The Lark and the Bull Page 4

  Holly was gratified to see that, again, Bull had almost lunged forward as if to catch her if she fell, despite how cruel he could be to her. She was glad to see that not all of the good things she'd known about him all along were being completely overshadowed by his obvious dislike of her and resentment at Lark's presence.

  In fact, he pushed her towards the staggering woman. "Go take care of her. Get her straight, if you can. We should all go see the chief and tell him what a cockamamie story she's come up with."

  That had been five weeks ago.

  Dale had been almost as skeptical as Keenan when they'd brought Lark's thoughts on the murders to him, but he was infinitely more open about the possibilities she brought to light than the younger man.

  Lark had just about heard Keenan's eyes rolling onto the floor the whole time they were discussing it.

  "Holly's going to show me some of the evidence—mostly I'm interested in the victim's clothes, but I'd like to handle everything else you've found, too, if that's okay."

  "Fine with me." The chief shrugged. "Will you stick around after that, or will you just be on call? I know you live in New England." He very carefully didn't say where, in order to preserve her privacy as much as possible. He certainly didn't want Bull to take it into his head to harass her at home, not that he thought the other man would do that— necessarily. And if he really wanted to find out where she lived, he had other ways of doing so. But Dale thought he'd just not make it easy for him.

  "Well, the length of time between murders has been getting shorter, and I knew that when I came down here, so I took an Airbnb for two months, just in case."

  That had proven to be just the right move, considering what had happened last night.

  She had just gotten out of bed—her body making her even more aware of what she'd gotten into after the fiasco at the murder scene—when her phone rang.

  It was a number she didn't recognize, so she let it go to voicemail but listened to the message immediately.

  He sounded different on the phone. Or perhaps different because of what had happened between them; she wasn't at all sure which it was.

  "Lark, uh, it's Bull."

  She blushed brightly at the name, knowing now that it was no lie, even though she knew that wasn't—necessarily—the intention of the nickname.

  "The chief would like to see you as soon as possible to talk about…last night." His tone was all business—until it wasn't, dropping several octaves and making her clench involuntarily. "And I want to see you even sooner for the same—but different—reasons." Back to business, he cleared his throat before continuing, and she sensed—non-empathically— that he was feeling uncertain as to the best way to proceed with her. "So call me back as soon as you get this." There was an abnormally long pause before he added, without bothering to hide his reluctance, "Please."

  He hadn't said please last night, Lark remembered, blushing brightly.

  She had—more times than she wanted to think about. She should have been frightened by how easily he had reduced her to out and out begging him, besides that very first, "Please."

  "Please, fingers…please, fuck me…please, let me come, please, fuck me harder." had followed with embarrassing ease and regularity. Her submission to him was faster and more complete than it had been with any man in her life.

  She wasn't frightened of him, though, in the long, deep heat of the night, despite the fact that she had ample reason to be.

  And he had obliged her, in his own good time, and that had only made it that much better for her.

  Once he'd told her boldly of his desire for her, and she had responded with that one word plea, he'd reached down to undo the loosely tied belt of his robe, letting it fall off her shoulders—to which it had only precariously clung in the first place—leaving her standing in front of him in just his shirt—which was easily big enough to house another two of her.

  The thought had teased his mind that he already knew she wasn't wearing any panties, because he'd put them into the wash himself, after having had to restrain himself from first burying his nose into the crotch and taking a deep breath of her essence. He didn't need the help—his body was already driving him crazy because of her, and Bull was doing his level best not to take advantage of her when she was in such a vulnerable state.

  And he'd lost that fight—badly. She was standing in his bedroom, much too close to him, looking as innocent as the day she was born, all big eyed and trusting of him, when the things he wanted to do to her were the kinds of things you make damned sure you've deleted from your browser history, just in case.

  Now he made a new, silent promise to himself—and to her—that he'd take it easy on her. He wouldn't be too dominant or too demanding, although that would go against everything he was and had been one of the reasons why the girl he'd had here before he'd gotten O'Leary's call was dissatisfied with him.

  She'd told him flat out that he was too bossy, and that she found that a turnoff.

  That was probably one of the reasons why he'd had a hard time getting her off. It was a point of pride with him to do so with every woman he slept with, but she hadn't seemed much interested in it, so he had acted contrary to his own instincts and simply took his own pleasure from her before she'd hopped out of bed like a scalded cat.

  But being here like this with Lark was something entirely different and completely unexpected. Weeks ago, if anyone had told him that he was going to end up making love with her, he'd've told them to fuck the fuck off.

  Here she was, though, looking as if she missed the rabbit or something—anything—to hold onto, as if she was having second thoughts. Bull reached out and pulled her to him, half expecting her to balk, but she melted against him in a way that was intrinsically satisfying to him on a level that had nothing to do with his rock-hard dick.

  He vowed again to himself that he was going to be gentle with her, that he was going to let her know everything he was going to do before he did it. That lasted less time than it took for him to complete the thought, and, to his surprise, she seemed to meet his every expectation, softly, sometimes hesitantly, but strongly, as if it was what she wanted from him.

