I could still make him shiver a little.
My hands slid under the material at his shoulders, pushing it down, watching as his skin got exposed.
My eyes drifted down.
And this time, the stomach-dropping sensation had nothing to do with desire.
Oh no.
It was a mix of surprise.
And concern.
Because Ross Ward, I realized, maybe had metaphorical guards because at some point in his life, he had needed literal ones. And there had been none to be found.
All across the tight skin stretching over his strong chest muscles, then even visible in the dips between the impressive abdominal muscles I knew he was hiding.
Scars.
They were almost flesh-toned, aged, definitely from when he was younger. But there were so many that there was more space that was scarred than there was that was unmarked.
My gaze moved back up, my breath catching at one on the left side of his chest I had missed before.
It was right under his clavicle, round, raised, almost puckered looking.
I didn't have to have experience in the past with one to recognize it.
A bullet hole scar.
I watched as if it wasn't attached to me as my hand slid up his bicep and over his shoulder to allow my thumb to slip down and trace the weirdly smooth, raised circle.
My eyes lifted, seeking his, but already finding them watching me, searching for a reaction.
And, sure, there were a million different things going through my head, questions I wanted answers to, even if it wasn't my business to ask.
But there was a tightness around his eyes, a tension in his shoulders.
Like he was bracing himself.
Like he was expecting the questions. Ones he didn't want to answer.
Besides, no matter how much my curiosity might have been piqued, this was not the time for that.
I leaned down, pressing a kiss to the scar, then placed my hands on both his shoulders, pushing until he moved to flatten against the mattress so I could move to press my lips between his pecs, down the center of his abs.
Scooting down, I worked his belt, button, and zip free, dragging them down enough for me to reach inside, and slide my hand around his straining cock.
His breath hissed out of him as my thumb brushed over the head, spreading out a bead of pre-cum before I slowly lowered down, eyes on him, and took him into my mouth.
His hand went to track up my neck, but paused, remembering, then moving to the side of my jaw instead as I slowly took him down, the velvety skin against my lips seeming to make my pussy clench in anticipation. I couldn't quite make it to the base. Wrapping my hand around him there, I started working him. Slow. Intense. Because his gaze was boring into me, more penetrating than it had any right to be, making the moment seem important rather than just a sexy lead up to the grand finale.
My tongue stroked over the impossibly smooth skin of the head, lapping up more pre-cum, finding the ritual of tasting him perhaps the most erotic feeling I had ever experienced.
"Addy," he called, voice a low, rumbling sound that moved through my insides as a shiver, but also a command.
I sucked him deep once more before releasing him, kissing back up his stomach, chest, neck.
My legs planted on the outsides of his thighs, opening me up, allowing me to drop my hips down and feel his hard cock run between my slick folds, making a whimper escape me as I pressed up to look down at him and the head hit my clit.
His arm lifted, his hand brushing my hair over to one shoulder so it didn't curtain my face. "You gonna ride me, Addy?" he asked, voice rough, making a shudder move through me, something that didn't just happen inside. He felt it too. "That's not an answer," he told me, smirk devilish as he ground his hips up against me.
My forehead slammed down on his shoulder as a loud moan worked its way out of me, making him do another grind since - I guess - that still wasn't exactly an answer.
"I'm gonna need an answer out of you. But in the meantime--" His hands slipped to the backs of my thighs, yanking so hard that I flew upward over his body, my belly level with his face, making me suddenly realize what he was planning to do in the meantime.
Go down on me again.
But this time, with me riding his face.
I felt my cheeks go bright red even as he brought in his arms between my thighs so he could slide downward.
I had no hangups about oral sex. I liked to give. I liked to receive. I had received not even half a day before from this very man.
There was just something about this position.
There was something about the phrase 'sit on his face' that made my stomach go all swirly and weird.
But even as I was in the middle of convincing myself I could never get over the weird feelings I had toward this position, I felt his tongue trace up one of my lips, moving upward and around my clit without brushing it, then back down the other lip before tracing up the seam and - finally - pressing into my clit, making my hips buck a little violently.
His hand moved up, sinking into my ass, holding me in place as he licked and sucked and drove me higher.
His other hand moved between my thighs, pressing a finger inside me, thrusting lazily as he kept devouring me, occasionally making an appreciative rumbling noise that kept making me wetter by the second.
It was right there.
Just one more thrust, or one more stroke of his tongue, and that would be it.
But suddenly his finger was out of me; his hands grabbed the space where my thighs met my hips, dragging me backward slightly.
"You gonna ride me, Addy?" he asked, voice rough with his own need for release.
There was no other answer.
"Yes," I whimpered, sliding backward even as he scooted back up on the bed, going in the nightstand for a condom, protecting us as I put my thighs on either side of his waist.
His hand went to the base of his cock, the other settled on the top of my thigh, his eyes boring into mine.
And, again, I got that feeling.
The one I felt when I went down on him.
