Marked by Elisabeth Naughton Page A

her mouth as her fingers wrapped around his arousal. Velvet and steel filled her hand, raw power and the promise of mindless pleasure. She stroked up the shaft, circled the head, and marveled at the control she held over him as his big body shuddered against her.
    His hands brushed her breasts, slid under her sweater and into her bra. Her nipples tightened as one rough finger grazed the tip. His mouth nipped her jaw, kissed its way across her skin and settled on the soft skin beneath her ear as he played with her breasts and brought her to new heights of sexual arousal.
    Her strokes grew longer, bolder with every touch from his hands. On the downstroke she slid her fingers lower to grasp the twin weights beneath.
    He groaned against her neck. “You’re playing with fire. In a moment I won’t be able to stop.”
    “I don’t want you to stop. I want to know what you feel like when you come.”
    Whatever restraint he’d been exercising broke with her words. Her sweater was quickly wrenched over her head, her bra ripped free of her breasts as if it were paper. He bent, and his mouth captured first the right nipple and then the left, until she thought she would explode from just that attention.
    Just as she was about to beg him to finish her, he turned her quickly and pushed her to her knees on the seat of the couch. One big hand pressed her torso into the cushions so she was leaning over the back of her grandmother’s blue-and-orange-checked afghan.
    “Gods, you’re beautiful,” he growled at her back. His weight depressed the sofa as he braced one knee on the cushions between her legs and nudged her thighs wider. “I can’t wait to find out if you’re as tight as you were in my dream.”
    His dream? Oooooooh, yes.
    It struck her then that she should probably be a little afraid. She was with a massive man she didn’t know, in a submissive position where he could do just about anything he wanted to her and she’d be hard-pressed to fight back. Considering what those two guys had tried to do to her outside XScream a few months ago, she should have been scared out of her mind. But she wasn’t. Somehow, she knew instinctively Theron wouldn’t hurt her. And his erotic words were sending her into a complete mind-melting frenzy.
    One of his rough hands wrapped around her torso to cup her breast, the other clamped onto her hip. His mouth found her ear and nibbled her lobe until she wanted to scream. And when he pushed his hips into her from behind and rubbed back and forth, white light erupted behind her eyes.
    The pleasure was swift and electric and not nearly enough. She didn’t realize until moments later that they were both still clothed—he in his boxers and she in herunderwear. He pressed forward again, retreated, teasing them both, mimicking what he would, in a moment, do to her naked flesh.
    “Theron,” she rasped.
    His lips slid to the nape of her neck. Trailed lower. He drew his hand down her spine as he rubbed against her again. Both hands found the sides of her underwear as his lips kissed the base of her spine. He lifted his head slightly and pulled the edge down.
    “Oh, yes.” Casey arched her back and closed her eyes.
    She was so swept up in the moment, she didn’t realize Theron had gone still behind her until she pressed back and met only air.
    She turned slightly to find him staring at her skin with wide eyes.
    “What’s wrong?”
    His finger brushed over the lower left side of her back, just above her buttock. “This marking. Is it a tattoo?”
    She knew what he was looking at. And he wasn’t the first person to comment on it.
    She chuckled. “I’m too afraid of needles to get a tattoo.”
    When he didn’t respond, only continued to stare at her skin, apprehension crept into her chest. “I was born with it. It’s just a birthmark.”
    His eyes lifted to hers. Though he’d removed his hand, heat radiated from his fingers where they hovered over her skin. “This doesn’t look like a