Hard Limit Page 6

  I did not immediately pull out.

  Looking down at the woman under me, a tightness spread through my chest. Her breasts full and her nipples erect through the material of her undergarment, her cheeks flushed, her hair spilled out around her—I had never laid eyes on a more beautiful woman.

  “Tarquin,” she whispered, searching my eyes, her expression uncertain.

  Feeling no pain, I leaned down and covered her mouth with mine.

  This time she did not hesitate to let me in, and I did not take her mouth like I would take her between her legs.

  I kissed her slowly.

  My eyes closed, my hand buried in her hair, I suddenly understood the brothers on the compound that I had learned from. Their fixation with taking a woman’s mouth, and angling them into their slow, controlled dominance was no longer an incongruity I did not understand.

  Because that was exactly what I wanted.

  Holding her hair, her head, I dominated her not with urgency, but with need. Need to taste her. Need to smell her. Need to feel her. Under me, around me, in the depth of my chest where my life force beat for something other than anger, I kissed her.

  Her arms wrapped around my neck, and I knew.

  If she were River Ranch, I would have fought to the death for rights to her.

  Still inside her, I grew hard again.

  A small moan escaped her mouth and bled into mine.

  It was all the incentive I needed. I began to thrust into her again.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus.” Her head fell back as her hands fluttered across my shoulders. “What are you doing?”

  I tasted the heat on her neck. “Taking you again.” Grasping the back of her knee, I pushed her leg up and sank deeper inside her.

  “Oh.” She shuddered. “That’s… ohhh.”

  “There are many ways I am going to take you.” I thrust deep and hard, wondering if I was telling the truth.

  She caught my words and turned them around. “We’re gonna do this again?”

  “We already are.” I reached between our bodies and caressed her sensitive flesh that was coated in the seed of my previous release. “You are going to give me your pleasure again.”

  Without warning, a tremor shook her body and she was coming.

  Growling in satisfaction and need, I grasped her hip and started pounding in to her.

  Her body shook, sweat beaded across mine, the sound of flesh slapping against flesh filled the old building, and I released inside her again.

  My heart pounded, my breath came fast, and I held myself over her as the last pulse of my strength filled her.

  Looking down at her heaving chest and flushed flesh, I stilled. “Now you are a woman.”

  Pink colored her already heated cheeks as her legs went limp on either side of me. “I guess I am.”

  There was no guessing about it. Slow, I started to pull out of her.

  She gasped and her muscles tensed. “Wait,” she said in a panic.

  I grasped one of her ankles.

  Alarm spread across her pretty face. “What are you doing?”

  “Trust me.” I lifted her leg and moved it across my body, gently turning her to her side. “It will hurt less this way.” When her legs were together, I bent her knees up as I slowly pulled out of her.

  Her mouth formed an O and she sucked in a sharp breath.

  My seed and her blood spilled on to the cement floor.

  She covered her face with her hands as she pulled her knees up higher. “Oh God, that I feel,” she said, embarrassed.

  “Do not be ashamed,” I commanded. “It is natural.” I laid her legs down and reached past her to the bag she had pulled water and food out of before. Lifting the top flap, I took one of several bottles of water and opened it.

  At the sound, she lifted her hands from her face and looked at me. Womanhood flushing her cheeks, she said nothing.

  My eyes on hers, I took the same ankle I had before and moved her leg back so that she was straddling my thighs again. Laying my hand on her slightly rounded stomach, I stroked my thumb over her flesh and gave a quiet command. “Spread your legs for me.”

  Biting her bottom lip, she let her knees fall open.

  Dropping my gaze, I poured water over her swollen flesh.

  She jumped. “That’s cold.”

  Resting my forearm on her thigh to hold her still, I swept my fingers through her newly tended womanhood. My gaze focused on the flesh I wanted to take again with my mouth and my body, I poured more water, cleaning her with my own hand.

  A soft sound came from her throat.

