by Amy Andrews
She needed all of him.
He kissed her and tears burned hot behind her closed lids. He slid his fingers out and Matilda whimpered, grabbing his arm, trying to stop him.
“Hang on, baby,” he said, pulling away to reach into his back pocket.
Tanner stood, his erection standing proud from the opening of his zipper as he grabbed a foil packet from his wallet. Hastily, he discarded his half undone jeans and underwear and, reaching down, he yanked Matilda’s off, too.
All she could do was watch, her chest tight at the sheer masculine beauty of him. Tanner had always been magnificent—something that could only be truly appreciated in his naked form. But he wasn’t a teenager any more. He was a man, and he had a man’s body, with all the subtle differences wrought by maturity.
The sight of him stole her breath and filled her heart with an overwhelming sense of rightness. Of belonging.
Him to her. And her to him.
He quickly rolled the condom on then crawled onto the bed, settling over her but holding the weight of his torso above her slightly, balancing on the flats of his forearms.
“You were always the best part of me,” he said, his voice tremulous as his eyes roamed over her face and his fingers brushed the lobes of her ears. “Always.”
Tears pressed behind her lids again as he kissed her hard and long and slow—like he used to. She clung to him, kissing him back as he slid the thickness of his cock through the slickness between her legs, setting up a torturously slow rhythm.
“Tanner,” she gasped, breaking off as muscles deep inside her started to spark and pulse. “Please, I…”
“Shh,” he murmured, kissing her again, his fingers ploughing into her hair, his thumbs at her jaw, tilting it to gain deeper access to her mouth.
The thick, blunt prod of him, notching himself at her entrance, shot the sparks higher, forking up her spine like a streak of lightning. Her hands convulsively gripped his biceps as she shamelessly wrapped her legs around him, easing his first deep, gratifying thrust. She gasped, the kiss broken, at the welcome invasion, everything tight and hot and full, stretching and pulsing and exploding behind her eyes and deep inside her pelvis.
Matilda anchored the backs of her calves to the backs of his thighs, holding him there tight—right there—buried to the hilt, and everything seemed to stop as if they were held together in a moment of suspended animation, pulsing together as one.
“Tilly,” he groaned in her ear on a roughly exhaled breath. His mouth was pressed to her neck and even just that sensation was too much for a nervous system at flash point. “I have to move. I…need to…”
Tilly loosened her grip on his buttocks. She needed it, too.
The rhythm of his hips took over, rocking her high and hard with each stroke, the walls of her world collapsing in all around her so quickly.
Too quickly.
Everything dissolved as he reared over her, and she clung to his biceps, feeling the flex and bunch of them. Everything quivering and clenching. Everything rippling and spiralling. Until they were both lost in a storm of pleasure, calling out each other’s names, one pounding, the other clinging, both working in tandem, stroke for stroke, until neither of them had anything else to give, and they collapsed in a heap on the bed.
They dozed for a while. Tanner didn’t know for how long. All he knew was he woke a little later, her ass pushed against a cock that was telling him it wasn’t done yet.
He kissed her neck and stroked a nipple, rousing her slowly until she turned in his arms, not talking, not asking, just exploring each other’s bodies, this time with a languorous thoroughness that kindled his hopes of a burgeoning connection between the two of them.
Something more than physical. Something deeper.
He lay in a glorious post-coital haze in the aftermath, malaise invading his bones, the still darkness of the night blanketing them in a drowsy cocoon. Tilly was smooshed up along his side, her head on his chest.
Having her here tonight in his apartment, with the guys and their wives, having a good time, all relaxed and laughing, had seized great big handfuls of his gut and squeezed. This was his world. Rugby. His teammates. Tanner had hoped she’d fit in. He’d hoped that she’d like his friends, that she’d embrace his world, too.
And she certainly seemed to.
His fingers trailed from the curve of her shoulder to the dip of her waist then back again. Her fingers drew patterns on his chest before wandering to his biceps to trace the outline of his tattoos.
