Undefeated

by Melissa Cutler

  He rewarded her bravery with wet, dirty kisses. She had a magnificent tongue, skilled and flirty, sampling him as he tasted her. For the first time that night—the first time ever—their bodies and minds synched up. They were perfect together while kissing, compatible in a way that their lives and personalities weren’t. That’s when he knew that he could never undo this new awareness. He could never go back to being okay with not kissing Marlena Brodie every chance he got.

  Without breaking the kiss, she pushed up on her legs and rooted around with her hand as though looking for his dick. He reached between her thighs and rubbed himself hard again, adjusting the condom back into place. Then he drove himself into her without ceremony, his hands on her hips pulling her down, impaling her.

  She cried out against his mouth, then threw her head back, her red hair exploding out around her, as wild as he’d always imagined she would be. Their bodies moved together, slick and rolling. She squeezed her pussy muscles in rhythm, milking him like some mythical sex goddess, angling her hips as though experimenting with what felt best to her pleasure centers.

  He clutched her ass and helped her move, letting her use his body as she needed to. It got to a point, though, in which he needed more. He needed to fuck her, not rough, but with full, deep, fast thrusts.

  “Stand up.”

  “What?” she breathed.

  “Just stand up. Time for something new.”

  She lifted off of him; then he stood, too. It was the first time they’d both been at their full heights up close since he’d reentered the apartment. He was almost a head taller than she was, but she didn’t seem to panic about that this time.

  “Don’t freak,” he said, sliding a hand around her waist.

  “About what?”

  Rather than answer, he swept her off her feet and into his arms. It seemed like the best strategy. While they moved to the bedroom, he didn’t want to give her any kind of physical space to start overthinking again.

  She slung her arms around his neck and rubbed her nose on his cheek. “You picked me up.”

  “And you didn’t freak. That deserves a reward.” His mouth descended over hers, kissing her as he walked to her bedroom.

  He did a mental pause at the sight of her bed set. Hideous, cheap wicker. As a woodworker, he hated the stuff with a passion—worse than the fake, composite wood of her yoga studio desk. Sure enough, when he laid her on the bed, the wicker creaked. He winced because it was a terrible sound. With any luck, they’d break the bed frame tonight so he could justify hooking her up with some higher quality furniture.

  “You have more condoms?” he asked.

  “By the bed, in that drawer.”

  He shed the used one and set it in a tissue. Then he set a knee between her legs and braced his hand on the far side of her, so that he was looming partially over her, his breath fanning over her face and chest. Again, she was getting zero physical space from him until he brought her to orgasm, not if he could help it. The wicker creaked again with his movement, but he put it out of his mind. Marlena deserved his undivided attention.

  He cradled her cheek in his hand and kissed her again, slow and wet, so much kissing he was dizzy with it. Then he kissed and licked his way down her body as though they were starting the whole dance over again, which, really, they were. This, what they were doing now—post-first-kiss sex—was incomparable to their cautious, uptight first attempt. He lavished attention on her nipples until she arched her hips up, rubbing her pussy against his chest, demanding his focus.

  He slid two fingers inside her, massaging her g-spot. She cried out, her legs curling around his back. He rose onto his elbow. “You hear that? That was a fucking beautiful noise you made.” He shoved his fingers deeper, harder inside her. Everything inside and outside him was molten and sweaty, shaking with adrenaline and need, not only for his release, but for hers, too. He was going to get them both there tonight if it killed him.

  She hooked an arm around his neck and pulled his face to hers, kissing him with more of those wet and dirty kisses he loved.

  He swirled his thumb around her clit until his fingers detected the slightest of tremors of her inner muscles, the first hints of an orgasm. When he withdrew his fingers from her, he almost stuck them in her mouth to suck clean, because there was nothing hotter than that, but tonight wasn’t about him.

  “Roll over, onto all fours. I know that’s not romantic, but I’m going to make you feel so good, you won’t care.”

