Ultimate Sins (33 page)

She stared back at him, the aching sadness and pain he glimpsed inside her tearing at his guts, ripping his soul apart.

“Are you angry with me?” he asked as she moved before him. What he wouldn't give to be able to decipher the expression on her face now.

“No. Should I be?” she asked.

“If the question has to be asked,”
she had once said,
“then no doubt I should wonder if there's something you're guilty of.”

“There's no anger,” she sighed then, her voice drawing a frown to his face before her next question had him tensing. “Would you hold me, Crowe?”

Hold her? She had to ask him if he would hold her?

“You don't have to ask, fairy-girl,” he assured her, opening his arms and drawing her to him. “I'd hold you anytime.”

Her slight weight settled across his thighs as she tucked herself against his heart. Her head rested against his shoulder as he held her close to him and waited.

He'd been forced to take her to the jail such a short time after John's revelations to her concerning her ex-husband that Crowe hadn't had a chance to discuss them with her. To allow her to rage, to hate, to do whatever she had to do.

That thing with the Carters was over, he'd known that the minute they left Archer's office. But her silence, the heavy burden her shoulders seemed to carry, hadn't eased. It hadn't gone away. The sight of it assured him that the darkness he could feel moving through her, around her, would have to escape sooner rather than later.

“It was a shock to hear about Stoner,” she finally admitted. “For seven years I've had to convince myself you didn't love me, or I couldn't have survived, Crowe. When you did come back into my life then I had to convince myself it was to capture Wayne, because you never told me any differently.”

No, he hadn't, he admitted. He'd made mistakes he should have never made where she was concerned. Hadn't said things he should have said. Had said things he damned well shouldn't have.

“Do you remember when I came to you after you tried to leave to meet Cami that night, after she and Rafer were together?” he asked her.

She'd dropped the note at her former friend's feet, asking her to meet with her as they had met with her during their teenage years. For a while Wayne and Mark Flannigan had decided Amelia was a bad influence on Cami, in some way. They had kept the girls separated for more than two years during their early teens.

Her head lay against his chest, fingers splaying as though to absorb his heat.

“I knew who you were the moment you covered my mouth with your hand that night,” she whispered. “It was like having my midnight fantasies suddenly come to life.”

“When I realized you were still risking yourself for us after Wayne had learned what happened that summer, I nearly had a stroke,” he admitted, running his hand over the ultrafine material of her blouse sleeve. “Nothing was worth the risks you were taking for us,” he went on roughly. “Nothing. Because if I lost you, Amelia, then my family would lose me as well. You were always my first priority. The knowledge of that put talons of guilt into my soul at times, but I couldn't change it. Protecting you was important, if not more so, than protecting the last of the family I possessed.”

Tipping his head to stare down at her, he found himself trapped in the gleam of her gaze even as darkness shielded the color.

“Wayne forced me to marry Stoner.” She admitted what he already knew. “Had I not married him, Wayne would have had Cami arrested as well as you and me. He said it was the only way he could be certain I stayed away from you. But I think it was because he believed you would come for me.”

He touched her head, stroked her hair. Touching her brought him pleasure. Just touch, it didn't matter where. The feel of her skin, the silk of her hair, the warmth of her against him. He couldn't find the words—he couldn't describe what she made him feel.

“Why didn't you tell me that summer that Wayne was beating you?” Would she answer him this time or find another way to distract him?

“There was nothing you could have done, Crowe,” she said, surprising him. The answer was given with gentle acceptance and a knowledge that the past could never be changed. “I couldn't leave with you at the time because you were constantly moving, according to Clyde. Besides, even if I could have left with you, you would have had to return, according to your parents' will. And the Slasher was waiting.” She looked up at him then. “I understand why you went after Stoner. It wasn't something I could have understood then. No matter who it was. The teenagers he attempted to rape—he deserved to die for that. They're children. You don't hurt children. But it can't be about me. Killing someone for hurting another person who has the option of walking away is still murder. Killing Wayne at that time, just because he hit me, would have stained everything we felt for each other with blood.”

