Chapter 13
Anya
The moment his lips touched mine, any voice inside my head urging caution shut right the hell up. There was no stopping, no slowing, no pause to decide whether we should or shouldn’t. I didn’t want to pause, and I didn’t want to decide what came next. The craving to let him take control spun through my head, and like he could read my mind, he did exactly that.
It was domination, plain and simple.
It wasn’t just the way he kissed, which was mind-bendingly thorough. It was how he managed to snag the breath from my lungs and weaken my knees as his arm banded around my waist, anchoring me to his body. All that hard, hot muscle turned my hands greedy and demanding, touching as much as I could.
Parker’s jaw pushed down, forcing my mouth open, and when he licked into my mouth, I whimpered, my hand digging into his hair and grabbing hold tighter than I ever would’ve dared. This was a dirty, raw kiss, the kind that scrambled brain cells and blew past even the sturdiest sense of discipline.
His other hand left my hair and slid down my back, shifting underneath my dress in one deft movement, his palm covering my ass as he clutched my hip with hard, demanding fingers.
I wanted to climb this man like a fucking tree, and I rolled to the balls of my feet to get closer, closer, closer. His palm coasted over my waist, grip tightening over my ribs before I sucked his tongue into my mouth.
A sound escaped his mouth, something tortured and obscene, a noise he’d make if I had my head between his legs or if he had his between mine. An out-of-control, violent need to experience both of those things had me tearing at the buttons of his shirt. Parker broke away from the kiss just long enough to help me, finally ripping at the shirt hard enough that buttons scattered onto the floor.
“Fuck,” he groaned as I tore it off his shoulders and raked my fingernails down his chest. “God, you’re going to have me on my knees, aren’t you?”
“Off,” I begged.
Parker complied, tearing at the shirt until it was gone. His body was insane, and I licked along his collarbone, hands sliding over his abs and obliques. The shifting muscles under my palms had my heart thundering. His hands moved to my back, ripping at the hook and zipper until the top of my dress was loosened. He stole my mouth again, sliding his tongue over mine in a rough drag while his hand pushed the strap of my dress down.
His entire body froze when he realized I wasn’t wearing a bra underneath the dress, head pulling away slowly to glance down. His eyes locked on mine as he used his thumb to drag a featherlight circle over the tip of my breast. My stomach shook, and my knees gave out underneath me, but he had me.
He had me.
His impossible strength kept me anchored to his chest as he dove to the juncture of my neck and sucked. Hard. Paired with the flicking motion of his thumb, I swear on everything holy, I almost saw stars right fucking there.
But I wanted him in me. I wanted to watch him lose control while my mind split from my body and my skin stretched to keep everything contained.
“Bed,” I begged. “Bed, please. I want to feel you over me. Just once. Oh please, I just need this once.”
Parker’s hair was wild, his pupils blown wide, and his cheeks flushed. Red streaks down his chest from my nails. He cupped my face in both hands, an anchor in the midst of the wild heat building between us. “Stop me now if you have even a single doubt, Anya, because I’ll walk away if you do.”
Consent was hands down the most underrated tool in a man’s arsenal.
Asking what a woman wanted and how she wanted it was a shock wave of power that spiraled into a reckless kind of need.
Show me.
Teach me.
Wreck any doubts or insecurities or broken pieces that might remain.
Want me.
I took his hand from my chest and slid it around my throat until his palm bracketed the back of my neck. That dominant hold and the feral light that flashed in his eyes had me leaning forward to ghost a kiss over his lips.
“Take me to bed, Parker,” I whispered against his mouth. “Show me what I’ve been missing.”
His eyes were nearly black. “Are we pretending this is real? Am I pretending you’re mine?”
There was a thick beat of my heart, and I had to consider whether I could do this for a moment. Could I let this man—complicated and charming and deep and sexy—try to heal that part of me that was still a little bruised? Could I do that and keep my heart safe?
It was a risk. One that I was more than willing to take.
“Please,” I begged.
His kiss was punishing, with teeth and tongue and that hand wrapped around the back of my neck, his thumb under my jaw directing the angle of my head.
He removed his hand from my neck and boosted me up right under my ass, my legs wrapping immediately around his waist. I squeaked in surprise because I was no dainty little thing, but God, he carried me like I was. I clutched the back of his neck as he walked us around the corner and up the half flight of stairs to the bedroom across the hall from mine.
The light still streamed in through the windows, and thank fuck, because I wanted to see this man in the harsh light of day. I wanted every detail, something I could replay again and again and again. He set me down, his gaze heavy and unrelenting as he shucked the dress down off my shoulders. I stepped out of it, leaving me in nothing but my high-cut bikini underwear and my shoes.
