Built

by Jay Crownover

“One of these days I’m just gonna watch you. Nothing has ever been that pretty.” His words were the end for me.

  I gasped his name and pulled on his hair. His fingers dug deeper into my thigh and his pace picked up until I felt him jerk and heard him mutter a few broken, filthy words as he found his own release inside my pliant and satisfied body. I fluttered around him and caught him when he collapsed on top of me with a sigh.

  His fingers rubbed up along my rib cage and his voice was lazy in my ear as he told me, “I’m so fucking happy you picked option two.”

  It made me laugh, which was hard to do with a naked giant pinning me to the bed. I stroked my hand over the stark and violent-looking image of the Norse god he had inked on one entire side of his ribs. I assumed the god was a depiction of the mighty Thor because of the hammer the image was wielding. The tattoo was powerful and huge, just like the man sporting it.

  I was going to tell him how wonderful it all was, how happy I was that he had brought the date I’d claimed not to want to me, when my stomach remembered the abandoned dinner in the kitchen and roared loud enough that it made him push up and look down at me in surprise.

  I would have been mortified but he was still buried deep inside of me, and when he chuckled at me I felt it everywhere.

  “Let me clean up and get situated and I’ll feed you. I don’t want you to tell me no the next time I ask you on a date.”

  We groaned in unison as he pulled out and I shifted around on the bed as he headed toward the bathroom. I was going to tell him that there would be no dating, that all of this was a fluke. When there was space between us I could think and the reality of things was as bleak and as barren as it always was. I wanted him to understand that what happened when I was with him was something magical and that it would eventually fade, but as I watched his toned backside flex as he disappeared into the bathroom I decided I just wanted to enjoy the view and that I would worry about the reality of who I was and how she had no idea how to be with who he was later.

  CHAPTER 12

  Zeb

  I had my hands full of Sayer’s plump, firm breasts and her long, silken hair was tangled all over my chest where her hands were planted and it hung on either side of my face as she bent forward so that she could rock on my very happy dick even faster. She made a strangled noise in her throat as I trapped her puckered and flushed nipples between my fingers and her eyelids fluttered in a way that let me know she was getting close to coming.

  Her typically pale cheeks were flushed a pretty pink and her mouth was damp and looked well loved, and her normally sleek hair was a mess from my hands and rolling all across her king-size bed for hours. She looked good all put together and ready to take care of business. She looked way better like this—messy, wild, out of control, and totally lost in the moment, caught up in how good we could make each other feel. This was the Sayer I was pretty sure I was well on my way to being in love with and I was really grateful she had started showing up more and more.

  I grunted as her fingernails bit into my skin and moved a hand up to the back of her head so I could draw her down for a searing kiss. She came easily, folding into me like soft butter, so I shifted her so that she was stretched out underneath me so that I could watch those limitlessly blue eyes burn as I pushed her over the edge with a single, hard thrust. I wanted her to know it was me, only me, that could make her go off like that. I was the one she melted for. I was the one she let inside. She sighed in pleasure as she kissed me back and I felt her inner walls start to milk my cock with desperate little motions.

  She still wouldn’t go out with me when I asked her on a date, but if I showed up at her house, she always let me inside and she never kicked me out of her bed. A few days ago I had asked her to come over to my place and was surprised when she readily agreed. My condo was nothing to write home about, basic in all the ways a condo typically was, and when she mentioned it, I had a hard time dancing around the fact that I had already built my dream home . . . she just happened to be living in it. I distracted her from that conversation by putting her on the kitchen counter and wrapping her legs around me, which, of course, led to a bout of vigorous kitchen sex. It took me a few nights to realize that to her, if we weren’t actually going out, actually participating in any kind of social activity other than all the sex we were having, then we weren’t dating.

