After Hours: (InterMix)

by Cara McKenna

  I fuck who I want, where and when and exactly how I want to.

  As he lowered his mouth to mine, gravity dissolved. My heart dropped to my feet and the room seemed to float, then the only force of nature left to obey was Kelly’s lips.

  A soft kiss for only a moment, firmer as his grip in my hair tightened.

  I shivered, wondering if this was how my sister had felt, all those times she kissed one of her terrible boyfriends, made one of her awful mistakes. If her mistakes felt half as good as Kelly’s mouth, I forgave her. Soft lips making callous suggestions. Three orderlies couldn’t have held me back.

  He released my head, pulled at my hips with both hands, drawing me close so our thighs touched. I had to crane my neck to keep kissing him, and it made me feel small. It made him seem huge. His tongue was firm, slick, his fingers rough and restless. My pussy tightened, hot with impatience, squeezing every last scrap of rational thought from my head. I held his biceps, grabbed on to that thick, locked muscle like my life depended on it.

  I was tilting, somehow, my weight in his arms. My head was on the pillow, back on the covers, Kelly’s thigh between mine, and his mouth plundering. I held his face, stroked his neck as we kissed—as he kissed me, more accurately. The bristle of his buzzed hair was soft, interrupted here and there by smooth furrows of scar tissue. I wanted to memorize every cut and bruise and hard swell of his body, to possess that knowledge with the accuracy of a map and pore over it in my memory on lonely nights.

  His other knee moved, joining its twin between my legs. I should have been offended, but all I wanted was for him to lower his body and let me feel what I might have stirred between his thighs. Or what taking advantage of me might have stirred—that was how it felt, everything smacking more of coercion than seduction.

  It felt like something I’d lament come morning, an impulsively downed shot that offered reckless exhilaration chased by hours of regret. It stirred the curiosity gnawing at me. I stroked his shoulders, the muscle pinched to hard crests from how he was braced above me. My touch was telling him I was okay with this. My body was telling us both that, a million invisible hands reaching for him, wanting him, welcoming him. Instincts warred in my gut, the urge to fuck trading parries with the urge to protect my heart.

  No, not my heart. No.

  My pride, only. I was in danger of getting my ego bruised, not my heart broken. My pride wasn’t such a guarded commodity, and the chance to explore this man’s body was a tempting trade. My pride had been fine for ages, but I hadn’t felt desire like this in years—I’d thought my capacity for it had faded with the rest of puberty’s insanity. Kelly’s touch made me feel young and dumb again, excited and awake. Wanted, no matter how fleeting or selfish his needs might prove.

  He kissed me slower, deeper, filthy as fucking, and lowered his hips to mine. Unbidden, my hand tugged at his shirt. He let me peel it up and over his head, then stripped my sweater away, tossing it to the floor. Dark sounds rumbled from his throat as he claimed my mouth, moans and grunts brewing. My fingers curled against his bare back.

  He’ll fuck like an animal. I’d never been with a guy who was like that. I’d always picked safe guys, generous but civilized in bed. And I’d always looked forward to their final sprints toward release, for those frantic, impolite moments of driving flesh and fevered groans. Maybe he wouldn’t be generous, but I bet fucking Kelly would be nothing but frantic, driving flesh and beastly sounds. Maybe he’d give me memories worth pleasuring myself to for the next six months. Or maybe not.

  I freed my mouth and gulped a breath. Kelly went still above me, waiting.

  All I managed was a croaky, “Well.”

  “Well.”

  I found the wherewithal to inch myself back, pushing up on my elbows. “Where are my roses?”

  I hadn’t realized I needed it so badly, but when he smiled, my heart unraveled.

  He crawled a bit closer, and spoke against my lips. “Brought you something better, if you want it.”

  “You really are shameless.”

  “You want this, same as me.”

  “Want what?”

