The Tiger’s Ambush Read online

  “I love when you thank me for things,” Austin remarked in a sarcastic voice. “Move your damn hands so I can see the wound.”

  Reluctantly, I peeled my hands away from the stab wound, which was bubbling with blood now rather than gushing. I still had on my lace corset though, and I could see the ragged edges of fabric dipping into the gaping wound. Austin must have seen it too because he used the blade he’d just pulled from me to slice the flimsy lingerie clean off me. Cool air met my skin, making me shiver and drawing my attention to the fact I was now naked except for a micro-thong and several gallons of blood. Oh, and two more fucking knives sticking out of my thighs.

  “These too?” he asked, nodding at the remaining blades, and I nodded.

  “Yep, just... give me a sec.” I sucked in a few deep breaths. That tiny bit of magic restored to my body was also bringing back the pain of all of my injuries, and I could feel myself going lightheaded.

  “On three, okay?” Austin said in a grim voice, wrapping a hand around each blade in order to pull them simultaneously. “One—”

  That motherfucker! Of course he fucking yanked them on one. If I hadn’t been hollering in pain, I would have been cursing him black and blue.

  “Such a baby,” he snickered, tossing the wet blades aside and trailing his eyes up the length of my naked, blood-soaked body, skating politely past my tits, which were literally heaving as I frantically sucked in breath to try and quell the pain. “You’re still bleeding,” he observed with a softness in his tone that bordered way too close to caring for my liking.

  “No shit, Sherlock,” I snapped, not willing to let this moment turn tender.

  Sarcastic and bitchy, I could do. Lust, attraction and sex, they were all easy. But concern, caring, and gentleness were nothing more than a gateway into mental breakdown territory. Now was not the time.

  Reaching up for the back of his neck, I dragged his lips back to mine for another spine-tingling kiss, and he thankfully followed suit. This time, I had a bit more life in me and gave as good as I got when it came to this unspoken battle for the upper hand. Damn all these alpha males in my life; I must definitely have a type.

  My hands slid around to the front of his shirt, and instead of bothering with buttons, I simply ripped the fabric in two and shoved it down off his arms while he shifted to straddle my waist, I allowed my hands to roam the hard, chiseled planes of his now shirtless torso, soaking up magic with every heated touch.

  Austin pulled back briefly from my lips, sitting up and swiping a thumb over my stomach to check my stab wound. Thankfully, it was sealing back together and no longer bleeding freely. It was more like a week old scar now, giving me faith that the rest of my injuries would soon follow.

  “This is much slower than usual,” Austin commented sounding concerned again, still trailing his fingers through the slick red on my belly and frowning.

  “Because I have about twelve broken ribs and some hectic internal bleeding to fix as well as everything you see,” I explained, deliberately trying to sound casual. “Also, I was already drained as fuck when he grabbed me from the party.”

  Austin didn’t look up, but I saw a frown pull at his brow. “Shit, Princess. I never should have let you walk out of that study alone and drained of magic. This is all my fault. I was just so shocked to see Peyton that I wasn’t thinking.”

  His fingertip drew a bright red line down the edge of my ribcage where it was purpling with bruising, and I shivered under his touch. Not because it hurt, which it fucking did, but because it was turning me on so damn bad. Something about being with Austin like this, so damaged and bloodied, it was perfect. And I wanted more.

  Fucking hell, I was seriously starting to sound like a twisted bitch with thoughts like that, but I was hanging on by a thread. Doing this, with Austin, simply felt right.

  “The whole world doesn’t fucking revolve around you, Austin,” I snapped, biting back at him in the only way we really knew how to communicate with one another. Through insults. “Now, are you going to keep crying about the past, or are you going to help me heal?”

  And by “help me heal” I really did mean, “fuck me like I’ve been wanting you to for goddamn months.”

  His eyes narrowed at me, glittering dangerously. “Oh, you want to be careful what you fucking wish for, baby girl,” he warned in a deadly quiet voice that would give Cole a run for his money in the menacing stakes. “Last chance to beg out and wait for the guys to get here.”

