by Eden Bradley
Still holding her nipples firmly between his fingers, he used his strong forearms to bring her body up until she was almost sitting up on her knees, his cock still deep inside her. And slowly he began to fuck her.
“Ah, God, Mick . . .”
His thick cock slid in and out, in this position easily hitting her G-spot, and pleasure built quickly, a deep, thrumming rhythm. His cock and his hard, pinching fingers on her nipples causing sensation everywhere—thrilling, dazzling. Even better when he bit into her shoulder, his teeth sinking deep while his tongue swirled over her skin.
Her mind was spinning, out of control, pleasure and pain all one thing. He fucked her harder, his cock jackhammering into her, making her gasp with each punishing stroke. His hands wrapped around her breasts, pressing hard, hurting her. Making her dizzy with the desire for more.
He bit her harder. She felt his body tense and knew he was ready to come. And at that moment he reached down to pinch her clit, using his nails to bite hard into the sensitive flesh.
“Ah, God!”
It fucking hurt. But she was coming and coming, her hips arching into his hurting touch, back to take his big cock in deep. He was growling, panting, his teeth sinking deeper. And she was coming so damn hard the coming itself was painful, the pleasure almost too much to take. He fucked her harder, slamming into her, and she was drowning in the heat of his body, his scent filling her head as her climax crashed over her again and again.
“Ahhhhhh! Mick!”
“Baby, baby . . .”
They collapsed on the bed together. He was still inside her, still hard even though she knew he’d come. They lay on their sides, his taut stomach pressed against her back, his arms still around her. They were both slick with sweat. Lovely, that slippery friction of damp skin against damp skin. He slung one leg over her hip and pushed in and out of her almost lazily, his slowly softening cock causing small frissons of orgasm to shiver through her.
“Oh, that’s good,” she murmured, locking her fingers with his. He held on tight, brought their clasped hands up to her chest and nestled them between her breasts.
“I can feel your heart pounding,” he whispered into her hair. “So is mine.”
“I can feel it against my back,” she told him, “I can feel your heartbeat echoing all the way up my spine.”
They were quiet for a long time, simply relaxing, trying to catch their breath.
Finally he said, “This is it, you know. This is what I want.”
Her heart surged at hearing him say it. She’d thought that was what he’d meant when they’d talked the night before. But the confirmation was lovely to hear. She’d needed to hear it. “Me, too.”
He slipped out of her and rolled her over then, pulling her in close to his big body. He propped himself up on one elbow, looking down at her. He was watching her again, searching her face.
“What is it, Mick?”
He shook his head, leaned in and kissed her cheek, her jaw, her neck, her shoulder. He was being so tender with her, so sweet it made her heart thump, her stomach flutter. Her nerves sang with the one truth she had known almost her whole life.
She loved him.
She nearly said the words. But she didn’t want anything to ruin this moment. She didn’t want to risk chasing him off with too much, too soon.
Instead she reached to trace the scar on his ribs. He flinched for a moment, but she looked up into his eyes and said quietly, “Let me, Mick. Share this with me. It’s a part of you.”
“It’s an ugly part.”
She shook her head. “It’s still you. It’s one of your life’s stories. It’s one you’ve never shared with me.”
“It’s one I’d rather not talk to anyone about.”
“This is me, Mick. Tell me. Please. It’s part of that transparency, right? How can we be together in the BDSM realm if I don’t know you as well as you know me? How can we have that ultimate connection—the power exchange—that’s so much a part of BDSM relationships if it’s not an exchange? I want that with you.”
He shook his head again and she thought he would argue. But after a few moments he said, “You’re right. But only because it is you, Allie.” He paused, ran a hand over his jaw, his eyes going dark and a little stormy. “Okay. I’ll tell you.”
CHAPTER
Twelve
MICK SMOOTHED A hand over her stomach, taking the heat of her body into his palm, his fingertips. He concentrated on that sensation for several long moments while he tried to get his head together, his thoughts organized.
“Okay.” He took in a deep breath. “So . . . when I went away to Louisiana State in Baton Rouge, I sold all my older, crappy bikes I’d worked on and rebuilt through high school and got the new Yamaha. I loved that bike. It was fast. Beautiful. All shining chrome, and I swear that thing purred at me when I really opened her up.”
“Jamie mentioned it a time or two when I saw him after you left.”
“Did he also mention I liked to drive too fast?”
She shrugged. “I already knew that. Anyway, Jamie and his muscle cars . . . he was nineteen, too. I doubt he even noticed.”
“Yeah, probably true.”
She laid a hand on his chest. “So, what happened, Mick?” she asked softly.
He focused again on the heat of her touch, using it to calm him. He did not want to talk about this. But it was Allie, and he would do it for her. “Motorcycles are tricky things. Especially when someone too young and arrogant thinks he’s in control of that kind of machine. All it takes is one pebble on the road. One moment where you don’t let out the clutch just right taking a turn, or you’re not focused enough on what’s right in front of you. That’s what happened, I guess. I wasn’t focused, wasn’t paying enough attention. Wasn’t giving the bike and the speed the respect those things deserve.
