Into the Storm (Signal Bend #3)(27)

“Stay. I’m on the Pill.” Still breathless, she gasped the words out.

He stared down at her. They’d both be taking a risk—that she was telling the truth, and that they were both clean. He was, of course, but she couldn’t know that. They barely knew each other. But in some way, that wasn’t true. Maybe it was just the effects of the whiskey, but Show didn’t think so. Something about this woman, on some elemental level, was known to him. Only explanation he could think of for the way he felt, why she’d gotten to him, past the deadwood. He trusted her.

“You sure?”

“Yes. I want you inside me. God, I really do.”

Her words were like a hand around his cock, and he dropped over her again, holding himself against her core, feeling her wet on his tip. She closed her eyes and nodded as he pushed into her. Christ, she was so damn tight. He hadn’t expected her to squeeze him like that.

Before he was halfway in, her eyes flew open, and she pushed against his chest. “Wait!”

He stopped, concerned.

“God, you’re big. Wait. Slow. Better go slow. Start slow, anyway.”

He held. With a laugh he said, “Sorry.” When next he moved, he did so slowly, inching into her—which was beautiful torment for him. While he ground his teeth, mustering every ounce of control, she breathed through his progress, until he was fully sheathed. Then he held again, as much this time for his sake as for hers. He dropped his head to her shoulder and forced his own need back.

They lay perfectly still, joined together, for a long moment. Then Shannon whispered, “Okay. I’m good.” She shifted under him, flexing hard, and they both gasped.

He reached down and grabbed her hip. “No. You don’t move.”

“What?”

“Don’t move. No matter what. Hold steady.”

She wrinkled her forehead at him, clearly confused. He responded by pulling back and slamming home.

She cried out, and arched her back. He pushed her down and held her. “Don’t. Move.”

“I don’t—I want—why not?”

Show didn’t entirely know. Part of it was that he needed to keep control of himself. The touch of her skin on his over the course of this…what? Thirty minutes? An hour? A day?...had had something like a cumulative effect, and his skin was buzzing with arousal. He was sheathed in her tight, wet box, inside a woman for the first time in years. Inside this woman, who’d dug into his head. But it was more than that.

He needed her to be still because he felt out of control of everything. It was the whiskey, making him feel like he was alive. He wasn’t. Not really.

What they were doing was a mistake. A risk on every level. Nothing had changed in him. That realization was settling on him as the Jack wore off, and he needed control to hold it off and claim this moment before it was too late.

He pulled back and slammed into her again. And again, holding her down, keeping her still. He went at her hard, and she cried out with every thrust. And then she screamed. Breaking from his hold with a single, strong move he didn’t see coming, she wrapped her arms and legs around him as he pounded into her. She bit down into his shoulder, her nails hooked into the skin of his back, and she screamed. He felt her muscles clenching and releasing around his cock, and with a final, deep, wrenching thrust, he came, the force of it like a punch to the gut, and he groaned so loud and long that he felt his throat roughen from the effort.

As he pulled out and lay next to her, sweaty and breathless, laying his hand on her heaving breast, his head grew loud again.

CHAPTER EIGHT



Before Shannon opened her eyes, she knew she was waking up in a strange bed. She took a second and searched her head, trying to get oriented. Her head ached, actually, and her throat was dry—sore, too. And that wasn’t the only thing that was sore. Also, she was naked.

Show. She was in Show’s bed. She opened her eyes and turned onto her back.

She was also alone.

There was a door in the corner of the room that obviously led to a bathroom, but it was open. He wasn’t in the room. She sat up, pulling the sheet up and tucking it under her arms, covering herself. Okay. It was okay. Maybe he was just getting coffee or something—it wasn’t like he could bolt from his own room.

Okay.

Scooting back to lean against the wall at the head of the bed, which had no headboard, she made herself relax. He’d be back. She was hung over, but not outrageously so; she’d always held her liquor pretty well.

She remembered everything. Everything. And dear God.

He was gorgeous. She’d known that; the first time she’d ever seen him, he’d been shirtless, and he was massive and cut as if from marble. She smiled, remembering that she’d called him a Rodin. Had he understood the compliment? His huge arms and shoulders were covered in ink, and a rearing horse with a flaming mane and tail spread over his back from his neck to his waist. His thighs and calves were heavy with muscle, and around his right thigh, a few inches above his knee, was a wide band of solid black ink, only the letters H-O-R-D-E left uninked around the band.

On his chest, he had only one simple tat: the name “Daisy,” in script, over his heart. His dead daughter’s name, she knew that. The rest of what she knew was that she’d died in bad circumstances—but how could a child die any other way?—and that it had caused the end of his marriage. That much she got from the gossip she couldn’t help but overhear around town. She wasn’t yet really in the gossip loop. Since she herself wasn’t a big fan of that kind of talk, she didn’t mind.