Boiling Point (Crossing the Line #3)

by Tessa Bailey

  “No.” He crossed his arms over his chest and hardened his jaw, the move striking her as…self-conscious? Austin? “Do they bother you?”

  Yes. Yes. But not for the reason they should. The scars had almost certainly been put there by women he’d been playing, conning…and yet her anger didn’t stem from that knowledge. It bothered her that he bore any reminders of other encounters or other places in time, when this moment was theirs. The sexually inexperienced part of her wanted to call it off, but it was overruled by an unbreakable will she’d never been aware of deep within her bones. So he had marks from other women? Those women weren’t here now. She was. And unlike the others, she had the distinct advantage of being in the know.

  No games.

  Polly lifted her knee onto the bed and knelt behind Austin, not understanding the compulsion to kiss his back, but following through in the spirit of not holding back. Being incapable of it in the face of such freedom to explore. His hot skin shuddered beneath her lips, muscles going whip-tight. She aligned their bodies, molding herself to the curve of his ass, feeling her way around to his front with both hands. The fingers of both hands met at his belt buckle, pausing in their actions when he heaved a masculine moan.

  “No. Dammit, don’t stop.” His head fell back on his shoulders. “I could come just knowing you’re about to unzip my pants.”

  The raw desperation and honesty in his voice, despite the Southern accent he’d just managed to maintain, was inebriating. Her limbs turned limber and heavy at the same time, excitement rising like dense steam to cloud her thoughts. “I’m going to do more than unzip your pants.” She tugged the leather of his belt through the pant loops, letting it fall to the bed. “Can you handle it?”

  “Try me,” Austin grated. “Try me hard.”

  Holy God. Wet heat gathered between her thighs, but instead of pressing her legs together to ease the sensual pressure, she positioned them wider, allowing herself a moment to writhe her hips against his bottom. Her fingers worked of their own power, unbuttoning Austin’s pants and lowering the zipper. She was still unzipping when his erection pushed through the opening, obscenely long and…plump, a description she never would have expected to apply to any part of Austin. She’d caught a brief glimpse of his manhood that morning in his bathroom, but holding him was an entirely different experience. His aroused flesh weighed down her closed fist, seeming to grow heavier, thicker, as she massaged him from behind.

  Again, it became apparent that Austin wasn’t breathing, his body gone stock-still against her. Unable to push coherent words past her lips, Polly let them whisper over his neck, bathing the spot with her tongue. His body jerked on a rough intake of oxygen. “Y-you h-have to breathe,” she forced out.

  “I’m trying.” His hips pumped into her grip. “It’s just that it never felt…good before when someone else did it. I hated when they touched me.”

  Somewhere in her passion-clouded brain, everything clicked together. Later, she would rebel against the overwhelming sense of understanding, sympathy for a con man who’d mistreated women, but claimed he hadn’t enjoyed doing it. Later, she would scoff at her moment of weakness and loss of reason, but not now. Now all she could do was whisper words of comfort into his hair, hold his erection tighter in her fist. Stroke him faster. I make him feel good. Me. No one else.

  “Polly…” He broke off on a groan. “If you want me hard for your pussy, you have to stop jacking me. Otherwise, I’m going to paint the fucking wall.”

  That was what she’d been working toward, wasn’t it? Somehow his loss of composure had become the most important aspect of her existence, transcending all else. But she couldn’t allow her eagerness to see him shatter end this so soon. Biting her lip until pain bloomed, Polly released his arousal and…picked up the belt. She stared down at the expensive leather object, her calculating mind colliding with lust to formulate bad plans. Hot, naughty plans that should have seemed foreign, but perhaps had only been lurking in the background.

  “Do it. Whatever you’re thinking of doing with that belt, do it.” Austin’s body vibrated with unconcealed anticipation, all traces of the phony accent a thing of the past. Everything was a thing of the past. “I can take it. I need to take it.” His gaze was penetrative when he delivered a blistering look over his shoulder. “We both know I deserve it. Are you going to show me the error of my ways, Mistress? Or not?”

