The General's Daughter (Snow and Ash #1) (19 page)

“I love your cunt,” he says and gives a series of wiggles with his tongue.

The walls inside me contract, and I choke out a cry. My hips buck against him and lock the phallus deep inside me. I’m coming all around the thing. It scares me a little, and this makes my orgasm even more intense—so intense that I want to eject the steel but I can’t. I scream. Talon doesn’t stop loving me with his tongue until I collapse back against the cushions.

Gently, he removes the toy and sets it aside, arranges me on the couch, and joins me. He strokes back my hair and brushes the hair from my face as I struggle to breathe normally.

“I don’t know where you got that thing,” I pant, “but don’t you ever lose it.”

“I’ll try not to do that again,” he says, his face solemn. “I don’t want to come unless I’ve given you yours first.”

I look into his eyes, so dark and full of emotion. “I wanted it to be together.”

He smiles softly. He kisses me. Gently at first, and then more deeply. I can taste myself on him. I’ve never felt so close to anyone before. I’m not sure where I end and he begins. And I don’t want to.

“I love you,” I whisper.

He takes a sharp breath and grips my face and kisses me slowly, methodically over my eyes, my cheeks, my neck. He’s trembling.

“You’re mine,” he tells me. “I told you that a long time ago. I’ll never let you go.”

No mention of love. Whatsoever. Only ownership. I bite my lips and shift away from him.

“What?” He obviously has no clue.

“You’re never going to forgive me, are you?” Despair rolls over me. Not the sharp kind, but the kind that settles in your bones and sinks you like lead.

“I…” He sighs. “Come back here.”

My coat is lying on the back of the couch, and I pull it around me.

“Nothing I do or say will ever make you forget. I’ve tried, Talon. I came all the way out here. There were doctors back home, Talon. Fresh vegetables. And all you want from me is a fuck. I feel like I’m in the back of a truck again, only with a better-looking guy.”

“Jesus.” He swipes a hand through his hair and looks away. “Look. It’s in the past.”

“It’s not in the past. It’s right here in the room with us.”

He gets up, adjusts his pants, and stokes the fire. “Your dad cheated on your mom. My mother knew he was married, and she did it anyway. Misty was an accident. The best kind, but I’ll admit, she creepy stalked you. You did your bitchy little best to get her to stop it, and who can blame you, really? You were fourteen, Ilsa.”

I stare at him, not sure where he’s going with this.

“I charged at you like an elephant. Instead of explaining things, I shoved my foot down your throat.” He frowns and looks away. “I should have stopped when I saw the look on your face. All innocence and shock. You obviously had no idea.”

Yeah, well. “I kind of deserved the things you said.”

“I hated you for years, Ilsa. I’ve obsessed over you until I was practically crazy. When they selected me for this mission, it was like God smiling on me. At last I’d have my revenge.”

A fresh wave of heaviness pushes me deeper into the jacket. Revenge. If he’s telling me I followed him here just so he could get his final revenge, I think I might just give up and let him have it.

He sits back down beside me, his hands between his knees. “That look stayed with me for years. I hated you for it. If I wouldn’t have come at you that day, none of that would have happened. None of it. I had to blame you because if I didn’t, that would mean
I
killed my family.”

“Well,
you
didn’t do it!”

“Neither did you. You dad should have told you about Misty. He should have told everyone. For him to go after your mom… Jeez, Ilsa, she had cancer. How did he think she was going to react?”

“So you don’t blame me?”

“Yeah, I blame you.”

Will you make up your mind?

“I blame myself. I blame Mom, and your mom, and Misty, and especially your dad. I hate that bastard, Ilsa. What I’m saying is, we all made it happen.”

He’s right. We were all a bunch of ugly people doing ugly things, and the outcome was tragedy.

I start to get up, but he tugs the coat off, pulls me back down, and rolls me under him.

“Hey, question for you.” Might as well get this out of the way too.

He’s nuzzling my neck, and damn it if I don’t feel him getting hard again.

“Look at me,” I say.

Reluctantly, he stops and meets my eyes.

