Glow (14 page)

“I figured. I have a long attention span, you know.”

Alice held her breath. When it became clear that Alice wasn't going to reveal anything else, Kuvi sighed resignedly. Guilt swept through Alice. She really had been grumpy with Kuvi lately, and Kuvi didn't deserve it. Not by a long shot. Alice heard her turn over in bed.

“Night.”

“Night,” Alice mumbled. “Kuvi?”

“Yeah?”

“I'm sorry I've been such a bitch lately.”

“I can take your moodiness. I just wish I knew what was really bothering you.”

“Yeah,” Alice whispered.

Kuvi sighed again. Alice listened as her friend's breathing grew
regular and soft. She lay there, wide awake, envying Kuvi's peaceful sleep.

The next morning wasn't a day that she'd scheduled to run with Terrance, but she got up anyway and put on a jogging bra, socks, and shoes. She quietly exited the cabin and locked the door behind her. A minute later, she was jogging along the white sand beach. The sun was rising, but the woods to the left of her were still blocking much of its light. The beach was still draped in a murky gloom. She looked around, but saw no one on the beach behind her. Determined, she ran full out, racing toward the entrance to the woods that led to the stables.

Her breath was coming fast and ragged by the time she reached the path. She wasn't crazy about the idea of taking the dim trail. She'd been trying to avoid the path as much as she could, highly aware of its significance.

Dylan had informed her that it was on that very trail that Addie Durand had been kidnapped and Dylan himself had been stabbed as he tried to defend her. At the time, he'd been a fourteen-year-old boy, and Addie a child of four. When she'd first arrived at the camp, Alice had thought she'd been chased by a ghost on that trail. The ghost had turned out to be a man Dylan had hired to follow her. The flesh-and-blood, secretive man and Alice's unconscious, hazy, yet atavistic fear of what had happened in those woods twenty years ago had blended to create Alice's phantom.

She didn't feel afraid today. She was too out of breath and focused on tricking her prey.

Several hundred feet down the trail, she decided it was time to make things a little difficult for Mr. Cigarette Man. Spotting a particularly thick growth of underbrush and trees, she ducked off the path, careful to mute her footsteps. Once she was sixty or so feet off the trail, she used a thick oak for cover, pressing her back
to it and willing her escalated breathing to slow. She listened for a tread on the path.

Any second now . . .

Was that a rapid footfall in the distance? She twisted her neck, craning her head around the tree to capture the elusive sound. Yes. Her follower was coming. Alice tensed in preparation to follow him and then confront him. She had a few choice words in mind. She hoped like hell Mr. Cigarette Man conveyed them verbatim to his boss.

Suddenly a glove-covered hand was covering her smirk. She spun around, her eyes springing wide.

Dylan eclipsed her vision. He pressed his big body tighter against her, pinning her between him and the tree. Alice realized she'd been struggling in panic and went still.

“Shhh,” he hissed.

They both listened as the footsteps grew louder on the path in the distance. Alice stared up at Dylan's tense face. He hadn't shaved yet. His thick hair was mussed. It had fallen forward, parenthesizing his dark, narrowed eyes. He looked scruffy and rugged and delicious.

Shit.

He looked like he did every morning when he left his bed and escorted her safely to her cabin. She'd forgotten that he went horseback riding every morning after that. The gloves pressed against her lips were his riding gloves. But she hadn't heard a horse. How did he know to find her here?

He wasn't watching her, but instead staring into the distance. She knew he was tracking the approaching footsteps. It was hard to focus on the man on the path, however, with Dylan's long hard body pressed against hers. He wasn't allowing her to move or look down, but she could tell he was wearing jeans, like he did most mornings. The fly of them was pressing against her lower abdomen.
His body felt dense and unforgiving against her flesh. His masculinity was flagrant . . . pervasive; about as impossible to ignore as a blow to the head. She caught his scent.

Against her will, arousal blazed in her body. Two nights away from him. Too long.

His stare suddenly zipped to her face, as if he'd sensed the flash fire inside her, like the spark of lust had jumped into him. He pressed his crotch closer. She felt his cock harden against her. The man was on the path directly in front of them now. Alice hardly cared. She twisted her head angrily. Dylan lowered his head until his face hovered an inch over hers, and removed his hand from her mouth.

