by V. Theia
Hot and heavy, she was intoxicated in seconds.
He pulled back, gave her a second of air, his nose glided against hers and then he sort of growled and forced her mouth wider, deepening what had already been a perfect kiss and blew it apart.
Oh, God. Poppy was not a human anymore.
This wasn’t a kiss.
She’d had plenty of kisses before and none had felt this hot and good and right.
She loved kissing, it was one of her most favorite hobbies, but no way could this be called a kiss.
His mouth was skilled, he went deep and slow, teasing to the point she almost broke her neck reaching up for more.
Tait chuckled, out of practice and gave her his lips.
A certain mood overcame her.
A mood Poppy had only experienced alone and never with a guy.
“Tait” she whimpered and that’s when he withdrew, soft and slow, like his lips didn’t want to leave hers either.
Her mouth felt puffy and oversized and when she licked them, she tasted him there.
“Has anyone ever told you how freaking amazing you are at kissing?”
His smile was Christmas morning on steroids. It set her skin on fire to please him.
“Not that I recall.”
He was totally lying, every woman that’s had his lips on hers would have told him so, but she smiled knowing he wasn’t rubbing his past in her face.
“Why did you stop?” The whimper coming out of her mouth didn’t sound like it belonged to her. That certain mood was still lingering and she tried to take his mouth and the beast held it out of reach.
His hand slid into her hair and that felt nice too and went some way to appease the ache she was feeling all over.
“We’re done.”
She frowned. “But why? Didn’t you like kissing me?”
If she couldn’t have his mouth, she pressed her cheek to his and roamed over the bristles.
She loved his skin, especially his masculine scent, she wanted to roll in it like a puppy until she was covered and owned.
“I was halfway down your throat, Poppy. Of course I like kissing you. Do you feel that against your belly?”
She’d be a halfwit if she didn’t.
It was part of the reason she wanted his mouth back.
“That’s why we’re stopping.”
Her frown doubled down. “Is it because I’m inexperienced? Because let me tell you, mister, in my head, I’m quite the slut. Test me out, I’ll prove it. I’ve watched porn, you know.”
Without warning, Tait started laughing and then he rolled off her, hit the floor and went right on laughing his ass off.
“Fuck, you are cute.”
“She craned half of her body over the side of the couch to look down at him sprawled like a well-dressed fighter. “But you think I’m hot too, right?”
She was not above fishing. Just watch her cast her rod … or whatever they called it.
She wanted to be more than cute to him.
His face sobered and Poppy caught a breath at how powerfully he was gazing up at her. Some of her hair hung down over her shoulder and he took the ends in his fingers.
It was impossible not to see from the vantage point she was at and the way he was laid on the floor, the big thing protruding from his half-worn jeans at the front.
A big gulp of air stopped in Poppy’s throat and she was forced to wrench her gaze away. It had felt nice pushed into her stomach and now she wanted to feel it in other places and in her hands.
She was not telling lies when she told him she was a slut in her mind.
She didn’t need physical practice to know what she liked or what her body craved.
So she went for it, falling on top of him un-lady like, it was a sort of whale roll and when Tait grunted, she took that opportunity God himself presented and smashed his lips under hers.
Give him his due, it didn’t take him but a second to get with it and take over. Spearing her hair with his fingers, he took over and devoured her.
“Goddammit, Poppy.” He groaned, going in deeper and then with one last kiss he wrenched her away, heavy breathing. “No more, or you’ll find yourself fucked right here, and that’s not what an innocent woman needs.”
In a small voice, lying on top of Tait, with his hands still holding her face, she confessed something she wanted him to know. “I want to tell you why it never worked with any of my boyfriends. They couldn’t give me what I wanted.”
“What was that?”
“You really want to know?”
“I’m sure those pricks could afford anything you needed.”
Poppy smiled sadly. Yeah, he’d think she was all about the materialism when all she’d ever wished for was to be wanted. Desired.
To be the center of someone’s universe, when they couldn’t see anyone but her.
To put her needs and wants first in the same way she’d do for her man.
She wasn’t a commodity or a thing to acquire and show off.
“I wanted to be fucked breathless, until I lost all sense of time and space. Until I came and came and he fucked me over and over again, how I needed it to feel, to know he was consumed in only me.” The look on Tait’s face almost caused her tongue to seize up. “That’s why I could never marry any of them, Tait. Because I didn’t feel anything remotely close to what I needed from them…nothing to what I feel lying on top of you right now.”
The seconds were fraught with nervous energy, they were also hot and unexplored and she could hardly swallow around the pulse of desire in her throat.
She went on before he could say anything.
“I know you’d never want to marry someone like me, I’m nothing like the Addison’s of the world. No matter how much influence and social training I’ve had, I just never live up. But do you think… you could fool around with me? Maybe… teach me how to touch a man. How to make a man feel good so he gets that way with me.”
SIXTEEN
“She would test the patience of a saint. And Texas was no saint.” – Texas
She. Was. Out. Of. Her. Fucking. Little. Girl. Mind.
