Forbidden Fire Read online

  She smiled at him, oblivious to his evil thoughts. “You always want a ton.”

  “Yeah.” Unlike other nights, he didn’t pretend to read the local paper. Instead, he watched her openly, her long, slim, tanned legs, her shorts that curved around her ass so he wanted to cup that fullness in his hands as she fell back against him, purring…

  And yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.

  They’d had sex, they’d fucked.

  They had not made love.

  He had no reason, no excuse to go over and put his hands on her shoulders, to kiss her and use the intimate voice of a lover in her ear.

  He could fuck her, but he couldn’t have her.

  Damn, why had he thought having sex with her at last would finally solve everything between them?

  The truth was, he was sitting here still aching for what he didn’t have.

  “How was work?” she asked, her tone so casual he had the sense she was leading up to something.

  “Helped clean up after an apartment fire. Seniors.”

  “Oh no!” She spun around, moving so she stood on the other side of the island. Her grey eyes were dark with compassion. Luke figured she wouldn’t last in his job. Too sensitive. You had to have some distance in order to help people. Sian was much better offering coffee, muffins and empathy in Coffee Dreams.

  “No one was killed, but some folks lost a lot of their possessions.” And you couldn’t replace that, pictures of family, mementos from treasured holidays.

  She reached out and squeezed his hand.

  He swallowed and put her palm against his cheek, hurting for her. His penis was engorged, full and ready for her. He wanted to pull her onto his lap and have her…but then it would be over, and he didn’t want it to be over.

  “Did you and your friend talk?”

  “My friend?” Luke was confused by her direction.

  “Taz.”

  Oh. She was wondering if he’d talked to Taz about her. Sian had always been sensitive to what people said about her, self-conscious.

  “No. We were hung up with the whole saving people thing.”

  She nodded, pushing back the hair gone curly from the steam from her pots. “Of course.”

  Keep with the programme. Forget the intimacy he couldn’t have. Their bargain was for sex. Pure, raw, wild sex.

  “Will the tofu splatter much?” he asked.

  Sian frowned, looking back at her cooking food.

  “No. I’ve basically finished. Just need to stir it as it marinates.”

  “Then we might as well get a start on tonight.”

  Her eyes were huge. She licked her lips.

  “I’d like a little foreplay this time.” He was surprised his voice didn’t crack. His hands were shaking.

  “F-foreplay?”

  “Yeah, you know, the appetiser.”

  “Uh-huh.” She sounded dazed. Well hell, he was just warming up. And he needed right now, as much as sex, to let his inner Dom out. He wanted to give her a touch of the lash, using only his voice, his commands.

  “Lose the shorts.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  She gulped in a deep breath, staring at him. Had he pushed her too hard? But he needed her to submit to him. He needed to push her.

  “You want a strip tease…while I’m cooking dinner?”

  “As long as it doesn’t put you at risk of getting burned.” The caretaker in him would never allow that. “I’ll lift the pots, transfer the food.”

  She cocked her head, as if she were working it out like a problem recipe. It made him want to smile even though his body was deadly earnest, on slow boil like their dinner. “That could work.”

  He raised his brows.

  Sian flushed, but then her hand went to the elastic band of her shorts and she pulled them loose. They fell to her feet.

  “Kick them away.” He was breathing hard, staring at her lacy white panties. Had she chosen them for him? They looked fresh and virginal and he remembered the tight feel of her as she’d milked him. She was the next thing to innocent. The thought of that added a hard edge to his arousal.

  He wanted to possess her. Completely. He wanted no other man to ever put his mouth to her pussy, to drag her close so her thighs hugged his head as he licked her to pleasure, sucked her under, made her sweat, cry out at his whim.

  “The way you look at me.” She had her hand at her throat, almost protective.

  Jesus, he thought Taz was predatory. But it was nothing compared to how he wanted her. “If we lived back when they made cave art, I’d hunt you and I’d drag you to my cave,” he said.

  “Some primitive people had taboos about…family members being together.”

  “That’s just bullshit!” He flashed. “If it still shames you that you come for your kid stepbrother, fine, but we’re not related.”

  “But we are.” Tears shone in her eyes. “You’re my family. My only family. When—if I screw up this sex thing with you, you’ll go away.”

  Shit.

  “No. I won’t.” He’d never go away, but even if he tried to reassure her, he wouldn’t touch her fear. He had to show her. Did he have it in him to be patient for her? He was impulsive, hot blooded. Sian needed to feel surrounded by him, needed to see he was the foundation, not a shaky new wall. “I know this sex thing changes a lot, but it doesn’t change how I feel about you. Haven’t I always looked after you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not going to stop now. But I’m also not backing down at the fire between us. You can call it forbidden, but I make you come.”

  She turned her head away, as if it still shamed her. That pissed him off, but he throttled down his hurt into action. “Lose the panties.”

  “Luke!” Now she looked at him again.

  Oh, yeah, he was going to make her do this. If she wanted everything tidy, if she needed things as orderly as her kitchen, tough shit. If he didn’t fit in her world, he’d make a place for himself as her lover.

  He waited. A Dom did not repeat a command. His submissive lover either obeyed or gave him a reason why not.

