by S. E. Harmon
“Maybe I won’t always be.”
“What does that even mean?” He just blinked at me with those burnished green eyes. I was hard-pressed not to growl. Frankly, when it came to cryptic shit that took me ages to puzzle out, I was all set. “You never did tell me your name.”
After a moment of hesitation, he gave me a bloody smile. His teeth were chipped and broken. Red dripped down his neck from a wound I couldn’t see—judging from the sudden matted state of his hair, it was probably on the back of his head. “My name is Joseph,” he said, “but you should already know that.”
With a start, I realized he was getting wispier, blending into the fog. “You have a last name, Joseph?”
“Now maybe you’ll ride the carousel with me,” he said wistfully. I could barely see him anymore, just swirls of fog that took the shape of the storm. But I could still hear him in my head, angry and puzzled at my reluctance to play.
Why won’t you ride the carousel with me?
A bit of the fog floated around me before winding sinuously around my wrist. I pulled back, but the mist was like glue. Another trail of fog locked around my other wrist, and I gasped. I yanked at the fog holding me in place, but it was like trying to break through concrete with my bare hands.
“Joseph,” I said firmly. “You need to send me back. I can’t stay here with you in a dream, no matter how much you miss Alex.”
Not just yet. First, we should have a little fun.
“I’m going to find out who you are and what happened to you, but I can’t do it here.” I tugged at my bonds and made a sound of exasperation when they held. “I’m going to help you.”
You’re going to love me, he promised, sight unseen. I’ll make sure of that.
“Send me back.”
Now?
“Yes, now.” My tone brooked no opposition. “Right fucking now.”
A crack of lightning split the air, and I woke with a gasp, only to find my vision obscured by bright blue terry cloth. I fought the fabric for a few moments until it came off my head. I blinked up at Danny, who was toweling me off furiously.
I spat out a mouthful of lint. “What the hell are you doing?” I asked, a little bewildered.
“What am I doing?” He gave a harsh laugh. “What am I doing?”
His tone and aggressive toweling gave me pause. “What are you doing… please?” I tried cautiously.
“I’m drying you off.”
“Yes, I see that.” I looked down at my naked body. My very damp, naked body. I was pretty sure I’d gone to bed in pajama bottoms. My parents were one room over, after all. Thou shalt not bare ass it when thy parents are sleeping over. I’m pretty sure that’s in the book of Genesis.
Chilled to the bone, I gave a little shiver. “Should I even ask?”
“Well, long story fucking short, you went out in the middle of a fucking hurricane. And I’m not even asking why.” His trumped-up irritation was doing a shitty job of masking his residual fear. “I’m not asking why you kept saying the name Joseph, either. Or why you kept babbling about not riding a carousel.”
“You’re not?”
“No, I’m not.” He held out a dry pair of pajama pants. “Because then you’re going to answer those questions, and the answers would drive me crazy. And with your parents here, we are officially at max capacity for crazy in this house.”
There was no proper response to that. I took the pants and busied myself pulling them on. I glanced at him a few times as he rummaged through a side drawer. The silence in the room was thick and oppressive. Danny seemed serious about not wanting those elusive answers, which was great because I didn’t have any.
He closed the drawer none to gently and stalked over to the mattress. I watched him lay down on it gingerly, and after a brief pause, I joined him. Then he held out the handcuffs.
I smiled in relief. Oh, good. He couldn’t be all that mad if we were going to have all the kinky sex. I held out my wrist before he could even ask. Just call me Grandmaster Kink. Let’s do this.
He handcuffed my hand to his and tugged on it a little, making sure the cuffs didn’t bite into our skin. “Comfortable?”
I waggled my eyebrows. “Very.”
He pushed the off button on the lantern beside the bed, and I nodded with approval. I liked sex with the light on—I was a bit of a libertine that way—but sex in the dark was up there on my hell-to-the-yeah list.
But then nothing happened. He just lay there. I reached over and turned the lantern back on. He squinted at me in the artificial light. “I guess I should’ve asked if you’d rather be on top.”
