Unleashed: Volume 2 (Unleashed #2) (6 page)

It was too big a risk.
I still had a whole summer ahead of me on Harlan’s ranch, a summer
of long, hot nights. But I had to spend them away from her. Kara
tempted me like no other, but this wasn’t going to happen. It had
to be that way.

§

A couple of days later
I was packing up the truck. Harlan and I were leaving for a two-night
trip. He wanted to check out a ranch in Wyoming, buy some new steer,
talk to a guy about a grain swap. He had a whole list of things. I
was happy he’d asked me to come along. I’d been hoping to get a
chance to talk to him. He was sitting on a gold mine if he’d only
open his eyes to it.

Right now, I could see
the writing on the wall. His ranch was going belly up. But he had a
great property, set right in the middle of a perfect patch of
wilderness, creeks and trails and all sorts of shit city folk would
love to come enjoy. He could turn it around, open his place up to
tourists. They’d pay, I knew they would. I didn’t know how it
would go, whether he’d be up for it, but I’d try to talk to him.
He might just go for it.

Kara came out to the
barn, all honey and sugar, pretty little flowers on her dress. She
had a package she was delivering into the cab of the truck, some corn
bread wrapped in a tea towel and a thermos. Like she was carrying
that night she had come down to my cabin.

“For me?” I had to
ask.

She nearly jumped out
of her skin, whipping around with a hand up to her chest. Guess she
hadn’t seen me.

“What are you doing
here?” she asked, like it was strange for me to be in the barn.

“I’m getting ready
to head out with your daddy.”

“On the two-day
trip?”

I nodded my head,
watching her. She looked so pretty when she flushed up, startled, her
eyes wide, her breathing fast.

“I didn’t know you
were going with him.”

“Gonna miss me?” I
couldn’t resist teasing her. She looked so skittish, like I might
eat her up. She was right about that.

“Bet you are,” I
continued. Her eyes widened. I liked getting her riled up. She sure
did it to me.

She looked down,
blushing now, the pink rising up into her cheeks. And spreading down
along her collarbone, up to the top of her halter dress. No sleeves,
no straps. A man could pull that elastic right on down and gain full
access to paradise. I stepped closer.

“I didn’t know you
were going on the trip,” she repeated.

“You already said
that.” I stepped closer.

“What are you doing?”
she asked, jumpy, her eyes darting over to the entrance.

“What do you mean?”
I wasn’t going to touch her, not with her father about to come down
to the truck any second. Hands-off, that was my policy. But it
couldn’t hurt to look, up real close, nose pressed against the
window.

“Why are you walking
over to me?” She looked pinned, trapped, though I wasn’t holding
her there. I’d like to.

“Can’t a man say
goodbye?”

“What are you going
to do?”

“What do you want me
to do?” I knew I was playing with fire, but who could resist it
when it burned so bright?

“Declan.” She
glanced away, down, anywhere but right at me though I was pretty
close now. Close enough that I could close the gap real fast, reach
out and pull her to me in the blink of an eye.

“Yes, Kara?” I
liked saying her name. Even more than that, I liked her saying mine.
I wanted to hear her whisper it into my ear real close in the dark,
breathe it out needy, scream it out loud when she came.

The screen door slammed
up at the big house. I knew Harlan would be by real soon. He’d want
to get on the road.

“Guess I’d better
get going,” she said. She didn’t move.

I brought my hand up
over her head against the wall of the barn. I leaned over her. She
wasn’t a tiny woman, she had real womanly curves and long legs, but
right next to me she felt small and fragile. I could tell she was
trembling. I could smell her strawberry hair, so soft. Her eyelids
flickered closed for a moment, like she was about to swoon.

“You OK?” I
whispered, real low in her ear.

“Mmm,” she
murmured, swaying slightly toward me.

Still in that low
whisper, I told her, “I’ll be thinking about you while I’m
gone. How you tasted in the barn. And that moan I heard you make when
you watched me get my cock sucked.”

Her eyes flew open,
wide. I pulled back, shoving my hands into my pockets and taking a
few steps away.

“You do the same now,
y’hear?” I flashed her a grin like it was no big deal. Like I’d
told her to say hi to her grandma for me.

