Hard Time (23 page)

“If she told you not to come, would you do what she said?”

He nodded.

“So I’m wasting my energy arguing with the wrong person.”

“I guess,” he conceded. “But stubbornness runs in my family like brown eyes and bad backs, if you’re thinking about talking to her. In any case, enough for tonight. Okay?”

I exhaled, long and weary. “Okay. But I’m still annoyed with you.”

“Cousins kinda gave me a high threshold for simmering conflicts,” he said with a little smirk. “I can handle that.”

I eyed his boots and coat.

“You want me to go?” he asked.

“No. I don’t.” I wanted him here. If I was stuck feeling all this anger and uncertainty and . . . and helplessness, I at least wanted the comfort of his body with me. And maybe not only comfort. Maybe the release. A chance to take all this aggression I felt toward him and
do
something with it. Something if not productive, then at least entertaining.

“Take your boots off,” I said. When he set them aside, his socked feet flexing, I said, “Take off your coat.” It hit the cushion beside me. “Take off your sweater . . . Your socks . . . Take off your shirt.”

He was standing now, stripping away his undershirt with a slow, smooth pull, staring down at me. I got to my feet. As I stroked his arms, his chest, his throat, he merely watched, hands at his sides. I let my palms roam low, all the way down his belly, and twined my fingers around his thick belt.

“Thought you were pissed at me,” he murmured, and his voice gave him away. Light words not matching the weighty pitch of his excitement.

“I am.” Fingers still wrapped around his belt, I took a step back. Another. Led him all the way to my bedroom then turned him around. He matched my paces until I had him backed against the bed. I let him go, gave him a soft push. He dropped onto the mattress with a bounce, a smile hiding behind his lips in the ambient light.

I stripped. Not down to the beautiful matching floral bra and panties I’d bought for this, our supposed romantic reunion. I stripped instead down to my crappy travel underwear—a tired old beige bra and navy boy shorts one level nicer than ones I might wear during my period.

Tonight wasn’t about seduction, or exploration, or indulgence. Tonight, I wasn’t after a man who’d uncover all my desires and shape himself to meet them.

Tonight I was after something I’d never have guessed I’d want: a man’s aggression, aimed right at me.

And I wanted it so bad it hurt.

What do you need?

I saw the question in his dark eyes, in that dim room, but for once he didn’t give it voice.

Perhaps he could sense it was the last thing I wanted right now—to be catered to. To be granted whatever I wished of his body, while I was still pissed that my wishes regarding his actions were falling on such willfully deaf ears.

I ditched my bra and panties, and straddled him there at the edge of the mattress. Heat bloomed at the sensation of his clothed thighs against my bare ones, but this fire was more than mere lust.

Those big hands kept me in place, firm at my waist, while our kiss was anything but steady. His hair was between my fingers, our mouths clashing, tongues fighting. Against my naked sex, he was hard, erection pressing into me along with his fly and belt buckle. I felt aggression in him, but no anger. In my own body I felt the anger. The frustration. Resentment. And it felt goddamn good, rubbing right up against his cock.

I wanted him now, now. But more than that, I wanted him to take control for once. We kissed for ages, well past the point when I felt the wetness between my skin and his fly, well past the point when I might normally have invited him to take things further. We kissed until my lips were tender and my core was aching, until he had to be in pain, taunted by long minutes of stifled friction.

Then finally, just as I was ready to claw him from the wanting, he made a move.

His hands gripped my butt, and he heaved me bodily to the side, onto the covers. Grabbed one of my ankles and hauled my legs wide so he could kneel between them. He worked at his buckle, forearms flexing, and it was the hottest thing I’d ever seen—him sliding that thick length of leather out and tossing it to the floor. A button was freed, a zipper lowered. He shoved his jeans down just enough to frame his straining cock in black cotton, and then that big body was descending on mine.

I’d missed his voice all that time we’d kissed, and he gave it to me now. Not in words—not in the usual requests to hear my desires—but in moans. Rough ones, grunting sounds that steamed against my throat in time with his flexing hips. He taunted me with his cock, every inch as hard as I’d ever felt it, his shorts growing wet from me. I felt his zipper, too, just a hint, and the thick denim of his fly teased my labia.

I wasn’t going to give him anything—not a request, not a plea, not an order. Nothing more than my grasping hands on his arms and back, irrefutable proof that I wanted this. But as for what shape
this
would take? He was in charge of that.

He was always taking me where I wanted to go. In this bed. In his truck, to the lake on that moonlit night, or to the airport, wherever I asked. I didn’t want a chauffeur tonight. I wanted a
kidnapper
. Needed him to grab me and take me where
he
ached to be, and show me he trusted that I could take it. I needed him selfish. But that meant I couldn’t tell him so.

His body was like I’d never felt it. Hard all over, from his thighs through his belly, to his shoulders, all down his locked arms—like I’d seen it from my office window at Cousins, those times I’d secretly watched him. The groans warming my skin were nearing a crescendo, and I could finally hear what I wanted from him. That same frustration I felt.

