After Hours: (InterMix)

by Cara McKenna

  “Huh.”

  He shrugged and stole a slice of my bacon. “So I dunno why am I how I am. Why I didn’t go rotten. I should’ve, probably. Any subconscious choices I made to be this way, though, I made them out of anger. And spite. Like I refused to turn into either of those guys. Just don’t go telling yourself I’m some saint. Just a stubborn son of a bitch with real shitty role models.”

  “Noted.”

  “What about you?” he asked, forking eggs onto a slice of toast. “Who made you the way your are?”

  “The way I am?”

  “Yeah. How’d you end up like a rabid raccoon, scrapping with your sister’s loser boyfriend?”

  “I don’t know. I basically raised her. It must be some maternal-type instinct.”

  “What’s your mom like? She still around?”

  “She’s around, back near Dearborn. I don’t talk to her very often. She was never built for motherhood, but she kept food in the fridge and a roof over our heads. She worked really hard. I can’t fault her for that.”

  “Bet you can fault her a few other things, though.”

  Yes, yes I could. “Doesn’t help anything, dwelling too much.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “He was never really in the picture. They reconciled when I was little, for maybe a year. Long enough for Amber to show up, then he took off again. Like a kid who begs for a pet and promises to take care of it, then changes their mind the second it stops being adorable. The whole family thing was a passing novelty to him.” My throat felt tight and sore, talking about it, and I had to work to swallow a bite of toast. The sensation surprised me. I’d thought I was numb to that old resentment.

  “Where is he now?”

  “Last I knew, he was living in Cleveland. Some kind of menial, warehouse-type job. He was never abusive or a criminal or anything, just . . . I dunno. Irresponsible. Like it didn’t register that he had a family unless he got it in his head that he was going to suddenly turn up and be Superdad, like a TV father. He showed up on Christmas once, with bikes for both of us. Amber was about eight and he got her a tricycle. I was thirteen and mine was pink, with streamers. He was clueless. We were just some project he’d pick up when it suited him, then he’d lose interest again.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Amber got a bike out of it, at least. A pink one with streamers.” I smiled dryly.

  “I’d say woe is us, but I don’t know anybody who had a great childhood.”

  “I’ve known a few, but they all had other problems.”

  “Amen.”

  We were quiet for a couple of minutes, finishing our breakfasts. Kelly had to help with mine, polishing off my bacon and eggs. Without a word, we carried our plates to the sink and he rinsed them. He took my hand in his damp one and led me silently down the hall, back to his bedroom.

  I lay across the rumpled covers, resting my head on my hands, flexing my feet. Kelly stripped down to his shorts, then joined me with his fingers laced atop his belly. After a minute he shifted, propping himself on his elbow to stare down at me.

  “Yes?”

  He brushed stray strands of hair from my face and without a word, he moved to his knees between my legs, gently pushing my thighs open. I saw recognition in his eyes as my skirt slipped up and my bare pussy greeted him. All the laziness left his expression, intensity hardening his features and voice.

  “Get me ready.”

  I touched his neck with one hand and clasped his already-stiffening cock in the other through his shorts. He shoved them down, clearly in no mood for waiting. He pumped his hips, fucking my hand, and with a dozen thrusts he was hard and thick, and my awareness had sunk low in my body, heat building between my thighs. He knocked my hand aside, wrestling his shorts the rest of the way off. My lips parted. His naked body was fascinating in the daylight. I memorized it, proud to know the secrets that lay behind Kelly’s drab gray Larkhaven uniform and stony professional persona.

  I peeled away my shirt and got my bra off as he leaned over to grab a condom from the side table and sheathed himself. Then all at once, my impatient lover froze, cock in hand. His gaze softened, wandering up and down my body.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just lemme look at you a minute.” He seemed caught between two sets of emotions, hesitance playing tug-of-war with his usual greediness. He looked at me like we’d never met before, like he was trying to figure out what this woman was doing on his bed.