  She dropped her head. “All right.”

  He did not acknowledge her acceptance but continued to wait.

  She put her hands on her hips and shimmied. His pulse pounded in his temples. His hands clenched as Sian loosened her underwear and let it fall. After a brief hesitation, she kicked it away.

  Her curls looked soft and he remembered they’d felt like down feathers to his touch. They were a tangled wet thicket between her thighs.

  Sian put a hand down, as if to shield herself and hide the way that performing for him, even reluctantly, was turning her on.

  He looked her in the eye.

  She dropped the hand.

  The only sounds in the kitchen were the tick of the clock and the sound of their dinner slowly cooking on the stove.

  But it wasn’t the only thing he planned to heat tonight.

  “Jump onto the island.” He patted the cool marble surface.

  She looked puzzled as she studied where he had his newspaper spread out, but it was a large counter, spacious enough for how he wanted her. He watched her work it out, offering no help.

  Chewing her lip, she approached him. Despite those long killer legs, she had to get on the stool on the opposite side to bring herself up to counter height. He heard her grunt, watched her wobble as she steadied herself. And then the most beautiful woman he’d ever known was on the island counter, bare bottomed, just the way he’d pictured her so many times as he’d sat here, pretending interest in his paper.

  She perched with her side to him, hiding her more delicious secrets.

  Luke shoved the newspaper aside and reached for her, turning her around to face him.

  Sian hiked her knees up in surprise.

  He smiled, faced with open female body, with Sian’s musky scent, with her startled eyes and her hands clenched in his forearms.

  “How I want it, Sian,�
� he reminded her firmly. “When I want it.”

  “Yes…” The word left her in a whoosh. Her hard nipples adorned her breasts like jewelled tips, moving up and down rapidly with her breath.

  But it was the pink succulent flesh revealed to his gaze that he wanted, that he craved.

  “This is what I’m hungry for. This is what I want to taste.”

  “But…dinner…”

  “Can keep.”

  He spread her wider so her trembling thighs framed his shoulders. Her eyelids fell, her colour high. He savoured the moment and then struck, putting his mouth on her, uncompromising.

  She screeched.

  “Oh, honey, you need this,” he murmured, feeling how tightly strung she was, how needy. “Those fuckers you dated didn’t take care of you.”

  “I didn’t…” He licked her and she sucked in a breath, shaking, on the verge already with her body open and pulsing against his lips, desperate for everything he could give her. “I didn’t go out with them for that.”

  “I don’t get that. I’m not an asshole, but if there’s a chance for sex with someone attractive and not crazy, why not?” He laved the side of her sex in one long move and her hands kneaded his back, her fingernails stabbing into his skin.

  “Uh uh uhhhhhh.”

  Her head fell back, her hair spilled from its clip and he stared at her arched body, at her heaving breasts, his hands keeping her spread and wanton. Even now her innate shyness would probably come between them if he allowed it.

  And he would allow nothing to keep her from him. Not now while he tasted her, drank from her, deep and dark like one of those exotic honeys she got from the countryside, made by bees fed on cactus flowers.

  He sipped and nuzzled, used his breath on her. She pushed against his lips, demanding, now so far gone she would do anything for her relief.

  He reached up and tugged one of her nipples through her silk top.

  She gasped at the sudden roughness in contrast with the gentle attentions of his mouth.

  “I would like to see some nipple clamps on your pretty tits the next time I eat you,” he told her, unable to stop the images, the need that rode him. Taz had been right, he couldn’t hide this part of himself from her. He only hoped he wouldn’t scare her so she ran from him again.

  “Nipple clamps?”

  “I’d pick them out with you on the internet,” he said. “I’ve used them on my ladies before and on myself when I want a bit of rough. We’ll get some with little peridots or fresh water pearls dangling so they’d look like jewellery on my princess.”

  “Don’t they hurt?” She gasped as he devoured her whole, spreading her even wider with his big thumbs and taking the most sensitive part of her into his mouth.

  “It’s a beautiful pain,” he told her, mouth brushing her sex as he spoke so that his words doubled as a caress. “And I want to hurt you a little. I think you’d let me do it. I think you’d begin to love it.” He’d coach her slowly. Teach her to kneel, to love a paddle on her ass.

  The idea of spanking her flipped his switch.

  Suddenly he was done, ready for the main course.

  She stabbed him with her nails when he pulled back, on the edge.

  “Easy, princess, you’ll get what you need. I got it right here.” He shoved down his Malibu shorts and lifted her easily from the counter. He sat down on the stool and then put her on him, impaling her hard in one stroke.

  “Uh!” He knew he should do this some classy way, that he should have waited until they could have soft sheets and a civilised mating, but he’d been raging for her, couldn’t wait to bury his prick in her.

  He messed her top, working her breasts through the fabric.

  “Ride me, honey.”

  She blinked as if she’d expected him to take her.

  “Pleasure me,” he ordered. “Pleasure us both.”

  He saw her think about it and then flush again as she saw her legs dangling on either side of his, her bare lower body, the place where their bodies met. This wasn’t soft and romantic, this was hard core.

