Cupcake (Complete Me #1)

by Sloan Kincaid

  “Jesus, Shep.” If any other man had referred to my breasts as tits, I would have been out the door, but with this one I found my arms hooking awkwardly behind my back to undo the hooks. I caught the garment before it fell, holding the pale lace to my chest, and watched as his eyes darkened.

  “Drop it, Cupcake.” I held on a second too long for his liking. With a low growl, he reached out and fisted the lace, tugging me forward. I held my breath, waiting for the kiss I saw coming, and he didn’t disappoint. Both of us had our hands tangled in my bra, crushed between our chests and binding us together. He claimed my lips with a kiss almost bruising in its intensity, his tongue demanding and gaining entrance.

  I gasped when he turned me and pressed me against the island where he’d been standing just a moment before. The cool tile was in front of me, the hard length of his body at my back.

  “I don’t like waiting.” He spoke matter-of-factly, his hands quickly cupping my breasts. The rough touch lit me on fire. “When I tell you to do something, you do it. Got it?”

  “What’s in it for me?” I couldn’t hold back the sass even as I pressed back against him, rubbing my ass against the rigid length of his denim-covered erection.

  His laugh was dark and warm against my neck. “You need a demonstration, huh? Greedy girl.”

  Moving his hands from my breasts, he slid them down along my arms until his fingers tangled with mine. He pressed my palms flat to the surface of the island and stepped back.

  I cried out.

  “Just be patient. You’ll get it.” I heard the rasp of his zipper, the sound of denim falling to the ground. The sound of a jar being opened.

  Anticipation thickened the air. I no longer cared if this was responsible, no longer cared how I would feel tomorrow. I just wanted everything that Shep was going to give me.

  “Look at that. You didn’t move an inch.” The smugness in his rough voice pleased me. “You must want it bad.”

  I found myself nodding, though my throat was too dry to respond. I did. I did want it bad.

  I heard the slick sound of his hands rubbing together, wondered at it, and then those calloused palms were back on my breasts, the scent of coconuts drifting up toward my nose.

  “These are mine now.” Coconut oil. He’d gotten a handful of coconut oil, and now he was stroking it up over my breasts. He covered them in the slickness, then circled back down and did it again, those rough hands scraping over my nipples.

  “Shep!” More. This was just a tease—a delicious one, but I needed more. He chuckled, and he moved from the slow sweeping motions to a soft, repeating pinch on those tips. The oil eased his way, skin gliding over skin until I wanted to scream.

  “You want it,” he murmured as his caresses changed yet again. Scissoring his fingers, he caught the tips of my breasts between them, again and again. I’d never come just from breast play, but then again, Max had never touched me like this.

  “Say it,” he ordered suddenly, the movements of his becoming harder, more insistent. Liquid heat surged between my thighs, and my hands slid off the countertop as I arched back against him.

  “What?” Turning my head, I tried to capture his lips in another kiss, but he turned his head, even as he continued to torture me with those firm rubs of my chest.

  “Say you want it.” Through my lust-fuelled fog, I caught a note of something that sounded a bit vulnerable beneath the dominance in his tone. “You said no so many times. And I know I’m a bossy bastard. Say you want it. Say you want me. I need to hear it.”

  My pulse stuttered, and I felt a moment of terror before the endorphin high of emotion. I wasn’t the only one putting myself out there.

  At that moment, I fell, hard.

  “I want you, Shep.” I chose my words deliberately. He shuddered out a groan, yanking me back against him and pressing into the denim-covered curve of my ass.

  “I wanted to make you wait this first time, like you made me.” He sank his teeth into my shoulder hard enough that I knew I would have a mark in the morning. I should have protested, but instead, I thrilled to it. “But you’re here to do what I want, and what I want is to fuck that tight pussy until you scream, then leave my come on your back.”

  My excitement ratcheted up to unbearable levels. I needed to crawl out of my skin and into his. Bracing my hands on the counter again, I pushed back against him, hard, as aggressive as I’d ever been.

  “Do it,” I insisted, savoring his hiss when I ground against his erection. “I want you too.”