Or she was intent on sending him out of his mind.
He might be considered a smart guy, he knew numbers for a start, he could see good deals where people didn’t. He had the ability to make the big bucks quite easily as it happened, but he was still a guy with a very good working dick and a woman in front of him who he was…unexpectedly…intensely attracted to, asking him to show her pleasure.
And right now his dick was hard as a mallet, and because the blood had rushed to his groin, he wasn’t feeling very smart as he stared at a lip chewing Poppy as she waited, wide-eyed, expecting an answer to her innocent request.
Fool around with her.
Teach her how to please a man.
Fuck him, he was inside a nightmare with a ready growl crawling up his throat at the mere thought of giving her all the physical knowledge her dirty little mind craved and then using it on some other chump.
In fact, he heard the rushing of his angry blood through his ear canal at the very thought of her touching someone else because he’d showed her how to.
He jumped to his feet and stood there, hands on his hips and his gaze digging into her face.
When he spoke, it came out thick and distorted. “You think I’m going to show you how to please a guy, making him weak and under your goddamn spell until all he thinks about is spilling hot and wet over your skinny fingers… and then send you back to New York so you can hook up with an investment banker?”
“Well… I. That’s not what..”
“Fuck that, Poppy.”
He knew what he sounded like.
A jealous idiot who’d staked his claim on the socialite.
“Your first mistake was in thinking I was nice enough you could ask this of me, Poppy. I’m not nice. You don’t ask a man if you can casually play on his cock and think he wouldn’t use you up until you’re a sopping mess. I’m not who you rem
ember. The boy who stepped in when you were a lonely little kid who needed someone to tie her laces. He doesn’t exist anymore. I would ram my cock so hard into your virgin pussy I would hit bottom on the first slam. Do you think that’s the actions of a nice man? Of a friendly man?”
She fucking moaned and lifted her fingers to her mouth, they trembled as she sat there on his couch, looking too small and delectable.
What did he have to say—to do, to scare this little innocent away from him?
He couldn’t lie and say he didn’t want to dig into her, to taste her innocence. Something short wired inside his brain to know she was untouched. Those idiots she was engaged to back home must be insane to leave her unsated.
He couldn’t unhear her compare herself to Addison either.
Like she thought it was actually true.
If only she knew the Addison he did.
“No, you wouldn’t.” her voice shuddered.
“I would.” Texas insisted, teeth clenched.
Looking at how sweet she was, tears filling her eyes, he just wanted to reach out and bring her into his chest, remembering all those summers spent at the lake together. Stupid kids with nothing more important to do than fooling around in the water, until Malachai pointed out the crush Poppy had on Texas, forcing him to start ignoring her. He was a teenager, easily influenced by embarrassment. It was only when Addison joined in that Texas started to avoid Poppy.
Now he was flooded with memories.
Sweet Poppy with her wide eyes.
He wasn’t the same boy.
Now he was the man who would tear the little panties off her and fuck her down on the floor.
His sweet innocent Penelope should have stayed at home.
Should have married her safe guy.
Texas didn’t feel safe whatsoever.
“I want to pound the goodness out of you. You should be running back home.” somehow, and he wouldn’t call it divine intervention, because there was nothing divine about this, but she’d fallen out of the sky and landed in his unworthy lap.
He couldn’t explain where this attraction came from.
She wasn’t his usual type, but then, Poppy was unlike any other woman and he didn’t mean that in a cheesy fucked up way.
He meant it because the things he was feeling, he hadn’t felt before.
Not this strong.
Not this overwhelming,
Even now he had to clench his hands together so he didn’t stride forward and crush her under him and make her moan.
He was doing her a favor by not taking her up on her offer.
Now if only he could get his body under control.
* * *
So that was not how she imagined the conversation to go.
They’d kissed so hot and heavy and now she’d made him mad and didn’t know why.
All his naughty words floated in front of her eyes, seeing the pictures he evoked and Poppy could barely breath from wanting everything he said.
She didn’t want the boy she once knew; she was already half in love with the snarling man in front of her, not that she’d ever tell him that. She didn’t think it would go over that well, going by his reaction right now.
Tait from the past was cute… very cute and she’d adored him, but this aged mature version with his facial hair and somber moods was so much more appealing.
Maybe watching porn had given her a false sense of just what men wanted.
The snarl from his mouth didn’t sound human.
Nor was the hint of darkness in his eyes, hair hanging over them, obscuring the irises.
Poppy felt a thump-thump-thump in her breastbone, a clanging of need to touch him and feel how hard his anger bristled.
She watched him pace through the kitchen, grumbling like a giant bear who’d hurt his paw. Cutting heated glances her way every few seconds.
She lapped those looks up and shivered with each one.
The last look sent her off the couch and she followed him.
“I didn’t realize I’d make you mad,” she confessed quietly and every inch of her body nearly set on fire when he spun around and stared down at her. It was both tender and hungry all at once. “I mean, it’s just sex…”
She was inexperienced not stupid, she recognized lust when she saw it.
