Rough Around the Edges (20 page)

He laid a hand on her thigh, sliding it up the length of her leg until he was cupping the curve of her ass. “I wanted to touch you like this.” He laid his other hand on one of her breasts, cradling it from below and letting the nipple grow harder between his spread fingers. “But I didn’t know how good it would feel. I couldn’t have imagined it, just like I couldn’t have imagined the silver lights and god-awful pain before I saw and felt them for the first time.”

Some things were either too good or too bad to imagine accurately until you’d experienced them.

He purposely brushed his lips over her breast again, lightly enough that he wouldn’t re-open his wounds. His mouth ached, producing extra moisture as he resisted the urge to take her nipple between his lips and suck until she arched into him and moaned, asking for more. Instead, he simply breathed against her skin.

“Being with you feels better for me than I knew it would, too. Better than I realized it could, to be honest,” she said.

He cupped her breast in one hand and squeezed. “Does it?”

“Yeah.”

For a few moments he was still and quiet. Her breast trembled faintly with her heartbeat, making him extra-aware of her nipple against his palm, still hard. The other one was stiff too, standing erect as he breathed over it, remembering the taste of her pebbled skin. “Ally?”

“Yeah?”

“Come here.” He tightened the hand he had on her ass cheek, drawing her close.

She climbed onto the bed. “What was it you said about wanting to be inside me?”

“I want to be inside you.” He’d never wanted anything as badly as he wanted her every time he saw her naked. “I want to feel you wrapped so tight around my cock that I forget I even have a head, let alone that it hurts.” Her body had the power to do that. He knew it and he craved it.

“Why don’t you lie back down, like you were before? I can grab a condom out of your drawer – the second one down, right?”

“Yeah. And I was hoping you’d say that.” He reclined against the mattress, like he had when she’d kissed his neck. “Best view ever from down here when you’re on top of me.” There was nothing better than lying back with her pussy hugging his cock as he looked up at her breasts bouncing, round and hard-tipped.

She got a condom out of the dresser drawer where he kept the box and returned to the bed, pausing to look at him as she tore the package open. He could practically feel her gaze roving up and down his body. Did she want him as badly as he wanted her? It didn’t seem possible, but he could hope that she did, for some crazy reason.

She put the condom on for him, her fingers sliding down his shaft and making him tremble as he watched, dick throbbing. Moments later she was on the bed, straddling him, gripping his cock by the base and lowering herself down.

The way their bodies fit together was too mind-blowing to truly be remembered. This wasn’t their first time or their second, and still, the feeling of being enveloped by her heat and wetness was shocking. It squeezed his mind like her pussy squeezed his cock, reducing him to an entity of pure sensation. She rolled her hips and gasped, sending a wave of inhibition-melting heat through him.

He flexed his hips, pumping into her and watching her breasts rise and fall as he rocked her. Placing one hand on her hip, he reached for one of the soft mounds, palming it while rubbing and pinching the nipple until it looked as hard as he felt inside her. The way her cheeks flushed deep pink and her mouth hung open in a perpetual ‘O’ as she breathed hard prompted him to lower his hand, rubbing between her hips instead.

He’d only been touching her clit for a few moments when her pussy seized up, clenching around his thrusting dick. He had to fight not to come too when she gasped his name, her pussy shrinking and releasing around his shaft, only to tighten again, gripping him as she bore down.

When her gasps faded to a breathless rush, he slowed his motions, resuming a steadier pace.

It didn’t last long. Soon, she began to ride him, rolling her hips and sending him deep into her pussy with each rocking motion. Within seconds, he was the one breathing hard.

He tipped his head back against the pillow and said her name as every muscle in his body tensed, flooded with sudden energy. He focused it all on thrusting into her. She rocked her hips harder too, and between their combined efforts, every stroke sent a jolt of mind-numbing urgency straight to his dick. Balls tight and shaft achingly hard, he slipped over the edge and into raw pleasure.

The rush of come was thought-shattering, the sensation too overwhelming to leave room for any of his other senses. Eyes shut tight, he thrust to her rhythm until every last trace of ecstasy had faded.

When he’d been still for a little while, she slid off of him, settling beside him on the bed.

“God, Ally…”

“Yeah?”

“That was good.” Biggest understatement of all time, but he had to say it. He rose, rolling his shoulders, which had been left tight in the wake of such fierce sensations.

“How do you feel?”

“The pain’s not that bad, but I can still feel the pressure behind my skull and see silver lights. I’m going to go to sleep while I’m still feeling good. Unless that will bother you?”

“No.” She rose from the bed. “It’s late anyway. You should get some rest. We still have tomorrow morning.”

“Okay. You’re still staying the night, right?” He reached out to brush her cheek with his knuckles, letting them skim the soft edge of one lip. All that and he still craved the feel of her skin beneath his fingertips.

“Yes.”

“Good.” A distinct feeling of relief washed through him, unknotting the tension in his shoulders. Yeah, they’d already had sex, but it mattered that she wanted to spend the rest of the night with him. It mattered a lot, because it proved that she liked being with him even when sexual tension wasn’t running high.

He pulled on underwear before exiting the room with her following close behind.

He paused at the bathroom door to watch her bend over the couch, retrieving the bag she’d left there. The position granted him a view of her ass that threatened to revive his erection. Reluctantly, he turned away. With a migraine brewing and his fights just hours behind him, the fresh cuts and bruises still aching, a second round of sex would be like begging for misery.

