by Zahra Girard
Then I think about something else.
About the lasting memory of our kiss.
How I can still feel the sensation and taste of him on my lips.
How I want that again.
Finally, my tongue starts working.
I look up and see that he’s watching me. Totally focused. And with a small, knowing smile shining at me on his handsome, bearded face.
“I’m not that hungry right now. Do you want to go upstairs?”
“Are you going to tell me how things went at the lawyer’s?” He says.
“Something like that.”
Another moment. There’s concern on his face. “And you’re sure? You’re OK?”
This man cares.
“I want to, Blaze.”
He holds out a hand. “Follow me.”
Holding onto him for support, I squeeze his hand gently and he squeezes me back, a simple expression sets my body tingling in anticipation. The eighteen steps up the staircase go by in a blur; one blink I’m downstairs, the next I’m in the doorway to his old bedroom; my breaths go from deep and even to short, hushed things stolen between kisses; my hand releases his and take hold of his back and his brawny chest.
He is so solid, so strong, so warm. My life might’ve fallen apart, but he’s doing his damnedest to help me put it back together; I’ve never told anyone about what happened to me, never felt secure enough to say a word, but it’s different with him; Blaze knows what it's like to have your dreams and potential fall apart, and he also knows how to fight to put it back together.
He makes me feel like it’s only a matter of time before I’ll have my life back, too.
I lean into him. Feel every one of his hungry kisses set my body on fire.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” I whisper. It’s a lie, it’s the stupid logical part of my brain that always tries to assert itself. I tell it to shut up.
“Why’s that?” He murmurs in my ear while he kisses my neck. “Don’t you want it?”
“I do.”
“Then what’s the problem? I ain’t going to hurt you, Tiffany.”
“You’re a criminal,” I whisper as watch him remove his autographed Backstreet Boys shirt.
“I am.”
I put my lips to his chest. Kiss and touch the hardened muscles of his torso. I can’t stop myself. Don’t want to stop myself.
“You’ve hurt people.”
He rumbles. Runs his hands through my hair. “I have.”
Now, I’ve undone his belt. Now, I’m unhooking the buttons of his jeans. Now, I’m on my knees.
“You’ll hurt people again, soon.”
“If that’s what it takes.”
His jeans hit the floor. As does his underwear. I take him in my hand, he’s already halfway hard, and it only takes a few gentle strokes and a lick to get him to full, mouth-filling thickness.
“You didn’t hesitate to say that. You’re used to hurting people.”
I’m trying as hard as I can to give myself a reason to walk away — to get him to say something, anything, that’ll justify me taking my hands off his cock and stepping away from this maddening path we’re on; this path leads to violence, to criminality, to compromising so many things I believe in.
Give me a reason, Blaze, I beg. Give me a reason not to care for you as much as I do.
He nods his head, but whether that’s because he’s agreeing with me or because I’ve taken the length of him down my throat, I can’t tell. He tastes so good and his smell — leather and pine and smoke, probably smoke ingrained in him from all those years fighting fires and saving lives, I think — fills my nose and makes my head swim in divine intoxication.
“I don’t hold back. If it’s someone I care about, I’ll never stop.”
He pops free of my mouth and I run my wayward tongue along the tip of his cock, my eyes peering up at him, scanning every inch of his rugged jawline, every crack and cranny of character in his chiseled features, looking for some sign of deceit. But that’s the thing, I never see deceit; Blaze thinks with his heart, lives by his heart, and his heart is so full of fire and love for those he’s close to that there’s no room for deception.
The things this man strives for aren’t measured in career achievements, award plaques, pay raises, or promotions; it’s in the smiles and love and gratitude of people he cares for.
And I’m one of those lucky people.
I meet his eyes. They burn with fire and lust.
“I believe you,” I whisper.
