Chapter 12
CHAPTER 12
Ashley
I sleep in his arms that night.
I don’t think I’ve shared a bed with someone since childhood and my best friend slept over. This is different. Very different.
After we make love, he finally takes off his clothes while I sit watching him from the pillows, wrapped in a soft sheet. He undresses the way he does everything else—with the utmost care. Tie. Belt. Watch. He removes them, sets them down, side-by-side. Eyes zeroed in on me, he draws his white dress shirt from his waistband and releases the buttons, one by one, until he can strip off the garment.
My pulse clamors at the sight of his ruthlessly tight muscles, the power of his half-naked body. His past is evident here, in tattoos and faint scars. I want to run my hands and mouth over every inch of that body and make it mine. Erase the past with my tongue and touch until he only thinks of me.
Apparently, I’m obsessed with him, the same way he’s obsessed with me.
My tummy hollows and I whimper softly when his fingers move to the fly of his slacks. I can still feel him moving on top of me. Can still feel the determined entry of his long, thick shaft into my body, the way he ground himself deep, cursing, grunting, rasping his disbelief over how well I was able to fit him. This man is a marvel of control, but I turned him into an animal. I’m addicted to that transformation already.
His pants are pushed down to the floor and he steps out, wearing nothing but a black pair of boxer briefs while he hangs his clothes on the back of a chair, his muscles moving and shifting in delicious patterns. I’m verging on screaming for him to join me in the bed when he finally does. He lies on his side, handsome head propped on a fist, the position putting his bicep on mouthwatering display.
For long minutes, he does nothing but stare at me in the dim silence of the room, a vein ticking in his temple. Until he breaks the silence. “I was rough with you. At the beginning. And the end.”
I’m sandblasted by heat, my pulse rate tripling. “I know,” I respond, smiling.
His brows draw together. “You seem happy about that.”
“Am I not supposed to be?”
“I don’t tell you what to be happy about.”
“I know,” I say, my smile even bigger. “If you’re worried you hurt me, you didn’t. I never felt anything but…”
“What?”
“Love,” I whisper.
“There’s a reason for that,” he says, his voice thick. Uneven. “God help me, I’m in love with you, Ashley. I’m sitting here trying to convince myself that you’re real.”
“I am,” I manage around the constriction of my throat. He loves me. He loves me. “I’m real and I love you back, Caleb. It’s crazy and it’s happening so fast, but it’s true.” The image of him begins to blur, thanks to the moisture crowding my vision. “I’ve never experienced anything that felt more honest. More real.”
His chest heaves once, twice. “Come here.”
I’m not ashamed to say I scramble like a little kid, tangling my naked self further in the bedding, before getting free and throwing myself up against him lengthways. Instantly, I’m soothed and made drowsy by his heat. Held in thrall by his sculpted and stubbled jaw. The size of him, the sinew of his arm as it wraps around my lower back and yanks me in as close as possible, our legs overlapping below as if we’ve done it a thousand times.
“You’re married, Ashley.”
“I know.”
“We need to get you un-married,” he growls.
“I…I want to do that…”
“No,” he grits out, framing my jaw in a determined hand. “We will. ”
“But my family…”
“We’ll make sure we end things with Waylon without hurting them,” he says, planting kisses along my hairline, my face. “But my patience doesn’t extend to this. My angel belonging to another man will not stand . Not even if it’s just on paper.”
“I belong to you in all the ways that count. My heart, my body, my mind,” I breathe, running soothing palms along his shoulders, down his chest, my touch stirring his sex into a standing position, the length of him beating up against my stomach. My fingers go to those inches, as if magnetized, holding that hard, throbbing flesh in a grip and looking up at him through my eyelashes while I deliver a slow stroke. “All of me is a Daddy’s girl.”
He lets out an abbreviated grunt, a glop of wetness rolling down my knuckles a few seconds later. “Oh lord, yes you are,” he says, choppily. “A Daddy’s girl who just learned how to come and wants a lot of practice now, doesn’t she?”
“Is that bad?” I tease, giving him a little pout.
“Hell no, it’s not bad.” He rolls onto his back, bringing me with him and in a matter of seconds, I’m on top of Caleb—and I squeal in alarm, in happiness, like a much freer version of who I was before. I’m a girl who pouts and squeals and straddles a man, naked, preening and arching her back, so that he groans at the sight of her breasts, reaching out with eager hands to touch them. Bat them gently, delivering arousing slaps to my nipples, before kneading them in firm hands. “I didn’t wear a condom, angel.”
