He inched forward, pushing farther inside her. God, she was tight.

Her nails raked over his back and came to rest on his ass. She arched and pulled at the same time, trying to force him deeper. With a groan he relented and thrust hard.

It was all he could do to hang on as her sweet heat enveloped his aching erection. He was balls deep and straining to get deeper.

Her shocked gasp startled him from his single-minded goal to bury himself deeper than he’d ever buried himself in a woman.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked urgently even as he began to withdraw.

“No. No!” She pulled at him, almost fighting to get him back, arching her hips to hold on to him.

He smiled and leaned down to fuse his lips with hers. “Well okay, then.” He surged back into her and closed his eyes as intense, mindbending pleasure shattered through his groin.

His balls tightened even as they pounded against her ass. His body wasn’t his own. He had no control. And she urged him on. Taking everything he had to give. Demanding more.

Fire coiled low in his balls, clutching the base of his cock with a death grip. It built rapidly, rising like an inevitable tide.

He looked down, wanting her with him. He wouldn’t go until she’d found her satisfaction.

“Tell me what you need,” he breathed.

She feathered a hand over his cheek, a simple touch he felt all the way to his soul.

“Just you. Just you.”

But she wasn’t as far as he was and he knew it. He paused though it damn near killed him. He had to grit his teeth and breathe harshly through his nose to prevent his orgasm.

He reached for her hand and gently guided it downward. “Touch yourself. Show me how you like it.”

He shifted his body the slightest bit so she could fit her hand between them. At first she hesitated, her expression a little uncertain—and shy—but then she slid her fingers through the damp folds, her knuckles grazing through the hair at his groin.

She gave a restless moan that prompted him to pull out of her and then stroke back, long and liquid. To his surprise her fingers wandered lower and wrapped around the inch of his cock that still remained outside her body.

She caressed his length as he eased out of her. Her fingers danced across the latex, and he cursed the condom that lay between her touch and his flesh. He’d never gone bareback with a woman—not even one he was in a relationship with, because caution was too firmly ingrained. But right now he’d sell his soul to be able to get inside her skin to skin.

Finally he had to pull at her wrist and return her fingers to her own pleasure because he was a nanosecond from exploding all over her hand. At this point he’d likely blow the condom completely off.

“You first,” he rasped. “I want to watch you come apart around me. I want to feel it.”

His statement seemed to excite her because she fluttered around him. Her flesh rippled across his cock and was so snug that he never wanted to leave its stranglehold.

Seemingly emboldened by his words, she began stroking herself in tight little circles, the backs of her fingers brushing over his sensitive skin.

Wanting her closer, wanting deeper, he reached down to cup her buttocks and marveled at how she filled his hands with such delectable, plump flesh. He squeezed and molded her in his palms and then plunged harder, reveling in the sounds that whispered past her lips.

Her fingers moved faster and her legs circled his waist. They strained and undulated. They gasped. His heart raced. Faster and faster and lightning sparked. His release was like a fast-burning fuse, sizzling through his balls and up his cock.

He cursed under his breath because God, he couldn’t last.

She went rigid underneath him and bowed until her back came off the bed. He stroked harder, determined to make it so good for her. The best she’d ever had.

His mouth found her neck, and he sucked at the sensitive spot beneath her ear as her cry split the air. He was instantly bathed in liquid fire. Surrounding him, encasing his cock in the sweetest honey.

He raised his head and stared straight into her eyes. Straight into the heart of her. His hips jerked forward as if he had no control over the beast that arose within him. It was startling. So primitive that he understood why some men were considered little better than cavemen because at the moment, his only consideration was dragging Lyric off to his cave by the hair and keeping her underneath him for as long as he had strength to make love to her.

She withdrew her hand, her body still shivering in the aftermath of her orgasm. When she cupped his face, he turned so he could suck her fingers into his mouth to taste that sweet honey.

“Now you,” she whispered.

Her words had the same effect his had on her. A violent shiver overtook him and his balls drew up and his release rushed down his cock and exploded with a force that had him gasping. Pain. Pleasure. It all blended together in a myriad of wicked sensation that he never wanted to end.

His hips were still jerking spasmodically forward when he finally lowered his body to completely blanket hers. He closed his eyes and rested his forehead on hers for a long moment as his cock twitched and shuddered deep inside her. He knew he couldn’t stay there long and expect the condom to work, but he was loath to retreat from her snug warmth.

Their breaths worked hot and hard, colliding with each other as they both gasped to catch up. When he finally felt his head stop spinning, he kissed her and, with a reluctant groan, pulled himself away and rolled to the side to dispose of the condom.

When he came back to her, her eyes were glazed—with shock? She seemed at a loss and a little baffled. Vulnerability shone like a beacon, and it riled every one of his protective instincts. She’d hate it if she knew how much he could see right now. The barriers would slam down and the hard edge would return.

He climbed into the bed and pulled her into his arms, but she was already stiff and tension radiated from her in waves. In an effort to ease some of her discomfort, he pressed a gentle kiss to her shoulder but he didn’t say a word, knowing that if he did, it would completely shatter what calm remained.

Instead he lay there and turned over the matter in his head. He knew it was stupid to have slept with her but at the time he accepted the inevitability of it. She was like a slow-moving drug that had taken hold of his system, insidious and unrelenting.

He didn’t have the strength—or the desire—to deny the intense chemistry between them. Even when he’d thought the worst of her, his body had been achingly aware of every part of her.