With a movement of his hips, a pull of my hand, a relaxing of my throat, I take him. All of him. My eyes roll back in my head, I catch spare breaths in between his thrusts and moans, and I shut off the part of myself that cares about thinking and logic and consequences — I listen to that part of me that aches to please him, that imagines wrapping my legs around him, that wants to see the look on his face as he comes.
“Oh fuck, Tiffany,” he moans. “How the fuck do you know how to do that?”
I open my eyes, spare a look for him, there’s surprise and carnal fervor on his face. It makes me blush. And it makes me wet. I need more than just his cock in my throat.
Slowly, I slip him out of my mouth, my hand still holding tight to his thick cock.
“You said before you liked my legs, didn’t you?”
He moans something I can’t quite make out; I give his cock a gentle squeeze to bring him back to attention.
“What’s that?” I say. “I couldn’t quite hear you.”
“I love your legs. Love your ass. Felt that way since the first time I saw you on the track team in those fucking short shorts. Fuck, just thinking about bending you over gets me harder than I’ve ever been.”
“So, if you want it so bad, why don’t you bend me over?”
Releasing his cock, I stand up, hook my fingers around the hem of the knee-length skirt I’ve been wearing since he first grabbed my hand days ago in the bank, and watch his eyes go wide as I slide it down and off.
No man has every looked at me the way he’s looking at me right now.
No man has ever made me feel like he does.
My skirt and panties touch the floor. Smiling, I do my best to gracefully step out of them and only wobble a little because of my injured foot. But the second I wobble, he’s on me. Grabbing me by the hips, holding me steady, and then spinning me around.
I plant my hands against the wall for stability.
I open my mouth and eyes wide because, the second I’m turned around, I feel his lips and tongue explore. Everywhere.
“Blaze,” I gasp. “Holy shit.”
“Do you know how many times I’ve thought about tasting every bit of the famous Saint Tiffany? How bad I’ve wanted to do this? Just hold on tight while I eat you out.”
I can’t retort. It’s all I can do to hold on and wish this wall had handles while his tongue explores me in ways that make my head spin and my knees weak. He doesn’t shy away, doesn’t hesitate, and he listens as I moan and encourage him to please me the way I want. Tongue, lips, fingers, everything, and soon I’m rocking my hips backward, grinding myself against his face as my legs shake and tightness forms in my tummy as I get so close to the orgasm I know will wreck me.
And, with a flick of his tongue and a crook of his finger, it does.
I break.
Shatter.
Scream and moan and shiver and come against his face. Writhing and pulsing, my entire body on fire, sensitive to even the slightest touch and begging for more.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” I moan.
His fingers run up my back, and the gentle touch nearly sends me to the ground. His lips touch my ear, and his hands slide around my body to my chest, caressing my tits.
“Are you ready?”
I can feel him behind me, hard, thick, aching to fill me just as much as I am aching to have him inside me. Yet, I know that the second I were to say something, anything confirming that I am not one-hundred percent wanting his cock inside
me, he’d stop.
Lucky for him, I want him.
Like I’ve never wanted any other man.
Because there is no other man like him.
“I am. Are you…?” I don’t know how to ask it. Don’t know if I want to even say it — oh, let’s break to go find a condom.
“My record isn’t clean, but I am.”
“Then, will you please and promptly fuck me?”
He chuckles. “With pleasure.”
My fingers claw into the wall and my mouth releases a moan that even the neighbors can hear as he fills me from behind. His hands grab me by the hips, take control of my body and, for the first time since I was hurt, giving up control of myself to another man doesn’t scare me; I want it; I crave it; I need it.
He fucks me like I’ve never been fucked; like no man ever has, like no other man could. He controls me, because I give myself to him. With no one else have I felt safe to offer everything, yet with him, I want to. With him, it’s different. Freeing.
And so much better.
“Saint Tiffany, no longer so saintly,” he rumbles as I rock my hips back into him, bucking against his thrusts, feeling his hardened lower abs crush against my ass.
