by S. Ann Cole
On purpose, I bite his lip, and he roughly grabs my breasts. Squeezing. Yanking the top of my racer-tank and sports-bra down, revealing one of my breasts, he rips his mouth from mine and transfers it to my nipple, sucking, swirling, teasing. Arching my back, I moan to the ceiling, my body on fire.
Drawing back, he makes quick work of getting off my sneakers. Such an annoying hindrance. In record time, my lower half is completely bare, legs spread wide for him.
“Take your shirt off,” I beg him. “I want to touch your chest.”
Despite the hunger in his eyes, his anger is also still there, as well as I know mine is showing, so I know it’s a concession if he gives me this. After about half a second of hesitation, he obliges.
He then pushes his sweats down his hips, and grasps himself. Strokes once, twice, and then he’s inside me. An earsplitting cry escapes me as his blunt head bucks inside. So good. The pain is so good.
Reaching up, I rub my palms all over his abs, up his chest. He feels so damn good to touch. Both hard and smooth under the soft flesh my palms.
Pressing one big, strong hand down flat on my pelvis to keep my lower half still, he starts moving, hips flexing back and forth, mixing this up with a circular plunge every now and again, slowing down and speeding up again. His other hand dips into my slick folds, skillful fingers flicking and gliding, massaging and pressing. Hips pumping in and out.
In no time, my legs begin to tremble as my orgasm rolls in sky-high waves toward me, threatening to submerge me, drown me. “I’m not gonna talk to you,” I spit out. “Not gonna tell you how much of an ugly, filthy bastard you are.”
“Didn’t ask you to,” he grunts back.
“Because you’re scum and dung and vomit and I hate you.”
“Good.”
He picks up momentum, hand pressing down harder on my pelvis when I start writhing, my orgasm barreling forward. “You don’t even know what you’re doing. You should be…ashamed of yourself. You’re terrible at sex. Freaking…awful.”
“Uh-huh,” he grunts. “Is that why you’re about to come?”
“I’m about to…ohgod…Ohhhh…about to come because I’m picturing Henry Cavill.”
Relocating his hands to my hips, he grips tight, buries himself deep, and begins grinding into me, creating a rhythm, restricting me from moving my hips at all as he dominates it. “Hmm. With your eyes wide open?” With his steady grip, he jerks my hips upward, off the floor, and then he slams into me with a punishing force.
And that’s it. I’m blown to smithereens. My back arches up off the ground, incomprehensible noises tear from my throat and slap into the walls, filling the room. “Noah! Ohhhhhhhgod!!!! Yes! Noah! Noah!”
Vaguely, through the haze and seizure of my orgasm, I hear him chuckle. “Huh. That’s my name I hear. Not Henry Cavill’s?”
I’m not even close to coming down from my cosmic high yet when he pulls out of me and gets to his feet, dragging me up with him and whipping me around, my back to his chest.
One big paw clasps my hip to hold me in place, while the other applies pressure in the center of my back, urging me over. “Bend,” he orders. “Hold onto your ankles for support.”
‘Sweet baby Jesus, he’s going to kill us,’ breathes Reckless Lotty.
Rational Lotty cackles, loving every minute of it. ‘Never thought I’d see the day when you cower from sex, Reckless.’ Cupping her hands around her mouth, she hoots, ‘Bring it on, suit!’
Complying with Noah’s order, I bend over, grabbing my ankles to keep balance.
He enters me. I was expecting him to slam inside, but he surprises me with this slow and controlled ease in. His strokes neat, measured, and unhurried. He bends over me and smooths his palm up and down my spine, worshiping, groaning in his throat. From upside-down, between my legs, I can see his sweats bunched around his ankles, his knees slightly bent as he pushes in and out of me.
A shiver tingles through me when I feel his lips on my back, pressing kisses along my spine. Oh wow. “You have no idea, Cooley. No idea.” He begins rotating his hips now, a sexy, sexy sound rumbling from him. “I could give you everything…everything.”
I say nothing, loving the cool and deadly grinding from this position, but also missing his stallion, body-domination style. Also, being in this position is a challenge, although it does wonders for the depth and intensity of how I feel him.
