She shivered and arched into him.
“You’re gorgeous.” He kissed her up to her neck.
She wrapped her legs around his waist, urging him inside. The head of his cock pressed against her opening, and she knew she was so wet she’d take his length and girth without much trouble, but he didn’t move. Her body trembled in anticipation. She rubbed her hand over the spiky nubs of his hair.
“Fuck me,” she said. “I need you.”
He pressed up to his knees and looked down at her.
Should I be ashamed to be sprawled out before him with my body needy and open?
He smiled. White teeth sparkled. “I assure you I will.”
He inserted two fingers into the well of her vagina. Her body went wild, working into a frenzy when he pumped in and out of her.
“Are you ready for me?”
“God, yes.”
“Tell me what you want, Tiffany.”
“You. I want you to fuck me with your cock.”
“Aw, sugar. Do you know how long I’ve waited to hear you say those words to me?”
After one deep thrust of his fingers, he pulled out of her body, leaving her pussy on fire and needing more. She watched him reach for the bedside table, rummage around, and come back with a scatter of condoms that he flung onto the blue-gray bedspread.
“That’s a lot of condoms,” she said, eyes wide.
His voice grabbed her right about the moment he nabbed a condom, tore it open, and skillfully slid the latex over his steel. “I’m going to fuck you like you’ve never been fucked,” he said in his low grumble.
A shiver snaked around her torso, constricting her, taking her breath because she knew no truer words had been spoken. Declan hooked his hand under her knees and lifted until her ankles were in the air, one on each side of his head. “Stay with me, baby.”
He was enormous. And rough. And, good heavens, she liked it. She nodded, licking her lips, feeling flush, as he powered inside her with one hip thrust. He filled her up so fast, so hard, it took her breath. He pulled out and did the maneuver all over again, only this time, he ground against her pussy. Flames lapped at her skin. Her clit became a hair trigger, ready for release.
“Declan. Oh, God. Oh, God….”
She saw his face—lethal. His smooth chest—solid. His ink, which she had never gotten to lick—sexy. She looked down to see their bodies connected. His cock pushed in and out of her. She lifted her gaze to the thin patch of bronze hair leading to his navel and then watched his stomach muscles rippling and biceps bulging. She glanced all the way up, connecting with his eyes.
“Don’t look away,” he said.
She didn’t. She couldn’t. Her body was engulfed in the throes of pure ecstasy. Her sex was being tested, stretched, filled up to capacity, and, in this moment, his need matched the need in her. Her desire for him, for release, was a thinly stretched cord, and she broke, staring into his eyes.
“I’m coming!”
She detonated and squeezed her pussy around his hard cock—an iron vice. He pounded his way past the contractions of her inner walls.
“Hell,” he muttered. “You’re so…sweet.” He dropped her legs and went down, his body on top of hers. He tugged her hips upward with his hands and slowed his movements, still fucking her, stoking the fires of a low burn, then picking up the pace, pulling out of her body and entering, pressing balls deep. He’d found her G-spot and worked it with expert strokes. She shook. “I can feel you,” he said. “Come for me.”
She did. Her climax rode the wave of her last one, and he never missed a beat. He lowered his head, pumped, and drove himself into her. Tiffany reached around him, forgetting about the brace on her right wrist, felt the muscles of his back working, and scraped her fingernails down his shoulder blades. He hissed. His cock jerked inside her. She knew the moment his release came. His body shuddered. Muscles pumped. He grunted. His stormy gaze locked on her. “This pussy is mine.”
Chapter Thirteen
Tiffany’s heart beat in her throat, awakened by someone pawing at her nightgown, and a bright light momentarily illuminated the dark bedroom.
“What’s going on?” She’d panicked, trying to wrap her head around what was happening.
“I told you she was pretty,” Royce had said to someone she couldn’t see.