Instead, he used his mouth to silence her. It was a good thing, too, because Alice whimpered in stark longing at the hard pressure of his kiss. He grabbed her shoulders and bunched her to him, his actions a little angry and a lot possessive. He plunged his tongue between her lips, a thirsty man slaking himself. In that moment, Alice knew for certain that he was every bit as desperate as her.

She tried to pull her hands up so that she could touch him, but he pressed even closer, preventing it. Her hands remained pinned against the tree. His cock felt fuller now, the sensation of it commanding every fiber of her attention that wasn't already ruled by his demanding kiss. Time passed. The man on the path was forgotten. She drowned in his taste. Her head swam.
God
, she needed air.

She needed him more.

She twisted her head, moaning softly. He moved his hands to her jaw and kept her face steady while he fucked her mouth with his tongue. He plucked at her lips forcefully with his own and bit the lower one, scraping the sensitive skin between his teeth. Alice quaked against him.

“Always rebelling, even when you don't know what against. I ought to spank your ass red, do you know that?” he breathed out in a husky whisper next to her parted lips. Arousal shot through
her at his dark threat. His eyes glittered with angry lust between narrowed eyelids. She squirmed against him and tried to break her chin free of his hold on her face. He grasped her more firmly, the feeling of the soft, well-worn leather against her skin only amplifying her excitement. “I
ought
to spank you good and hard and then fuck you even harder.” He plucked at her mouth hungrily and she felt his cock swell against her belly. “I ought to fuck you so deep and come so hard, you feel me inside you as a constant reminder as you go about your day of rebelling. Would you like that, Alice?”

“No.”

“Yes, you would,” he growled, recognizing her lie instantly. Holding her stare, he reached between them and began to jerk down her running shorts. Her heart leapt.

“If you spank me, whoever you had follow me will hear it,” she said in a panicked, choked whisper.

“Then I'll have to save the spanking for later. The other part isn't going to wait, though. If that incompetent jerk is stupid enough to come back here while I'm having you, he can just be fired sooner versus later.”

“But—”

He shoved unceremoniously at her clothing and she felt her shorts and panties fall against her shins to her ankles. He grabbed her hand and pressed it against his erection. She bit her lower lip, air hissing between her teeth. Her hand moved of its own accord, cupping and massaging large, round testicles, and then the heavy, protruding staff of his cock. He snarled at her touch. “You've asked for it before against a tree in the woods. Ask for it now, little girl,” he taunted. “Ask for the nice hard fuck you deserve.”

His crudity was arousing her. He knew it had on other occasions in the past. Her cheeks burned and her breathing was coming fast and erratic. The ability to think rationally was fogged by lust.

“Say it,” he bit out softly, nuzzling her lips with his nose and then his mouth.

“I deserve a nice. Hard. Fuck.”

If there was such a thing as defiant begging, Alice had just done it.

He grunted softly, his mouth slanting into a hard line. He turned her in front of him forcefully. When she staggered because her clothing had gotten twisted on her ankles, he steadied her, his hands cupping her shoulders. He pressed his face to her neck, his hot, openmouthed kiss making her gasp and put her hands on the tree trunk to steady her swaying world. She sensed him working to unfasten his fly.

A moment later, his naked cock slid between her thighs, the top of the rigid shaft rubbing against her sensitive, damp outer sex. He gave a restrained, rough groan that vibrated in his throat. Biting her lower lip to suppress her own arousal, she leaned into the tree, bending at the waist. The feeling of the bulbous head of his cock pushing into her channel felt exciting and forbidden.

So damn good.

He held her hips steady with his hands and firmly pumped his cock into her. The fact that she couldn't scream her pleasure made her want to yowl like a cat in heat. Her choked wail burned her throat. His cock felt huge and heavy inside her. When he finally pressed his full testicles to her outer sex and paused, squeezing her to him, she opened her mouth in a silent scream.

“Quiet,” he muttered tensely behind her, and Alice wondered confusedly if she'd whimpered aloud after all. In the distance, she heard the footsteps on the path. Her follower had realized he'd lost her and was retracing his steps, his pace faster than it had been previously.

