Bound By Desire (The Acadian Curse) Read online

Hesitantly, she licked at the tip of his cock.

  "Take more. Open your mouth," he said.

  Sarah grasped him harder and leaned forward. She stretched her mouth wide, and pressed his crown against her tongue. She tried pulling him into her mouth, but he simply wouldn't fit. She looked up into his face expecting to see frustration and disappointment, the same emotions that were rushing through her. Instead she found the same quiet control that had been there from the very beginning.

  “Wet my cock," he said.

  Sarah laved the crown with her tongue, and was surprised at how good he tasted, how warm he felt against her tongue.

  "More”, he ordered when her timid laps didn't coat his shaft enough.

  In response she ran her open mouth along the sides of his cock.

  "That’s right," His throaty response told her he approved of her method but she didn't want this kind of tepid response. She wanted him shaking with pleasure. She wanted to feel him tremble and know that she was the cause.

  She tried again and this time the head of his cock popped into her mouth.

  "Relax your jaw," he said.

  Sarah tried, but every single part of her felt tense.

  “Relax,” he repeated. The control in his voice soothed her. It made her believe that everything would be fine if she just stopped fighting the urges swirling inside her, if she stilled the judgments and the chaos in her head. She began to listen to a deeper part of herself, one that had been pushed down for so long that Sarah couldn't even recognize the sound of it.

  She pushed him deeper. His groans urged her on and on.

  Her lips stretched out over his thick shaft. It stung, but Sarah didn't push away the pain. Instead she relished in the sensation. It brought an immediacy that she had never felt before. The pain did something that nothing in this crazy situation could—it made it real.

  She increased the tempo. Her mouth strained as she bobbed up and down on him. His shaft hit the back of her throat. Her body convulsed as she gagged. A rush of blood surged through her. Her eyes watered. It warmed her, pushed her on.

  She had made it only three quarters of the way down his cock, and she wanted more. The deeper she went the more certain she became that the feel of him could fill the empty parts of her, if only temporarily. Tears began to run down her cheeks as she became lost in the motion.

  “Touch yourself,” he commanded.

  She let go of his shaft. Only her mouth was on him now. She popped the button on her jeans and slipped her hand below the elastic of her panties. Her fingers slipped between the folds of her pussy. She was wetter than she’d ever been. Sarah was surprised that she hadn’t soaked straight through her jeans.

  Her fingers found the sensitive tip of her clit, and she rubbed furious circles around it. Tension began to swell inside her. Her throaty moans matched his. Pleasure pulsed through her, pushing her harder to please him.

  She pulled back until he popped out of her mouth, then she plunged back down. Over and over again, she repeated the motion, gasping for air with each stroke.

  “That’s a good girl,” he said. “Now make yourself come.”

  Her fingers sped, flicking her clit back and forth. She was so close. She closed her eyes and let her head fall back from his cock.

  “I didn’t say you could take your mouth from me.”

  Her head snapped up. Of course he hadn’t. Besides, she didn’t think she could find her pleasure unless she was pleasing him. It was a strange logic, but it freed her. For just right now, she had no concerns of her own. She was a part of him.

  She slid her lips back down him, her mouth burning with the prolonged stretch of muscles. Her eyes watered and her flesh cried for release.

  Her hips moved, reaching for something that wasn't there. She ground against her own hand, speeding her release. She began to shatter just as his shaft slid against the back of her throat. She struggled to keep herself upright as white-hot pleasure ripped through her.

  Her knees slipped underneath her, pushing through the layer of hay on the floor. They struck hard against the wood boards beneath. She would have bruises the next morning, but it didn’t matter. There was no morning. There was only this moment.

  The sound of creaking chains filled Sarah’s ears. She looked up to see his taut muscles flexing and straining the limits of the steel. It was obvious that he didn’t relish his bondage. He wasn’t satisfied with simply commanding her, he wanted his dominate her with his body, she realized. She wanted it too.

