Chapter Three #3
I pulled off him with a slow slide. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“If you keep doing that, this ends too fast.”
“That sounds like a compliment.”
“That sounds like a warning I mean.”
I smiled against the head of his cock. “Then stop me.”
Dex moved.
I was between his legs one breath and on my back the next, with him over me and his mouth on mine. He kissed me like he could taste himself there and liked it.
He shoved his jeans and boxer briefs the rest of the way off, kicking them toward the side of the bed with a soft scrape of denim and metal. Then his body came down over mine.
It made me claw at his shoulders and wrap my legs around his waist.
His cock pressed against my pussy, hot and hard. No fabric between us now. No steel on my wrists. No space for pretending this was only about the door.
Dex braced himself on one forearm. “Condom?”
“I have an IUD, and I’m clean.” I dragged my nails down his back. “No condom.”
His body went rigid above me. “I’m clean too. Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. If you stop now to be responsible in a way I didn’t ask for, I’m going to judge you forever.”
He gave a strained laugh that broke into a groan when I rolled my hips under him.
“This is a terrible idea,” he said.
“Yes,” I whispered. “Fuck me anyway.”
His control snapped.
Dex pushed into me in one slow, hard drive that stole my breath.
The stretch burned, then turned molten. I dug my fingers into his back and held on as he filled me, thick and hot and too much in exactly the way I wanted. The motel bed creaked. My body adjusted around him, and every nerve I had went bright.
Dex stopped when he was buried inside me.
His forehead dropped to mine. “You okay?”
The question was rough enough to scrape.
I nodded, then remembered he needed words to keep himself on the right side of the line.
“Yes,” I said. “Move.”
His hips drew back.
Then he thrust in again.
The first stroke made my nails bite into his skin. The second made my head press back into the pillow. By the third, neither of us was quiet.
Dex fucked like he kissed: controlled until control became useless. He kept one hand beside my head, the other under my thigh, opening me wider, driving deeper. I met him every time, hips lifting, legs tightening around him, refusing to let him take anything I wasn’t giving right back.
The narrow motel light cut over his shoulders. Sweat shone on his throat. The crucifix swung between us, brushing my chest with every hard thrust.
I caught it once in my fist.
Dex groaned.
“There,” he said, voice wrecked. “Hold on to me.”
“I am.”
“Not enough.”
He hooked my knee higher against his side.
The change drove him deeper, and I cried out before I could stop it.
His mouth found my throat. “That’s it.”
The praise hit harder than it had any right to.
I turned my face into his neck, biting down just enough to muffle the sound that broke out of me.
Dex’s hips stuttered once, then his rhythm went rougher.
“Don’t hide from me,” he said.
“I’m not hiding.”
“You’re biting me to stay quiet.”
“I’m biting you because you’re available.”
A laugh broke out of him, breathless and real, and it ruined me more than the heat did.
I kissed him before the sound could matter.
He kissed me back hard, and the angle changed again, his hand sliding between us. His thumb found my clit. One stroke. Two. Slow circles that didn’t match the punishing pace of his hips at all.
My whole body tightened.
“Dex.”
“I’ve got you.”
“You’re very sure of that.”
“I am right now.”
Right now.
The words were supposed to remind me what this was. Temporary. Tactical. A bad idea with a countdown.
Instead, they shoved me over the edge.
I came again with his name in my mouth, sharp and shaking, my body clamping around his cock as pleasure tore through me. Dex swore against my skin. His hips drove into me once, twice, then harder, and the last thread of control in him snapped.
His cock pulsed inside me, and his body locked over mine. His breath came hot against my neck. His fingers dug into the mattress beside my head.
For a few seconds, we breathed like we’d run all the way from Old Quarry Road.
Dex settled some of his weight onto me, careful even then. His face was buried against the side of my neck. His crucifix lay warm between my breasts. My legs still bracketed his hips, and my hands had found his back and stayed there.
I loosened my grip.
Dex lifted his head slowly.
His eyes moved over my face, then down to my mouth, then back up again. He brushed damp hair away from my cheek with two fingers. The touch was small enough that I could’ve pretended not to feel it anywhere important.
I turned my face to the side.
Wrong move.
The hair behind my right ear slipped back.
Dex’s thumb followed the line of my jaw, then paused.
“What’s this?” he asked.
My pulse kicked.
His thumb touched the skin behind my ear, light enough to be a question. Not the shared flowers on my leg. Not the anchor and compass on my shoulder. The other mark. The one so small it usually belonged only to me.