But he would have done it.

Had he known for a fact Wayne was abusing her as severely as he now realized, it would have pushed him over the edge.

Cupping her face with his hand and tilting it up so he could stare into her incredible eyes, he let his thumb brush over her lips before flipping on the radio.

Cupping her cheek once again, Crowe allowed all his furious, hungry possessiveness to rise to the surface as his head lowered, his lips a mere breath from her ear.

“You are mine! Mine by God, and no one but no one will hurt, abuse, or dare to fucking harm what's mine, ever again.”

*   *   *

Fury, hunger, possessiveness.

Territorial.

Her thoughts of earlier suddenly flared in her mind.

The primal staking of claim couldn't have been more obvious if he'd branded her.

“Yesterday, tomorrow, and by God forever. You. Are. Mine.”

He nipped the lobe of her ear as her entire body flushed with a sudden, sensual heat and melting sexual submission she had no idea how to combat.

She didn't want to combat it.

“We need to talk,” she whimpered as his lips brushed against hers, rubbing over them with heated friction.

“The night I came to you, after you left Cami that note, it was like coming out of the cold, Amelia. Suddenly I was too warm, too sensitive. Everything was rushing back to life and I had no idea how to handle it.”

Her lips parted and a shocked breath rushed past them. And he took complete advantage of it.

Covering her lips fully with his, he let his tongue lick past her lips, taking quick, erotic tastes of her as her arms curled around his neck and she began taking, just as she had been giving.

Shifting on his lap, holding his kiss as she struggled against his restraining grip, she gave a satisfied little murmur as she broke contact, slowly straightening to her feet.

The dim glimmer of light from the radio case was just enough glow for Crowe to see that escape wasn't her objective.

Slender, graceful hands moved to the closure of her jeans, easing the little metal buttons free as Crowe quickly went to work on the buttons of his shirt. He was shrugging the material from his shoulders and tossing it to the floor as she wiggled from the snug jeans.

Tugging his boots off, he dropped the last one to the side of the chair, never taking his eyes off her as she released the last buttons of her blouse and pushed it from her shoulders, letting it flutter to the floor.

“We need to talk.” Her voice was breathless, that little catch of lust in her tone hotter than hell.

The sound of it hardened his dick further, causing the blood to pound through the heavy veins in quick, hard pulses of excitement.

As she released the catch of her bra, he quickly released his jeans and shoved them off his hips and down his legs. She dropped her bra to the floor. Clad only in a pair of incredibly tiny boy shorts, the mound of her pussy barely hidden, she caused a rough, barely muffled groan to pass his lips.

Kicking the jeans and boxer briefs free of his legs, Crowe gripped the painfully hard shaft of his cock, his fingers tightening on it as need for her began to beat at his brain.

“Are you going to take those sexy-as-hell panties off?” he asked suggestively. “As pretty as they are, I'd rather see all that pale pink, pretty flesh it covers.”

“This?” Her fingers caressed the material covering her pussy. “Like this, do you?”

His gaze slid from the pretty white boy shorts over the rounded flesh of her tummy. He was momentarily distracted by the hard tips of her nipples but finally managed to drag his eyes to the sensual depths of hers.

A small smile titled his lips as sensual promises gleamed in her gaze.

Oh hell yes. His fairy-girl, his sugar elf—the temptress he'd always known she harbored in that lush little body was finally making herself known.

He lowered his gaze again, drawn helplessly to the sight of those graceful fingers pressing beneath the band of her panties.

Hidden, silken fingers met what he knew had to be dew-saturated, slick and swollen, aching-to-be-tasted-by-him folds.

“Let me see.” He'd been pushing her to this, certain that behind her shy demeanor Amelia was hiding the sexual wildcat he'd sensed lurking.

“Do you deserve to see?” The husky, teasing whisper of her voice had his balls drawing tight to the base of his cock.

“Fuck no,” he groaned. “No man deserves to see that sweet, pretty pussy. But I'd die for it.”

He'd die for
her
.

He'd killed for her and he would do it again.

In a fucking heartbeat.

