by Penny Wylder
“But?” I prompt, when he doesn’t speak again for a long moment.
“She found me.”
“Here?” My mouth drops open. No wonder he’s still single, if this is what he thinks women are like. If this is what he’s had to deal with in his life already.
He’s nodding, a grimace on his face. “She works in tech, so stalking me, finding where I worked and lived, then trying to find whoever I was dating, it’s her professional skillset. The first few dates I went on after we broke up, she pulled this exact stunt. Stole photos of the girls—some of them nudes, some of them just regular pictures that she edited and Photoshopped to look like the girls were naked. She posted them everywhere, harassed the women, started fake websites like she did with yours.” Zayne groans and runs a hand through his hair. “I had to file a restraining order. We got everything set down legally. After that, I hadn’t heard a thing from her. It’s been over a year since she did this to anybody, and I’ve been on a few dates since then. I figured the danger had passed. She hasn’t tried to ruin any other girls’ lives in a year, so I didn’t even think to warn you…”
I groan and press my fingers to my temples, massaging. “Shit, Zayne. I’m so sorry that you had to deal with that.”
“No. I’m sorry.” He catches my wrists. Draws my hands away from my forehead to fold them in his instead. “You shouldn’t have to pay for my past mistakes. You shouldn’t be suffering for my problems.”
“You shouldn’t either,” I counter, my lower lip trembling. “I can’t imagine what all of that was like…”
He laughs faintly, bitterly. “That wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg. God, there was the time she set my car on fire…”
“She what?”
“The time she tried to poke holes in all the condoms, back when we were still together—”
“Fuck, Zayne.”
“I’m sorry, Clove. I’m a mess. I’m messed up, after all of that. I should have told you, but it was so…” He shuts his eyes. I fight the urge to kiss him, to kiss away the pain that’s written so obviously across his face. “Embarrassing, really. And just, an old wound I hate reopening. I didn’t know how to explain, how to talk about it. And I don’t know why she would do this now, why she would come back to try and hurt you.”
I give in to the urge and press a faint kiss to the corner of his mouth. “It’s okay. I mean, it’s not okay that you didn’t tell me the truth, but I understand why you hesitated.”
He opens his eyes to meet mine. Runs a hand through my hair, smoothing it back from my forehead. “I should have trusted you.”
“We don’t know one another that well yet,” I point out.
He shakes his head so hard his hair flops across his forehead, almost into his eyes too. “We do, Clove. I know it’s crazy, I know we’ve only been talking like this for a few days, only seeing each other up close for that long, but it feels like I’ve known you forever already. It feels like this is right, this is where we’re meant to wind up.”
I can feel myself nodding, agreeing. “That’s why it hurt when you didn’t tell me about your ex. When I found out someone had leaked photos like this before around you…”
“I know. I get it, Clove, really. And I never meant to hurt you. I swear I won’t again.”
I can hear myself laughing. “All this from a stupid dating app.”
He laughs, too. “You know, much as I’m glad it helped us find one another…” He smooths my hair back again, gazes into my eyes. “I’m deleting that app tonight. I don’t need it anymore.”
My breath catches in my throat. “Me too,” I hear myself whispering.
His smile widens. But then it catches, snags, sags a little. “I just don’t want to hurt you, to hurt your career, over this mistake.”
“You were right too,” I counter, shaking my head now. “We’ll figure this out. Especially now that we know who’s behind this.”
“Clove, I don’t know what to say…”
“Then don’t,” I suggest. Then his lips are on mine, and I don’t need another apology. This is explanation enough. I collide with him, let my head fall to one side and my mouth part as his lips work against mine and his tongue slips between my lips to tangle with my own. He knows me already, after just three days. Knows how to kiss me, how to turn his head at the right moment to deepen that kiss, and how to wrap his arms around my waist and lift me against him so that I can forget everything else in the world except for the feeling of his arms around me.
