Manster

by Cari Quinn

  Cripes. I couldn’t believe I’d left that on my bed.

  Callie had given it to me as a joke for my birthday. It was surprisingly comfortable to sleep with. Not gonna lie.

  I couldn’t even say if Hudson was more comfortable. I didn’t remember falling asleep after…

  There were no words for what the before part had been, let alone what I could comprehend about the after. I’d passed the hell out in sheer blissful exhaustion. I’d been up late the night before, then up early, and then wound up for the entire day before his two in the morning booty call.

  Me. A booty call. It just didn’t seem like my reality.

  I huffed out a breath and shoved my hair out of my face. “A horror film picture?”

  He laughed as he came farther into my bedroom. Rosie and Hank were dancing around his ankles and hopped on the bed before he could sit down. They twined their way around behind me to settle on my pillows.

  The closer he got, the more I took in. His shoulders were massive and his waist was lean and tight. I mean, I knew he was built well from the cut of the clothes he wore, but seeing it up close without the fog of lust was a touch more disconcerting.

  Especially the only boxers thing. Incredible Hulk boxers.

  I wondered if he had Thor boxers. He certainly owned the hammer.

  Yeah, not the time for those thoughts.

  “You’re having one of those conversations in your head again, aren’t you?”

  I could feel my cheeks flush. “At least it was a good one.”

  “Is that right?”

  “It ended in a synonymous use of your cock and Thor’s hammer.”

  His eyebrows shot up before he glanced down. “You know this is the Incredible Hulk.”

  “Yes, but you'd said you had all the Avengers.”

  He frowned. “I never know what I’m going to walk into when you’re involved.”

  “Well, not sure you want it to be all Hulk smash on my girl parts, right?”

  “Depends.” He knelt on the bed and leaned into me for a kiss before he handed me a bowl of the ziti we’d never eaten. “If it’s me holding on to your hips banging away, I’ll take the Incredible Hulk moniker.”

  My heart raced and the room fuzzed a little. I wasn’t sure if it was from the kiss or the thought of him banging me that hard. He had very impressive thighs.

  I frowned as I got a good look at his thigh. A web of scars stretched over the bulk of muscles. I shoved my bowl onto my nightstand. “Oh, Hudson.”

  He looked down at what I was looking at and his face went blank. “It’s fine.”

  I dragged him down to a sitting position and knelt beside him. “What happened?”

  His shoulders were tight and his entire body went stiff. He stared over my shoulder. “It’s no big deal.”

  I glanced over to the wall he was looking at, then framed his face and dragged his gaze back to mine. He tried to shy away from my touch. If I was smart, I’d give him the space he was so obviously looking for.

  Guess I wasn’t having a smart moment. “Tell me.”

  His amber eyes heated. “Look it up on the internet.”

  “No. You tell me. I don’t want some story that is probably exaggerated or not fact-checked.”

  When Callie and I got together, we didn’t exactly talk about other people. It was more about movies and funny moments on tour. She always had a ton of stories to tell me. But she wasn’t the type to talk about others. Not when she’d been on the receiving end of so much shit with her ex-husband.

  I took his bowl away from him and straddled his lap. I knew his scars didn’t hurt him. At least not considering the way he’d moved last night.

  I cupped the back of his head as I crowded in on him. “You tell me,” I said against his mouth.

  He gathered my hair into his hands and instead of replying, he kissed me. Not a sweet kiss. It was hard and hot, without a trace of the fun from earlier. I took every lash of his tongue and bite of his teeth. I took it and gave him back only softness.

  I held him and rocked against the erection growing between us. I lightly grazed my nails along his scalp as he slowly wound down. I could have followed him into the dark that was obviously gripping him. Part of me wanted to taste the edges that sometimes crept into his good time nature.

  But I followed my instincts. They’d never really steered me wrong before. There was a lot of anger sitting inside him. I wasn’t sure if it was from work stuff or the accident.

