“I hate you, Axel Collins.” I bear hard into those lucent colored eyes. “I hate everything about you.” My mouth crashes back over his with a vengeance, my tongue searing over his, ravenous to have him this way.
Axel lifts me up, and I wrap my legs around his waist as he sails us through the penthouse. That oh so happy to see me protrusion in his boxers rubs hard over my sweet spot as we move through time and space to what I can only guess would be his bedroom, but Axel stops in the hall and pulls a condom out of his wallet before tossing the boxy piece of leather over his shoulder.
“I need you, Lex.” He lunges at me with a wet, hostile kiss that exhilarates me from my hair to the tips of my toes. He runs his heated lips over my cheek, his heavy breathing loud in my ear. “I’ve always needed you.” He pulls back, his violent breathing just as deafening as my own. I can feel him pulling himself free from his boxers and working on the condom at record speed. He pulls my panties to the side and he’s there, on me, feeling me.
An earth-shattering groan evicts itself from my throat as he lands his mouth over mine as if making me swallow it back down.
“You’re wet.” His chest rumbles with a dry laugh, and just like that he replaces his hand with a more prominent part of his anatomy. My entire body stretches to accommodate him. After six long years, it’s safe to say I had regressed back to a virginal state, and I can testify to this fact by the burn he’s incited in me. He gives one bionic thrust and pushes himself as far as my body will allow, and we both let out an aggressive moan in tandem.
“Shit,” he hisses as he takes a quick bite from my neck. Axel pins me to the wall, his kisses running rampant over my lips, my cheeks, my neck, and shoulder. His hands secure themselves over my hips, and he dives my body over his with a marked aggression. Axel hammers away, grinding his hips into mine, and with every single thrust he grunts out a roar of passion. This is years of worked-up aggression coming to a head, a multitude of fantasies all playing out at once. It’s an explosion in the fireworks factory, with every last glorified cherry bomb going off at once. I’ve never known this heightened level of ecstasy was possible. Sure, Axel and I always brought passion to the table, but this is off the charts, illegal in most parts of the world, I’m sure. This is bona fide nirvana, something just outside the grasp of ordinary people. Axel and I had never been ordinary. We were special, and that was the gift we both brought to the table and the bedroom.
“Lex,” he pants hard into my ear as he grabs my hips with superhuman strength and crashes my lips over his for a brief, hungry kiss. Axel lets out a mighty roar loud enough to rattle the walls as he holds me down, shaking and quivering over me as he arrives at completion. His chest pounds hard over mine, detonating like a series of eardrum-shattering sonic booms. Axel stills, burying his face in my neck, warming me with his breath. For a moment, I’m worried he’ll say something I’m not ready to hear—that I may never want to hear. The last thing I want are words exchanged between the two of us—at least not anything decent.
“Come on.” He pulls out and secures my legs around his waist as he shuttles us into a dark, cavernous room. The lights pop on as we head to an enormous bed with a thick tweed comforter neatly draped over it. “It’s time for that dessert you promised me.”
Axel lands me on my back, whips off my panties, and pins my knees to my ears with his hands. He dives in headfirst with those wet, heated kisses straight to that tender part of me. I look down to see his dark head writhing over me, and I do the only thing left to do—scream with ecstasy so earthly loud it has the power to shatter every window in a three state radius.
And then I scream again because I never want this feeling to end.
I never want us to end.
Axel
“I love it when you scream for me,” I whisper the words into her ear through heavy breathing, the sweet taste of her still fresh in my mouth. I pull down the covers with a violent yank and land us both on the cool sheets. Our bodies are putting out enough heat to set the room ablaze. Lex pants, staring up at the ceiling with a dead gaze, and I’m not sure if I’m ready to ask her how she’s feeling just yet. I know for damn sure she loved what just happened. Her body shook so hard for a second I thought she was having a seizure. And judging by the way she struggled to pluck my hair out at the temples, the way her knees clamped down over my head assured me of a job well done. In truth, I didn’t want it to end. If there was an option to make it last forever, I would have locked in on it a long time ago. I missed this. I missed her. I missed the girls bouncing as my body pumped into hers. I missed those noises she makes, those throaty whimpers that drive me wild. And now I’ve got everything back if only for a night.
