by Abby Knox
"How…I mean…what…" Harper did not stammer, as a rule. She spoke quickly and assertively, and she did not mince words or beat around the bush. But everything about this conversation made her head foggy. Blood was not getting to her brain, nor oxygen. Her voice came out breathy, and her nipples felt hard under her nightgown. "So…do you want to tell me what that means?"
Dash grunted. "You want me to tell you or show you?"
Harper's stomach turned over in some new emotion that felt like both fear and longing. Dread and fascination.
"Show me."
She exhaled when, instead of attacking her, he removed his coat and lifted his bar tee-shirt.
Dash was all his bare ridges and valleys, lines of long, lean muscle. Her body bloomed with fresh heat.
"What…what am I looking at besides your man nips?"
Dash ran his hand over his chest slowly, almost caressing himself, and then stopped above where his heart was. "Here," he said, "is where you hit me the first time." And then his hand moved over to the other side of his chest. "And here is where you thumped me the second time."
Harper's breath trembled. "It's dark in here, but did I leave a mark? I'm so sorry."
"No!" he replied. "No, it's not that. I went home and checked in the mirror, and there were little red marks. But then they were gone. I don't know why but I wanted to see them before they disappeared."
"Why? Why would you want that?"
"Because it fucking turned me on knowing you left a mark."
A lump formed in her throat. If this was foreplay, it was the weirdest foreplay she'd ever experienced. And yet, it worked.
This man was infuriating. Confusing. Ill-tempered. But goddammit, if this fine slab of grumpy human did not bone her tonight, she was going to march across the street and tell the priest that she wanted to become a nun because she would have to give up trying to figure men out officially.
There was that breathy voice again.
"Dash. I don't know why you're telling me this."
"Did I embarrass you?"
"No," she answered.
"I told you that because you need to know what you do to me."
"Other than act like a harpy trying to scratch your eyes out?"
"Harper, You make me so goddamn furious. You don't listen. You have a smart-ass remark for everything. Everything makes you super defensive and loud."
Harper cocked her head. "Well, if you wanted a soft-spoken Stepford girlfriend, you'll have to look outside of Newcastle because none of us here are gonna put up with your Crow Bar bullshit without some choice words."
Dash looked confused. "Stepford…there's not suburb around here by that name, is there?"
Harper covered her face and moaned. "Oh, my god. Sweetie. No, it's a book…you know what? Forget it."
"Already have. Can I finish telling you my shit?"
She nodded.
He continued, "I feel things I've never felt for another person. I'm so restless. I can't sleep. I can't eat. I can't think about anything but making sure you're OK."
Confused, she said, "You kissed me for the first time today. Or yesterday."
He put up his hands and swallowed, building up another ounce of courage. "I've been lying to myself, but I've wanted you for years."
Wow.
"And your smart mouth makes me want to do things."
Harper inhaled slowly, taking a beat to consider whether she wanted to ask the next question. Do you want to know? God yes. Yes, I do.
"Wh…what kinds of things?"
Dash's voice dropped. "Do you want me to tell you or show you?"
There was nothing at that moment except the sound of their trembling breath, the distant low tone of a ship's horn echoing off the water, people somewhere having a party. The air smelled faintly of a bonfire and weed.
She remembered when her mother said, "Nothing good happens after midnight," when Harper had been campaigning for a later curfew.
Her mother was right but also wrong. Whatever happened next would be good. So good. She knew it. The man's face was trained into a permanent intense glower. He was a whole angry, fiery mood that she didn't understand and had never wanted to understand.
Until now.
"Sh—"
Before the words "show me" had fallen entirely from her lips, Dash was on her.
The kiss was nothing like the kisses earlier that day.
This moment had in it only raw, wide-open passion.
She felt everything that Dash had been feeling, everything he'd been bottling up for so long, there in his kiss. He gripped her face so tight she had no choice but to let him control the kiss. And she didn't want any other option.
Harper and Dash were beyond tasting and teasing now. The need felt almost bloodthirsty.
She once again fisted his tee-shirt.
He pulled away from the kiss. "Dig your nails in when you do that."
He grunted in pleasure when she did exactly as he said. "Good, but harder."
He returned to kissing her, but she said, "I don't have a lot of nails to speak of."
"Maybe this will help," he said, reaching back and pulling his tee-shirt off over his head and tossing it aside.
Eyes roaming his chest, she could now see how rapidly he breathed. She had known this person her entire life. They had run with different friends as kids, but they had always ended up in each other's vicinity. The two of them had swum near each other at the city pools, at the beach at Newcastle Pier. She'd seen the guy shirtless countless times. But this was different. Now she saw…him. She saw hard edges and slopes she wanted to touch and caress, skin she wanted to feel against hers.
Once again, his lips owned her, claimed her.
Harper's hands grazed over his bare shoulders and down over his arms. She noticed the muscle better with her eyes closed. He was tall and rangy but so strong. His sculpted muscles stood out in relief as if an artist had carved him in stone. His ropey arms trapped her like a bird.