  But it wasn’t meant to be. Not tonight. The steel that bound him was just too strong. Grant had done a thorough of jailing his demon.

  Sarah picked up the tempo of her strokes. If he couldn’t have freedom, she could at least give him this. Every time she buried his shaft in her mouth she felt the tremble in his legs increase.

  She delved down him one last time, and his core shook. His groan rumbled through her. His cock jerked in her mouth. His hips jolted forward. Salty cum shot over her tongue. Sarah swallowed but not fast enough. Rivulets of cum ran down her cheeks, mixing with her tears.

  Sarah looked up into those green eyes. Their color had deepened. The passion that shone there not only remained, but it burned hotter.

  Sarah lifted her arm to wipe her face clean.

  "Leave it,” he said.

  She obeyed. Tension still crackled in the air between them. His chains were still pulled taut at his side. The ache inside her had lessened but the sense of emptiness remained. Their momentary gratification had resolved nothing. This was far from over.

  Sarah didn’t rise to her feet. Instead she shuffled backwards, until her back rested against the far wall. She pulled her knees into her chest. Emotions tumbled wildly inside her, one after another. Using her arms as a pillow, she rested her head.

  She didn’t need to look up to know that the creature was still looking at her. She could feel its gaze, hard and merciless, on her. It went against everything that she thought she knew about herself, but Sarah found that she actually liked being the focus of this creature’s attention. She was too tired to reason out why. Excuses and explanations could wait until morning.

  "Go ahead and sleep. But come back to me tomorrow night,” he said. His voice was softer, much softer than before, though no less sure.

  Sarah nodded. Then she closed her eyes and fell asleep under the comforting blanket of his stare.

  Grant opened his eyes. The familiar ache in his arms burned a path to down his chest. It was barely dawn. A pale hazy light bathed the stables. The sun probably hadn’t even peeked up above the horizon. He could hear the rustle of animals just beginning to wake in their stalls.

  He slipped his hands from the oversized rings above his head and rubbed at the deep red marks on his wrists where the unforgiving metal had bit into his skin. Even after all this time, it still amazed him that his change was so pronounced. If anything he was growing bigger.

  Grant glanced at the wall. The bolts still held but just barely. Cement dust littered the floor of the stall, evidence that he had strained the emergency system to its limits. He would have to reinforce the wall, maybe switch out the chains for a higher gauge. But they had held, and in the end that was all that mattered.

  It was the first thing that he had changed when he bought the ranch. He had only been caught out in the open once before when the change had come upon him, and he would be damned before he let that happen again. If any of the ranch hands had found the manacles and chains that he hid in here they had kept their discovery to themselves. He didn’t care what anyone thought, just so long as they never found out the truth.

  Grant twisted at the waist, pulling his arm across his chest, trying to stretch some of the soreness from the muscles. He froze.

  She was here. Sarah McIntire.

  She was still curled up in the small ball that she’d tucked herself into last night.

  Last night.

  The memory came back to him as swiftly as a punch to the gut. Looking down on that r
uffle of her honey hair bobbing up and down on him. The sound of her taking him in. The feel of her....

  Dear god, the feel of it. It had been like nothing before.

  Because he had never let it happen before. He never let himself be around women when the moon was nearing full. He could feel the change coming on him a few days before the creature inside him reared its ugly head. He looked at things differently. His senses became keener.

  And Grant acted appropriately. He took precautions.

  But, not last night. He should have known from the moment that Dr. Sarah McIntire had stepped out of that truck that it wouldn’t end well. Had he been in his right mind he would have forced her back in to the cab and pushed the damned Ford back down the hill himself if he had to.

  It was damn bad timing, that was all—that his mare had to gone into labor early and just before the full moon had come up, that Henry McIntire had to go on some fool vacation when it did, that the country vet had such a tempting daughter. There was no way he could have expected any of that. Especially that she would still be here come morning.