  As his mouth took hers, slowly, tentatively at first, then slanting hungrily over hers, his hands traveled down her back, arching her into him. They found the edge of his huge-on-her shirt and slipped beneath them, his palms immediately full of two plump, wonderfully rounded cheeks.

  Damn, he wanted to spank them so badly! He wanted to spank her—indeed, he would feel justified in doing so. What had she been thinking, going out in the cold and the rain like that without so much as a windbreaker or a sweatshirt? He'd never brought that kind of thing up with someone he'd never slept with before, though, doubly so with someone he thought was going to be a one-night stand.

  Bull was very deeply dominant, but for him to truly become invested in it, it was all about the context.

  Making up reasons to spank a woman just didn't do it for him. He liked punishment within the confines of a relationship, so that he felt he was within his rights to mete out what would always be a very painful, very thorough punishment to his partner when she misbehaved.

  "Can I?" she asked, her softly spoken inquiry jolting him back to the situation at hand as he saw her hand hovering over his arm.

  "Not just yet, baby." He felt her shiver at the endearment, and he didn't think it was from fear. No, her pupils had most definitely dilated when he'd said that.

  Those big hands stopped gently squeezing her bottom to curve around her hips instead, then slowly began to make the trip northward, grazing over her sides and ribs.

  "You're awfully thin, little girl." He frowned down at her.

  She blushed beautifully at that, almost trying to wiggle away from him, as if she was embarrassed, but he tightened his hands—just slightly— to stop her from getting away. "Stay still. I didn't mean to insult you."

  Lark shook her head. "You didn't."

  "Good. But you're hardly bigge
r than a minute as it is. I don't want to hurt you—"

  "'M strong."

  He grinned down at her, his callused hands skimming up, the heels of his palms barely brushing the sides of her almost disproportionally ample breasts, carrying the shirt up and over her head to let it land wherever it may.

  As Bull took a calculated step forward, crowding her towards the edge of the bed, he asked huskily, holding her gaze, "You're not afraid of me, are you?"

  Her eyes went a bit round, as if the thought hadn't really occurred to her, and that just made her seem that much more—almost untouchably, unbearably—chaste. "Should I be?"

  That was what was different about her voice since he'd rescued her at the scene. It had been noticeably higher, until this last question, as if the seriousness of it was making her warier of him, which was the opposite of his intention.

  He took that last step towards her, hands splayed on her back as she tipped over, easily strong enough to control her descent until she landed without a trace of a bounce on her back beneath him. "Absolutely not, kitten," he breathed into their kiss, feeling little fingers, which had found their way to his chest, contract just slightly at the endearment as her mouth blossomed beneath his, rounded, feminine hips lifting themselves against his erection fit to make him come in his pants if he wasn't careful.

  As much as he wanted to tear his clothes off and drive himself into her, he wanted to see her writhing in ecstasy even more so, so he kept his clothes on, lifting her up to the head of the bed and lying to one side of her, a hand buried in hair so soft that he couldn't seem to leave it alone for more than two seconds, the other lying on her flat tummy, the large, dark brown expanse of it nearly spanning from hip to hip.

  Carefully not looking at him, she reached up then, looking for and finding the hand behind her head, as if she wanted to lace fingers with him. But Lark deliberately pushed her whole hand through his, until his fingers closed around her wrist, instead, and the minute they did, she drew in a very audible breath.

  But—as much as he wanted it, too—Bull wasn't having any of that. Although he retained gentle possession of her wrist, he tipped her chin up with his thumb and forefinger on either side of her chin so that she had to meet his eyes.

  "Does this mean that you want me to restrain you, little girl?" he asked, in a voice full of dark promise.

  She bit her lip hesitantly but continued to stare up at him, legs moving restlessly on the bed.

  All of the signs were there that that was exactly what she craved, but—for all sorts of reasons— he was going to make her agree.

  When she answered him, though, her eyes slipped from his. "Yes, please."

  "Look at me when you answer me, please." It was no less an order for the courtesy at the end, and he was incredibly pleased by the eagerness in her eyes when they met his again.

  Her repetition of the phrase was much breathier and slightly more hesitant the second time around. In other words, it was just perfect.

  He was already lying on her other arm, and now he did nothing more than take a bit firmer possession of her wrist, watching greedily as she arched and pouted, as if she was unhappy at getting exactly what she'd wanted.

  But he dispelled that pout simply by leaning down and pressing his open mouth over the nipple that was closest to him, causing her to arch again, even further, offering herself up to him with a whimper of the kind he definitely preferred—hungry. Aching. Submissive.

  Suckling so hard, her nipple popped audibly out of his mouth when he drew his head back, Bull took a long moment to simply gaze at her, his eyes sweeping down the length of her small, lithe body. "Christ, you're beautiful," he breathed almost reverently.

  She would have put her hands over her face, but she didn't have control of either one of them, so she tried to press it into his chest instead, but he wouldn't allow her to. "No, stop," she begged him sweetly.

