Chapter Seventeen
Amy
I wasn’t going to pretend that I wasn’t enjoying having Mitch in my home full time, I really was. It was just a pain in the ass that he wasn’t his usual energetic self. Though if that hand job I’d given him was anything to go by, it wouldn’t be long.
“Your bath is ready,” I called and swooshed fluffy bubbles through steaming water. “Perfect temperature.”
He appeared at the bathroom door, gloriously naked, his cock at a semi and his wound now thankfully healed.
“I should be looking after you.” He frowned and reached for my waist to pull me close. “That’s the deal here.”
“And you will be again, soon.” His hairy chest was warm under my palms. “For someone who took a bullet, you’re doing very well.”
“I have a great nurse.” He swept his lips over mine. “Join me, in the bath.”
I glanced at it doubtfully. “You think there’s room?”
“We’ll make room.” He slapped my bottom, the whack echoing around the room.
“Oh!” I giggled, “Okay then.”
He lowered himself into the water, his long, thick limbs folding, and I shucked off my shorts and t-shirt.
He studied me as I twisted my loose hair up onto the top of my head and secured it with a clip. “You have the best tits.”
“I’m not exactly voluptuous.”
He frowned and shook his head. “Just say thank you. I gave you a compliment, don’t put yourself down.”
I paused and thought about what he’d said. “Okay…thank you.”
He smiled and swiped his tongue over his bottom lip. “They are the perfect handful, and I love it when your nipples are hard and poking at your t-shirt. Gives me a boner every time.”
“I does?” I held the side of the bath and dipped my foot in.
“Hell yeah.”
In a sudden movement I hadn’t been expecting, he grabbed me and dragged me into the water with an almighty splash.
“Mitch!” The heat engulfed me and he jammed my back to his chest.
“Keep still.” He locked his arms around me. “I can’t fight you. Not yet.”
I laughed and knocked bubbles from my face. “That seemed like a ninja move to me.”
He touched his lips to my ear. “You’re the only catch I want.”
“Well, it seems you’ve caught me.” I was sitting between his legs, his knees bent to make room.
“Have I? Have I really caught you?”
The question changed the atmosphere. It was loaded. And it was time we had a more serious conversation about what we were.
“Yes,” I said quietly and curled my hands over his thick forearms that were around my waist. “You have.”
“I don’t want this to change,” he murmured. “Being with you, like this.”
“Why would it change?”
“Lots of reasons.”
“So start with number one.’
“I’m getting better.” He paused. “I won’t need to be here.”
“Do you like being here…with me?”
“Can’t you tell?” He shifted his hips, and his cock rubbed the small of my back.
I giggled. “I guess I can.”
He squeezed me closer. “I like waking up with you, having my breakfast with you, watching you move in all the different lights of the day. I don’t want that to change. I know my shift work is crazy, and not easy to fit a nine-to-five life around but…”
“But that’s something we can overcome.” I stared at the tap, it was dripping every five seconds. “If we want to.”
“I want to.”
“So…” I inhaled deeply. “Move in, permanently. If that would work for you.”
“It would.” He’d spoken quickly. “I mean, I’ve got a place to stay, Rose Cottage, with the twins, but here…it smells of you, it tastes of you, and I haven’t slept so well in years as when you’re in my arms.”
My eyes prickled, and my heart did a silly flip-flop. “I know I shouldn’t say this.”
“What? Say it.”
“Well, you’ve just been shot, which was horrendous, but…but I’ve never been so happy as having you here. I feel alive, like I’m living and not just existing when I’m with you.”
“Ah, you say the sweetest things.” He chuckled, his chest moving against my back.
“And for the record, that’s how I feel. It’s called love, Amy.
” He paused and slid his left hand to my breast and squeezed.
“I love you, I really fucking love you.” He kissed the side of my head, a firm crush of his lips that added gravitas to his words.
“I…I love you, too.” I closed my eyes and felt relief at finally saying it.
“No, don’t say that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t know everything about me, you can’t say that until you do.”
What the hell? Not the response I’d been expecting.
Silence. It stretched, deafening. Thoughts rattled around my head. I’d known there were depths to Mitch, dark depths. Was this my opportunity to find out more? Was he inviting me in deeper?