“Why thorns?” she asked after a while.
Tanner, whose eyes had been drifting shut, stirred himself, resuming his stroking, goose bumps roughening the pads of his fingers in their wake. “I liked the symbolism,” he murmured. “You want to get past me then you’re going to have to hack me down.”
“Tough guy, huh?”
He swore he felt her lips curve against his chest. “When it comes to rugby? Sure.”
When it came to her? To love? He was weak as piss.
But not anymore. It was past time he put things right with her.
“I’m sorry,” he said tentatively, aware that his heart was suddenly thudding loudly in his chest as his palm came to rest on the spread of her ribs, “about how…things ended between us.”
The stroke of her finger halted abruptly, and she grew very still.
“If I could do that moment over again, I would.”
He would have been honest. He would have used his words instead of a dumb, ill-considered, rash action. Made her see the sense in not following him. In pursing her own dreams.
Her cheek tensed against his pec, and he swore her lungs hadn’t inflated since he’d opened his mouth. “It’s fine,” she said, her voice toneless. “I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that it must have been something I’d done anyway.”
It was Tanner’s turn to still and to tense. What the fuck? What the hell was she going on about? He frowned down at her blonde head. “What?”
She shrugged, her fingers resuming their patterns on his arm. “I’ve been angry at you and blaming you all this time, but I realised today that everyone loves you, and that’s because you really are a great guy.” Her voice sounded surprisingly calm and matter-of-fact. “You always were. And you’ve proven that to me over and over these last six weeks. So it has to have been me. I mean, it does take two people to ruin a relationship, right? Maybe there was something I did or didn’t do that drove you to Jessica Duffy? I mean, I made you wait a really long time for sex. And I wouldn’t…swallow or let you go down on me. Maybe if I’d been more open to…things you wouldn’t have found the need to go elsewhere.”
Tanner hadn’t known what to expect when he’d opened his mouth to confess all. It certainly hadn’t been a mea culpa from Tilly.
She was blaming herself now? Because she hadn’t been comfortable with certain sexual things?
He hadn’t heard anything so crazy in his life.
“That,” he muttered, curling himself up into a sitting position, displacing Tilly in the process, “is utter bullshit.”
He glanced over his shoulder at her, the sheet twisted between her legs covered nothing much at all. Her breasts were bare, as were most of her legs. Just a swath of skin from hip to thigh was hidden from his view. His dick twitched. Even in her state of obvious confusion, frowning up at him, he wanted to rip that sheet away and bury his face in the bit he couldn’t see.
He hauled himself out of bed, away from the temptation of her. It was important she hear the real reason—that she understand his real reasons.
This was not the time for distraction.
“Nothing that happened that night was because of anything you’d done or not done. I didn’t kiss Jessica Duffy because I was dissatisfied with our sex life and looking for something else. I kissed her on purpose. I waited until you walked through that door and I knew you were looking at me, and I kissed her because I wanted to smash a gulf so wide between us that you’d never want to speak to m
e ever again.”
She didn’t look any less confused as she swung her legs over the side of the bed, dragging the sheet around her. But she did look pissed off. “Well, congratulations, it worked,” she said, her voice stony. “You know, if you didn’t want me anymore, you could just have said.”
“Didn’t want you?” The accusation felt like a hot poker being thrust into his gut. Tanner shook his head. “I never stopped wanting you. Hell, I was all set to ask you to marry me. I’d even put a deposit on a ring. I was going to propose and suggest we set a date for after you got back from America.”
He shoved a hand through his hair, remembering how excited he’d been to find the perfect ring. A round opal surrounded by diamonds. The stone had been stunningly beautiful and reminded him of her blue-green eyes, complete with a rich fiery vein of pink and amber.
“But then you announced you weren’t going to go, were going to knock back your scholarship and do your degree externally in Australia whilst following me around, and all my pleas that you go, that you not stay, fell on deaf ears.”
She rose from the mattress, pulling the sheet out of the end, wrapping herself up in it as she turned to face him. “So you kissed another woman?” she demanded, the rush of air in and out of her chest audible. “To make me jealous? To make me…hate you?”
