17. Nero
17
NERO
M y jaw cracks when Miranda puts enough power behind her swing to knock any man on his ass. Birds fly around my head as a headache instantly forms. But I remain standing—just.
I work my jaw side to side to make sure it isn’t broken before righting my head.
Upon spotting the welt on my face, Miranda stares at me with her mouth open and her eyes wide. She didn’t think she had it in her to retaliate with violence.
I’ve always known it.
From the moment I laid eyes on her, I knew she had it in her to tell her emotionally and verbally abusive husband to step the fuck back with more than words. Her gall was just hidden beneath years of manipulation and society’s wrong beliefs of perfection.
That’s done with now.
“You good, butterfly? Or do you want to weapon up to save your pretty hand from getting nicked up?”
She swings again. I dodge this one before I use her imbalance to pull her into my body and lock down her missile-serving arms.
“Let me go!” she screams, her voice echoing even with the warehouse brimming with the goods her husband stole from her.
I don’t heel to her shouted command.
I hold on tight, loving her fight.
There’s nothing sexier than a woman with enough gall to put a grown-ass man in his place.
The thickness of my cock is heard in my words. “I will let you go… when you make me.”
“Ugh!”
Miranda screams, kicks, and scratches. Then she bites. That defense move turns me on the most. It is as possessive as it is aggressive, and proves she knows deep down that our hookups over the past few days haven’t been about searching for the fifteen-million-dollar cocaine shipment that went awry when I was taking out the trash striving to make her an overnight online sensation, and everything to do with an obsession a year in the making.
Yes, I stalked her.
Yes, I stroked my cock while watching her move from the gym in her garage to her loft-like bedroom, removing her clothes on the way.
Yes, I wanted her from the moment I saw her.
But I didn’t force her to become a part of my life.
I stood back and made sure she was safe. Then the name of her catering business fell into my lap.
That was three days after we slept together.
Coincidence? Un-fucking-likely. But I wasn’t going to sidestep the perfect opportunity to show this beautiful, cock-thickening woman that she deserves far better than a weasel like Roy Martin.
I just had to perfect the work-life balance my personal life has been without for over two decades.
The hours I wasn’t with Miranda, I’ve been striving to find the missing coke and who threw her name into the hat when I got too close to the truth. It can’t be Roy or Tasha. They’ve been under my captivity the entire time, so it has to be someone else—someone not even Miranda would consider looking at.
The gleam Eight’s eyes got when he was told to revisit Miranda’s warehouse has wild curls and chubby cheeks popping into my head—and a heap of unfounded theories.
“What was the name of your assistant, again? The curvy one with the curly hair.”
Miranda kicks out so hard that I’m almost emasculated.
She almost takes out my dick.
“Don’t you dare bring Shiloh into this. She hasn’t done anything wrong.”
I adjust her to protect my nuts before saying, “If she means something to you, she means something to me, butterfly, so you have my word that I won’t do shit to her.”
Eight, on the other hand…
I’m pulled from uncalled-for thoughts when Miranda shouts, “How can a shipping kerfuffle be blamed on anyone but the shipping company? Nikolai said it was a mistake!”
“Nikolai is a man in love. He’s about to marry his angel and watch her birth his kin. He isn’t thinking with his head right now. That’s why I need to have his back.”
As much as this kills me to admit, I now have a better understanding of Trey’s concerns.
I’m just as snowed under as Nikolai, if not more.
When you’re finally lucky enough to test something you’ve craved for months, you fall for its wizardry fucking fast.
I’m under Miranda’s spell, and not at all ashamed to admit that.
Miranda’s words rip from her mouth. “Oh, right. Sorry. I forget fucking someone below your league is how men like you take one for the team!”
Nothing but fury resonates in my tone. “What the fuck did you just say?”
I don’t care about her insinuation men in my industry use their dicks to get what they want. That’s a well-used tactic in any ruses that involve women. I’m pissed as fuck to her alluding that she’s below me.
I stayed away after her cocoon cracked because I know she’s too good for me. I didn’t want her wings sullied so soon after they were freed. I struggle to keep my hands to myself when she’s in the vicinity. She’s the flame and I’m the moth. Our wings aren’t close to the same caliber, so I tried to do the right thing.
Tried —the ultimate summit of my viewpoint.
I can’t do it anymore.
The instant Miranda knew my wings were more devilish than angelic, and she didn’t press on the brakes, this train moved forward at a dangerous speed.
I refuse to give her up for anything or anyone—even men I’ve known over half my life.
“You heard me,” Miranda spits out, still fighting, still drawing me in with her grit. “That’s why you showed up at my doorstep, isn’t it? You arrived looking for the missing cocaine and thought, What the hell, what’s one more pity fuck? ”
I let her go, happy to face the wrath of her fury if it gives me her eyes. They are the only things capable of displaying her true feelings. They show the woman behind the shield her fuckface of a husband forced on her years ago.