He tilted his head, teeth digging into his bottom lip as he stared unabashedly at my body. “Fucking perfect,” he growled. “And this time? I’m not going to be a gentleman.”
I cupped him through his pants, the heavy weight of him delicious in my hands as his eyelids slammed shut and a groan tore from his throat. “Good. I don’t want one of those.”
Parker ripped my hand away, using his hands on my hips to steer me backward onto the bed until my knees hit the mattress. I shifted backward, chest heaving on sharp, hard breaths while he unhooked his belt and pushed his pants and boxer briefs down.
My throat went dry at the sight of his fully nude body, and I wasn’t proud to admit it, but I almost said something stupid and girlish like, how the bloody fuck is that going to fit inside my body ?
Parker prowled over me, forcing me back onto the bed. He started with his lips skating over my ribs, quick, sharp bites and sucking kisses. He licked around my belly button and used one hand to press my breast up, his thumb working in tight circles over the bud before he sucked it into his mouth, dragging his tongue over in teasing little licks. My hips shifted restlessly, pulse racing higher and higher and higher.
Helpless sounds fell out of my mouth, and I tugged at his shoulders, wanting the relief of another hard, bruising kiss, but he stayed frustratingly out of reach, licking and sucking and kissing his way across my body. He kissed over the top of my underwear, chuckling against my skin when I made a frustrated growling noise.
“Parker,” I begged, my hands mapping the shift of muscles in his shoulders and back as he took his sweet fucking time.
He nipped at my hip bones, then dragged his nose along my ribs, between my breasts, resting his chin against my sternum as his gaze locked with mine. “You’ll give me one first.”
“No,” I said, firmly gripping his face and tugging him up toward me. He groaned as our lips met, as my tongue slipped and slid over his, as he tugged on my bottom lip with his teeth and sucked it into his mouth. “I’ve spent too many years waiting for something this good, and I swear, if you make me wait any longer, you’ll live to regret it.”
His smile was devastating. “Oh yeah, you’ve got me on my knees, all right. Is that what you want?”
If I’d stopped for any longer, if I’d let the months of frustration swamp me, if I let myself indulge the ways my spirit had been crushed, I would’ve burst into tears. But just for that moment, all I wanted was to feel good . I wanted to feel beautiful and sexy and desired, and like it was inconceivable that he’d ever want someone else.
It was inconceivable to me that this feeling existed, that I could finally submit to it.
It wasn’t revenge, and it wasn’t for anyone else.
This was for me. And holy hell, I deserved it.
“What do you want, Parker?” I asked instead. “What do you want to do to me?”
I cradled his jaw, studying his face while he ducked his head down and sucked my breast into his mouth, sliding his tongue over the tip until it was wet and slippery. Then he ran his teeth where his tongue had been, and my back arched, my hands digging into his hair as I clutched his head so he couldn’t pull away.
Wordlessly, he moved to the other breast and licked a slow line underneath, sucking along the side. His hand slid up my thigh, fingers digging into my underwear as he started to tug them down my legs. When they were tangled around my knees, he sat up, eyes tracking over every inch of my body.
“What do I want to do?” he mused, dragging my panties down with the tips of his fingers until I could unhook one leg, and then the other. He tossed them onto the floor and pushed his palms along my inner thigh until my legs were spread on either side of his body. I waited for the flare of self-consciousness, and it never came. “Everything.” He slid two fingers between my legs and braced his weight on his elbow near my head. His mouth found mine in a voracious kiss, groaning into my mouth when he curled his fingers, the easy slide in and out because I was so stunningly ready for him. He broke away from the kiss, his forehead resting against mine. “Oh, I want to do everything. Will you let me?” He kissed me again, sweet and deep and slow, his fingers pushing in and out. I clutched at his wrist, afraid I’d explode just from that. “Will you let me, wife?”
It was on the tip of my tongue to snap at him for calling me that, to push his buttons like he so desperately liked to push mine, but the buck of my hips would’ve made a filthy little liar out of me.
Parker said I had him on his knees. It conjured a picture in my mind of a begging supplicant, someone worshipping a deity, someone begging for mercy where it might not be bestowed.
But I was going to bestow the hell out of this man. Whatever he was talented enough to pry from my body, which was coiled tight from days and days of walking this tightrope with him.
I wrapped my hand firmly around his hardness, and his eyes slammed shut. I ran my palm up over the tip and watched a gratifying shiver wrack his entire massive frame. “Show me,” I told him, a daring tilt to my chin. “I’m not sure I believe you.”
