by Jillian Neal
“Hotdog gun?” Hannah gasped as she swept in protecting me from other bidders. “Is that to go with the mayonnaise?”
I shuddered. “Never say that again. Never. Just…never. Also, you know those roast beef clubs you make me when I come to Denver? I need you to never put mayo on those again. I can basically never have mayonnaise in any capacity for the rest of my life.”
“You got it.” She bit her lips together but couldn’t quite contain her giggle.
“You know how I said I wasn’t mad about this whole auction thing?” I finally spluttered.
“Yeah, I feel the need to apologize again. Also, I promise to make it up to you, and I promise no one will outbid me.”
“I’m holding you to both of those promises,” I assured her.
Despite her laughter, those cool blue eyes of hers carried a storm of shock and sorrow. She still felt bad about the auction. “And here I was hoping you’d hold me up against a few walls, the side of your personal pool, the custom tile I designed for the showers, and to the bed,” she teased.
I cocked my left eyebrow in intrigue. I’d hold her up against most any flat surface I could find. She needed to remember that it was me who’d stopped taking her phone calls. I was just as much to blame for this shitshow as she was. Our world just didn’t work when we weren’t talking. “It’s a good thing I love you.” I wrapped my arm around her.
She brushed a sweet kiss on my cheek. “I’ve always thought so.”
“Come dance with me,” I demanded. “I need something that will make me stop thinking about what my dick would look like in a knitted sock.”
Hannah dissolved in another round of giggles. “I had no idea it would be like this. Where on earth did some of these people even come from? That girl over there just told me I should’ve bought this dress in a bigger size.” She pointed out the woman who’d asked about my scar.
“And you didn’t bitch slap the shit out of her? I’m shocked,” I teased her.
“I thought about it, but I love this dress and she looks like a hair-puller. What I want to know is who are all of these people? Where did Ms. Mallory find them? I know all of the board members for Homefront Heroes, and none of them are here.”
“No idea, sweetheart. All I know is you look so fucking gorgeous in that dress I honestly can’t wait to get you out of it.”
“Thanks.” She gave me a bashful grin that had my cock taking up far more real estate in my pants than it had been a few moments before. “Hey, you know, if you really want a cock sock I’ll knit you one. Nana taught me how a few years ago when I was home one summer and missing you.”
I’d met her grandmother once and couldn’t quite picture the sweet lady who’d fussed over the entire team like we were her own flesh and blood crafting thermal penal outerwear.
“To make cock socks?”
“No.” She continued to giggle. “But I could improvise.”
“Dance. Now.”
“Yes, sir,” she breathed across my ear.
I grunted my approval, set our beers on a nearby table, and dragged her into my arms on the dance floor. She melted into me, and any sign of irritation from being hit on by Betsy Ross’s slightly younger and far more perverted sister evaporated into thin air.
She laid her head on my shoulder and buried her face against my neck. Yeah, I was all good. If she’d forget to ask me again about her father, I would’ve been damn near perfect. “Hey.” My whisper lifted a few stray strands of her hair. I inhaled the perfume of her that wafted to my nostrils. “You know I would never have agreed to spending a week anywhere with you if you hadn’t arranged this. So, thank you for always knowing what I need better than I do. I promise I’ll make this everything you want it to be. Okay?” Her guilt was unnecessary. I wanted her to leave it behind and focus only on the two of us and the things we could do here for the next seven days.
Her head lifted, and my shoulder instantly felt abandoned. “Thanks for saying that. I needed to hear it.” Her eyes made a cursory glance around us. The music and low lighting in the ballroom provided a slight smoke screen, a concealment from the insanity surrounding us. Or maybe it was the actual smoke filtering from the Golden Girl’s cigarettes. I couldn’t be sure.
“Can I tell you something?” she whispered.
“Anything in the world, baby. You know that.”
She gave a slight nod. “You know that night that you apologized for earlier? The first time you came to my apartment in Denver?”
