On The Ropes: Tapped Out Book 3

by Quinn, Cari

  “Don’t look so shocked.” For the first time tonight, I heard amusement in his voice. Just a lazy hint of it. “You’ve had it inside you.”

  Oh, shit, now I was blushing. Fire engine red, probably, to go with my hair. “It’s no big deal,” I said, shrugging as if I saw enormous cocks every day of my life.

  Hard-boiled eggs, chopped carrots and penises. All good.

  As soon as he spoke, the humor fell away. The mere mention reminded him all over again of what we’d been through.

  We, not just me.

  Throat tight, I stroked my finger up the center of his length, watching the veins ripple and bulge. At the head, I touched the bead of pre-cum forming there, catching the next before it trickled down. His breathing sped up, his massive chest lifting and falling while I followed the same path with my tongue, all the way down until I could hesitantly flick it over his sensitive sac. He hissed and his powerful arms flexed, reminding me I’d leashed the beast for now but it wouldn’t last for long.

  I licked my way back up, taking just the head in my mouth while my hands learned him. Hot skin pulled tight over his thick shaft, and the slightest attention paid to the tip caused him to swell and shift in my grip. I had small hands, and he seemed to dwarf them, barely able to be contained. Just like the corded arms that bunched and twisted as he fought to remain still for my torture.

  The heat in my core caused me to press my legs together, and he must’ve seen me because he swore. “If you’re going to torment me, you better get your ass up here so I can do the same.”

  “What?” I asked, licking my lips.

  My hearing was shorting out. It was as if steel wool had been pushed between my ears, cushioning everything but the manic beat of my heart.

  He swore again. “Give me your pussy.”

  I gasped. Not because he’d asked—well, sort of—and not because I was some newb who wouldn’t do that. Hell, I’d wanted that very thing, hadn’t I? But he wasn’t a boy who would stumble through a couple quick tongue stabs and finish up by trying to rub off my clit as if it were a magic button.

  Odds were good he knew what to do to not just get me off, but spectacularly.

  “You gotta stop doing that,” he muttered, and I blinked, looking down at my lax hands. “Not that, the gasping thing. You do it all the time.”

  Narrowing my eyes, I lapped at his cock. Mouth wide open, tongue flat. Deliberately, I brushed my breasts up his tensed thighs, waiting for him to gasp himself. When it didn’t work, I took him between my lips, forcing back my gag reflex as I tried to accept more of him. I hadn’t given a ton of blowjobs, and he wasn’t the best practice dummy.

  Head pressed to his groin, eyes shut tight and watering, I started to choke. My lungs seized up, the memories from earlier swirling behind my eyes. I heard Marco’s voice, felt his fingers on my leg as he pulled off my shoe.

  “No fucking Cinderella here,” he said with a sneer, dumping the shoe in a garbage can.

  “Carly.”

  My hands shook and I fought to steady them while I struggled to breathe through my nose.

  “Carly,” he said again, and my head came up, my eyes fastening on his.

  This time when he cursed, low and in Italian, he also undid his hands. Two twists of his wrists, and my skillful knot came apart as if he were freaking David Copperfield. “This is why I didn’t want to do this. Not like this. You’re still reliving—”

  “No.” The last of my bravado slipped and tears popped into my eyes. I’d done so well all night. I hadn’t cried at the club, hadn’t cried on the way home, hadn’t even cried in Gio’s shower. I hadn’t been raped, not technically. Not the way my sister had been. This was different.

  So why were my eyes stinging and my hands shaking and my stomach pitching so hard that I was afraid I might be sick?

  “Come here,” he said, and all of the anger had disappeared from his voice. He sat up and opened up his arms and I lurched into them, mindlessly seeking the comfort I’d found there earlier in the midst of our shared hell.

  “You’re fine. You’re safe.” His hand stroked my hair, up and down, up and down. “I won’t let anyone hurt you. I promise.”

  I pressed my damp eyes to his neck and breathed him in—expensive cologne, the faint tang of sweat and rain. Cleansing rain.

