Chapter 22
22
A scream ripped from my lungs as the man shoved me, making me stumble, but his brutal backhand across my face cut the sound short by knocking the air clean out of me. Was he trying to rob me? Or…worse?
Whatever he wanted, he was making angry, urgent demands but I didn’t understand anything and the pain from my cheek made my head spin.
“T-take my p-purse,” I stuttered, trying to shove my bag at the man, but he snarled something back at me and started shoving me into an alleyway.
Apparently, he wasn’t interested in my money.
I drew another breath to scream, but before the sound could leave my lips I was abruptly released. I staggered backwards, losing my balance and falling on my ass in shock as I tried to process what’d just happened.
Panicked screams of pain clued me in and I found my attacker on the ground of the alleyway with a dark shape looming over him. Hitting him . The thud of fist hitting flesh reached my ears between the man’s agonized wails and I gasped.
“Carter?” It was instinct supported by absolutely zero evidence but my gut knew . I scrambled to my feet, foolishly rushing forward instead of running for my goddamn life. I couldn’t just leave him, though, what if the guy had a knife or a gun and Carter got hurt?
“Carter! Stop!” I exclaimed, confirming that it was indeed my handsome travel companion with a bad attitude currently beating the ever-loving shit out of my mugger. “Stop, you’re going to kill him!”
Blood already coated the man’s face, and he’d stopped wailing, which suggested maybe he was unconscious, so I grabbed at Carter’s wrist to stop his next swing.
In a flash, he turned on me. A startled squeak escaped me as his bloody hand circled my throat and my back slammed into the brick wall of the alleyway. Carter’s deep blue eyes were practically black in the darkness, and for a moment it was like he had no clue who I even was.
Then he startled, his expression shifting from furious determination to shock and regret in an instant. “Spark? What the—” He cut himself off, swallowing hard and shaking his head in stunned disbelief. “You stupid woman! What were you thinking? You could have been hurt!”
My jaw dropped. “Me? You! Don’t call me stupid, you arrogant, spoiled shithead! How dare you—” Carter silenced my insults in the only way that could have possibly worked in that moment.
He kissed me.
My brain short-circuited with shock…then before I could fully comprehend what was happening, I realized I was kissing him back. Oh shit, kissing Carter was like licking a live wire and I couldn’t stop myself from doing it again, and again, not caring that I’d be burned.
His hand on my throat increased pressure, his thumb and index finger digging into the flesh below my jaw like he was holding me captive. Like I wasn’t a totally willing participant as I grabbed his shirt and pulled him closer. My whole body flushed with intense heat as I remembered how delicious he’d looked in the sauna wearing nothing but his boxer-briefs with sweat running down his artfully tattooed chest.
A rogue whimper escaped as he bit my lip, and the sound only seemed to encourage him to kiss me harder. This time his other hand gathered the fabric of my dress, scrunching it up and out of the way until he could grasp my bare thigh and hitch my leg up around his waist.
The moment I tilted my hips forward, I collided with his thick hardness and he let out the most delicious moan that made me desperate for more. I roughly yanked on his shirt, untucking it and sliding my hands beneath, searching for the button of his pants.
“Spark,” he groaned, kissing my jaw as I flicked his button through the eyelet and grasped a handful of his straining erection. I could safely say I was no longer thinking straight. My face throbbed from the smack my attacker delivered, but I’d all but forgotten about the pain thanks to the heady arousal flooding through my whole body.
Carter bit my earlobe, and I gasped. Fucking hell, why did that feel so good? He immediately followed the bite with sucking, and I nearly combusted as my head rolled to the side. Then I locked eyes on the unmoving man just six feet away, a pool of blood under his head.
Tension snapped through me and I inhaled sharply. “Carter…is he dead?” I could hardly believe I was even asking…but it didn’t look good. Then immediately after that thought, my eyes burned with overwhelming emotion. “You saved me.”
Carter pulled away just far enough to meet my gaze, his dark eyes serious. “You scared the fucking life out of me, Spark. Never, ever do that again.”
The intensity of that statement burned me up inside, even if it made my stubborn defiance raise its head. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
His brows lifted as he drew a deep breath. Then a soft, ice-cold laugh huffed out. “I want to fuck you so badly right now.”
“We shouldn’t…” I replied with a breathy whisper. It wasn’t a no though. Damn it, I was one hundred percent going to regret this later but I couldn’t seem to make my own better sense prevail. As if my body was mocking my indecision, a delicious shiver ran through me from where his hand grasped my thigh and I moaned.
Carter dipped back in to kiss my mouth, teasing me with light pecks rather than the soul consuming depth of our first kiss. “Shouldn’t…” he repeated “…but?”
Smart man, he heard the silent but implied. “But I want to.”
His response to that admission was his hand shifted from my thigh to my throbbing pussy, his long fingers hooking the crotch of my panties aside and plunging inside. My gasp echoed through the alley and my eyes fluttered shut with the heady pleasure, all my focus centered around his fingers buried in my cunt. So freaking good.
“Carter,” I whined, rocking against his hand. My intention was to say we can’t do this but instead what I said out loud was, “I need more…”
He kept finger-fucking me as I desperately freed his thick cock from his underwear and pumped my fist along his length. Crap on a cracker, he was big. If I wasn’t already saturated I’d be worried he would hurt me, but as it was I couldn’t think of anything so sensible. I just needed him inside me.
