by Willsin Rowe
“It’s not just Cameron.”
“I know. Toni said you had a couple of other guys who were just as stupid.”
“No. Well, I mean, yes. But that’s not what I mean at the moment.” I had to swallow the tension mounting in my throat. The whole thing was coming back to me as if it was happening right there and then. The choking episode in my store, and the sheer, undiluted threat of the car park. “There was an… an incident after I closed the store today.”
“An incident? What, like you had a fender bender or something?”
I shook my head as I formed the words. “It kind of wasn’t anything, but it sort of was, too. Out the back, heading for my car. And that mailman guy…”
Mark flexed his broad shoulders as he balled up his hands. “Who, Patrick the fucking asshole? Are you okay? You need me to bust him up?”
His concern sent tickling fingers of pleasure down my spine and into my belly. The only person who’d ever looked out for me like that before had been Toni. And while she would be an absolute tornado of anger, there’s no way she could ever match Mark in the strength stakes. “Thanks Mark. But no, I’m pretty sure I’ve taken care of it.”
“Woah. Go you.” He crossed his arms and gave me a tiny smile. “It’s probably for the best, anyway. I’ve never had a fight in my life.”
“Must be why you’re so damn pretty.” I risked overstepping the mark a little by leaning against his lovely chest. “But see, all I can be sure of in any of this, is that I’m utterly hopeless when it comes to men.”
He put those strong arms around me, crowding my body in a most delectable way. I was all trapped and restrained but there was not a shred of threat in this moment. “Oh, I disagree on that one. You have me on a string, young lady.”
“I absolutely do not!” As appealing as the idea was, I couldn’t allow myself to believe him. I was not obsession material at all.
Mark pressed his lips to my forehead, imbuing the simple action with such depth I thought maybe he’d planted seeds in my skin. The roots of that kiss seemed to burrow through my skull and straight into my mind. “Seriously, Luce. With barely a word or a gesture you reel me in. You let me taste the paradise of your body and soul, and then you close back up and cast me away.” He glided his hands down my back, stopping just short of my ass. “What do you think it says that I keep coming back for more?”
“You expect me to answer when you’re touching me like that?”
“It’s because you’re incomparable, Lucy. You’ve ruined me for anyone else. If you won’t have me I might just die alone.”
“Don’t say that, Mark.”
“It’s true. Whether I say it out loud or just think it won’t change that.” He lightly scratched the exposed skin at the base of my spine. “Somehow, I still felt like a sleaze, even though you started it all when you kissed me. I knew how you felt about housemates and all, but I just wanted you so much. When you put your lips to mine it was impossible for me to resist. My strength failed me, and I couldn’t stand the thought of one minute more without touching you… tasting you.”
“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, Mark. I’m sorry. It was the heat of the moment, and I was reacting to Patrick’s attack and… and I was the one who was weak.”
“You were the one who was weakened. I know, it’s a semantic argument. But your judgment was affected and I felt as if I’d taken advantage of you. But today… you bust into my shower and give me what might just be the finest blow job I will ever receive. And then try to convince me it meant nothing?”
“It wasn’t… that wasn’t what I meant.”
“Don’t you understand, Luce?” He stepped back and stared into my soul, resting his hand against my cheek. Without me even thinking about it, I leaned into his touch. “It surprised me. Shocked me, even. But at no point did I wish for it to stop. God, it was wonderful.”
“But—”
“I’m not finished.”
The sharpness in his tone pulled me up short again, but tightened my belly in such a nice way.
“I know some guys might think that’s the perfect situation. Living with a total goddess who’ll suck his cock as a surprise. No commitment either way.” He kissed my nose, again a small embrace which wouldn’t be weird for a family member to do, yet somehow the way he did it made it more intense than playing tonsil-hockey with a one-night stand. “Thing is, I don’t know if you realize just how fucking hard I’ve fallen for you, Lucy.”
“How? How could you have?” I didn’t just mean the shortness of time. I was also thinking of my own hot-and-cold behavior.
He pulled me closer to him and pressed his mouth to my ear. Every word he spoke from then was a quiet murmur, made incendiary by the short distance it had to travel before his voice entered my bloodstream.
“How could I not? You intoxicate me with your presence. You’re as funny as hell, as smart as a whip, you smell just… fucking amazing.” His breath turned ragged for a moment, which in itself was an even bigger turn on than anything he’d said. “And your body. God damn it, Lucy. Your body is the most supreme temptation I’ve ever been presented with. And I resisted you as long as I could. But you’re in my blood now. I held off, I kept my distance. And you simply obliterated all my defenses.”
“I’m… uh, sorry?”
Mark slid his hand down from my cheek until he hooked it around the back of my neck. It was close enough to the way Patrick had attacked me that it should have made me squirm. And it sort of did, but for a completely different reason.
“Are you, Luce? Are you sorry you broke your own rules? Or just sorry that I won’t play your game?”
“But I’m not…” He tightened his fingers into claws, scratching at my neck and the base of my scalp. I struggled to locate my voice in the storm of pleasure it awoke inside me. “Not… playing…”
“You’re not playing any games?”
