Half My Blood

by Lauren Gilley

  Then Michel pulled back, and his gaze went to the length of rope, his eyes hooded, mouth tugged down in a grim frown. He reached for it slowly, curled his hand around it. “I’ve got a better idea.” His eyes flashed up to her face. “You tie me up.”

  Holly couldn’t believe this was happening. If she hadn’t heard the rustle of the sheets, smelled the faint whiff of laundry detergent lifting up from them, or seen Michael preparing himself, she would have chalked this up to some strange dream. And not a good one, either. She hadn’t intended the evening to take this turn. She’d wanted to exorcise some of her demons, if she could, not turn the tables around on Michael.

  Michael was stretched out naked on his back. He was aroused, had been since he’d first shucked his jeans moments ago; apparently, he liked the lingerie after all.

  He let his arms fall out toward the edges of the mattress. The undersides were pale in contrast to the golden tan of his shoulders and biceps. A real, working man’s tan, and not something he’d cultivated through careful sunbathing.

  He lifted his head off the mattress, looked down his body toward her, where she was perched on the edge of the bed. “Tie me up, Hol.” It wasn’t said with any sort of licentious intent, but his arms flexed as the words left his mouth, and his cock twitched.

  Her mouth was dry suddenly. She had to wet her lips to say, “Okay.” And then she moved up the bed on her knees.

  She was very aware of the way each breath lifted his chest, expanded his ribcage. She heard the air whistling between his clenched teeth as she laid one hand on his wrist and passed the rope gently around it.

  “Tight,” he instructed, head turning toward her. Tight the way she’d been tied. Tight enough to break the skin, to leave scars.

  “No,” she said, making a loose knot and stretching the rope toward the bedpost.

  “Hol–”

  “I’m in charge, and I say no.”

  This whole scenario was like a dream sequence. It didn’t feel like a part of her real life; she’d stepped into a movie; was playing a part in some stage performance that called for her to do these things she’d never envisioned herself doing.

  She climbed over him and tied his other wrist to the far bedpost. And then he was her captive, stretched across the bed, waiting and at her mercy.

  Holly lifted her hand, hovered it over his chest…

  And could do nothing.

  Her hand quivered, and then grew blurry as her eyes filled with tears. She didn’t want to cry, but her chest was tight and her head was spinning and the sight of her naked husband spread before her should have been sexy, but only felt like the biggest violation of his masculinity.

  “Holly.”

  She blinked the tears away and glanced up at his face. The tenderness in his expression was nearly her undoing.

  Softly, sweetly, like he knew exactly what was happening inside her, he said, “Sweetheart, come here and kiss me.”

  She braced her hands on his pecs and leaned forward, hair falling over her shoulders, to press her lips to his. She closed her eyes and tasted his mouth, pushed the ropes and the old trauma out of her mind. Let the warm smell of his skin and the firmness of his body beneath her swamp her senses. Just the two of them, his chest swelling under her hands, his tongue sliding between her lips. Even though she was the one on top, he had control of the kiss, was working her jaw open wider and taking the inside of her mouth for his own.

  She pulled back a fraction to catch her breath, not wanting to put too much distance between them, still wanting her lips to touch his.

  “What do you wanna do?” he asked her in a low, rough voice that left her pulse throbbing between her legs. “You can do whatever you wanna do to be, baby.”

  An incoherent sound left her throat. A hard shudder gripped her, left her insides clenching. Whatever she wanted to do. That had never been an option in her old life, in her life before Michael. Her wants, her needs…he was so impossibly good to her.

  And she was so very hot and wet for him.

  She closed the gap and kissed him again, one leg easing across him, so she straddled his stomach. She slowly let herself relax, until her weight was distributed across his torso. Not much weight, he would have said. She was small. And so when he surged upward against her, leaning into the pressure of her breasts, flexing his abs so the hard ridges rubbed against her sex, she thought he might toss her clear off the bed.

