by Bethany-Kris
“Mmm. Good point.”
As fast as he said that, Marcus snagged Cella’s wrist in this strong hand, and dragged her away from the door. The hallway became a blur of colors as the two of them flew down to the last door on the left. His bedroom, she would guess, for the quick moment she was able to admire the cherry oak furniture making up a four-poster bed and matching dressers. The only other thing she was able to get a peek at was the large chandelier hanging over the bed before her back hit the wall, and Marcus clouded her vision.
So fucking tall.
She loved that she had to look up at him.
“Now, will you answer me?” he asked.
Cella blinked, the strength of her desire for this man surprising even her when she tried to clear the haze in her mind. “Answer what?”
“What I asked—did you mean what you said earlier?”
“What did I say?”
“When you got here. That I’m dangerous.”
Cella licked her lips, saying, “For my heart.”
“Yeah, that.”
“I don’t say things I don’t mean, Marcus.”
His gaze dropped to her mouth as he said, “Good. But you should know there’s no reason to worry about your heart here, Cella.”
A breath caught in her chest.
Why, she almost asked, because you’re not here for my heart?
His next words came too fast for her to say anything at all. “I couldn’t hurt your heart—wouldn’t even try. Besides, I might like to keep it.”
Why would he say that?
Words like those made it hard for her to protect the heart in her chest. She wasn’t sure if she was ready to give it over to him quite yet. He saved her from having to make a choice right then and there by kissing her instead of saying anything else.
He fucked like he kissed, she had come to learn. With no restraint, and totally willing to take every single bit of her that she was willing to give him. Wild or not, soft or so rough ... any of it, he would take. Their lips moved in a familiar dance, tongues slashing together for just another taste while the two of them began shedding clothes.
One piece at a time.
Lips only parting when necessary.
Before Cella had met Marcus again, whenever she thought about dating ... these moments that she shared with this man had been the kind of thoughts that would freeze her with fear. Her body had changed after her child, and while she was proud to get it back to the trim state it had been before, that didn’t mean everything was the same. Silly and vain, maybe, but with dating and relationships came sex.
Truth be told, she never worried with Marcus.
Never even thought about it.
It made her realize that it wasn’t the faded, few white lines on her tummy that scared her, or even the fact that her hips were slightly wider from carrying a child, but rather ... the fact she just hadn’t been ready to be intimate again with someone.
Except now she was ...
Didn’t even have to think about it.
That’s what this man did for her.
She adored him more because of it.
Marcus’s hands slid up over her hips, over her waist, atop her breasts, and then came to a stop at her throat. Those deft fingers of his circled the column, making her heart thrum harder against his palms. She didn’t have to wonder if he liked the feeling of making her heart race. She could see it in his eyes that he did.
All that was between them now was a bit of air, and she closed that distance easily enough when she circled his cock with her palm. The first stroke of her hand along his pulsing length had him jerking closer to her. The second brought him close enough that he flattened her back against the door again while his hard lines molded against her feminine curves.
One of his hands slipped higher on her throat, coming to rest on her jaw as his thumb dragged over the pad of her lower lip. The urge to suck on the tip of his thumb came on swift, and his approving groan echoed in the bedroom when she dragged the digit between her teeth to get a taste of his skin.
“There’s something about the look of you like this,” he told her.
Hungry.
Rough.
That’s what his tone sounded like.
He spoke even while she continued tugging on his cock, and rubbing him against her body while she tried, and failed, to help with her own need. Nothing would help with that until he was between her thighs and making her pray in a whole new way.
“Oh?” she whispered.
“Mmhmm, when you let me put these hands on that pretty throat, and you look so fucking close to begging when I haven’t done barely anything at all. It’s ... perfect.”
“Would you like me to beg?”
Marcus’s lips titled upward in one corner, that wicked smirk of his making her ache between her legs in a way she would never be able to soothe. “I would—yes.”
Cella didn’t even have to think about it.
Not really.
The words slipped out so easily.
“I want you to fuck me, Marcus. Please, fuck me.”
She dragged in a lungful of his unique scent, her mouth watering from what she was sure would come next, but he always had a way of surprising her. This time wasn’t any different, but a thrill shot through her all the same when he replied, “Once you get on your knees and show me how badly you want me to fuck you, then we’ll see what I can do for you, mia tesoro.”
Her hand stilled on his cock. He pressed a fleeting kiss to her lips. His grip on her finally loosened when she lowered to her knees in front of the closed bedroom door, but only so that he could press his palms to the wood as she took the tip of his cock into her mouth. The taste of salt and man hit her tongue, the soft skin on the underside of his length throbbing from the pulsing vein there when she took him deeper into her throat.
“Fucking hell,” he uttered.
Cella would have smiled.
Her mouth was a bit busy.
He let her toy with him just long enough to get his hands shaking when he let go of the door to thread his fingers through her hair. She stilled, feeling the way he struggled to keep still when she took him right down to the very root of his cock.
