Before Dawn (3 page)

A sharp, cold edge pressed into the flesh of her thigh, sliced—and she screamed.

Ryan captured the flailing hands and squeezed but she continued to thrash about wildly, her legs pumping, tangling in the hot sheets. He called her name despite knowing she wouldn’t hear him over whatever dream demon was making her struggle against him with such desperation.

Manacling both her wrists, he jerked them over her head and let his body fall on top of hers, trapping her legs between both of his. When she continued to struggle, trying to twist out from underneath him, he let her have his entire considerable weight, deliberately crushing her. It was either that or slap her into full consciousness. The air was audibly squeezed from her lungs just before she went limp.

Ryan remained still, uncertain of her surrender. After several moments, he braced his forearms on the bed and lifted his chest off her. She sucked in a lungful of air, her body quaking. The sounds of her harsh breathing filled the room.

“Mercy?”

Another quivering breath. Very carefully, he released her wrists. Mercy didn’t take advantage of her new-found freedom. Gently, Ryan brushed back the tangled mass of hair covering her face.

“You were only dreaming. You’re safe.”

Underneath him, she inhaled slowly and shook her head. It was dark in the room, the only illumination provided by moonlight filtered through chintz curtains covering the window. He hadn’t been able to think about anything except getting to her when her scream had ripped through the air. Her face was pale and her eyes were closed. Tears glittered on her lashes.

Something clawed at his chest. Hoarsely, fiercely, he promised, “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Ryan started to sit up. Her hands shot out and clutched at the front of his T-shirt, keeping him above her. Startled, he looked down at her. Her eyes were wide open and filled with apprehension.

“Don’t go.” Her voice was raspy and broken. She swallowed. “Please. I-I can’t…be…alone.”

Oh, Christ.

Feeling inordinately clumsy, Ryan shifted onto his side. When the fingers fisted in his shirt clenched, he made noises he hoped were soothing and pulled her body into the curve of his. Her face burrowed against his chest, soft hair tickling the underside of his jaw. A slender leg slipped between both of his, naked breasts flattened against his abdomen.

He stroked a palm down the soft, smooth skin of her narrow back, stopping shy of the curves of her buttocks before retracing his path. As his blood heated and his body hardened, he wished he hadn’t been thoughtful enough to strip her of her torn and bloodied clothes before tucking her in.

McGinnis, you do
not
take advantage of vulnerable women.

Ryan reined in the impulse to pull her closer, to explore the tantalizing crevice—

The female body in his arms trembled. Her lips moved against his pulse, as did the soft globes of flesh against his abdomen. Ryan froze and cursed the thin barrier of his T-shirt. And he knew she couldn’t miss the erection pushing against her thigh.

Something hot and wet brushed the skin of his throat, and he cursed himself. While he was lusting after her, she was silently crying.

“Mercy?” He sounded like his throat was lined with gravel. “What’s wrong? Are the puncture wounds bothering you?”

God, he hoped it was the bite on her breast. He’d been trained to handle those types of injuries.

“He’s in my head,” she whispered, revulsion and fear shading her tone, and shook harder. “I can still see him, hear him. I can still…
feel
him.”

His hands tightened on her body. In his mind’s eye, he saw the scene in her office and blood pounded violently in his temples.

“Kiss me.”

Her quiet demand cut through the red haze clouding his brain. Ryan drew back and stared at her, not sure if he’d heard right.

“Please,” she whispered, tilting her head back and offering him her lips. Her short laugh was a rough, humorless sound. “I need to forget.”

He’d watched over her for three months and wanted her just as long. He’d fantasized about being with her, about spreading her underneath him, driving into her, making her cry out his name as he made her come again and again.

There was no doubt he wanted her, but not like this, not as a tool to chase away bad memories.

A hand cupped his bulging erection. Even through the thick material of his jeans, the heat of her palm seared him. He was lost.

Mercy felt the muscles in the male body curved over hers tighten even more and knew he’d surrendered. Not wanting to allow him time to reconsider, she felt for the tab of his zipper, making him groan in the process. A large, rough hand closed over her wrist, squeezed it hard enough to make her fingers go numb.

She looked up. He was staring into her eyes as if the anti-life equation was hidden in their depths, intense and scrutinizing.

“Last chance,” he warned, his voice deep and rough and impatient and pleading all at once. No smooth, insidious seductiveness. Nothing at all like the voice that had whispered in her too-real dreams. She shifted her head, her nose brushing against the skin of his throat, and inhaled. No cloying cologne masked his warm, masculine scent. She flicked out her tongue, touched the hollow of his throat and tasted salt. Something inside her eased, even as arousal uncurled its heated fingers in her lower body.

Above her, he hissed in air between gritted teeth, and then he was crushing her into the mattress. One hand plunged into her hair. The other hooked the back of her knee and spread her open even more. While his mouth sealed over hers, he pressed the hard length of his cock against her sex. It was her turn to suck in a breath and hold it. He rocked his hips, small movements so they never broke contact, making her shiver uncontrollably in response.

Oh, God.

The need to touch him, to know the feel of his bare skin against hers was a physical ache that made her entire body taut. Wanting desperately to explore him, Mercy struggled to free hands trapped between their bodies.

He immediately pulled back and muttered something unintelligible. Suspecting he thought she’d changed her mind, Mercy slid her freed hands into his hair and pulled his head back down, crushing his lips to hers. She slanted her head, parted her lips, and traced the seam of his mouth with her tongue. His own plunged into her mouth, returning her kiss hard enough to force her head deeper into the pillow.

