Chapter Twenty-Two

Possession

Tucker

The look of her was astonishing. Almost as tantalizing as the way her warm, soft body felt as it undulated beneath him. He should have just fucked her, should have lunged deep inside her juicy cunt and taken what they both wanted, but before push came to shove, another thought had leaped into his mind.

Control.

The dynamic between him and Ella had been fraught at the best of times, and it was obvious, although perhaps unsurprising, that a child of Bennett would be as willful and demanding as their father was, but in recent hours, Tucker had sensed their energies shifting.

Ella seemed to be getting comfortable.

Ironically, that had been what he wanted when he'd carried her out of his home and showed her his mother's nightshades. He'd sought ease and supplication, choosing not to bind her for the first time as they perched in the moss, but as she'd later sat by the fire, the simmering defiance in her eyes had only intensified.

The way she'd spoken to him, her curt tone and dismissal of his honorific, had been the final straw. He hadn't exactly laid down a myriad of difficult and perplexing rules since her arrival, but he had asked her to offer him the deference of calling him ‘sir'.

Rank and respect had become part of his life when he'd served, and while he begrudged some of the losers who'd managed to slide their way up the greasy pole ahead of him and become his commanding officers, he still saw the point of hierarchy. It brought order and guaranteed people accepted commands when they came their way.

That was all he required from Ella—submission and respect—but her recent behavior suggested little of either.

Gazing down at her now, he realized he had little to complain about. He was about to drive his cock into the warm and wet folds of just about the most beautiful woman he'd ever set eyes on. There was no question about it, Ella was sublime, but he'd have been happier if she'd just learned to surrender.

That's why he'd insisted she beg. His cock pulsed as he imagined how her scorching plea would sound. He was going to fuck her anyway, but he longed to see the fresh blush he suspected would light her face as she squirmed at the instruction. Hovering his cock at the entrance of her pussy, he was pleased to see his wildcat didn't let him down. Her cheeks were burning crimson.

"Sir." Her breaths came faster as she brushed her needy clit against his groin. "Are you really going to make me do this?"

Fuck, was she intentionally trying to make him lose his mind with her plaintive tone and hot, breathy voice? The timbre was everything he'd longed to hear.

"I really am, little girl." His shaft was rock hard as he deliberately withheld the thing she wanted most. The thing they both wanted.

Denying her pleasure seemed to be the most scintillating power of all. It didn't matter that in another incarnation, he'd literally held the power of life and death in his hands, that he'd been ordered to kill, and he'd done so with efficiency. Nothing compared to the rush of this.

"Give me what I want." He lowered his cock just enough to skim over her hot skin, and she moaned. "Then you get what you want."

Her gaze narrowed, and in her wonderful eyes, he saw the host of insults she was thinking but was intelligent enough not to articulate.

"Okay, sir." Throwing her head back as best she could under his weight, she let out a frustrated groan. "You win." Her face flushed as her focus flew back to him. "Please." Her brow crumpled as she pleaded. "Please, may I have your cock, sir?"

His balls constricted at the desperation in her voice. Nothing had ever sounded better.

"Yes, little girl." Filling her with one hard thrust, he finally relented, knowing the wait had been well worth the effort. Watching her cede was one of the most wonderful sights he'd ever witnessed.

She moaned at his intrusion, her mouth parting into a silent ‘O' as she accepted his full length.

"Fuck." Protracting the syllable, her body seemed to come alive as he withdrew, her throaty gasps filling the air as her eyes fell closed.

He slammed back into her, already knowing this wasn't going to be his usual fast and frenzied fuck. This was different. Ella was different.

She's changed me.

His brow furrowed at the disconcerting thought. Had she altered him in some fundamental way? Had the beautiful blonde snuck in and shifted the way he saw life?

His breath caught as he mused on the urgent questions. Tucker had already decided to give her precisely what his senses also longed for—the type of slow and intense sex he rarely ever indulged in, the sort that spoke of feelings and sentiment, as well as carnality.

Feelings?

The new query bounced in his head as her body sheathed him.

"Is that good, little girl?"

There was really no need to ask her. Ella's ecstatic expression conveyed everything he needed to know, and if there had been any doubt about her passion, her fingers entwined with his confirmed she was more than on board with his plan. But somehow, he needed to speak, to dismiss the lingering concerns from his head.

The torrent of emotions and unspoken questions could plague him later. This moment was all about his and Ella's union, about the dark fantasy world they'd carved out of Bennett's debt, and about satisfying the incessant instinctual chemistry that danced uncontrollably between their bodies.

"So good." Devils danced in her green eyes as her gaze met his. "Don't stop, sir." Her hips pressed forward, refusing to let his cock slip away. "Don't fucking, stop."

