And he’s not even naked. Yet.
“Then I shouldn’t—I really shouldn’t—do this.” I rip open the snap of his jeans, drag down the zipper.
I shove my hand between cotton and flesh. Reach down; grip a greedy, needy fistful of Lock. And god, there’s so much to grip. My fingers don’t meet, can’t fully encircle him. I whimper as I get my hand around him. Groan in delight as I stroke him top to bottom.
“No…” he chokes out. “You really shouldn’t.”
“But I’m going to anyway.” I use a moment—knowing this time together is limited, each second ticking away is one closer to when, according to him, everything is going to change—to jerk his pants down, use my feet to shove them to his ankles.
He kicks off his shoes and steps out of his pants, and then, just like in my fantasy, peels his shirt off. Exactly how I pictured. Leans back, crosses his arms in front of his body and yanks the shirt off. And fuck, he’s even sexier than in my fantasy. Miles of muscle, lean, hard, bulging muscle. Corded forearms, thick biceps, razor-cut, grooved, ridged abs, that yummy V-cut I want to lick. He looks like a warrior from bygone eras, even has scars on his torso and arms. Fairly recent scars on his chest, near his heart. Surgery scars.
I don’t spend too long on that. Doesn’t matter.
All that matters is that I’ve got him in my hand again, and he’s kissing me, fingers moving in me, against my clit. I ache. Throb. I’m volatile. I take my time touching him, exploring him. Cup, curl, stroke, rub my thumb across the tip. God, I missed this. I need this so bad. I know I’ll have a world of emotions to deal with later, probably including regret or remorse or guilt or shame. But right now, all I know is the power of the present. How beautiful this feels. How beautiful and desired I feel. His eyes are all over me. His mouth is all over me. His hands, his fingers. He can’t stop. He knows he should, for whatever reasons he has that are so clearly eating away at him. But he can’t.
And I like that he can’t. I don’t want him to be able to stop. It means he’s as drunk on me as I am on him. It means I’ve still got something that can entice a man, when I thought I’d lost it. I’d barely subsisted for so long, dragging through each day, just existing, not feeling. Certainly not feeling like a woman who could ever be the subject of a man’s desire again, let alone feel that desire for a man within myself.
I thought I’d died too, that day on the freeway.
But I didn’t.
I feel Lock’s hands lift me up, feel him unclasp my bra. Impatiently, I jerk my shirt off, tossing my bra with it. And being naked with Lock isn’t weird, or awkward, or embarrassing. He’s raking his gaze over me, devouring me, exactly as I’d fantasized.
“Niall, Jesus.” He smooths a palm down my side, cups my hip. Nudges his knees between my thighs, towers above me. “You are…” He doesn’t seem capable of finishing.
“What, Lock?” I stroke him. Touch his abs, rub my palm over his pectoral muscles, over his biceps, down to his waist, to the taut, hard, cool bubble of his ass. “What am I?”
“Fucking gorgeous.” His palms are so rough, like sandpaper. It should hurt when he grips my breasts, but it doesn’t. The rasp of his callused hands across my soft, sensitive skin is delicious, makes me tingle all over, makes me shiver. “The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen some of the most beautiful things there are to see in this world.”
My throat catches, a thick hot knot in my throat. “Don’t stop there. You don’t know how much I need to hear this. Especially if you mean it.”
He laughs, white teeth flashing. “I mean it, Niall.” His expression sobers. “But the truth is, we really—”
“I know,” I say, cutting him off. “And I don’t care. Whatever it is, don’t tell me. Not yet. Just…just let me have this, okay? Please? I want this. I want you. Yeah, we just met, so we know basically nothing about each other. I don’t care. Yeah, you’re this drifter, and you’re going to move on. Okay, fine. Just let me have this moment.
