by Tessa Bailey
His admission cut the leash on something wild inside of her. Frantic for a more substantial connection with the man staring down at her like he could suck in his final breath at any moment, River wedged her hands between them, unbuttoning Vaughn’s jeans. Heavy lids came down to conceal his eyes, that stubbled jaw going slack. “Do you have a—”
“In my pocket.” Vaughn’s eyes blazed open. “Wrap it up this time, you understand? I need about ten years of fucking you without a break. Just want to slide right up inside my woman’s pussy and remind the back of it what my tip feels like.” He slipped a hand between River’s thighs, twisting his hand in her panties and tearing them off. “Mmmm. You kept it warm for me.”
“Yes.” Lord, she’d missed the way he spoke to her. The way no one had ever dared, as if they were two objects put on this earth for the sole purpose of providing pleasure, giving them permission to touch, talk, move how they wanted. With frantic fingers, she delved into his pocket to locate the condom, holding it between her teeth as she unzipped his pants, whimpering and sobbing the whole time.
The muscles in Vaughn’s arms, neck, and chest flexed, his eyes squeezed closed, his mouth chanting the word hurry, again and again. River thought he would drive himself inside her the moment she’d seen to their protection—she needed him to—
but he took her by surprise, sliding off the bed’s edge and positioning his mouth just above her damp femininity, hovering there as he perused her beneath half-closed lids.
River lifted her hips with a needy sound. “Please.”
“Stop that begging,” he growled. “I’m doing this right, begging for you this time around.” His stiffened tongue dragged through her folds. “Asking you to please let me ram my cock into this pretty flesh. Need it. Need you. Need you so bad.”
Already, the high, inner section of her thighs was beginning to spasm, but Vaughn must have felt the tremors, because he pinned her limbs onto the bed. “Y-yes,” she cried out through clenched teeth. “Yes, you can have me.”
She clapped a hand over her mouth to stop from screaming when Vaughn’s tongue began to flick against her clit relentlessly, making it swell above the deep, resonating buzz of lust. “Love everything about this pussy. My too-tight second home,” he said, laying a hot, tongue kiss over her sensitive nub, before rising above River and planting a hand on the mattress. A gruff breath heaved past Vaughn’s lips as he thrust into her, his foul curse coloring the air. “And you…you’re my first home, Riv. Always have been,” he said shakily. “But I’m about to demolish you.”
Reunion. Her mind and body synched for the first time in years. She gasped for air and felt her lungs fill to a capacity she’d forgotten them capable of. The evidence of their irrevocable attraction pulsed between her legs, stretching flesh that remembered him, craved him. Thrills raced up her middle, starting at the point he ended and River began, although that line blurred and vanished when Vaughn dragged her hips to the bed’s edge. She expected their first time in four years to be fast and hard, but Vaughn’s heated expression told her he had other plans.
When Vaughn knelt on the floor, he took River with him, holding her against the mattress drop-off until only the tip of his huge erection remained inside her. And then he let go, allowing River to slip down and impale herself with a close-mouthed scream.
Vaughn’s head fell back, sensual mouth opening on a long, vile fuuuuck. “I could have done so much more with all those hours together, Riv. I think about how I missed out on taking you in so many different positions. God, all the ways I could have banged you if I’d just had some patience.” His hips ground in an up and back pattern beneath her, creating a sweet sizzle in her clit as his body massaged her at the deepest possible point. “It was all about getting inside you, wearing you out, slapping my balls up against that schoolgirl ass. I still want to, don’t I? I’d like to flip you over and get my nut, but I’m a man now. And you’re going to be treated like a woman on my watch. Say my name if you understand me.”
“Vaughn,” she breathed, widening her thighs and attempting to ride him, but big hands on her backside kept her seated and still. “Vaughn. Vaughn.”
“That’s the only name you’ll ever say on the way to an orgasm.”