Parker grinned, biting at my lower lip just shy of too hard. He moved down to my breast and sucked hard on that too. I cried out, arching my back, hands scrabbling at his back because I still wanted more. He pulled his fingers from between my legs, and with a filthy glint in his eye, he sucked his fingers into his mouth.
“You sure you won’t let me kiss you down there?” he whispered.
“I want to come with this,” I said, curling my hand around him again, “inside me. And if you can’t manage that, then we’ll discuss other options.”
He let out a shocked laugh. “Yes, ma’am.”
Parker rolled over, reaching into his nightstand to fish out a condom. He ripped the packet with his teeth and gawd, that should not have been as sexy as it was. His forearm flexed as he rolled it on, and I shifted restlessly on the bed while he sat on his haunches between my legs.
Parker stretched out his body, gathering me in his arms while I writhed underneath him, sliding his tongue into my mouth, and I whimpered when I could taste myself on him.
We were plastered together, every inch of his skin against mine as he kissed me again and again, and I wrenched my thigh tight against his side. He took himself in hand and teased me, back and forth and back and forth, not quite pushing inside.
My pulse was wild, thundering in my ears, because holy freaking hell, I was close already.
Sparks of pleasure plucked at my nerves, lighting me up from the inside out, and that was before he started rolling his hips an inch in, then back out. Another inch, back out.
By the time he was half in, I was going out of my mind. With his hair gripped in my fists, I panted against his mouth, begging incoherently for him to put that monster inside where it belonged. He told me to be patient, but how? How ?
It shouldn’t have felt this good, with someone I didn’t really know, who’d flipped my life upside down in the way he had. But it did. It did .
Parker whispered against my skin that I was so good, so tight, so wet, and that he wanted to hear me scream. His thumb plucked my nipple, his tongue worked filthy against mine, and that’s when he pulled his hips back, locked his eyes on mine, and snapped forward, fully seating himself in me with a relieved groan torn straight from his chest.
My back snapped forward, my head tossed back, and a silent scream stayed locked in my throat while my body adjusted to the size of him, from the perfect way he’d already brought me to the slick edge of a cliff I’d never fallen from before.
“Hold on, baby,” he whispered, and the sheer confidence in his eyes almost had me coming right on the spot.
He was going to rearrange my world, and oh, I couldn’t wait.
Parker wrapped his arm around my shoulders, holding me firm to his chest while he thrust forward, long and smooth and a slight push up at the end with his hips that had me seeing stars when I closed my eyes.
“Oh my God,” I sobbed. “I’m close, I’m … Oh, don’t stop.”
It was so good. It was too good. Too big. My body couldn’t hold it all.
Then he sat up, and the sudden loss of the wall of heat from his chest almost knocked the breath from my lungs, but he kept my legs draped on either side of his hips while he sat on his haunches, using the higher angle and his hands wrapped tight around my thighs to hammer into me in a way that had me moaning with every smack of his body against mine.
The flex of his abs on each snap of his hips was practically obscene, and I felt the build again, spiraling tighter and tighter. Then he spread his hand over my mound, his thumb going right where I needed him, tight circles that matched his rhythm, and a blinding pleasure hit me like a train running straight through my chest.
It was so big, so bright, so powerful, that my bones shook, and my throat tightened up as I seized around him.
“That’s it, sweetheart,” he said between gritted teeth. “Holy hell, Anya, that’s so fucking good.”
It went on and on and on, keening sounds spilling from my mouth as the spiked wave of pleasure wracked my frame, and I clutched at his arms where they held my hips. Parker took another sharp thrust, and another, and another, and he tilted his head back and groaned loudly, stilling tight inside me with our hips together. He moved a few more times. Slow. Lazy. Milking whatever was happening for him. If it was half as good as what I’d had, I didn’t even know how he could move a single muscle in his body.
I felt drunk watching this man orgasm. There would be consequences to this. A different kind of hangover that just might be even worse than the first. But at the moment, I really didn’t care.
He shifted his weight, carefully pulling himself out, and I winced at the sudden empty feeling. Parker sat up on the bed and took off the condom. I tugged the sheet up over my chest and fought a sudden wave of anxiety, that he’d ask me to leave, that he’d shut down, and he’d get that blank look in his eye when I could tell he was struggling with something.
Instead, he climbed right back in bed, and with a contented grunting sound, he pulled me straight into his arms, anchoring his arm around my waist and pressing his nose into my hair. “Nap now, golden girl,” he mumbled. “Talk later.”
Yes. I liked that plan.
His thumb brushed along the top of my ribs. Back and forth, back and forth. Then he pressed the sweetest, softest kiss to the back of my neck, and I smiled, letting the heaviness of my eyelids win the battle.