“You’ll be sorry,” she said to my departing back. “I won’t make this offer to you again.”
I didn’t say anything snotty back. All she got from me was silence.
I figured Kevin would comment on that exchange, but he didn’t say a word, just drove us to the movies, pretending like it hadn’t happened.
I was fine with that.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
I was dreaming.
I was in bed on my stomach. My lacy underwear were being pulled down my hips in slow, gentle tugs.
I squirmed a bit as they were freed past my thighs, down my knees, then poof, gone.
Hands started rubbing at my feet, running a big thumb up the soles, then knuckles ran down the arch. Special attention was spent working at the sensitive pad below my toes, knowing just where to target, lulling me with a rough, addictive touch.
I knew those big, skillful hands.
They were Heath’s, of course.
Who else would I be dreaming about?
I moaned into my pillow as he massaged his way up to my calves, digging deep into the muscle tissue.
When he reached my thighs, I pushed up on my elbows and knees, rising a few inches from the bed.
This was my dream, after all, and I was in the mood for more than a massage.
I felt his knees wedge between mine from behind, denim abrading against my bare skin, keying me up.
His chest pushed into my back as his hands snaked down under my shirt, fondling my breasts, his lips brushing lightly against my nape.
Desire hit my bloodstream like an opiate, overtaking my senses with one strong pull.
He didn’t take my top off, just wrenched it high on my collarbone and out of his way.
He palmed my tits roughly right as I felt his tip nudging my sex.
I arched my back, legs spreading wider, welcoming him, a willing lamb to the slaughter.
He bit down on my nape and shoved into me hard.
And that’s when I knew.
Oh God.
This wasn’t a dream.
But it was too late. I was too far gone for it to matter, one way or the other.
We rutted mindlessly, quick and savage.
I had my sheets in a death-grip while he surged into me, again and again, hips slamming against my ass with each downswing.
He made jarring direct contact, then pulled out, rubbing, dragging along my walls until only his tip remained, then slamming in again.
It was so good. I couldn’t form a coherent word, not in any language, but I didn’t need to. The cadence of begging was pretty universal.
He was still pumping into me, his pace relentless, when I lost it coming with loud cries.
He jarred deep, rooted there, and came in big, tangible spurts, my cunt milking each one of out him, our bodies in perfect sync.
The silence was punctuated only by our pounding hearts and gasping breaths for a good long while.
He stayed inside of me, his breath punching against one sensitive shoulder blade, his hands braced in fists on either side of me.
God, I wanted him again. The first time shouldn’t have happened, and here I was, ready to submit to a second.
I whimpered when he started to pull out. It was a protest.
He ignored it, dragging himself free even while my slick flesh tried to suck him back in.
“Miss me?” Heath’s voice was clear and sharp and right next to my ear. His tone was lethal, like he was delivering a blow.
Some vicious feeling tore through me. Something strange, an incongruous mix of rage and relief, of savage comfort.
“You said you wouldn’t be back.” My voice came out wrong, not how I’d intended. It was supposed to be accusatory, but instead was imploring and delicate in a way I found intolerable.
He had left. Left. I had nothing to feel guilty about.
“That’s not what I said. I said I didn’t know when I’d be back.” As he spoke he was climbing from the bed.
I dropped flat to my stomach as light flooded the room.
“We need to talk,” he growled at me.
I rolled onto my back just in time to watch him stride, still in his jeans, into my attached bathroom.
He peeled the condom off, dropping it into my little bathroom wastebasket.
I didn’t look away while he cleaned himself off and tucked his spent member back into his boxers.
At some point he’d taken his shirt off, and he didn’t bother to zip his jeans.
I enjoyed the view while he came back into the room and started to prowl.
But more than his spectacular body caught my attention as he moved around my room, shooting looks at me every few steps, like he couldn’t help himself.
He was off, more than usual off.
There was a darkness in his eyes, a great black void of it, that called to me, to some integral part of me, deep down inside the marrow of my bones, that I hadn’t even realized existed.
It was heady.
I was witnessing some new level of his rage, and it did nothing so much as draw me in further, even when I knew that all I should be doing was sending him away.
“You got rid of ’Tato,” he growled, moving out into the hallway, then back into my room again.
I sat up, drawing the sheets to me, covering my nakedness.
That caught his attention, and he stopped pacing, just in the doorway, his eyes on the sheets.
“He’s at Raf’s,” I said defensively. “He’s Raf’s dog as much as mine. It was his turn.” This was kind of the truth. Part of it, anyway. Raf loved that dog as much as I did, and he’d taken him without a qualm.
But the reason I’d sent him there, of course, I wouldn’t be sharing with Heath. ’Tato wouldn’t stop barking at this new guy I’m seeing, would not go over well, I knew.
He seemed to catch the hint of deceit instantly, though, going by the way his demeanor suddenly changed.
