“You’re gorgeous.” I drank him in, golden in the candlelight, honed and powerful. His cock glinted each time he pulled out, slick from me. Thick from wanting me.
“This what you need?” he breathed, his motions beginning to speed. His excitement had darkened, awe eclipsed by animal appetites.
“Yes.”
“Am I big enough for you?” He made it rough—a half-dozen long, smug thrusts showcasing his arousal from base to crown.
“Yes. You’re perfect.” This needy creature, mine to spoil.
“You make me feel that way. So fucking big. You’re so tight.”
“From wanting you.”
“Yeah.” He lowered, weight shifting from his palms to his forearms. “I can feel it.” And he made me feel it—the way he could fuck hard, effortless from how wet I was. The only resistance came from how lush and swollen he’d made me, how big I’d made him, but not the tiniest hint of friction.
I touched his back, his arms, his hips, kneaded his ass and urged his strokes. He felt so male on top of me, strong body flush to mine, muscles clenching. With another man, one I didn’t want this badly, I might’ve felt overwhelmed—plowed or crushed. Violated by the thick, pounding length of him. But all I felt with Eric was his desperation. He moaned against my neck, something in the sound telling me he’d crossed a boundary. That he was too far gone to pull back.
“Show me, Eric.”
A deep grunt answered me, then, “I’m too close. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not—let me see you come apart.”
“Yeah,” he breathed, taking the permission. “I’ll show you.” His body seemed to rise up, casting me even deeper in its shadow. His angle was sharper, his handsome, fierce face right above mine, eyes on fire behind those heavy lids.
“You’re so fucking wet.”
I touched his hair, smoothing it back, holding it. Holding him. “You made me this way. The things you did. And from wanting you.”
“You made me this hard,” he echoed, and took me roughly. I palmed his hips, feeling the way his muscles worked.
His forearms butted my ribs, hands sliding under my back. He sealed us together, close as two people can get, holding me tight as his cock took what it needed.
“Oh. Oh, here I come.” He was falling to pieces above me. “Here I come, baby.”
“Good.”
“Fuck, you’re so warm.” He buried his face against my neck, hips hammering hard and frantic.
I held his head. “Come on, Eric.” I could feel his pleasure. I could sense how hard he was going to orgasm from the way it kept building. Come on home, I thought. Home to me.
“Yeah. Yeah. Oh God, here I come. Here I come.”
Every inch of him seized, muscles rigid and his cock buried deep. A grunt, a spasm, and another, and finally—
“Annie.” So quiet. Like a whispered secret, like that very first time he’d uttered my name.
And then it was just his breathing, harsh and labored and wondrous in the dim room. He pushed up, taking his weight off me. His face was incredulous. Drunk. He brushed my nose with his, touched his forehead to mine, panted against my temple. He felt so startlingly right. So meant for me.
He luxuriated a moment longer, then reached between us to secure the condom and ease out. I admired his body as he moved aside and off the bed, ducking out to disappear into the bathroom, returning a moment later. The most gorgeous man I’d ever seen, the candles bringing back that summer tan I’d admired in an alternate reality, in the Cousins Correctional Facility exercise yard. In August. In some previous life.
He joined me, the both of us propping ourselves on our hips and elbows, knees locking, skin radiating heat. He touched my hair, chest still rising and falling hard, though his expression was pure peace.
“Tell me that was worth waiting five years for,” I teased, smiling.
“Tell me the same.”
I nodded. “It was.”
“That was worth way more than anything I can think of.” His eyes roamed my throat, my breasts, our tangled legs. “That was so much more than I even let myself imagine, back when we were writing each other those letters. You felt so much more . . . So much more of everything I’d guessed. Soft and warm and so fucking . . . right.”
I shivered. “Exactly.”
“Tell me what you need.”
“Anything.” Two minutes of just about anything, I was so wound up. “Your hand, maybe. While you kiss me.”
“Here,” he said, moving. He sat up, legs in a V, back against the pillow and wall. “Straddle me.”
I did, settling so our faces were level. His mouth took mine as two fingertips found my clit, his hard arm flexing against my breast with his teasing motions. I swayed against him, overcome. His fingers curled and dipped, the pad of his hand rubbing me as he penetrated.
“God.” I spoke into his mouth, dizzy.
“Pretend it’s me,” he said, lips moving to my ear. He slid inside me, again and again, and I did as he said, imagined his cock. Remembered his cock, the way it had owned me, flat on my back. My hips were moving then, eager to be the one doing.
“Yeah. Ride me.” His other hand rose up between us, not cupping my breast, merely grazing it, the contact sparking each time my motions rasped my nipple against his palm.
“I’ve imagined this,” he whispered, voice so close by my ear, it became the room itself. “You using me, to feel all this. All those things you missed.”
“Me, too.”
“Next time it’ll be my cock,” he promised. “Hard as I was before. But for you, not me.”
“That’s what I’m imagining.”
“Hard,” he said again. “All for you.”
