Chapter 15 #2
Before I'd settled, he rolled over under me. His hand fisted the front of my shirt and pulled me down on top of him, my hips between his thighs, his face tipped up to mine. His eyes were half open and his mouth was open, the tequila on his breath sharp enough to taste.
I leaned in to kiss him, but he turned his face away.
I kissed his cheekbone instead. I kissed the line of his jaw.
I kissed the soft place under his ear where his hair'd started to curl from sweat at the bar, and his hand fisted tighter in my shirt.
His breath came rough against the side of my face.
I worked down his throat, kissing and tasting what he offered until his hands came up and gripped my ass and pulled me down hard against him.
He shoved my shirt up and my boxers down, his grip drunk-clumsy and too hard as he closed it around us. I hissed, but didn't fight him. I needed this. He needed this.
He worked us slowly while I rocked into his fist. Each time he pushed up to meet me, the headboard tapped the wall in a steady, dull rhythm.
His teeth caught my shoulder and bit down, harder than the dance floor, and I gasped against his neck.
Then he eased off and licked over the place where his teeth had been.
It felt like an apology he was too drunk to put into words.
His other hand let go of my hair and slid down my back and raked.
My back arched and a sound tore out of my throat that I was glad nobody was around to hear, and his hand came back up and did it again, and I bit my lip and rocked harder against his fist.
The hand in my hair tightened. He hauled my head up by it. My face came up over his, and I looked down at him: eyes half open, lips wet, jaw tight. I waited for him to look back.
But he didn't. Ransom was somewhere else. His body was in the room with me, but his mind was back in that hospital room with his brother.
I kept moving, hoping maybe he'd come back. Or maybe he wouldn't. Either way, I was selfish enough not to stop.
His hand came off my jaw, slid down between us, past where his other hand was working us both, and cupped my balls.
I froze.
He didn't say anything. His drunk fingers closed around me and squeezed, and the pain shot up into my stomach and stopped my hips mid-motion. I let out a whimper.
He squeezed harder.
I dropped my forehead against his collarbone and breathed through it, and his hand around our cocks kept stroking. I rocked into it because I couldn't stop, even with the pain. His other hand pulled down on my balls in a steady, mean grip that took the climb right out from under me.
"Ransom—"
He didn't answer. His grip tightened.
I tried to come. The vice grip he had on my balls wouldn't let me. The orgasm gathered and broke against his hand, and I was left shaking against him, my whole body trying and failing so hard, I thought I'd cry.
His hand eased.
I climbed again. He let me get close. His fist tightened on us both, his thumb working the heads, and I was right there, right there —
His hand on my balls clamped down.
I cursed and whined, and he held my face against his neck and shushed me like I was a child throwing a tantrum. All the while, his hand never stopped moving.
My back was on fire from his nails and my shoulder ached from his teeth and his hand kept catching me at the edge and pulling me back from it, and I bit my own forearm where it was braced beside his head because there was nothing else to bite, and I rocked into his fist and shook against his grip and could not come.
"Stubborn," Ransom mumbled, and his hand on my balls finally went slack.
I thrust into his hand and came so hard it made my balls ache even more. I bit down on the meat of my arm and shook through it with my face shoved against his neck. I felt his cock pulse against mine a moment later. His hand kept stroking us through it, slowing to a stop a moment too late.
For a long second, neither of us moved.
Then his hand let go of us. It stayed between us, slick, resting on my stomach like he'd forgotten he owned it. His breathing slowed under me, his eyes closed, his mouth softened. He was already half asleep.
I propped up on my elbow and looked at him. The neon from the parking lot cut a red bar across the wall above the bed, and that was the only light in the room. It painted his cheekbone and missed his eyes.
My shoulder throbbed. My back stung. My balls ached up into my stomach. I had marks coming up on me that'd show in the morning, and I'd asked for every piece of it, but it wasn't enough.
I wanted more. Not just more of this, more of him, more drunk nights, more dark days, more hours of silence spent in a borrowed truck.
I didn't want to go back to El Paso and sit in my pristine white office in my boots and tie and check boxes on paperwork.
I didn't want to go back to my mother alone, or stand over my daddy's grave alone, or ever sleep alone again.
And I wanted him to do that to me again.
Not in spite of what it had been. Because of it.
The mean grip and the held edge and the hand that wouldn't let me come until he decided I could.
I'd known what it was while it was happening, and I wanted it again anyway.
I wanted him grieving and cruel and gone behind the eyes and using me to hold himself together.
I wanted him present, too, when he could be.
But I wasn't going to lie to myself about which one I'd take if I could only have the one.
I wanted him even when he wasn't here. Especially then.
Winston, I thought, you old selfish bastard.
I reached for the corner of the comforter and wiped the mess off my stomach and then off his, rough and not particular. He made a sound that wasn't quite a grunt, half awake. I eased off him and started to roll away to give him space on the bed.
His hand came up off the mattress and caught the back of my neck before I could get far, and he pulled my head down against his. His breath came out warm against my lips. We were so close to kissing, but a million miles from it.
He held me there for a long second with his face against mine. Then his hand fell, and he was asleep.
His head went slack on the pillow, and his face slid an inch off mine. His mouth had dropped open. His breath came warm against my chin in slow, even pulls.
I stayed where I was for a while and looked at him. The neon cut a red bar across the wall above us, and his lashes threw a small shadow on his cheekbone. Handsome for a hitman. Always had been.
After a while, I eased onto my side facing him and tucked my arm under his ribs. His hand fumbled to land over mine, but when it did, he threaded his fingers through mine.
His breathing evened out inside a minute, but his fingers stayed hooked through mine even after he was asleep.