His lip curled, eyes running over me in a way I didn’t like. Like he was only just seeing me then. Like he’d only now noticed something about me that he found unpleasant.
“I know about that other man.” His tone was more than accusatory.
It was disgusted.
My entire body stiffened. How dare he?!
“That was fucking quick,” he added quietly and vehemently.
It was a short sentence, not many words, but somehow it was enough to convey something so much worse than accusation or disgust.
It told me he was wounded. Like I’d hurt him badly.
Like I’d done something wrong.
Like I was the bad one here.
That set me off.
“Excuse me?” I spat at him.
“I do not excuse you.”
That had me cursing at him. Loudly and fluently. Losing my cool. Completely.
“He’s not the other man,” I snarled. “You are, and that’s all you’ll ever be. I don’t know what I was to you, but you were never my man. That wasn’t what we had.”
One second he was nearly in the hallway, the next he had me pinned to the bed, moving so fast it made my head spin.
“That’s a lie,” he growled into my face. “And you’re not a liar, Lourdes. I think you only tried to pull off that one because you’re lying to yourself.”
I tried to buck him off, but that only had him moving his hips, seating himself more securely against me, our bodies flush. I felt the hard bulge of him growing with every movement, grinding crudely into my pelvis.
And I felt my temper going. Felt myself losing it.
“You left,” I spat at him, all of my bitterness, every ounce of my ire in those two words.
He shuddered on top of me. “I didn’t want to. Can’t you see that I didn’t want to?”
His voice was pleading, and the tone of it was like balm to my rage, calming it instantly, and though my feelings were every bit as volatile, they were no longer as uncomplicated as the wrath I’d been feeling mere moments before
.
“You left,” I said again, but the tone had changed completely, so that now I was pleading back at him.
He groaned, a pained noise, and started kissing me.
I let him. No, not let. Welcomed.
I sucked at his tongue and didn’t stop him even when I felt his hands between our bodies, freeing his rock hard erection.
It sprang free, slapping into my thigh. He gave me time to stop him as he reached into his pocket, ripped open a condom, and rolled it on.
I didn’t stop him. Didn’t even consider it.
His hand guided his tip slowly to my entrance.
God, I’d forgotten how impossibly hard he was. How big. How perfect.
That first time, I could have blamed on being on the edge of sleep. On thinking I was dreaming.
I had no such excuse for this round.
As soon as his hand slipped out from between our bodies, my legs snaked firmly around his hips.
He gripped my hair in both hands, still kissing me as he stabbed into me with one heavy thrust.
He didn’t hold my wrists captive, for once, didn’t bind them.
Left free, my arms curled around his shoulders, clutching him to me.
He slammed our bodies against the bed, over and over, his jeans abrading against my inner thighs as he drilled me deep into the mattress.
At some point his hands left my hair and went down to my hips. He ripped his mouth away to watch me as he rose up onto his knees.
He grabbed my ass in both hands and lifted me into his possessive thrusts.
My hands, which had been forced from his shoulders, moved to my own body, gripping the sensitive mounds of my breasts into my palms, pushing them together, giving him a hell of a view.
It did not go unappreciated.
He tensed and heaved on top of me, getting close.
The lights in the room were bright, and so my view was unimpeded as I saw him start to lose it, the coldness going, the wildness overtaking his beautiful, broken eyes.
His jaw went slack, gaze boring into mine, taking me with him, dragging me under, straight into the heart of this madness we shared.
If it was up to me, and it wasn’t, I’d have slept after that.
I knew we needed to talk, but it was the middle of the night, and my body had just been exhausted. Twice.
He wrenched himself out of me, off me, climbing from the bed.
I was already on the edge of sleep when I felt his hands grip my ankles and start to pull.
“Oh no you don’t, honey,” his gravelly voice was a rough croon. “You don’t get to sleep. Not tonight.”
He dragged my hips to the edge of the bed, spreading my legs wide.
I listened to the sounds of him putting on another condom.
I still hadn’t opened my eyes, but I wasn’t in the mood to sleep anymore.
“Look at me,” his voice rumbled.
I opened my eyes just in time to watch him push between my thighs. I scrambled up onto my elbows to see as each thick inch of him disappeared inside of me.
“You’re insatiable,” I told him, voice low and needy.
“Had you forgotten?” he shot back. “And besides that, it’s been months . . . for me.” His tone was so dark and accusing that my eyes shot to his face, raking over it, trying to decipher if he’d meant what I thought he had.
But I couldn’t tell from his expression, and he wasn’t elaborating.
He was otherwise occupied. And so was I. There was no room in my overtaxed brain to spend on wondering what was in his just then.
He planted his fists on either side of my hips, rocking in and out of me at a jackhammer pace.
I tried to go to sleep again after that round, but he, again, was not having that.
“Get up,” he said, hands on my shoulders, pulling me to sit. “There’s no time to sleep. We still need to talk.”
I propped myself up on my hands, looking down at myself.