  “Luke, I can’t do this,” she whispered.

  He shook his head. “Fuck my cock.”

  He could see his crudity embarrassed her, but it also got her hotter. She was so wet he slid easily as she lifted herself on him and then let herself go, crashing down, letting him fill her.

  She was so tight it had to be slightly uncomfortable for her, but she seemed to go for that bit of hurt spicing her pleasure.

  But suddenly she froze. “We didn’t use anything again.”

  The first time had been so unplanned, but he’d always used protection, and Sian… God knew how long since she’d got any.

  Fuck it. “I wouldn’t mind making you pregnant.”

  “What?” Again he’d managed to shock the shit out of her. Somehow it was hot to do that while she was taking him, all of him deeply buried inside her.

  “I wanted to the first time. You said you were on something…”

  “I take birth control pills to stay regular,” she muttered. He could tell she didn’t have this kind of intimate conversation often. But he was her lover now, damn it. And they would talk about this.

  “You don’t get your period that often.”

  “Oh my God!”

  He had to laugh, she looked so mortified.

  “Come on, it’s the twenty-first century, honey. And I do live with you.”

  She wouldn’t meet his gaze, bashful again. “I worked it out, I don’t have to have it often.”

  He nodded. “That’s good. Why suffer with it when you don’t have to?” And she had suffered. He’d known what it was that occasionally made her grouchy and sore, not that he’d been stupid enough to say anything. He’d given her back rubs on the guise that she’d had long days and he’d known she was hurting when she’d allowed him to do it. “But if nature happens, if I knock you up, would you mind my baby?”

  “No.” The answer was automatic, from the heart.

  And Jesus, did it turn him on. He made a silent vow that whenever he was inside her he’d work on that, on making her pregnant. He knew she wanted kids and why not? They had this big empty house. They both ached for family. And if he made her pregnant it was another shackle on her, another way of keeping her his.

  He lifted her off him.

  “Luke!”

  She sounded desperate.

  “Easy, honey.” He positioned her in front of the stool, bent her over and widened her legs with one of his. “Hold onto the stool.”

  “What are you—”

  He thrust inside her, taking her from behind. Nothing gentlemanly about this.

  “This is your little stepbrother doing you and you love it,” he whispered.

  “Oh, Luke…” He heard regret and a little bit of shame in her tone. She was still ashamed that she’d let him do her. It hurt, hearing that, so he took her hips and battered into her, her succulence making juicy sounds as he fucked.

  “Stop me if you don’t want it,” he taunted her.

  “You know…I can’t,” she gasped. Her pussy tried to grip him, milking him as he ploughed her.

  “That’s because you’re my whore,” he whispered, his own pain making him want to hurt her. “Because you agreed to give this to me once a day.”

  If he expected her to back down at his harshness, he’d forgotten her spine. “I like giving you this once a day.”

  But her tone was stifled.

  That didn’t stop her from receiving him, all of him as he buried himself in her again and again.

  He smacked one butt cheek and she cried out, clenching on him, coming as a red hand print bloomed deliciously on her ass.

  He shoved deep, the stool falling away so they were working against the counter.

  Everything he was, all his frustrated love, spilled into her.

  “Luke…”

  And suddenly he felt like Cinderfella after midnight. He pulled out, tugged up his shorts.

  He was se
eping out of her body. Her hand went to her thigh as if to stop it.

  He lifted her onto his lap, his throat tight. “Don’t. Let it stay in there a while.”

  He expected her to argue with him, to want to talk this out. He knew it was crazy, this need to make her pregnant. It was unlikely with her taking something.

  But she only sagged against him, her cheek pressed to his neck.

  Family. She was his family. And he was desperate to keep her any way he could.

  Chapter Nine

  Sian felt self-conscious huddled in Luke’s lap. And wonderful. And terrified.

  Their post-sex record was disastrous.

  The first time she’d run away and locked herself in her room.

  The second time they’d almost been interrupted by his best friend—who seemed to have it in for her.

  But for right now, she loved listening to Luke’s heart beating, loved this closeness. She was hungry for it, as much as she had been for the sex. As her hand ran over his shoulder, she was conscious again that he was younger than she was.

  “It don’t matter a damn,” he said, as if he were reading her mind.

  “Of course it does. When I’m forty, you’ll be—”

  “You’ll be hot and so will I.”

  “Luke…” She had to go shower. She’d lost her mind and jumped on a whole new crazy train with the let’s-get-pregnant thing. What the hell?

  “It’s hormonal.”

  “My current insanity?”

  “Did you or did you not talk to me once about artificial insemination?”

  Sian swallowed. Okay, yes, she’d told him she thought she might try to have a baby one day if she didn’t find someone. And yes, as the years went by, the ‘someone special’ had narrowed down to Luke. Even with her compulsive dating, she still spent most of her time with him. She enjoyed being with him more than her dates.

  “We shouldn’t do this on a whim.”

  “Sian—”

  “What if we screw up our…friendship, for lack of a better word? And then I get pregnant. How does that work?”

  Luke’s jaw was tight. “We don’t.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I know us.”

  “Our parents were disasters in the marriage department.”