Touched by Lightning (9 page)

He slipped between a few trees and saw her up ahead, trying to untangle the shackles from a bush. She didn’t speak, grunt or make a sound other than the frustrated rustling of the bush’s leaves as she tried to break free of it. If he hadn’t been so pissed at her for putting those kids at risk, he would’ve found her fumbling cute. But he was pissed and the electricity he’d put a tight clamp on heralded his arrival in the form of a pulse of power.

Like prey realizing a predator had it in their sights, her head lifted high and she turned to look at him over her shoulder. Their gazes met and it was like being slapped in the face. She sneered at him, her eyes furious and dark as though daring him to come after her. This wasn’t the same woman who’d sat in the van, her face pale and frightened. No, this was another personality, the dangerous one that had no compunction about castrating a man.

He needed to handle this with caution. Use the diplomacy he’d learned at his mama’s knee. That’s what he needed to do, but it wasn’t what he did. Not after that sneer of disgust and dismissal, as though he were some weakling she didn’t need to concern herself with.

“You scared the shit out of those kids,” he snarled from a safe distance. If he touched her now chances were he’d paddle her ass. “You put yourself and others at risk with your little fit.” He took another step forward. “I’m trying to save your fool ass and you just proved what everyone’s been trying to tell me since the day I met you.” She didn’t say a word or do anything but lift her chin at him, daring him to do something about it. He forced himself to relax.
She’s scared, she doesn’t trust the O.T. yet. Keep it cool.
“We’re not going to hurt you. The O.T.— Fuck,
I
want to help you, to keep you safe.”

She scoffed. Just a puff of air that spoke volumes. Then she flipped him off and tore herself away from the brush, the chains shackled to her wrapped around her hands to help her along. For some reason, seeing her turn away from him, giving him her back as though he were no threat to her, snapped what little control he had over his temper.

The feet separating them disappeared as though they were inches. Brit had to push some of his power into the ground with every step to bleed off some of the intensity so he wouldn’t hurt her when he touched her. He couldn’t hurt her, but he’d sure as hell teach her a lesson for treating him as though he were insignificant. Later, he’d think about why it mattered so much, later, when he was in his right mind. Not now.

Not giving himself time to rethink his decision to confront her, Brit grabbed her arm. His power, so hungry for Gyda’s body, surged into her as though it belonged. She jerked to a stop, her back arching and her gaze finding his, surprise and a shard of pain disappearing beneath pleasure.
This
was why he couldn’t let her walk away from him. Watching her pupils explode with desire, seeing her nipples swell, witnessing the flush of desire that darkened her cheeks was all the evidence he needed that she was his.

He only meant to stop her so he could talk to her about what she’d done, to convince her to stay and let the O.T. help her. Those intentions fled the minute he saw her mouth go soft and moist with desire.

“Gyda,” he growled as he pulled her closer, her shackled hands caught between them. She tilted her head back to keep him in her sights and that was the final nail in his coffin. He was a goner.

He lowered his head, kissing her with every ounce of desire and power coursing through his body. She jolted at the contact, but didn’t pull away. If anything, she snuggled closer, her softness melding to his hard frame, the gentle slope of her belly cushioning his cock. Her lips parted beneath his and that cool, spicy flavor he recalled so well met his questing tongue. One of his hands cradled the back of her skull, using her thick braid to tilt her head until he found the perfect position that allowed him to plunder her mouth the way he wanted to take her body.

The instant his tongue surged into the warm, moist depths of her mouth, skating along hers, she melted like butter. There was a clanging of metal as her hands let go of the chain to her shackles and gripped his shirt, pulling the fabric taut as though she needed him to hold herself up. Brit groaned into her mouth, swallowing her sigh. His electricity felt puny and insignificant compared to the heat they generated together. They were a perfect blend of components that when combined formed a volatile chemical. And when her tongue hesitantly met his, he knew she felt it too.

Tora didn’t want to cede ground to Gyda, didn’t want to give up the delicious thrill of having this man’s power surging into her, but there was no contest. She’d managed to get them out of the van, taking out the behemoths and getting them as far from the O.T. crews as she could, but Tora was no match for the desire Gyda had for Brit.

Breaking through the ceiling of Tora’s blanket of control, Gyda left one prison for another, but this one was of her choosing. Brit’s arms were tight around her, his body a hot, hard wall she couldn’t stop rubbing herself against. His electricity bounced through every cell of her body, lighting her up from the inside out and banishing the dark demons who’d taken control of her in the van. Those demons had no power when Brit’s lightning touched her, scorched her with delicious pain.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew some people would think this was wrong, that her intense need for pain was fucked-up, but in Brit’s arms with his electricity pulsing through her veins, causing her nerve endings to explode with sensation, Gyda accepted that she was different. His kiss heated her blood and his power banished the demons, leaving her feeling like a brand-new person. A person who could feel desire.