I kept my voice steady. “Ink.”
“I figured that part out.”
“You want a certificate?”
His thumb moved over it again, slow. “It’s tiny.”
“It’s a drop.”
His mouth came closer to the spot. “Black ink?”
I swallowed. “Occupational hazard.”
“You didn’t mention it.”
“You didn’t ask for a full tour.”
“I might now.”
Then his mouth touched the mark.
Not a kiss on my mouth or a hand between my legs. His lips brushed that tiny hidden piece of me like he’d found something private and wanted to know whether I’d let him keep looking.
The sensation shot down my spine.
I closed my eyes.
Dex kissed the ink drop again, then the sensitive skin below it. His stubble scraped lightly. My hands slid back to his shoulders before I could stop them.
“Sensitive,” he murmured.
“You’re smug for a man who just discovered basic anatomy.”
His smile pressed against my skin. “This isn’t basic.”
No.
It wasn’t.
I needed to get out.
Dex rolled to his side and drew me with him, still close, still too warm.
He pulled the ugly sheet over my hips, then tucked it without making a big thing out of it.
The gesture hit too hard. So did the way his jeans stayed abandoned on the floor, the way he left the metal on the nightstand, the way he acted like not putting it back on was somehow still safe.
“Don’t make me regret taking those off,” he said.
I stared at the restraints across his body, out of reach.
Then I looked at him. “Do you already regret it?”
“No.”
The answer came too fast.
Dex’s hand settled on my waist over the sheet. Heavy. Warm. Not holding me down. Just there.
I wanted to hate it.
I meant to move away.
Instead, I stayed still and listened to his breathing slow.
The sign outside buzzed in the dark. The cheap sheet smelled like bleach and old smoke, and underneath it my skin still held the heat of his mouth, his hands, the place behind my ear where he’d found the only mark that wasn’t in Crystal’s file.
He’d noticed it like a lover.
In the morning, it would ruin him.
The thought was supposed to get me moving.
I stayed where I was.
Dex’s thumb moved once against my waist. “Get some sleep.”
“You first.”
“I will.”
“You believe that?”
“I believe a lot of things,” he said.
The echo of my own words from the truck slid between us.
I looked at him.
His eyes were open, but fatigue had pulled at the edges of him. The chase, the drive, the room, me. Everything had done what I needed it to do.
Almost.
I had my hands free.
His jeans were on the floor near the bed.
The hidden burner was still in my boot.
Crystal was still waiting somewhere in the dark because she had to be. She was my sister, my twin, the good part of my face looking back at me from a life that had gone wrong without warning. I’d promised her without saying the words that I would keep Dex away from her as long as I could.
Dex’s eyes drifted shut.
My chest hurt in a place I couldn’t blame on sex.
I counted his breaths until they deepened.
He shifted once, pulling me closer, then settled again.
His hand stayed loose at my waist. He didn’t sleep like a careless man.
Even exhausted, he took up the door side of the bed.
The restraints were on his side. The small cuff key was in the pocket of his jeans on the floor near the bed.
His truck keys were in that same pocket, buried in denim and close enough to steal if I could reach them without waking him.
The restraints were still on the nightstand.
His hand was loose at my waist, not locked there. He’d fallen asleep on the door side, with the keys in his jeans on the floor and his body between me and the exit, as if that was enough.
I waited until his breathing stayed even.
Then I moved.
Slowly.
First my hand off his shoulder. Then my knee out from under the sheet. Then my waist, sliding from beneath his palm one inch at a time. Dex’s fingers flexed once against the mattress.
I stopped breathing.
He didn’t wake.
I slipped off the bed.
The carpet felt damp and gritty under my bare feet.
My knees wobbled, which was rude and inconvenient and entirely Dex’s fault.
I found my underwear and shorts by touch, pulling them on in the dark with one eye on the bed.
My tank was twisted under one arm. I fixed it, then grabbed my bra and shoved it into my overshirt pocket because clasps were not worth dying over.
Dex slept on his side, one arm bent under the pillow, the other loose across the place where I’d been. His face looked younger in the motel light. Not soft. Just stripped of the hard edges he wore when he was awake and responsible for everyone else’s bad choices.
I looked too long before I made myself move.
His jeans lay on the floor beside the bed, the right front pocket turned half toward me.
I knelt beside them.
Every tiny sound in the room got louder. The sign. A pipe ticking in the wall. My breathing. Dex’s breathing.
I slid two fingers into the pocket of his jeans.