A Night by my Fire Read online

  Patting his chest, trying to signal he was too close, River stammered, “Just cook the rabbit.”

  Stephen shifted his knee to settle it between the woman’s legs, so he might continue to look down at her. When her expression betrayed physical discomfort, large hands adjusted her positioning. One sharp yank on her thigh, a tug that brought her prostrated fully underneath him.

  In the first few days, the man had hardly touched her, had always kept an almost laughable distance, and now he was hauling her around. River was not happy about it. “You’re making me very nervous...”

  He’d read the entirety of the terrible romance while she’d slept. He’d studied. “Why? Is this not the way the woman was handled in that book?”

  Oh dear god, he was actually teasing her... “It’s just a book.”

  The man smirked. “You claimed that was the desire of lonely women.”

  Her brows drew down, offense obvious in her voice. “I said no such thing, and I am not a lonely woman!”

  Agitated, Stephen growled, “If the book was incorrect, then tell me the custom for initiating.”

  “Initiating?” River repeated the word slowly, seeing the man was staring at her mouth again. “You’re holding me down.”

  Blue eyes snapped up, met hers, and were far too intimidating. “I would not force you.”

  Then why had he dragged her to the fire? “You forced me here.”

  Not knowing the proper words when propositioning a female, he said, “I see no more point in playing games when you know I want to touch you and you want to be touched.”

  He was so blunt, even River was not sure what to say.

  “And I want to see your body,” Stephen added, carefully noting the minutia of her reactions so he might continue in the correct direction. “I want to feel your mouth again. When you are naked, and I am hard, I want to fuck you.”

  He began lifting the hem of her sweater, his hand sliding quickly until her breasts popped free. She gaped at the way the stranger looked at them—as if he wanted to eat her. Considering their positions, she was pretty certain he did.

  Stephen did as he claimed, and just looked, tentative fingers tracing over something soft and unknown—tawny skin and dusky areolas, nipples that puffed under his view. Lower lip caught in his teeth, he leaned in to smell, and River made a noise.

  As if he was going to feast, he lined her up, pulling her closer to his mouth. Warm lips skimmed her nipple so lightly it was almost as if he were not there, like being kissed by a ghost, until he chose to latch on, to suck as much of her flesh into his mouth as he could.

  His brashness, the way his knee pressed right against her mound. Unsure what the hell was wrong with her, River rolled her hips in search of friction.

  He came up for breath, but he was far from done. River didn’t squeak or shy when he gripped that swollen breast, when he pinched the nipple to see if it might grow more flushed. The woman let out a pant, one single, wracking shiver, and he found he wanted to make her do it again.

  Pale eyes darted up to a face he’d memorized, only to find River’s lips parted, her cheeks flushed in an all new expression. “You enjoy this?”

  Breathless, she spoke nonsense, “If I say yes, it will only prove that I have lost my mind.”

  That was confirmation enough. Stephen began tugging the bunched sweater fully over her head. “You will spread your legs for me.”

  Raking his face over her to hear more of that mewl, feeling himself swell large in his pants, he wanted to show his girth to her, so she might know she’d inspired such a reaction. He wanted to put it in her, and do what males were designed to do. Most of all he wanted her to reciprocate. “Touch me.”

  “Where?”

  Would she dare to tease? “Everywhere.”

  Palms settled right at his collar bones, and smoothed lower, fisting the fabric of his thermal to pull it up as he’d done to her. He helped her, shedding it quickly. His body was grand, he knew it was—the woman should see, as she’d seen when she gaped at him from the door the previous night.

  His trainers had complimented his physique, River would too.

  But she remained silent, that nervous tongue darting out again at the view of so much mass. Stephen was on the border of ordering her regard, but the woman leaned forward, and she flicked her tongue in the soft hollow of his throat.

  Nothing had ever felt so moving.

  He was the one panting, reaching to take the rest of her clothes and stripping her naked so fast fabric tore.

  “Careful.” River was nervous, and one word seemed to mellow her would-be paramour.

  Stephen stripped himself much more cautiously, pressed her legs apart, and answered her apprehension. She’d hardly had more than a glimpse of what bobbed, kissing her opening. The tentative strokes were gone. Instead he rose up over her, beholding where he longed to push forth, just to see what she looked like where she quivered and was expectant of him.

  ***

  There was no silly slapping of her pussy with his girth, no spitting on his hand as others had done before him—things, River was certain, some third-rate seventies porn had glamorized and every man who’d seen it since thought was some spectacular bedroom move. No, he braced, tense, with a look in his eye as his cock nested. It turned her on... because that look was hers and had never belonged to another.

  But she had to warn him. “I don’t... protection—”

  The stranger cut her off, head racing up to glare. “There is nothing that could protect you from me.”

  Chuckling at his inability to grasp that she referred to a condom, River found her mouth silenced when he surged full inside and stole her breath. All laughter forgotten, her hole spasmed when a flurry of neglected internal muscles shut her up. A throat noise, her heart beating in her ears—she felt so full.

  He held her there, gauging the slippery grip for himself, soaking in her reaction to him. “Do I feel good inside you?”

