Redemption

by Rebecca Sharp

  With a groan, his mouth opened with mine and the kiss from yesterday—the one ruled by need rather than the one that needed rules—returned. His hands slid back into my hair and pulled me tighter against him as his mouth devoured mine.

  On his tongue, I tasted both desire and possessiveness. That who I was and whatever I felt was safe with him—belonged to him. And my mouth tilted underneath his, begging for more.

  I came to tell Ash the truth. But as he pulled me closer, I felt my darker, self-serving desperation bubble to the surface…

  I wanted him to want me.

  I wanted to know if he could feel something for me without that something being obligation to our child. And so, I kissed him harder—because I wanted to know that truth more than I needed to tell him mine.

  Dragging my tongue along the velvet length of his, I felt his growl against my chest and the way his arousal thickened against my stomach. Power bloomed inside my chest, bright and freeing, knowing it was because of me. In that moment, our kiss was my world, Ash its inhabitant, and I was its god. Every stroke and lick, every small moan and gasp, they were my cosmic forces that created his desire and destroyed his restraint.

  I moaned as he sucked my lower lip into his mouth, tugging the flesh between his teeth. My body drifted closer to him, knowing that he was the end to everything it was searching for. Warmth rushed between my legs, feeling his hard length against my bump.

  His hands left my hair and reached around my back. Skimming down over my back, his fingers searched out the fleshy part of my butt. My back bowed slightly, needing the bend because of our difference in height and I wrapped my arms around his neck.

  And then he yanked me hard against him, my gasp fueling the fire. Feeling his thickening erection against the swell of my stomach between us drove my need for him even higher.

  It seemed as though pure fire was pumping through my veins as I arched against him, the ache between my thighs dropping off the cliff of needy into the abyss of unbearable.

  “Ash, please,” I begged him.

  Not for a single second in all of this did it feel like a sin. Instead, the fire in my body was cleansing, rather than damning. There was no guilt for the way he touched and kissed me—or for the way I wanted him to.

  “Taylor.” The way he said my name sounded like he’d dragged it down from heaven to his desperate, imperfect earth.

  My breath hitched and I choked out. “D-did I do something wrong?”

  “Wrong?” This time his groan was mingled with a hint of a laugh. “No, Pixie,” he rasped. “Just I want you so fucking bad and if I don’t stop now, I’m not sure I’ll be able to.”

  “I want you,” I blurted out, my mind in a fog of need. I definitely didn’t want him to stop. At this point, I didn’t think my body would be able to come back down “I mean… I don’t want you to stop.”

  His mouth claimed mine as I felt my back up against the cold hard plastic of the old refrigerator. My gasp sent his tongue back into my mouth, licking and running along the edges of my mine as his hands on my butt lifted me.

  I let out a small yelp, my legs instinctively wrapping around his waist as he picked me up.

  “Where are we going?” I asked breathlessly.

  Dumb question, Taylor.

  He chuckled again. “Are you sure you’re pregnant?”

  I gasped as his tongue trailed a line of pure fire from the corner of my mouth back to my ear where he tugged on my earlobe. “You have to have some experience with what happens here.”

  “I-It only takes once.” I let out a shaky laugh, but it caught in my throat as his head jerked back.

  “Only once? You only had sex once?” Blue eyes pierced mine, searching for the truth.

  My face flushed. I didn’t realize what I was saying—what I was admitting to while trying to excuse my ignorance. I lost sense of everything when he touched me—everything except him. And how much I wanted him.

  My mouth parted but I couldn’t answer. I wondered if he thought me completely unbelievable. Though I remembered feeling that same sense of incredulity.

  My feet touching the floor again made me realize that we’d made it to the bedroom. His eyes bored into mine, a new intent in their depths—one that was inescapable.

  “How many times have you had sex, Taylor?”

  I swallowed hard, my embarrassment growing. “Once.” The word rushed out like the fall of a guillotine. “Just once. What difference does it make? Do you not want to do this? B-Because I don’t know anything—”

  His mouth on mine cut me off.

