Page 34 of Carved Obsession (The Sanctum Syndicate #4)

Scarlet

Rain mercilessly batters the cabin’s roof, filling the silence that stretches between our slightly out-of-sync breaths.

The blanket he tucked between his cock and my ass wouldn’t provide us with modesty, even if he wasn’t half hard. The slight bulge pressing into me drives my thoughts to dangerous, delicious places.

I caught a really good look at what hangs between Carter’s legs when he undressed, and...it truly hangs. So much so that I had to lick a little drool at the corner of my mouth.

He’s been the main character of so many of my dreams in the last few months, but, my lord, even I didn’t imagine the carved masterpiece I’m currently held flush against.

I’m afraid to breathe, in case it causes me to accidentally grind against him, yet I’m not sure why. It’s not like I’ve hidden my attraction for the man. Maybe it’s this night, this small bed, or the fact that there is quite literally nowhere to run, that messes with my head. With my guts.

My muscles started relaxing once our bodies began warming each other, but damn, they’ve tensed back up now that I feel his taut skin and how his heartbeats vibrate through my flesh and join mine. Even his chaste hold on my shoulder seems to itch to slide somewhere more intriguing.

The breath I pull into my lungs weighs me down. It sizzles in the air around us, charged with an intensity that seeps through my skin, goosebumps rippling all the way up my back. My back rolls, and my ass pushes against him involuntarily.

I swallow my apology when I hear him suck in a breath.

“Would you have done it?” I blurt out, rolling my eyes at myself. “Would you have really killed me?”

“If you were a threat to me or The Sanctum, yes.”

“Just like that?”

“Yes.” His bluntness sends shivers down my spine.

“And you’ve decided I’m not a threat.” I purposefully phrase it as a statement, not a question. Maybe it’s wishful thinking for the sake of self-preservation.

“You made me promise not to kill you.”

That’s definitely not what I needed to hear, and I tense further.

“So, you do think I’m a threat.”

“Only tonight, I found out it was you who stole from me, infiltrated my business, and invaded my home. I don’t know why yet. You tell me, kitten , are you a threat?”

His hand tightens on my shoulder, body pressing more firmly against mine, and with his cock hard against my ass, I can’t fucking think straight.

I imagine him ripping the blanket away and sinking his length so far between my ass cheeks that I scream louder than this storm from the hedonistic intrusion.

Fuck, I can’t think straight!

With a clumsy, rushed turn, I face him. His arm is still wrapped around me, palm now laid on my back, and if I thought I couldn’t think straight before, well.

..this was a big mistake. Flames dance through his devilish eyes, making his carved cheekbones harsher in this light, and. ..the blanket no longer separates us.

He holds my stare. I hold his.

My breath stalls in my lungs. The warm tip of his cock twitches against my belly.

The stove must have warmed up the cabin because my skin grows damp. And deep between my joined thighs, it turns...slippery.

“I’m not a threat to you,” I whisper, but it comes out breathy. Needy.

Carter’s empty eyes remain unchanged. Unaffected. And slight disappointment prickles in my chest.

“And my Sanctum?” Right there, in his low, smoky tone of voice, I can hear that he’s not all that unaffected.

“It was never about them. But you already knew that,” I murmur.

No answer comes, but in his eyes, I notice a spark that has nothing to do with the flames.

“You ruined my last plan,” I tell him.

“How? You successfully stole my violin.”

I uncross my arms tucked tight to my chest and lay one hand over his waist, reveling in the noticeable hitch in his breath and the goosebumps suddenly peppering his skin.

“I may be a thief, but I wasn’t going to keep the things I stole from you. You were supposed to come after me at my house. Not here. But you figured out the puzzle much faster than I thought you would.”

“I’m a pretty smart guy,” he says with a sinful smirk that makes me even wetter.

“Clearly.”

“And what then? At your house?”

“We would have hashed it out over a glass of exquisite wine. Talked about how exciting this little game has been. I would have convinced you to stop this nonsense about killing me. And we would have called a truce while enjoying a nice swim in my pond. I have a very nice pond.” I flutter my eyebrows, grinning suggestively.

“And you think that would have been enough to convince me? Wine and a swim? After everything you put me through?”

“My charming personality too.” I answer with that same smile on my lips.

“Charming, indeed.” Laced with sarcasm, it doesn’t sound like a compliment at all.

He lifts an eyebrow when I shift closer. My breasts press against his heavily tattooed chest, and his entire cock lines up against my pubic bone. But I recoil slightly; something cold and hard digs into me.

“You okay, kitten?”

I’m not sure.

“Wha—what is that?”

“Jacob’s ladder.”

I frown, utterly confused by his response, but only for a couple of seconds. Because the penny drops and a random memory filters through—cock piercings. Rungs of a ladder running up the underside of his penis.

