Sin for Me

by Jackie Ashenden

  She’d never been naked in front of anyone before and didn’t know what to do with her arms or her hands. Whether to cover herself or fold her arms across her chest, or let them merely hang loose at her sides. Her throat felt dry, her heartbeat beginning to race again, uncertainty tightening inside her. There was a dull ache between her legs, and she couldn’t tell whether it was pain or rising desire again, though she was going with pain. Because she couldn’t want him again so soon, not after the last orgasm. Could she?

  Gideon put his hands on the backs of her calves, then ran his palms up her legs in a long, slow caress, stopping just below the curve of her ass. Her breathing began to slide out of control once more, because the feel of those hands on her skin seared like a blowtorch.

  Then they dropped away and he came to his feet in a smooth, impossibly graceful movement. She gulped in some air, her lungs starved of oxygen, her heart feeling like it was battering away inside her chest, trying to get out. Light from the street outside leaked into the room around the edges of the curtains, but even so, his face was impossible to read. Merely a collection of vague shadows and deeper darkness, pools of black where his eyes should be.

  He’s right. You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.

  Too late for that now. Too late for regrets or second thoughts. She’d pushed him into this and now she had to deal with the consequences.

  He put his hands on her shoulders, turning her very deliberately around, so her back was to him. Then without any warning, he pushed her down onto the bed on her stomach.

  The sheets smelled of laundry liquid and Gideon, so familiar it made her want to cry, though she didn’t really understand why that would be. Because he wasn’t hurting her, at least not in a bad way.

  You’re out of your depth and you know it.

  Yeah, maybe that was it. Maybe that was the problem.

  The bed dipped and she felt him behind her again, kneeling astride her, judging from the feel of the rough denim on either side of her thighs. God, he hadn’t even taken his clothes off.

  “Why am I the one who gets to be naked?” Her voice was a shock in the silence of the room, sounding out of place and wrong.

  “Because that’s how I want it.” There was a pause. “If you can’t handle it, you know where the door is.”

  Zoe gritted her teeth, staring into the darkness in front of her. Damn him. She could handle it and she would.

  Another long moment passed.

  Then, obviously taking her silence for acquiescence, he touched her, a long, slow stroke down the curve of her spine.

  She tensed, her heart jumping, her mouth dry.

  He did it again, caressing her like a cat, except this time his hands didn’t stop in the small of her back. They carried on over the swell of her buttocks, squeezing. Then he shifted and she shook as his fingers slipped between her cheeks, spreading them apart before squeezing them together again.

  Zoe buried her face in the cool cotton of the sheets, her face burning, fighting the urge to jerk away from his touch, to protect herself. She was supposed to be taking this, wasn’t she? She was supposed to be letting him do anything he wanted. But this . . .

  He spread her again, one thumb pressing against the tight ring of muscle between her buttocks. She stiffened, unable to help herself, biting her lip hard to stop from protesting or crying out, or maybe even just bursting into tears. But he didn’t relent, pressing harder until the tip of his thumb pushed inside her, tearing a muffled, choked sound from her.

  She shook, her face turned against the sheets, the dull ache between her legs now something more, something intense, that pleasure/pain building again. Gideon pushed harder, deeper, and she gave a little sob, because it was dirty and wrong and nothing like anything she’d fantasized about. Yet she was panting, wanting movement, wanting friction, wanting something to ease that ache.

  He reached around her, hooking his arm beneath her hips and tugging her up on her knees so her butt was in the air. Then he slid his free hand between her thighs, his fingers stroking through the slick folds of pussy, finding her clit with unerring accuracy and circling around and around.

  All the breath rushed into her lungs, the pleasure as sharp and bright as an electric shock. She tried to pull her hips away from the thumb buried in her ass only to come up against the fingers stroking her clit. Then they slipped into her pussy, deep inside, moving with firm insistence, drawing another inarticulate noise from her.