A rasp of teeth at my jaw, then a growl. “Where are they?”

I nearly came from that alone.

“The drawer,” I said, and waved a hand toward my bedside table.

He leaned way over and when the reading lamp came on, I studied the muscles that moved along his side, beneath his ribs. Watched him breathe. The rustle of cardboard and a rip of plastic brought my attention to his hands.

He sat back on his heels, wrapped condom between his lips. He shoved his jeans to the tops of his thighs, thumbs dragging his shorts down with them. His arousal stood between us, a welcome threat. I could see his heartbeat there in tiny tics as he got the wrapper opened. Under my palms, through the denim, his thighs were hot and hard as rocks baking in the sun.

I watched this man sheath himself. He’d never looked stronger, or bigger, or more dangerous, and I’d never wanted him so badly . . . Yet I could never have been with him like this, those first few times. He’d earned it with all that deference and care. And I’d earned it by giving him the chance to make me trust him.

He rolled the condom flush to his base and gripped himself there. “You want me all pissed off, don’t you?”

My lips parted, but no reply came.

“Fine,” he spat, and moved to the side, freeing my legs. “Turn over.”

I did, settling on my hands and knees, heart thumping hard with excitement, nerves, everything.

He was against me in a breath—cock and hand between my thighs, the other palm on my butt. The penetration couldn’t have been rough if he’d wanted it to be; I was too wet.

He drove in deep and smooth, all the way, moaning as his hips met my ass. I felt both hands at my waist, trembling faintly, then all at once, he found his self-control. He planted his knees a bit wider, the fronts of his thighs brushing the backs of mine. One broad palm slid to my shoulder. It curled tight, holding me in a way that brought fire to my cheeks and an ache to my sex.

His thrusts began. Slow and mean, punctuated by a rough little thump each time our bodies met. A thump, and a grunt. I was silent, so focused on how he felt. His jeans slipped lower, bunching against the backs of my legs. I could’ve killed for a view of that—of impatience personified, of his gorgeous bare ass, denim pooled around his strong thighs.

It didn’t feel impersonal this way, not as I might have guessed. As intimate as if we were staring into one another’s eyes. I missed his voice, though.

Until it cut through the darkness and straight into my core.

“This what you need tonight?” he asked, words stilted by the impact.

“Why’s it always about what I need?”

“Because that’s what gets me off, Annie. Being what you need.” One hand slid around my hip, dipping low, fingertips tickling my mound then finding my clit.

I sucked a raw breath, head dropping from the shock of it. “I need . . .”

“Yeah?” Those lethal fingers moved in tight, cruel circles.

I swore, lost in the pleasure.

“Tell me. Tell me what you need.”

“I need to . . .” I wasn’t even sure how to put it into words. He slowed behind me then stopped, and his fingers became nothing more than a warm weight against my clit. The other hand was tender, stroking me from my ribs to my thigh, calming the frustration building inside me. As always, just what I needed.

He let me go, sliding out slowly. “Turn over.”

I did. And
that
was what I needed, really. An order. A sense that I was his, not the other way around.

I lay back as he got his jeans kicked away, then he brought us together on our sides, his sheathed cock hot against my belly. Only that part of him felt impatient, the rest of him perfectly placid. He stroked my hair and touched the tip of his nose to mine.

“I don’t feel right about this,” he murmured, “with us angry.”

“I do. I want you that way.”

“Why?”

“I . . . Because I want to know what you feel like when you’re not just . . . catering to me. I want to know how you feel when you’re selfish.”

He brushed his lips over mine. “You afraid of what you might find?”

I shook my head against the pillow, more certain about that answer than anything else we’d discussed this evening. “No. I’m not.”

“You get to see that, sometimes, me being selfish. After I’ve gotten you off.”

“But never before.”

“That’s just how it works,” he whispered. “Ladies first.”

“Says who?”

He blinked. “Manners.”

I sighed, head sinking deep into the pillow.

He traced my ear. “What, baby?”

“Fuck, I don’t even know.”

“You want to see me angry?”

“Yeah.”

“To prove what? That I’ll never hurt you, the way he did?”

“No. I already know that.”

“To prove I won’t hurt you, the way I hurt that piece of shit back home?”

“No, of course not. Just show me something . . . something more than just how . . . How fucking
good
you are.”

What the hell was wrong with me, needing proof of an ex-con’s flaws? Or maybe that was the disconnect. Maybe this fight had driven home for me exactly how vast the divide was between this man and the one who’d committed that crime. Or maybe . . .

Or maybe, I wanted proof that this man could do something just for himself. He doled out pleasure for me, vengeance for his family. Maybe I wanted another taste of the man who’d come on to me in Cousins, surrounded by guards and cameras and prying eyes. Who’d wanted something badly enough to put us both at risk to get at it.

