Truly Helpless: A Nature of Desire Series Novel Read online

  Yes, maybe he needed to do violence. But when violence wasn’t an option, men would sometimes choose the closest thing to it. She’d see if she could channel that violence toward a different kind of passion. She’d already opened that door, with the earlier directive she was sure he’d forgotten. She’d be happy to remind him of it.

  When it finally came into view, the Marriott was a welcome sight, because that vibration had become so strong she was starting to wonder if they’d make it before everything blew. She put her laptop bag and food tote on his shoulder, threading his arm through the straps. She tugged on them to catch his attention. “Carry those and come with me.”

  He stood mutely in the lobby while she handled check-in. From the surreptitious looks of the desk staff, she expected they were picking up the unstable vibes, his stillness too peculiar not to be noted. She gave the clerk a reassuring smile as she handed over her credit card. When she moved toward the elevator, she made an imperious motion toward Marius that fairly screamed “Come, boy.” It pulled him out of his head enough to earn her a narrowed glance from the steely gray eyes. His mouth set in a flat line, and he started to look a little mean.

  Yeah, triggering him out of his stupor wasn’t going to be the problem. The challenge was going to be channeling it in the right direction. He was like an animal in a cage.

  It was unsettling, how often he inspired that analogy from those around him. He’d been dubbed “Rabid” as a fighter. Tyler had told Regina she had the key to his cage. “It’s up to you whether to unlock it or not.” Now here she was, using the same imagery. But though he might think he was trapped, she knew Marius himself clutched the key to that lock. She just had to help him realize that.

  They were on the fifth floor, a corner suite where they’d have plenty of room and lots of privacy on this weekday night. “Put them down there,” she said, pointing to the desk. The bed was a king with a heavy wood headboard bolted to the wall. The jacuzzi tub and bathroom were equally spacious.

  She moved back to the center of the room. He stood a few feet away in the lamplight, his hands loose at his sides, but nothing about his body loose. He was rigid as a corpse, except for his eyes, which were tracking her movements. Good. Grasping the hem of the tunic top, she removed it, standing before him in black leggings, boots and burgundy satin bra. She removed her jewelry, placing it on the nightstand.

  “Want me to service you now, Mistress?” He spoke at last, a cutting edge to his voice. He thought he was as far away from her as the moon. She was about to prove him wrong. They were so close together they were sharing the same still, explosive point of the universe. His eyes had latched onto the quiver of her breasts, held up high in the satin. If he was a beast in truth, saliva would be gathering around his fangs. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to fuck or eat her, but both weren’t out of the question.

  “As a matter of fact, I do.” She cocked her head. “You remember the night I transformed you into my stallion? You could have freed yourself from the ropes I had on you. But where you went in your mind, you didn’t have hands to untie them, did you? Only hooves.”

  Taking a step closer, she let her hand drift over the top of her breast, down her abdomen to play with her navel piercing. He tracked the movement, a quiver going through him. She wanted to see that tension play over his muscles.

  “Take off the shirt.”

  He did it with impatient jerks, an aggressive shrug of his shoulders. His muscles were so unyielding they stood out in stark relief from the play of light and shadows in the room.

  “You’ve tried a lot of things to throw me, Marius, but none of them work, because I see past the bullshit. I see you.”

  Tonight, she’d call forth another kind of animal. The human male, at his most primitive. Her pulse elevated, recognizing the signs that the hunt had started and she was walking the fine line between being huntress and prey.

  “I know you’re a violent man. I also know you’re a good man, maybe sometimes even a gentle man. I’m not as physically strong as you are. I know how to defend myself, but you’ve learned that, and the darkness inside you is ready for it. If you want to hurt me, you’ll be able to do me real damage. Maybe even finish the job you started the other night.”

  His attention snapped to her face. She’d startled him. “Is that what you want, Marius?”

  Another ripple through his upper body, his jaw setting. “No.” His gaze latched onto hers, and she saw the pain flash through it, jagged crimson. “I need to leave.”