He was still wearing his jeans. He’d cleaned up, again, and even zipped them up this time.
But I was still nude, completely, sitting on the edge of my bed, legs splayed wide apart.
It was so undignified, the way I was spread open for him, just letting him stare at every part of the body I’d just let him have three times, that it spurred me into action.
“If you want me to stay awake,” I informed him, standing and moving to shrug on my favorite silk robe, “I’m going to need coffee.”
He left the room without a word to make said coffee, I presumed.
I took the opportunity to clean myself up and finger comb my disheveled hair.
Also, I gave myself a good berating in the mirror.
What’s wrong with you? I asked myself. Why do you just keep going back for more?
But it was swiftly clear the berating did no good, as, after I’d straightened myself up to a minimal degree, I went out to join him in the kitchen.
Going back for more.
He handed me a cup of coffee right as I got to the kitchen, moving past me, into the dining room, and taking a seat.
That was unusual.
He never just sat down.
It was so strange that I found myself standing over him, right in his personal space.
He just sipped his own cup of coffee and stared at me.
I sipped mine and stared back. I had not one clue what to say to him, where to start.
The truth was, I didn’t want to start, because I knew how it would end.
Don’t come back here. We’re finished.
How was I ever going to manage to make those words come out of my mouth? I had not a clue.
But I knew that they needed to.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
“I don’t know what to say to you,” I finally told him, after we’d both drained our cups.
We’d been silent the whole time, watching each other between long drags of coffee.
Neither of us wanted to have this talk, it seemed.
He took the mug from my hand, set it on the table, then picked me clean off the ground by the hips, setting me astride him.
We were breathing our coffee breath into each other’s mouths. “I thought you said we needed to talk,” I said softly. “This won’t solve anything.”
He didn’t answer, just stared at me while he worked between our bodies, getting us both ready.
“Heath,” I chided when I realized he was hell bent on fucking me again.
He stilled, cold eyes intense, then spurred into action, reaching for my hands, setting them, palm down, over the muscled flesh of his pecs.
“Go ahead,” he rasped. “Touch me. Do it.”
I did, hands moving over his chest, softly tracing at his scarred flesh, and as I watched the way it made him cringe, I knew why he wanted me to.
It was painful to him, and he wanted to hurt.
But, regardless of everything that had happened, all the ways I was hurting myself, I didn’t want that.
I took my hands away, gripping his where they held my hips.
He made a pained noise and kissed me.
So much for talking.
He took me right there in his lap, opening my robe and impaling me.
“Condom,” I cried out. Just because we’d had that one night of a slip up, months ago, didn’t mean I meant to be so careless again.
“I’ve got a better idea,” he rasped into my mouth. As he spoke, he closed his eyes, dropped his head back, and rocked his hips in and out, fucking me hard, bouncing me on his lap with firm hands and bucking hips.
Perverse as it was, his words, what they might have implied, combined with the way he was working me, had me coming in a flash, gripping around him, wondering what the hell was wrong with me even as I clenched on his thick length and got off.
I was still catching my breath when he pulled me off his dick, setting me down on the ground. On my knees.
He hadn’t finished.
He gripped my hair in both hands
and dragged my face to his lap. He was still hard and throbbing. His engorged cock was slick and close enough to lick. When his tip touched me lips, I couldn’t seem to help myself. I opened up and started sucking him off like I’d been starving for it.
He didn’t last long like that.
He rasped out my name as his seed burned down my throat.
I was still licking his twitching length clean when he spoke.
“I know he spent the night.”
I moved away from him like he’d just caught fire.
My robe had been opened, but not removed, and I closed it and retied the belt with shaking hands.
For once it was my turn to pace. I didn’t look at him for a long time, and when I finally did, I wished I hadn’t.
He was still sitting, his thick, spent length hanging crudely out of his pants, but I don’t even think he noticed it.
His arms were folded across his chest, and he was staring at me in a way I couldn’t stand.
He looked wounded and vengeful all at once.
It was several pounding heartbeats later that I found my voice. And my indignation. “And just how do you know that? Did your spy girlfriend tell you that?”
He went still as stone. “What are you talking about?”
My lip curled. I could feel this getting ugly. “You know.”
Something happened to his face, something scary.
He stood, tucking himself back into his jeans and zipping them up, his eyes never leaving me.
A ruthlessness I’d never seen before had overtaken his expression. “I don’t know,” he bit out. “Explain it to me.”
“That woman you have spying on me. She told you, didn’t she?”
His whole face clenched up, and I knew something bad was happening.
He’d gone so still, but something volatile was writhing in agony under the surface of that stillness.
“How do you know about the woman spying on you?” he asked me.
I wanted to curse at him in five languages for the question, but I managed to answer civilly enough. At least he knew now that I was aware of her. It was something I’d needed to address, needed to have out in the open. “She came to see me. Didn’t you know?”
His face didn’t so much as twitch, but his shoulders started shaking.