  I thought of taking her under running water as I cleaned her a third time.

  “Tarquin,” she whispered.

  Still focused on where I had taken her, I drew my fingers though her soft flesh and gave her words I had never given a female. “You are beautiful.” But I could not keep her.

  Her small hand landed on my wrist.

  Ignoring her gesture, I used the last of the water to wash her blood off me. Then, without words, without eye contact, I moved over her, put my arm under the small of her back and lifted her to my chest.

  She made a shocked sound but wrapped her arms around my neck.

  I crawled us to the mattress and laid her down. Turning her to her side, I brought my chest to her back, pulled the blanket over us, and slipped my good arm under her head. My body settled into the air-filled plastic and deep exhaustion hit me a second before the familiar pain in my leg, arm, ribs and side returned.

  “You need to take another antibiotic,” she whispered.

  I had never taken medicine in my life before yesterday. Medicine was not allowed on the compound, and we were all taught to mistrust it. But I could not deny my body felt stronger after taking it than it did before. “Where is it?”

  “Hand me my bag?”

  I reached behind me and picked up her bag before placing it in front of her. She pulled out the packet that held the antibiotic and pushed one through the casing. Then she retrieved another medicine from a small bottle.

  She handed both medicines to me, along with another bottle of water. “Here you go, antibiotic and Advil.”

  “Advil?”

  She nodded. “It helps with the pain. And swellin’.”

  I took the medicines without further comment and drank the water, but saved half and offered it to her.

  Watching me, she took the bottle, drank, then turned and lay back down without comment.

  Following suit, I lay behind her and pulled her close with an arm around her waist. Then I gave her a single truth. “I have never slept beside a woman.”

  “Ever?” she asked, surprise in her voice.

  “No.”

  “But you’ve definitely….” Her hand waved in front of her stomach. “You’ve done that before.”

  “Yes.” I did not lie.

  “A lot?” she asked, her voice catching.

  I was not ignorant. I knew how male and female mating worked outside of the compound. One woman, one man, marriage was common, and females had fewer children. River Ranch was different, but I had no intention of explaining it to her.

  I gave her the simplest of answers. “Enough.”

  She was quiet, but her breathing did not even out.

  “With lots of different women?” she asked a few moments later.

  I did not answer. I inhaled the sweet scent of her and touched my lips to her shoulder.

  She let out a small, humorless laugh. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  I did not respond.

  Sadness crept into her voice. “Do you want that? Lots of women? I… I heard rumors about River Ranch.”

  I had not thought of it until she asked, but I did not have to think twice about what I wanted. “I do not, ever again, want anything to do with the goings on of River Ranch or any of its members.”

  She rolled in my arms and a smile spread across her face as her hand covered my heart.

  I spoke before she read into my meaning
. “I cannot keep you.”

  Her smile dropped and her hand left my chest. She gave me her back again. “Who said anything about for keeps? Besides, I’m leavin’ here for good soon anyway. I don’t have time for flowers and chocolates.”

  I digested her words.

  I was not a conversationalist. I had not spent my days interacting with females. In fact, I did not converse much with anyone, not even the elders. I did my job in solitude, I showed up for meals and Sunday worship and nightly prayers, as we all were commanded to do, and I spent my evenings in the men’s quarters before falling into my bunk exhausted every night.

  I had spoken to her more than I had spoken to anyone, but I was not ignorant. No amount of conversation meant I could keep her.

  I had no homestead, no job and no means.

  I had been raised on the notion that paper money, formal education, society and the government were the root of all sin, and judgment day was coming. Hard work was my salvation, nightly prayer my penance, and the designated women my duty as a capable breeding male.

  I was never going back to that life, and I was never giving a female a flower again.

  “Go to sleep,” I commanded.

  “Whatever.” She pulled the blanket around her as she moved away from me.

  Battling pain and exhaustion, I exhaled. “You said you were leaving. Where are you going?”

