Hunter: A Reed Security Romance
Page 2
“If you don’t get inside me now, you’ll never have another chance again,” I threatened. His eyes narrowed at me as he pushed inside me to the hilt. His cock moved slowly inside me, thrusting in long, hard strokes that had me splitting apart in seconds. I bit my lip as I felt my body clenching around his. He threw my legs up over his shoulders as he started pounding me harder.
My eyes rolled back in my head as pleasure washed over my body. I would never find anyone that could give it to me the way Hunter did. His primal need for me matched mine for him in every way.
“Fuck me harder, Hunter. Give me what I need.”
He pulled out and pounced on me like a tiger. “I’ll fuck you the way I want to and you’ll take it.”
“Then stop talking and do it.”
He flipped me onto my stomach and gripped onto my hips, pulling me up against him. I felt his rough hands spread my ass cheeks as his dick rubbed against my ass. “If you weren’t just in a fucking fire, I’d be a lot rougher with you.”
“I’m fine,” I insisted. “I can take it.”
“Not today.”
He slapped my ass and pushed hard inside me. He was pounding me so hard that he had to hold me up. Normally I could hold my own with Hunter, but I wasn’t quite myself today and now I could see why he was going easy with me. He pulled my body up against his, kneading my breasts as he kissed my neck. He sank down onto the bed with me in his lap and continued to thrust up into me. It was gentler than what we normally did and so much more intimate. When his hand slipped down to my pussy, it didn’t take long for me to come again for him. He followed me over the edge and then held me tight to him as we both came down.
“Hard enough for today?”
“Yeah,” I said breathily. We laid back down on the bed, both of us slipping in and out of sleep throughout the day. When I was awake, I couldn’t help but stare at him and wonder if this was real. It felt like it was a dream. Just yesterday, we were nothing to each other. How did this all happen so fast?
By the time late afternoon rolled around, I was tired of being in bed. I slipped out of bed and was making my way to the bathroom when he snagged me around the waist.
“So, you’re staying?” he asked as he held me to his chest.
“Yeah, I’m staying.” He nipped at my ear and I batted him away. “But you could at least give me a drawer so that I don’t have to have my stuff in a bag on the floor,” I said, pointing to the bag he had put in the corner that was full of things Maggie had brought for me. I pulled out of his grasp and made my way to the bathroom, blowing him a kiss over my shoulder. I almost stumbled as I saw him looking intently at my bag with a strange look on his face. I didn’t want to think about what that meant. Everything was fine. I was just letting my mind go crazy, thinking about what ifs.
I showered, taking my time to scrub the remnants of the fire off me. I should have taken a shower when I got home yesterday, but I was just too tired. After drying off, I walked out of the bathroom to an empty room. I grabbed my new bag of clothes and pulled out a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. Maggie had packed me everything a girl could need and after finishing up, I headed downstairs to see Hunter staring out the window. I slipped my arms around his waist, but he stiffened when I kissed his shoulder.
“Something wrong?”
“No,” he said shortly. “What do you want for dinner?”
His mood was different than before, darker and I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened in the short time I had been upstairs cleaning up. I stepped back from him, a little uncomfortable with this new tension and shoved my hands in my shorts. “Uh, I’m fine with whatever you want.”
“I have to run into the office for a little bit. I can just pick up a pizza on the way back,” he said, but he wouldn’t look at me.
“Sure. I can just hang out here.”
He nodded and picked up his keys, leaving without saying goodbye. I tried to watch TV and I tried to read, but I just kept going over what had happened this afternoon. He had asked me if I would stay, or had he phrased it differently? Maybe he hadn’t been wondering if I would stay, but wondering when I was leaving. That’s not what his body language suggested, but maybe I was reading him all wrong. I dissected every word, every move since I had come here yesterday for the rest of the night. Hunter wasn’t back by dinner time, so I made myself a sandwich and flipped through the channels some more.
When eleven o’clock rolled around and he still wasn’t home, I decided to go to bed. I had to go check out the farm tomorrow and talk to my sister, Claire about what our next steps would be. When I woke up in the morning, Hunter still wasn’t there and I was beginning to think I had made a very bad decision in letting him into my heart.
✯✯✯✯✯
Claire had picked me up and we drove out to the farm together to see how bad the damage was. The house was in shambles, barely anything left standing. We walked through the burnt interior and found some picture frames that hadn’t been totally destroyed, but there was nothing left of the photos that were once in them. There was no upstairs, which meant that all of our things had been destroyed. After ten minutes, there was no point in looking anymore. There was nothing to find.
We went to the chicken coop and took care of the chickens, but at this point, I just didn’t have it in me to do anything with them any more. What was the point?
“Claire, I think we need to just sell the chickens and put the farm up for sale. I don’t want to deal with this any more.”
“I don’t think I can make that decision right now. There are too many things to consider.”
“Well, if you want the farm, it’s all yours, but after everything that’s happened and with Dad no longer here, I just don’t see the point. I’m going to be starting a new job and the last thing I want is to be driving out here to do upkeep on a farm we don’t even live on anymore.”