  “Taylor,” he growled against my lips as he dug his hard length into my stomach. “If you can’t feel how much I want this, then maybe you don’t know anything. But it matters because… one fucking time. Christ. You’ve basically never done this before, and I bet the asshole didn’t even know what he was doing.”

  My cheeks flushed deeper.

  I love the hint of jealousy in his voice—even if the man he was jealous of was himself.

  Licking my lips, I kept silent rather than contradict him with the truth: that the asshole did know what he was doing; he just didn’t know he was doing it.

  “You deserve better than that, sweetheart. You deserve to be worshipped. And the things I want to do to you—” He broke off on a groan and I felt the way his erection pulsed. “Well, let’s just say I want to do something completely different now. I want to treasure every inch of your body before I fucking possess it.”

  I shivered.

  I’d always been taught not to swear. But those words weren’t a curse when they came from his mouth—they were a promise.

  I felt the heat from his gaze as it traveled south, lingering on the way my breasts swelled slightly over the edge of the towel. My pulse spiked when the tip of his finger hooked underneath it and paused, as though daring me to stop him.

  His eyes fixed on mine as he slowly pulled the one corner securing it. I let out a breath and lifted my arms slightly from my sides, letting the heavy fabric fall to the floor, landing with a soft thud along with the rest of my reservations, as my whole body was bared to him.

  Goosebumps marched a celebratory path down my body like an army returning to celebrate their victory.

  I pulled my gaze up from where it had settled squarely in the center of his chest, all the way up to his tumultuous blue eyes.

  He looked like he’d just revealed the eighth wonder of the world—and it belonged to him. It made me feel sexy and powerful and beautiful. And it made me all those things to the point I thought they might burst from my chest having never been free to be felt before.

  Ash’s harsh intake of breath went straight to my core, and my nipples tightened even further, a harsh shade of red against my pale skin as the need pumping through my veins made them vibrantly aroused.

  My knees shook as one palm came up to test the weight in his hands.

  “Perfect,” he rasped as his thumb rolled over my nipple and I almost crumbled to the floor right alongside my towel.

  Maybe a small part of me had thought that he’d remember something from that night if he saw me… if he touched me. It was a foolish assumption; there was a reason it was called a black-out. Still, I hoped for the unreasonable as his hand kneaded my swollen flesh.

  His other hand cupped the side of my face as he bent and took my mouth with a growl. This kiss was harder—more desperate—as his hand pinched and rolled my nipple, sending my desire drenching between my thighs.

  He pushed against me until the back of my knees hit the bed.

  With a gasp and an awkward plop, I landed on the bed, looking up to Ash’s lusty gaze that held mine as he knelt between my legs, putting him eye-level with my breasts. Propped back on my hands, I felt like I was dessert—and someone hadn’t eaten dinner.

  “You know how many times I’ve dreamt of your tits, Pixie?” he asked as both hands now teased my flesh. “Probably since before you even had them.”

  “They’re… bigger,” I
managed to breathe out amid his torturous touch. “I mean, they’re… not normally this big.” I moaned as he pinched both nipples and pulled them out toward him. His mouth was so close. I just wanted to feel that sharply sweet suction again.

  “Wrong. They’re perfect, sweetheart,” he said, watching as his fingers rubbed and pinched me until I was arching my back painfully to get them closer to his mouth. “Perfect.”

  The word disappeared into a growl as his mouth closed over one tight peak. White-hot lightning zigzagged through my body and had me jolting against him. I’d had months of remembering… dreaming… engraving this sensation in my mind, and strangely, it was nothing like I could have remembered. It ripped through me, burning a trail straight down to where I felt my sex clench frantically for him.

  Staccato gasps echoed in the room as he bit and sucked on me. Licking and teasing the sensitive bud until I was just about in tears.

  Minutes or hours later—I couldn’t be sure—he pulled back, my nipple popping from his mouth redder than a candied apple. Air dragged into my lungs, feeling like it weighed more than a freight train.

