Embraced

12

Marey awoke slowly the next morning, her eyes fluttering open, the dark beams of Sax’s ceiling the first thing she saw. Sax slept deeply beside her, his arm lying over her hips, his head lying next to hers as he kept her tucked close to his body.

He had awakened her in the early morning hours for a hot shower, washing her carefully, gently, before drying her and tucking her back into bed before crawling in beside her.

He had taken care of her.

She frowned deeply up at the ceiling, wondering if there had ever been a time when anyone had taken such care of her. She couldn’t remember it if there had. Perhaps as a child her parents had, but if so, she had been so young that those memories had been lost over time.

She had cared for them since she was a teenager. First her mother, who had conceived her only child in middle-age then contracted cancer when Marey turned thirteen. She had fought it for ten years, but she had been weak. So weak that her heart had given out before the renewed cancer had taken her.

A year later, her father had a stroke that had left him bedridden.

She could have hired someone to care for him. She could have deposited him in a nice little nursing home and resumed her life. But she loved her father. With his gentle smile and soft voice and his remorse that her life had been spent caring for him and her mother rather than being the woman she should have been.

There had been no regrets. But there had been no time for relationships. She had known her father would be gone within a short time, and she hadn’t been willing to desert him, to leave him to strangers to care for him any more than she had to.

But she had found an escape. From the pain and the depression of watching her parents dying in front of her eyes, Marey had found an escape in the books she loved. First as a reader, then as an editor. She had worked the past six years as an editor for an erotic book publisher. The books were blistering, incredibly hot. And for a while they had eased the dark, sexual fantasies that haunted her. After her father’s death…

She breathed in deeply. What a fool she had been. She had married the first man to ask her no more than a few months after having met him. Within weeks the rages had started. Within six months he was hitting her. It had been a horrible blow to her confidence. Within weeks of the divorce, she had learned that Vince had no intentions of letting her go. If he even suspected she was interested in another man, accidents began to happen.

She didn’t know if she could live if something happened to Sax because of her. To this point, Vince had always struck at her, but she knew Vince had never felt truly threatened that she would find someone else to share her life, or her money with.

It was all about the money and the power he thought it would bring him.

“If you don’t stop thinking so hard, I’m going to have to fuck you again,” Sax mumbled at her ear, his deep voice rumbling in his chest with morning drowsiness.

A smile quirked her lips.

“You play dirty pool,” she told him quietly. “Sometimes I have to think, Sax. This is one of those times.”

He grunted mockingly. “I don’t like how you think sometimes, have I mentioned that?”

He pushed the sheet away from her body before his hand flattened against her belly, his lips smoothing over her shoulder. She stared down at the rich coffee tone of his skin contrasting so exotically with her pale skin.

“Now, I would have never guessed that,” she countered, allowing the amusement to weigh heavily in her voice. “You’ve surprised me, Sax.”

He chuckled, a low sexy sound that had her womb clenching in response.

“You’re a smart-ass first thing in the morning.” He stroked her stomach slowly, his fingertips lightly drawing over her flesh, sending soft, though destructive sensations washing over her nerve endings.

It wasn’t so much sexual as it was caring…loving. She tried to steer clear of that. She couldn’t let daydreams get mixed up with reality. She had made that mistake once before.

He cared. She was certain he cared for her. Sax was often a brutally honest person, he rarely pulled his punches with anyone. But for three years he had moved on the outer edges of her life, always there, always watching her. He had never, not at any time, unleashed his infamous biting sarcasm on her. He had never looked at her with the brutal icy-eyed gaze she had seen him give others. He had never done anything but treat her with the utmost consideration and heated hunger.

Yes. He cared. And perhaps he could have loved, if she was strong enough to be as brave as she had needed to be three years before.

“Yeah, Ella calls me a smart-ass often,” she finally answered, her gaze going back to the ceiling as she smiled fondly, thinking of her friend. “Actually, I think her favorite insult is bitch.”

“Not hardly.” His fingers strummed over her hip. “Smart-ass I’ll accept though. Now what has you so solemn this morning?”

She could feel his erection against her thigh, but there seemed to be no haste in him to relieve his arousal. He touched her gently, easily. The caresses as calming as they were arousing.

“Just stuff,” she sighed. “I was shameless last night, wasn’t I?”

She heard the note of pride in her voice and almost winced.

“You were indeed shameless,” he chuckled. “And wet and wild. So fucking hot you were incredible.”

She turned back to him.

“Why do you share, Sax?” she asked him then. “You’ve said it’s for the women’s pleasure, but that doesn’t make sense.”

“Why not?” He propped his head on his hand as he levered up, watching her curiously. “Do you think I don’t find pleasure in it, Marey?”

“I wouldn’t find pleasure in seeing another woman touch you.” She frowned at that thought. She would feel murderous.

“And you won’t ever have to,” he promised. “But you can’t deny you enjoyed what happened last night with Daniel. That you haven’t thought of it, looked forward to it. I heard it in your voice, saw it in your eyes and your response. Why did you enjoy it?”

“Because I’m a pervert,” she snorted sarcastically. “Now your excuse?”

He laughed, a smile curving those sexy lips as he stared down at her reprovingly.

“Shame on you,” he growled. “You’re not a pervert. You’re a very sexy, very sexual woman. That edge of the forbidden is exciting though, isn’t it? Makes the pleasure higher, hotter. Maybe that’s why we like it. I don’t know. But it’s something I wouldn’t want to do without. Seeing you like that, embraced between myself and Daniel, your eyes dazed, your face flushed, pleasure swamping every particle of your being is addictive. It’s a high, baby, only unlike any other I’ve ever known.”

“Beats drugs, huh?” She rolled her eyes expressively.

