Honor

by Jay Crownover

  How was a girl supposed to say no to that?

  A wry smile twisted my lips as I felt his cock stretch and twitch under the fabric of the towel keeping his erection from me.

  “We just have to take it easy, okay?” I was forced to take a step back as he fluidly got to his feet in front of me, pushing my borrowed robe the rest of the way off of me as he went. His mouth hit mine and desire hit me like a punch in the gut, and his hands wrapped around my waist and pulled me flush against him so I could feel every hard, needy line of his body calling to mine.

  “When has anything between us ever been easy?”

  He had a point, but that didn’t stop me from allowing him to back me into his bedroom and right toward the big bed right in the center of it.

  Chapter 10

  Nassir

  My head felt like it was going to blow apart. The handful of Tylenol I had swallowed down before my shower wasn’t doing anything to stop the throb and ache that was beating as steady as a drum behind my eyes and in my ears. The fact that my heart was thundering and my dick was so hard it hurt because I had a very naked Keelyn in front of me wasn’t helping my comfort level at all. I forced myself to focus on all that soft skin, on those high and pert breasts with their perfectly pink nipples, on those long legs, toned and sleek from dancing, on that wild shock of red hair, and on the way her gray eyes softened and darkened like a storm cloud as she looked down at me.

  I knew if she saw or sensed any of the discomfort that I was forcing back behind the years of desire I had for her, she would put a stop to all the things I wanted to do to her, and even if that was probably the smartest thing to do, it wasn’t the least painful option. I had wanted her to be mine from the start. Now that she was here, now that she had surrendered, I couldn’t waste any more time. Even if I felt a little like I was going to pass out if I moved too fast or turned my head the wrong way.

  The back of her knees hit the bed and I kept moving until she was flat on her back and I could crawl up over her. I wanted to dominate. I wanted to own. I wanted to possess. But when I bent my head to claim that sassy mouth, the outside of my vision went fuzzy and something that felt like a hot poker sliced through my head. I groaned before I could make contact with her sweet lips and had to roll off her and onto my back in order to make the room stop spinning.

  One of her tiny hands reached out and landed on my chest right over where my heart was trying to lunge out of my chest and eat her alive with all the hunger for her that had been gnashing inside of it for years.

  “I told you I’m not going anywhere.” She sounded so sure and so calm, while I felt like a wildfire of pain and desire was blazing uncontrollably inside of me.

  Damn straight she wasn’t going anywhere, and there was no way in hell a little headache and some cuts and bruises were going to stop me from finally getting what I always wanted from her. Everything.

  On my back, the world seemed less fuzzy and some of the pressure inside my skull felt like it had let up. I grabbed her wrist and tugged on her until she got up onto her knees and straddled my supine body. I still had a towel wrapped around my hips, but it was doing little to keep my dick contained. The other part of me that had been longing for this woman for years was just as eager and ready to have its shot at her as my pounding heart was. Probably more so, if the way it pointed straight up like it was stretching up just to brush along her naked backside was any indication.

  I glided my hand up over the curve of her ribs. I rubbed my palm over the surface of her full breasts and stopped to work her nipples into stiff little peaks. She whimpered a little and I reached up to grab her around the back of her neck so I could pull her down to me. Her lips touched mine lightly, and thankfully the room stayed put. My head still screamed at me and my shoulder wasn’t happy with all the tugging and pulling, but her tongue darted between my lips and touched my own and any complaint I may have had drowned under the feel of her. Now that I could touch back, it felt like I didn’t have enough hands to put on all the places I wanted to touch her.

  I wanted to touch her cheek and wrap my fingers in her crazy red hair. I wanted to play with her breasts, test the weight of each of them, and make her nipples pucker and beg for me. I wanted to stroke the inside of her thigh and explore that sexy curve that led to the places on her body I most wanted at. I wanted to put my hands right against her wet center and pet her, tease her, fondle her, until she screamed my name and came all across my fingers like she had forced me to do in my office. It was like I had been given everything I ever asked for at one time and my head was whirling trying to figure out how to get ahold of all of that bounty at once.

  “You kiss better than most men fuck.” Her voice was husky and held a note of humor in it. I might not have been at my best but she was still turned on. I could feel where she was damp and hot between her legs where she was perched across my tight abdomen, and decided that while touching was nice, tasting would be even better. I kissed her again, this time with a bite, and moved my hands to the curve of her hips so that I could start moving her up my body.

  She pulled away with wide eyes and didn’t argue as I helped her scoot farther up the bed and closer to my face.

  “I do everything better.” I wasn’t bragging. It was the simple truth. With her, there could never be anything better because this thing between us was the best there would ever be.

  When she got her knees up by my head and had herself braced over my face, I turned and kissed her on the inside of her thigh. She flushed a pretty pink and I could see that her body was already getting slick and ready. Her blush traveled even into her most private places and it made me grin against her soft skin. I felt her thighs quiver and she looked down at me with a mixture of trepidation and anticipation. I grinned up at her as I curled my hands around her legs. “There is no way I can get at you the way I want without blacking out, so you’re going to have to bring the goods to me.” I was going to bury my face between her legs until we were both stupid with lust.

