Intimidator (12 page)

He wanted her, he didn’t want her. He wanted to keep his honor intact as well as her. Most of all, he wanted to stay true to his first love.

With barely twenty yards to go, he received the first automated warning. The room was on fire. And she was inside.

He sprinted.

He tore through the lock sequence in seconds, ripped open the door, and beheld a large inferno in the middle and bonfires reaching toward the ceiling elsewhere. The bed was on fire. At the opening of the door, a torrent of smoke poured past him, blinding him, choking him. As he strode forward, he was already barking out a command to the Preyfinders to manually activate the fire suppression systems, and in between that, he was screaming her name.

Why weren’t the Preyfinders here? If this was rules again, he might kill them both.

Was she dead? Hurt? Lying somewhere among this fire writhing from burns?

“Willow! Willow, where are you!” He spun, tears streaming down his face from the terror that possessed him as well as from the smoke. If she were dead… An arm raised from the shadows and fire to the left then seemed to twist in an unnatural way. Stom leapt over and threaded past burning debris, racing to get to her. Was she on the floor?

But she wasn’t there. Or had he missed the place? Was she here? He spun, searching through the pall of smoke, but couldn’t see her. “Willow! Answer me.” He kicked and tore flaming clothes from the blazing piles, making sure she was not beneath them. Then he spun around in another circle, searching with his eyes, though they stung. “Willowww!”

The smallest sound drew him to look behind him, and above the roar and crackle of flame, he heard footsteps.

Suppressant foam hit the room as he ran out and he passed the two Preyfinders as he dashed up the stairs.

“Seen her?” he yelled.

They kept going but one jabbed backward over his shoulder.

When they’d opened the secret door, she must’ve dashed out. They’d not stopped her. Fucking Preyfinder rules.

He caught her in the corridor, tackled her, then threw her over his shoulder and left the house and burning room to the others. The subtle whine of an engine and lack of smoke out here said they had some way of concealing the fire. The Preyfinders had easily controlled it, yet without his intervention, they’d have let her burn.

Terrifying. It hammered home the fact that she was his and no other’s: his to throw away, to let die, or to guard from all the dangers of the universe. He could be her world, if he so desired. She could be his world, if he’d let her in. Complicated, so complicated. Where was the thousand page
Guide to Your Heart and Soul
when he needed it?

“Stom,” she demanded in a wobbly voice. “Let me down.”

He smacked her on the butt once and kept walking. Apart from a weak couple of kicks, she gave in.

Outside, beneath the trees at the edge of the lake, he waded into the water with her in his arms, letting the cold water soothe the burns on his hand. Weeping willows and the angle of this tiny cove shielded them from onlookers.

Though he hadn’t restrained her, to his shock, she made no further attempt to escape. Instead she slipped to her feet when he let her down then stood shaking from head to foot. She didn’t meet his eyes.

He watched her grimly as he dipped his hands in the fluid coolness. The water trickled musically.

“Do you have a death wish?”

Her shoulders slumped. Then she gave one wrenching sob and took his blistered hand at the wrist. At least it was the same one she’d shot. There were fresh tears on her begrimed face and more ran down through the soot as she gently turned his hand.

“I’m sorry.” She sniffed. “You’re hurt…I never meant to get you hurt. I’m so sorry.” Her sobs wrenched at his heart and he raised her chin with his other hand and caressed her cheek with his thumb.

Then, wordless, he pulled her to his chest and sat in the sandy mud at the edge of the water, among the reeds and water lilies, with her clutched to him. He bowed his head and kissed her hair.

“It’s okay. I’m not hurt badly. Small burns. It’s nothing. Can you breathe okay?”

She nodded.

As she kept crying, he could feel the shakes of her body but gradually she calmed.

She might have meant to escape but he didn’t care at all about that, not in the face of her misery over his pain. He’d been ready to explode with grief at the thought she might have died back there. And she – he took in a long, aching breath – she felt something the same. This was crazy.

He patted her, the water lapping at his knees where they stuck above the lake’s water. “What are we going to do, Willow?” he whispered.

