Cowboy & the Captive (14 page)

Tightening his hands on her hips, Luc held her in place as he began his campaign to drive her crazy with the slow, hungry licks and carnal sips he took from her weeping pussy.

“So good…” he muttered as he traveled lower, his tongue rimming the entrance to her vagina. “So sweet and hot…” He invaded her slowly as Melina’s tumultuous wail echoed around them.

She scrambled to hold onto the last shred of control. Fought to hold back, to enjoy without losing herself in his touch, but from the first caress she had been a goner and she knew it. When he lifted her thighs, opening her further, and plunged his tongue into the snug cavern of her cunt she gave up the last measure of sanity.

She had never been loved like this. Had never been taken with such carnal intent as Luc was taking her now. His tongue fucked deep inside her burning pussy, pumping into her with fierce strokes as he threw her higher, deeper into the maelstrom awaiting her. Whipping arcs of heat flickered through her, heating her flesh, sensitizing each nerve ending as she strained closer to the inferno building in her womb.

“Luc. Oh God. I can’t stand it…” Melina thrashed beneath him, her voice rising in reaction to the extreme pleasure rushing through her. “Luc…”

She was terrified, exhilarated, yearning and yet desperate to draw back. The conflicting impulses were shattering her sense of reality.

“No.” She nearly screamed the word as he jerked back from her, moving quickly between her thighs as he bent across her and opened the small drawer in the table beside the bed.

“Condom,” he gasped.

At the same time, the thick head of his cock nudged into the snug entrance of her pussy. They froze, breaths rasping, lust sizzling around them.

“Fuck,” he seemed to wheeze as his hips jerked, only to bury him marginally deeper.

Melina felt the convulsive clenching of her vagina, the hungry milking motion of her muscles as Luc’s flesh stretched them tight. Bare, hot flesh buried inside her. A danger. She panted, fighting not to tempt the control he was trying to impose over his big body. But it was so good.

“Luc…” She jerked as she felt the head throb within her, driving him deeper.

“Condom,” he rasped again, jerking one free of the drawer a second before he drove deep inside her gripping flesh.

Reality no longer existed in any way, shape or form. There was only this. Luc buried within her, hot and steel-hard, fucking her with deep driving strokes as she screamed out beneath him. Melina’s legs wrapped around his pounding hips, her hands gripping his shoulders as he held her close, lunging forcefully into her wet sheath.

Each stroke sank to the very depths of her cunt, caressing sensitive tissue, rasping delicate nerves until with a final, weak cry Melina fought the final battle with the orgasm overtaking her and lost. She exploded beneath him, the white-hot streaks of ecstasy surging through her body as her pussy tightened spasmodically around his plunging cock.

A second later she felt Luc’s release; hot, hard jets of semen spilling into her as he groaned her name roughly, his voice tortured, dark and hungry. The heated warmth shattered her again, sending her plunging headlong into a smaller but no less destructive orgasm that left her weak and terribly frightened that she had just given this man more than her body. She had given him her heart.

* * * * *

She wasn’t Maria Catarina Angeles. Luc held her close in his arms, feeling her soft breathing against his chest, her body relaxed in exhaustion, and admitted the truth she had been trying desperately to convince him. She wasn’t Maria. She was Melina.

Which meant Joe had lied to him. But why?

He smoothed back the fall of red-gold curls and stared down at her sleeping face somberly. What the hell had he done? He had somehow managed to fall in love with a woman and not even know who she was. It was terrifying. It was— Hell, he was in deep.

He drew in a deep breath and ignored the erection pleading for another dose of rapture. Nothing had ever come close to the pleasure he had experienced as he plunged his cock inside her snug pussy unprotected. He had been a goner the minute he had unintentionally buried the head of his erection inside her. He had tried, though, he assured himself. Hell, he had been clutching the condom in his hand even as he spurted his seed deep inside the hot depths of her vagina.

What now?

God, she was pretty. Now he understood the innocence in her eyes, the unlined, unblemished skin of her face. Her laughter, unaffected and so often freely given. Her joy in that black mouse catcher she gave so much affection to.

He doubted she had ever taken a drug in her life. There were no tracks on her arms, no furtive behavior, no withdrawal. There was none of it, because she wasn’t Maria.

What the fuck was Joe trying to pull on him? Luc frowned heavily as he gently disengaged himself from his sleeping lover and pulled on a pair of loose pajama bottoms before leaving the bedroom quietly. Joe had called several times the first two days to check up on
Maria.
Luc snorted. The other man knew what the hell he had done; now Luc wanted to know why. And the reason had better be a damned good one.

He slipped downstairs and into his study, his anger building with every step. There had been times that he had been unjust in his treatment of her. He hadn’t gone easy on her. The house was spotless, dust was now afraid to enter, and the place smelled like her. The tempting subtle scent of woman seemed steeped into every nook and cranny of the house.

Sighing wearily, he picked up the phone and quickly dialed Joe’s number. Several rings later, the other man answered.

“You have two minutes to tell me why you fucking lied to me. If the explanation isn’t satisfactory, then your voice will rival Melina’s for soft feminine sweetness.”

There was a long silence on the line. Shock and sudden comprehension filled the line.

“Fuck,” Joe finally said. “No matter what you do to me later, Luc, don’t let her out of your sight right now. She’s in more danger than you know…”

Chapter Seventeen

Every time she said no, they hit her again…

She was beaten so badly we didn’t think she would make it…

The doctors doubt she’ll ever conceive due to the internal injuries…

She was tricked, Luc. Maria didn’t spend that week in jail that you demanded, Melina did…

Luc pushed shaking fingers through his hair as the words replayed through his mind. His fault. It had been his fault that an innocent woman had nearly died. The same woman who had called him, apologizing for what had been done to him, her voice whispering in regret and sadness.