  Kelly left me to stand beside the bed. Laces were tugged loose, shoes and socks kicked aside before I could realize what was happening. A freed button, a lowered zipper, and he pushed his jeans to the floor. As I sat up I stole only a glance, just enough to know his boxer briefs were black and his cock wanted out. He looked big and hard and obscene, and getting caught staring would’ve felt incriminating. I studied his bare chest instead, his chiseled belly. I memorized the shapes of his shoulders and hips, drank in the finest, most masculine body that’d ever been offered to me. I took a crisp mental snapshot of the very big mistake I was about to make, and swallowed.

  He stepped out of his pants, and in seconds his weight was bucking the bed once more, his bossy hands urging me to lie back.

  He’ll take a mile, some goody-goody in my head warned. Give this man an inch and in a blink he’d be halfway across the county and already forgetting me, just some newbie nurse he vaguely remembered nailing during her first week on the job.

  But he felt too good. Sinful, the way his warm palms stroked my shoulders, the way he wedged his knees between my thighs and loomed over me. His body was tense in the glow of my reading lamp, at once heavy and lean like some rare predator, every inch of skin and tendon and muscle seeming to thrum with life and impulses. Reflexes.

  He braced one hand at my side, and trailed the knuckles of the other down my arm, up my ribs and along the edge of my breast. I held my breath, flesh tightening under his caress. He traced the curve with his thumb then closed me in his heat, squeezing softly. His gaze jumped to my face and snatched the air from my lungs.

  Tell me I’m beautiful.

  Kelly’s hand slipped from my breast and he leaned in close. “Turn over.”

  The words sounded ominous in his deep, dark voice, but I did as he said. A strong hand settled me against him on our sides, his chest melting my back muscles like butter. I felt his cock just below my butt, hard and hot through his underwear and my pajamas. He stroked my thigh, kneaded it, then coaxed it up.

  His mouth brushed the back of my neck; soft, slow kisses fogging my brain so thoroughly I didn’t protest as his hand crept closer, closer. His palm slid over my mound, cupping me, the other hand tucked beneath my ribs. Something in his touch told me to trust him, so I let him hold me, feeling warm and fragile and protected, a captured bird.

  He told me things without uttering a syllable. The kisses behind my ear said, You’ll give me anything I want tonight. The palm heating my sex added, And anything you don’t offer, I’ll take. Promises, not warnings. I’d always been a girl whose spine stiffened the second she felt a man trying to sweet-talk or pressure her, but not with Kelly. Had to be the voice, or maybe the hard length of him pressed to my ass. One dose of Kelly and I went docile, welcoming the surrender.

  He plucked at my hem, and without thought, I helped him take my shirt off. There was cool air on my bare skin, then the hot whisper of Kelly’s lips across my shoulder. I shut my eyes as he freed the bow of my pajamas, slackened the waistband with a tug.

  You hadn’t even kissed him twenty minutes ago, and now you’re going to let him touch you? Down there?

  Fucking right.

  He slid his hand inside, the tips of his fingers tracing me through my underwear. I reeled. His hips shifted, cock pressing harder at the juncture between my thighs.

  What if he wants actual sex?

  That question grounded me. Surely he did want actual sex, and I wasn’t on anything and I didn’t have condoms. Even if he’d come prepared, I’d have to tell him no. That was too far, and as good as these horrible mistakes felt, I’d have to find out what happened when Kelly Robak didn’t get what he wanted, how he wanted it.

  What if he gets mad?

&nb
sp; Better to find out now than in a few minutes, before I gave him too much implicit permission.

  “I can’t go all the way tonight,” I murmured. Oh Jesus, I sounded like a scared-shitless high schooler in the back of some horny upperclassman’s car.

  Kelly said nothing, just kept whispering things with his hips and fingers. You’ll go where I tell you to go, they informed me. I imagined the worst, of his pressing the issue and my not telling him to stop. Us, as we were now, but my underwear gone, my body ready, Kelly pushing his shorts down and sliding inside me. The breaths heating my neck would deepen to grunts, the fidgeting of his hips speeding to thrusts.

  I wanted all those things as badly as I feared them. I wanted to know what he sounded like as the need mounted, what he’d say as he chased his pleasure. A man so in control, coming undone. I didn’t know which of us I distrusted more, on this bed.

