Twisted Up (5 page)

She wiggled in his hands and he removed one from her ass cheeks to pop the flat of his fingers against her pussy. A surprise yelp followed by a low moan made him do it again. The moan was louder that time. He grinned. His little kitten still liked it.

He leaned in and tasted the newly plumped pussy and she writhed, sensitive to even the barest of touches, of licks, of breaths.

Tugging again on the ropes that held her arms stretched above her head, she whined a protest at his teasing.

“Had enough, pet?”

She growled. “Had enough before you started. Please just let me come already.”

“Now where would the fun be in that?” As he spoke, his breath fanned the wet and open sex in front of him. Her scent wafted toward his nose and goosebumps coated her skin.

“You’re mean and cruel and evil and I just don’t like you,” she protested while at the same time digging her heels into his shoulder blades again, pulling herself up toward his lips.

He nipped her clit with the edges of his teeth and just caught sight of a trickle of wetness leaking from her. If he’d blinked, he’d have missed it. He’d never seen anything sexier and licked at the droplet, taking it on his tongue before it could slide out of sight. He moved her legs from his shoulders and crawled up her body, sliding his tongue in her mouth, sharing her taste.

She whimpered into his kiss and wrapped her legs around his hips much as she had when he’d seated her on the tailgate. Cradling her head in his hands, lingering over the kiss that stole his breath, he ground his jeans-covered cock against her, the denim rubbing at her clit.

She tore her mouth away, and he looked at her with hooded eyes. She was riding him from below as much as he was riding her from above. Her gasps and gulps of air, her small whimpers and the trembling of her entire body drove him crazy.

Fucking her while he was still fully dressed and buttoned up was the best and worst of ideas. He wanted inside her so bad he could almost feel her heat close in around him. He was harder than a jackhammer and he rocked his hardness into her until she was wrapping her fingers around the ropes and holding on tight.

Justin lowered his mouth to her ear and fisted his hands in her hair. “Come, Ella. Come for me.”

She nodded, and her mouth opened on a wordless, soundless cry… Then she wailed it out, bucking under him, bound in his ropes, giving herself up to him and to the teasing pleasure he’d induced.

He dropped his lips to her heaving chest, licked at the dark valley between her breasts, tasting the salt of her skin until she calmed beneath him. Her heartbeat was strong and thunderous, and when he looked up, he saw the tilt of her lips upward in a sated smile. Her eyes were closed, her fingers slack.

“Ella?” he whispered.

“Hmm?”

She still didn’t open her eyes and her lips were still smiling. She was more beautiful than anything or anyone he’d ever seen.

“I think I… ”

“Yeah?” came her breathy whisper.

“I think I need to change my jeans.”

Her eyes flew open, and her mouth formed a tight, little O before she started giggling. He tugged on her hair, and though she winced slightly, she didn’t stop laughing.

“And you find this funny, why?” Not that he was upset with her.

“You were so intent on being in control of me, and when I came
you
lost control.”

She was right. “Yep. Teach me to use your pretty mouth before I start teasing and playing with you.” He kissed the tip of her nose and sat, straddling her body just under the breasts and went to work on untying her arms.

Next thing he knew, she’d leaned forward and her mouth was fastened to his wet crotch. He tried not to groan but did it anyway. Before he could move away, she grabbed hold of his ass with one hand and was working the button and zipper of his jeans down with the other.

“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” There was no heat in his voice, only a croak of sound as she fastened her lips to his come-coated dick.

“Cleaning,” she murmured in between licks.

“Shit.” He grabbed at her hair again and held her against him as she cleaned. They would need to get going soon, but he wasn’t ready to let her mouth leave him just yet. He might not have been hard anymore, but the pleasure zinging through him…

Their gazes clashed when she looked up and he looked down. She licked her lips and he sat back on his haunches, stealing her tongue into his mouth, tasting himself on her the same as he’d shared her taste when he’d kissed her before.

“Justin,” she said softly when he pulled back.

“Yeah, baby.”

“I think you’re still gonna have to change your jeans.”