  He tore his mouth away, then pressed his forehead to mine.

  “Is this a hate fuck kind of thing? I can go there if you want to. If you need to get some sort of aggression out, I’m more than willing. But something tells me that’s not what you need.”

  “And how would you know what I need?”

  The arrow hit. He wanted it to. I moved to get off him and he cupped the back of my head and dragged my mouth back to his. Except this time, the kiss was soothing. “Forgive me.” His sigh of frustration blended into the kiss. “I’m sorry, kitten. I just…” His grip firmed in my hair and the streak of pain ignited something in me.

  “You what?” I cupped his cheeks. The scruff of his beard was heading toward softness already. It was more auburn than the lighter golden red of his hair. His eyes sometimes seemed green, sometimes gold. Right now, they glowed with a fierceness that urged me to get him to talk.

  Why did it matter to me?

  He was supposed to be just fun. This wasn’t fun, but it felt important in a way I didn’t want to ignore.

  “The accident took everything from me. My engine blew and my car careened into a spin. A lot of the courses are open, so there wasn’t a wall, but going the speeds we do, one wrong move can be a disaster.” He gripped my thigh. His long, strong fingers dug into my flesh as his memories took him.

  I didn’t flinch, didn’t move away from him. In fact, I held on tighter. I molded my fingers to the stony set of his shoulders.

  “My frame fell apart like fucking toothpicks and metal tore through my skin. And I’m tall, so they had to use a torch and a metal saw to get me out of the seat.”

  I slid my fingers upward and made little soothing circles against his close-cropped hair. His eyes were shut and a muscle jerked at his temple. So much pain radiated from him.

  “It took months for me to recover. I’m lucky I could walk. The muscles and tendons were put back together by one of the most skilled surgeons in the freaking world. I was damn lucky.” He exhaled. “But I didn’t have the fine motor control to get back into a car. Not for the split-second response time you need for the pedals. I was one of the best racers on the circuit. I couldn’t go back to being anything less.”

  “And you couldn’t have worked back toward it?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. I’ll never know because my team had to move on without me. Mouths to feed and all of that. The engineer had to find another driver to work with on the cars. It’s not like NASCAR. When you do Formula One, it’s only partially about the car. And my mindset was gone.” He paused as if he was going to say something else. “Everything was gone.”

  “But you can play the drums? It seems really… I don’t know. Hard on the legs?”

  He laughed. “A lot of PT. For the most part, it doesn’t bother me now. Well, unless I’m stuck on a plane without any leg room. I had to find something else or I was going to lose my fucking mind. And this let me get out the frustrations and gave me a new team.”

  A team that he needed. I didn’t understand that. I’d been alone for most of my life. I had my dad, but it had always been him and me against the world. Moving out on my own had allowed me to find a little more of an identity, but I was used to being a force of one.

  I had people now. Levi, Tabs, Callie, and of course my dad. But I’d never been part of something like a band. Or had an offhand comment about a sibling like Hudson did.

  “Then why does it bother you to talk about it?”

  “How do you know it does?”

  �
�The bruises you’re leaving in my hips.”

  “Oh, fuck.” His grip lessened. He lifted me off of him and set me down on the floor. “I’m sorry, kitten.”

  Instead of letting him move away, I snagged his hand and pulled him into me. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I don’t.”

  “I’m willing to listen though. If you ever do. And whatever’s made you so mad too. I don’t know if it’s the accident, or something else.”

  He laced his fingers behind his neck and the sheer breadth of his shoulders and power in his arms distracted me for a minute. I’d never been with a guy built like him. Regardless of his height, he was also built like an action star.

  I smoothed my fingers over his chest, down to his abs, before toying with the band of his boxers.

  I dropped to my knees in front of him and his eyes went dark and hooded. “Kitten.” His voice was pure warning and bass.