It’s as if he’s heard my thoughts, because he stops moving, but remains buried inside me. One hands bands around my middle, and I’m suddenly up off the ground. The unexpected move has me grappling for a second or two, until he tells me lock my legs backward around him. Locking my legs behind him, I arch my upper half, throwing my arms around me to lock around his neck. Some serious gymnastic-type stuff this is.
Pressing his face to the back of my neck, he nips and kisses me there while he walks with me over to one of the leg machines, all the while buried inside me.
He sets me to me feet, instructing me to hold on to the bars and hike my left foot upon on bench. I don’t question, I don’t argue, I don’t hesitate, I just do. Because there’s something ovary-explosive about the way he commands and orders me what to do and then takes me. Something completely new for me because I’m normally the pushy one in bed. With Noah, the roles are totally different. I’m the bossy, mouthy one outside the bedroom, but inside the bedroom, he rules. And I love it.
Once I’m steadily positioned around the complicated equipment, he slides out of me, then slams in. Yes! Here we go!
Done with the slow grinding, he gives it to me, hard and fast, deep and penetrating, body-ripping good. In less than five minutes, I’m screaming out as I come all over his shaft that relentlessly, sweet-achingly rips pleasure from me.
He reaches around and kneads my breasts, his breathing harsh and jagged in my ear. “Lotty, please…you feel so…shit…I want...”
I don’t get to hear what he wants, because he’s abruptly out of me, his growls condensing as I feel warm liquid on my ass, his knuckles hitting against my butt-cheek as he milks himself on me.
With a long-winded throat growl, he collapses onto me, kisses the side of my neck, nuzzles me. “How was that, little screamer?” he hustles out.
“On a scale of one to ten?” I breathe, “I’d say, eh, about three. Much better than last night, which was a one point five.”
He grunts. “Too bad you’re leaving. Won’t have enough time to wrack it up to a ten.”
“You said you’re glad I’m leaving.”
“You said you’re glad you’re leaving.”
“You offered to help me leave.”
“You accepted the offer.”
Okay, I’m not doing this again. Round and round we go like a goddamn Ferris wheel. There’s nothing for us to argue about, there’s nothing to be complicated. He knows what I want, I know what he wants, but neither of us are willing to bend for the other. As a result, we can’t be with each other the way we really want to be with each other. Instead of wasting the limited time we have together arguing, we might as make the most of it with some good sex, good food, good workouts, and good television series.
“What do you want for dinner tonight?”
“Just you.”
“You don’t want me to cook?”
“I’ll pick us up something later on the way home.” Easing back, he drops down on his knees behind me, his hands parting my butt-cheek. “But for now, can I eat you?”
At the feel of his tongue swiping up my crack, stopping to swirl at my pucker, a finger reaching around to flick my clit, I breathlessly whisper, “Yes, please.”
TWENTY-THREE
MIKE DULLBOY IS waiting for me downstairs when Noah finally lets me leave the gym, weak-kneed and thoroughly screwed. He’s not looking so dull today, though. His shoulders are widened defensively, and his eyes are vivid and sharp on me. Something is always off about him. But today, something is off about him.
“Sorry you missed me earlier,” he apolog
izes, not really sounding sorry. “Had to make a bathroom run. Just bad timing you came while I was gone.”
“It’s cool.” I smile and wave my hands. “I still don’t understand why I need to be escorted on the elevator anyway.”
His lips peel up in a half smirk, half sneer. “If someone’s after you, every single precaution is necessary, sweet thing. No matter how small. You slip up and…”—He makes an explosive gesture with his ten fingers—“boom.”
His “sweet thing” makes me shiver, and not in a good way. “It’s Miss Cooley.”
He pauses as we’re about to push through the revolving doors. “What?”
“You called me sweet thing. Don’t call me that. For you, it’s Miss Cooley.”
He stares at me for a beat, clicks his tongue, and then drawls mockingly, “Yes, ma’am.”
When we’re outside, he heads for a black Jaguar, taking out a key fob.
“You’re taking me home?” I ask, hesitating. “Where’s Muscles?”