  The change wasn't pretty. He knew that from watching his father go through it. But Sarah had seen it and stayed. Something in the monster’s words must have kept her here. He couldn't imagine what. His father hadn’t been capable of anything more than a few incoherent grunts when he wasn’t raging.

  But she had obviously found something to like. He remembered the feel of the heat of her mouth wrapped around him as he came in her mouth.

  A groan fell from Grant’s lips before he could stop it.

  Damn.

  Her head popped up. It took a few seconds for the fog of sleep to dissipate from her eyes. Mascara was smeared across her cheeks, but they were no longer as red and swollen as they had been when she’d pulled away from him last night.

  His body tightened with a surge of desire at the remembered image.

  "Grant?" she asked slowly.

  “Yep.” He stepped forward and offered her his hand. She eyed it with equal parts suspicion and relief, but after a long moment, she took it. He pulled her to her feet.

  She rose slowly. Her body had to be nearly as sore as his. Nearly half of her sandy blonde hair was pulled from her ponytail. Her clothes were wrinkled and stained. She was a mess, and yet he still felt a nearly unbearable pull toward her.

  "Are you all right?” she asked. Her eyes narrowed as her gaze swept up his exposed body. She was just a doctor examining a patient, he reminded himself as his blood began to heat.

  “Yeah. How about you?”

  Her hands went to her face self-consciously. The evidence of all they had done had dried against her cheeks.

  “I could use a shower,” she said with a shy smile. “And a cup of coffee.”

  Hell, the woman was inviting herself in. Why? If she had a lick of sense she’d be halfway to the highway by now. Grant shook his head. “Then we’d best get you on your way, Dr. McIntire.”

  He placed his hand on the small of her back and started pressing her toward the door.

  “Oh, no. You are not shuttling me off as easy as that,” she said.

  Grant sighed. Why did this woman refuse to see reason? “It would better if you got yourself home.”

  “Why? Are you going to change again?”

  “Not until tonight.”

  “Then we have plenty of time for you to answer all of my questions.”

  Her knees locked in place as her heels dug down.

  “But—”

  “Mr. LaCroix, because of you I am filthy, I am tired, and I am terribly confused. Now by my reasoning you owe me a shower, a cup of coffee and a shit load of answers, and there is no way in hell you are getting rid of me until I have all of those things.”

  Sarah stepped out of the bathroom and followed the smell of coffee down the long hallway. That might have been the best shower that she’d ever had in her life. Her fingertips and toes were all pruned, but all that hot water cascading over her aching shoulders had felt too good to cut short.

  A fresh set of clothes had worked wonders as well. She’d grabbed them from the truck after checking in on her patient and her foal. She had been happy to see that both were doing just fine She had learned from her father to always bring along a spare set of clothes to a call in case things got messy, and last night certainly qualified as messy. They were wrinkled from being balled up in a rucksack, but they were clean, and right now that was all that mattered. She hadn’t even bothered packing up the old ones. She’d just balled them up and threw them in the trash.

  Even though the coffee called to her, Sarah walked slowly down the hallway. Exposed dark wood beams lined the walls. The doors were heavy with rustic brass handles. Every trace of the old Anderson house was gone, and in its place was a masculine fortress. The house only made Sarah wonder more about the man who had built it.

  She found Grant in the kitchen standing over the stove. The aroma of sautéing mushrooms and sausage filled the air. He didn’t look up as she stepped into the kitchen, but he did push a full mug of coffee across the counter toward her, and that was enough acknowledgment for her.

  “I didn’t know how you take it,” he said.

  “Black is fine.”

  “I was hungry. I thought you might be too, so I’m making eggs.”

  “It smells wonderful.”

  Sarah took the mug and found a seat on a high stool by the kitchen’s center island. She lifted the coffee and uttered a little moan of pleasure with the first sip. Grant’s head popped up.

  “Thank you for the coffee,” she said.

