“As you say. But when it is over, I want his body autopsied. I want to know exactly who this poor fool is.”

Nathan heard the men leave the room, but only distantly, as if his mind had been swaddled in the same numb paralysis as his body. The light glowing beyond his bandages dimmed by slow degrees as he tried to make sense of it all. Gisele was dead; her parents murdered. And he was dying.

His vision blurred and darkened, and Nathan fell away from himself into the void, where there was nothing, no color or sound, no scent or sensation. Later, on some level, he sensed the doctor and the nurses working on him, their frantic efforts to preserve his life. He felt sorry for them, but he didn’t resist the darkness. His time was done, and he was ready to go, to be where she was.

Non, mon frère. Two vivid blue lights flared to life in the center of the nothingness, like blazing eyes opened for the very first time. Tonight you do not die. Tonight, we live.

Chapter 16

Rowan slept on Meriden’s chest as if she’d never made her bed anywhere else. She didn’t move except to breathe, although after what they’d done over the last five hours she was entitled. He only resisted the satisfied exhaustion that wanted to drag him off into the dark so he could watch her and think.

He’d never hear or say the word “kiss” without smiling again. And he was going to have that fucking chair bronzed.

Meriden hadn’t really expected her to stay, not after the tornado of lust they’d generated between them. She’d been on her feet all night, it was late, and he knew it was asking too much. When she’d taken his hand, he’d almost promised to keep it G-rated and simply sleep with her.

Until he’d guided her into his bedroom, and she’d turned those big, beautiful eyes on him.

Her smile had changed from sleepy to feral. “I get to go first.”

She’d gone off on him, peeling away his clothes and running her hands all over him. He knew his size was unsettling to some women, but Rowan felt him up like a greedy kid in the backseat of a car, unable to decide what to touch first. Then she started using her tongue, and dimly recalling that he wasn’t squeaky clean for her, he’d muttered something about jumping in the shower.

“Later,” she purred as she pushed him back on his bed. “Maybe.”

His body clenched as the images kept rolling through his head. He’d held himself back to let her have her fun first, and he’d paid for it. Overtime. By the time she’d stripped him bare he’d had to grab the head rail to keep from ripping off her clothes. Then she’d draped herself over him, licking at his mouth and his neck and his nipples, her body insinuating itself between his thighs, her belly rubbing the straining column of his cock until the head rail began to make ominous cracking sounds.

She’d lifted her head away from his navel to enjoy his expression. “Don’t let go, or I’ll stop.”

“No,” he promised her, not knowing if he meant letting go or her stopping.

She made a humming sound as she inched lower, nuzzling him. “You smell good.”

He smelled like come, and her, and had to agree through his teeth. Then she cupped him, caressing him with her cheek a few times, her fingers stroking the knot his balls were tying themselves into before she slid her tongue along his shaft in a long, slow, wet glide from root to head.

He’d never been a man to beg. “Kiss it.” Shit, he was begging.

She pursed her lips and touched them to the hot, tight skin stretched over his cockhead. “Like that?”

“Put me in your mouth,” he told her. “Suck on me.”

Her lips parted over the wet, seeping eye and slid down to engulf him, and she sucked lightly, teasing him with little flicks of her tongue until his hips arched off the bed. She moved her head with him, just keeping the tip of his penis in her mouth, and he groaned his frustration.

She released him but kept her lips against him so he felt every word she whispered. “Want a little more, Farm Boy?”

“All of it,” he muttered, looking into her glowing eyes. “Give me everything.”

She gripped him at the base and then took him in, pushing him deep, sucking harder as she worked her head over his, up and down lower, up and even lower, until he felt the tip of her nose graze his body hair and the hot slick drag of her mouth enveloped him. She held his hips with her hands as she sucked his cock, keeping him from thrusting hard as she kept it slow and deep. He swelled over the soft abrasion of her tongue, and cursed as she scored him gently with the blunt edges of her teeth. It wasn’t a kiss, she was eating him up from the inside out, and when he couldn’t take another second of it without coming he let go of the head rail and reached for her.

Meriden had fully intended to keep his promises about kissing her, but his dick had other priorities, like getting inside her as fast and deep as it could. He rolled her under him, scooting her up the bed as he wedged himself between her legs and rooted against her.

“You’re getting warm,” she whispered, smiling as she felt his searching cock bumping into her mound. “Warmer.” Slyly she shifted, preventing him from breaching her folds. “Colder.”

