If Wishes Were Horses Read online

  which, you don’t get confused about that. Life is harsh fluorescent lights, chemical smells, pain. Every time I surfaced, if I saw my husband, I saw the truth of our life together on his face. He was there, but he already wasn’t there. I knew it. I had to choose life for myself, just for me, knowing he didn’t want me anymore.”

  “Oh, Sarah.” He reached out a hand for her, but she shook her head, stepped back.

  “I’m not telling you this for your sympathy. This time, every time I surfaced, you were there. Not just waiting for me to get up so we could go back to having a relationship where we’d pretend we were devoted to each other. Not just there because you had a week’s worth of lust and attraction for me boiling through your system.”

  She took a deep breath, and it shuddered through her. Justin realized in sudden anguish that she was fighting tears. If they spilled from those blue eyes, he had no doubt he’d go to his knees and beg for the right to touch her.

  “No, you were there, by my side, in my head, in my heart. This time I knew I’d make it because you were there, not in spite of that. Do you know how terrifying it was to realize my heart was that dependent on you after less than a week of knowing you? So, Number Three. This is the big one, Herne, so pay attention.” She blinked twice, swallowed, pointed one of those glossy nails at him.

  “You don’t have the right to play games with me, to make me choose you. To make me lower my shields when it’s already so blessed obvious how important you are to me. I can’t handle that.” Her voice caught, and she averted her face from him.

  “Sarah.” He moved forward, and the cuff caught him again. “Damn it,” he exploded. “Come here and take this off, or I swear I’ll rip the damn steering wheel out.”

  She was crying without making a sound, her shoulders shaking.

  “For God’s sake

  , let me hold you. I

  ’ve wanted to do nothing else since I left your

  side. Do you know every time I heard a car come down the road I practically mowed

  down my customers to look out the window? I got a damn crick in my neck.”

  “You could have come to me.”

  “No, Sarah,” he said. “I’m sorry, so sorry. My intention wasn’t to play games with you, I swear. I wanted you to be sure when you chose, because I was already certain about you. I knew the first time we made love in your house, but even if I hadn’t been certain then, I was the night…that night when we stopped him.”

  She turned her head to look at him. He didn’t want to bring it up, knew it hauntedher, but she could handle hearing about it, he knew it. Nothing defeated her. He wondered at what he had done to earn the blessing of her in his life.

  “Everything was laid bare, Sarah. You knew it, felt it, just as I did. In that moment, with the Lord and Lady in us, our souls knew that we were meant for each other. I love

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  you, Sarah. It was there, just waiting, since that first second I saw you. Our minds haven’t caught up to it, but it’s in my heart and soul and I wanted you to choose. I wouldn’t take half, or stand the wait.”

  She stared at him, defiant still, her eyes bright with new tears.

  “I’m begging you, Sarah,” he rasped. “Let me hold you. I’ve been hard as a rock for days, and all I’ve wanted is you.”

  “All right,” she murmured, and he thought they were the most sacred two words he’d ever heard.

  She came toward him. One step, two steps, and she was there. Before she could reach for the key, he had his free arm around her, crushing her to him, holding her with her face against his neck. Her arms came up to twine around his back and waist and she trembled in his embrace.

  “I thought I had lost you,” he said into her hair, and he meant the night of the incubus as much as when he had to walk out on her at the hospital.

  “Never,” she said, muffled against his skin. She tilted her head. He kissed the salt of her tears away, tasted her with his tongue. She made a sound in the back of her throat and pressed her body against him. He insinuated his thigh between her legs and she opened for him there, whimpering in that maddening way when she rubbed against him.

  “You put on some weight since I last saw you,” he said, his hand palming one cheek of her bottom and clamping down hard, savoring the feel of her squirming, her quick smile.

  “I’ve been drinking milkshakes everyday,” she informed him. “Doctor’s orders.”

  “Anything else gotten rounder and fatter?”

  “Your lip, if you keep it up, Herne.”

  He grinned. “You going to let me go?”

  She leaned past him, biting her lip as his free hand slid around to cup her crotch and found her blessedly wet. Her eyes twinkled, a mixture of lust and joy, and quick as she unsnapped the cuff from the wheel, she clapped it down on that other errant wrist, locking his hands together.

  “Sarah, what the—”

  She snaked her arms through the locked ring of his and closed her fingers over hisass. “Improvise.”

  He slanted her a glance. Arrogance and raging hunger changed to calculation soquickly she barely had time to blink. “Hold on,” he warned her.

  He stepped back so her arms slid free and then brought his hands up and over her, so she was bound in the circle of his arms against him. He caught her buttocks in his hands and tightened his grip to alert her before he used his strength to hitch her up onhis body. Sarah obliged with an accommodating hop and wrapped her legs around hiswaist, gasping at the feel of his erection pressed against the base of her soaked pussy.

