And when he slipped a hand down the curve of her ass, his thumb pressing inside her anus with one, unapologetic thrust, she came in one unbelievable rush. The contractions started deep inside—so deep that they were almost painful. And then they spread, rippling out a little more with each second that passed. Spreading through her womb to her pussy. Taking over her stomach and her br**sts, her ni**les throbbing against the cool, clear shower glass.
Until all she could think about was the pleasure. Until all she could do was feel. Absorb. Scream, as Kevin continued to thrust inside of her, stoking the fire, making her orgasm so intense she feared for her consciousness.
And then, just when she thought she could hold on to her sanity, he rocked the very foundations of her soul. His mouth closed over the spot at the juncture of her neck and shoulder at the same time he hit her G-spot with a twist of his h*ps and sent her soaring again.
And again. One long orgasm after another until she was pleading for relief, begging him to stop and to continue. Pleading with him to do something—anything—as sobs racked her body. As pleasure thundered through her. As her heart and her pu**y and every nerve ending in her body wept for relief.
The ecstasy had spun out of control—her body was out of her control—and there was nothing she could do about it. In those moments Kevin owned her—body and soul. She would have died for him, would have given him anything he asked for, given up anything he demanded.
The knowledge should have chilled her blood—and it was terrifying—but the soul-searing delight of belonging to Kevin overshadowed everything else for the moment. The powerful pleasure he gave her burned away any and all of her misgivings until all that she feared—all that she was—was laid bare for Kevin and his unrelenting, insatiable cock.
She knew the minute he sensed her surrender, felt it in the powerful surge of electricity that arced from him to her and back again. And then his hands were on her hips—bruising her, branding her—as he pushed her forward and slammed her back against his thrusting shaft.
Another orgasm ripped through her. “No more, Kevin. Please, no more.” She was whimpering, begging and she didn’t care. All she cared about was ending the insane, never-ending pleasure before she burned up from the inside out.
Clenching the muscles of her pu**y tightly around Kevin’s cock, she reached back and grabbed his ass. She caught him off guard and as she slammed him into her, he bellowed in shock and surprise and pleasure. And then he was flooding her, his cum jetting into her with each thrust of his hips.
Marking her. Claiming her. Filling her to overflowing.
As the waves of pleasure slowly ebbed, she came back to earth with a thud. And struggled, silently, against the panic suddenly clawing at her throat.
* * *
Hours later, she was still fighting the panic as she counted the number of stripes on Kevin’s bedroom wallpaper for the fourteenth time.
Even after Kevin’s wild and steamy lovemaking by the side of the road earlier and his out-of-control attentions in the shower, she couldn’t sleep. Her body was exhausted, completely wrung out by the events of the past weeks and Kevin’s insatiable lust. But her mind couldn’t settle. Images of Sandra and Damien chased themselves around in her head, while thoughts of Kevin and his unspoken demands trailed directly behind.
What was she going to do? Please, God, what could she do? Part of her really believed that it was Damien doing these things—the scorpion in her camera bag, the car, even the accident in San Diego. Not to mention the crank calls. They, in particular, had his sick and demented fingerprints all over them. But she didn’t want it to be so, didn’t want him in her head again. She couldn’t stand even the idea that he’d gotten close enough to her to do those things and she hadn’t had a clue.
Because she hadn’t wanted to think about it, hadn’t wanted to know. After Sandra’s death, she’d become an expert at burying her head in the sand and ignoring anything she didn’t want to see. It was a habit Kevin steadfastly refused to put up with as he pushed her to face reality the way it was, not how she wanted to see it. Which was just one more reason she was studying herself in the mirror above Kevin’s bed instead of sleeping.
With a sigh, she rolled out of bed, careful not to disturb Kevin. The light from the nearly full moon shone in through the window, lending support to the night light he’d installed in the hall the night he’d found out she was afraid of the dark. She looked down at him, smoothed his wild mane of hair back from his face in the same tender gesture he usually used on her.
He really was a beautiful man—even more so on the inside, which surprised her. She’d come here prepared to dislike him, expecting to do her job as quickly as possible and then get out.
Instead, she’d dragged it on. Even though she had enough quality photos to fill at least three books about him, here she was, preparing to take more. For two reasons, really.
One, because she hadn’t gotten the perfect shot of Kevin yet. That first night she’d come close when she’d captured the art-god side of him. But she hadn’t gotten the human side yet—the one who laughed and cried. The one who yelled at anyone who entered his domain, yet anonymously gave money and food to the poor people of the bayou. The one who had always fought for everything he wanted, yet held her tenderly when she denied him what he wanted most. That was the Kevin that she wanted to capture on film. That was the Kevin she wanted the world to see.
The other reason she was still here was because she couldn’t bear to leave him yet. She knew the end was coming, knew that it had to arrive sooner rather than later. Eventually even Kevin would get tired of the baggage and neuroses she wore like a badge of honor.
But not yet. She wasn’t ready to say good-bye yet. That, more than anything else was what had had her lying awake tonight, staring at her own reflection in the mirror long after most sane people were asleep. That was the situation making her increasingly uneasy as her time with Kevin slowly turned from days into weeks.