  “I know.” I gasped when he hooked his fingers on either side of my waistband and tugged my jeans and panties down together. They caught just under the bottom curve of my ass, and he left them there. I knew he could see my folds, wet and glistening, and almost cried with the need for him to touch.

  I heard the rip of foil, knew he was smoothing latex over his length, and craned my neck to see. He halted my quest for a visual, fisting his hand in the chin-length strands of my blonde hair and tugging. The sting urged me on, and I growled.

  “You dirty girl.” His free hand caught my hip, helped me slide up belly first onto the island. The tile was cold, the oil on my chest easing my movements as he positioned me with my ass sticking out, legs bound together and dangling, not long enough to reach the floor. “I knew you would be, the first time I saw you. You were sitting there, all prim and proper in class, wearing those tights that showed off your ass. I knew you’d get wild. Knew you were perfect for me.”

  My pulse stuttered again, and then he slid two fingers inside me, scissoring open inside my waiting heat, and I knew nothing but sensation.

  “You’re wet.” He pulled his fingers from my slickness, and I cried out, only to be silenced by satisfaction when he pressed the head of his cock to my folds. “And it’s all for me.”

  “It is,” I agreed breathlessly, rocking my hips, the sting of his grip on my hair urging me on. I would have done anything, said anything, just to ease this ache, this need that was steadily growing. “I need you, Shep. Please.”

  He liked that. Keeping a fist in my hair, the other slid down to get a good grip on my waist, something to anchor him as he thrust once, hard.

  “What was it that Fifty Shades fucker said?” He panted into my ear as he met resistance, rocked, and slid in the final inch as I cried out. “That he didn’t make love, he fucked hard? Smart dude.”

  “Shep—I can’t—I don’t—”

  “It’ll fit.” The smugness in his voice both infuriated me and made me hotter, and I struggled against his hold on me.

  I was anchored firmly by that massive cock—Jesus, I needed to get a look at this thing—so I settled for using my words. “Quoting Fifty Shades? Getting in touch with your womanly side?”

  “I watched the movie.” Slowly he pulled back, giving me a moment of relief before working back in, even further if it was possible. “If you’re a good girl, we’ll watch it on Netflix later. Maybe re-enact some of the scenes.”

  The thought of Shep with a flogger in hand combined with his insistent touch as slid his hand from my hip to my clit was more than I could take. I came, stars dancing before my eyes as I screamed—actually screamed—and clenched around his cock.

  “God, Anna.” Letting go of my hair, he grabbed my ass cheek and started to pump. “I wanted to go slower, but Jesus, woman. You’re so fucking hot. So wet and swollen around my cock.”

  I shuddered through his thrusts, which were hard and full of his own need. I felt the tremor pass through him just a moment before he pulled out of my slickness. He snapped the latex off of his erection, and I heard a slick sound that told me he was pumping himself. Moments later, I felt liquid heat splatter across my lower back, and my sigh of pleasure mixed with his groan of satisfaction as he spoke, just one word.

  “Mine.”

  8

  I woke up under one of Shep’s massive arms. The digital clock on the bedside table read 3:05 in stark red letters. The window was slightly ajar, and in the dis
tance, I could hear a distant siren. I stretched, noting the soreness in my body, the musk of sex that clung to my skin.

  I wanted to laugh as I recalled the night before. We’d used each other hard. After that first time in the kitchen, Shep had followed through on his threat, renting the first Fifty Shades of Grey movie and teasing me with his fingers throughout the whole fucking thing. I’d responded to his touch with an intensity I hadn’t known was inside of me.

  It was that intensity that scared the shit out of me. That moment of vulnerability between us, where I’d felt my heart start to engage…

  What have I done?

  Had I just undone all my independence in a few short hours?

  I couldn’t take the chance.

  I slipped out from under Shep’s arm, found my jeans on the floor in the moonlight, and slipped them on. Shep shuffled behind me. I glanced over my shoulder at him. He’d rolled over but still seemed to be asleep, and all I could see was his bare back. I plopped down on the floor, pulled on my shoes, and then pulled my shirt from the lampshade and tugged it onto my arms.

