Chapter 24 #2
“This?” Hunter bites his lip and thrusts against my pussy again. I feel metal brush me again, but I can’t see it.
“Yes!” I splay my hands against his muscular chest. “Hunter, are you… pierced?”
“Yes, sweetheart.” He rocks his hips slowly, pressing his hand between our bodies to make sure that I feel the mysterious piercing with each thrust. I can’t see his cock, but I can feel it, his hot, impossibly hard length teasing my slit. “That’s not a problem, is it?”
I groan. One part of me wants to know when he got the piercing and if it hurt. The other part of my brain is tuning out, narrowing to the feeling of my clit pulsing and the heat between our bodies.
Am I drooling? God, I hope not. My orgasm face might be humiliating. The thought slows my hips again.
“You’re thinking too much.” Hunter tugs my head back and growls in my ear, “Let me make you come, Monroe.”
God, he’s killing me. I’m fucking needy and my face is on fire. Nodding to him, I relax an inch. He moves his hips faster, his eyes on me.
“Are you going to come just from me touching you like this?” He seems curious. His stormy blue-gray eyes probe me. “How does my cock feel, Juliet?”
“Good,” I gasp. “So fucking good. Don’t stop.”
He’s playing me like a fucking fiddle. How embarrassing. My breath hitches as he snaps his hips, his clothed cock brushing against my clit. Every thrust brings a brush of hard metal. My whole body shudders, knotting.
“I wouldn’t dare.” Hunter smirks. “Do you have a very sensitive trigger, baby? Is that it?”
I swallow. I’m very close to the edge, hanging on the precipice by my fingernails. “Uh-uh.”
He grips my hips harder, thrusting against me more forcefully. My eyes roll back in my head. “I’m–I’m going to–”
“That’s it.” His hips move faster now, rolling against me, his hands the only thing tying me down to earth. “You’re so fucking hot. So perfect. I can feel how wet your pussy is getting, sweetheart. I want you to come on my cock.”
I seize up somewhere just before he tells me to come, exploding, shaking, my fingers digging into his shoulders hard enough to leave marks. Hunter keeps thrusting while I ride the wave, washing up and over me like a tidal wave and then leaving me a gasping mess.
I remind myself to chill out a bit. Hunter has barely touched me. I need to slow my roll down a little. Brushing the hair out of my face, I look at him, breathing hard.
“Can I touch you?” I ask, feeling silly.
His lips twitch. “Juliet, you just came on my lap. I think you can touch me if you want to.”
I bite my lip, smiling shyly. My palm finds the hard length of him through those sinful sweatpants, shaping his massive cock, and he groans like I’ve hurt him in the best possible way. When I explore his pierced tip with my thumb, he groans.
“Jesus Christ, Juliet.”
I slip my hand into his waistband, exploring his cock.
Hunter’s fingers cover mine as he sets a fast tempo.
I want to pull his cock out so I can see the damn thing, especially the metal piercing that runs through the head of his dick.
But I’m not sure he’d be into my scientific curiosity, so I move my hand in the rhythm he’s set.
“Talk to me, Monroe,” Hunter whispers. He knots his fingers in my hair, dragging his top teeth across his full bottom lip. “Tell me what you think about when you’re in bed, all alone and horny.”
“Lately?” I suck in a breath. “You. How you smell. How big your hands are. The feeling of kissing you. How big your cock probably is…” I smile sheepishly. “I spend a lot of time imagining how it would feel if you fucked me.”
“Fuck, Juliet.”
I kiss him hard, my hand moving faster, flicking the metal barbell each time I work my hand along his cock. “Mmm, you’re so hard. Is that for me?”
“Fucking right it is,” he growls. His breathing gets ragged; his control slips. There’s something intoxicating about being the one to reduce him to this.
When he comes, he says my name like a prayer, and I feel powerful in a way I never have before.
After, we sit there breathing hard, trying to process what just happened. His lips had my lipstick smeared across them. My hair is a mess.