When he sets me back on my feet, we’re both smiling faintly, despite the knot of worry still buried deep in my stomach. Somehow, I still need to find a way to solve this. But that feels possible here, wrapped safely in Zayne’s arms. With him by my side, we can manage anything.
He kisses my forehead lightly. “Can I take this as a sign that we’re okay again?” he murmurs softly.
“As long as you promise you’re not hiding any other dark skeletons in your closet from me,” I reply.
He laughs. “My closet is open wide. You can have a look anytime you want.”
“What if I’d rather steal a peek under your clothes instead?” I counter with a raised eyebrow.
His grin deepens. “Hmm. That could also be arranged. But first, I’m afraid there’s something else I really need to do.”
“Oh? And what might that be?”
Without responding, he steps back and catches the hem of my shirt. In one smooth motion, he pulls it up and over my head and drops it to the floor beside us. “I’m very hungry, Ms. Walker. I need to eat something. Preferably you.”
I laugh, which turns into a shiver as he catches me in a tight grip and lifts me onto the kitchen counter. He spreads my legs and starts the slow process of peeling my jeans off. I lean back, my head grazing the flowers that sit in the vase beside me, perfuming the air. I breathe in the scent deeply, sigh it out again as he yanks my jeans off my legs and tosses them aside with my blouse.
He kisses his way back up the inside of my leg, from my ankle up to my knee, then past it, along my inner thigh.
“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you, Clove,” he murmurs as he works his way up my body. “Every minute of the day, all day.”
I think about the shower, my fantasies. My inability to force him out of my head, even when I was mad at him, even when I thought he did this, or thought he was lying to me. He was, I guess, but I understand his reasons.
“I can’t stop thinking about you either,” I whisper.
“I get hard every time I remember how gorgeous your body is, how beautiful you look spread out before me like this…” He leans in to lick his tongue across my mound for emphasis, and I gasp, biting down on my lip.
“I have to touch myself whenever I think about what you did to me this weekend,” I admit, my voice low, soft. “When I think about that hour when you commanded me…”
“Or when I think about the way you moaned so loud and desperately, with my cock inside your ass…” He stands, so I can see the hard bulge in his pants, the way he strains for me.
“Nobody has ever made me come the way you do, Zayne,” I admit.
He smiles. “Nobody has ever made me want to fuck them for hours and hours the way you do…” He trails his finger up my slit, through the wet juices already gathering there, and then pops it straight into his mouth, licking my juices with a hungry glow in his eyes.
“I feel like I’m going crazy.” I brace myself against his shoulders, both hands gripping him tight. “How can I feel like this for you so fast?”
“Because I was always there, Clove. Waiting for you to see me under the uniform. We haven’t known each other long, but we’ve been standing right in each other’s paths for years.”
He’s right. I may not have known him well, but Zayne has been in my life for a long, long time. No wonder it feels right, now that I’m realizing how much more in my life he needed to be. How deeply involved in my life he should have been from the start.
“Let me
make you feel good, Clove. Let me take your mind off all of this…”
He kneels in front of me again, but it feels different this time, charged somehow. Like he’s not just touching me, tasting me, but feeling me too. He wants to give me pleasure, doing it gives him pleasure, and knowing that only turns me on even more. This isn’t just a hookup. It can’t be. Not when it feels like this.
Zayne spreads my legs, hands wrapped around my ankles, and kisses his way along my inner thigh. I close my eyes and shiver, savoring the feeling of his rough stubble as it grazes against my sensitive skin, right at my hipbone. He takes his time, the way he always does. I love that about him, the way he’s so careful with me, so precise. He makes sure that I’m aching, about to burst before he gives me what I want. I never knew denial could be so hot, or that making me wait could make me so much hungrier for him when he finally gives me what I need.
When his tongue delves into my slit, I clench my fist in his hair and arc my back, leaning backward along the kitchen counter. He pushes his tongue inside me slowly, circling, tasting each of my walls as he enters me.
“Zayne,” I gasp, my hands clenching and releasing in his hair of their own accord. He always does this—makes me lose control of my limbs, my hands, my own body.