He swallowed. “Yes.”
“Jessica freaking Duffy?”
Tanner wasn’t very proud that he’d chosen Tilly’s nemesis deliberately. But it’d had the desired effect. “Yes. I figured she’d cut the deepest. But don’t blame her—it wasn’t her fault. She had no idea what I’d planned, either.”
“Oh, trust me,” Tilly fumed. “I don’t. You are totally on the hook for that one.” She glared at him across the bed. “How far did it go?” she demanded. “Did you fuck her?”
“No!”
“Really? Because you both appeared to be enjoying it to me.”
Tanner shook his head vehemently. “As soon as you ran out, I broke it off. It was only ever a kiss. And a pretty terrible one at that.” He shuddered thinking about it now. “Too wet. Too much tongue. It felt like she was trying to reach my balls via my throat.”
“Imagine how not sorry I am,” she hissed, “to hear it was so freaking unpleasant for you.”
Tanner shoved a hand through his hair, trying to figure out how they’d gone from so deep inside each other he hadn’t been able to tell where he ended and she started, to glaring at each other across a mattress that may as well have been as wide as the bloody ocean.
What he’d done had been stupid, but his motives had been true. Surely she could see why he’d done it?
“I’m sorry,” he apologised again. “But I did it for you.”
Her eyes practically bulged out of her head. “How very noble of you,” she yelled, looking around the floor before bending over to scoop up her discarded underwear. “You want a medal for your sacrifice?” she demanded as she stepped into the scrap of satin and lace he’d yanked off her less than two hours ago, manoeuvring them up under the sheet.
“Okay, that came out all wrong,” he muttered. Christ. Talk about making it worse.
“Ya think?”
She threw her shirt on over her head sans bra, yanking the sheet down and off. He quickly located his underwear and pulled them on. Being the only buck naked one in an argument did not augment his position.
“I just meant it was the only way I could think of to make you dump me and go follow your dreams.”
“You think you did me such a big favour?” Her voice broke a little, and the sharp edge of it stabbed straight into the middle of his chest. “By breaking my heart? And making me distrust not only every single man who’s crossed my path since, but myself? Distrust my own judgement? Making me wary of relationships and getting too close to anyone in case they crushed my heart like you did? Closing me off to any possibility of loving another man, or letting him love me?”
Christ. Tanner hadn’t wanted that. He’d let her go so she could have a life. Her life. “Tilly—”
“Goddamn it, Tanner,” she yelled, interrupting him with all the grunt of a machete. “My name is Matilda!”
She grabbed her jeans that were in a pile on the floor at the bottom of the bed and turned on her heel, striding for the door.
Chapter Fourteen
“Wait,” Tanner called after her, using the superior length of his stride to catch her as she reached the door, grabbing her by the elbow. She flapped her arm trying to yank out of his reach, but Tanner was going to hold tight this time instead of letting her go.
It had been a mistake doing that eight years ago, the gravity of which was only hitting him now.
“Please…Matilda, just wait.” He dodged another elbow, although he doubted it would have had the same impact as the one he’d copped on the field earlier in the night. He bundled her up in his arms, pressing her back against the wall near the door, shoving a thigh between her legs as she tried to kick at him, caging her with his body.
“I’m sorry, okay? I’m really sorry,” he murmured. “I didn’t mean for any of that to happen. I was a complete dumbass.”
“You got that right,” she panted, still pushing against his body.
He was excruciatingly aware of where his thigh was trapped and how every wriggle rubbed her crotch against it. Of the smell of sex still clinging to their skin and sizzling off them like steam as the heat between them grew. Of the frantic pull of her breath and the mad flutter of the pulse in the hollow at the base of her throat.
And, God help him, he was so damned turned on he could barely think for the blood pounding through his head and his chest and his groin. It was the most inappropriate time to get a hard-on.
But his dick didn’t get the memo.