I should feel embarrassed or regretful or something. Shouldn’t I?
Instead, I feel electric. Alive in a way I haven’t been in years.
Hunter doesn’t say much, but I can tell by the way he looks at me, steady and possessive and almost proud, that he knows he gave me something no one else ever has.
I have only been with Patrick, and he never got me off. Not with my shorts on, not buck naked, not in five long, lonely years.
Hunter seems proud that my ex couldn’t make me come the way he just did. That he could. He’s not gloating exactly, but it’s there in the way he watches me. Quiet satisfaction mixed with something deeper.
“That was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen,” he says, sweeping my dark curls from my temple. “Juliet? Look at me.”
Face red as a beet, I peek up at him. “I got kind of carried away.”
“Are you kidding?”
I squint at him. “No?”
“Monroe.” He grips my hips again. “I think we’ve both wanted this since college.”
That’s news to me. My eyes narrow. “I thought you said I wasn’t the type of girl guys went for. I was too uptight.”
“I said that, didn’t I?” A low laugh snakes from his throat. “That’s what you tell anyone who’s sniffing around the girl you like. You tell them she’s not the hottest thing you’ve ever laid eyes on and hope that your lying tongue doesn’t rot out of your mouth.”
My mouth drops open. I’m flustered, not just that he said it, but that it wasn’t even how he really felt. I ball up a fist and pound it on his chest.
“You are horrible! You know that the guy you said it to ended up publishing your hateful words in the newspaper?” I smack him again for good measure.
“One of my internship offers got pulled because the boss read your words and decided that your opinion meant more than my several-weeks-long interview process.”
“What?” Hunter has the decency to look a little chagrined. “I’m sorry, Juliet. I was just trying to keep that dude from figuring out that you were…”
He trails off. I smack him again. “I was what?”
“You were perfect.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Again, I’m really sorry.”
What the hell am I supposed to say to that? I look at him, not really knowing what the proper thing to say is.
Thanks? I still hate you? I thought you were dreamy in college, too?
And that’s when the panic sets in.
Because this isn’t supposed to be real. This is supposed to be a business arrangement with some convenient chemistry on the side. It’s not supposed to feel like this. Sometimes it’s like he’s seeing straight through all my carefully constructed walls to the messy, needy person underneath.
There’s a version of this where I lean in. I could kiss him back like I mean it. I could let myself want something more than just survival.
But that version of me? She doesn’t exist anymore. Five years of Patrick telling me I was too much, too ambitious, too everything kneecapped her. That version of me got suffocated by the realization that love is just another way to lose yourself.
Juliet Monroe doesn’t get to fall. She gets to win. Or she gets to disappear. Not this complicated… whatever this is between us.
I move away, to put some distance between us before I do something stupid like tell him how I really feel.
“I should...” I start, my voice clipped and shaky. “I should probably get some sleep.”
But Hunter catches my wrist before I can stand up completely.
“Don’t.”
I freeze, not sure what he’s asking.
“Don’t run,” he clarifies. “Not tonight.”
There’s something vulnerable in his voice, something that makes my chest tight. It seems like he’s asking for more than just my physical presence.
“Stay with me.”
Staring at him, my heart still pounding, my body hums from his touch. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know if staying would make this better or worse.
All I know is that I’m terrified of how good this felt and how much I want it to happen again. I’m scared shitless of how easy it would be to let myself believe this could be real.
“Hunter,” I whisper, but I still don’t know how to finish the sentence.
He doesn’t push or demand an explanation or try to convince me of anything. He just looks at me with those steady blue-gray eyes and waits for me to decide.
And for the first time in a long time, I don’t know what the smart choice is.
The safe choice would be to go to my room. Lock the door. Pretend this never happened and go back to treating this like the business arrangement it’s supposed to be.
