She chuckled, stretching out her fingers, the rope still tight on her wrists.
He kissed her warm, sweaty neck, then rose and had her released from the headboard within seconds. Somehow, he ended up on his back, and she lay in his arms while he removed the rope cuffs. “This was a taste of what I can offer you. You can take what we had here and leave. Or you can accept this little game of ours and take more.” That left eyebrow lifted. “Decide.”
The decision was an easy one, and she answered within a split second. “More.” She lifted her head off his sweaty chest and stared at him right in the eyes. “I want more.”
His sexy half smile returned. “Then more you’ll have, sweetheart.”
Chapter 6
Two orgasms later, the sheet beneath Joss had been changed. She’d been wiped down, and at some point, Maddox had ended up back in the bed next to her. She couldn’t recall all the steps that had gotten her to being cradled in his arms, only that she was glad she was. Warm and comfortable, she lay tucked into his side, his chest slowly lifting and falling beneath her cheek with his relaxed breaths.
He’d been silent over the passing minutes until his fingers began to trail over her hip and he asked, “If I asked you something personal, would you answer me?”
“Of course.” She rose a little higher on his chest, resting her chin on her hands, getting a better look at him. She found his eyes…they were guarded. “What’s on that mind of yours?”
He tucked an arm behind his head. “How many lovers have you had?”
Not the personal question she’d anticipated. “Why do you want to know?”
He gave a gentle smile. “Call me curious.”
She thought about avoiding the truth, not sure what he’d conclude from her answer, but she figured…what the hell? “Two. You and my ex-boyfriend, Nick.”
“Just two?”
She considered him, trying to get a read on his thoughts. His emotions were very much in check, leaving his face unreadable. “I’m not sure if I should be offended that you sound surprised. Do I seem easy to you?”
“Easy?” His expression turned clearly thoughtful. “No, not easy, but willing and eager.”
She paused. Then, “Is that a good thing?”
“For me?” His eyes heated, his voice thick with promise. “Yes.”
She examined him again, trying to figure him out. Usually, she was good at reading people. But this guy had a very strong shield up, keeping her out.
Before she could say as much, he smoothed the lines along her forehead and asked, “Was the other man like me?”
“Like you in what way?”
He shifted then, moving onto his side with his arm still tucked under his head. “Did he have a particular fondness for kinky sex?”
She noted how the blanket rested at his hips, showing off the hard, beautiful lines of his body before answering him with a snort. “I think Nick only knew two sexual positions.”
“Hmmm,” Maddox said, his eyebrows furrowing.
“Why does that seem to bother you?”
“Bother me?” He chuckled softly, shaking his head against the pillow. “Joss, why would it bother me that your ex-boyfriend was clearly a boring fuck? While I suspected you hadn’t had much experience with the kinkier side of sex, it does make me curious how you made such a big jump. You went from one lover to having a one-night stand in a nightclub to now being tied up and fucked by me.”
She could see his point. “Well,”—she recalled what had gone through her mind when she’d met Maddox at the bar that night—“after Nick and I broke up, I guess I was looking for something a little crazy and wild.”
“And you’re sure you’re still looking for that?”
The concern on his face made her laugh. “You know, you can really stop worrying that I’m suddenly going to wake up and realize that I can’t handle a sexual relationship with you. To be perfectly honest, wanting to date a guy that has clear commitment issues and who doesn’t want to date me isn’t in my relationship goals.”
“It’s amazing how you do that.” He snorted a laugh.
“Do what?” she asked, tracing the curve of his six-pack.
“You speak as if you have nothing to hide.”
She half shrugged, running her finger over his squared chest. “That’s because I don’t have anything to hide with you. For a long time, I hid my feelings with Nick, always trying to make him and the rest of our family members happy. With you, and because of our arrangement, I don’t have to hide anything because I don’t need to make sure you’re happy.”
He watched her finger move down his abs before looking into her eyes again. “And that’s a good thing?”
“That’s a really good thing,” she confirmed. “For the first time ever, I feel like I can be myself.”
“Well, then, I’m glad you feel that way.” He looked to the ceiling again with a smile, then shut his eyes. “I find you…refreshing, so keep being yourself.”
She smiled, too, even if he couldn’t see it.
Right as she moved to lean her head back against his shoulder, he asked, with his eyes still shut, “Is Nick also why you’re so determined to stay single?”
Back to this again? She wasn’t sure why he kept focusing on her love life. Shouldn’t he stay far away from this subject? “Shouldn’t you be happy that I am single?”
“Of course, I am,” he said, glancing at her with soft eyes. “But you’re not like the other women I’ve been with. You’re…” His eyebrows drew together, “You’re a little too sweet, a little too real, a little too honest. You seem like a relationship girl, more than someone who’s just looking for sex.”
She smiled at the compliments he gave, and she supposed she could see why women became attached to Maddox. “I’m single because I don’t want a boyfriend.”
“Is there a reason for that?”
“Because I’ve been there and done that, and I don’t want to do it again right now.”
“You seem pretty certain of that.” His brow arched as he tucked the fallen strands of her hair behind her ear. “Did this guy hurt you?”
“Yes. Horribly.”
