15. Ava
AVA
H e’s lost his mind.
Levi catches me around the waist, tugging me into the storage room.
“Running off again, Ava?”
“Let go of me, you psychopath ,” I growl.
He chuckles, forcing me back into the wall. His body covers mine, and liquid fire slips through my veins.
“Who’s your friend?” he asks, a devilish grin on his face.
“Why do you care?”
Levi only smirks, bending down and pressing his lips to my ear.
“Your first mistake is thinking I do . . .” A tremor moves through me at the scratch of his stubble on my skin, and the heat that was already gathered between my legs amplifies to a scorching flame.
I surge in his grasp. “I’ll scream.”
He shoves me back against the wall, his big body boxing me in.
“I asked you who your friend is, sweetheart.”
I stare at him blankly, my mind reeling at the near-feral look in his eyes.
Oh my God . . . Levi’s jealous.
“Alex is my friend,” I grit. I shouldn’t care. The man is an actual psychopath, though I can’t lie and say there aren’t butterflies swarming through my stomach when his lips tip up in a sinister grin.
“Does he know that?”
Gathering all my strength, I place my hands flat on his chest and shove, but I may as well be shoving at the wall. He’s at least a foot taller than me, and a whole lot stronger.
A soft, humorless chuckle escapes his lips.
“You’ve been hiding from me.”
He’s right. I have. After the other night, I haven’t been able to get him out of my head.
The way his hands felt on my skin. The brush of his tongue against mine. The way he tasted like danger and sin and safety and everything I want to consume me, all wrapped up in one devilish man.
I’m no fool. A man like him would ruin a girl like me.
“Haven’t you, little ghost?”
Slowly, I nod, unable to tear my gaze from his.
“I—”
“Shh . . .” he hums softly against my temple, his thumb tugging my bottom lip from between my teeth. He watches me like I’m the most fascinating thing in the world. Like a toy, he wants to take his time ripping apart.
My heart thunders in my chest, my clammy hands pressed to the wall behind me.
We shouldn’t be doing this. I should shove away from him and go about my day. I should forget he exists and move on with my life.
Unfortunately, I’ve never been good at following the rules.
“Let me go,” I breathe, warring with the demons in my head telling me not to let this man touch me and the fire burning my body to a crisp telling me he’s the only one who can quench it.
He leans closer, boxing me in, making sure I feel every inch of him pressed against me. My nipples are drawn to tight points. My clit is throbbing in my panties. My heartbeat skitters to a stop when his lips meet the shell of my ear.
His hand snakes into my hair, fisting the strands and tugging my head back. He leans in, pressing his nose into the crook of my shoulder and inhaling, like he’s memorizing my scent.
“You can’t stop thinking about it, can you?
” His other hand slips down my side, over my hip, and to my thigh, teasing at the hem of my shirt.
His finger traces over the smooth flesh peeking out beneath, and heat slips through my veins.
“How it felt when you were grinding against my cock. How bad your pussy ached to have me inside you.”
God, he’s filthy . . .
“I don’t want anything to do with you,” I lie, breath trembling when he chuckles darkly.
“See, baby girl . . . I think you’re lying.” My stomach dips at the nickname, and I hate it.
He presses his lips to my neck right over my racing pulse. His gentleness, mirrored by the roughness in his voice, throws me for a loop. As if he wants to rip me to pieces, but he’s barely holding on to his self-control.
Something tells me Seattle couldn’t handle Levi Cross unhinged.
“I think you’re salivating for my fingers in your cunt.
Teasing you until you come all over them.
” I bite my lip, a shaky breath managing to slip free when he traces the hem of my jeans, up to the center of my thighs.
“That what you want? You want me to touch you?” His fingers stroke up and down my thigh as if he’s taunting me.
Testing me to see just how far he can push me before I break.
The pressure in my core expands, and I can barely breathe from the weight of it. Like I’m going insane.
“My pretty little prudish housekeeper, hooked on the touch of a man she hates. Is that it, Ava? You’re afraid of what everyone will say when they find out you’re just as attracted to me as the women you claim you’re nothing like?”
“Fuck you,” I growl, surging in his hold. He shoves me back, harder this time, and his lips skate across my racing pulse.
