If Wishes Were Horses (3 page)

She had no comfort zone with men who were sexually confident. As a cop, she knew how to fence words with criminals whose  filthy attempts to  get a rise out of her

fell short. The riding and suggestive comments  of other cops were also  part of the rough  world she had to face.  Perversely,  the stares of  a group of shirtless construction workers  or a good-looking cable guy’s smile made her fumble.

Justin Herne emanated the sexual confidence  of  a  god,  so  strong  it  seemed  to  come at her from all directions, even though  all he'd done was rise from the chair.

Her nose betrayed her, stealing her judgment. Beneath the clean chambray shirt that  lay in soft folds against the planes of his body and the well-tailored black slacks, she  smelled the earth, the residue of perspiration dried on his skin after coitus, the faint  aroma of an animal's hair. Her cop senses confirmed what her woman's senses told her. The man facing her was the antlered man.

“I guess it makes sense, the guy owning the property being the star of his own  show,” she said caustically. “So can you tell  me what you were doing tonight? Or do I  need to know the secret handshake?”

She wanted to turn on a brighter set of  lights to dispel this mood, the sense of

intimate isolation with him, but she couldn't risk the distraction.

13

Joey W. Hill

“You can search on the Internet for the  mechanics of Wiccan ritual, including the Great Rite, officer.” He  moved forward, and though he  did it slowly, Sarah still felt the threat of him. Not of physical peril, but  of something more fragile, as if the ground  beneath her were becoming unstable as he pulled matter to him, giving her nowhere to run. He was annihilating her boundaries with his intent eyes and physical presence.

“There was nothing mechanical about what  I saw,” she  said, her voice harsh. “You  need to stop right there. Now.” Was that panic in her voice?

“No, there wasn't.” He stopped, and she realized with professional horror that he was standing with his chest against the barrel of her gun. “The Great  Rite is an  expression of one of the deepest mysteries.  There are no words to adequately describe  it. It brings opposites together to create balance.”

She was sliding down a cliff and there was no  one to offer her a rope. “Is that your  best pick-up line?” she scoffed. She was  all too aware her arms were trembling.

“No, this is.” He snagged the wrist of  her gun hand and yanked her arm and the  weapon to  the outside  of her hip.  At the  same  moment he closed  his grip on  her other hand and jerked it down to his  erection.  She found herself cupping his balls in her shaking fingers, his hard length against her palm through the fabric of his slacks. The  pulse of his large organ throbbed under the sensitive skin of her wrist.

She could fight him. She could twist away, inflict pain  on him to effect a retreat for  both of them, but she didn't. Sarah stood rigid, staring up  at him,  wishing for something  she couldn't name. He destroyed her intention to resist by staying still, holding her close to him, the lift and fall of his chest no  more than a deep breath’s distance away  from the rapid trembling of hers.

He studied her face for a long moment. He  released her gun hand to reach up and  trace the line of her cheek, shielding her eye  from the moon's light coming in through  the window. His finger moved forward, under the  soft skin of her eye, down the side of her nose, etching the curve of one nostril, then rested on her parted lips. He dipped his touch within, just the slight movement needed to find the moisture between  teeth and  gum and spread it on the fullness of her bottom lip.

He kept his  other hand firmly on hers against his cock, not allowing movement, just  making her experience the pulse of that rigid organ against her damp palm.

“Is the safety on?” he asked, his voice a breath of sound against her face.

Somehow a brain cell survived to  send a message to her fingers so that she shifted her grip, clicked it back on. Damn. She should have thought to check the safety beforehe had. But he had thought to protect them. Protect her. It did nothing to ease the growing fire in places in her body a  total stranger should  not be igniting.

She nodded, and he twisted her hand, a strong but not painful force. The weapondropped several inches  to the sofa. His arm  went around her waist,  his hand against herback, and the last space was closed, her breasts against his chest, her thighs against his. Her hand was free, for now his other was on  her neck, tangling in her hair,  pulling herhead back. Her fingers curled into a claw against his hip.

