31. Alba
THIRTY-ONE
ALBA
Sometime in between leaving Koval’s and that moment on my bed, the energy between Vaughn and me had shifted. He touched me like a man starved. He kissed me like I was the only thing that mattered.
It fed the neediness inside me. Made me feel wanted, beautiful. I wrapped my arms around him and sighed at the warmth of his skin, the hard pack of muscle beneath my palms. I ran my mouth over the bulk of his shoulder and traced the line of his stubble on his neck.
“Vaughn,” I repeated, shimmying as he pulled off my bottoms, underwear and all.
“You’re mine, Alba,” he said, his voice rough. “I’m not letting you go.”
His words sparked something in my gut. Excitement. Pleasure. Hunger. I wanted to belong to him. I wanted him to want me so badly that he was deranged with it, because no one had ever wanted me like that before. It was easier to reckon with the size of my own emotions when he was wild with his own.
Then his mouth was on me, and there was no time to reckon with anything at all.
His hands spread me, his lips devoured me, and I flew.
I clung to his hair and rocked myself against his mouth, my heart thumping so fast I thought I might pass out.
I cried out his name and arched when he entered me with a finger. Two.
It was a frenzied, delirious coupling. Vaughn flipped me onto my stomach and hiked my hips up, then licked into my opening as I moaned into the covers. He spread my arousal over my clit, back to my ass. He rasped that I belonged to him. That he’d keep me always. That I was his.
And I agreed. I was a raving, shameless woman. Putty in his hands. He knocked my knees wider and ran his hand between my thighs.
“Who does this belong to?” he growled, entering me with a finger. He curled it, rubbing inside me as I writhed on the bedsheets.
“You,” I panted. “I belong to you.”
“All of you.”
“All of me,” I agreed, my fists twisting into the sheets as he drove me to another shouted orgasm with nothing but a finger inside me and a thumb circling my clit.
I loved belonging to him. I loved giving him my body. I loved that he wanted me so badly he was incensed. That’s how I felt too.
The bed dipped, and I gasped for breath while I tried to get my bearings. My arms shook as I propped myself on my elbows, sweat slicking my hair to my forehead as I glanced over my shoulder. Vaughn was behind me, a conquering warrior, all brawn and greed. I’d put that look on his face. Me .
His cock slipped between my legs, hot and hard against my flesh.
He rocked his hips, an exhale slipping through his lips.
“I want to take you like this, Alba.” His hand smoothed up my spine and back down again.
His eyes landed on mine. “Want to feel my skin against yours, finish inside you. Make you all mine, princess.”
It was the kind of thing that, if a girlfriend had told me about it after, I would have rolled my eyes. Yes, he wants you so badly he just can’t wear protection. How tired. How cliche. I wasn’t that stupid—no way.
Except I was precisely that stupid. I felt his cock against me, felt the weight of his attention and his desire and his covetousness, and I wanted to be his. I wanted to feel him inside me and drive him as wild as he drove me. I wanted all of him—just as he wanted me.
My chin dipped. “Yes,” I whispered.
He groaned, his hips rocking forward so that his cock slid against me. The hair on his thighs rasped against the back of mine. His hands tightened around my waist. “You want me to fuck you like this, Alba?”
“Yes,” I repeated. The covers on my bed felt rough against my forearms, my knees. “Yes, Vaughn.”
“Want my cock in you, raw and hard?” His eyes were nearly black with need. “My little princess needs to be taken care of, doesn’t she? She needs me to fill her up and fuck her?”
My mouth was dry. “Yes,” I rasped.
He shifted behind me, positioning himself at my opening.
His gaze lowered, and as he entered me, I knew he was watching.
My own head dropped between my shoulders, forehead resting on the pillows, and I exhaled.
It felt so good. The stretch of him inside me.
The weight of his hands. The heat of his body.
Vaughn shuddered, his hands sweeping up my sides and down my spine. They settled on my hips, his thumbs pressing near my spine, his fingers gripping me hard. He settled into a steady, relentless rhythm, and I clung to the sheets and moaned in the pillows.
“You feel like heaven,” he said, his voice ragged. “You feel so good, Alba.”
I gasped my agreement. My mind was blank, my body burning from the inside out. All I could do was cling on as he thrust into me, our bodies shaking and writhing and groaning. This was something other than sex. It was more. It was rough and feverish and greedy—and nothing had ever felt so good.
Vaughn draped his body over my back, his lips running over the back of my shoulder.
My arms trembled, and he shifted to press his hands into the mattress to take most of his weight.