River’s nod was frantic, her teeth beginning to chatter, courtesy of the desire grabbing hold of her nervous system, of every part of her. With that silent agreement, Vaughn surged up, positioning her bottom just beneath the edge of the mattress, hooking his arms beneath her knees. Then he began to drill into her slowly. A nasty, yet unhurried entering of her body. A torturous slide out. The mind-blowing journey back to her stopping point. The hot press of his balls against the crease of her backside. “Oh…faster, please,” River sobbed. “Too long. It’s been too long.”
“What did I say about that begging? It’s my goddamn turn,” Vaughn reminded her hoarsely, craning his neck to suck a pebbled nipple between his lips. And when he spoke again, his gaze was fastened between her spread legs. “Can I have this pussy for myself again? Please, River? Give it back to your buck for safe keeping.”
A shudder drove through her like a hundred mile an hour wind. The word yes bounced up and down on her tongue, but it wouldn’t come out. Some shred of self-preservation begged her not to make the almighty decision when her body was on fire. And it was. She was engulfed by a blaze that had never really gone out, but had been renewed even hotter than before.
It was clear from the inferno reflecting back in Vaughn’s eyes that he didn’t appreciate her hesitation. The pace of his thrusts grew more biting, more insistent, his flesh entering her with hard slaps. “My baby doll needs more persuading, does she?” He added a twist of his hips to the sensuous pattern in which he drove into River’s body. There was a stiff set to his jaw, but those brown eyes were pleading and desperate, calling to the organ in her chest. “Please, oh God, please. I can’t live on memories anymore.” He fell forward, planting his sweat-dappled face against her neck. “I’ve hated my cock. I’ve abused it, because it wasn’t making you come. I’ve been so rough with it, holding off until a single thought of you could make me bust in my pants. It’s been my enemy.” His rush of breath slithered through her hair. “Because it wasn’t here where it was supposed to be, satisfying these dirty little needs I created in you. I did, didn’t I? Made a good girl dirty?”
“Yes,” she wailed up at the ceiling. During Vaughn’s speech, the pumps of his hips had lost their rhythm, but River’s pulse still accommodated the erratic beats, matching it, made for it. “You made me dirty.”
His answering growl was accompanied by the last vestige of his control slipping. River felt the snap, felt the impact of restraint being lost. He began thrusting into her so hard the upper half of her body bowed back, hands fisting in her own hair. She could feel the rebounding of her breasts with every pounding of Vaughn’s body, and that sexual hyperawareness was heaven, earth, and everything in between. Especially when Vaughn’s teeth raked down the center of her body, from her cleavage, downward.
“Oh. Oh God,” River gasped, feeling her loins tighten and quiver. “Yes.”
When Vaughn forced them both fully up onto the bed, the gravitational press of his body robbed River of lucid thought. As if every component of their beings craved contact, their left hands met and held above River’s head. “This is where I’d turn you over and fuck anything I want to hear out of your mouth, isn’t it?” His right hand slid between their married hips, the pad of his thumb giving her clit the attention it craved. “This kitty likes when you’re on all fours, doesn’t it? You could never get that ass up in the air fast enough. Fuck, the way you used to look at me over your shoulder. Come get it, big daddy.” He broke off on a growl, releasing the hand he’d pinned above her head in order to grip her leg. “Next time. This time I’m begging to get back between these thighs. Permanently. I want it every goddamn day.”
River’s right knee was jerked up to her shoulder, Vaughn coming at her from an angle that ripped a scr
eam from her mouth. Every pound of his formidable body drove her across the bed, her hands alternating between slapping him across the face and yanking his hair, urging him closer. Here was familiar. This place where her lover—Vaughn, always Vaughn—stole her humanity. Turned her into a climax-hungry animal, clawing, reaching, twisting.
And then the orgasm pummeled River, locking her muscles into a shaking tangle with Vaughn’s. She could hear his voice in the distance—and he was angry, in a breathless, awed sort of way.
“No. No. I needed you to take me back first,” Vaughn shouted into her shoulder, seconds before he lifted his head, giving River a front row seat to his eyes going blank, his jaw slackening. His masculine rumble of completion pushed her higher, prolonging the climax, doubling its potency. “Finally coming in what’s mine again. Finally. Finally. Say the words, doll. Please.”