Like this was somehow important.
I raised up, positioning over him, looking at his face as I felt him stroke the head up toward my clit once more before moving down, and pressing against my opening, just a firm pressure waiting for me to take him in.
So I did.
Slowly.
Even as my walls stretched around the head, my hand slapped down on the top of his on my thigh, holding on, as my air exhaled out of me like a gasp.
In response, his eyes closed for a second as he took a deep breath before opening, his hand turning under mine so he could twine his fingers through as I kept lowering my hips, taking him in, taking him deeper than anyone before, feeling a slight pinch when he finally buried to the hilt.
"Oh my God," I whimpered, taking a moment to adjust, pulling in a slow, deep breath.
His hand pulled from my grip as he pushed to sit up, one arm going around my lower back, the other stroking down my jaw, his brows drawn together slightly. "You okay?"
And, what could I say?
I have a feeling - with absolutely no facts to back this up - that this moment is somehow significant.
That would make me sound like a crazy chick.
To be perfectly honest, your cock is quite a bit bigger than any I've had before, and it is taking some adjusting.
Yeah, no. Referencing other cocks was never good.
"Pinches a little," I admitted, pulling up slightly when his hand yanked at my hips, wanting to ease it.
"Your pace," he offered, even though his body was tight, the muscles coiled, every inch of him needing motion, needing release as much as the pressure on my lower stomach, and the aching in the walls wrapped tightly around him, said I needed as well.
I lifted my hips, almost losing him, before sliding back down, taking him almost fully.
His hand tightened on my hip, telling me he was every bi
t as affected as I was, that this was as intense to him as it felt to me.
I lifted again, taking him a bit deeper, feeling the pinch ease.
Soon, there was no keeping it slow, dragging it out, enjoying the moment. The pulsating need inside was acutely painful, demanding release.
I rode him harder, faster. His hard exhales of breath, the way his fingers were gripping in hard enough to bruise my skin spurred me on, wanting to take him with me, wanting us both to lose control together.
"Ross," I whimpered, fingers pressing crescent-marks on his shoulders as I held on.
"Come, baby," he demanded, voice rough.
As if I needed the permission, I came even as he told me to, the pleasure seeming to form at the base of my spine before exploding outward, overtaking me completely.
I was vaguely aware of crying out his name as my forehead slammed down on his shoulder, letting the waves crash through me.
Even as I came down what felt like forever later, I could feel him inside me, hard as ever.
I pushed myself up, my brows drew together slightly, finding his eyes just as hot as moments before when he could feel my walls milking his cock.
"Not done with you yet," he informed me, arm tightening around my lower back to anchor me against him as he moved to take his feet.
Even just fully satisfied, my pussy tightened in anticipation, greedy for more.
I had no idea what his intentions were until I felt my ass drop down on the sleek, cold surface of his dresser, the shock making my body jolt even as his arm left my back so both of his hands went behind my knees, jacking them up as his cock withdrew, then slammed back in - hard, deep. He paused, watching my face, gauging my reaction.
But there was no way I was going to turn this down - getting to see what a man like Ross Ward was capable of; watching him lose control.
It might have been the hottest thing I had ever seen.
My hands went to plant behind me on the dresser, making my back arch, and my breasts press out.
A deep, low growl came from somewhere buried in his chest as he leaned forward, snagging one of my hardened nipples between his teeth, biting just past the point of genuine pain, the odd pain/pleasure mix making me let out a throaty moan.
Hearing it, he released my nipple, pulling back, and starting to fuck me.
There was no other way to put it; he fucked me.
Hard.
Each thrust deep, going as far as my body could take him as he pistoned into me, each jerk making my body jolt with the impact.
All I could think even as the orgasm built again, this time feeling even more acute, was that it had never been anything like this before. I had been fucked before. Or, at least I thought so. But this was different. This was raw, primal, completely without any kind of control at all.
His skin dampened with sweat over his impossibly tight muscles; I could feel the glistening on my skin as well, as I managed to rip my eyes from him for a moment, looking down, watching his cock slam inside me over and over, something that made my pussy become a vice grip around him.
"Fuck," he hissed, making my eyes go up again.
His hand grabbed my knee, forcing my leg straight up, putting my ankle to his shoulder, freeing his hand to move between us and work my clit.
Seconds.
It only took seconds before the orgasm exploded through me violently, making my entire body shake hard as the waves crashed, as the world went quiet, my ears not even registering the cry I must have let out because my throat hurt as I slowly started to come back down.
"Fucking amazing," he praised before slamming deep, jerking upward, and coming with my name on his lips, half-collapsing forward, his forehead to my shoulder as he struggled to find his breath.
He might have stayed that way for a long while, trying to find that control he always had, if maybe aftershocks hadn't started racking through me.
His head raised, eyes going soft, then he wrapped me up, pulled me close, and carried me back toward the bed, carefully placing me on my side so I didn't rub against my stitches, pulling the blankets up to my shoulder.
