“I will.”
“Don’t make me regret this.”
I punch the air. “I won’t.”
“Maybe it will do you good to see the same things I did. But you need to talk to her first. You’re making the same incorrect assumptions I did.”
I doubt that. “I’ll keep trying.”
“Try harder.” She hangs up.
Incorrect assumptions. Maybe the club really isn’t a dangerous place. Sloane seems fine—I bet that guy Darko’s involved, and he seemed okay as well, but it’s easy to fool someone for an hour. I need to see things for myself. Maybe the girls have some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, I don’t know. Sloane’s right though—the first step is to talk to Tessa, get through to her directly.
Things with Tessa Winters have never been straightforward or easy.
That’s not exactly true. Me and Tessa were easy. You know when you just click with someone—when you can speak volumes with a look, a touch. We didn’t need to talk. It was terrifying and perfect. We were easy. It was every other circumstance around us that complicated things. Her family, my past, her age, my lack of status. Not that we were fucking Romeo and Juliet, but it did seem like fate or something written in the stars were conspiring to keep us apart.
The last time we’d made love had been two days before I’d left. She was always so responsive, but that time had been even hotter. She’d pulled me into her room and on top of her on her bed, spreading her legs to reveal all the beautiful nothing she had on under her skirt.
She immediately slicked my finger, and I slid it back and forth across her clit, working her with rapid but light pressure. She bucked, and sucked at my lips and my tongue, and I thrust two fingers deep inside, swallowing the moan when she tensed beneath me and pulled away to start clawing at my pants.
“Now, Mark, I need you inside me.”
I’d leaned back a bit. “I should get a condom.”
“It’s fine.” She got my belt open, and unbuttoned my fly.
I grabbed her hands to still them. “But—”
“I said it’s fine.”
“But—”
She huffed. “I’m on the pill.”
“Tessa, going bareback is more than about that. It’s about a next level of trust and...it’s saying you don’t care what the consequences are, that we’re more. It’s not something you do without meaning it.”
She licked her lips. “Who says I don’t? Just stop talking!”
I pressed close again, melding us together with a kiss that devoured her from above as I ran my hand up her belly. Her hand snaked down my now-opened jeans, and stroked me a couple times, like she’d done with the pool cue when I’d seen her and Sloane playing earlier. I’d known what she was doing, trying to tease me into a frenzy, picture my dick instead of the cue, but that hadn’t mattered one goddamn bit. I shimmied my jeans down lower, giving her full access. She pulled my cock free from my boxers. “I wish I could watch you doing that.”
She chuckled softly. “You can see it.”
“Not enough. Let me turn the overhead light on instead of just this lamp.”
“You don’t think it’s better in the dimness?”
I gritted my teeth at the gorgeous way her hands were moving. “Fuck no. I want to watch your hands on me. God, I want to see the look on your face when I lick and suck at you. You’re so beautiful. So sexy.”
She clenched me tighter, stroked faster. “What else did you like?”
“Your body.”
“What else?”
I groaned. “The sounds you make.”
“What else?” she whispered.
“Looking down and watching my dick slide inside you.”
She moaned and stroked faster. “That was amazing. Was it the way it looks or feels that’s the best?”
I bit my lip. “Both. But nothing feels better than being inside you.”
She pouted her full bottom lip out. “And why aren’t you inside me now?”
I pulled back to see the heat in Tessa’s eyes before gripping a hip and plunging into her in one, long, hard thrust. Our moans sounded loudly, a perfect harmony of a physical union so deep it ran dangerously close to being something more. I didn’t dare to let her in, but I couldn’t hold back, couldn’t close off, any more than I could stop touching her, kissing her, breathing her in as she clutched me tighter.
It felt like more, more intense and deeper than we’d ever been.
I drove into her, hard and slow. So hard. If I went as fast as I wanted, I’d blow a hip or my load, and both of those outcomes were unacceptable. I wanted to live buried inside this woman.
“You feel so good.” She wrapped her legs around me and squeezed harder. I agreed but couldn’t talk. Instead, I showed her with my tongue in another passionate kiss all the things I felt, reached lower and skimmed my thumb across her clit until she tightened around me and then I was unable to stifle my moan. I want to see her, need to see her face.
Propped on my elbows, I had room to see her. The full lips that smiled when she was about to come. I pulled back again, and saw on her face, even in the dim light, stamped on every feature, that in that moment she was mine.
And in that moment, I realized I wanted her to be mine forever.
And damn the consequences.
How quickly things can change in two days.
Two days later, the night her father found out about us, was the last night I spent under the same roof as her.
He called me to his office, late. I should have known something was up when he poured me a drink and offered me a seat. He never cared about people’s comfort unless others were watching. We were alone.
“You’re pretty young, aren’t you, Mark, for a job like this?”
I cleared my throat. “I wouldn’t say that, Sir.”
He picked up his glass and motioned for me to do the same. “Sometimes I wonder about people’s pasts. Everyone’s got a story. Yours is a particularly interesting one.”
I swallowed my scotch and set my glass down. “Is it?”