She found the strength to move her head, pushing her lips up against his ear. “My body will always be yours, Vaughn. Always.”
With a broken sound, Vaughn moved down River’s body, slipping his sweaty forehead between her breasts. “Need this heart back, too. This beautiful heart.” He turned his ear to her chest, listening for a moment to the rapid beat before nodding, pressing his lips to the fluttering flesh directly above the clenching organ. “I’m sorry to you most of all.”
Chapter Sixteen
Vaughn could barely keep his eyes on the road as he drove River home. God, with the amount of time he’d spent inside her body in his lifetime, one would think he’d have had an accurate memory of the sensation. The clenching, the sliding, the push and pull. In his mind, his groin, his stomach. Everywhere. They were fucking magic in bed together. There was no way around it. Before setting eyes on River that day in the school parking lot, he’d been with other girls. Not hundreds, but enough that he needed two hands to count. And yet something deep in the pit of his soul had compelled him to wait for River once they’d met eyes, swearing off all others. Thank God for that elusive something. Thank God.
A similar prayer had gone into tattooing her name across his chest. He’d been working a security job, escorting the family of a visiting businessman to and from their various activities while the guy worked. One afternoon, while waiting for the wife to emerge from a lunch meeting, he’d been standing on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, and swore he’d seen River walk by. He’d run. Without a thought, he’d been in a dead sprint toward the feather-light blonde hair floating on the wind. His lungs were burning, eyes gritty by the time he stopped, realizing he must have imagined her.
That night, he’d gone home and, using a prison yard technique, added her name to his flesh, ink and blood drying into the carved up skin. Maybe enjoying the pain meant he was sick, but he’d needed to divert the ache coming from deeper inside. And with the pain of being without River growing worse with each passing day, he’d known getting over her was a pipe dream. So he’d resigned himself to living with the agony and needed a representation of it. Something tangible.
Showing River tonight what he’d done had been the ultimate high, although he couldn’t account for why. He only knew watching her eyes run over the letters, hearing her breath catch, had healed something he’d thought never would be soothed, a raging that had been living under his bones for so long.
Unfortunately, she yet hadn’t vocalized whether she would allow the soothing balm she provided to spread over every part of him. She hadn’t put him out of his misery and taken him back. While he appreciated her need to be cautious and process everything through the eyes of adulthood, it was killing him. The silence, the fact that no part of them was touching…everything about waiting hurt.
Vaughn pulled his truck to a stop outside River’s house and cut the engine, neither of them making a move to alight. “Something tells me my house is a wreck.”
His mouth edged up. “Hire a cleaning service, and we’ll send Duke the bill.”
“Or we could just put him in a maid outfit and have him clean it himself.”
“Now there’s an idea,” Vaughn laughed. When the sound faded, he knew the elephant in the truck had to be addressed. “Look, Riv—”
“Yes,” she blurted.
His pulse skittered, hands clutching the steering wheel so hard they shook. “Yes to what?”
She turned shimmering blue eyes on him. “Maybe I’m crazy, but I want to try…us again. I’m thinking maybe it would be crazier if we didn’t.” Her laugh was watery and self-conscious. “Okay?”
“Okay?” He could barely speak around the relief pressing against the walls of his throat. “Yeah, Riv, that’s pretty fuckin’ okay.”
“Okay,” she breathed, blonde hair falling across her face when she ducked her head, probably to hide the flush creeping up her smooth cheeks. But when their gazes met again, he saw there was more, could feel purpose radiating from her. “Tonight at dinner…the way you talked to me. I need that all the time, Vaughn. No more keeping things to yourself. We can’t be a team otherwise.” She paused. “Please?”
“Yes.” The word ripped out of him, because what else could he do or say when life was bleeding back into his body? River. He was getting a second chance with River. “Yes.” They stared at one another across the console a moment, before she turned to exit the truck. But she paused. And then she was launching herself across the truck’s cab at Vaughn, who’d been halfway to diving after her if she’d actually managed to escape. “Where were you going, huh?” He growled against her mouth. “You were just going to sneak out after that, doll?”