  “Away from here,” she quipped.

  I did not like, nor understand, her shortness or the underlying hurt in her voice. Females on the compound did not speak to the men like this.

  “Why are you angry?” She had asked me to make her a woman. I had given her what she wanted.

  Breathing rapidly, her back still to me, she jerked the rest of the blanket off me and wrapped it around her. “I ain’t angry,” she snapped.

  I looked down at my naked body.

  My torso was bound in thick white tape where she had tightly wrapped my ribs. A stab wound on my lower left side was crudely stitched, with gauze and tape over it. Another stab wound on my right thigh was also stitched and taped. My left shoulder was all mottled bruising, but the arm was now functional. My right forearm had scabbed-over shallow knife-slash wounds. From my knees to my shoulders, I was bruised.

  But I was alive.

  Because of her.

  “Thank you,” I said quietly.

  “For what?” she asked defensively.

  “For tending to me.”

  She shifted, but she did not look at me. Then she spoke in a small, hurt voice. “You’re welcome.”

  If I had been on compound and pledged rights to her and survived the beating that would prove me worthy of her, taking her virginity and making her a woman would have been deemed an honor.

  I knew nothing of the word irony until that moment.

  “I am honored to have taken you,” I admitted.

  “Yeah, well, seems like it ain’t nothin’ you haven’t done a whole lotta times before, so whatever. I’m not puttin’ any kinda stock in that honor.” She pulled the pillow out from under my head to resituate it under hers.

  I stared at her back, wrapped in an old blanket with her hair everywhere. “What does that mean?”

  She flipped over like a hurricane. Her face dripping tears, she spat anger at me. “It means,” she hissed, “you dumb, infuriating, big-muscled Neanderthal, that I don’t like thinkin’ the man I gave my virginity to has had sex with a whole lotta other women and taken them before he took me because that makes me feel shitty and jealous, and now that we did… that.” Her hand waved between us. “I feel all sorts of turned around in the head, and funny in my belly, and I like you a whole lot more than I should. But I’m more than a little upset that you said you ain’t keeping me, because no girl who gives it up for the first time wants to hear that it’s not a forever kind of love, and that her man don’t want her as desperately as she wants him.”

  I blinked.

  She made a derisive sound. “Don’t that just figure. You got nothin’ to say for yourself.” She made to turn back over.

  I cupped her nape, stopping her. “I said I cannot keep you. I did not say I did not want to.”

  Another tear slid down her cheek. “I don’t even know what that means. What does that mean?”

  I did not like her tears. “I have no means with which to take care of you.”

  She threw a hand up in frustration. “So get a job.”

  I did not want a job. There was only one thing I wanted besides River Stephens to breathe his last breath. “I am going to be an Army Ranger.”

  She stilled with surprise as her eyes widened. “You’re in the Army?”

  “Not yet.”

  “But you signed up?”

  I frowned. Signed up? “No.”

  “So how do you know you’re gonna be a Ranger? You have to like, try out and qualify for that and then train for it. I don’t know much about the military, and I’m not tryin’ to be discouragin’, because Lord knows you look like you would be a shoo-in, but I think becomin’ an Army Ranger is supposed to be one of the hardest things to do in the military. They’re considered some of the best of the best, right next to Navy SEALs and those special forces, or Force Recon Marines, or whatever you call them.”

  Not understanding half of what she said, defiant anger surged. One of the brothers on the compound had been a former Army Ranger, and he was the smartest male in River Ranch. He could shoot a deer from a thousand yards, he knew how to build anything, the females all sought his attention hoping to be claimed, and he made every woman he took in the men’s quarters sing with submission. He never spoke an untrue or unnecessary word, and not once had he thrown a single punch or kick against my flesh for my sins.

  I had wanted to be like him from as far back as I could remember. But when he had come to me the morning after I buried my birth mother and made me memorize an address before telling me there were a hundred ways to take a man’s life with your bare hands, I knew I wanted to be an Army Ranger. I told him as much. He had only smiled and said to remember the address.