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  He turned, took them around the door, slamming it with his knee, and laid her back on the hood of the car. He tried to be careful, but his need made it a rougher descent than expected. She didn’t mind.

  Though he was restrained, he very quickly made it obvious she had become his captive. His cuffed hands, behind her back, slid down her ass and beneath her thighs,those clever fingers finding the seam of the tight trousers.

  “Justin,” she gasped. He ripped them with a sheer brutal male strength that delighted her and made her tremble at once.

  “Yes.” She arched against him, rubbing her now bare cunt against the turgid arousal under his trousers. As she arched, one of the buttons of the small shirt popped loose and rolled, and her breasts spilled out before his hot eyes. The areola and nippleof her left breast had worked free of the bra cup and was now visible over the edge of the lace. He leaned down, grinding his cock hard against her. He latched onto thenipple, the tatting and his tongue rubbing rough and soft against her at once.

  There was no warning. All the alarms went off in her body and she managed just a whisper of air before she came, just from that pressure and the sucking of his lips. She cried out his name. He kept up the suckling, the rubbing of his hips against her as shebucked. The metal of the cuffs bit into her skin as her back bowed and her shoulder

  blades thumped against the warm surface of the car, her body convulsing with the force

  of the climax.

  Even as she vibrated with aftershocks, he would not let her rest. “Open mytrousers, Sarah,” he ordered, biting her throat. “I need to fuck you.”

  Her fingers trembled and she could barely manage the belt, but she did, taking down his zipper and his underwear. He let her get the garment to his thighs, but before she could close her hands around his pulsing, thick length, those capable hands shiftedand twisted her. With a squeak she was in the air and flipped over, her thighs pressedagainst the grill, knees on the bumper, her booted toes off the ground. He sheathedhimself deep in her cunt in one fluid movement, sinking himself to the hilt against her,along tissues so exquisitely sensitive from her orgasm that she screamed, part pleasure, part pain, but accepting all of it, all of him.

  The weight of his chest was on her back and he set his teeth back to her throat, all male animal now, all rutting stag, claiming his mate in the oldest way known
to allbeasts.

  “Mine,” he murmured, underscoring her thoughts, recalling the other times he had said it to her, though this was the first time she believed it, embraced its truth.

  The few times they had been together had been explosive, but he had always shown some level of control or artistic finesse, and her body and mind had deeply appreciated

  his skill at driving her body to peak. However, her primeval soul wanted only this now. He was not concerned with her climax as he drove into her hard, ruthlessly. He was sating his own need, lust and possession at once. Just the psychological impact of that ripped her over the next edge of control, and she would have bitten her fist, if it had not

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  been held to her side. The binding on his arms locked hers against her, the metal of his handcuffed hands biting into her lower belly as his fingers dug into her hip bones and pelvis, holding her for his branding strokes.

  She screamed again, her hips lifting to take him. He answered with a sound somewhere between a snarl and a guttural cry and his body thrust against hers, spilling his seed into her. She opened her legs wider, unspoken acceptance of him, and felt the heat of the car hood burn through her shirt and bra, warm her nipples just like his body sliding against her back, his thighs slapping her hips. She was all heat, liquid heat that boiled over and turned the world around her a swirling red and orange, mixing with the green of the fields.

  When he collapsed upon her, and at last his heart slowed with hers, he showedtenderness and mercy. He turned his head, brushed his lips against her shoulder blade, her nape.

  “I love you, Sarah,” he said quietly.

  She quivered beneath him, her eyes filling even as her lips curved in a smile. Shepressed her cheek to warm metal and managed to look up at him with a sidelong glance. “God help us both. If it’s always like this, we’ll kill each other.”

  He chuckled and raised his upper body with a grunt of effort. He took her with him, bringing her attention to his bound wrists by cupping her breasts in his palms. The chain rubbed the underside of the curves while his thumb played in the deep crease between them, sliding under the band of the bra.

  “This looks like something from my shop, Chief Wylde. Have you moved on to breaking and entering?”

  “Worse. I resorted to a lingerie competitor.” Her head rested on his shoulder, her body still quivering in his arms. “I hope you’re appreciative. This thing is a torture device from the Inquisition.”

  “I’ll be happy to soothe every red line away with my tongue.” He nuzzled her neck, and continued to stroke his finger between the two breasts. “Slow licks to take the painaway.”

  She swallowed. “You are going to kill me,” she said, and his eyes promised thedelightful danger of it. “Why don’t I release your hands?”

  “I don’t know. I’m learning just how enjoyable playing with handcuffs can be.” Hishands slid down from her breasts and played in her curls, the wet swollen lips of her pussy. Her breath left her and her head fell back on his shoulder again.

