Compartmentalize.
She could. She was usually better at that, and she didn’t want to send him away. She craved his submission for the moment and her own release, so she was just going to do it.
Worry about tomorrow on tomorrow.
She took his hand and, with one beckoning look over her shoulder, led him to the bedroom.
The room was impersonal, as every furnished rental she’d ever leased was. The personality in the décor wasn’t hers. Surprisingly, she found herself upset that he had to see that and that she was trotting him into some dim, uninteresting room that may as well have been a hotel she’d booked for the night. A place where secret trysts happened and not places where people connected.
It seemed like that was what they were doing. Connecting. It’d been so long since she’d tried she hardly recognized what wanting to be with someone felt like.
She turned him so his back was to the foot of the bed and pressed her hands down his hard belly. “Take off your clothes.”
His hand went immediately to his belt buckle. “All of them?”
“Everything.”
She left him to disrobe, but only to step a few feet away. Pulling the long bench at the foot of the bed back so she could walk all the way around it, she then walked to her closet where she kept useful things like condoms and lube and…rope.
She rifled through her Suitcase of Shame—the one the TSA opened and inspected damn near every time she traveled with it—and found a skein of silky cordage. For the moment, she left the rest.
Quinn had very efficiently undressed and stood near the bench with his arms crossed over his chest and his cock jutted toward her, awaiting her touch.
She used her foot to nudge his pile of clothes out of the way and walked a circle around him, studying him from head to feet.
Damn.
She gave his ass a pinch and he had the nerve to grin.
“You know what you look like, don’t you?” she asked.
“Pride is a sin and I have it, I guess.”
“You should be proud, but maybe you should keep it to yourself. It’s probably gotten you into a few fights.”
“A handful. Yeah.”
She trailed her fingers down his chest and swirled them around his navel. Peering up at him, she studied his beseeching expression, wondered what he was thinking. Wondered if he could tell what was going through her mind, too. She hoped he couldn’t. He might take her confusion personally when it wasn’t entirely his fault that she felt that way. Her emotional baggage choked at her and made her hesitate.
She led him to the foot of the bench and had him sit. “Spread your legs,” she whispered, jamming her knee between his.
He inched his feet farther apart, and she pushed them more until they were perfectly aligned with the bench’s legs.
On her knees, she set aside half the cord and worked the other half around his ankles, securing them to the bench.
“Don’t trust me not to move?” he asked.
“I don’t want to make you practice your restraint. I want a guarantee that you’ll be still. I need it.” She added in a whisper, “Okay?”
“Yes.”
He hadn’t even given her time to hold her breath. His answer was quick and sure. No sigh of reluctance or of mere tolerance. He wanted to do as she’d asked.
“Thank you.” Grabbing the spare skein of rope, she stood, skimming her lips over his shaft. She pulled away just before reaching the head, and he groaned.
“Too predictable, Quinn. Why would I be predictable?”
“I should know better.”
“Yes, you should.” She straddled him, letting her legs dangle over the sides of the bench as she leaned forward, pressing his arms into position. She brought his wrists together in a cross over his heart. “Keep those there.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She didn’t have much rope to work with, but she was good at making do.
She fashioned a harness out of the rope and looped it around his neck, down his shoulders and over his arms. She wound it beneath the bench and made sure his arms were secure. “Okay?” she asked. “Too tight?”
He squirmed a little, his cock jiggling against the inside of her thigh. “No, it’s fine.”
“Good.” She wiped a bit of shed fiber from her palms and climbed off of him. “Stay right there,” she said.
“You don’t gotta be mean, Marina.”
She chuckled as she adjusted lights and turned up the air conditioning. The room might have been comfortable at the moment, but once Quinn’s blood starting racing, he was going to get hot. She didn’t know a single man who could maintain an erection once he started to sweat. She didn’t need him hard for long, but still wanted to acclimate him…just in case there was a next time. She didn’t think there’d be one, but wanted to enjoy the fantasy of it all the same.
She grabbed a bottle of massage oil from the bathroom and let some of the lavender-scented stuff pool in her palm. Kneeling at Quinn’s feet, she rubbed her hands together and stared up his long body at his face.
His lips parted wordlessly and he put his head back and gaze on the ceiling.
“Good boy. You know what to do, don’t you?” She started at his feet, rubbing the tops of them and working the oil up his shins, massaging his strong calves.
His muscles flexed beneath her hands as she traced along the edges.
She swirled her fingers around his scarred knees, pressed her thumbs into the flesh along the sides of his lower thighs and then rubbed higher.
She squeezed more oil into her hand and worked on his hips and haunches, paying special attention to the creases between his belly and thighs.
His cock jerked attentively, but she avoided touching that. She had no plan to touch it just yet.
Standing at the other end of the bench, she moved to his shoulders and pressed and kneaded the knots and kinks.
He rolled his gaze back to her. Her face first, then downward to the opening of her robe. To her pussy, as she set one knee beside his head and then the other, and moved carefully over him.
His lips parted once more as she pulled her robe around her waist and settled her sex onto his face.
