Slams his mouth down on mine.
Pushes me against the door.
And then, he takes. He just takes and takes and takes.
He’s ravenous, his mouth skimming from my lips to my jaw to the long column of my throat. He latches on just where my neck meets my shoulder and sucks so hard that I know there will be a bruise there tomorrow.
He moves to the other side, does the same thing, before grabbing my shirt and yanking. It rips straight down the center, buttons flying in all directions.
Then he’s on his knees in front of me, biting and nibbling and sucking a path straight down the center of my body. He pauses at my breasts for a few breathless seconds, shoving my bra down and sucking love bites into the soft undersides of my breasts.
“Ethan,” I half-sigh, half-moan. My head is rocking back and forth against the wall, my fingers tangled in his hair and my body—God, my body feels like it’s about to go supernova. Like it’s going to spontaneously combust in a pillar of flames that burn so hot it just might incinerate my whole world.
“Chloe,” he growls back as he undoes the button on my jeans and yanks them down and off.
His mouth is on my hip, and this time he sinks his teeth in. Hard. I yelp even as I burn hotter and then he’s burying his face in the juncture of my thighs, eyes closed and hands cupping my ass.
“Ethan,” I gasp again, rocking my hips against him. I’m desperate for his mouth, for his hands, for something—anything—for whatever he wants to give me.
He doesn’t answer. For long seconds, he doesn’t do anything—doesn’t speak, doesn’t bite, doesn’t move. Instead, he just breathes me in, short, shallow, shuddering breaths that somehow only ratchet up my desire.
And then he’s shredding the delicate lace of my underwear, ripping them off my body with a curse that sounds an awful lot like a prayer. He rests one hand against my stomach, pressing my ass into the wall, then grabs my right thigh and lifts my leg up until it’s draped over his shoulder.
“Ethan!” This time it’s a high, keening cry as my consciousness—my whole world—is reduced to those two syllables.
“I’ve got you, baby. I’ve got you.” He’s nibbling at my inner thighs now, swirling his tongue after each small bite to ease the sting. Again and again he nips at me, leaving a trail of love bites from my knees to my sex.
“Please!” I clench my fingers in the cool silk of his hair, pull his head up so that I can see his face. So that he can see mine, and the desperation that is slowly, steadily, eating away at my sanity. “I need you. Ethan. I need you.”
“You’ve got me,” he answers, sucking hard at a spot on my mons this time, and it takes every ounce of self-control I have not to scream. Shocks of electricity arc straight from his mouth to my clit, drowning me in sensation. Making me crazy.
Then his tongue darts out and traces along my sex in one long, slow sweep that makes everything that came before look like nothing.
“Ethan!” The cry is low, desperate. It’s a plea for him to stop, for him to continue, for him to do something—anything—to lessen the sensual desperation sweeping through me.
But he ignores my cries, ignores my desperation, ignores everything but the wetness of my sex and the way my entire body is trembling.
“You okay?” he whispers against my clit, his tongue snaking out to circle it once, twice.
“Do something!” I whimper. “I’m begging of you, do something. Do. Anything.” Without conscious volition, I rake my nails down his scalp to his shoulders and dig in.
“Fuck!” His control breaks—finally, finally—and he clamps his hands on my thighs, spreads my legs farther apart. I’m already off-kilter, one leg draped across his shoulder and as he opens me up I lose whatever precarious balance I can claim.
I grab at him again, dig my nails in, and he curses, long and low and desperate. “I’ve got you,” he snarls. And he does, he really does. Ethan would never let me fall.
The thought rips away my last vestige of nervousness and it’s like he knows it, because suddenly he’s reaching for my second leg and draping it over his bent elbow so that I’m completely open to him, completely vulnerable. Completely dependent on him to keep me from falling. To keep me safe.
And I let him because I can’t not let him.
Because he’s Ethan and I trust him.
Because he’s Ethan and I need him more than I need my next breath.
Because he’s Ethan and I love him.