“I need it, Lock, I need it so fucking bad, and I’m not going to apologize for that, or for how desperate I know I must seem—I am desperate. And sure, maybe you have some earth-shaking thing to share with me. Maybe I’ll hate you and never speak to you again, although I can’t fathom what you could possibly have to tell me that could make me feel that way. I don’t care. Not yet, not now. I will, probably. But right now, I just…I want to have sex with you. I want you to shut me up with a kiss, and not stop. I want you make me feel things I’ve not felt in—so long. Too long. And if you’re gone in the morning—”
His mouth crashes against mine, shutting me up, as requested, with a kiss. His hands are all over me, roaming over my breasts, my hips, my face, my thighs. Delving in between my thighs, touching me there, bringing the wild heat back.
He dusts kisses down my jaw, on my throat, between my breasts. “I won’t be gone in the morning,” he says. “And I reserve the right to say I told you so, later.”
I bury my fingers in his hair, let my knees fall apart, and hold on to his head as he settles between my legs, lips touching delicately to the insides of my thighs. Inward. Closer. And then, fuck yes, his tongue and lips are there where I want them, and it’s infinitely better than I could ever have fantasized. He’s so much more skillful at this than I ever thought possible. He’s edging me, using his fingers now too, bringing me to the cusp of coming and then backing me off, bringing me closer yet, and then back, closer, and back. Again and again until I’m vicious with the need to let go.
“Enough, Lock,” I gasp. “Let me have it.”
He rumbles a laugh, and then does as I ask. Does this thing with his fingers and something else with his tongue, reaches up and tweaks my nipple, and then I’m screaming his name and thrashing and everything is white and hot and I’m dizzy and detonating, hips driving up off the bed, a live wire searing inside me.
He doesn’t stop when I climax, though. He keeps going until I’m limp and then keeps going until I come again, harder, and then I feel him move up over me. I feel him on me. Feel his weight.
His beard tickles, and then he’s kissing me.
And I feel him nudge against me. Hard, thick, hot, soft. I reach between us, grip him. Stroke him and stroke him. Devour his kiss and lift my hips and slide him into me.
It feels so good I cry. Sob into his kiss, knot my fingers in his thick hair so he can’t stop kissing me, and lock my heels around the backs of his thighs so he can’t stop, so he can’t get away.
He moves.
And it’s heaven.
I bite his shoulder and claw my fingers down his spine and bury my nails in his butt cheeks, pulling him against me. I don’t know this version of me. I’m a beast, thoughtless, feral, full of raging need for this, more of this, all of this. I hear myself making…noises. Desperate, erotic, wild noises. Loud shrieks, hoarse cries.
The way he moves, slow, deliberate, makes me even crazier because I need it harder. So then he gives it to me like that, hard and fast. But then he slows down again, fluttering soft and sweet and shallow. When I mewl in frustration, he pushes deep and increases the tempo.
Mastery. God, such mastery. He knows exactly what I want, exactly what I need, and he refuses to give it to me until I’m ready to vocally beg for it. He plays me like I’m an instrument, plucking the strings of my needs and desires. Mouth moving over my flesh, sucking, kissing, laving his tongue over and over and over.
Worshipping me.
I move with him, give in to his mastery, go where he goes, take what he gives. He feels me tense, feels me clench, hears my breath go short and ragged, and he moves faster and faster until I’m riding the edge, and now I’m falling over again, falling this time off the edge of the entire galaxy into the nova-hot epicenter of an orgasm so intense it steals my breath, my sense, any hold on any restraint I might have left.
I feel his motions stutter, feel his biceps flex. Feel his abs tighten.
“Niall, Jesus, I can’t—I have to—fuck, I�
��m so close.” He gasps this against my ear.
He pulls out, and I take hold of him with both hands and smear our mixed essences all over him and stroke him hard and fast and relentless until he growls like a lion, grunts, hips spasming, pushing his erection into my hand, his entire body going rigid, his face pressed between my breasts, breath coming in groans. I pump him hard and fast, feel him come, feel him unleash, feel it splash wet on my stomach, laying a hot wet line up to my diaphragm.
And then I give him what he gave me, soft slow endless touches until he softens in my hands.
Spent, Lock flops to his back beside me.