But sitting here on this couch, looking at Hunter’s face in the blue glow of the TV, feeling the warmth of his hand still wrapped around my wrist, I’m not sure I want to be safe anymore.
I’m not sure I want to be smart.
Maybe I want to be reckless. Maybe I want to see what happens when I stop running from things that scare me.
“Okay,” I say finally, my voice barely above a whisper. “I’ll stay.”
Something shifts in his expression. Relief, maybe. Or gratitude. He doesn’t say a word. He just pulls me back down onto the couch next to him.
For a moment we sit in silence, the TV murmuring in the background. My heart’s still racing, but not from the kiss. From the way he’s still holding me, like the doesn’t plan to let go.
“I wasn’t supposed to be reckless,” I hear myself say, surprising us both.
My voice is soft but steady. “Not growing up. My mom had this whole blueprint for me. Perfect posture, perfect grades, perfect internships. I was supposed to be polished and professional. Not loud. Not messy. Definitely not reckless.”
Hunter glances over, brows pulling together, but he doesn’t interrupt. He just waits.
“I tried,” I go on, my throat tightening. “God, I tried. But it was never enough. She’d always find something to criticize. My laugh was unprofessional. My hair wasn’t right. I wasn’t ambitious or cutthroat enough. I was never the daughter she wanted me to be.”
The words hang in the dim light between us. My throat aches. I rarely admit this to myself, much less anyone else.
Hunter’s jaw flexes. “Sounds like she’s the one who wasn’t enough. Not you.”
I blink hard, not trusting myself to answer.
“What about your dad?” he asks gently.
“He checked out a long time ago,” I whisper. “He hides behind his work and lets my mom call the shots. When I’d cry in my room, he’d say she just wanted the best for me. That I’d thank her someday. I’m still waiting for that day.”
For a while, neither of us speaks. His hand finds mine and rubs gentle circles into the back of it with his thumb. After the silence stretches for a good long while, I ask, “What about you? What was your childhood like?”
Hunter shifts, eyes on the flickering TV. I’m not sure he even heard me.
“Lonely,” he says finally. “After my dad died, it felt like the house went quiet. Everyone was grieving in their own way. My mom… she couldn’t look at us without seeing him. So she looked away. A lot.”
“I’m sorry about your dad,” I whisper. “Being lonely when you’re a kid is the absolute worst.”
He shrugs. “I had my brothers, but they were just kids too. Hockey was the only place that made sense. The rink was loud, physical, and you could understand the rules. Out there, you either scored or you didn’t. You won or you didn’t. It was the one place I felt like I had control again.”
“Ah. So you dedicated your life to it.”
Huxley looks over at me. “Yeah. I guess I haven’t really thought about it that way, but I like to be in control. Everything feels better when I’m the one pulling the strings.”
I study the hard lines of his face. There’s no self-pity in his voice, only fact. But underneath it, I hear the boy who lost his dad too young and had to build armor to survive.
“I’m sorry,” I say again. “Can I… give you a hug?”
He shrugs, but his eyes flick to mine. “I would never turn down a hug from you.”
I scoot over, slipping my arms around his waist and burying my nose in his t-shirt, hugging him and inhaling his woodsy scent.
His smell and the feel of his colossal body pressed against me do something complicated to my brain chemistry.
My mouth waters, my skin feels hot, but my mind tries to relax.
This man is turning me into a fucking turnip and I’m trying to get closer. At this moment, if I could crawl inside his chest, I would. He seems to feel similarly because he presses his nose into the crown of my head and breathes me in.
So we’re both a little weird, I guess.
We just sit here, watching Swedish Detective Saga piece together clues in her methodical way, pretending we’re not both hyperaware of every place our bodies are touching.
But I can feel something has changed between us. We crossed some line we can’t uncross. And as much as that terrifies me, there’s a part of me that’s relieved.
Because pretending not to want him was exhausting. Pretending this was all just fake was becoming impossible.
Now I just have to figure out what the hell I’m going to do about it.