  I tried to talk to her about it, tried to get her to see that I was in this for so much more than her delectable body and the mind-blowing sex, but it was her turn to distract me from the conversation by pulling my dick out and sucking it so far into the back of her throat I was amazed she didn’t choke on it. Needless to say, I couldn’t think much after that, but the conversation still needed to happen, but it could wait, unlike the orgasm that I felt coiling up at the base of my spine as I hammered into her. Our pubic bones collided and I could feel her sweet spot quiver and her whole body tense up.

  She put a hand on the side of my face and combed her fingers through my beard. It was a new thing she seemed to like to do, and while it should feel comforting and sweet, all it made me want to do was bury myself inside her as far as I could go so that she felt me everywhere, every day, in every single move she made while we were apart. I growled at her and sank my teeth into the top of her shoulder with just enough force to make it sting. She garbled something that I’m sure was supposed to be words and then her body clamped down on me like a velvet vise and I felt her pleasure and mine collide and merge into one intense flood of completion. I couldn’t remember a time when I ever got off at the same time as the girl I was with. I was never that in sync with anyone, never that caught up in the moment and feeling what they were feeling as intensely as my own desire. It had happened more than once since I started sleeping with Sayer, and each time it felt more important, more significant than the last.

  I swore down at her and she giggled up at me as I rolled to the side so I didn’t crush her when I collapsed. I brought her with me and she wiggled on my dick, which had me growling at her. I was so over the latex that kept me from being able to stay inside her forever and enjoy a minute where I could just hold her and marvel at how perfect she fit me. That was another conversation I wanted to have but was leery of how she would react. She seemed bound and determined to keep me close but with enough room that she could duck out if she felt like she needed to. I didn’t want to push too hard, considering being here, in this house I built for her, in her bed anytime I asked, was a huge victory. I might not be all the way through those icy barriers she had, but I was tunneling my way into the core of her nicely.

  I pulled out of the heat that she still had me wrapped in and bit back a grin when a frown pulled at her face. I liked the way her golden eyebrows puckered in annoyance at the loss of me. I leaned forward so I could kiss those little lines and told her I would be right back.

  It was a good thing she had a master bath attached to the room. One morning when I was running particularly late because of shower sex—totally worth the hitch in my schedule, by the way—I had scared Poppy half to death by bursting into the kitchen half dressed and hurried. The timid young woman was getting more comfortable having me in her space, but clearly she wasn’t at the point where a big, half-naked man was something she was ready to deal with. I thought she was going to burst into tears, and I wasn’t sure how to make the situation any better. Luckily Sayer had heard Poppy’s shriek of terror and had come down to smooth things over. She was so good with the fractured young woman, so kind, so caring, I was baffled how she thought she was going to hurt me.

  I made a concerted effort to stay dressed and move more carefully around the Victorian when I knew I might run into the other woman. It broke my heart a little bit for her, but Sayer assured me that the fact that Poppy hadn’t run and barricaded herself in her room after the encounter was huge progress. I was skeptical but decided to believe her.

  I crawled back into the bed and pulled Sayer on top of me so that she was sprawled across me like a sexy, naked bl
anket. I pulled the comforter up over her waist and ran my fingers up and down the knobs of her spine while she traced over the tattoo on my shoulder with her index finger. She did that a lot. It was almost like she was trying to commit the images to memory through touch or something. By now I was convinced that she could draw spot-on images of them if I asked her to, given how much time she spent studying them and touching them.

  “Did you tell Hyde?” Her voice was sleepy and sluggish against my chest. I twisted my fingers in the ends of her hair, and as usual the silky strands clung to the calluses I had there.

  I’d had two long weekends of unsupervised visits with the little boy, with two more to go before he could start spending Thursday through Mondays with me. I wanted to tell him I was his father before he came to stay with me, but every time I had him all to myself, I chickened out or couldn’t figure out a way to give him such important information in a way that was easily digestible for a five-year-old.