But she only shook her head a little, laughed in a wretched way, and snuggled in closer.

She hadn’t meant to hurt him, but she had. And if he’d not returned in time, she would have died in the room.

“I thought someone would come to get me out before it got that bad,” she said to him, not courageous enough to look him in the eyes. He’d yell at her now, but he didn’t.

“I’m sorry they didn’t, but you’re safe. I’ve got you now.” Then he did make her look at him. The sadness in those blue eyes made her bite her trembling lip. “Promise me you won’t do that again.”

Why should she promise that? But before she could think it through some more, she nodded. Then she felt underwater in her shorts pockets, and pulled out the lighter. When she put it on his palm, he smiled and tsked at her.

The gentle forgiveness in his words and actions made her smile back. Was her mind going? All she wanted to do was please him and keep him safe. The tears kept dripping down her face. She sniffled and wiped them away, feeling stupid. When he only hugged her more, the trickle of tears turned into a constant flow and ragged sobs choked from her.

At last he struggled to his feet with her in his arms. “Come. You need something more than this. I don’t want you to say anything. Just let me…” With her head laid against his chest, she could hear him swallow. “Let me take care of you.”

The words,
I’m not a child
, came to her but remained unsaid. As her personal colossus walked up the steps and through the garden to the house with her cradled in his arms, she kept her eyes open and yet she wondered if she’d truly died and gone to heaven.

Let me take care of you.
For as long as she could recall, no one had ever said those words to her.

She clutched at his shirt, wrinkling her forehead as that thought sank in deep, and something inside her broke.

There was a shower upstairs next to the big bedroom so he carried her up there, wanting to wash away the smoke smell and still overcome by this grating, incessant need to make her whole again. That she’d almost killed herself trying to get away from here, from him, seemed the worst condemnation ever.

Under his feet were pretty rugs and a polished timber floor. He left footprints of soot and lake water on everything he walked over. The shower was big enough for a small war. The walls and floor were made of some pale stone and the shower bits and pieces were shiny and looked like poetry in metal. He didn’t pay any of this much heed for the woman in his arms meant so much more.

When she tried to speak he shushed her. He removed the collar from her neck, despite a momentary regret. It looked so right on her. Then he set to work undressing her, pulling off her wet T-shirt and shorts, kneeling to ease down her panties, getting her to step out of them, undoing her bra. He told his rude cock to stay out of it despite the unrelenting sexual reminders as he handled her pliant female body.

With her undressed, he swallowed, held his breath, and turned away to adjust the faucets. Then he urged her under the flow of water, found the soap and stopped dead, mouth dry. Nipples, breasts, and when he looked lower, the gorgeous way her legs met and her sex peeked out in that pretty divide…and his cock was so upright he’d snap it off if he tried to get it down.

“Hmm?” Wide-eyed, she looked as dumbstruck as him. “We can’t do this.”

No.
He cleared his throat and backed her further under the shower then began soaping her.

Amazing how he managed, even getting her to turn around so he could wash her hair and watching the water flow in rippling and twisting currents down her back. Her muscles were heaven under his hands. Smoothing away the residues of soot on her pleased him immensely. It hit some spot inside him that made him know, yes, he was doing good.

Her soft noises of pleasure made him have to stop once or twice to reassemble his brain, but he kept going. Clean her. Get her right.

Make her a woman again and not some soot-covered succubus.

Suck.
The word in his mind made his cock twitch and his fingers dug into her shoulders.

“Ow!” Willow flinched and spun around, almost slipping on the wet stone.

Her full breasts jiggled, swayed. The pink-brown centers drew him. They were all puckered up from the play of water over them, or perhaps from his rushed soaping. The two little taut buds had been under his palms, bubbles of soap catching on them…

“Oh,” she murmured, looking down at where his pants were pushed out by his erection.

When she didn’t raise her eyes and the very tip of her tongue emerged from her lips to curl moistly against them, he groaned.

This wasn’t why he’d kept her, remember? He needed to sort out her life, somehow. Stop her getting killed. Sex was just, was not… He inhaled a shuddery breath.