“Yeah.” I had no idea where she was going with this, but if she was talking I was absorbing every word.
“I’ve been trying to practice how to tell you this. You’re going to think I’m lying to you,” she hemmed.
“Hey, come on, it’s me. Just say it. Whatever it is.”
“I hated how freaked out you were. When you’re hurting, it hurts me, too. Please know that.”
The flare of my nostrils from the harrowing memories brought more of her vanilla cream scent to my lungs, calming the storm in my gut. “Keep going,” I urged. There had to be more.
“It killed me that you were scared but that night was…amazing.” Her eyes closed as if she couldn’t be in the presence of whatever was coming next. “It was amazing because you didn’t hold back with me. You were…unrestrained. You let me have all of you. I want more of that. I want all of that.”
Shame. She’d closed her eyes out of shame. “Look at me,” I demanded. When her eyes flickered open, they were pools of confusion and pure, unadulterated need. “Mean what you say, baby. It takes everything in me to hold back with you. Are you saying you don’t want that? Are you telling me…”
“I’m telling you I want you in every possible way I can have you but mostly I want…”
“What, Hannah? Tell me.” Urgency swamped my veins. I could barely breathe. I was choking on what she wouldn’t say.
“I want it hard, rough, hungry. All the things we always are for each other but without you thinking you have to be gentle with me. Tie me up, hold me down, all of the dirty things you could ever dream up right down to the most depraved and filthy fantasies I know you have about us. I want to do them. I want you to leave marks on my ass. I want to feel so empty when I’m without you all I can think about is being full of you again. I want to ache with it. I want to see the evidence of your possession on my skin. I want to be used by you. I’ve always wanted that and…I was…”
“Scared to ask or ashamed to admit that?” My cock burned in my trousers. I looked down to make certain they weren’t actually on fire.
She swayed slightly to the music. Heat from the cradle of her thighs further amped the fever in my groin. If she’d reached her hand down my pants and had wrapped her fingertips around me to tug, I swear I couldn’t have been hungrier for her. Dammit. I still couldn’t be sure I hadn’t died on that plane. If she was real and really saying all of this to me, this had to be heaven, but men like me, we don’t get to go to heaven. If for no other reason than the fact that I wanted to protect her above all others, but the craving to corrupt her ran a close second. I’d burn in hell for the things I’d already taught her.
“Both.” A tremor that probably registered on the Richter scale worked through her body. My sweet, sweet baby. Her eyes were seeking some kind of beacon, something to guide her right into my arms and into my bed. If she needed a guiding force, I would always be that for her. “Those are the things that were on the agenda I had for this week. Right at the very top of the list is to do every single filthy thing you can come up with for us to do. I want that. I need that,” she all but begged.
With that declaration, the depraved side of my soul won the ongoing battle between good and so very, very bad. Jerking her closer to let her feel exactly what her admissions were doing to me, I buried my face in her hair right beside her ear. “I have one question, sweetheart.” My tone carried more than a single note of warning. It was a whole fucking sonata full of it. “How wet are you right now? How wet did it make you to
finally tell me what you need from me?”
She whispered two words that cemented the plans surfing on the blood surging to my cock. “I’m soaked.”
“Good because from the time I get you inside my suite you’ll have less than one full minute before my cock is buried deep inside of you. No foreplay. Just me taking what I want. You want me unrestrained, honey, I’ll show you just how ruthless I can be.”
“Please,” she whimpered.
“Now.”
19
Hannah
I’d just propelled myself headfirst into the eye of the hurricane, and there was nowhere else I wanted to be. It brewed right there under the invisible armor Griff kept wrapped around his skin. I’d held his darkest desires in my hands only once, the night he’d finally broken down his own walls and had come to me. I needed to hold them again, so together we could heal his self-inflicted wounds.