  She stretched her legs out, feet flexed, and watched with a cloudy, half-lidded gaze as he got up from the bed, leaving one hand lightly on her torso, and picked a condom out from the nightstand drawer.

  He sent her a sidelong glance as he rolled the condom on. “You gonna do what I say? Hmm?”

  She was smiling at him, her teeth biting down on her bottom lip. Her hand was between her legs. “Yeah, I’m going to do what you say, but don’t get used to it.”

  He huffed and shook his head. Guess he wasn’t the only bossy, stubborn person in residence tonight. He stood bedside, stroking himself, while she made a show of rolling over and tossing her hair.

  He climbed onto the bed, between her legs, and pressed on her midback. “Now, down on your elbows. Yeah, like that.”

  He gave her pussy a juicy kiss before driving his dick into her with a decisive thrust. She moaned. Her head sank between her elbows as though she was lost in pleasure, the same as him, because it was all so damn good—the position, knowing it was none other than the Marlena Brodie he was riding, and finally getting to fuck her with deep, pounding strokes. The only thing standing between him and the orgasm of his life was the fraying strength of his stubborn will to get her there first.

  Their bodies found a rhythm in no time flat. He smoothed his hand over her perspiration-slick back and along the flair of her hip, clearing his mind and going into auto-pilot to keep his release at bay.

  Finally, on a whimper, she said, “I’m close.”

  Victory. Fuckin’ A, he’d never felt so satisfied at hearing those words. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

  He rose to his feet behind her, squatting. Seizing a tight grip on her hips, he let her have it with hard, fast thrusts at an angle that he knew from experience would rub her pleasure points in just the right way. Sure enough, she let out a breathy curse and clutched the blanket. Time for his secret weapon. He wet his thumb in his mouth and, on his next thrust, drove it right into her ass with a growl.

  Not a second later, she came with a cry, her whole body quaking, her inner muscles pulsing and sending him over the edge along with her. He grunted through his release, allowing himself a few moments of unleashed, unmanaged, totally selfish pleasure for the first time that night. When he came back down from the high, Marlena was still panting and twitchy. He wished he could’ve seen the look on her face when she came, because he bet she was gorgeous when she let go and went wild. Next time.

  Tipping his face back to the ceiling, he smiled to himself at the startling truth that there had to be a next time because he had a new need to satisfy with her. It was the startling truth that this night of sex, while it’d been strange and wonderful, had done nothing to satisfy that nagging feeling that he and Marlena were far from over.

  Chapter Six

  Liam stood on Marlena’s third-floor balcony, smoking. Restless.

  The balcony faced south, with a view in the distance of the back side of downtown Main Street’s quaint, brick buildings and canal bridge. The streets were quiet, the air chilly, despite it being nearly June.

  It was only eleven thirty, though it felt like a lifetime had passed since he’d knocked on her door. Really, he should be heading home. He hadn’t done his last P.E.T. listen for the day¸ and Saturday was going to be a grind since he was determined to finish the built-in bookshelves he was making for a family down on State Street, but he wasn’t ready to let Marlena go yet, not knowing if she’d ever let him get this close to her again.

  He snu
ffed out the cigarette into the nearly empty water bottle he’d brought outside with him, then retraced his route through the house to the bedroom. Marlena was still in the shower.

  He detoured to the bed and jostled the headboard on the off-chance he’d broken it. The wicker creaked pathetically and some bits of white paint flaked off, but it wasn’t broken. That didn’t mean he couldn’t pressure her into investing in some higher quality furniture before the next time he came over.

  Shaking his head, he walked to the bathroom. “Your bed sucks, by the way. Wicker’s the worst.”

  “I like it,” she called.

  He scowled at the shower curtain. “When you move into the creepy apartment, do yourself a favor and buy a bed frame that’s real wood.”

  “You’re cute.”

  He had no idea how to take that because he was most definitely not cute. Probably, she was being sarcastic. Whatever. One way or another, he planned to start upgrading the furniture in her studio and apartment as soon as possible. “You want to go someplace and get a drink?”