She twisted her mouth and took a partial step toward him, enough that she nudged his pants and, more importantly, pushed into the tip of his cock with her stomach. Her mischievous smile as she rolled her hips side to side, pushing at him some more, made him growl.

“Stop.” He took her shoulders, all too aware of what parts of her he could take hold of if he slipped his hands lower. “It’s midday and I want to get you fed. I doubt you’ve eaten today. Have you?”

As if pretending innocence, she shook her head, but moved into his cock. He
had
told her she should pay homage to his cock. Tempting, so tempting.

“Demanding little thing. Aren’t you hungry? For food?” He cradled her chin in his palms and toyed with her mouth until she opened and took one of his thumbs inside. The wet suction went straight to his groin. This time he shut his eyes, sure he’d come from her doing this alone if she kept it up.

“Mmm.” Her little female tongue licked all up and down the tip and she sucked audibly.

A pulse of heat ran up through his cock. Cornering her against the wall, getting her to open her legs, and shoving into her became his number one priority.

But when he felt her let go, he snapped open his eyes, and grabbed her arms.

“Come.” He steered her out of the shower, dripping, sexy, and ready for him. When he only threw a towel over her and began to dry her hair, she grumbled. “No, Willow. You need to eat.”

The things he made himself do, but he had this weird longing to do this at his speed, when he wanted to, and not when she demanded it. He ignored his steel-hard member and toweled her dry. Whatever need for sex raged within him clearly also consumed her, but he loved doing this his way, so much so that he began to tease her with his fingers beneath the towel – pushing the cloth into her cleft, rubbing the mounds of her breasts. When she was squirming into his touch, he put a lock on her neck from behind so she couldn’t move, and he slipped his hand down over her ass. He splayed his fingers to appreciate the shape of that delicious globe then pushed his whole hand between her legs.

Slick. Wet. Plump lips.

“This isn’t water down here. It’s you. Want something, girl?”

He laughed when she wriggled on his hand then again at her shocked stillness as he found the right spot, nudged his finger in, and ever, so, gradually, curved the tip of that finger up inside her. He left it there for a while, exploring no more than an inch of her but making circles and tugging at her lips, doing tiny thrusts, and widening her.

Soon her sobbing moans demanded he did more but he held back.

When he had her sopping wet, arching her spine backward to where he penetrated her, and panting, he murmured in her ear, “I think that’s enough.” He let her go. She staggered and seemed mesmerized.

Whatever chaotic thought had brought her to set fire to the room, she’d recovered. He made a decision then and there. They needed to talk. But after. After what? Feeding her? Sex? This animalistic attraction was screaming at him. And having her staring at him, wet lipped, glazed of eye, with her pussy so obviously swollen and ready for him that his toes curled looking at her,
this
was tangling up his brain.

He didn’t want a pet, but he couldn’t stop himself, not now, not when he had her like this.
Traitor
, whispered deep in his head. He wavered. Later, afterward, talk. Not
now
.

“Wait.” He stripped off his wet clothes, his shirt, pants, and underwear. Experimenting, pleased at how she avidly watched him, he ran his hand up and down his cock. She watched that too.

When she went to say something, he added, “Don’t speak.”

He wondered how much this lust within her would let him go. Willow hadn’t seemed a woman to obey if she had other notions. “If you speak, I promise you, I will tease you all day and all night with my tongue on you down there, and I won’t let you orgasm.” He flicked his finger at the door. “You first. To the kitchen downstairs.”

She huffed out a big exasperated sigh, while eyeing his erection, but then she turned and headed out the door.

The exaggerated wiggle of that ass had to be deliberate and he found himself not breathing. She taunted him. This was a fascinating game.

With both of them naked, collecting everything from the kitchen was a painful test in how to ignore a nude woman. She helped him gather a bowl of fruit, fresh bread and cheese, and they took it all to the dining table.

“Stand there.” He pointed to the floor in front of a chair then sat in it. His cock bobbed enough to attract her gaze. “I’m going to feed you and I’m going to play with you. If you make a sound, I get to bite you somewhere.”