Desperate Domination (Bought by the Billionaire #3) (3 page)

With a shudder of relief, Hannah relaxed into him, going limp to make her body easier to tow out of the rip tide. Clearly sensing her surrender, Jackson kicked hard beneath the water, his powerful legs sending them gliding toward the beach on the crest of the next wave. She could feel the current tugging at her thighs, but it was still hard to believe that Jackson was fighting the full force of the ocean to get them both to safety. He was, as ever, in control of himself and all he surveyed.

The immense strength and power of the man hit home long before they reached the shallow water and he pulled her into his arms, carrying her out of the waves like she weighed nothing at all. But it was the moment he laid her down in the sand—gently, carefully—that impressed her the most.

Any man could bulk up until he was the biggest beast in the jungle, not any man could communicate with a touch that he believed the world was a better place with you in it.

“You almost died,” he growled as he swiped water from his face, his voice a low rumble that threatened an impending storm. “If I hadn’t seen your dress blow into the road, you would be dead right now.”

Hannah stared up at him, still breathing hard. “Maybe not. I was fighting. I might have made it.”

Heat flashed through his eyes as he braced his hands on either side of her shoulders. “Or you might be dead. You might be at the bottom of the ocean because lying to me is more important to you than your damned life!”

“Lies are the only things you’ll believe,” she shot back, refusing to be cowed by his anger. “You wouldn’t recognize the truth if it walked up and slapped you in the face, Jackson Hawke.”

“You don’t have permission to—”

“I will call you what I want, when I want,” she barreled on, tears rising in her eyes. “I don’t want to be your property; I want to be your friend. Because I c-care about you. Even if you are mean and dangerous and probably out of your damned mind.”

“You care about me,” he echoed, his expression going blank in that way he had, the way that made her unsure whether she was going to earn pleasure or pain from his hands. But right now she was too fresh from near-death to be afraid of the consequences of her frank speech.

“Yes, I care about you.” She blinked faster, trying to keep her tears from slipping down her cheeks “But I’m probably as crazy as you are you big, stupid, arrogant—”

Jackson’s lips found hers, silencing her with a kiss. His tongue slipped into her mouth, mating with hers, sending electricity searing across her chilled skin and a roar of approval thundering through her every cell. She relaxed her jaw, welcoming his invasion with a moan as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

She clung to him, each press of her fingertips into his muscled shoulders a promise that she would never let him go. He might be mean and dangerous and crazy, but he cared about her, too. She could feel it in the way he pulled her close, rolling her on top of him as he claimed her with his kiss.

CHAPTER THREE

Jackson

He didn’t know up from down or right from wrong. All he knew was that he needed her. He needed to be inside of her, to prove to both of them that she was still alive.

Thank God she was still alive. If he’d lost her…

If he’d been forced to watch her die…

He couldn’t think about it. He wouldn’t think about that or anything else.

Driving a hand into her wet hair, he fisted the other in her panties, ripping them away with one swift jerk. She cried out against his lips as the satin tore, but when he tugged at the back of her thigh, guiding it to the outside of his hip, she spread her legs without resistance. He smoothed his palm over her ass, tracing the seam of her buttock until he dipped his fingers between her legs, finding where she was already slick and hot.

“No more lies,” he said, shoving two digits deep into her pussy, summoning another moan from low in her throat. “From now on, you tell me the truth or I will show you how mean and crazy I can be. Do you hear me?”

“You don’t scare me,” she said, nipping his bottom lip between her teeth hard enough to send pain coursing through his jaw.

“You don’t scare me, sir,” he corrected as he delivered a stern swat to her bare ass, falling back into the game.

He understood the game. The game had rules and a logic that was easy to follow. He didn’t know what to do with this woman when she refused to play by the rules, when she told him she cared about him in that sweet, sad voice that made his heart want to believe her, even if his mind knew better.

“Yes, sir,” she said, easing the tension in his chest. “You don’t scare me, sir.”

“I should.” He released the close of her bra and tossed it away. Her breasts fell heavily onto his chest, making his cock throb. He cupped her fullness in his hands, pinching her nipples until she cried out and her hips began to squirm, restlessly seeking the friction of his erection between her legs.

“Because I don’t love you,” he continued in his hardest voice. “I told you, the man who cared about you is dead. Even if I wanted to, I could never love you, or anyone else, ever again.”

“I thought you said no more lies,” she said, arching her back, pressing her breasts more firmly into his palms.

“I’m not lying.” He kneed her legs apart and bowed upward, lifting her into the air as he pressed his cock against her through the drenched fabric of his boxer briefs. “I don’t love you, and I don’t want to make love to you. I want to fuck you until you scream and realize what a stupid decision it was to run from me.”

“Then fuck me until I scream, sir,” she said, a flush spreading from her breasts up her throat to her gently parted lips. “Fuck me until I know who I belong to.”

God
damn.

He didn’t want to give her the upper hand, even for a second, but there was no way he could resist an invitation like that.

Clenching his jaw tight, he reversed their positions, rolling her beneath him as he shoved his soaked boxers down his thighs. He kicked the fabric free and reached down, spreading her outer lips with his thumbs, revealing the slick, swollen flesh of her pussy.

His
pussy. She was his and he was going to make sure that every time she sat down for the next three days she remembered it.

He positioned the dripping head of his cock and shoved home with a brutal thrust that wrenched the promised scream from her lips. The sound was part pleasure, part pain, and so fucking sexy he couldn’t have held back if he’d tried.