  “Why?” I challenged, “You scared you’ll like it?”

  I deliberately threw his own words back in his face, and he didn’t miss the reference. With a furious growl, he dove back down, grabbing my face within his bloodied hands and mashing his lips to mine.

  Our lips opened to one another almost instantly, our teeth clicking together as we fought for positioning, and my fingernails clutched at the muscles of his back. Closer. I needed him closer. My back arched up from the bed, pressing my naked breasts to his chest and earning a rough moan from him as our skin sizzled and tingled with magic everywhere it touched. Relief flooded through me, and I honestly couldn’t have picked which was stronger—relief from pain or from the pent up sexual frustration the two of us had been dancing around for months.

  Breathing ragged and wet, I knew my ribs were still broken and digging into my lungs, but I’d dealt with worse. It’d sort itself out when it was good and ready. Already I could feel the injuries to my stomach, thighs, and feet lessening, the pain transforming from the sharp searing heat to a low, dull ache.

  My hands slipped down Austin’s back, clutching at his sides, and then when it still wasn’t enough, I flipped us both so that I was on top. My near-naked body was sprawled across the length of his colorful skin, and I pulled back a fraction to admire the view.

  Even coated as he was in my blood, his tattoos were a sight to behold, covering his whole torso and disappearing under the waistband of his tuxedo pants. Sucking my lip between my teeth, I stared hungrily at that line of fabric interrupting my view, and I knew, without a doubt, I needed to see what was underneath.

  “Maybe you should take a picture; it’d last longer,” Austin snarked, dragging my attention back up from his waistband to his face. His lips slightly swollen, he watched me with ravenous, lust-filled eyes, and I glared at him, fighting back a grin. He spoke my language fluently.

  “Oh please,” I scoffed. “As if you haven’t been practically begging to get in my pants for weeks.”

  “What pants?” he replied, looping his fingers into the side of my dental floss thong and tearing it clean off my body, leaving me exposed and halfway straddling him. “I see no pants to get into. Now mine on the other hand—”

  “Jesus Christ do you ever shut up?” I groaned, taking matters into my own hands and kissing him hard, putting his sassy fucking mouth to better use than arguing with me over who wanted whom more. Suffice to say, as hard as his dick was straining against his tuxedo pants, he wanted me just as bad as I wanted him.

  Austin threaded a hand back into my hair and flipped us again so that I was on my back—thankfully my ribs were almost fully healed—with him on his side, allowing him full access to my body with the hand he trailed down from my neck. Pausing at my chest, he cupped a handful of my breast, squeezing firmly and pinching my nipple hard enough to make me yelp against his mouth.

  He chuckled a dark sound against my lips because he knew full well that I fucking loved it, as was evident by the way my back arched, pushing my chest harder into his hand. Fingers leaving my breast, he ran them down the bruised and aching line of my ribs and over the slick red of my stomach where my knife wound had all but disappeared, then danced lightly over my naked public bone.

  “Oh God,” I groaned dramatically. “Don’t tell me after all that tension you’re going to turn out to be a damn tease.”

  “A tease?” he repeated, pulling back from my lips and looking down at me with eyes narrowed in anger. “You of all fucking people want to talk to
me about being a fucking tease?”

  “Yeah, Austin, I do. What of it?” I challenged, my hands making quick and deliberate work of his belt and fly, freeing his rock hard shaft and palming it.

  “You must be fucking kidding me, Princess. You’ve done nothing but fucking tease me since the moment we goddamn met.” His voice came out in a low growl of fury, but he did nothing to stop my hand as I stroked up the length of his cock and fiddled with the piercing through the tip. In fact, his hips bucked a little harder into my grip, and his breath came in short puffs as a wet bead of pre-cum slicked over his tip.

  Of course Austin has his dick pierced. I’m not even surprised… but good god I’m as wet as hell wondering what it’s going to feel like inside me.

  “Agree to disagree, Austin,” I told him. “You were an absolute fucker to me from day one, but that’s an argument we can hash out another day. I still want to hear what happened with Peyton downstairs.”