And immediately, grabs me, hauls me against his left side.
I move closer, throw my thigh intimately over his thigh. Hand on his belly. Not caring of the mess I’m making of both of us. I press my cheek to his chest, my ear over his heartbeat.
And now comes the fraught emotions.
It’s the heartbeat in his chest that does it. Beating hard and fast, loud under my ear, slowing to a steady, rhythmic thump that is so familiar, so beautiful in its familiarity. This place, being held, cuddled in the shelter of a strong man’s arms…is its own gorgeous brand of intoxicating. As much so as sex itself.
I look up at Lock, and I realize he’s feeling his own maelstrom of emotions. And judging by the expression on his face, he’s waging a war of some kind.
Losing, too, I think.
And, selfishly, I choose to wait. Choose to enjoy this for as long as I can.
Thump-thump…thump-thump…thump-thump…
Go all in just to lose again
She’s asleep. Sheets bunched just beneath her perfect, heart-shaped ass, lying on her side, one hand under her chin, the other thrown behind her. Curls springing awry, exploding everywhere, a bomb of brown ringlets. Long, thick black lashes dark against her cheeks. Innocent. Relaxed.
Perfect.
And my heart is hammering out of my chest, my gut is twisting. Guilt is a razor-sharp blade corkscrewing through me.
Confusion has my heart in a vise.
Panic is a serpent injecting poison into my veins.
And beneath all this is a complete and utter lack of regret for what we just did. Because that was…
I can’t even articulate in my own mind what just happened. What it did to me.
My entire soul has been rocked off its axis.
I don’t know which way is up. I’m not a crier. I’m not a pull my hair out, pacing back and forth type. I’m not a pensive, brooding sort.
Because I’ve never invested in anything, or in anyone. I’ve never let anyone mean anything to me.
I’ve known Niall for two fucking days, and what just happened, it was…
…I don’t have any goddamn words for it.
It’s just too much, too intense.
I am motherfucking terrified.
I have to get up. I have to move. I can’t breathe in the same room with that woman, even if she is asleep.
And not just because she’s so incredibly, indelibly beautiful I am compelled by some inexorable force to just stare at her when I’m near her. Not just because she’s so sharp, so smart, so sweet. So eager. Jesus, not just eager, but fucking ravenous. She was a tiger, insatiable, literally snarling like an animal as she came apart beneath me. And I want that, I want to make her do that over and over and over, infinitely.
That, right there, is why I’m terrified.
That word, that concept: infinitely.
Forever, without end.
That smacks of commitment. It smacks of meaning, of investment, of purpose, of vulnerability and truth. And I have no experience with any of that.
I fucked her senseless, and she still doesn’t know the truth.
I came here to do who knows what, and for reasons I don’t fully understand; yet here I am in a maelstrom of my own creation.
God, I’m a monster.
It’s going to gut her. And that, in turn, is going to shred me.
I’m up, out of her room and out the back door. I’m still naked but I don’t care. The nearest neighbor is a mile away and their house is tucked into a copse of oak and maple. There’s no one around to see. And I wouldn’t care even if they could see me; let ’em look.
Her back porch is a piece of shit. Literally nothing but half a dozen unpainted, unstained two-by-fours laid across some cinder blocks. No railing, no steps, nothing.
But, holy hell, what a view.
The moon is gargantuan. A silver-white disk in the sky, shining brilliant, bathing everything silver. The fields are endless, extending for miles and miles in every direction, waist-high grass waving in a gentle breeze, a thick stand of cottonwoods a ways out, limbs waving in the wind as if dancing to some unheard song.
It’s peaceful.
Reminds me of the ocean, in a way. The rippling, the soughing of the wind, the utter calm, the stillness.
I breathe it in, try to soak up some of the peace, try to get it into my veins.
But I’m still panicking.
My flight reflex is going haywire, instructing me on an instinctual level to run run run run run run—
But I can’t.
I won’t.
I owe this woman…something.
I owe her the truth.
