Chapter 4
ROSE
When he tells me I could take everything he’d give me, I know he’s not talking about the truth. He’s talking about something way steamier.
He’s wearing a tank top that shows his huge muscular arms. Sweat slides down his body. Making him glisten. His jeans hang loosely, no belt, but they’re held up by the stiffness in his pants. He seems incapable of even looking at me without getting hard. And it drives me crazy.
I sip my lemonade, hand trembling.
For a while, he digs without saying anything. My legs press together as lust flows through me. It all feels like too much. Like I’m going to erupt into a surreal orgasm just by sitting here.
The muscles in his back shift as my mysterious neighbor digs.
“It would be good to know if I’m living next to a serial killer,” I joke.
Or … I try to joke. But then he spears the shovel into the dirt and leaps out of the hole. Which is substantially bigger than when he started. He walks toward the back porch, shadow swallowing me.
“What did you say?” he grunts.
“It was … a joke,” I tell him. Shifting on my glutes, or more accurately squirming my ass into the chair as he approaches.
“Why are you so interested in who I am?”
I stand. Sick of this. I’m not going to let this misplaced and crazy desire make me meek. “Why are you so opposed to telling me?”
“Maybe it’s none of your business.”
A step forward, and he’s so close I could reach out and touch him. A bead of sweat slides down his firm chest between his pecs. I wonder if they’re as hard as they look. If I bit down on them, would my teeth shatter on impact? He looks like he’s carved from marble.
“Those tattoos look Russian,” I murmur.
Another step. I can smell him now, thick and manly. No cologne, just a primal hum that surges around me. Through me.
“Why would that mean anything?” He stares like he’s debating throwing me, smacking me or fucking me.
“I read an article the other week. About Russians and their presence in the city.”
“Their presence,” he growls.
The article was about the increase in organized crime. But I don’t dare say that.
He reaches with his big tatted paws and grabs my shoulders, pulls me closer. My sensitive peaks brush against his chest and a shiver of longing spikes through me. My nub scorches against my underwear. My head swims.
“Fuck,” he moans. “Touching you was a mistake.”
“Why?”
“I thought I was stronger than this.”
He slides his arms from my shoulders and around my body. Pulls me right up against him so there’s no confusion now. His rock-solid pole presses urgently against my belly through his jeans.
His lips find mine. Rough and hungry. I’ve never felt anything like this. I’m drunk on him the moment our mouths collide. He growls like he’s letting out the beast inside of him. Greedy hands glide to my ass and squeeze, his hips twitch as though he wants to slip into me already.
I sink my fingernails into his arms. One almost snaps against his firmness.
I was right. He is like marble.
He stops kissing. Pushes me back. Stares at me like I’m his ruin.
“I’m not good for you, Rose,” he snarls. “A man like me—you should slap me. You should push me in that ditch and pile dirt on me. Pile it thick until I’m buried. Because that’s the only thing that will stop me from indulging right now in your curvy young perfect body.”
Next door, a window closes. His head turns violently. Tilted like a predator waiting for sounds of prey.
He steps me backward. Reaches behind me and punches my door open. Drags me into his arms and lifts me off my feet.
Instinct makes me wrap my legs around him. He lays me on the kitchen counter. Kisses me again so that I don’t even have time to process his words.
His hips grind against me, shaft grinding against my sex through the prison of our clothes. I tear my nails down the back of his neck.
Then he leans away slightly. Still kissing. Like he can’t stop.
Makes just enough room so that he can grip my thigh with one hand while bracing my back with the other. His lips graze over my mouth, find my neck, kissing and biting like he can’t control himself.
When his hand presses against my groin, I gasp, my head falling back. He leans away like he wants to watch me. Staring like a nuke could detonate outside and he wouldn’t even care because his last moments were with me.
He grinds his hand up and down outside my pants. My hips respond immediately like his touch was made for me. Suddenly, all my inexperience doesn’t matter.
If you let him get too far, you’ll disappoint him.
I do my best to ignore that voice.
I’ve been through a lot. Can’t a girl have a little fun?
I push against his chest.
“That’s right,” he grunts. “Push me away—I’m fucking poison to you.”
“You—protected—me,” I gasp, forcing the words out.
“I’ll always protect you,” he snaps. “If any man even looks at you wrong, I’ll break his goddamn jaw. Or worse. But that doesn’t mean you want this, Rose.”
He’s right. I don’t want it.
I need it.
Despite his words, he hasn’t stopped moving his hand. Grinding my shorts against my underwear and my underwear against my lips and clit. He pumps the heel of his palm so that all I can think about is the pressure.
I close my eyes. See blossoms of red like fireworks sparkling across my eyelids.
His breath is the hottest part. Urgent and husky, like he’s experiencing as much pleasure as I am just by giving it to me.
“Cum for me,” he demands. “Soak your underwear. Drench your fucking shorts. Cum all over my hand and get your horny tight pussy ready for my cock.”
I have to tell him before this gets too far.
But it’s too late. We’re already too far.
He speaks close to my ear in the final moments. Hot breath painting me in volcanic desire.
“I brought you in here because I can’t let anybody else see you like this. Moaning and perfect and so sexy I’m aching with the need to be inside of you. Nobody apart from me, Rose, sees you like this. Understand?”
I open my mouth to say yes. It should feel ridiculous but it’s not. As the shimmers of near release make my thighs clench, it seems reasonable. Like anything else would be insane.
Then I erupt. I tighten my hands around his hand, trapping it there. He pumps it quicker.
My eyes snap open and I see the intense focus on his face. Staring with possession and starvation in his dark eyes. He groans as the orgasm shatters me, wetness flooding my underwear, my hips twitching as everything in me tightens to a searing ball of white-hot euphoria.
He lifts his hand in awe. Looks at his glistening fingertips.
“Fuck, you’re soaked,” he groans.
He reaches into his jeans. Strokes up and down, the movement of his hand behind the denim making me ache with a second wave of tension.
When he leans in again, I shake my head. Hop off the counter.
“You need to know something.”
I walk to the other side of the kitchen. Back turned to him.
This shouldn’t be so hard to say. But he needs to know.
“Don’t tell me you have a fucking boyfriend,” he snarls. “A husband?” He spits. “Christ, Rose. If you belong to somebody else I’ll go to war right now. I’ll take on the whole goddamn world just to try and forget you. And even then, I’ll fail.”
I turn swiftly back to him. “I’m single.”
Relief flows visibly through him. “What then?” he grunts.
I lick my lips. Build up my courage as best as I can. “I’m a virgin.”