by Anthology
I wanted those lips on me. Now.
I looked down at my purse and dug around until I found my keys and held them up in victory before turning and shoving the key into the lock and pushed the door open. As soon as we were through the door, he picked me up with one arm around my torso and practically ran up the stairs.
“Which one is you?”
“Thirteen,” I said breathlessly.
I was amazed he could make it up the stairs with me in tow without breaking a sweat. That said a lot about what I was in for. He could pick me up and throw me around like a ragdoll, and I was ready to get thrown around.
He set me down in front of my door, grabbed my keys, opened the door and then we were inside and he was on me again. Within minutes I’d gone from being completely freaked out to absolutely, all the way in. Screw caution. Forget about consequences.
I wanted him, and he obviously wanted me.
He picked me up, tossed me on the bed, and ordered me to strip.
“You better get those pants off yourself. I’m not patient enough to get those off with out tearing them.”
I was panting, halfway hyperventilating and nearly ready to pass out as he watched me work with fury to get rid of my clothing. Not once did he look away, his eyes steady and intense.
He pulled his shirt out of his pants, and went to work on his belt. I watched in rapt attention, dying for a glimpse of that hard body.
I’d had quite a few fantasies about his body, especially after the first night I’d seen him. His thick thighs filled out every inch of the dark wash jeans he wore, and his ass was about as perfect as they came. You could tell right away he took care of himself, and the way he’d handled me a few moments before told me he knew how to take care of a woman as well.
I was too far gone to think about the consequences of what was about to occur, and I knew full well what was about to go down. I was going to fuck a perfect stranger a cop no less and I hoped it wouldn’t be a one-night stand.
He’d ruin me forever; I knew it as soon as he touched me. Once he got inside me, this man would own me.
“You looked at me like that the other night, sugar.”
I blinked, and realized I’d been giving him one hell of a once over. It was still pretty dark in my apartment since neither of us thought to flip the switch for the lamp, but the lights outside shown through my window and gave me a damn good glimpse of him.
His chest was broad and sprinkled with a light spattering of dark curly hair. Not a lot, but enough to make me want to run my fingers through it to see how soft it was. Tight, dark nipples hefty built pecs, and a hell of a washboard stomach. I gulped and suddenly felt very insecure.
I wasn’t hard on the eyes, I could admit that, but I was also soft where he was hard, and by soft, I was squishy. I hadn’t seen a gym in over five years and I enjoyed a slice of cheesecake whenever I could get my hands on it.
That wasn’t to say I was fat, or even overweight. I just had some cushion on my curves, and compared to the Hulk in front of me, I felt very insignificant.
I’d seen the chicks he was talking to at the bar—all rail thin model types in tight jeans.
I pushed my hands against my hips and looked down as I shoved them beneath me. I didn’t feel naughty or sexy anymore. I felt… uncomfortable.
A warm knuckle came to my chin, lifting my face to look up at him. His eyes were soft, kind, and still heated. I couldn’t tell what color they were, but in my dreams they were blue.
“Don’t shut down. I have plans for you, and you’re not leaving here until we’re done.”
I concentrated on his full lips, watching them move and trying to comprehend the words falling out of them. I shook my head. None of this made any sense.
“Why are you doing this?”
He chuckled. “I get what I want.”
I shook my head again. This was crazy.
His hands reached around and grabbed mine, bringing them in between us and squeezing my knuckles. He gave me a tug toward the edge of the bed, reached behind him, grabbed his handcuffs, and shook them between us.
“In case you change your mind. Not on my watch, sweetheart. Tonight, you’re mine.”
He took one of my wrists, slapped a cuff against it and then clicked it closed. I gasped and looked up at him, shocked.
“Like I said. Mine. Tonight.”
He clicked the other cuff to his own wrist and then pressed me back down against the mattress, leaning his weight on me.
“What the hell?”
