Under The Cover Of Love Page 6

  He attacked her avidly, and with obvious, unabashedly loud enjoyment, rarely coming up for air – unlike her ex who rarely agreed to do this for her and did it so badly and complained about it so loudly that she eventually stopped asking him to do it, which of course was his aim.

  Not that he didn't expect her to do the reverse for him, but reciprocation wasn't high on his list of priorities.

  Merck acted as if he'd been walking through a hot, dry desert for years, and she was a cool, wet oasis. He loved her as if he was a woman, and this was the way he would want someone to pleasure him. Not one word of complaint – just the opposite. He often groaned in unison with her, finding and sticking to a rhythm – once he'd tested a few out – that earned him the loudest response from her.

  He let go of the leg he'd been butterflying to bring his hand back into play, petting her entrance with those two bold fingers, double dipping them into her cream, then following her groove down towards her little pucker.

  Jenna stiffened immediately and tried to get away from him, but he wouldn't let her. "Remember, relax. I'm not going to do anything you don't want or you're not into," he soothed, bringing his fingers back up to twist them into her, exposing her little jewel to even more loving from his lips and tongue, planting his fingers deep within her, stretching her and pulsing them quickly in and out of her.

  "Muh – Muh – Merck!" Jenna keened, feeling that unbearable pressure, the relentless build up of sensation upon sensation and knowing that something in her was going to have to give very soon.

  "That's it, honey. Don't hold back. Holding back is a spankable offense."

  That was all she needed to hear in that deep, dark voice of his. Jenna felt every muscle in her body tense for a long, unbearable moment. Then she screamed his name as a tidal wave of orgasms, one after the other, slammed her, He refused to allow her to avoid it, coaxing and guiding and pulling her through until she collapsed beneath him, even though he could still feel her contracting in his mouth.

  "More, baby?" he asked, lapping his tongue over her from top to bottom as if he was a particularly fastidious cat.

  "Oh, fuck me, no," she breathed, barely able to get even the one-syllable words out of her mouth.

  "Your wish is my command," he grinned, levering himself up and over her, leaning on both hands but much more on his stronger side, catching her legs up over his shoulders again, only this time it wasn't his fingers invading her.

  Unbelievably, they proved to be a poor substitute for the real thing.

  He was a big man, well endowed, almost too much so, for someone who had not done this in a while. But he was infinitely patient, and she was just about as ready for him as she could get, regardless.

  Dear God, she was almost there again, just from his first penetration!

  "You sound close, baby, are you?"

  Damn, the man noticed everything!

  All she could do was nod.

  "Mmm. You may cum at will, Jenna. I'll keep you going as long as I can."

  He would delay his own pleasure in favor of hers? Who was he?

  And he did.

  It got him off to get a woman off as much as possible, to feel her spasming around him and knowing that he was making her do that. So he held off until his body would no longer have it.

  "I'm sorry but I've got to – I've got to –" He hammered himself into her the last couple of strokes, fucking her hard, then bellowing his pleasure to an almost deafening extent, his big body shaking and shuddering above her before he rolled off and onto his good side, breath bellowing out of him in great puffs.

  Jenna could barely register that he had apologized to her for not being able to forestall his own orgasm any longer as they were fucking. What man did that? Certainly none in her previous experience.

  As soon as he could manage to corral his muscles into obedience, Merck reached up and released her loosely held arms, pulling the ribbon-like threads of the bandages away from her wrists so that she was completely freed.

  After that short bout of coherency on his part, each lost in their own thoughts, they lay there, on their backs, separately for a while, both still panting loudly and trying to catch their breath.

  Finally, Jenna said what was on her mind. "Dear God, when you can do that, how the fuck did Simone ever let you go?"

  Merck laughed. "We never had a problem in the bedroom. It was the rest of the relationship that she wasn't happy with, and, as I said, I understand completely – now. I didn't really then. I didn't much try to. I was – and still am, to a certain extent – a workaholic. She wanted a guy with a nine-to-five job and a house and babies, eventually..." Merck turned a bit towards her, reaching out to play with a strand of her wavy blonde hair, the end of which curled around his finger as if it never wanted to let go. "Was that why you two got married? The whole home, hearth, and kids thing?"

  Jenna shrugged. "I don't think either of us really thought about why we got married. We just...did. It seemed to be the thing to do; everyone else around us was, so we did it." She paused for a moment, seeming to Merck to be gathering her thoughts, then she said, her voice with a faraway tinge to it, "And there was a baby, once, but I miscarried, and the doctors told me I probably wouldn't be able to get pregnant again, afterwards."

  He didn't know why that story hit him so hard, but it did. She'd been such a good caretaker to him, bringing him – someone she didn't know and who she thought meant her harm – through a dangerous fever, that he just had a gut feeling, she would have made a terrific mom.

  Snarky and sarcastic on occasion, but definitely loving, if she could find it in her heart to see to a man who had terrified her as he had.

  Before he could even tell whether she was crying, he pulled her into his arms, surrounding her with himself and holding her tightly, not knowing what to say, but wanting to provide whatever meager comfort he could.