  She panted against the cotton, trying to get a handle on everything she was feeling, but it was too much, way, way too much. All her emotions were tangled and knotted, like a ball of old yarn, and there was no way she could free them. Fear and embarrassment, a dark, dirty craving deep in her soul. Pain and discomfort. Bewilderment and confusion. And pleasure, a blinding, annihilating pleasure that was rapidly becoming the whole of her world.

  Her thighs were shaking, her nipples pushing into the mattress beneath her, hard and sensitive and aching. Her hips wanted to move and yet she didn’t know where to move them, because there was no escape from the torture. No escape from the brutal pleasure that was slowly tearing her apart.

  He said nothing as he played with her, his thumb in her ass and his fingers in her sex, making her writhe and twist and sob against the sheets. And when he finally made her come, she screamed into the mattress, the pleasure detonating inside her like a bomb blast, utterly overwhelming her.

  Her ears were ringing and she couldn’t move, and when he pulled his hands away from her, she lay on the bed almost stunned. Sounds came from behind her, footsteps and rustles, but she didn’t really pay attention.

  She felt like she’d been hit over the head with a baseball bat.

  Then the bed dipped again, and his hands were on her, lifting her hips, the push of his knee against hers, easing them apart. A helpless groan escaped her, because she couldn’t do this again, she really couldn’t.

  “No,” she said in a raw whisper. “I can’t. . . .”

  “Yeah, you can.” His heat against the backs of her thighs and this time without denim, only hot, bare skin. “You will.”

  Firm fingers on her sex, spreading her open, and his cock sliding into her, stretching her, making her burn. And she cried out because she was sore from last time and from the orgasm that was still sending aftershocks through her. But he didn’t stop and he didn’t go slow, making her fingers curl tight into the cotton of the sheets.

  Yet despite the pain and the discomfort, the fear and the strange disappointment that sat in her gut, despite the fact that she’d come three times already that night, her body woke to aching life again. The pain twisted to become pleasure, the thrust of him inside her an unbearable, intoxicating thrill she couldn’t get enough of.

  She didn’t want to do it again. She couldn’t bear the intensity. But it was happening all the same and this time it was different. She could feel his skin against hers, hot and smooth, the powerful muscles of his thighs flexing as he thrust. The movement of his hips was slower, almost leisurely, the slick sounds of flesh sliding into flesh providing an erotic soundtrack.

  His hands moved on her, stroking her spine, then shocking her with the hard slap of his palm over one buttock.

  Zoe blinked back the prickle of tears fiercely, biting down on her lip and clinging to the pain to hold herself together, to not let herself get torn apart again. But the pleasure rolled over her, crushing her, the sting of his palm against her skin focusing it like a sunbeam through a magnifying glass. It set her on fire, burned her, and she flamed in the night, moaning into the sheets as he thrust harder, deeper. Until she couldn’t hold on any longer, couldn’t stop herself from breaking like she had downstairs. Only this time she didn’t even have the strength to scream, letting out a thin, high thread of sound instead, her body shaking itself apart. Then his fingers found her clit once more and she came to pieces in his hands.

  She wasn’t aware of anything after that, only of the darkness and the feel of the
sheets against her burning skin, and the sound of someone sobbing as if their heart would break.

  She didn’t know it was her until his arms came around her and she felt the heat of his naked body against hers. Sensitized beyond bearing, she shoved at him, unable to bear the closeness, but he didn’t let her go. Instead, he pulled her in tight to his chest, her head turned into his neck, his arms like iron bars at her back.

  This was familiar. This she knew. The scent of him, the warmth of his body, the knowledge that she was safe and protected. It eased something inside her and she stopped shoving, pressed her face to his skin and wept for reasons she didn’t understand.

  Then, despite the fact that her soul felt like it had broken in half and been badly glued back together, her body like she’d run three marathons in a row, the sobs eventually quieted and she fell into a sleep so deep it was like death.

  Chapter 10

  “What the fuck are these?”

  Gideon pushed up the visor of the protective helmet he wore when he was arc welding, and glanced over.