He pulled away again, and Harper yipped out in pain. She hadn't wanted the kiss to end. Dash cupped her face and gazed at her tenderly, a gaze that she had never thought was possible for Dash.
"I don't want to stop kissing you, but take off your undies."
She suddenly felt strange and vulnerable. "You want me to take off my top too?"
His face darkened, and he rumbled, "Don't need your shirt off, what I'm about to do to you. But you do you, sweetheart."
She smiled and said, "I'm not wearing anything under this nightgown."
Dash groaned as if that information was the worst torture. "Fuck…me."
She watched as he dug the condom out of his wallet but politely turned away as soon as he dropped his jeans and underwear to roll it on, pretending to take an extra-long time to retrieve a small bottle of lube from the side table. When Dash saw what she was doing, he held out his hand. "Here, let me."
"Dash, I am competent—"
He grunted, "Give. Me. The bottle."
Harper grudgingly did as he said, then watched in wonder as he opened up the bottle and squirted some on his hands, then rubbed it with his fingers. He was warming it up for her…and her brain shorted out at this simple courtesy. How low have my standards been that this act of warming up lube makes me want to cry?
Harper felt bowled over at how this man she thought she knew alternated between intense passion and frustration to consideration and care. She liked both sides. She needed both sides.
She craved all of him. Whether that craving went beyond the physical, she didn't know. She might not find out today or tomorrow, but for now, the sheer physicality of him was more than she could handle.
She watched as he applied the lube on himself, then turned to her, spreading her legs, watching as her nightgown fell away.
She braced herself for his touch against her bare, damp skin. Such incredibly intimate contact was so unexpected, it should have freaked her out. Dash kept his eyes trained on her the whole time, reading her reactions to ho
w he took control of pleasing her, reassuring her while also readying her body.
What a complete mystery he was.
Her throat felt as dry as the desert as he massaged her sex. Dragging his fingers through her wetness, he found her clit. The contact pulled a raspy moan from Harper's lips. Dash strummed it once, twice, and then brought his hand to his lips, popping his pinky into his mouth. When he sucked, she could see in the light from the streetlamp outside that his eyes had rolled back in his head.
"Oh my god. Fuck me," she whispered.
"Oh, I'm gonna. Lie back, sweetheart."
Nestling between her legs, she felt the hard rod getting squeezed between their bodies.
"Pull my hair?" he asked.
Eyes wide, Harper wove her fingers into his long, dirty-blond locks. Cupping the back of his head firmly, she tugged.
Dash's eyes went dark. "You're holding back, Harper."
"No, I'm not," she said.
"That's not the firecracker I know."
"Make me."
He raised one eyebrow and said, "I guess the firecracker is all outta spark tonight."
"Fuck you, give me that hair." Harper tugged harder. Dash blurted out a curse, and then a wicked smile spread across his face.
The girth of him when he slipped inside her made her understand his prowess with the lube. He went slowly, stretching her out. He leaned down and spoke softly into her ear. "I'm gonna fuck you so good, you won't remember how much you hate my guts."
His hair tickled against her neck when he spoke, and she gathered up all of that hair in her fists. When he backed out of her, she pulled.
She used his hair to pull him closer each time he backed out slowly.
"Stop teasing me and fuck me," she rasped.
"Pull harder."
"I can't. I'm going to hurt you, Dash."
"You can't hurt me any worse than years of making me watch you walk away."
What was he trying to do, make her cry?
One thing was sure; he was building her need, making her want more; every time he went in, he stopped just a smidge before reaching the hilt and backed out again. He was making her intensely greedy.
Harper clenched her legs around him as tight as she could, then let go of his hair. Raking her nails across his chest, she felt his body shudder.
"There she is."
He drove into her all the way to the hilt, finally. She smiled and rolled her hips, her body elevating at this much-needed contact and pressure.
She resumed losing herself in his hair, the scrape of his beard, the fierceness of his lips.
"More. Harder," she said, tugging, pulling, demanding with her whole body. She used all the fight in her to bring him closer. They were as close as two people could be, but she needed more.
But Dash had been fucking her so hard they were close to tumbling off the bed.
"Here, I got you," he said, grabbing her up and friskily tossing her at an angle across the bed. Dash lifted her hips off the mattress and rammed her senseless.
From this position, she could no longer pull his hair, but he egged her on every time she raked her nails over his skin. His eyes would close, and he'd yell out a curse every time she did it. She missed the closeness of his mouth and was about to try to pull him closer, to feel his body weighing her down. But as she reached up, his thumb found her clit.
In tandem with the lively pounding, the things he did with that thumb sent Harper into another place.
"I don't hate you, Dash. I never hated you. You just bugged the shit out of me."
His eyes widened, and he roared out his orgasm, his body seizing up around her with one final thrust that nearly sent her off the edge of the bed again.
"I got a lot of punishing coming to me, feisty girl. Don't be afraid to take it all out on me. I can take it. I can take whatever you got."
His wildness, combined with his tender side, continued to catch Harper off guard. The feelings Dash brought up were more than she thought she could handle.
