Chapter Seven
STRIKER
She comes down the steel staircase in jeans and a black leather jacket of mine over the silk shirt because I told her she'd freeze on the bike, despite the warm temperature today. Hair in a low loose braid with pieces escaping at her temples.
She walks toward me across the lot and the sunlight catches the gold of her hair.
“Stop. Walk back. Walk toward me again.”
She laughs. “No way.”
“Walk back. I’m not asking, I’m telling.”
She’s shaking her head, laughing.
“Princess. Let me look at you again. You’re the best fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”
She walks back, laughing, and turns, and walks toward me again, swinging her hips. I get on the bike and pat the seat behind me to give my hands something to do other than grabbing her and throwing her over my shoulder.
“Up.”
Bethany gets on the back, her arms wrapping around my waist. The front of her body presses against the back of mine, her soft tits against my shoulder blades. Her thighs against mine.
She tightens her arms around me at every corner.
By the third switchback she has stopped pretending it is for safety.
Her hands have moved down from my ribs to the place above my belt.
She is gripping the front of my jeans with both hands, the flat of her palm half an inch from where I am hard for her, and my cock goes from interested to insistent instantly.
By the time we come out at the top of the mountain, my hands are shaking on the bars. I pull into the gravel turnout, kill the engine, and sit there with my eyes closed, breathing through my nose.
“Off.”
She gets off, slow, dragging her body down the length of mine on the way.
I get off after her, picking her up and kissing her.
Her mouth opens for me as her legs wrap around my waist. She makes the little breathy sound she made in the truck last night, the one that goes straight to my cock.
Her breath is warm as I explore her mouth with my tongue.
I pull back.
“Bourbon,” I say.
“Bourbon in the morning?”
“Best time for it.”
The viewpoint is a gravel turnout the size of two cars with nothing past the edge of it but clear air and the valley going down forever. The sky overhead is deep blue.
I shake the wool blanket out across the gravel near the edge. I get the coffee flask and the bottle out, pour out the coffee into two enamel cups and add a shot to each.
She comes back from the edge and sits on the blanket. Knees up. Arms around them. I sit next to her and hand her one. She takes it with both hands.
“All right, princess. Order of operations. I'm going to tell you about me and you're going to listen. You're going to know what you're saying yes, if you still do once you’ve heard my story. Then if you still want what I think you want, you are going to have it.”
“In that order?”
“Correct.”
“Um… why is the talking first?”
“Because I'm not made of fucking stone. If I touch you again, we won’t get any talking done.”
Bethany smiles into her cup.
“Twenty-eighteen. I was twenty-eight and I'd been fighting for paychecks for nine years.
I was addicted. To the thrill and the money.
Gambling, owed money to loan sharks, so I got back in the ring when I had no business being there.
You get a number stitched on the back of your shorts and some asshole in a folding chair tells you who you're fighting and how much you get if you don't lose. The man in the folding chair was a piece of shit named Pavel, who is a story for another night.”
She doesn’t move.
“That night I lost. I had been partying for three days in advance.
I lost stupid. He hit me in the ribs in the third round.
I went down and didn't get up. Pavel had me dragged out the back into the alley and dumped, because you don't get a doctor if you don’t stand up, you get a parking lot in case you die.
I was bleeding out from places I didn't know I could bleed.
There was a dog barking somewhere I couldn't see.
I'm telling you this so you understand. I was finished, princess, in that alley and I wasn't going to make it another hour.”
A tear rolls down her cheek as she looks at me.
“There was a man at the fight who'd seen what Pavel did with the men he didn't pay. He came around back to see if there was anything left to save. He picked me up and took me to a doctor he knew who saved my life. Stood over the bed in the room he put me in until I opened my eyes. And when I could stand he asked my name. I told Prez my real name. Reed Barnes.”
“I like your name.”
“Don't use it everywhere. Not yet. I'm not done being Striker. Just you, Doc and Prez know it. You’re not the only one who’s got people looking for them.”
She nods, her eyes wide.