  “No. He wanted to ride around in the truck and eat pizza today. I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m just his playtime buddy. I couldn’t do it. He was having such a good time, and I feel like when I tell him, that’s gonna change how he sees me.” I’ll admit it. I was scared to death of a five-year-old. I already loved him so much, was so attached to the little guy that I was terrified that when I told him what our relationship really was he would feel betrayed.

  She yawned and then lifted her head up and rested her chin on her hands, which she stacked up over my heart. “You’re running out of time if you want to tell him before the overnights start.” She lifted her eyebrows up. “Speaking of the overnights, you might want to ask your sister or someone to help you make that condo a little more kid-friendly before he comes to stay with you.”

  I tugged on her hair and she scowled at me. “What’s wrong with my condo?”

  She rolled those ocean-colored eyes at me like I was clueless. “Nothing is wrong with it for a single guy. Everything is wrong with it for a five-year-old. He needs to have someplace that is fun, a place that is all his own. Before you get full custody, the court very well may send a social worker out to check out the living conditions. Your condo is nice, but it doesn’t scream ‘family.’ ”

  I moved one of my hands and propped it behind my head. She watched the way the motion made my bicep flex and her gaze got all kinds of stormy and appreciative.

  “And I think you’re worrying about nothing. Hyde adores you. He can’t wait for your visits and he talks to his current guardian about you nonstop. It might take some time for him to process the fact that you’re his father, but he’s bright and he cares about you so much. You guys will figure it out together.”

  I let go of her hair and tickled the base of her spine where she had two really cute dimples that I was now intimately familiar with. I liked to dip my tongue in them and make her squirm and wiggle while she tried to figure out how low I was going to go as I licked her like a lollipop.

  “I hope you’re right, and what do you mean by ‘single guy’?” I palmed one of her ass cheeks and gave it a solid squeeze so that I made sure I had her attention. “Two of us in this bed right now, Say. Two of us in bed at my condo. That makes for me being decidedly unsingle. It’s been that way for a while now.”

  She wiggled a little on top of me as I brought up the topic I knew she didn’t want me to broach. She dropped her head so that her cheek was on her hands and I was looking at the crown of her head. “You know what I meant, Zeb.”

  I grunted and gave the tight ass cheek I was fondling a smack. She yelped and jerked her head back up so that we were eye-to-eye in the dimly lit room.

  “No, Sayer, I don’t know what you mean. I’m with you even though you refuse to admit it, so I am not some single guy. I’m not fucking anyone else, have no desire to fuck anyone else, so you are it. This is it.” I was annoyed and she could tell because I could see the war waging between what she thought she should say to that declaration and what she was actually feeling. Terror and joy did battle and crashed like angry waves in her eyes as she gazed down at me.

  “I . . . I’m not sure what to say.” Well, at least she wasn’t trying to litigate her way into some bullshit response about how we could screw each other’s brains out but not be anything more because she was scared of hurting me. That would’ve really pissed me off.

  “Just admit that neither one of us is single at the moment, Say. That’s all I want to hear.”

  She gave a breathy little sigh and closed her eyes. “Neither one of us is single, Zeb.”

  It was a small victory, but one I would gladly take, and since I was gaining ground I figured I would go for the gusto. “And since neither one of us is single and neither one of us is fucking anyone else, how about we work something out so that I don’t have to buy stock in Trojan?”

  That startled a laugh out of her and I wanted to pound on my chest in primitive pride. She cuddled back into me and her hair slithered all around me in an erotic caress that had my dick tightening up and twitching underneath her.

  “I have an IUD, so we’re good.” She said it so offhandedly, so blasé like she hadn’t just given me the keys to the only kingdom I wanted to get inside without a suit of armor for protection.

  Her declaration made me and my impatient cock very happy. I slipped my hands all the way under the covers and between her legs. She jolted a little and peered up at me curiously as I dipped my fingers inside her soft opening. She wasn’t protesting, but she wasn’t spreading her legs to let me in any farther either.