She’d said it so seriously, so matter-of-factly that he laughed and wondered what in the hell he’d gotten himself into with her.

“We ever gonna talk about it?”

Ella turned her head toward him. “Talk about what?” She feigned innocence though she knew without having to be told what exactly it was that Justin wanted to talk about.

“You know what.”

“I don’t really want to.” She sighed and took the lifeline he offered when he reached for her hand.

He slid his fingers between hers and squeezed lightly. It wasn’t the first time he’d asked, but in emails and texts and instant messages, she could avoid the subject better and easier than she could with him seated a foot away.

“I know you don’t want to and I don’t want to push it. Part of me thinks you’ll tell me when you’re ready, but the other part of me thinks that unless I prod you and make you tell me, that you never will.”

He was right about that. “That’s the thing. I don’t know when I’ll be ready.” And she didn’t. She might never be and that just wasn’t acceptable if she was going to ever move forward and have another relationship. Whether it was with Justin or not, she would have to get to a place where she could be and would be ready to open up and talk about her marriage.

“We weren’t suited, you know? He and I. We just weren’t compatible in…” Damn she sounded as if it were more a business arrangement or friendship than a marriage. “I had this idea of what being married would be, of what a relationship between a husband and wife should be and the reality didn’t live up to it.”

“How so?”

“I used to think that a marriage was two people who wanted to be with one another, two people who couldn’t imagine life apart. I didn’t really feel that with him, and I don’t think he ever felt it with me either. I think it was more or less that neither of us wanted to be alone. It’s not that I expected roses and wine and to be attached at the hip all day and night. I just wanted his attention, his affection, sex. I wanted someone to talk with, share life with, and after giving in, in nearly every area of his interest and getting nothing in return…” She shrugged and tried to pull her hand from his, to put some distance between them, but Justin wouldn’t let go. She was open and feeling exposed and she hated it. Sexually exposed she could handle. Emotionally, not so much.

“You deserved better. You still do, baby.”

“So did he. It just wasn’t working out and I didn’t want to hurt him more than I had already by pushing him away, by not being able to accept that he wasn’t going to change or be able to let me in the way I needed him to. Even though I understood his reasons for keeping everything so bottled up, even though I was doing exactly what he tried to protect himself against, I needed more from him. I didn’t want a fairy tale, but I wanted more than I was getting. I was starving for affection, for closeness, for any kind of connection, and he wasn’t capable of giving it.”

She thought back to all those conversations, to the look in his eyes, to the disappointment, to the anger, to the relief. He knew she hadn’t been happy for a long time because she’d told him on more than one occasion. He didn’t ask her to stay to try and fix things. He didn’t promise he’d try to change. She was emotionally and sexually needy and she knew it, and staying with him wasn’t going to help her fulfill those needs.

“I’m sorry, Ella.”

“No need for you to be sorry, Justin, but thank you just the same.”

“Do you regret it?”

Did she? “No. My mom always said that when it was time, I’d know. She’d realized even before I did how unhappy I was. I wasn’t fair to him. I should have let him go long before. I wasted eight years of his life and mine. I knew before we ever walked down the aisle that I shouldn’t marry him, that something wasn’t clicking, but I did it anyway.”

She didn’t need or want to make excuses, drum up reasons why or what if. What was done was done. She couldn’t undo it, she couldn’t take it back, and even if she could, she wouldn’t. “I should have walked away long before I did.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Why indeed. “Fear. I was scared no one else would ever want me. Strange to think that when I don’t know that he ever wanted me to begin with. I just don’t know. We were great as friends, bad as lovers.”

Justin nodded. “I think a good marriage takes both.”

She agreed with him on that.

“Do you still see him, talk to him?”

Ella smiled into the darkness outside the dim truck cabin. There was an odd intimacy surrounding them. There were cars and trucks with lights on, passing them on the road, but it was almost as though she and Justin were the only two people in the world. “Yes. We actually do still talk, more so than we did when we were married. He moved back home to Georgia, and oddly enough, I travel near there on occasion. We’ve met for lunch and dinner and talked about the things that made us friends but not lovers.”