There she was again, clawing back control. Gripping her hands tighter, he steadied himself inside her.

"I'll stop if I fucking want to, little girl." He glowered down at her. "You don't get to top me from the bottom."

"Is that what I'm doing?" She giggled like a schoolgirl, her gaze searching his face as her intimate muscles clenched around his dick. "I'm sorry, sir."

Fuck.

His jaw tightened as the looming pressure of his orgasm neared. He wanted to hold back, to make it last for them both but everything she did seemed to lure him closer to the precipice. How was she managing to mesmerize him even when he was the one exerting physical control? It was as if the woman had bewitched him.

"I want to go slow." He could hear the strain in his voice. "Make you feel it."

"Slow is good for me, sir." Her expression shifted, as though she'd finally understood his intent as well as the depth of his possession. "I love this."

His mouth fell to her jaw, planting a line of hot caresses there as his lips relented and his cock drilled into her. In all of his life and all the numerous casual sexual encounters he'd enjoyed, he couldn't recall any connection as electrifying as this.

Lifting his gaze, he concentrated on her entrancing eyes, hoping each possession of her conveyed how much he adored that connection, how he hoped it could outlive his cabin, and how he never wanted it to end.

Energy knotted in his stomach at his peaking passion's aspiration. The idea of their coupling ‘never ending' was out of the box, even for him. There was no relationship between him and Ella. Only her captivity and their enforced time together. He had to remember that.

Her gaze was soulful as she watched him, her hands rising to his biceps, then to his back when he finally let her wrists go, but still, their gazes were never broken. Staring down at her as he reveled in the heat of her body, it was as if Tucker needed her to see who he really was. That he was more than only a captor.

Emotions burgeoned as his climax neared, the need to claim her mouth overwhelming. Acting on instinct, his lips found hers, his tongue mirroring the actions of his dick as his testicles tightened.

In the end, it was only the nagging need not to empty his load inside her warm cunt that drove him from her sex. Sliding his excited cock between their bodies, he stared down at her as he pumped cum all over her midriff.

"Thank you, sir." Her voice was silky, and as he lowered his head to her shoulder to catch his breath, he couldn't be sure if her admission was born of genuine gratitude or designed only to tease him. Blowing out a breath, he realized he no longer cared.

Satiated, he kissed her shoulder as another wave of pleasure engulfed his senses, and as she turned her head to watch him, one goading thought pushed the fore.

He could never let her go.

***

Ella

His expression was euphoric as he lifted his gaze to look at her, but she couldn't decide what she saw in his blue eyes. There was pleasure, certainly, and a warmth she hadn't noticed before, but something else too—a message he wanted to convey but that didn't form on his tempting lips.

Wow.She blinked up at him as the heat of his deposit spilled over her belly. That was incredible.

Even though she hadn't enjoyed an orgasm, Tucker had given her what she'd needed, what she'd desperately desired. Looking back, she didn't even mind that he'd made her beg for it. The pleading had been perturbingly hot.

She watched as he slid between her and the wall, wrapping an arm around her chest. Her gaze followed him, taking in his disheveled dark hair and sexy smile.

Who the fuck was this man?

"Are you okay, little girl?"

Wasshe okay?

Staring at her older lover, all she could think was how a man with such obvious life experience and apparent enormous wealth had ended up alone in this bizarre cabin, but in the grand scheme of things, the answer wasn't important. He was there, and now, so was she.

She snuggled against his chest, soothed by the alluring aroma of his sandalwood scent, although its presence was an anomaly for a man with such a rustic way of life.

"Sir." All at once, she decided to clarify that point, at least. "Can I ask a question?"

"Ask away." His voice was gentle, as though he still floated wildly on whatever cloud his climax had elevated him to. Oddly, she acknowledged how pleased she was to have taken him there.

"How is it you always smell of sandalwood?" Reaching out, she trailed a hand along his soft chest hair, musing on how the expanse of muscle had just the amount she liked to see on a man. She might have expected a man who lived in the wilderness without a working shower to smell of body odor and sweat, and yet she'd never noticed anything off-putting about Tucker's aroma. Instead, it was all too appealing.

"You like it?" Avoiding the query, one of his hands rose to clasp her digits at his chest.

"A lot." Her attention flitted from their entwined fingers to his face. "But I can't imagine it grows out there in the forest." She gestured beyond the wall to the place where his peculiar purple petals bloomed.

"No." His lips twitched. "The scent belongs to me." He hesitated, as though unsure how to better explain. "It's a fragment of a previous life."

"The life where you knew my father?" Her stomach lurched at the mere mention of the man. She hated that Alexander had the power to corrupt the moment of intimacy she and Tucker had shared, but some things, it seemed, would never change. Her father was a poison there was no cure for.