  But then he settled, and he kissed her hungrily, his hips flexing the slightest and then releasing, flexing and releasing, as he sought friction between their bodies.

  He was very, very turned on, she realized, and he couldn’t put his hands on her, because she’d tied him to the damn bed.

  The realization was dizzying. She latched onto his shoulders and let his solid hardness anchor her as her lips and tongue accepted the invasion of his kiss.

  His body gave another of those great tidal wave movements beneath her, and he grunted against her mouth, breaking the kiss with a ragged sound. “No pressure or anything, but baby, damn, you’re gonna have to do something.”

  “I know, I know.” She was, because neither of them had expected this turn of events to prove so incendiary, and he needed some relief from the ache of wanting.

  She kissed the side of his throat, the pounding pulse there, the slight salt taste the day had brought out in his skin. Down to the hollow at the base, where she pressed her tongue – and heard the creak of the ropes as he pulled against them.

  She started to lift her head. “Are you–”

  “Don’t stop.” A tight, strained voice, nothing Michael-like about it.

  The sight of him, his head pressed back into the pillow, the tendons stretched tight along his throat, melted her insides, sent heat pouring through her that vaporized all worry, wonder, and shame. She was doing this to him: popping all the muscles in his arms, pushing him over the edge into a crippling desire that he could only wait out, because she was the one in control.

  Holly shifted down his body, leaving a trail of kisses across his chest, the leaping muscles of his stomach. She crawled backward, skimming her lips across as much of him as she could, long, lingering kisses pressed to the soft skin below his navel.

  When she wrapped her hand around his cock, his hips surged off the mattress and he cursed between his teeth, all of his body one glistening, straining line of tension.

  “I’m sorry,” Holly murmured, sliding her hand up his length, passing her thumb over the velvet-soft skin at the head. “Really sorry.”

  She lowered her head and took him in her mouth. Shallowly, at first. She had no idea if she was any good at this. Before Michael, it had only ever been hands knotted tight in her hair and hammering hips that gagged and choked her and made her sick.

  But Michael was always very gentle; he always gritted his teeth and let her move at her own pace, exploring him slowly.

  She was slow now not out of uncertainty, but because she was hypnotized by this moment of complete trust on his part. She’d entrusted him with everything she had, and he was doing same.

  She sucked at him lightly, just at the head, as if she were kissing his mouth. And when he groaned something incoherent she relaxed her jaw and took him in deeper, her hands holding him steady, massaging him.

  As she brought him to release with her hands and mouth, she felt a faint stab of guilt. This was almost like torturing him. But he had volunteered, and the sounds filtering between his clenched teeth were not frightened, tortured sounds. They spoke only of passion and satisfaction and a deeper longing.

  He finished, but he didn’t calm, and she was glad for it, trailing her fingers up his slippery cock as she straightened, feeling the hot wetness between her legs.

  “Do you like the green,” she asked, surprised by how breathless she sounded. “Or is naked better?”

  “Fuck. Naked.”

  She fumbled with the clasp of the bra, pushed the panties down her hips and kicked them free. She imagined the way he’d rea
ch for her, if he could, imagined his hands settling on her hips and squeezing in silent encouragement as she straddled his hips, took him in her hand and lowered down onto him, taking him in her body. Didn’t just imagine them, but missed them, longed for their weight pushing her down as she lifted and lowered, searching for a rhythm. She wanted him to cup her breasts and play with her nipples; wanted his strong fingers kneading at the small of her back as she arched and crested.

  But he couldn’t touch her, and so she touched him.

  She leaned forward, smoothing her hands up his chest and back down again. Tickling at his ribs. Digging grooves into his pecs with the tips of her fingers. He was slick with sweat and her palms glided over him. The perspiration was a high sheen in the late afternoon light, painting him shiny and chiseled as a cover model.