I flushed all over, from his tone as much as his words. From how cocky he sounded, and from knowing he’d not sounded this way for anyone else in so long.
“What else?” I asked, needing this man, exactly this way.
“Whatever you want, like I said. Ride me. Hold my face between your legs until I taste it when you come. Watch in a mirror as I take you from behind—whatever you want to feel. Or see. Or make me do for you.”
God, all of that. I nearly asked for that final thing, for the mirror. For him behind me, stroking me home, moving his hips so I could imagine we were fucking, that he was owning me. But not tonight, my mind whispered, sounding so like Eric, back in his truck. Tonight, face-to-face.
“Faster,” I whispered. “Use your fingers.”
He slid them out, stroking me with my own slickness. “Like that?”
“Even faster.”
He strummed my clit, setting my body humming.
“Eric.”
“I can smell you.”
I folded around him, pressing my face into the crook of his neck, gripping his hair.
“Next time,” he breathed. “Next time you come on my dick.”
As the orgasm began blooming, I imagined it. All that slick, hard heat hugged inside me. His own excitement, that cock gripped in a tight fist as he pulled out, lost himself all over my belly or breasts. Explicit, possessive things.
“Moan for me,” I whispered, teetering on the edge.
He did as I asked, his deep voice right behind my ear, his throat humming. His fingers circling, circling.
“Like you’re coming.”
He gasped for me, grunted deep in his chest. His hips flexed beneath my thighs, and when he spoke, I unraveled.
“Here I come,” he murmured, and I pictured just that. Just as he’d done, not five minutes earlier, and I felt it all. The snap of the tension, the free fall, the plunge. The surge and crest, surge and crest, until I went still, trembling against his chest, hips ground raw.
His fingers were gone, both palms whispering over my sweat-damp back as I caught my breath.
“Good,” he to
ld me. “Good.”
I pulled back and let him see everything I felt, no matter how flushed and crazy and rabid looking it’d left me. He smoothed my hair away from my face, twisting it into a coil, letting it tumble loose.
“All right?” he asked, and the tenderness in his voice broke my heart, officially.
“So much better than all right.”
He smiled at that. “Me, too.”
My calf was threatening to cramp, so I shifted to sit beside him, arranging a pillow at my back. He took my hand, linking our fingers atop his thigh.
I sighed for the entire city to hear, dropping my head back against the wall.
“Well said.”
I turned to grin at him, giddy when he grinned back.
After a long, dozy silence, he urged me to lie down with him, curling his body around me from behind. All that possession I’d fantasized about just as I came, only so tender, this way.
He froze with a deep breath, then asked, “Can I stay the night?”
I blinked at the dancing shadows of my room, surprised. “Of course you can.”
He buried his face against my neck, body going utterly slack, and he growled, “Good.”
“I wouldn’t dare send you back out into the cold. Not after that.”
“Can I take you someplace for breakfast tomorrow morning?”
“Sure. Or I could make pancakes or something.”
He hmmmed happily at that. “Homemade pancakes. Jesus, it’s been ages.”
“Then we could stay inside and drink too much coffee. And get to know each other, nice and lazy. Oh—unless you have to work.”
“Only if it snows again. And it’s not supposed to.”
“Oh good.”
He pulled away, sitting up a little so he could catch my eyes. “So you really do want to get to know me better.”
I nodded. “Sure I do.”
“Does that mean . . . I dunno. What does that mean? Are you over the things that freaked you out about me?”
“I’m getting there. I forgive you for not telling me about your release, when you knew. As for the assault . . . I don’t know how I feel about that. I don’t know that I’ll ever understand it. But I don’t think it scares me anymore.”
“That’s something.”
I frowned, lips pursed hard enough to tingle.
“What?”
I twisted around to face him. “If we were ever . . . You know. An item.” My face went warm. Funny how naming that possibility could feel so vulnerable, after everything else we’d bared to one another tonight. Did people even say that anymore? An item?
“Yeah?” he prompted.
“If a man did to me what that guy did to your sister—”
Eric instantly looked horrified.
“Sorry. I don’t want to imagine it, either. But just if . . .”
“Would I fuck him up?”
I dipped my chin in a nervous little nod.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah I would. If that ever happened and you weren’t even my woman, just my friend, or my ex? Yes. I’d do that.”
“What if I asked you not to? Could you promise me you wouldn’t?”
That one really, truly stymied him. His gaze dropped to my chin, brow creasing.
“Eric?”
He met my eyes. “I couldn’t promise that, no.”
A little something went dark inside me, even as something else sparked hot. This man would avenge me, to the death. A thought as fierce and reassuring as it was disturbing.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But I know that’s what I’d do.”
“If we were together, your freedom would mean more to me than another man’s punishment.”
His expression matched my own feelings—stubborn confusion, frustration, and everything so much bulkier and tougher to process with the sex haze still making us stupid.
“What would you gain from assaulting him?” I asked.