  “You were supposed to be my prisoner.”

  “I like how this worked out.” He smiled.

  “I admit I’ve never looked at them quite the way you do. They’re typically a serveand-protect type of thing. You know, criminal element and all.”

  “I know.” His hands stilled, went to her waist and convinced her to turn in that protective circle to face him. His mouth was sober all of a sudden, his eyes hard. “It’s

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  going to be difficult for me, Sarah. I want to protect you, love you, but you do a job that doesn’t let me protect you much. It’s not in your nature to stay in Lilesville forever. You’ll eventually want to go back to where your talents are needed even more.”

  “It’s hard for a lot of cop’s lovers, particularly men,” she admitted, some trepidation

  rising in her. “I guess…you’ll have to think it over some…”

  “No.” He shook his head, squeezed her ass in reprimand. “That’s not what I mean, Sarah. What do I have to offer you? I can't protect you from the things you see in your job.”

  “Oh.” It had never occurred to her, that someone might think about it that way. A warmth spread out of a place deep inside her, dispelling the cold fear she had carried around for so long. The heat reached her eyes as she raised her lashes and stared into his eyes.

  “No, you can’t,” she said softly. “But you can protect me from my nightmares. I can handle my own reality, if you can handle that. You saved me from this one.”

  He studied her a long moment, then nodded. “I can do that.”

  He went to one knee and rested the side of his face against her abdomen just below her breasts. It was a gesture of comfort, an offer and a request all at once. Sarah laid her hands on his head, bent her own to it and laid a kiss there, feeling his soft hair tickle her mouth, the press of his hands against her hips. They stayed that way some time, letting the soft wind be the only sound, loosening and freeing the pain of the past few weeks,leaving them clean.

  “So.” He lifted his head at last and gave her a thorough perusal. “I’d say you pulled in some heavy favors for this one.”

  “Pretty heavy,” she agreed.

  “Remind me to give her generous gift certificates.”

  “You better. You just tore the hell out of her uniform.” She gazed ruefully down at the frayed shirt and trousers. “And I helped.”

  “Good Lord, she must be a pixie.”

  “Weighs a hundred pounds sopping wet, and is meaner than any trooper threetimes her size, so it better be a really good gift certificate, if you value your lover’s skin.”

  “I do, very much.” He placed his lips on it and she closed her eyes, hummed a sigh.

  “Very well, then. A lifetime supply of hopping penises.”

  “You—”

  He laughed at her and ducked her swat. Sarah fished her key off her belt and Justin reluctantly stood, lifting his arms from over her head. He brought them down before her so she could unlock the restraints.

  When the cuff dropped from his left wrist, he startled her by lifting her and thrusting his cock into her. He was half hard for her again already, and her pussy was slippery enough to take him.

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  He buried himself in her, there was no other word for it. A thrust into a wet passage eager just for him, the summation of everything that ever was. A release from prison, a meal of homemade bread and gurgling cold water for a person stranded in the desert, the miracle of life being handed back when only death was expected. The simple joy of a hand reached for and there to be held, forever.

  She gasped and he eased her back on the hood, leaning over her, very close,studying her face. That quiet moment of stillness she remembered from their first night descended, and this time she embraced it. She reached up, touched his face, framed itwith her hands, brought him down to her for that tender kiss.

  “I figured out the most important treatment for healing wounds,” she murmured.

  “Did you? What was it, darling?”

  She smiled at the endearment, drew in another trembling breath as he rubbed

  himself inside her, slow circling strokes.

  “I used to believe we have to heal our own wounds to be able to love others

  , but I

  don't think that's true. All we need to do is accept the love of others, because there are

  broken places that can't be healed without that. It would be like a pitcher trying to glue

  its own handle back on.”

  She looked into those dark eyes, so intent on hers. Her truth was there in them.

  “I love you, Justin. Take me home.”

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  About the author:

  Joey W. Hill lives on the Carolina coast with her wonderful husband, a houseful of animals, and their dauntless sailboat, Shadowfax. She is published in two genres
, contemporary/epic fantasy and women's erotica, and has won awards for both.

  Joey welcomes mail from readers. You can write to her c/o Ellora’s Cave Publishing

  at P.O. Box 787, Hudson, Ohio 44236-0787.

  Also by Joey W. Hill:

  Make Her Dreams Come True

  Holding The Cards

  Enchained

  Discover for yourself why readers can't get enough of the multiple award-winning publisher Ellora's Cave. Whether you prefer e-books or paperbacks, be sure to visit EC on the web at www.ellorascave.com for an erotic reading experience that will leave youbreathless.

  www.ellorascave.com