"One second," he said, walking back to the bathroom to deal with the condom, coming back barely a minute later, climbing in the other side of the bed, sliding in behind me on his side, "Turn, Addy," he demanded softly, making my belly wobble as I flipped to my other side, only to be pulled close, nestled under his chin as his hand stroked up and down my spine.
It was then that I finally realized I was right.
It hadn't just been a mix of happy hormones and wishful thinking.
This was important.
It was significant.
Not just for me.
But for him as well.
Because suddenly, those guards he wore so well that I thought maybe they were soldered on, seemed down.
And, well, one had to imagine that it wasn't just the sex. If that was the case, a man as good-looking as him would have had a reason to let his guard down at least a few times a week.
This was more than that.
The guards were down, I was sure, because he felt something akin to what I did.
I pulled my arm up between us, resting it on his shoulder, not realizing where I had placed it until he pulled back slightly, looking down at me.
"You can ask," he said, tone a bit hesitant, something I didn't expect from such a normally confident man.
Part of me didn't want to.
I didn't want to ruin what was, as a whole, a perfect moment. I didn't want to muddy the memory if things didn't go well if I did ask.
On the other hand, I recognized that I might not get the opportunity again, that this could be my only chance to get to truly know him, know what was underneath.
"What happened to you?" I asked, looking up from the bullet hole scar to his eyes, finding them watching me a bit warily.
"You know what a dog fight is, right?" he asked oddly.
"Yeah," I said, brows drawn together.
"I was the fucking dog."
NINE
Ward
My only memories of my early life were of anger.
Literally as far back as my consciousness went, which couldn't have been much older than three, that was all that was there - anger.
It boiled in the veins of my little body.
It made me curl my fists until there were bloodied crescents in my palms.
It made me put my face in a pillow and scream.
My childhood memories weren't the dreamy, blurred around the edges, sepia-toned softness many had to think of in quiet moments.
Mine were sharp, vivid, harshly focused.
I could clearly see the plastic blinds in one of my earliest apartments, the way one was broken off in the center, the way another had an indent through ten of the blinds from when a friend of my mother's had gotten angry and tossed her against it, the plastic making a cracking sound as it bent inward.
I had been sitting five feet away on the cold, lackluster wooden floor in front of a dome-fronted TV that was hardly bigger than the cover of the only coloring book I had, watching a grainy, in-and-out of focus cartoon that we only got because of my mother stealing the cable from the apartment next door. It's our little secret, Rossy, she had confided in me, like my little brain even understood the concept of theft or secrets. I can't be living here without my soaps. That I did understand, because it meant that she shooed me away from the screen and watched her own shows, leaving me with little to do but play with broken crayons in a coloring book where all the pages were already half-colored.
He took my mom's purse as he left.
And she cried.
And my reaction hadn't been worry or sadness myself.
All I remembered was anger.
Just like when I was five, a week before I was going to 'be a big boy' and start school for the first time. And she had left me to go get a pack of smokes.
Then didn't come home all night.
Or until the middle of the next afternoon.
Leaving me with an empty fridge and a churning, painful belly.
She had stumbled in, makeup smeared, clothes twisted, shoes in hand, her eyes glassed-over, her voice way too chipper, announcing that she brought me a big breakfast before producing a bagel she had eaten half of.
Anger.
That was all that coursed through me.
Or when I was eleven, several years after getting the first drug lecture at school, mature enough to understand exactly why there were spoons all over my house with burned undersides. Why my mother's moods would spike for fifteen to twenty minutes where she would dance around, tell me these grandiose plans that we were going to do, and then crash, sending her into her bed, too depressed even to sign my permission slip to the museum.
Hell, it wasn't like we had the fucking money that was needed to cover the trip anyway. I stayed behind in the school library with the pinched-faced librarian who kept watching me like I was going to steal her dusty ass fucking copy of Lord of the Flies or some shit.
And as I sat there, reading the pages, trying to think of a world, any world that was different than the shitstorm I lived in, my hand was curled on the desk, fingernails biting in, my pulse pounding, my blood boiling.
It wasn't until I was thirteen that I understood how we managed to keep an apartment - albeit one with roaches in the sinks, a radiator that only worked half the time, and power that flickered on and off even on calm wind days - when my mother very rarely worked.
Sure, there were 'good spells' when she wasn't in bed all the time, sick from the drugs, depressed, and oblivious to the world around her. Those were the weeks - at the very most, months - when she put on decent clothes, went out, got a job, and started remembering to do things like keep food in the cabinets, and buy me new shoes when my toes started to push through the ends of my old pair.
Those spells were rare, though.
And yet we never got thrown out on the streets.
But, well, I was a fucking kid.
How could I have known?
I didn't even know what the terms were until middle school. And I didn't have the disposition - bitter, angry, jaded, disgusted - until thirteen to really consider the possibility.
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