“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he said, gathering her to him. His voice was rough, raw, and she believed him. He was under her now, his legs straight and his hot, hard erection against her sex, her thighs around his waist. He took himself in hand, lifted her up a little, and angled himself down, giving her the brief notion that he’d penetrate her, just like this, but instead sliding beneath her, leaving her empty, with nothing but an illicit shiver of disappointment.
But the disappointment fled as he started to move, all business, his eyes locked on where their bodies came together. His shoulders flexed, and he moved her, forward and back, her wet heat lubricating him.
“This is good,” he breathed into her ear, and it was. It was perfect. Dirty and rough, but somehow sweet beneath it all. He looked so needy, the way his brows sank and those stark lines etched deeper into his skin, his scar taut and white. Scrawled across his lowered lid, in stark contrast to that sweet sweep of lashes, the scabbed-up ink tried hard to look like fighting words but came out empty and weak in comparison to the true beauty of the man.
A good man, she knew, could feel it in her bones, certain in a way that should have worried her, but instead only made her want to give him things: her body and food and love.
The water ran cold by the time he got close to finishing, pulling her quickly away to yank his erection up between them and give her a chance to help. She grasped him, hard, the press of his skin beneath hers igniting her as it had since the first time she’d grazed him wearing a thin Nitrile glove. Something snapped in her brain. Synapses connected; fuses blew.
He clasped a big hand over hers, tightening even more, and showing her the rhythm he needed, his eyes skipping over her body until, for one frantic moment, they landed hard on hers, vague and young-looking, before closing, and he spilled all over their joined fists—his come emerging in hot, short bursts, too quickly washed away by the water.
* * *
After drying off, Clay moved to put his nasty clothes back on, but George stopped him by throwing a worn, brown terry-cloth robe in his face and racing off with his dirty stuff, giggling.
He got her back in the kitchen a short while later when he snuck up on her doing dishes, pinching her under the ribs and sending her into a squealing, vertical leap. Her reaction was so adorable that he had to kiss her, right there against the sink, and before he knew it, her hands were on him, under the robe, and they would have gone at it again on the kitchen floor if some timer hadn’t gone off, sending them apart like guilty teenagers.
He liked her like this, flirty and light. He liked himself like this, which was rare enough to shock him into silence for the few minutes it took her to get their food plated. They wound up eating on the porch, with front-row seats to a fucking cicada symphony, and Clay was only minimally bothered by it. It was George, he figured, watching her eat out of the corner of his eye. Her presence muffled the buzzing, dulled the agony. It felt good not to hurt quite so much.
They talked about her plans for the garden. He asked what needed work in the house, and all of it was done with a blind eye to reality—to the weirdness of the two of them, such an ill-suited pair, discussing normal things. He couldn’t just hang out here with this woman for the rest of his life. He couldn’t, because he had a job to do—or he would eventually. He had a life to get back to. Duties. It was all he knew, and he couldn’t imagine doing anything else… Although, at this point, he couldn’t imagine going back, either.
So, maybe I can do this right now. He tried out the thought, and no bells went off in his brain. For once. Just for now.
She got up, cleared their dishes, and disappeared inside, leaving him with the precarious happiness he’d allowed himself. “Leave the dishes,” he called after her. “I’ll do them.”
“I should hope so” was her sassy reply, and he liked it. I like her, he thought in this rare moment of clarity—no vengeance, no violence, no bitterness to cloud him. I really like her.
Although like had never ached so much before.
15
There were practical things to deal with: dishes to wash and lights to turn out, but none of that mattered. How could it matter when George’s life had just shifted so drastically? She tugged Andrew’s hand, brought him up the stairs to her room, to her bed.
He shut the door, which she found sweet, and walked toward her in the dark, dropping the bathrobe as he went. Her husband’s bathrobe—the one that had finally lost his smell. It should have bothered her. It would have on any other man, but not this one, not this man, whose arrival in her life had been brutally unexpected, but whose presence was now so very right.
Andrew’s hands on her face were gentle, his fingers rough against her mouth, his thumb firm on her tongue. She sucked it in, let him paint her lips with her saliva, and shuddered when he closed in with a kiss. She couldn’t see him in the dark, his ink and his scars and the life story he wore like a sordid badge, but she knew him in ways she couldn’t quite fathom. And this kiss, this moment, twisted something inside her.
She let him peel off her clothes, helping him with the buttons on her dress. Her breathing picked up as his hand made its way down her side, curving along her waist and hip, to squeeze her bottom and pull her in against him.
“You got those condoms somewhere close by? Left mine out in the truck.”
“Bedside table,” she said in a rush, and things went fast. On the bed now, with his heavy body sprawled across her, and all she wanted to do was stroke him—like a woman, not a doctor. Straight to those hard, little nipples that had given him away in her office, down over his belly, where she could picture the ink but couldn’t feel it. His shoulders. God they were thick. The heft of them surprised her, affected her in a visceral way.