There was something malignant wrapped up in his mind. I had to rid him of it. The only suture for the survivor’s guilt he’d lived with for so long he could no longer see through it was complete acceptance. Whatever he blamed himself for, whatever it was that he had wrapped up in a box with our relationship, I deserved to know it, to hear it, to wipe it from existence.
The way he dragged me out of the ballroom said I’d gotten through at least the first layer of Kevlar. The plates underneath would be another war all unto themselves.
I should’ve felt guilty for leaving before dinner had even been served, but this was far more important. Not to mention the ache between my legs was unbearable. The quick motion of my steps wasn’t quite enough friction to bring any relief. I needed him just as much as I needed to make certain he knew whatever demons he was trying to slay on his own, I was right there to fight beside him. The check I would write at the end of the night was why we were even attending this bizarre soiree anyway. Our presence was not required.
The corridors were choked with people out for a taste of Vegas nightlife. People oohed and ahhed over the rainforest motif as the lights from The Strip filtered through the doors.
Griff made quick work of slicing through the crowds. He unlocked the entrance to the villa suites and fished his wallet out of his back pocket. Before I could ask what he was doing, he’d pulled two twenties out and restored the wallet all with one hand. The other was still being used to keep me right beside him. It was woefully unnecessary, but I wasn’t complaining.
Halting beside the doors to his suite, he slapped the bills into the attendant’s hand. “Do me a favor and take the night off, Fred. I’ll take care of anything we might need.” His tone held every weight of an order from the weapons sergeant of Special Forces Team Seven.
The attendant grinned. “I understand, sir. I’ll give you a little time. If you should need anything, I’ll be around… just not too close.”
Griff dismissed him with a nod. Another wave of heat washed through me and then centered between my legs. If I’d bothered to wear panties, they would’ve been soaked. The dress was too tight. There would’ve been a panty line. Besides, I wanted as few obstacles between us as I could get away with. He wanted to take me without foreplay. I was more than ready. The important part would come after. When I assured him that his desires were also mine, that he could lose himself in me and feel no shame, that we could find healing together.
The lock on the door turned with an audible click as he closed it behind us. The dark fire in his eyes burned away most of his practiced restraint. He shed his suit jacket and tossed it on a nearby chair. I prayed he’d toss away any inhibitions he held as well.
“Tell me,” I urged again. “Tell me exactly what you want to do to me. Don’t think, Griff. Just feel.”
“Oh, I’m gonna feel, baby. Feel how tight you are when I haven’t warmed you up. Feel how sweet you squeeze around me when I pound into you. Feel how slick and wet I make you. I’m going to feel myself fucking you raw. Just need to make sure your mouth isn’t writing checks your sweet little pussy lips can’t cash.” The deep timbre of his voice shot jolts of need through the cream coating my lower lips.
“Why don’t you come see for yourself?”
“I intend to. What’s under that dress, honey?”
“Nothing.”
A low thundered groan accompanied the harsh male shudder that signaled another slip of his control. My breaths were much too quick. I squeezed my thighs together desperate for relief from the achy heat gathered there.
“Say it one more time, honey. Tell me you’re sure you want me to lose control with you.”
“I want you to lose everything with me. I’m not a china doll, Griff. You can’t break me. I want all of you, even the parts you’re afraid to show me. I’ve always wanted those.”
He popped the knuckles on his right hand. I fought not to throw myself at him, to do whatever it took to convince him he didn’t have to be nervous with me. He was still worried he’d do something I wouldn’t like, or that if he showed me the demons he tried so hard to keep caged I might run away. I wasn’t going anywhere. Not this time. “I don’t need you to be a soldier for me, Griff. I want the warrior that existed deep inside of you long before you signed on the dotted line with the United States Army. Show me what you think about when I can’t be with you.”
That did it.
With savage possession armored in his drive, his long legs ate up the distance between us in two determined steps. “You want to hear my depraved thoughts when I’m not with you, honey. Fine. Hike the skirt of that dress up. Then bend over that couch and show me what belongs to me. Right fucking now.”