“Please,” I said softly. “Let me see you angry.” So much for driving him to selfishness. This was still all about me getting what I asked for.

“I’ll give you what you want,” Eric said softly. “But I won’t pretend I understand it.”

“I don’t understand it, myself. But yeah. Give me that.”
Give me what I feared you maybe wanted from me, way back when we met; feared even as if thrilled me.
“Be greedy. Use me.”

“I won’t hurt you.”

“I’m not asking you to. Just do what
you
want—what you’d do if you just needed to get off.”

Sounding resigned, he took a deep breath.

I touched his hair, slipping a curl behind his ear. “It’s what I want, okay?”

He kissed me in response. First a soft flirtation of lips, then deeper. Far deeper. I felt my body being turned, the cool covers finding my back, but our mouths stayed sealed together. Between us he was touching himself, rousing his cock or checking the condom. His breath flared as he shoved a leg between mine, then the other. He let my mouth go to sit back on his heels. For a long moment he stared down at me, his body looming even curled in on itself, hands resting on his thighs, chin dipped. I quashed an urge to ask if he was upset.

His hands slid to my knees and he raised his head, taking me in. My sex first, then upward, along my belly and breasts to my face. I let him study whatever it was he was after, trying to pinpoint the look in his eyes. Not hunger . . . not that primal. Some sort of fascination, as though he were searching for something.

“I only know one way to make this all about me,” he said.

“Okay.”

He left the bed, stripping the condom as he strode to my dresser. The vanity mirror pivoted on its stand, and Eric tilted it down. Beyond his shoulder I saw myself, sitting on the bed.

He climbed onto the end of the mattress, kneeling in profile to the watching mirror, and gripped his cock, stroking softly. Those dark eyes caught mine, and he nodded to the covers before him.

With the condom gone, I could guess what he needed. I came to him, sitting on my hip. Brought my face close. He smelled of latex faintly, and far more potently of sex. From so near, I could make out the way his hand trembled, wrapped around his shaft. He gave himself a long, slow stroke.

“This used to be my favorite thing,” he murmured, eyes moving over my face. “When I was younger. Before I cared so much about what a woman wants. Before I got put away and realized how much I’d missed out on, thinking sex was all about getting my own needs met. Back when I didn’t know shit.”

“I want it to be all about you, tonight.” Like that letter he’d written, the one where he’d told me what he’d imagined for his birthday.

“Suck me, then.”

The shiver that roused was so deep, it shut my eyes. I opened them, finding him still stroking, still waiting. Ready—a droplet glinting at his crown. I braced myself on my forearm, reaching for him with my other hand. His own hand moved, circling in a lazy frame at the root, presenting his cock. I felt a warm weight on my head, fingers in my hair. Things I’d fantasized about—things I’d felt with him before, even, yet it took my breath away. A new act entirely.

“Taste me.”

I did. Brought his head to my lips and lapped him, the flavor pungent from the rubber and lube. It faded with the next pass and the next, until it was Eric, only Eric.

“More.”

I gave it. I took him between my lips, welcomed the first couple of inches only to be given a measure more, courtesy of his hips. Not enough to gag me, but plenty to catch me off guard. Yet I’d asked for this. For my catering lover to get pushy. So whatever was in store for me, I welcomed it.

The hand on my head was restless, fingertips rubbing my scalp, palm urging me to take more. Just as I got into the rhythm he was setting, the next correction came.

“Harder.”

The word had my throat tightening, but I obeyed, rewarded by a harsh gasp from above. I stole a peek, but didn’t find his eyes on me—not directly. On the mirror. At the pornography we were making together . . . or that I was making for him.

“Suck me harder.”

I don’t know why that excited me, but it did. I’d needed this man’s gentleness for so long, in order to trust him. Now that the trust was implicit as a natural law, I wanted the opposite. To explore a man’s cruder desires, maybe. To explore the rougher aspects of maleness that I’d been so scared of, for so long. Maybe somewhere along the way, I’d turned terror into taboo. Whatever the reason, feeling a man’s bossy hand on my head and sensing his stare refracted off that mirror . . . I could have been getting head myself, for all the fire I felt between my legs.

“Yeah,” he muttered, fingers tightening around my hair. “Suck me.” His hips began to make demands, thrusting faintly. I could feel the change in him, like clouds drawn over the sun. Felt him shift from excited to crass in a near instant.

I worked to find the best position, to take what he was feeding me, to keep the suction up, keep my teeth covered, keep from gagging. The hand making a ring at his base dipped lower, three fingers seeming to press along his balls.

What did he see in that mirror? His younger self, getting serviced by some anonymous girl? Or was the muscle and the ink too much to edit out?

Maybe he saw us as we were. Maybe he saw through the gruffness of it—saw himself giving me what I’d asked for. Was that what he wanted right now, despite the role he’d adopted? To please me?