“Tell me you want me to fuck you. Right here. Like this. Right now. Tell me, or I’ll get dressed and I’ll go back out there and I’ll leave you in here to suffer it out for the rest of the night.”
“You wouldn’t,” she hisses. “You’re crass and full of yourself and you wouldn’t do that because you wouldn’t be able to stand it.”
I release her hands and my knee so that her feet hit the floor suddenly. She gasps, since she just about ended up on her ass. A look of pure, outright fury comes over her face when I grasp my cock like I’m going to get that glove off.
“I’ve taken it for fourteen years. Four high school years, which were really long to a teenage boy. I didn’t die then. I won’t die now. So. Your choice. Do you want this or do you not?”
“W-wanting it doesn’t mean anything else.” Bree’s throat works hard. Her pupils are blown, her lips swollen. Her nostrils flare with every single word. “It doesn’t change anything between us.”
“So, basically, what you’re saying is you don’t want me. You just want my cock. Or my fingers. Or my tongue.”
She trembles visibly and I know I’m crossing just about every single line there is. I would never have talked to her like this in high school. Obviously. I would have been too scared to say filthy things and she would have been too scared to listen.
She’s not scared now. She’s angry. She’s angry because she’s fighting with herself, because I know she wants me and she hates that she does.
“This is never going to work,” she insists. “We’re different people with different lives. I don’t want a relationship. I don’t want to move. I like my life just fine without you in it.”
“Okay.” I grip the condom. “If that’s what you want.”
“Wait!” She glances around the room like there’s a hidden camera in there and this is all about me getting the upper hand and holding one over on her. “We’re adults. We can do this, can’t we? It’s unfinished business. I know it is. I know that sex is rarely ever just sex. It’s going to change things. Everything. If we do this, we have to…” She bites down hard on her already plush lower lip and my cock kicks in my fist. “Alright, fine.” Her eyes fly back to my face. “You win. I want this. I want you. I’ve wanted you for a long time. I want you now, but it doesn’t change the fact that I am who I am and you are you and I’m still getting on a plane in a couple days and going back to where you’re not.”
“I can live with that.” I manage to sound casual, almost bored, even though it’s not what I feel at all. I’m not letting her go. Even if she doesn’t know that yet. Baby steps. I wasn’t ever going to walk out of this room. The truth is, I can live with it, because even if she’s not willing to move or give up her job, I am. Baby steps, though.
“Say it again.” I’m not trying to goad her. I just need to hear it. It doesn’t feel real.
Her eyes darken, but her lips part and she says the words I’ve waited a lifetime to hear. “I want you, Karsyn Diswell.”
I might be an asshole at heart, because I then have to follow up my question with another entirely logical one. I’m a journalist. Asking questions is what I do for a living.
“And where do you want me?”
Her throat works hard again and I swear her pupils dilate so far that her iris is swallowed up. She lifts her head and tilts it defiantly, smirking at me, and I know this game and this war is far from over.
“Where do I want you? I want you everywhere. All over me. But mostly, I want you inside me. Right. Now.”
Chapter 13
Breona
Karsyn takes that literally, and drops his hands to my waist and spins me around so that I’m facing the door. I’m off balance and my hands smack against the door with a thud that echoes through the room.
He nudges his knee between my legs, spreading them, then his hand is at my core, pushing aside my panties and stroking me in hot, blissful strokes. I want to tell him to stop.
Karsyn finds my clit and rolls his thumb around it, nearly sending me over the edge and effectively cancelling out any remaining brain cells that I had. He works me with his hand while I buck back into him and my fingers attack the door, trying to dig in to the steel. His cock is throbbing against my thigh, hot, wicked. I want him and he knows it. I just told him, but instead he slides his finger to my entrance and slips inside up to the first knuckle.
I shamelessly grind back into him and I can’t stop the hiss of pleasure that escapes.
“Is this how you want me inside you?” Karsyn asks behind me. His finger slides in a little further, filling me, but it’s not the way I want to be filled and we both know it.
He wants to hear me say it and I won’t. Not again.
He slides his finger all the way in, torturing me. I’m slippery and wet, leaking all over his hand. He thrusts hard, sending a wave of hot sparks shooting through my bloodstream. At the same time, he brushes up against my clit with his knuckle and I’m just about done.
“Answer me, Bree. Is this how you want me to fill you?”
“Yes.” I buck my hips back, searching, aching. I do want it, but it’s not enough. I know what he really wants too, though, and two can play at his shitty game. “Yes, this is exactly what I need. Just this. How did you know?”
I thrust my hips back while he slides his finger in and out of me, taking him deeper, daring him to put an end to this dance and do what he truly wants to do. When I press back, his cock digs against my thigh, and when I feel how hard he is, how gloriously hot, I want to weep.
We fit together perfectly, even like this.