I would, yes. But in my scenario, I had a dick up my ass. I pushed the power button on the lantern and darkness fell again. I sighed. “I take that to mean we’re not having all the kinky sex.”
“Not with your parents next door, we’re not.”
I rattled the cuffs. “Then let me out of these things.”
“My first reaction is no, but that seems unfair.” He pretended to think for a few seconds. “Yeah, it’s still very much a no.”
“This isn’t amusing.”
“No, it certainly wasn’t amusing to find you in the middle of a hurricane. You also can’t assure me that it won’t happen again, and I don’t know if I’ll wake up in time if it does. That’s not a risk I’m willing to take.”
“Surely we have other options,” I said, my tone laced with exasperation.
He pressed a kiss in my damp hair. “Anything that involves losing you is never an option.”
I grumbled a bit because, well, I’m me, but I couldn’t argue with that. I had to stop being disarmed when Danny was unexpectedly sweet. He was starting to catch on.
I wriggled around a bit, trying to get comfortable. After the third time my elbow connected with his stomach, he sighed and pulled me on top of him. Yep, that was better. I settled my cheek on his shoulder. In the darkness, I couldn’t see much more than the slope of his nose and the curve of his mouth.
From the sound of the light rain against the shutters, the storm had abated. Knowing hurricanes as I did, we were probably past the worst of it. All that was left was to ride out the lingering inclement weather and then take stock of the damage.
Too bad being a medium couldn’t be like a hurricane. It wasn’t capable of raging through my life and leaving the next morning. I’d learned the hard way that the ghosts were here to stay.
I couldn’t help but wonder about Joseph. Who was he? What happened to him? And who was this Alex person he mistook me for? Judging from Joseph’s injuries, he’d been shot in the head. No mistakes. No accidental shooting. Someone had walked up behind him, jammed a gun in the back of his head, pulled the trigger, and walked away.
Merciless.
I made plans to ask a favor of an old contact from the Bureau, Chevrolet Sullivan. She would bitch and moan, of course, but I had no doubt she would help me. Chevy had been the closest thing I’d had to a friend at the FBI. Other than the occasional lunch, our relationship had mostly been in a professional capacity, but that was still worth something.
“Stop staring at me and go to sleep,” Danny said.
I huffed out a laugh. “How can you even tell?”
“I know you.”
So he kept telling me. Maybe, one day, it would finally sink in. I traced the tattoos on Danny’s forearm silently, knowing it was going to be a long time before I fell asleep again… unless I had some assistance.
I kissed his neck, right where I knew he was the most sensitive. He ignored me, resettling against his pillow, but he didn’t move his neck one iota either. I flicked my tongue against the spot next and then worried the sensitive patch of skin with my teeth.
“No,” he said warningly, even as he helplessly bared his neck. “Not a chance.”
I could feel him growing underneath me, already hard and long enough to make my mouth water. I sucked the patch of skin delicately, hoping his usually formidable self-control would crumble like cobbler topping. �
��Why not?”
“Your parents are next door,” he hissed, “and I’d like to look them in the eyes again.”
We’d given them our bedroom, choosing to bed down in my office. With the chairs and desk up against the wall, the room was now ninety-percent air mattress.
I made a dismissive noise. “The walls are plenty thick. Now let me out of these things.” I was all for handcuff sex, but it was starting to look like he was going to need a little hands-on encouragement. “I’ll let you put them back on afterward. Scouts honor.”
I could tell he was warring with his better judgment. I waited patiently, keeping the faith that horniness would win the battle. I could see the moment he internally told Better Judgment to get lost.
He swore and leaned over to get the key. I hummed in satisfaction. “It’ll be all right, I promise. I earned my Having Sex Quietly merit badge in college.” At his decidedly arch look, I clarified. “Stop looking at me like I had a channel on Pornhub. I got a blowjob in the stacks from my boyfriend. My steady boyfriend.”
“Still.” He huffed. “Who has sex in a library?”