She knew it wasn’t fair to him. He loved her and she didn’t know how to love. How to be a lover. Not anymore. Too much of her was frozen behind the shell she’d formed after Sandra died—so much of her, in fact, that she wondered if there’d be anything left if she let Kevin melt it as he was so desperate to do.
Pulling the sheet up, she smoothed it over his glorious body and let her fingers linger for just a moment over that beautiful heart of his. She didn’t know what to do about him. About them. Like everything else in her life these days, her relationship with Kevin had spun wildly out of her control. This afternoon, as he’d made wild, glorious love to her, the death grip she kept on her emotions had loosened and for the first time in a decade, she’d feared for her heart.
Afterward, when he’d taken her excuses and her cowardice in stride—when he’d loved her anyway—she’d known that her heart was no longer her own.
She loved him. Wasn’t just infatuated with him. Didn’t just like him. She really, truly loved him. She loved Kevin Riley and all of the crazy pieces that made him who he was.
Serena tried the words on for size, imagined herself saying them to Kevin. Imagined his tender smile and the way he held her like she was the most fragile thing in the world. As she did, panic—chilling in its intensity—skated up her spine to grab her by the throat.
She wasn’t ready for this. Kevin had pushed past her barriers, bulldozed over the control that kept her separate from the rest of the world. For the first time in a long, long time she felt vulnerable. Raw. Her emotions on display for the whole world to see. To say it was terrifying was understatement in the extreme.
After Sandra had died, she’d closed herself off from her emotions because the pain of losing her twin had been so intense that she’d contemplated suicide for the first time in her life. Once she’d locked those feelings behind walls, it had become easier to breathe. The guilt and despair were still there, just distanced. She could still take them out and examine them whenever she wanted to, but she’d learned how to wall them back up when she was done. So that she could move on with her life, as her parents, friends, and shrink all told her she must.
The side effect, of course, was the emotional chasm she’d opened up between her and anyone who’d ever cared for her. It’s why she never spoke with her parents except about the most superficial things. It’s why her brother had stopped calling years ago. And it was why she’d never connected emotionally with a man. She’d dated casually, had sex when her body craved it, but had never let her emotions be touched.
Until Kevin. Kevin had scaled the incredibly high walls she’d erected and now her defenses were threatened. She, and her crippled emotions, were on their way to being laid bare for him.
She couldn’t stand it.
Couldn’t stand the vulnerability of having another person see that much of her.
Couldn’t stand the pain and uncertainty that had rushed back in the past few weeks. Damien’s parole hearing might have been the catalyst, but Kevin was the one who had enacted the thaw of her chilled emotions. Part of her almost hated him for it.
With a sigh, she shrugged into his black cotton bathrobe. It was miles too big for her, but it smelled faintly of him and made her feel safe. She shook her head at the irony.
How it was possible for one man to embody both total security and absolute threat, she didn’t know. Kevin had managed it, however, and his ability to do so was tearing her up inside. She turned away from the bed they had shared for nearly three weeks. Turned away from him and on bare feet padded out to the family room to curl up on the couch and watch some abysmal movie or other on late-night TV.
Sandra had loved late-night movies, had talked her into watching any number of terrible horror movies in the early hours of the morning. The ones with the deranged serial killers and the stupid teenage girls had always been her favorite. If only they’d known …
It had been nearly eleven years, yet she could still smell the blood—the stench of old pennies mixed with sweat. Her blood. Sandra’s. She could still hear the sickening, sucking sound as Damien plunged the knife into her sister and pulled it back out, again and again. And his inhuman cries—high and wild—an animal in a killing frenzy.
But it was Sandra’s screams that haunted her, her pleas for help that went unanswered because she, Serena, was too weak to help her. Because she’d been stupid enough to let Damien in the house that night. Because keeping the peace with her sister had been more important than saving Sandra’s life. That was the guilt that ate at her from behind the walls she’d erected, the guilt that had never gone away. She could have saved Sandra, had she only been strong enough.
The young he**ine on TV screamed as she ran through the streets, fleeing the masked madman with a knife. Serena watched with a detached kind of horror as he caught his victim and stabbed her over and over. Was that what it had looked like when Damien had killed Sandra? Had her body been that rigid and tense as she’d fought him, gradually going limp as he’d punctured major organs and her blood had slowly drained from her body?
Serena studied the gory death scene with objective eyes. There wasn’t nearly enough blood. When Sandra had died there’d been miles of the stuff. The marble floor had been liberally covered, the walls and art—even the chandelier—sprayed with huge, dripping ribbons of red. The floor of the coat closet had been soaked in her own blood, so much so that her parents had had to rip the entire thing apart to get rid of the smell.
The screams from the TV were lessening as death claimed the he**ine. The screams inside her own head were lessening as well, as the blessed and familiar numbness claimed her. She watched the he**ine’s face relax, saw her eyes go gradually blank. She continued to watch, torturing herself, as the killer threw back his head and laughed maniacally before plunging the knife into the dead girl a few more times. He ripped at her clothes, bent down to smell the stench of death permeating her. Licked a drop of blood from her face before—