And it stole all of her air when he snapped a look at her so boiling hot, every inch of her body came awake for him. Aching for all those dirty things he threw at her.
She didn’t know if they were possible, but she was dying to try and find out.
If he wanted her, why then was it even an issue?
“Did I do wrong?”
“Poppy.” He gusted a great big sigh that sounded unhappy and then shook his head. “No, baby, you didn’t do wrong. I’d be fucking furious if I found out you’d asked some other guy what you asked me.”
Her skin prickled with lovely warmth. “Then what’s the problem?”
A dreaded inkling told her she knew what it was and it started with Add and ended in ginger bitch.
He was still hung up on the girl he couldn’t have.
Coming forward, his bigger body didn’t give her a chance to brace when he flattened her spine to the counter and dwarfed over her.
His thumb pressed to her lips, almost like he didn’t even realize he was touching her. Poppy stood as still as a docile gazelle, barely breathing because the intimate gesture when he pulled down her lower lip was kind of crude but she liked it.
It felt like he was claiming her mouth, as though he was telling her that the mouth he devoured only moments ago belonged to him and no one else.
Maybe she was overthinking, maybe her hormones were barking too loudly.
“I’m so sick of being the good guy.” He rasped, dropping his head. “Always trying to do the right thing. Look where it got me, no family or friends and a little girl offering me her sweet body.”
All her words tumbled around her tongue. “Who said you had to be good? Be yourself.”
“Be myself?” he laughed with so much heat in his eyes, she nearly checked that he hadn’t burned her eyebrows off. She couldn’t look away from his stare, and she was pressing her belly into his without realizing she was doing it until Tait hissed and stepped away.
His arousal was unmistakable.
“If I were myself, you’d be a whole lot more wrecked right now, little girl.”
“What… what do you mean? You’d hurt me?”
She didn’t believe that.
“You’d be fucked against every surface I could press you against. Until you were soaked in me. Until you were no longer the sweet, good girl. You’d be the woman I used over and over until we couldn’t walk and then how would you go back into Harrison and expect people not to see down to your skin and bone how I ruined you.”
Oh.
Oh…
“Tait…” she breathed.
His eyes pinged to hers and she watched his jawline flex rapidly.
“I’m not… I’m not ever going back to Harrison.”
His snarl was back and when he opened his mouth it was to bare his brilliant white teeth. “Oh, yes you fucking are, little girl, if I have to hand deliver you back there myself. This is no life for you.”
His declaration was so vehement in volume that she felt her knees shake and her heart break all over again.
It seemed Tait Hunt was not done breaking what pieces of herself she’d given him.
Poppy was not one for angrily storming out of anywhere.
It just wasn’t her MO, but she felt her feet move, carrying her across the loft floor and she grabbed her hooded jacket, ignoring his question asking her where she was going.
She didn’t know and she didn’t care, only she needed out of that atmosphere where he choked her in lust and anguish in equal measure.
Seek out a life, she’d told herself.
Find adventure.
Think outside of the stifling box.
Go back to the person who’d made h
er heart thrive and see if those feelings were still there.
Well more fool Poppy, because she did find the boy who sparked her heart and what did the big idiot do? He hurt her all over again.
And it was her own damn fault this time.
She’d encroached on Tait’s life, not the other way around.
He could be a snarly bear all he wanted; he didn’t owe her anything.
She’d asked too much.
Expected far too much and now she was hurt and humiliated that she’d put her feelings on the line and her risk didn’t pay off.
There was not much she could do if Tait still pined for the one he couldn’t have.
Walking the streets, with no direction in mind, she didn’t feel the cold, only a gurgle of humorless laughter in her throat.
He wanted someone he couldn’t have.
And she wanted someone she couldn’t have.
What kind of love triangle drama had she stepped herself into?
SEVENTEEN
“There’s bigger and better bikers out there, Cinderella.” - Roux
“Dumbass move, dickhead.”
Texas muttered to himself, not for the first time since seeing Poppy walk quietly out of his apartment as though he’d done the worst thing possible to hurt her.
He was a man who always did the right thing.
Or so he thought.
Now he was figuring himself to be the man who fucked up at every turn no matter how he tried for rightness.
Maybe he was just rotten to the core.
It was what his family thought.
That first time he told them who he worked for, he thought his mom was gonna have a straight up heart attack and the anger from his father… nah, it was worse than that, it was pure disgust to know Texas worked for the most notorious biker conglomerate the states has ever seen.
It didn’t take long after that for the news to spread like gossiping wildfire through his family and for each of them to believe he’d fallen by the wayside and wasn’t worth pissing on even if he were on fire.
The Hunts were not known as emotional people, that’s for damn sure.
For more than a decade, Texas had been dead to his entire family, save for a handful of times he rocked up for his mom, only to be treated like a second class citizen because of her humiliation, as she put it.