I pull her up and strip off her dress, unhook her bra, and send it sailing across the room. Lex pulls her arms over her chest in a weak attempt to cover herself before growling at me and relaxing back on the bed.
“Take off your clothes,” she barks out the command, and I’m quick to comply. I unbutton my shirt laboriously slow, taking it off as if it were my job. She gives my boxers a yank as if to say move it along, and I slip them off and strip down to my birthday suit, kneeling beside her on the bed, affording her an eyeful.
“Recognize anything you like?”
“I see that my ex-boyfriend has adhered to a prison-worthy workout. Nice abs, Collins.” Her eyes flit down to my crotch for a moment. “And it looks as if your man parts finally caught up with your ego.”
“I didn’t realize you thought so little of me.” I land next to her, my face next to her chest, still heaving, and my gaze latches onto her nipples.
“My eyes are up here.”
“I don’t care where your eyes are, sweetheart.” My mouth starts in on a sucking spree that starts on those pillow soft mounds and works its way down her torso. Lex has always needed me to feed her caustic words. The more I volleyed her sarcasm right back at her, the more she opened up to me—the more it solidified who we were. Lex needs those words to come back curt, dismissive, and as much as I’ve always thought of them like a game, I think in this new reincarnation of our relationship we should evolve, progress to that next level—to sweet words, the tender words I’ve craved to say to her for as far back as the day we met.
I love her like that with my mouth, taking my time over her honeyed flesh. I make a game of it as I reach her belly button, and she writhes and gasps below me. I inch down her thighs, running my tongue up and down each one as if they were dipped in sugar. I make love to her knees, her perfectly smooth legs before making my way to her feet. Lex jumps and giggles—nothing she’s proud of, I’m sure. Giggling has always been somewhat beneath her, and it’s something I’ve secretly enjoyed about her. Her toes are painted bright pink like candy, and I take a healthy bite of each of them before sucking them down.
“Oh, gross. Would you knock that off? Leave my feet alone.” She does her best to kick my shoulder with her knee. “Is the foot fetish something new? Because it’s not an improvement.” I run my tongue over the back of her sole, and she lets out a hearty groan. She slides her other foot beside me. “In the least don’t make this one feel like an orphan.”
A laugh thunders through my chest as I oblige her. I take my time making my way back up, burying a kiss in that dark triangle before dotting a line of kisses from her belly to her shoulders. There’s not a thing in the world that should be rushed with this girl.
I reach up and take a gentle bite of her ear. “I was born to worship you. I’m positive about that.”
She averts her gaze as if the thought nauseated her on some level. “You put in quite the performance tonight.”
My arms circle her warm body as I pull her close to me and we lie side by side. “I didn’t have to try. It came naturally to me.”
“I guess that’s what happens when you turn pro. About how many women did it take for that to happen?”
A soft laugh rumbles through us both.
“Aha, laughter.” I dot her nose with a kiss. “Finall
y, a crack in the armor.”
“I’ll deny it in the light of day.” Her eyes spark as if they were readying to ignite. “I’ll deny all of this.” Lex has always had the ability to look like a porcelain doll, albeit one you might be a little afraid of, but there is an innocence to her beauty. And that hair. I dig my fingers into the back of her mane. Her hair has been a silent third entity in our relationship since the beginning. Those dark crimson curls have always shook themselves my way, teasing me, taunting me, making me want her on an entirely different level.
“That’s okay. You keep lighting up my nights and I’ll let you deny it all you want.”
Lex bites down over her lip with those glowing white teeth. “I suggest you brace yourself for the fall because this was a one-off that I have no intention of repeating.”
