Make Me Say It (5 page)

He ran his tongue along the top, inner portion of her thigh, that strip of skin directly next to her sex. She knew she was probably wet there from her arousal. He gathered her juices with his tongue.

He looked up when she turned her head on the pillow and whimpered.

“Is it too much?” he asked her, his deep voice seeming to caress her prickly, sensitive skin.

“Yes. No. I don’t know,” she whispered miserably. How could she speak aloud what she was feeling in that moment, put words to the heavy, sweet ache in her chest?

He reclined on the bed again on his side, his groin pressing against her naked hip. She shut her eyes at the exciting sensation. He came up on one elbow, his face hovering over her, and cupped her jaw.

“Then we’ll use the vibrator again if it feels too intimate. But I’ll warn you, I’m not going to wait much longer before I taste you.”

She opened her lips to tell him
no
, that wasn’t what she’d been thinking. It’d been the intimacy of the unfolded moment that had crowded her consciousness, not anxiety about the shocking closeness of oral sex. But then he was kissing her, more gently this time, but forceful and demanding nevertheless. He pushed the tip of the vibrator again, sliding between her labia. The friction built so quickly. She didn’t want the mechanical caress, though. It was his touch she wanted. His fingers. His lips. His tongue. But the vibrator was nothing if not precise, and his kiss drugged her. Soon, she felt herself rising to the crest again.

He broke their increasingly wild kiss and studied her face with a narrowed stare. His gaze transferred to her flushed breasts and tight nipples.

“I can’t take it anymore. I want to be inside you when you come this time.”

“Yes,” she muttered, spinning from arousal.

He flipped onto his back and fleetly unfastened his shorts. Before he lowered them, he removed a condom from the back pocket. She lifted her head off the pillow, watching him as he jerked both the shorts and a pair of snug boxer briefs over his straining cock. His heavy erection sprung free and thumped onto his belly. Was it the restraint that redoubled her craving for him, the knowledge that she couldn’t just reach out and touch that straight, thick shaft or that plump, defined cockhead anytime she chose? It drove her crazy.

A moment of disappointment went through her when he knelt between her spread thighs a moment later and rolled on the condom. She wanted him in her naked. She wanted to see her own juices slicking the shaft and gathering beneath the thick rim of that cockhead. God, he really had transformed her into a needy slut, to be thinking such things.

She held her breath as he edged closer between her suspended, restrained thighs, his sheathed cock protruding from his body. He planted one hand in the mattress next to her waist. With the hand that was bound to the primary restraint above her waist, she reached with her fingers, touching his wrist, caressing his skin. It was the tiniest of caresses, but electricity tingled through her at the contact. His gaze shot up to meet hers. Had he felt it, too?

She felt something hard and firm next to her sex. He rubbed the head of his cock between her labia.

“Oh,” she mumbled shakily. He glided smoothly against her lubricated flesh, but the pressure was firm. It made her burn. She heard it: the wet, sucking sound of his hard cock moving in her soft, wet flesh. She grabbed at his wrist, her eyes fluttering closed as pleasure swamped her.

“Jacob,” she moaned.

“Was it the first time you masturbated, thinking of us? This evening?”

She opened her eyes, bringing him into focus with effort. The vision of him hovering over, one hand between his strong thighs as he manipulated his cock, so beautiful and powerful, and yet so focused on her: It left her tongue-tied. He stopped stimulating her clit for a moment. Her lungs unfroze and she gasped.

“No,” she said hoarsely. “I . . .” She bit her lip, embarrassment penetrating her thick arousal.

“You found me jerking off, Harper. You owe me this.”

It was his small, wry smile in the midst of the unbearably intimate moment that did it.

“I brought myself off in the bathroom at work. I’ve never done that before.”

Every muscle in his body looked ready to break from strain. One of them flickered in his tense cheek. He moved his cockhead, rubbing her again. She grew desperate. If he didn’t give that cock to her hard and deep soon, she was going to explode. Implode. She didn’t know which . . .

“Tell me, Harper,” she heard him say.