  Fuck, he felt like something else entirely. Mute, River nodded and breathed out a soft moan, the nearest thing she could create in verbal affirmative. As he flexed to withdraw, she made her tongue form words, “You need to take it slow... it’s been awhile for me.”

  “I move at the pace I choose.”

  The Neanderthal growl and man’s hoarse demand should not have made her cream around his dick... but it did. She was dripping for him, feeling it seep when he pulled out so slow it was deliberate—a reminder that no matter the tempo, he was in charge, she was to follow, and all would be satisfied should she obey.

  She almost came at the thought... more than willing to admit she might have been a little fucked up in the head.

  His second penetration mirrored the withdrawal. Slow—infinitely slow—as if he wanted to feel each separate nerve of his cock learning a cunt... so he might imprint it onto his person. It would have been clinical had his eyes not widened in awe.

  The man fucking loved it just as much, if not more, than she did.

  Raising her legs to hook at his back brought a growl of warning from the stranger hovering over her, until he felt the angle and squeeze, recognizing her heels dug into his glutes because her body craved more. He drew it out, three more slow plunges, grinding in when she willingly sucked him fully inside her belly.

  The noises he could inspire when he did that... it seemed the man wanted to know just what other response he could create. It became a game. Hard, forceful thrusts made him groan and her squirm. Steady pacing, teasing at her mound with his pelvis and her head rolled back, River’s loud moans making his balls clench.

  Under him, being his experiment, River found herself more than happy to let him play... relieved he didn’t just hump away like most virgins overexcited by the opportunity to nut-off for the first time in actual lady parts. Her stranger was the pirate, she the captive damsel... he didn’t even need to outline the fantasy in words—it was in the grip of his hands that already seemed to know her, that had memorized from those few strokes he�
�d offered before ripping off her clothes.

  He controlled to the point of obsession, tilting her hips, thumbing her clit until she squealed, spreading her wider when the mood hit so he might watch. All obedience was rewarded and the first time she came, twitching and shuddering at his manipulation of nerve endings, he took in her every reaction and sought to outdo them.

  It was unnatural the control he had over his own body. His sack was already high and tight, it had to ache from need of release, but he was mesmerized in the act. She took advantage, dug her nails into an ass most women would die to feel clenched pleasuring them and reared up. Using the foul mouth he claimed to hate, River trilled out a list of dirty talk that would make an old perv blush. The second she told him to, “fuck that needy pussy,” he came, jerking, trying to get as deep as possible while moaning like a ten-dollar whore.

  Never had she had it so good or been in so much trouble with the man who wasn’t quite done spilling. He looked like he could strangle her, like he wanted to fuck her again, like she might have been the most amazing thing he had ever seen.

  Her hand skimmed over his growing stubble of brown hair, wiping the sweat away as she grinned, owning up to her naughtiness in one wicked leer.

  Punishment was coming for unsettling his plan. Panting, he threatened, “Again. We will go again. Every way.”

  ***

  She wasn’t off the hook and Stephen still had much he wanted to experience. After he prepared the rabbit, after he’d fed her to shore up her strength, he kneeled over her chest and hung his uncut cock near her mouth, quieting her complaints at being shoved down... or so he thought... by thrusting between pretty lips. River hummed around him, made obnoxious sucking noises, gagged when she let him go too deep... and he found the sounds better than the silence he thought he wanted. He supported her skull, pleasure unmasked in his eyes, fisting a handful of braid each time her vulgar tongue traced the veins in his cock or flittered across the slit where he leaked.

  He came in that warm, velvet mouth. With hollowed cheeks, she drank him up like a good girl, batting her eyelashes in a way that felt far dirtier than her previous vulgar speech.

  Chapter Eight

  “You must angle the blade away from your body, foolish woman, or it will slip and you will cut yourself.”

  Wrapped in only a blanket, sitting beside her guest, River snapped, “Shut your mouth and pay attention. This is called a pare cut, so long as you go with the grain and your knife is sharp, chances of it skipping are slim. Just go slow.”

  Stephen watched her shave another curl off the wood, the woman repeating the process until the lump in her hand turned smooth. Copying her technique, he found creating curves in his block difficult. Where hers grew soft, useful, he’d carved a shiv. Seeing her eyes dart to his work, the minute cock in her brow, and the silent shake of her shoulders, made it clear she was laughing at him.

  He didn’t like it.

  River saw the look in his eye and scoffed. “Don’t be so touchy.” A fresh piece of basswood was shoved at him, the woman snagging the ruined stick from his fingers to set aside. “It takes practice.”

  In the time it took her to carve a spoon, he’d made another shiv... “This seems a waste of your resources.”

  River shrugged. “Just keep carving your little pointy sticks. I can use them in my traps.”

  “How do you make these traps?”

  She seemed to ponder leaving the carving lesson for a new one he might enjoy. “How are you at tying knots?”

  “Show me these knots.”

  Black eyes stared dead into his, the woman not teasing, “Do you know how to make a noose?”

  “Yes.” Out of just about anything; human intestines were especially effective.

