Chapter 23 #3
“What the fuck, Tanner?” I touch the tender spot on my lip where his teeth bit in to. “What do you think you’re doing?”
He shakes his head and moves closer to me again, sliding his hands down my body and gripping my waist firmly.
He exhales heavily as he looks down at the space between our chests.
His voice is like sandpaper when he utters, “There’s a lot I want to do and say, but first we need to get one thing straight.
” His steely eyes bore into me. “You are mine, Belle. In whatever fucked up way we’re doing this right now, you are mine. ”
His words stun me and his close proximity brings a heaviness to my chest.
“You know this is all a lie!”
That is apparently not the response he was looking for.
His eyes turn to slits and he rips himself away from me.
He begins aggressively pacing the alley, looking a whole lot like a gorilla pounding the ground in front of its cave.
Grateful for the space, I drag in a huge breath and attempt to slow my heart rate before it pops out of my chest.
“So that’s why you’re here flirting with DeWalt?” He shoots me a venomous look, pushing his hair back behind his ears. “Because this is all a lie and you’re looking for the real deal to fuck?”
“No!” I answer with a haughty bark. “DeWalt is nothing.”
“Well then, what do you want?” he roars.
“I don’t know.”
“I think you do.”
“Oh, then by all means, enlighten me,” I snarl.
Suddenly, he moves close to me again, towering over me.
One hand is pressed on the wall by my head while the other grazes all over my body but never actually touches me.
Every deep inhale of breath I take brings me closer to his hand, but he continually adjusts his location so he never actually lays a finger on me.
“You want me, Belle.”
I scoff and look away. “How could I? You’re acting like a bloody maniac.”
“For you.” His voice is guttural and I can’t help but meet his eyes. They are so blue and probing I can hardly breathe. “I act like a maniac for you. We have issues, but past all of them is the fact that I want you and you want me.”
My jaw juts out defiantly, shaking my silent refusal but feeling an alarming tickling sensation on my shoulder blade.
“Say the words, Belle,” he pleads, dropping his face down closer to mine.
I can smell him. I can taste him. His lips are only a centimetre from mine, so close I could stick my tongue out and touch them if I wanted.
His breath trembles when he adds, “Just tell me you want me.”
I sniff, unable to find my words with his aching eyes on me.
He moves his mouth to my ear and whispers, “That’s all you have to do.” He breathes in deeply. “Because I’m already yours.”
He pulls back and looks into my eyes with total and complete dire need. Like a ship in the night, his presence is the swirling light, drawing me in from the dark sea. His vulnerability is too much. His need is too heady. My gaze waters as my body arches into him.
Of course I want him. I’ve wanted him since he rejected me. I’ve wanted him since he hurt me. I’ve wanted him even when I hated him. And I know I can’t hold out a second longer. My endurance has crumbled.
So I feed the beast.
“I want you,” I whisper and a strange noise rises from my throat as I brush my quivering lips against his. A feather-light touch of our mouths that I feel all over my body.
He pulls back and closes his eyes, exhaling the weight of the world out of his lungs. His eyes crack open for a split second before he angles his face and drops a hard, claiming kiss on my lips. It’s wet and sloppy and possessive, and it’s turning into so much more but nowhere near enough.
We shift into a mess of groping, squeezing limbs, crushing our bodies together completely and giving in to the beast of need roaring between us.
My chest heaves with longing against his.
My breasts yearn to be touched. My body aches to be filled.
This kiss isn’t sufficient. The desperation to reconnect in the most carnal way possible is urgent.
Tanner moves us away from the wall and farther into the darkness of the alley. My back collides with something hard and cold, and I break our kiss to see I’m pressed up against a truck.
His voice is deep and throaty as he presses his hard-on into me. “I’m fucking you right here, right now. I can’t wait.”
He starts frantically digging in his pocket and I hear the most glorious sound ever. The beep of a key fob.
He opens the door and lifts me into the driver’s side, crawling in behind me and pushing me across the bench. I give the alley a cursory glance, knowing it is nuts to fuck in an alley outside a pub with his entire team inside.
But that’s us. We’re crazy.
Once he’s past the gear stick, I fly toward him and frantically fumble with his jeans, opening the zipper and grabbing his hardened shaft in my hands. I squeeze the silky skin with all the anger I have still coursing through my veins. Rage and frustration fuelling this crazy act of sex.