  “I am going to be an Army Ranger.” And I was going to watch River Stephens take his last breath. But I was not ignorant. I knew I needed training beyond what I had learned from my compound brothers.

  She stared at me for a long moment, then she simply nodded. “Okay.”

  My muscles relaxed marginally.

  She moved closer and threw half the blanket back over me. “Did you know they got housing for spouses in the Army?” She curled into me and rested her head against my chest.

  I stared at her hair as it fell across my shoulder. “Spouses?”

  “Wife,” she clarified.

  I frowned. “You want to be my wife?”

  She let out a nervous laugh. “So nice of you to ask, but I don’t quite know you yet.” She looked up at me, and her slight smile disappeared. “You a cheater?”

  “Cheater?”

  “Yeah, are you faithful?”

  I stared at her green eyes. I had never seen anyone, male or female, with eyes the color of hers.

  She sighed. “Faithful. As in one man, one woman, for life, till death do them part, livin’ happily ever after, and never havin’ sex with anyone else except each other. That kind of faithful.” She paused, and her expression turned to one of shock. “Wait. Do you even know what marriage is? Do people get married at River Ranch?”

  “I know what marriage means,” I defended.

  “So there were married couples on the compound?”

  “No.” River Stephens taught everyone that marriage was a false testament to God and loyalty. Bonding was stronger and lasted beyond this life. “If you claimed rights to a female, then you were bonded. It is stronger than marriage.”

  She frowned. “So did bonding mean you only had sex with your woman? You didn’t cheat on her with other women?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “You would never take another woman if you were bonded. Not even if your female passed.”

&nb
sp; “Were you?” She bit her lip. “Bonded?”

  “No.”

  Her voice turned quieter. “Did you want to be?”

  I had never thought about it before I had met her. “There was never any female on the compound I wanted to fight for rights to.”

  A soft smile touched her full lips. “Oh.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

  Heat hit her cheeks. “I like that.” She laid her head against my chest again. “You never fell in love before.”

  I stroked her soft hair, wanting to keep her. “Go to sleep.”

  “Okay,” she whispered, placing a kiss against my chest.

  I wrapped my arms around her and closed my eyes.

  He slept for eighteen hours.

  I watched over him for every one of those hours, but by sunset the next day, I must’ve dozed off because when I opened my eyes, he was silently staring at me.

  I smiled. “Hi.”

  “You changed my bandages.” Rough and deep, his voice swept around me like a winter chill.

  Unsure of his dark tone, I nodded. “I think the antibiotics are kickin’ in. Your leg looks much better.”

  He flexed his leg, but he made a face. “It is fine.”

  “You hurtin’? I have more Advil. And it’s almost time for your next antibiotic.”

  His stern gaze cut from his leg to me. “No Advil. Did you sleep?”

  A small laugh escaped. “Seeing as you caught me sleepin’ on the job, I reckon so.”

  He frowned. “On the job?”

  “Um.” I bit my lip. “Watchin’ over you?” It came out sounding like a question.

  His frown deepened. “I am not an infant. I do not need tending to.”

  “No, no, of course not.” I blushed hard. “I was just….” Shoot, shoot, shoot. “Fine,” I admitted, “I like to watch you sleep. I wanted to make sure you were okay. And yes, I changed your bandages as gently as possible so you didn’t wake up.” There, I said it.

  He stared at me for what felt like a full minute. Then he issued three words that were more command than statement. “I need clothes.”

  “Oh, sure. I, um, washed your jeans.” I reached behind me and dug in the plastic bag I’d brought in earlier from the house when I’d snuck in while both he and Mama were sleeping. “I also got you a couple T-shirts. They ain’t much, they’re from the gas station where I work, and the selection there is about as bad as you’d think.” I laughed nervously as I held one up. “But I think it’ll fit.”