  The moment passed and his roaming gaze steeled. He braced himself on one arm and guided his crown to my lips.

  As he drove inside, everything was different. I wasn’t wet yet, and his cock felt pleasantly intrusive with only the condom’s lube to ease the way. I welcomed the pressure, a contrast to the accessibility I sensed, staring into his eyes.

  He was still taking what he wanted, but what he wanted felt more tender than yesterday, more personal. His wrists pressed tight to my ribs, arms locked, thrusts deep and slow. His eyes were steady, but softer. Sadder, or something. Something that passed for vulnerable in Kelly’s impassive emotional repertoire.

  His body was as powerful as ever, looking as strong and exciting and cut as it did in my fantasies. He owned me in smooth, explicit strokes. But it was the noises he made that had me aching. The tight grunt each time his hips met mine. There was helplessness in that plaintive sound. Something that said, Let me in, a plea trying to pass for an order. I hugged my legs to his waist and welcomed him to take what he needed.

  He didn’t say or do anything to address my pleasure, and for some reason, it was incredibly hot. This strong, greedy man needed to come—needed me. A peevish voice said I should feel overlooked, but all I felt was wanted.

  And I knew implicitly that I could touch myself if I felt like it, no permission needed, come when I was ready. But excited as I was, I simply wanted to watch him. I might never again have a chance to see him this way.

  Powerful and rough . . . and needy. Always a contradiction.

  He found the rhythm he craved, taking me with swift, rough thrusts and grunting in time. Still, he didn’t offer to get me off. He must’ve felt as I did that this was somehow about him. Maybe it was just another facet to his role for these two days, a more subtle flavor of selfish. No games or threats, just him using my body to take what he wanted, when and how he wanted it.

  I stroked his soft, short hair. I rubbed the nape of his neck, his shoulders and back and arms, admiring the man who’d given me the best sex of my life. The most intense and unsustainable sex I’d likely ever have. I relished the temporariness of it. It made every stroke and thrust and kiss more forbidden and fleeting, knowing all of this would be nothing more than memories in a few hours’ time. I might never feel this again, but I could go forth knowing that once upon a time, I’d had mind-blowing, wild-animal sex with a huge, cut, bruised-up beast of a man. I could move on, knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that I wasn’t missing out on anything.

  Kelly moaned. “Fuck. I’m gonna come. I’m gonna come.”

  I held his shoulders. “Good.”

  “Oh. Fuck.” The climax seemed to have crept up on him, as though he weren’t ready for the sex to be done, but helpless to stop it. His body slammed into mine for a dozen frantic strokes, then every muscle locked, cock pushed as deep as it could go. Four times he clenched, each punctuated with a groan, then I felt his weight on me as his body softened.

  He shoved his arms under my back, pressing his face against my throat. He took a long, ragged inhalation and let it out in a sigh. I grazed my fingertips up and down his back, secretly savoring the moment.

  I assumed the sex and the early hour would leave him soft, in both cock and demeanor, but as the haze lifted, I saw mean Kelly shining in his eyes. He left the bed and stripped the condom, never dropping my gaze. I gasped as he grabbed my ankle
s and pulled me across the bed, until my butt was at the mattress’s edge. He dropped to his knees between my legs, pushing them wider. I propped myself up on straight arms.

  Everything felt intensely real, in that instant. The morning light slipping through the blinds was warm, draping his shoulders in golden stripes, illuminating the dust motes drifting in the air.

  He slid his fingers over my mound and fisted the hair there, rough enough to pull a little yelp from my lungs. He held me as he might steady my head while his cock owned my mouth, the gesture echoing all that aggression while promising precisely the opposite act. With his other thumb and finger he spread my lips, and he breathed me in.

  “You ever been fucked by a man’s mouth?”

  The way he said it, I knew he wasn’t talking about any kind of oral I’d experienced. I’d been teased and spoiled and serviced by guys’ mouths, but no, I hadn’t been fucked.