“God, Cella ... that mouth of yours, woman. I’d start wars for that mouth.”
She could see when he lost his sense of decorum—all that control he prided himself on left in a flurry of his clenched teeth, and the harsh curse that left his lips. It took nothing more than her dragging her mouth up his cock again, only this time she used her teeth to tease, too.
A man who lost control was the best kind, though. She found with him, it’s what she liked the very most. It was why when he dragged her away from his cock, and up from the hardwood floor, all she could think about were those hands of his pulling and grabbing and wanting. So rough, and unforgiving in the way he pulled her to the bed.
Shit.
She didn’t even make it entirely to the bed.
Marcus bent her over the side of the bed with no gentleness to his movements. That only made Cella want him even more. There was something about the fact he didn’t treat her like precious china when he fucked her that made her so damn wet and crazy.
Speaking of wet ...
“Fuck,” Marcus said, his approval coming out in a rumbling moan when his hand slipped between her thighs to find her pussy that she’d already spread open for him to be slick. “So needy, this pussy—you feel that, Cella?”
“Yes.”
Each drag of his fingertips against the slit of her pussy had her clenching for him.
“You have no fucking idea how much I thought about this pussy of yours. How often I wanted to be fucking it or eating it. All the goddamn time. I woke up hard because of you for weeks. All I could think about was the way your pussy looked when my cock was stretching it out, and all those pretty sounds you make when you’re coming for me. Is that what you want again?”
She was shameless, now.
Rubbing her pussy back against him.
&nbs
p; “More than you know.”
Marcus chuckled. “Oh, I know.”
He leaned sideways, but she didn’t notice it as much because he slipped two fingers into her pussy at the same time a drawer creaked. Just as fast, he hovered over her back again, those lips of his ghosting over her trembling shoulder when foil pressed into the curve of her ass.
“Get your fingers inside your pussy and fuck yourself while I put this on, yeah?”
She did, surprised at how hot and wet she was, the sounds of her arousal turning her on even more as her fingers slipped in to take the place of his before he withdrew his own digits. That brief second of being filled with her own fingers and his had Cella moaning for more.
He didn’t waste time giving her exactly that.
Just long enough to get that condom on.
“Rub one out while you sit on me, and then I’ll fuck another one out of you before you can ride me until you can’t breathe. How does that sound?”
Cella let out a shaky breath, her fingers already pulled out of her slit to pull all that wetness up to her clit, so she could rub fast circles into the bud. “Like you’re going to make me too tired to even dream.”
The head of his cock filled her.
It wasn’t nearly enough.
It still took her breath away.
“Yeah, that’s the plan.”
He thrust all the way in, then.
His cock filled her full.
Stretched her open.
Her fingers stilled at her clit as he worked in and out of her for just long enough to have her shaking all over while she shuddered against the bed. He was so—each stroke he made deliberate and not nearly enough to get her off.
Which she was sure was the point.
Then he yanked her brutally onto his length, stilling all at once while his fingertips flexed hard enough along her ass that he stretched her open and made her whine. She was sure there would be bruises there in the morning, and yet the thought only made her hotter.
“Now, you can get yourself off,” she heard him say.
That permission ...
She hadn’t realized that’s what she’d been waiting for. Although as soon as she had it, there was no going back, and she couldn’t even have stopped if she wanted to try.
Cella did exactly what he told her, drowning in the sound of his dark promises while he rubbed at her clit. He did nothing but hold her body tight to his cock. Entirely filled with him, she trembled through the first orgasm of the night.
“There’s my girl, huh?” He met her gaze when she threw a desperate look over her shoulder, but then his hands landed to her body even tighter than before. A hand to her shoulder, and one to her hip. With no warning, and deep enough to surely leave her sore though she loved it, he started fucking her with earnest. She hadn’t even finished panting through that orgasm. “Now you’re going to do it for me again—and all you have to say is, please, Marcus.”
She couldn’t breathe.
It didn’t even matter.
“Please, Marcus.”
He fucked her to a harder, longer second orgasm. He didn’t even have to tell her to beg for a third. She was all too willing.
9.
“Is it going to be a long drive?” Tiffany asked.
Marcus didn’t miss the roll of her eyes and the smile Cella shot his way. No doubt, Tiffany was worried the drive they were taking from the suburbs to the city would be like the over eight-hour drive she’d taken the day before with her mother.
“Not very long—an hour, depending on the traffic.”
“An hour is sixty minutes, right, Ma?”
Cella nodded. “That’s right.”
And given it was the weekend, most of the work rush happened during the week, not to mention it was only seven-thirty in the morning, he doubted traffic would be horrible. They’d make it to the city in no time, and he suspected the drive would be a lot better for Tiffany than yesterday had been. Also, he was serious on just buying Cella plane tickets.
That was next in his plans.
Added to the list.
Cella stared up at the bright, early June sun as she slid a pair of large sunglasses over her face. “You know, there’s a portion of Americans who believe Canada is cold all year round.”