“So I saved myself for an undeserving lover?” She had him on the edge of his seat, his fingers stroking over his dick as need for her throbbed beneath the swollen stiffness.

His lips parted as he fought to draw in air, her fingers delving deeper. Pushing inside the silky, wet flames of her swollen inner heat.

“So undeserving,” he agreed. “But dying for just one sweet taste.”

Her fingers slid free. Stepping to him she laid two fingers, the fingers that had possessed the tight depths of her pussy, against his lips.

“Just a taste?” she suggested as his lips parted to taste her slender fingers. “Is a taste enough?” Her fingers paused as they tucked just inside the low band of the material hiding her intimate flesh from his gaze. Crowe licked his lower lips, the taste of her lingering against his tongue.

“I said I didn't deserve it, not that I wouldn't gorge myself once I shoved my tongue in your sugar, elf.”

Her eyes widened, then narrowed, her fingers still resting beneath the band of her panties.

Yeah, he grinned back at her; that was where the nickname originated.

Then slowly, temptingly, she pushed the material of the boy shorts over her thighs, the dim light of the clock not nearly enough to fully appreciate the treasure she was revealing.

Reaching out, Crowe flicked on the low lamp next to the chair. The light wasn't bright enough to shock her senses, but fully illuminated that stubborn little fairy tattooed beneath her hipbone.

The golden glow spilling across her creamy flesh painted her a tempting, exotic treat he was dying to experience.

“Sugar elf, huh?” she murmured, stepping between his spread thighs.

“And I have a hell of a sweet tooth.” He couldn't take his eyes from the swollen, glistening folds of her pussy, the tempting, sweet dew lying along the swollen folds, heavy and slick, gathering in small droplets ready to spill to his tongue.

“So taste me,” she whispered, her breathing growing rougher, faster as she lifted her shapely leg and placed her small foot on the arm of the chair.

Crowe needed no further invitation.

Sliding from the chair, he did a quick turn, gripped her hips, and twirled her around, quickly setting her shapely rear on the chair cushion. Kneeling now between her thighs, he was entranced.

Rather than being thrown off balance or attempting shyness or confusion, she smiled that Lolita smile of hers, her thighs parting farther as her fingers slid over her thigh to stroke over the narrow, delicately pink slit revealed by the swollen folds that flared open at his touch.

He didn't give her a chance to change her mind. Leaning forward, his tongue distending, he tasted in a long, slow lick that had the sweet feminine taste of silky heat exploding his taste buds.

She slid lower in the chair as he lifted her leg, bending it at the knee to set her delicate foot on the edge of the cushion she sat on.

Parting the folds farther with his thumbs he watched the glistening slide of her juices easing from the plump, clenched entrance of her pussy.

“Don't tease me,” she demanded, staring back at him with gleaming sex-hungry eyes. “Let me feel your tongue tasting me, Crowe. Give me what you promised. Shove your tongue inside me.”

The words were barely past her lips when his head lowered and his tongue was suddenly tunneling inside the dew-rich, heated depths of her cunt.

Pushing her foot into the cushion, Amelia lifted her hips to the hungry penetration, her hands clenching on the chair arms as he set his hands beneath her hips to allow his tongue to penetrate her farther.

“Sweet heaven, Crowe,” she moaned. Her head dug into the back of the chair as she thrust against his teasing tongue, her cries deepening while lust, hunger, and need rocked her senses. He pushed her, drove her, his tongue fucking inside the sensitive depths of her flexing inner flesh as she lifted to each ravenous lick.

“I dreamed of this.” The words were torn from her desperation. “Oh God, Crowe. Oh God, don't let me be dreaming.” She had a sudden, horrifying fear that this was just a dream. She would wake up and he would be gone. Just as he had been gone so many nights before.

“Look at me.” The naked escalating fear overwhelmed her. Just as it had in her dreams. Until she let her gaze lock with his. Until she felt his lips surround the swollen, aching bud of her clit as his fingers thrust, hard and deep, rocking her, surging through her with sharp sizzling jolts of electric current.