“I don’t even know exactly what happened, as stupid as that sounds. It was stupid. Totally irresponsible. I woke up in the hospital and they told me I’d wrapped my bike around an old oak tree in someone’s front yard. In the middle of the Goddamn day. Could have been someone’s kid out there, you know?” His chest pulled tight. It wasn’t any easier to say it now, even after all the years that had passed. It felt like the damn words were choking him. He could barely stand to look at her while he said these things. “Thank God it was just my reckless, idiotic ass out there. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it—that I could have hit someone. I could have fucking killed someone. It’s still there in the back of my mind. It’s always there.”
“You can’t do that to yourself, Mick.”
“No? How can I not hold myself accountable? For what happened. For what could have happened. Especially after Brandon. We all saw firsthand what that did to his parents, to Summer. To all of us—his friends—especially Jamie. I knew better. Or, I should have. And Allie, I come from a family of men who care for the people of our community. Not only did I take a stupid-ass risk with other people’s lives, I took away my own . . . shit. It sounds selfish as hell to even mention it.”
“What?” she asked, her tone gentle. “Tell me.”
He looked away, shook his head, but he went on, his blood pounding in his temples. “I took away my chance to . . . my ability to serve this city the same way my family has for generations. That accident ate a part of my soul. A part I’ll never get back.”
“Oh, Mick.”
He flinched. “Ah, stop it, Allie. I can’t take anyone’s pity and you know it.”
He felt her fingertips soft on his cheek, and he allowed her to turn his face back to hers. Her brown eyes were sheened with tears, gleaming golden in the misty morning light.
“This is me, Mick. You know it’s not pity, that hearing you say it makes my heart break for you. To know you’ve carried that kind of guilt all this time. But I’ve never pitied
you. I thought you were just mad.”
“Oh, I’m mad. I’m pissed as hell at myself.”
“I don’t blame you. I’d probably feel the same way. I know I would. But Mick, at some point you’ve got to let it go.”
“Do I? Or more to the point, should I?”
She tilted her chin, her brows drawing together. “I don’t understand.”
“The guilt is nothing less than I deserve, Allie. It’s my burden to carry with me.”
“But you didn’t hurt anyone else,” she protested.
“That’s not true. Every single day I’m not a firefighter like I should have been, like my family and my city had a right to expect of me, I hurt someone. Every day there’s one less man on the force to protect people.”
She shook her head. “That’s not realistic, Mick. You can’t blame yourself for things you might have been able to prevent. And you have found a way to protect people. Your security business—”
“I work boxing matches and rock concerts. I protect drunken fools from other drunken fools. It’s not the same thing.”
“It’s something, Mick,” she said quietly, maybe understanding that he simply wasn’t able to hear it, no matter how she put it.
“Yeah. Something.” He shrugged.
“Thank you for telling me. Even when you didn’t want to. Especially because you didn’t want to.”
But he had wanted to. That was the strange thing. Or maybe the strange thing was that they were there together, in her bed, naked. Strange that it had finally happened, the two of them together again.
A part of him felt like it was fate. Another part still believed she was too damn good for him.
He had to shake that shit off.
He lifted her hand, kissed it, shifted the gears in his head.
“Enough of this. I’m taking you out to breakfast.” He silently thanked God for the male ability to compartmentalize. “Get your gorgeous ass in the shower and get clean while I make some coffee for the road.”
“Yes, Sir.”
She was smiling at him, going along with the game. Good girl.
She was a good girl. The best. More than he deserved. But he was done trying to convince her of that. She’d chosen him. And he wasn’t that stupid anymore. He wasn’t letting her go again.
* * *
LESS THAN AN hour later they had made their way uptown along St. Charles Avenue to The Camellia Grill, one of the best breakfast spots in the city. It was the usual packed Sunday morning. They stood together on the sidewalk in front of the old colonial structure, with its white columns and dark green shutters, another of the city’s local landmarks to resurrect after Katrina.
It felt strange to be out with Allie, doing this kind of normal thing like going to breakfast. They’d been to this place a dozen times as teenagers, and it took him back. Him in his ever-present leather jacket. Allie’s long hair shining in the sun, her laughing with him. Everything had seemed a lot simpler then. So much less at stake. But wasn’t that always the difference between being a teenager—just a kid, really—and being an adult? Yeah, a hell of a lot more at stake now.
Don’t trip on it. Just enjoy the day.
What had happened to the compartmentalizing he’d been so good at only a little while ago? Hell, he’d had years of practice at shutting things down. He knew it was Allie that was making things harder to keep under control. And control had been the key to managing his life since those days . . . the days before his life had come crashing down around him piece by piece. Brandon’s death. Seeing Jamie’s reaction—his grief going way beyond what the rest of them had experienced. Coming to terms with the fact that he had to leave Allie behind when he went away to college. That one night when he’d seen her again. When he’d done those things to her. The way he’d felt the next morning, as if he’d fucking murdered someone . . . and the damn accident that he swore was not a death wish.
