by Jessica Ames
I watch transfixed as he reaches behind his head and in one motion pulls his T-shirt off. He tosses it on the floor before his fingers move to his belt. His jeans disappear swiftly too, leaving him only in his boxers. I think he’s going to remove them too but he doesn’t. He climbs back onto the bed and straddles me.
He rains kisses up my thighs and I twitch beneath him, writhing as he comes close to that sweet spot but not close enough to provide the relief I want. His fingers dig into the backs of my legs as he continues to kiss around the line of my underwear.
“Dean!” I gasp out his name, a mix of frustration and elation.
My hips buck as he circles back and forth on my pelvis, getting close to my clitoris but not close enough.
Just when I think I might lose my mind, he releases his hold on my thighs and pushes my underwear aside to run a finger through my folds. The moment he touches me there my back arches off the bed and my mouth opens in a silent scream. I squeeze my eyes shut until I see stars behind the lids.
Jesus Christ.
I can’t draw breath as my orgasm tears through me at warp speed. It’s like I’ve never been touched, and it’s embarrassing how fast I react. It’s not surprising, however. Dean is good with his hands.
Gripping the sheet, I ride the wave but Dean doesn’t let me come down from it. He pushes my underwear aside, his gaze locked on me as his finger moves through my wet folds. It keeps the pressure building and I almost hit crescendo again as he rubs back and forth. I mutter a garbled noise that barely sounds human as his finger enters me.
My body reacts immediately, my muscles squeezing around him.
“You okay?” Dean’s voice drifts up to me, a disembodied sound.
“Don’t stop,” I force out and he laughs.
His finger starts to move inside me and my eyes squeeze shut. I try to breathe but I’m no longer in control of my body. Some other primal force is working through me and all I can do is let it.
Dean moves up my body, even as he keeps working a finger in and out of me and I nearly lift off the bed as his mouth latches around one nipple.
Oh. My. God.
The sensations are overwhelming as he adds another finger and pushes deep inside. I feel the fullness of him, but it’s not enough and my body wants more. I need him inside me. I need his cock because his fingers are not enough.
And just as I’m about to unravel again he removes his fingers and I feel bereft at the loss of his touch. As I go up onto an elbow to see, I understand why. He’s slipping his boxers down his legs and his cock springs free.
“Darlin’, I want to do more to you right now,” he tells me as he rolls on a condom he pulls from his bedside table drawer, “but if I don’t get inside you soon this is going to be game over.”
I laugh at his candour. “I don’t need more; I just need you.”
He clamours onto the bed, crawling over me, but keeping all his weight on his arms and legs. Leaning over me, he lowers himself to kiss my mouth. I can feel the heat from his body as he does, and my need is growing.
He kisses the tip of my nose and then he enters me.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I wake, as I do every morning, in Dean’s bed with his warm breath against my neck. He’s wrapped around me like a vine, his leg thrown over mine, his arm wrapped around my waist. This keeps me from moving, not that I want to go anywhere. This hard man, this tough, rough biker is slowly becoming my world. It should scare me, but it doesn’t.
His soft inhalations tell me he’s still asleep and when I glance over my shoulder to check I must disturb him because his arm tightens around my waist. He makes the most adorable little noise—which I will never ever tell him I find adorable—and stretches his legs out before nuzzling into my neck.
“Morning, beautiful.”
I smile at him. “Morning.”
He makes another sleepy sound as he moves a little to press his lips to mine. The kiss is soft and warm and all Dean. I don’t care about morning breath or the fact I probably look dishevelled from sleep; with Dean I don’t need to care about these things.
Being with Dean has been nothing short of amazing. I never thought I could love again, that I could feel for a man the love I once had for Simon—before the violence, before the gaslighting—but Dean showed me it’s okay to open up my heart and to let down my walls. Every day, I wake up and I ask whatever divine entities may exist that he doesn’t break that belief I have in him and every day that wish is granted.
In the past few weeks since we finally got together he’s never let me down, although I’m not sure the same can be said for me. My inability to let go of the past has, at times, tested our relationship to its limit, but Dean takes it all in his stride. He has infinite patience and for that I will love him until the end of time.
He doesn’t see Olivia, the domestic violence survivor. He just sees Liv—the woman he’s dating.
Dating.
Christ. That is going to take some time to get used to. But I like how it sounds: Liv and Dean, Dean and Liv.
But being with Dean raises other problems—like the not-so-insignificant-fact that I’m still married. I know Dean wants me to consider filing for divorce, if nothing else than to finally reclaim that last part of my life back. I’m still Olivia Wilson on paper, even though I use my maiden name where I can, but I think it hurts Dean to know another man still has a part of me—even though he will never say so. He’ll never push me to file the paperwork before I’m ready, but I suspect he would prefer I do it sooner rather than later. And I should.
“You sleep okay?” he asks and I nod.
“Did you?”
“Like a baby. I was fucking knackered.” He rolls to his back, his fingers trailing over my stomach as he goes.
I shiver, delight racing through me as I shift on the bed to face him. I love when he touches me, his tattoos a stark contrast to my unmarked skin. “You have work?”