  Thunderclaps boomed in her ears, the belt’s weight feeling like a live electrical current in her palm. With her free hand, Polly wrenched Austin’s pants down to his knees, exposing his backside, which was as cocky and breathtaking as the rest of him. She knew what he expected. Now seemed a good time to let him know she’d never provide him with the predictable.

  Polly walked on her knees around Austin to face him, blasted by the bridled intensity shooting from him like sparks. Ready to snap, but equally determined not to give in. The conflict was all there in his burning eyes. Amazing man. She let her focus drop to his erection, dense and capable of pulverizing where it strained against his belly.

  “All yours. You’ve been its cruel keeper for months.” He tilted his hips, presenting himself to her in a way that should have been crude, but on Austin, it was all animal grace. “At any time at all, you could have demanded me. Sent me to my knees to lick you off with one word. Grabbed my cock through my pants in front of everyone and told them who it belonged to.” His eyelids drooped as if the scenario was an aphrodisiac. “Please yourself with me, Polly. My body. My cock. Own it all.”

  “I will,” she whispered, shaken by his speech. Emboldened by it. Holding his gaze, she lifted the belt to his arousal and looped the leather around its ruddy base. A broken curse fell from his mouth, the muscles of his abdomen jerking. His big hands flew up, as if to grip her shoulders for balance, but they fisted and dropped back to his sides, where she told him with her inaction they must remain. Careful to keep the buckle from touching him, Polly tugged the leather to her right, watching the belt slither around his erection in a circular caress.

  “Oh, fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” He swayed on his knees. “More. More.”

  Polly leaned close and ran her tongue along the seam of his lips, pulling away when he tried to capture her mouth in a kiss. “Only if it pleases me.”

  “Yes.” His nod was disjointed, breathing uneven. “Only if it pleases you.”

  “It does.” Faster than the first time, Polly pulled the belt left, whimpering at the sight of his aching flesh being squeezed by the leather strip, the precome that beaded at his tip. She repeated the action twice more, faster and with more surrounding pressure on his length each time. “How does it feel?

  “Like nothing else,” Austin groaned, neck muscles straining. “There’s nothing else.”

  His declaration made her want to prove him wrong. Or maybe she needed a distraction to avoid feeling humbled. With the decision to stop thinking and experience, Polly grasped Austin’s hand and dragged it up her skirt, between her thighs where his palm conformed to her shape without hesitation, ripping a moan from her throat. “Th-there is something else.”

  Austin’s gaze turned intent, fixated on her face. “You need to fuck now, sweet?” There was nothing casual about his perusal of her body. It was predatory filth and it set Polly ablaze. His middle finger pushed at her entrance, through the barrier of her underwear. “Ah God, just set me loose with a yes. I will split the fucking headboard down the middle from bucking into this pussy.”

  Polly’s legs and hands shook, almost making her drop the belt. A scream of now clawed at her throat. She wanted to fall back on the bed and allow Austin to follow through on his words. But the new, persistent desire to rule both of their actions won out. “Almost.” She smoothed her fingers over his wrist and removed the secure grip he had on her wet center, moving sideways to put a foot of distance between them. “Almost.”

  Austin breathed a vile curse, falling forward and planting his fists on the mattress. His marred back lifted and plummeted in gr
eat, racking breaths. In the minimal light of the hotel room, his powerful body was majestic, not just for its superior form, but for all his many assets being tethered. By her.

  Polly shook out the belt still tucked in her grip and ventured back behind Austin. Her new position tensed his shoulders, his thighs, and ceased his breathing once again. His need bled into the air surrounding them, beautiful and terrifying all at once. Above all, it was undeniable.

  “Want,” he said, voice unrecognizable. “Need.”

  Static currents zinging and multiplying in her veins, Polly lifted the belt and snapped it down onto the tight flesh of Austin’s backside.