She lifted her head off the pillow. “
Fuck
me,” she wailed. “God, if you don’t fuck me now, I’m going to—”

She screamed. He’d given her clit one last, hard flick with the cockhead and then drove into her pussy. It didn’t hurt precisely, but the pressure was overwhelming. For a few seconds, her brain overloaded with sensation. His loud, harsh groan brought everything back into focus. He was crouched between her thighs now, both of his hands planted in the mattress. She watched through heavy eyelids as he thrust again, and his cock pierced her to the hilt. A snarl shaped his lips. He pumped her hard for several long, ruthless strokes. Harper screamed again, pausing only when his movements did.

She watched him through narrow eyelids, teetering on the edge of orgasm. He lifted one hand and spread it on her lower belly. He was so big, she felt like he was palming her entire being. His thumb dipped between her labia, rubbing her clit.

There
it was. His touch. She came against it thunderously.

Her fingers clutched at his wrist. It was the only contact she had with him, other than his cock throbbing deep inside her. She clung onto that wrist desperately as she shuddered in bliss.

He started to fuck her again as she came, resituating himself slightly, but still allowing her to hold him. Distantly, she heard him praising her. What he said was graphic and lewd, but somehow it sounded beautiful to her, solemn . . . sweet, even. He rocked her without mercy, his possession causing the bed to shake and her body to jerk and tremble beneath him.

“Look at me,” he demanded.

He withdrew almost completely, and then re-pierced her from tip to balls in one stroke. Her eyelids sprung open. Their groans entwined, hers incredulous, Jacob’s harsh. Savage. He repeated the stroke, but this time, he withdrew completely. The sound of his cockhead popping out of her wet channel emphasized the movement. His turgid cock flicked upward in the air slightly, freed from the restraint of her body. But no sooner had it happened than he dipped his hips and drove back into her pussy. She screamed at the jolt of hard, relentless pressure.

“I’m never going to get enough of your pussy.” Somehow, he sounded both amazed and bitter at his declaration.

He continued like that for a breathless moment, using the defined rim of his cockhead to create a suction in her liquid pussy, withdrawing and driving back into her until she was mindless with excitement. She writhed and panted, but she couldn’t move, thanks to the positioner. He’d made her his fixed target. She couldn’t escape his pounding cock.

The last thing she wanted to do was try.

She saw that he watched himself penetrate her as he took her with those ruthless strokes. His ass and abdomen muscles flexed tight, he drove into her again and again, grunting in undisguised pleasure.

“Never. I’ll never get enough,” he seethed after a boiling moment.

He drew out of her again, dipping his hips, and sinking his cock into her to the hilt. This time, he didn’t withdraw. He pumped her in short, staccato strokes that jolted Harper’s body on the mattress. His eyes seemed to blaze as he watched her bobbing breasts for a charged moment, and then he transferred his gaze to her face.

“I’m going to make you pay for this, Harper.”

“Pay for what?” she panted as her world shook and her body tensed against his onslaught. The friction was so good. She watched him through a haze of lust, but the sensations he created in her body felt sharp and lancing, almost cruelly precise.

“I’m going to make you pay for making me want you this much.”

He plunged, her breasts bouncing as they crashed together. She cried out at the sensation of him swelling huge inside her. He grimaced and lunged slightly, applying pressure on her clit. He unlocked the tension that he’d built in her so surely with a hard, subtle circle of his hips.

She ignited yet again at the feeling of him coming. She shuddered, the sound of his low, savage growl echoing in her ears.

She panted in the aftermath. The tension left his rigid body on one ragged exhale of his breath. He slumped over her, still supporting his weight on his hands, his head bowed. Perspiration darkened the hair at his short sideburns and his nape. Harper experienced an overwhelming urge to touch him, to tangle her fingers in his hair, to slick her tongue along his hairline and taste his sweat, to feel his naked skin pressed against hers and their hearts racing in tandem.

She opened her mouth to voice her request, but something else came out of her mouth.

“What do you mean exactly, you’ll make me pay for wanting me so much?”

