Into His Keeping (13 page)

Holdin felt her surrender and growled into the heat of the cunt he owned. She may not have realized this surrender was to the primitive male who’d claimed her once before and never given up his position on her. That bastard had hunted her, driven him to become who he was for her. Now he had her back and no power would take her again. Well, that’s why the bastard was primitive. He fucking didn’t care what else occurred as long as he had Jill.

Reluctantly he let her spiral down. His fingers remained buried deep in her tight pussy as he licked around them, lapping up her taste greedily. He moved them lazily in and out and she clenched weakly every time he did. Watching for a moment, he smiled. Yes, this was his.

Finally his eyes traveled up her body. Over a trembling belly, tracking the mounds of her exposed breasts still half captured in the severe bra, to her face. He pulled himself up so he sat with one of her legs draped over his thighs, the other behind his shoulders on the back of the sofa and drank in the sight of her sprawled open to him. His fingers still moved in her and he enjoyed the slow fuck.

Her eyes half opened, sensing him looking at her.

“Roll your nipples for me, Jilly-girl,” Holdin directed as he continued to slide his fingers in and out of her.

She tensed as her eyes focused on him, slowly surfacing from the fog of release and becoming aware of his view and his command. He was breathing heavily as his eyes moved over her, his jaw clenched and sweat glistened on his wide, bare chest. The damp evidence of her passion covered his face. His continued invasion of her body was gentle but insistent as was his hold on her leg across his thighs. She’d tensed and his grip tightened warningly. She was to remain as she was. No words were required, just the savage look on his face to tell her that.

Now the low-timbre command was pushing her. Taking her. He wanted her compliance and it had very little to do with sex. He was taking possession of her body. Her response to his command was overwhelming and immediately clear to him. His fingers deep inside her felt her body shudder and then liquid acceptance gushed around those digits.

He didn’t smile. He bared his teeth and hissed as her fingers moved to the sensitive peaks of her breasts and slowly rolled them for him. Even though the act was surrender, sensation zipped straight down to her womb and shook her with little tremors. Jill’s mouth opened in a silent gasp at the intensity of her response. Her body arched into his fingers and she reveled in the surrender he required. Everything else fell away and there was only this man in her world. He burned through her with his elemental control of her base responses.

A wicked cord of fear whipped up her body as he looked at her. It wasn’t bitter. It was sweet seduction. He would have her as he wanted her. She knew he would. He’d make sure she loved his possession too. For this man it would be almost effortless. The fact that he understood the power he wielded was overwhelming. But not as frightening as the sure knowledge that he also knew how badly she needed it from him.

Suddenly there were three fingers in her and he was fucking her with them in hard thrusts.

Her hips lifted helplessly and her fingers pinched engorged nipples hard, pulling her breasts up to send drugging spikes of pain into the enveloping pleasure of submitting to Holdin. Looking into his eyes, Jill felt the whirlwind coming. His consuming need coupled with her desperate desire created such an overwhelming vortex of emotion and sensation. The power of it washed over her body with a roaring intensity that she couldn’t control, couldn’t resist.

“Help me,” she gasped in panic. Fear and surrender crashed together and the storm of this moment was about to carry her away.

He heard it in her plea, saw it in her trembling body and immediately he was over her, the weight of his body holding her to the sofa as his other arm wrapped around her head and held her cheek pressed to his. The fingers in her cunt thrust into her with greater force and she gave herself into his keeping. The release erupted in what would have been uncontrollable abandon as she flew into the universe. He took her there and protected her from the power of it at the same time.

His low voice in her ear drove her higher and gave her an anchor to cling to. “That’s my girl. Yes, let it go. So beautiful, baby girl.” She convulsed repeatedly and he held her still. The world spun away and he guarded her soul with his body. His rigid control released her to abandonment and she was safe.

The full-body contractions finally began to quiet and his fingers in her slowed to gentle caresses as reality crept back into the room. Jill lay panting beneath him, afraid to open her eyes. The overwhelming pleasure she’d just experienced was as frightening as it was wonderful. It’d been about them, Jill and Holdin, in the most elemental way possible. Her pleasure had only been complete when she’d been willing to surrender even her life into his keeping.

Jill was still trembling as Holdin pulled his drenched fingers from her body. His cheek was damp with her tears as he turned to gently kiss them away. “Don’t cry, baby,” he crooned softly. “Don’t be sorry this is who we are.”

He was kissing her face with tender desperation as Jill opened her eyes to gaze at him in glazed amazement.

“Doesn’t this scare you? Do you know what you did to me?” He’d shattered her and held her together in ways she couldn’t even put words to. Her release had been as bound up in the symbolism of surrendering to him as it was about the sensations.

“I know what
we
just did and no, it doesn’t scare me. What scares me is that you don’t trust me now,” he told her softly. “That is how we are. Tears on your face terrify me.”

He knew she’d been completely his. Once again he’d held
his
Jill and given her everything he could. But now he needed to hear her say it, acknowledge that unique merging of souls that only she and he could achieve.

Jill closed her eyes again and tried to let their embrace calm her. He held her tenderly and again rested his cheek beside hers.

“Tell me why you’re so afraid, Jilly-girl. You trusted me for a moment and then it was gone. What happened?”

“Reality happened.” Jill dragged in a deep breath. “The past, the future, all of it. I’m afraid of going to a hospital again. Cutting into my brain is just piling on the terror factor. I’m so worried about Drifter and so afraid I can’t help him deal with this. He’s such a little man. He doesn’t show me his fears anymore. He’s too busy trying to protect me. Oh God, Holdin. Everything! I have to take care of everything and it’s so much harder to remember that when you show me how it feels to…to not worry about anything.” Jill turned her head into his neck as tears flowed again.