She clung to his shirt, her fingers scrambling for purchase and somehow she touched the silky skin of his stomach. He growled into her mouth, his kiss becoming hungrier, hotter, which should have been impossible. Yet it happened and she surrendered to it. The liquid heat in her stomach blossomed and flowed south, dampening her panties with want. The past had no hold on her when she was in Brit’s arms. The dirt and grime of her darkest moments was burned away beneath a wave of intense,
clean
arousal. Sixteen hummed with pleasure, encouraging Gyda to relax and give in to the feeling, telling her this is what she wanted—needed.

Gyda’s hands flattened on the hard muscles of his belly, the silky hair that began beneath his navel teasing her palms. It was an intimate act, one she’d never willingly performed before and it made her heart—which was already pounding hard and fast—pick up the pace. Brit tensed around her but he didn’t push her for more, didn’t grab her hand and force it down where she could feel the iron bar of his erection pressing against her stomach. He just tightened around her, shuddering slightly as though her touch alone was more pleasure than he could bear.

And he didn’t stop kissing her, his tongue darting into her mouth, tasting her as though he could never get enough. His reaction and those mind-numbing kisses gave her the courage to glide her palms up his ripped stomach, his shirt lifting with the movement. He was hard all over, not an ounce of fat greeting her questing fingers. Just smooth, satiny skin over muscle that rippled beneath her hands. She brushed the small nubs of his nipples and he drew back from the kiss on a hiss as though she’d done something amazing.

The electrical current passing between them gave a sharp pulse that she swore raced straight to her clit, which set up a throb to compete with her heart. Gyda dug her fingernails into his skin, not really meaning to, but needing to do
something
with her hands. She just wasn’t prepared for the reaction she got. Brit gripped her braid tighter, pulling her head back and kissing her with renewed fervor. It was rough and should have reminded her of things best left forgotten, but it had the opposite effect. A whimper, a sound she didn’t mean to make, escaped her throat. Brit met her whimper with a growl that caused miniature quakes to rack her pussy, her inner muscles demanding more.

And he gave it to her.

Brit knew he shouldn’t be doing this. It wasn’t the right time for it, but Gyda’s sweet surrender was more than he, or his libido, could take. When she clawed his chest with her fingernails and dragged them south, he was a goner. Lust stronger than anything he’d ever experienced swelled inside him. His power increased alongside his hunger until he feared hurting the woman clinging to him, but as though it knew she was precious, it eased off at the max capacity she could handle and stayed there.

She sighed against his lips and it was enough to have his cock jerking in his pants, the head growing slick. If he wasn’t careful he’d go off like a rocket and leave her behind, but even as he thought it, she tried to wrap one of her long legs around his. The clinking of the chains hampering her movement brought him back from the brink.

He tore his mouth away from hers, staring into her lust-dazed eyes. He’d never seen someone as gorgeous as Gyda caught in the grips of arousal. Lust made her face softer, the sharp edge of her past blunted by the innocent wonderment in her eyes that told him she’d never felt this level of need. It helped him haul back on the hunger threatening to run away with him.

Her gaze searched his face for something and apparently she found it, because a small, sweet smile curled her lips. His heart lurched in his chest. Goddamn, she was beautiful and his. All his. He gentled his hold on her hair, but couldn’t make himself let go of the thick, cool strands. The silver hoop in her nose and along her ears twinkled against skin that glowed with arousal. Her lips were puffy and dark pink from his kisses and her body had settled into his, giving him her weight without a sliver of space between them.

She wanted him.

It was heaven.

With that thought in mind, he knew exactly what he had to do to give them both what they needed without going too far. He used gentle, yet firm hands to clasp her hips and turn her away from him. She craned her neck to look at him, her expression all confused arousal. His heart flipped.

Unable to help himself, Brit lifted one hand to her cheek, stroking his thumb across the velvety soft lips he couldn’t get enough of. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered into her watchful face. Her cheeks flushed and she lowered her gaze, suddenly shy. He cupped her jaw and tilted her head back to his shoulder. “You’re beautiful. The most gorgeous fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”

Her lips parted, revealing the edges of her white teeth before she grinned up at him and rolled her eyes. Her expression said it all, that she thought he was talking shit, but she liked it anyway. More importantly, she didn’t move away. She actually cuddled into him, her tight ass nestled against his cock. She had to feel the way his heart pounded, had to feel how hard he was, but she didn’t shy away. She bit her bottom lip and watched him over her shoulder, trusted him to do something.