“Muscles is kinda tied up right now,” he says with open irritation. He stops walking and turns so abruptly I bump right into him. “Why? You got a problem with me? We all work for the same team, Miss Cooley. We’re all here to protect you.”
Yet, somehow, I get the feeling he doesn’t care to protect me. Maybe he feels I’m a nobody, unworthy of all the attention I’m receiving. Heck, my sentiments are as exact. Regardless, allowing his aversion toward me to come to the surface is unprofessional.
Opting out of a response, I sidestep him and round to the passenger side of the car.
The ride home is so gratingly quiet and irritatingly awkward, I couldn’t have chucked out of that car fast enough.
After those, ahem, eventful two hours with Noah Van Der Wells, I’m pleasurably beat. I have a class to check into at four, so I set my alarm and collapse in bed, sneakers and all.
It’s not my alarm that hijacks my siesta sometime later, but the bellowing of my name. Someone’s calling me.
I sit up in bed, heel of my palms rubbing the haziness from my eyes.
“Charlotte?”
A smile touches my lips as the voice registers. Only Dad and Gloriel Van Der Wells calls me by my proper name. For everyone else, it’s Lotty.
Although it feels as if I’ve slept for just two minutes and I’d much rather cover my head with a pillow and go right back to sleep, I clamber out of bed and follow her call.
I find her in the kitchen unpacking grocery bags.
A frown pinches her forehead. “Oh, you were sleeping? Sorry for waking you. I’m just dropping in to stock up and check in on you. How are you doing?”
A tall-dark-and-handsome in blue overalls—the same tall-dark-and-handsome who’d helped her with the groceries the last time—wheels out of the pantry with a trolley. Gloriel tips him a Ben Franklin and thanks him, touching the side of his face and calling him a “sweet boy.”
“I’m doing alright,” I say once the man is gone. “What about you? You were a bit touchy-feely with ‘sweet boy’ there.”
She shoots me a reprimanding look, but then ducks her head; smiling into the grocery bag she’s unpacking. “He’s is a sweet boy.”
Tall-dark-and-handsome appears to be no younger than twenty-eight, but I guess that’s a boy for her.
Rounding the counter, I join her in the unpacking, grinning. “I bet he is.”
“Oh,” she murmurs, snapping her fingers, an obvious attempt to change the subject. Dipping into her handbag, she comes up with a black gift box, wrapped with a neat red bow. “The concierge gave me this on my way up. He said it was delivered for you half-an-hour ago.”
“What is it?” I ask as I take it, suspicious. I know Gloriel loves to give. It’s probably her own doing.
“How should I know? Open it and see. I’m anxious to know what it is, too.”
As I untie the bow, I narrow my gaze at her, betting this is all her doing. But she appears as innocent as a nun.
Lifting the cover off the box, I discover a smaller black box inside. And when I untie the red bow and lift the lid off that box, I find another small box inside.
“Okayyyy?” I mumble through a nervous laugh.
I slide a glance to Gloriel, and the genuine curiosity in her green eyes that are fixed on the boxes ascertains she has nothing to do with this gift.
If it’s not her, then who? Noah?
I lift out the smaller box, and with a flick of my wrist knock the other two boxes aside. Repeating the process of untying a red bow and lifting the lid, I’m faced with another black box. Except this box is not a gift box, but a box bearing an emblem with the letters HW.
“Harry Winston,” Gloriel whispers, her hand pressed gently to her chest. “Charlotte, are yo…”
To my ears, Gloriel’s words fade, her voice sounding far, far away, wind-swept, echoed, as my heart drums a hurried rhythm and my blood whooshes, a noise like torrential rainfall flooding my head. I can no longer feel the ground beneath me, can no longer feel the box. Everything is numb, aerial. As if I’m having an out-of-body experience, I watch my own hand reach down and flip the lid.
The expensive diamond winks at me, grins, mocking me. Gotcha!, I can almost hear it exclaim.
It’s his ring. My ring. My engagement ring.
I can’t breathe. He’s found me. I can’t breathe.
A piece of folded paper sticks out from the slit that the ring is seated. Again, I watch my hand pluck the paper out, unfold it.