“I can make you feel good, sweetheart,” he whispers, and a shiver slides through me. The man is a walking red flag, yet I’m addicted to the attention he’s giving me. The knowledge that someone is jealous over me. Let alone Levi Cross. It makes me feel wanted for the first time in my life.
But . . . unfortunately, I didn’t realize it always comes with a price.
“You won’t get what you need unless you tell me,” Levi says in my ear, nipping my earlobe between his teeth, and for some reason, I feel it in my nipples. I bite my lip between my teeth, trying to work up the courage to walk away from him.
God, I can’t believe I’m doing this.
“Yes.”
He chuckles in my ear, and it’s the scariest sound I’ve ever heard. My core pulses with need, burning hot when he flicks the button of my pants and slowly eases his hand inside.
Am I really about to let Levi Cross touch me?
“You’ve been dreaming of this, haven’t you, Ava?” He slips my panties to the side, and I bite back a moan when his thumb slides through my folds, gathering my wetness. He releases a sharp breath, his fingers in my hair tightening and jerking my neck up to meet his gaze. “Say it.”
“Only when I want to come,” I admit, voice cracking, and he groans like he’s been waiting to hear it his entire life.
“Suck.” He raises his fingers to my lips.
I don’t get the chance to deny him, because when I open my mouth, he presses them against my tongue.
I choke, tasting myself on his fingers. I’ve never experienced anything so .
. . erotic in my life as the darkness in his gaze and his rough curse under his breath when he watches me suck my own flavor from his skin.
He pushes further into my throat, making me gag around his hand. Tears well in my eyes, clouding my vision, and all I can think about is what it would be like if it were his cock.
“Fuck, that’s a good girl.”
Pleasure zips straight through me, his rough approval stirring something inside me I didn’t know existed.
And then, I realize I’d do anything to hear this man call me a good girl, again.
When he pulls his fingers from my mouth, he reaches down, swirling over my clit once, before he’s sliding one long finger deep inside of me with a sharp hiss through his teeth.
“You’re fucking drenched, Ava. Is this for him, or me?”
I don’t respond, clamping my lips shut to keep the moan on my tongue from slipping free. My stomach tightens at the growl in his voice, the throb in my clit matching the whir of the pool cleaner in the room behind us.
He leans forward, pressing a hand over my mouth to silence me while he slips a second finger inside, watching my reaction.
“Fuck, that’s tight, baby girl.” Levi tightens his hold on my hair, tugging my head to the side, nipping the side of my neck. My pulse races beneath his teeth, and I gasp against his hand, biting it to silence the sound when he adds a third finger. “You’re so sweet when you want something.”
The pleasure in my stomach tightens when he swirls his thumb up to my clit, rolling my wetness over the sensitive bud and clamping his hand tighter over my mouth to silence the moan that threatens to claw free.
I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’s getting to me . . . even if the evidence is all over my inner thighs.
Somehow, I know if Levi were to know how much I really think about him, he’d use it as a weapon.
“Feel me, Ava?” he asks, his voice rumbling through my chest and going straight to my pussy. His lips travel up to my ear, his tongue dipping inside and rimming the shell. “Feel me filling your sweet little cunt? Imagine how good it’ll feel when it’s my cock.”
“Levi,” I breathe against his palm, my voice shaky and my skin damp with perspiration. I grind against his hand, chasing the pleasure as everything in my body tightens, right before it shatters.
And then his hand drops away.
I sputter at the loss of his touch, tears welling in the corners of my eyes out of frustration.
Fucking asshole.
Levi chuckles darkly, pressing his lips to my cheek with a rough kiss.
“You going to let that little prick touch you?”
He’s freaking insane.
“I told you, he’s just a friend,” I grit.
My head knocks back into the wall when his fingers find me again.
He releases his hold on my hair, only to move those fingers around to grip my throat and roughly force my gaze to his.
They tighten enough to steal my breath away, and my own hand shoots up, wrapping around his as a momentary shot of panic courses through me.
It’s very quickly replaced with a fever when his fingers find me again, and this . . . this is new.
He laughs under his breath, pride in his eyes when I let out a garbled moan, the pleasure doubled as my body comes alive under his fingers. My pussy clamps down when he slips two inside me, curling them up to brush over a spot that has me seeing stars.
I arch into his palm, my eyes clamping shut as the first waves of my orgasm start to tear through me.
He removes his hand completely. “Answer the question, baby girl.”
“No,” I hiss between my teeth.