“We needed a reward after six hours of studying, and the Doritos and Red Bull we snuck in weren’t cutting it.”
“Which boyfriend was this, anyway?”
“Didn’t we already have this conversation?” I was eager to get on to other, more interesting things. “Take your pants off.”
He ignored my request. “That was about shower sex, not library sex,” he grumbled. “It’s not that creep who still sends you birthday messages on Facebook, is it?”
“You want to keep talking about Mark, or you want to work out your frustrations on my ass?” I held out my cuffed wrist, and with a huff, he worked the key in the lock. “And since when do I have to cajole you into sex?”
“Since your parents moved in to our bedroom.” He cast another apprehensive glance at the wall.
“Please don’t use the words my parents and moved in. I think that qualifies as an incantation when used in the same sentence.” I sent him a suggestive look. “Pants. Off.”
My wrist unshackled, I was free to pin him to the mattress. The key pinged on the floor beside the bed, but neither of us paid it any mind as I started a slow grind on his dick. “We have to be quiet,” he gasped.
“I could be quieter if I didn’t have to keep asking you to take off your pants,” I said exasperatedly. “We’ll be quiet as church mice.”
Wildly inappropriate, all too perverted church mice.
“Really,” he said skeptically.
“Trust me.”
That brought a crooked little smile to his face. It had been a suggestion, not a question, but he answered anyway. “Always.”
Never let it be said Rain Christiansen can’t admit when he’s wrong. I don’t think I’ve ever been so wrong, and that’s saying something. If it matters, I realized it rather quickly. Apparently, fucking on a squeaky air mattress rated pretty high on the decibel charts, probably right behind rockets and blue whales. I was just hoping that I hadn’t overestimated the wall thickness between the rooms. Even if I had, it was a little late to alter course.
Correction, I was too horny to alter course.
“Harder,” I gritted out, spreading my legs wider. Now on my back, I dug my heels into the mattress for better traction, and it let out another wheeze of protest.
“It’s a fucking air mattress,” Danny managed as he slid inside of me again, maintaining that same cautious rhythm. “There is no harder unless you want to pop the damned thing.”
Be my guest. I never really cared for air furniture anyway. As long as he just kept giving me that dick, I didn’t care. “Oh, fuuuck,” I groaned as he did just that. “More, I need more.”
“Shhh.” He put a hand over my mouth but didn’t stop fucking me, which was a win in my book. I gave up on waiting for him to give it to me hard and bucked up, working my hips in a faster rhythm. A squeakier rhythm.
“Shhh,” he said more urgently this time, pressing his hand down farther over my mouth. I licked his palm slowly, thoroughly, and he pulsed inside of me. By the time I started on his fingers, slipping my tongue up, down, and between each digit, it was his turn to break the noise rule.
“God,” he growled as I sucked his pointer finger in my mouth. “How am I supposed to hold back when you do shit like that?”
“Exactly when have I ever wanted you to hold back?” I demanded.
I hadn’t quite seen that particular expression on his face before, a blend of apprehension and pure bliss, as he continued to rock into me gently. I wasn’t sure which he was trying to avoid more—the squeaking of the mattress sliding against the floor or the slapping of skin against skin. Either way, it was turning me on and frustrating me in equal measure.
Fed up with his caution, I finally bucked him off. He flopped on his back, panting up at the ceiling. “I told you we shouldn’t do this right now. Quiet sex is not for us. Never has been.”
“And I told you that there’s no better way to ride out a hurricane.” I got on top, straddling him, a knee on either side of his waist. I had a gratifying moment as his eyes widened in alarm. He let out a choking, gasping noise as I took him back inside me in one slow, smooth glide.
I braced my hands on either side of his head, channeling my best pirate from Captain Phillips. “Look at me,” I said sternly. “I am the captain now.”
He let out a wheezy noise, grabbing my ass with both hands. “Don’t make me laugh. We’re already loud enough.”