  Zee was standing near the Chevy, frowning at something dangling between his fingers. It was black and lacy, and undeniably feminine.

  “Underwear, I think you’ll find,” Tamara said with some amusement from behind him.

  “Yeah, but whose underwear?” Zee glanced over to where Gideon stood beside the Harley. “Levi and Rachel have a hot date here over the weekend?”

  Jesus. Zoe’s panties. They must have fallen under the Chevy and they’d both forgotten all about them. Slowly Gideon put down the welding gun, trying to decide just what the hell he was going to say, because he was pretty sure “Oh yeah, they’re Zoe’s. I tore them off her when I fucked her over the hood of the Chevy on Saturday night” would go down like a lead balloon.

  You goddamn hypocrite.

  He gritted his teeth. Yeah, he knew that. He knew exactly how big a hypocrite he was. The word had been going around and around in his head all fucking weekend. It whispered to him every time he pushed her down on the bed, or up against a wall, or over the kitchen table. Every time he touched her to orgasm or put her down on her knees to suck him.

  He was a hypocrite. A total fucking hypocrite.

  Yet even now, even right here with his friends just a few feet away, all he could do was stare at Zoe’s panties, getting hard at all the memories they set off.

  “Gideon?” Zee was looking at him strangely. “You know whose these are?”

  He blinked then, pulled himself together, strode over to where Zee stood, and tugged them out of his hand, stuffing them into the pocket of his overalls. “Yeah. They belong to a friend of mine.”

  Zee’s eyebrows rose. “Uh-huh. Which friend—”

  “You here for a reason, Zee?” It was a graceless change of subject, but quite frankly, Gideon couldn’t be bothered with any niceties. He was already feeling on edge, and what had gone down between him and Zoe over the weekend hadn’t made him feel any better.

  She’d wanted him, pushed him, and so he’d made the decision to show her exactly what she was letting herself in for. It had been a shock for her, he knew that. Mainly because she saw him only in terms of the big foster brother who’d protected her since she was small and not who he actually was. And that wasn’t an easy lover or an easy man. Certainly not easy enough for a sweet little virgin like Zoe.

  Guilt turned over inside him like a huge beast turning over in its sleep, heavy and slow.

  He’d made her cry that first night, as he knew he would. Yet that had been a deliberate choice. Going easy or slow, being tender and gentle with her would have given her more fuel to stoke the flame she carried for him, and that wasn’t what he’d intended.

  He needed to show her the reality of what she was asking for because no matter what she said, she really had no idea. Rough and hard and dirty, that’s what he was and that’s what he liked, and that’s what she had to accept. Except when he’d confronted her with it, she hadn’t run screaming from him like he thought she would.

  Oh, she’d been shocked and scared, no doubt about it. But he’d given her chances over and over again to leave, and she hadn’t taken any of them. Not even on Sunday morning when, for the first time since he’d taken her to live with him, he hadn’t made her pancakes. Instead, to draw a line under the relationship they now had, he’d pushed her over onto her back and fucked them both into insensibility.

  You sick fuck.

  Yeah, he was. And he was going straight to hell.

  Regret twisted, cutting deep, but he ignored the sharp pain in favor of the dull anger that simmered alongside it. Anger at himself for giving in to her, for letting her push him to this. He should have been stronger, shouldn’t have let her get to him so badly, because, Jesus, she was the innocent one here.

  You should have been kinder to her. You should have been gentler.

  Yeah, he should have. But he hadn’t. And he didn’t know where that left them, but one thing was certain: They couldn’t return to the way things had been before.

  “Yeah,” Zee said, giving him a narrow look. “We’re going to Gino’s tonight, meeting up with Levi and Rach to have another look at those plans of Levi’s. Thought you were gonna come. Didn’t he text you about it?”

  Fuck. Levi had and he’d forgotten all about it, immersing himself in engines and grease so he didn’t think about the guilt clawing at his insides or the consuming need for Zoe, the strength of which had completely blindsided him.