Something flashed across his eyes then, and she grinned, unable to help it. “You’d better stop looking at me like that, or I’m going to start believing that you’re actually capable of caring about someone.”
He jerked his gaze away, staring once again at the ceiling. “I never said I couldn’t care about someone. I said I couldn’t give what most women want.”
“Well, I had what most women want, and then it ended in tears and heartbreak and wasted years.”
He gave her a quick look. “What did he do to you?”
“Oh, you know, broke up with me,” she said with a dry laugh. “At that time in my life, it seemed like the worst thing that could have happened to me. Now…well, now things are different, of course.”
“There had to be a reason for why he ended things.”
“I wanted a simple life in Seattle. He wanted a fancy life in New York City. I know that doesn’t seem like a big deal, but to me, it was. I gave him six years of my life and was totally wrapped up in him. I thought we’d get married. I planned on it, going so far as to look at bridal magazines and keep articles and stuff. My future had him in it. Then he took away the life we’d built together, and I unraveled.”
“You don’t look all that beaten up about it anymore,” Maddox commented.
She smiled, proud of that. “Because I’m not beaten up about it. I don’t miss him, if that’s what you’re wondering. Of course, it took some time, but I realized how much of myself I’d given to him when he didn’t deserve it. How his dreams mattered over mine. How I had honestly considered leaving everything behind to go to New York with him, all to be someone that I wasn’t. Honestly, it bordered on pathetic.”
“Why pathetic? Obviously, you cared for him.”
“Because he didn’t want me in New York with him.”
“Oh,” Maddox mu
ttered.
“Oh.” She laughed softly. “Apparently, I wasn’t fancy enough for his new lavish lifestyle. Which he told me when he broke up with me on the telephone.”
“Ouch,” Maddox said with a frown.
She gave a firm nod. “Which is exactly why I’m not broken up about Nick anymore. He’s a prick, and I’m lucky to not have wasted more years on him than I did.”
“Well, from my point of view, the relationship made you strong,” Maddox said, brushing his fingers across her cheek. “You’re incredibly put-together, which makes you different. I’m not used to being with girls like you.”
“What are you used to, then?”
“Girls who say they’re fine with a one-time thing and then hunt me down afterwards. Girls who think they can change me.”
This she had to know. “What kind of girl do you think I am?”
His eyes locked onto hers intensely. “A girl who sees me for what I am and is okay with it.”
She wasn’t sure why that one line brought so much emotion between them, but it did. His eyes were heated. She felt warmth slide within her, too. But she reminded herself that emotions didn’t belong between them. Maddox wasn’t hers to figure out, and that was refreshing. It didn’t matter what was going on in his head. She liked his company. She liked his brand of sex. The rest didn’t much matter. “Well, to answer your original question of why I’m single,” she added to put an end to the entire conversation, “I think what most women want out of a relationship is highly overrated.”
He gave her his sexy grin before shutting his eyes again. “And that, Joss, is the sexiest thing you’ve said all night.”
She laughed, but then she began wondering over him. “All right, you asked me something, so if I asked you a personal question, would you answer?” She cleverly used his words back on him.
“Depends.” His mouth twitched. “Shoot.”
“Have you always been so kinky?”
His eyes opened then and turned his head against the pillow. “No, not always. At one time, I was a teen that would’ve fucked anything that breathed on me.”
“Like most teenage boys, I suspect.”
He nodded with a smile. “It wasn’t until my early twenties that I was introduced to kink.”
“Introduced, in what way?” she asked hesitantly.
He shifted on his side again, the blanket inching it’s way lower off his torso. His gaze fell to her breast, and he began tracing her nipple. As the bud hardened beneath his touch, he said, “What I did to you tonight, she did to me.”
She shivered as warmth pooled low in her body, his tickling touch circling her areola being a tease of something more to come. “I can’t even picture that, to be honest. You being tied up and not in full control seems so unlike you.”
“It is unlike me now, but it wasn’t back then.” His finger travelled slowly around the curve of her breast. “Back then, I had no idea what I was doing.” His eyes lifted to hers, and they smoldered, as he added, “What twenty-one-year-old kid does? You’re still figuring yourself out.”
“That’s when you got into all this? At twenty-one?” At his nod, she sorted through a hundred questions. “Do I even want to know how old the woman was?”
“Thirty-four.”
“Of course, she was older than you,” Joss said with a laugh. “Let me guess, your professor, right?”
He shook his head, sliding his fingers down the center of her chest to her belly button.
“Doctor?” she asked.
“No.”
“Therapist?”
His eyes snapped to hers, and he frowned. “Definitely not.”
“Well, then, who was it?” she said. “Because I know it has to be something scandalous.”
He laughed easily, dragging his fingers back up her torso to her neck, then sliding them across her lips. “Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s not that exciting.” His eyes followed his fingers as he caressed her shoulder. “I met her while working at a bar as a bouncer. She was a bartender there.”
Joss shivered as the heat from his touch caused her pussy to dampen with need, but she managed, “And this woman taught you about kink?”
“That’s right,” he murmured.
God, his voice got low and throaty, and she was finding it hard to concentrate. “So, what happened? Did you date?”