“Alright. I’ll take care of the farm from now on until I make a decision.”
A truck pulled in the drive and Claire and I watched as Derek and Hunter got out of the truck. Hunter stalked toward me with his sexy swagger that had my insides lighting on fire, but the closer he got, the more I realized that he wasn’t happy. My eyes flicked to Claire, who obviously was seeing the same thing as me.
“Why the fuck did you leave the house?” he snapped at me as he got closer.
“Excuse me?”
“You fucking heard me. I got home and didn’t know where you were.”
Claire scurried off to Derek and they quickly made themselves scarce. I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at Hunter. “The last I checked, I don’t have to tell you when I’m doing something.”
“You could have some fucking common courtesy and leave me a note or something.”
“Like you did last night?”
His eyes narrowed at me. “I was working and I told you I would be.”
“Right. You also said that you would be bringing dinner home, but you didn’t call and you didn’t come home.”
“See, this is why I don’t have relationships. I go to work and then have you nagging me when I don’t come home on time.”
“I’m not nagging you. I don’t really give a shit if you don’t come home because you’re working, but you don’t get to yell at me when you just did the same thing to me.”
He ran his hand over his head and started pacing in front of me. “Look, we just need to take a step back here. This is too…fuck, I don’t know. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here. One minute, just fucking, and the next, the next there’s this expectation for more and I don’t know how to deal with that.”
“Hunter, let me ask you something. Did you stay away last night because of the whole drawer thing?”
He looked up at me and I could see it in his eyes. It had totally freaked him out. “It was just too much. I should have talked to you about it, but I’m not used to having to discuss shit with someone else.”
“You know that I wasn’t asking for more, right
? You asked me to stay with you and I just wanted someplace to put my things.”
“I didn’t…” He rubbed his hand along the back of his neck and sighed. “I didn’t know. I just thought it was moving really fast and it freaked me out.”
I nodded and looked over to where Claire and Derek were walking around the house. I wanted what my sister had. I wanted a man that would cherish me the way he obviously did my sister and didn’t have to second guess or hold back because of fear that I wanted more than a drawer. I would never get that with Hunter and that was clear as day. He was a great guy, but he just wasn’t ready for a relationship.
“Can you take me back to your house and then to a hotel?”
He looked up sharply at me in confusion. “You don’t have to go. I know I kind of freaked out, but that doesn’t mean you have to leave.”
“Yes, it does. Hunter, we’re great together, as fuck buddies. I like you, but when I start dating someone, I don’t want there to be all this second guessing. I don’t need someone to ask me to move in and offer me everything within the first month, but I need to know that he’s ready for a future together.”
“I’m trying, Lucy. Shit. I told you I’ve never done this before.”
“I know and I’m not faulting you for that, but you asked me to come stay with you and you freaked out after one night together. You didn’t even want me in your bedroom.”
“Fuck, Lucy. You have to give me time to adjust. This is all new to me.”
“I know, but I don’t want to go through an adjustment period. I don’t want to always be wondering what you’re thinking or if you’re freaking out. You just said we need to take a step back and we haven’t even been together a day. I’m sorry, but this isn’t going to work with us.”
I walked toward his truck without another word. I didn’t want to stand there and argue about what was going to happen between us for the next hour. It was clear to me that even if Hunter wanted to try for more, he just wasn’t equipped to handle a relationship yet.
✯✯✯✯✯
I got lucky and found a small apartment over the laundromat in town. It wasn’t much, just a one bedroom apartment, but it was all mine. It needed some work, but I didn’t think that was going to happen, especially considering how cheap the rent was. Still, since I was starting a job in just under a month, I couldn’t be picky about where I was going to be staying. The college where I was going to be teaching was about a half hour from me. I didn’t want to move to Pittsburgh and the rent would have been higher there anyway, so this would suit me fine. Besides, Claire was going to be staying with Derek and my dad was in a retirement home now, so it wasn’t like there were other people to get an apartment with at the moment.
The apartment had been vacant for some time, so they agreed to let me move in right away. I wanted to paint the walls and spruce it up a little, but that would have to wait. I didn’t even have any furniture yet. I had a little in savings from working since I was seventeen, but it would only be enough to get me by until my first paycheck, I hoped. The only thing I really needed right this minute was a bed to sleep on. I could get a futon for the time being. It wouldn’t be the most comfortable, but it would work.
I set my bag of clothes and bathroom products that Maggie had bought for me in the corner of my bedroom and sighed at how pitiful it looked. Grabbing my keys, I locked the door behind me and headed for the closest Walmart to get the cheapest futon, sheets, and pillows I could get. I didn’t really need a blanket yet because it was still pretty warm outside.
By the time I got my all my stuff picked out, I realized that I didn’t have any towels or washcloths. I also didn’t have dishes. There was just so much that I was missing that you don’t really think about until you need it. I picked up the cheapest dishes I could find and the basics for the kitchen, not spending more than $200 on all of it. My total bill was much higher than I wanted, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.
