Chapter 14 #3
My jaw won’t unclench. My shoulders won’t loosen. Every muscle in my body is locked, coiled, held together with nothing but the fragile threads of politeness.
She smooths her palms over her dress as she walks and I remember how the warm fabric feels against her skin, between her thighs…
And then she’s gone. Actually gone.
No glance back.
No invitation.
No hint that she even remembers I exist.
Just her back and the sway of her hips as she disappears down to bed.
What the fuck!
Daisy says something beside me. I answer – short, clipped, probably rude, but I can’t force anything else out. If she seriously thinks she can just fuck the fuck off to bed and leave me hanging…
I’m already striding after her. I don’t care who sees, what they think; in that moment, all I’m thinking of is her and me and this damn need that’s choking me up from the inside.
The door to her cabin is closing when I fly up to it, one hand braced on the frame, one foot wedged against the door.
She looks up at me, mouth open, breath tight, pulse racing beneath her skin.
‘You’re playing with fire, Baby Girl,’ I rasp, the warning clawed out of me.
Her chin lifts, eyes burning with something fearless and reckless and utterly undoing. ‘Then make me burn.’
She throws my command back at me, and that’s all it takes.
I’m over the threshold in a heartbeat, the door swinging shut as my mouth claims hers in a kiss that ain’t pretty. A kiss I’d forbidden from the get-go. A kiss I know, even as I take it, is wrong. But I’m done caring.
The world stalls, then surges, violent and dizzying. Twenty-five years of want crashes into a single breath, and I’m too far gone to stop it. I want it. I want it all. The slide of her lips, the rasp of her breath, the sound she makes when my tongue slips deep.
I walk her back until she hits the wall, hands everywhere, breath everywhere, tearing my mouth from hers only to taste her skin, her pulse, her heat through silk.
She cries out when I bite around her nipple – punishment for bringing me to this point. And she gives it right back. Nails piercing my skin. Fingers tearing at my hair.
‘You think you can walk away from me,’ I rasp against her skin. ‘You think you can look straight through me and just… leave.’
I drop to my knees, bunching her dress beneath my palm, and pressing it to her stomach as I pin her to the wall. ‘You think you can tease me with this…’
I hold her gaze as I run my tongue along her laced slit, and her breath catches, thighs trembling, knees buckling.
‘…then take it away.’
She bites into her lip, shakes her head.
‘Too fucking right, Baby Girl. This is mine. You’re mine.’
I growl it into her, working her through the thong, sucking her juice from the lace. Who needs swanky dessert when this exists? Filthy. Perfect. Addictive as fuck.
She cries out my name, one hand gripping the clothes hook above her head, the other sinking into my hair, pressing me deeper.
‘Please, Ax!’ she begs, shamelessly riding my face to oblivion, her whole body vibrating with the same desperation tearing through me. ‘Don’t stop – don’t stop – don’t stop.’
I yank the lace aside, fingers sliding in easy – one, two, three; she clenches around me, her cries turning frantic. I lick and suck and finger fuck until she’s coiled tight, head thrown back, breasts thrust out.
‘That’s it, that’s it, that’s—’
She explodes, her climax a gusher that soaks me through, and I’ve never witnessed anything more devastatingly beautiful, more fierce, more free.
I slow only when she does, easing her back down, milking every last tremor until she sags against the wall. Her head tips forward, eyes fluttering open.
‘Wow,’ she puffs out. ‘Sorry.’
Sorry? What the fuck’s she sorry for?
‘That doesn’t happen often,’ she says softly, her hand sliding from my hair to the drenched collar of my shirt. ‘But when it does…’
‘It’s sexy as fuck.’
Her mouth quirks, eyes bright in the soft cabin light. ‘Thank you.’
Thank you.
I don’t need gratitude.
I need her.
Right now. Immediately. Yesterday.
I push to my feet, ready to close the distance, but she comes at me instead, palms planted to my chest, her forceful march taking me straight to the door.
I don’t fight it. Hell, if this ends with her pinning me to climb me, she can shove me through a wall.
‘You’re so fucking hot,’ I growl, dipping to catch her mouth, because now I’ve gone there, I ain’t giving it up.
Only my lips catch thin air.
The pressure at my chest vanishes.
My back hits open space – and suddenly, I’m standing in the open doorway, blinking like an idiot, while she smiles up at me.
What the—?
‘Night, Ax.’
She gives me one last, deceptively gentle shove, and I stumble back – off balance and a whole lot off-kilter – and the door swings shut on her triumphant, victorious grin.
I stare at the dark wood.
Did she—
Did she just play me?
‘Hey, man. What the hell happened to you?’
I spin to find Theo stepping out of his room, empty ice bucket in hand. He looks about as wrecked as I feel – hair wild, skin flushed – but at least he’s dry.
Fuck.
I gesture vaguely at Tay’s door, drag my other hand through my mussed-up hair like dignity might still be salvageable.
‘Faulty… shower,’ I mutter. ‘Thought I’d check it out.’
Theo looks at me.
At the door.
Back at me.
‘Isn’t that Tay’s room?’
‘I was passing.’
He squints. ‘Dude. What is it with you and malfunctioning water systems lately? You got a plumbing kink I should know about?’
There are probably a dozen cocky answers I could give him.
Instead, all I can think is:
I’ve been played.
For the first time in forever, someone else held all the cards. And no, I ain’t counting Trouble and her damn cock’l.
But if someone offered me a do-over with Taylor right now?
Not to kiss her.
Not to make her gush.
I’d hand her the whole damn deck myself and tell her to have at it.
Theo studies me. ‘You good, man?’
‘Yeah,’ I lie.
Because I just broke my ultimate rule. And I have no fucking idea how to come back from that.
Worse, how to want to.
‘You sure?’ he says. ‘You’re looking kinda peaky.’
‘You want ice?’ I say. ‘Because I want ice.’
I grab his bucket and head for the kitchen before I do something monumentally stupid.
Like storm Tay’s door and ruin her dream with mine.