His eyes followed the sway of my hips, right and then left, as I shifted to scoot the skirt up. My ass jiggled as I worked the cotton lining to my waist. An untamed growl hummed from the base of his throat.
I managed a breath that came in harsh gasps as I turned to face the rolled arm of the Chesterfield sofa. I’d picked this piece specifically for this purpose. Soft, cushioned material to provide a canvas for brutal passion. Every nerve ending in my body quivered. A hint of fear skimmed the periphery of my awareness. But my own personal halo was far too neat and shiny. It needed to be shattered, and my own personal HALO jumper was the man for the job.
“Show me,” he ordered. I could almost hear the chains he’d bound the warrior in scraping along the cage walls as he yanked against his own restraints.
Spreading my stance, I balanced on my high heels, and did as I was told, folding myself forward over the arm and bracing my elbows on the cushion below. I turned to stare him down. Reverence and greed went to war in his eyes. “Take me.” I fed the wolf I knew he needed to free.
20
Griff
If there was such a thing as the sweetest sin, it was my baby offering herself up on the arm of a couch and begging for the beast I did my damnedest to keep caged. And he’d been deprived of her for so fucking long I had no hope of denying myself or her.
Laying the condom from my wallet on the couch, I’d freed my cock from my trousers in two quick moves of my right hand. I jerked my boxer-briefs down low enough to get the job done. She wanted to know the things I’d ultimately burn for, the things I wanted from her but would never take without her prompting. Fine. I’d hate myself later. Right now her bare pussy was swollen and creamy, ripe to be ravaged. I’d never be strong enough to walk away from the only piece of heaven I’d ever hold in my hands.
The spice of her arousal filled my lungs as I stepped behind her. I gripped the globes of her ass too far gone for any kind of tender touch. I kneaded her pliant feminine flesh. She wanted marks. I’d make certain she could see where my hands had lain.
A quick gasp sprang free from her. My cock lengthened and throbbed, such a weak motherfucker for my baby. Weight of restraint racked in my balls, more than I could bear.
She wanted me to lose control, wanted me to take exactly what I wanted. Done.
Gripping my cock, I traced my head up and down her slit once, twice, slicking my tip with her honey. I was
a fucking inferno for her and the only relief was so deep inside her neither of us could tell where I stopped and she began. “So wet. Does thinking about me fucking you so hard you forget your own name make you drip for me?”
“Yes,” she panted. “Please, Griff.”
Her hips rocked upward. The sound of my name snapped the chains I roped myself in when I was with her. The bare lips of her pussy were swollen and pink as they brushed by my cock and tempted my sac. Bare all for me. She’d wanted this all along. Fuck, she’d planned this. And the thing that I couldn’t rectify was that she’d planned this all for me.
She spread her stance farther, incinerating any hope I’d ever had of keeping my dirtiest demons at bay.
“Take it, baby. Take it all,” I demanded as I speared through her in one dedicated thrust. Because that is what I needed more than I needed the next beat of that half-shattered organ in my chest. Desperation filtered through my veins. The blood required to pump through my body demanded that she allow me to own hers.
Unable to help myself, I withdrew a few inches and then slammed into her again with brutal force. I didn’t want to see the scars from the skin grafts and reconstruction on the left side of my cock. Only she could make me whole. I sank deeper with each pass, seeking the holy water that would wash me clean.
“God, yes!” she screamed. Oh fuck, it was on. She arched her spine, and I gripped her hair the way she’d gripped my heart, forcefully and with no reprieve. I rode her hard and still needed more.
Untangling my hand from her hair, I gripped the top of that dress that drove me to the brink of insanity, jerked the bodice down, and let the weight of her gorgeous tits spill through my fingers. Her nipples pressed insistently against my palms. With every thrust of my hips, she soothed the constant ache that resided there. With every slight withdrawal, she somehow tightened as I barreled back inside.
