Out Of Control. Shannon McKenna

wanted her girlfriends. To watch chick flick DVD’s on her big squishy couch while pigging out on chips and margaritas with Jenny and Chris and Pia. She was even nostalgic about the problems she used to stress about. Dates, or lack thereof. Panty lines. Calories. PMS. Tax write-offs. Ants in the kitchen. Mold on the bathroom grout. Hah.

      She wanted to cancel out the ugly memories in her head.

      She felt so small and powerless. Sex was unthinkable under those conditions, but that didn’t stop her longing to be touched.

      Wrecked as she was, she couldn’t even remember how it felt to be confident enough to take on a guy like McCloud. Maybe she never had been. He was so damn big, after all. Ultra-macho. She’d always made a point of staying away from those types. They were way too problematic.

      She had to let her sexual imagination run hog wild to encompass the idea of sex with Davy McCloud. The farther from reality, the better. Along the lines of…a barbarian queen and her captured enemy warrior. Yeah. That was just silly and improbable enough to work. Him wearing nothing but a sword belt and a raggedy loincloth over his manly parts. Chained hand and foot, eyes hot with helpless fury. Fresh out of battle, all jacked up and desperate. Yummy. This could be really good.

      And herself, sporting lots of cleavage in a teeny weeny chain mail bikini top. A filmy skirt slit up to both thighs dangling from her jewel-studded belt. She dreamed her hair back to its original coppery red, grew it out to instant hip length, slathered on makeup; shadowy bronze tints that made her look feverish and slutty. Like the covers of those fantasy novels she used to devour, except that she was the one brandishing the sword looking tough, and he was the one on his knees, clutching her thigh. The image was so silly, it made her giggle.

      Big mistake. The laughter shoved her almost over the edge into tears. She rolled over, pressing her hot face into the pillow, and slid her hand into her panties. She was wet already, squirming around a damp glow of arousal. She didn’t even need the vibrator. She was teetering on the brink of a screaming orgasm just thinking about his eyes.

      She shut her eyes tightly, caught her clit between two fingers, and clenched her trembling thighs together. She had to get some relief from this ache. It scared her. Her whole damned life scared her.

      The barbarian queen wasn’t scared. She had the power to enforce her slightest whim. Armies at her beck and call. Lucky her.

      Exotic images formed, broke, and reformed in her head. McCloud on his knees, his eyes furious. Unable to hide his excitement under that skimpy loincloth. She imagined touching him as she caressed herself, her hands sliding over his tense, straining muscles, his hot face.

      He was slick with sweat, trembling. She slid her hand beneath the loincloth, grasped his hard penis and stroked it boldly. He jerked, gasped, arched back in a helpless spasm of pleasure.

      Images blurred and shifted in her mind, the myriad possibilities pulling her in every direction. The fantasy refocused. She stood over him naked, legs wide, his face cupped in her hands. Telling him with her eyes, get to work, soldier, and make it good for me if you know what’s good for you.

      And it was. Oh, it was. She’d never had a fantasy so clear, every nerve alive and thrumming like it was actually happening. His strong tongue thrust and lapped, sliding up and down her slit and suckling her ravenously, and the glorious feeling was building, higher and hotter, almost there, almost…there…

      The tension dropped a notch, and left her dangling. Unfulfilled.

      She was furious. This was bizarre. She’d never been so turned on in her life. It made no sense at all that she couldn’t make herself come.

      Onward, take two. Segue to the lavish, curtained bed, the light of a flickering fire. He was stark naked now, tied with silken cords to the carved posts. First she went the kinky route and had a bunch of her sexy barbarian ladies-in-waiting teasing and tormenting him to prepare him for the main event. That lasted about a nanosecond. She sent the silly bitches packing. Poof, they disappeared.

      This one was for her alone. Every last drop of him.

      The silent room was charged with desperate tension. The only sounds were the crackling of the fire and the low, strangled moans of the man beneath her. He writhed, cords standing out on his neck, muscles hard and flexing with desperate tension against his bonds, but she was merciless. She gripped his penis in her oiled hands, sliding her hands up and down his shaft, swirling and squeezing her fist around the swollen head. Hypnotizing even herself with the rhythmic caress.

      It was time. She straddled him, guided his penis to the soft, swollen opening of her sex, and flung her head back with a moan of delight as she forced herself over the thick, throbbing club. Taking him, claiming him. She stared down into his eyes, silently demanding that he acknowledge her supremacy.

      He would not. He bucked and writhed, pounding up into her body, but his eyes stared back up, glittering bright and wild and absolutely unconquered.

      And the orgasm kept eluding her. She would get so close, heart pounding, ready to fling herself into that well of dark oblivion, and suddenly, whoosh, gone. It evaporated, and he gazed up at her, eyes gleaming with wicked amusement. He was doing this on purpose.

      Damn him. This was insane. This was her own fantasy, in the privacy of her own mind, and he had no right to mess with it.

      But it was more than a fantasy now. It was more like a trance, or a waking dream with its own crazy momentum. She was helpless to guide or command it. She reached for the knife hidden in the sumptuous bed hangings. Held it in her hand just long enough to make that sly gleam in his eyes fade, to be replaced by wary uncertainty.

      She reached back and cut the silken cords that bound his ankles…one, two. She leaned over him, dangling her breasts in his face, and sliced through the cords that bound his wrists. She rocked back, letting his penis slide inside her, as deeply as it could lodge. She laid the knife in the pillows at the head of the bed, well within his reach.

      It was all up to him. She stared down at his astonished face.

      The paralyzed part of her mind locked behind the swirling dream images was aghast. Was she out of her skull? Did she not deserve even the artificial luxury of running the show in a silly sexual fantasy?

      The fantasy thundered on. He gripped her waist with his big hands and rolled her over, a guttural snarl sounding deep in his throat. He pinned her beneath his big body and thrust deep, driving her hard.

      Unleashing his passion unleashed hers too, and sent her soaring.

      When she regained her awareness, she was still clenching around the pulses of residual pleasure. Dazed, gasping for breath.

      And still alone in her bed. Alone in her wrecked life. Aching for the loss of something she’d never even had.

      What an idiot. Torturing herself with fantasies. She fought back the tears. She’d cried enough for a lifetime already.

      Chapter

      5

      Marcus Worthington was in a killing mood.

      Years of meticulous conditioning that Marcus had instilled into his younger brother, Faris, wiped away as if by a vicious computer virus.

      All that Callahan bitch’s fault.

      He would be glad when the woman was safely dead, though disappointment could drive Faris over the edge. Few people were aware of Faris’s unique abilities, and the tremendous risks involved. So far Marcus had always prevailed in a battle of wills. Still, it worried him.

      The only thing that calmed Marcus when he was so agitated was puttering in his lab, playing with what Priscilla, his late father’s fourth and worst wife, was pleased to call his “toys.” She would learn soon how wrong she was about him. Just as his father had learned. The wife that had preceded Priscilla had learned as well. They all had, in the end.

      But Priscilla would get a very special lesson.

      Marcus teased the gelatinous mold of Dr. Driscoll’s