Miranda spins on a dime and whacks into my chest, too enraged with anger to pay attention to the caution in my tone.
Nothing will stop her onslaught—except a warning she knows I will uphold to the letter.
“Every whack, bite, scratch, and nick you do to me, I’ll do back to you. That’s how we operate. That’s our thing.”
“ Our? ” She scoffs as if disgusted. It is a pity her scent announces differently.
She is as turned on right now as I am, and one step from waving the white flag.
“Yes. Our .”
Before she can respond with the fierceness I’ve craved from her since the day I laid eyes on her, I snake my hand up her back, fist her locks, then seal my mouth over hers.
There’s nothing tender about my kiss. Nothing friendly. It is possessive and claiming, a kiss that speaks my intentions better than words ever could.
And Miranda is defenseless to its onslaught.
“Does this feel like the reaction of a man pity fucking?”
I grip her ass and rock my hips forward, dragging my erection against her heat, drawing out her sultry moans.
“I stayed away at the start because I know you deserve better than both the douche you once called your husband and me. But don’t take that as disinterest on my behalf. I had eyes on you more than on my job. That’s how they were able to play me for a fool. Again. ”
Conflicting timelines removed the nooses from Roy’s and Tasha’s necks for the missing cocaine, but something isn’t adding up. There are too many missing pieces to this puzzle, but not enough hours in the day to find them.
The number of bullets I’m dodging should have my cock hanging limp, but this, my butterfly’s final metamorphosis, is more important than insolent idiots too dumb to remain hidden forever.
They’ll start acting flashy and will talk shit like all unaccredited drug mules do, and then I’ll take them down. It will only be after they’ve announced who suggested Miranda’s business name should be dropped into the dirt with them, though.
After reacquainting our lips, I kiss Miranda with everything I have.
Several long minutes pass before I pull back to marvel at the life firing through her pretty eyes.
“Every time I have you, I want you more.”
My tongue lashes her kiss-swollen lips, still craving more even when she is right in front of me.
“The first time I saw you… fuck. Your beauty brought me to my knees. Then, as I watched you more and more, I realized your attractiveness goes much deeper than skin deep. Everything about you is perfect. Your smile, your kindness, your ability to make it seem as if you’re happy even when you’re dying on the inside.”
I kiss the edge of her mouth for each statement, tinging their honesty with a smear of deceit, but too desperate to touch her to hold back for a moment longer.
“But you weren’t mine to do with as I pleased. Both on paper and in your eyes, you belonged to another man.” She tries to interrupt me, so I speak faster. “So I kept my distance and bided my time, knowing one day you’d eventually break out of your cocoon and be free of him.” Again, I inch back, smirking when she groans. “I couldn’t force you to do that, though. Your metamorphosis had to be your own doing. It made you that much stronger.” The lust in her eyes announces she is aware of my next sentence before I articulate it. “Strong enough to know you could stop this if you truly want to.”
I use my grip on her hair to force her to her knees, and then I use my opposite hand to raise her chin and lock our eyes.
When I drag my thumb over her lips, softening them to be stretched, she whimpers. It drills through the last of my resistance and has me speaking as honestly as I have the past forty-eight hours.
“The only person about to be pity fucked is me. But fuck if I can stop this, butterfly. I crave you enough to watch you from afar for a year and keep my hands to myself. There ain’t no way I’ll achieve the same now knowing I can have you. I crave you more than my lungs crave air. You’re my drug of choice.”
With her wings fully expanded, Miranda gets on board with my plans rather quickly. One second, she’s wetting her lips. The next, she’s tugging on the fastener of my jeans and pulling my cock out of my pants.
I groan when her plump lips circle my crown, and then my teeth crunch when she takes me to the back of her throat.
For a woman who was never given the chance to showcase her brilliance of giving head, her skills are undeniable.
Miranda knows how to please a man orally.
I’d be jealous as fuck if I had witnessed a single scenario instigated by lust with her husband.
In the twelve months I stalked her, I didn’t even see them kiss once.
“Christ…” I grunt when she swivels her tongue around the base of my cock and fights past her gag reflex to accept me as deeply seated as possible. “You’re taking me so deep.”
I gather her hair in a ponytail, then use the firmness of my hold to control the movements of her head. I can’t have her choking on my cock, even with her gags sounding like calls from heaven.
When I say that to Miranda, her moan vibrates down my shaft, making me thicker.
Pre-cum leaks from the top of my cut penis as she sucks the marrow from my bones. She licks it up, as desperate for my taste as I am hers. I want her to ride my face, and for her juices to drench my beard, but I need her to feel how hard she makes me.