It came out strangled and panicked, because I was in fact panicking. Just as I was about to complain, he flipped us so I was on top and dragged me so I was straddling his face. The second his lips met my clit I was a goner. He sucked me into his mouth and then flicked his tongue over my entrance and my hips bucked.
“More,” I cried.
Both of his hands came down against my hips, pinning me down while he went to work licking and tasting and biting as he ate me like a starving man. My eyes rolled into the back of my head and my back arched as his tongue entered me, and I lost it, falling, falling, falling, until I was a boneless mess.
“That’s it, Lyssie. God, you’re beautiful.”
I felt beautiful. He made me feel beautiful.
“Oh God,” I whimpered. “I’ve never… that was… oh God.”
Again he maneuvered me like I weighed next to nothing and then I heard the click of the lock and he released the cuff. I opened my eyes and he was hovering above me, a satisfied smile on his face.
“That wasn’t the midnight kiss I planned, but damn, that was much better.”
I had to agree.
Then a thought entered my mind. “You wanted to kiss me at midnight? Why? You don’t even know me.”
Sitting back, taking me with him to straddle his lap he ran his fingers through my hair and kissed my forehead.
“I know enough. I know I’ve thought about you for fucking years. The one that got away.” He chuckled and shook his head. “Then you came back, and fuck me, I knew I’d do whatever I had to do—even stalk you until I caught you.”
“You have been following me.”
“Alyssa Baggoire, you’re the most oblivious woman I’ve ever seen. Fuck yeah I’ve followed you. I was afraid I’d blink and you’d disappear again.”
“Holy crap,” I said with a laugh. “What the hell is happening?”
“Well, if you’d shut up I’d like to fuck you now. If I don’t get inside you soon I’m gonna lose my mind.”
I shut up. I shut up for the first round, through the third. Finally, around three o’clock in the morning, I was ready to talk some more.
We laid there, touching, feeling, each other for a long while. It felt like I’d known him forever; it was that natural. He knew my body better than any man I’d ever been with. Not even with Zack had I experienced sex that way.
And I’d never had such deep, interesting and real conversation after being fucked six ways to Sunday either. With him, everything was different.
“I don’t remember ever seeing you before. You said you talked to Melanie about me. When?”
He turned his head and kissed my temple. “It was before you married Zack. I didn’t know you were with him, or whatever. I saw you, I wanted you, and before I could talk to you, you took off. Your friend was still there, I asked about you and the bitch gave me a bunk number. I found out later you married that dick.”
“God,” I groaned. “I’m blind.”
“Yeah you are,” he agreed. “Then you show up at the bar and I thought I was seeing things. You changed, but it was you. I wasn’t about to fuck around this time, sweetheart. So I did my homework without relying on your friend.”
I leaned up on my elbow to look at him. “She didn’t mean anything by it. That’s what we do. We look out for each other. It’s a thing we’ve done forever. We always give out the same name, and the same number.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, well that old lady I called rip
ped me a new one, Lily.”
I giggled. “She’s my old neighbor. She’s mean as hell, so that’s why we used her number. Now, it just seems mean. When we were young, it was funny.”
“You know what’s funny?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“I talked to her tonight—that chick. I told her I was taking you home, and I wasn’t letting you go.”
My eyes bugged out. “She didn’t say anything! Again!”
He ran his fingers through my hair again, and then pulled my head down against his chest. “It was probably hard to talk with that guy’s tongue down her throat. Plus, I told her not to. Told her I’d impound her car.”
I giggled again. I hadn’t felt so happy, so light or so free in so long. He made me laugh. He gave me orgasms that blew my mind. He liked to cuddle after sex. He wanted to know all about me, what I liked, what I did.
He was damn-near perfect.
“I should be completely ticked off that you’ve been stalking me. That’s just…”
“Creepy?”
“Well, it’s a little creepy, but now I get it. I kinda like it. I’ve never been stalked before.”