How was it he was able to read her so well? Probably because he doubted he’d be able to look away from her even upon pain of death. She drew his gaze, his power, his body. Everything. As though she were made just for him.

He rubbed her lips again, feeling her smile and watched her eyes darken with renewed hunger. Then she touched her tongue to his skin. A zap of power leapt from him to her and if it was possible, she melted deeper into him, her eyelids drooping over suddenly sultry eyes. The breath whooshed out of his lungs and he kissed her again, this time gently, as though she’d break if he pressed too hard.

He held her steady for his mouth while his other hand began to roam in slow sweeps up and down her side. She was lean, but soft, her body holding just enough cushion to make her womanly. He tested the bend of her waist with gentle fingers, the curve of her hip. His palm itched to explore the round globes of her ass, but decided to save it for later.

The kiss grew wetter and hotter the more he gentled her to his touch until her body seemed to vibrate on a new frequency, one he was attuned to and when he gently cupped her breast, she arched into him, gasping into his mouth. The first stroke of his thumb over the tight peak of her nipple dragged a moan from her. She stiffened and jolted for a split second before her weight sank deeper into him, giving it to him as though all the strength left her body. When he gently pinched the peak, rolling it between his finger and thumb through her clothing, she gasped and ground her ass against him.

“Fuck, Gyda,” he groaned into the soft skin of her temple. “You’re so hungry for it.”

Releasing her jaw, he slid his hand down her throat, pausing at her pulse to feel it beating against his fingers before he cupped her other breast. She burrowed her head deeper into his shoulder when he repeated the pinch and roll with her neglected peak, working them both into a frenzy. He gently rocked into the tight ass pressing into him, the friction of his clothes stroking over his dick a painful torment. He wanted to be inside her, filling her over and over until they both came.

But now wasn’t the time for that. She trusted him not to hurt or scare her. He forced his hunger down, forced himself not to hump her like a horndog. This would be for her, for the girl who didn’t seem to realize she was beautiful and that it was okay to feel pleasure. He didn’t want to think about it, but the reports he’d read back in Kansas City haunted him, the knowledge that she’d come to her womanhood as a sex slave something he wished he had the power to change. Well he couldn’t change her past, but he could teach her that her body was meant for gentle touches and soft caresses. He could give her that and he wanted to.

With that in mind, Brit gentled his hold on her, flicking the thumb of one hand over her nipple as he eased the other down the front of her body. Her muscles tightened wherever he touched and as he neared his goal, she tensed and shuddered.

“Shh,” he whispered against her hair. “I’ll never hurt you, Gyda. I swear it on my life.”

She didn’t relax, not entirely, but then he knew it was up to him to help her. He slid his hand beneath her shirt, not going for the gold yet, wanting to ease her into it. It wasn’t exactly a hardship. Her skin was silky soft and warm. Her stomach tightened as he stroked it, but the sharp gasp that left her lips told him it was a good kind of clench.

“There you go,” Brit urged in a voice gone hoarse from pent-up lust. “Just relax and let me take care of you, baby.”

Gyda’s head tilted back even farther so she could look up at him. Her face was flushed, but there was an underlying tension in the set of her mouth, in the contracting of her pupils. She was scared and wary. He read it clear as day and he wanted to kill the bastard who’d done this to her. Kill all of them.

“I swear to God I only want to show you pleasure.” He put every ounce of his sincerity into his voice, hoping to convince her he was telling the truth. “I won’t do anything to hurt you. You can trust me, Gyda.”

Tora urged her not to give in. Thinking he probably had some ulterior motive for this sudden attack of eroticism. She was still in shackles and chains for fuck’s sake. But even Sixteen seemed to revel in what was happening. It was a change from Sixteen’s usual motto, stay in power and take your pleasure where you could. Then again, when she had the reins, she made sure the men she chose to bed were into being dominated by a woman. Brit wasn’t going to let her do that.

But Gyda ignored them both and studied Brit carefully. His face was sharp and hungry, the anger from earlier gone as though it never existed. Dark-as-chocolate eyes stared down at her with sincerity and heat and hunger, but it wasn’t the same all-consuming desire she’d seen in other men. Brit’s need was tempered by warmth and what looked to be affection. Why he should feel that for her was anyone’s guess, but she’d take it over animal lust any day.

Because the way he touched her was gentle and sweet and sexy and it made her bones threaten to melt. He was careful with her, even while he drove her arousal higher and higher. Just with that brush of his thumb over her nipple she’d nearly come. She’d felt it building, the pleasure layering itself until she thought her skin would split from the pressure.