Her gaze darted around her room. The yard light barely trickled in through her closed curtains. Music came from the other side of the wall. The clock on her dresser ticked. A shadow moved in the corner. Smoke. The stench of cigarettes, alcohol, and sweat filled the air. Click. Flash—from a camera her stepdad had in his hand. Terror stricken, Tiffany started kicking¸ trying to get Royce off her bed.
“Get her feet.”
That came from Royce.
“I’ve got her,” said a deep voice right before hands clamped around her ankles, and Royce’s palm came down over her mouth, stopping her in mid-bloodcurdling scream.
Nobody would hear her. She tried to bite Royce’s hand, but could only wiggle. She struggled to do something. Anything.
“Be a good girl,” Royce had said. He snapped a picture, the burst of light blinding her.
Unseen hands tore her nightgown at the neck. Cool air swooshed across her bare budding breasts when they exposed her torso. Horror. Shame. Humiliation. Fear. Pain.
There was another flare of the bulb on the camera. Hands on her breasts. Hands on her stomach. Too many hands. Groping. Pinching. Hurting. Laughter. Click. Flash….
“No!” she screamed, sitting up in bed, sweat trickling down her neck.
“Sugar?” Declan burst into the half-lit room, wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”
He glanced around, the expression on his face harsh, body pumped up, fists balled as if he expected to see a burglar.
She blinked. Why couldn’t she ever forget? Why did she have to have a breakdown now? She shook and burst into tears.
In a flash, he was beside her, sitting on the edge of the bed, his palm making soothing circles on her bare back.
“Nightmares,” she said. “I guess I fell asleep. It was so real; I thought I was there again.”
“Where?”
She drew her knees to her chest and bowed her head, hair swishing around her in a welcome curtain. “At Royce’s.”
He brushed her hair aside, removing the barrier for her to hide. “Tell me.”
“I can’t,” she said between sobs.
“Please look at me and tell me what the bastard did.”
Tiffany lifted her head. She gazed out in front of her for a moment and wondered if she were strong enough. Could she talk about Royce? She bit her bottom lip. Declan swiped tears from her cheek. She caved under the simplicity of his touch.
She turned to him. “I was fourteen,” she began.
She looked through Declan and cut open the pustule of her past, knowing on some instinctive level that once the wound was free to ooze, she couldn’t stop the putrid flow until, eventually, all the poison came out.
He’ll never look at you the same if you tell him.
She only hoped he would be the man she wanted to believe he was; a man strong enough not to hate her. Strong enough not to look at her with pity. Strong enough to stay and not walk away.
“Royce was home, watching some kind of skin flick in the den and drinking. He was almost always drinking then, so I tried my hardest to be scarce and spent practically all my time in my room when he was there.” She paused, sniffled, then wiped at her tears. “Living with him was like living in a space made of eggshells. I never knew when the walls or floor would crack, and I’d fall and slip through.” She closed her eyes. “I should have known he’d eventually work up to harsher punishment. Destroying my things, shredding my clothing, and hitting me wasn’t enough.”
“You mean, because he based his cruelty on the fact he thought you resemble your mother?” Declan asked.
“Yes. I tried not to. I changed t
he color of my hair, even gained weight.”
“Sugar, you were a child. He was wrong to make you feel bad about yourself and to reinforce his twisted hatred by hurting you.”
“I know, but when someone says ‘you’re beautiful,’ then beats you until whatever part of you was isn’t any longer, you begin to believe you need to be someone else. I tried being pleasing. I tried being invisible. I tried a lot of things, but nothing worked.”
He rubbed her arm, and the heat warmed her cold skin.
“I understand,” he said in a soft voice.
“The night I turned fourteen, I’d snuck into the house after dark and made it to my room without Royce any the wiser of my arrival. Eventually, I’d fallen asleep, and I remember stirring, half-awake, when my bedroom door opened then becoming fully awake when the flashes started going off.”
Declan frowned. “Flashes going off?”