“No, they don’t.”
“Yes, they do.”
Marcus’s brow knotted. “Really?”
“Yes—but this heat is about to kill me.”
He laughed and put a hand to the small of her back before slipping his other in with Tiffany’s to walk them both down the stairs of his front porch. As always, his gaze scanned the street as he directed the girls toward the waiting SUV in front of the two-door garage that was currently closed, just in case. Habit, really, and while only his family knew he used the house in the suburbs when he needed to get away for a time, that didn’t mean word couldn’t get out.
Considering the biker gang was still reeling over the hit Marcus had gotten his men to put out on their president—he figured what better lesson than that—he still needed to be extra cautious. Nothing said the club knew about his house in the suburbs, so that was why he decided this would be the best place for Cella and Tiffany to be while they were here, and the nonsense with the gang worked itself out.
As for the hit?
That lesson?
It went through successfully.
Marcus’s hope was that would be the last message he needed to make where the bikers were concerned. They could now focus their efforts on picking a new president to run their chapter, stay the fuck out of Guzzi business, and hopefully come to an understanding that they were never going to be invited to sit at the table with him in business.
But what did he know?
The fuckers had surprised him before.
So, he wasn’t taking risks.
At least, not while Cella was in town with her daughter. He didn’t want his business touching them. Not if he could help it.
The enforcer that kept an eye on his house had taken the SUV out of the garage that morning at Marcus’s direction, but the man was nowhere in sight as he helped Cella to transfer Tiffany’s booster seat from her vehicle to his. Once the girl was buckled into her seat in the back behind Marcus’s driver seat, he and Cella rounded the back of the SUV to put the bag in the rear hatch.
He took his chance to kiss her, then. To push her against the back of the closed hatch after they’d tossed the bag in and wrap his hands around her trim waist while he got a taste of whatever lip balm she’d smoothed over those plump lips of hers that morning. Her soft gasp was swallowed by his lips working against hers, and when she opened that sweet mouth of hers, he didn’t waste time deepening the kiss.
Cella’s fingers twisted into the dress shirt stretching across his chest, and he slowed them down just enough to press two fast kisses to her lips before he pulled away with a ragged breath. The very last thing he wanted to do was stop touching this woman—she had quickly become an addiction of his that he was more than happy to feed—but someone else was waiting in the car, and he couldn’t forget that, either.
“Okay, now we gotta get in the car,” he muttered.
“After that, huh?”
Marcus grinned. “I’ve been waiting all morning to kiss you like that.”
Her expression softened. “Thanks for thinking about her ... you know?”
“Of course.”
Did she expect anything different from him?
Marcus understood something big was happening here with Cella, but he also knew she had to think about her child. And the decisions she made for that girl weren’t choices he had any say in, or could even share his opinion about, really. She did, however, allow him to be around her daughter, to bring her here, and that meant she trusted him.
He wasn’t going to abuse that.
He certainly wasn’t going to confuse the kid about what was happening between her mother and him. Those were things for Cella to explain how and when she wanted to. He wouldn�
�t speed it up by the kid seeing things she was too young to understand.
Simple as that.
“Care to tell me what these plans of yours are for us this weekend?”
Marcus smirked, and pulled Cella away from the SUV’s hatch. Walking them around the side of the vehicle, he took the time to peek in the rear passenger window to find Tiffany was still fully engrossed in the movie her mother had put on her tablet to watch. “Well, we’re going to start with breakfast at a very kid-friendly business my mother loves to take the kids to, and then we’re going to go from there.”
“Yes, but where are we going?”
“Let me have a little fun, Cella.”
She passed him a look as they came up to the passenger side of the front, and he pulled open the door with a wink that had her shaking her head. She looked damn good standing in his driveway in a summer dress that was just loose enough to let the breeze flow through the fabric, but still fitted enough for him to admire all her curves. Those curves he’d spent the night adoring. As she deserved. Her scant makeup gave her cheeks a bit of color, and the sunglasses hid her blue eyes though he could tell by the way her lips turned upward that she was more than enjoying his staring.
Good.
He loved to stare at her.
And so much more, too.
But he’d get back to those thoughts later.
Today was about them, and fun.
“Just trust me,” he said.
Cella sighed. “I guess I don’t have a choice, hmm?”
“Tiffany will have a blast.”
“Is it going to tire her out?”
“Oh, absolutely.”
Her laughter soothed the ache in his chest. A new thing he noticed whenever Cella was near, but he wasn’t touching her. Something else for him to obsess over, even though he was sure that was anything but healthy.
Oh, well.
This was much more fun.
“Was that purposeful on your part?”
Marcus cocked a brow. “Pardon me?”
“Make sure my kid was good and tired so you could have me all to yourself for the evenings?”
“Not particularly, but if things work out in my favor that way, are you really going to complain?”
The prettiest red flush heated her cheeks, but Cella didn’t act the least bit ashamed when she replied, “Definitely not going to complain, Marcus.”