An employee helped me load the futon into my car and I drove slowly home since it was sticking out the trunk. When I pulled up to my apartment, I groaned at the prospect of dragging the futon up the narrow stairs by myself. I hauled the rest of the stuff inside first, knowing that as soon as I attempted to take the futon, I wouldn’t want to do anything else.
I took the huge box out of the trunk and pushed it across the sidewalk to the entrance door. With a little maneuvering, I was able to get it through the door and started pushing the heavy box up the stairs. I was about halfway up when I lost my footing and started to fall backwards. I tried to grasp onto the railing, but my fingers just brushed it before they slipped away. My eyes went wide as I realized I was about to be crushed by my own futon, but then I hit a hard chest and arms wrapped around me to grab the box, preventing it from sliding down further.
“Thank you so much. I’m sorry-” I stopped when I turned around in the massive arms and saw Hunter standing behind me with a smirk. “You.”
“Me. What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
“Moving in.”
“To this dump?”
I squirmed to get out of his arms, but I was trapped between him and the box. “It’s my dump. Can you let me go?”
He lifted one of his elbows for me to squirm out from under and then he started pushing the box up the stairs as I did my best impression of a wallflower. When he got to the top of the stairs, he looked at the two doors and then back at me in question. I snapped out of my haze and rushed up the stairs to let him into my apartment. When I opened the door, I tried not to let my embarrassment show. Yeah, it was a piece of crap.
“You can just slide it in and I’ll take it from there.”
“I’ll help you set it up. Where do you want it?”
“The bedroom,” I pointed to the only other door in the place and he started pushing it over.
“This place is a rat trap. I can’t believe you’re staying here.”
“It’s what I can afford for now.”
“You could have fucking stayed with me.”
“Hunter, you do remember how that went, right? You, freaking out over a drawer?”
He opened the box and started putting together the futon. “I may have fucked up, but you’re still mine, and the next time you fucking need something, I expect you to ask for help.”
“I’m not yours. That’s not how this works. Do you even understand how to be in a relationship? You don’t normally have to demand that the other person is yours.”
He abandoned the futon and walked toward me with a glint in his eye that I knew all too well. “I don’t have to demand that you’re mine.” He took a few more steps, backing me up until I had nowhere to run. “You know as well as I do that you will always be mine. Your body knows it. Now we just have to wait for your head to catch up.”
I shook my head slightly and glanced around for some way for me to escape. I couldn’t resist Hunter and if he had his way with me, I would fall back into his arms. “We were never more, Hunter,” I whispered. “It would never have worked.”
“Then I need to remind you what you’re missing.”
His mouth latched onto mine, sucking my bottom lip into his mouth and biting gently. When he pushed me up against the wall, I was powerless to resist him. The truth was, I craved him and his touch. If I had any hope of not falling under his spell, I was going to have to go out and find someone else to give me what I needed.
CHAPTER TWO
Hunter
DEREK’S BROTHERS WERE in town to meet Claire, so I thought I’d stop by and get to know all of them. I didn’t get many chances to weasel information out of family because we were always so busy. This was my chance to see what Derek was like as a kid and maybe even get some leverage on him. I grinned at all the stories I was going to get and rang the doorbell, beer in hand and ready to chill.
“Hey, man,” Derek said as he pulled the door open.
“I brought beer. I heard your brothers were in town and I wanted to-”
Lucy
came walking through the sliding door, her hand interlocked with some other guy’s. Her hair was messed up and her clothes weren’t hanging properly. She had obviously been fucking this guy, who was most likely Derek’s brother. Anger surged through me and I did my best to hold back my anger, but I was fucking pissed. How many times did I have to tell her that she was mine?
“What the fuck are you doing, Lucy?”
Lucy looked up at me in shock and the guy looked between the two of us, obviously wondering what the hell was going on. Lucy narrowed her eyes at me and then turned to the guy.
“Don’t worry about it. We aren’t together and who I fuck is none of your business,” she said, turning back to me.
The guy took a step back and shook his head. “Whoa, Lucy, I’m just looking for a good time. I’m not getting in the middle of whatever the fuck you two have going on.”
“We have nothing going on,” she insisted. “Now, let’s get out of here.”
The guy took another step back and glanced at Derek. “Sorry, I don’t poach what belongs to other men.”
“I don’t belong to anyone.”
“Does he know that?” The guy asked. He shook his head and walked out of the room. Lucy turned to me and glared. I could feel the anger pouring off her. I didn’t give a fuck.
“I hope you’re happy.”
“Why the fuck would I be happy that you’re out screwing other guys?”
“Hunter, you need to get something through your head. We fuck occasionally. It’s never been more than that and you can’t just swoop in and change the rules when it’s convenient for you.”
“I flat out told you how it was going to be. I’m not fucking around on you and I expect the same courtesy.”
“I never agreed to that and if you had it in your oversexed brain that we were going to have something different, that’s not my problem.”