"Yes." Tucker's tone shifted as though he also sensed the change in her. "From that life. There weren't many things that I wanted to take from that incarnation of me, but cologne was one."

Cologne?Her gaze darted around the cabin. Why would he bring cologne to a place like this?

"Okay." She was grateful for his honesty, at least. Tucker might have been a cruel sociopath and her father even worse, but a part of her longed to understand how they'd both come to be in her life. "Thanks, sir."

"Of course." The arm around her body tightened. "I'm glad you like the scent. Are you cold?" His head rose to survey the fire, which was still ablaze at the other end of the space.

"I think you ditched my blanket on the floor." Tugging her lower lip with her teeth, she motioned to where the blue cover had been discarded.

"If you want it, you've got it." His arm vanished, his hand signaling for her to move, and fleetingly, she realized she was free.

Free from his grasp, from his binds, and if she remembered correctly, from the lock that normally secured his front door. She couldn't recall Tucker replacing it when he'd carried her back from the grass outside.

That meant freedom was only a few paces away.

Her attention landed squarely on the exit, and for a few prolonged seconds, she simply watched it. Her heart galloped as she contemplated making yet another escape, but for the first time since he'd hauled her back to his bleak little cabin, she realized she didn't want to.

Ella had discovered an element of repletion and understanding in the arms of the man who'd agreed to take her as a surety. And even though she longed for the liberty of her old life, for her friends and cosmetics, a deep, unspoken facet of her needed to know if there was more to their connection than only banter, conflict, and climaxes. Tucker had taken on a pseudo-father-figure role in her life, and despite how crazy it sounded, she felt as if she'd finally found a man she could count on.

Some father-figure. Her throat dried. This is not how fathers and daughters interact.

"Planning on running, little girl?" His voice was spiked with sarcasm. "Again?"

"No, sir." Her shoulders sagged as she acknowledged it was the truth. "I'm staying." She did want to stay, to find out if the softer side of the man who presented as such a monster could truly ignite her beyond the bedroom.

Secretly, she also wanted to know more about her father and how Alexander had played into the woman she'd become. Her mum adamantly refused to talk about him, and Tucker was the only other person she'd met who had known him. If she wanted to understand her paternal genes, Tucker was her best shot at the discovery.

"I'm pleased to hear it." She heard the smile on his face, although she never lifted her gaze to see the gesture.

A satiated silence fell over them where she forgot her search for the blanket, and he didn't continue to question her. For once, there was peace in merely being in his presence. Ella had never known sensuality like it.

The wave of contentment swelled as he leaned down to kiss the crown of her head. Evidently, her so-called captor felt the instinctive harmony as well, and head heavy with the weight of her pleasure, she allowed her eyelids to flutter closed.

Breathing in the serene energy, she didn't dwell on what would happen when their bubble burst, preferring to just be present in their sweet, simmering connection.

It was almost perfect, like a dream she never wanted to wake from, until her eyes were forced open by the shrill ringing of an electronic device from the other side of the cabin.

Shit!

Her pulse quickened as her brain registered the noise, and her gaze searched the darkening space for evidence of its source.

"Wait here." He straightened behind her, climbing over her body with unexpected dexterity as he charged toward the counter.

"Sir?" She stretched for the blue blanket and clutched it to her chest, suddenly conscious of how cold the air had become.

"A phone." He hissed, his hands moving piles of paperwork and tools around the workspace as he searched for the device.

"But?" Her head started to ache. "I didn't think you had a phone?"

She strained to remember if he'd explicitly told her that, but it was certainly the implication he'd made, and she hadn't seen sight or heard the sound of a phone since she'd been there. Goodness only knew, she'd have tried to use one if she had.

"I don't," he confirmed, as lowering to his haunches, he searched beneath the counter. "Not here."

"Oh." Curling into a ball, she tried to ignore the knotting anxiety as it rumbled in her tummy. If he didn't have a phone, and hers had never made it to the cabin, then how was one ringing?

He'd just seized upon the clanging device as the answer smacked her in the face.

Alexander.

Her father had left a phone in the sleeping bag she'd been bound in. The ringing device had to be his.

"I'd forgotten the damn thing was still here." Irritation whirred from Tucker as he rose, clutching the buzzing phone in his hand. "I'm surprised it hasn't run out of power."

"Who is it?" Her words rushed out in one long gasp as she gripped the cover closer to her chest. "Is it Alexander?"

Who else could it be?

Her query was answered with one searing glower from Tucker, her heart plummeting as he pressed the button to connect the call.

It has to be my dad.Panic ballooned in her chest at the conclusion. Who else would even have the number?

Holding her breath, she couldn't decide if she wanted Alexander to swoop in and save her or just do what he should have done from the very beginning and leave her the fuck alone.