  “Really?” She sounded dumbfounded. I had been all over her for hours, but she just gave me the green light to go in bare and that was like dropping a lit match into a puddle of kerosene.

  I rolled her under me for the second time that night and rubbed my aching dick between her plump folds until I felt them start to warm up and her body start to react to the gentle ministrations.

  “You just told me I could have you raw, uncovered, and you didn’t think that meant I was going in? I told you, Say . . . I want inside and I want to leave parts of myself there so you can’t shake me loose.”

  Her mouth rounded in a little “oh” and her hands curled around my arms as I sank into her heat and let her burn all along me. It was sweet as heaven and hot as hell. It was everything and more. It was a place that was all mine and that I was never going to let anyone else anywhere near.

  I started to move, slower, more deliberate than I usually did when I was inside of her. I wanted to savor every drag, every pull of flesh against flesh. I wanted to memorize every squeeze, every tiny tremble of pleasure. I wanted to remember every pulse and throb as I retreated and invaded over and over again. I wanted to leave a mark and I wanted to leave with marks of my own, our straining bodies imprinted on one another and linked in intimate ways no one else could see.

  This wasn’t me fucking her or her fucking me, this was making love. This was coming together. This was the kind of sex that made lovers fall in love. This was the kind of sex that neither one of us was going to be able to live without once we tasted how intense and profound it could be.

  I came before she did this time . . . I mean, give a guy a break. I was inside her with nothing between us, she felt like she was made just for me, and I had ridden her hard and merciless before this bout of lazy lovemaking. She whimpered when I filled her in a hot rush and I watched as she turned her head to the side and squeezed her eyes shut. There was a lot of emotion welling up there and I knew it was easier for her to hide from it than to face it.

  I grabbed her chin in my hand and forced her to look at me as I rocked into her one last time with a languid glide of my hips. “Sayer . . .” Just her name. That was all it took. Her name spoken like it was everything to me because it was. She broke apart under me in rippling waves.

  I knew she was going to be spent both physically and emotionally after she came down from her orgasm, so I wrapped her in my arms and turned to the side so that her back was to my front and I was su
rrounding her.

  I kissed her on the back of the head and muttered a soft “thank you.” What else was there to say? What she had given me felt like a gift.

  She breathed out and my heart kicked hard when she gently put her hand over the top of mine where it was possessively curled around one of her breasts.

  “Tell Hyde, Zeb. You’re going to be an amazing father and he deserves every minute of that.”

  We were both quiet after that and eventually I felt her go lax and knew she was asleep. All I could think while I held her was that there was no falling in love with this woman, there was only being in love with her. She had owned me from the very start; now I just needed her to take possession and keep me forever.

  “YOU ARE SUCH a coward.” I threw a handful of the little pellets I bought Hyde to feed the giraffes with at Beryl and laughed when she smacked my arm in retaliation. Fall was rushing headlong into the colder winter weather, so I had a heavy canvas coat on over my shirt and barely felt the blow.

  “I’m not the one with the secret boyfriend that’s too afraid to introduce him to the family.” I watched as Joss took Hyde’s hand and practically dragged him across the walkway toward where the wolf enclosure was. It wasn’t the first time my niece had been to the big city zoo in the center of City Park, but it was Hyde’s. His little face was alight with wonder and he couldn’t seem to take it all in as Joss delighted in showing him all her favorite animals. Both the kids were bundled up, and even though he was five years younger than her, Hyde was almost as tall as my energetic niece. He really did take right after me.

  Beryl snorted and tapped her fingers on the white Starbucks cup she clutched in her hands. “Wes actually really wants to meet you and Mom. He sort of gave me an ultimatum the other day.”

  I lifted an eyebrow at her and chuckled as Hyde pressed his nose against the glass so he could get a better look at the animals. Everything he did tugged at my heart and made me even more anxious about what his reaction was going to be when I told him the truth.