  He muttered a reply under his breath, and Sarah was pretty sure it wasn’t “you’re welcome.”

  His shoulders sagged, and he went back to poking at the pan. He’d changed into a fresh pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Sarah eyes him up and down. In the light of day he seemed like an ordinary man. Okay, maybe not like an ordinary man, maybe more like any other extraordinarily handsome man.

  “So you’ve had your shower, and you have your coffee. So, I guess it’s time for you to get started on those questions.”

  Sarah looked down into her mug. Now that the time had come, she wasn’t sure where to begin. She took a deep breath. Maybe it was best to start with the question that had plagued her the most.

  “Does it hurt?”

  He straightened up and turned around. His brows pulled together. “When I change?”

  Sarah nodded.

  “Not really. It feels a little strange, but it’s been happening so long now that I’m used to it,” he said.

  "It happens often?"

  "Every full moon, all three days.”

  "Every month you chain yourself to a wall in your stables?"

  "No. I built a special room below the house. It’s reinforced with steel, and the locks are all on timers. The stall in the stables was just in case of an emergency. I never needed to use it before last night.”

  He grabbed a couple of plates out of the cupboard by his side and divvied up the contents of the pan between them.

  “So you spend three nights out of every months locked up in an underground cage?”

  “Pretty much.”

  He turned and gave Sarah her plate. He put his on the island directly opposite her, and remained standing. He kept his eyes on his food. It was obvious he was uncomfortable with her here, but it was hard to tell if it was simple embarrassment that plagued him or if went deeper, all the way to shame.

  Sarah took a bite of her breakfast. An amazing combination of flavors melted across her tongue. It appeared that Grant LaCroix was a man of many talents.

  “This is delicious,” she said.

  He shrugged his shoulders but didn’t glance up. “It was the least I could do, Dr. McIntire. As you said, I owed you.”

  “Considering everything that happened last night, I think we can probably be on a first name basis.”

  He nodded noncommittally and shoveled another forkful of eggs into his mouth. A thought sprang up
in Sarah’s head.

  “Can you remember anything after you change?” she asked.

  He took his time chewing and swallowing. Sarah had the distinct feeling that he was debating whether or not to tell the truth. When he looked up his eyes were steady.

  “I remember everything.” His slow drawl lingered on the last word.

  Sarah fought the heated blush that started in her cheeks but soon raced all her core. She forced herself not to glance away.

  “What exactly happened to you last night? This thing you changed into, he said it was a curse, but what exactly does that mean?”

  His jaw tensed as he looked back down at his breakfast. He poked at the eggs with his fork for a moment before giving up and let it clatter onto the plate.

  “I’ve never talked about any of this to anyone outside of my family before,” he said, propping his arms up on the island.

  “Well, at least you don’t have to worry that I won’t believe you.”

  He didn’t smile at her attempt at humor. If anything his eyes grew harder.

  “Seven generations ago one of my ancestors moved down to Louisiana when it was still owned by the French. He married into the local gentry and created one of the best horse ranches around. It’s still around. My brother runs it now.”

  “Impressive,” Sarah said.

  “Yeah, well, this great-granddaddy of mine was also a world-class asshole. He seduced one of the prettier house girls with fancy words and promises, but then threw her down the stairs when he found out she was pregnant. Apparently he wasn’t keen on the idea of having any bastards around to ruin the perfect life he’d created for himself.”

  Sarah flinched at the image that sprung up in her mind. “That poor girl,” she said.

  Grant nodded. “Indeed. And it might have just been another sad family fable if that girl’s momma hadn’t been the most powerful voodoo priestess in Acadia parish. The story goes that she was the one that cursed him and all us male descendants to show our true nature when ever the moon is full so that no other woman would ever be deceived by our pretty lies again.”

  Sarah took a bite and turned the story over in her mind. “I wonder why she did that? I mean I can’t imagine the reason for keeping the curse going this long.”