  On the way out, the spaghetti caught my eye. In the dim light provided by the glow of the microwave clock, I estimated that the spaghetti looked pretty much done. Quiet as a mouse, I pulled a large bowl down from the cabinet and stuck it on the counter next to the stove. I dumped the pasta into the bowl with the sauce on top, covered it in saran wrap, and set it in the fridge with the can of sliced olives beside it.

  Thus accomplished I let myself out the apartment door and into the hallway. As the door thumped shut behind me, I paused. Was this the right thing to do? Shep was a good guy—did he deserve to wake up to find an empty bed at his side? Then again, how many one-night-stands had he had? Had Kendra from class woken up one morning expecting to see Shep and found only an empty pillow instead?

  I shook my head. No, this wasn’t an act of viciousness. I wasn’t getting back at Shep for whatever he might have done in the past. No, this was an act of responsibility—this was Anna Kent finally acting like a damn grown-up. This whole situation with Shep had already spiraled out of control, and I was taking the first steps into fixing it. I’d let this mess happen; I’d let it get as far as it had gone. Now I was taking steps to make things right. Would it hurt? Yeah, probably. It wasn’t anything new, though.

  Shep and I were at different places in our lives. We just weren’t meant to be together. Our relationship was already on a collision course; I was just taking the wheel and mitigating damage.

  Taking a deep breath, I checked to make sure Shep’s apartment door was fully closed and started down the hallway, reaching into my purse for my car keys.

  9

  “He never called you this morning?”

  “No! No call, no text. We whammed, we bammed, but there was no thank-you-ma'am.”

  Lisa was one of my younger sisters; I knew hen she was annoyed. There was irritated Lisa, and there was annoyed Lisa. This was the latter. Her voice had an edge – not just any edge, but one laced with acid. “Did he say he was going to call?” I asked.

  “Yeah, he did,” Lisa snarled. “He said he’d call me first thing. He said we’d have the day together. Then I wake up and find the bed empty, no note. I waited all morning for him to call, nothing.”

  I wake up and find the bed empty. I tensed while Lisa said that.

  “Maybe he had to work. Like, maybe he got called in or something,” I offered.

  “Nope,” Lisa said, her voice like a brick wall. “He said he had the day off, and that he’d worked – I don’t know, eight or nine days in a row – and that there was no way in hell he was working one more consecutive day.”

  “I’m sure he just got busy or something,” I said. What else was I going to say? Lisa was talking about some guy she’d met who worked up North, on the oil rigs. These were guys who worked hard, but they weren’t in town a lot, so I didn’t know what she’d been expecting. Frankly, I couldn’t figure out why she’d moved all the way out here from the city in the first place—it wasn’t like she had a job out here that she couldn’t get there, or like she was married and had a husband that wanted to move—but that was a conversation we’d had many times in the past, all of which I’d lost. So I’d put it to bed.

  On the other end of the line, Lisa sighed. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. Why is it so hard to call someone the day after you have sex with them?”

  “Beats me,” I said. My stomach tightened.

  “Whatever. Listen, I have to clean up the house before I pick Shayna up from the Groomer. I’m going to have to let you go.”

  I withdrew my phone from my head long enough to look at the screen. The class would be starting in forty-five minutes. “Sure, I have to get going too. The parking down at the college is a nightmare if I get there too late, and I’ve already been late for class twice.”

  “Well, get a move-on,” Lisa said. “Say, how’s that project going? The business one, with—what was his name? Sherpa?”

  “Shep,” I corrected, a little quicker than I’d wanted. “It’s short for Shepherd, I guess. And yeah, it’s going great.”

  “Is he cute?”

  Ugh. Don’t get me started.

  “Yeah, he’s all right,” I said, struggling to keep my cool. “I mean, he’s in his twenties, so he’s pretty immature.”

  Right, he’s the kind of guy that will have sex with you and then tiptoe out of your house at three in the morning because he’s having a damn mid-life crisis. Oh wait, that wasn’t Shep, was it?

