TangledHunger (10 page)

She opened her eyes and her heart nearly stopped.

His silver eyes burned into her. His gorgeous chest was
moist with sweat and his fingers clenched around her hips, telling her right
this moment she drove him to the brink.

“No!” She leaned forward and rested her palms on his chest.
Her movement rubbed her aching clit against his member and catapulted her
higher. “This is my ride. You said I’m in charge.”

Duncan clenched his teeth, giving her an idea how much it
cost him. “You’re in charge.” He speared his fingers into her hair and dragged
her lips to his. “But understand that my control is at breaking point.”

Tanasha wanted to laugh. She, dumpy, boring Tanasha drove
Duncan to the edge. Instead she dug her nails into his chest. “Then distract me
from how bloody big your cock is.”

He froze and closed his eyes for a moment. Then he pulled
her close for another kiss. “I’ve created a monster.”

“Deal with it.”

Duncan’s eyes widened and he roared with laughter. “Oh babe,
I plan on it.”

Both his hands went to her breasts, cupping and massaging
the delicate skin but completely ignoring the desperate nipples.

Tanasha thought she’d go insane. She moved her chest, trying
to rub her hard tips against him, but he evaded her every movement.

In the end she leaned back, caught his hands and pressed
them against her nipples. “Touch them. Please touch them.”

He followed her instructions immediately. Two fingers of
each hand caressed the responsive peaks.

Then he stopped.

Tanasha screamed. “Why did you stop?”

“I’ll continue if you ride me.” His hoarse voice rasped over
every nerve ending that stood at attention.

She finally realized that his distraction had worked. She’d
sunk all the way down on him. His thick cock burned her from the inside. His
balls rubbed against the sensitive flesh of her perineum. “Jade.”

“Yep, with you on that. But by everything that’s holy,
move!”

She exhaled and slowly rose. Then slid down. She was so wet
that the downward slide this time brought only mind-bending pleasure. Tanasha
groaned.

Duncan continued to play with her nipples, fanning the
flames burning through her.

Each movement was pure heaven and pure torture. His heat
rubbed against her inner walls. Her clit bumped him on every downward glide.

And still she climbed toward the peak.

She increased her tempo. The sound of slapping flesh, of
moans and groans filled the room.

Still she needed something more. “Talk to me, Duncan.
Please.”

“Woman, you want me to form a coherent sentence when I’m
flying through a hyperspace window without a ship?”

“Please.”

Duncan grabbed her buttocks. Every time she thrust down he
pushed up. And this time she didn’t restrain him.

“Fuck, babe. Your cunt walls are clenched around me as if
they’ll never let go. Any moment now I expect them to squeeze all my come out
of me.”

Tingles shot through her body.

“When you slam down on me like this—” He threw his head back
and groaned. “Yes, like this, my dick goes all the way in. I can feel you
against my balls. I’m bumping the back of you.”

Duncan pulled a nipple into his mouth, pushing Tanasha’s
out-of-control libido farther.

“You’re like pure liquid fire. You burn me from the inside
out.” He groaned. “Nasha, I’m sorry, I can’t hold on much longer.”

“Neither can I.” She panted. “Help me bring it to an end.”

He tightened his grip on her buttocks
¼
her
ass
. The word burned through her.

They both increased the force of their movement. She
tightened on him until she thought she would die with pleasure.

Duncan released one cheek, found the tightly bound nerves of
her clit and rubbed his fingertip against it for a moment before he returned
his hand back to her ass.

But something still rubbed her clit.

Sparks exploded all across her body. He used his Gift to
tease her. Tanasha clenched around him. He groaned and his head fell back.

Then she felt a forbidden touch between her cheeks. With his
power he caressed her sensitive rear entrance, something she’d secretly dreamed
of but never dared to voice.

She moaned. “Duncan?” Tanasha lost all sense of time and
place.

“Yes, babe. One day, when you’ve been a really, really
naughty girl and I have to—fuck, Nasha, you’re killing me.”

She bit his neck. “Tell. Me. Punish?”

“Yes, I’ll have to punish you by fucking the tight little
hole you’ve hidden so far. I’ll prepare you a little so it won’t hurt too
badly. Then, then—” He groaned when she increased the tempo.

“Duncan, please,” she panted, could barely contain herself,
but she needed to hear.

“Then I’ll thrust my big, fat cock deep into your little
hole, all the way in.” The touch on her rear grew deeper. Then he thrust into
that forbidden entrance and everything around her faded away.

“Let go, Nasha. Fly with me.”

And they exploded.