  “You don’t have my permission to leave. You’re not going to damage me, Marius. I’m not physically stronger than you are, but I am stronger in another way. Here.” She tapped her temple. “And that’s what you need the most.”

  The meanness resurfaced. “No.” He growled it, eyes roving over her with glittering avarice. “Not the most.”

  She bared her teeth. “If pussy and a pair of tits were all you needed, you wouldn’t have asked me to be here, before all your shields kicked in and you ripped up the note.”

  His lip curled, that broken sneer, but she saw the flash of dangerous desperation in his gray eyes, almost dominated by dark pupil.

  “Before you went into the prison, what did I tell you was going to be your first job when we came here tonight?” she asked.

  “I don’t care. I don’t remember.”

  “Hmm. Okay.” She slid her fingers into the waist band of the leggings, pushing them down far enough he’d see the lace edge of her burgundy panties as she dipped below it to stroke herself. “Too bad. Guess I’ll take care of this myself. I’ll think about Noah, Lyda’s boy. How accommodating he is, how willing to please.”

  She tipped her head back with a little hum. “He can put his mouth between a woman’s thighs and get her worked up in no time with that tongue stud of his. He turns a woman’s pussy into a feast and makes her feel like a seven-course meal he’s going to enjoy one tiny nip, lick and suck at a time.”

  “I won’t be gentle,” he said harshly.

  She brought her head back up, sharpening her gaze. He’d shifted forward, but she was all too aware he hadn’t closed the distance between them yet.

  “Earlier today, your Mistress gave you permission to be rough,” she said evenly. “Or did you miss it, because your head was too far up your ass?”

  He was on her within the next breath. His forward momentum slammed them into the wall, his hip hitting the side table and lamp. The items toppled, the lamp tumbling over the easy chair next to it. Her shoulder blades made bruising contact with the wall, and she hoped the people next door didn’t think they were coming through, if there were any tenants there. But then she had no more thoughts except for the here and now, and the male whose rage and need overflowed, commanding her absolute attention.

  He pulled the right cup of her bra down and seized her breast in a calloused palm. He clamped his mouth on it, sucking, pulling, biting. She writhed away and yanked at his hair, scratching his back hard enough to draw blood. “Do what you were told,” she commanded. “I want your mouth between my legs.”

  He snarled against her flesh but swung them around, bringing her to the bed with his heart-stopping strength. He flipped and shoved her face down, her knees braced against the side of the bed, her feet planted on the floor. “First I’m fucking your ass. Your beautiful, round ass.”

  “No, you’re not.” She hooked his leg, twisted and tangled them into a heap that slid them both to the floor. Now she was on her back, and she pushed the leggings and panties to her thighs, stroking herself again as he reared up over her. “Do as you’re told,” she repeated.

  He clamped his hands on her thighs, his lips curled in a snarl, but his eyes were riveted on her glistening labia. His cock was a mouthwatering thickness against his jeans, the violence driving him to an even more potent erection. Her pussy contracted against her fingers in reaction.

  “Everything you’re getting, I’m allowing you to take,” she said through gritted teeth. “You’re sti
ll not doing a damn thing without my permission. I won’t let you. What’s more, you won’t let you. You need your Mistress, and that’s the deal.”

  He stripped off his belt and bent over her, grabbing her hands and wrapping the strap around her wrists, cinching it up in the middle before linking it to one foot of the heavy dresser beside her. “Now I can do anything I want.”

  She laughed. “That’s the point. What you want is your Mistress to command you. So stop talking and fuck me with your mouth already.”

  He stared down at her. She held his gaze without flinching, her body lifted and exposed by the restraint. They both knew the belt wasn’t impossible for her to shake. He’d just been making a point. So had she.

  The air conditioning unit cut off, leaving the room in total silence except for his rasping breath and her heart, pounding in her ears.

  It was a slow-motion moment, everything focused on what might happen next. He swallowed, his gaze sliding down her body again. “My Mistress.”