He filled my glass again. “No.” His gaze hardened. “You just drank seven hundred dollars’ worth of scotch like it was nothing, and you think you could come in here and consume...this lifestyle, as though you’re worthy?”
“Sir, I—”
“Drink.”
I sipped but he indicated I should down it, so I do.
“Some things, despite your good intentions, are not for you, boy. Maybe you’re a hero—I read your file. But heroics and worthiness are not the same thing. You’ve overstepped boundaries.” He didn’t elaborate, nor did he need to. “You leave tonight.”
Tessa was going to come back and realize I was gone. She’d wait for a call or text or something from me, explaining why I’d gone, what was happening. After the experience we’d shared only days before, bonded like never before, the thought of up and leaving without a word was inconceivable. “Can I just—”
“And you’re going to think back on this time as...educational. Because you’re going to learn your fucking place, Mr. James. I’ll see to that. We’ve looked into your financial situation. Seems the majority of your paychecks go to a hospital. A treatment facility specializing in Dementia and Alzheimer’s. Your dear grandmother, I’m assuming? There’s no way you can afford those payments. You’ve been falling behind for months.”
Anger boils my guts. “I’ll make it work.”
“You won’t. How very noble of you. I’m a man who appreciates taking care of his family. But you have fucked with mine, Mark.” He drains his glass, glaring at me over the rim. “Disappear quietly, and I’ll see to it that your grandmother Josephine lives out the rest of her days in comfort and stability, with the best specialists in the country consulting on her case.”
“And if I don’t leave quietly?”
His gaze grew cold, like staring a reptile in the eyes. “What’s the worst thing you can imagine happening to the one family member who ever gave a shit about you? I want you
to picture that. Because that will be a fucking holiday compared to what is in store for her and for you if you don’t leave tonight without another fucking word to my daughters.” Expensive scotch and broken glass decorated the far wall as he threw the bottle over my head. “I’ll do that and ensure you never find another job. Ever. Do not test me.”
The threat wriggled down my back like an ice cube, but I didn’t trust myself to speak. Besides, what was there to say? I knew the kinds of friends in high places he had. Ruining my life would be laughably easy for someone like him with his connections.
But, “I love her. I would marry her, if she’d have me.”
He sneered. “She’s a child and so are you. Let her live her life without being tied to someone with no prospects. You think this is forever? She’ll grow tired of you and realize you’re nothing more than another diversion—a bit of rough from the wrong side of the tracks. Honestly, do you think you could give her the kind of life she needs?”
Yes.
He raised his eyebrows like I’d spoken the word aloud. “And the kind of life she deserves?”
I left that night, hating myself with every escorted step I was forced to take away from my heart. The bastard kept his promise and so did I. He was right—I’d never been good enough for her.
My grandmother died five years later.
CHAPTER TEN
Tessa
Darko sets a scandalously fluffy piece of cake in front of us and takes his leave to let us talk.
His awareness of other people’s needs is another quality that makes him a great Dom.
Sloane nibbles at her piece, and I can tell there’s something on her mind.
“Out with it, Sloanie. You’ve been practically bouncing in your seat the whole night. Good thing we didn’t have soup for supper or you’d have burns.”
She sets her fork down. “I know it’s not my business, but...”
“Don’t make me beat it out of you.”
She laughs. “Okay. So, you said you saw Mark?”
I sigh. “Yeah. He came to my apartment.” The words dry up beneath the heat of our history that suddenly ignites inside my belly, and I can almost feel cracks re-forming in my heart like desert earth baking under the hot sun.
Sloane narrows her eyes. “You never talk about him, but I know you guys were together when we were young.”
“Did he tell you that?” It makes me resentful thinking he’d be open with Sloane about our past while also being morbidly curious for any details she’s privy to that I’m not.
She shakes her head. “He didn’t have to. You hid it well...for a while.”
“You never said anything.”
“I didn’t really know what to say, which questions to ask.” She focuses on her mug though I know she’s dying for more information.
And maybe I want to talk about it for a change. “Our eighteenth birthday, I finally got my wicked way with him. God, he’d resisted me for ages, I was determined not to let him get away again.”
Sloane smiles and slaps the table. “The night you were sick? You asshole! Daddy paraded me around like a prize Pekinese for all his buddies. I expected someone to pin a ribbon on my ass by the end of the night—I certainly should have won ‘Best In Show’ for my performance that night. So many of those pricks went from polite to interested since I was eighteen and therefore a potential prospect for themselves or their entitled little shit sons. I was fending off smarmy jerks all night and you were having a great time banging your bodyguard.”
I lick frosting from the tip of my finger. “Sorry not sorry?”
“And? He was worth it?” Her eyes twinkle.
A short but vivid montage of all the things we did that night flickers through my mind, heating my skin and making me smile. “Oh, yeah.”
“Was...was that your first time?”
Sloane and I never really discussed certain things growing up that I always pictured other sisters casually chatting about. While we always had each other’s backs, we grew up in a home that made us more allies than best friends. It was an environment that fostered closeness, not openness. “Yes.”
More impactful on me than our first time? Our second. Maybe because he’d already tasted the forbidden fruit and now he was doing all the things he hadn’t dared to do the first time—things he’d probably thought about doing since he’d had the first taste.