He looked up slowly. Perspiration glazed his handsome face, chest, and bulging, muscular arms. She was reminded of his physical strength and endurance during lovemaking . . . the power he exerted over himself in restraint. His expression seemed to close off as she watched him. He hitched his hips and withdrew from her. A cry caught in her throat at the ensuing sting in her flesh . . . at the sudden deprivation of him.

“That,” he said, sounding a little regretful. He leaned down and touched his lips to hers. She inhaled shakily, craning up to brush her lips against his. He straightened his arms and looked down at her solemnly, perhaps reading the question in her eyes. “I’m being very hard on you.”

“I can take it,” she whispered.

“Maybe so,” he said, rolling over on his side. He unfastened the restraint of her right hand and reached across her to do the same for the left. “I’m not sure I can, though.”

What does that mean?

She opened her mouth to ask the urgent question, but she realized her hands were unbound. Suddenly, she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear his answer. Besides, she was free now to touch him. Instead of clarifying his enigmatic statement, she reached for him, delving her fingers into his thick hair. His gaze darted to hers. Was he about to emotionally withdraw like he had on the yacht?

Was he thinking of that other woman, the one she reminded him of?

“Come here, Jacob,” she dared softly, urging him with her hands.

Her heart charged in the silent pause that followed. At first, he remained unmoving beneath her pressing fingertips. His hesitation cut at her.

Finally, he came. Did he seem resigned? If so, even his resignation came with a flash of his singular fire.

He fused his mouth to hers, and his taste eclipsed her concern. She urged further, coaxing him by caressing and pushing on his muscular, smooth back, and then on his round, dense buttocks.
God help me.
He felt so good. She couldn’t get enough. Their kiss deepened. Pleasure suffused her when he pressed his entire weight against hers and she sunk into the mattress, a pleasure that was different but no less potent than the bliss he brought her while she’d lay there helpless, and he made love to her like a firestorm.

She lost herself for minutes, indulging in the dark, sweet addiction of his kiss. Why did she feel like he lost himself, too, and that perhaps this was a novel experience for him, as well . . . as much of a mysterious awakening for him as it was for her?

Abruptly, he parted from her and rose off the bed.

She’d been wrong in her idyllic fantasizing. He hadn’t been feeling what she had at all. She grew bereft watching him walk away. The evolving intimacy had been too much for him. She shouldn’t have pushed him. Maybe it was for the best.

It’d felt overwhelming for her, as well. She’d told him she thought she could handle a purely physical affair, and already, she was crossing the boundary.

He returned, pausing next to the bed. She watched him roll a fresh condom onto his re-stiffened cock, her heart jumping into overdrive.

She wasn’t sure what to make of his serious expression as he climbed back onto the bed and came between her suspended legs. He unclasped the clips that were attached to her thigh cuffs. Her legs dropped down to the soft duvet. He fell over her. He caught her mouth with his as the head of his cock nudged at her entry.

She cried out into his mouth as he slowly, but firmly, entered her again.

They came together differently that time, more tenderly, but with every bit of the former intensity and fire. He let her touch him while they made love. And she did: everywhere, each touch, each stroke, bringing her higher into thrilling, dangerous realms.

Afterward, neither of them spoke. Jacob held her fast. Harper lay with her cheek against his chest, wondering if it was only her that sensed the words that surrounded them like too soft whispers, or shouts that were too far in the distance to fully hear.

Jacob awoke in the dead of night at the sound of a woman crying out in distress.

“It’s all right, you’re okay, Harper.”

The room was almost pitch black. He knew from experience with insomnia that his suite only grew this dark just before dawn. Swiftly, he lunged and hit a button on the bed’s built-in console. A lamp illuminated. He twisted around to look at the woman in his bed.

“Harper,” he said forcefully.

There’d never been any doubt in his mind whose shout it was. A lot of women had slept in his bed, yet he’d recognized her frightened voice in an instant. There was a hint of the girl she’d once been in that cry.