“Mmm.” His tongue sought her entrance, and having experienced his earlier attentions, she had no doubt he’d find it even without use of his hands.
He flicked the tip of his tongue in and out of her contracting opening and she bit down on her lip to control her sounds as she leaned forward. With slick hands, she massaged the creases between his legs again and worked inward slowly, teasingly. With each inch she gained, she pulled her hands away—frustrating him, judging by his erratic licks and suckles of her clit.
It didn’t matter, anyway. She didn’t plan on finding an orgasm straddled in that uncomfortable position. She’d merely wanted him uncomfortable—to see what he could endure in the name of pleasure. Crushing her breasts against his bound arms certainly wasn’t her idea of pleasurable.
She inched her fingertips toward his sac and at his hiss, pulled away.
He didn’t complain or beg, but his breath against her cunt was sharp before he resumed his tongue-only exploration.
She raked her nails up the insides of his legs to his belly and watched his delicious muscles clench and body bow toward, then draw away from her. If she had an hour to do nothing but look at him and touch him, she’d take it gladly. She wanted to memorize every inch of his Adonis body and plot out a litany of ways to drive him wild.
“Want to hear you beg,” she mused, grinding her sex over his seeking tongue. “Want you pleading for me to take care of you. That’s what you want, right, Quinn? You want someone to take care of you? Tell you what to do?”
She moved away from him and the bench so he could answer. Panting and rutting into nothing, he tipped his head back and met her gaze.
“Is that what you want, Quinn?”
He nodded.
“Poor thing.”
She left him there in that aro
used state and retreated to the closet once again. She grabbed the lube she’d left behind and a condom, and walked to the foot of the bench.
She set the objects on the floor and pressed her hands against the triangle of bench fabric between his legs. “I just want to look at you for a moment. I like looking at you.”
He kept his mouth shut. Obviously, he knew the score. Someone had trained him well, and Marina didn’t particularly want to give much thought to who that might have been. Jealously had no place in short-term trysts.
She scanned down his torso and over his bound arms, let her gaze linger over his rippled abs, and happily tracked down the dark trail of hair between his navel and jutting cock.
His thighs were tan and hard, his calves toned and flexed from strain.
The only way she could have improved on the sight was if she’d bound his wrists behind his head. She wanted to see the stretch of his long torso and his chest open and broad.
Next time.
“I hope you don’t mind a ride.” She held up the condom packet. “Being one, I mean.”
“Take what you need from me.”
“Oh, I won’t go all that far tonight.” She leaned in to kiss down the insides of his thighs and grazed the tip of her tongue around his tight sac.
His startled breath spurred her on, made her drag her tongue up the length of his shaft and circle the head.
“God,” he whispered.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t been touched recently, Quinn. I wouldn’t believe it was possible for a lusty guy like you.”
He kept his mouth shut, so in her mind, that was exactly what he wasn’t going to tell her.
“When’s the last time you came?” she asked, and wrapped her fist around the base of his cock. She squeezed and pumped, and eased off a bit so he could answer.
“Uh. Yesterday.”
“Oh?”
“Hard not to do something when I get so turned on. You’re fine as hell in those dresses.”
“Am I?”
“Mm-hmm. You know you are. That’s why you wear them, isn’t it? So people’ll look at you?”
She wouldn’t go as far as to say that, but she did like the way she felt when she wore them. Sometimes, feeling girly and pretty made her feel more powerful.
“I had to needed to get the edge off,” he said. “I was hurtin’ bad.”
“What’d you do?”
“I jerked off.”
“Where?”
He let out a breath and turned his face to the side, breaking their gaze. “Leaning against the door in my apartment. I barely got inside before I got my pants down.”
“You came all over your hand, leaning against the door like that?” If he had been as hard then as he was there with Marina, she could understand his need for release. He was like velvety steel in her hand. Hard enough to break her, maybe.
She pressed her palm against his weeping head and rubbed the wetness down his shaft.
He bucked into her fist. “Yeah. I…fuck, Marina. I did, even with my roommate watching.”
“Your roommate caught you?”
“Walked out to—to say hi, I guess, and I didn’t care that he was there. I didn’t want to stop. I was already so close and I didn’t care if he saw.”
“What’d he do? Did he walk away?”
“No. He watched me come and then got me a towel.”
“Dirty boy.”
“Yeah, he is. But…so am I.”
“Yes, I think you are.” She loosened her grip on his shaft only so she could teasingly lick the head. She’d wanted to taste him from the moment he’d walked into her apartment. A lick turned into a suck, because there was so much of him to taste all at once. Pulling the whole head into her mouth seemed logical.
“Jesus, Marina.” His control may have been unpracticed, but it was excellent. Aroused as he was, he didn’t try to thrust more of himself into her mouth. He wouldn’t take more than she was willing to give, and that seemed to be his modus operandi outside of the bedroom, too. She wished she’d know that about him sooner. All the time she spent avoiding him as if he were any other Rooster could have been used so much more productively.
Perhaps she would have been so much less lonely.
Sighing, she let him fall from her mouth and leaned back. She was getting carried away already. “Did he want to know what go you so hot?”