His grin kicked in again, his chocolate brown eyes watching her closely, warmly.

She was so lost, she thought. She had lost her damned heart to this man so long ago and now she faced losing him.

“I love you, you know.” He said the words so simply, so matter-of-factly that for a moment, she was certain she hadn’t heard him correctly.

“Boy, you really like to play dirty pool,” she snapped then, anger, helplessness washing over her. “You couldn’t at least wait until this was settled? Until Vince was caught and I could make sense of any of this?”

She jumped from the bed, casting him a furious glare as she jerked the shirt she was using for a gown from the small chair beside the bed and pulled it on. He was lying back on the pillows, watching her somberly, his eyes piercing her, filling her with guilt.

“I like things clear,” he amended calmly. “Don’t play dumb, baby. You knew this was more than an affair when you went into it.”

There he was, just lying back in the bed, his erection tenting the sheet, staring back at her in that calm, solemn way of his. What the hell was she supposed to say? To do?

“I can’t even think about this.” She pushed her fingers through her hair in irritation. “I won’t think about this. Not until Vince…”

“This excuse is getting old.” His voice never changed inflection but it still hardened, grew deeper. “It’s like you pull it around you whenever you can’t face what’s growing between us. It’s a crutch.”

“That isn’t true,” she snapped back defensively. “He’s dangerous…”

“Because you refused to stop him when his violence escalated.” She flinched at the calm accusation, staring back at him furiously.

“It doesn’t matter why it happened.” She breathed in deeply, fighting to make sense of the clash of emotions rising inside her now. “I can’t make decisions about the future now.”

“I’m not asking you to make decisions, Marey.” His smile was a wolf’s snarl, predatory, confident.

Rising from the bed, completely unashamed of his nudity and the erection jutting from between his thighs, he stalked toward her.

“It doesn’t take a decision.” Gripping the neckline of the T-shirt with both hands, he tugged forcefully, ripping it down the front as she stared back at him in shock, gasping in arousal. “It doesn’t take anything from you, baby. I’m not asking for anything. I don’t have to ask. I know what’s mine and I know how to claim it.”

He pulled her to him, a strong, forceful movement as he gripped her hips. His head lowered, his lips covering hers, possessively, dominantly.

She couldn’t hold back her moan. There was nothing like Sax’s kiss or the way he held her to him. He seemed to surround her, his heat and his strength protecting her even as his kiss ravished her senses.

She couldn’t fight him. There was no fight in her. She could only grab his shoulders, hold on tight and absorb him into the very depths of her soul. There was nothing so hot, so tempting, so completely overwhelming as Sax’s embrace.

As his lips moved on hers, gentle and sure one moment, hard and possessive the next, Marey moaned in rapturous pleasure, her hands clenching on his shoulders, rubbing her body against him, loving the way his hands stroked her back, drew the remnants of the T-shirt from her body, and sipped at her lips with hungry demand.

This was what she had run from for three years. As insane as it sounded, and inconceivable as it was, she could feel him sweeping not just through her heart, but through her soul.

“I know how to love my woman,” he whispered as his lips slid from her lips to her ear. “I know how to protect her, and I know how to hold her. And I will hold you, Marey.”

He pulled her back to the bed, lifting her against him as he lay back, staring up at her with heavy-lidded sensuality as he cupped her buttocks in his hands, moving her until she straddled his hips, lifting her until the head of his cock seared the sensitive opening of her pussy.

“Ride me,” he growled, arousal thickening his voice as his hand raised to her heaving breasts, his head lifting to allow his tongue to lick at her hard, distended nipples.

Marey whimpered at the sensuality of having the control, staring down at him, his body reclining beneath hers, his cock hot and erect, waiting to pierce the willing depths of her pussy.

She lifted up, her breath hitching as she moved against him, whimpering as his cock began to penetrate the slick, heated entrance to her hungry pussy. Her head fell back as she took him slowly, working the hard flesh inside her by increments, driving herself crazy with the incredible sensations streaking through her body. She loved it. Loved feeling his cock stretch her, burn her.

His hands were on her breasts, fingers tweaking her nipples as she rode him with long, slow strokes, fighting the need to rush, to drive herself to madness on the thick stalk of flesh filling her.

“There you go, baby,” he whispered as he tensed, obviously holding himself back as he allowed her to take her pleasure as she needed.

Her juices were flowing between them, the sounds of wet, suckling flesh echoing around her, driving her arousal higher. His hands, warm and slightly calloused, rasped her nipples as his voice crooned in that rough, deep baritone and sent her mind spiraling with her pleasure.

Her pace increased, their moans mingling as the intensity and the heat grew. She could feel her womb tightening, fingers of fire racing through her pussy. She was going to come…

“Sax. Harder. Oh God, fuck me…” She couldn’t gain the force she needed, the rhythm he used to power into her and throw her over the edge.

She shook, shuddered, fought her own weakness and pleasure in her drive for ecstasy.

His hands moved from her breasts to her hips. They held her still, his fingers clenching there as he began to move. He drove his cock inside her with enough power and force to cause her to arch in his arms, a strangled scream leaving her throat as her orgasm began to race through her body.

She convulsed above him, her thighs tightening, her hands clenching into the muscles of his chest as she felt herself come apart around him. His strangled groan met her scream as he drove in one last time, tensed further and then found his own release. Hard, rapid jets of semen burning her, the feel of the silky fluid flooding her, throwing her higher.

The aftershocks seemed to last forever. She shuddered through them as he drew her to his heaving chest, his lips pressing to her forehead, his hands stroking over her back. Soothing her. Easing her down from the almost painful heights of pleasure.

“Can you walk away, Marey?” he asked her then, his voice gentle, understanding. “No matter the risks, can you really walk away?”