Free Hunger Untamed H3 by Dee Carney Page B

skin. When it was all over, she’d clean up and hope he didn’t want more too soon.
    Every part of her wanted to tense when his arm draped over her waist. She almost trembled in her frantic attempt to remain calm. Lucy held her breath.
    Waiting.
    Victor squeezed tighter. Her heart began to race.
    He pushed his face into her hair, inhaling and sending anticipation shuttling through her veins. The thick bulk of his thigh slid in between hers, the fine hairs of his leg tickling her.
    Lucy’s skin crawled with awareness...and it wasn’t a bad thing. Warmth infused her, and so did another sensation. For the first time in a long time, a sense of security grew, tentative but present.
    He used his nose to nudge aside her hair, the strands falling in a gentle cascade against her cheek. His lips brushed her scalp, the nape of her neck. Lucy shivered despite herself, and a soft sound rose in the back of her throat. She wasn’t used to this tender teasing.
    Yet, who was being teased? Victor could have done more, asked for more, demanded more. But he cuddled.
    He seduced.
    “What are you doing?” she whispered.
    “Getting comfortable.” His voice was whiskey rough, drowsy.
    Victor shifted, and his stiff erection bumped the top of her thigh. Lucy swallowed hard, because wow , her glimpse of him before hadn’t been an illusion.
    Still, she waited, scarcely breathing now, poised for that moment when he reached for her breast and twisted a nipple. Or maybe Victor was the type of man who went straight for the kill, plunging his fingers between her legs without waiting for her readiness.
    Any minute now...
    Nothing but silence. No movement. Nothing.
    “V—” Lucy cut herself off, despite having barely whispered. She opened her eyes and caught sight of his arm holding her tight. He’d tucked her in close to him, the hold of a lover.
    She’d told him she was used to being treated a certain way. It wasn’t a complete lie, but in her years as a blood slave, she couldn’t recall any of them ever putting her in a position like this. One that suggested intimacy. It made her feel...
    Like someone who was cherished.
    Her heart tattooed, and Lucy forced herself not to wriggle from beneath his grasp. The small cabin didn’t need air conditioning, and the evening was temperate. Victor’s warmth coddled her, a disconcerting feeling.
    It didn’t matter if she couldn’t reconcile his actions with her confusing emotions. She could close her eyes, drift off to sleep and awaken completely refreshed and unmolested. By evening fall, she’d be ready to start their training lessons and maybe have gathered her fortitude for fucking.
    Fucking. That was all it would be. His body inside hers as he brought himself off. It wouldn’t mean a thing. A means to Sage’s end.
    Before, when she’d had sex with them, it’d been about survival. It still was.
    Victor shifted, and even in his sleep, he stroked her cheek with his lips. Lucy waited, breath held and heart pounding, but he stopped almost as quickly as he’d begun.
    Two or three hours must have passed before she finally believed. Victor wouldn’t be straddling her, forcing himself between her legs and shoving his way to release. She could relax, if only a fraction, and wait for him to awaken. She would come to unaccosted.
    Lucy couldn’t understand why. Not when she felt his lust for her down through her soul. She’d sold that same soul to him for the next few days, a price she would have paid over and over again.
    For some reason, he wasn’t ready to take it.
    That thought intruding into the next one and the next one after it, another hour and a half passed before she finally drifted into a fitful slumber.
    * * *
    Victor had no idea what he might have done or said to her while they slept, but it must have been one hell of an insult. Lucy kept her eyes on him at all times, the beginning of a scowl set on her face. Might have had something to do with the way he’d tucked in behind her on the