  “I don’t think that’s such a great idea.” Her words said one thing, but when I snaked a hand between us so that I could part her slippery folds to get at her clit, she shuddered over me and one of her hands landed on the top of my head. I winced because she nailed the gash she had just sewn shut and she immediately removed it. “See!” She hollered the word out, more because I was done talking and used my tongue to attack her than because she was actually upset or worried about my well-being.

  She tasted like every dream I had ever had. She was warm and creamy. She was soft and pliant. She was spicy and sweet at the same time. She was greedy, but with every pull of her body around my tongue as I lapped at her, she muttered my name and tried to make sure she wasn’t hurting me or putting too much of her weight on me as I devoured her.

  I swirled my tongue around her opening, let it dance up inside of her, and let her flavor and excitement wash all over me. Her body started to move over me. Her back arched and her hands moved across her chest, so I switched tactics and trapped her little point of pleasure between my teeth and tugged—hard. She reared up almost all the way off me, but her change in position gave me the clearance I needed to finally get my hands on all her hot and needy parts.

  I forced two fingers inside of her wet heat and her inner walls immediately started to grasp and pull at them. I continued to nibble on her clit and to flick it over and over again with the tip of my tongue while she really started to move and ride my face in earnest. Her eyes were squeezed shut. Her mouth was open just a tiny bit, and I could see her chest rising and falling in time to every twist and drag of my touch. She had her hands on her breasts and she had her nipples clasped between her fingers in a grip that looked almost painful. All her skin was a rosy pink, and when her eyes popped open and she looked down at me, I could see that she was there and going over right before she told me, “You aren’t just better, you’re the best.”

  That was nice to hear since I was basically an invalid trying to get her off wi
th as little amount of effort as possible. Not how I pictured finally conquering this woman, but I would take her any way I could get her.

  Her release rushed across my hand and into my mouth. Delicate flutters milked my fingers as they continued to play inside of her. She fell forward onto her hands over the top of my head and panted out choppy breaths as I wrung every last drop of pleasure I could from her perfect body. When she was done I pulled my hand from between her legs and lifted it to leave a stinging smack across her ass cheek. She reared up over me and moved herself back down to her original position, where she was sitting across my abs. I couldn’t not touch her now that I had the opportunity, so I reached behind her and started to run my hands up and down either side of her spine. Her eyes were still foggy with desire and satisfaction as she gazed down at me.

  I smirked up at her. “See. We both survived. No harm, no foul.” Sometimes one had to lose a battle to ultimately win the war.

  She narrowed her eyes at me and reached behind her to wrap her hand around the insistent erection that was all for her. It stretched and grew even harder in her soft palm and I thought my eyes were going to cross for a second. She rubbed the shaft up and down and spread the drop of moisture that leaked out of the tip around the tapered head. My stomach muscles went tight and my hands started to pull at her instead of soothing her.

  “You say that, but I can see the lines of pain around your eyes and you should be smiling because I just told you that you’re the best I’ve ever had, and yet you look like you want to throw up.” Her hand tightened around the base of my dick, which made my hips kick up and had me swearing because it made pain shoot hard and fast throughout my entire head. She clicked her tongue at me. “Just lie there. Be still and let me take care of you and then we can pick this up when you’re feeling better.”

  Oh hell, no. I wasn’t going to get this far, have her taste all inside my mouth and her hands on my dick, and not get inside of her. If she put her mouth anywhere near that aching erection it was going to be over in a second and I wasn’t going to be able to claim her as mine. I wasn’t going one more second without having her.

  It took some effort and I really did have to fight back nausea and blackness as I jackknifed up and snatched her up around the waist. There was no more foreplay. There was none of my usual finesse. There was none of the skill I had just boasted about as I pulled her to me so that we were sitting on the edge of the bed pelvis to pelvis. She tried to protest. She told me to wait but I ignored it all, even the way her beautiful face blurred into two as I impaled her on my waiting erection.

  She was so ready for it. She burned all around me, and my dick couldn’t be happier to be caught in the suffocating prison of her body.

  I needed to apologize for being so barbaric, but I couldn’t talk, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but grab her ass and urge her to move. At first she was reluctant. She barely lifted herself up off of me, but it was enough to have her inner muscles loosen up around me and start to flutter. I groaned her name and clutched at her skin. She dropped her head forward into the curve of my neck and started to lick and suck on the tendon that was taut and straining there. If it was possible, her light touch had me growing even thicker and harder inside of her.

  She started to move. Just a gentle rocking of her hips, a sexy little wiggle that shouldn’t be enough for either of us, but I felt pleasure start to coil tight at the base of my spine. I had always figured when she came to me, when I got her, it would be explosive and volatile like the rest of our relationship always was. Never in a million years would I have imagined that she was going to make me as much hers as she was mine with gentle ministrations and sex so soft and sweet it felt like it wasn’t even real. It was more than I deserved.