“Mick? You look like a cloud just passed over your grave. What are you thinking about?”
“What? Sorry, princess. Just woolgathering.”
“You are so not the kind of man to mingle with sheep,” she teased.
He had to smile. “Nope. Subbie girl though you may be, you’re definitely not the sheep type.”
She laughed, and some of the ice that had been running through his veins melted. “You’ve got that right. God, I can’t remember the last time I ate here.”
“The last weekend in May, my senior year. Jamie and I were cutting school, which was our right as seniors, and you were playing delinquent with us.”
“I can’t believe you remember all that.”
He reached out and tucked a long strand of her dark, silky hair behind her ear. “You were wearing a cotton sundress with tiny pink roses all over it. They were the same shade as your lips.”
Her smile widened, her eyes shining. “You’re a romantic at heart, you know that, Mick Reid?”
“Never.”
She slunk up against him. “Always.”
He grabbed her by the waist and bent to brush a kiss across her lush mouth. “If I agree with you, will it get me some later?”
“Do you really have to ask?” Her voice was a quiet purr. “You buy me breakfast and you are so getting laid.”
“Am I, now?”
“Yep. Sir. Yep, Sir.”
He laughed and picked her up until her feet left the ground.
“Hey!”
He set her back down, took her hand and kissed it, held it tightly in his.
If he could just keep the bullshit from invading his brain, this might turn out to be a perfect day. A perfect life.
Gotta take it one day at a time.
That was the smart thing to do, wasn’t it?
Wasn’t it?
* * *
THEY WERE FINALLY seated at the long counter facing the gleaming steel kitchen, the only seating there was at the crowded, noisy Camellia Grill. Mick seemed almost too big to fit on the stools lined up at the marble counter—he had to sit half-turned toward her, one long leg crossed over hers, but Allie didn’t mind. She was enjoying the closeness she felt with him today.
Maybe part of it was that he’d opened up to her and told her a bit of his story about the accident. But it was also that he’d remained open to her—a good chink in the armor, anyway—and she loved the vulnerability he was allowing himself with her.
She knew it was that he allowed himself—there was no doubt about it. Mick was still almost perfectly controlled. The Dom thing. The Mick thing. It was that lovely, melding combination of control and vulnerability that just killed her. He could ask anything he wanted of her right now and she’d have to say yes.
“What are you having, baby?” he asked.
“A veggie omelet.”
“Really? That’s no fun. I’m having the waffles.”
“Oh, that sounds good.”
“You should have them, too.”
“I’m a pastry chef, Mick. I have sugar in my mouth on a daily basis. Or, I will when I start working again.”
He leaned in and murmured against her ear, his breath warm on her skin, “I’ll put some sugar in your mouth, girl.”
She shivered, lust infusing her system so fast it made her go hot all over.
“Yes, please,” she answered.
He grinned. “Good girl.”
“Oh, God, don’t do that to me here, Mick.”
“I’ll do plenty to you later. Just leaving you with something to think about.”
“You’re a wicked man.”
“You like me that way.”
“Yes, I do. But shall we change the subject?”
His gray eyes were sparkling. “Why, when I’m having so much fun torturing you?”
“Change of subject,
please.”
He looked like he was about to protest when a waiter approached their section of the counter and poured two cups of coffee for them without being asked.
“What’ll you have?”
Mick ordered for them, and the waiter, in classic Camellia Grill style, shouted the order at the cooks.
Mick turned his attention back to her.
“Okay. Change of subject, but only because you asked so nicely. Tell me how your family’s doing.”
“They’re fine. I’ve talked to Mama and Zia Renata on the phone. No one brought up my business plan, which is just as I’d expected. Brush things under the rug and they disappear—that’s our family motto.”
“That’s everyone’s family motto.”
“Maybe. How is your family? I only get regular updates on Neal through Marie Dawn.”
“Doing well. Gareth’s kid just had his fourteenth birthday. Makes me feel old. I remember when he was in diapers. Nolan’s wedding is coming up in the fall . . . hey, you should see if they need someone to do the cake.”
“Oh, I’m sure they’ve got that arranged by now.”
“Maybe not. I’ll give you his fiancée’s number. Katie’s great. You should call her.”
“I actually love to do wedding cakes.”
“Where did you learn how?” he asked as their food arrived.
“Veggie omelet hold the onions and the house waffles for the beautiful couple!” the waiter shouted for effect as he set the plates in front of them.
“Thanks.” She smiled at the waiter before turning back to Mick. “A bit at culinary school—just doing cakes, I mean—but I apprenticed at this incredible place in Vienna for about six months and they really put me through the drills. Made me stay up literally all night rolling and rerolling my fondant until I learned to do it right.”
“Fondant?” He took a big bite of syrup-covered waffle. “Ah, this is damn good,” he said, the words muffled.
“It’s like icing, except it’s heavier and more moldable. You can make flowers out of it—almost anything.”
“Ah. And now I know as much as I did before.”