They went still in a tableau of frozen, incendiary pleasure. It was unbearable. Dylan throbbed inside her, his cock steaming into her flesh. God, she needed to
move.
She couldn't stop her muscles from convulsing around him, from squeezing his rigid length.
Behind her, she heard him make a small, choked sound. Somehow it helped, knowing she didn't suffer alone.

But not much.

Her follower's footsteps faded while they mutually sweated. Just when she thought she couldn't take it anymore, he began to thrust in and out of her, his strokes deep and even a little harsh. Alice loved it. Her body jolted at the impact of him against her. His unrelenting cock plunging into her and the sharp friction he created became her sole focus.
Dylan. Dylan. Dylan.
She chanted his name in her head like a mantra every time his pelvis thumped against her. She closed her eyes, bit her lip, and counterstroked with a firm, fluid pump of her hips. It felt hot and forbidden. So
ri
ght.

She was so deep in the zone, it jarred her to the core when Dylan suddenly stilled her bobbing hips, his thumbs digging into her buttocks. She heard distant footsteps approaching. The man was back, retracing his trail.

“Damn,” she heard Dylan say behind her, the single muted word practically bursting with sharp frustration.

“You put him up to it,” she hissed over her shoulder, her whisper barely audible.

He squeezed both her buttocks in a taut reprimand. Alice tried to get air, but it was like her body had grown confused under the influence of rampant, stifled arousal. Her lungs didn't seem to want to expand, even though she needed oxygen desperately. Dylan's hands moved slightly on her ass, peeling back her ass cheeks, making some kind of lascivious display of her. There was nothing she could do about it, either.

Except scowl over her shoulder.

He was indeed staring down at her ass. As if sensing her gaze on him, he glanced up and met her stare. The gleam in his smoky eyes, his small knowing smile and the lurch of his cock deep inside her made her scowl evaporate. In the distance, her follower's
footsteps retraced the path. The Cigarette Man was growing increasingly alarmed. Soon, he was going to leave the path and comb the woods, looking for her.

Dylan must have thought the same thing, because he started to move. Obviously, he was in agreement with her that the only course of action was forward.

No going back now.

She winced at the friction, holding his stare, her chin on her shoulder. She couldn't look away from his rigid face. It was wrong. The man was only sixty or so feet away. He might notice some tramped-down grass and identify where she'd left the path. He could step off the trail and be upon them in a moment. It would be humiliating to be discovered.

But the moment was too volatile. What was happening between Dylan and her wasn't going to end anywhere but in explosion.

For a moment, she lost count of where the man was. Dylan wasn't thumping his pelvis against her bottom anymore. Instead, he was stopping just short of making contact, his hips moving fast, fluid, and furious. It was enough. It was more than enough. Blood was pulsing in her ears and pooling in her sex. She'd never known a man could fuck so silently, yet so forcefully. She bit her lip, stifling a moan with effort. It wasn't something she could control.

She was going to come.

Maybe Dylan sensed her agony, because suddenly he transferred one hand to her shoulder. His other hand slid over her mouth. The feeling of his glove against her lips sent her over the edge. He silenced her cry with his pressing hand. She shuddered in climax, biting down on the soft leather with her front teeth. Pleasure gushed through her, hot and forceful. He fucked her while she came, using his hold on her shoulder to power his thrusts.

She blinked open her eyes a moment later as her orgasm waned. She'd heard the snap of a twig, and then silence. Dylan thrust into her, and then went still as well. Alice held her panting breath. She
tried desperately to hear past her roaring heartbeat. Slowly, and very deliberately, Dylan stepped closer, sliding his cock into her to the hilt. He pressed. Alice's eyes sprang wide at the pressure.

Her lungs burned with a need to breathe, but she was stifling her pants.

Then she heard it. The man's footsteps on the path. He was jogging in the direction of the stables. Now he was running.

A deep, ominous growl vibrated in Dylan's throat. His hand slid off her mouth. He clutched at her hip and thrust hard. She whimpered at the sensation of his cock swelling inside her. He shuddered behind her, and she knew he was coming. His warmth filled her. She tried to move, to stroke his cock a little as he climaxed, but he gave a small grunt and fixed her in place with his hands.