I knew we had to be quieter. I knew that. But now that I could take him as deep as I wanted, I was starting to care less and less. I rode him hard, as fast as my working hips and thighs would allow. My aching cock jutted out proudly, slapping against my stomach each time I came down on that dick.
Danny’s token protests dried up as he watched the obscene rhythm of my cock, his mouth a little slack. That intense gaze drifted up to my stomach, then up farther to nipples, gone diamond hard. By the time he got to my face, my cheeks were flushed with both arousal and embarrassment—not from the sight and sounds—because he could see just how desperate I was to be fucked.
There was nothing wrong with that need. On a conscious level, I knew that. We’d talked about it rationally when we weren’t in a fog of arousal. We were comfortable with our roles. We switched things up every blue moon, but most of the time, I needed him to fuck me and fuck me hard.
It had nothing to do with stereotypical roles, but about getting what we both needed. My job often put me in high-stress situations where I had to make snap decisions, the right decisions, and stand by them. If I made the wrong choice, someone could die. Depending on the circumstance, that someone could be me.
Control was more than a requirement; it was a necessity. Sex with Danny was about shelving all that and letting my instincts take over. Bottom line? My body had spoken, and Dick was never getting voted off the island.
“I hope you’re close,” he told me, his voice like gravel.
“Is that your way of telling me you are?”
“Fuck yes,” he managed. “I’m this close to filling you up.”
God, he was so lewd sometimes. I only wished I didn’t love it so much. Or that I could hide it better. Whatever he saw on my face made him grin. “You like that, huh? You like thinking about your ass dripping with my—”
I slapped a hand over his mouth, muffling his words and the chuckle that ensued. In retaliation, he reached out and started jacking me off, slicked by the copious fluid leaking from my cock.
I barely remembered to abort my moan and pursed my lips tightly, where it vibrated against my teeth. The sensation of him, hard and long in my ass, just thick enough to be wonderfully intrusive, and his hand working my cock with a knowing grip was almost too much pleasure on both ends. I leaned down farther to relieve the ache in my thighs, and he took advantage of my position to meet me for a slow, drugging kiss.
His hand dropped away from my cock, and I made a des
perate noise that he swallowed with his mouth. His hand anchored in my hair and pulled me down flat against him. His upraised knees provided a perfect cradle for my rear. “Relax,” he whispered against my hair.
“Easy for you to say,” I murmured, my nose buried against his neck.
I licked a path up his neck again, and he shivered. It was always like this when we fucked—every zone became erogenous, even something as ordinary as a neck. I set my teeth to the skin there for the third time that day, and he jumped. Then he slapped my ass in retribution, hard.
I tightened around him involuntarily, causing us both to hiss. “That’s… not exactly the deterrent you seem to think it is.”
“Goddamn it, Christiansen, you’re like a freaking vampire today.” He sounded vaguely amused. “I told you not to fucking mark me.”
“But you’re so fucking markable,” I said, going after his earlobe this time.
He could say what he wanted, but the slight bite of pain got his engine revving even more. His hands tightened on my ass again, and he started moving me up and down on his dick, noise be damned. I tried to match his rhythm, but he slapped my ass again. I finally gave up trying to steer the fucking ship and concentrated on not making a sound. I was mostly successful, until he pulled almost all the way out, catching on my sensitive rim. I moaned helplessly as he surged back in with no hesitation.
I shook against him, unsteady, grateful that I just had to hang on for the ride. The only sounds in the room other than the beating of rain against the shutters were skin on skin, his grunts, and the gasps I couldn’t quite hold in. My orgasm hit me unexpectedly, causing me to stiffen and cry out. He shushed me, swallowing the rest of my cry with his mouth, even as he followed me over the edge.
It took me a few moments to come down from the high, endorphins surging through my body and all synapses exploding like fireworks. His hand, rough and calloused, ran up and down my back in soothing circles as he murmured something against my ear. I was too out of it to process many of the words, but I caught “love you” and “so fucking much,” with a “sweetheart” somewhere in between.
He murmured something I couldn’t quite catch.