  "Lie back down," he encouraged, with a slightly stern edge to his tone, and she obeyed him immediately. "Don't try to hide yourself from me. You have no reason to. You're perfect."

  She snorted loudly at that, and if she'd been feeling more herself—more verbal— she would have gone into the long list of all of her physical faults that every woman has in the back of her mind.

  He gave her an unhappy look from under drawn brows. "If you were mine, you would have just earned yourself a spanking, young lady."

  Her eyes were like saucers at that declaration, and she was blushing bright red.

  "I don't like women being all negative about themselves—how they look, especially. Everybody's got flaws—wait'll you see me naked. Nowadays, I'm being held together by scar tissue more than anything else."

  "Can I? Please?" she asked eagerly, trying to extract her arm from his hold, but he refused to allow her to, but reaching down to divest himself of his shirt seconds after she'd asked.

  He was as advertised, big and broad and muscular, but there were visible lines, and what she recognized as obvious puncture and gunshot wounds all over him. Still, he didn't shrink from letting her drink her fill of him, but he was horrified to realize that her eyes were filling with tears.

  "Pain," she said, as if she was feeling it herself, literally trying to fling herself against him. "Please?" she repeated, pleading up at him.

  He didn't really know why he let her go then, but he did, and she launched herself at him, snuggling up to him and rubbing her entire face against him like a cat. Then she used her one free arm to very delicately trace his scars—as if they still had the power to hurt him—surprising him by finding the oldest first and moving in absolutely correct order to the most recent, from a knife that had been jammed between his ribs while he was trying to break up a bar fight.

  But he refused to spend any time dwelling on that strange coincidence, which was all he could chalk it up to, reasonably.

  When she bent over to press her lips to the jagged, ugly line, he gasped and dragged her back up.

  Lark looked a bit startled—bordering on fear—at what he was doing, but he continued to push her onto her back again, confessing with a half-smile, "Honey, if you start that now, it's all going to be over much too soon, and I intend to take my fill of you tonight." Then he put his arm behind her head again, the hand at the end of it open expectantly. "Give me your wrist, babygirl."

  This time, she was the one who gasped, lips twitching as she was considering rebelling, although a deepening look from him made her think better of it, and she once again gave herself into his keeping, surrendering her freedom to him—to a man who had let it be known by all and sundry, in no uncertain terms—that he didn't like her and that he didn't believe the majority of what she said about herself.

  Chapter 4

  Still, she did it. Regardless of who he was and what she knew he thought about her, even now, he was also everything she needed, at that moment, and had been, unfailingly, since he'd arrived by her side on that Godforsaken dirt road where she'd fallen horribly apart.

  When his fingers again closed around her forearm, Bull murmured, "Good girl," and was glad to hear her slight whimper again in a much more pleasant manner than earlier.

  Her behaviors made him think that they were likely quite compatible. Everything he had seen in her, tonight, pointed to the fact that she was a submissive. Not that he had any delusions that this was really going anywhere, but, especially after what he'd heard from the young lady who'd practically run from his bed this evening, it was nice to find a like-minded person. It seemed that they were few and far between, at least in West Virginia, in his experience.

  Her attachment to the rabbit and her sensitivity to the endearments he chose to use, as well as the praise he gave her occasionally, hinted at something that extended past that. But he didn't think an exploration of that was in what was probably their very limited future. He found he actually mourned the loss of what would never be, because it was an aspect of himself that he had tried to cultivate, to a certain extent, but hadn't had much success in
introducing to the women he was with. He'd had partners who were into discipline and spanking, but none that went any further than that.

  Bull found himself in the unenviable position—considering his stance on her and how he'd treated her up until last night—of wishing that she would be sticking around on a more permanent basis.

  In all likelihood, he was going to have to content himself with tonight, so he was going to make it one for the record books. To hell with sleep, for either one of them.

  Instead, he let himself feast on her as he held her captive, transferring possession of her arm—and even capturing the other when he needed to, or ordering her to put hers above her head when needed to keep her in his control the entire time his mouth and whatever spare hand he had explored every bit of her, from that crown of curls to the soles of her feet, which he discovered were very ticklish.

  It was the only time she told him "no"—very flatly and with not the slightest hint of flexibility in her tone.

  He stopped wiggling his fingertips against her skin immediately. "Ah—a hard no." Bull crawled his way up the center line of her body slowly, dragging his much rougher one over it, tongue flicking out here and there as he lay atop her legs to reach up and take her hands, bringing them down to hold one on either side of her at hip level. "Yes, ma'am. Good girl for telling me."

  She writhed at his praise, or tried to, unable to do much of it because of his weight. "Am I hurting you, little one?" he asked, giving her a sharp look.

  Lark shook her head vehemently. "No."

  As much as he didn't believe a lick of what she said about her so-called abilities, Bull prided himself on being a relatively good judge of whether or not someone was telling the truth, and he felt that she was.

  "I…" Her eyes skittered away from his as she whispered, as if it was a terribly embarrassing secret. "I like it."

  That made him grin wickedly. "Well, I'm glad for that, because, as kinky as I consider myself to be, my favorite position is on top."