“Royce had come into my room with a camera. He took pictures of me while I slept.”
“Bastard,” he muttered.
“I tried to fight him, get him off my bed, but he had someone with him. Another man. And I couldn’t do anything once they held me down.”
“Fuck.”
“They did things to me while they snapped pictures.”
“Did they rape you?” he asked.
She was quiet for a long moment, unsure if she could answer. “They hit me. Marked up my face. The man burned me.”
Declan touched her arm. “The mark on the side of your breast is from him?” She nodded, and to do so stabbed at her heart. She was tainted. “Did he rape you?”
“He watched. And laughed,” she said.
She heard the drunken cackle in her head. A sound she wanted gone. A sound that always returned.
“Watched what?”
“Royce.”
In a deep, low voice, Declan asked, “What did Royce do?” She looked down. Pain gripped her chest. Her temples ached. “Tell me. Let go of the pain, baby.”
“He did things to my body with a toy he’d bought my mother, saying he knew I’d be just as much of a whore as she was.”
“Jesus,” he muttered and tugged her into his arms.
She curled into the safety of his body.
“When they left me, I snuck out my bedroom window, bloody, half-naked, and too afraid to care about anything. All I could think about was getting away, so I ran to the neighbor’s house. I banged on their door, and everything around me slowed down into a weird, distorted slow motion until their porch light came on and startled me into reality.”
“What do you mean?”
“The reality I wanted to be in the dark, in some place where the ugliness couldn’t find me, so I cowered into a ball, aware on some level it was me shaking and watching my own blood trickle across the top of my foot. I fell into a surreal type of moment, as if the light on the porch didn’t shine down on me and show the shame.”
“I’m so sorry, baby.” She clung to him, wanting to crawl under his skin and wrap up within his hard strength, feel the sturdy bone and sinew of him giving her support.
“The neighbors took me inside. Old Mrs. Litton wrapped me in a blanket, and Mr. Litton called the police. I was taken to the hospital for a whole other invasion,” she said. Declan continued to hold her. “Royce and Buddy Daleheart, the man’s name I later found out, were arrested. Royce was in possession of photographs of other nude, underage girls he had accosted. Children’s protective services took me from the hospital and put an end to my time with Royce Brooks.”
But not an end to the memories.
Declan kissed the top of her head.
“Please don’t change how you touch me, Declan.”
“Never,” he whispered, and she hoped he meant it.
Chapter Fourteen
No,” Declan said. “If you’re not on site within the hour, I’m getting another electrician; end of story.”
He slammed the handset of his office phone onto the receiver a little harder than intended, but he was irritated. Hell, irritation wasn’t the correct sentiment. He was pissed off and in a bad mood, and he didn’t want to be. He had to pick his brother up from DIA. tonight.
He’d spent the weekend with Tiffany, having mind-blowing sex and heart-wrenching conversations that made him consider it was a good thing Royce was already in prison, or Declan would probably be sent up for killing the fucking bastard. He narrowed his eyes. Maybe if there was such a thing as justice, a hardened prisoner would use a homemade cell-block sex toy on Royce’s asshole until he bled.
He glanced out his office window, needing to calm down. He watched leaf after leaf flutter to the ground and cover the side yard in a colorful splash of fall. He supposed he would need to give the landscaping company a call and tell them to come rake the leaves.
Bang. Bang.
“Come in!” Declan yelled out.
Jett strode in, took one look at him, and stopped dead in his tracks. “Whoa,” he muttered. “Deidre said she thought you were off the phone. Perhaps this isn’t a good time.”
“I thought she headed to Office Max for more copy paper,” said Declan.
“I caught her on the way out….” Jett paused.
“You might as well tell me, good time or not.”
“The auger is on the fritz again, so I’m not loading it up to take over to the site.”
Declan squeezed the back of his neck. “Shit. Did one of the guys leave it out again without cleaning the damn thing?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Since you are one of my foremen, shouldn’t you know?”
