Charged

  I watched his eyes widen and darken to almost navy blue as I wiggled my hips and rode him with a different, untried part of my body. We both started breathing harder and I could see the speculation and curiosity in his gaze. I liked the way he felt back there, liked the way I felt with him back there, so I made a mental note that executive sex had some really interesting things to offer that I was definitely missing with intern sex. Done with the heated and suggestive manipulation, Quaid tweaked the nipple he was playing with hard enough that it sent a jolt of pain shooting through my nerve endings. I jerked back from trying to eat his mouth with my own and gave him a scowl. His eyes had shifted from denim blue to a stormy slate and I could tell he was as done with the teasing as I was. His nimble fingers abandoned my desperate clit and shifted to the side of the panties that were once again soaking, only this time it was from desire and need and not the mountain water.

  “You need to get one of the condoms I put in the pocket of my jacket and put it on me, right now.” I heard the sound of fabric tearing and a pop of elastic as the side of my panties gave way to the force of impatient hands and the slide of a chilly blade against my skin. I’d read about men ripping their women’s underwear off in the heat of the moment a million and one times, but I never thought I would be on the receiving end of the action or that the man doing the ripping would be someone like Quaid. He was a Boy Scout, always prepared, but I doubted getting women naked in the heat of passion was one of the uses that young scouts were taught when they were handed their Swiss Army knives. I admired in ingenuity and shivered at the thought that I was the one to make him let loose his uncivilized side, that I was the one that brought him back to his most primal self, almost had me coming all over the very rigid erection that I still had trapped between my legs.

  My heart was kicking hard and fast in my chest as I stuck a hand in the pocket of his jacket that I still had on. “You brought condoms hiking?” I couldn’t help the laugh that escaped with the question.

  He grunted a noise at me and put a hand in the center of my back so that I could shimmy out of the tattered remnants of the underwear, and so that I could get a grip on his throbbing cock. I angled his erection away from where I wanted it most, enough to get the condom on him. His feathery eyelashes lowered as my fingers rolled the latex down over the stretched and silky skin.

  “I went hiking with you, so of course I brought condoms. I would bring them with me if we were going to the grocery store, or to the post office. I would grab a handful of them if I was taking you to church. I told you …” My mouth fell open and my head fell backwards as he pushed against my hand and finally entered the opening in my body that was begging and weeping to be filled by him and him alone. “You make me desperate and needy. The time and place doesn’t seem to matter. The only thing that does is that you let me in.”

  I was sitting on his lap, stretched wide open before God and country, and all I could think about was how sweet his words were as they drifted across my now flushed and rosy skin. He said all the right things as his body invaded and took me hard and fast. He spoke sweetly as he fucked me wild, and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop him from working his way even deeper into all those places inside of me he said he wanted to fill.

  I was perched up on his legs in a way that kept my knees from dragging across the rough terrain he was kneeling on, so all I could do was hold on to his shoulders with one hand as he lifted me up and down on the straining shaft between us. I watched his thick cock, shiny and glistening with our combined pleasure, as it hammered in and out of my body. The deeper he pushed in, the darker the blue in his eyes got, and the wetter I became. It was more than fucking rough and uninhibited. It was a joining, a connection between us that went beyond the way my lower lips parted so prettily for him as he dragged almost all the way out and then used the leverage he had on me to haul me back down so that it was almost impossible to tell where either of us started or stopped. We were one being, intent on bringing each other pleasure. We were one essence, focused on taking what the other person was offering and giving it back to them a hundredfold. We were intent on undoing each other with passion and pleasure, and it really felt like we could mend the holes each of us had within us with the parts the other was leaving behind.

  Quaid’s other hand held me in the middle of my back, between my now-sweat-slicked skin and the heavy jacket, so I could lean backwards, the ends of my still-wet hair touching the ground. He growled at me to move the front of the coat out of his way as he continued to rock me up and down on his cock like a piston. I felt used and manipulated in the best way possible. He was taking his pleasure and giving me mine and all I had to do was leave myself in his steady hands. As soon as my lace-covered breasts were revealed, his blond head swooped down and engulfed one pert nipple into the scalding heat of his mouth. His teeth scraped none too gently across the soft skin and it made me gasp in a mixture of pleasure and pain. I was lifting a hand to tug at his golden hair when his raspy voice ordered me to “Put your hands on yourself.”

  Since his mouth was busy licking and sucking its way across my heaving chest, I figured he wanted my hands in only one place. The place that was spread wide around his cock, which pulsed and pounded in a rapid entry and retreat from my quaking core. Every time he pulled out just so, the hint of his swollen tip touched my folds and the frosty mountain air hit the wetness pooled between us, which made me catch my breath at the stunning sensation. Then when he plunged back inside of me, chasing the internal chill with his molten arousal, the sensation from the temperature change on such sensitive tissue was enough to have me screaming so loudly I was surprised flocks of birds didn’t scatter from the nearby trees.

