Dangerous Temptation (Dark Dream Duet #1)(59)

I could tell by the size and heft of the body that it was a man, but it was too dark, even the moon obscured, to see his face. I didn’t even think to look. Sheer panic held me by the throat. I was thrown back to being a girl again, cornered by one of the Morelli thugs in the parking lot of my elementary school, his dark eyes wicked as he dragged me into the car.

A wail left my lips, something like a battle cry and I threw my weight into the heavy torso hard enough to rock him off-balance. There was a muffled curse as he fell, taking me with him. I landed on his chest, the air expelling from his chest in a hot plume over my right ear. Before I could scramble away, he was rolling us, pinning me beneath his considerable bulk.

Fear clawed at my insides, tearing me up.

I struggled so hard, I thought my heart might burst.

In the squirmish, the earbud fell from my left ear and a familiar voice cut through the dense night like a blade. “Bianca, enough!”

My body understood before my mind could compute it, freezing immediately. A second later, realization broke through the haze in my skull.

Tiernan.

I opened my mouth to yell at him, to demand to know why he was chasing me, why he’d scared me like that, but the only thing that came out was a long, low whimper.

“Bianca,” he said again, this time almost gentle, the tone rusty with disuse.

His hands softened around my wrists as he pinned them over my head.

“W-why?” I whispered as tears pushed to the front of my eyes. “You scared me.”

He made a noise in the back of his throat, part frustration, part sympathy. “I’ve been saying your name for the last five minutes. You were obviously too panicked to hear me.”

That was possible, maybe, but it didn’t explain why he’d chased me at all.

“I was out looking for your idiot self,” he growled, fingers tightening around my wrists again, his narrow hips and wide chest pinning me to the cold, damp sand. “Then you started running and I didn’t want to fucking lose you again. Ezra, Walcott, and Henrik are all out looking for you too.”

“But Brando?” I protested automatically.

“Chef Patsy stayed late to watch over him.”

A long sigh unspooled from my lips, faintly white in the cold air, fanning across Tiernan’s looming face. “You scared me,” I repeated softly.

“Good,” he grunted, not moving off me, instead, crushing his hips even tighter to my groin. “You need a good scare.”

“I can run by myself without needing your permission,” I countered, even though there was enough evidence to support the contrary.

“You are a stubborn, silly little girl. You don’t know a thing about Bishop’s Landing or the monsters that live in these streets. You want a run-in with Bryant fucking Morelli? You want to run into a man like me who’d see a pretty little thing like you lost and alone, and think he’d take his chances on hunting you down for himself?”

I noticed suddenly the thick, obvious length of Tiernan’s erection grinding into my core. Chasing me had aroused the predator in him. I could tell by the tension in his body that he was barely hanging on to his control. He wanted to rut into me on the public beach like an animal claiming his mate.

Despite the cold, my bones began to melt, my body growing pliant against his tautness, eager for the contrast. Eager for him.

He read the change in my posture correctly and a low growl rumbled through his chest straight into mine. “You like being hunted, little thing?” he hummed. “You like knowing you bring out the animal in me? That I get hard as steel imagining ripping a hole in these tight little shorts big enough for my cock to slot through straight into your wet cunt? I wouldn’t even have to prep you. You’re probably soaking wet for me already.”

God, he was right.

It should have been embarrassing, but I was beyond that. Maybe I couldn’t own my feelings for Tiernan, but I could own my body’s response to him. To his cruelty. It yearned for it.

I arched unconsciously, drawing a wicked chuckle from him. He collected both wrists in one of his expansive hands, the other trailing down my body, stopping to tweak a hard nipple before descending to my core which he cupped possessively.

“You want me to break through this virgin pussy?” he asked coldly, the heel of his hand digging into my clit deliciously. “You want me to take the last part of you I don’t already own?”

My body and free will were the only things I had left to call my own. So why was I so eager for him to possess them?

I didn’t have an answer.

All I had was a second heartbeat in my sex, throbbing for him. My pussy clenched desperately around nothing, already eager to be filled, already swollen. I wanted him to set his teeth to my skin, his cock to my folds, his hands on my limbs and rip me apart with pleasure.

“Fuck me,” I told him before I lost my nerve. “Fuck me, you monster.”

A shaft of moonlight pierced through the night like a blade and stabbed Tiernan in the eyes, making them glow unnaturally green. A second later, we were submerged in darkness again and Tiernan was moving, dipping down to whisper against my ear.

“Remember, little thing, you asked for this,” he warned.

And then his lips were catching mine, locking them in place and sweeping inside with a hot stroke of his silken tongue. I groaned and surrendered myself to the storm of longing he raged inside of my skin.