Once again she shattered into a million different pieces,
but this time she was uncertain if she’d ever fit together again.

He bellowed as his release scorched her from the inside.

Another rush shot through her.

Unable to do anything else, she sank against his
sweat-soaked chest. He curled his arms around her. She vaguely heard him give
instructions to the bed and then they dropped back.

Tanasha bit her lower lip, the one he so loved to tease her
with.

She was in deep, deep trouble. The connection between them,
the one she’d only been able to sense, now shimmered with all colors of the
rainbow.

She’d fallen. Fallen so deep she wanted to wake up to him
every morning and go to sleep beside him every night.

After one day.

She had no idea who Duncan was, what he wanted from life,
his goals, his fears, his needs.

The moment she’d met him she’d known he was out of her
league.

And now he could tear her heart out if she let him.

Cold spread across her middle despite his arms around her.

Memories flashed through her.

The look on her parents’ faces. The doctors waltzing up to
her with just one more thing that would heal her. The bullies at school
laughing at her. Her first kiss she’d been so excited about only to find out
he’d done it on a bet.

The more Tanasha attempted to hold back the past, the more
it swallowed her whole.

Her teachers’ disinterest in her opinions. The disgust on
her fellow students’ faces. The derision that surrounded her at functions. Her
self-worth growing smaller and smaller despite her battle to maintain it. Her
last boyfriend laughing on the comp how pitiful she was and how he’d take
everything he could get from her.

She squeezed her eyes shut to push out the images. It didn’t
work.

Gasping for breath, she sat up in bed.

Duncan, still asleep, tightened his grip around her, but he
couldn’t chase away the cold.

Tanasha studied him, his long hair spread across the pillow.
The hint of stubble decorating his cheeks. He appeared softer without his
burning silver eyes.

I can’t do this.

It would break something inside her, but the risk of letting
this connection between them grow was monumental.

It was too big.

Chapter Six

Duncan woke with Tanasha tangled tightly in his arms. Her
head rested on his chest and the scent of her hair was the thing he registered
right after the feel of her skin next to his.

By Jade, it had really happened.

Elation and worry coursed through Duncan. He’d found her.
After all these decades of hoping and searching he’d found his lifemate, the
other half of his soul.

He looked down on the black-haired beauty resting on his
chest and nearly snorted.

She is nothing like I have ever imagined.

She was better.

Tanasha cuddled closer.

He sighed and tightened his grip. Only in her sleep did she
let down her guard.

Duncan knew she’d sensed the strengthening of their bond,
knew she’d realized that they grew closer during the night and not just on a
sexual level, but on an emotional level.

But she’d pulled down the shutters, not allowed the link to
blossom, to bring them even closer. Instead she’d blocked him, blocked their
possibilities.

He rubbed his chest above his heart. But even the hurt
couldn’t stop him from kissing her hair.

Going by the glimpses he caught of her past and her present,
life hadn’t been easy for his little Naema. Growing up without a measurable
Gift would have been difficult enough, but add to that coming from one of the
highest-ranking families and not fitting into the narrow description of
stick-thin beauty that reigned for more than a century now, and Tanasha had
built up walls.

Walls he now needed to find a way around or through, or risk
losing his lifemate.

Tanasha moved in his arms.

He didn’t let go.

“Please release me,” she asked.

Her cold tone raised the hairs on the back of his neck.
“Maybe I don’t want to.”

She pushed against the arms around her. “You don’t always
get what you want. Let go.”

“No, not until you explain what has turned you from warm,
sexy woman into cold Guala Monster.”

She stiffened in his arms. Then she thrust her elbow into
his side and threw herself to the edge of the bed.

Duncan thought about holding her despite the sharp pain in
his ribs, but the flicker of panic in her black eyes persuaded him otherwise.

Tanasha stumbled out of bed as he sat up and ordered the
lights on forty percent.

“Nasha, what is wrong?”

She wrapped the sheet around herself and turned her back to
him. “Nothing is wrong except that we’re mucking about here while Sydney could
be suffering the most horrific tortures. What kind of friend am I that I fuck
while she’s in danger?”

Anger curled in his belly. He clenched his fist and watched
as she stumbled around his bedroom, looking for her clothes. Most of them were
no longer wearable, so she finally settled on one of his shirts.

Duncan threw back the covers and rose off the bed. She’d
called their lovemaking fucking and that was something he would not permit. “We
didn’t fuck, Tanasha. How can you put down what we have like that?”

She raised her hand as if to stop him from stalking closer
to her. “Whatever we had last night, it won’t happen again. This thing between
us is over. I hired you to find Sydney. Has your trip last night given you any
ideas on what is going on?”