  Holly worked him slowly, rocking her hips, small movements, savoring the deep, breathtaking pressure of his cock wedged so tightly inside her. She was dizzy; felt drugged. She wanted it to stretch on and on, this sophisticated flirtation with release, holding right on the edge.

  She glanced down at her hands, saw the terrible heaving of his chest as he fought for breath. The twitching in his stomach. Saw the deep crimson flush splashed across her own pale skin, across her swaying breasts and the slight curve of her stomach.

  She reached down between her parted thighs and touched herself, just above the place where they were joined, right at the aching little place that –

  That was when the ropes gave way.

  Or, rather, Michael twisted his balled fists out of the insubstantial knots and got loose.

  Holly didn’t have a chance to be startled. Suddenly his hands were on her, gently touching her despite the violence that quivered under his skin. He gathered her up and rolled her, withdrawing from her so that he could put her on her back and climb over her. Spread her knees, push her legs up. A desperate, ragged sound echoed in his throat as he passed his fingers across her wet entrance and then found her with his cock. One sure thrust and they were together again, and his hands braced on the mattress beside her head as his hips churned.

  Holly wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him.

  Yes, this was what they both needed. This was how it was always the best, when he was above her and she was straining to reach him, to press as close to him as she could.

  His breath was a hoarse panting in her ear, his face buried in her hair on the pillow as he lost all control and fell to the mercy of the strong flexing of his back. He could do nothing but thrust into her again and again, and she wanted nothing else.

  “God,” she breathed against the side of his face, turning her head so the rough grain of stubble rasped the tip of her nose. “Michael, yes. Please.”

  And he gave her everything.

  There were no words after, only a collapse, their pulses still raging, breathing still ragged. After a long silent spell, Michael reached for her again and she went all too readily, moving onto her hands and knees at his urging, welcoming him into her body in this position.

  It was torture in a way she’d never known before. Not pain and punishment, but a lavishing of pleasure, and passion, and the most earnest affection in the most relentless onslaught.

  “Thank you,” she said, when it was finally over and awareness had returned to her. She smiled softly at him and reached to touch his face with the back of her hand. Roughness of stubble, faint tacky pull of drying sweat. Total relaxation of his jaw because he was exhausted.

  It was dark outside now, and the lamps in the room were a soft buttery glow pooling around their bed. They lay on their sides, facing one another, legs interlaced.

  His eyes were large and dark, and not narrowed and cynical as they were in the daylight, in the world outside their bedroom. “Not sure we did what you set out to.” He almost sounded regretful.

  She passed her thumb across his lower lip; the skin was so soft in comparison to the rest of his face. “Thank you for making sex something that I want, and need, and can’t do without.”

  Instead of literal torture.

  His arm was heavy with fatigue, but steady as it went around her waist and drew her in even closer. “I think you’re probably always going to have nightmares, baby,” he said quietly. “I don’t know what to do about them.”

  “You already do so much.”

  “Not enough, apparently,” he said roughly.

  She shook her head. “No, you were right the first time. They probably won’t ever go away completely. And it was – it was stupid what I tried to do tonight. That…I won’t ask something like that again.”

  He touched his forehead to hers, so his features were blurry with the closeness. “It wouldn’t have helped you to relive that. I can’t – I won’t ever do what they did to you, Hol. I love you too much.”

  She closed her eyes; her chest filled up to bursting with overwhelming love for him.

  “We could get an alarm system,” he continued. “I brought you home some brochures. If it would make you feel better, we could have one put it.”

  She opened her eyes again. “You would want someone monitoring the house even though you…”

  Are part of a giant illegal organization.

  “If you’d sleep better, I would.”

  Ava had told her about this. About how even though the club was supposed to come first with all members – and did ninety-nine percent of the time – a man’s old lady was sacred, and in his heart, he put her first each and every time.

  “No,” she said, feeling stronger. “We’re safe here, in this house, and in this city. No one’s coming after me. I don’t want you to do anything that makes you less safe.”