  Chapter Ten

  With the sting of the belt reverberating through Austin’s body, a brief moment ensued where he felt nothing at all. To some, that might be an alarming feeling, to feel absolutely zero, apart from the bite left by leather. People were adept at numbing themselves, after all. Pretending the wealth of negative forces in their world existed only in movies and television, when in fact they were more real than their positive counterparts. For Austin, having the constant flow of cognizance cease for a sparkling handful of seconds was a thing of unattainable dreams. It had never happened before, the total and utter blanking of his mind. The unawareness of his surroundings and ideas and ways out and mind reading and tricks.

  He’d found utopia.

  There was only one single thread that lit up like spun gold in the empty space, and it connected directly to Polly. His too-fast moment of nothing passed and…everything, dear God, everything, blew in like a flash storm and flooded him in no time. Drowning whatever had been present before her. Or before him. Because he wasn’t playing a part of hiding…for once, he’d been exposed. And she was still there.

  “—stin.” Polly’s voice. She sounded anxious, which brought his head up. “Austin.”

  “Present,” he murmured. “Mostly.”

  Austin felt, rather than saw, her body deflate. “I thought…are you—”

  “Again,” he interrupted, through clenched teeth. “If it pleases you.”

  A beat of silence ensued, shattered in seconds by the snapping of the belt. The quieting of his mind was more brief, but no less potent. Polly’s golden thread glowed brighter this time, anchoring him to her. He could hear her tiny whimpers, shuddering intakes of breath as she doled out the sweetest torture he could have devised. It was amazing to feel pain after being invincible so long. To feel a physical representation of what he’d caused in others. You deserve this…

  …but you’ll never deserve her. The effect on him, wrought by each carefully spaced slap of leather, became secondary to how it made Polly feel. He turned his head to observe her over his shoulder, swallowing a growl when the belt greeted his flesh.

  Her kneeling position had rucked her skirt high on her thighs, her rapturous expression leaving him no doubt that she was dripping wet in those panties. Let me at her. The shouting in his head roared back, louder and sharper than ever, making up for the silence she’d gifted him with. He welcomed it. Craved the clarity.

  She noticed him watching her, whatever she regarded on his face making her hand go limp, releasing the belt and letting it land with a thud on the soft carpet. “I don’t want to think anymore. Don’t want to think about why it feels so good. Just don’t let me thi—”

  “Done.” Austin rose and twisted, circling Polly’s waist with one arm and throwing her down on the bed, thanking Christ his pants were already down. His cock was the very essence of pain, full to the point of leaking onto the bedspread. The friction of a closed zipper would have masturbated him into coming by now, and that would have been a bloody crime against humanity, because Polly’s legs were spread, her pussy begging for rough treatment from his stiff, angry dick. “You don’t want to think, pretty Polly? Is that right?”

  She thrashed her head side to side on the pillow. “No. No more thinking.”

  Austin hummed a noise of sympathy as he reached beneath her skirt, whipping a pair of black lace panties down her legs. Wishing to immortalize the moment, he palmed Polly’s knees and slowly pushed them wide, revealing her naked pussy to himself for the first time. Her legs twitched in his grip, as if uncomfortable with being so blatantly exposed, but he only shoved them wider, drawing a cry from her teeth-abused lips. “Oh, you will be indulging me now, sweet. I’ve been mad to get a look at what you’ve denied me.” He groaned at the slickness coating her pink flesh. “Skirts, so many skirts,” Austin muttered, bending down to swipe his tongue from her puckered back entrance, all the way to her clit, where he sucked until she screamed his name. “I could’ve been pumping you full of hot come since day one, you cruel little girl.”

  “Do it now.” She struggled to free her knees, fingers stabbing into her hair and pulling. “Do it now.”

  In a reversal of what she’d done to him at the club, Austin lifted her blouse and stuffed the hem into her sobbing mouth. His groan rent the air as he fisted his cock and dragged it through her pussy, working his head into her tightness and predicting he’d have a tough time fitting through. Good. Good. He wanted nothing more than to make the same fucking impression she’d made on him. An impression he was too far gone with lust to attempt analyzing.

  Austin made a grab for his pants to extricate a condom and roll it down his cock, dipping his head for rough sucks of her pointed red nipples all the while. Clamping his lips down on her pebbled peaks, he drove himself to the back of her pussy.

