Have I kissed anyone since him? With his hands on my body again, I can’t remember. His hand fumbles with my hair clip, ripping it out and tossing it aside. My long, dark hair tumbles down in waves from the bun and he winds his fingers in it, grabbing a fistful. Despite the primal need for him that torches every nerve in my body, my blood hums with satisfaction that even after all this time he’s desperate for me as well.
Just inside the bedroom he sets me down and we’re both overwhelmed with hands on a mission. There’s nothing gentle in our frantic efforts to free our bodies from the material keeping us apart.
I gouge his belly with my fingernails unbuttoning his jeans.
The hook to my bra scrapes my back when he yanks it off.
Fabric torn away so fast there’s nothing left but friction burns. In seconds, the only thing between us are hard nipples and a harder cock and I shove him backwards onto the bed and climb on top.
I remember every scar on this pale chest, though more have faded to silvery white instead of the angry pink they were when I was eighteen.
Where have you been? I glare down.
I’m here now, his eyes say.
His six pack has turned to eight and that chiseled V, pointing the way to his engorged cock. Even his balls are hard. Good. I hope he wants me so much it hurts. I straddle him and trap his hardness between my pubic bone and his belly, and grind.
His cock twitches between us, and I lean down, taking a smooth nipple in my mouth. Men’s nipples tend to be more sensitive than women’s, probably because they get overlooked most of the time. I suck it hard and he groans and reaches up, palming my breasts, deftly thumbing the nipples into aching peaks.
I hate how he’s able to affect me so much even now, after all the experience I’ve garnered throughout the years. With Mark James, control is a silk flag flying away in a strong breeze: always just out of reach, snapping at your fingers, tantalizing you into continuing the chase. Just when you think you’ve got it...
I leave a vicious hickey on the side of his neck.
His hands brand my back with the heat of their touch, leaving want behind. I fumble for the drawer in my nightstand and unroll the condom on him before common sense catches up with me and makes me stop this bad decision I’m about to make.
I need this.
Seven years of separation evaporate as I sink onto his hard cock and punish him with my hips, knowing my face is saying everything to him, but unable to stop.
I missed you.
I hate you.
You made me.
You broke me.
His touch burns my hips, and I force his hands to the bed, pinning his wrists. “Don’t move.”
He obeys as I scratch my name onto his chest, needing to mark him like he marked me, only his scratches were inside me where no one else could see his name on the broken pieces of my heart.
A blush crawls up the pale skin of his chest and neck, and I lean down and bite his collarbone just hard enough so there will be a bruise tomorrow when he’s vanished back to wherever he came from.
My heart stutters. Shut up, brain.
I fuck him harder to drive the past away.
What gave him the right to take the heart I offered and then abandon me when I needed him?
His hips buck up to meet mine.
Why couldn’t I scratch him out?
His hands caress my waist and breasts.
Why did I let him in again?
His gaze threatens to capture me again until I never want anyone else looking up at me with a hunger that makes me shiver with pleasure.
Why is he different from every other lover I’ve had?
I slam down onto him harder and harder, crying out when his cock hits too deeply and pain mingles with the pleasure. I lean forward, splaying my hands over his collarbones, touching my thumbs at the base of his throat, collaring him with my hands to see how that would look, but mostly because I want him to feel the difference between me being his and him being mine.
I’m not giving him pleasure, I’m taking it from him.
I want him to know I’m using him to make it better and he needs to lie here and take it.
He keeps his hands on the mattress, but moves his head to kiss my wrist while keeping those illegally blue eyes fixed on mine.
“I missed you, Tessa.”
My hips stall as a sob strangles me.
CHAPTER FIVE
Mark
Oh, God, no. I spring up and wrap my arms around her.
“Let it out.” I smooth her hair.
She jerks away from my touch.
I hold her tighter. “Hey. Look at me.”
Seven years later and she still responds to me immediately, though the resentment radiating from her eyes is new.
“Tessa, I’m sorry for the way I left. I’m sorry—”
“You never even said goodbye.” Her voice cracks on the last word.
“I never had the option to, but I’ve thought of you every day. I never stopped missing you. It broke me to leave your side.”
Her lips twist into a grimace. “What do you know about being broken?”
“More than you’d think.”
Something in her breaks and tears decorate her cheeks, but something’s eased inside her as well—her breathing deepens and her body relaxes. Even better than the feeling of her on my cock, is her being in my arms again.
She’s alive and strong and fierce. Safe. When I think about how close she came to dying...
I cradle her face and bring my lips back to hers. Our gentle kiss tastes like salt, broken trust, and the past being bridged just a little bit.
But some bridges burn, and soon we’re devouring each other again, bodies and hearts seeking frantic release. I’m already buried in her, but I want more, it’s not enough.
What if she’d died? When would I have found out? Would it have been years later, stumbling upon the news in an old bio of her father’s when I got curious about her?
The only woman I ever loved almost killed herself and I didn’t know about it for years and years.
How could there be a world without her in it?
Kissing so deeply there’s barely room for air, we roll around fighting for the top with our bodies. I win, but barely. She smiles against my lips.
