Need you Now (Top Shelf Romance Book 2)

by Laurelin Paige

  “I think it’s be—”

  “Shut it and let’s do this.” He holds out his hand. “Gimme.”

  Beautiful, I was going to say, but he’s in such a strange mood, suddenly. There’s a tremor inside my chest. It’s not fear, exactly, but it’s uncertainty. It’s being out of my depth. I put the foil wrapper on his palm. The small contact sizzles over my skin.

  “Move.” He pushes me back.

  I curl my legs under me, waiting awkwardly on the bed below him. I feel like covering myself, but he’s not even looking at me. He opens the little packet with a crinkle. “Girl like you should learn not to slum it,” he grumbles, rolling it over his hardened penis with rough efficiency. Maybe he has to concentrate, maybe that’s why he doesn’t look me in the eyes or seem romantic anymore. “But if this is really what you want…”

  “Stone,” I say. “It’s what I want. It always was.”

  “What you think you want.”

  “You don’t know,” I say.

  He doesn’t seem to be listening. He crawls onto the bed and grabs my hair. The strange, hard look is back in his eyes. With a guttural sound, he bends me over, pushes my face into the rough wool blanket. It feels like a kitchen scrubby on my cheek.

  “Ass up. Now.”

  “Wait…” I’d imagined it different. Us face-to-face.

  He slaps my butt. “Up. You want roses and candles? Don’t tell me you’re chickening out already.”

  Slowly I raise my butt in the air, reminding myself I trust him. He’s had all the reasons in the world to hurt me, and he never has.

  He positions himself behind me. His hands are on me, but his movements aren’t tender anymore. I don’t understand what’s happening. Why does he seem mad at me? His fingers are between my legs, sliding my juices around between my legs, but his touch isn’t tender.

  “Stone?”

  “Wider. Jesus!” He pulls my thighs apart without waiting, wide enough I feel the stretch on my secret muscles. Wide enough that a blush burns my cheeks, imagining how much he can see.

  I try to swallow past the thickness in my throat. My cheek itches from the abrasive fabric. I’m always doing things wrong, never measuring up. Did I do something wrong? I crane my neck around to try to see his face. Try to figure out what happened.

  He’s kneeling behind me, chest rippling with muscle, every inch of him hard. But the look in his eyes is…torn. Or maybe grief. Pain.

  I feel the fatness of him between my legs. He feels like a doorknob. Like something that definitely shouldn’t fit into the soft private place.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, a tremor in my voice.

  He frowns down at me, fixes me with a glare. “Did I say you could look at me? That’s not how we’re doing this. You’re gonna kiss that scratchy blanket and take what I give to you.” He smacks my butt again—hard.

  “Ow!” I say.

  “Kiss the blanket! Or are you changing your mind?”

  My heart hammers in my chest. This isn’t right. This isn’t right. He was rough with me before, during the blowjob, but it felt different. A little bit more like a game. A secret we both knew.

  “Why are you still looking at me?”

  Then I get it. The look on his face isn’t grief or pain. But it’s close.

  It’s loneliness.

  What he’s doing, the way he’s acting—if loneliness was a sport like field hockey or badminton, he would be an Olympic gold medalist.

  Looming there behind me, he’s transformed into the loneliest person I ever saw. It feels like a knife twisting in me to see him so alone. Why is he so determined to keep me out? To keep me facing away from him? It isn’t because he wants pleasure. There’s only pain now.

  “No,” I say.

  “Had enough?” he growls.

  I turn to face him. Move nearer. I slide my palms over his chest.

  “What are you doing?” he rasps out. He grabs my wrists.

  “Let me go!” I hiss. I shake him off.

  He lets me go—more out of surprise than anything, I think.

  I run my hands over the scars and the crisscrosses that mottle his chest. Some of them old. I lean in to kiss the largest, most angry of the white lines. He called them ugly. They’re anything but.

  He shudders. “…the fuck?”

  “I love this one,” I say and kiss it again.

  “Don’t.”

  “I love this one, too.” I kiss another.