I grunt at the thought. “That’s funny. I don’t see you bolting out of my bedroom.” My hands swivel down her back before I dig my fingers into her luscious soft hips. The last thing I want to do is incite her to collect her things and take off.
“That’s because I’m not done tormenting you.” Her finger glides down my nose before tracing out my lips. “I’ll have you beg once I’m ready.”
“Sounds like a solid plan.” I’m up for begging. Hell, I’m up for barking like a dog if she wants me to. There is nothing I won’t do for another round with the love of my life. That’s what I really want to tell her. That, and the words I love you. I need her to hear it before she leaves no matter where it might lead us. I remember where it led us the last time.
“What should we do while we wait?” I pull her in closer and bury a kiss on her neck. “Spoon? Snuggle?”
Lex belts out a laugh, and her tits press tight into my chest, springing my hard-on back to life.
“Easy, Collins.” She grazes me with her knee. “We’re going to talk.” She pulls back a notch as her expression grows increasingly serious. “I want you to tell me.” Her eyes turn glassy, and I’m half-afraid we’ve made a turn we might not recover from. “What happened to Emilia?”
“Emilia.” I tip my head back as I say my sister’s name with relief for the first time in months. A hard breath expires from me as that tragic accident bounces through my mind. “We lost her just after Christmas. It’s been really tough.” My torso hiccups with grief, and now it’s Lex pulling me in close.
“I’m so very sorry. I can’t imagine the pain you and your family must have gone through. I’m sure it was unbearable.” Lex is transformed by her own grief. Her bottom lip quivers between us, and I lean in and press a simple kiss over her just to quell the pain.
“Still is most days,” I whisper. A sense of tragic sadness weighs me down. Here it was, Emilia’s death that has brought on the first serious conversation between Lex and me.
“May I ask what happened? I mean, I don’t want to pry or gouge open any wounds, but I cared about her.” Lex covers her face and vibrates with quiet tears.
“Hey, it’s okay. I know she cared about you, too. If it makes you feel better, she didn’t talk to me for a month after we split up. I think she may have liked you a little more than me.”
A tiny laugh trails through her. “She was smart.” Lex pulls back with black muddy trails tracking down her cheeks. “What happened to my beautiful friend?”
My heart warms as she says it. Lex has always been a self-proclaimed hermit who only had a heart for blood relations and then only some of those. She once told me that Emilia was her first real friend and she wore that like a badge. She loved my sister. I knew that. I still do.
“She fell.” I shrug because there is no other explanation really. “She went on a hike with her boyfriend—a walking tour about a mile beyond the overlook in Hollow Brook. It had just finished raining, and her foot caught on a branch. She tripped and sailed over a steep embankment—about twenty-five feet. That’s all. Hit her temple on a sharp rock, closed her eyes, and never opened them again. I was at the office with my father and Shep—got a hysterical phone call from Teagan. Tom, her boyfriend, didn’t really have any of our numbers. He was pretty new to the scene. But Teagan had sent Emilia and him a group text—a picture of her headed to a winter dance at school so he knew to call. We took off for the hospital, but she was already gone. Life turned inside out, and it was hell.” I close my eyes, and Lex presses my face to hers by the back of my neck.
We sit there, our noses locked together, our lips lying over one another as our silent hot tears conjoin into one.
“I’m so sorry, Ax. I’m so very, very sorry.” Her lips find mine, and we start in on a slow, delicious kiss that feels more medicinal than it does anything else. For sure it’s not one of those angry kisses we indulged in back in the kitchen. Gone is all the fury, the resentment over what we lost, what we could have been. This was a perfectly mild kiss, penetrating to the core with hope of a beautiful future.
She pulls back, her face glossed with tears, her eyes so red they’re unrecognizable. “Did you think of calling me?”
“I don’t have your number, Lex.” I shake my head. “I tried to find you, but you’ve covered your tracks so well I would have bet you slipped into the witness protection program. Heck, you did a fantastic job of protecting your privacy.”