I fuck her hard.
Her fingernails dig into my ass. “Harder.”
I fuck her as hard as I can, until her words dry up and my fear begins draining out of me. Pain drains from her eyes, as fear probably drains from mine, until one thrust at a time, our movements become less frantic and more sensual. I slow down, and pull back to suck one of her hard nipples into my mouth, rasp my tongue across the tip the way she used to like. She moans and her hands alternate from squeezing my ass to stroking my back and threading themselves into my hair.
She still likes it.
This time when our mouths meet, there’s the ghost of a smile on her lips.
A part of me used to beat myself up about the things I did with Tessa when she was too young. The twisted part of my brain that told me I deserved all the horrible things that had ever happened to me whispered that I only wanted her because she was off-limits, forbidden fruit.
That voice is crushed under the realization that I want her more now. I wanted her then because of who she was. I still want her now because of who she is. Back then I was the experienced one. Now time’s made me her slave. Her eyes always had that knowing look in them, only now she’s seasoned and smoky as well as sweet and supple and I’m lost in her touch.
We crash together and slide apart in an almost brutal sensuality. Why did I ever leave Tessa Winters? I was dead until she touched me. I died again when I left.
She brings me to life.
Her pussy clamps down on my dick, forcing me to come with her in long pulses of heat.
This time when she moves for the top, I don’t fight it, rolling so she’s stretched out on top of me, face pressed into the place where my neck meets my chest.
She grabs a few hairs on my jaw and tugs. “You need a shave, Red.”
I laugh. “Maybe I should grow a beard.”
“No.”
“No? I thought you liked my scruff.”
Her laughter puffs across my skin. “God no, it looks ridiculous. I just liked how it felt scratching against my thighs. I savored that beard burn between stolen moments.”
I squeeze her tight, regret and affection choking my words.
“Where have you been the past seven years?”
I sigh. “All over the place.”
She rolls off me and sits like a mermaid on a rock, legs together but curled under her. “Be specific.” Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes.
“Deserts, mostly.”
She sags. “You went back to serve?”
“Not like I had a choice.” Bitterness twists my mouth into a frown and I try to shake the past away. “Came back a year or so ago.”
“Did it have anything to do with this?” She gently runs her hand down my leg, but the sight of her perfect fingers tracing my scarred calf slams something shut inside me and I pull away from her touch. She was too good for me then and that was before I got fucked up in combat. I hurt her so bad before, who’s to say I wouldn’t do it again, leave her worse off than before? I couldn’t bear it.
“Mark?”
I shake my head and scoot to the edge of the bed, pulling the condom off and tossing it in the small garbage basket by the nightstand and grabbing my jeans as soon as I locate them. “You need to call your Dad.”
“What?”
“He told me about The Underground and you being tangled up in it. He gave me an assignment to get you and Sloane out of there.”
She frowns and shakes her head. “That’s why you’re back? Because of an assignment?”
“I had to see if you were safe. And if you’re hanging around in a sex club, that doesn’t sound very healthy.”
She stands, still fully naked, jamming her hands onto her hips. “Excuse me? That is very much none of your fucking business.”
I stand taller and glare down at her. “We both know that’s not true. I’m the one who got you into kink, if memory serves me correctly, but it was meant to be a means to an end, something to make you stronger.”
“There are no lines of demarcation when it comes to me and kink, Mark,” she snaps. “The hottest vanilla sex in the world is still just vanilla sex. I need more. For years I tried to mainstream it, but that was like cutting off my legs. Cutting off my wings. Dominating lets me fly.”
I grab her wrist and inspect it. The only marks have long-since healed. She hasn’t cut in years.
She snatches her arm back and glares at me. “Get real. I don’t do that anymore.”
“So what are you doing in a place like that? Found someone else to do it for you?”
Tessa throws her hands up and howls in exasperation. “It’s been a long time, Mark, people change. It’s who I am.”
“It’s who you think you are.”
Her eyes blaze. “You of all people should know me better than that.”
“I showed you this to make you stronger, not so you’d join a kinky club and lose your life in it. How is that even a job? Are you a professional submissive? Taking money to let people...”
She crosses her arms. “Well, you weren’t there, were you? Besides, if you think that’s what’s happened, then you don’t even know me.”
Passion flares in my chest, burning me from the inside out. “I don’t know you? I know you better than anyone. I know you can’t fall asleep with a foot or a hand dangling off the bed because of a prank one time at summer camp when you were twelve. I know that you slouch when you think no one can see you and it hurts your back but you can’t stop because you hate being tall. I know that when it’s just my hands or mouth locked against your clit you don’t make a sound when you come, but my cock nudging that place deep inside you makes you scream. I know that the pain never went away because I felt it too every goddamned day with every goddamned breath I took that wasn’t with you. I know that you need me and I need you.” The last words are spoken right in her face as I’ve closed the distance between us without realizing I moved.
“So take me,” she whispers.
My hands are reaching for her before I gather my control and take a step back for both of us. “What?”