  She poked her head around the shower curtain. “When?”

  “Now.”

  “Locks?”

  “Nah. Somewhere nobody knows who we are.”

  “Don’t want to be seen with me?”

  Oh brother. What a chick way of thinking, even if she was trying to mask her insecurities with a joking tone. “No. Because the only person I want to talk to is you, and if we see people we know, then we have to do that whole awkward small-talk thing, which I hate. Plus, being anonymous in public is seriously underrated, especially for people like us who’ve lived in the same small town most our lives.”

  She flung the shower curtain aside. The intrigued smile on her lips managed to hold his attention for a split second before he gave the rest of her wet, sexy body a once-over. “Let’s do it,” she said.

  It took him a minute to wrap his brain around the idea that she meant going out for a drink because the sight of her naked body gave him a one-track mind. “Get dressed. I’ll drive.”

  ***

  Marlena stared with surreal wonderment at a spot between Liam’s shoulder blades as he stood at the bar and waited for the bartender to pour their drinks, still not fully believing all that had happened between them that night. They’d ended up in a dive named The Grotto twenty minutes away on the outskirts of Lockport.

  The music was loud, but not obnoxious, and the bar was crowded, but they found a small round table in a far corner. The number of people at the bar shocked Marlena. She was rarely out this late, and even more rarely at places she didn’t usually frequent. Liam was right, though. It was a thrill to be anonymous and invisible in the crowd.

  She’d known before they got intimate that he wasn’t selfish, as he’d warned her he was, but sex with him had driven the point home. So to speak.

  When he’d pointed out that they hadn’t kissed, she’d been flabbergasted and embarrassed. She was great at sex. She loved it. Heck, she taught courses on sexual healing and tantric sex, but she’d acted like a scared virgin around Liam. She couldn’t let go of who he was and who she was and their long, messy history. She’d actually seen flashes in her mind of the day he’d embarrassed her about senior prom. The act of being with him dredged up all the awkwardness and pain of their high school encounters, as well as the memory of the night of his massage appointment.

  Her fear of him had lingered, which pissed her off because he’d been nothing but a gentleman. He’d asked to kiss her with no aggression at all in his tone or actions. While their bodies were joined and he was hard and huge inside her, they’d had a conversation. He’d admitted that she had good reason not to relax around him and he’d tried to understand where she was coming from and what was holding her back. She’d never been with a man who had so much patience—not her tantric lovers, and definitely not her boyfriends.

  That first kiss had wiped it all away, her fears, the bad memories. Once she gave herself completely over to the experience of being intimate with him, it’d been the most intense, emotionally satisfying sex she’d had in a very long time. Liam knew what he was doing, sexually. He’d had the confidence of a man who’d had a lot of sex and was used to being in command. And yet, he’d insisted on her orgasming first, going down on her not once, but twice. For all his macho posturing about rough sex, he’d been singularly focused on her body and her pleasure. A girl could get used to that kind of royal treatment.

  She had no idea where they went from here in their relationship, but tonight wasn’t the time to speculate, not when she’d been granted her first opportunity to sit and have a conversation with one of the biggest enigmas in her life. She ran through her mental list of first date questions, searching for the perfect icebreaker.

  He returned to their table carrying her vodka soda and his beer. “So here’s a question that I’ve been wondering about for a while,” he said before she could ask hers.

  “Shoot.”

  “You’d already opened the yoga studio when I got out of the army, but you’re fairly young to own a business. How long have you had the studio?”

  She sipped her drink through the straw, making note that he’d been aware of her, even back then. “Only a little more than three years. Before that, I rented a massage room at a day spa and taught yoga classes at a bunch of different studios and fitness centers. It got to a point where it was hard to keep track of all the different payments and bills, and I was in my car driving to all these places every day. I felt scattered all the time and it was stressing me out, so I made the leap.”

  “Did it turn out like you thought—less stress?”