“It’s not what I get, or what I need. When I did what I had to, for my sister . . . The kind of man who’d do that to a woman, no sentence can fix what’s fucked up inside him. He’d have to be an animal to do that. And an animal won’t understand regret the way the prison system thinks he should . . . But he’ll understand two pounds of metal in another man’s fist, hell-bent on beating the life out of him.”
I winced.
“I know you can’t stand to hear that,” he said, stroking my hair. “But I hid enough from you already. From now on I’m laying it all out, ugly as it is.”
“I appreciate that. I think. But my daddy’s a state trooper. And a good man. So I refuse to believe the system’s completely broken.”
He laughed softly. “Jesus Christ. A trooper? Well, I’m fucked. Never getting that blessing.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
He sighed. “I’m not going to lie to you, not about what I feel. And as far as I’m concerned, any man who does what that asshole did to a woman has that coming to him, from her husband or her brother or her father.”
Her father. My father. Thank God I’d never had to find out whether that good, upstanding lawman was capable of Eric’s brand of justice.
“Let’s not talk about all that,” he said, tone softening. “Let’s keep talking about pancakes and shit.”
I nodded. It wasn’t as though these worries might ever materialize, down the road. And it wasn’t as though we even knew if there would be a him-and-me, down the road. The fact that he was holding me now, that our impossible affair had somehow tunneled out from under those ten-foot walls and become this—our two bodies warm and spent in my bed—wasn’t anything I ever could have predicted.
And I didn’t want to waste this miraculous present, worrying about a future that might never arrive.
I turned back over, enclosed in strong arms and male heat. Wrapped in a body that offered me everything a man could, be it pleasure or desire or the darkest depths of loyalty and honor. Wrapped in uncertainty and inevitability. Wrapped in everything good and bad, beautiful and ugly, black and white and gray. And green.
Everything that made a man worth loving.
Everything that made a woman run. Into his arms, or out of his reach.
Chapter Twelve
“Hey.”
The world inside my eyelids was dark pink, and I peeked through those curtains to find the man from my fantasies sitting up beside me in bed. He was cross-legged, sheets and blankets pooled around his waist. And goodness, he looked nice there.
“Morning,” I mumbled, wary of my breath and not wanting to waft its offense at my bedmate.
“Morning yourself. I was going to shower, unless you need to get in there first.”
“Oh, let me brush my teeth. Two minutes.” Leaving the covers, I felt a weird mix of self-conscious and seductive as I skirted the bed, naked. The drapes were closed, but light still leaked in from their crack and from the hallway. I shot Eric a look over my shoulder, admonishing the way he watched me.
“Take your time,” he said, a smug half smile on his lips.
He was still sitting up when I returned from my freshen-up, and he watched as I pulled on panties, a bra, yoga pants, camisole. I stared right back as I slipped into a cardigan and flipped my hair from under the collar. I put my hands to my hips.
“Two can play that pervert game,” I told him, awaiting my free show.
He smiled at that and drew the covers aside. All the mischief left me then, just to see this beautiful man, naked in my room. Tall and strong and handsome and, for however long it was meant to last, mine.
As he passed me, he let our arms touch, his hand catching mine, and he gently turned me around as he moved toward the door, our fingers finally slipping free. My attention caught on his back, on black ink.
“Wait, come back here.”
I
made him sit at the edge of the bed and I went to the curtains, drawing the heavier ones back, the sheer layer underneath letting in the dawn light but preserving our privacy.
I knelt on the mattress behind him. “I’ve been wondering what your tattoos were . . .” The one between his shoulder blades was as big as both my palms, a pair of feathered wings flaring out behind some kind of crest, a ribbon woven through it all, with writing. It was more illumination than motorcycle gang, and I traced the Antiqua-style letters. “‘Thicker than water.’ That’s quite appropriate, for you.”
The design flexed with his shrug.
“Did you get this in prison, or before?”
“Before.”
“And what’s the other one?” I shuffled on my knees and turned his shoulder toward me. A staggered stack of words, a trickling river of script. Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
Blood ties and vengeance. Of course. “They’re very . . . you, I’ll give you that. And I’m selfishly glad neither of them is some other girl’s name.”
He shot a smile over his shoulder. “Jealous?”
“Maybe a little.” I traced the ribbon drawn across his back one more time. “They’re pretty. You picked a good artist.”
“I’d get rid of them if I could.”
My hand dropped. “Really? How come?”
“I got them when I was twenty, twenty-one.”
I wondered if perhaps his time served had contradicted these words, if perhaps blood hadn’t proven especially thick in his family, not thick enough to stand by a man through a five-year sentence . . . ? Maybe not. Who knew?
“They’re still nice,” I told him.
“Glad you think so . . . Just feels like they belong to a guy who doesn’t exist anymore. Some dumbshit kid who had no clue what those things meant.”
“Like a bad omen or something?”
He shrugged again, the muscles between his shoulders bunching. “Nah, nothing that superstitious. I just feel like, I’m never going back to being that kid, the one who thought that stuff—loyalty and blood and all that—was just some crap to get inked across his skin.”
“I think I understand.”
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