Nevermore Bookstore (Townsend Harbor Book 1)

Conquorer

(KŎNG′KƏR’OR) NOUN. TO OVERCOME OR SURMOUNT MENTALLY OR EMOTIONALLY: OR TO SEDUCE.

Hi.

Fox had stared into the eyes of innumerable dying men. Of people begging for their lives. Of people begging for death.

But he’d never witnessed someone coming to life.

The recognition sparked first. The confusion. The anger. The threading together of her relationship and conversations with the two monosyllabic-named men in her life.

His breathing became a prisoner of her expression, unable to move until she did.

He waited for feminine rage. For fear. For recrimination and rejection.

For all the shit he deserved.

A coward would run. It was what he yearned to do. Melt into the shadows and hope his lies hadn’t done too much damage to her kind, trusting heart.

But the only way he’d protect her from pain now was to take whatever whipping she thought he deserved.

If only the thought of her whipping him didn’t send all his available blood to his cock.

She looked like a Valkyrie. Blue eyes shot through with electric silver. Golden hair barely secured back. Chest heaving with violent emotion.

She could spill his blood with a knife, and he’d thank her for the intimate penetration.

Darkness gathered like energy in the storm, preparing to strike. The demonic need to claim her whispered devilish thoughts through his broken brain. He wanted to fuck, and fuck, and fuck until oblivion was his only physical option. He wanted to pound into her all the pain and loneliness he’d suffered. The loss and shame. The desire and devotion.

Without breaking eye contact, Cady undid the deadbolt.

He shook his head with wide-eyed warning as pelts of rain flowed from his hair down his neck and cooling veins sweltering with lava-hot lust.

The rage and fear and adrenaline transformed into something even more powerful and ultimately perilous to them both.

Violent need.

The second lock clicked.

The door opened.

Only the storm stood between them.

She’d done it now.

In a last-ditch attempt to escape the inevitable, he stood for a moment in his twitching, straining body and drank in the sight of her like an addict taking the first tongue-stinging sip of liquor in years.

He shouldn’t.

But it was too late for that now.

“Fox—”

Neither of them realized he’d moved a muscle until he exploded forward, snatching her up and molding her warm, soft body to his hard, wet one, swallowing what he hoped was a sound of shock and not distress.

The kiss was flavored with rain and skin and urgent, ardent hunger.

Immediately she responded, matching his hunger with need of her own. Tongues tangled with wet, penetrating thrusts.

Sometimes passion was a whisper, other times a roar. This time?

It was a storm.

His, a white-hot flash of lightning. Hers, the answering thunder.

It snaked through the room as intangible as the air and yet destructive as the tempest when whipped into such a frenzy.

This was happening. No more words. No more yearning.

Everything burned to ash. Panic. Anger. Restraint. Hell, common sense. It’d all been swept away with a flood of carnal, primal, animal need.

He did his best to kiss the questions and the thoughts of tomorrow out of her, letting her meld to his body with the pliancy of warm honey over granite. Filling his rough spaces with smooth, sticky sweetness. Surrendering to his dominance.

He was in the driver’s seat. Driving his tongue deeper. Driving her against the credenza and crowding her up onto it with his big body, letting her feel the totality of his strength. Warning her that, even though they were the same species, he was a different animal.

A beast.

He didn’t speak, and neither did she. Somehow it felt like it would cheapen the moment and profane the purity of what flowed between them. Language was not meant to contain such phenomena.

No more words.

Fox fused their mouths, letting the storm rage on, blowing their pain and fear and sorrow away like it was built on fragile foundations.

What stood was what they felt for each other. What they needed. What they were willing to give.

He palmed her ass as he’d been dying to do since the moment he’d followed it up those spiral stairs. She purred against his mouth, her sibilant sound of surrender having the opposite effect than he’d expected.

His snarl vibrated against her teeth, a threat of what was about to come.

Bodies melded together as they were, his erection ground against the zipper of his jeans with a painful insistence.

Their breaths were short and swift, fanning the flame between them, providing much-needed air, as neither of them would separate their mouths long enough not to drown in each other.

He didn’t bother with her shirt, but her yoga pants disappeared. Her panties disintegrated.

A tremble rolled through her, but her mouth was strong against his, returning his kiss with equal force. He’d been right when he thought those lips were made for sex.

Not remaining compliant, she pushed his wet jacket off, then his shirt and tank, and her fingers found the warm, tight muscle of his smooth chest.

He watched her lashes drift down over the soft curve of her cheekbones before he splayed his hand on her chest and pushed her back to lie on the desk. Watching her with uncompromised dominance, he wrenched her pale thighs wide enough to accommodate the broad expanse of his shoulders.

Breath abandoned him as he exposed her. Pink and pretty, weeping with want and glistening with desire.

She was so wet.

He couldn’t die without a taste.

Since his tight throat could make no sound, he hit his knees, securing her thighs open with his strength and draping her legs over his shoulders.