  “Hol–”

  “If there’s things you won’t do, then there’s things I won’t do too. And I won’t put you at risk of going to jail. Ever. For any reason. I need you here with me.”

  He took a deep breath and let it out through his nose. A peaceful, contented sound. His hand stirred lightly against the small of her back, aimless petting. One corner of his mouth twitched, the tiny Michael-smile that was for her and her alone. “I did like the green.”

  “Oh, good,” she laughed. “I got a dark blue set, too.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Maybe you can see it tomorrow.”

  “Without the ropes, though.”

  “Yes. No ropes.” She snuggled into his chest, completely done in, and yet unable to stop the shiver of anticipation that went down her spine.

  Seven

  Thing For Bad Boys

  Samantha Walton shuffled the papers she’d been reading, tapped them once on the table to line up all the corners, and set them off to the side, in a stack all their own that was separate from the essays she was grading and her own schoolwork. She really hadn’t had the time to spare to read a short story just for the sheer fun of it.

  Some days, she wondered why she was pushing herself so hard. She had her master’s in English. She had a decent job as a part-time professor at UT. Education, income – check. But she was managing to squeeze a second master’s degree into her schedule.

  Why? Because deep down, she wanted to write novels, not lecture half-asleep college kids.

  She’d known from the outset that teaching at the high school level would have been too soul-crushing for her to bear. University level Brit Lit was better: the students more engaged, the workload lighter, the daily grind a little more inspired. And it gave her the flexibility to work on her second grad school endeavor. She could make her own schedule, for the most part, and that did wonders for her creativity.

  And her sanity.

  She was teaching one summer course – Shakespeare – and taking one summer course – Poetry Writing. Her students had turned in ten-page papers on Henry IV, Part I last week, and she needed to finish scoring them with red pen. She also had to write seven poems and print them off for tomorrow’s class. She had plenty to keep her busy, but instead, she’d spent the past twenty minutes reading one of Ava Lécuyer’
s abandoned box projects.

  “Mon Amour.” My love in French. Everything sounded lyrical and twice as poignant in French, and in this case, it was a fitting title, because the story dripped richness and emotion. The story of a young girl having a sexual awakening could have felt overdone or melodramatic, but in Ava’s tactful hands had become something literary and sharp-edged.

  So growing up in an outlaw motorcycle club gave a girl an advantage in the flair department. Who knew?

  Sam resolved to put the story out of her mind and concentrate on her essays. She collected the MLA-formatted sheets in front of her, uncapped her red pen, took another swallow of Earl Grey for courage…

  And her mind went back to the subtle French environs of the story. Ava had a thing for dark, brooding, Byronic heroes, and Sam liked that. No doubt, as Ava had written she’d been thinking of Mercy: his long black hair and the way an easy grin could transform so swiftly into something furious and sinister. It was his kindness and cruelty that had inspired Ava in her writing.

  Certainly not her brother.

  No, why would anyone think of her brother while writing something romantic?

  Sam’s cheeks grew hot as she sat staring stupidly at her ungraded papers, because while reading “Mon Amour,” it hadn’t been Mercy that had filled her imagination – it had been Aidan Teague.

  She hadn’t taken a good long look at the man since high school. She’d spotted him going down the streets in town on his Harley, had glimpsed him in passing at Ava’s baby shower, but mostly, his image lived in her memories. All those stupid, schoolgirl memories she couldn’t seem to power-sand out of her mind.

  He’d never known she existed when she was sitting in the seat directly behind him in algebra. Hers had been the sort of pathetic She’s All That crush that she’d inwardly scorned. Hoping one day he’d turn around to borrow a pencil, finally take notice of her, and a Disney masterpiece of a teenage love story would unfold from there.

  But such a thing had never occurred. His best friend, Kevin – Tango, now – had been polite to her, smiled at her in a sympathetic way, like he’d known she was hopelessly head-over-heels for his friend. But Aidan had never known that she’d looked on him adoringly.