She lay on her back, her chin twisted in his direction. Her vibrant hair was spread out on the pillow. The expression of tight fear on her face made something sharp twist deep inside him. He slid closer to her, planting his elbow next to her ear. He curled his arm around her head, stroking her hair back from her temple, while he caressed her neck with his other hand. She was damp from sweat, a result of her nightmare. She moved her lips silently, fear still tightening her face.

“Harper, honey. Wake up.”

“He’s got a knife!”

He started when she jerked in his hold at the same time she shrieked. Suddenly, her aquamarine eyes were wide-open, and she was staring straight at him. It only took Jacob a split second to realize she wasn’t
seeing
him, though.

“Harper, it’s me. Jacob Latimer. You’re safe. No one is going to hurt you.” He cupped her jaw. “Do you hear me?” he demanded loudly, intent on penetrating the fog of her nightmare.

Too slowly for his comfort, the fear and desperation faded from her expression. He caressed her cheek and leaned down to brush his lips over her temple and then her eyebrow.

“It’s all right. You were having a nightmare.”

“Jacob?” she muttered thickly.

He lifted his head to peer at her face. “You okay?” he murmured, smoothing the tendrils of her hair away from her ear and damp neck.

She glanced around the room, seeming to gain her bearings.

“I’m sorry. Did I yell?”

He nodded, studying her face closely. She seemed okay now, but confused. “What were you dreaming about?”

“I . . .” She looked up at him, her blue-green eyes reminding him of pure, untainted pools, when only moments before, primal fear had swum in their depths. “I don’t remember.”

How could the terror he’d witnessed have vanished so quickly? His stroking fingers paused. “Are you sure?”

She nodded, looking embarrassed. “I’m sorry I woke you. I probably should get up, anyway. It’ll be dawn soon, won’t it?” she asked, rolling her head on the pillow and squinting to see the time on a nearby clock. He used his hold on her jaw to tilt her face back in his direction.

“You said something about a knife.”

She stared at him blankly. “A
knife
?”

He nodded, searching her expression.

“That’s weird. I can’t remember what I was dreaming. But—”

“What?” he asked, when she cut herself off.

She shook her head. Her cheeks flushed a light pink.

“I guess it makes sense. I used to have a fear. About knives.”

“A fear?”

“Yeah, a phobia actually,” she muttered, her discomfort clear now.

“You mean you got anxious around knives?”

“More than anxious,” she mumbled, avoiding eye contact with him. “I couldn’t be around them. I’d panic. It was one of many phobias I had when I was a teenager. I was a mess, if you want to know the truth.”

“I do.”

She blinked and looked at him, probably startled by his firm, quick reply.

“No. You
don’t
, actually,” she assured thickly. She started to sit up, clutching the sheet over her breasts. He moved back reluctantly to give her room. “Don’t worry,” she said, leaning up on one bent elbow and finger-combing her long hair back behind her shoulders. “I don’t have any phobias anymore . . . or panic attacks.”

“How come?”

“My dad.”

“He treated you?” Jacob asked slowly, recalling that her father was a psychiatrist.

She nodded.

“Isn’t that a little . . .”
unethical
, he thought. “Unusual? For a father to treat his daughter?” he asked, repulsed by the idea, for some reason. She stiffened.

“My father was one of the most respected psychiatrists in the country, not to mention arguably
the
most renowned expert in the world in the field of hypnotism. He was the ideal candidate to address my issues.”

“Hypnotism,” he repeated, stunned.

“Yes,” she said, eyeing him warily. “You don’t have to look like that. It’s not witchcraft, you know. What’s more, he was completely successful.”

“He cured you.”

Her gaze skated away from his. “That’s right. Don’t worry, I’m not contagious, Jacob.”

She flipped the comforter back in preparation to get up. He caught her forearm as she started to slide out of bed.

“You’re glad?” he demanded. “That your father was the one to treat you?”

“Of course I am! You have no idea how anxious I was, how shut off from my friends and a normal teenage existence. I was afraid constantly. I’m a different person today, because of my father’s help.”