“Just a couple of hours at the shelter.”
“Great. I have to do some shit for Derek this morning but then I’m all yours.”
“You need to rush off?” I’m sure the disappointment sounds in my voice because he grins as his fingers sift through my hair. It’s now longer on the top but he’s shaved the sides. It suits him. Then again, everything suits him.
“Why?”
I shrug as I trace the contours of his pectoral muscles, down to his abdomen. His muscles quiver as I touch him.
“No reason.”
He pulls me against him, my breasts pressed against his side and he brushes my hair off my face. Then his lips find mine. This kiss is nothing like the one we shared moments ago. It’s wet and hot and his tongue moves past my teeth.
I feel his hands on my bare back, stroking from the base of my spine, up to between my shoulders. I want his hands elsewhere, but he doesn’t move them. He just keeps up his tantalising stroking of my skin.
Then, he gently rolls me to my back and moves on top of me, straddling my hips. His hands go to my breasts and I moan as he takes a handful of both. They feel heavy and I’m needy as his thumbs scrape over my nipples. It’s like there is a direct line between my breasts and my clit because every touch makes my breath rasp out of me and my back arch off the bed.
His eyes lock on mine as he alternates between this and firmly pinching the buds between his fingers. It’s just on the right side of rough and I squirm beneath him, noticing his exposed cock is standing to attention. I try to reach for it, to touch him, but he gives my left nipple a sharp tug that almost pushes me into orgasm territory right there.
I never realised just how sensitive my breasts are until I slept with Dean. I don’t know what the hell he does, but his touch is phenomenal. Every scrape of skin against skin is like a jolt of electricity and my clit pulses, needing to be touched too. My hips thrust up, trying to find any kind of friction and failing.
“Dean…” I gasp his name as he ducks his head and takes one nipple in his mouth. The hot warmth of h
is tongue swirling over my nipple makes my breath catch in my throat.
Jesus.
He pulls off it, making a popping sound with his mouth, and moves to the other. The dual sensation of his tongue on my breast and the cool air hitting the other is heady. I can barely think straight when his hand goes between our bodies and he lifts a little so he can get his hand between us. I nearly lift us both off the bed as he skims fingertips over my clit. I’m so close to the edge and that brief touch is almost enough to push me over it.
Then his finger slips inside, and I lose it. My head goes back and I let out a long almost feral sounding moan as my pussy pulses. While I’m still in the throes of my orgasm, he climbs off the bed, hooks his arms around my thighs and pulls me to the edge of the mattress so my arse is hanging over the side, my feet flat to the carpet. Standing over me, his hand runs over my stomach, up to my breasts before coming back between my legs. I can do nothing but lie there as my body continues to contract and pulse through my orgasm.
I feel his cock against my entrance as he rubs it through my folds, through my wetness. Then he pushes in a little before pressing deeper. As always, I feel the burn as my body stretches to take him, although it is less now than it was the first time we had sex. My thighs fall open to accommodate him, to give him more space. And then I’m hit with the fullness in my pussy as he stills.
His eyes come to me as he drags his cock out and then pushes back in with deliberate slowness. It wrenches a whine from me that sounds inhuman. Then he starts to move his hips back and forth. His pace is slow but that doesn’t last. His hands come to my breasts, holding them as he fucks me hard and dirty.
My head turns to the side, my hands over my head clutching the blankets as I try to keep grounded from the sensations he’s delivering. This feels good, so good I can barely think straight. Dean’s back curves as he leans forward to get a better rhythm and one hand moves from my breast to brace against the mattress.
It doesn’t take either of us long to hit orgasm. I come first, him following a second later. He lets out a groan as my pussy contracts around his cock then he sags on top of me, although he’s careful to keep his weight fully off me. His nose goes to the crook of my neck and he peppers kisses in the valley between my shoulder as we both come down.
After a moment, he slides out of me and heads into his en suite bathroom. I hear the taps running as I lie boneless on the bed, still in the position he left me in. I can’t move. I’m completely incapable of making my legs work. He returns after a moment and stands at the foot of the bed in all his naked glory, his condom removed, his cock starting to soften.
He’s beautiful—both inside and out.
His tattoos, his narrow hips that taper down to the hint of a V; he’s not muscles on top of muscles, which I like, but I love his body. I love everything about him, in fact.
“Do you need a hand up?” he asks with a lift of his brow.
I nod because I do not have the energy to move. He takes both my hands and carefully pulls me up off the bed. Then steadies me as I come upright. Inches separate us as he leans down to brush his lips over mine and I love being skin-against-skin with him.
“Thank you,” I tell him.
“For what?”
“For all that.” I wave haphazardly in the direction of the bed.
He grins.
“Do you think you can stand long enough to shower with me?”
And I’m glad he insisted we stayed at his house last night because Dean’s shower is big enough for two.
This time I grin.
Once we’re both clean and dressed, Dean takes my hand and walks me across the street to my house. He lingers on the doorstep, playing with a curl of my hair.
“Have dinner with me tonight.”
Since I have dinner with him most nights, I readily agree, “Okay.” I use his shoulders to brace myself as I kiss him.
