Page 67 of Hell In A Handbasket
“A rotunda?” I throw my arm over her shoulders and follow her in. “This is what regular people call a gazebo, babe. Your word is weird.”
“My word is proper Latin. Yours is dumb.”
“And your use of formal English kinda implies you’re nervous.” I swing her to the left so her back presses to the lattice wall. Ivy tugs at her hair, and the shadows swallow her up. But not her smile. Not her dancing eyes. I follow her into the darkness and plaster my chest against hers, crushing the oxygen free of her lungs until it’s mine. Mine to gulp. Mine to hoard. “You’re nervous, because you’re horny. And you don’t like being the one to ask.”
“Shut up.” She wraps her arms over my shoulders and lifts to the very tips of her toes, vibrating under my touch and groaning as I slide my hands to her hips. “This is the first time in a really,reallylong time that we’ve been alone.”
“We’ve been here for two days.” I suckle on her lips. “Fuck, you taste good. How’d I survive thirty years without knowing you?”
“Bad luck.” She brings one leg up, hitching it over my hip, and with a smile and a little jump, she brings the second up and trusts all of her weight to my hands. “Even in Copeland, we’re rarely alone.”
“So you figure we could sneak out to a public park and fuck?” I unsnap her pants with a fast, practiced flick of my fingers, and slipping my hand into her panties, I find her wet and wanting. So fucking slick, my mouth waters and my throat burns. “This is the second crime you ask of me in one night, Chief. Are we to become a regular Bonnie and Clyde?” I take a step back and push her legs down, earning a glare and a growl of dissatisfaction. But I tug her pants to her ankles, and her panties right after, dragging them over her feet, then I slip my fingers into her pussy and inhale her gasp of surprise.
Of pleasure.
Desperation.
“If we go to prison, not only do we lose our jobs, but our crimes will be front-page news.”
Panting, she mewls in the back of her throat and rests her head against the trellis, the muffled thud sending whatever creatures living in it scrambling away. “Shit.” So quickly, so responsive, she squeezes my fingers and moans. “Archer.”
“We can’t even take our time.” I tear my belt open with one hand, fucking her with the other, and though I wish for better self-control, I step forward anyway and slam my lips to hers.
I need to taste her. To breathe the air she breathes. “I want to savor you. I want to feast on your sweet pussy and bathe in your pleasure.” I draw my cock free of my jeans and moan at the fiery heat that touches the tip.
She calls me closer.
Closer.
So fucking close, we may as well be one person.
“I want to spend hours tasting every inch of your skin and marking you with my teeth. But not tonight.” I straighten out and pick her up, pulling her legs around my hips and pinning her to the wall. Then I wait… not yet in her. Not yet home. I wait for her breath to slow and her chest to calm. And when her eyes come back to mine, dazed and wheeling, I charge forward and fill her up.
“Fuck!” I slam my lips against hers and swallow her cry of pleasure and pain. “Fuck, Minka.”
She rides my cock to the same rhythm as the music across town, bouncing her back against the trellis and taking me until I’m not sure I can tell where she starts and I end. Sucking my tongue between her lips, she feasts with a heady desperation they used to write about in the old fantasy stories. A succubus collecting souls. A vampire drinking their victim dry.
But I don’t mind a single bit of it.
“I love you, Minka.” I grip her thighs, bruising her when I should be especially careful. Slamming her against scratching vines when I know the thorns will mark her delicate skin. But she does this to me. She steals my common sense and burrows in, unlocking the darkness I’ve spent a lifetime trying to ignore. Exposing a part of my psyche I’ve tried so hard to forget.
She takes the man who trained himself to be decent—to benotMalone—and reduces me to nothing more than a beggar and an animal. A hunter who hasn’t eaten in too long.
“God.Archer.” She latches on to my neck, biting, so I swear her teeth break the skin, and a ferocious sting zings through my veins. But then she swallows me up again and squeezes my cock.
This.Thisis why I don’t fear death. Not if it came at her hands.
“So fucking tight.” I move faster, rocking my hips forward and slamming to the very base. Slipping my hand under her shirt, I peel her bra aside and cup her tit in my palm, tweaking her nipple and elongating the tip between my fingers. “Fuck, Minka. I can never get enough of you.”
“I’m close.” She drops her head back, exposing her neck and leaving me with the intoxicating view of her thundering pulse. It pounds against her skin, dancing like it knows this is a night for doing so in the moonlight. Tightening her legs around my hips, she draws me in and makes me work for our rhythm. “Archer?—”
I bring my hand down and circle her clit, and when she goes wild in my arms, bucking and squirming, I hold on extra tight. She mewls, desperately whining. Then she explodes, crushing my cock and drawing me to a standstill. Screaming, until I slap my hand over her mouth to keep the sound in.
That’s just for us.
And because she’s so fucking warm, so tight and delicious, I follow her over the edge and allow myself to come, too. I choke on my breath and bury my face in the curtain of her long, luscious hair. This isn’t home for us, and we don’t have our regular amenities. Our soaps that make up the foundation of what makes her smell the way she does. Her perfumes, I swear I could pick anywhere, anytime.
The scent I’ve become accustomed to washed off long ago.