She stayed pressed
against the wall, breathing fast, her breasts heaving up and down,
her tiny waist below. I just about rushed back and crushed her
against me, pressed my lips to hers, the hell with it all.

Instead, I tipped the
brim of my hat to her. Such a gentleman. Then I climbed into the
truck with her father and drove off with a raging hard-on for his
daughter. Not such a gentleman after all.

§

We came back from the
trip early. Some meeting had fallen through, something else had come
up back at the ranch. I didn’t feel like being out on the road with
Harlan anymore anyway. He’d shot down my idea for wilderness
tourism like I was an idiot. He didn’t see the point in it, didn’t
believe anyone would ever pay to come out and do ranch work.

When you put it like
that, it did sound stupid. Who would pay to do hard manual labor? But
that wasn’t the point. You had to sell the idea of it, the lure of
the wild. I’d seen it work at the other ranch where I’d spent my
winter. I knew the idea had legs and I was pissed off that Harlan
didn’t see. He was going to drive his ranch right into the ground
and Kara’s future along with it if she didn’t get out in time.
That’s what he was determined to do, but he was too blind and
stubborn to see it.

Down at my cabin, the
door was ajar. I didn’t like that. I’d spent one too many nights
in mixed company, crashing in places where I didn’t have my own
space and I couldn’t lock anyone out. Now that I had it, I was
never going back. My place was my own. No one messed with it. I had a
Swiss army knife in my back pocket. Slowly, I worked it into my palm
as I silently eased open the door.

There, on my bed, lay
Kara Brooks. She had her shirt pulled up and a full breast in her
hand, kneading and stroking it. Her jean shorts were unbuttoned and
wiggled down her hips. Her panties were pulled down. She had her hand
on her pussy, her fingers deep up inside of her folds as she moaned
and gasped and writhed on my bed.

“Uh! Oh!” she
called out in need, pleasuring herself with fast, urgent fingers.
Tossing her head to the side, she played with the aroused, erect
point of her nipple while she turned her face into my pillow. She
breathed deep, taking in my scent.

I thought I might
explode. I stood there, unable to move, not believing what I was
seeing, my cock as hard as a rock.

“Declan,” she
exhaled, eyes closed, completely unaware that I stood there watching.
Her fingers feverishly circled her clit and she moaned. She was
getting close. So was I, standing there watching my deepest fantasy
coming to life right before my eyes.

It couldn’t be
happening. That was the bed I touched myself on, the bed I’d spent
long nights with my hard dick in my hand wanting her. I couldn’t be
watching her pleasuring herself on that same bed, my bed. Kara, the
untouchable, innocent farm girl, the one I’d want but never have,
playing with her own tits and gliding her fingers in and out of her
slick, needy pussy while she fantasized about me. Holy shit.

She writhed on my bed,
arching her back up. Her fingers worked in and out of her slit, fast,
urgent, rubbing her slippery clit like she’d die if she didn’t
come. Then she jammed her fingers up inside of her, deep. And she
called out my name. “Declan!” Her body jerked and shuddered, her
fingers way up inside of her, milking herself as she sighed and
shivered, coming down from what looked like a spectacular orgasm.

“Kara.” I stepped
into the room.

Flushed, breathless,
she looked up at me. Then she panicked. She jackknifed up, pulling
her shirt down and starting to button her jeans.

“What are you doing
here?” she choked out.

“I live here.” I
strode over to her on the bed.

“I didn’t think you
were back. I just came in to—”

I was on top of her
before she could say anymore, nervous excuses tumbling out of her
gorgeous mouth. I grabbed her wrists and stretched them out above her
head, trapping her hot little body beneath mine. She gasped under my
assault.

Taking my time now, I
wrapped her fingers through my own, twining myself around her.

“If I smell these
fingers,” I asked her, low and secret, just between us, “will I
smell that sweet pussy of yours?”

She gasped and twisted
beneath me, caught.

I breathed deeply,
inhaling her scent, the strawberry mixed with musky need. “I can
smell you right now.” My head down, along her neck, under her chin,
I scented her like an animal savoring its prey. Sweet, hot, juicy.

“I know what you’ve
been doing, Kara. I watched you. I heard you call out my name.”