He couldn’t believe it when he watched her pull on the same
arrogant mask she’d shown the Guard at the entrance to her District. His anger
slowly burned out of control. “Do you honestly think you can stuff the last
twelve hours back into the time bottle? Make them disappear and pretend we’ve
not had the most amazing sex in this galaxy?”

She crossed her arms over her chest and stuck out her chin.
“That is exactly what I’m planning to do. I’m paying you to find my best
friend, not to fuck me.”

Direct hit.

His emotions whirled together like a black hole sucking
everything into its center.

Duncan stuck out his hand and curled his fingers around the
metaphysical connection that linked him to his lifemate. A lifemate he couldn’t
tell the truth. In the state she was in she’d never allow herself to believe.
The walls were up. He no longer felt her on the other side of the link. “Don’t
you dare imply what happened had anything to do with your fucking credits. So
far none have passed our hands and if I have anything to say about it, they
never will.”

He tugged on the connection.

Her eyes widened and her breathing grew uneven.

“This,” he moved their metaphysical bond back and forth, “is
not going anywhere. Why are you so determined to deny its existence?”

Tanasha swallowed. “I don’t know or understand your Vampire
hocus-pocus, but whatever you think exists between us isn’t real.” She threw
her hands up in the air. “For Jade’s sake, Duncan, we’ve known each other less
than a day. How can you think that something lasting and important could
develop between us?”

His hands turned into fists.

Fear.
The full-blown panic in her eyes finally gave
him a clue.

She would push him away, she would not give their bond the
opportunity to develop, to bind them together, to be the two parts of a whole
that lifemates were.

Because of fucking fear.

He stepped up to her and kissed her with all the anger and
hurt he carried inside him. For a second she hesitated then she threw herself
into the kiss with the same fervor.

He tore his shirt off her and pressed her against the wall.
“If there is no future for us, I better make the most of the present.” He bit
her lower lip.

Instead of being cowered by his edge, his dominance, she
rose to her toes and dragged his head down for another kiss. A kiss brimming
with so much desperation it crowded his heart with fear.

He couldn’t lose her.

Duncan filled his hands with her overflowing curves, her
round hips, her bountiful ass and her breasts. Her gorgeous, amazing breasts.
He thumbed her nipples, raising them to awareness.

Then he could no longer resist and leaned down to pull one
into his mouth. Her taste exploded through him. Her groan and the giving of her
knees threw even more fire onto the already exploding supernova. He thrust a
leg between her thighs as support, but when her juices marked his skin he had
to grab the base of his cock to keep himself from coming too early.

But her arousal also heated his fury. She said they had no
bond, but her body showed the complete opposite. If she didn’t want him, if
their connection wasn’t as real to her as it was to him, she wouldn’t be this
wet.

Or this desperate.

Duncan rubbed his knee against her moist pussy. Her head
dropped back and her fingernails dug into his shoulders. He moved to the other
breast, giving it the same thorough treatment as the first.

Back and forth he went, licking, nipping, sucking, venting
his anger.

And his hurt.

By Jade, she may not know what a lifemate was or how fucking
precious it was to find one, but she felt the bond as deeply as he did.

And she wouldn’t give him a chance.

With a growl Duncan pulled back. He draped one of her creamy
thighs around his hips and lifted her by her gorgeous ass. “Wrap your legs
around me.”

She threw her arms around his shoulders, eyes wide. “Duncan,
you’ll hurt yourself, put me down. I’m too heavy.”

Another growl rolled through him. “You may be too heavy for
some lily-livered Naema, but for me you are just right. Now wrap your fucking
legs around my waist.”

Tanasha did.

He didn’t need to test the waters to ensure she was with him
all the way. He knew.

Duncan plunged inside her. The top of his head nearly
exploded. “Jade, you’re so tight, Nasha. Every inch of your pussy is milking my
cock, is sucking me in.” He groaned and forced strength into his knees. Each
thrust was pure torture and exalted bliss.

But he couldn’t go as hard or as deep as he wanted in this
position.

He turned around, walked to the other side of the room and
instructed the wall to cover itself with thick fur. Each step forced him deeper
and deeper inside her. He locked his lips to hers, took in her groans, her
moans, her whispers for more.

Once at the soft wall he tilted her back against it and set
out to work through the agony and ecstasy that was loving Tanasha. He licked
his finger and put it between them, the place where they were so intimately
connected. Duncan rubbed it across her clit.

She arched her back and sucked him deeper inside.

He gently freed the little nub from its protective cover and
pushed his cock inside her, raking against her clit.