That didn’t mean there wasn’t the morning to look forward to. The thought was enticing, but as he brushed his teeth and rinsed with mouthwash, his thoughts centered more on the hours between now and then. Asleep or not, the night was going to be different than any other. Different in ways that mattered, even if her overnight stay was a matter of convenience.

When he emerged from the bathroom she slipped past him, still naked, with her hands full of toiletries.

He retreated to the bedroom, sank onto the bed and closed his eyes. It didn’t matter whether they were open or not – all he could see was her perfect body.

“Could I borrow a t-shirt?”

He opened his eyes to see her standing in the doorway, no longer naked, but topless.

Cotton hot short panties clung to her hips, but there was nothing to hide the rest of her from his gaze.  She’d put her hair up into some sort of knot; it left her shoulders bare and their graceful slopes complimented the fuller swells of her breasts.
“I would say no, if the idea of you wearing one of my shirts didn’t turn me on even more than you being topless for some reason.”

Though the thought of sleeping with her bare breasts against his chest or resting in his palms was undeniably appealing, so was the idea of her body draped in his clothing. “They’re in the drawer with the condoms.”

She opened the dresser drawer, selected a t-shirt and pulled it over her head. His eyes lingered on her breasts until the garment slipped over them, draping them in cotton. Her nipples were still discernible, dark peaks that pricked against the fabric.

When the hem hit her hips, she met his gaze. “Want me to shut off the light?”

“Yeah.”

She came to him in the dark; it was clear she’d made it to the bed when she bumped the edge of the mattress with her knees, making it tremble.

He reached out and pulled her in, wrapping an arm around her and drawing her onto the mattress.

She slipped beneath the covers, her bare legs sliding against his, creating gentle friction as she settled beside him, her back against his chest.

The position felt natural; there was just something about the way her curves fit against his body that banished whatever awkwardness he might have expected. His t-shirt didn’t do much to hide the shape or softness of her breasts. With his arm crossing them, he could even feel her heart beat. Lost in the feel and smell of her, he slipped into sleep without realizing it, without dreaming.

* * * * *

The Humvee rolled forward at a steady pace. There was no sign of an impending explosion in the air or on the road, which was pockmarked here and there with pot holes, but nothing really treacherous. Still, Ryan could feel the possibility deep in his bones, where dread blossomed and multiplied in his marrow, spreading throughout his entire body. His mouth went dry and he sweated even more than the sweltering heat accounted for. Any second now, the Humvee would set off the IED, or maybe not.

The engine rumbled, a constant droning, and someone said something he didn’t really hear. He couldn’t focus on the words when he was bracing himself for the explosion, for the loudest sound he’d ever heard. Just the thought of it dulled his hearing.

A drop of sweat slipped into his eye and burned. He lifted a hand to wipe it away, but only made things worse. Fuck it. There was no escaping the sweat; his uniform collar was damp against his neck and perspiration beaded on his upper lip, liquid slipping over the edge and coursing over his mouth and chin like a little waterfall.

As the salty taste entered his mouth despite his best efforts to keep it out, he raised his eyes and dared to look at the desert beyond the Humvee’s window.

It was ugly – he’d always thought so. But a sharp-edged sliver of hope slipped into his head as he stared. There had been no explosion yet, and it had been forever. Or at least, it felt like it. They had to be past the place where the bomb would’ve been hidden.

He’d finish his deployment and return to the US when it was time, then finish out his four-year contract. Maybe re-enlist. The hope was vicious; it snaked through him, tearing him up inside, inciting a kind of happiness that hurt. No bomb. No injury. Not this time. It didn’t make sense that he’d been given a second chance – when he thought about how it’d happened, his thoughts jumbled together, refusing to yield a clear explanation. Still, all that mattered was that he was in uniform again and in one piece.

He’d fixed things, somehow.

Maybe there wasn’t even a scar beneath his pants. His heart picked up pace as he lowered a hand to his thigh, fingers spread over the camo pattern in search of a telltale bump, the edge of a ridge of twisted flesh.

The world exploded in a burst of light and sound. Thoughtless moments passed by – how many, it was impossible to tell – and the entire universe shook. His head ached and his ears rang. His sense of equilibrium was obliterated; there was no telling if he was upside down or not. Some vague memory told him he probably was.

He could tell, though, that there was no scar. The flesh beneath his fingertips was wet, open. His fingers rested in a trench of bleeding meat. Had they been shredded, too? He looked down, but everything was too red to tell.

“Holy fuck.” The words echoed through the Humvee, anonymous and familiar.

Something warm hit his cheek and ran down his jaw. He turned his head and looked to the right, toward the source of the wetness, more as an excuse not to look at his own leg than for any other reason.

His stomach cramped with regret as his gaze settled on something more blood-soaked than his own leg – Gibson’s neck. A long, twisted piece of metal stuck out of it, buried in tender flesh. Blood was spurting from the wound like gas from a broken fuel line. A coppery taste hit the tip of Ryan’s tongue, overpowering the salty traces of sweat that had seemed so distasteful before.

Every muscle inside him tensed, squeezing his stomach so hard he was going to puke, upside down or not…

“Ryan?”

More blood sprayed onto his face – his forehead, this time.

No, not blood. Someone was touching him. Someone was saying his name.