“It’s silly. I know it’s silly. You just…we just…”
“Fucked like the world was ending.” He smoothed a hand down her ass, ran a finger up through the sweet divide in the center. “Invite me in, and we’ll end it for good. Burn the motherfucker right on down.”
“I can’t yet.” She kissed the underside of his jaw, then slid back to his ear, delivering a groin-tightening lick. “We have to ease into this. Marcy can’t wake up one day and find you sleeping in my bed.”
Vaughn nodded through the ache in his gut, knowing she had a point. “Okay, doll. You’re right. I just…Christ, I want to hold you while you sleep again. I never stopped taking that job seriously.”
“Soon.” Their mouths locked together, tongues competing for the best taste, before River pulled back. “Soon…I hope. Taking this slow isn’t just because of Marcy. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking you didn’t want me. Just let me get used to you again.”
Ah God. She didn’t mean to twist the wrench in his chest, it was just a casualty of the war they’d been fighting to stay alive while apart. Vaughn wrapped two fistfuls of blonde hair in his hands and tugged her close, pressing their foreheads together. “As long as it takes, Riv. I’m staying right here.”
Forever starved for River’s mouth, Vaughn moved in again, but River evaded him. “Vaughn.” That pink tongue skated across the seam of her lips. “What happened that night overseas, and the hard time you had coping…is that the only reason you left? Because you didn’t want to burden me with it?”
An image of the deed flickered in his conscious, but the truth never made it out. He was too close to having her back. And God knew, he would not only fuck up the explanation, but the relationship between River and her father, a relationship he’d never had with his own. “I couldn’t ask you to heal more of me, doll,” he finally pushed through stiff lips. “You’d already wasted enough time doing that.”
“It’s not a waste,” she whispered. “It never was.”
They shared one final desperate kiss, pulling away with a mutual groan. Watching River climb the stairs to her house, the past collided with the present, creating a sense of completion so strong, he couldn’t house it all, even as the necessary lie by omission tried to roam his mental hallways.
Hope grew, sprouting green and rolling into fields…until Vaughn went to put the truck in gear and saw River’s father parked in a running car across the street. The older man glanced toward the house, then
back at Vaughn, before pulling away from the curb and disappearing down the block.
…
From the corner of her eye, River observed Vaughn squashed into the driver’s seat of her red Pontiac—his white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel, the stress around his mouth. Before they’d loaded into the car in preparation for the drive to the ceremony at Fort Hamilton he’d been jumpy, but refused to say why. When she’d noticed him go still as she strapped Marcy into her car seat, she’d realized it was his first time driving with a toddler in the backseat.
“Jesus, I was less nervous driving a Humvee,” he admitted now, raking blunt-fingered hands through his hair. “Did you…how do you decide which car seat to buy? Don’t any of them come with a steel cage around them?”
River laughed into the paper cup of coffee he’d brought her from the deli. “The first time I took her to the supermarket, I kept checking the rearview mirror, double checking I didn’t accidentally leave her on the sidewalk or something.”
He cast her a measuring look. “How did you hold her and shop at the same time?”
She rolled her shoulders forward. “They have these slings—”
“You used one of those?” The muscles in his throat moved in a pattern as he swallowed. “Do you have any pictures of you wearing it?”
“Somewhere,” she murmured. “Probably.”
“I’d like to see that.” His brows drew together. “One of you in the hospital. One of you feeding her. Even the bad, out of focus pictures. I want to see them all.”
River had to stare out the side window a moment. “They’re in the attic, most of the earlier ones. I’ll dig them out.”
“I can do it.” His glance in her direction was rife with meaning. “I’ll be around.”
His focus returned to the road, but she could almost sense the scattering of his thoughts, could see him shift from determined to pensive and back again. Would this man always be a little bit of a mystery to her? Would his mind’s inner workings, when finally confessed, always surprise her somewhat? Not looking at him and wondering was worse—she knew that from experience—but the yearning for total honesty wouldn’t be swept aside, either.