She gives a wry smile. “I am rather stealth.”
“And stingy with your whereabouts.” I give her hip a light pinch, and she bucks with a quiet laugh. “But I’m glad I found you.” My eyes rake over her features in hope of a hint that she might feel the same. “Are you glad you found me?” There. I said it. For as desperate as it sounds, I really do want an answer.
Lex takes a quivering breath somewhere between tears, regret, and relief. “I was about twenty minutes ago. And I most likely will in about another hour.” She cocks her head to the side and offers up a quick wink. “But prior to this, I pretty much blamed you for the current disarray in my life. You do realize it was you who caused me to bolt from The Sloppy Pelican last spring and send Harlow Walking Disaster Hartley in instead. Everything went to holy heck after that. I lost my job. I gained two friends.” She head-butts me lightly with that last one, and I can’t help but laugh.
“Friends never were your forte.”
“And now one of the she-devils is living with me while the other one is making me wear frilly taffeta in just a couple of weeks. Friends are a hazard I’ve spent my entire life avoiding.” She slaps me over the ass with some muscle behind the action. “And it’s all your fault.”
“If my actions led to tonight, I’m guilty as charged.” I dip a kiss into that soft spot just below her ear. “And I plan on becoming a repeat offender.” My hands drip down her thighs, melting into her skin as if I had the ability to become a part of her.
“Repeat offender, huh?” A dirty laugh brews in her chest. Her eyes widen with delight as if this is the banter she’s craved all along, something with a hint of crudeness that leads to the promise land for the both of us. “You do realize I have a brother who would love to see you arrested.”
A horrid groan escapes me at the thought of Marlin Maxfield. “Did you have to drag your brother into this? Marlin hates me, and you know it.”
“I do know it. And you do realize this brings me great pleasure.” She outright giggles into me like a schoolgirl, and I can’t help but shed an ear-to-ear grin.
“You know I love it when you’re happy.”
Her mouth opens as she gasps. I had done the unthinkable, invoked the L word—the pinprick in our helium balloon.
“Don’t.” She presses a finger over my lips. “You’re no longer allowed to speak for the night.” She leans in and takes a healthy bite from my shoulder, eliciting a roar of a moan from me. “I’m ready for you to have me now.” She gives my leg a few quick taps. “Nice and slow to begin with, then hard and aggressive like you mean it. I want my hair tugged once when I least expect it, and do that little thing with your tongue before you’re through.” She dips her finger into my mouth and bites down a smile. “And if you play
your cards right, I might let you tell me what to do in the morning. After all, you are the boss.”
A hopeful smile percolates on my lips. “I think we both know who the boss is around here. But as for tomorrow morning—expect to be on top.” My teeth graze over her ear. “On all fours.” I run my tongue up the side of her face in a heated line, and she shivers beneath me. “And most importantly on your knees.”
Lex shakes with a laugh, and I cover her mouth with mine, drowning out that sound leaving her body to express the sentiment. Lex and I make love slowly at first, just the way she instructed, then something fiercer, darker, deeper, longer, stronger.
Lex always did have impeccable taste and timing. Lucky for me, her appetite for my body hasn’t waned a bit. If I’m truly lucky, her hunger will linger long enough for her to realize that I’m one meal she’ll need regularly for the rest of her life.
We wrestle long into the night, well past those early morning hours and straight through to sunup. We hold one another as the sun rises and fills the room with the peachy glow of another blessed day. It feels like the first day of the rest of our lives.
Sleep has never felt so thick, so delicious, so very necessary. Both Lex and I moan in tandem as our lids flutter at the very same time.
“Hey, beautiful.” I lean in and steal a kiss.
“I look like a witch.” She scoots in and wraps her limbs around me, and just the feel of her heated flesh pressed up against mine makes my skin quiver as if attempting to drink her down.