  “Ugh, another day.” He gasped. “Definitely another day.” His eyelids fluttered as my thumb flicked at his piercing and my hand tightened around his shaft. He was hard enough to cut diamonds, and I wasn’t in the mood to be patient.

  Shoving him flat on his back, I swung a leg over his waist and gripped hold of his cock once more where it sat thick and rigid against his ripped stomach. That gorgeous ink only dipped a little lower than where his pants had sat, following the contours of his Adonis belt in a way that drew the eye to his impressive package below. Not that it needed any road signs.

  Raising up on my knees, I lined his pierced head up with my opening and sank down onto him. Slowly, carefully, feeling the exquisite scrape of his metal on my inner walls, I gasped when my butt touched down on his thighs.

  “Satisfied, Princess?” Austin asked in a cocky voice, even though his lips were swollen and his eyes were hooded with desire.

  “Not even close,” I bit back, grinding against him and feeling the tingle of our magic flood through me.

  “Good,” he gasped, kicking his pants all the way off his legs, bucking his hips up, and sinking in just a fraction deeper until we were flush with one another, my pussy clenching and stretching to accommodate him. “Then hold the fuck on, baby girl. You’re in for a ride.”

  Grabbing me by the waist, still sticky with my half-dried blood, he tossed me to the side, flipping our positions again and driving his cock into me with a force that made the breath puff from my lungs. A moan of encouragement slipped from me as I reached up and dragged his lips back to mine, desperate and hungry for more.

  Our lips met with a frenzy while Austin began a punishing rhythm, hitting me so deep it bordered on painful. But wasn’t that the way we’d always been? Constantly trying to hurt one another just to protect ourselves from what could have evolved into feelings.

  My nails raked bloody lines down his back while my hips bucked up to meet him stroke for stroke, making sure he knew he wasn’t in charge here.

  “Quit fighting me, Princess,” Austin panted, placing a strong hand on my hip and pinning me to the mattress while he increased his pace, leaving me no choice but to do as he said and hold on.

  Torn by indecision on whether I needed the upper hand again, I pulled his face back to mine and kissed him hard, sucking his lower lip into my mouth and biting hard enough to make it bleed a little.

  “Bitch,” he breathed, breaking free and returning the favor with a hard bite to the curve of my neck—on the exact same spot Cole had left his teeth marks the first time we’d slept together—and I filed this information away for later. The mere fact that he’d remembered, and that he felt compelled to echo that mark, was worth consideration. Later.

  The incredible juxtaposition between the almost euphoric pleasure of his cock inside me and the sharp pain of his bite caused me to cry out and tighten my nails into the back of his neck.

  Withdrawing from me entirely, Austin picked me up by the waist and flipped me over so my face was pressed into the pillows. Without a second’s notice, he sunk his huge, pierced dick back inside me, lifting my hips up from the mattress and hitting me at an even deeper angle, which I hadn’t even realised was possible.

  “Oh, fuck,” I groaned, readjusting my weight onto my knees but leaving my upper body flat on the bed because the angle of Austin’s cock stroking my g-spot was beyond amazing. “Harder, you asshole.”

  Austin growled a frustrated noise but ignored my request while his long fingers gripped my hip bones for leverage while he stroked into me slowly. My ass pushed back against his stomach, urging him to fuck me harder, faster, deeper, something.

  “Austin,” I panted. “Come on!”

  “Baby girl, you’re going to want to shut the fuck up,” he warned me, his breathing coming in short gasps and his fingers digging in hard enough to leave bruises that I somehow knew my body wouldn’t be healing.

  “Or what?” I challenged, ever the combative bitch, even from the seemingly submissive position I was being fucked in.

  “Or this,” he replied, releasing his grip from one hand and bring his palm down hard on the flat of my ass. A startled cry squeaked out of me, followed closely by a moan of excitement when the sharp smack faded to burning warmth.

  Austin groaned. “Fuck, you dirty bitch, you loved that. I felt how hard you just grabbed my cock when I slapped your ass.”

  “Bite me, Austin,” I panted, desperate for him to spank me again. He didn’t disappoint, and after several more smacks I was a panting, sopping mess, begging for him to fuck me harder.