I told her I’d be here in the morning, and I fucking will be. I’ll cut open the vein and spill the truth to her, and then I’ll leave.
But the thought of telling her the truth makes everything inside me clench and constrict. I don’t want to tell her. I don’t want to leave. I like it here. The wide-open spaces remind me of the ocean, and they fill a similar void in me. I don’t want to tell her because I don’t want to give her up.
I want to lay her down on that bed and show her what it feels like to be properly worshipped, what it feels like to be paid homage as a goddess of her calibre deserves. I want to spend hours and hours kissing every inch of her, making her come apart again and again and again until she can’t take it any more. I want to feel her lips on me. I want to watch her sink that lush mouth of hers down around me. I want to get her on her hands and knees and rut into her like a beast.
What we just shared was just the beginning. It was a tease of what we could have.
I want to cradle her against my chest and love her slow.
Fuck, that word really just went through my head.
God, Jeeee-sus.
I step off the porch and into the cool grass, feeling it tickle and prick and poke. I wade through the grass like I’m wading through the sea. I stare at the moon and deny, deny, deny all of the preceding.
What the hell have I gotten myself into?
I am not in any way equipped to deal with something like this, to handle a woman like her. She deserves so much more than I’ve got to give. Money doesn’t mean shit to her. None of my crazy adventures will impress her. My well-rounded stocks portfolio—thanks to Mom’s financial gurus rather than my doing—won’t mean a damned thing.
Who I am—that’s what will mean something to her.
And who am I?
I don’t know.
Fuck, that hurts: I don’t know who I am.
God, I need a fucking drink.
You put a new heartbeat inside of me
I wake alone. The bed beside me is empty, the sheets cool, long unslept in.
I’m a sticky mess, and that sends a grin spreading across my face. I’m sore, and that too has me grinning.
Before anything else I pee, rinse my mouth with mouthwash, hop in the shower and scrub my skin clean. Find Lock’s T-shirt still on my bedroom floor, so he’s around somewhere. I slip his T-shirt on, and you bet your ass I take a second to inhale the scent of it, to relish in the feel of a man’s T-shirt on my body.
I find him in my kitchen, clad in nothing but his jeans, unbuttoned, unzipped, no underwear. Fucking sexiest thing I’ve seen, that look. Makes my insides quiver. Or is that the memory of what he did to me, how incredible he made me feel? Both, I think.
He
’s at my table, feet hooked toe-over-heel beneath the chair. There’s my bottle of serious emergency, big-time breakdown whiskey on the table in front of him, one of my resale-shop juice glasses in his hand, half full of whiskey.
It’s not even good whiskey, really. I rarely drink it, but sometimes, early on, when things were still fresh and I was liable to just completely lose my shit over nothing, over a tiny little thing like remembering the way Ollie would have done something, or said something, or the instinctual urge to go “Hey, Ollie—” and then realizing he’s not there—sometimes, when that kind of thing would happen, I’d pound a shot or two of whiskey and breathe through the burn and refuse to cry.
Eventually, I got to the point where I didn’t need the whiskey, and that was a hard-won victory in learning the fine art of emotional numbness.
I watch Lock from the hallway for a moment. I don’t think he’s seen me yet, so it’s an opportunity to observe him unnoticed. He’s got the glass in one hand, and it’s obvious he’s gripping it tightly; his knuckles are white. He lifts the glass to his nose and inhales deeply. The way a hungry person would inhale the scent of food—with relish, with anticipation. He touches the rim to his lips. Tips.
But then he lowers the glass—slowly, deliberately, as if each inch downward to the table is a battle fought and won.
He sets the glass with delicate care on the tabletop. Lets go, and his hand is shaking.
Is he an alcoholic? That’s what this is, a man fighting a demon.
And then, without warning, he bats the glass aside with a vicious swipe of his fist. “FUCK!” he shouts, and the glass smashes against the wall.
It’s so suddenly violent and unexpected that I jump and squeal in fright, hand clapped to my chest.
Yours: A Standalone Contemporary Romance Page 15