The woman he had confronted in her parents’ living room hadn’t been Maria. He remembered his fury when he had faced her, seeing the confusion and fear in her eyes when her parents introduced her as Maria. The memory of the awareness that had sizzled between them that day had haunted him over the years. For some reason, his cock had strained in urgent demand when her soft lips had trembled into a self-conscious smile that day.

He had allowed his rage free. His voice hard, harsh, his words damning as he watched her face drain of color.

You’ll pay for it, Ms. Angeles,
he had warned her furiously.
By God, I’ll make sure you spend time in jail if it’s the last thing I do in my life.

At the time, he had ignored the bleak pain that filled her expression. Her gaze had dropped, her soft lips pressing together a second after a betraying quiver had shaken them. He had wanted to haul her into his arms and apologize, which only made him madder at the time.

Now he knew why. Some instinct, some primitive part of his mind, had recognized the fact that he was punishing the wrong woman. That he was punishing
his
woman.

Damn. Where had that thought come from?

Shaking his head, Luc rose to his feet and paced from his office through the darkened house and back upstairs to his bedroom. She was still sleeping in his bed, curled in the middle, her hair tumbling around her head and shoulders like a fall of silk.

She hadn’t been raped. Thank God. Out of all the horror she had faced at least she had been saved the destructive pain of having been raped by her own sex. His fingers clenched as pain threatened to swamp him. He had put her there. Unintentionally perhaps, but he had been to blame all the same.

He sat down in the wingback chair beside his bed and stared at her. He simply watched her sleep, realizing he had never done that before. He had never watched a woman sleep nor would he have thought he would have gained any pleasure from it. But he did. Seeing the steady rise and fall of her full breasts, the way her lips parted just the tiniest bit, the small shadows her light colored, surprisingly lush lashes cast on her cheeks.

She was exquisite. In admitting that she wasn’t the shell of a woman he had thought she was, he was able to look beyond what he thought was there to the woman beneath. There was no longer the conflict that had warred between his head and his heart where she was concerned. Now, if only he could find a way to keep her safe.

Maria was missing and, with her, two of the dangerous drug runners she associated with. According to Joe’s information, she was looking for Melina. There was only one reason for Maria to be searching so hard for her sister. To find a way to ensure that Melina endured the coming prison sentence rather than her.

God, what kind of monsters raised a child to believe her sibling could always stand in front of trouble for her? What hold did Maria have over her parents’ hearts to have allowed something like that to happen? How did a sister—a twin—turn so dark and black against the other? It made no sense to Luc.

He knew twins, the August twins, especially. Men whose battles had left them, for a while, scarred and almost broken. But they had always protected one another, and their older brother, Cade, had protected them all. They were brothers; there were no questions of loyalty or determination to help each other. It was a part of them. How had Maria managed to be born without that innate love for her sister?

And Melina. How had she endured it? To be betrayed, not just by her twin, but by her parents? They had left her in that fucking jail cell while they vacationed in the Bahamas, accepting Maria’s word that her sister had been released. Accepting, without question, the word of a known liar, thief and drug addict.

Melina had nearly died. He stared at her, horror streaking through his system as he noted the almost fragile build of her slender body, the delicacy of her bones. She had been beaten so badly that she had received two broken ribs, suffered internal bleeding and contusions, scarring that might never heal. She had been only minutes from death when Joe had carried her into the emergency room of a local hospital. For days, it had been touch and go.

Hell, what had made her even fight to live? What did she have to hold onto at that time?

One of the inmates heard her scream your name…
That had surprised Luc, when Joe told him that. Why would she scream for him? It had been his fault she was there to begin with. But she had screamed his name, cried out for him.

He wiped his hands over his face as fury consumed him. God help him, he prayed he never had a chance to wrap his hands around her father’s neck, or her sister’s. He feared he’d kill them himself for what they had done to Melina.

Rising to his feet, he shed his pajama bottoms and returned to the bed. He pulled her gently into his arms, surrounding her, holding her to him. She moved against him with a murmur of satisfaction, pillowing her head on his chest as he pressed his lips to her hair.

She was where she belonged. In his arms. His bed. His life. He’d be damned if he ever let her go. She might as well get used to being his captive, because she had stolen his heart and there wasn’t a chance he was going to let her leave with it.

Chapter Eighteen

Melina slipped out of bed the next morning, aware of Luc’s stormy eyes opening, his silence as she gathered up her clothes and headed for the shower. He didn’t speak and she was thankful for that. She wasn’t entirely certain she could handle a conversation with him right now.

Never in her life had she experienced a pleasure as astounding as what she had felt in his arms the night before. Sex had never been one of her favorite pastimes, even before she met Luc. Her few experiments into it had left her disappointed, left her wondering why she bothered. Last night had shown her why she should bother with Luc.

She shivered beneath the pounding force of the hot shower, her eyes closing as she fought the sensitivity of her own body. She ached in places that she didn’t know could ache. Her breasts were tender, the snowy globes marked here and there with the reddened proof of his passion. Even her hips carried one of the rosy brands from his mouth.

Her thighs clenched as she felt her pussy ripple in remembered pleasure. His mouth had lingered there, kissing her so intimately she had thought she would die from the sensations. If she wasn’t extremely careful, she could become addicted to his touch, his kiss.

She shook her head, attempting to dispel the memory of his touch, and quickly finished her shower. She had to figure out what to do now. She hadn’t expected things to progress to this point. She had never imagined she would be so weak as to allow Luc to actually take her while he still believed she was Maria. Yet, she had.