Tanasha screamed.

He thrust again and again, each movement sliding him across
the bundle of nerves, driving them higher and higher on their road to bliss.

“Please, Duncan, harder,” she whispered. “I need you
deeper.”

The last bit of control exploded at her whispered words. He
drove deep enough to bump her cervix, deep enough to feel as if he would always
be a part of her. But still it wasn’t deep enough.

Duncan bit her lower lip, hard enough to draw blood.

Her glazed black eyes focused on him. She narrowed her gaze
and clung to him with every push, every plunge.

He would not let her go, not let her escape their bond by
closing her eyes. And she knew. Her nails dug into his back, her legs locked
around his waist. He rode her deep and hard, but he never looked away.

And neither did she.

Her acquiescence calmed the wound she’d scraped raw. “You’re
mine, Nasha. No matter who you are, where you are, you are mine.”

For a second she looked as if she was about to answer, but
then her pussy clenched around him and she groaned.

Duncan used his power to stroke her hard nipples while he
continued to hold her steady for each hard thrust.

She grew more vocal. Her nails dug deep enough into his back
to draw blood.

He sped up, shortening his strokes, increasing the strength,
the power, the need.

Tanasha’s eyes widened more. “Duncan. Jade, Duncan, you’re
killing me. It’s too much.”

When she looked as if she would fold in on herself he nipped
her lip again. “It’s never too much.” His finger returned to her clit,
massaging, stroking, pushing her way past her comfort zone.

Blood trickled down his back from her scratches, but the
small pain thrust him higher. Her pussy locked around his hard cock as if she
never wanted to let him go. His balls drew up close to his body and he knew he
didn’t have much longer.

But she still fought it.

“Let go, Nasha. Just let go.”

“I can’t, Duncan. It’s too much.”

His fangs wanted to drop, but she hadn’t given her consent.
A blood exchange between lifemates was sacred. Instead he moved one of his
hands slightly until he rimmed the little hole between her cheeks.

Color flushed her cheeks and she pushed closer to him.
“Duncan!”

“I warned you about being naughty. You lied to me, saying
you didn’t want me, that we were over. I warned you what would happen.” He bit
her earlobe. “Shall I pull out of your sweet little cunt and push my fat cock
into this little hole? It’ll be a tight fit, but it’ll be so good. You won’t
know where pleasure starts and pain ends.”

Despite her wide eyes and the small shake of her head, her
juices flooded around his cock. As had happened from his touch had last night.
They would come back to this. Soon. But not now. Now he needed her to come.

He pushed one finger between her lips. Automatically she
sucked it into the heat of her mouth.

Duncan groaned and nearly lost his rhythm. He gently pulled
it out and placed it back between her cheeks. At once he pinched her nipples
with his mind, thrust deep inside her and pushed his fingertip into the small
hole.

That was enough.

Tanasha screamed and convulsed around him, milking his cock,
throwing him over the threshold into the abyss. He bellowed his release,
falling through infinity held together by the one short, round woman.

He removed his finger and sank against her, holding her as
if by keeping his arms around her he could stop her from leaving.

Her head dropped against his chest.

They both panted. Duncan wanted only to sink to his knees
and keep her fastened to him.

At least until he felt tears trickle against his chest.
Every muscle in his body tensed. “Nasha, did I hurt you?”

She shook her head and locked her arms around him but didn’t
look up.

He gathered what strength he had left and stumbled to the
bed. “Nasha, what’s wrong? Was I too rough?”

Tanasha’s arms remained clenched around him but her
shoulders now shook. She cried in earnest.

Terror raced through Duncan. He’d been too harsh, had pushed
her too far.

He’d hurt her.

Sickness curled through his stomach.

He’d hurt his lifemate.

“Baby, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Tell me
where it hurts, I’ll do everything in my power to make it better. Please, baby,
what hurts?”

She just shook her head and continued to cling.

Totally at a loss, Duncan rolled to his side and held her,
hands stroking up and down her back, giving her his strength and support. He
murmured to her, apologizing over and over.

Moments that felt like an eternity later, her sobs died
down. Her death grip around him loosened. Duncan took her chin between his
fingers and made her look at him. “I am sorry, baby, so sorry. Can you forgive
me?”

She shook her head, stopping his world.

“There’s nothing to forgive, Duncan. You didn’t hurt me.”

His heart beat again. He leaned down and gently kissed her.
She didn’t pull back, but pressed closer.

Duncan wiped a tear off her cheek. “Why this? What happened,
Nasha?”

Tanasha leaned into his touch, dropping her gaze from his.