A low groan rolled from him as he released my throat and grabbed my other thigh, hitching me up around his waist so I no longer had feet on the ground at all. It also positioned us perfectly so the transition from his fingers to the tip of his cock was almost magnetic.
“Oh!” I exclaimed as his broad head slipped in. We were forgetting something important, I was sure of it, but every time the thought pricked at my mind, I violently shoved it aside. This was the only important thing I needed to think about.
“Spark…” Carter hissed, his jaw tight as he shifted his position slightly. “Don’t scream, we need to be fast.” Then he thrust in hard and fast, pinning me to the wall with his dick.
I screamed. Then he chuckled and covered my mouth with his hand.
“I said don’t scream,” he whispered with a laugh. “Otherwise, someone might come to investigate and that would be bad.”
Oh shit. Because of the mugger.
My gaze flicked to the man still lying motionless on the ground a short distance away, and the whimper I let out was more panic than arousal. Carter’s hand smelled strongly of blood, metallic and earthy, but the way his dick filled me was confusing my emotions. Especially when he started to rock back and forth, exquisite shivers of pure pleasure chasing through my core.
But then…the mugger. Was he dead? What would that mean for Carter if he was?
Carter seemed to read my mind, or maybe just followed my gaze and guessed, but his hand shifted from my mouth to cover my eyes instead. “Just don’t look,” he told me in a rough whisper, his lips chasing kisses over my jaw once more. “Don’t look, just feel.” He emphasized that point by thrusting harder and making me groan.
Fuck. This was so wrong . Not just the fact that his hands were literally stained with blood and his victim lay possibly dead nearby…but also for the fact he was a total dickhead and had been treating me like crap all day. I really, really shouldn’t be fucking him but I also couldn’t find it in myself to stop…
“Oh my god,” I gasped, my fingers clenching against his tight oblique muscles as he fucked me. “Carter, we really shouldn’t be— ah, yes! ” He’d just found my sweet spot, and my whole body started to coil up and shake. “Holy shit, don’t stop, I’m so close.”
His breath came in rough pants as he did as he was told, repeating the same stroke again and again, his lips brushing my neck, and his hand firmly planted over my eyes. It was bliss and allowed me to forget where we were for just the few minutes I needed to shatter.
“Carter!” I moaned, crashing into orgasm without any attempts to hold it at bay. My pussy clenched tight around his girth, my legs holding him close like I wanted him to climb inside my skin and chills broke out all over my flesh. It was utterly delicious.
He shuddered and groaned, his teeth tugging at my earlobe again. “Perfection,” he whispered, hoarse and breathless. “Once won’t be enough.”
With that confusing statement, he pumped his hips hard a half dozen times then grunted his own release deep within my cunt. There was no attempt to pull out, and I sent up a mental thanks to my past-self for getting an IUD to eliminate pregnancy risk.
For a few moments, we stayed exactly as we were, locked together and breathing heavily. Then Carter slowly raised his hand from my eyes and crushed a kiss to my mouth. It wasn’t a quick kiss, taking his time to kiss me thoroughly and adding to the intense head spins I was already suffering before he gently withdrew and lowered me to standing.
“Come on,” he ordered, linking our fingers together and hastily stuffing his cock back into his pants. “Let’s get out of here.”
I took a couple of steps, following, before I shook my head and pulled my hand free. “What about—” I gestured to the unconscious man. I hoped he was just unconscious.
Carter shrugged one shoulder and grabbed my hand again. “He deserved it.”
This time pure shock saw me comply when he tugged me out of the alleyway and back toward our hotel, but by the time we reached the lobby I was practically sick with guilt.
“Carter,” I started to say, jogging a few paces to catch up from where I was trailing behind. “We—oh, what are you doing?” He had his phone in hand—the one not grasping my fingers like a vise—and was texting.
He glanced up from his phone, meeting my eyes as we paused in front of the hotel elevators. Rather than dropping my hand, he used the one holding his phone to press the call button. “I’m ordering an ambulance to check on your mugger,” he murmured, “though I’m sure he will be fine, I didn’t hit him that hard.”
I screwed up my face, remembering how much blood there had been. “Um…okay. I guess.”
The elevator arrived and we stepped inside, Carter scanning his keycard and pressing our floor while I closed my eyes a moment. My head was thumping and dimly I remembered being hit before the guy tried dragging me into the alleyway. Before Carter saved me.
A deep shiver ran through me and I dislodged my hand from Carter’s so I could wrap my arms around myself. That man hadn’t wanted my purse, and if it wasn’t for Carter I dreaded to think about how it would have ended.
Carter turned toward me, taking one quick look at my posture before scowling and wrapping me in his tight embrace. An unexpected sob ripped from my chest as I leaned into him, my arms snaking around his broad frame and holding on for dear life. The hug wasn’t sexual, it was safe .
“I’ve got you, Spark,” he murmured into my hair, his face buried in the crook of my neck.
I closed my eyes, hot tears squeezing from between my lashes and running silently down my cheeks. Carter Bassington was a goddamn tornado, but right now I was safe in the eye of the storm.
At least for right now, there was nowhere else I’d rather be.