Just then, my phone rang causing us both to freeze. Then I made a move to grab my phone from my purse but he stopped me.
“I got it.”
He grabbed my phone, glared at it and then opened it to answer the call. “Who’s this?”
He climbed back in bed with me, pulled me close again so my head was on his chest and wrapped an arm around my shoulder. I stared at him, wondering who the hell it was calling at that time in the morning.
“Hey, buddy. I asked you first.”
I tried to sit up, but he held me down with his arm. My nerves got the best of me wondering who the heck was on the phone, and praying it wasn’t an emergency, or God forbid my father.
“Name’s Wyatt. Yeah, she’s right here, but she can’t talk right now. I’m about to stick my dick back inside her so she’s saving her energy.”
My eyes bugged out.
“Who is it?” I whisper-yelled.
He pressed a finger to his lips and smiled. “Who’s Hank, baby?”
I closed my eyes. Fucking hell. Hank.
“Give me the phone. Please.”
He shook his head slowly. Crap!
“Listen up, Buddy. I’m her man now. Lose her number.”
He chucked the phone across the room, sat up, and pulled me with him and laid a searing kiss on me. If I hadn’t already been sitting, I would have fallen to my knees.
“Hank is history.”
“He already was history,” I told him. “I haven’t talked to him since I moved back to New York.”
“Just letting you know,” he said, cupping my face in his hands. “Never letting you go, Lyssie. This is going somewhere. Me and you.”
I couldn’t agree more. Somehow, some way, I’d found what I was looking for.
Or, rather, he’d found me.
Breakfast in Bed
By Emerson Shaw
Sharp, winter-morning light streamed in through my fourth floor apartment window. I rolled onto my back and scratched my stubble, moaning away the pressure behind my eyes thanks to the prior evening’s overindulging. Talking myself into the day was going to be a feat anyway, and a headache didn’t help my cause. I hated New Year’s Eve. It was my least favorite day of the year, second only to New Year’s Day. I’d never pinpointed exactly why I didn’t like it. The day gives birth to new beginnings, new hopes and dreams, or whatever other mushy, optimistically shitty spin people want to put on it. I should have loved it like they did, but I’d never experienced anything so mind-blowing that made the day worth remembering. I’d prefer to stay on my couch watching football, not watching hordes of drunken people or seeing the ball drop, but, to be honest, that was more of a Ryan Seacrest thing.
I was going to be doing exactly that on my day off, though, because I’m a sucker. My buddy Ty cornered me last night at his bar The Cask and Barrel, a popular watering hole for our men and women in blue. He asked me to help maintain peace and order for the big party, and I couldn’t say no.
A group of pigeons sitting on my windowsill cooed, catching my attention. I squinted, adjusting to the bright glow reflecting off their perch. My phone rang, and I snatched it off the nightstand without looking at the screen. There was only one person who’d call me this early.
“What?” I said.
“Aiden!” Wyatt Harrison shouted into my ear. “My main man. What’s up, yo! You up and movin’ yet?” Wyatt was a fellow officer and was also working at The Cask and Barrel with me on this most joyous of nights. He’d been obsessed with some chick named Lyssie for months, and he hoped to bump into her at the bar tonight. The excitement in his voice was palpable, and for some reason it pissed me off a little more. I needed coffee.
I hit the speaker button and set my phone on my pillow. “Barely. What’s up?” Macie walked up my stomach and rubbed her white face against my chin. Long-furred and affectionate, she was the only good thing that had come from my last relationship. I scratched behind her ears, and she purred as I waited for Wyatt’s reason for calling.
“Wanna hit the gym? I gotta look tight tonight.”
Macie leaned in and stroked her sandpaper tongue against my nose. “Bro, that chick’s not interested. Give up already.”
“Pussies give up. I’m going after what I want, and I want her. Her ass is what my dreams are made of. Em!”
I snorted. “You’ve got it bad. This might be teetering on stalker status.”