I let my eyes fall closed as he brought his other hand up and doubled the dose of pleasure. Weakly, I shook my head, knowing all the time he was right. I hadn’t set things up that way, but I’d been playing this weird yes-no game with my own need for Mark, and with his desire for me.
“Oh, I assure you, Luce… you most definitely are playing games. But you know what? It’s cool. I told you before, when it’s the right girl, it’s worth playing. It can be a whole lot of fun.” His fingers met behind my neck and I let my head fall back almost as if he’d severed it. Certainly it acted like it was a separate part most of the time, with my mind blocking my body’s wants. “My only problem is, it has to be the right game, and a level playing field. Right now you have one rule for you and ten for me.”
“I… don’t…”
“Yes, you do. I almost don’t mind because you really are worth my time and my effort. But you don’t play fair, either.”
“H–how so?”
“I already told you. You’re like a siren song. Every move you make, every tilt of your pretty head, every sway of those fucking gorgeous hips, every inch of these luscious thighs… you call to me. Even from another room. This house feels icy when you’re not in it.”
It was as if he’d read my mind. The way his fingers massaged me I wondered if he actually could. He seemed to know exactly the right words to say and places to touch me. When he spoke again I had to come back from some distant, dreamy place just to hear him.
“And now you come to my room, dressed like this? You’re either a tease or… something worse.”
“These? These are just my workout clothes. Surely you can’t—”
He silenced me with a kiss, pouncing on my mouth as if subduing me. As if I’d ever try to escape from him. I opened instantly, welcoming his sensual tongue, silently begging him to stay there, to never stop kissing me. Ten years too soon, he drew himself back, his dark brown eyes all I could see. “Haven’t I already said that to you? You don’t
get to tell me what I like.” He licked his lips as he scanned me from toes to eyes. “Damn. You truly don’t know how fucking gorgeous you are, do you? But the question remains. What do you want from me?”
To keep touching me like you are right now. To kiss me like you just did and never stop. To be here for me every time I come home, and every time I wake up.
To just… love me.
I couldn’t say any of that. It was all true, but I simply wasn’t brave enough to put it all out there. Besides which, it was just too soon. Too soon after he moved in, too soon after he broke up with Gabrielle, and far too soon after we’d first made love.
I hooked my hands around his wrists and left them there, feeling certain I should be worming my way out of his heavenly grip, and just as sure I didn’t want to. Finally, I pulled on him, loosed his hands from my hair. When the delicious tremble had run its course through my body I shook my head and leaned back on the wall.
“Look, you’re right, Mark. I don’t have any rational explanation for my behavior. And no excuse for messing you around so damn much. I do want you, like I’ve never wanted anyone, but that could just be hormones. I do think maybe you’ve changed me. That I picked up on your vibe too much.”
He began to protest, so I held up my hands in surrender as well as suppression.
“No, no. Please. I’m not blaming anyone but myself. I love the way you are, so free and easy with… well, with pretty much everything. But that’s not me. I’m high maintenance, finicky, pedantic—”
“Gorgeous, fun, sexy, smart—”
“Stop. Please, Mark. I love that you feel that way but I really don’t think I deserve you. Not when it’s clear you want more from me than I can give. Maybe more than I actually have. And you don’t run on batteries. I can’t just turn you on and use you simply because I feel like it.”
“Do not sell yourself short, Lucy Featherstone. Not only do you have depths which are deliciously plumbable… you turn me on with your mere existence.”
“No, look, I acted like an ass and I’m sorry. I really like you and I don’t want us to fight. It wasn’t fair of me to mess with your head.” I held my hand out, hoping he’d shake it. “Truce?”
He looked down at my proffered hand and back up at my face. “I don’t know, Luce. If we’d had a drunken fumble one time, maybe we could laugh that off. A couple of times, if they were spread over a few months? Then maybe that too. We could just smile and shake our heads and say oh, you remember when? But it’s been less than a week and we’ve both slipped a bunch of times. While sober.”
“Wait...it’s only been three times.”
“Three times we’ve actually acted on our feelings. But what about all the teasing? You’ve been putting me through the most beautiful hell since I moved in.”
“I haven’t been teasing at all!”
He hooked his finger through the shoulder strap of my crop top. “Baby, you wear this kind of thing around the house every day, with that scrumptious body. You dress in those beautiful retro dresses that hug your curves and highlight all that magic.” He scooped my hair into one hand and pressed the other to my cheek again. “And you have this fiery waterfall of brilliance, and this creamy pink-white perfection… and you don’t think you’re teasing?”
My throat was suddenly dry. Possibly because my pussy was suddenly drenched with want. This would not do. He was not allowed to seduce me again. Those were my goddamn rules. Right?
“W–well, what about you, mister?”
“Me? I definitely don’t—”
“The way you touch my arm when you talk to me? And how you walk around the house with no shirt on. The way you smell so…” My struggle was as much physical as mental because that wonderful driftwood scent of his skin flooded my senses again. “So damn amazing.”