Her release slammed through her, and she grasped around for something to hold on to. Dash leaned in closer and kissed her tenderly. "Hold on to me; I got you, firecracker."
Chapter Nine
Dash
* * *
When she invited him into her bathroom to clean up together, Dash had been expecting a shower.
Instead, he saw a beat-up, small-ish clawfoot tub attached to a bunch of exposed copper pipes.
He admired Harper's body as she dropped her nightgown to the floor and turned on the hot water.
He asked, "Why don't you have a shower?"
She looked over her shoulder at him flirtatiously as she poured bubble bath liquid under the running water. "Because I like baths."
"But baths don't clean you," he said.
She looked offended. "Are you telling me I'm not clean? Because that does not make me want to share a tub with you."
He laughed. "Alright, let's not argue, OK?"
She agreed and motioned for him to get in first. Dash grumbled as he situated himself. "This thing is barely big enough for me."
"So hang your legs outside the tub," she said.
He forgot what bugged him about the tub as he watched her bare ass slowly drop in front of him. She settled her little body in between his thighs. "This is sexier anyway," she said.
Dash rubbed his hands together and spread the herbal-scented soap suds all over Harper's back.
He'd known this girl his entire life.
"I'm not going to lie. I've wondered what you looked like naked before," he said.
"What? When?"
"Harper, we've been going to the same public beach every summer since birth. You can't fathom a teenage boy undressing you with his eyes?"
She looked back at him. "I was in a one-piece in high school, and we were in different friend groups."
"That never stopped me from looking."
As he stroke her back with the loofah sponge, he had never imagined this would happen.
He had never pictured before today—or last night, he wasn't sure what time it was—that he would ever see this much of her. Have her this close.
"Lean back."
Even as she did what he said, she smarted off. "You're very bossy when it comes to this stuff."
"When it comes to what?"
"Naked sexy times. You like me to scratch you, pull your hair…but at the same time, you're bossy as fuck."
He chuckled and watched her wet red curls wrap around his index finger. "My head is clear now. We can't function as adults until we let go of the hate."
"I never really hated you," she reminded him. "That wasn't just my orgasm talking."
"But you didn't like me."
"I didn't get you."
Dash dragged his hand up her wet bare arm, and he placed a sloppy kiss on her shoulder. Looking down over her shoulder, he gazed at her lovely pink mounds floating in the bubbly water—god, what a view.
"Oh my god. Are you getting another boner?"
He laughed. "Sweetcheeks. It's the same boner every time. I don't change it out like repulsor discs."
"What the hell is a repulsor disc?" Harper snorted.
"Okay. You remember when Iron Man—"
Harper looked back at him again and held up one hand. "I'm gonna stop you right there. I've never seen a single Marvel movie."
Dash considered whether he should continue this thread of conversation but went for it anyway. "Well, actually, the repulsor technology originated in the comic books before the movies—"
Water sloshed over the edge of the tub as she turned a few degrees more to level him with her gaze. "Oh, look. Your repulsor has vanquished its one true nemesis, my lady boner."
"Oh really?" He dragged his hands down her back and circled her waist, then let his hands dive down between her legs. She hissed when he found her split and expertly located her button. "Liar."
Harper was working hard to bite back a moan when he ran sensuous circles around her clit,
but her whimpering felt even more sultry in his ears, turning him on even more.
"You know what your superhero name would be? Harper the Cock Slayer. Destroyer of mediocre men. Keeper of the legendary pussy."
She pressed her pelvis against his stroking hand and let out a guttural sound.
Dash lowered his head and murmured low and slow in her ear, "I'll destroy that lady boner alright,"
She arched her back, reaching her arms backward, and circled her hands around Dash's neck. The posture lifted her breasts entirely out of the water, her head resting against his chest. Soapy pink bubbles traveled lazily across her glistening skin.
"Dash."
"What is it, Firecracker?"
"I can't believe I'm about to come again," she whispered.
He let go of her pussy and cupped both of her breasts. She whimpered and moaned. "I was so close. I'm…I…"
"Fuck, I love bringing you so close you're at a loss for words. That's my superpower."
His hands worked over her breasts while the entire scene from his perspective burned itself into his memory. Red curls of hair plastered against his chest, tight, soft, red curls teasing his calloused fingers where he stroked her.
Her voice trembled. "How dare you bring up superheroes, then turn right around and edge me?"
"I guess the Destroyer will have to punish me. Squeeze my windpipe."
"Dash."
"Sweetheart, your hands are already there. It's just a matter of—"
"I don't know how to do it without hurting you," she said.
Dash then realized he was behaving like a dick.
When he stilled his hands on her breasts, he hadn't meant it as a power play. He was gathering his thoughts.
"I got carried away; I'm so sorry."
His hands started to travel back down to her core to finish her off. God, he was such an asshole.
But Harper caught his hands in hers and said. "Hold on."
Pushing his hands away, Dash had a feeling for a brief second that he had fucked up so badly he'd lost her. That he'd offended her. He gripped the sides of the tub and waited for the ax to drop.