  His voice still held darkness, but it had transformed, now hoarse and hollow.

  “Yes, your Mistress,” she said, low. “Your mouth, Duncan. I demand your mouth. Rough, hard, soft or gentle, just as we discussed. You’ll stop when I tell you to stop and not a minute before, even if I make you do it until the sun rises.”

  She heard her heart beat a dozen times, still thundering in her ears, her throat, the pit of her stomach. When they’d knocked the lamp over, the bulb must have blown, because there was barely any light in the room, except for the hellfire in his gaze and the parking lot lights penetrating the sheer window panels. His lips tightened and then so did his hands on her hips.

  With a deep, shuddering sigh that seemed to ripple through him like a desert hot wind, he bent and put his mouth on her.

  Chapter Thirteen

  She was ready for his anger. She hadn’t calculated what everything this day had brought would pull from her. Finally getting the missing pieces—the traumatized boy who’d become a tormented man—had driven the emotional tide within her to overflowing. Especially when those emotions came face to face with what she already felt for him.

  As a correctional officer, she knew there were bad men. But even in the worst of the worst, she occasionally glimpsed who they might have been if they’d chosen that different fork in the road. When she saw those flashes, she also sometimes caught the rare instance when the spark remained, the wish for what they could have been. Astronaut, firefighter, dragon slayer, the hero of the story instead of the villain. Instead of the dregs of society, relegated to a prison jumpsuit and locked away to be forgotten.

  There were exceptions. The psychopaths like Don Larabee, born bad, coughed up from Hell. She couldn’t fathom the divine power that would allow a child to be born to such a creature, a helpless victim from his first breath outside the womb. But in this room, on this night, she’d be the avenging goddess who would provide him her fury, her sex, her passion and fearlessness, to give him a safe haven for the full range of his feelings between grief and rage.

  Or, in simpler terms, she was pissed, she cared about him, and if she couldn’t bash his sperm-donor’s brains out with a bat, she’d fuck the son senseless, until he let it all go inside the safety of her arms and body.

  He pulled off her leggings and panties, leaving her naked. He didn’t stop to savor or look, but dove on her as if he were jumping off a cliff into a welcoming tropical sea. When he buried his face between her legs, she wrapped them over his back. His hands came up and gripped, held on to her thighs and ass as he dedicated himself to pleasuring her, following her command. He started out forceful, impatient, but after that first wave, something settled and he was moaning with a painful relief, a vibration against her pussy as he immersed himself in the task she’d imposed on him.

  He thought he needed violence, when what he really needed was something that made sense. This made sense.

  “That’s my boy,” she crooned. She freed her hands from the loose hold of the belt and stroked his head, her breath catching. God he was good at this, his tongue and lips working so well together. “Oh, baby, keep doing that. Your gorgeous mouth. That’s it…”

  It didn’t take long, this first time. The violence, the need in them both, shot her right into a powerful climax. She let herself go up and over, and made sure he heard it, what he could do to her. She grabbed his shoulders, clawing at him, and brought him up her body, her palms spreading out on his chest, gaze dropping to the jeans.

  “Off. All of it.”

  He stood up and obeyed, standing over her. In that position, the tide could change back to him and his demons, but she didn’t allow it. She gazed up the length of his body, letting him see how much she liked what she saw. How she owned him, head to toe. When their gazes met, she spoke. “Put me on the bed.”

  Setting aside his clothes, he bent and lifted her. She looped her arms around his shoulders, put her face in the curve of his throat and bit him lightly. He swayed, and she flattened her palm on his back, sweeping over the broad expanse. “Put me on the bed,” she repeated.

  Moving to it, he slid a knee onto the mattress, and lowered her. When he released her, he did so reluctantly, but he straightened and moved back, standing at the foot of the bed, between her feet, as if he didn’t trust himself to be too close. Or as if he were waiting for his Mistress to take further control. Direct his actions, because he didn’t know where to go from here.