She twisted her hips to dislodge him, to no avail, her gaze burning. “Let. Me. Go.”
Tanner held fast. “We have the chance to start again, Matilda. You’re crazy if you think this thing between us is dead. The chemistry between us is as hot as it always was.”
“Speak for yourself,” she snapped.
Her denial pushed Tanner to his limit. No. No more lies. His lie in their past had already caused too much pain, and he was determined another one wasn’t going to derail their future. He wasn’t going to let her lie to him or herself about what was going on between them.
He pressed his thigh hard between her legs, grinding for good measure, the action hitching her up the wall a little. His erection, straining against the confines of his underwear, pressed into her belly.
He was gratified to hear her sharp intake of breath. “You were saying?”
“That’s physics.” She dismissed the evidence through gritted teeth. “Not chemistry.”
“Bullshit.”
He ground again, and she moaned, clutching his biceps reflexively. Her head fell back against the wall, a hot sizzle of lust burning in her gaze. “You better be prepared to follow through on that,” she growled, her chest heaving, her voice thick with barely suppressed desire.
Tanner blinked at her very clear meaning.
She wanted to fuck?
Now? Part of him recoiled from the suggestion. They needed to talk. They needed less action and more conversation. But the blatant intent in her gaze had grabbed him by the dick, and the devil had him by the balls.
“On this?” He ground his thigh into her underwear again.
Holding his gaze she bucked her hips and rode the hard wedge of it. “Yes,” she gasped, her hands suddenly in his hair, pulling his head down, their lips meeting in a clash that threw sparks and almost cut Tanner off at the knees.
Their breathing was loud between them as he fought her for dominance of the kiss. Rage at himself for his weakness and frustration at her manipulation combined in a potent mix. The kiss was his to master and damned if he was going to let her have it all her own way. He demanded her submission, and he wasn’t letting up until he had it.
But she gave him no measure, twisting and e
vading any attempt of his to master it, the savage kiss stoking his arousal to fever pitch. And hers, if the whimpery noises coming from the back of her throat were any indicator.
Her submission was brief but splendid, her body softening and melting, a sigh on her lips for the merest of moments. Triumph surged through his system for a nanosecond before her hands were delving inside his underwear, squeezing his cock and cupping his balls, owning him more completely than any kiss could.
“Fuck me,” she demanded against his neck, her teeth nipping as she twined her legs around his waist, the fingernails of one hand sinking into the broad sweep of his shoulder, the other guiding his cock to her centre, using the head to push her underwear aside. He settled amidst the slick heat between her legs and Tanner’s eyes clamped shut as the sensation pushed him beyond all reason.
This was all kinds of fucked up. They were angry. This wasn’t the slow, tender lovemaking of less than half an hour ago—this was screwing. One hundred percent pissed-off, nail-raking, neck-biting, wall-fucking screwing.
It was rage and revenge. It was reprisal. It was rutting like animals.
It sure as hell wasn’t the way to prove to her that he wanted more from her than what they both had between their legs. But she writhed against him again, nipping the muscle that sloped from his neck to his shoulder and a wild primitive roar pulsed through his body.
Having sex with her all angry like this reminded him of how pissed off she’d been at him after he’d gone down on her that night at her apartment. He remembered how hard she had come and what she had tasted like. The smell of her, of them both, real and remembered, flared his nostrils and welled in his head, driving him to a point well beyond control.
In one swift movement he’d braced the flat of a forearm against the wall near her head, grasped her hip with the other hand and shoved inside her, her head rocking back as he drove in to the hilt. She cried out, her fingernails digging hard into his shoulders.
“Yes,” she moaned, their gazes locking. “Yes.”
She was hot and tight and wet, and he didn’t care that he wasn’t wearing a condom, he only cared that they were finally looking at each other, as close as two people could be. That he could see right into her soul and there were finally no barriers between them. He could see her emotions raw and real, the same as the ones reflected inside him. He wanted to keep her here like this, pinned to the wall in this moment of truth, this moment of utter consummation, forever.