He chuckles, the sound dripping with malice. He presses closer to me, his hard cock digging into my stomach as he lowers his lips back to my ear.
I let out a growl, tears slipping down my cheeks, when he stills his movements.
“No, what?”
“Screw you, Levi,” I seethe, but he just chuckles, dipping his fingers back inside me, and this time, his thumb circles my clit. My eyes cross, my hands digging into his shoulders in an attempt to hold myself up. I’m sure there are little half-moon crescents from their blunt ends.
Good. He can have something to remember me by.
He sucks the flesh below my ear, nibbling and marking me. I arch my neck to give him better access, my hips arching into his rough thrusts as he picks up his pace.
“So fucking beautiful,” he breathes in my ear. “Riding my hand while I keep you just on the edge of coming.”
He withdraws his fingers.
“You going to hide from me, again?”
“I fucking hate you,” I seethe, clawing at his wrist. Tears well in the corners of my eyes, my sanity slipping away just as fast as my orgasm.
He chuckles in my ear.
“If your hate looks like this, I’d hate to see what your love looks like.”
He resumes his ministrations, and my knees wobble, threatening to give out. He’s practically holding me up while I shake in his grasp.
“Say it.”
I’m both furious and so turned on I can’t think straight. I’m pretty sure I’d call him daddy right now, if he wanted me to. That’s how far gone I am.
“No.”
“No, what?” he taunts.
“No, I won’t hide from you again,” I growl.
“Fuck,” he rasps against my skin. “That’s my good girl.” I whimper, closing my eyes, but his hand tightens in my hair painfully.
“No, don’t look away from me, Ava. Let me see how bad you need it, sweetheart. You want to come, don’t you?”
I shake my head, but it’s a lie. He’s unlocked a need inside me I didn’t know existed.
“Ask me nicely.”
I bite down on my tongue, fighting it. My body is strung tight. He’s dangling my orgasm in front of me, but he won’t let me come until I give him what he wants. Like some kind of sick punishment.
“I’ll stop,” he warns, his patience hanging on by a thread. “If you think I won’t walk out the door right now, and leave you fucking breathless and wanting, you’re dead fucking wrong, little girl.”
My pussy clamps down at the rough threat, and something in me breaks.
“Please make me come,” I beg on a shaky breath, and finally, with a sinister chuckle, he gives me what I’m dying for.
It only takes a couple of brushes of his fingers on my clit, and my knees are buckling. A moan claws its way up my throat, and he presses his hand over my mouth to silence it as the entire world comes crashing down around us.
God, the Pope, Mother Theresa herself could walk in and catch us right now, and I’d be powerless to stop the pleasure coursing through me.
“That’s it, Ava. Come on, my fingers like a good little whore,” he growls in my ear.
“Levi,” I gasp, my eyes screwed shut and my voice muffled by his palm as every nerve ending in my body feels like it’s become a live wire.
The orgasm that rips through me is the most intense, earth-shattering feeling I’ve ever experienced. Like a thousand volts of electricity shooting through my body at once, rendering me nothing more than a puddle at his feet.
I cry softly, my body arching into his until there’s not a single inch of space between us.
“That’s it. Good fucking girl.” A tremble moves through me as he draws my orgasm out until I’m squirming under his hand. He leans into me, slowing his movements until my pussy vibrates against his hand, his lips at my ear. “I told you I’d make you beg for me, sweetheart.”
I don’t have the brainpower or the stamina to try to figure out what that means, right now. Everything in me has been turned to mush.
I let out a shaky breath, the aftershocks of the most intense orgasm I’ve ever had rattling through me.
He watches me, a darkly disturbed look on his face. Like I ruined his plans and now, he’s not sure what to do about it.
“Don’t call me a whore,” I mutter through my teeth.
He releases me, and I open my mouth, but before whatever nonsense that was on the tip of my tongue, he spins me around, pressing my front to the wall and stealing my breath away for an entirely different reason.
I clear my throat. Now that the deed is done, I feel . . . shaken. Maybe he ripped my plan to shreds, too.
A shiver moves through me from his lips at my ear, his voice rough and his words demanding.
“Let me catch you with his hands on you again, and I’ll remove them while you watch.”
Leaning back, he drops my keys in the palm of my hand.
“Car’s fixed.”
And then he releases me, stalking out of the supply closet without another word.