“When we were at the hospital and the police came to take your statement,” I said, “you made me leave the room. Why?”
“Because I couldn’t lie in front of you. I never want to lie to you.” He’d spoken quietly, his breath warm on my ear.
“What did you tell the police?” I asked.
“That I was mugged in a back alley, the asshole got rough, pulled a gun when I refused to hand over my wallet. He shot me.”
I swallowed. It was the same picture I’d painted in my own mind. “And that’s not what happened?”
“No.”
“So…what did?” Oh fuck, my stomach was in knots now. What was I going to learn about this big strong man of mine who played by his own rules? “How did you get shot?”
“I was with the guys—”
“The twins?”
“Yeah, they were there. And we were…””
“You were what?” My voice was tight, my heart thudding. “You were what, Mitch?”
“We’d got a this tip-off, some old farm south of here that was being used for human trafficking, women from abroad. So we decided to check it out.”
“Just you guys? Not the police?”
“We would have passed the information on to the police had our suspicions been correct, but we had to act…had to go see for ourselves and help if we could. There was no time to lose if women were being held hostage. You wouldn’t believe the evil in some men, the greed and the disregard for human life.
The way they treat women as sex objects.
Theirs to violate in the most despicable of ways. ”
I stayed quiet, waiting for him to go on.
“We got there, ready for anything—the twins are martial arts experts, remember—and we were all carrying.”
“Guns?”
“Yes.”
“Are you allowed to? I mean…?” I frowned.
“No, obviously not. It’s not legal to carry a handgun in this country.” He switched his attention to my other breast, lazily swirling the water over my hardening nipple. “But sometimes…sometimes the law doesn’t stand up, and then we have to break it.”
“For good?”
“Yes, exactly for good. The end justifies the means. And these assholes who had the women would be carrying, we knew they would be. There was a lot of money at stake, and they’d kill to keep their cash.”
“Money?”
“They were selling the women, to the highest bidder. Sick fucks.”
“Ick, that’s so gross and…well, there are no words.” The poor women. How awful. I was beginning to understand why my man had felt there had been no option but to act.
“So we got there, this grim place, and pretended to be interested in a purchase.” He paused. “And then the shit hit the fan.”
“Go on.” I was no longer staring at the tap. I’d conjured a vision of a tumbledown farmhouse with cages of women and Mitch and the twins arriving to save them—weapons pulled like something from a movie.
“We found the women, there were a lot of them, ten perhaps, and we were negotiating.” He swallowed, the sound loud by my ear. “One of the women, she got hold of a gun, not one of ours, the guy who’d grabbed her. She was a damn good shot, took him out, right between the eyes.”
I gasped. “She shot him. Dead.”
“Yeah, baby, she did, and he deserved it. He’d just admitted to raping her and was about to sell her into a life of slavery and abuse.”
“Oh my God.”
“And then, well, bullets started flying. We came off best, though, all three of those cunts were dead within seconds.”
“You didn’t come off great.” The images in my head were getting bloodier.
“But I’m alive. Alive and holding the woman of my dreams in my arms in a hot bath.” He smoothed his hands over my torso as though convincing himself he was in reality.
“I suppose that’s true.”
He fluffed his fingers through my wet pubic hair.
A tingle of desire went through me. “And the women?”
“All free to get on with their lives. They went home from what I hear.”
“That’s a relief.”
“So you see, the guys cleared up the mess at the farmhouse, no evidence. The women are safe, and those scumbags are burning in Hell, so what was the point going into the details with my work colleagues. There’s nothing else to be done by the police.
We’d sorted it. It’d just be a load of paperwork. ”
“And you’d have been in trouble for carrying.” I was quiet for a moment. “But surely there is some evidence at the farmhouse, I mean…bodies…”
“That got sorted, they won’t be found.”
“But how? I don’t understand—”
“You don’t want to know.” He slipped his finger between my pussy lips, the water making his skin glide over mine. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.
A tremble caught in my stomach and suddenly the water felt even warmer.