  She tilted her head, considering. “It’s a different kind of stress, better stress. I rent the studio space out to other yoga instructors, so that adds a managerial element to the job that I don’t always like, and I have to bill the clients, which I never had to do before. Numbers aren’t my strong suit, but that’s where my friend Presley comes in, because she’s a CPA. I don’t regret the decision to start the company. I like being my own boss.”

  “Same here. I didn’t grow up watching my parents go to a day job, like with bosses and coworkers and all that, so it was a culture shock going into the military. When I enlisted, I was so full of myself. I wasn’t a huge fan of being told what to do, but the army doesn’t want you to have a single independent thought for the first couple years.”

  “Did you ever get used to being told what to do?”

  He stood a cardboard coaster on its end and tapped it on the table. “Oh, yeah. Definitely. They knocked most of my hubris out of me in boot camp and Afghanistan took care of the rest.”

  “What appealed to you about being a medic?”

  The coaster tapping paused. “I wanted a specialty. I didn’t want to be infantry, but I wanted in on the battle action. And once I got started with medic training, I figured out fast that I had an aptitude for it. All that means is that my superiors and I figured out that I don’t panic and can puzzle out complex intellectual solutions while being shot at.” He offered a self-deprecating smile. “Even the day I cracked up out in the field, I didn’t do so until afterward. After the shooting stopped and my patients were dead.”

  “That is quite a useful trait to have. I would have thought you’d have gone into carpentry in the army, since you’re clearly skilled at that.”

  “Yeah, see, that didn’t have enough frontline action for my stupid, punk, eighteen-year-old self.”

  Marlena sipped her drink, considering her next question, nothing too personal, not when there was plenty of more generalized information she craved to know about him. “Then how’d you learn carpentry?”

  “From my dad. Growing up, he was always fixing something at the apartments or building things in his workshop—which is now my workshop—and he let me tag along. By high school, I was working odd jobs as a carpenter with Duke and for various renters who found out I had a knack for it, so I could finance my car. Plus it kept me from having to work at th
e apartment complex’s front office.”

  “Like Olivia did. I was in that front office hanging out with her all the time. It seemed like such a boring job.” She would’ve sworn that his jaw tightened and his muscles stiffened at the mention of his sister’s name. But she refused to let Olivia be the proverbial elephant in the room, not when she was such an important part of Marlena’s life.

  “Exactly,” he said, the word clipped.

  He drank deeply on his beer, his attention wandering. Marlena sipped her drink through the stir straw and listened to the classic rock song on the jukebox.

  Under the table, he tapped the side of her ballet flat with his work boot. “You’re serious about taking 710, the creepy apartment?”

  She swirled the ice in her drink. “Yes.”

  “710 is bigger than your apartment, but yours is nicer and you said at Locks that you liked yours better. What changed your mind?”

  She couldn’t very well admit to taking the apartment because of him. She’d sound like a stalker. “When my intuition tells me to do something, I try to listen, because intuition is the universe’s way of pushing us where we’re meant to go. And all signs pointed to me agreeing to rent the apartment.”

  “That wasn’t the universe pushing you to take it; that was my sister.”

  Maybe Olivia wasn’t quite as off-limits a topic as she thought. “That might be, but I want to see where this ride takes me.”

  “It’s going to take you to a creepy apartment.”

  She shrugged. “A place is just a place. It’s nothing.”

  With a grin, he leaned back in his chair, draping a loose arm across the back of hers. “You own wicker furniture, so of course you’d think that. Let me guess, our minds are on a higher plane and we’re not tethered to material objects and places, am I right? Like feng shui and all that crap? No offense.”

  She was used to nonbelievers making insensitive remarks about her core beliefs, which was why it was good that part of practicing Buddhism was not taking other people’s choices and opinions as personal offenses. Easier said than done, of course, but that’s why they called it practicing. “None taken. I think feng shui is real and important, but I also think we each have the ability to change the energy of the space we’re in. I think our bodies are our homes.”