Loving the Beast (Skye Warren) (A) (2 page)

He pressed his face into her hair. She smelled so fucking good. His arms tightened around her. He forced himself to relax a fraction, to let her breathe. But not much, because he needed her. Needed to hold her, to feel her safe and whole with him.

There were questions he wanted to ask her. Like if he’d hurt her while he was dreaming. If he’d hurt her before tonight. He wanted to know if she was happy with him, truly. But he knew what her answers would be. She was fine, fine, fine. He wasn’t sure she’d ever tell him if she wasn’t.

She was too damn strong for her own good.

His heart had stopped racing, his nerves had cooled. She had that effect on him. His dick was also hard as a fucking flagpole. She had that effect on him too, especially with her ass pressed up against him.

He smoothed his hand over her hip and down between her legs. Soft. Wet. Fucking heaven.

A small hitch in her breath was the sound of her assent. That and the widening of her thighs, giving him more access. She always let him in, and at least in this one thing, he could give her pleasure. He could make her feel good. As long as he kept the dark side of him in check. As long as he kept the beast locked up.

*     *     *

E
RIN SHUDDERED AS
his thick finger slid through her folds. God, she was slick. She could hear the sounds of her wetness. Her cheeks burned with humiliation. It was one thing for a man to wake up hard. That was normal. Natural. But this? Her body was constantly primed for him. As if it knew he might roll on top of her and slide inside at any moment—and he did. She’d wake up clenching around him, her hips already rocking. She didn’t need to be awake for him to make her come. He gave her the best dreams.

Her body was ready, but her mind was… worried. Worried about the dark expression on Blake’s face, the loneliness in his stance. Sex distracted him, but it was a temporary fix. Then again, there was no permanent fix. Not to war. Not to the scars that covered his body. No permanent fix for the ones inside him.

“Wait,” she gasped. “Let me…” She wasn’t sure what she’d do. Stroke him. Tell him everything would be okay, even if it wouldn’t. Something, anything.

He was already shaking his head. She felt the motion of it just like she felt his arm tighten around her, his fingers stroke more forcefully.

“I want to make you feel good,” he muttered against her neck, and she was helpless then. Helpless except to relax her legs completely as he stroked and stroked.

He was hard and big against the small of her back. His fingers weren’t entering her. They just teased at the opening, taunting her. “Fuck me,” she moaned. “Please.”

He said nothing. His masterful fingers, his endless teasing was all the answer he would give. She bucked her hips mindlessly, trying to grasp those thick fingers, trying to fuck them. He wouldn’t let her, always pulling away, bringing her to the brink only to push her back again. She was gasping, crying, begging.

Only then did he move. But it wasn’t to mount her.

His shoulders were between her thighs, his head bent, before she could say no. She wanted his cock inside her, filling her up. Only then did she feel complete. Only then did she feel safe, knowing that he wasn’t thinking of anything but this.

“Stop,” she managed to say. Only that.
Stop.

He looked up, his expression severe. “You don’t want me to kiss that pretty pussy? You don’t want me to suck your soft skin or lap that little clit?”

Her sex clenched at his words. She wanted all of that. All of him, forever and always. There was something forced and almost frantic about the way he held her, as if he thought she might disappear. That wasn’t forever. And the way he’d sometimes go away, his eyes dark and opaque, the past almost a living thing in the room—that wasn’t always.

His voice got low. Seductive. “You want me to push my tongue into your slit, fuck you with it? Then I’ll shove two fingers inside—no, three. That’s all it’ll take to hold you still, three fingers inside you. You’ll be so full of me, you won’t be able to move.”

Her breathing grew heavy. “Blake.”

“That’s right, baby,” he said, and the approving note in his voice made her rock against him, seeking his lips, his tongue. His three fingers. “And while I’m holding you still like that, from the inside out, that’s when I’ll suck on your clit.”

She pressed her heels into the bed, pushing up, begging with her body. All she succeeded in doing was brushing her sex against his chin, and the bristles there made her ache in the best ways.