“Are you sterile?”

He recoils. “What?”

“In Dad’s army, a lot of the soldiers have been sterilized. V-Secs, they call them. It’s so they won’t leave kids behind when they get killed.”

“No!” He’s outraged.

The way we go at it, I’ll probably learn about poop and puke a whole lot earlier than I planned.

“I’m just asking. Dr. Avanti tested me, and she said I’m not pregnant.”

His eyes blaze, and he covers my mouth with his. He cups my breasts, squeezes them. He flicks my nipples with his thumbs, and I arch to meet him.

“I’m going to fuck you until you can’t walk,” he says. He stands, gets rid of his pants, and joins me again. “And even then I don’t think I’ll stop.”

He may not love me, but obsessed is kind of close. I guess. I try to smile at him, but I can’t help the hurt in my expression, the tears that leak from my eyes.

He licks them away. He runs kisses over my heart. “You’re not the general’s daughter anymore. You’re mine--your mind, your body, and especially your tight little cunt. Wherever I go, you’ll go with me. I will protect you till the day I die, and I’ll love you to hell and back. I swear it.”

And then I really start bawling.
 
He loves me. I’m in a safe place where no one will find me, and I’m loved. I actually get to look forward to the future. Does it get any better than that?

“Hey,” he says, dead serious. “How about I fix you something to eat, and then you can suck my dick.”
 

Thank you for reading
The General’s Daughter
.
 
If you enjoyed this story and would like to know when future titles will be available, please sign up for my
NEWSLETTER
.
 
Honest reviews are always welcome and encouraged, as they help other readers find good books. If you enjoyed your reading experience,
please feel free to leave a review
on
AMAZON
or
GOODREADS
.
 

AND NOW for a sneak peak at Book Two, another standalone novel in the Snow and Ash Series:
 
STOLEN MELODY
.

Stolen Melody (Book #2 of the Snow and Ash Series)

Sneak Peak — Chapter One
 

I look like I’ve spent the last fifty years shopping at Sears. I’m nineteen and my figure rocks, but I don’t dare show it off. Instead, I wear a skirt worthy of the Amish and a cardigan that will secure my virginity forever.

The whole town, all three hundred twenty-nine people, has gone church crazy. When Yellowstone blew up three years ago, the world got scary there for a while. A few million people died in the first week or two. After that the world basically fell apart and people either froze to death, starved, got murdered, or the flu took them. I hear over two-thirds of the world’s population is gone. Seriously, being stuck in a church-happy town is a good thing. Out there, people are raping, pillaging, and cannibalizing anyone who’s left.

I’ll listen to a thousand sermons about God’s love as long as I can stay here where it’s safe. In my heart I know I’m bound for hell, but Pastor North is like a grandfather to me.

The church continues to fill as I sing with the kids. When I glance up between songs, I note a new person in one of the back pews. It’s uncommon to have a visitor but not unheard of. Pastor North will occasionally feed a harmless-looking passer through if they promise to sit and listen to one of his sermons first.

Most people are hungry enough.

“How about ‘Safely and Tenderly’?” I suggest to the kids. It’s Pastor North’s favorite song, and some of the older ones are looking a little insulted at the “Jesus Loves Me” type fare.

A chorus of
yeahs
answer me, and I pluck the first chords. The dang kids don’t join in, though, and it’s like giving a concert. Except here no one’s high, drunk, naked, or screaming
show us your tits.

I glance toward the pews and find it’s not just the children listening, but the adults too. My cheeks burn. I shouldn’t have risked this. Pastor North would have a stroke if he knew, but today he’s late. None of these people know my past, and they probably didn’t know I could sing. I would have liked to keep it that way, but the kids were tearing the church apart this morning, and a frustrated grade-school teacher shoved a guitar in my hands. The congregation heaved a collective sigh of relief, so now I’m stuck.

The stranger’s not just staring at me. He’s eating me with his eyes. I accidentally meet his gaze, and he throws me a crooked smile.

“Miss Imogen?”

I jerk, realizing I’ve skipped several beats. “I can’t remember the words. Can anyone help me?”