  “What’re you…”

  “I love this one very much.” I press a kiss to a scar over his heart, press my face to his heart. I feel him trembling, shaking.

  “Stop it.” He grabs my shoulders, holds me off.

  Maybe he can keep me from touching him, but he can’t stop what’s true. “I love you.”

  He seems to freeze, right there before me. “What are you doing? No.”

  “I love you,” I say before I’ve even thought through the words. I’ve only ever said I love you to my parents. And not very often. They don’t like to say it back. “And I want you to fuck me however you want. I’ll love whatever you do because I love you.”

  “You can’t,” he says. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  I throw my arms around him and kiss him on the lips. Because love doesn’t have to be complicated and hard. It doesn’t have to hurt. This feeling inside me, something large and expanding, a lightness—it’s love. As ordinary as a speck of dirt. As magical as moondust.

  And something strange happens.

  It’s as if all the hardness melts out of him, and he pulls me to him. “Goddamn it,” he snarls. “Fuck.” He’s holding me to his ruined chest, clutching me hard enough I can’t breathe.

  I make no move to stop him. I don’t want to stop him.

  “Why aren’t you afraid of me?” he demands, but it feels a little desperate. Like I’d maybe solve everything if I just cowered from him. Like he’s imagined ways he could scare me.

  I let him crush me, the way I might be hugged by a wild animal. A tiger or a bear. With his claws resting against my fragile skin. He could hurt me, but when you love someone, you don’t let that stop you. What’s the point of fear if it keeps you from living?

  He isn’t going to let me go, so I turn my face, only slightly. His chest looked terrible in the moonlight. A tapestry of scars. But it’s only skin pressed against my cheek. I can barely even register his scar tissue from feeling alone.

  There’s a message there. Something I need to understand about the man who holds me. He has been tortured and used. He has been hurt, but it doesn’t change the fabric of him. He’s still a man.

  Only a centimeter, that’s how far I can turn my face toward him.

  I open my mouth and graze his skin with my teeth. He sucks in a breath. He doesn’t relax, not exactly. It isn’t that the pressure around me loosens, but it changes. It becomes heavy with expectation, with the knowledge of what will come next.

  Not my face pressed into the blanket, with him saying crude words to distance himself. But it will be sex. And it will be rough. Maybe even rougher like this, without him holding back.

  “I’m not going to use that condom,” he says, his voice thick with lust.

  The declaration saturates the air around us, the knowledge that he’s serious, the awareness that I’m going to let him. That I like it. I want us to be skin to skin. “My mother gave it to me.”

  A growling sound. “She saw that fucker and gave you a condom and let you leave with him?”

  Jealousy. It’s weirdly mundane, even as I’m naked in a wild hideout with a criminal. Like we’re an ordinary couple instead of a hostage and her captor. “Liam’s nice.”

  It’s the wrong thing to say. Or maybe exactly the right thing to say. Because when Stone pulls away from me, there’s a dangerous light in his eyes. “Liam’s nice,” he repeats, his voice caustic. “He’s fucking nice.”

  “He is,” I protest, not sure why I’m pushing Stone.

  Probably because I
want him to push back.

  And then he does, in a literal way. His hands on my upper arms. That’s all he uses to lift me up and toss me back toward the middle of the bed, like I weigh nothing. The breath whooshes out of me as I land, and I scramble to get away from him, breathless, panting, because it’s almost like a game again.

  Almost. Because there aren’t any rules.

  Stone grabs my ankle and drags me back to the middle of the bed. Then he grabs my other ankle, spreading me wide. I have this mental picture of him having sex with me this way, my legs pressed so wide apart, him far away at the foot of the bed. It doesn’t make any sense, but that’s what happens when you’re a virgin. Even your fantasies are a little confused.

  And then he lowers his head, right there. Between my legs.

  My fantasies didn’t prepare me for this.

  His mouth touches my stomach, and I jerk away with a high-pitched sound. “What…what are you doing? No. Wait. Not that.”

  He gives a low laugh. “Not that, says the girl who can still taste my cum.”