She needs to know none of this is about anyone else but us.
Miranda’s eager sucks have me racing for the finish line. She pays a heap of attention to my engorged crown while pumping the portions of my shaft missing out on the warmth of her mouth. Then, just as my balls pull in close to my body, she kneads the pressure making our exchange painful.
I’ve never wanted to come so badly in my life.
My grunts and moans encourage Miranda to go faster. She loses control on my cock, and it takes everything I have not to surrender to the madness. I want to come down her throat, to watch her eyes dilate as I spill my load onto her tongue, but I also want to be balls deep inside her before filling her with my sperm.
Taking her bare gets better every time we do it. The dangers associated with unprotected sex, and the knowledge she is the only woman I’ve ever broken the rules for, has me putting steps into play to experience it again before they’ve fully ruminated.
In ten heart-thrashing seconds, I flip Miranda over until she is on her hands and knees and her fantastic ass is thrust high in the air, unbutton her jeans, peel the waistbands of her jeans and panties to her knees, then enter her from behind with one ardent thrust.
She calls out, her moan unlike anything I’ve ever heard. It has my cock throbbing through a release like I won’t be ridiculed to hell for coming after one pump, but I don’t stop. I continue pounding into her until her climax hits as fast as mine smashed into me.
As I pound into her relentlessly, she shouts my name.
Shivers wrack her body, and the walls of her pussy tighten around my shaft.
“ Yesss … Take me. Accept every inch. Swallow my dick like you’re still hungry for my cum.”
My cock thickens to the point it is painful when the angle of our romp allows me to see the mix of our excitement on the shaft of my unsheathed cock.
“Oh god…” Miranda moans, her words breathless and full of lust as she slowly comes down from climax. “How are you still so hard? You’re taking me so deep. It feels so good.”
My chest puffs high, proud of the shock in her tone.
“It’s you, butterfly. Everything about you makes me hard.”
I thrust fast, making her tits clap.
“And then there’s contemplating if his plan will work, but for me instead of him.”
Miranda peers back at me with red cheeks and wide eyes.
Her confusion should lessen the strength of my pumps.
It doesn’t.
It doubles them.
I’m not a jealous fuck… until it comes to her.
Then I’m a fucking tyrant.
“There was only one time I intervened in your marriage before you invited the carnage.” I fuck her wildly, like she is to blame for her husband’s fucked-up ideas of marital bliss. “I didn’t give a fuck that you had his last name. There was no way I was going to let a prick like him knock you up.”
Miranda’s mouth pops open to release a moan in response to my brutal pounds, but eventually, a handful of words slip out between her heavy breaths. “Roy… doesn’t… want… children.”
I grind my teeth together before forcing words between them. “Then why did he replace your birth control with placebos?”
She wiggles, demanding I stop.
There’s no fucking chance in hell of that happening. I held back my desires for months for that prick. I ain’t doing it again.
As I continue thrusting, shifting the concern on Miranda’s face to need, she slowly says, “I don’t know.”
Another handful of pumps.
Another husky sentence.
“But I promise it wasn’t for what you’re thinking.” She shivers through signs of an imminent orgasm before continuing. “For one, we’d need to have sex for that to happen”—I stop punishing her for the foolhardiness of another when she adds—“and we’ve not done that in an extremely long time.”
I slow the thrusts of my hips until they’re no longer manic, and then I slide my hand around her body to toy with her clit.
The swivels of my index finger and middle finger, and the flexes of my cock as I stretch her wide, switch the focus back to where it should have never deviated from.
It returns it to us.
A low, shallow groan rolls up my chest when Miranda’s moans remind me of the faint noises she releases when she is consuming something naughty. Before I entered her life with guns blazing—literally—it was only ever in the darkness of night and long after her husband went to bed.
“Mm.”
I doubt she knows she’s doing it. She is too self-conscious after years of abuse to openly express her desires, but they’re the noises I crave more than her screams.
They expose the true depth of her pleasure, and how they only ever sound now when I am near.
As our wild fuck soothes to lovemaking, Miranda’s little mewls pick up. They clutch at my throat as vigorously as her pussy clutches my cock.
Who knew something so simple could bring a man to his knees?
“I need you to come again, printsessa . I need you nice and wet to make my sperms’ swim effortless.”
“Nero…” Her husky delivery of my name makes her seem cautionary. Her body is on the opposite end of the spectrum. It stills for half a second before it shakes in the brilliance of a fire-sparking climax.
Miranda moans my name again, louder this time, as the tight clamps of her pussy set me off. I come with a roar, my cock throbbing as sperm rockets out of me.
Then I realize we’re not alone two seconds before Miranda.