This finally gets the kids singing, and they drown me out for the rest of the song. When we reach the end, the schoolteacher claps to get the kids’ attention.

“All right, everyone, time to find your seats.” Somehow teachers hadn’t seemed so mean back when I lived in Denver.

I stand and place the guitar on its rack. I sneak another peek at the stranger. There’s something so…disturbingly male about him. He’s handsome in a rough kind of way, but that’s not it. He looks confident. Dangerous. And he’s smoldering with something like pure sex.

Bugger.

Pastor North approaches the pulpit—finally—and that’s my cue to take my seat at the piano. You can’t get in trouble playing piano for the church. You just can’t. That’s one of the reasons the pastor assigned me the job. Most of the time my back is turned to the congregation, so no one can look at me for long enough to place me. At least that’s what the plan was in the beginning. Now I just do it because I love Pastor North. I’d do pretty much anything for him. He took me in when just about no one else would.

Playing the piano also ensures that I won’t look around. You know, at the stranger.

Pastor North—Uncle Mike to me—goes into a variation of his usual sermon on “God Loves You,” then picks the verse of the day to lecture on. All I have to do is wait for his cues and play the next hymn. I’ve gotten so that I can tune him out most of the time. I smile at him every once in a while just to let him know he’s doing great. I actually do love him. He could be talking about how to dissect worms and I’d tell him how wonderful he was. I may have a questionable past, but I do know what loyalty is.

The whole time I sit there a hole burns through my granny sweater, right between my shoulder blades. It’s the stranger. He’s staring at me; I know he is.

We’re almost to the end of the service when the pastor takes a deep breath and puts both hands on the pulpit. He shakes his head. “One final thing.”

Uh-oh.

He puckers his lips like he’s about to say something that tastes bad in his mouth. “I have some unfortunate business to address with you all. We all know Mia Lavely—have joined her in prayer, have welcomed her into our homes. We’ve broken bread with her.”

This does not sound good for Mia Lavely. Her husband died of the flu last year, and I feel sorry for her. Plus, I love her irreverence.

“Yesterday Mia was discovered to have an entire box of pornographic romance novels hidden under her bed.”

The entire church goes silent, but the thought of detailed pornographic romances shoots a delicious clench to my belly.

“Now as you all know, these are desperate times. This is a lone sanctuary against the evil that’s ruled since Armageddon fell on us. If we are to have any hope of gaining the kingdom of heaven, we must resist sin. We must renounce it.”

Like half the church joins in a chorus of
yeahs
.

“Mrs. Lavely approached Diana Fletcher and tried to share this wicked trash. We cannot suffer the devil in this community. We simply cannot.”

I close my eyes. For a stupid book? What, does it describe a guy touching some girl’s boob? Come on!

Pastor North shakes his head like he’s really, really sorry, and I know he is. “So as a final order of business, I’m asking the church deacons to join together and escort Mrs. Lavely to the town gates. She is no longer welcome here in Sadie’s Bend, and henceforth she must be shunned by all members of this community.”

I feel sick. Like, sick.

The door behind the pulpit opens, and Mia Lavely, her chin high and her shoulders squared, is escorted down into the center aisle. As she approaches each row, the people turn their backs on her.

This is some bullshit. I’m the last person to preach—I’m not entirely buying into the heaven-and-hell thing—but what kind of Christian throws a middle-aged lady out into…into…what’s out there?

There’s nothing to eat. It’s been winter for three solid years, and if she doesn’t freeze to death, the cannibals will get her. I kind of feel like I might cry.

Mia and her party pass into the vestibule, and the front door shuts with a bang.

I clench my jaw and stare after them. I feel like I should stand up and say something, but I don’t dare. Not if I don’t want to be next. Pastor North loves me, but even he has to bow to the rules.

My gaze falls on the stranger again, and I read calculation in his eyes. I shiver, but I’m not even sure it’s fear. There’s a heat in my belly that I don’t understand. I can’t look away. It’s like he’s seized hold of me with some weird weapon only astronauts know about, and he’s got me hostage.