by Jillian Neal
There was no room within her for me to be anything other than the man I’d been put here to be, a fierce protector and ultimately a dirty corrupter of her.
My hands scraped to her hips. My thumbs dug into the flesh of her ass once more. I worked her open until I could see her sweet little puckered rosebud seeking with every thrust of my hips. She’d asked me to show her what I wanted. I wanted her to come with my thumb teasing her ass.
I stroked her opening. She shook and gasped out my name.
“That’s it, baby. You said you wanted filthy. This is only the beginning. Scream my name for me so I know how good it feels.”
“Yes,” whimpered from her.
I snapped my hips against her thighs hard and fast, even deeper this time. My redemption was there in the depths of her. “My name. That’s all I want to hear from you.”
“Griff,” groaned from her as I pressed deeper between her cheeks with my thumb. Her body seized, cinching tight against my hand and my cock.
The grip of her pussy tore a deep guttural growl from my lungs. Another ragged shiver worked through her. Fuck it, I couldn’t fight it anymore. Every blood cell in my body surged toward my cock with a boatload of cum. Metallic silver glimmered in my peripheral vision as I stared down at her. The unopened condom wrapper that had fallen off the back of the couch and landed on the cushion she was currently gripping with everything she was glared back at me.
Dammit. Thing probably wasn’t even necessary, but I didn’t get to decide that for her. Letting her feel the calluses on my hands, I shoved the skirt portion of her dress further up her back as she screamed out my name. Her channel cinched around me constantly, tight pulses that threatened to decimate me. She milked away my every weakness. The vice grip of her pussy choked out my every failure, silencing the howl of my demons. Her heat consumed me.
She squeezed her thighs together and dug her nails into the couch. That’s how my baby always came, hard, fast, and with an intensity that made me weak. Then she’d curl up in my arms, sweet little sex kitten, and let me soothe away all I’d done.
I made one more pounding thrust, reveling in the perfection of her, before I pulled away and unloaded all over her ass. Spurts of my cum dripped over her gorgeous curves. It had been so damned long and the erotic sight fed the darkest fragments of my soul. I just kept coming.
Shutting my eyes made no difference. All I could see was the fantasy I’d just lived out until white pops of light shattered across my lack of vision. I gripped the sofa until I could bear weight on my hip without wavering. “Stay just like that one more minute, sweetheart,” I whispered. Locating a towel from the wet bar, I wiped her clean of my seed.
When she finally stood, shame gut-punched me. She stumbled forward. Her body was still flushed from her climax. I caught her and held her against me. The former twist she’d put in her hair was undone. It hung in tangled hanks over her shoulders. The clip caught in a few stray strands. The dress, God, I couldn’t stand that I’d been rough enough to have contributed to the disheveled garment oddly shoved under her breasts and over her ass. Keeping her tucked close to my chest, I managed to unzip the damn thing. I watched it slink over her slight curves until it gathered in a puddle of satin at her feet. “Baby, I didn’t mean…”
“Stop.” She lifted her head and placed a finger over my lips. “You were perfect.”
I brushed a kiss on her fingertip and stepped back, quickly working through the buttons on my shirt. Shrugging out of it, I eased it over her shoulders as she slipped her arms through. I lifted her up into my arms and set to make up for taking her like a cheap one-night stand. Settling on the couch, I eased her adorable feet out of the strappy heels I’d left her in for the purposes of fucking her blind.
Her lips were swollen even though I hadn’t gotten to kiss them yet. Next time, I promised myself, I’d take my time with her. There’d been no room for words or promises or anything else just then. Confusion fed the shame swirling low in my gut.
Guilt mortared itself inside my brain as soon as enough blood flow reversed course from the head below my belt to the one on my shoulders.
“Griff, I’m serious. That was amazing.” Her voice was rough, almost anxious.
“You deserve better than that, and you know it.” Disgust perforated my tone. She was everything, and I’d treated her like nothing.
