Epilogue
Six months later
Cara
I dream of rough hands running up and down my hips, their touch lighting a fire under me and causing moisture to flood between my thighs. I bite down a whimper when the roving hands slide over my hips, then nudges my legs apart before touching the aching spot between.
“Oh, Daddy,” I whimper when he strokes my clit, his middle finger moving faster and harder over the aching nub. I sob as I push into his hand, chasing the sweet pleasure only he can bring me.
“Wake up, angel.”
I whine at the deep voice in my head that’s trying to force me away from this dream. “I don’t want to,” I protest when the hand leaves my thighs and climbs up my stomach, then my boobs, fondling and pinching my aching nipples. “Oh God…”
“Open your eyes, sweetheart.”
But I don’t want to wake up.
I want to stay in this dream forever, feeling his touch here as intensely as I do in real life, but the voice is insistent and I feel myself surface.
I wake up to the press of lips on my shoulders, moving down my back with seeking hands touching me everywhere.
“I thought I was dreaming,” I purr, my voice raspy from sleep, but my body viciously aroused.
He chuckles against my skin, sending goosebumps licking up my body as he tugs me to lie on my back, and my breath catches when those brown eyes lock on mine. “Good morning,” he rasps, trailing his hand up and down the curve of my ass. I read heat in those dark eyes, and it only fuels my own.
“Do you ever sleep?”
“Not when you’re in bed with me,” he says with a smile, his mouth dropping over mine. “You can’t blame a man for not finding sleep when there’s a beautiful woman in his bed.”
I bring my hand to his jaw, rubbing my fingers over his short beard. “For someone who gets little sleep, you look so goddamn hot in the morning.”
He nips my bottom lip, trailing his mouth lower and kissing under my jaw. “Just in the morning?”
“No, you look sexy all the time,” I say, smiling, and he’s too distracted to catch the mischievous glint in my eyes as I catch him off guard when I push him onto his back and straddle his hips. “Now that you woke me up and I’m all excited, what should I do to you?”
His eyes gleam with laughter as he lays a hand behind his head, running his eyes longingly over my body. “Anything you want today. I’m off all day.”
“We’ll, I’m not,” I purr, watching his eyes as I slide my hands up my stomach and cup my breasts, smiling when his eyes darken and the bulge pushing against his sweatpants jolts against my ass.
I massage my tits slowly, rolling my hips over his hard cock and drinking in every little heated expression he makes.
To want someone—and to be wanted by them—is a feeling I never imagined I would experience. I’ve lived in enough shelters to see what people who swear they’re in love are capable of doing to each other.
I promised I would never allow myself to be vulnerable for someone and put myself in a position to be hurt, but I should have known I stood no chance when James showed back in my life. A caring man who turns into a rapid bulldog when he thinks I’m in danger.
No, I didn’t give my heart to the man. He stole it right out of my chest and made it his.
Made me his as much as he’s mine.
“Cara,” he groans when I roll my hips over his erection, his hands flying to my waist even as his hips lift to meet mine. “Christ, the things you do to me.”
“I could do more,” I say, and he groans in protest when I inch back before leaning down to kiss his bare chest. Excitement flutters in my stomach as I trail my tongue over his firm muscles, licking a path down his body until I’m staring down at the hard V-line that disappears into his sweats.
My breathing catches in my throat as I tug down his waistband and his cock bobs out, all thick and angry.
“Fuck, baby, what are you doing?”
“You don’t know yet?” I smirk, licking the salt on the tip of his shaft. “No? Then let me show you.”
He groans when I close my mouth around his shaft, fingers tangling in my hair, then he’s pushing me down on his cock. I moan at his taste, looking up to lock eyes with his as I take him deeper into my mouth.
“Fuuuck!” he groans, slowly inching that hard shaft into my mouth, voice thickening as I roll my tongue on the underside of his cock.
He pulls out with a curse, heat firing in his eyes as he inches back into my mouth.
I bring my hands up, stroking his cock as I lick the top half of his massive girth, pushing the boundary by attempting to take more of him than I have before.
“Fuck me, that sweet mouth ought to be outlawed,” he grinds out, pulling me off his cock, and I find myself spun on the bed before I can make sense of it.
“It’s my turn now, angel,” he growls, shoving my thighs open, and I barely have time to react before his hungry mouth is on me.