Her eyes are big and brown and soft. “You didn’t come here and look at me like that, make love to me like that, because of any assignment. Admit it.”
The sun rises in the east, fire burns, I still love Tessa Winters.
And telling her that would be the worst thing for both of us.
I grab my shirt and put it on as fast as I can to cover the scars I’m suddenly self-conscious about. “I had to see you, Tessa. The way I left things back then—”
She stalks from the room and I follow. She’s still naked, striding around without any hesitation, and stops by the front door. “If you’re just here to ease your guilt over the way you left, spare me. I’m over it. I’m over you.”
I put my shoes on, and shuffle my feet awkwardly. “I’m sorry and owe you an apology.”
“You don’t owe me anything. Your conscience is clear, now get the fuck out.” She makes the sign of benediction at me, flips me off, and pushes me into the hall, throwing the deadbolt into place with a loud, final sound.
Her sudden anger shows she still cares too—a lot. Maybe she still loves me back and would be fine with picking up where we left off, only this time it would be in the open. No sneaking around, no judgments, no threat above my head.
What more could her father do to me at this point?
I don’t think she’s in danger, but until I see The Underground for myself I can’t relax on this. I need her to be okay after how I hurt her. My chest warms at the memory of the fire in her eyes when she threw me out. I still affect her too.
It doesn’t matter because it can’t.
I walk slowly down the hall, feet dragging with the weight of the past in my every step.
I’ve got too much past for us to have a future.
She may want more, but what have I got left in me to give?
CHAPTER SIX
Tessa
“Your shoulders are terrible. What have you been doing? You’re worse than last time! Have you even been stretching?” Risk’s machinegun admonishments hit my back and I roll my eyes into the towel, glad she can’t see my face. She’s always way too gleeful about digging her elbows into my ‘trigger points’ when I sass her.
“Occupational hazard. I’ve been busy with prep for The Games.” And knots? Since I threw Mark out of my apartment, my back muscles basically French braided themselves and stayed that way.
Sloane sighs from the massage table next to me. Her masseuse Cristina gives her a relaxation massage instead of the tenderizing I’m being subjected to. “How’s that going?”
“Good.”
“Good? You afraid of spoilers?” she teases.
“No, I just don’t want to jinx anything.” I’m not worried about speaking in front of the masseuses—also members—but people would give their eyeteeth to know what happens behind the scenes, and I need The Games to go well.
“Fair enough. Darko trained in this you know.”
“In what? Massage?”
“Yes.”
I can see him doing it though—he’s always taken exceptional care of his subs. “I didn’t know, actually.”
“He’s the best.” Her tone radiates a smug happiness. “No offense, Cristina.”
“None taken.”
I snort. “Really, Cris, it’s only because Darko gives her the Happy Ending afterwards.”
A swish of air bursts across my skin as Sloane’s slap misses me by mere inches. “You’re lucky I can’t reach you from here. And that I’m too lazy to get up.”
I smile. It’s interesting how Sloane and Darko are both blooming like flowers, opening up to only each other when they’ve been
so closed off for so long. It’s only been a few weeks, but Sloane’s never been this relaxed and I’ve never seen Darko smile so much, like a weight’s been lifted from the gloomy bastard.
Will I ever find that with someone? Don’t think of that red-haired son of a bitch.
“I want this for you.” Sloane’s words mirror my thoughts as her voice becomes less muffled. She must be looking at me.
I swallow hard against the lie and keep my gaze on the hardwood floor. “I’m good as I am.”
“Yeah, you always did seem happier on your own. More contained. But haven’t you ever wanted anyone for keeps, wanted more than a sub? Not even outside the lifestyle?”
Oh, I’ve wanted someone so much it nearly killed me. Don’t even think his name. “I’m better on my own. I like my space, like the quiet.” That’s true at least.
Sloane makes a hmph sound and goes blissfully silent. I relax into my massage and sink into memories of the only person I dared picture a happily-ever-after with.
I’d been on a mission when I came across the delicious surprise in the hall outside Daddy’s office the day before my seventeenth birthday. It was like life had given me my present a day early. I’d never seen anything I wanted more than Mark.
My feet stalled when I saw him. Every inch of my skin suddenly hummed as though I was a tuning fork that had just been struck for the first time, coming alive with awareness. He felt my presence too, and his posture stiffened, but he kept me in the corner of his eye, not looking at me directly.
I wanted eye contact with this creature who’d faltered my steps, so I marched right in front of him, forcing him to look at me or turn his head away—there was no room for subtlety between curiosity and me. He was younger than I’d thought. His eyes were as haunted as my heart and we were going to be ghosts together.
What had put that pain inside him? He was perfect for me.
Was he visiting or staying? “What are you?”
He blinked, shuttering those eyes that were too bright blue to be real. “New bodyguard.”
It wasn’t what I’d meant, but it was a good enough answer. The thought of trusting this man with my body was appealing in ways I’d never felt toward anyone outside a magazine or movie, and his eyes widened slightly at the grin I couldn’t stop from claiming my lips.
Take Me (The Submission Games Book 2) Page 4