  “We should’ve done this outside,” I said, clutching his ropey arms as if he might vanish. And he just might.

  He’d never stuck around long before.

  “What?” Something that might’ve been a laugh rumbled through his chest. “Why?”

  “Rain makes everything clean.” I looked up at him, my lower lip quivering. “Even me.”

  “You listen to me.” He cupped my cheeks in his big hands, his thumbs catching my tears. “You aren’t dirty. You’re perfect. What happened tonight wasn’t your fault. You were caught in something bigger than you—”

  “Don’t you mean caught by something bigger than me?” When I glanced between us, he jerked my face up again. “Sorry. It’s not the time for jokes. I just…I don’t want it to be the only time we have. I want to stamp it out with a better memory.”

  His throat moved. “You’ll regret it in the morning. After you sleep…”

  I reached up to trace his lips. So wide and sensual, so reluctant to smile. “I could never regret you, Giovanni Costas.”

  He shut his eyes. Then he opened them again and smoothed away the last of my tears. “See that lock right there?” He indicated the skylight slanted over the bed. “Go ahead and open it up.”

  It took me a moment to understand. Rain. He was giving me—us—the rain.

  I went to my knees, and he gave me a boost with his arm around my waist. Supporting me while I fumbled with the lever and slid away the glass. Behind it was only screen, and a fine mist of rain squeezed through the specially reinforced weave.

  “The bed,” I asked, looking behind me.

  “It’s fine. The sheets can use a wash.”

  His soothing voice made me laugh, then I stopped, suddenly embarrassed. Though I showed off most of my body nightly, I hadn’t shown him before a little while ago, when I’d been riding the high of adrenaline and the need for distraction. I could pretend with the best of them, but right now, with his thickly muscled arm clasping me close and the rain spritzing down on my bare skin, I felt more exposed than I’d ever been in my life.

  Even earlier tonight couldn’t compare, because they hadn’t seen most of me. Besides, they hadn’t really been paying attention to the details.

  Gio was.

  “Are you sure?” he asked me, brushing a kiss over my hip.

  “Yes. I need it. I need to think about this instead.” I slipped my fingers through his silky, shoulder-length hair. “Give me a better memory. Please.”

  He eased me down to the bed, shifting me on top of him so smoothly I almost wasn’t aware of the movement. His cock pressed against me intimately, reminding me that what I’d taken with haste sure as heck could give me a panic attack if I actually thought about it.

  “I have a condom.” He stuck an arm out, started to drag over the trashcan.

  “You’re not serious. You’re going to use one from the garbage?”

  “It’s fine,” he snapped. “Not expired or anything. I just threw them out because I wouldn’t be needing them anymore…” He trailed off at my pursed lips. “What?”

  “Miscalculated there, didn’t you?”

  Again, that slight twitch of his mouth. I so wanted to make him smile, almost as much as I wanted to make him come.

  Inside me, with nothing between us. Just like before. I’d already been spoiled by that feeling, only having had it once.

  “Barn door’s already open,” I reminded him softly. “Horse nearly broke the fence, but the fence is willing to try again.” As he started to object, I placed my finger over his lips. “I’m clean. I’m assuming you are too. With fighting, you’d be tested often. Blood and all.”

  “This is underground fi
ghting. Not exactly the same stringent requirements.”

  “So you’re not clean? What did you give me earlier tonight then?”

  “Nothing.” He bit off the word. “Of course I’m clean. It’s just not safe.”

  “We’re covered. I’ve never missed a single pill in three years.”

  “Three years? Did you start having sex in junior high?”

  Ignoring him, I peered in the garbage can. “But if you’d rather me dig through that rotten banana peel and other things I can’t identify—”

  “Never mind.”

  “No, really, I’m sure I can wash off one of the packages—”

  “Shut up.” He was actually flushing a little. Mister Suave being thrown off his game would’ve absolutely delighted me, if I wasn’t still so unsteady.

  Teasing him helped.