“I could make you come like this, but I won’t,” Karsyn says maddeningly. To prove his point, he tears his hand away.
I crane my neck around and watch him stroke himself over my shoulder. “You won’t make yourself come like that either,” I taunt again. “Not this time. Not when you can have the real thing.”
“Maybe I will, just because you’re a brat.” He glances up and smirks at me. I’m embarrassed to be caught watching him and my body heats up painfully. I feel desperately empty everywhere. I do need him. I need him filling me. Between my legs. In my chest. In my life.
“Fine,” I pant, desperate to paint a coat of non-existence over those last thoughts. I need him to wash out all the thoughts. All the feelings. I just need him. “Fine. I want your cock. Inside me. Now. Or I’ll finish myself off and go back out there, since we probably don’t have much time, and you’ll be the one left alone in here with your palm and your tale of woe.”
He chuckles at that and that smirk never leaves his face. He leans in against me, his knee pushing my legs apart again, and this time, he doesn’t hesitate. He guides himself to my entrance and time stops when I feel him there.
He’s huge. He’s tall and broad and muscled to the point of making me want to actually drool, but he’s big everywhere. Even just the feel of his tip there, stretching me, makes me want to drive myself back and take my own pleasure.
I don’t, because I don’t want him to know the level of my desperation. He tries to play it cool, sliding in just a little, then a little more, stretching me and teasing me and filling me deliciously, but his uneven breaths and his only half-stifled groans tell a different story. He’s not as composed as he lets on.
I want to pretend that I’m half bored or that doing this isn’t what I think it is, but I can’t. I don’t honestly know what I think it is, because there isn’t a label I can put on it.
I just know that we’re going to war, equals like we were before. We used to challenge each other all the time, debate each other’s ideas. Karsyn used to finish my damn sentences, that’s how well he knew me. I feel like we’re right back there, but with an extra layer of experience and emotion because we’re older and we’ve spent a decade apart and we both want this so fucking badly that neither of us can stop.
Karsyn thrust inside me fully and I let out a moan that I don’t even attempt to keep in. My hands claw at the door again. His hands are ev
erywhere, moving over me, cupping my breasts, my ass, my hip, setting me on fire.
If the first thrust made me see stars, the second one nearly pitches me right into them. I feel like I’m flying, tumbling amongst undiscovered galaxies. He moves, thrusting up into me, and even though he’s huge, I take all of him. We fit perfectly, and I don’t want to think about that because it makes me want to cry.
I choose to focus on what every single hard thrust is doing to me instead. On the tremors wracking their way up my thighs, on the way my stomach muscles clench up and how everything seems to be cinched up tight right in a central spot right below my belly button.
I edge my legs open wider, a silent invitation that I don’t want to admit even to myself. I want him. I want all of him in all of me. I want it always. I want to take him further, harder, take him right over the edge with me. Take him to oblivion. This feels so right. So amazingly right that it scares me senseless and all I can do is scrabble at the door in desperation.
Our bodies take on a life of their own. I grind back harder while his thrusts become more frenzied, out of control, the rhythm completely off. I can’t help it. As everything inside me goes into a wild state of frenzied, glorious disarray, I tear my face away from the door and turn around to look at him.
He’s so beautiful. He’s always been beautiful. He burns me like he always has, like looking right into the sun. He’s so dazzling, his jaw clenched, his eyes screwed up tight, his face scrunched up in pleasure and pain.
I have to whip my head back around. I don’t want him to see me watching him, but I also know that the image of his face is going to be burned in my head forever. It always has been, ever since the first moment I saw him. Looking at him makes this real. It makes it far more real than I want it to be, because looking at him makes me realize just how much I don’t want to leave him, and that makes me realize that I’m weak and silly and probably useless too and that I’ve tried my whole life to be strong and independent and that everything I’ve built for myself is at risk of crumbling all over the place and making one hell of an epic mess.
I can tell that Karsyn is close, because his thrusts get wild and uncontrolled. There is no rhythm. Only our bodies, grinding and writhing, sweating and leaking all over each other. Our breath churns in and out of our lungs and the only other sounds in the room are the sounds of our joining and it’s the hottest thing in the world.
“Come for me,” Karsyn groans between thrusts.
“No,” I spit back. My hands clench at the door. I’m so close, but I don’t want to just because he commanded me.
“Always so stubborn.” His hand flies to my clit and he strokes me while he’s thrusting in and out of me. I let out a desperate whimper. “Fine. Come with me.”
I want to hold out, just to prove a point, though I’m not really sure what it is, because he’s already inside me, stretching me and working me to the point of soreness, and I know that I’ll never be the same. Karsyn thrusts hard, to the point of a sweet pain that is deliciously dark and totally sinful, and pinches my clit.
