Prey: A Novel Read online

  He was breathing so hard that every exhalation seemed to rasp from deep in his chest. His gaze burned down at her like blue fire, the color deeper and more intense than she’d ever seen it. “Now,” he said, sliding a muscular arm under her hips and lifting. He grabbed something, maybe his jeans, maybe part of the sleeping bag, bunched it up, and slid it under her to keep her hips tilted. Then he braced himself over her on his elbows and began thrusting, slow and steady, keeping the penetration fairly shallow at first and then going deep and hard. The gasp had barely died in her throat when he dragged himself back and began anew that slow, steady rhythm. Hard and deep. Slow and steady. Over and over again, alternating his rhythm until she was all but climbing him, the pleasure built to such a pitch that it verged on torment. She heard the raw sounds tearing from her own throat, but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered, except the shattering release that still hovered just out of reach.

  She needed him, needed him, needed release from this pleasure that was so acute it felt like torment, unbearable, as if she would come apart under the tension—and then she broke, a savage cry exploding from deep inside her, sensation pulsing, her entire body feeling as if every muscle in her clamped down on the thick penis moving back and forth inside her. And he broke, too, abruptly driving his body hard into hers, over and over again, groaning, his teeth grinding together until the shuddering, throbbing pleasure released its hold on him and dropped him down onto her where he lay, heavy and boneless, almost crushing her.

  Neither of them moved for a long time. The chilly air felt wonderful on her overheated skin. Her bones had turned to water, her muscles to mush, her brain to utter blankness. Breathing was the best she could manage. She dozed, if falling off a cliff into unconsciousness could be called dozing, and woke when he groaned against her neck and muttered something she couldn’t understand.

  She licked her lips, took a few deep breaths, and mustered the energy to say, “What?”

  He did his own deep breathing, gathered himself, managed to heave his weight up onto his elbows. He wobbled a little, but the expression in his heavy-lidded eyes was fiercely satisfied. “I said, ‘This is serious.’ Us.” He cupped her face in his rough palms, kissed her mouth. “I love you. I have from the first. I think you love me, too, if you’ll stop doubting yourself and just go with your gut.”

  Angie opened her mouth to deny it, panic already blooming, but at the last minute she caught herself. She had to stop being such a coward; if Dare could hang himself out emotionally like that, she could at least have the courage and honor to tell him the truth. “I think so, too,” she finally managed to say, her heartbeat double-timing at the risk she was taking, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth she felt a massive sense of relief, a lightening inside, as if she’d dropped a burden she hadn’t even realized she was carrying.

  “What did you say?” He tilted his head at her. “I didn’t hear you.”

  Of course he heard her, unless he’d gone deaf in the past five seconds. She put her hands over his and raised her gaze to his. “Yes, you did. I thought: How could I possibly love anyone in such a short length of time? The same goes for you, too.”

  “Two years? That isn’t such a short length of time?”

  “You can’t love someone you don’t know,” she chided.

  “I knew you were the one. Drove me bunny-boiling nuts every time you looked at me like I was a pile of horse shit you’d stepped in. This thing with buying your place was one last effort to work things out between us, because that was the only way I could think of to keep you here.”

  She was silent, thinking that she very likely wouldn’t have listened to the deal he’d offered; she would have taken the money and left, started over somewhere else, probably near Missoula. If circumstances hadn’t intervened and given them this time together, she would have missed this. Suddenly she identified the feeling she had inside, that sense of lightening; it was happiness.

  He kissed her, his mouth tender. This big, rough man had been nothing but tender with her from the moment he’d found her crawling down the mountainside in a torrential rain. He’d laid himself on the line for her, in more ways than one. Angie could have lain there with his softening penis nestled inside her for the rest of the night, loving that link, the mingling of their bodies, but with a sigh of repletion he gently disengaged their bodies and sat up. There were practical matters to attend to, but once they’d cleaned up Dare turned out the lantern and once more they snuggled close together under the sleeping bag. This time, however, they were both naked, and Angie’s head was nestled on his shoulder, her hand resting on his chest.

  She smiled in the darkness. “It is a magic dick,” she teased, hoping she could get a laugh out of him.

  “No magic involved. It’s just angles and self-control, honey, angles and self-control. But you can think I have a magic dick as long as you want to.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The morning dawned bright and cold. Angie woke to sunshine filtering around the edges of the curtain, feeling warm and relaxed, her bones like butter. They had slept, woke to make love again, then slept some more. Sometime during the night she had turned on her side and he had curled around her the way they’d slept before, as if he could cocoon her in warmth and safety. Despite being naked, despite the colder temperatures, she’d either been completely comfortable or so relaxed and tired from truly wonderful sex that she’d slept like a baby anyway.

  In the strange way that Dare was so attuned to her, she could feel him wake up, even though she hadn’t moved a muscle to disturb him. His breathing changed, and the subtle tension of awareness changed the way his arm felt, draped around her. This time, though, his hand cupped her breast, instead of resting on her stomach. His thumb moved, lightly flicking over her nipple and sending sparks of sensation cascading down her nerve endings.

  “I like waking up with you,” he rasped sleepily, his morning voice rough and strained, as if he had a case of laryngitis. His morning erection prodded at her, and he tightened his arm. “Want to satisfy one of my fantasies?”

  “No, I want to pee and have a cup of coffee.” She turned her head to give him a narrow-eyed gimlet look. “Your fantasy can wait.”

  He surveyed her don’t-mess-with-me face. “You’re not a morning person, are you?” The question was obviously rhetorical. “If peeing and coffee always take precedence over sex, I won’t ever get to satisfy that particular fantasy.”

  “If it involves sex before we do anything else, no.” But she found herself smiling, because the way he’d phrased his complaint made it plain he was expecting to wake up beside her for … always? That was the word he’d used: always.

  “Always” was kind of a definite thing, but she didn’t let herself dwell on it. They were together, in a way she’d never imagined was even remotely likely, and that was enough for now. When they were back in the real world and this situation had been dealt with, that would be the time to start thinking about what might be in the future.

  She had more immediate things on her plate, one of which was the fact that she was stark naked, and regardless of what they’d done during the night or that he’d made love to her with the lantern on, she still felt awkward about getting out from under the protection of the sleeping bag and getting dressed in front of him.

  She was mulling over the different ways she might handle this when he simply tossed the sleeping bag aside and got up. She yelped, grabbed the edge of the sleeping bag and pulled it up to her shoulders, but not entirely from modesty. The temperature had dropped a lot during the night; when the cold air hit her bare skin, she began to think about getting dressed completely under the cover. “Aren’t you cold?”

  “It’s chilly,” he agreed as he stepped into a pair of underwear, then grabbed his jeans and pulled them on. When he had a T-shirt on and a flannel shirt over that, he stopped to turn on the heater. “Just get your clothes on as fast as possible, and get it over with, so you can get the coffee started. The faster