“I deserve better than the very thing I’d been fantasizing about since that first time you visited me in Denver?”
“You fantasized about me slamming you up against the side of a sofa and coming all over your ass?” I was incredulous and had no plans to hide that from her.
“My fantasies about you occasionally get way dirtier than that,” she admitted. “Despite what you, and my brother, and my father think about me, I’m not a little girl. I’m a full grown woman, and I refuse to be ashamed about the things I want or the man I want them from.”
Her bringing up Smith and the general right after we had sex was not a good sign. In fact, I couldn’t recall a single time she’d ever done that in the years that this non-relationship had been going on. Quite honestly, I’d take Smith to the mat over who loved her more. I didn’t even know love was an actual thing until I met her.
As for her father, no man who’d done what he did to his son could possibly love his daughter at all. She adored her big brother, and he’d all but signed his death sentence. General Hagen wanted to control her not to love her.
“I never want you to be ashamed for anything, sweetness. If you want to…push the boundaries of what we’ve done in the past, I’m all in, but you have to understand that me loving you more than life itself means I want to protect you from everything that might hurt you. That includes me.” There. She wanted feelings, she got them.
“I do not need to be protected from you. I wish you would let yourself have something you want without convincing yourself you didn’t deserve it.”
My brain still hadn’t fully engaged, so I participated in the male tendency to grunt instead of speaking. Only thing I knew for certain, I’d never deserve her.
She lifted her head off my shoulder and brushed a kiss on my cheek. “I was unaware that one of the inhibitions you wanted to lose was the cock sock.” She traced her fingernail along the V-neck of my undershirt and gave me a mischievous smirk.
“You’re going to call Trojans that from now on aren’t you?” I forced a mirthless chuckle.
“Definitely.” Her giggle erased a little of my own confusion. If she wanted to turn up the heat, I’d set the whole fucking world on fire for her. I just had to get my head on straight.
“I didn’t quite mean to lose that one. You had me so fucking turned on I’m tempted to say I forgot the damned thing. Full admission though, I love the way you feel with nothing between us. Like my own personal piece of heaven. I swear it feels like a fucking drug when I’m inside you. You’re the only thing that…” I couldn’t lay that on her. What the hell was wrong with me?
“I’m the only thing that what?” Fervency darkened her sky-blue eyes like night had vanquished the day. The truth shimmered there in her starlit gaze. I’d always thought of her as my own personal sun, but this was different. People believed light revealed the truth. Soldiers knew the truth came to life in the flickers of fire watch. Night held secrets the daylight would never see because it couldn’t contain the weight of the pain. I refused to deny her the authenticity she deserved.
“That makes me feel like I never got hurt, like I’m…a whole person.”
Her eyes closed, and I loathed the words I’d spoken aloud. She always disintegrated my barriers like they’d been constructed of nothing more than residue and gunpowder. “I love you,” she whispered.
“I love you, too, baby, but we both know that isn’t enough. Don’t worry about the condom. You know you’re the only person I’ve been with in years. Probably not even necessary.”
“We do not both think it isn’t enough, and you don’t know about condoms being necessa
ry either. None of what you just said is true. It’s just what you’ve chosen to believe. The doctors said it might be more difficult for you to make babies not that it was impossible, and I don’t care. I want you. If babies come out of that, great. If they don’t, that’s fine, too. I love being your own personal heaven. Of all the things I am or ever will be, including a mother, that’s the most important to me.”
Damn, she was setting me straight that night, or at least she was trying. And fuck me if it wasn’t somehow working. I reminded myself that she’d said it didn’t matter several times, but we both knew deep down she wanted kids.
There was slight damage to my vas deferens from the bullet that had shattered near my groin. I’d stopped going in for the tests after the first one showed a significantly lower than average sperm count and motility. Yet another reason, after this week, I had to figure out how to make her understand that she’d ultimately be happier with someone else.
