twelve years. Kept every sordid need and idea to herself. Never once spoken openly about what she really wanted a man to do to her.
What she wanted Garreth to do to her.

Until a week ago.

But God help her, with Garreth she had no more control. As hard as she’d tried to cling to it while they argued, it slipped away. Her pussy wept for him, her breasts ached. Her nipples weren’t just tight. They throbbed, desperate for his touch, his mouth, his tongue, his teeth.

She longed for him to fuck her. Fuck her into oblivion. Fuck her until she couldn’t remember her name or his. Fuck her until all she felt was him and her and the intense magic she knew they’d create together. The same magic she’d denied forever.

The very magic he conjured now as he kissed her.

His mouth seduced, his lips a sinful treat against hers. And his tongue. God, that tongue. So fucking talented. So fucking amazing. So… so…

Jenna tore her mouth from his. “Touch me,” she begged.