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  His tongue delved deep, firm and wet and filthy. My legs bucked. His stubble rasped my most tender flesh as his nose brushed my clit. Another lap, and another, savoring before he penetrated again. His thumb slid up and down my outer lips, doubling the sensations. I felt wet and vital, as ripe and slippery as a mango and decadent as a steak, and Kelly feasted. He clutched my curls tight and I wished I could return the gesture, if his hair were longer. Instead I drew my nails along his scalp, and he replied with a soft scrape of his teeth over my clit. I moaned, as shocked as I was aroused.

  His fingers abandoned their teasing. He made a spearhead of them and eased it inside me, freeing his mouth. I could feel his wedding band each time it glanced my lips.

  “Think about my cock,” he ordered.

  I shut my eyes. I conjured every thick, pulsing inch he’d fed me the night before, and imagined that was what filled me now. He’d feel even better. Deeper, harsher, and his face would be above mine, eyes staring me down. Or maybe I wouldn’t be allowed to see his face at all, just hear his primal groans and grunts behind me, as he took me on my hands and knees. He suckled my clit and suddenly I didn’t care how it happened. My very life depended on our fucking again. Soon. And hard. The position didn’t matter. All that mattered was his body pounding into mine. Rough sex, rough hands, rough voice. Rough Kelly, taking what he wanted.

  His fingers were making me crazy, a hot, dirty reminder of the thing that felt even better than this. “I need your cock.”

  His mouth left me. “Do you then?”

  “Please.”

  And he was on his feet, grasping my ankles and hauling my legs back onto the bed.

  As he climbed between my knees, he was hard again, like he’d never come. A condom materialized from the bedside table, and he looked me dead in the eyes as he rolled it down his cock.

  He moved to my side, sitting up with his arms braced behind him. “Straddle me.”

  I got one leg over and he did the rest, jerking me down, entering me hard with a sharp pang.

  “Oh fuck.” I grabbed the headboard, rushing to keep up with the motions his hands were demanding.

  “Ride me. Hard.”

  “Jesus, hang on.”

  He eased up enough for me to find my way, negotiate the angles, get a rhythm going. When his bossy pulls resumed, I welcomed them. He could tell me what he wanted, beg for it with his hands, but for once I was in control of the sex. How deep, how fast.

  “Yeah.” He shut his eyes, leaning back. “Fuck me.”

  I slowed nearly to a halt. “Say please.”

  His lips quirked, eyes opening. “Please.”

  “That’s better. And fuck you how, exactly?”

  “Rough. And fast.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Those bullying hands forced my motions for a few thrusts, long enough that I couldn’t care about teasing him anymore. What he wanted felt too good. When he stopped dictating, I kept up the rhythm and intensity he’d established.

  “Yeah. Fuck me.” His eyes were half-closed, lips and nose pink, expression drunken.

  Charged by the moment, I held his face, cupped his ears and dug my thumbs into his cheeks, drawing his lips back just enough to expose a glimmer of teeth. I raked my nails over his scalp and felt him vibrate with a deep, low moan.

  “Rough?” I asked, filled with dark mischief.

  He nodded. “Yeah. Rough as you can handle.”

  And I hit him. Slapped him with an open palm right across his face and jerked his head sideways.

  I didn’t even know what made me do it, if it was anger or lust or blind impulse. But it felt good. He blinked for a second, gray eyes bleary.

  He reached behind to clasp the headboard with both hands, gripping so tight a vein stood out along his triceps. “Again. Harder.”

  My slap landed with a noise like a sound effect and left a pink mark rising beside his mouth.

  “Good. Now fuck me.”

  I did. I fucked him so fast and rough it felt like we were fighting, like my hips were possessed by a demon, like my life depended on it. He kneaded my ass, spanked me, spurred my motions with harsh pulls and growled commands—faster, harder, use my fucking cock.

  I adjusted my thighs so my clit rubbed his base each time I eased my hips back. The fight-fucking was hot, but the contact was breathtaking. I was nearing the edge within seconds, the feedback loop of friction and conflict and the sight of Kelly’s body and face speeding to a blur as the pleasure boiled up inside me.