  He made me curious—me, the girl who’d always planted her feet firmly in place when the other kids wanted to race after trouble. I was in my sister’s shoes now. Shoes that felt like roller skates, bad ideas like magnets and me dipped in steel. I’d glide right into whatever Kelly wanted, I could feel it. And I hated myself for it.

  But you can’t fuck him unprotected.

  He’d be the one fucking, silly girl.

  Still. If that happened . . . it’d feel awful, come the dawn. I’d feel foolish and reckless, and any pleasure that giving in might offer, it’d sour to days or weeks of disappointment, cast a shadow over my working relationship with this man, maybe even wreck the professional trust I’d already invested in him.

  “Where’d you go?” Kelly whispered.

  I’d turned still and stiff, I realized, brittle with regrets I hadn’t even earned yet. “I’m right here.”

  He kissed my ear, and when he spoke it was like he’d stepped inside my mind. “Not all of you.”

  “You scare me, a little.”

  Another soft kiss. “What about me?”

  Your intentions. And the way you garble my intuition. “I don’t know. You’re just more . . .”

  “More what?” Another kiss, another hot exhalation.

  I spoke from some thoughtless, honest place. “I don’t trust myself around you. This way.”

  “There’s something between us,” he murmured. “We’re just doing what it’s asking.”

  “It feels like I’m just doing what you ask.”

  “And you don’t like that?” As he said it, his fingers traced my lips through my panties, cock pressing close. Heat flashed, dizzying me.

  I swallowed a moan, scrabbling for words. “I like it now. I’m afraid I’ll wish I hadn’t done so much in the morning. It feels good, but it won’t last.”

  “That’s what pleasure is.”

  Indeed. That was what made much of it decadent. Every one-too-many cocktails a person downed, every cookie that wrecked a diet, every bad-idea boyfriend taken by my mother or sister . . . all just pleasures given in to, consequences be damned. But I hated consequences. I’d spent my entire life searching for calm in the fallout of other people’s shitty impulses.

  Push him away, my brain said.

  Fuck him, my body begged. All these years you’ve wasted cleaning up after other people’s parties. Quit reaching for the dustpan.

  Kelly slid my pajama bottoms over my hips. Thoughtlessly, I shifted to let him pull them to my thighs, my knees, then I kicked them away myself, all those fresh chances to tell him to stop heaped on the growing pile.

  His hand was on my belly and slipping lower, lower. His cock was against my ass, insistent. I felt his knee nudging my legs, and I did as it said, raising the top one. He moved behind me, adjusting his erection, pressing it deeper between my thighs. My breath was shallow, cheeks fevered, lips swollen. Drunk again. Drunk on Kelly.

  “Jesus,” I muttered.

  “Got a better name you can say, if you want.”

  Before I could reply, his hand slipped inside my underwear, robbing me of words. His fingers tickled my curls, warmed my skin. They glanced my clitoris and I bucked. It was too much and nowhere near enough. His breath steamed hot on my neck, and with a low, sharp moan, he stroked my clit. I gasped.

  “Good,” he murmured. He withdrew his hand but only to wet his fingertips at his mouth. Then they were between my legs again, hot and slick, teasing me with explicit caresses. I groaned, imagining his tongue. His cock. He was imagining the same, I knew. I could feel his hips moving, rubbing his thick length against my inner thighs with steady thrusts.

  I’d never wanted a man so intensely. So simply. His flesh inside mine, two greedy bodies taking what they wanted from each other. I imagined him above me, working. That harsh face, cruel with arousal, that voice hijacked by the sounds of his nearing release. My own climax was building against his quickening touch. I fondled my breast, toying with my nipple to double the sensations.

  I was close, so close, and Kelly could tell. His hips bumped my backside again and again, clothed cock fucking my thighs. He grunted behind my ear with each impact, and it was his voice that did me in. The orgasm swallowed me whole, drowning me in perfect, violent heat; too much, way too much. I grabbed Kelly’s wrist, forcing his hand higher, the pleasure so intense it hurt.

  I heard myself panting, gulping air.