One word. Just one word, in bold black letters, printed across a clean white paper: BOOM!
And then, I know nothing, I see nothing, I hear nothing.
“…could you let him find her?! You promised her you’d protect her. You promised me!”
“Shorty, calm down. She’s here. Unharmed. He’s just trying to frighten her.”
“But…but he was here! And for the hundredth time stop calling me shorty. I’m not your shorty.”
“You are my shorty. And he wasn’t here. I was in Brooklyn myself, scoping. At the time this was delivered, her ex was in a bar playing pool.”
“So? What does that mean?”
“It means he has eyes on this side. Close eyes.” A brief pause. “I’m getting the feeling Andrew Jameson is a more than just a simple taxi driver with abuse issues.”
“Yeah. I think so, too. I mean, that ring isn’t Tiffany’s. It’s Harry Winston. How can he afford that?”
“Gonna have to dig a little deeper into his background. He’s not a fool rushing in. He’s smart. He wants her back, and he intends on it, at all costs.”
The voices drift into my head before I’m awake. When I do wake, Muscles and Kiera are standing over me in a face-off, Kiera pissed, Muscles placating. A couple of feet off in an armchair, Gloriel is sitting with a concerned frown and bouncing knees.
We’re in the living room, and I’m lying supine on the couch. Images of black boxes slam into me, reminding me, terrifying my heart.
Boom. The word bounces around my head like a ticking bomb.
Boom. Andrew’s favorite word. He’s uses it instead of words like “gotcha.” He uses it each time he wins a game; some as simple as pool or darts, or something as serious as a car race or a big-pot poker game.
This time, the game is me. Boom means he’s already celebrating. He’s found me. Just like he always does. And he’s not afraid of my hefty security. He never was one to back down, and he never was one to rush in. He was just…Andrew.
Realizing I’m awake, Gloriel stands and hurries over with a waiting glass of OJ, ordering me to drink up. I sit up.
Kiera breathes out a relieved sigh and drops down beside me, her arms circling me.
Muscles, however, crosses his arms over his chest and glares down me. “You never told me you were engaged to the guy.”
“I—”
“He frickin’ proposed to her at a funeral” Kiera bites for me. “Right over her mother’s uncovered grave. That’s hardly an engagement!”
Gloriel looks aghast. Her mouth falls open but nothing comes out.
“Really?” Muscles ask, disbelieving, staring me down for confirmation. No surprise he needs one. Everyone who knows Kiera knows she’s an exaggerator. But she isn’t exaggerating this time.
I nod in affirmation, and Muscles grimaces. “Wow. This guy sounds like a nutcase.”
“Understatement of the year,” I mutter under my breath. My eyes sweep around the room again, searching for the face I most want to see right now. “Where’s Noah?”
“In a momentous meeting,” Muscles speaks up. “We can’t get through to him. But he’ll call once he gets the message. Mike’s downstairs checking the surveillance feed for the identity of Andrew’s delivery guy. We’ve also added extra security to the building. For now, I’m gonna head to the office and dig deeper into your guy’s past. Stay put. If you must leave, call me.” He then squats down so he’s eye to eye with me. “Hey, just breathe and relax, alright? Like I said, Andrew’s smart, he’s not gonna come here. So until we find out who’s working with him, try being more careful.”
With not much of anything to say, I simply nod. Words and promises and reassurances don’t matter right now. Not with Andrew. If he wants me back, he’s going to get me, no matter how many precautions we take. That’s what he wants me know, why he sent that ring: I’m his, and no amount of buff bodyguards and sky-scraping penthouses can stop that.
Maybe he’ll get to me, or maybe I’ll end up going back with him to end this, but for now, I just want Noah.
Muscles is hesitant to leave when he realizes I’m not verbalizing much, as he knows by now that my mouth is my weapon. Kiera assures him she’ll keep an eye on me, and he finally, reluctantly, leaves.
“Charlotte,” Gloriel begins, concern straddling her voice. But then she’s stuck, as if not sure exactly what to say. After a full minute of nothing, she settles on, “I’ll go make you a cup of chamomile tea.”
As her heels click out to the kitchen, I glance around, searching for my phone.
