Rhyannon Byrd - Primal Instinct 05 (17 page)

“Granger talks too much,” he grunted, shoving one hand
through his auburn hair.

“You don’t deny it, then?” she asked in a soft voice.
“That you thought I was weak?”

“I’ve already told you that I considered you the most
talented student I ever had,” he growled with a blast of impatience. “And I
don’t want to sit here wasting time talking about the past. I’m done with the
past,” he muttered, and then he suddenly shook his head, a grim, breathless
burst of laughter spilling from his lips. “Hell, I know I sound like a madman,
but I just…I need to put the past behind me somehow and go on from here. Only,
I can’t do that with this…with what’s between us still hanging over my head. I
swear to God, Morgan, I’m gonna go out of my mind if I don’t get this out of my
system.”

She scowled at his words. “You make me sound like some
kind of illness.”

“You’re my illness. And I’m just trying to get my
hands on the cure.” He sent her a deep-grooved grin that was unbearably
beautiful, and said, “Or maybe addiction would be a better word for you.”

“And you’re just trying to get your fix?” she asked,
surprised to find herself grinning back at him.

“Yeah. Something like that.”

It was so tempting just to fall under the spell of
that devilish, lopsided smile he was giving her, but she knew what could be
waiting for her on the other side. “If I say yes,” she whispered, shifting her
gaze away again, “I know how you’ll act, Kierland. Belittle me. Call me a
slut.”

“No,” he said in a rough voice. “That’s not going to
happen.”

“You—”

He cut her off, his voice ragged as he interjected,
“Morgan, I’m ready to get down on my knees and beg. If that’s what it’s going
to take, just tell me. I’ll do it.”

“If I agreed,” she murmured, trying to hide the fact
that her stomach was doing somersaults, “when did you want…to do this?”

His answer came hard and quick. “Right now.”

Unable to hide her surprise, she jerked her head
around, her stunned gaze colliding with his. “You can’t be serious.”

“You say yes,” he rasped, “and we’re gonna be lucky if
we make it to a bloody bed.”

Again, she lowered her gaze, which was so unlike her.
But she couldn’t help it, damn it. The raw heat and hunger on his gorgeous face
was melting her down. Turning her brain to mush. Making her feel stripped and
bare and completely exposed.

Which is exactly what’s going to happen if I say yes
to him.

Suddenly, Morgan found herself staring at the way his
big hands rested palm down on the table, imagining what those rough, masculine
hands would feel like on her body. Imagining those long fingers inside her,
touching all those intimate places that had always hungered for this man’s
touch. He had beautiful hands. Not pretty, but hard…rugged. Battle-scarred and
dark. Powerful…strong. She knew, without any doubt, that they were more than
capable of making her scream with pleasure.

And oh…God, was she actually thinking of agreeing to
this insane idea?

With her breath coming in sharp, embarrassing pants,
Morgan lifted her gaze, staring deep into those heavy-lidded eyes, and knew
that she didn’t have any other choice. Her lips felt numb, but she somehow
managed to form the words she wanted to say. “I… Okay.” A soft, shaky whisper.
Almost too silent to be heard. “I…I think you’re right. We should…clear the
air, so to speak.”

She’d half expected him to gloat or burst out laughing
or tell her it had all been some kind of sick joke. But he didn’t say anything.
Not a word.

Instead, the Lycan stood up and grabbed their luggage
from under the table, hooking the straps over his broad shoulders. Then he
reached down, took her wrist…and pulled her out of the pub behind him.

“Where are we going?” she gasped, squinting at the
bright rays of afternoon sunlight as they stepped onto the busy street, his
hold on her firm and solid and strong.

“We’re getting a room.”

That was all he said. Just those four gritty words.

But as he headed down the bustling sidewalk and she
ran to keep up with him, Morgan knew they were the most exciting, terrifying,
breathtaking words she had ever heard.