His chest hair rasped against my back, his arms caged me in, and his hips snapped forward over and over again.
All that existed was me and Vaughn. Our bodies. Our pleasure.
“Love you like this,” Vaughn said, voice gasping, and his words were dangerously close to the ones lingering on the tip of my tongue. “Love the feel of your body. You grip me so good, Alba. Never felt this good in my life.”
“I know,” I panted out. “So good.”
“Want to come inside you. Want to fill you with it, princess.”
I shouldn’t have wanted that, but I did. It shouldn’t have turned me on, but it did. I reeled with it and managed to say, “I’m not on the pill.”
“Don’t care,” Vaughn said, his arm coming around my stomach. He slid his fingers down to my bud and started stroking. “I could put a baby inside you.” He exhaled, hips snapping. “I’d like that. Having you carry my child.”
I huffed—mostly to cover up the rush of heat that went through me. It was wrong to be turned on by the frantic words he whispered in my ear, wasn’t it? It was wrong to want this—to want to be wanted so badly he could hardly make full sentences, so badly he was talking nonsense.
“You’re mine, Alba,” Vaughn said, his fingers moving over my clit. I trembled beneath him, overwhelmed by sensation. “You’ll always be mine, princess.”
“Yes,” I moaned, heat warping through me.
It coalesced between my legs, around the spot that Vaughn teased with his fingertips.
A fine trembling started in my limbs, and then I was gone.
I cried out, muffling the noise in my pillows, lost to the pleasure of Vaughn’s touch.
A moment later, his teeth sank into my shoulder, and he came along with me.
Another rush of hot sensation went through me, and I collapsed on top of the bedding with Vaughn on top of me.
He caught himself, shifting his weight so it wasn’t fully on me, his mouth moving from my shoulder to my neck as he peppered my skin with clumsy kisses.
“That was nuts,” I rasped.
He huffed, sending a strand of my hair flying through the air. “You drive me so crazy, Alba.”
“Was that—” I stopped, shifting my head so my voice wasn’t so muffled by the pillow. My thoughts were in tatters. I couldn’t figure out what I was trying to ask. “Was that just dirty talk?” I finally managed.
Vaughn slid off me—and out of me—and shifted me so we were facing each other on our sides. His big hand coasted up my side and over my shoulder, reaching up to brush hair off my temple. “About putting a baby inside you?” His brow arched.
I blushed and bit my lip. “I should probably get the morning-after pill.”
His eyes were solemn. “Would it be so bad?” His hand moved from my temple downward, the backs of his fingers brushing the space below my navel. “You carrying our child?”
My pulse sped. Yes, it would be so bad. We’d met only a couple months ago.
He was rich, and I was destitute. He already had a child with another woman, and the relationship seemed strained.
Having a baby with him would be disastrous.
The possibilities that had opened up with my income from working for him would shut.
I’d be entirely reliant on him. Vulnerable.
And it would also be wonderful. A sweet-smelling baby with soft, soft skin, bundled in my arms. The sight of Vaughn holding our child, his eyes soft.
My features—or his—in miniature. The first gummy smile.
A little white tooth poking through, sharp as a saw.
It would be the best thing to ever happen to me—if my life were a fairytale.
If things worked out for me, which they never did.
Or they never had …until I met Vaughn.
“You’re not thinking straight,” I whispered, mostly talking about myself.
“I know,” he agreed easily, his fingers still stroking my stomach. “I know.”
His release was still there, between my legs. Serious blue eyes stared back at me, and it felt like we were having an entirely different conversation without saying a word. A conversation that started with “ What if…? ”
I sighed, closing my eyes as I shifted and leaned my forehead against his lips.
He kissed me softly, his hand moving from my stomach to my side and then up my spine.
His touch was tender. We moved slowly, limbs wrapping around the other, lips coasting over skin.
Afternoon sunlight slanted through the bedroom window, and I stared at the play of the shadows against the opposite wall.
“You want to come home and have dinner with me and Charlotte?”
I shifted my gaze from the wall to Vaughn’s face and smiled. “That sounds wonderful.”
He let out a sigh, like he was relieved to hear my answer.
His fingers traced my hairline and the shell of my ear, and then he leaned in to kiss me.
It was a chaste kiss, nothing like the frantic lovemaking we’d just experienced, but it still sent a tumble of heat through me.
Heat—and comfort. He held me a while longer, and I felt as safe and comfortable as I ever had.
I felt like maybe my fairytale might be happening, after all.
And later, when I listened to Charlotte tell me about the goings-on at school, I couldn’t help but think she’d make a good big sister.
I had officially lost my mind.