"Who is this?" Tucker answered in his conventional gruff tone. He turned to the window as he spoke, the gesture doing nothing to assuage Ella's rising concerns.

There was a pause as the person on the other end of the line answered, and while she couldn't hear who it was, she recognized another male tone.

"What do you want?" Tucker's tone was a sneer as he paced toward the counter.

Alexander.Her throat dried as she watched the interaction play out. In her experience, few others could produce such hostility in only a few words.

Tucker's dry laughter snatched her attention back to him. Still topless and with his trousers pushed down past his hips, his hard body was an awe-inspiring vision.

"Who the fuck do you think you're talking to, asshole?" His gaze flitted to her before he stalked toward the fire. "We had a deal. You don't get to tell me anything."

Her heart sped up at Tucker's menacing tone. A deal? Were they talking about her?

"What I want is no concern of yours." Tucker stopped at the chair by the hearth, his knuckles blanching as he gripped the back of the furniture.

"Oh." He chuckled darkly after another brief pause. "Is that right?"

"Sir." She mouthed the word as she slid slowly to the edge of his bed. Whatever the two men were discussing, it didn't appear to have pleased Tucker.

His gaze darted to her as his free palm rose, and one finger called for her to wait. She might have been irked by the gesture, by his thinking that she could be contained with one raised finger, but something about his brooding expression squashed any thought of insubordination. The emotions flashing in his blue gaze spoke of a new and unspoken threat.

"You're out of your fucking depth, Bennett." Tucker's growl confirmed her suspicions. He was definitely speaking to her father. "You've forgotten who you're talking to."

Rising to her full height, Ella wrapped the cover around her naked body as she risked a step in his direction. Something was clearly wrong between Tucker and Alexander, but perturbingly, she found herself more called to support Tucker than she was to hear Alexander's point of view or take the logical step of seeking escape. The door was still unlocked, and all of her abductor's focus was captured by the phone's intrusion. She could have taken the opportunity to flee now that the afterglow of their intimacy had been well and truly wrecked.

But she didn't want to.

"I don't fucking think so." The venom in Tucker's voice commanded her attention to his face. His eyes spoke of ill intent as he turned from the dancing flames. "Yeah, you'll find out."

Ending the call, he threw the device to the floor. Her pulse accelerated as he lifted his huge, muddied boot and brought his foot crashing down on top of it. The noise of the plastic splintering filled the air, and Ella watched in horror as the phone was crushed beneath his sole.

"Fuck." The hand that had been holding the phone balled into a huge fist.

"What's wrong, sir?" She wondered if he heard her over the loud thud of her heart beat.

"Fucking, Bennett."

She tensed at the way he spat her second name.

"What's he done?"

Taking a step toward him, she hoped the legacy of whatever they'd manifested before the call would protect her from Alexander's latest injection of poison.

"He wants you back." Tucker's tone was low as his gaze fixed on her. "Says he has the money, and he's coming to get you."

"Oh." Her pulse raced as she contemplated Alexander's rescue. Tucker had told her on more than one occasion that her stay in the cabin was only temporary until Alexander paid up. So, why was he so angry about her imminent departure? "I thought you wanted the money, sir?"

He doesn't want to let me go.

She inhaled at what should have been a terrifying idea. Tucker had taken her and done terrible things to her, but he'd also revealed a more tender side and had started to open up to her. Then there was the absurd hedonism he'd sparked. She didn't think there would ever be another man who could replicate it.

"I'll get my money." His voice was calmer as he reached for her hand. "I just don't take kindly to threats, especially from worms like your father."

"And me?" She gazed up at his face. "Do you want me to go?"

"Do you want to go?" His question echoed in the air, epitomizing her every bewildered thought.

The truth was, she didn't have an answer. Naturally, she missed her real life, but her jaunt to the woods had unearthed more than only terror and pain. Tucker seemed to have unlocked a part of her personality she hadn't even known existed until he'd dragged her there—the desire to be overcome and made to submit, the quiet she found in the surrender, and the immense amount of pleasure.

"I…" Her reply dried up as she pulled in air. "I don't know, sir, and that's the truth."

His brow rose, her answer apparently not what he'd expected. It wasn't what she would have anticipated, either. Even a day earlier, she'd have clawed out his alluring eyes to break free from his twisted grasp, but now things felt different.

They were different.

Ella couldn't risk walking out of his shitty cabin and never finding the same electrifying chemistry with another man.

"I'll make it easy for you, beautiful." A wry smile rose to his lips as he pulled her gently toward him for an embrace. "You're not going anywhere."

"But Alexander?" Panting at his sudden proximity, she craned her back to meet his eyes.

"I'll deal with Alexander." The vow sounded insidious. "And I'll promise you one thing… wherever I go, you go with me."