Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
Kissing Mateo was pure instinct.
It was an expression of everything welling up inside her. The good and the bad twisted together to form something that felt like it was bubbling up inside her, demanding to be let out.
Normally, she’d suppress her feelings, pretend they didn't exist, and make herself small so she didn't draw attention to herself, didn't become a bother or a burden.
But she was tired of living that way. Tired of shutting herself down, breaking off parts of herself before they had a chance to grow and flourish.
She wanted to know who she truly was, to find her wings and fly, to know what it was like to live her life without constantly being afraid.
This was the first step.
“What are you doing, baby?” Mateo asked against her lips when she pulled back to draw air into her lungs.
“I thought it was obvious,” she replied as she shifted in Mateo’s hold so that her center was pressed against the bulge in his pants.
“We can't, little mouse,” he said, but she felt him jerk against her.
Ally knew exactly what he was doing. It wasn't that he didn't want her, it wasn't that he wouldn't love to be buried deep inside her, it wasn't that he didn't care, or that his feelings for her had changed.
It was she who he thought had changed.
And she had. In a lot of bad ways after her ordeal, but in some good ways, too.
Her body and mind had been broken, but they’d always been dozens of pieces glued together, it was never going to take much to make them shatter.
Scars would litter her soul for the rest of her life, and she’d never completely heal from this ordeal.
But some good had come out of it.
She’d found herself. The mortification she’d felt when she realized how easily she’d broken had come dangerously close to destroying her. Add in how the men of Azure had twisted her own body and used it against her, and she was sure she was ruined beyond repair.
All her life, she’d seen her easy acquiescence as weakness, but for the first time, she’d found strength in the quiet way she accepted her circumstances.
So far, she hadn't broken. She was still standing, she’d made it through that horrific party, had blanked her mind, and endured being used like she was less than human.
Then she’d killed a man. She hadn't run away from trouble, hadn't hidden, she’d run toward it and fought.
The shooting might have been an accident, but she was so proud of herself for being proactive for once instead of always being reactive.
“We can. I want to,” she told Mateo as she removed her hands from his shoulders, trusting him to keep her afloat in the beautiful, clear, cool water, and slipped them into his pants.
A groan tumbled from Mateo’s lips as she wrapped her fingers around him, and the sound made her feel powerful.
“Baby, you keep doing that, and my control will snap.”
“Good. That’s what I want. I want you to take me hard and fast, I want you to make me come so hard I can't breathe, I want you to show me that you still find me desirable despite what those men did to me.”
“Don’t want to take advantage of you, baby, don’t want to hurt you,” Mateo said on another groan when she squeezed him.
“It’s not taking advantage if it’s what I want,” she reminded him. “Trust me, I know the difference between someone making my body betray me, and me giving my own body what it craves. It craves you, Mateo.”
Those dark eyes of his widened as he took in her words, as though he could hardly dare to hope that she meant them.
Well, she did.
Only she got to decide how she felt. No one else was ever going to have a say in that again, she would never let anyone have that kind of power over her. She was twenty-eight years old, she’d wasted enough time as it was.
“I don’t deserve you, baby,” he murmured, his hold on her secure, his teeth nibbling at her bottom lip, making her the one who groaned this time.
“But if you're offering yourself up to me as the most deliciously perfect treat, then I'm going to take you and devour you. Are you sure that’s what you want, little mouse? Are you sure you can handle that?”
“I'm sure that if I can't, and I tell you that I can't, you’ll stop. So yes,” she answered confidently. If she was reading her body wrong, she could change her mind, and Mateo would respect her wishes, because he respected her. “Take me. However you want, I'm yours.”
“Mine,” he said, a hint of wonder in his voice, and then he growled, the sound all male and territorial.
Before she could blink, Mateo yanked both her pants and his own out of the way, and she felt his tip teasing her entrance.
“You ready for me, baby? Are you wet and dripping, aching for me to fill you up?” he asked, his voice rumbling against her skin as he dotted kisses along the column of her neck.
“So ready,” she whispered, a needy moan falling from her lips as she tried to wriggle closer, to get him inside her.