Truthfully, I’m at Dean’s house (or he’s at mine) so much that we should just move in together, but that’s a step I’m not quite ready to make. Yet.
His hand moves to my waist, pulling me against him as he deepens the kiss and when we come up for air we’re both breathless.
Dean stares at me, scanning my face before his knuckles trail down my cheek.
“Be good, darlin’.”
“Always.”
He kisses my nose and then turns back up the path. I watch him cross the road before stepping inside the house.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
When I head into work the next morning, I have to admit I go with a spring in my step. In fact, I’ve had a spring in my step in the weeks since Dean and I got together.
It’s gushy as hell to say, but I’m falling for him, hard, and although I have that niggling doubt in the back of my mind that this won’t last, that something is bound to derail us, I keep it at bay by sheer force of will. Because I have to believe that things can get better, that what Simon doled out to me wasn’t the best I would ever have. It’s not. I deserve more although I don’t know what I did to deserve a man like Dean.
He’s sensitive to my past, and over the last few weeks, I’ve opened up bit by bit to him about what happened between me and Simon. I was hesitant at first, but truthfully, I think it’s necessary because while I am mostly whole, I’m still damaged underneath and Dean needs to be aware of just how damaged, so if I go off again—like I did in self-defence—he can be prepared.
I know he hates what happened to me, but he hasn’t judged me for any of it, even when I told him the number of times I went back to Simon after leaving. He just listened. I can’t even put into words how much I appreciated that he did that.
For the first time in a long time I feel complete, whole. My life feels like it’s on track. I’m settled in my new job. In the end, I reported Bob to HR—mostly because I wanted them to be aware of his behaviour in case he tried it with others. He was suspended without pay until HR can investigate the matter fully, but that’s all I know.
I spend the morning helping Holly with some admin bits and bobs. At lunch time, she comes in looking preoccupied.
“What’s the matter?” I ask, as I file a stack of invoices that have been piling up since Christmas.
“Georgia texted. HQ isn’t able to process any paperwork for the next few days. The office was broken into last night.”
My eyes flare at this. “Seriously? What happened?”
“I don’t know. The police suspect it was a disgruntled ex. Georgia’s worried.”
She’s not the only one. I stayed at the Bedford shelter when I first left Simon. It’s the original Safe Shelter and the headquarters of a network of sixty-two regional shelters. It’s also where we sent Tammy after she left Simon. At that thought ice settles in my stomach as I briefly wonder if he had anything to do with it. I dismiss it as soon as I think it. He’s capable of a lot, but breaking and entering?
“How come she’s worried? We don’t keep paperwork on residents.” And we don’t. Everything is done on the quiet, and for this exact reason. We never want there to be a paper trail for a domestic violence survivor.
“It was employee records that were taken.”
I blink at her. “Employee records?”
“Yes. Strange, but she told us all to be vigilant until she can work out what’s missing.”
I head home late afternoon to get ready for dinner with Dean. I have no idea whether we’re eating in or out so when I pull the car onto the driveway, I don’t get out immediately. Instead, I grab my phone from my bag and text him.
ME: Are we going out for dinner or staying in? Just wondering whether I need to dress up or can sit in my PJs.
It takes less than a minute for the reply to ping back.
DEAN: I thought we could have a night in. Me, you, a movie, maybe Chinese. Although feel free to dress up. I really like those lacy thongs.
I grin and quickly type back.
ME: Oh, you do, do you? Well, I’ll see what I can do.
I don’t w
ait for his reply. Stashing my phone back in my bag, I climb out of the car and start towards the house. My mind is on Dean and what naughty plans he might have for us later as I push the key into the lock.
The house is still when I enter and I toss my bag by the door before heading down the hallway into the kitchen. I flick the kettle on and turn to grab a mug when I notice something out of place.
Glass.
Sparkling diamond shards are littered over the floor beneath the back door from the broken pane—the broken pane that has clearly and deliberately been put through.
What the hell?
I step back from it as adrenaline floods my body. With shaky legs, I stagger towards the hallway, towards my bag and my phone, but I stop dead as a figure steps out from the living room door.
He gives me a lopsided grin that holds a hint of anger and pain rolls through my chest as my breath stops.
Shit.
“Hello, love,” he says in his usual charismatic tone.
And my heart rate picks up more as I take in my ex-husband.
He’s smaller than I remember or maybe it is just that Dean is so much bigger than him. His hair is longer than the last time I saw him and his goatee, which is usually tidy, is a little on the unkempt side. Surprisingly, he’s aged a lot in the past few years, and time hasn’t been entirely kind to him.
I stare at him, trying to think while channelling all my inner strength for the showdown that is inevitably coming.
I swallow the lump in my throat and wipe my clammy hands on my jeans as my eyes stay locked on him.
“You owe me a new back door,” I tell him, impressed my voice doesn’t wobble.
The urge to move back into the kitchen and put space between us is overwhelming but I hold my ground. I’m not that Olivia anymore and Simon no longer has any hold over me. He can’t do anything because I won’t lie to protect him anymore.
“You owe me a fiancée.”