  His vision had gone bright and hazy at once. Like his eyes were full of unshed tears, though they were dry. He kept staring at her, not moving. Except for one hand, slightly twitching against the foot she’d propped onto the bed, her knee bent.

  She slid down to the end of the mattress and sat up, her legs flanking him, dangling on either side. Enclosing him in her arms, she slid her hands up over his ass, the small of his back. Using the pressure of that embrace, she bumped him a step closer and put her lips against his upper abdomen. His cock was pressed between her breasts and his stomach. It was temptingly close to her mouth.

  He cupped the back of her head, oddly tentative. But what was moving inside him wasn’t ready to let him be gentle. His hand dropped to her hair, clutched and then jerked, making her look up at him. His mouth had become a hard line, eyes cold.

  “I want to try topping, like you said.”

  “Oh?” She tugged against his grip to prop her chin on his abs and blinked, wide-eyed. “So what do you want…Master?”

  His lips curled. “Suck my cock. On your knees.”

  She shook her head. “No.” And went back to kissing his stomach, ignoring the steel shaft nestled in her cleavage, the testicles pressed below her rib cage.

  His biceps bunched into a knot against her temple. She added a teasing trail of her tongue along the ridges of muscle. Stretching up to his nipple, she closed her lips over it for a tiny nip. He shuddered, and let out a noise, half snarl, half groan. “You said I should try topping.”

  “I said that when I was letting you figure out your way, figure out your own bullshit. Not tonight. Tonight you need a light in the storm. You’re all darkness, baby. Let me lead the way.”

  As she tipped her head back to look into his face, she gripped his wrist and squeezed. “Duncan,” she said with soft firmness. “Obey your Mistress. Trust her, if only for this.”

  His grip loosened. She let him go too, using elbows, ass and feet to sensually slither back toward the head of the bed. As she stretched out, she spread her thighs, drifting fingertips along the inner track to caress the damp arousal he’d already left there. “Bring that fine mouth back to my cunt. I want you there again. Soft and easy, because I’m still sensitive. Show me that you can build me back up again. Then I’m going to want you inside me.”

  He pressed his lips together. From the obvious struggle with his emotions, she expected more fencing with words. She didn’t expect what he said next, especially when he spoke out of stiff lips, his eyes still brittle and not particularly kind. “I wish I cou
ld do that without a condom.”

  “So do I.” She cocked her head. “There’ve been hookups at the fight, right? Women all worked up, watching strong men being violent with one another. They’d come on to you afterward, fucking you in your car or theirs, right? Sometimes you didn’t even make it to the parking lot. Just did it in the alley. It worked for you because they were hot and demanding, like a Mistress would be. Telling Rabid to fuck them. Fuck them hard.”

  His gaze lifted from her body to her eyes. “Don’t ever call me that.”

  He’d intended to make it sound like a threat, a warning. But she heard the plea beneath it. “I never will,” she said softly.

  “I always wore protection.” His jaw flexed. “I wouldn’t lie about that.”

  “No. I didn’t expect you would. But something has you hesitating to be inside me without a condom. Maybe because that’s a big step. It says a whole lot.”

  “Yeah.” But that wasn’t entirely it, or maybe he just hadn’t gotten to that concern, because another was in line in front of it. She could tell from the shift of his gaze. Moving her hand onto her pussy, she began to stroke and play. Most men couldn’t be led around by their cocks unless they wanted to be, no matter popular notions to the contrary. But there were men closer to their animal instincts than others, and Marius was one of those, particularly right now. She couldn’t lead him by the cock, but she could use it to distract and unbalance him. A form of truth serum, so to speak. A serious smile touched her lips, her heart aching at how his gaze clung to her hand, what she was offering him behind it.

  “Tell me, sweet boy,” she said. “Then you can come have as much of this as you want.”

  “I want to be sure.” The fist clenching thing, evidence he was fighting something inside himself. “I want…to keep you safe.”