  “I know what you mean. Well, keep it up. I’m proud of you, sis.”

  “Thanks, Lisa. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  On the way to class, I got to thinking about Lisa and her man troubles. I hadn’t had the heart to tell her that what she was describing, the thing that had her practically tearing the house apart in a white-hot rage, was the very thing I’d done just a couple of nights earlier. How could I? I was Anna; I was supposed to be the older sister. The one who’d stepped I to be the adult when my Mom acted like a teenager. The one with her shit together.

  And that all worked great when it came to things I knew how to do. Things I didn’t know how to do? Manage a relationship, for one. I’d already gotten into a relationship with one jerk, and it looked like I was well on my way to turning my current one into a train wreck. How was it possible to do right when I feel like I’m being forced to choose between the lesser of two evils?

  As I walked into class two minutes late, I dreaded the next hour. Not because of what Shep would do but because of what he wouldn’t, which was acknowledge my existence. I averted my eyes as I walked in, pretending to be looking at my phone, waiting until I caught a glimpse of Shep settling into his seat. And there he remained for the entire class period in his ultra-laid back posture—slightly slouched, one elbow draped over the back of the chair, eyes half-knit and nonchalant. Again I spent the whole class period looking at him—‘eye fucking him’, as Shep would say—and wondering what he was thinking. Was he angry at me? Did he understand why I’d left? Did he just not care? Was I just another girl in his bed?

  Class ended. I didn’t dawdle this time and instead packed up my things, slung my purse over my shoulder, and made a beeline for the door. Shep took his time as per usual. As I was exiting the door, Shep was just about standing up and beginning to saunter out of the room. He didn’t call after me.

  I slipped through throngs of people on my way to the door and stepped outside into the brisk air and mid-morning sunlight. The undersides of my shoes thudded against the granite steps as I plodded down toward the parking lot. Okay, that could have gone better, but I couldn’t keep doing this. The semester wasn’t even half over. What, was I going to just ignore him for the next two months? Pretend like nothing had ever happened? Pretend I hadn’t shown up at his garage and then spent half the evening in his bed, riding him like a cowgirl on a goddamn stallion? No, I’d have to deal with this sooner or later. We’d have to talk about it, find some reso
lution. But what would we talk about? How would I start the –

  “Anna.”

  My pulse stuttered—had Shep followed me after all? I looked up with a start and came to a skidding halt. The crease in my brow—the one Shep had told me to get rid of—came back in full force.

  “Max,” I said, with a decidedly unenthusiastic tone. “What are you doing here?”

  He looked to be on his lunch break, as he was dressed in a dark brown suit with a crimson tie, his black hair slicked straight back. Max shook his head slowly and looked at the building from which I’d just emerged. “I just thought I’d stop by, see where my money was going.”

  Oh, here we go. I knew where this was going. I knew exactly where it was going. “It’s not your money, Max. You agreed—”

  “I know what I agreed to!” Max snarled, turning to me. “I agreed to pay for college tuition under the understanding that you’d be getting a degree. I’m not so sure those are entirely accurate terms?”

  I crossed my arms. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Anna, look. I told you, I’m getting married in a few months.” For whatever reason, hearing Max say that made my blood boil. Was it jealousy? No, I didn’t think so. It was more the knowledge that I knew why he was saying it—he was saying it to remind me of just how successful he was. You were nothing to me. We divorced, and I was able to scoop up another partner in a few weeks. What’s your major malfunction?

  “Yeah,” I said, my teeth gritted. “You mentioned that.”

  “That means I need money. For the wedding ceremony. Jennifer—her tastes are a little more refined than yours. She wants a classy wedding. That means money.”

  “So get a job at Burger King,” I said. I’d heard about enough of this. I moved to step past Max, but he grabbed my shoulder.

  “Stop kidding yourself, Anna,” Max said. “Admit it. This is some mid-life crisis you’re having. You think you’re going to go back to school, get some fancy degree, and everything will work out peachy for you. Right?”