“Maybe.” He laughed. “So, gym or no gym? The world waits for no man.”
“Yeah. Meet you there in an hour.”
And so it was settled; my day had officially begun. I plopped my girl onto the floor and threw off my covers. I ate a quick bowl of oatmeal, downed a strong cup of coffee, and popped a couple Advil.
Outside, tourists and locals shuffled around gearing up for the festivities. The sky had turned an ominous shade of gray, and the wind ripped through the streets like a tornado in an Oklahoma corn field. Winter can be brutal, and I had a feeling she was getting ready to bare her teeth. Everything around me was more than enough to evoke a snarl.
I met up with Wyatt outside the gym and after working out, we went down to Scalini’s pizza joint to refuel. Scalini’s pizza was world famous and was my second favorite thing on the planet, the first being the feel of a woman’s skin, and it had been too long since I’d experienced that.
Wyatt and I sat at a table, and a waitress came over to take our order. After a bit, she set down our drinks then Wyatt laid into me.
“What’s up with you, bro?” He raised his hands, palms up.
“What?” I twitched my upper lip and shrugged. But I knew what he meant. After benching two hundred and fifty pounds, I should have felt like a goddamn gladiator, but I still couldn’t shake off my morning funk.
“You know. You’re sulking around like some sad Sally.”
“Eh, I don’t want to work tonight.”
“Then why’d you say yes?”
“Because Ty asked.” I glanced around at the decorations. “And I hate all this New Year’s crap.”
Wyatt peeked over his shoulder like Al Capone himself was going to come around the corner and “off” me. “You better keep your voice down. You’re a New Yorker. The city could revoke your resident card for hating this.” He pointed to various festive decorations scattered throughout the restaurant.
“It’s just depressing. Don’t like it. Never have. Never will.”
His eyes narrowed. “You need to get laid and stop moping over Monica.”
He may as well have thrown a hot cup of coffee in my face. Monica. I should have known right off the bat our relationship was doomed when we’d found Macie on the street, dirty and covered with fleas. Monica had wanted to drop her off at the pound—a helpless kitten. What kind of person could do that? A soulless one, that’s who, and I wasted a year and a half with her. I
was relieved the day I came home and found she’d left. “Fuck her. I’m not moping.” I pulled my phone from my pocket and scrolled through my screen.
“She left, bro. You’ve gotta move on.”
I glared at him. “Look, bro, I have moved on. It was hardly a challenge, and it was months ago. That chapter is long closed. This has nothing to do with her.” It wasn’t a lie; I’d long been over the split. But, I’d been hesitant to get involved with any woman since. My current dry spell was putting me at risk for a sprained wrist, however.
He cocked a wry smile. “You sure? I get the feeling you’re sad you won’t have someone to kiss come midnight.” He raised his voice in a mocking tone and rested his chin on laced fingers.
I opened my mouth to say something callous but thought better of it. I glanced back to my screen.
“Eh, don’t get your panties in a twist. I’m just bustin’ your chops. Know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna find you a chick tonight.”
“Don’t want one. I’ve had enough headaches from women for a while.”
“You need someone to gobble your knob, yo. Trust me, it’ll set you straight.”
I chuckled. “Look, I can get a girl anytime I want. I don’t need anyone’s help in that department.”
“Prove it.”
I shook my head and let the conversation drop.
I tightened the straps of my vest around my waist and buttoned my shirt. I gave a few knocks on my chest to remind me of my protective shield, strapped on my belt, and hit the road.
I pulled into a spot in the back lot behind The Cask and Barrel reserved for employees. Wyatt would be along in a few with a squad car. It was still early and the party hadn’t yet begun, but the air buzzed with electricity and excitement. I walked through the rear entrance and into the kitchen. Ty manned one of the deep fryers. His dark hair was plastered to his head in sweaty chunks as he turned and shook a fry basket, loosening the crispy bundle of onion rings bubbling in hot oil.