He chuckled. “Impatient.”

“Always,” she gasped.

“Then you aren’t going to like this.” He bent his head and finally, finally dragged a long slow lick from the bottom to the top of her slit, each millimeter as long as a mile, while she writhed and moaned. “I’m going to take a long time with you tonight. I’m going to spend a long time tasting this pretty pussy, drawing out every drop of that sweet come. I won’t stop until you’re begging me.”

“I’m begging you now,” she moaned.

He pressed a quick kiss to her mound. “Not yet.”

Not enough.
“Please.”

His expression was tender but his voice was stern. “Hands above your head, sweetheart. Hold onto your pillow.”

“Oh God.” She reached up and did as instructed, grasping the sides of the pillow.

Already her body was thrashing against her will, as if she could climb him, as if she could climb the peak—but she couldn’t. He wouldn’t let her until he was good and ready.

If there was one thing the man had most of all, it was patience. He drew out their lovemaking to last hours. They were both sweaty and exhausted by the time he was done. And most of all, incredibly sated. She longed for those nights as much as she feared them. They were more than a sexual act, they were a test, and sometimes it felt like they would break her.

He nibbled at her pussy with his lips and with light touches of his teeth that made her squirm. He spread her wide with his fingers and feasted, leaving no part of her untouched. He bathed her with his tongue until she could only clench and clench at nothing, could only keen in helpless unfulfilled desire.

It might have been minutes or hours or days that he played with her, tasting her and teasing her. Barely brushing her clit and then roaming back down to her slit. He fucked her entrance with his tongue like it was a cock, and it felt somehow sweeter than his cock—but less fulfilling too. She’d never come this way, never come at all, she’d be forever strung up on his tongue and fingers and relentless, bittersweet patience.

Only when she’d come again and again, when her body was wrung out, somehow tighter and more needful after climaxing three times, did he raise his head. She panted on the bed, clinging to the pillow, fabric clenched and sweat-damped in her hands.

“Take me,” she said, her voice soft and broken. He’d done that to her.

He pushed up, onto his knees, and for one heartbreaking minute she thought he would leave her like this. His eyes flickered with that distance, that darkness—the same one he had after every one of his nightmares. His broad chest expanded, and his breath came out in a harsh groan of giving in.

He was on her a second later, firm hips pressing her thighs open, chest looming over her, expression hard. His hands were on either side of her shoulders. He didn’t touch himself, didn’t guide himself inside. There was no need for that, not when their bodies fit together like sea and sky, like light and dark. His cock nudged her entrance and slid inside, stretching her walls, filling her up and making her clench down around him.

She gasped out a wordless thanks, gratitude and desire all tangled up in the physical sensation.

He bent his head. A whisper in her ear, hoarse and hungry, “Come for me. One more time, beautiful. I need to feel it around my cock. I need that hot liquid all around me and trickling down my balls. Can you do that for me?”

But he didn’t need to ask the question; she was already coming, already squeezing him tight and bathing him in her wetness. And then he was coming too, pushing back against her with heavy pulses of his cock and thick spurts of come deep inside.

Chapter Two

“E
RIN?”

She blinked once, twice, and the book came into view. It was large, with that old library smell she loved to breathe in. Even though she liked the smell of the book, she couldn’t say the same for its contents. They hadn’t managed to keep her awake—and she’d been reading out loud.

“Sorry,” she said, feeling sheepish. Bad enough that she would doze off while reading a book. Much worse to have been caught by Blake, who had read The Philosophy of History multiple times.

“I’m the one who should feel bad for boring you. I picked the book.”

“That’s only fair. I got to pick the last one.” Her choice had been the diary of novelist and eroticist Anais Nin. He’d read it to her while she’d attempted to bake homemade bread. It had turned them both on so much—explicit words in his deep voice, her hands plunging into soft dough—that they’d made love on the kitchen floor until the bread had burned.

So when they’d loaded the car for their trip, she’d offered to read him his choice while he drove.