Jett held up his hands in surrender. “Like I said, I’ll come back. I can tell you’re not in the happiest of places right now.”
“Hell.” He banged his fist on his desktop. “I’m sorry for being such an asshole this morning.”
“It’s a Monday. And Mondays tend to suck.”
Declan bobbed his head. “Yeah. I guess they do.”
Jett eyed him. “This current mood wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain young woman, would it?”
“In a roundabout way, but I can’t discuss the problem.”
“Okay. Can you fix it?”
“Not really.”
Jett looked thoughtful. “All right. Can you at least smooth things over?”
“It’s nothing like that,” said Declan.
“Then what’s it like?”
“Have you ever met someone who’s had a lot of bad things happen in their life?” He paused. “Hypothetically.”
“Hypothetically speaking, yes,” Jett said.
Declan leaned back in his office chair. “What did you do to help them?”
“I was there for them when they needed me.”
“I’m trying my damnedest.”
Jett smiled. “There’s your problem.”
“What?”
“Don’t try. Do,” Jett said.
***
Don’t try. Do.
Those words had echoed inside Declan’s head all day. He couldn’t be too overly in your face with Tiffany or too nonchalant about their relationship. It was a fine line with her, and he couldn’t be different because he knew she’d notice and take the change as something bad. Not that he intended to treat her any differently. What happened to her was horrible, but it didn’t diminish his attraction or his desire for her.
Don’t change how you touch me, Declan. He didn’t think he would ever forget her soft voice and her sad expression when she spoke. And when he’d explained she didn’t need to worry about that, skepticism lined her face.
What she didn’t understand, what he wanted her to see, was he needed to show her the gentler side of his nature. Everyone has different facets, and she needed to know he also liked the slower pace of being intimate. He supposed more time spent together would be the only answer. However, she was really skittish sometimes, distrustful of men, and he knew a lot of the reasons why. She’d told him about Simon, too; how he’d mistreated her, lied to her, a
nd cheated on her. Declan had the feeling, though, she’d held back when she spoke about Simon being just another bad relationship in a string of bad relationships that left her feeling, until recently, as if she didn’t deserve better.
His mind made the connection, and the puzzle piece snapped into place. Her crazy comment about doing better for herself by going out with the fancy-pants banker made a lot of sense. He hoped he could punctuate his point: the suit didn’t make the man.
Shit. He thumped his desk with his fist. He wanted her to continue to be open with him and to let go of all the baggage of her past. The thing was, unloading baggage wasn’t always easy, so he had to be patient with her. He exhaled. Perhaps he was analyzing everything too much, yet he couldn’t help but think if he went overboard with his affections, she’d see him as trying too hard, and this would be another thing she’d misconstrue as bad intentions or pity.
He straightened his spine. The woman had his thoughts pinging in every direction, and he wasn’t the type of man who second-guessed his decisions. He was resolute. Unwavering.
He’d wanted her from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her in Matthew’s office, so prim and prissy with her pouty lips and a bottom he wanted to spank over and over again. He scrubbed his palm down his face. Once he made up his mind, he set the course in the direction of his decision.
Declan picked up his cell phone and tapped the icon in his contacts for Stoub Engineering. Yep. There was no denying. He’d fallen for her like a mudslide, and, fast or not, he had to continue their relationship.
“Good afternoon. Thank you for calling Stoub Engineering. This is Tiffany. How may I assist you?”
Her voice teased him, and his cock twitched beneath his jeans. “Hello, Ms. Brooks.”
“Mr. Cage,” she said. He smiled. She knew his voice, and the recognition was the best feeling he’d had all day. “How are you today?”
“I’m doing well. And you?” he asked.
“Good,” she said in her professional manner. “Do you need to speak with Mr. Stoub?”
“No. I need to speak with you.”
“All right,” she said, still all business, though he wouldn’t expect anything less while she was at work.
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