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  He turned on his heel, so sharply she didn’t expect it. Facing her, he reached out to grab her by the hips. “Nothing about last night hurt,” he said, his voice as thick and rough as gravel. “I’m not that injured.”

  Then, as if to prove his point, he slid his big hands back until they were spanning the curve of her ass. He lifted her up to a position where she automatically wrapped her legs around his waist.

  “Your bruises,” she gasped, squirming as she tried not to put any pressure on his damaged side.

  He started to walk, his grip so strong there was no sense in fighting it. “I told you. I’m not that injured.”

  He carried her over to the bed, his size and strength making her feel unexpectedly small and feminine. When he reached the bed, he lowered her onto the thin mattress and moved over her, the muscles of his arms bulging as he supported himself above her.

  His eyes were so intense they seemed to devour her, and Riana felt naked despite her grungy shirt. She also felt a thrill of excitement. Anticipation.

  Despite the bleakness of her situation—or perhaps because of it—her body responded to the sight of him above her. He was an attractive, virile man. Different from any man she’d ever known. She was going to have to fuck him if she wanted to stay alive.

  She might as well enjoy it.

  He leaned down, and her eyes widened as his face lowered toward hers—their gazes never breaking. For a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her.

  But instead he shifted direction just slightly to run his lips in a line down her throat.

  She tilted her head back, sucking in her breath as she felt his mouth on the sensitive skin at her pulse. He smelled strongly, but it wasn’t unpleasant—it was almost a relief after the vague nastiness of the mingled odor of the Hold—and the scent of him surrounded her, intensifying her carnal response.

  When he nipped at her neck slightly, she gasped at the resulting jolt of pleasure. Then she jerked her shoulders up so she could pull off her shirt. When she tossed it away, his mouth lowered even more until he mouthed her right breast through the fabric of her camisole.

  She squirmed beneath him as tugs of arousal multiplied in her pussy. Her fingers groped at the back of his neck, then slid up to feel the delicious texture of the close-cropped hair on his scalp.

  He adjusted his position until he was kneeling on the floor as his mouth lowered down to her middle. He pushed up her camisole to bare her flat belly, and she moaned when she felt him press hard kisses onto the sensitive skin there.

  He must have unfastened her pants while she was distracted by his mouth on her belly because he pulled them off with a quick yank, taking her panties with them.

  She gave a little squeal of surprise and excitement at the rough move and felt an ache of desire between her legs when he stood up beside the bed—big, primal, and powerful. She was wet. Really wet. And she was glad to see the bulge at his groin—proof that he was aroused as well.

  “Turn over,” he said in a thick voice, kneeling on the bed beside her.

  She wasn’t sure if his words had been a request or an order, and she didn’t really care. Doggy style sounded pretty good to her.

  She arranged herself on her hands and knees, pointing her head and shoulders away from him.

  He covered her exposed bottom with both of his big hands and gave it a possessive squeeze. “Damn, you have a great ass,” he muttered.

  It was the first compliment he’d ever given her. And, despite its crudeness, it gave her a ridiculous little thrill. She looked over her shoulder at him and felt another thrill at the smolder she saw in his eyes as he stared down at her half-naked body.

  Then she saw him move one of his hands and felt two of his fingers in her slick pussy. The penetration made her gasp.

  He pumped his fingers a few time, hitting her G-spot and rubbing her inner walls.

  Riana gave a breathless grunt and started to pant at the delicious stimulation. Still looking back at him, she bumped her hips back toward him, trying to accelerate the rhythm.

  “Fuck.” Cain’s voice was faint, and she couldn’t tell if he was pleased, surprised, or baffled by her obvious eagerness. But before she could start to feel self-conscious, he added, “So hot.”

  That was okay then. So she kept pumping her ass against the penetration of his fingers, beginning to huff out little grunts that sounded almost childish as an orgasm developed more quickly that she could have expected.

  Her breasts jiggled in her top, and it took some effort to keep looking over her shoulder at him kneeling behind her. But she couldn’t seem to turn away from the expression on his face—hungry and intense, like he wanted to swallow her whole.

  He stared down at her eager bouncing and skillfully moved his fingers in her wet pussy until her grunts turned to whimpers and then to wordless mews as he took her to the edge.

  He was pushing hard against her G-spot as she came, her body jerking in clumsy spasms as the waves of release washed over her and her pussy clamped down hard around his fingers.

  He sustained the contractions by pumping his fingers against the spasms, and her entire body flushed hotly as her urgency relaxed into satisfaction.

  She was a little embarrassed as she darted one last look at his face, hoping he didn’t think she was too easy or desperate for succumbing so easily to his advances.

  For coming from nothing more than a few pumps of his fingers.

  But he was already unfastening his trousers, and he looked just as eager as she had been as he aligned himself behind her, grabbing her bottom cheeks and pulling them apart so he could sink his cock into her.

  She made a silly sound as the hard substance of his erection penetrated her, stretching and filling her deeply. She adjusted her hands, bracing herself on her arms so she could rock her bottom back against his pelvis.

  He began to thrust immediately, his cock moving easily inside her slick pussy, and each thrust hit her in just the right way.