“Would you have me be prim and proper, Blaze?” I say, looking at him over my shoulder. “No oral, just missionary under the covers, and with a shower right afterward?”
“Are you trying to make me go soft?”
I shut my eyes and loll my head back as he hits a particularly perfect spot inside me. Thunder shakes my body, and lightning courses my nerves in aftershocks.
“Blaze, I don’t believe that’s even possible.”
“That’s not the first time I’ve heard that,” he chuckles.
There’s a strained note beneath his voice. Tension, the sweetest kind, is waiting just around the bend.
And an urge tickles me. A need. Something that’s lurked at the edges of my desires and, with him, has come roaring to the forefront.
“Take me to the bed,” I moan. “I want to look you in the eyes while you come.”
It’s bliss and pain when he leaves me, a sense of loss and the anticipation that surges through my body knowing pleasure is just seconds away; it’s a race between us to the bed.
Then I’m looking up at him. Chiseled muscles, body hardened by a rough life, a rough career, marked with tattoos and the occasional scar, and his face — a ready smile, a smirk that makes my knees weak, and bright blue eyes that hold nothing back.
He fills me again. His face contorts in pleasure, and his eyes gaze at me with naked desire. I shake with each thrust, rock my hips against him, guiding his cock to fill me at just the right spot that tickles each of my nerves with fire. He adjusts, he listens, responds, cares, and fucks me exactly how I want.
But I still want more.
He makes me want to submit. Makes me feel safe to submit.
While pleasure thrums and builds inside me, I part my lips and whisper to him. “Put your hands on my throat.”
It takes a second for my words to reach him, to break through the formidable wall of pleasure. When it does, he looks me in the eyes.
“Is that what you really want?”
There’s no judgment in his voice; I nod.
“I feel safe with you,” I say.
He reaches down with one hand. Easy, just gentle pressure. Enough to feel him. Enough to send a forbidden thrill through my body — this is a powerful man I’m giving my body to.
My gasps and moans get a little shorter. My breathing gets a little harder. My head swims, my body hums, pleasure building and growing, intensified by the sensation of being wholly controlled by him. I shut my eyes, listen to him — his breathing, his moaning, the intensifying urgency of his lust as he approaches his climax.
I want to finish with him.
As he nears his peak, I lock my legs behind him. Clench tight to him with the legs he lusts after, and I pull him into me.
“I’m not letting you go.”
Five words break him. Turn this hardened titan to jelly. He clenches, he thrusts his hands onto the mattress to keep himself upright, and I feel him lose himself.
He doesn’t hold back. Because this man can’t hold back. His lips find mine, they hold them in a tight embrace while our bodies stay intertwined. It’s bliss.
In time, we part just enough for him to roll to his side on the bed.
“Fucking hell, Tiffany, you nearly killed me,” he gasps, falling to the side. “Give me a second to catch a breather and then I’ll be ready to almost die again.”
Laughing, I scoot closer to him, feel his arms envelop me, rest my head on one massive pectoral and listen to the thunderous rhythm of his heartbeat. I hope he knows my heart is beating for him, too.
I’ve never been this close to a man. With everyone else, it was about ambition, but with him, it’s about vulnerability. Honesty. Compassion. With my ear to his chest, I can hear the pump of the thing about him that I love the most: his tremendous heart.
But my brain won’t let me just enjoy the moment. This supreme and novel closeness; I never could rest on my laurels, even if it’s a kind of emotional contentment that’s better than I could have ever imagined; I need to be striving, working, thinking, doing.
I sit up. Look into his eyes. My damned brain overrides my heart — the part of me crying out to just enjoy the moment — and I say, “What do we do next?”
His eyes are only half open. Slightly-lidded, slightly-closed, and they turn lazily to me. There’s still a smile on his face, but it’s faded a little as I prod him back to work.
“What do you mean?”