“Still no regrets?” he asked again.

She turned toward him. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking or feeling. Since her separation and then her divorce, she’d vowed that no matter what, she’d be honest from then on. Whether it was about how she felt or didn’t feel, what she wanted or didn’t want, what was or wasn’t working for her, she’d be honest. She wouldn’t try to talk herself into someone else’s truths or beliefs or feelings of what was best.

Just like with Justin. If she hadn’t wanted to be with him, she wouldn’t be riding in the truck, getting closer to Dallas and his home, his bed, with every second that ticked by. “No.”

It was a few minutes before he spoke. “I have regrets,” he said softly.

Her eyes widened as she stared at him. He had regrets? About them? She tried to pull her hand from his grip again, but he wouldn’t let go. Was he having second thoughts about this? Maybe she should have put up a bigger fuss, pushed him harder about why he wanted her, why he’d come to see her and made the proposition he had. The only way she was going to find out what his regret was, was to ask. That was another form of honesty, asking the hard questions even if you were afraid to hear the answers. “What do you regret?”

“Not coming to get you sooner.”

He said it so quietly that she almost didn’t hear it, but for emphasis, he lifted her hand and stretched her over a bit so he could kiss it. Her heart stuttered to a near stop at his words, at the relief she felt. “Why didn’t you?”

“Work is the easy answer. I knew you were busy and I couldn’t get away at the time. It gave me an excuse to give you space in the hopes you’d come to me, that you’d let me in again, that you’d start talking to me, sharing with me again. You never did. I didn’t understand why you kept pushing me away and the only way to find out was to put myself in front of you and force you to talk to me, to react to me. So, the first chance I got, I took it.”

“Trickster.”

“Whatever I had to or have to do to get you to open up again, baby, I’m ready, willing and able to do.”

“I wish I were as confident about us as you.” What if she could never have a serious relationship with anyone? What if it was more than the lack of affection and attention and sex? What if there was something wrong with her? She hadn’t come from the most stable of homes.

Her father had an affair when he’d been married to her mother, and when he left her, he married the woman he’d been seeing, and to this day they were still married, happily. Her father hadn’t been happy, not for many years before he’d left. Her stepmother was the exact opposite of her real mother, and those differences were overwhelmingly obvious. “I don’t know, Justin.”

“I don’t
know
know either, baby, not for certain, but by your own admission there were doubts in your head before you got married and throughout you felt something wasn’t right.”

“I wanted more.” And she had. She wanted more attention, more affection, more sex, more of everything. She’d turned into a homebody when what she’d really wanted was to go out and do things, be with people, but her husband wanted to sit and watch ball games and television shows. At first they’d sat on the couch together, but then he bought a recliner, and that small bit of togetherness, that little bit of intimacy was gone. Her marriage hadn’t given her what she’d hoped for and she’d turned to going out with friends from work. He’d never seemed to mind. He did his thing and she did hers. They simply paid the bills together and shared a roof.

“I know you did. Some things just aren’t meant to be, Ella.”

“We might not be,” she said solemnly, giving voice to one of her very real fears.

“True, but I’m inclined to believe we are.” He slid her a wink and a waggle of his eyebrows in an effort to pull a smile from her. It worked.

“And why is that?”

“Many, many reasons.”

His voice had dropped to that deep, seductive Texas twang she loved so much. It usually wasn’t so pronounced, but there were moments where it took over and it was all she could do not to melt into a puddle. “Such as?”

“Well, there’s the taste of you on my tongue. One just doesn’t get over that.”

Ella rolled her eyes in his direction and huffed. “Oh, I’m sure one does and can if one tries. What else have you got?”

“The taste of me on your tongue. One just doesn’t get over that either.”

She’d have laughed if he hadn’t sounded so serious. She knew he was teasing her, trying to bring her out again, make her smile and believe in him, even if she didn’t believe in them yet. “Arrogant ass. There’s more, right? Something more substantial maybe?”