His thumbs tease my nipples with slow circles and the targeted, prolonged attention causes a restlessness in my hips, dampness to slither through my flesh. And my hips begin to undulate automatically, my bare, wet sex dragging up and back on the ridge of his erection, my pussy parting to cradle him, paint him root to tip with my arousal.
“My job is to protect you in every way,” he continues. “But it’s getting harder and harder to battle that side of me that needs to…”
“Claim me?” I murmur, working my lower body a bit faster. “You have.”
“More,” he growls, his eyes going from blue to obsidian. “I need more. All. ”
I’m carried away on a current so swift, I don’t even attempt to reach for a branch to stop me from tearing down a river of obsession. Love. Unmitigated lust. I follow the instincts he’s awoken in me, lean forward and speak against Caleb’s panting mouth. “Maybe you need to fuck me in front of him.”
It’s almost like Caleb has been hit by shocker paddles.
Dark energy surges through him, his physique rippling and hardening, his nostrils flaring as he drags me down into a wild kiss, his hand guiding his superior length between my thighs and slamming home, my resulting squeal a mixture of pressure and excitement. He holds my face tightly in his hands, his maddened eyes boring into mine while he hammers me from below, sweat breaking out on his face and chest.
“Don’t tempt me, Ashley. I will do it.”
There are so many snares, so much that would need to be unraveled for my marriage to be dissolved, but I play along with the fantasy, because…yes. Yes, it turns me on in the wickedest way possible, imagining Caleb and I giving each other pleasure in front of the devil who only ever gave me pain. Proving I’m not cold. Reveling in my newfound happiness and sexuality without any shame. Out from under his control and into mine.
“Can I call you Daddy while he’s watching us?”
The trunk of his sweaty torso twists in the lamplight, his teeth gnashing. The scenario we’re both imagining appeals to Caleb, too. A lot. But he’s focused in on my face, as usual, searching my eyes, making determinations. Counseling me even while I’m riding him. “Keep going, angel. This is healing you.”
I think…he’s right.
There’s something heavy climbing my sternum, bursting free of me in waves. A sense that I was built to be a victim. I’m not one. I’m whatever I choose to be. If I want to be a sex kitten or a witch or celibate, that’s what I’ll do. I decide.
And I decide on him.
I choose to feel the impact of his thrusts, his hips slapping up beneath mine, my sex stretching to take him, my hips angled in a way that allows slippery flesh to graze my swollen clit, sending zings to my hair follicles, fingertips, to say nothing of my gripping core, already poised for another release.
Abandoning myself to the wickedness, I lean down and capture his thickness, squeezing too tight for him to move, clamping until he roars my name, but all I do is smile and lick his sculpted mouth. “I’m going unzip your pants in front of him and show him what a real man looks like.” Still holding his inches hostage, I wiggle my hips and his pupils bleed into his darkened irises, his stomach flexing to iron against mine. “Big and sturdy. Heavy. Balls like a bull.” I lap at his tongue. “The kind of man a woman swallows for.”
My world turns upside down in the wake of those words.
I’m looking down into his fierce eyes one second and the next, I’m face down, ass up with my wrists pinned at the small of my back.
Caleb enters me again with such ferocity, I scream, but the sound is muffled by the mattress, which creaks in time with his drives, his ragged moans loud in the once silent room, that thick appendage finding its home deep inside my body, the power of his invasion lifting my knees off the bed again, again, again, bliss culminating in that pleasure palace just beneath my navel, the intense quickening making me sob and rut my hips back to greet his charges, our smacking flesh loud and crude and glorious.
“Come inside me, Daddy,” I half-scream, half-sob. “ Please. ”
“You know I will, angel,” he pants, his fingers biting into my wrists. His growl reaching my ears when he says, “You know damn well I’ll get you pregnant and laugh while I send him the announcement.” His hips pump deep and hold, hold, grind until I pop, shuddering, moaning down at the mattress while my body remains inches above the mattress, impaled and trembling through the roller coaster of release, wave after golden wave setting me free, along with his threat. Or promise. Whatever we’ve just engaged in.
And when I collapse face down, struggling to catch my breath, I also encounter a warm, rosy glow, head to toe. All-encompassing contentment. When his fingertips begin a slow stroke of my spine, I turn my head to look at him, finding him gloriously disheveled for the first time. Gazing at me with unabashed reverence.
I’m sure that’s how I’m looking back at him. Like he gave me wings.
Through the most unconventional means possible.
“I’m starting to think there’s a method to your madness,” I whisper.
He plants a kiss beneath my ear, lingering a moment. “You are my madness, Ashley.”