  Austin’s ears went temporarily deaf, time slowing around him. No…them. Them. They were so securely joined, he couldn’t shift an inch without her moving with him. Having a profound reaction. He knew Polly screamed around the material in her mouth, saw her head thrown back, felt her thighs band his waist, but he couldn’t hear it over the incomprehensible silence in his head. His mind groped for a handhold on the golden thread leading to Polly, twisting it in an unyielding grip. Calm pervaded immediately, the volume of reality lifting to greet his ears.

  She was lifting her hips and whimpering his name, begging for movement. God, he needed to move, but self-preservation had kicked in, warning him that finding release in Polly would end him. Ruin him forever.

  Fuck it. I don’t care. Don’t care. I’m ruined without this.

  A need to provide pleasure struck him deep in the chest, like a molten arrow. Austin braced his hands on the headboard, reared his hips back and pounded into Polly’s hot, contracting pussy, stopping to growl in disbelief that one thrust had been enough to make her come. She arched on the bed beneath him, hands fisted and twisting in the bedclothes.

  Yes. Mine to satisfy.

  The headboard creaked in his fists as he slid partially from her body and fucked back in with a twist of his hips. “Legs back up.” When she jerked her limbs back up to his waist, he gave her a series of wet, slapping drives, allowing pressure to increase in his balls until it became unbearable, forcing him to slow with a moan of her name. By all that was unholy, she was a tight, liquid vise around him, but the wicked squeeze of her pussy was only half responsible for putting him on the verge of combustion. She was sin and beauty, her body undulating in time with his thrusts. Her chin was tilted toward the ceiling, as he’d pictured it that morning, eyes blind as she whispered yes, yes, yes. If he died tomorrow, it would be with that image on his mind, and he’d go with a smile.

  There’d been women. So many women. Names, faces, voices that probably cursed his name to this very day. At the best of times, none of those hazy faces had ever made him want to smile. None of them had ever inspired a sense of privilege. An irresistible call to duty. Fuck her. Gratify her. What she’d given him with the belt compared to nothing in his memory. For so long, he’d craved the opportunity to use every trick at his disposal to satisfy Polly. And he wouldn’t waste a second addicting her to his body. It was selfish. She would hate needing him. So be it. He couldn’t give up the brilliant woman who brought the silence.

  Austin loosened his spine, so his hips were pressing d
own onto Polly’s, but his back was still at an angle, his hands still clutching the headboard. He used his thighs to push her legs wide as possible, her knees touching the bed in a provocative split, and ground the base of his cock against her clit. His movements were slow, but hard, giving her no way to escape them. Oh, and she tried. The heels of her hands found his shoulders, pushing him away while she wailed at him to keep going.

  “Too much,” she cried out. “Oh God, don’t ever stop. Don’t stop.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” High on Polly’s approval, Austin turned his head and kissed the fingers curling into his shoulder, licked each individual one, increasing the pace of his grinds as he did so. He closed his eyes and focused on the little bud being rubbed by his heavy cock, his aching flesh so in need of relief. No. Can’t let it end. Make her need more. Make her always need more. Austin let go of the headboard, meshing their bodies together and—oh Christ—she reacted like a wildcat to the new position, all his body weight concentrated on her precious clit. Bump, grind, bump, grind.

  “Austin. Jesus…I’m g-going to…”

  He slowed his ministrations just a fraction, rasping the scruff of his evening beard against the side of her neck. Words flowed from him. Words he could pretend were being spoken because she needed to hear them to feel fulfilled, but it would have been a lie. Somewhere amid the storm, her approval had become a requirement for him. “Am I a good boy, Polly? Tell me. Tell me I was a good boy for your belt, so I can finish getting you off. All I want to do is get you off. ”

  She drew her knees higher, tweaking her hips beneath him, visibly overcome with the need to release. “Yes. You were…are. You’re a g-good b—”

  Austin bore down, shouting a curse when her fingernails landed on his back. A familiar sensation. But with Polly, it wasn’t unpleasant. “Go ahead.” They locked eyes. “Dig in. You know you want to.”