He senses my surrender—or maybe he feels it in the sudden relaxation of my body, the sudden acceptance of his control despite the need spiraling up, up, up inside of me.
“I’ve got you,” he tells me again. And then he leans forward and plunges his tongue as deeply inside of me as he can reach.
I go wild as pleasure swamps me, my body wigging out in twenty-seven different directions and begging for more. Begging for everything. I arch against his mouth, press my sex against him as he licks and strokes all the right places deep inside of me.
“Ethan!” I’m nearly sobbing now, so close to the edge that waiting is almost more torture than pleasure. Almost.
We’ve only been together a little while, but already Ethan knows my body as well as I do. When it registers just how close I am to coming, he swirls his tongue inside me, hitting every sensitive spot I have.
And then he’s pulling out and I’m sobbing, pleading, begging him to end it. He murmurs softly to me, nonsense words I’m too far gone to even register. Slipping his hands beneath my ass, he lifts me up more, opens me wider, and closes his teeth gently around my clit.
I slam over the edge, my body arching, shaking, bucking wildly as I lose all sense of myself, all sense of everything but Ethan and the pleasure coursing through my body. It goes on and on and on, until my head is fuzzy and my body aches. And still Ethan pleasures me, still he licks and sucks, kisses and strokes.
He slides one finger inside of me, then a second and a third even as he continues to circle my clit with his tongue. He finds my G-spot, rubs softly and I bite my lip, try once again to stop the screams rising inside of me. But this time, it’s no use. I’m going insane, Ethan driving me completely crazy as he uses his fingers and tongue and body—his beautiful, strong, sturdy body—to drive me from one orgasm to the next.
It’s never-ending, the pleasure coalescing inside of me until I’ve gone beyond individual orgasms, riding one endless wave of pleasure without beginning or end.
As afraid as I am awed, I dig my fingers into Ethan’s shoulders and hold on. I just hold on as the pleasure starts to destroy me. I lose the ability to think, to talk, to breathe. Lose the ability to do anything but feel Ethan all around me and the pleasure he is wringing from me over and over again.
There’s a part of me, one small, cognizant part that’s holding on to reality even as the rest of my brain lets go. That part is screaming at me to stop, screaming at me that Ethan is wrecking me, destroying me, taking me over completely until there will be no more Chloe without him. Until the addiction we feel for each other is no longer just a flame in our blood, but a raging forest fire that threatens to level us both.
“Ethan, I can’t take it. I can’t—”
“You can,” he snarls before circling my clit with his tongue and driving me right up the edge of another orgasm. “You’ll take everything I have to give you, give me everything in return. You’ll take until neither one of us has anything left.”
And then he bites me at the same second he pinches my nipple and my body goes spinning into oblivion, the pleasure beyond anything I could ever imagine. I hold on for dear life, some instinct I didn’t even know I had telling me that if I let go of him I’ll fly completely out of control.
Ethan must feel it, too, because he doesn’t let me go. Instead he pets and rubs and kisses me, helping me come down slowly from the physical high. He doesn’t bring me all the way down—not enough to relax—but he does give me the chance to breathe, just breathe, for long seconds.
> He stays where he is, his face buried in my stomach, his body wrapped tightly around mine. Only when my breathing starts to sound more like a human and less like a freight train does he shift, gently lowering my legs from his shoulders to the floor.
My knees are shaky—big surprise—my whole body tight and aching, so Ethan keeps his hands on me as he climbs to his own feet.
“What was that for?” I ask, brushing my lips over his as aftershocks still wrack my body. I can taste myself on his mouth, and somehow that only ratchets up the pleasure zinging from my breasts to my sex and back again.
“Because I love you,” he mutters, eyes and voice darker than I’ve seen them in a long time. Maybe ever. “I thought maybe your brother had convinced you that I wasn’t worth it.”
“Ethan, baby, that wasn’t ever in the cards.”
He cups my cheeks then, tilts my face up to his. “You sure about that? I know being with me comes with an awful lot of shit.”
