Hold (7 page)

But she somehow knew he wouldn’t do that. It would make him weak. It would give the other prisoners power over him.

Over both of them.

It was a gift that he’d done so for her last night.

So she did as he said and tried to ignore the onlookers. Instead, she fought through her physical responses to find the concentration to turn back to look at Cain again.

His expression was almost twisted with pleasure and effort and there was something mesmerizing about the primitive fire in his eyes.

She felt another clench of sharp pleasure. “Oh yeah.”

“Yeah?” he gritted out, his face only inches from hers.

She wasn’t sure exactly what he was asking but she answered him anyway. Her whole body was shaking—from the force of his motion now since she couldn’t do much pumping in her present position—and her vision was starting to glaze over again.

“Yeah,” she gasped, “Gonna come. Again. Oh God!”

His thrusting intensified even more—so hard now the bed squeaked even more loudly. His grunts grew even more animalistic, guttural sounds that turned her on more than she could begin to understand.

She huffed out choppy little sounds as the agonizing pressure in her pussy finally peaked.

She buried her face in the bedding to smother her scream of release as her pussy clenched around his cock.

She was conscious of his pelvis jerking clumsily against her bottom and she heard a rough sound as he came as well. But she couldn’t think of anything except the pulsing waves of pleasure, radiating from her center to saturate her body.

They left her feeling drained, exhausted, hot and deliciously satisfied.

And really, really embarrassed.

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She could feel Cain panting above her but she couldn’t bring herself to turn her head to meet his eyes immediately.

After a minute, he asked, “Okay?”

The gruff question made her able to unbury her head and look up at him. He was pulling his cock out of her pussy with a sloppy wet sound.

“Yeah,” she said with a faint smile. It was nice of him to ask—even in such an abrupt way. “That was pretty good.”

The corner of his mouth twitched up. “Yeah. Pretty good.”

The irony in his voice made her snicker a little and she felt better as she curled up on the bed, trying to hide her body as best she could from whomever happened to be outside.

Cain got up, pulling up his pants and walking back toward the bathroom. When he returned, he looked normal again. He’d even pulled his t-shirt back on.

“So what are you going to do now?” she asked, curious about what else there was to do to pass the time in his cell.

He arched one eyebrow and gestured toward the fork he’d retrieved on their outing earlier. “What do you think?”

She frowned at his curt tone but watched as he went back over to the machine he was putting together out of scavenged parts.

“Oh.”

“Where do you get all that stuff anyway?” she asked after a long silence.

Still focused on his work, Cain didn’t glance over as he answered. “You saw me.”‘

“I know you get them from around the Hold. But how did they get here? Surely prisoners aren’t allowed to bring wire and gears and all that with them.”

He didn’t respond immediately and for a minute Riana didn’t think he was gong to reply at all. Then he said slowly, “To keep up the pretense of treating prisoners humanely, the Coalition distributes supplies every couple of months. That’s where the 53

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towels, the bedding and the dishes come from. Sometimes they send down other things too. It just depends what kind of surplus they have on hand.”

Riana thought about that for a minute. “Distribute? Does that mean they dump the supplies in big heap and leave everyone to fight about who gets them?”

“Yep.” Cain was fiddling with a piece of metal. She couldn’t begin to guess what the metal used to be. “A couple of years ago, they tried to move to individual replicators for prisoners’ meals instead of the feeding-trough method they use now. But that idea didn’t last long.”

“Don’t tell me. The replicators were taken apart and made into weapons.”

Cain gave a brief nod. “Evidently, in less than a week. At least, that’s what I’m told.

The guards made a gesture at confiscating the parts but most of them are still around in one form or another.”

Obviously, Cain had scavenged many of those parts for his ungainly device.

“Oh.”

She watched him for several minutes while she tried to enjoy the physical satisfaction of the aftermath of her orgasms and tried to ignore the crude comments that occasionally drifted her way from outside the cell.

When it was clear Cain had nothing more to say, she sniffed and stretched out on the bed. “I guess I’ll take another nap.”

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It was still dark in the Hold. Lights out. Pitch black. It never got any lighter than this during the imposed nighttime hours.

She couldn’t see Cain. But she could feel him.

Feel every part of him.

His long fingers spanned her ribs, holding her lower body up off the bed. He knelt between her legs, forcing her thighs apart, splaying her wide open for him. With her feet bouncing awkwardly and her stomach muscles stretched taut, it wasn’t the most comfortable of positions.

Riana didn’t care.

She clung to the worn bedding above her head and futilely struggled to free herself from his viselike grip so she could pump her hips against the hard, fast thrusting of his cock. Her helplessness only intensified the frantic pressure building at her center and the moans she’d been making earlier transformed into little sobs of pleasure.

Cain made a guttural sound in the dark but there wasn’t light enough to see his expression. He’d awakened her a few minutes ago by rubbing his erection against her butt.

After a month of sharing this cell with him, her body immediately responded to the silent invitation.

Now she was naked on her back, her bottom several inches off the mattress, her pussy wet and aching with sharp, primal desire for him.

“Oh, oh, oh God!” Her voice was shrill and breathless, and louder than she’d expected. But the urgency of her growing climax made it impossible for her to stifle her vocal responses.

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Cain grunted in response, the sound of his breathing intensifying as his fingers tightened on her ribs. He almost never spoke while he fucked her, but by now she could read his grunt as one of approval.

He liked it when she was loud, when the pleasure was too much for her to control.

Riana clawed at the mattress and bit down hard on her lower lip. But it was no use.

Her choked cries grew even louder, echoing in the complete darkness and nearly drowning the sound of wet suction from his cock in her slick pussy and the choppy tempo of the slapping of their groins. “So good. Oh, oh, fuck. So good!”

Cain made another rough grunt, adjusting his hold on her so he could thrust even faster and harder.