There isn’t any more holding out. I’m gone. I shatter as he lets out a low groan and thrusts a few more rapid-fire times before he buries himself deep inside me. I can feel his cock kicking as his whole body jerks and he lets out a feral groan that could probably induce another orgasm all on its own. I feel it and hear it all, even through the waves of red hot pleasure rolling through me. I jerk and vibrate against him.
And then, because he can’t just be any other person, because he’s so Karsyn that it hurts, he bends his head to nuzzle my neck and scrapes his teeth along the column, before he finds the soft, fleshy crook and sinks his teeth in, biting me lightly like an animal would to his mate to claim her.
It sends a dark thrill through me and instead of pulling away and telling him off, I collapse back into him, savouring the last fleeting aftershocks of our combined climax.
Our skin sticks together. Our muscles knot up and release as one. Our breath is a combined mess. He’s hot, so scalding inside me, and I throb and clench around him. Everything is done in a unison so messily perfect that it’s like we spent years coordinating this, learning how to do this, learning how to fit like this. Like we’re old lovers, experienced and practiced with each other.
That scares me more than anything.
When he pulls away, it hurts a little and I realize just how sore I am. I adjust my panties and sweep my dress back into place. This is the third time I’ve done something illicit in a dress that I have to wear for the rest of the night. I’m lucky that it doesn’t have a bunch of dubious looking stains all over it.
While Karsyn throws the condom in a trash bin in the corner and adjusts himself, I go for my tote, since it’s the only thing I can think of to occupy my hands, my eyes, and my mind.
“We shouldn’t come out of here at the same time. I’ll slip out. Look like I was just touching up my makeup or something. I have the tote, so it’s believable. You follow behind me. It will take you ten minutes to get your shirt back on. Hopefully it’s not too rumpled.”
I don’t give him a chance to answer. I show him my back, throw the lock on the door, and slip out, thankfully unnoticed. I shut it hard behind me and take off, straight to the bathroom.
Like I can put myself back together there.
I already know that I’m not changing my mind about anything I said. What we did doesn’t change anything. It just makes a mess of everything, my heart most of all. This isn’t the time or the place to sort it out, so instead of having another melt down, I’ll take a few breaths and get on with the rest of the night. At the end of it all, I’ll go to my parent’s house for Christmas and then I’ll go back to Raleigh and try and sort out my life.
My life that I’ve worked so hard for. My life that does not include Karsyn Diswell. Okay, so it’s always included him. Thoughts of him, but he’s never been real.
Not like he is now.
I have no idea what to do with any of this, and it’s easier to run. Run to the bathroom. Run from myself. Run from my feelings. Run back across the country. Just run. I did it before, ten years ago. I can do it again now.
Chapter 14
Karsyn
It’s a lie that an orgasm will relax you. I’ve never seen anyone keyed up as tight as Breona. She sits through the entire reception like a ticking time bomb. Barely says a word. Stumbles over her speech. Picks at her food. Barely dances. Whenever she sees me coming, she runs the other direction or finds someone to stick between us.
Why does it seem to be an unwritten rule that couples have to be painfully unhappy? Case in point, Cozzie and Bryn at the back of the hall. Their heads are bent and they think no one is watching them, but I can tell they’re arguing heatedly about something. And here I thought weddings were supposed to be about love.
At least Jake and Arla have that down. Those two give me hope for the future. For my future. A future that I want to share with Breona.
Of course, she has other ideas.
Arla nods, wraps her arms around Breona’s shoulders and Breona hugs her back. She grabs up that massive tote a second later and glances around like she’s going to make a break for it.
Yeah. Not on my watch.
I catch her trying to dodge out the back door a minute later. She’s just about there, her fingers curling around the handle, when I call her name. It echoes like a gunshot in the stillness around us even though the music is still playing, the DJ in full swing, the laughter and hum of conversation blanketing the air.
Breona whirls and her forehead crinkles. She looks like a kid who was just caught doing something really bad. Guilt flicks across her beautiful features.
I edge closer and she edges further away. “What are you doing trying to sneak out the back door when you should be going home with me?”
She huffs and her eyes narrow. “I told you that wasn’t going to happen.”
“Yeah. I know what you said, but tell me it’s not what you want.”
“It’s not what I want.” No hesitation. No pause.
“You’re a liar, then.” I close the distance between us and take her free hand, the one reaching dangerously for the door handle. Before she can rip it away, I slam it up to my chest, right above my beating heart. It pounds through my ribs and my clothes, right into her fingertips.
She lets out a strangled noise and snatches her hand back. She tucks it carefully at her side. “I might be a liar.” Her eyes flood with tears and cut me to the core. I don’t want this. I don’t want her to be miserable or full of regrets. “But this is the way it has to be. I told you. I’m not interrupting my life for you. For this. It was nice, okay. I’m glad we got things…resolved. There isn’t a future for this. You live here. I don’t. I’m never moving back. We have our own lives. We’re different people now. That’s the end of it.”
The Mistletoe Wedding Page 10