He yielded for no ceremony as he split her with one long, sinewy lick with the flat of his tongue, lapping up her body’s lubricant like the dog he was. Her body clenched and she made a strangled sound that sang like a benediction through his blood.

He did his best to subdue his strength. He really did. But his restless, relentless tongue slipped and slid through the delicious ruffles and pleats of her pussy with relish.

Somehow, he’d known how she would taste. Would have ordered this for his final meal. The texture of her. The flavor. The pheromones plying their alchemical trade with his olfactory senses. Fusing with his DNA, then deeper. Into the spaces between his molecules. The places unexplored by the most ingenious of quantum physicists.

This was where the soul lived.

And she’d fucking reached in and reanimated his.

The sounds she made ratcheted his lust higher. His cock fuller and heavier.

More insistent.

Not yet. First, she was going to come in his mouth.

He focused just below her clit, bearing down with unrelenting pressure, even as her raspy sounds became almost plaintive as she surged against his mouth.

Grappling her back to the desk, he pinned her with his face and forearm pushing her higher. Further. Until she gripped the back of his head and tugged on his hair with such ferocity that he could hear some of the strands separate from his scalp.

The pain nearly unmanned him right there.

With a sob, she trembled and bucked, writhed and wriggled as the release became so powerful, she now sought to escape it.

Fox granted her mercy by standing, allowing her legs to melt down his shoulders and arms until they rested in the crooks of his elbows. He tugged her closer, bringing her round ass to the very edge of the desk.

When he wrenched his zipper down, his knuckle brushed against her sex. Soft hair tickled and moisture coated the rough skin.

Which broke the last vestiges of his humanity.

He thrust with such power that her body resisted halfway. When he might have panicked, she arched and whimpered, letting her legs fall completely open, placing their weight directly on his arms.

Their eyes locked and held. A low sound of demand vibrated in the air between them.

His? Hers? It was impossible to tell.

It could have been a millisecond or an eternity before he allowed her to adjust. But before he could stop himself, he was drilling her into the desk, hungrily watching what the motion did to her tits beneath her shirt.

For a man so constantly on the edge, he exercised unnatural control and precision. Once he found what made her gasp or squirm, he never altered. He reveled in her pleasure. Became a student of her responses.

He vibrated with rigid intensity. Thrummed with all the unspent lust of a stag in rut. His body took over.

He cursed.

She arched.

Then they were surging against each other, the connection going deeper than their thrusting flesh. Deeper than their grinding bones. Until this, too, found that space. The part of the construct built and unraveled by forces unseen.

He’d lost track of every yes she uttered. A thousand at least escaped with each powerful impact of their bodies.

For a moment he became somehow detached from his own long, brutal strokes by a reverent disbelief. A tender awe that both soothed him and seized him with unfathomable dread for when this moment ended.

Fuck that. Fuck everything. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

He spoke then, demanding explosions of vulgarity that he’d never remember. Even if she repeated the words.

When she came, he’d expected her to throw her head back and arch forward. But she surged up, clamping her arms around his shoulders and clinging on for dear life as her intimate muscles clenched and pulsed. Growing tighter. Wetter. Infinitely sweeter.

Yes. The victorious word hissed through him as he fought the sweet release gathering in his spine, threatening to blow his entire world wide open.

No. Not yet. It couldn’t be over yet. They might never get the slow, long, all-night fucking some lovers did, but dammit, he wasn’t finished with her.

He couldn’t stop a growl rising from the deep. Threading his hands in her hair, he curled his fingers into claws, imprisoning her to his will. He pulled her head back, exposing her neck and falling on it like a fucking vampire.

Down her jaw. The column of her throat, using his teeth in little bursts, tasting her skin. Inhaling the fruit and feminine scent of her deep into his lungs as if he could make it a part of him.

Burying his face in the cove where her neck and shoulder met, he locked a leg around his thrusting hips and then reached between their bodies to flick his thumb against her sensitized clit, making controlled but insistent circles around the tight, smooth bud.

Her sound of delighted astonishment gave him fucking life as she wordlessly but ecstatically convulsed around his cock. Once, twice, then again, suffused with the tremors of another climax and a smaller one right on its heels.

Through her mewls he noted a pinch of desperation between her brows. A sheen of moisture on her skin. She was done. Tired. Spent.

He should be too.

A generous woman made a man like him greedy. And with the stamina he’d summoned over the years, he’d not even broken a sweat.

Surrendering to the frenzy, Fox finally allowed himself to follow her into that place where dark prayers and little blasphemies accompany a mire of inescapable bliss.

This. This is what you were missing. What you always wanted.

He crushed her body to him, wrapping her legs about his waist until she clung like a barnacle to his straining, bucking body. Never. Never had it been this good. This strong. This sweet.

She’s yours if you ask her.

But he knew he never would.

To cuff her to his side would be like putting a bird in chains.

And to a free spirit like Cady…he could never do anything so cruel.