  I urged her to move faster with greedy hands, but she resisted. She moved her mouth to my own and kissed me with everything she was feeling. There was desire in there but there was also fear and annoyance. There was softness, but more than that, there was the hardness she was going to have to possess in order to be with me. We kissed and kissed and kissed some more. We kissed until she started to grind on me a little harder and started to rub her chest against mine. We kissed until neither of us could breathe. We kissed until I knew I wasn’t going to last any longer because I felt my balls tighten up and my heart start to miss beats.

  Since I had taken her with zero delicacy, I knew she wasn’t as close to the edge as I was, so to catch her up I got my fingers back between her legs where we were joined and pressed down on her clit with the flat of my thumb. She made a startled noise in her throat and definitely added a little speed to her bump and grind as I began to rub stiff little circles around that hot little button. One of her hands tangled in the ends of my hair and the other rested against my cheek. It was the most intimate connection I had ever had with another human being in my entire life, and when she smiled at me it was over. I pulled her down onto me and rolled over so that she was under me.

  I thrust into her like a wild person. I rode her hard and fast until I felt her nails dig into my skin and my body started to break apart around me. The room was spinning. Things were starting to fade in and out around me, but she was coming in white-hot bursts and yelling my name as I collapsed on top of her and followed suit. My body felt wrung dry. My soul felt like it had been scrubbed clean with bleach. My heart felt like it had finally been rewarded for waiting and my mind was so full of rightness and contentment that for once, there was no place in it for all the things I had done, all the things I would do.

  She wrapped her arms around my shoulders and whispered in my ear. “Are you alive?”

  The truth was, I hadn’t been alive until this very moment. “Yeah.” I rolled off of her and onto my back with a groan. It felt good to shut my eyes. I felt her shift on the bed next to me. “How about you?”

  She snorted and I pried open an eye to look at her as she climbed to her feet and looked down at me with censure.

  “I’m great, other than the fact that we just had the world’s greatest sex without talking about protection. That’s an amateur move on both our parts, Nassir.” I sighed and caught her arm, and pulled her down so that she was on the opposite side of the bed from where the obvious wet spot we left must have been.

  “You’re on the pill. I’m clean. You’re clean. Everything is fine. Besides, when I said nothing was getting between us, that includes latex.”

  I shut my eyes again as she began to sputter indignantly next to me. “How do you know I’m on the pill and how do you know I’m clean?”

  I sighed and clamped an arm around her as she tried to wiggle away from me. She should know better than that. I was never letting her go anywhere ever again.

  “I know everything there is to know about you, Key. You are the only thing that has ever mattered to me, so I made sure that you were safe. How doesn’t matter. Why does.”

  She didn’t like my answer but she stopped fighting to get released. “I’m not property, Nassir.”

  I smoothed a hand over her hair and curled my fingers around the back of her neck. “You’re worth everything, so that means I leave nothing to chance when it comes to you.”

  Her breath was warm and feathery on the side of my neck as she finally settled in next to me. “You can’t do that anymore. We’re in this together. I’m in your business, I’m in your home, and I’m in your bed. I’m right in the center of your world right now, Nassir. You have to talk to me and ask me what I want and what I think is best. What you can’t do is control me. If you try to lock me up in a cage, this fragile thing we have between us will shatter when I beat it against the bars trying to get free.”

  I never could control her, and that’s why she was perfect for me. I had spent too long being under the thumb of other people. Her fierce independence and thirst to be free of any constraints called to the part of me that had been smashed and destroyed while I was yanked around like a murderous puppet suspended from blood-soaked strings.

  “You aren
’t in my world, Key, you are the center of it. You always have been. That means I want to care for you, not control you, but my methods in everything are extreme. I don’t know how to do it any other way. Now, can we enjoy the fact that we waited years and years to fuck and it was everything it was supposed to be if not more? But right now I need to shut it down for a few minutes. My ears are ringing so loud I can hardly hear you.”

  The pain wasn’t actually that bad, but my words got her to be quiet, and before I knew it, her rhythmic breathing and soft weight against my side had me struggling past all my aches and pains into slumber as well.

  I woke up the following morning with Key sprawled on top of me. I mean she was completely covering me and her hair was all up in my face. She had a knee between my legs and my morning erection couldn’t be happier about the situation; unfortunately, my phone was vibrating somewhere on the hardwood floor in my pants, where they had been carelessly knocked off the bed during my haste to get inside of her last night.

  I hated to disturb her but the rattle of the phone against the hard surface was driving me insane, so I rolled her off of me as gently as I could, and felt something inside my chest clench when she whimpered and reached for me in her sleep. A pout puckered her lips and a tiny little frown dipped between her eyebrows, and it made me grin. Even asleep, she was full of fight.

  I scowled when I saw Race’s information on the phone and pulled on a pair of loose cotton pants as I headed down to the living room.

  “What?” We were business partners, but that didn’t really mean we had the type of working relationship where we checked up on one another. At least we hadn’t before now. I appreciated the guy’s smarts and his willingness to get his hands dirty after Novak went down, but he was just a little too slick and far too clever for me to really trust him.