  I lifted the hem of his boxers and drew the pads of my fingers over the raised scars of his thigh, then leaned forward to trace my lips over the abused skin. I stared up at him as I pulled the hem back down, but I didn’t stop there.

  I dragged the silky material down over the increasing bulge hidden from me until his hard cock was revealed. I wrapped my fingers around the thickest part of him and lifted it to drag my tongue along the underside of him.

  “Fuck.”

  I stroked him slowly. “After.” Then I took the head of his cock into my mouth. I may not have participated in the Orgasm Olympics before him, but this, I knew how to do. I swallowed him down as far as I could go.

  Considering the few men I’d done this to definitely hadn’t had equipment like Hudson, I was a bit out of my comfort zone. I watched the tendons in his neck pulse and his hands fist at his sides. Evidently, I was doing all right.

  “Undo the buttons,” he said hoarsely.

  I did as he asked and started to shrug off the shirt when he shook his head. “No. Leave it on. I just want to see.”

  I sat back on my feet enough for the shirt to gape open and the cool air to caress my skin. With my free hand, I cupped my breast and rolled my nipple like he’d done before.

  He tipped back his head for a moment and swallowed. His Adam’s apple jumped as he took a deep breath before opening his legs more. I twisted and plucked at my nipple as I sucked him.

  The first hit of salty pre-cum made me greedy for more. No woman really liked a mouthful of cum, but for him, I’d do it. I’d drink him down because that meant I could watch him go over.

  I gripped him tighter and was rewarded with a groan ending in my name.

  The way he said kitten would stay with me even if Hudson didn’t. That much I knew right now. And I’d live off of this for years to come.

  Maybe even touch myself in the dark of night and relive his taste.

  I rose up to get a better angle so I could lift his shaft toward his belly and memorize it all.

  His fisted fingers went for my hair. He pushed it out of my face, his jaw tight as his eyes burned.

  “Come,” I said as I took him in hand and applied suction. He pulsed in my hand and then it was just his taste. The low groans filling my room as his fingers tangled at the roots of my hair. The quick bite of pain surprised me, but it intensified everything.

  I gripped his thighs, momentarily forgetting his injury. His gaze sharpened and I followed instinct, letting my nails score his skin. No holding back. The chain reaction transferred to my scalp and my clit pulsed.

  And he stared at me as if I was giving him so much more than an orgasm.

  Now I needed something too. This was for him, but I was getting off on the extreme pleasure arcing between us. There was also a growing trust, and that made it so much sweeter.

  I dropped my hand to my pussy and stroked myself as he let go. I swallowed him down as my own shuddering started. My clit was so tight I could barely touch it.

  I felt empty in ways I didn’t understand.

  Then suddenly I was being dragged off the floor and spread out on the bed. Sweat dotted his shoulders as he hooked one of my knees beside his head. “Fuck. That was… I can’t.”

  Hudson opened my legs and his mouth was on me. I bowed up off the mattress as he held on to me for dear life. He was relentless. His tongue lashed against my clit and his fingers filled me.

  He finger-fucked me, groaning against my thigh as I dissolved into a broken shell of myself. I rolled onto my side and he flipped me over onto my belly to use the friction of the sheets and his trapped hand.

  “I’m not done with you yet.”

  Too bad I was dead.

  He’d have to be done with me.

  Lips, tongue, fingers…he was undaunted by my halfhearted twists to get away. He brought me right to the edge of orgasm before backing off and resuming his torment all over again.

  Suddenly, he let me go. I started to crawl away from him, but he pulled me back onto my knees. The blunt head of his cock slid along my pussy.

  Apparently, I’d given him enough time to suit up again and slam home.

  I couldn’t believe he was ready to go again. Then again, I’d lost track of how long he’d been teasing me. He held me still and did exactly what he’d warned me he would do.

  His skin slapped against mine as he fucked me to within an inch of my life. My thighs shook as the angle and his long goddamn cock tried to impale me.

  But it was so good.