  His gaze met mine, thunderclouds of desire booming inside of it as his lips tugged up on one side. I whimpered, not knowing, yet knowing at the same time that this moment was all the reprieve I was going to get.

  I vibrated as I watched his hand pull my other breast closer to him. Just within his reach, his eyes never left mine as his tongue darted out and flicked over my nipple.

  “Ash!” His name turned into a whimper as he captured the other peak, torturing it the same, if not more than the first.

  My body felt like it was on fire, every cell unraveling underneath his touch. My skin felt as though it were knit out of nettles, so sensitive and desperate for release.

  I searched for it… that distant memory of pure ecstasy from months ago that in so many ways was responsible for this moment right now.

  One hand made it into his hair, unable to decide whether it wanted to pull him closer, desperate for more, or push him away, overwhelmed because it was too much.

  “A-Ash… please…” I moaned with a voice that played to the tune of wanton but didn’t feel wrong.

  Growling, his teeth pulled on my nipple, making my hips roll and writhe against the bed.

  “I want to taste you,” he said with a rough voice, his hand sliding down to the waist of my pants.

  Wasn’t that what he was doing?

  The question never made it from my mouth as his lips began trailing over my belly bump and all thought was lost. I didn’t know what I was feeling, watching the way his lips caressed my skin with a kind of reverence that, if I did such things, I would swear to God that some way, somehow, he knew my baby was his.

  And then I imagined what he would do if I told him… And the thought took the air from my lungs with the way I imagined he’d treasure me.

  The cool air against my naked sex shocked me; I’d only been vaguely aware of what his hands were doing while his mouth played on my stomach and tugged at my heart.

  “Ash!” I gasped, my knees trying to jerk closed but broad shoulders got in the way.

  We’d had sex. Obviously. But he’d been drunk, and the hotel room had been dark and shadowed. And that night, both of us had been desperate for something that we never thought we’d have.

  I always thought I’d savor it—my first time. That it would be slow and sweet. It wasn’t—and I was glad. Until that night, it felt like I’d been living with my head shoved underwater, holding my breath and waiting for someone to finally bring me to the surface.

  When you’re drowning, you don’t savor the first breath of air that you’re given. You take it. You gasp it in like you’d kill anyone who would try to rip it from you. That is how my first time was. Kissing him, touching him—being touched by him… it was the first breath in lungs that had been filled with water for far too long. I’d wanted it all—and more—and fast wasn’t fast enough.

  And that meant he hadn’t stopped and looked at me like this.

  If there was a mirror, I was pretty positive that I looked like a cherry—both in color and shape. I squirmed under his stare that felt

  “Ash…” I choked out his name.

  Immediately, his head jerked to mine as he rasped, “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  My head rolled around in a circle, unable to decide if the answer to that was yes or no. “What are you…”

  It could have been the blatant uncertainty in my voice or the deep red of my cheeks, but I saw the second he understood.

  “Has anyone ever tasted you, Pixie?” The gravelly texture of his voice was now a caress in and of itself.

  I had a hard time shaking my head no, the way his thumbs brushed back and forth along the insides of my thighs.

  Wetness ran down toward my butt the way his groan seemed to crack open his chest.

  “The last time I felt this desperate for a drink of something, I ended up with an addiction that stole my life.” Crystal blue eyes took me prisoner. “But you… one taste of you would start the addiction that saves it.”

  I gasped in eager shock as his head sank toward my aching sex.

  “Wait,” I choked out and instantly he pulled back, concern marring the beautiful way desire turned his face into a masterpiece.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I gulped. “You can’t… You can’t blow in it.”

  Like a hot air balloon with only half its tethers cut, his head tipped, off-balance, to one side. “What?” he rasped.

  Oh, goodness.

  “I don’t—I mean, the book says—”

  His eyebrows rose. “The book? What does the book say, Pixie?” he rasped, pressing a gentle kiss to the tingling skin of my inner thigh, a small smile creeping over his lips that promised ecstasy.