“Shhhhh. No, baby, no. Don’t cry. Honey, how about you let me worry about a few more things for both of us? I’m trying to get you to see that you can do that. I’m the one you can lean on. I’ll take care of you. I’ll take care of our son. Your only job is to get through the surgery. That’s it. Everything else is mine to worry about. Let me have it, Jill. Give me your trust.”

Jill shuddered beneath him and the tears stopped flowing. He couldn’t see her face but he didn’t need to. Her body was tense. She was thinking about it but not really getting what he meant. She was withdrawing the gift of her soul. Somehow she couldn’t take that step in the cold light of logic.

“It’s not that simple,” Jill stated softly.

“Why not? Have I ever intentionally let you down?” he prodded her again. Would she be brave enough to come to him? He steeled himself as he waited for her. She had physically returned to him voluntarily but could she make the rest of the trip mentally? Oh God! He wanted her so bad, so damn bad. Not just in his bed but at the center of his world. She was the heartbeat of his soul, a position that had always been hers.

“We’re not so free anymore. Now there are huge issues to think about. There are estates and inheritance and guardianship. There are legal issues and moral ones. I can’t just stop thinking as an adult. If it were just me, I could manage it. But as a mother, I have to think about all these things to protect my son. I can’t let go. Not for an instant.”

“Who asked you to stop thinking? Damn, woman! Of course you have to protect our son, but don’t you see that you’ve done that?” Holdin’s arms tightened around her as he ended the statement with soft kisses to the crown of her head.

Jill was silent and Holdin frowned. He could feel her resistance to what he’d just said in her body. Pain at what she couldn’t say to him was surprisingly sharp. It was unrealistic to expect her surrender, that didn’t mean he couldn’t want it. Didn’t mean he didn’t need it. Anger was his initial response, fierce rage at the years that had been stolen from them, the life that should have been theirs. Those long wasted years of loneliness.

Damn, this would be so much easier if she were his wife already.

Holdin jerked in shock. That was it!! Baby girl needed security and he needed her. All of that could be tied up in a tidy bow with a marriage license. There would be no more questions of inheritance, guardianship, obligation or slick doctor bastards trying to steal her.

“Marry me.” His deep voice made it a command instead of a request.

“What?” Jill’s body stiffened.

“Marry me. Before we go to the hospital tomorrow. Let me call the preacher and have him do it. We’ll file for a special license but I want to say the words and have it recorded in the church records now.”

Jill’s face left his neck and she stared at him with wide, shocked eyes. “You’re serious?”

“Yes. Marry me,” Holdin insisted again.

“No! We can’t just get married! Are you insane?” Jill frowned at him as if he were suddenly some alien being.

“No. Think about it. Married is the one thing that takes away all the questions. I’m totally serious. We should have been married a long time ago,” Holdin insisted logically.

Jill searched his eyes in consternation. He was serious and apparently convinced he was making sense. “Holden,” she started slowly, intending to speak to him as plainly as possible. “People do not get married because they were a lovely couple once upon a time. Nor do they do it because they had a child. Getting married for any reason but the right one is insanity.”

She grabbed his handsome face, framing it as he opened his mouth to argue with her. “No. Listen to me. You are a dominant. I’m well aware of that and what it means now. You need to take care of your family and that’s wonderful. But I will not consent to marry you because you suddenly realized a marriage license would make controlling everything so much easier. Nor will I do it because you think I need it. Come up with the right reason and I’ll consider it sometime in the future. But not now, not before the surgery.”

“Jesus!” Holden snapped his teeth shut to stop the flow of frustration and carefully peeled himself off her to start gathering up her clothes. Shaking out her pants, he studiously concentrated on the job at hand while Jill pulled the bra cups back over her breasts and started fumbling with reinserting the shoulder straps in the little clamps attached to the cups.

He’d gone too far. Damn it to hell! Her “right reason” was kicking his ass, hard. She wouldn’t believe a declaration of love now and he wasn’t even certain the emotion he was feeling could be called that. Love was gentle, kind, long-fucking-suffering. None of that shit applied to the pacing beast dragging its claws in the dirt right now. That animal apparently had the mental capacity of a baboon. Holdin slammed the cage shut on the idiot and set about repairing damage.

Her pants were about as shaken out as they could get and Jill was still fumbling with the shoulder straps. “Let me, baby.” Holdin gently took over the hooking up and deftly inserted the cloth straps through the clip slots. Pulling them tight required supporting each breast, which he did gently.

Jill glanced up at his face. His expression was calm as if a mask had dropped over it. He pulled down her polo shirt and picked up her panties from on top of the jeans he’d laid over the other arm of the chair. Jill was still half reclining on the sofa as he slipped them over her feet and glanced up at her with a raised eyebrow. She shifted so he could pull them up her legs.

“Dressing me?”

“Mmmm,” Holdin grunted and grabbed her pants. Gently he helped her into them, going so far as to zip and snap them. “Don’t get up. Remember you’re not supposed to move around if you don’t have to.”

Jill let him do as he pleased. He seemed intent on the task. The explosive conversation that had ended so abruptly weighed on her. Would Holdin see her refusal to marry him out of convenience as a rejection? It was a rejection, but only of the reasons he was using. Or would he see it as a narrow escape? Even in her mind, she knew that wasn’t fair. He’d been very clear that he intended to be involved in her life, not just Drifter’s. Marriage was a huge step.