Chapter Twenty-Three
S he took her shirt off .
I stared.
Three seconds.
Four.
Five.
White lace bra, full breasts, hard nipples, thick waves of dark hair, the swell of hips that every woman should have, soft skin, dark amber eyes… unsettled eyes. I took her all in. Like I always did, but this was more. I was feasting on the sight of her almost naked, except I’d already cut my losses and nothing had changed. She wasn’t speaking the words.
She wasn’t choosing me.
I moved to leave.
She undid her bra.
My dick stirred, and I rethought everything. This wasn’t a spontaneous decision like in her house earlier. This wasn’t me losing control. This wasn’t her taunting me with her words. This wasn’t me breaking.
If I touched her now, this would be a conscious choice.
Her full breasts mocking my control, my cock pulsed and my mouth watered.
She pushed her pants down.
I allowed my gaze to wander.
Narrow waist, the swell of her hips, matching lace underwear.
She gave me four seconds to look.
Then she hooked her underwear under her thumbs and pushed them down her full thighs to her knees before letting them drop. She stepped out of them.
I brought my gaze up.
“Look,” she commanded, turning.
Round ass, two indents on her lower back, thirteen freckles on her right shoulder. “I am.” Every inch.
Coming full circle, her eyes met mine. “This is what you’re giving up.”
How do you give up what you never had? “Semantics matter.”
“I matter.”
Yes, she did. To me. I said nothing.
“React, Preston.” Her voice quieted with something close to desperation. “I’m standing in front of you naked.”
Nothing in her uncomfortable tone swayed me. “You’re not saying the words.” Permission, trust, want, need, desire, intent, consent—right now, I would take any of them.
“Actions speak louder than words.”
I knew. Fuck, I knew. “The result of your actions is lying in my bed.”
Her face blanched right before indignation covered it. “Fuck you. I wasn’t the only person there that night.”
“No, you weren’t.” I’d already told her I’d regretted my actions.
The sides of her nose flared with an inhale. “Is this what this is about? You haven’t forgiven me?”
“You owe me no apology.” I wasn’t irrational. I knew that to be fact.
“Stop speaking in circles. Be direct.”
“Choose me.”
“I am.”
She wasn’t. “Say it.”
She didn’t.
She didn’t utter a word.
She stepped forward, went on tiptoe, grabbed the back of my neck and slammed her mouth over mine. Her tongue, hot and needy and frantic, stroked across my lips.
It was a carnal reaction.
My mouth opened, and my tongue met hers.
Hard, rough, without control, I kissed her. Everything my mouth could do to hers, I did. Stroking deep, taking what I wanted, tasting what I still thought of as mine, I kissed the fuck out of her. But I didn’t touch her. Not with my hands, not with my arms, not with my body.
Ripping her lips from mine, she dug her hands into my scalp. “Goddamn it, Preston, touch me.”
“Choose me,” I rasped.
Desperation bled into her voice. “I’m showing you. I want you, Preston Vos . ” Stepping back, she pulled me with her. “Shower with me. Show me you want me back.” She grabbed my hard dick. “More than this. Show me .”
“Let go,” I demanded, turning into exactly what she accused me of.
Her face fell. Her hands dropped.
“Walk backwards,” I ordered.
She did. Into the shower.
Nodding at the running water just behind her, I was the train wreck. “Rinse your hair.” I wanted my mistake from this evening off her.
“Preston—”
“Rinse.” I didn’t want another woman’s blood on her.
Her nostrils flared, her eyes narrowed and her jaw set. I saw it in her face before her mouth opened. She lost it. “I don’t want to wash my fucking hair. I want you to touch me!”
Split-second decision was a misnomer.
Synapses, speed of thought, distance of signals, reaction time of movement—it wasn’t measured in sections timed by seconds. It was milliseconds. The brain’s processing speed faster than the ability to react, I didn’t blink.
I moved.
My mouth crashed over hers, and I gripped two handfuls of her hair.
Her back slammed into the wall, and water drenched us as her gasp filled my mouth with the taste of crumbled restraint.
I kissed her.
Stroking her frantic tongue with mine, my head crawled back seven years. The urge to erase everything driving my movements, I pressed into her harder, kissed harder, and gripped her hair harder.
“Preston,” she half moaned, half cried out.
My hips thrusting against hers, I drove my tongue deeper.
Fuck the words.
I didn’t want them.
Not now.
Her nails dragging over my shoulders and down my arms, she arched her back and pulled on my hips. “Fuck me,” she panted.