  He chuckled at my response and repeated the action a couple more times until I got my uncoordinated fingers to obey his repetitive command to touch myself. I loosened my death grip on his corded neck and skimmed my fingers over the nipple he wasn’t loving on with his tongue and teeth, then that hand danced across the curve on my belly until I reached the place where we were connected.

  The place that was all the best of all the things in this moment. Me and him. Him and me. Hard and soft as it collided with hot and cold. I shivered and my touch tripped through the evidence of how well we were working each other over, and when I got my fingers on that little point of pleasure, it practically vibrated at the first gentle swipe of my fingertip on the sensitive bundle of nerves. I groaned and slammed my eyes shut as pleasure, more powerful than any of the purposeful pain I filled myself up with could ever be, took over.

  I felt it move through each of my limbs. I felt it pulse under the bite of Quaid’s teeth where they were anchored into the side of my neck. I felt it in the way my nipples hardened to points so hard they physically hurt and I felt it in the way my body locked down on Quaid’s surging dick to try and keep him in place. My inner walls milked him, my channel spasmed around him, and every last bit of desire and satisfaction I had left inside of me rushed out and consumed us both. I wanted him with me, forever.

  I panted through the orgasm as it ripped me apart on the inside. I was pretty sure the intensity of it had turned my heart upside down and all the garbage that was usually inside of it was now dumped out. I could barely breathe, couldn’t think past the fact that this man did things to me and for me that I wasn’t sure I would ever deserve, but then he whispered my name against my neck and I realized he was still chasing down his completion. He was always giving to me before he took for himself.

  I shifted on his lap, rocked myself up and forward so that I could get some leverage on the ground and began to ride him—hard. I plowed my fingers in the soft hair at the base of his neck, put the other on the side of his face so he couldn’t move as I lowered my head to devour his mouth with wet, aggressive kisses. It was my turn to speak to him sweetly while I fucked him wild.

  I rocked my hips back and forth and kissed his cheek so that I could get my lips next to his ear. I licked the outer edge and then whispered sof
tly, “You can have me any of the ways you want me, Quaid. I’m happy to let you in, as long as you know what’s waiting for you once you’re inside.”

  I wasn’t sure if it was the words or the image that went along with them, because even though I’d never let anyone touch me in the places he had hinted at, the thought was intriguing and almost dangerous, so it had my spent and sated nether regions perking up with renewed interest as his hips bucked up hard to meet my final downward thrust. He roared into the wilderness like the primitive, animalistic man he was here, in this place with me, and I felt his entire, big body shake as his orgasm rolled over him. I could feel his cock kick and jerk inside of me as his hips stopped moving and as his eyes quit burning.

  His chest was billowing in and out like he had run a mile, so I grinned up at him as he slowly lowered me the rest of the way to the rocks, making sure the heavy material of his jacket protected me as he settled into the cradle of my hips where we were still joined.

  He lifted a hand and used it to push my now hopelessly tangled and snarled hair off of my face. He brushed the pad of his thumb over the crest of my flushed cheek and breathed, “My mountains are still standing after my hurricane blew through them.”

  I shivered and felt my heart squeeze tight at the possession in his tone. I lifted my arms up so that I could hold him to me. “At least, this time, there was minimal destruction.” We both knew I was capable of so much more.

  When he lifted his head to look at me, his eyes had shifted back to the unusual grayish-blue and there was an emotion in them that I didn’t recognize.

  “Don’t be so sure about that, Avett.”

  Not liking the seriousness on his face after what had been some of the most astounding sex in the world, I kissed him softly and rubbed the end of my nose against his.

  “For the record”—I lifted an eyebrow at him and used my body to squeeze him where we were still connected on the inside— “I’m always going to jump and think the risk is worth it. That’s part of who I am.”

  I couldn’t tell by his expression if he agreed with me or not about the risk, but when I mentioned that I was on the pill and had gotten myself checked out as soon as I realized how deep into his addiction Jared was, his head jerked up and he seemed a whole lot more interested in the different kinds of risks we could take that involved having no kind of protection between us at all.

  CHAPTER 14

  Quaid

  I was surprised how easily I slipped back into the role of the guy that knew how to do without and how to make the most out of very little. The two days spent in the tiny cabin with nothing more than a roaring fire and Avett for entertainment were some of the most peaceful, relaxing, recharging days I’d had in … I couldn’t remember how long. I thought she was the one that needed escape from the commotion of her life but it turned out I was the one that really benefited from the forced unplugging and isolation. The quiet used to haunt me and taunt me with the emptiness and memories; now it soothed all kinds of ragged edges that I thought I had ruthlessly polished off. Plus, the way my name sounded when Avett screamed it or whispered it was so much better with nothing around for it to get lost in.