“No,” she
protested, struggling beneath me. Her breath came hard, her eyes
half-closed with desire. The war within her raged.

“You know what
happens when you play with fire, Princess. You get burned.” Still
pinning her wrists with one hand, I trailed my fingers down her side,
searing a path along her curves, stopping at her waist. I parted her
legs with my large, powerful thigh and pressed the full, steel length
of my cock down against her sex. She bucked underneath me, half
trying to escape but also wanting more. A throaty groan escaped from
her parted lips. Right after an orgasm, she still had to be so
swollen and sensitive.

“Worst thing is,” I
continued, rocking my hardness against her, knowing she’d be wet
and slick for me. “I’m going to make you love it.”

“Oh!” she cried
out, tossing her head to the side, nearly wild with it already.

“Declan. I need you,”
Harlan called from outside.

I need you. Got that
right. Panting, we looked at each other. I cursed and rolled off of
her. I ran a hand through my hair, pulled my shirt down and headed
out to be of service.

Of course when I got
back she was gone.

Now

5 a.m. I’d spent the
night tossing and turning on my looked-good but hard-as-a rock black
leather couch. Kara was sleeping soundly, alone in my sumptuous king
size bed.

She’d been a virgin.
A fucking virgin, like in medieval tales of chastity. Were there even
24-year-old virgins in the world anymore? Apparently I’d found the
one and only. Like a unicorn.

Crazy thing was, last
night had felt like my first time, too. That sounded like bullshit,
but taking a woman had never felt like that before. My mind had this
funny way of keeping going all the time, at night, while I worked,
even during sex. I always had 10,000 things milling around up in
there. But not with Kara. With her, all I did was feel. I’d been
100% locked-in on her and her alone, completely mesmerized by the
heat of her, the sounds she made, the way she fit me so tight and
perfect.

She hadn’t told me
she was a virgin. She should have told me. But would it have made a
difference? A beast like me? The animal in me liked that I’d been
her first. No one else, I’d taken her. It satisfied something deep
and primal inside of me, to claim her and mark her as my own. I never
wanted her with anyone else. Now she was mine.

Only she wasn’t, not
really, just for the week. And this wasn’t a medieval tale of a
knight and his lady. I was just the guy with a large bank account,
large enough to lure the one that got away into playing out every
dark fantasy on my list. I had a long list.

I tossed on the hard
leather, that sofa not giving an inch. I’d never been a big
sleeper, the kind of guy who got his regular eight or nine hours
every night. But I’d learned over time how to force sleep to come
to me. Body-breaking physical exertion worked pretty well, first as a
ranch hand and then, after I’d gone from hired help to bossman, I’d
taken up working out. The adrenaline, the full-body discipline, the
soaked with sweat exhaustion I felt after an intense workout, that
usually got me down for the night. And if that didn’t do it, some
raw, nasty sex did the trick. Sometimes it took both.

Yesterday, I’d done
both. The sex had been through the roof. With Kara Brooks. I wasn’t
big on nostalgia. Honestly, I’d devoted way more time to erasing my
past than dwelling on it. Who wanted to sit there crying into your
soup about how your daddy had run off and your mom…well. It wasn’t
right to badmouth the dead, now was it? The addictions that had
hounded her her whole life had finally caught up to her a couple of
years ago in an overdose. So, no, the past wasn’t something I liked
to think about all that much.

But Kara Fucking
Brooks. She’d been a difficult one to forget. And now she was back.

Sleep wasn’t going to
happen. I finally gave up and headed to my home office. I glanced
through the day’s news, watched a couple of market analysts’
podcasts, replied, filed and mostly deleted emails.

6 a.m. Time to hit the
gym. I grabbed my bag from the closet. Sleeping beauty didn’t move
a muscle. After pounding it out for two hours, sweat dripping off of
every pore, every muscle in my body screaming out, I returned to my
penthouse. She was still asleep.

She lay perfect in my
bed, her long golden hair splayed out across the pillows, her pink,
full lips slightly parted, the ultimate Disney princess awaiting her
prince to kiss her awake. Only I was the beast who didn’t become a
prince. I stayed lurking in the darkness, fucked her senseless for a
week, then turned her out again into the cold, harsh forest.