Her face was pale and tense. It came to him in a rush, how his abrupt, tactless questions must have struck her. Yet his curiosity still prodded at him. Did her father’s treatment have anything to do with why she never mentioned her kidnapping or their flight from Emmitt Tharp? Is that why she didn’t recognize him? No, that couldn’t be the only reason. She didn’t recognize him primarily because he didn’t remotely resemble that skinny, helpless thirteen-year-old kid. Jacob had made sure of that.

Maybe Dr. McFadden had merely done what any father would have longed to do when presented with a traumatized daughter. Had his treatment psychologically distanced Harper from the frightening memory of her kidnapping and her assault at the hands of Emmitt Tharp? Or had he tried to totally erase that handful of days and nights entirely from Harper’s childhood? Speculation and questions flooded his brain.

Until he focused on Harper’s anxious face again, anyway. He couldn’t badger her about it. Not now.

Besides, if she had forgotten, she was safe from the memories.

He
was safe from her remembering.

He nodded once, his hold on her loosening. “I’m sorry. I think a little of your nightmare rubbed off on me. You looked really scared. I shouldn’t have asked so many questions.”

He saw the tension melt from her sloping shoulders and graceful back. “It’s okay. I’m sorry for freaking you out. I guess we all have nightmares, right?” she asked him uneasily.

He nodded, reaching to stroke her silky shoulder, reassuring her even as he reassured himself.

Yeah. Everyone had their nightmares. The truth was, Jacob had some that involved a knife, too. Not just any knife, either.

The
exact
same knife that apparently still haunted Harper’s dreams.

* * *

Twenty Years Ago

After they’d locked the sedated dogs in the barn, he’d furtively led Harper over a freshly mown lawn to the edge of the forest. He removed his backpack.

“Climb up onto my back,” he whispered.

“
What
?”

“Your walk leaves a trail. I’ll wipe it when I go back. Just
do
it, Harper. Get on my back.”

Even though she looked exasperated, she put her hands on his shoulders when he turned around. He draped his pack in the crook of his arm and hoisted her onto his back. Willfully ignoring the sensation of her hands fastened on his skinny muscles and her breasts pressing against his shoulder blades, he entered the forest. Fifty feet in, he set her down next to an ancient, branchy oak.

“The angle on the house is good here, see?” Jake said, pointing toward a clearing in the trees. “I’m going back for a few minutes to do something. You stay here. If you see my uncle come out, or any other man come onto the property, hide up there,” he said, pointing at the intersection of the trunk and seven gnarly, thick branches. “There’s a hole in the trunk up there. Just slide right in it. You’re little enough to fit. I hide there sometimes from Emmitt, so I know he doesn’t know about it. If I don’t come back to get you soon, wait until you’re
sure
the coast is clear, and head in that direction.” He pointed to the west. He noticed her alarmed expression. “I’ll be back in less than five minutes. I’m telling you this . . . just in case.”

She caught his arm, halting him as he started back toward Emmitt’s property.

“You’re crazy. Let’s go. What do you have to go back for?” she hissed.

“There’s something I have to do,” he repeated, holding her stare as he calmly removed her grasping hand from his arm. “It’ll only take a minute.”

She looked mutinous. “I’m coming, then,” she stated, stepping toward him.

He caught her at her shoulders.

“You’re
not
. I’m sorry. I told you that you had to do what I said, and you agreed. This is something I gotta do alone. Don’t pitch a fit about it.”

The anger slowly drained from her face. Maybe she sensed his grim, sad sense of purpose.

“Okay. But . . . hurry,” she whispered tensely as he turned.

He merely nodded once. He turned and slunk back onto Emmitt’s property.

* * *

She had lead feet, Jake thought numbly several hours later. He hadn’t hesitated to tell her, either, as they hastened through the woods earlier. Now he heard her stomping on the cave’s dusty stone floor a good fifteen seconds before she appeared by where he knelt next to a tiny trickling waterfall.