She started undoing the rope around his ankles.
“Yeah, he wanted to know, and I didn’t want to tell him. He’d want to share, and I don’t share.” He flexed his feet and tried to look down. “Um, what are you doing?”
“I’m gonna get you up so you can come, Quinn.”
“Pardon?”
“I changed my mind. Am I allowed to change my mind?”
“Of course you are, honey. Any time you want.”
“Good. I want you against the doorway with your fist around your dick. I want to watch the turmoil on your face as you come too hard and too fast.”
“I thought—”
She pressed her index finger against his lips and shushed him. “Okay?”
Brow furrowed, he nodded.
So trusting.
She bent to kiss him, just a sweet, short peck, but a reward for his easy compliance all the same. She didn’t want to do anything to breach his trust, because he didn’t seem to be the kind of man who gave it up easily.
She undid the knots that secured his arms and rubbed his skin where the rope had pinched. Then she kissed each little spot of red, and few other swaths of his golden skin, too.
Judging by his indulgent little sighs, he liked it, and she liked pleasing him. He was easy, and she needed some things in her life to be easy.
She took his hands to get him to his feet, led him to the bedroom door, and put his back against it. “Stay right there, handsome.”
“If you’d like.”
“I’m going to like it a lot, I think.” She retreated to the bench and sat.
Curiosity tugged at his features as he stood waiting, and his hands clenched and unclenched repeatedly at his sides. He didn’t seem impatient so much as nervous. Having seen him play baseball so fearlessly, she would have never taken him for the nervous type. His hesitance humanized him and made him that much easier to want.
She already wanted him very much.
She shrugged her robe off her shoulders and opened her legs so he could see. He had a good view from where he was, even if the light was poor. He could see her parting herself, could see her fingers delving in and out of her slick folds.
Could see her putting her head back as she strummed at her clit with her thumb.
Maybe he’d been strung too tight and needed to slake off the edge, but she was there, too. She wanted him so badly, but wanted to see him pleasure himself more.
She wanted to learn what he needed so she could give it back to him later, because as gratified as she’d be by his easy compliance, she’d craved being at his mercy even more.
She was tired of being the one in charge.
CHAPTER SIX
“Show me,” Marina said breathily.
Her head was thrown back and fingers worked feverishly over her clit, dipping every so often into her sex.
Quinn could do that for her. He could get on his knees and fill her with a finger or two—put his tongue wherever she wanted it. She didn’t seem to want that at the moment, though.
“Look at me, then,” he whispered. He sounded so needy, and in his everyday life, he was unused to that. He was assertive and cocky and used to asking for what he wanted. Marina could tell him “no,” though, and that little word coming from her could break him. He hadn’t wanted to get entangled with another rich woman. The last one had vowed to give him everything he needed up until the first time he refused her for something. Then she’d taken everything she’d given him back and with interest.
He couldn’t go back to that place. Couldn’t afford to, financially or emotionally, but resisting Marina was too hard.
She woke something up in him, and he liked feeling like he fucking mattered to someone.
Marina lifted her head and dragged her tongue across her lush, pink lips. “Show me, Quinn. Now.”
“Of course.” Taking his cock in hand, he nodded and improved his stance. He widened his legs and put his spine against the door.
“Let me see you come. Show me how you did it in front of your roommate.”
He knew it wouldn’t be very much of a show, but if she wanted to see him stroke his cock, he’d indulge her. If it’d make her happy, he’d show her.
Letting out a ragged breath, he lifted his sac with one hand and rolled his balls beneath his thumb. He gripped the base of his shaft and squeezed to the end and briefly brushed his palm over the head, gathering the bit of liquid beaded there.
“How does it feel, Quinn?”
“Good. Feels good.”
He much preferred Marina’s soft flesh against his, but if he wanted to come hard and fast, his rough, calloused hand on his cock would do just fine.
“Show me how you like it, Quinn. Do you like it gentle like that?”
He shook his head. Squeezing his fist around his dick tighter, he stroked faster. “No. Like…like it rougher.” His knees and thighs started to quiver and ass clenched as blood pooled in his lower core, and he could hardly draw in enough breath.
Marina’s sultry stare and wanton fingers dancing over her cleft teased him. He’d been so close to being inside her, and he didn’t even have the second-best thing of her just touching him anywhere she could reach. Still, that sight of her with legs spread wide and lips parted in bliss incited him to that can’t-help-but-to-come place, and so he did.
Right there in his hand and all over the fucking floor, too.
Shit.
Marina closed her eyes and put her head back again. Her hand worked faster—thumb over her clit and fingers of her other hand stuffed inside her—and she ground out through clenched teeth, “Quinn.”
“Yes?”
“Quinn. Oh, Quinn.” Her body shuddered and a shuddering laugh fell from her lips. “God. Do you know how sexy you are?”
“I—” Yes? No? He shifted his weight, his gaze locked on the wet spot on the floor. She’d already warned him about his pride. He failed at it a lot, but he tried hard not to make the same mistakes more than once.
Designated Hitter (Reedsville Roosters Book 4) Page 6