Rough Ride

  He held the weight in his palm over my bra but did nothing else.

  “Snapper, honey,” I breathed, pressing and swirling my hips into his hardness.

  “Rosie,” he whispered back, his sweet baritone drifting all over me.

  He used his arm at my waist to pull me back and dropped his head to my chest.

  Unhurried, he slid it to the breast he was not holding, over the swell, then back again, this time tracing the edge of the lace with his tongue.

  Now we were getting somewhere.

  But he was still going slow.

  Restlessly, I churned against his hips, stroking his hair, his back, arching into his touch.

  “I’m not real sure I can do slow,” I told him breathlessly on the backward glide of his tongue.

  “No?” he asked my skin.

  “No,” I murmured.

  “Hmm…” he hummed against my skin.

  God!

  He was driving me crazy!

  I ground into him, bunching his hair in my fingers, my mouth opening to say something (maybe whine, maybe beg, I was up for anything that might work at that point) when suddenly he tore the cup of the bra down and honed in with thumb and forefinger, twisting gently, just as he sucked my other nipple into his mouth over the bra.

  The awesomeness of that tore through me. I jerked in his hold and he held me to him before he switched nipples and hands and then he was mouth-to-mouth on me.

  Way.

  More.

  Awesome.

  “Snapper,” I moaned.

  He sucked. He swirled. He rubbed me with the front of his teeth. And I rolled in his lap, pressing into his cock, doing all I could to stroke it with the crotch of my jeans.

  He let my nipple go, pulled my mouth down to his, and kissed me hot and wet before he broke it and ordered gruffly, “Baby, get on your feet.”

  I didn’t want to get on my feet.

  I wanted to get him in me.

  But I got on my feet.

  I’d barely got my trembling legs to support me before his hands went to my fly.

  Okay, this was good. I was happy to be on my feet for this.

  The zip went down then my jeans went down.

  My panties, thankfully, went down with them.

  I stepped out of them hurriedly.

  Snap surged up out of the bed.

  “No!” I cried, landing both hands on his broad, bared shoulders and pressing down. “We’re both getting farther away from where we’re supposed to be.”

  He gave me a look that would melt asphalt at the same time it was filled with humor that I decided in an instant I utterly adored before his fingers went to the button on his jeans.

  He grabbed his wallet before he shoved them down.

  He stepped out of them, opened his wallet, pulled out a condom, and tossed his wallet to the nightstand.

  “Hurry,” I urged, not caring that I did it staring greedily at the perfection of the cock that had sprung free from his jeans and was now standing full and hard and proud, reaching toward me.

  “Babe, hurrying a condom is a bad thing,” he muttered, sounding growly turned on and amused, and I utterly adored that too.

  I reached out and spread my hands across his pecs, touching him and watching him roll the condom on his beautiful, thick cock, all the way down to the root, dancing lightly on my feet with anticipation, salivating, running my thumbs hard over his nipples.

  Snap latched onto my hips and sank back down on the bed, pulling me into his lap, this time not with my legs to one side, but a knee to either side.

  Now we were talking.

  “I’ll give you a foreplay blowjob our second go,” I offered, aiming myself at that goodness.

  “Foreplay for me with you essentially involves you lookin’ at me, so that’s unnecessary, but I’m not gonna say no,” he replied, guiding me to his goodness but doing it way too damned slow.

  “Snapper, hurry,” I rushed.

  Laugher in his tone now. “Rosie, it isn’t going anywhere.”

  I grasped either side of his head and looked into his eyes.

  “I want you,” I whispered.

  With a rumble I felt from scalp to toes, he pulled me down and filled me.

  Snapper was finally inside me.

  My head fell back, my hands slid down to clench his neck, and I started moving.

  “Fuck…me,” he groaned.

  He didn’t mean it that way, but all I could think was, gladly.

  “Oh my God, you feel…” I started on an upward glide, “beautiful,” I ended on a puff of breath on a downward one.

  He held me steady, arched away from him, riding his cock, with an arm slanted along my back and alternately played with my nipples and sucked them while I rode.

  Which made me ride faster.

  “Careful, honey,” he murmured.

  He was worried about my ribs, but…

  No fucking way.

  We were making this one to remember and we were going to do it in a way we’d never, ever forget.

  I went faster.

  “Jesus, Rosie,” he grunted.

  “God,” I pushed out, loving the heft of him inside me, the support of his arm around me, the smell of him all around me, feeling it build in me.

  I went faster.

  “Jesus, fuck, Rosie.”

  From every word he said it dripped that I was building it in him too.

  And I loved that.

  I snapped forward, my hair going everywhere, all around me, all around his face and shoulders, and I took his mouth in a hard kiss.

  Then I gasped down his throat as he clamped an arm around my hips. Keeping me full of him, he shot up to his feet then turned and we were down and he was the one taking the ride.

  I wouldn’t have believed it, but this was even better.

  I wound my legs around him, one at his waist, one at his thigh, and lifted my hips to take him as deep as he could go.

  His hand went between us, his finger hit the spot, and I moved my hands to his hair, clutched both into the length and whimpered, “Snap.”