  “Fuck, you feel good.” I started laughing before I got all the words out, drunk on the sex.

  Had I even ever had sex before Kelly? Like I’d thought I’d gone swimming, splashing in the bathtub, but now here I was dropped in the middle of the fucking ocean. I wrapped my arms around his neck, ignoring his hands’ orders. My clit was calling the shots, and I ground against him in tight, honed motions, doing exactly what the pleasure demanded. I cupped Kelly’s head and let him hear every ugly noise the feeling squeezed from my lungs, every whimper and moan and grunt. His fingertips whispered up and down my back, hips tensing in time with my rhythm.

  “Good. Use me.”

  “Jesus, Kelly. Keep talking.”

  He put his lips to my ear. “Ride my cock. Wreck yourself. Feel how fucking hard you make me, and remember it every goddamn time we pass each other on the ward.”

  “Kel.”

  “Think about this every night before you go to sleep, and imagine me doing the same. Wishing to hell my hand felt even half as good as your cunt.”

  That did it. Of all the dangerous thoughts, that one tipped me—the idea that Kelly might miss me, after our sweat dried and Saturday dawned.

  My body turned frantic, a writhing knot of legs and arms and fingers whose only purpose was to master Kelly.

  “Good. Good. Come on that cock, girl.”

  “Fuck.” I was dizzy from wanting. The pleasure was a hook inside me, linked to some chain winching tighter, tighter, tighter. Then—

  “Yes. Good.” Kelly’s voice somewhere, above me or below, inside me. I was trembling, moaning, quaking in his lap and pawing at his arms. I came like an exorcism, the harshest, most violent, barbed pleasure drawn through me and ripped back out, until I was crumpled against his chest, shaking.

  He was stroking my hair, kissing my ear. If not for the thrumming pulse of his cock inside me, he’d have felt impossibly tender.

  “Good,” he whispered, and cupped my head.

  I let myself stay that way, panting, my chest slippery against his.

  “Whoa,” I finally mumbled.

  I felt a laugh I couldn’t hear and smiled, unseen.

  “That was fucking sexy.”

  “Oh my God.” I sat up straight, not caring how feral I must’ve looked. Let him see what he did to me.

  He
smoothed my hair from my face, traced my jaw and skimmed his fingers down my throat, collarbone, breasts, waist. “Nobody’s fucked me that good in ages.”

  I laughed. “I didn’t even get you off.”

  “You will. Unless you broke your hip or something.”

  I shifted in his lap. “Creaky, not broken.”

  “Good,” he said, expression darkening, hands beginning to tug again.

  “Tell me what you want.”

  “Just what you were doing. Just fuck me.” His gaze was nailed to the space between us, thighs tensing in time with my motions, deepening the sex. In no time at all, I could feel him losing control. It spurred my own need to be in charge, to own his pleasure in retaliation for the way it felt he’d been owning mine since that night he’d forced my orgasms in my room.

  “You close, Kel?”

  “Fuck yes. Don’t stop.”

  I stopped.

  Kelly swore, grasped my thighs roughly to urge the motions, but I locked my muscles.

  “Beg me,” I said with a smile.

  “Fuck, please.”

  “Please what?”

  “Make me come.” He looked me dead in the eyes, and shot me a crazed, smarmy, powerless smile. Through his teeth he hissed, “Please.”

  “Like this?” I asked, rocking forward and back, slower than he needed.

  “You fucking know how I want it.”

  I quit my taunting, settling him deep inside me and moving in quick strokes.

  He kneaded my hips. “Yeah. Like that.”

  Pride rippled through me. I knew how to please this hard, unreadable man. I was halfway to taming him.

  As I rode him I ran my nails through his hair, stroked his shoulders, watched his face turn from mean to needy to some pleasurable twin of pain. When his flushed lips parted, I knew he was losing it.