“Please don’t.” He interrupted her progress, one hand clamped on her wrist.
“Don’t what?”
“Touch me like that.”
“Like wh—”
“All soft and sweet and like you care.”
“But I do ca—” She stopped herself. “Why don’t you want me to touch you?”
“You touch me like that, George, I’m gonna blow in two seconds.”
“Really?”
“Got no idea how close you get me when you touch me like that. Fuck, in your office, even.”
“Really?” she breathed, remembering how there’d been no tenderness on the stairs the night before. Only heat and passion.
“You’re so…soft,” he said.
“I want to make you feel better.”
“Here,” he said, putting her hand on his erection, tight.
“Hang on. You’re afraid tenderness will make you…”
He let out a dry, little half laugh. “Yeah. Freaky, huh? I’ll come too soon if you’re nice to me, but you can jack me as hard as you want. How fucked up is that?”
“I want to touch you.”
“Later. I can’t take it now. Please.”
A quick slide of her palm over his erection brought a grunt to his lips. It lit her on fire.
“You like that?” she asked. Teasing, actually teasing a man for what might have been the first time in her life.
“Yes, fuck yes,” he groaned. “Do it again. Squeeze my cock.”
His cock, she thought, pulling at him hard, wanting to leave an imprint of herself, a mark as indelible as the others on his body. More indelible because she’d get rid of the tattoos. But this… She squeezed him, letting her hand take in the contours of his…his cock. This she wanted him to remember.
“Your cock.”
“Mmm?”
“What do you call this?” she asked, running a hand lightly over her sex.
“Your pussy,” he said.
She grimaced. “I don’t like that.”
His eyes roamed her face and narrowed with dawning understanding. “All right. Your cunt.”
> Pleasure sparked deep and low in her body. “That’s a bad word,” she said, half teasing.
“But not a bad thing.”
“My…cunt?” She ran a hand over herself again, dipping in to show him her explorations.
“Fuck, George. You’re killin’ me.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, not meaning it one bit.
“Get a condom.” Andrew’s words came out as an order. She let him go just long enough to obey. “Put it on me,” he said, and she got wetter from the roughness of his words, the ragged quality of his voice.
It took too long to open the drawer, pull out the box, and struggle with the cardboard. Too long for Andrew, apparently, because in a flash, he was up and on her, grabbing it from her hands and tearing it open, sending little packets everywhere. A giggle formed in George’s throat when he finished rolling it on and pulled her onto his lap, but it caught there as the blunt head of him sought her out, rubbing once, twice against her, until it found her opening and sank in, one inexorable inch at a time. Slow, slow, painfully slow, but good, better than anything she’d felt in a lifetime. A million lifetimes. Better than the night before—more explicit and real, less of a dream.
He’d gotten inside her, all the way, with her on his lap, stretched around him, too full to move. Not just her…cunt, but her throat and her chest, where emotion swelled. A tear rolled down George’s face—a rogue bit of love or something equally mushy. She wiped it, fast, so he couldn’t see it, and went to lift herself up, but he grasped her hips and held her still.
“Don’t. Don’t, baby. I can’t…” He finished on a groan, an uncontrollable, dark, desperate sound that made her want to move even more, swallowed up by desire.
She lifted up, her thighs trembling with the effort, but it was so worth it when his hands bit into her hips, fingers hard points seared into her body. Every slide up, every inch back down was a slow, smooth glide, gorged with sensation.
“You…you don’t fucking know, do you?” he asked, and indeed, she had no idea.
Another slide up, and one of his hands shifted to her butt and slammed her back down too hard, wrenching a gasp from her lungs. Again he brought her up, fast and furious, and down, leading the dance, his rhythm so much more vigorous than hers, a piston to counter her caresses. And that speed, that power, pushed her toward climax unexpectedly, brought her close, so close she almost wanted to stop him—almost, but not quite. Because who in their right mind would say no to an orgasm like the one his body promised?
It was the slap on her ass, though, that pushed her, groaning, over the edge. Sharp and stinging and reminiscent of that long-ago screening of Secretary, it sent her mind elsewhere, while her body convulsed and pulsed around his cock, the orgasm inescapable.
Andrew’s hard gasps warmed George’s face before he kissed her, ate at her, consumed her again, and left her nothing, nothing but the quivering shell of a woman satisfied.
It wasn’t until she came back down, collapsed over Andrew’s lap, that she realized he was still inside her and very much not finished.
Do whatever you want, she thought, and then she said the words, which led to a breathless, eager-sounding, “Yeah?”
“Within reason.” She laughed, and he joined in weakly.
“I wanna do everything to you right now, George. I mean everything. I want to fuck you everywhere and…shit. I’m not usually out of control like this.”
“No?” George answered, feeling light-headed from the possibilities. Lust. The man lusted after her. How crazy was that? “Well, pick one.”