Tanner unceremoniously tosses my heels and rips me out of my skinnies and knickers.
He leaves my long sweater on as he manhandles me astride him.
His eyes are dark on me as the head of his cock nudges my opening.
I use the roof to brace myself and moan loudly, already soaked with a wanton ache to be filled.
As if my cry was a shotgun at a starting gate, he yanks down on my hips and meets me with a hard thrust upward, impaling me with a ferocity that has me seeing spots.
A garbled cry of relief escapes his throat, like being inside me stopped something from completely breaking inside of him. His hold on my thighs is bruising as I grind down on him, begging him to move.
He drops his head to my chest and groans, “I don’t like you flirting with other guys.”
His hips resume pumping up into me again, and my arousal is only intensified by the possessive tone of his voice. I bite my lip and slide up and down on his dick. “I wasn’t flirting,” I breathlessly snipe, realising sex isn’t going to fix all of our problems.
“Oh really? Then tell me, do you like it when I flirt with other girls?” His voice is moany as he power drives into me over and over, my arse bouncing on top of his balls.
“I couldn’t give a fuck,” I lie as he yanks down my top and pulls a hard nipple into his mouth. When he bites down, my hands drop from the roof and I claw my nails into his shoulders so hard, I’m sure they’ve ripped the fabric of his shirt.
The pain drives my arousal higher.
“Bullshit,” he growls, his eyes wild on mine with determination. “I know you, Belle.”
He twists his hips in a way that hits a spot so deep, I’m not sure it’s ever been touched before.
Recognising how I respond, he begins rapidly thrusting up inside me, punching that spot over and over and over.
I claw and scratch at anything I can find.
His hair. His face. I even bite down on his shoulder at one point, desperate to find control over this painful climb.
Right when I think I’m going to blast into the universe, he stops all movement and says, “Admit it.”
I growl, my fiery eyes snapping to his. “Fine, I care! I want to tear that girl’s eyes out. Are you fucking happy?”
He yanks my face down to him and I feel his triumphant smile as he captures my lips.
Pulling back, he murmurs, “That girl I was talking to in there…those women…All I spoke about was you and how incredible I think you are and how amazing your job is. I even told them about your fucking hospital charity.”
My breath is heavy as I process his words, but I don’t even have a chance to respond before he suddenly quickens his pace inside of me. My hands grapple for purchase, but they are reaching for the unknown, flailing in the dark shadows and trusting that Tanner will continue to never let me go.
My hard and fast climax takes me completely off guard in all its Tannerific glory. I could sing at the electric tingle all over my body that I so desperately needed after all the wrath and anger I felt moments ago.
Tanner follows seconds after. We’re both slick with sweat and panting for a while before I roll off of him. Then he moves to pull his jeans up, which only made it down to his thighs.
I feel his come dripping out from between my legs. “You don’t have a tissue in here, do you?”
He winces and eyes my legs. “I don’t…but…here.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pair of my knickers. Not the ones I was wearing tonight, but the ones he nicked out of my suitcase in Manchester.
He shoots me a lewd smirk. One that brings me right back to how we were before. A little nuts, but happy. He shrugs and I laugh, sounding a bit insane but not giving a shit.
I use them to clean up and then toss them out the window toward the dumpster. Tanner side-eyes me.
“Oh, did you want to keep those?”
“Not as long as there are more where they came from.” He winks.
I sigh and slide back into my clothes, smoothing down my hair so it’s not glaringly obvious to the rest of the world that I was just angry-fucked in an alley.
“So what now?” I ask.
“We’re doing this.” He says it so simply as he throws his arm on the back of the seat behind me and plays with a tendril of my hair.
His eyes are perfectly serious. His breath is smooth and steady.
The angry, maniacal glint in his gaze from before is gone.
He brushes the back of his finger along my cheek with one hand and says, “No more fake dating. No more bullshit. You’re mine.
I’m yours. We walk back in there and we act like it. But this time, it’s not an act.”
My heart skips a beat, so I decide deflection is the best response. “Stop barking orders at me, you fiend.”
He leans across the seat and kisses me with a tenderness that feels as if it was reserved specifically for this moment. “Woman, say you’re mine.”
I sigh against his lips. “Why do you need to hear it so badly?”