  I heard Kelly murmur, “Good girl,” and he kissed my jaw. I let his wrist go and the ball of his hand brushed my throbbing clit with a jolt. His fingers dipped lower, parting me like water. I blushed, shocked by how wet I was.

  That’s been permission enough for too many pushy men, I reminded myself. But his fingers delved deeper and a lust-heavy sigh in my hair erased the worries.

  “That’s where I want to be,” he whispered. He stroked my clit with his slick fingers, then slipped back inside with a moan. “You want me there, too, don’t you?”

  I wouldn’t lie, but I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t take this chance to reassert some boundaries. “I want you,” I admitted. “But not tonight. Not that far.”

  “I heard you the first time.” Not a jot of irritation in his tone—just a fact. His hand left my pussy to fumble behind my butt. Suddenly I could feel him, his unmistakably bare cock between my thighs, pressed to the damp crotch of my panties. Then he was touching me again, warm fingers penetrating with slippery suggestion, erection stroking me through the cotton. He spoke right against my neck, lips tickling my skin. “Feel that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Feel how bad I want you?”

  He pressed roughly against me, a thrust that would’ve made us lovers if not for my last stitch of clothing. I answered with a little moan.

  “You’re so wet,” he whispered. He rubbed my clit, letting his length tease my lips with the friction of wet cotton. I felt the flex of his hips as he thrust, muscle as hard as his dick. “I can’t wait to feel you.” His body sped at the suggestion, alongside my pulse. I hadn’t had many lovers, and none had ever been able to do this—to make me this crazed. Certainly not to make me come without instruction or assistance. But his fingers read me like Braille, and in no time at all I felt a second climax building against his touch.

  Fuck, I wanted him. I wanted him above me, those strong hips spreading my thighs. I wanted to see him—his face and chest and cock as he took me. But not tonight. Not tonight.

  “I’m gonna make you come,” he said. “Tell me.”

  “You are.” Oh, he was. His bossy words alone had me close.

  “I’m what?”

  “You’re going to make me come.”

  A smug hmmm at my ear, wet fingertips at my clit, hungry cock begging for entrance. He pulled my panties aside. I froze. But it was his fingers that taunted my folds, not his cock.

  “So tempting,” he muttered.

  Indeed. Just one bad decision and I’d be abl
e to feel his hard flesh inside me.

  “Someday you’ll give yourself to me,” he said matter-of-factly. “Let me have whatever I want, do whatever I say.”

  It would’ve been a pretty pompous announcement if I hadn’t suspected it was completely true.

  “I’ll have you pleading for my cock.” He pumped me with his fingers, hips mirroring the rhythm. “Can’t wait to hear you beg.” He let the crotch of my panties go, slipping his fingers back down the front to rub my clit again, erection taunting my swollen lips. I imagined him rolling me onto my stomach, taking me from above and behind at once.

  I’d never wanted someone this way before, never wanted to be dominated. I’d always seen strong or pushy men as dangerous creatures to be kept at a distance. But with Kelly I wanted to see the beast set free to take what it wanted, exactly how it wanted it.

  Behind me, he changed. His thrusts were for him now, designed for his pleasure and not mine. He was that thing I coveted most during sex, a man losing control. One second’s massive lapse and he could have me—slide his thick cock between my slick lips and prove himself a liar, and me a fool. Do it, I thought.

  He moaned, a long, desperate, needy sound. His fingers abandoned my sex, a gruff hand angling my hips so his dick rubbed my clit with every thrust.

  “Fuck.”

  “That’s right,” he muttered. “That’s right. Lemme feel you come.”

  The position triggered a stitch in my side and his fingertips dug hard into my hip, promising yet more bruises. But I felt my body obeying, the next orgasm drawing me tighter, hotter, closer and closer against his punishing cock. His chest pushed hard into my back, tilting me so I had to brace myself on my elbow. He was half on top of me now, but fuck, he was hot.

  I wrenched my neck to steal a glimpse of that mean, scarred-up face, and I was done. Those irises like ice, red-black blood and white stitches, lamplight making a golden halo of his hair. I turned back and shut my eyes tight, came against his cock, trembling, shuddering, moaning.