I wrote this back in June 2010. Nicia’s a university student studying dance (or theatre… kinda up in the air), and Daniel’s a veteran of Iraq who escaped on his own after being tortured for a year. They’ve just hooked up, despite the advice from everyone she knows to stay away from him because they say he’s mentally unstable and violent.
These two are absolutely one of the most interesting & engaging couples I’ve ever written about. Their relationship is dark and beautiful and I really want to share more about them with you all at some point. Maybe. But their story should be a novel, so, maybe not!
Oh, and for full disclosure: Daniel is not my character; he belongs to Jesse. I’m just lucky enough to get use him as I want
Nicia groaned as she swung her legs over the side of the bed and raked a hand through her wild, dishevelled hair. Every inch of her body ached with a sweet sort of tenderness, as though she’d been running all night, but she certainly hadn’t.
She’d been with Daniel.
She gazed at him, stretched out on the bed with his back to her. She’d not had much chance to look at him, truly, last night, to study that muscled body.
Scars, some of them hideous, criss-crossed his back. She paled a bit. She didn’t want to think about the origins of those scars — not here, not now, not with the taste of him still on her lips — but she couldn’t help letting her imagination wander into the darkness. Was that a mark from a knife, or some animal’s claw? What did those jagged, twisted markings, like runes carved into his flesh, mean? And what in God’s name could have left that hideous gray splotch of skin, so dry and rough it hardly seemed to be a part of him?
She wasn’t even past his shoulders.
For a few moments, she simply watched him breathe. Time and again, his breathing changed, almost as if he forgot to do it, or came in short, pained gasps. Her jaw clenched, the aching of her own body forgotten for now. A shudder coursed down her bruised spine. What kind of nightmares did he have?
She cried out and tightened her fingers against his back, her other hand grasping the top of the bookshelf. The look on his face as he lowered his mouth to her breasts hovered somewhere between ecstasy and recklessness; he spared no gentility upon her, snapping his teeth against her flesh as though he were a starving man and she the first meal he’d seen in a week. The intensity made her shudder, a mixture of sharp pain and throbbing delight, and she arched her back, begging for more.
At least, she knew, she was safe with him. He didn’t scare her in the way he scared others; he might be on the verge of madness with them, but not with her. He wanted her. She recalled how he’d pulled her up into his arms when she sat in the chair beside him, teasing. For a moment, the intensity of his desire for her had been frightening, the way his fingers gripped her hips and the hard, broad length of his body against hers pairing together to leave her feeling soft and small. There had been a moment when she saw why some called his eyes frightening, but Nicia knew better than to confuse lust and anger.
She wanted to reach out and touch him. No, more truthfully, she wanted to worship him with lips and hands and tongue, to coax forth the ferocity he’d shown last night.
“Daniel!” She beat her tiny hand against his arm. He had never seemed so huge, so utterly masculine, as he did in that moment, there above her. His green gaze met her own, and the wildness in them made him seem foreign, almost primal, as if she had somehow been laid bare at the mercy of a tempest in the form of a man. “Daniel!” she whimpered again, swatting at him ineffectually. The pressure of his hips grinding against hers was overwhelming. Her tired body, the body he’d been savaging for what felt like hours, ached. One of his hands was beneath her head, entangled in her hair, holding her down. Her scalp burned. “Daniel, stop. You’re hurting me.”
For a moment, she thought that, despite how he focused on her face, he hadn’t heard her. Then he blinked, and the storm in his eyes faded; she could tell he was truly looking at her. “Nicia,” he gasped. His movements stilled, and he leaned down to kiss her forehead. “I’m sorry.”
Incongruously, Nicia blushed. Things hadn’t happened as planned. She hadn’t come looking for him with the expectation of ending up with her skirt tangled around her waist, his pants barely down, screwing mindlessly with furniture pressed against her back and his strong arms holding her up. In her mind, she’d expected their first time together to be more romantic.
And, she admitted, less painful.
His eager hands left her body bruised and sore, swollen and sensitive. She was positive she had papercuts and bruises from where books had tumbled against her shoulders.
She wanted to wake him up, to ask him to look, to touch, to soothe her. As rough — violent? — as he might have been while taking her, she’d felt those same hands smoothe her hair and caress her skin. She wasn’t afraid of him.
Sometime during the night, she awoke to the touch of his hands stroking her collarbone and neck. She opened her eyes, and although it was too dark to see clearly, she knew he was leaning over her, looking down. She giggled, deep in her throat. “Missing me already?” she asked, her voice languid and sleepy. He didn’t reply, merely brushing the back of his hand against her throat once more before lowering himself onto — and into — her.
Nicia stood, picking up her clothes from the floor. Her hips ached in protest and her knees popped. He’d been, she admitted to herself, something of a beast, but it made her proud. Daniel Morgan wanted her, Nicia Benoit Dunham, badly enough that he hadn’t worried about holding back, and simply claimed her, taking all that she would give him.
She was his.
Loved it!
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