  His hand smoothed over the flaming heat of my ass, slowing his thrusts as his thumb trailed down the length of my crack and circled my tight backdoor.

  “Have you let Cole or River get this far?” he asked, his voice thick with lust and his breathing short.

  “How far?” I replied, not totally sure of the question. In response, Austin slid a finger into my soaked core alongside his hard dick, wetting it, then pushed that finger into the entrance of my asshole.

  “This far?” he asked, and I moaned, pushing back onto both his finger and his dick. “I take that and your lack of freak-out as a yes.” He pushed in deeper, stretching me and sending shock wave of ecstasy shooting around my body like a damn pinball machine.

  “Any further than this?” he asked, and I gasped at just the idea of further.

  “No,” I panted. “Not yet, anyway.”

  He grunted what sounded like an approving noise. “Good.”

  “Good?” I repeated, but didn’t get any more of a response from him as he withdrew his finger, re-gripping my hip and sliding his other hand around to tweak at my clit.

  “Come for me, Princess,” he ordered, finally giving me what I so desperately wanted. His cock pounded into me with a violent passion while his skilled fingers danced and tweaked at my tight bundle of nerves, sending me into a screaming, crying orgasm.

  Seconds later, he joined me, thrusting deep as he shouted his release then collapsed on top of me as my knees gave way, and I landed flat on my belly, boneless and satisfied.

  For a long moment, neither one of us moved. We just lay there, our bodies still linked in the most intimate of ways, basking in the afterglow of seriously great sex and still feeling the magic tingling between our naked flesh.

  “Fuck that’s a weird feeling,” Austin huffed, his breath stirring my hair, but he didn’t seem bothered to move off or out of me.

  “What is?” I asked, turning my face to look at him from the corner of my eye. “The magic?”

  He mumbled a noise of confirmation, stroking a finger down my side and over the gorgeous fox tattoo, still obscured by my blood.

  “This is probably some of my best work,” he murmured, and I felt his finger trace over that fucking negative space on my hip where Caleb had pointed out that Austin had hidden his name. I briefly toyed with the idea of calling him out on it, but I was too tired and revenge was a dish best served cold.

  “We should go,” he mumbled almost reluctantly, placing a gentl
e kiss against my back where his face lay. “Before someone finds us in here covered in blood with a dead body on the floor.”

  “Hmm,” I sighed my agreement, but neither one of us made any move to get up. Or at least, not in the sense of getting up to get dressed. Still deep inside me, I felt Austin’s cock twitch and begin to harden once more.

  “Austin.” I gasped but couldn’t stop my back from arching like a damn cat in heat, pressing my ass back onto his hot shaft.

  “Shh, baby girl,” he breathed in my ear, rolling us gently so we were both on our side, with his cock penetrating me from behind still. “You’re still drained; I can feel the magic begging to be back in you.”

  “True,” I groaned, sliding my hand down his naked side to grasp at his hip and hold him tight against me.

  “We have a few more moments; just take as much as you can.” His hips stroked a smooth, gentle rhythm, his cock barely withdrawing before pressing back in. My body relaxed into it, letting him do what he would without demanding, or even needing, anything different. It was like he knew exactly how I wanted it, and he was giving it to me without complaint.

  “Fucking hell, Princess,” he swore in a breathy voice. “I thought once would be enough to get you out of my brain.” His fingers dragged over my flat stomach, stained with dried blood, and down to my pussy. Gently, he slid one long finger the length of me, wetting it in my own fluid before teasing at my clit. My head dropped back onto the pillow, turning slightly to meet his solemn gaze.

  “And it’s not?” I finally replied, after letting him work me into a panting mess again. I halfway dreaded his answer, not totally sure what I wanted from this. Obviously, one awesome fuck under extreme circumstances didn’t erase the already established animosity between us. Nor did it change the fact that we simply loved to hate each other.

  But it was a start, wasn’t it?

  In lieu of an answer, he leaned forward and sealed his lips to mine, kissing me deeply as we both came in shuddering, groaning waves of pleasure.