  And I realize that he’s right. There’s salt that lingers on my tongue. Oh God, that makes me think about what I must taste like.

  He slips his tongue into my core, warm and thick. He’s fucking me with his tongue. Invading my most secret place.

  He pushes it deeper, again and again. I shudder at the sensation. I writhe and moan.

  Heavy hands push my legs wider apart. He changes his motion, licking now, licking me like an ice cream cone. Except not exactly, because an ice cream cone is cold, and the heat from his tongue sizzles up through my belly.

  He licks again, making wet sounds that are somehow more obscene than what he’s doing to me. Then his licks get smaller, more pointed, his tongue feeling more like a finger, thick and warm.

  I never felt anything like it. I grab onto his hair, stunned at the feeling. His tongue between my legs is the best thing I’ve ever felt. Embarrassment washes over me for a split second when I make myself think how he’s licking right where I pee, but then he moans, rumbly with pleasure and approval, like he thinks it’s the best thing, too, and I let go.

  The rules don’t apply when Stone is around, and everything is possible. I shove my hands into his hair and grab and twist. I hope I’m not hurting him.

  But from his moans, he seems to like it.

  He’s licking faster. He’s swirling good feelings through me, swirling and swirling them. It’s too much, but I don’t want him to stop.

  There’s a high noise in the room, and I realize it’s me, crying out. Stone’s answer is a rumble between my legs, low and dark. His tongue is a live thing, wiggling on that special spot. It’s as if he knows exactly where I ache for him—even better than I do. As if he knows secrets hidden inside my body.

  That’s when everything explodes behind my eyes. Pulsing waves of magic flow inside my head and down to my toes. “Stone!” I cry.

  His licking is different now—softer. Like he’s softening with my pleasure. As if he’s taking care of me, even in this.

  He slows and rumbles again. I can barely think. Everything seems so wild. I tighten my grip on his hair.

  He’s kissing up my belly. Rumbling into the soft flesh there. He kisses between my breasts, kisses my neck.

  He looms over me, cages me with massive arms.

  “More, Stone.”

  He studies my face, muscles bulging on either side of me.

  “I want all of it. All of you.”

  He looks down at me with a kind of wonder. “There’s no going back.”

  “Please.” I reach down to grab him like he showed me, but he’s too far away. He wraps his fingers around my wrist and kisses the flat of my palm, then places it above my head. Somehow I know to keep it there. He trails rough fingers down the sensitive underside of my forearm, then down to my armpit, to the side of my breast.

  I let out a gust of air. Everything with him is new and sexy.

  He lowers himself. Slowly, muscles bulging. And he kisses me. He’s right on top of me—not enough to crush me, but I feel him there, heavy and good.

  “Please,” I say into the kiss.

  “I’m gonna give it to you good and slow, little bird, but you’re going to feel it.” It’s going to hurt, he means.

  “I want to feel it,” I say, even as his thick fingers move at my entrance.

  I feel the knob of him pushing into me, filling me. My breath quickens. It’s bliss and pain, mingled together.

  I cry out.

  He stills.

  “Keep going,” I say.

  Gentle fingers stroke the side of my forehead. “Breathe, baby.” He nips my lips. “Breathe.”

  I take a deep breath, and he’s rocking into me, rocking gently. Filling me, stretching me impossibly wide.

  I feel panicky, like maybe it’s too much. He’s so huge inside me.

  I breathe again, and something warm in me unwinds, loosens, and he’s sliding deep. It feels like he’s filling me down to my toes.

  “Stone,” I whisper.

  Chapter 20

  Stone

  She feels like heaven—warmth and goodness and the home I never had. It takes every ounce of my restraint not to pound her right into the bed, right through the fucking floor, to devour her like an animal.

  I don’t deserve her. But I’m taking her. It feels like I’ve been waiting for her forever.

  She’s mind-bendingly tight. I brace my arms on either side of her and press all the way in.

  And nearly come, right there. Like a schoolboy.

  Fuck, that was close.