  As horrified as she was to be crying in front of him, she couldn't stop the words from pouring out of her mouth. "Abel, my ex, never said anything to me about the baby at all. It was as if she had never been. He never held me, never cried with me…"

  And here he was, a man who had known her for less than a week, the majority of which he'd been unconscious, and she could feel his own tears seeping into her scalp as he massaged his big hand up and down her back and murmured wordlessly comforting nothings.

  It was the first time she'd ever talked to anyone about the baby – none of her friends or family even knew there had ever been one, because she knew she really couldn't count on them for support, either. They all had their own lives, and she lived so far away and was so often incommunicado, and, married to a man who refused to acknowledge what had happened, she had truly realized at that point in her life that she only had herself to rely on.

  She couldn't blame them. Her husband at the time – she laid every bit of blame at his feet, where it belonged.

  It was really the first time she'd ever truly cried for the daughter she never had, sobbing all over him for a good long time, then, when she'd realized how uncomfortable she must've made him feel, bawling all over him – and him essentially a total stranger – Jenna began to apologize profusely.

  "Stop."

  "But…"

  He didn't raise his voice, but he got his point across, nonetheless. "I said stop."

  She looked up at him a bit warily, but remained silent.

  "You don't have to stop crying, Jenna. Just don't apologize to me about it. I can't imagine how much it must hurt to lose a baby – born or unborn. And I'm so sorry that your ex was such a jerk to you about it. And a jerk in general, it seems to me, on very short acquaintance."

  "Well," she sniffed. "I can't imagine that I'm that much of a prize to live with, either."

  "Enough." Much more sharply. "Perhaps there were little things that bugged you about each other, but this kind of thing is something you come together over in your grief."

  Jenna nodded. She didn't think Abel had felt any grief about the loss of t
heir child. If pressed, she would have said that, if he felt anything, it was relief.

  Merck didn't say anything more; he just held her until he could see that she'd cried most of it out. When she'd calmed, he tipped her chin and kissed her tenderly. "As much as I would love to continue to hold you, I need to change my bandages."

  "I'll help," she volunteered.

  "I can do it myself," he said. "Why don't you go get ready for bed, then we'll snuggle back here when we're done with our ablutions?"

  She did as he asked, but when she returned in her nightgown, he was still struggling to apply the bandage to the wound in his back. So she did end up helping him with it, glad to see that it looked much better than it had – much less swollen and red and angry looking, and seemed to be on its way towards healing over, which she told him.

  "Thank you, again," he said, when he was slathered with antibiotic cream and bundled up again.

  "You're welcome."

  He rolled onto his back and held his arms up to her.

  But Jenna was feeling quite shy, all of a sudden. Her time alone in the bathroom had been full of long moments of self-recrimination and guilt. She'd told herself that falling in love with – and yes, she'd acknowledged to herself in a moment of stark clarity and rare self-introspection that she was, indeed, falling for him. Falling for a man who had treated her so badly at first, regardless of the provocation, and whom she'd known for all of fifteen minutes was probably not the right thing to do, regardless of how wonderful he was being to her now.

  At least Abel had never threatened her with a knife.

  But it was the truth, and, since the debacle with her ex, she had done her best to confront her feelings rather than running away from them.

  "No, thank you," she said primly, as if he was offering her a cookie, "I think I'll sleep in the recliner, like I have been."

  She turned away from him to head towards it, thinking she really should dig the twin bed in the other room out from under all of those books and sleep in there, but not before he whisked her into his arms – with only a slight grunt of pain – and carried her over to the bed, growling, "The hell you will. Only if you want to try to do so with an even sorer bottom than the one you already have."

  "Merck, put me down – you'll hurt yourself even more than you already have and start bleeding again!" She wanted to struggle, but also didn't want to contribute to his pain, so she remained board stiff.

  He only held her more tightly. "You're not going to sleep anywhere but in the bed with me."

  "Please, no – it doesn't make sense for me to…"

  He curled his strong arm so that her face was inches from his. "I'm not interested in doing the sensible thing, Jenna. I will do whatever is necessary to have you with me tonight." His words rumbled through every bit of her, leaving fires burning everywhere along their path.

  "All right," she said ungraciously, knowing that if she fought him, she would lose. Not wanting to injure him further, she allowed him to tuck the both of them into bed, pulling her into the crook of his body and holding her there with his one good arm around her waist. And sometimes in her hair...and occasionally at her breasts, or stoking her cheeks until he could feel her fall asleep against him and knowing he'd just made the biggest mistake of his life.

  But that he wouldn't – couldn't – have done anything differently.

  Chapter 6

  The next few days were blissful on many levels. Jenna indulged herself in him – and he in her – both of them realizing that they wouldn't be together for very much longer.

  Jenna had to assume that he still felt much as he did when he was with Simone, and although she wasn't necessarily looking for marriage or babies, she rather got the vibe that he wasn't one to settle down; that he was married to his job.