IT WASN’T UNTIL THE DOOR TO THE hotel room—the room
Kierland had just walked in off the street and paid for—was closed with a hard,
solid thud that Morgan understood just how tightly he’d been holding himself
together. But with the closing of the door, he stopped fighting it and allowed
the hunger to fill him. The fury-tinged lust and craving he’d confessed to in
the pub was suddenly staring her right in the face…and she almost panicked.

She stumbled back, not running from him, but needing
some space to breathe…to think.

Misreading her intention, Kierland rasped a single,
desperate word as he dropped their bags on the floor. “Don’t.”

Then he moved so fast, Morgan couldn’t even remember
seeing him cross the room, but suddenly he was there, on her, crushing her into
the mattress, crawling over her, his hard weight pinning her down. For a split
second Morgan worried that the panic which sometimes came when she felt crowded
or confined would rush over her, ruining the moment. It’d happened before
during sex. Ever since the awful night when things had gone so horribly wrong
ten years ago, she hadn’t been able to take all of a man’s weight on her. Not
the times she’d been with Ashe, after the incident, or with the few other
lovers she’d had over the years. The feeling of being trapped always threatened
to take her back to memories she’d worked hard to forget.

But Kierland’s weight didn’t make her feel frightened
or suffocated. It made her hungry…greedy, and she wound her arms around his
broad, tough shoulders, clawing at his sweater, wanting more of him…needing
everything he had to give.

His lips found hers, at once hard and tender, the heat
of them after being out in the cold making her gasp. With his long fingers
shaped around her skull, he held her trapped, kissing her like he was making
love to her mouth. Then he pushed his hips between her thighs, forcing her legs
to part, the hard ridge of his erection grinding against the slick, damp heat
of her sex. With a thick sound, he pushed his jeans-covered cock against her in
a move that would have driven him impossibly deep, if not for the frustrating
layers of clothing separating their flesh, and she arched in reaction,
clutching onto his powerful shoulders.

It’s too good, she thought, wondering if it was
possible to spontaneously combust from lust.

He groaned her name, fed a feral growl into her mouth,
and pulled one hand from her hair. His fingers touched the curve of her cheek,
trailing across her jaw, the sensitive side of her throat and down the front of
her sweater before curving around her breast, his thumb finding her beaded nipple
and rubbing it with a strong, aggressive touch. Shivering, Morgan curled her
hand around the back of his neck, where hot, silken skin met the short, damp
layers of his hair. The heat of him burned her palm, and he shuddered beneath
her touch, thrusting hard again, his hand shaping her breast. His tongue slid
suggestively against hers, the kiss turning savage and raw, and then he tore
his mouth away with a low, guttural curse.

Pulling back, he shot off the bed, his hands fisted at
his sides. His chest heaved as he stood at the foot of the mattress, staring
down at her with the force of all the fires in hell. He looked tormented…in
pain, his voice a graveled rasp as he said, “Gotta slow down.”

Morgan pushed up onto her elbows, her hair hanging
over one side of her face. “What? Why?”

“Because I’ve waited too long for this to have it be
over in a matter of seconds,” he said between hard breaths, his hands fisting
and flexing, his muscles hard and thick beneath his sweater and jeans.

Morgan wanted to see him naked. Desperately. And
Kierland apparently wanted the same thing, since his next words were, “Take off
your clothes.”

She started to sit up, but he shook his head, saying,
“No. Right there. Lying down. I want to watch you strip like that.”

Her breath caught, but she lowered her back to the
bed, and began to do as he said, reaching for the hem of her sweater and
pulling it over her head. Her movements were clumsy with nerves, no practiced
striptease to lure him with her feminine grace, but he didn’t seem to mind. He
didn’t move, except for that flexing of his hands, as if he was fighting the
urge to reach down and grab her, and Morgan had never, in her entire life, felt
more desirable than she did in that powerful, intensely provocative moment.

Crazy, to think that she would experience this height
of feeling with the one man she’d been so sure would never lay a hand on her.

“You on the pill?” he grunted, his molten gaze locked
on her fingers as she began to open the button fly on her jeans.

