Chapter Seventeen
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Saff
It was just supposed to be a quick roll in the hay and I was out of there.
No feelings.
No sleeping over.
Hell, I didn’t even want any conversation.
Just bodies moving together.
Mutual pleasure.
An itch that needed scratching.
I’d been catching myself fantasizing about Soren all week. Even, once, while interrogating someone who I suspected of being involved in the beat-down of one of my associates.
The guy had been cuffed to a chair, and then I was suddenly imagining Soren cuffed there. And how I could tease him until he was groaning and practically humping the air in desperation…
Yeah.
I couldn’t be having borderline kinky images in my head when I was supposed to be beating answers out of a guy.
On more than a few occasions, I attempted to talk myself into walking in any random bar in Brooklyn, finding a guy I found remotely attractive, and getting sweaty for a few hours.
The problem was, the second I even tried to think about it, I got this churning in my stomach that immediately killed the desire.
Because, as I was coming to accept little by little, I wasn’t just horny for sex. It wasn’t like anyone would do.
I wanted Soren.
And only Soren.
Damnit.
I suffered for another full day before I finally snapped, grabbed the key out of my purse, and walked inside Soren’s building.
“Miss Amato,” Walter greeted me, looking genuinely happy to see me.
I’d been pep-talking myself the whole ride up, reminding myself that I was going to storm in there, climb the man like a tree, get an orgasm or two, then get right the hell back out.
Then those plans went all to hell when the doors opened.
And there he was.
Standing in the kitchen chopping something, his suit jacket off, and his sleeves rolled up all sluttily. Yep. Sluttily. I didn’t make the rules.
Then, well. Whiskey. Cooking. Talking. Sharing the only meal a man had ever cooked for me. Realizing he was reading one of my most anticipated books…
Sure, there had been sex.
And it’d been hard and rough and delicious.
But somehow, that paled in comparison to everything else.
Which was in no way helping the argument I’d been trying to make about how I just wanted him sexually, not personally.
Then the bastard had to pull me against his chest, cover me with a blanket, and rub my scalp while I read.
I tried to ignore the heart-clenching sensation he was causing by getting sucked into the story I was reading.
But then the characters who hated each other had to go and decide they wanted to settle an argument the old-fashioned way. Naked.
And, yeah, it went ahead and reignited that need inside me.
Luckily, this time, I had Soren right under me.
When I woke him up, I hadn’t exactly expected him to follow the hero’s lead in the book, his hand gliding between my legs, teasing me through my panties until I was rocking and whimpering. Then sliding under to torment me some more.
“You’re not allowed to come yet,” he warned, warm breath in my ear as he got me closer and closer.
But the damn heroine on the page still had a while to go.
“No,” he warned again, pulling his hand away just when I felt that telltale tightening sensation.
“Hey, that’s not on the page,” I reminded him, taking slow, deep breaths to try to calm the ache deep inside.
“Neither is coming. I haven’t even gotten to taste you yet,” he reminded me, reaching to tap the page where the hero was going down on the heroine like a starving man.
The next thing I knew, the book was getting tossed onto the coffee table, then Soren was moving out from behind me to slide in front of me.
He made quick work of removing my panties, then he was down between my legs, working me in a frustratingly slow pace that had me fisting my hands in his hair and trying to rock against him to get more of what my body was screaming for.
I’d never hated a heroine more than I hated that one right then as Soren kept edging me with his tongue, lips, and fingers.
“Nope,” he said as my thighs shook, my back arched, and I was dangerously close to crushing him with my legs.
“Soren, please,” I begged. And I was never the kind to beg. I demanded. I took. I never pleaded for anything. Ever.
Except, it seemed, him.
“Hey, I didn’t write it,” he said, reaching for me with an annoyingly smug smile, pulling me up, so he could remove my shirt, then bra.
“Fuck the book,” I grumbled, hands going to his belt and whipping it off, then working on his button and zipper.
If I could just get my hands and mouth on him, there would be no more playing around.
“Saff…” he warned.
“You’re supposed to be naked too,” I reminded him.
“You’re right,” he agreed, but he moved away from me, leaving me alone on the couch, aching, needy, as he stepped just out of reach.
Then he started to undress himself, making an event of each button before finally shrugging off his shirt.
His pants went next. Then the boxer briefs that were doing nothing to hide just how turned on he was.
A needy whimper escaped me when he was finally standing before me with nothing to hide behind.
Reaching out, I grabbed his hand, pulling him closer, my hungry gaze on his.
“This isn’t in the story.”