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If Wishes  Were  Horses

“No,” she said. “You've been…with another woman.”

“You don't give a damn about that,” he said, his eyes glowing in the dim light like a wolf's. “She is part of you, part of the same Goddess that claimed the Great Lord as her  Consort through me, renewing the land  and our spirits with our joining.”

It was true in a deep, primitive way she  did not understand, and it scared the hell  out of her. She didn’t want to be swept away like this.

He brought his mouth down on hers before she could say anything else, and God, she didn’t know what she’d have said.

Something about this night and  seeing the ritual had opened the wounds of her divorce, as well as that familiar and overwhelming yearning in her. He was here like an answer to that aching emptiness. Just…fuck it.

Fuck me, please. Make me forget. Make me  believe  again. Make it everything, so nothing else will matter.

“I will,” he  muttered, and she realized she had spoken  aloud, though she did not  know which part of the words had made it to  her lips. Sarah held onto his hard biceps as he devoured her mouth, scraping his teeth against her soft lips, bearing her tongue down beneath his, stroking it even as he  dominated it inside the wetness of her mouth.  He made it lie pliant beneath his will and quiver there.

He was an intruder in her house. A stranger. She had just seen him participate in a  ritual that would horrify the notion of moral  conduct in civilized society. But every gasp  for breath brought that animal  smell to her,  the sweat of the ritual beneath his clean  shirt, the hunger in his body. Her body shoved away her inhibitions in a way it never  had, mowed them over like an eager child overriding its mother's feeble protests in the  face of an offer of candy. This wasn't just  candy. This wasn't even  a whole candy store.  This was a child's paradise of endless treasure to discover, summer days that never  ended, bare feet in the mud and  all the mysteries of the universe expressed in ways so simple they did not have to be spoken.

She whimpered in the back of her throat when he shifted, pressing his cock against  the dampening crotch  of her plain cotton panties. He hoisted her, wrapping her legs around his  waist, and her hair  fell along his jawline  as he lifted her above him. His  hands cupped her ass cheeks and opened  her to the tips of his fingers. It made her  squirm in erotic shivers, which rubbed her against the heat of his cock, pressed hard  against her clit with pinpoint accuracy.

She was dizzy. The walls were moving. No, she was moving. He was taking her  down the hall to the bedroom.  She felt like she was falling down  a tunnel,  like a  slide  where there was no stopping the momentum  without getting her palms blistered. She  held onto his shoulders and he  bit her throat, using his tongue to  soothe even as he bit  down again, harder. His fingers were under  her underwear, the tip of his middle finger  probing her tight rear entry. Her legs spasmed, kicking the wall, reacting to the strange  whirl of sensation the  unfamiliar touch speared through her.

15

Joey W. Hill

There was a scrape as they passed her dresser, and then  something cold and metal touched her. Before Sarah registered the different sensory input, he had her down on her back on her bed and her arms above her head. Panic shot through her at the snap ofthe steel bracelets of her own handcuffs, their rattle against the wrought iron bars of the headboard. The sudden blast of fear  shoved away the tide of lust.

“What the — Herne, you son of a—”

“Ssshhh.”

The world had not  stopped spinning from her trip down  the hallway, and her  panicenhanced the disorientation, keeping her from getting her bearings back in time. Hispalms clamped under her knees and he pushed  her legs up into the air and back, so her body folded over and her kneecaps were shoved to meet her shoulders. He threaded her thrashing feet between the railings of the headboard, four slats apart so  her legswere spread. He hooked them there so she was held by them and the strength of hishands against the  back of her thighs. She stared helplessly up at him through the  vee of her legs.