“Are you sure you’re talking about me, and not yourself? I have finger-sized trails on my shoulders from when you glide past me in the hall. And if we’re going to talk about who smells amazing…” He pulled in a long, deep breath through his nose, and when he sighed it out again it brought his voice with it. A deep, satisfied moan.
“Oh, god… stop that.” He was going to melt my bones with that voice of his.
“Let’s also not forget the way you play with your hair all the time in such a mesmerizing way. Plus you’re always smiling at me. Don’t you know what a damn turn-on that is?”
“Well, you’re the one keeps making me laugh, you jackass! God, you’re so frustrating!”
He grabbed my shoulders and slammed me back against the wall. Not so hard as to hurt, but definitely hard enough to make the moment come alive, and switch every iota of my focus to him. My breath caught sharply in my throat as I stared up into Mark’s eyes, scanning for any sign of anger but seeing only desire in the darkening of his irises. Heat rose in my cheeks but it was impossible for me to decode it, to know if I was embarrassed, ashamed, angry… or simply so filled with desire my body might liquidize.
“Frustrating?” His voice had grown as dark as his eyes, and as rough as the stubble on his cheeks. “You think I’m frustrating? You seduce me hourly with your sharp sense of humor and your old-fashioned values. You taunt me daily with your perfect mouth, your emerald eyes, your velvet skin. And now I know how much I adore the sweet, feminine flavor of your perfect pussy.”
“Mark…”
“Yet you want to keep yourself from me just because some other guys were the biggest idiots on the planet?” Somehow, the quiet intensity of his voice was far stronger than any shout would have been. “Honestly, you have my head on a rotisserie, Luce. Not just because I know you want me as much as I want you. It’s the way you keep drawing new lines in the sand, only to break the sound barrier as you leap straight back over them.”
“Says you.” I slapped at his forearms. “Let me go.”
“I’m getting pretty tired of your rules, Luce, and the way you think they trump everything else.”
“I said let me go.”
“Haven’t you worked it out yet? You don’t tell me what I like, and you don’t tell me what to do.” There was a deep smoldering menace in his voice that sent urgent signals straight into that troublesome prehistoric part of my stupid brain. As always, though, my temperament won out and I curled my lips into a sneer that was guaranteed to take his emotional heat even higher. Because fuck letting him have it all his own way.
“My house. My rules. You want to live here, you do as I say. Got that?” It was almost impossible, but I managed to keep the smile from my face.
“You keep talking crap like that, and I will find a way to shut you the hell up.”
He dug his fingers into my shoulders and the pressure turned to pain, slicing to pieces the breath I’d been drawing in. “If you really think you could shut me up…” I prodded at his chest. “…then you, sir, are a fool.”
“I did it once. It’s the easiest thing in the world.”
“I won’t fall for that ag—”
Mark came forward so quickly he was a blur, pouncing on me like a predator, driving his tongue deep inside my mouth in a kiss so hot it felt like he’d scald me.
Within seconds the heat of his kiss, and the wave of desire it flooded through me, turned my body to syrup. The presence of him—sight, sound and scent—pulsed straight through me, firing out to my fingers and toes and back again. I felt like I was in shock, about to collapse. My hearing and vision clouded, faded, and the air around me rippled with a charged stillness like the moments before lightning strikes.
All I could hear was my own voice moaning with want. All I could feel was Mark’s tank top coming apart beneath my fingernails.
Mark’s precious mouth was my entire world at that moment. He glided his lips across mine and clamped his teeth on my tongue. Maybe to stop me from speaking and spoiling the moment, or telling him to stop. If he thought that was going to happen h
e was even more mistaken than ever because I would willingly drown in his sweet mouth. Suffocate from lack of breath, if only he would keep kissing me like that until my life ended.
All too soon he eased his lips from mine and I collapsed into his powerful arms. The comfort of his solid chest against me was a fresh heaven. For three seconds. Before I’d even closed my eyes to soak up the wonder, Mark growled like some kind of big cat and swung me down to the floor. He landed me on my knees and pushed me forward onto my hands as well, leaving me propped with my ass in the air. In seconds he’d stripped my yoga pants and underwear down to my knees, the fierce movement leaving me with a delightful cold sensation on my skin. I was completely exposed to him and it was utterly freeing.
A quick rustle of fabric sounded from behind me, and a few muttered curses and a strangled come on. A second later Mark had the fat head of his cock pressed up against the slick wetness of my pussy. I was ready for him—so fucking ready—but at that moment he stopped.
“Luce? I don’t have a—”
“I don’t care, Mark. Fuck me!”
“God, you smell good, Luce.”
My yoga pants were still caught around my knees, holding my thighs close together. I desperately wanted to spread my legs and beckon him in but the fabric won out. Instead I dropped my head and chest to the floor, pushing my ass higher. If my words hadn’t already been enough, surely this signal would compel Mark to drive himself inside me again. And again.
I’d been ready for him, but the moment got really big, really quickly. He clawed his hands around my fleshy hips and pulled me back against him, his beautiful bare cock gliding straight inside me and awakening sharp tingles through my entire body. The other times, sheathed in latex, had been amazing. But this, skin to skin, heat to heat, was a whole new level of intensity.