  “Rosie,” came his guttural reply.

  And with that I was gone, flying, soaring, reaching for the stars, feeling Snap take his weight fully into his forearms on either side of me so all I took of him was him bucking between my legs. I heard his sharp grunts followed by a long groan and I felt him touching the heavens right there with me.

  He stayed deep and I’d wrapped everything I had around him, holding him to me, when I came down, feeling his breaths hot and hard against the skin of my neck.

  “That was awesome,” I breathed.

  “Yeah,” he agreed.

  “Totally awesome,” I decreed.

  On a small lurch of his body that told me he thought I was funny, he repeated in a voice that shared the same thing, “Yeah.”

  “Snapper?” I called.

  He lifted his head, adjusted an arm so he could stroke my neck with his thumb, and looked me in the eyes.

  “Yeah, baby?”

  “It worked out in the end,” I told him.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I found the one who was perfect for me.”

  He didn’t seem sated or amused or anything right then.

  He stared down at me under him, his body connected with mine, and he looked at me in a way that I knew that earlier, he had not lied.

  I was his world.

  So yeah.

  Definitely.

  Perfect for me.

  Then he spoke, and as was Everett “Snapper” Kavanaugh’s wont, he made it even better.

  “I know the feeling.”

  Chapter Eight

  Eden

  Rosalie

  “Rosalie.”

  I knew what that meant, Snap saying my name in that low, throaty tone. We’d had weeks now of me learning what that meant.

  And even though I liked what I was doing, since he was Snapper and I’d give him anything, I slid his rigid, pulsing cock out
of my mouth, slithered up his body, attached my lips to his, accepted his tongue as it slid between, thrilled in the bristles of his whiskers scratching my skin, and allowed him to roll me onto my back.

  After a time, he broke the kiss and reached for a condom.

  I explored the muscled contours of his back with my fingers, reveling in the power of his body under my touch and intensity in his profile that met my eyes while I did.

  His eyes came to mine as his hand went between our legs and he just gazed at me, showing me openly so many things, all with just a look, it was insanity.

  He was excited. He loved having me under him. He enjoyed what I’d done to his cock. He couldn’t wait to get inside me.

  And he loved me.

  “Love you,” I whispered.

  “Love you too, Rosie,” he whispered back right before he slid inside me.

  At the glory of taking him, having him become a part of me, I closed my eyes.

  Snap stroked his hands down the backs of my thighs, pulling them up as he went, until he reached my knees. He positioned them high at his sides, all this while he moved inside me.

  Snapper Kavanaugh was a gentle lover. He liked slow. He liked taking his time. He liked building things until they were burning bright. He liked to be in the moment, not lost to it. And he guided me there right with him.

  So he moved inside me, deliberate, leisurely, making sure I felt it as I took every inch of his length again, then again, and again, all the while watching me.

  Finally, he started kissing me and then he worked my neck and he continued to hold the backs of my knees to control me, hold me back from careening into a place he didn’t want us to be, and he made me just feel it. Feel us. His weight. Our bodies’ movements. Our connection surging and retreating. Surging and retreating. Surging.

  Through this he tuned to me, built it in me, in both of us, but he knew when he got me there. The kisses became less gentle penetrating strokes of the tongue, light tastes in the mouth. They drew deeper, twining and joining. But it was never ravishing. Snap didn’t tongue fuck my mouth. Snap didn’t fuck at all. With Snap, it was about being fully aware of the togetherness we were sharing and savoring it in every detail.

  It was when the kisses heated up that the strokes of his cock got faster, the intensity built. Then he released my knees and let me go to devour him, biting and sucking his neck, his lower lip, sinking my nails into his flesh, digging my heels into his ass to get more of him, and more, and more, more, more until I flew high, anchored by his body, his love, his safety.

  Which was what happened, or a version of it, no matter if he was on top, I was on top, I was on my knees, I was against the wall or bent over the back of the couch or whenever and wherever we did it (and once the gates were opened, we did it a lot).

  Totally, if Snap was a different kind of guy, the Sting version of a biker, he’d go tantric. For real.

  But he wouldn’t make me do that.

  And by the time we got there, no…by the time he took me there, he was so wound up by what I gave him, but I sensed it was more what he’d given me, that his explosion was—there was no other way to describe it—immaculate.

  Muted in noise, concentrated in feeling, his fierce hold on me, the way he stilled buried deep inside me, it was like he reached out and drew the edges of the very air around us close, forming a little shell where it was only him and me and making love and finally climaxing.

  Shy was an amazing lover.

  Beck was no slouch either.

  But I’d never had this. I didn’t even know this existed.

  What I knew now was that I couldn’t live without it. Not just the “it” of it, sharing that “it” with Snapper.

  “You good?” he whispered, nuzzling my neck.

  Was I good?

  The way it was at all times with Snapper, I knew now I’d never be bad.

  No matter what life threw at us we’d always make it.

  Because he’d make it so we would.

  “I’m good,” I whispered back, nuzzling his neck too and holding him to me in all the ways I could, even after he naturally withdrew from inside me.