“Oh God!” I cry out, back arching off the bed when he parts my feminine lips with his thumb, then runs his tongue over the valley of my sex, grunting as he licks me up.
It’s an assault on my senses, and my eyes flutter to a close as he licks me everywhere.
I feel myself teeter close to the edge when his tongue flicks over my clit, and when I’m near enough that I can almost see it, he pulls back. “Daddy…”
“Want to feel you come with me inside of you,” he says, his voice deep and guttural.
His eyes are hungry, dark like a predator’s when he climbs up my body, wrapping his arm under my knee as he settles between my parted thighs.
“You are so fucking gorgeous,” he says, watching me as he pushes his hot, pulsing cock into my aching sex.
“I don’t imagine a day when I’ll stop needing you as desperately as I do. ”
“Take me, Daddy,” I say, running my hands up his shoulders before locking my fingers behind his neck. “Make me yours.”
“Mine,” he growls, burying his face in my neck, and I brace myself against him as he takes me in rough drives, rocking hard and fast into me.
My eyes roll, then close, and I allow myself to just feel—the hard press of his body against mine, the hot brush of his breath over my neck, and his massive shaft stretching and pleasuring me with every smack of his sex against mine.
“Yours,” I sob, keeping my arms looped around his neck as we grind into each other desperately, every move pulling us closer and closer to the edge, and when we reach it, I’m blissfully aware that we get there nearly at the same time.
We come apart together, absorbing each other’s shock to the system as he gives and I take.
“I love you, baby,” he says when our breathing slows down. “Maybe you should take the day off, and we’ll spend it in bed.”
I chuckle, slapping his butt as I nudge him to the side. “There is no way I’ll risk Samantha’s wrath,” I say, climbing off the bed. “You’ve seen her be nice and kind to the women, but when she’s mad, even at someone else, it makes you want to crawl under a table and hide away.”
“I’ve seen her get mad before,” he says, and I turn around to see him leaning against the pillows, an arm under his head as he watches me, and Christ, it’s too tempting to climb back into bed and lick those muscles.
He has the expression of a wild cat, sated but still dangerous.
“The first day we met at the shelter, the way she looked at me, I thought she might skin me alive.”
“Oh.” His words stop me in my tracks. “I’m sorry about that.”
“I’m not. She was being protective of you. As a mother is to her child.”
I let his words simmer in my mind as I take a shower.
I realize, as I wash up, that Samantha has been more of a mother in the time I’ve known her than my own mother ever was.
Heck, with her age, she could pass as my mother, and perhaps that’s why I’ve been leaning on her a little too heavily lately.
I find myself questioning what kind of mother I would be.
If I could hate my child enough to abandon her the way my birth mother did.
She just packed her things and disappeared one day without a word.
The abandonment hurts less now than it used to.
There is no space for her in my heart anymore.
Not when it’s filled by people who actually love and want me.
No, I’m content with what I have in my life.
When I finally emerge from the bedroom, dressed for the day, I find James in the kitchen drinking coffee and scrolling through his iPad. “What are you doing?” I ask, taking his coffee and sipping, hissing when it burns my tongue. “Christ, why is it so darn hot?”
He smirks, wrapping an arm around my waist and pulling me flush against him. “Come here, and I’ll soothe your burning tongue.”
“No way,” I say, wiggling away from the man set on making me miss work. He’s not the one who’ll have to deal with Samantha. “Go back to reading your medical articles or whatever.”
“I’ll give you a ride to work, give me a minute to clean up.
” James’s apartment at the clubhouse offers us more privacy than my little studio room at the shelter, so I’d moved in with him months ago.
While I miss the easy downstairs commute to work, it’s nice to have some distance from the shelter as James and I build our life together.
“No thanks, I’ll just take an Uber,” I say, risking another sip of his coffee and getting burned again because I never learn. I kiss his lips goodbye, and I’m out before he can make another attempt to grab me.
Twenty minutes later, I’m grinning like a fool when I climb out of the Uber.
Something about waking up to sex with the man that’s stolen my heart has me in a good mood, and I am practically skipping up the steps when a muffled cry stops me.
I wait a few seconds before it comes again, a soft whimpering sound, barely audible above the rustling leaves and the busy noises of the city.