With a groan of surrender, he braced his arms on either side of her pretty face and rode her hard. He fucked her until her breasts bounced against his chest and the sound of their bodies connecting made a dull thudding sound audible over the crash of the waves against the shore. They were both going to be sore as hell tomorrow, but he didn’t care. He needed her to feel him, every inch of his cock filling her up, staking his claim.

Her pleasure and pain belonged to him.
She
belonged to him.

“You’re mine,” he said, biting his bottom lip as he fought for control, for the strength to hold on until he felt her go. “You belong to me. Even if you kill yourself, even if you kill me, you will always belong to me.”

“Oh God, Jackson, please!” Her nails raked down his arms, leaving stinging trails behind that he knew would fill with blood.

But he didn’t care. Let her mark him. Let her bleed him, so long as she came begging him for more.

“Please what?” He shifted the angle of his thrusts until her breath caught on a gasp of pleasure.

“Can I come?” she asked, voice rising as she writhed beneath him, fighting to hold back the wave mounting inside of her. “Please, sir, can I come? Please? God, Jackson, please!”

“Come,” he commanded, shoving into her one final time. She cried out his name and he roared something incomprehensible into the soft curve of her neck as her pussy clenched tight around his cock, triggering an orgasm so intense he lost time.

For a moment, he existed outside of reality, in an alternate dimension where there was nothing but warmth and pleasure and the smell of this woman all around him. And it was sweet, so sweet he thought maybe he could die a happy man as long as he died with the smell of her thick in his head, the taste of her on his tongue, the feel of her arms and legs locked around him, holding him close to her heart.

He came and came, pleasure having its way with him for what could have been hours before he finally collapsed on top of her, fighting to regain his breath. Between the battle with the ocean and the erotic battle with his newly recaptured prisoner, he was too spent to move, even when he realized that he hadn’t pulled out. He’d come inside her, spilling every drop into the slick heat of her pussy.

He cursed himself but didn’t roll away. It was too late for pulling out to do a damned bit of good and he wanted to stay joined with her a little longer, with his softening length buried inside her and the sticky heat of their pleasure binding them together. He didn’t want to think about what came next, or what he would have to do if she lied to him again.

“I’m sorry I ran,” she finally whispered. “I saw Adam carrying a cage around to the back of the house and I lost it. I…I was afraid it was for me.”

“It was for you.” He didn’t bother to add that it still might be, depending on her answers to his questions.

“But why?” she asked, her voice breaking. “I thought we had a good time today. I thought we were connecting in a way we hadn’t before.”

“I agree.” He drew back until he could take in her flushed cheeks and blue eyes, still glittering with passion. “That’s why I trusted you to remain alone on the porch while I took a phone call. And you rewarded that trust by running away and nearly killing yourself.”

Her brows drew together. “And if I hadn’t, you would have put me in a cage. What kind of reward is that?”

“I said the cage was for you; I didn’t say I was going to put you in it. It was a possibility, not a foregone conclusion.”

“Can’t you just give a straight answer for once?” she asked. “Is that so difficult?”

“The only thing I’ve promised you is that I will break you,” he said, capturing her wrists and guiding them above her head before pinning them to the sand. “I never promised you truth or affection or anything else.”

She held his gaze, her bottom lip trembling. “You’re right. You’re impossible, but you’re right.”

“I’m not impossible,” he said, shocked to feel desire whispering through his core as she shifted beneath him, her hips sinking deeper into the coarse beach. He wanted to fuck her until he was hard again and they both had more sand in uncomfortable places, but the time for pleasure was through.

He needed answers and he intended to get them. “I’m going to give you a chance to make this better,” he said softly. “If you please me, you will sleep in your bed tonight. If you displease me, you sleep in the kennel.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Jackson

Her eyes widened. “No. I can’t. Please, I’m terrified of small spaces.”

“Then I suppose you’d better answer my questions honestly.” Jackson leaned in until his face hovered inches from hers, close enough for him to see the starbursts of gray surrounding her pupils.

Had Harley’s eyes turned into tiny blue and silver suns at their centers? He didn’t think so. Not exactly like this, anyway. If he were a gambling man, he would bet this was her sister, Hannah, but he needed to hear it from her own lips.

And then he needed her to tell him why she’d lied.

“What is your name?” he asked, his fingers tightening around her wrists as he relaxed more of his weight on top of her. He wanted her to feel just how vulnerable she was. Vulnerable, exposed, and completely at his mercy.

“My name,” she echoed, searching his face. “We’re back to this?”

“We are,” he said. “But this time I want the truth.”

She pulled in a breath and held it for a moment before releasing her words in a rush, “What if you don’t believe me?”

“I’ll believe you. If you’re telling the truth.”

“How will you know?”

“I’ll know.” He would. She had no reason to suspect that he’d discovered her secret. If she confessed the truth now while staring up into his eyes with her body slick around him and the steady thud of her heartbeat echoing through his chest, he would believe her.

“All right, I…” Her tongue slipped out, dampening her lips. “My name is Hannah. Hannah Elisabeth.”

He swallowed, keeping his expression impassive, trying not to think too much about all the things he’d done to this woman while laboring under a case of mistaken identity. “Harley is your twin sister.”

She nodded, fear and uncertainty swirling in her eyes. “Yes.”

“And where is your sister now?” He moved his hands away from her wrists, granting her that slight freedom as a reward for her honesty.

“She’s dead,” she whispered. “She died in a car accident six years ago.”

He closed his eyes. If he didn’t, there would be no way he would be able to hide his response. She was telling the truth. Harley was dead and he’d wasted six years of his life hunting a ghost.

Six
fucking
years.

And now here he was, buried balls deep in a stranger he’d been hate fucking for a week, treating her the way he would only have treated his worst enemy.