But now he had to admit that what he’d done could and probably would cause problems. He’d been contemptuous of her bodyguards for not doing their job because they couldn’t take their hands off her, and now he was no better. He was here to protect her—in essence to be that same bodyguard—and he could no more keep his hands off her than give up breathing.

It posed a serious problem—one that he was at a loss as to how to solve.

Lyric hadn’t relaxed and now she stirred and rolled away from him. He felt her retreat long before she’d actually done so physically. It pissed him off but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

Still, his perverse side roared to the surface and he caught at her arm. “Where are you going?”

“Bathroom,” she murmured as she pulled away.

She got up from the bed and hurried across the room, her arms shielding her nakedness from him. He wanted to growl at her that there wasn’t a damn thing she could hide. He’d seen and tasted every inch of her. He’d touched and caressed until she’d responded wildly.

He sighed as she disappeared, and he wasn’t at all surprised when she didn’t return. He stared up at the ceiling and wondered how much more she’d cut herself off from him now that he’d breached her defenses.

CHAPTER 18

It was a sure sign of just how desperate she was not to be A) alone or B) one-on-one with Connor that she found herself downstairs watching television with men she didn’t even like.

Okay, that wasn’t entirely accurate or fair. She didn’t like Kane, the smug, way-too-sure-of-himself “leader” of her security detail. The other guys were probably just fine, but she found them guilty by association, so the result was that the entire lot of them were assholes.

And yet here she was watching late-night television, trying to work up the courage to go back upstairs and face her empty room and the silence that yawned like a chasm.

She could feel the gazes of her security guys resting on her. One had uttered a greeting when she’d come down an hour earlier, but when she hadn’t responded, they took the hint and hadn’t spoken since.

To her annoyance, Kane entered the living room and didn’t seem inclined to ignore her presence like his men had done. He stood a few feet away openly staring at her.

“Is there something we can do, Ms. Jones?”

“Like you care,” she muttered.

“Sulking doesn’t become you.”

She curled her lip into a snarl. “I’m not sulking. I want to be left alone.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “And yet here you are in the room with my men.”

“Got a problem with that?” she asked belligerently.

He studied her for a moment. “If I’m to believe Connor when he says you only get more belligerent when you’re threatened or unsure, then I’d say you’re feeling pretty insecure right now.”

She bared her teeth. “Fuck off.”

There was a glimmer of a smile. She could swear his lips twitched, but when she looked harder, she saw only his cool blue eyes staring back at her like she was boring him.

“If there’s nothing you require, we’re going to turn in. Time for the next watch.”

“Whatever.”

“They won’t be coming inside.”

“So? What’s your point?”

“My point is, in thirty seconds you’ll be alone down here.”

She flushed and curled her fingers into fists so he wouldn’t see her hands shake. How did he know? How could he possibly know?

Without a word, she pushed herself from the couch and bolted toward the stairs. Darkness awaited and she made damn sure she turned on every light between the top of the stairs and her bedroom.

She was simultaneously relieved and disappointed that Connor had evidently gone to his room. The door between her bedroom and his was closed. And silent. No light crept underneath his door.

What was worse? Being one-on-one and vulnerable with him or being alone?

It took everything she had not to get on the phone and call in the troops. Right now she wasn’t picky. She could fill her room—hell, she could fill every room in this damn house—with people who’d be only too happy to keep her company and prattle on about everything and nothing.

Connor would have a kitten. Kane would be beyond pissed. And it wouldn’t make her feel a damn bit better.

Some memories just haunted you no matter how far or how fast you ran.

She wasn’t in denial of her circumstances. She knew how fucked-up she was and made no apologies to herself. Self-preservation was a powerful thing, and she knew that what she did kept what little of her sanity she still possessed.

Being alone freaked her out. She couldn’t even think about it without feeling the suffocating darkness close in around her. It brought back the feeling of utter helplessness. Guilt. Despair.

The fact that she’d stood by and watched her mother die and never uttered a word. Too scared to cry out. To say stop. To run for help. To scream for help. She’d known that any movement, any sound, would thrust her back into a madman’s attention. And she’d suffered his attentions for far too long.

She closed her eyes and felt the familiar sting of tears. Her head ached from holding so much back, from the constant fight to keep her carefully constructed walls from crumbling.

“Oh, Mama, I’m such a mess,” she whispered.

She hadn’t spoken to her mother in a long time. There were days she still battled her rage and, with it, the terrible guilt for feeling so angry with a mother she’d adored.

She stood in the middle of her room, surrounded by . . . nothing. Silence. Stillness.

“I’m so tired of this,” she whispered.

Panic clawed at her throat at the idea of being here alone. The house. The room. It was all unfamiliar to her. These weren’t her things. No matter how much of a badass Kane professed to be, he couldn’t keep her safe from her dreams. He couldn’t keep her safe from her memories.

Connor.

She stared at their adjoining door and was suddenly filled with such powerful longing that her throat ached and swelled. For several long, wonderful moments she’d found exquisite peace in his arms. He’d made her forget about every bad thing that had ever happened to her.

And she’d taken off like a scared rabbit. He must think she was either crazy as a loon or a first-class bitch. Maybe both.

She took a hesitant step toward his door and then another until she was mere inches away. She laid her palm over the wood and held her breath, listening for any sound from the other side.