  She couldn’t look away from his expression—it was tense now, and ravenous, and so hot. At the twist in his features every time she tightened her pussy around him. She could tell he was enjoying how it felt to be buried inside her.

  They were both breathing loudly, and the cot was starting to shake, squeaking shamelessly in response to their motion. The rest of the sound in the Hold blurred into a background murmur, fading against the stark urgency of their coupling.

  Riana felt another orgasm beginning to build, and she gasped in both surprise and pleasure. Her neck was starting to ache and she was losing her concentration, so she finally let her head fall forward again.

  And realized they had an audience.

  It wasn’t the offensive onlookers of the night before. She didn’t even recognize the two men who were staring in through the bars of the cell, openly gawking at their fucking.

  She stifled a whimper, not wanting Cain to tell her to toughen up again. There was no privacy in this hellhole. She would need to get used to that.

  Cain hadn’t even seemed to notice them—the others were so insignificant to him. She needed to learn to ignore them in the same way.

  But she couldn’t. She couldn’t stop thinking about what they must see. She was on her hands and knees on the bed, naked except for her disarranged camisole. Her tangled hair was falling into her flushed face. Her breasts and the flesh of her ass was jiggling as she pumped her hips back toward Cain’s pelvis, eagerly meeting each of his thrusts. Their skin was slapping together, and Cain gripped possessive handfuls of her bottom.

  And she was going to come again.

  These strangers on the other side of the bars were going to see her. Coming hard from being fucked like this by a man she barely knew.

  The pressure at her center tightened like a fist, sending shockwaves of pleasure into her building orgasm. “Oh God,” she gasped, her vision blurring over as she bumped her bottom back against his hard strokes as rapidly as she could.

  He let go of her ass and reach
ed forward, pushing gently on her upper back until she folded her arms and lowered her shoulders to the mattress, leaving just her bottom in the air. He didn’t pull back. Instead he planted one of his hands next to her shoulder, giving him better leverage to thrust.

  He wasn’t pulling out much now but his hips were pistoning against her ass, pushing into her in fast, animalistic strokes. The only sounds he made were low grunts and fast, wet breathing.

  She tried to keep her eyes on the bedding just before her eyes, but she couldn’t resist turning her head to look out the bars again.

  The two men were still watching. One of them had his mouth hanging open. Then she heard the other one say, “Fuck. Look at her take it.”

  Riana whimpered and hid her face in the mattress, burning with heat that was as much shameless desire as it was mortification.

  “Ignore them.” The voice was low, gruff, right in her ear. Cain.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Take it?” This voice was from outside the cell. The other man. “She wants it bad.”

  Riana tried to smother another whimper in the bedding as her whole body began to shake with intensifying need and urgency.

  She did want it. She wanted it bad. And the feel of Cain’s cock driving into her deep and hard was threatening to make her scream with an inexplicable pleasure.

  Part of her wished that Cain would lash out at the men—making them leave the way he’d made the men leave last night.

  But she somehow knew he wouldn’t do that. It would make him weak. It would give the other prisoners power over him.

  Over both of them.

  It was a gift that he’d done so for her last night.

  So she did as he said and tried to ignore the onlookers. Instead, she fought through her physical responses to find the concentration to turn back to look at Cain again.

  His expression was almost twisted with what he was feeling, and there was something mesmerizing about the primitive fire in his eyes.

  She felt another clench of sharp pleasure. “Oh yeah.”

  “Yeah?” he gritted out, his face only inches from hers.

  She wasn’t sure exactly what he was asking, but she answered him anyway. Her whole body was shaking—from the force of his motion now since she couldn’t do much pumping in her present position—and her vision was starting to glaze over again. “Yeah,” she gasped, “Gonna come. Again. Oh God!”

  His thrusting intensified even more—so hard now the bed squeaked even more loudly. His grunts grew even more animalistic, guttural sounds that turned her on more than she could begin to understand.

  She huffed out choppy little sounds as the agonizing pressure in her pussy finally peaked.

  She buried her face in the bedding to smother her scream of release as her pussy clenched around his cock.

  She was conscious of his pelvis jerking clumsily against her bottom, and she heard a rough sound as he came as well. But she couldn’t think of anything except the pulsing waves of pleasure, radiating from her center to saturate her body.

  They left her feeling drained, exhausted, hot, and deliciously satisfied.

  And really, really embarrassed.

  She could feel Cain panting above her, but she couldn’t bring herself to turn her head to meet his eyes immediately.

  After a minute, he asked, “Okay?”

  The gruff question made her able to unbury her head and look up at him. He was pulling his cock out of her pussy with a sloppy wet sound.

  “Yeah,” she said with a faint smile. It was nice of him to ask—even in such an abrupt way. “That was pretty good.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched up. “Yeah. Pretty good.”

  The irony in his voice made her snicker a little, and she felt better as she curled up on the bed, trying to hide her body as best she could from whomever happened to be outside.

  Cain got up, pulling up his pants and walking back toward the bathroom. When he returned, he looked normal again. He’d even pulled his t-shirt back on.

  “So what are you going to do now?” she asked, curious about what else there was to do to pass the time in his cell.