Her lush body, wet and hot, her mouth on mine—I shook with need. I wasn’t fucking counting her every breath. I wasn’t measuring the distance between our bodies. I wasn’t watching a clock, waiting for her to get off work, take a lunch break or run an errand.
I had her. In my arms.
And a seven-year-old mistake seemed trite, even to my war-honed brain, but I was the train wreck. Derailed. Cutting losses.
Pulling her hair, tilting her head back, I moved my mouth over every inch of her wet neck.
“Oh God, Preston,” she moaned, rubbing on my cock. “Take your boxers off.”
I bit the flesh where her neck met her shoulder and skimmed up to her ear. “Pill?” I wouldn’t do to her what he’d done.
“On it,” she breathed, digging her fingers in to my biceps.
Dropping to my knees, I held her waist with one hand and shoved her leg wide with the other. My eyes landed on a small horizontal scar above her shaved pussy as my mouth covered her clit. Cataloguing, analyzing, memorizing, I sucked.
“ Jesus Christ .” Her hands fisted in my hair.
If her mouth tasted like redemption, her pussy sang with sin. I never thought we would come this far only to end like this. Because in my head, this wasn’t the beginning. This was the end. The one we should’ve had seven years ago.
I would taste her. Fuck her. Make her come. Leave my mark on her. But I wasn’t going to own her. I never would.
Her hips rocked, water pounded down on us and I ate her sweet cunt.
Circling her clit and driving my tongue into her, never doing either long enough to let her come, I held her lips apart until her legs began to shake. Then I shoved two fingers into her and sucked her tight bud between my teeth.
“Oh fuck!” Her pussy clenched, and she clamped down on my fingers.
Sucking harder, taking her orgasm, I rubbed her G-spot.
“ Oh my God .” Her body convulsed, and her legs gave out. Sliding down the wall, she held on to my hair with shaking hands.
Releasing her clit from my mouth but not taking my hand back, I caught her on my lap and gripped a handful of her thick, wet hair. Stroking my fingers shallowly, I brought my lips to her ear. “You’re going to come again.”
Then I was going to come. Inside her.
She shivered. “I can’t.”
I drove my fingers deep and stoked her G-spot as my thumb landed on her clit. My mouth covered her nipple, and she jerked in my arms.
“ Oh shit .” She gripped my shoulders. “No, no, nonono, I can’t. I can’t .”
“You can.” She could.
Relentless, I stroked, I sucked, and I fucked her with my hand.
She exploded.
Her body bowed, her head fell back, and her throat vibrated with the groan of her release as she held on to my neck.
She was exquisite.
Rocking on my hand, aftershocks pulsing in her cunt, her legs trembling, she rode out her orgasm.
And I let her.
For twelve beats of her heart before I pulled my fingers from her tight cunt and shoved my boxers down. Gripping my cock, I dragged it through her wet folds as I tasted the heat on her neck, but I didn’t shove inside her. Not yet. “You had a C-section.”
Her muscles tensed. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t do this. Not now.”
“Then when?” Her cunt was tight on my fingers. I was big. She’d been cut into to have her son. I was going to stretch her.
“Preston.” A warning tone thinned her voice as she moved to her knees to get off my lap.
I grabbed her hips. “I can’t ask what happened to you?”
“I can’t ask what happened to you ?” she fired back.
“I’m not scarred.” Not on my stomach.
She looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “You have ink covering your entire body.” She pressed two fingers over one of my nipple rings. “You’re pierced.”
That was by choice. “Were you alone?”
Her mouth opened, then closed. She inhaled, but she didn’t try to get up. “No.”
“Who was with you?” I demanded, unrighteous anger flaring.
Three lines formed between her eyebrows, and she averted her gaze. “Ty came home for a few days.”
He’d never mentioned that. As fast as it’d infiltrated, the anger dissipated. “Then what?”
Pushing her wet hair off her face, she shrugged one shoulder. “I nursed, I healed, I finished school. I got a job and raised my kid. Ty sent me money for babysitters until I could afford them myself.”
“I’m sorry you went through all of that alone.” She’d raised her kid by herself. Something my own mother had never done.
“I’m not complaining.”
My cell phone vibrated on the bathroom counter, the sound just loud enough to hear over the running water falling on my legs and her back. I turned my head to listen to see if it vibrated a second time, and she tried to push my hands away.
It vibrated again in quick succession, letting me know it wasn’t a text. Only two people ever called me. Ty or Luna.
Holding her tighter, I lifted her off my lap as I stood, bringing us both to our feet. “Wait for me.” Walking out of the shower, I grabbed one of the towels and reached for my cell. Glancing at the display, I stepped out of my wet boxers, wrapped the towel around my waist, then answered. “What happened?”