  If he finished on top, he always gave as much of his weight to me as he sensed I could bear, and fortunately with my ribs close to fully healed, I got to take more and more of him.

  But once he did that, he didn’t leave me.

  This was something else Snap did. I didn’t know if he preferred the sex or the intimacy of snuggle time after (okay, he was a guy so it was the sex, but the other was a close second).

  He didn’t rush either.

  We didn’t talk much. But we touched. We kissed. We held. We nestled and cuddled and caressed and squeezed.

  But even if we didn’t talk much after sex, make no mistake, Snapper Kavanaugh was a talker, and he spoke in two languages, the one where he just used his mouth and the one where he used absolutely everything.

  But even good things had to end, so that morning, like every morning we’d had when we took what was between us where it was meant to be, had to end.

  “I gotta get going,” he muttered.

  “’Kay,” I muttered back.

  He pulled his face out of my neck. “You’re dinner shift tonight, yeah?”

  I nodded. “Be home around eleven.”

  “You still on to go look at that property with me tomorrow?”

  I grinned up at him, excited to be in on the ground floor of one of his investments. “Definitely.”

  “Good,” he replied, dipped in, gave me a gentle but thorough kiss, then he rolled off of me.

  I shifted to my side and watched him walk naked to the bathroom.

  He had his Chaos emblem tat on his back and the Chaos scales with its reaper drifting up from one plate of the scales, the blood dripping from the other that I knew all the men had wherever they wanted to put them, his was along his ribs on his right side.

  And down his left side, ribs to waist, in a simple, small, no-nonsense font, he had Henley’s Invictus inscribed.

  Out of the night that covers me,

  Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

  I thank whatever gods may be

  For my unconquerable soul.

  In the fell clutch of circumstance

  I have not winced nor cried aloud.

  Under the bludgeonings of chance

  My head is bloody, but unbowed.

  Beyond this place of wrath and tears

  Looms but the Horror of the shade,

  And yet the menace of the years

  Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

  It matters not how strait the gate,

  How charged with punishments the scroll,

  I am the master of my fate:

  I am the captain of my soul.

  I hadn’t known what it was (Snap had to tell me).

  Even so, the minute I’d read it, the morning after our first night together, I’d touched my lips to it.

  I’d had no questions about it. It said it all and what it said defined Snapper.

  I knew Snap had not lived in night with demons plaguing him. He had not suffered evils. He had not endured untold tortures. He had fought no bloody battles. And God willing, he never would.

  He had a good family who loved him, found another one who did the same, then won the heart of a woman who, day by day, became more tied to him.

  But he was so self-contained. So self-aware. So self-assured. I knew deep into my soul that he could be delivered direct to the gates of Hell, and with head high and shoulders straight, he’d walk right through without a blink of his eyes or even a moment’s hesitation.

  It was just the man he was.

  That wasn’t right.

  It was just the man that my man was.

  When he’d told me what that poem was, not wanting me to worry, he also told me it meant nothing in regards to his history. It was just the series of words that was the favorite he’d ever read. It spoke to him and he wanted it on him to remind him of the p
ower of those words, and if the time should come for him, it would serve to remind him to be that man.

  I did not tell him he already was that man. I hoped he’d never have to find out.

  But if he came to a time where he’d be tested, I knew he would then know the man he was, the man he was to me.

  In a miracle of goodness, as miracles tend to be, with all of Snapper’s autonomy, I did not feel left out.

  In the weeks since we’d officially begun, it was not unusual I came home from a shift to find Snap stretched out on my couch reading. He wasn’t about meeting me at the door and dragging me up the stairs to have sex with me.

  He was about me settling in with a beer or a cup of herbal tea, tucked into him in front of the fire, me quiet and unwinding, Snap into his book but still right there with me. And then when it was time, we’d shut down the house, together, and move up the stairs, together, and find our way to the bed…

  Together.

  He hadn’t lied. I was his world.

  It was just a quiet, unhurried world where a roof over our heads and closeness (and a cozy fire) were all that was needed.

  I was quiet too. I always had been. I wasn’t attracted to bikers because they were (stereotypically) tough and wild and partying, all about loud music, loud pipes, good times, and loose women. I also wasn’t attracted to bikers (just) because of my dad.

  It was the family of a club. The closeness of the brothers. But also, if you found the right one, and in the end, I had, it was about strength and protection and loyalty. The fiercest, truest loyalty I’d seen in my life had always been demonstrated by bikers.

  I’d just found the exact right fit for me.

  I snoozed while Snap showered but he woke me before he went, moving my hair off my neck and kissing me there.

  I slid my eyes up to him.

  “Have a great day, Rosie,” he bid softly.

  “You too, honey,” I replied.

  He touched his mouth to mine and moved away.

  I rolled to my other side so I could watch him spiral down the stairs.

  I had not been to wherever he lived (because he always came to me). We had not gone on an official date, but we’d spent every night together. We’d gone out to no dinners, but had shared all we could when I wasn’t working. We’d gone to see no movies, but had watched several.