  “Yeah, he did.” Gideon pulled off his welding helmet and stalked back over to the workshop counter, dropping it with a clatter. “I’ll go take a shower and meet you guys there.”

  At that moment, Zoe appeared at the top of the stairs that led up to the garage’s office, and every muscle in his body closed up tight like a fist.

  She wasn’t wearing anything different from what she usually wore, black skinny jeans, a pair of dirty blue Chucks, and a tight dark blue tank top, and yet he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  The tank top molded to her slender torso, outlining her small, round tits and the graceful indentation of her waist. Her legs looked outrageously long in the black jeans, and he suddenly wanted them around his waist, holding on as he pushed inside her, as he made her scream. Her hair was a black cloud, held back from her face by a couple of barrettes that made her seem acutely young and vulnerable. And sick bastard that he was, he wanted to take out those barrettes, wind her hair around his wrist, and pull hard on it as he took her from behind.

  Yeah, he’d own up to it now. He’d name it. He wanted her. He wanted to fuck his little foster sister so badly he could hardly think.

  It was wrong, so very, very wrong.

  But that’s the kind of guy you really are after all.

  He couldn’t deny it. That kind of bad he’d grown up with and had embraced when he was younger, back when he’d been securing his reputation as the go-to man for muscle in the Chicago criminal underworld. Territorial, possessive, short-tempered. Mean as fuck. He’d been famous for it. Now he could feel those old urges, the ones he’d thought he’d buried for good, all rising back to the surface, turning on Zoe.

  She didn’t look at him, her gaze firmly directed to Zee and Tamara, and for some reason that annoyed him. She’d been doing that all weekend, staying quiet, not saying a word to him. Not that there had been anything much to say, but still.

  “Zoe,” Zee said. “You gonna come?”

  A crease appeared between her brows. “Come where?”

  Zee shot him a puzzled look. “You told her, right?”

  Actually he hadn’t. He’d had other, more important things on his mind.

  “Told me what?” Zoe’s gaze shifted to him, her mouth in an annoyed line.

  “The others are going to Gino’s to discuss those plans,” he said, knowing she was going to be pissed about it. “I meant to tell you but . . .” He paused. “We had a busy weekend.”

  She blushed, heat blooming over her skin, her gaze flickering aw
ay from his. “Uh. Right. Yeah. Well, sure. I’m definitely coming. In fact, I’m ready right now.” Zoe put a foot out onto the next step down.

  “No, you’re not.” The words were out of his mouth before he could check them.

  She froze, and there was a surprised silence as all three of them looked at him.

  Jesus. Okay, perhaps he was sounding crazy, especially when the others weren’t aware of the other thing he’d almost forgotten about in the haze of sex and hunger that had been going on all weekend: the potential threat to Zoe’s life.

  This isn’t just about Zoe’s life.

  No, it wasn’t. It was about those old feelings again, the ones that whispered to him that she was his. That he had to protect her, keep her here in the apartment so no one could take her from him, no one could hurt her, touch her. No one but him.

  “Excuse me?” The edge of outrage in Zoe’s voice was clear.

  Not that he needed to hear it, not with the gold embers of anger that had started to smolder in her eyes.

  He pushed himself away from the workshop counter and headed for the metal stairs that led up to the office. “Gimme a minute, Zee.”

  “Gideon,” Zoe said. “You’d better not be—”

  He started up the stairs. “A word in the office, little one.”

  Her jaw tightened, and for a second it looked like she wasn’t going to obey him, but then, letting out an irritated breath, she turned around and stalked up the stairs and into the office.

  Following her inside, he kicked the door shut behind them, and it didn’t escape his notice that she was standing down the far end of the office, as if she wanted to put as much distance between them as she could.

  That, too, annoyed him.

  “You can’t stop me from going,” she said before he could say anything. “This development is something I’m a part of too, and you can’t just cut me out.”

  The enforcer in him wanted to roar that he could do whatever the fuck he wanted and if he didn’t want her leaving the apartment then she wouldn’t. But he wasn’t that man anymore, and he hadn’t been for quite some time.