“I think we do better off-script,” I told him, closing my hand around his hard length, then stroking him to the base as I leaned forward to run my tongue around the head. “Or should I stop?”
A growl moved out of him as his hand went to the back of my neck, fingers borderline crushing. “Don’t you dare.”
I had no plans to.
If there was anything hotter than having Soren drive me wild, it was doing the same to him. I was drunk on his desire, the way his fingers tightened on the back of my neck, how his hips were helpless but to rock deeper into my mouth, the frantic pace of his breath, the curses and groans as I sucked him faster and faster.
“If you don’t stop, I’m going to come down your throat instead of inside you,” he warned.
Suddenly, I was okay with that.
But Soren, it seemed, had other plans.
His fingers curled in my hair, yanking hard until the pain forced me back, then slowly made me rose to my feet.
He grabbed the backs of my legs, hauling me up, then walking backward until my back slammed into something hard and cold.
Not the wall, I realized with a shivery sort of desire. The window.
His lips were on mine, kissing me hard and deep, his lips as demanding as the hands that were moving over my body.
“Soren,” I whimpered, rocking myself against his hard length pressed to my cleft. “Please,” I cried as he pulled my hair to the side, exposing my neck so his lips could press there.
Then I felt the sharp sting of a bite that had my legs clenching around him, intolerably turned on by this feral sort of desire from such a controlled man.
“Is there any reason we can’t?” he asked, his breath ragged in my ear as he rocked harder against me.
We both knew what he was asking.
Tests, results, a lifetime commitment to each other in nine months.
None of which he needed to worry about.
“No,” I said, breathless. “Unless… you…”
His head lifted, his dark eyes flaming depths of need.
“You’ve got nothing to worry about from me,” he said, slipping his hips back, then surging deep inside me.
I couldn’t tell you what was louder: my cry, or the groan that escaped him.
“Fuck, you feel good,” he ground out, rocking just a little deeper.
“Please,” I whimpered, fingernails digging into his shoulders as my hips wiggled, too desperate for friction to care how much I was begging of this man.
Soren’s hands dug into my ass.
Then he was giving me exactly what I was aching for.
Fast and relentless—driving me right to that edge, then sending me ruthlessly over.
I thought I would take him with me, but as I clung to him afterward, I found him still hard inside me, his muscles shaking with the control it was taking to hold himself back.
He lowered me back onto my own feet, then turned me toward the windows, the lights of the city all around and below us.
I shivered at the exposure even as a devious little need rekindled.
Somehow, I wanted someone to see that, for just the night, Soren Vale was mine. That a man as wealthy and powerful as he was wanted little ol’ me.
Soren stepped inward, his cock gliding against my cleft before sliding slowly inside me.
He reached around me, his hand closing around my throat, pulling my back flush to his chest, so his words could whisper in my ear.
“I want anyone who is looking up to see me fucking you,” he said, hips rocking into me. “To know you’re mine.”
I wasn’t his.
I could never be his.
But for just this night, I would let myself pretend.
So right then, I did.
I pretended we were just any man and woman, that my entire world wouldn’t implode if what we were doing somehow got out.
Soren’s hands slid down to my hips, pulling me back against him as he thrust forward, making me take each thick inch of him each time.
My moans became ragged gasps as he drove me closer and closer. Until, with one choked cry, I came.
“Oh, fuck,” Soren groaned, fucking me harder until he, too, was overcome.
His arms went around me, holding me tightly to him as my body shook gently with aftershocks.
“Shit,” he murmured, exhaling hard. “I should have asked before…”
“You did,” I reminded him.
“I don’t do this,” he said, face nuzzling into my neck.
I didn’t either.
Ever.
If there was anything I was protective of, it was my future. Which meant I made sure that even though I was on birth control, I used condoms. Because no guy was going to leave me a little present that I would have to deal with. Whether that required antibiotics or an eighteen-year commitment.
Aside from that, it always seemed a little too, I don’t know, intimate.
Yet, somehow, with Soren, that felt right.
Except, of course, it couldn’t be right.
Not with him.
“And there she goes,” he said, tone defeated, as he slowly slid away from me.
Some part of me wanted to say that no, I wasn’t running. Even though I knew that was exactly what I needed to do.
Back to my own apartment. Back to the life I fought tooth and nail for.
Back to a life that could not, under any circumstances, include him.
While he went to the bathroom to clean up, I slipped into my clothes—minus my bra that I couldn’t find again —grabbed my phone and key, and fled.
It was for the best I told myself as I sat back on the seat in the subway.
But if it was for the best, why the hell did it feel like someone had cracked open my chest and carved out my heart?