21
Hannah
A few weeks after Griff and I had started dating secretly, I’d talked Smith into taking me to hang out over at Chris and Maddie’s house with the rest of Team Seven. Griff had done a decent job of acting like he was amused I was there, just Smith’s baby sister, along with my brother and T-Byrd who were really the only members who would say much around me.
I was an outsider, a slight weakness to their tight cohesion. There was a reason Special Forces never hangs out with the regulars, as they refer to other soldiers. The secrets between them were an iron bond that both kept them alive and forever afraid to break the chain.
When Smith wasn’t paying attention to us and everyone else was distracted, Griff would whisper the evening’s itinerary near enough for me to hear. “Chris’ll throw everyone out in an hour, sweetness. Meet me outside the Enlisted Club. I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”
The E Club was always our place. My father only ever went to the Officers’ Club, of course, and Special Forces would never show up at the E. He’d park his Jeep in the back near the dumpsters. I could run there from my house, so my dad never missed my car. Griff always took me where I needed to go, straight into his arms. Biding my time without a great deal of patience that evening, I’d managed to give nothing away. His countdown was constant fuel to the fires he kept burning low in my belly. My control slipped with every warning.
Desperate to be near him, I’d wiggled my way into a circle of conversation between my brother, Griff, and Chris. Laying my head against my brother’s shoulder, he’d wrapped his arm around me protectively like any good big brother would. The conversation had continued on despite my presence.
They’d been discussing something they’d done in training that day. With his greedy gaze occasionally locking between my thighs when the slight breeze ruffled the hem of my skirt, Griff had managed to focus enough to answer Chris’s question. “Yeah, but we don’t have to dismantle things the way they’re put together.” He’d taken a long, satisfied pull on his beer. I’d caught a glimpse of his tongue and had shivered against my brother. He’d offered me his jacket. “You don’t have to take it apart piece by piece. You can blow the damned thing to hell, or we can tear it apart in chunks. Your choice,” Griff had concluded.
You don’t grow up the way I did without learning a thing or two. I planned to blow Griff’s insistence that Smith and my father never know about us straight to hell, and if that didn’t work, I’d tear it apart, chunk by stubborn chunk.
“Where’d you go, baby?” The husky rumble of Griff’s tone in present-day jerked me back from my reverie.
I grinned. “I was thinking about that night I made Smith bring me over to the bonfire at Chris’s just so I could see you before we snuck out. Do you remember that?”
“I remember every single moment I have ever gotten to spend with you. You hopped out of Smith’s truck in a freaking mini-skirt right as Chris lit the fire pit. For a second, I thought the damned thing had sparked without a match because you looked so damn hot. It took everything in me not to march over, pin you up against that truck, and kiss the hell out of you.” He paused as if the memories needed a moment to breathe. “I remember what else we did that night, too, after I got you back to my apartment.”
My heartbeat quickened. I swore I could feel my own pulse between my legs. I remembered as well. Suddenly, Griff was no longer beside me on the couch. He was on his knees before me, positioning himself between my legs.
“I’m about to ask you a question, and I want the truth,” he demanded as his hands skated up and down my thighs. I spread them automatically. His scent surrounded me in his shirt as the fabric spread and fluttered against my skin. His hot breath whispered over my bare pussy.
“Always.” The word hitched a ride on my breathless pant.
“Did I hurt you, baby? Are you tender from what we just did?” Hot-leaded intention was locked and loaded in his darkened gaze.
There was no right answer, dammit, and he knew it. His thumbs circled higher. He licked his lips. My legs spread farther. My clit went to war with my brain. I didn’t want him to think he’d hurt me. He’d never forgive himself, but his implied offer to make everything feel better was a temptation I had no hope of denying. “Just a little tender,” I confessed in a haggard choke. That was true. The only pain I had resided in the absence of him. A quick moan escaped when his roughened fingertips brushed the thin skin at the apex of my thighs.