I can feel the curl of his lips as he smiles against me, but he doesn’t reply, just keeps licking me, inside me. He eats me like a starving man, like I’m the only meal he’s had in months. He grips my ass with one hand, lifts my pussy closer to his mouth, and I can feel his stubble scratch across my inner thighs, graze the edges of my lips as he forces his tongue as deep inside me as possible.
At the same time, I feel his other hand slide up my thigh too, until he’s stroking his forefinger along my slit. I don’t realize what he’s doing, don’t notice how he’s coating his finger in my juices, until he presses the tip of that finger against the tight pucker of my ass.
I cry out as he presses his finger into my ass, slowly and deliberately. The sudden tight, full feeling is doubled, because I clench my pussy in response, and feel his tongue press back against me, the flat plane of his tongue caught between my walls. My head falls back against the counter, my body too distracted by the conflicting sensations—the fullness from every angle.
He starts to move his finger, sliding it deeper into my ass, then drawing it out again slowly. At the same time, he continues to lick into my pussy, his tongue curling to drag against my front inner wall. I thought I felt wild before, but this pushes me to a new limit. I twist against the counter, the hard marble cool against my ass, another contrast to the white-hot heat pouring from Zayne’s mouth, his finger inside my ass, his whole body.
I can’t help it. Before long, I’m bucking against his face, and he flattens his lips around my pussy, licks me hard and fast as he continues to finger my ass. I wrap my legs over his shoulders, hook my ankles to hold him against me as I bury my hands in his hair. I come with a loud cry, the orgasm sweeping through my whole body, from the tips of my toes all the way to the top of my head. I feel like I’m on fire, bursting from the inside out.
He keeps his finger buried inside my ass and draws back to lick my sensitive-as-hell clit. I gasp and jerk against the counter, and he laughs, his breath hot against my soaking wet pussy.
“You like that, Clove?” He grins up at me, still kneeling between my legs, that cocky grin of his irresistible from this angle. Or from any angle, really.
I grin back, breathless, heart still racing. Then I clench my ass around his finger, and smirk. “What was your first clue?”
He lifts an eyebrow, enjoying the challenge. “Hmm. So you like having both holes filled at once, is that it?”
My cheeks flush bright red, but I hold his eye, emboldened by the naked lust in his eyes. “If that orgasm was anything to judge by, it’s definitely nice, yes.”
“Mm…” His gaze rakes down my body, and his lower lip juts out as though he’s considering something. Pondering. “Well, I didn’t come prepared, but I think we should be able to make do…”
With that, he stands, and draws his finger out of my ass. I gasp in protest, especially because without him kneeling between my legs, I feel cold, my naked ass freezing against the marble countertop.
But he doesn’t leave me hanging for long. He scoops me into his arms, and I wrap my legs around his waist. His hard cock presses against my ass, so I’m almost sitting on top of it as he holds me against him with one arm and digs through my drawers with the other.
“What are you doing?” I ask, but he only winks in response. I feel him shift against me as he picks up something, and then we’re moving, before I can tell exactly what he has in mind.
He carries me to the doorway of my bedroom, then hesitates in the entrance, glancing past me. “Red sheets. It’s almost like you planned on having a sexy encounter in here sometime soon…”
I laugh, and feel my face flush again, this time with regular embarrassment. “I… Forgot I had those on.”
He casts me a sideways smirk.
“It’s my favorite color!” I protest. “I just like it is all.”
“I like it too.” In response, he steps across the threshold, and tosses me onto the bed without warning, so hard that I bounce a little, laughing as he steps up to the bed, gazing down at me. “The color suits you. You look good on it.” His gaze roams across my body, naked and exposed before him. “Though you’ll look even better spread-eagled across it.”
My laughter turns a little breathy, my flushed face getting even hotter as he kneels beside me and leans down to kiss me softly, slowly. “Zayne…” I murmur. Then I lift my eyes to his, smiling, because a sudden idea took hold of me. “It’s my turn,” I say.