With his hand pulsing steady streams of electricity into her body as he drew uneven circles on her stomach, the heat between her legs ramped up. The moisture in her channel seeped into her panties and dampened her thighs. She needed. She hungered. And it was all her. While Sixteen encouraged her to fuck him, she still whispered in a distant voice now, a caution not to give everything away to the first man who woke her up, but Gyda didn’t listen.

No, she nodded and prayed she hadn’t made a mistake.

Brit’s face lit up as though she’d given him a precious gift, as though this was the most important moment of his life. That look caused her breath to hitch in her throat and the warmth in her belly to blossom into an inferno. Because it told her without a doubt that he was being honest in his desire to take care of her this way. She was still shackled, she hadn’t forgotten, but even that added to the eroticism of the moment. She should have been freaked out, but no, he was blowing holes in the shitty memories she had one touch at a time.

He was gentle, careful, as though he feared breaking her. Treating her like glass. It was a beautiful thing. Even better that he didn’t rush straight to the core of her body, as though they had all the time in the world. As though she
was
his world and that, coupled with the lightning streaking through her veins, helped her sink deeper into a bliss she’d only ever found at the edge of a blade.

And she could almost love him for it.

Then his hand dipped beneath the waistband of her jeans, his fingers skimming over the thin material covering her mound. Gyda’s fingers and toes curled at the static charge so close to her throbbing clit. If he hadn’t had his arms around her, his body supporting her, she would’ve fallen to the ground, that’s how powerful it was. She wanted to tear her clothes off so he could pass that addictive charge along every inch of her skin, but especially through the slick folds of her pussy, which ached for him.

“So beautiful, Gyda. I just…” He paused and cupped her, his fingers pressing the cotton of her panties between her nether lips. “So wet.”

His words, spoken so reverently, in a tortured, hungry tone, only made her wetter. If she would’ve been in her right mind, she would’ve been embarrassed by how quickly her body responded to him, but there was no sanity here. Only the all-consuming pleasure of his touch and when his fingers curled, his fingertips coming into contact with her clit and sent a charge into the nubbin of flesh, Gyda found her voice.

“Oh!”

Her knees shook as pulse after pulse of current surged into her body through that touch. Something…huge and overwhelming was building inside her. Gyda lifted her hands to grip Brit’s arm, her fingernails digging in as though to anchor herself in place. With each sharp bolt of power he sent to her clit, the sensation of something waiting to burst out of her skin grew. Fear and panic and uncertainty filled her. It was big, massive in a way she couldn’t even begin to explain, but she couldn’t make herself pull away from him or his touch.

“I…” She gasped like a landed fish, her entire body writhing as her legs shook and her lungs labored. Words were dragged from her, the sounds ragged and hoarse as her voice was put to use for the first time in a long while. “What is… What do… God!”

The man holding her, touching her body with such erotic care, paused for a moment, the electricity shooting into her ebbing away. A crack in her mental shields allowed her to sense his emotions and beneath the thick, hot layer of lust was a spark of surprise so powerful it almost eclipsed everything else. But Gyda’s body was hungry for something only Brit could give it and she whimpered, needing him to ease this aching pain clawing at her insides. She bumped her hips, reminding him of what he was doing in the hopes he’d continue.

“Relax,” Brit whispered into the crown of her head, his hands going back to working her body like a master. “Just relax and let it happen, baby.” The charged power in his hands grew stronger by slow increments until it sizzled along her nerve endings in a never-ending current that spread throughout her body. He dipped his head until his mouth was next to her ear, the rasp of his unshaven cheek gently grating the lobe. “Give it to me.”

Then he raked his teeth along the edge of her ear at the same time he pinched her nipple hard and firmly rubbed her clit. Gyda’s head dug deeper into his shoulder as she arched her back hard and came. But that word sounded too tame for what happened. It was as though she were being electrocuted, her entire body seizing from the force of the massive buildup finally breaking. It swamped her, drowning out everything but the sharp, nearly painful convulsions of her inner muscles. Her knees did give way and this time she sank to the ground with Brit behind her the entire way.

He was talking, praising her, soothing her, but her ears couldn’t seem to hold on to his words, his voice muffled and distorted. Her entire world shifted, tilting as though she were all lit up. Floating high even though she could feel the ground beneath her, Brit’s arms around her, it was as though they weren’t really there. It was like flying after a session with her knife, the only time she’d ever felt so separated from the ghosts of her past and at peace.

She didn’t know how long she floated on that high, getting off on the best buzz of her life, but when she finally came back to herself, it was to find she was on the ground with Brit propped up next to her. He started out as a blurry figure, known only by his dark hair and the scent of ozone and musk that he wore at all times. Then, slowly, as though she were waking up from the most amazing dream ever, her eyes focused on him. And when they did, she had to catch her breath.