“So,” he said, “his voice deeper now, huskier. “Now you need to decide if you want to be with a man who takes the law into his own hands. A man who’s not afraid to make assholes pay for their crimes or find ways and means to get information to protect innocents.” He paused.
“I hate injustice, I hate how so many men take advantage of women, treat them like they are expendable. It’s dangerous out there; I want to make Oxford a safer place. ”
“I think it’s commendable.” I twisted to look up at him. “And I think it makes me love you more.”
Our gazes connected, and I stared into the depths of his eyes, seeing the darkness as well as the desire.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
“There’s a side to me you’ll never see, Amy, but I need you to know it’s there.”
“I think…I think I’ve always known it was there.” I touched his cheek. “And I’m not afraid of it; in fact, it makes me feel even safer when I’m with you.”
“You should feel safe when you’re with me. Nothing and no one will ever hurt you again, I promise.” He kissed me, holding my face to his as he ran his hand further between my legs.
I moaned softly and parted my thighs. I’d never felt so close to another human being or so happy to be surrounded, entrenched, and vulnerable with another person.
He broke the kiss and set the crown of my head in the crook of his neck. “I’m going to make you come like this. You deserve it, you deserve everything.”
Closing my eyes, I held the side of the bath, and he circled my clit.
I quivered with longing. I wanted more of his touch, more of everything. Just getting to this stage of being turned on had been virtually impossible in the past, yet Mitch took me there in seconds.
And I knew he’d take me all the way.
“Oh yes, there,” I murmured.
“I know where,” he said softly. “I know your body better than you do.”
I was beginning to think that was true.
I relaxed into his caresses. Each swirl of my clit and rub of my sensitive flesh brought me closer. The water was another delicious stimulation, and soon my thighs were trembling with the building pressure in my pelvis.
“Oh!” I arched my back, rubbing his erection. “Yes.”
He moaned and sped up. “Fuck you’re hot, baby.”
“I…I…” I squeezed my eyes closed.
“Don’t rush, we’ve got all day, and playing with your sweet pussy is how I want to spend my time.”
“It feels so…”
“Good?”
“Yeah. That.”
He rubbed and fretted, repeated over and over the tiny movements that had me gasping and squirming, but each time I was about to topple into orgasm he retreated, stroking around my clit but not over it.
I languished against his strong body, our flesh sliding and almost becoming one.
“Give me more access,” he murmured.
Lifting my right leg, I folded it over the side of the bath, the cool air a breeze on my skin.
“Good girl.” He found the entrance to my pussy and eased two fingers in deep.
I clenched around him and shook in his arms.
“I’m going to fuck you later, tonight,” he said. “This is just a warm-up.”
“Yes. Yes.” I nodded and bucked my hips. “Oh…”
The heel of his hand caught on my clit as he fingered me deep. Wide and dense and firm. The sensation had my stomach clenching and my heart rate ramping up.
“Okay, you can come now,” he said. “I won’t stop until you do.”
I curled my toes and caught my breath. He worked me with sharp, fast movements that filled me and crushed over my clit the way his body did when we fucked.
The water splashed and sloshed. I clasped his forearm, aware of the tendons beneath the surface of his skin flexing and shifting as he brought me closer to climax with each movement.
“You know I’ll make you come,” he murmured. “So relax into it. It’s there.”
“Yes…yes…” I was quivering inside and shaking on the outside. The deliciousness of an orgasm was hovering in front of me. Every part of me was tense and taut.
“Come,” he demanded. “Come for me, beautiful girl. Show me how you do it.”
His hotly spoken words toppled me over the edge, and bliss unfolded. I cried out, gasped and writhed. He stayed with me, finger-fucking me with sheer determination. I arched and bowed, my pussy spasming over and over.
“That’s it, take it all, fuck yeah, take it all,” he said, excitement lacing his tone. “Fucking beautiful.”
A fresh wave of bliss held me hostage, and then I slumped, canting my hips and wriggling upward.
He withdrew from me and captured my chin, turned me to face him. “I fucking love hearing you orgasm.”
His lips caught mine, his kiss speaking a thousand words. Words that made my heart sing with the thought of a future with this man who fulfilled needs in me no one else ever had.