As her fingers raked across his shoulders and down his back, she wrapped her legs around his hips to pull him closer. The heavy material of his jeans was rough on the inside of her thighs, but it only added to the stimulation bombarding her senses.

She arched her hips to meet the downward thrust of his, moaning darkly into his mouth when the center seam of his jeans rubbed and pushed up against her swollen clitoris. New fires started, making her melt at her core.

She went wild, tearing at his T-shirt until he broke off the wet kiss and pushed himself up and back onto his knees. He peeled off the T-shirt, tossed it aside, then reached for the fly of his jeans. He found her hands, trembling with desire and anticipation, already there.

She popped the button. He pulled down the zipper and brushed her hands aside, shedding the jeans, a lot hastily, a little clumsily, and stared avidly the entire time at her nude body laid out before him like an offering. Then he was as naked as she—all lean, corded muscles rippling under golden skin, his shaft long and thick and flushed with blood—and Mercy’s mouth watered. As he tore a foil packet he’d retrieved from the hip pocket of his jeans and rolled on the condom, her lips parted and her tongue flicked out to wet them.

A low sound broke from his throat. Before she could grab him and pull him back to her, calloused hands clamped onto her thighs and spread them until her muscles protested. He lowered his head, and the first lick of his tongue made her close her eyes. Her fingers tunneled into his hair, the short, cool strands a sharp contrast to the heat of his skin, the heat of his mouth.

He licked her, up and down, making her writhe beneath him before sucking her clitoris into his mouth and letting her feel the smooth edges of his teeth.

The orgasm took her by surprise, making fireworks explode behind her eyelids, her body arch in one still moment before the spasms took over.

Ryan licked the glistening juices trickling from her sex, loving the taste of her on his tongue. Here, she was as soft as silk, as slick as satin, and the thought of burying his shaft in her heated core made it twitch. He felt electrified. He was so close to release his body was shaking. If he had more self-control, he’d leave her.

But he’d never claimed to be noble.

And right now, he couldn’t even be soft and gentle.

Planting his forearms alongside her torso, Ryan moved his open mouth across her hips and up to her belly. He swiped his tongue over a patch of skin and, primitive bastard that he was, sucked it hard enough to mark her.

She gasped, her abdomen tightening.

Fuck.

Beating back the frustration that sliced through him, he lifted his head and looked up at her. “Sor—”

“No,” she breathed, “don’t stop.”

As if he needed encouraging, her hands went to his head and urged it back to her belly. Ryan lowered his head and picked up where he’d left off. To the accompaniment of low, needy sounds from the woman beneath him, he licked and sucked and nipped his way up her body.

When he reached her breasts and the small, round bandages covering the puncture wounds that marred her skin, something ugly filled him. There’d been no question the bastard was going to die. The reasons, however, had changed.

Despite the new tension, Ryan tenderly kissed around the bruised flesh surrounding the twin bandages before lavishing attention on the peaked, velvety tips. She sighed. Under his mouth, her breasts seemed to swell, filling with blood until her nipples were as red as berries.

He shifted, trailed his tongue along the skin stretched over her clavicle, buried his face in her sweat-dampened neck, then drew back his hips. He made a sound deep in his throat when the tip of his cock parted her labial lips and the heat of her burned him through the thin layer of plastic.
Jesus.
Her legs lifted, encircling his hips, her ankles crossing against the small of his back, and she arched her hips as he thrust down, sheathing himself in a single stroke.

His shout was muffled against the skin of her neck.
Fuck.
She was slick and wet and hot and so tight it felt like her inner walls were clutching at him. Three months of fantasizing, and she’d blown those fantasies away.

His hips lifted, withdrawing his cock until only an inch remained inside her before diving into her again and repeating the cycle. He wasn’t gentle. Mercy, however, only made little broken whimpers and held onto him as if he was her lifeline, her body straining against his.

Ryan reached between their sweating bodies, found the pulsing nub of her sex, and stroked it roughly. She came apart, crying out as her body quivered with an endless orgasm.

The ripples of her inner muscles along the length of his shaft broke what little control he had. With a shout, Ryan ground his hips into her as his body exploded and his mind went gloriously blank.

Long moments later, he collapsed on top of her, knowing he was probably interfering with her breathing but too exhausted to do anything about it at that precise second.

For a time, there was only the sound of their harsh breathing and the rapid tattoo of her heart in parallel with his. He started to doze off until a small hand cupped his shoulder and shoved. Taking the hint, Ryan rolled onto his side, pulling his penis from her body with a wet sound.

Sleep still beckoning, he let himself drift.

Wood creaked.

His eyes flew open, sleep forgotten, even as his hand reached for the Glock he’d placed on the nightstand before shaking Mercy out of her nightmare. Another creak. Both had come from downstairs.

“Wh—”

He slapped a hand over her mouth, cutting off her question. She stared at him, her eyes very wide. He put his mouth next to her ear and, in a very low whisper, said, “If I don’t call for you in five minutes, open that window and climb down the trellis.” He reached out and, without a betraying sound, swiped the two keys he’d placed beside his firearm. Pressing them into her hand, he said, “Go for the beige Volvo. It’s sitting out in front.”

He got off the bed as noiselessly as he could and crouched down beside it. He pulled Mercy after him, and she wordlessly complied. Only momentarily taking his eyes off the open doorway, he scooped up his discarded T-shirt and tossed it at her. She caught the garment, pulled it over her head, and wrapped her arms about herself as if the temperature in the room had suddenly dropped by ten degrees. Her eyes were very large and very dark in her wan face. But he didn’t have time to comfort her.