  I move inside her, then, slow at first. She makes this sweet little gasp every time I rock into her. I could live on just that gasp. They could lock me up and throw away the key and not even feed me, but that little gasp contains everything I need. And her tight, hot cunt and her breasts, soft pillows against my ruined chest.

  Her hands roam over my back, exploring, seeking.

  Take it all, I think. Whatever you want.

  All this time I was worried about ruining her. I never imagined she’d be the one ruining me.

  Then she comes, and her little pussy squeezes me so hard I see stars.

  There’s been sex. There’s been orgasms. There’s never been this, the pressure that builds at the base of my spine. That explodes in a wild burst of joy. I come hard and long, rutting into her body as if I can fuck her deep enough to merge with her. We won’t be two people anymore, just one fucking body.

  It’s the collapse of my muscles, my strength that finally puts an end to it. And I collapse on top of her.

  Climax has only ever meant release for me. That I’m done with whatever woman I’m with. That whatever man has taken me upstairs is finished for the night.

  This climax isn’t an ending. It’s a beginning. When I look at her, everything seems clearer.

  I love you. She said that to me.

  It seemed impossible but inevitable. Because I love her, too. It’s the only thing that explains the way I take her hostage, again and again. The only thing that explains why I fucked her without a condom. Shit.

  I push up on my elbows, looking down at her. She looks wrecked. Her eye makeup is smudged, her hair a crazy tangled halo. She’s never looked more beautiful.

  If I weren’t already sunk, she would be a cannon blast in my side. She still is.

  Even as the world is sharper to me, more colorful, brighter, it’s the opposite for her. I can tell by the hazy look in her brown eyes. By the dreamy half-smile on her face. She’s blissed-out. Well-fucked. Masculine pride swells in my chest.

  “You okay?” I murmur, pulling away from her reluctantly.

  My dick doesn’t want to leave her tight, wet clasp. It’s ready for another round. To fuck her again and again until we die in agonized bliss.

  But it’s her first time. She might be sore.

  “Better than okay,” she mumbles, her eyes still soft and unfocused. Like she can’t really see me, even one foot
away from her. Like she can see through me, inside me. And for some reason, that doesn’t terrify me like it should.

  Her body is the very definition of welcome. A warm place to land. I want to lie beside her for a long time. A lot longer than we actually have. I’m well versed in denial, so I push out of bed and cross to the small sink. The hot water here is shit. I never cared about that. I could take a cold shower, could stand the sting of freezing spray, but I hate the thought of causing her discomfort. I find a clean washcloth and dampen it, twisting it in my hand as if I can transfer some of my body heat into it.

  She hasn’t moved even an inch from where I left her.

  “Little bird,” I say softly.

  There’s a small sound that might be acquiescence or denial. She doesn’t want to move, so I move her myself. I pull her legs apart and use the washcloth to clean her. A gasp, the first time the cloth touches her private place. And then a soft whimper. Fuck. How bad did I hurt her? I hate myself a little for that, for taking her thin little hymen, even knowing I’d do it again if I could.

  The washcloth comes away pink, stained with her blood. Lord knows I’ve seen worse injuries, especially ones that happened through sex, but none of them hit me as hard as this. It would take a thousand fucking rivets to suck the darkness out of me. I made her bleed.

  She shakes her head, as if trying to rouse herself, to focus. “Stone. You okay?”

  “Course,” I say, but it feels like a lie. The ground beneath me trembles. Breaks apart. I’m standing at the epicenter of an earthquake. One with pale skin and pink nipples.

  It fools her, my lie. She settles back into the bed like it’s made of fucking velvet. That’s what she deserves. Silk and lace. Everything soft and beautiful. Instead she has me.

  So I force myself to clean her, thorough and careful. Even though it’s hard to see her skin turned pink from my mouth, a set of fingerprints on her hips. I’m a fucking barbarian.

  And then I’m done. Nowhere else to clean. Nothing else to do but stand there, looking down at a goddess who somehow landed at my feet.

  She reaches toward me, her slender arm both fragile and strong. “Come here.”

  My body responds before I can think it through.