He smiled faintly, his hands steady on the steering wheel. “Fair or not, I’m more than happy to have you pick our books from now on. I’ll save the Hegel and the Kant for my students.”

“Kant? I’m thinking you’re a bit of a sadist.”

“Only with books. And only in the classroom. When it’s just you and me, I only want to make you feel good.”

Her cheeks flushed, and judging by the amused expression on his face, he knew it too. If only there was a kitchen floor nearby. Unfortunately they were far away from Blake’s ranch-style home, with its seclusion and comfort. With every mile they drove, her stomach had tightened another notch. She’d hoped reading would distract her, but it had only put her to sleep.

Blake reached over and took the book from her lap. He put it in the backseat without taking his eyes off the road. Her gaze followed the lines of his muscular arms, his torso as it was exposed to her. How did he make even ordinary actions so sexy? She would catch him stroking the spine of a book or reaching for something on a high shelf, and her body would heat up.

“You should sleep,” he said gently. “We have another hour to go.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to trade off?”

“I’m sure. Go ahead and rest.”

“I’m not sure I can,” she admitted.

He glanced over, concern darkening his expression. She hadn’t said anything particularly revealing, but maybe he’d heard the tremor in her voice. “What’s wrong?”

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

“Erin. Baby.”

That was all it took to twist her up. Him saying her name. Him calling her the sweet endearment, the one he used when they were tangled up in bed together, so tight and twisted she wasn’t sure they could ever break apart—and she wouldn’t want them to. But this trip, this felt like breaking apart. His home was their cocoon, where their relationship had begun, where they’d fallen in lust and in love.

Of course they’d have to leave it sometime. They were engaged now. If anything, it was late in their relationship to be meeting his parents for the first time.

“I’m a little nervous,” she said on a soft breath.

“Ah, baby. I understand that. I do. But I’m going to be by your side the entire time.”

“I know,” she said, although she didn’t really. His parents came from old money. Heck, Blake came from money. And that was a foreign world to her. A scary one.

He cleared his throat. “Are you worried about it because of your mom?”

She didn’t flinch. Didn’t do anything that would give away how even the thought of her mother made her feel. It would only make Blake feel guilty, and he didn’t deserve that. He hadn’t done anything wrong. But maybe his father had.

Years ago her mother had worked as a maid at Blake’s parents’ house. Then one day, she hadn’t worked there anymore. Erin was young, but she remembered her mother crying. She remembered the anxiety, the tension. The fear. At the time she hadn’t understood it fully. She still didn’t understand it fully. All she knew was that something bad happened in that house when her mother had left.

“I just wish she would talk to me about it,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. She and her mother had always been close, but her mother had never opened up about that time, even when Erin was old enough to have understood anything. And when Erin had finally confessed who Blake’s parents were, her mother had seemed to shut down over the phone. At least after this visit they were going to visit her mother. Then she could see her in person and make sure everything was all right between them.

Blake’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “My parents are cold and manipulative. I’m not close to them, never have been. But I don’t think they would have done…”

His voice trailed off, and they drove in silence for at least half a mile, watching light poles whip by.

Erin had never voiced her fear of what exactly might have driven her mother out of the house all those years ago. It could have been anything. There was no reason to assume it was something truly bad, like inappropriate behavior or even an assault. And yet she couldn’t shake the possibility from her mind.

The fact that it would have been Blake’s father who had done it made her stomach turn over. Not because she would blame Blake—she wouldn’t. He hadn’t even lived in the house at the time, having left for college and never returning. But because some part of her wondered if he’d believe, even
want
to believe her, if she somehow found out it were true.

The same thing had happened with her only other serious boyfriend. He’d said he didn’t have a problem with what her mother did for a living. But when the truth had come out, that his father had come on to her mother, Doug hadn’t believed her. Would the same thing happen again? She knew Blake was a better man than Doug, a stronger one, more honorable. But she couldn’t be certain he would back her up if the choice was between her and his family. She never wanted to find out.