Overture (North Security, #1)

It’s a dream; I don’t have to stop.

I press my face into her hair, breathing in the sun-drenched strands. Her skin feels impossibly smooth against my cheek, beneath my lips. I lick her to see if she tastes as sweet. Like the velvet skin of a peach, holding such treasure inside.

The curve of her neck and the place it joins her shoulder. That’s where I bite down, reveling in the squeak of sound she makes, the way she stiffens beneath my thighs. Afraid. Afraid. Afraid. She should be scared of me. It would take so little force to break the skin. I must be careful. Even in my dream, I can’t hurt her.

I turn my attention lower, to the slope of her breast. The faint memory of black ruffles threatens the edges of my mind… but there is no silk here. There’s only a thin T-shirt, and the warning bells recede. My tongue finds her nipple, teasing until it becomes hard enough to bite through the fabric. I’ve never been tame.

Even when I stand in a suit, in a roomful of a hundred other people, I’m a wild animal wearing clothes. The fact that I choose not to rage and rip and roar does not change who I am.

During sex my base nature reveals fully.

I close my lips around her breast, sucking her through the cotton. My hand plays with her other nipple, which is already hard; it wants my attention there, my mouth.

“Oh God,” someone moans, but I must have imagined that.

I find the hem of her shirt and lift until her breasts are exposed to the cool night air. I nuzzle them from underneath, where a deep warmth permeates her skin. And then higher, to her nipple. This is her punishment for touching me, from waking me from hibernation.

She tastes so goddamn sweet. Like sunshine made flesh.

One of my knees nudges her legs apart. My hips settle against hers in an ages-old formation. There’s a warm notch for my cock. Even through her panties and my jeans, I can feel the cradle of her body. It’s the perfect place to settle while I kiss her breasts.

Forever. That’s how long I could remain here, feeling her warmth, petting her softness while she writhes in helpless welcome. While she makes little sounds.

Her hips move against me, hesitant and hungry.

“That’s right,” I mutter against her nipple, licking in approval. “Make yourself ready for me. I’m so fucking hard right now. I need you soft and ready.”

If she isn’t, I could hurt her—bruise her secret muscles or tear her tender folds. I clasp her hip and hitch her against me to show her the rhythm. When she comes, her tight little body will clench and release liquid that will ease the way.

She isn’t a hot shower and the jerk of my fist. Once I get my cock inside her, I’m going to stay there for a long time. Even when I break her little hymen, I’m going to slide through the blood and the arousal. When I come, I’m going to keep fucking her, the salt enough to sting any break in her skin. Even that wouldn’t be enough to make me stop.

Those inquisitive little hands grasp my side, my back, struggling to hold on as the climax rises up. My cock throbs in desperation, feeling the gush of liquid heat. She cries out, and I capture the sound in my mouth, sliding my tongue against hers.

She comes in exquisite little pulses, legs clamping around my body, moaning into my mouth, vibrations I can feel down to my soul. Her body collapses back against the sheets, legs splayed open, arms beside her head. She’s never been more beautiful.

“Don’t stop now,” Dream Samantha says.

Why does she think I would stop? My cock is hard enough to split in half, made of marble, brought to the breaking point. She’s soft and ready for me.

I reach to shove down my jeans. There’s no time for anything else; I push aside the wet fabric of her panties. A small pile of curls and slick flesh. Heat races chills along my spine. I press the head of my cock to her—and push push push.

A short, muffled scream of pain pierces the air.


SAMANTHA

Liam stops moving, but it does not quiet the chaos. The pulse beating in my ears, the ache in my breasts. The throbbing between my legs. I shouldn’t have made a sound. I tried to be quiet. Everyone knows the first time will hurt, but it took me by surprise—both the flash of pain and the fullness. God, the fullness. It’s like having a club inside me. Or maybe the curved head of a violin. Something that most definitely does not fit.

“You’re not a dream,” Liam says, his voice thick as honey.

“A dream?” I say faintly. My legs are spread wide, his body shoving inside me, and he thinks I might not be real. I have the sudden wild urge to giggle—wholly inappropriate. The words a condom is mandatory float through my mind. Preposterous, things like practicality, in the face of his wild animal need.

This is nothing planned or careful. This is two animals mating in the jungle. There is no place for latex here.

“I thought—” He makes a low sound of grief. “You’re so beautiful and warm. And wet. Samantha, you need to stop clenching like that. It makes me—”

“I’m sorry,” I say on a breathless laugh. I’m on the other side of the looking glass now, my old life strange and boring in light of the terrifying wonder before me. “I’m not doing it on purpose.”

One thrust of his hips and he pushes in another inch.

I won’t survive it. “How much more?”

“I’m not fucking you,” he says, unsteady, but there’s no conviction in his voice. How can there be when he forces himself another inch?

He’s a large man, but I never worried that he wouldn’t fit inside me. Men and women perform this act every day. Surely I can figure it out. The theory is nothing more than a smooth water’s surface—a mirage replaced with sudden violence by the reality of him. His shoulders loom above me. His muscular thighs hold mine open as wide as they can go. And his cock burrows deeper into my body.

This is everything I’ve ever wanted, and now that it’s here, I can’t take it. My body refuses. I wriggle instinctively, trying to get away, to find relief, and he clasps my shoulders in an impossible grip. “No, don’t,” he gasps, green eyes hazy. “Don’t move. Not like that.”

“Hurts,” I say, barely able to squeeze out the word.

“Sorry. Sorry.” He drops his head to taste my shoulder in an openmouthed kiss. “I need to get off you, to stop touching you. To stop fucking you. I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t stop.

His hips pull away only long enough to let cool air soothe my tender skin. Then he pushes back inside with a grunt. I might as well try to stop a boulder rolling down a mountain, picking up speed as it goes. And I don’t want him to stop, not really. It’s only that I want this terrible pressure to ease. It makes me pant and writhe.

I don’t know whether he’s exceptionally large or I’m exceptionally small. Maybe both. It would be only right that we would be mismatched this way, when everything else about us is also wrong. We are not meant to be together; it’s only the force of our wills that makes it work.

“No, no,” he mutters to himself, fighting it even as he fucks me, thrusting deep inside me, going slow enough that I feel every ounce of friction against my intimate walls. His eyes are wild and angry and somehow frightened. “Make me stop,” he says.

I press a kiss to the only part of him I can reach—the bulge of his pecs.

He flinches beneath my lips.

My chest aches with something that has nothing to do with his cock. I’m hurting for the man who thought I’d leave for my tour with a cheerful goodbye and never come back. For the man who thought that would be best for me, as if he’s been nothing but a vending machine, a place where I got safety and comfort without ever caring about him in return.

“It’s okay,” I whisper. “I want this. I want you.”