  He arched one eyebrow and gestured toward the fork he’d retrieved on their outing earlier. “What do you think?”

  She frowned at his curt tone but watched as he went back over to the machine he was putting together out of scavenged parts.

  “Oh.”

  “Where do you get all that stuff anyway?” she asked after a long silence.

  Still focused on his work, Cain didn’t glance over as he answered. “You saw me.”’

  “I know you get them from around the Hold. But how did they get here? Surely prisoners aren’t allowed to bring wire and gears and all that with them.”

  He didn’t respond immediately, and for a minute Riana didn’t think he was going to reply at all. Then he said slowly, “To keep up the pretense of treating prisoners humanely, the Coalition distributes supplies every couple of months. That’s where the towels, the bedding, and the dishes come from. Sometimes they send down other things too. It just depends what kind of surplus they have on hand.”

  Riana thought about that for a minute. “Distribute? Does that mean they dump the supplies in big heap and leave everyone to fight about who gets them?”

  “Yep.” Cain was fiddling with a piece of metal. She couldn’t begin to guess what the metal used to be. “A couple of years ago, they tried to move to individual replicators for prisoners’ meals instead of the feeding-trough method they use now. But that idea didn’t last long.”

  “Don’t tell me. The replicators were taken apart and made into weapons.”

  Cain gave a brief nod. “Evidently, in less than a week. At least, that’s what I’m told. The guards made a gesture at confiscating the parts but most of them are still around in one form or another.”

  Obviously, Cain had scavenged many of those parts for his ungainly device.

  “How did you learn how to put things together like that?” She nodded toward his device.

  He shrugged. “You pick things up. I had a piece-of-junk transport that always needed fixing.”

  She thought about that. People didn’t own transports—even junky ones—unless they traveled a lot from planet to planet. Maybe he’d been a smuggler, and that was how he’d ended up in prison.

  She watched him for several minutes while she tried to enjoy the physical satisfaction of the aftermath of her orgasms and tried to ignore the crude comments that occasionally drifted her way from outside the cell.

  When it was clear Cain had nothing more to say, she sniffed and stretched out on the bed. “I guess I’ll take another nap.”

  Three

  It was still dark in the Hold. Lights out. Pitch black. It never got any lighter than this during the imposed nighttime hours.

  She couldn’t see Cain, but she could feel him.

  Feel every part of him.

  His long fingers spanned her ribs, holding her lower body up off the bed. He knelt between her legs, forcing her thighs apart, splaying her wide open for him. With her feet bouncing awkwardly and her stomach muscles stretched taut, it wasn’t the most comfortable of positions.

  Riana didn’t care.

  She clung to the worn bedding above her head and futilely struggled to free herself from his vice-like grip so she could pump her hips against the hard, fast thrusting of his cock. Her helplessness only intensified the frantic pressure building at her center, and the moans she’d been making earlier transformed into little sobs of pleasure.

  Cain made a guttural sound in the dark, but there wasn’t light enough to see his expression. He’d awakened her a few minutes ago by rubbing his erection against her butt.

  After a month of sharing this cell with him, her body immediately responded to the silent invitation.

  Now she was naked on her back, her bottom several inches off the mattress, her pussy wet and aching with sharp, deep desire for him.

  “Oh, oh, God!” Her voice was
shrill and breathless, and louder than she’d expected. But the urgency of her growing climax made it impossible for her to stifle her vocal responses.

  Cain grunted in response, the sound of his breathing intensifying as his fingers tightened on her ribs. He almost never spoke while he fucked her, but by now she could read his grunt as one of approval.

  He liked it when she was loud, when the pleasure was too much for her to control.

  Riana clawed at the mattress and bit down hard on her lower lip, but it was no use. Her choked cries grew even louder, echoing in the complete darkness and nearly drowning the sound of wet suction from his cock inside her and the choppy tempo of the slapping of their groins. “So good. Oh, fuck!”

  Cain made another rough grunt, adjusting his hold on her so he could thrust even faster and harder.

  She was washed in heat and perspiration, and her blindness in the dark only increased her helplessness against the overwhelming sensations.

  “Make me come.” She arched her back desperately in an attempt to grind her pussy against his pumping.

  “Yeah,” Cain gritted out, the unexpected words shaped without warning, his low, thick voice the most erotic thing she’d ever heard. “Come for me hard.”

  She came. Hard. The climax sliced through her so powerfully she nearly screamed as she shook and shuddered through the spasms.

  He kept fucking her through the clenching of her pussy, pushing into her with several rough groans as his body tightened palpably. “Again,” he demanded in a strangled tone, still holding her body rigidly in place.

  She didn’t know if it was the rough, irresistible authority in his voice or the intensity of the carnal sensations. But she came again, the second climax rising up on the heels of the first, making her cry out even louder as the pleasure erupted once more.

  Cain didn’t shout as he came. But he forced out a choked exclamation she recognized as the one he made when he came particularly hard. Then his body jerked and pulsed with his climax, and his hands finally relaxed on her ribs.

  “Shut the fuck up!” someone yelled from outside the cell. In the disorientation of such complete darkness, she couldn’t even tell from which direction the annoyed shout had come.