  “I normally carry them,” I began, continuing even when his eyes narrowed on me, “but my purse is still in my locker at the club.”

  “I’ll take you to get it tomorrow before I drop you at home.”

  “Okay. Thank you.” I leaned forward and brushed a kiss over his chin. I still wanted his mouth, but I wasn’t at all sure he’d let me at it. “Can I?” I asked, circling my hips. Unfairly rubbing against him, making his choice hard.

  Harder, because he was already as stiff as steel.

  He speared his fingers through my hair, tipping my head until I was sure he would kiss me. He’d have to, wouldn’t he? Our mouths were so close, perfectly lined up…

  “You’re going to be the death of me, woman,” he breathed instead, grabbing my hip and pulling it forward. Stopping just before I slid over his cock.

  It would be my choice.

  Eyes on his, I brushed over him, once, twice, a dozen times. Getting him wet with my desire, driving him insane until he gritted his teeth. But he slid his hands under the pillows behind him, bracing his shoulders, allowing me the freedom to control the pace.

  I’d wanted him before, now I craved him.

  I bit my lip before I sank down on him, and still wasn’t able to stifle my swift exhale. I tried to make it manageable, to only take a little bit, but my body had other ideas. While my brain was still reeling, my hips drove forward and took him almost to the hilt in one pass.

  One of us groaned. It might’ve been him, because I couldn’t breathe. He’d filled me up, every pore. I was steeped in him. Drowning.

  Lost.

  “Christ, this body.” He looked me over, swallowing his cock as I rode, and shook his head. “I’d cover you in burlap and never let you leave the house.”

  My lips curved, bolstered by his words. Perhaps that had been his intention. I’d been bouncing around on top of him like I’d never had sex before, unsure how to find a rhythm. I was used to being led. The man rutting into me until I finally came as much to get it over with as anything else. I’d never been on top before. Never been in control.

  The one thing I’d been searching for above all else, and he’d given it to me. In spite of the price to himself, and the huge amounts of willpower it was taking him to hold back and let me lead, he’d willingly handed over the reins.

  So I needed to figure out how to use them.

  Gathering my nerve, I locked my arms behind my head and gave into the urge to go faster. To take him deeper. It took me a minute to find my groove. Less for him to swear in Italian again and clutch the pillows beside him with fingers gone white at the knuckles. His gaze was riveted between my legs and I looked too, swallowing at the sight of my wetness smeared all over his length. His skin was so much darker than mine, Mediterranean gold, and the contrast as that thick shaft plunged between my reddened lips was startling.

  “I can see every damn thing,” he gritted out. “Even your shiny pink pearl, so swollen. Touch it.”

  I did as he said without thought. Shyly, I flicked it once, my eyes going wide and connecting with his at the jolt that sizzled through me. Power, heady and dark.

  “Again. Harder.”

  Doing what he commanded felt like breathing. My finger sped up, falling into the pattern I used when I was alone. Except there was a thick, throbbing cock inside me, hulling me out, his hips lifting now to do the work while I enjoyed the wonder of my body. Of his, in mine.

  I was so wet that my finger slipped again and again. Then I was using two, chasing the pleasure tightening deep inside me. I lifted my face to the light rain, savoring it on my skin as my fingers rotated in mad circles and his hips slammed up into mine. He was so strong, and he was hitting me just where I needed it, far inside in a place that made my knees turn to water on either side of him. I couldn’t stay upright any longer, couldn’t do anything but clench him inside me while the spasms started and spun out.

  The first cry left my lips against his throat. I bit him to hold back the next, but it turned into a scream as he took over the task of my hand between my legs. He used both, locking most of his fingers around my quaking thighs. Only his thumbs met over my clit and stroked me like an instrument that had been tuned solely to him.

  My second climax started before the first stopped. I buried my face in his hair, my hips pumping frantically, trying to contain the wild pulses of his cock before they vibrated through my body and shattered me. Then he was coming, my name a roar from his throat as the warmth of his release blasted me deep inside. Even that continued my orgasm, making it go on and on until I whimpered and dug my nails into his tensed shoulders.