  So, in order to have as much as possible to look back on, she took to watching him when she thought he wouldn't notice. Even when she protested that he was exhausting himself and might be setting himself back rather that helping himself recover, he was using everything he could around the house to regain his strength as fast as he could. He was not really allowing himself time to recover as much as pushing himself to heal and get back to a hundred percent as soon as possible.

  She didn't like to think about exactly why he was doing that. They never spoke about it, but it was the same reason he carried her phone with him at all times, checking it frequently for a dial tone, and why he had gone around shutting all her windows and checking and improving as best he could the security of all her doors.

  It wasn't as if she had weight lifting equipment around – or any exercise equipment whatsoever, frankly – but still, it was strange to have a man in her living room, doing repeated sets of lifting jugs of emergency water she kept in the closet, wearing nothing but the sweats she had bought him, which he had promptly cut off into shorts.

  She was in her favorite easy chair, watching him as surreptitiously as she could manage, trying to keep the drool off her laptop. Who needed Netflix or Hulu – which she couldn't get anyway, even when the phone lines were working – when she had this amazing gun show to watch? She could see the muscles rippling in his back, beneath his tanned skin, and could remember the feeling of them beneath her palms as he surged powerfully within her.

  Damn, when did it get so hot in here?

  He attempted sit ups and was only able to do a few at first – all while groaning in pain – and the same went for pushups, and she had whimpered quietly as he did so, hating to see him in pain – especially the self-inflicted kind. But she understood his purpose and did her best to keep quiet, not wanting to disturb him.

  Jenna knew that her life, but more importantly to her, his, would largely depend on how fit he was able to get himself, in what she sensed was a very short time, before he disappeared from her life.

  She swallowed hard, resolutely putting that thought out of her mind, which was easier to do since the choppers no longer flew above their heads day and night. The radio had said that several suspects had been captured, and that they had eased up on the manhunt but hadn't discontinued it completely. She'd gone into town yesterday for more supplies, and the place hadn't been crawling with them, but there were more cop cars than usual around, not to mention the plainclothes ones, who stuck out like sore thumbs, even in casual, business attire, when everyone else was in well worn jeans and shit kickers.

  It wasn't as if she had any illusions about whatever it was this was between them, but she was determined not to let the facts of the situation interfere with her enjoyment of what she could have of it. Her head was firmly planted in the sand, and she had no intentions whatsoever of removing it until she absolutely had to.

  He was remarkably fit, and even after just a day or so, she could see the improvement in him – and eventually there was much less whimpering on her part as he ruthlessly forced his body to conform to his standards, kind of the same way he coerced her into bed with him at every possible moment. She thought they had probably christened every room in the house by this point, not that she was complaining in the least.

  He'd gone back to the weights, the sweat glistening on him, the look on his face so concentrated and determined, muscles bulging, breath puffing out of him...

  Jenna was on her feet before she knew it, insinuating herself between the jugs he was curling to kiss him deeply, her fingers buried in the damp hair at the back of his neck, holding him into the kiss when he might have pulled away.

  When she finally did, she was biting her lip and looking surprisingly tentative for her. Merck squatted down to put the makeshift weights on the floor, rising to pull her into his arms. "You still hungry, woman? I thought I'd sated you for a while this morning," he teased cheekily, a self-satisfied grin on his face.

  Sated? He'd damned near killed her – her lady bits were still throbbing in remembrance.

  But then they always seemed to be that way around him, sensitive and tender as if he'd just attended to her as excruciatingly well as he had th
is morning.

  This may have evolved into a bit of a dominant and submissive relationship – and she had no real personal experience of them – but she wondered if every Dom was as generous and downright worshipful of his sub? She'd never feel so cared for and looked after in her life – not even when she was a child in her parents' home! He noticed everything about her, and he used that knowledge to increase her pleasure, or worsen her punishment, but never to denigrate her in any way.

  In fact, just the opposite.

  Besides the exercises he was forcing himself to do, he proceeded to do all of the little things around the inside of the house that she had been putting off. The things that, if she'd had a man around on a regular basis, would have been on her 'honey do' list. He did them without her having to ask, as soon as he noticed something was amiss. He tinkered with the washing machine that was filling terribly slowly, tilting it forward with impressive – and disgusting – ease, to show her the little filter in the cold-water hose where it entered at the back of the machine was clogged and causing the problem.

  "But you are not to do this yourself," he warned. "This is a heavy machine, and I don't want you getting trapped under it. Get whatever handyman is in the area to do this." As if he knew her already too well, knowing she was likely to disregard what he'd said and attempt it herself, he looked down at her sternly, tapping the tip of his index finger on the end of her nose. "Understand?"

  She frowned up at him, giving him a reluctant, put upon, "Yes."

  Merck didn't much care how she felt about what he'd ordered – nor did he think about the fact that he would never know whether she'd obeyed him – but then he put that thought firmly out of his mind.

  He fixed the leaky faucet in the bathroom, the running toilet, and he even installed the filter for the icemaker on her fridge, which she'd bought more than a year ago and had just never gotten around to installing. He nailed down the track for the sliding closet doors, fixed the shelf in the pantry so that she could use it again and rehung the cupboard door that swung off its hinges every time she opened it.