Page 23

Jack

A soft hand caressed my cheek, and I grinned lazily.

“Do you like that, my sweet?”

I nodded, leaning back and turning my head as Sally’s mouth found mine. My lips parted, granting her admittance, and her tongue, soft and tasting of honey, swept in. I sucked it, wanting to taste her, to devour every bit of her she would give.

A warm hand wrapped around me, running up the underside of my shirt, tracing the line up the center of my stomach to my chest. There, her fingers circled my nipples, pinching each when it pebbled.

A second hand slid south, dipping beneath my pants.

It found the hard length of my arousal and stroked.

“I want you,” I tried to say, tipping my head back to give her better access, but Sally had my tongue between her teeth and was biting playfully so my words were garbled.

A third hand traced a line up my arm, wrapping around my biceps and tugging my back against her solid chest.

Her tongue probed into my mouth again and her languorous strokes beneath my pants grew insistent, coaxing me to a quick climax, and it was all I could do to hold back the orgasm long enough to ensure she felt pleasure too.

But I wasn’t touching her. I wasn’t giving her any of the pleasure she was giving me. With my free hand, I reached behind me, running a hand over her rough skin.

My eyes flew open, and I glanced down.

My body was wrapped tightly in thick branches, one snaking inside my pants and choking my rapidly deflating shaft. I gagged, spitting bits of bark and sap from my mouth, and wriggled to free myself, but every movement only made the tree creature wrap tighter.

Another small, tongue-shaped branch darted against my mouth, and I pressed my lips tightly together.

“Come on, Jack. We were having so much fun,” the gravely creature’s voice rasped in my ear.

The branches wrapped around my cock squeezed and I screamed as bark flooded into my mouth, cutting off the sound. I pushed reflexively with my tongue, forcing it back. Biting down savagely, I tasted sap and spit out the bits of bark no longer wriggling between my teeth.

The creature’s hold slackened for a moment, and I reached across my chest, tearing away the branch securing my other arm.

A scream like the dying embers of a fire burst in my eardrum and I released the branch, covering my ears. The pressure in my head was building as I tugged uselessly at the rock-hard grip around my middle.

“Jack!”

Sally’s voice, clear in my mind after the delusional state I’d just been in, roused some of my senses and I fought the creature’s hold again, ripping bark from my body.

Its screams were an unending cacophony of sounds exploding through my head, and the world darkened as the sound overwhelmed me and I slumped forward, losing the fight.

“Jack!”

Sally’s voice was closer this time and the pressure around my waist and between my legs eased and I gasped at the sharp pain in my side.

I was dragged away from the tree creature and laid out on a soft bed of grass.

I stared dazedly up at the sky and darkness obscured my vision before Sally’s face came into focus.

Some of the wild panic in my chest calmed.

Her dark lashes—shrouding hazel eyes the color of amethyst—blinked several times, and my heart slowed, moving in time with the motion.

A lock of her thick auburn hair fell across her face, and I lifted a hand, tucking it behind her ear and running my thumb over her mouth to assure myself it was really her this time.

Her full, pink lips moved, saying something I couldn’t understand.

My breathing slowed—calm settled over me—and as my eyes drifted closed, her face burned into my retinas.

I exhaled a long sigh. “Beautiful.”