“Yes.”

He didn’t have to ask about tests or blood work, and
neither did she, since sexually transmitted diseases didn’t affect their
species. So with the question of birth control out of the way, they were free
to indulge. As Morgan pushed her jeans down her thighs, kicking them away, she
thought she might die if he didn’t get started. She felt charged, like some
kind of electric current was surging through her veins, unable to take her
hungry stare off the startling, mesmerizing sight of his heavy erection bulging
against the denim of his jeans.

Reaching for the front snap on her bra, she said, “I
want your clothes off, too.”

He gave a sharp nod, his gaze glued to her breasts as
she bared them. He reached for the hem of his sweater and all but ripped it
over his head.

“Lose the underwear,” he rasped, jerking his chin
toward her black bikinis.

Pulling her lower lip through her teeth, Morgan hooked
her fingers in the waistband of her panties and started shimmying them down her
thighs, her attention focused on his hard, bare torso. She took a moment to
drool over the outrageous beauty of his chest, dazzled by the golden skin stretched
tight over solid slabs of muscle, the scattering of scars only adding to his
rugged perfection. She loved his dark brown nipples and the jut of his hip
bones, but his abs were her favorite. She wanted to run her tongue over the
deep grooves, kissing her way down that silken trail of hair that arrowed
toward his groin, disappearing beneath the ragged waist of his jeans.

She tossed her panties over the side of the bed at the
same instant his strong hands began undoing his fly, and Morgan simply forgot how
to breathe.

It was impossible to look away from him—not that she
wanted to. Her pulse roared in her ears as he shoved the denim down his hips,
along with a pair of white cotton boxers, and all she could do was stare at the
thick, heavily-veined length of his cock as it rose up high against his
stomach, her mouth hanging open, her face burning with heat. She knew she
shouldn’t have been so surprised by his size, considering Kierland was massive
everywhere. That dark, mouthwateringly male part of him was merely in
proportion to the rest of him, but even so, she was fairly certain she was
having some kind of awe-induced heart attack.

“Get higher on the bed,” he rasped. “Right in the
middle.”

He gripped himself with a rough hand, stroking the
heavy length of his cock as she clumsily scooted back, sliding along the
quilted comforter. Morgan licked her lips, wanting to touch her tongue to the
dark, bruised color at the head of his shaft. Wanting to take him into her hand
and feel that hot, velvety skin against her palm. Feel the pulse of his blood
in that thick knotwork of veins.

He jerked his chin toward her again, and said, “Now
spread your legs. Let me see it.”

“You like to give orders, don’t you?” she whispered,
shaking, unbearably aroused by his aggressive attitude. Morgan never would have
thought it possible, but it seemed that getting bossed around in bed by a
gorgeous Lycan really did it for her.

Or maybe it was just getting bossed around in bed by
the outrageously sexy Kierland Scott. Which meant that she had some serious
issues. He might be staring at her like he wanted to eat her alive—like he
couldn’t wait to find out how she tasted, everywhere—but she needed to remember
that this was just sex for him. A way for him to satisfy his curiosity about
what he’d never had, so that he could put it behind him and move on. She
couldn’t afford to get lost in emotion. She couldn’t afford any emotion at all.

“Do it, Morgan.” His husky, rough-edged voice slipped
into her system like a drug, mesmerizing her senses. “Spread your legs for me.”

Her breath hitched with some kind of soft,
embarrassing girlie sound as she lifted her knees in an explicit pose, showing
him the wet, pink flesh between her thighs. His eyes narrowed, his thick lashes
leaving spiky shadows on his carved cheeks. His body seemed to expand, his skin
stretched tight over all those hard, coiled muscles.

The way he stared…it was like she’d shown him
something priceless. Something precious and dazzling.

Needing to say something before she started crying,
and God would that have been embarrassing, she told him, “I’ll let you boss me
around for now. But I get my turn eventually. Just be warned, you’re not the
only one who likes to take control.”