“You went to this construction site. You saw Anna, her father, and the foreman meeting. There was nothing else, no details, nothing you heard or saw, that could be useful to us?”
Those lidded eyes look away from me and toward the ceiling. His heartbeat shifts, and a sigh fills his chest. The happiness behind my smile flees my face, and my lips stay curled upward only by force of will. Something’s off. Why do I feel like he’s withdrawing from me?
“Nothing, Tiffany. I told you everything I saw at that construction site.”
“You’re sure?”
“Would I lie to you?”
I think he might.
Chapter Eighteen
Blaze
“I don’t think you’re lying, I just want to make sure you’re telling me everything. Maybe there’s a detail that you don’t think is important, but could actually be important. Are you sure there’s nothing you’ve left out?” She says, taking her head off my chest and propping herself up on an elbow.
“I saw what I saw. And I told you everything,” I say.
It kills me to lie to her, but the last thing she needs to know right now is that her old man is neck-deep in this mess. She’s too fragile, she’s been through too much, and something like this could break her. As much as it hurts to keep this from her, it’d be harder for both of us if she was a wreck right now. There’ll be time to deal with her father later.
“Fine. I believe you, Blaze. But this leaves us in a tenuous position. We need more information to help your mother, but neither of us can exactly waltz back in to Southwest Regional and start asking questions and requesting paperwork.”
“And the lawyer wasn’t any help?”
“He wasn’t. No.”
“That seems crazy to me. It’s been my experience with lawyers that they’re happy to earn some cash and take on a case, even if it doesn’t have much hope of winning. Those bloodsucking bastards love money, no matter how they get it.”
She shrugs. “Well, this bloodsucking bastard wasn’t very interested in helping. That became apparent early on.”
Something about her answer raises the hairs on the back of my neck. A lawyer who doesn’t want to earn some easy cash from some hard-up people who are nearly out of options? It doesn’t add up.
“You’re sure that’s it?”
“Blaze, I’m sure.”
; “How much did you tell him? How much does he know about the mess we’re in?”
She shifts. “Not much. We just talked about your mother’s problems. When it became apparent that he wasn’t interested, I left.”
“How did you find this shitty lawyer who doesn’t want to work?”
She flinches. Her eyes whipsaw side to side for a second, as if searching for a way out. Yeah, something definitely isn’t right. Is Saint Tiffany lying to me?
“He went to Stanford, too. When I first moved back here, I looked up what Stanford alums were in the area. I had this stupid idea of maybe reconnecting with some of them, maybe to get the spark back to return to Stanford and finish my studies there. Or maybe I was just hoping to find someone to talk to. I hurt for a long time, Blaze, and I kept it all inside, and eventually it turned me into this self-pitying person who just wanted to wallow in mediocrity while bitching about it.”
Though I’m sure she’s hiding something, the pain that’s in her voice draws my hands to her, and I brush a few wavy brown hairs out of her face. Even now, I can’t resist trying to comfort her.
“You had no one else to talk to? No family?”
She shrugs. “My dad isn’t the emotional support type; he’s the Torreon tax assessor, and he lives for his work. Even more than I do. I haven’t really spoken to him since I came back from Stanford because I knew he’d be disappointed in me. And seeing that disappointment — even if I thought he’d understand — would just be too much. I met him for coffee once, just to tell him the so-called good news when I got hired at Southwest Regional because it was the first actual job I’d had after years of temping. The look on his face when I told him I was going to be a loan advisor at some rinky-dinky little bank really hurt. It was like he was in actual pain. I ended up taking my coffee to go cause I just couldn’t stand being there. And my mom is off somewhere. She and my dad divorced almost ten years ago and, last I heard, she was living in San Francisco, but planning to move to Miami with some boyfriend of hers.”
“Your dad’s the tax assessor?”
She nods. “He is. Has been for a long time. He’s pretty well connected with a lot of banks and businesses around here. Are you asking because you want to see if he’ll help your mom?”