  Spent, blitzed beyond belief, I crumpled on top of him. And he stroked my back as the aftershocks rolled through us both.

  It was the rain that brought me back.

  Sometime later I lifted my head and studied the splatter of miniscule raindrops on my arm. The rain was falling on an empty bed. Empty of Gio anyway.

  There was just me, lying naked in the center of the bed with what appeared to be a handmade throw tossed over my back.

  I huddled beneath it, shaking suddenly though the room wasn’t cold. Spying the beer on the nightstand, I crawled across the bed and tipped it back, swallowing the warm liquid so fast that it spilled out of my mouth. I rubbed the moisture away with my wrist and looked around blearily, taking in the room that hadn’t made a dent in my consciousness earlier.

  “That’s not milk, you know.”

  His voice sent tingles over my skin as if he’d physically touched me. “It was sitting here.”

  “Yeah, I forgot about it. I went to make you…this.”

  I turned back, the cover wrapped around me, and frowned at the mug he held out. I clutched my beer closer to my chest. “I like mine better.”

  He plucked the bottle out of my hand. “Warm milk will help you sleep.”

  “Alcohol will get me drunk. A good drunk also helps me sleep.”

  “You have school tomorrow.”

  “No, I don’t. Tomorrow is Saturday.”

  “Fine, you have to study tomorrow.” He dropped the beer bottle in the infamous trashcan and sent me a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it smirk.

  Yep, not going after that one.

  I sniffed at the milk and took a sip. It was good, just slightly warm, so I took another. But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t goad him for acting as if I was too irresponsible to have a drink. “I have to work tomorrow too.”

  “No.”

  Now it was my turn to smirk, though the gesture was hollow at best. I wasn’t any more eager to return to the club than he was. It just felt like I had to. That if I didn’t, they’d have won.

  What, I didn’t even know.

  “I meant at the Salad Hut.”

  “Oh.” He crossed his insanely tattooed arms, bringing my attention to what he was wearing. Or what he wasn’t, namely anything but his boxer briefs.

  Was I seriously supposed to carry on a reasonable conversation with him when he wasn’t dressed?

  “I was supposed to work at the club tonight,” I continued, studying the mug. Guess he was a Mets fan. “I swapped with another girl. I’m taking her shift next Thursday
.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Can’t. The Pyramid Club pays my tuition.”

  He walked to the desk in the corner and turned back with a checkbook and pen in his hand. “How much do you owe?”

  My eyebrows lifted. “Damn, I must be better in bed than I thought.”

  “Consider it a loan.” He rolled right over my last statement. “We’ll figure out a way for you to pay me back.”

  I set the mug on the nightstand. Rising, I let the handmade coverlet fall away. Gio was too busy studying his checkbook to notice me padding soundlessly toward him. He glanced up again as I grabbed the checkbook and tossed it behind me in the direction of the mattress.

  I nudged him back against the desk. “I have an idea…”

  Six

  “Three times,” I said under my breath as I headed into the locker room at The Cage the next morning.

  Once would’ve been bad enough. Once beyond the club, which was different for so many reasons.

  Even a second time wouldn’t have been hard to believe, considering she was still unsettled and I knew part of her desire to be with me physically was to erase what had come before.

  The third time, though, this morning before I drove her to the city—that had been ridiculous.

  She wasn’t my girlfriend, and wouldn’t be. That wasn’t possible.

  After the last round, we’d gone to the club to get her purse. I’d waited while she got what she needed out of her locker, then drove her home and parked around the block so she could tell her sister and Fox she’d spent the night at Jenna’s, as per the text she’d sent them at some point.

  Good thing, because I didn’t think I could face them. Not for a good long while.

  What had happened last night with Carly after the club hadn’t diminished what had occurred before. Knowing she didn’t hate me alleviated some of my guilt, but only some. There were debts that went beyond individual circumstance, and the one I’d incurred transcended us.