“No, we didn’t date.” He slid his fingers back down over her ribcage to her nipple again, where he circled her areola. “I told you I don’t date seriously. We fucked for a few months.”
“Ah, I see,” she commented. “I’m not the only one who you were with more than once?”
“She was the only other one,” he said with a measured look, “and that was back in my twenties.”
Interesting point, which Joss decided not to look too deep into. She reminded herself that’s what she liked about Maddox. He didn’t want her to figure him out. No messy emotions. Bliss. “Then you ended the relationship?”
He nodded.
“Why?”
The side of his mouth arched then, and he climbed on top of her, sliding in between her thighs. “Because I decided I wanted to be in control.”
Joss’s heart rate kicked up, having all that man and muscle pressed against her. He blanketed her in the most spectacular way. “And she wouldn’t let you be in control?”
“It’s not what she wanted.”
“So that was it?”
“That was it.”
And that was the end of the conversation, too.
His mouth sealed across hers, and by the time he deepened the kiss, she’d forgotten the remainder of her questions. He grabbed the blanket off her, tossing it to the side, and slid an arm underneath her. She squealed as he flipped her over onto her knees.
Behind her, he wrapped an arm around her middle, lifting her, until her back pressed against his chest and his hand massaged her breast. He lowered his head into her neck and inhaled deeply. “You smell like a sugar cookie, did you know that?” His nose slid from the base of her neck all the way up to her ear.
She wanted to respond, she did, but she couldn’t. All she could do was shiver at the strength at her back. At the feel of his lips. At the gloriousness of his hand massaging her breast.
“It’s the most incredible smell,” he added in her silence.
When he began nibbling and licking and scraping his teeth across her neck, she couldn’t be still in his arms any longer. She wiggled against him, wanting more of his touch. Obviously, he heard her plea since his hands moved to her breasts and squeezed tightly, working over her until he pinched her nipples. She moaned with each perfect tug, which turned into a hiss as one of his hands cupped her sex. He teasingly squeezed her pussy, and she unabashedly swayed her hips, rubbing her sex against his hand. “Please,” she begged.
“Please, what?”
“Please touch me.”
“Like this?” he murmured, stroking her engorged clit.
She leaned her head back against his shoulder, reveling in the warmth building within. “Yes. Like that.”
“Oh, but I think we can do better, don’t you?” He dragged his hand from between her thighs up her torso to her mouth where she parted her lips, and he slid his fingers against her tongue.
With his fingers now soaking wet, he returned to them to her swollen clit. Like her own personal vibrator, he worked the bud fast, back and forth, pinching, swirling, bringing her higher. She began gasping and trembling, desperate for him to give her more. “What do you want, Joss?” he demanded, voice hard.
“Your tongue,” she rasped.
He pushed her forward, sending her facedown onto the mattress. She grasped the sheets beneath her hands as he pulled on her hips, angling her bottom high in the air. Heat flooded her as he spread her bottom, opening her in ways no man had ever exposed her.
Then he hesitated, and she knew by his groan and the way his fingers tightened on her butt cheeks that he studied every inch of her. She’d never felt more vuln
erable, and that rawness soaked her pussy in need. Her fingers clenched around the bed sheets when his tongue found her sensitive flesh, and she moaned and arched against him. He licked from the top of her sex right to her puckered hole, and back again. Over and over, he stroked and sucked her folds, teased her clit, and licked her slit. He never stopped, always driving her higher, until she began shifting her hips, boldly rubbing her sex across his mouth, needing more.
“Maddox…” she begged, not even knowing what she begged for.
He grasped her hips and then flipped her onto her back. She arched against the mattress as his mouth sealed over her clit. The stubble of his facial hair tickled against her inner thighs, seconds before his mouth covered her clit again and he sucked…hard.
She grabbed his head between her legs, holding him tightly to her. He teased and swirled and tickled the bundle of nerves until she fought for breath. Until she was unable to stay still, no matter that his arms were locked around her legs, holding her to him. She rocked her hips, gyrating against him, and he released one arm, pinning her with the other to the mattress. A rough moan escaped her dry throat as one finger entered her. Then another. He stroked her in perfect rhythm, while his tongue flicked her clit.
Pleasure roared through her, causing her chin to angle up and her muscles to seize, when suddenly his mouth popped off. His body then pressed against hers, and he sealed his lips over hers. She smelled herself on his mouth, as he angled his hand so that his palm connected with her clit. She tried to arch into the pleasure, but he thrust his free hand into her hair, pinning her.
All she was left to do was embrace the intensity that she had no control over.
Right as she began to quiver, he freed her.
“Give me what I want.”
She unraveled, exactly as he requested. Her toes pointed, body frozen beneath the strength of his, and she free fell into the pleasure only he could offer. Ripple after ripple, she rode the waves of climax. And then she relished the satisfaction thereafter that only he could deliver.
When she began to catch her breath, he kissed away her whimpers and cupped her sex until the pulsating climax lessened. Then he brushed his mouth across hers in a whisper of a kiss. “I gave you a beautiful orgasm, didn’t I?”
Heartbreaker (Filthy Dirty Love #1) Page 7