  I felt like two parts of my soul that had always been ripped apart were slowly being stitched back together, but Avett seemed no different than she was deep in the heart of the city. She went fishing with me without complaint and didn’t even balk when we had to clean and cook our own dinner. She tromped through the woods with me, her pink hair getting tangled with pine needles and bark as the trees reached out to touch her like I felt compelled to do. I took her out to the makeshift firing range that had been an integral part of my youth and was shocked and, admittedly, impressed that she handled my firearm almost as well as I did. She laughed and told me that when you were the daughter of a badass, things like spot-on aim and not being squeamish at the sight of blood came with the territory. The only thing she complained about was having to use the bathroom in the middle of the night and it wasn’t even that she had to use the rickety outhouse; it was the fact that she was afraid of mountain lions and bears that made her grumble. All we had with us was what we packed into the backpacks the Ducati forced us to use and still she didn’t seem to be missing a thing. She was content with me and the woods for company and that did something fundamental to all the truths I had been holding up as my reality for so long.

  I wanted possessions to matter because I’d had so few of them growing up. I wanted stuff to make me important and to fill all the empty voids my childhood, the fallout with my folks, and the sham of my marriage had left in my life. I wanted to have so many things and obvious material objects so that no one could ever doubt my success or my worth because I lived in a constant state of fear that someone, like my ex-wife, would decide I wasn’t enough. I was smart enough to know it was a deep-rooted fear that came from growing with parents that were more interested in teaching me how to survive than they were in teaching me how to love or how to be a good man. Because I wanted an education, because I wanted a way out, because I wanted more than they thought I needed, they always considered me the weakest member of the family. I wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t resilient enough. I wasn’t solid enough or brave enough to be the man they wanted me to be. So I chased after a girl that I knew would never settle for the kind of life I came from. I threw myself into a fight for a government my family abjectly disapproved of. I went into a career that was all about rules and order and I took up on the side that was guaranteed to put me in the press and in the crosshairs of ethics and morality. And I got the stuff. Submerged myself in the things because I had something to prove.

  Only now, I wasn’t sure who in the hell I was trying to prove any of it to.

  The girl that currently had every single piece of me tied in knots and broken me down to my most basic, my most pure self, apparently didn’t care about any of the shiny and opulent things I was surrounded with. She was happy with me wherever I happened to be, so there was no need to kill myself trying to show her the finer things in life.

  My parents hadn’t bothered to reach out to me since I let them know I bought back their land for them, and even then, other than to let me know that they weren’t coming back to the lower forty-eight. Harrison and I used to be close, but when he left and my parents followed, I lumped them all into the category of what was. I never gave my little brother the benefit of the doubt. He might not know about my marriage ending, but I didn’t have a single clue what he was up to, and how his life was going either. I felt like my folks abandoned me, but I’d never done anything to bridge the gap as I got older and maybe not so wiser.

  If Lottie had been impressed, maybe she wouldn’t have cheated or been so callous about how she treated the life we built together. I’d wanted to give her everything, and had tried, but there was always more, so I knew that no matter how much I worked or spent I was never going to have her look at me like I had done a good job. To her, I was always going to be the kid from nothing, doing his best to hold on to the girl that was out of his league.

  There was Orsen and the guys at the firm. I worked my ass off, took cases other lawyers were scared of, and I won far more often than I lost. I made them money. I fit the mold that was set out for me to crawl right into when I was hired, and I did it all with determination and my eyes set firmly on the big picture. But the reality of the situation was that no matter how nice my home was or how expensive my suits were, they still hadn’t made me a partner, and I had more than earned the right to have my name on the sign. I don’t know if it was because I didn’t have an Ivy League law degree like the rest of the partners did, or if it was because my messy divorce had made the news, or if it was simply that they knew underneath the veneer I was a guy playing at being civilized and refined. I wondered if those jagged edges that were so apparent here in the wild and with this girl were blatantly obvious to people that hadn’t been born with them. I wondered if who I had been born to be was keeping me from being the man I was so sure I wanted
to be.

  After waking up with dawn in my face and pink hair tangled in my hands, I woke Avett up by kissing her, and touching her, and warming her up in front of the fire. I hated that I had to take her back to a place that wasn’t safe and hated even more that I was going to have to put her into the hands of other men to keep her protected and out of the trouble that so effortlessly found her. I could tell she was nervous when we stopped for a late lunch, and I tried to reassure her that once her ex went to trial and saw that his lawyer had a bigger interest than his at play, Jared would do whatever he could to cover his own ass. I had a feeling his first night in jail without Acosta’s protection would have him singing a new tune.

  She nodded, but I could tell she was still worried about what came next and it made my heart throb because I was worried, too. My job was typically to put guys like Jared back on the streets. I never wanted the story and when the story was staring me right in the face, terrified and trying not to show it, I understood why I’d kept myself so separate from my clients. Emotion and personal attachment meant I couldn’t do the job I was hired to do. The reason I had been so off-kilter and unsteady with her from the beginning was because she had managed to tell me her story without words. It was in her eyes and in the way she sat there, locked up, devastated, and forlorn over her circumstances, knowing she was the one that had orchestrated her own downfall. She was never a client. She wasn’t a job or another victory I could put in my cap and tote around as I searched for validation that I shouldn’t need or want. She didn’t merely see past my personal façade to the man underneath; she had managed to slip under my professional one as well.