He knew from years of solitary exploring that the waterfall filtered down through stone from the top of the bluff. It was pure for drinking. Caves like this one pervaded the Appalachian Mountains, but this particular one was different. It was unique to Jake for the sole reason that Emmitt didn’t know of its existence. Jake knew this from the simple logic that Emmitt had never successfully discovered Jake there, despite the fact that he’d combed the woods and hills looking for him on dozens of occasions in the past.

He’d brought them there because he was uncertain about the tranquilizer and how long his uncle would be knocked out. Here, he could keep Harper temporarily safe while he determined if Emmitt had picked up their trail.

Harper noisily plopped down on the earth next to him. At least her lack of grace wasn’t as important now that they’d reached the cave. Either Emmitt would fall for Jake’s false trail in the direction of Poplar Gorge, or he wouldn’t. If he picked up their trail to the cave, Harper could be as silent as a flea, and Emmitt would still find them.

During their flight through the woods, Harper hadn’t seemed to have any idea what Jake meant about moving through the woods like a ghost. How could Jake ask her not to make the grass rustle or bend, or twigs break beneath her feet?

She had no idea of what it meant to be prey.

Given the racket she’d made approaching him just now, there’d been time to duck behind the rocks and avoid her. Was it what he’d done back at Emmitt’s, his fear of being caught . . . or his fascination with Harper McFadden that kept him fixed in place? He was too weary to figure it out. He continued to wash his hands in the cool waterfall when she came and sat beside him.

They’d washed and dressed her cut wrists earlier. The white of the bandages flickered in the light of the small camp lantern. He was highly distracted by the feeling of her knee brushing against his lower leg. Half in dread and half in anticipation, he waited for her to speak.

But she didn’t.

Instead, her small, warm hands surrounded his wrists. He stiffened at her touch, but didn’t resist when she gently pulled his hands out of the streaming water. When she released him, he sat back on his haunches, his wet hands leaking onto his jean-covered thighs.

“Your hands aren’t going to get any cleaner,” she stated dryly.

He raised his hands to his face, palms facing him, and peered at them closely. His fingertips were as wrinkled as prunes from being underwater so long.

“What’d you do, Jake?” He heard her whisper from the darkness. “What did you do when you went back to your uncle’s?”

He lowered his hands and braced them on his thighs, rocking back and forth slightly.

“I killed Mrs. Roundabout.”

“Who’s Mrs. Roundabout?”

He was surprised and relieved that she didn’t gasp in horror at his confession. She’d asked the question quickly and calmly.

“My dog,” Jake answered dully. “Emmitt didn’t think she was my dog. But she was. Not that I owned her. Not like that. She was just . . .”
My friend.
He didn’t say the thought out loud. Harper probably already thought he was a stupid hillbilly. “My dog, that’s all,” he repeated lamely. He lowered his head and studied his knees. “All the dogs on Emmitt’s property are bought for the fights, so Emmitt thought Mrs. Roundabout was his. She wasn’t, though.”

“Fights?”

“Yeah. Dogfights. Men bet on a dog to win in the ring.”

“How do they win?” Harper asked, sounding puzzled.

“By taking down the other dog with its teeth and claws, injuring it until it can’t get up and fight anymore. Sometimes by killing it.”

“And . . . and people bet on it?
Watch
it?” she asked, her bewilderment and dawning distaste obvious.

“Yeah. They root on their dog. The one they bet on.”

She didn’t say anything for several seconds while Jake steeped in his foulness. His dirtiness. She had no knowledge of the things he’d seen, of the brutality he’d witnessed and taken part of, even if unwillingly.

“Why’d you kill her?” He winced at the word “kill” coming out of her mouth.

“Because my uncle made her fight, and she got hurt real bad. I was trying to doctor her, but she wasn’t getting better. She was in a lot of pain. Suffering. Since I was leaving with you, I didn’t have any choice.”

“How’d you do it?” she whispered.

“I gave her a lethal dose of the sedative. She’ll just have gone to sleep.” He sniffed and swiped at his cheeks. They were wet. He hated that she witnessed how weak he was. He clamped his eyes shut and took a deep, uneven breath. “It’s done, now. I guess she’s not suffering anymore.”