She was washed in heat and perspiration, and her blindness in the dark only increased her helplessness against the overwhelming sensations bombarding her.

“Make me come,” she whimpered, arching her back desperately in an attempt to grind her pussy against his pumping.

“Yeah,” Cain gritted out, the unexpected words shaped without warning, his low, thick voice the most erotic thing she’d ever heard. “Come for me hard.”

She came. Hard. The climax sliced through her so powerfully she screamed as she shook and shuddered through the spasms.

He kept fucking her through the clenching of her pussy, pushing into her with several rough groans as his body tightened palpably. “Again,” he demanded in a strangled tone, still holding her body rigidly in place.

She didn’t know if it was the rough, irresistible authority in his voice or the intensity of the carnal sensations. But she came again, the second climax rising up on the heels of the first, making her scream even louder as the pleasure erupted once more.

Cain didn’t shout as he came. But he forced out a choked exclamation she recognized as the one he made when he came particularly hard. Then his body jerked and pulsed with his climax and his hands finally relaxed on her ribs.

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“Shut the fuck up!” someone yelled from outside the cell. In the disorientation of such complete darkness, she couldn’t even tell from which direction the annoyed shout had come.

Riana giggled as Cain released her, and she stretched out to try to ease her tight muscles. She’d become accustomed to the lack of privacy far sooner than she would have expected. She was occasionally hit with self-consciousness—if one of the other prisoners caught her in an unusual position. The other day she’d been fucking Cain as he’d sat on the edge of the bed, leaning back on his arms. She was on his lap, facing away from him, her legs folded beside his thighs, bracing herself on his knees and bouncing on his cock as frantically as she could. She’d been naked, her breasts jiggling wildly, while Cain had held himself perfectly still. She’d come three times, riding him with shameless eagerness. For some reason, when she’d noticed there was an audience of several gawking prisoners, she’d burned with mortification—although she’d come a fourth time, knowing she was being watched.

But usually she could shrug off the lack of privacy.

It was amazing what familiarity could accomplish.

Cain collapsed beside her, breathing heavily and stretching out beside her. He didn’t reach out to pull her against him. He wasn’t the cuddling kind. But she felt his eyes on her in the dark.

“I suppose you’re pretty proud of yourself,” she said in a dry voice.

He grunted. A sound she understood as agreement.

“I just screamed to feed your enormous ego,” she lied. “I thought you needed some encouragement.”

He grunted again. This one sounded amused.

“It wasn’t that good,” she continued, pleased with her success. Cain wasn’t an open or easy man, and it always gave her a thrill when she managed to connect with him in a way other than sex. “But you’re making good strides. Keep at it and I’m sure you’ll get better.”

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Her teasing got a more dramatic reaction than she’d expected. Cain rolled over on top of her—hot, heavy and damp with perspiration. She could feel his warm breath against her flushed cheek and—although she still couldn’t see his expression only inches away from her—she could sense his predatory smile in the dark.

He adjusted his body until he could slip one hand down between her thighs. His fingers explored her groin, stroking the hot, swollen flesh and her pussy, sloppy and wet from his fluids and hers. “Is that right?” he said, his guttural voice making her shiver.

“Yes.” She tensed as she felt his thumb close over her sensitized clit but she managed to say in a somewhat wry voice, “Don’t be discouraged. You’re still learning.”

He lowered his face until he could murmur in her ear, “How’s this for a lesson?”

Then he began to rub her clit in firm circles with his thumb.

She tried to resist—willing herself to keep control of her reactions so she could keep the upper hand in their teasing conversation.

But it was no use. Her body was already overly stimulated and now it was primed and ready for his touch.

It took less than a minute of his intimate massage for another climax to coil and release inside her. She bit down hard on his shoulder to keep herself from choking out the pleasure that pulsed through her.

“Forty-seven seconds,” he drawled, stroking her pussy as the lingering spasms died away.

“Arrogant bastard,” she replied without any heat. “That one was fake too.”

He actually laughed—a low, throaty sound she almost never heard from him.

She experienced a flush of pleasure at the sound.

He was so hard to figure out. And she had no idea how he felt about her.

She knew he loved to fuck her—she had ample proof of that—but that might be because she was the only available, willing female in his present circumstances. They 58

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fucked a lot, sometimes three or four times a day. But they didn’t have much else to do, and at least it was an enjoyable way to pass the time.

She knew he tolerated her pretty well. She did her best to make herself accommodating—even when he was silent and bad-tempered. She tried to be helpful and interesting, and did her best to be a good companion.

But she didn’t know if he actually liked her. If he had feelings for her beyond lust and easy tolerance.

And she wanted Cain to like her. Desperately.

So much she thrilled at every small sign that he might.

She supposed it wasn’t entirely healthy. She’d latched onto him with unnatural neediness, since there was absolutely no one else to bond with in the hell where she was living. Under normal circumstances, she might not have even liked him. Much less developed so strong an attachment to this rough, silent loner.

But she spent a good portion of her endless days brooding about Cain, wondering what made him tick, dissecting every comment he made to her and hoping she was growing on him too.

Sometimes she daydreamed about escaping the prison. And in those daydreams she and Cain always left together.

And they stayed together even after they were freed.

Other times she had nightmares about a freak accident occurring and Cain getting killed. Her horror in those imaginings wasn’t just about what would happen to her. It was also about losing Cain.

Most of the time, she tried not to think about either of those things. She tried to just live in the moment, since anything else was almost unbearable.

At the moment, she wanted to roll over and snuggle with Cain. She wanted him to put his arms around her and hold her close. She didn’t make a move though. The last 59

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thing she wanted to do was make Cain feel uncomfortable about anything connected to sex.

Sex was all she had. And it was the only thing keeping her safe.