“I bet I can make it feel better, baby.”
The involuntary arch of my spine scooted me closer to the edge of the sofa. The rolled hem taunted the back of my thighs. “Yes.”
“I can make it better just like I did that night.”
“God yes.” I shuddered against his tender touch and the seductive memories. I wanted to steep myself in both.
His fingertips teased at my pussy, and my entire body was on high alert. I was still swollen from his earlier force. The nerve endings were raw with need.
“I remember every single thing about you that night. So fucking beautiful. The way you tasted. I wanted to drown myself in your sweet heat, baby. The way you spread your legs for me. How wet I got you on my tongue. You love when I fuck you with my fingers, but you crave my mouth, don’t you?”
“Oh God, yes,” I choked on the admission.
“And you know I love you bare and creamy for me, don’t you, baby?”
My teeth sank into my lower lip as I managed a nod.
“And you did this for me, didn’t you?”
Words became a foreign concept when he delicately circled his thumb at the apex of my slit, preparing me. My eyes fluttered closed. I wanted only to feel.
“Answer me,” his demand was laced with greed. I knew it wouldn’t take much to shatter all of the rules and obligations he’d heaped onto his own shoulders. I just needed to locate the words.
His fingertips continued to feather over the lips of my pussy. Just enough teasing friction and pressure to make me weak. Speak Hannah. I whimpered instead. That smirk of his formed readily on his features. Damn him.
Summoning my own inner determination, I channeled my best sex goddess tone. “I don’t think you have any idea how much pleasing you turns me on.”
A flash fire of undiluted sin lit in his eyes. “Your very existence pleases me, Hannah. My God, how could I ever ask for more than that?” His tone was a wounded warning, refusing the very things I desperately desired and what he was ashamed to give.
“I know you want more than that.” There. Not the most eloquent statement, but his fingers were still tracing over my pussy and it was the best I could do under the intoxication of his touch. An involuntary shiver quaked through me. A low hum of approval rumbled from low in his gut.
“Tell me, Griff,” I begged, pushing him constantly closer to the cliff of pure arousal. A real relationship and an unending well of my love for him was at the bottom. I just needed him to trust me, take the leap, and free fall one more time. I’d be the thing that took his breath away, but I’d also restore
it.
Coasting my own hand down my torso, I captured his and pressed his fingers between my lips, right where I needed them to be.
His nostrils flared and the dark fire in his eyes intensified. His jaw worked visibly damming back the things he needed to say with the might of his molars. Using my middle and ring fingers I gathered my own dew and lifted them to his lips.
“Tell me,” I whispered as he abandoned my pussy and wrapped my hand in the strength of his own. His tongue guided my fingers into the heat of his mouth. I groaned from the sensation as he began to suck. My legs opened farther in a desperate invitation, needy for his ministrations somewhere other than my hand.
“You want to hear all of the filthy, depraved thoughts I carry around with me? That’s what you’re telling me?”
“Repeatedly,” I urged.
“I’d turn your gorgeous ass over my knee. You want marks, baby, I’d leave you with marks for the months I’ve spent thinking you were with another man. Then I’d put you on your knees, feed you my cock, make you suck away the fucking agony I’ve been through thinking you weren’t mine anymore. Nothing I’ve tried works. Nothing satisfies me even for one damned minute. Nothing but your lips wrapped around me while I come down your throat.”
“Oh my God.” I chased the air my lungs begged for and wet heat coated my lower lips. Yes. This. This was precisely what I wanted.
“Oh, I’m not done, honey. Not by a long shot. How fucking long has it been since I’ve buried my face between these fuck-me thighs? Too damned long I know that. I’d spend hours here, honey. Hours. Make you raw from coming on nothing but my tongue so many times, you begged me to fill you full of my cock just for relief.”
“Yes.” If he wanted me to beg, I was more than happy to oblige. My body rolled and writhed against the cushions. Victory fed the need surging through my veins.