“You can't—”

He was on his knees before her vulnerable  pussy and ass, and she  had a glimpse of those dark eyes before his head bent and  his  hot,  moist breath touched her cunt through the cotton. He sucked the fabric and her clit  into his mouth, rubbing his tongue againstthem. The alternating friction of the three caused her body to shake erratically, the onlything she could do in this position. There was no straining  possible, no arching,  just the fixed point of her pussy and that  convulsive  little bounce that made his mouth a tiny staccato of pressure against her full to bursting tissues.

He growled, there was no other word for it, and hooked his finger in the panties.  He tore them off her body,  the seams scraping her skin  with the roughness of themotion. His tongue stabbed into her pussy and she cried out, a prolonged soundbetween a wail and a moan that begged for whatever it was he could offer her. She was going to come, he was stroking her clit, making wet sucking noises of enjoyment that were driving her crazy, yes, now he was stroking harder, alternating light with rough, he was –  nooo. He moved back into her pussy, taking away the driving force of the sensation, and when she bounced, the bump of  his nose was all the relief she was given.  No relief at all.

She gave a shocked cry as his middle finger, wet with her arousal, invaded her anus and fingered her there, setting off electric  sparks of reaction she never knew existed.  Her knees rubbed  the sides of her breasts, and her nipples were begging for attention against the  stretched thin fabric of her tank  as  she lay helplessly raised like a baby with her ass in the air.

“Tell me you want more, Sarah,” he demanded, his mouth and fingers working her.

Don't. Don't.

“You bastard—”

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If Wishes  Were  Horses

He bit, just the barest pressure of his teeth closing on her clit. She rocked against hisstill finger in her ass and his tight canine hold on her pussy, whimpering. Waves rolled through her, but it was not enough. The  surf roared in her ears, beckoning.

“I can do this all night, Sarah,” he murmured, his  lips playing  on her pussy. “So ask for it, or I'll torture you, with pleasure.”

“More,” she whispered.

Still he did not move. She looked down between her splayed legs  and he looked at

her, holding her clit  in  his  mouth, his  tongue  doing idle flicks, his eyes hot and  steady

on hers.

“More,” she snarled. “More!”

He straightened, held her with one hand  on her thighs and freed his belt. Sarah'seyes widened as he leaned over her, his  body pressed between her legs. Before she could work her feet free of the railings to thwart his intent, he had reached through theopening of  the slats and looped  the  belt  around one ankle. He threaded the tonguethrough the rails and looped the other end around the other ankle and cinched it with  aclever knot. Now her ankles were firmly tied  and held  to the railings, her knees posed over her head without him having to exert his weight against her.

“Herne.” She yanked against the  cuffs holding her wrists to the same headboard. Her voice trembled. She hated it, hated herself. “Don't.”

He braced a hand on either side of her  head and eased down between her tremblinglegs. His hips were against her upturned ass, his rigid cock against her weeping, bare pussy.

Furious tears filled her eyes. Not from a  physical fear but an emotional one. He knew it, she could see he knew what she was feeling, as if her psyche were as laid opento him as all of her orifices. She wanted to  hate him for it, was sure she would, but atthis moment in the darkness there was just  fear and desperate need. She saw images just behind her disintegrating shields, images  of death and gunfire, her ex's closed and resentful expression. A message pounded in her head behind all of that, a truth she wastoo frightened to face.

She wasn't even sure what  message she was trying to give him with her one word protest, but she thought Herne  knew. It terrified her that he might know her heart and body at this moment better than she did.

“You asked for more, Sarah. I’m going to  give you more.” He nuzzled her ear, licked her neck. “But I won’t stop. I’m going  to fuck you so well you’re going to  loseconsciousness. This will all be a dream. You  won't be sure if you want to savor it orregret it. But you won't forget it. Not ever.  I'm taking away that option.” He hesitated, staring down into her face, and she sensed  something there, something she did notunderstand. “The other two choices, to savor or regret, those will be yours.”

He rose on his knees above her and unfastened his trousers. The thick, pale cock came free as he lowered the zipper, revealing he wore no underwear. Her mouth went dry. He took the  trousers to his knees and  that was all. He leaned forward, holding the