  “The pregnancy book says not to blow on it,” I blurted out. “Or in it. In me.” I groaned. I was botching this. I was ruining the moment.

  I felt his smile grow against my leg. “Explain,” he demanded.

  I closed my eyes, trying to focus on the passage I’d recalled while my body raged against the delay of its satisfaction. “During oral sex, if you blow into the vagina, you could cause an air embolism by blocking a blood vessel,” I said in a rush. “It’s dangerous.”

  I pried one eye open when I felt his shoulders begin to shake against my thighs and the rapid releases of his breath against my sensitive core.

  He was laughing.

  But his eyes weren’t when they lifted to mine.

  “Did the book say anything dangerous about licking?”

  I swallowed over the massive lump in my throat. “No,” I said steadily.

  My mouth parted. A silent gasp lodged in my chest as his thumbs spread my glistening sex open wide and I watched as he drank in the sight of my obvious desire for him. Tipping his head back up to look at me, I watched a devilish half-smile spread over his lips.

  “Good.”

  Before the word even fully registered in my mind, the sound was obliterated by the broad, firm velvet of his tongue as he licked me from the base of my slit all the way up to the swollen bud that felt like the center of it all.

  “Ash!” I cried his name as my body tensed and fractured in cells and synapses I never knew existed.

  “How about sucking?” he demanded hoarsely. “Any danger in sucking?”

  Unable to take my eyes off of him—unable to do anything but exactly what he wanted me to—my head jerked in a short but unquestionable no.

  The heavens exploded in my eyes as the heat of his mouth vacuumed over my clit and he sucked. Long and hard, he pulled against me until my head was arched back into the mattress and my fingers curled viciously into the sheets.

  I let out a loud gasp as he pulled away again.

  “And how about stroking, Pixie?” The strain in his voice almost fooled me into thinking he was as tortured as me.

  Almost.

  My head turned side to side, feeling as though my puls
e was thrumming directly from the center of my thighs in angry, demanding beats.

  “Was stroking dangerous?” His ragged question was accompanied by an electric shock to my thigh as his teeth nipped into it.

  “No!” I exclaimed breathlessly.

  I arched off the bed as his tongue pushed inside me, stretching my sex and stroking along the muscles that vibrated with desperate and needy tension.

  “And how about making you come, Pixie?” he growled, hardly lifting his lips from against my core that dripped with desire, pleading him to drink his fill. “Is it dangerous to make you come all over my tongue? To drown me with the sweet honey from your pussy?”

  I moaned, his delicious and dirty words a new kind of torture on my inexperienced body.

  “Is it?”

  Only to me, I wanted to reply but lacked all capacity to do so.

  “No.” I looked to him. “Please, Ash…”

  My need for more overcame the paralysis of pleasure, and I was rewarded with the warmth of his breath against my wet sex.

  Heaven.

  Hell.

  Hot.

  And then his mouth closed over all of me, covering me with heat that was only the beginning of my destruction.

  Licking, swirling, sucking, stroking… I watched the way his head rocked until I couldn’t watch any longer. Squeezing my eyes shut, all I could do was feel. Every lap. Every flick. All I could do was hear the wet noises come from him—or maybe from me—as they mingled with moans I didn’t realize I was capable of making.

  All the way down to the tips of my fingers I felt it, the spiraling tingle—the warning that my body was hurtling toward something I still wasn’t sure I could have remembered correctly. His fingers tightened on my thighs and his tongue moved faster, darting just inside my entrance before running up to my clit.

  Panting… unraveling… I inhaled his name over and over until it no longer sounded like a word. Maybe it was his feral growl against me. Or maybe it was the way his lips suctioned around the swollen, dripping bud of my sex and pulled it hard into his mouth, drinking from it as though it were an antidote rather than an addiction. But it was definitely the way one hand drifted back up to my stomach, almost able to completely palm the slight swell, with a possessive grip that sent my body soaring.