Meriden reached down between them, seized his penis and pushed her folds apart with the head.

“Very warm.” Her eyes narrowed as he found the small niche at her core and squeezed the aching bulb inside it. “Hot.” She groaned as he jerked his hips, driving another inch past the muscles and into the tight flutter of her inner tissues. “Oh, hell.”

Meriden cradled her head and pressed her face against his shoulder. The need to plow into her until he flooded her sweet little cunt to overflowing was so strong he wasn’t sure he could make it pleasurable for her. “Hold on to me, okay?”

“I’m holding, I’m—” She lost the rest as he thrust straight in, as far as he could go, and then dug her fingers into the sides of his arms. “Sean.”

The viselike restriction of her body, the shock in her eyes, and the way she said his name settled everything for him. She hasn’t been with anyone, not in a long time. And if he was an ass for taking pleasure in that discovery, so be it.

She’d chosen him.

Somehow the wildness became entangled with tenderness, and Meriden nestled, relishing the relief of being clasped inside her as much as the reassurance of having her body all to himself.

“Right here, baby.” He kissed the top and bottom of the O that her lips formed, and caught her gasp as he worked a fraction deeper. “Don’t let go.”

Meriden recoiled and pressed back in, making the stroke an almost continuous motion that slid into the second breach of her body and then the third. Penetrating her was as darkly satisfying as feeling her nails bite into him. She was drawing blood by the time he brought her to the edge, but it only stoked him more. When she stiffened under him and went over, he fucked her harder, driving into that quivering clench of slick muscle and convulsing nerves without mercy. The sounds that spilled from her were as beautiful as the astonishment in her eyes as he held back and kept stroking.

Sean made it good for her even as his own pleasure built, past erotic, past anything he’d ever felt. Having sex had never been much more than relieving a need and blowing off his frustrations. Fucking Rowan was like wallowing in pleasure, soaking it up until he felt it pouring out of him in waves of heat and sweat and sensation, raining all over her long, sinewy body, and then he was lost in her, his mind gone, and there was nothing more in the world than his cock and her pussy, and planting himself inside her, giving her all that he was, all he would ever be. . . .

As the morning light crept in to gild her curls, Meriden remembered something she’d done after the last time, when he’d started drifting off. She’d gotten out of bed, he assumed to do the girl thing and clean up, but then she’d come back almost right away. She’d knelt beside the bed, holding his hand. When he’d opened his eye to see why she was on the floor—he had some ideas, but he wasn’t sure he could give her anything else to play with for a couple of hours—he caught the glint of something shiny.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing.” She sounded odd, and when she climbed in next to him she was shaking. “Hold me, will you?”

He’d held her then, but this morning he gently eased her away, smiling a little as she grumbled something and rolled over onto her back. He sat over her, looking at each small, beautifully shaped breast until he had to lean down to brush his mouth over each soft areola. They beaded for him, silently pleading to be sucked, but he drew the covers back and exposed the rest of her, his eyes intent on the dark curly triangle beneath her navel.

He slid around her, moving down until he hung halfway off the end of the bed, and nudged her legs apart until he had enough room to lie between them. Her sex was dark pink and faintly swollen, the black curls still damp from the last time he’d filled her up. He wasn’t sure how many times he’d done that, only guessing she was probably too sore now to take him again.

He’d settle for a kiss.

Wherever Rowan was, something strong and warm wrapped around her, holding her there. She could feel cool air trying to get at her, tickling the damp peaks of her breasts, but the warmth spreading up from her hips flushed throughout her torso, tingling across her nerves and tightening in her chest. Whatever had her was doing something wet and wicked down there, a sweet, moist stroking between those sensitive lips and the almost painful throb of her clit.

By the time she opened her eyes she was hot, her breasts swelling and her hands fisting, and she saw the head and shoulders of the man who had his open mouth pressed between her legs. He slid his hands up to cup her breasts and squeeze them, and then she saw that he was watching her, too, his eyes burning like her skin as he laved his tongue up and down. He rubbed her clit as if it were a piece of candy to be licked before sliding down and pressing inside the tender ellipse of her body, extending his tongue in long jabs as he fucked her with it.

He’d started doing this a while ago, she thought, dazed by the force of the surging heat forged by his mouth. He’d been kissing her pussy while she slept.