I press against him, the scrape of his clothes against my too-sensitive body setting off all kinds of sensory alarms, alarms that only underscore the ones going off deep inside me because of Ethan’s words.
He’s never insecure, never unsure. He might be vulnerable sometimes, might open himself up to me in a way he doesn’t anyone else, but he always knows what he’s doing. Always knows what’s going to happen. The fact that he doesn’t now, the fact that the two weeks we spent apart managed to shake him so completely, wound me like nothing else could have.
Yes, I have doubts. Yes, I’m concerned about this addiction we have for each other, if it’s healthy and where we’re going to end up when everything is said and done, but I don’t want him to have the same doubts. Don’t want him to hurt as I do.
“I love you,” I tell him as I once again press my lips to his. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
It’s what he needs to hear, I think, because suddenly he’s turning me around, pressing my face and breasts and hands against the cool wall even as he cants my hips back.
He shoves a jean-covered leg between my own, spreads me open all over again. There’s the rasp of his zipper, the rustle of his clothing. And then he’s inside me, no condom, no prelude to make sure I’m still ready, nothing but the single, hard thrust that seats him all the way to the hilt.
His mouth is on my shoulder, sucking my bruises—more love bites—and then he’s moving, each thrust rocking me up on my toes, rubbing my oversensitive nipples against the roughly textured wall until I want to scream.
There’s something incredibly decadent about this moment, something incredibly powerful about being naked while Ethan is clothed, about being open and giving when he is being so forceful. When he’s taking what he wants, his hips pistoning against mine again and again and again.
He murmurs nonsense as he fucks me, words of love and sex, passion and need. And while none of them make sense on their own, together they make the most beautiful cacophony. They take me higher and higher, my body spiraling out of my control yet again.
And as Ethan stiffens, emptying himself inside me with a shout and a twist of his hips that pushes me right up to the edge all over again, I realize something that I never have before.
I belong to Ethan Frost. He owns me in a way no one else ever has, in a way no one else ever will. Heart, soul and body.
With my past, it’s actually the last of those that scares me the most, that has me pulling into myself, my need to come retreating under the emotional onslaught of too much. Much too much.
Except Ethan knows. He always knows, and he slips a hand between me and the wall and strokes my clit, once, twice, then again and again.
And though I’m afraid, though I’m awed and overwhelmed and absolutely terrified, I’m no match for his touch, no match for the love that I feel pouring out of him and into me. And then he’s biting my shoulder, his sharp teeth pinning me in place in what is sure to leave the mother of all bruises.
And I don’t even care, because he’s fucking me and fucking me and fucking me. Harder and harder, his hips pounding me into the wall. Pounding me into oblivion. Until there is no Chloe. No Ethan. No past. No future. There is only us, together. There is only now.
As I go careening into climax, my body no longer—my body never again—my own, it doesn’t even matter.
Nothing does but Ethan and the way he makes me feel.
Chapter Fifteen
“Hey, what are we doing sitting way over here today?” I ask my friend Austin as I slide my tray onto the cafeteria table.
We met my first week at Frost Industries—he and my other friends, Romeo (use his full name and suffer the consequences) and Zayn, are interns over in the lab while I’m in intellectual property. They were cool enough to let me sit with them the first week when the intellectual property interns were treating me like shit—an ongoing thing courtesy of Rick and his minions—because of my relationship with Ethan. During that time, the four of us really hit it off and we’ve spent pretty much every lunch hour together since. Except we usually do it on the other side of the cafeteria, where we have some small semblance of privacy.
Sitting up front makes me feel like I’m on display. Thanks to the other intellectual property interns, especially Rick, the whole company knows I’m dating Ethan. It’s not like we were hiding it—Ethan wouldn’t put up with even the appearance of that when I suggested it—but it’s not like I’m going out of my way to flaunt our relationship, either. After all, dating the boss never won anyone good favor.