His laughter moved him in her, and she tightened unconsciously around him, drawing a helpless, crazed-sounding moan from his lips. She’d move again, she’d just decided, when he pulled out and tapped her hip. “Lie down. I wanna…” He didn’t finish, but she knew what she wanted right now. She wanted to see his face while he came. She wanted to see how lost he’d look, and thankfully, there was just enough moonlight to give her that.
* * *
George lay pale and ghostlike against her sheets, her body strong and very much alive. He settled between her thighs, wanting—no needing—to get back inside her, where everything was right in the world.
Quickly, faster than he’d meant to, he shoved back in, the smell of sex and latex coming at him in a sultry whoosh and dragging him back, against his will, to another place, another time—a world he wanted more than anything to forget.
Fuck no, he was here with this woman now, and he wouldn’t let his mind take him back to that hell.
She must have felt something, because her arms were around him, comforting and tender, tight and firm, her thighs encircling his hips, and he wanted this—not just the sex, but the rest of what she had to offer—in a way he’d wanted little else in his life.
But first, he wanted to come. He thrust into her a few times. Not deep enough, not as far as he wanted to go. One hand beneath her ass, he dragged her up, pushed one of her legs to her chest with his other hand, and there…there, he pounded, as hard as he could, forgetting who she was, the delicate sweetness. He didn’t think he’d ever fucked so hard, so wild, so out of control. He heard her scream—a strange sound, soft and muted—and when he pulled back into his brain, truly focused, he saw his ugly, scarred hands pressing tightly into her perfect, white throat.
“Fuck,” he grunted, pulling out and shooting up off the bed, breath gone wild, head buzzing, eyes impossible to clear. “I hurt you.”
“I’m fine,” she said, the hand at her throat proving the lie.
“I don’t hurt women.”
“I’m not a victim, Andrew. I want to be here. I want to be with you.”
“Even if I hurt you?” he said, hating the reedy sound of his voice.
“I’m not afraid of you.”
“You should be, damn it. Look at me, for God’s sake!”
“I…I liked the spanking,” she said, head turning away. “Are you planning on hurting me more than that?”
“Who the hell knows! I mean, your throat…” He stalked to the closed door and rammed his fist into the hard wood with a quiet, “Fuck!” And oh, the pain was good. Letting go was good, so good. “I go into my head sometimes, and then I…I can’t control it, the shit I do. You’ve seen me. I could hurt you, and I wouldn’t even know it till it’s too late. Too fucking late, George!”
His mind slipped back to Kathy with a K, against the clubhouse wall. He pictured fucking her there, above and beyond the call of duty, but so very in character for Indian Greer. He remembered pulling out, loosening the fist he’d had wrapped tightly in her hair, stroking her face and then her shoulder in an odd, platonic, placating gesture, and then waiting a half second before muttering a quiet, “Sorry,” and walking away.
Those memories were fine, though, compared to the image of Kathy’s dead, blank eyes staring at him from beside him at the bottom of the well only a couple of weeks later. She’d just been more collateral damage, killed because of her link to the club. The murder of Kathy with a K had been the last straw, and even that had been rife with shame. He could have saved her.
He’d torn himself up about Kathy—for not getting her out in time, for using her—but the worst part, the very worst thing of all, the thing that ate him up inside, made him worthless, soulless, and ready for hell, was that even in death, she hadn’t meant enough to mark him. Because the face he’d seen attached to her body, bruised and battered and thrown down there like unwanted trash, hadn’t even been hers. It had been Carly’s. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t for the life of him remember what Kathy with a K looked like.
* * *
Andrew stood rigid at the foot of her bed, doing a strange heavy breathing that scared her as nothing else would. He could have yelled and screamed and threatened her physically, and she wouldn’t have felt half as helpless as she did right then.
Becau
se she wanted to love him, she realized, with a tragic dose of reality. Tragic because you couldn’t love a man like this and not get hurt. She shouldn’t love him at all—not after so little time, not after all the strife. But she wanted to; she wanted to give him that. Maybe even give it to herself.
Across the room, the moon highlighted wet streaks on his face. Crying. He was crying, and George wanted to fix it—fix everything. She’d do whatever it took to take him in, to protect him, to make him better.
And not just his skin, but every beautiful, scarred inch of his psyche.
She stood up and walked to him, put a hand out, let it rest on his chest, and when he opened his arms just a little, she moved in, settled against him.
“It’s okay, Andrew,” she whispered into his neck. “I’m here. I’m here.”
After a while, he let out a shuddering breath and pushed gently away from her to walk out into the hall and then the bathroom. She heard the water run and wondered if this was it. This man wouldn’t stick around to discuss it, whatever it was. He couldn’t. He had too much pride. He couldn’t let her take care of him and still keep his man card or whatever the hell they carried around besides their big cars and penises.
With a sigh, she followed him to the bathroom, hesitating outside the closed door.
“Andrew?”
Nothing except the turning of the faucet and the water stopping.
“Please stay.”
She could hear him sigh, even through the door, and could only picture how heartfelt it was.
“You don’t want my brand of crazy, George. I’ll only drag you down.”
By Her Touch Page 23