Sweet Mary mother of God.

Okay, okay. Focus, Scarlet. You’re better than this.

“Let me ask you this,” I say, lifting my leg to splay it over his. Turns out I am, in fact, not better than this. “What would you be killing me for? Watching you murder a man? Or stealing your precious violin?”

The first answer comes from his fingers digging into my shoulder blade and the slight pressure building there.

The second is his hardening cock, no longer half-mast against my pelvis.

And the third is deeper. Darker. His eyes turn menacing, like they absorb all light cast onto them from the flames at the opposite side of the room.

His palm settles on the small of my back, the tips of his fingers tickle my cheeks, and he presses me against him, holding me firm.

I almost forget what my question was, because his cock is nestled onto the slippery seam of my sex, piercings sat comfortably against that sensitive part of me.

A flurry of electric tingles bursts from my clit, spreading through my body on a shiver.

“You tease me, Scarlet.” He drawls my name like it was born on his tongue. “Forgetting that you’re trapped here, all alone, with the predator you’ve been carelessly poking at for weeks.” He mercilessly grinds against my center, pinning me against the onslaught of pleasure when I try to pull back.

Fully distracted by the ecstasy in my core, I don’t react in time as he flips us over and tucks me under his towering body.

I’m drenched in darkness beneath this feral man, folding my leg over his that he shoves beneath.

At this angle, the torture comes from his thick length assaulting the drenched seam of my center, warming metal rolling against my pulsing clit.

“Look at you now, kitten. Pinned beneath my body, your warm little cunt weeping for me. So very greedy, aren’t you?”

He bucks his hips, and the moan I’ve been keeping tucked away in my chest explodes out of me as I sink further into the pillow.

“That’s it. Show your true colors, Scarlet girl. Show me just how much you want my cock to teach you how to harness rough pain into mind-bending pleasure. Is that why you’re so wet for me, little whore?”

I shake my head because opening my mouth might only reveal another desperate moan.

“I like a fighter, and I yearn to punish a filthy little brat like you.”

He rewards me with another grind of his hips. This time, the tip of his cock catches on my aching clit, sending my whole body into a violent shake. His breath tickles the crook of my neck as his teeth scrape the sensitive parts of my ear.

“I could have both, you know. I could shove my cock so deep into your messy, needy cunt and break your pretty little neck at the same time. Right here, in the middle of this forest...and no one would know. No one would find you. I would probably fill you with my cum, regardless.”

One hand drags over the base of my throat, leaving goosebumps in its wake as a strained whimper breaks out of me.

“Or maybe I’ll keep you alive until that final moment, when your last breath strangles my cock and every bit of my cum fills you.”

“Fuck...” I moan, wondering just how sick I am to get so fucking horny at the thought of my death. But the mental image of this man fucking me raw, straight into oblivion, is the hottest thing I’ve ever pictured in my head.

“You would like that, wouldn’t you?” He licks the side of my throat, grinding his cock through the wet seam of my core, the tip teasing my entrance but never penetrating.

“Dirty little slut, you would love to be utterly helpless as you squeeze my cock and I do the same to this delicate throat. Such filthy”—he licks the edge of my jaw up to my chin, and the breath stalls in my throat—“filthy desires you have, kitten.”

“Yes,” I whisper so low that I’m not sure he heard me.

“Tell me why you fucked with me, my business...my home. Tell me why you played me when I so very graciously spared your life.”

That sentence pulls me right out of my pleasure-laced stupor.

I pull out the knife I tucked between the mattress and wall and put all my force into flipping us over.

We fall with a violent thud onto the wooden floor, wrapped in a mess of blankets, and I revel in the surprise I finally see in Carter’s eyes.

He grips my hips as I straddle him, glancing down, but he can only feel the blade I hold to his throat.

“Now, where did you get that little thing from?” he asks, quirking an eyebrow.

“I swiped it from the kitchen when I was taking my underwear off. A girl has to protect herself when a predator is in her bed,” I taunt.

“And you say you’re not a threat to me.”

“I may just be when you dare to fucking claim that you ‘so very graciously spared’ my life, asshole!”

“You’re alive, aren’t you?”

Does he have selective memory loss?

“Not because you didn’t try! Someone else stopped you, otherwise I would have been dead in the middle of a jewelry store!” I’m raging, balancing the tip of the knife in the same spot he sliced the skin on my throat.

But I can’t control my hips from rolling onto his cock, torturing him with pleasure just as he tortured me. Fuck, it feels so good. I don’t blame him for wondering how it would feel to fuck me and kill me at the same time. Especially now, when I know piercings adorn his beautiful length.

The man dares to chuckle, actually fucking chuckle, and digs his fingers into my flesh as he pushes his cock against my pussy.

“Ah, that little thing. Is that why you’re so tightly wound, kitten?”

Excuse me?