What my illicit—or at least less than fully licit—relationship means is that I get a lot more attention than I like when I’m in Frost Industries’ common areas, which in turn is also the number one reason I prefer to sit in the most secluded, out-of-the-way section of the cafeteria we can find. The guys know that, so I’m confused as to why they’ve suddenly changed the rules.
“Austin?” I ask again, because he’s always been sort of the leader of our ragtag group.
Today, he doesn’t even bother looking at me, let alone answering my question. His behavior is strange enough that I look at Ro and Zayn to fill me in.
“The TV’s over here,” Ro tells me with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. “It’s semi-finals for the World Cup today and he’s been glued to his cell phone, computer and that TV screen all day—he’s been down for like four different snacks this morning alone. It’s even why we’re eating lunch late today. He doesn’t want to miss the opening pitch.”
“It’s called a kickoff, you arsehole,” Austin tells him in his crisp British accent, eyes still glued to the large screen in the center of the cafeteria wall.
It isn’t the only TV in the cafeteria—there are twelve of them, all tuned to different news or sports stations. Right now, the same World Cup scene is playing across seven of them.
“I’ve never really understood the appeal of soccer,” I tell Ro, who nods surreptitiously. “I mean, I know the whole world loves it but I much prefer football.”
“Right? What’s the point of watching a bunch of skinny guys in short shorts chase a ball around a field?”
“Are you kidding me?” Austin finally yanks his attention away from the screen long enough to blast us with a glare so frigid I actually feel shivers sliding down my spine. “This is football, you wankers. And I don’t know what the hell you Yanks get from watching a bunch of fat men in skintight pants and motorcycle helmets run around after a pigskin! This is real football.”
“This is a toddler’s game. Any three-year-old could play it.” Zayn winks at me behind his hand as we all wait for the explosion.
It doesn’t take long.
“A toddler’s game? A toddler’s game? I’ll have you know this is the most sophisticated, most important, most interesting game in the whole fookin’ world!” The more indignant Austin gets, the heavier his accent becomes. “It’s not my fault that you have no appreciation for sports or sportsmanship or good, old-fashioned competition, but the rest of the world certainly does.
More people watch this than the Olympics, for God’s sake!
“And not only that—”
Laughing, I reach across and put my hand over his mouth, cutting him off mid-sentence. “Not only that, soccer is super-exciting,” I tell him with mock enthusiasm. “It beats watching fishing and lawn bowling and it even beats going to the ballet if you squint at it hard enough.”
“Fishing? Lawn bowling?” He’s choking on his own indignation—or maybe that’s his tongue. Either way, it’s a sight to see. “Ballet!”
I can’t help it. No matter how hard I try to keep a straight face, it’s impossible to do it when Austin’s eyes are all but bugging out of his head. I start to laugh and seconds later Zayn and Ro join me.
“So, that’s what this is about? You guys are taking the piss out of me, then?” He watches us with narrowed eyes.
“I have no idea what that means, but it doesn’t sound like anything I’d want to be doing, so eeew, no. I am definitely not taking the piss out of you or anyone else.”
“He’s asking if you’re messing with him. It has nothing to do with what it sounds like.”
I glance behind me at the sound of Ethan’s voice, to find him standing only a few inches from my chair. “How did you get there without me noticing?”
“I believe you were too busy taking the piss out of Austin here to notice.” He grins at me, then leans down and drops a light kiss on my lips.
I freeze—I can’t help it. I feel like the whole cafeteria is staring at us, and when I go to glance around Ethan, it turns out I’m not that far off base. He’s definitely making a spectacle of the two of us.
“You want to join us, Ethan?” Ro invites, scooting over to make room on our side of the table. It’s an invitation that took some time in coming—for the first couple of weeks, the guys were so in awe of Ethan all they could do was trip over their own tongues when he showed up. Of course, it didn’t help that he spent a lot of his time glaring at them like they were competition. But eventually things smoothed out and I’m glad to see that those two weeks when we weren’t together haven’t altered the group dynamic.