He raises an eyebrow, still smiling, but questioning. “Your turn to what, exactly?”
“To spread-eagle you.” With that, I push myself up to a sitting position, then flip around to kneel next to him. He lets me push him over easily, even though of course, he could overpower me if he wanted. There’s something sexy about that, about the confident way he’s willing to let me take control when I want to. He doesn’t have anything to prove—he just wants me to enjoy myself however I want. And right now, I want to do to him what he just did to me.
I spread his legs wide, then position his hands over his head. After a moment’s consideration, I grab the edges of the my sultry red sheets—silk, no less, because I love the way it feels against my skin, cool and soothing and smooth as hell. I wrap each corner around the bedposts, then use them to tie Zayne’s wrists to the bed frame. He smirks at me. I know it’s just a loose knot—he could slip it anytime he wanted. But he lets me do it, and to judge by the stiff cock standing erect in his boxers in front of me, he’s enjoying this too.
I bind his ankles too, the same way, not very tight, and he could easily slip the knot if he wanted.
“I hope you know turnabout is fair play,” he comments while I work. “The next time I’m back here, I’m going to have to tie you up nice and tight for this. Maybe even give you a spanking, too.” His gaze drops to my ass, and I shiver at the thought of him doing this to me. Tying me up, leaving me vulnerable and exposed before him. Having his way with me.
My pussy clenches just thinking about it. “Promises, promises,” I tell him, a playful sparkle in my eye as I wink and finish tying off his right ankle. “But first, it’s my turn.”
Now that he’s bound, I reach up to trace my hands over his sides. Let him have a taste of his own medicine—see how it feels when I touch him like this, slowly, torturously, not touching his sensitive spots, not yet. I trace his muscles, every inch of his hard abs and the flat plane of his stomach. I lean down to feather kisses along the carved V that points straight to his cock. I flick my tongue into his navel, loving the salty-sweet taste of him, and the way he inhales sharply, trying to hide his pleasure. He can’t though, not when I have him like this, naked before me. He can’t hide anything from me here.
“Zayne…” I catch his eye again.
Begin to inch his boxers down his legs. “Have you done this before?”
“What, been tied up?” His eyes catch mine with a mischievous glint. “Once or twice, I have to admit.”
I laugh. Then shake my head. “Have you ever felt so… hungry for somebody before?” I trace my hands along his sides, down to his upper thighs. I pull his boxers further down, far enough that his cock springs free, standing tall at attention, curved upwards so the tip almost touches his navel. “You just made me come, and it was great, fantastic, but I…” I graze his cock with my fingertip, barely a touch, just enough to make him jump as his muscles clench in reply. “I already want more.”
He swallows so hard it’s audible, and gazes up at me with sincerity. “I know exactly what you mean, Clove. I never knew it was possible to feel this hungry. Every minute of the day, I think about you, about all the things I want to do to you, all the ways I want to enjoy your body. I’ve been hard practically since the night we first spoke…”
I touch his cock again, still lightly, barely touching him between my fingertips. I stroke them up and down his length, hardly touching him, but he’s so turned on already that it makes his hips twist against the bed, his eyes hot where they catch mine. “I know how you feel,” I murmur. “I feel like I’ve spent the entire weekend wet, red-hot, ready to jump you any second you’ll let me.”
“Which is any second you want,” he points out.
“What is this? Why do we feel this so quickly?” I murmur, my voice dropping lower.
“I don’t know,” he admits. “But whatever it is, I don’t want it to stop. I want you, Clove. I want to be with you. When you showed up downstairs with that… that…” His face twists into an ugly expression, a scowl. “That fucking disrespectful asshole who followed you home. I wanted to tear his throat out for touching you. For trying to use you.”
I lean down to feather a kiss along his jaw, but he turns his head and catches my lips with his, kisses me hard and deep. “Nobody else touches me,” I promise as I draw back, just far enough to meet his eyes. “Nobody but you.”