  She moved from her seat beside him on the couch to dig through a cupboard near the kitchen, coming back with a bundle of twine and some wire. Her fingers flew over the string to create the basic knots to display. “The noose changes depending on the size of prey you’re trying to catch. Squirrels are easy. An overhand knot, a simple noose, a sapling, and some bait. Unfortunately, if their necks don’t break, their deaths are unpleasant... they just hang until they croak. That’s why I go for rabbits.” She gestured toward his pointed sticks. “The trap is more complex, but a sharp point ends it pretty quick.”

  The woman’s words were absolutely ridiculous, causing Stephen to enlighten her, “How they die doesn’t matter, so long as you can eat them and assure your survival.”

  “Wrong.” Her lips thinned, her eyes too.

  Stephen understood her lack of experience. “You have never starved.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Are you starving now? No. You’re not... so you have the luxury of not being a total asshole to nature. Now stop interrupting and watch my fingers.” She made three types of easy knots, unmade them, and made them again.

  When the man seemed to have a skill in recreating what he saw, she tried more complicated creations, looping, tucking, and challenging the string.

  “You skipped a step.”

  She hesitated. “What?”

  “Here.” Stephen reached over and pointed to where her fingers were tangled incorrectly, hooking the loose bit with his finger to tuck through her mess.

  After the knot was fixed he kept going, weaving something complicated around her slack fingers until she laughed. “Is that a human snare?” Seeing as all her fingers were steepled and bound, it could have been.

  Stephen grunted, “Pull your hands apart.”

  When she did, the strangeness of the creation tightened itself but let her go, until there was something that looked almost like lace in her hands. River lifted it, turning it this way and that to see the little pattern. “How did you do that?”

  That little game had always amused him when he was bored in the orphanage. “The first knot I learned how to make was a noose. The prey I caught was strung up to choke slowly... so it would keep other predators away. In those situations, I would not have ended their lives quickly with a knife to the chest.”

  He was talking about people, River going ashen. “Predators eat trapped animals, they don’t avoid them.”

  “Where I was born, in times of famine, eating one another was more common than you might imagine.”

  What the fuck was she supposed to say when someone looked at you like that? “What do people taste like?”

  “Better than your cooking.”

  Coughing a nervous laugh, River edged away from the shifting male.

  “I’m not sure if I say these things to frighten you, woman who has no lock on her house, or if I say them because they have not been spoken aloud before.” And they hadn’t been, not even with Mikhailov.

  He had her awkwardly bent back against the armrest, River muttering, “Whenever you seem to relax, you mess up the vibe ... and crazy shit comes out of your mouth. You can’t handle the real world. You’re scared of what’s outside your very creepy bubble.”

  Stephen took the knives and cast them aside, reaching to unfold the scratchy blanket over his next meal’s breasts. He had already taken her three times, until she cried for mercy and a nap. When the female had fallen asleep curled around him, wanting physical contact for reasons outside of sexual pleasure, it had been... different.

  Her skin felt nothing like his, she hardly had a scar, and he got to touch her as she slept, Stephen most content when he kneaded her rear or weighed a breast. He even took her hair from the braids, a thing she woke to find and blushed at when he wanted to play with all that kinked length.

  Now he had that hair in his fist, all gathered up so he might turn her, brace her over the arm of the sofa, where she trembled.

  She shook, and he knew it was not from fear, but anticipation.

  He made her wait while he scratched a nail over the phoenix’s outline, while he gripped just a little too hard the flesh of her ass, while he reached around and kneaded hanging breasts until she rubbed her scented, slippery woman parts against him.

>   Stephen wanted to let go—to grab and use her, setting aside caution for his strength.

  He’d earned this.

  Ramming in with no warning, hearing her grunt, he yanked harder on that hair. Violent, he took her from behind, pretending he didn’t like it when she stared over her shoulder, her jaw agape and moaning for him. Finding the tattoo over her back come alive with his jerking thrusts, scoring it with his fingers, he knew the image was no different than her submission to him.

  There were no two tattoos in the world like the one River wore, just as there would never be another sexual moment that might compare to the one they shared, better or worse. It was singular. When his hips surged to rock her forward, when she fought the pull on her hair, he speared her all over again until Stephen felt her squeeze tight about his cock... and he fucked even harder. River was forced past release, almost fighting him so her orgasm might end. He held her lust-drugged eyes, he held her hair and hip so she had to take him all... and nothing else existed in that moment. Stephen called her name as he came, as he gushed into a place already saturated with his mark. Falling atop her, unconcerned she was crushed or that she might not like the arm he circled tightly around her middle. Panting against her neck he found rest.

  * * *

  When she woke and he was gone, there was no surprise... or disappointment. For a moment he’d been afraid, and so had she. He had a part to play—the stranger. She had a part—the recluse. There wasn’t going to be a fairytale bullshit story. She didn’t want it; he didn’t want it. They both just wanted to survive.

  Survival was lonely work.

  His smell lingered after him. River straightening a room that lacked the precious woven blankets she’d extended in temper, a spare compass, two rabbits, all the thrown money… and the brown book she’d last been reading to him—a book she had written.