It was six days after our first time. For days, he’d kept his distance and I’d felt a little hurt by all the space he was giving me until it hit me that he was staying as far away as possible so he could resist the same temptation that was tying me up in knots. Well, I couldn’t have that ridiculousness. I finally cornered him inside the den one evening while he was walking through the house on patrol.
That click of the lock sliding into place seemed to echo off the dark wood panels and bookshelves, but he turned around before I’d closed the door, hearing my presence before knowing it was me who’d hunted him down.
But you’re damned right he was in the sights of someone who was going to get her man.
Not even the dim light of the tinted windows of the den could hide the hunger in Mark’s eyes. It made me shiver and smile because beneath the bullshit chivalry, he’d wanted me back all along and right at that moment he’d finally stopped trying to hide it.
Despite the fact I’d already had him, my desire for Mark had only grown. And there was something more than hunger in his eyes when he stared down at me too. Tenderness and want. Need and awe. The combination punched me in the chest, leaving me lightheaded and almost dizzy because it was like looking in a mirror that reflected emotions instead of faces.
We stood like that for what felt like hours, just drinking in the sight of one another, finally able to look, to see, in ways we were denied when surrounded by everyone else. Oh, God, I wanted him in ways that made me stupid, but I couldn’t be or he’d have been fired and replaced, I knew that much. So I hid it by ignoring him as much as possible when there were others in the room with us because I couldn’t look without staring.
But now we were alone and I could be as greedy as I wanted to be. I closed the space between us slowly, walking when I wanted to fly into his arms. The atmosphere was charged, waiting for the lightning to strike when we finally touched. I stopped in front of him, hands at my sides. Even taking in his face this way felt intimate and raw, and when he reached up and caressed my face, I thought my knees would buckle from how amazing it felt to be connected to him again. My body came alive with an electric humming that stoked the heat in my belly.
He traced my lips with the pad of his thumb, and I licked at it and bit it, wanting to feel strong to balance the way my legs went weak every time he was near me. His pupils had blown the blue from his eyes, turning them black with desire and I wondered if mine looked the same, rimmed only with a tiny sliver of brown.
We walked over to the pool table like dancers heading to the floor, sizing each other up. I leaned a hip against it, waiting. Not that there was a tally, but I’d been the one to make the initial overtures the other night. Right here, right now, it was his fucking turn to come to me, even though I’d seized the opportunity for us by trailing him inside the room and locking the door behind us.
Not that people didn’t have keys...
Not that I’d let that stop me.
His hands trailed up the sides of my thighs and sent shivers across my skin. He groaned and crushed his mouth to mine when his hands discovered I wasn’t wearing anything under my sweater dress.
Have you ever met someone who makes you breathe deeper? Like, you can’t even think about them without your chest filling with air and that funny nameless twinge that’s not quite love but it’s more than lust. Or maybe it is love. All I knew was that it felt like the only time I could truly breathe was when Mark touched me. Hands, mouth, even a look as long as it came from him.
I pulled the condom from inside my bra. It was from the same box from when we’d first made love and I’d had the f
oil packet in my bra ever since that night, hoping to use it. Call me sentimental. Better to have it and not need it, I figured... He took it while I pushed his pants down his hips and pulled his cock free from his boxers. He was so hard, standing straight up, and that pleased me to know he wanted me back just as much. He couldn’t hide it from me the way he hid his feelings behind his schooled features during the days, and that was to protect both of us, but I still needed to know.
Uncertainty filled so many breaths, I needed to know he felt the same...and now I did. I didn’t want hours of foreplay. I wanted him inside me as fast as possible, but he still kissed my face and throat and chest until I tugged impatiently at his hips and ass, lining him up exactly where I needed him the most.
I wished it was brighter so I could see his eyes better, so every inch of him was highlighted, visible, every face he made when he moaned and smiled and came.
I wanted to see every second. I wanted to laugh and sigh and scream when he finally pushed inside me again. What we had was more than sex, more than bodies crashing together. Mark was the flame that I could use to ignite the explosion to blow away the walls between who I’d been and who I wanted to be. With him, I felt powerful.
He was the vehicle I could use to find the freedom to be myself, and I grabbed on harder and ground against his cock for all I was worth. He touched me like I was everything. He looked at me so intensely I thought my chest would burst from how important he was making me feel. In his strong arms, I felt...precious—safe. I could be weak with this man because he would always be able to hold on.
And he could be weak with me too if he needed to be. We could shatter in each other’s arms and it would be perfect because we’d rebuild each other using all of those shards of ourselves to create one beautiful new person.
He took his time like he wanted to stay inside me forever, make every second last as long as possible.
But I couldn’t handle the slow pace. I liked it even more when his gaze turned devouring and he held me on the verge of too-tight. For me, that growl deep in his throat, the catch of his breath in his throat was the best thing I’d ever heard. I was still a bit tender from the other night, but the way his body fit mine hit a certain spot inside me that drove my hips wild against his.
Take Me (The Submission Games Book 2) Page 7