  So freeing to empty out my brain and let the sensations swamp me. When his thumb stroked down the crease of my ass, I didn’t even question it. I welcomed the way he wrung pleasure out of me by any means.

  Then his fingers were grasping my hair and pulling me up enough for his mouth to get to my neck and his other hand to rub my clit. I screamed his name as I offered him all of me.

  I couldn’t do anything less.

  From me trying to soothe him, we’d ended up here with him taking care of me again. Showing me things I never thought possible.

  He wrapped his arms around me and tucked me onto my side so I was splayed against his chest and hip. He opened me up and slowed his thrusts into me. One arm banded around my waist as he rolled his hips against me with slow, measured strokes.

  His gentleness was almost worse than the gale force storm version of Wyatt that had laid me out. Now it was the soft, sultry Hudson whose easy pace hollowed me out. He took everything. Demanded all.

  He rested his chin over my shoulder, his cheek pressed to mine as he watched us together.

  I reached back to grip his hair as the room blurred and his harsh groans seemed to fade into the background. There was nothing but his cock filling me and his huge body holding me close.

  I vised around him and his harsh growl of my name ended with him pulling out of me and stripping the condom off. He held my hand around his shaft and we both stroked him until hot stripes of his cum splashed against my belly.

  His teeth tugged on my ear before he sucked on it with a low, satisfied groan.

  “I think I’m lightheaded,” I said into his biceps.

  Somehow I’d melted into his arm and the bed.

  My body was deliciously used in ways I didn’t realize were possible. It was hard to believe he’d come into my life only a bit over a week ago. Now it was so very different, even beyond the lessons and the sex.

  I knew I’d never be the same after tonight. It frightened me and thrilled me. I’d thought I was broken. That I couldn’t connect with anyone because it was just the way I was. But now I knew it was oh, so much worse because I’d been waiting for this man.

  One who had one foot on a tour bus that would take him away from me.

  I gripped his solid forearm holding me close and tucked my face against him. We lay like that for a little while before he gathered me up and carted me into the bathroom as if I weighed nothing.

  “Shower, then food.”

  “In that order?” I hooked my arm around his neck.

  “Definitely.”r />
  “Wait until you see my shower.”

  He shifted me more comfortably against his chest and stepped over the threshold to my stone bathroom. It looked like it belonged in a castle. Even better, the corner shower unit would actually fit him.

  He groaned as he lowered me to my feet. “If I was capable, my dick would get hard again.”

  I laughed and opened the door, then turned the dials. “Wait until you see the shower heads.”

  “I’m never leaving.” He dragged me into the hot spray with a laugh.

  I grinned up at him even as I wished what he said was true.

  13

  Wyatt

  I left Piper’s place late the next morning. We had ziti for breakfast because we never did get back to it the night before. After the hot shower, we’d rolled into bed and had been unconscious within moments.

  I wasn’t used to sleeping with a woman in my arms, but she wasn’t overly clingy. If anything, she and her cats tried to push me out of the bed. For someone so tiny, she sure could sprawl.

  The bonus? I was rewarded with some librarian action. Give Piper an idea and she was going to run with it every fucking time. The woman could give a blowjob that sucked the damn brains from my head. Both of them. The little self-satisfied grin I got before she rolled off the mattress and headed into the kitchen stayed with me through another shower.

  She was right. I had a multi-million dollar condo, but her shower was heaven itself. Add in a fun and tasty breakfast and I had an actual bounce in my step. Oh, and a huge thermos of my coffee. My girl—

  The words tripped in my head. Was she my girl? Did I even want that?

  She was supposed to be a distraction, and she damn well was. But it felt like more than that. The heaviness I’d expected to be in my chest was missing.

  Replaced by happiness.

  Clearly, this morning was full of surprises. Including the running jump that had nearly laid me out at the door. Two cats who had springs in their feet would obviously need to be owned by a woman with the same.