But Mateo held her still, his hands on her hips, both keeping her afloat and preventing her from sliding down his length.
Ally knew from experience that he wouldn't give her what she wanted until he was good and ready.
“Hmm, maybe I’d better give you what you want then.”
With a single jerk of his hips, he slammed inside her. There was a sharp sting as her body stretched to accommodate his size, but it quickly morphed into the first tinglings of pleasure.
When she went to rock her hips, Mateo’s fingers dug into her skin. “Uh-uh, little mouse. You’ll come when I'm good and ready for you to come and not a second sooner,” he warned, as his lips drifted lower.
Through the borrowed T-shirt, she could see her nipples pebbled against the wet material that was plastered against her, partly from the cold and partly from arousal. Arousal won out when Mateo’s lips closed around one hard little bud and sucked.
Thrusting her chest forward, Ally begged without words for him to give her more.
Because he was Mateo and really did only give her what she needed when he was ready to give it to her, he took his time.
With excruciating slowness, Mateo’s grip on her hips kept her still, even though she could feel him filling her to perfection, as he suckled at her breasts, scraped his teeth along them, making her cry out, then sucked and licked and nipped his way back up the side of her neck.
His lips eventually lingered on her pulse point, and he lavished attention on it until she moaned and shook, the need to come so strong because it was what she decided she wanted that she had no choice but to beg.
“Please, Mateo, I need it.”
“Need what, baby?” he asked, even though they both knew he knew the answer to that question.
“More, I need more,” she pleaded.
Instead of getting the hard and fast she’d asked for, she got a single swirl of Mateo’s thumb against her bundle of nerves. “This what you need, baby?”
“Yes,” she said, her hips trying to move, seek him out, needing more stimulation. “That’s not enough, Mateo. Please. More. Give me more.”
Another brush of his thumb across her bud was all he gave her, and another lingering kiss to where her pulse fluttered wildly out of control.
“More,” she begged again.
Rewarded with another swipe of his thumb on the place that throbbed with need.
“More.”
Another light touch.
“More.”
A harder touch this time, Mateo’s control was slipping.
“More.”
A tweak this time of her bundle of nerves, and he jerked inside her again, pushing her closer toward the inevitable peak. But it wasn't enough. She needed more stimulation. Needed him to throw caution to the wind and take what he needed from her, giving her everything in return.
“More, now, I need to come.” Tears trickled down her cheeks, not tears of anger, or sadness, or fear, just born from pure, unadulterated desire.
Her words, or maybe her tears, were the final blow his control needed before he snapped, then he was thrusting into her over and over again, pinching and tugging on her bud until she spiraled upward into the Milky Way, then came plummeting back to earth as pleasure exploded inside her.
It stole her breath.
It stole her ability to think, to speak, to do anything but sob as it tore through her with a ferocity that was everything she’d hoped for and more.
“Thank you,” she murmured before pressing her lips to his.
A sudden bright light flooded the sunken blue pool, and both of their heads snapped up to find a ring of men standing at the top looking down at them.
August 21st
1:47 A.M.
If he survived this, his heart was going to have permanent damage from all the times it felt like it had stopped beating over the last week.
Bright light shone down on them, and Mateo didn't even have to look up to know that it wasn't Trigger and his team. If it were them, and they’d returned because they’d seen something concerning, they wouldn't be bringing out the spotlights and alerting anyone who could be nearby.
Which meant there was only one person it could be.
“Do exactly as I tell you,” he whispered in Ally’s ear, then quickly pulled out of her and rearranged both their clothes. Then he crushed her tighter to his chest and looked up, quickly counting the number of men surrounding them.
From what he could see, there were eight.
Not great odds, but not terrible either.
Too bad he’d left his pack and his weapon up there when he jumped.
This was exactly why going on a mission with a woman you were madly in love with and wanted to give the entire world to was a terrible idea.
You got sloppy, made mistakes. They shouldn’t have stopped to play in the water, he should have insisted they keep going with the others.
If Ally wanted to swim in a beautiful, remote, blue water hole, then he’d bring her back to the tropics some other time.
“That you, Rolland?” he yelled up.