“Prez saved my life. After a few years, we put the down payment on the bar. He said a man who runs a bar is too busy to risk going back in the ring to get killed for a paycheck. He was right. I haven't taken a hit for money in eight years and I’m not going to.”
Looking at her over the rim of my cup, I let that sit.
“I'm telling you all of this so you know what kind of man you’re saying yes to.”
Her eyes are wide as she looks up at me.
“Yes.”
I slide the leather jacket off her shoulders. The blue silk shirt is underneath. Her chest rises under my knuckles every time I move down to the next button. By the time I get to the last one her mouth is open, eyes on mine, and I haven’t even touched her yet.
I open the shirt and take it off. She reaches back and unhooks her bra, her eyes never leaving mine.
She has full, soft tits with nipples that are tight pink points already.
I cup them in my hands, bending my head and take one of her nipples in my mouth and suck.
She arches off the blanket and grabs the back of my head with both hands and moans.
I work her with my tongue, slow, then harder, scraping with my teeth just enough to make her gasp.
Her hips are rocking up off the blanket against the front of my jeans without her thinking about it.
I move to the other side, taking my time.
I sit up enough to drag my t-shirt over my head.
Her palms find my scars; the long one across my pec and the shorter one on my side from a knife I didn't get out of the way of fast enough.
The puckered one low on my stomach. Then she pushes herself up onto her elbows and presses her mouth to each one.
I close my eyes and groan. “Princess.”
“Mmhmm?”
“Do that again and I am not going to make it ten more seconds.”
She laughs and does it again.
“Fuck.”
I haul her up by her shoulders and crash my mouth back onto hers, hard, laying her back. My fingers scrabble to unbutton her jeans.
She lies back on the blanket in nothing but a pair of plain cotton panties that are wet through where she's been pressed against me. There’s a dark patch right at the front where she's soaked through. I get one finger under the waistband and pull them down her legs, slowly.
“Fuck. Princess. Look at you.”
“Reed…”
I get down between her thighs, pushing them open with my shoulders. I look at her. Curvy and pink and so damn wet for me.
“You are so fucking beautiful…”
She moans as I get my mouth on her. The first taste of her hits me as I work her with my tongue.
I find the spot that makes her thighs tighten around my ears and stay there.
I lick and suck, closing my lips around her clit and she cries out, grabbing at the blanket above her head with both hands.
I slide two fingers inside her and curl them up and work my tongue against her clit at the same time, and I do not let up.
“Please…”
“Princess. You're going to come on my mouth before you come on my cock. That's an order. Stop arguing.”
She makes a noise that might be a curse as I keep going. The moment her body goes tense and still is perfect. She comes hard on my mouth with my fingers buried in her, her thighs locking around my head, saying my name on a long exhale, and I keep working her through it
I sit up between her knees and get my belt off. I get the jeans off in one move, and she sees me for the first time, her eyes widening.
“Oh my god.”
“Yeah.”
“That's huge…”
“You're going to take it for me, princess.”
I have a condom in my back pocket and I reach for it, but she shakes her head.
“No. I'm clean, on the Pill since I was eighteen for cramps. Tested in summer. I haven't been with anyone in over a year. I want to feel you. All of you. Bare.”
“Sure? I don’t make a habit of riding bareback.”
I’ve never been inside a woman without a condom on. Never wanted to take the risk, even when I was so drunk I could barely see straight.
I get back over her, bracing my forearms above her with her body warm under me. I take my cock in my hand, dragging the head through her wetness. She gasps when I find her clit and circle it, then moans when I notch the head against her opening.
I push in slow, inch by inch, watching her face the whole time.
She’s so fucking tight, and I’m big, but she’s taking every inch of me.
Her mouth opens as her hands grip my biceps so hard her knuckles go white.
She lets out a shaking breath once I’m fully inside her.
I have to hold still because the wet hot grip of her pussy means I’m close to coming right now.
I take her slowly at first, with long, deep strokes, my eyes on the rise and fall of her tits every time I sink into her. I drag my cock almost all the way out, then push back in slow until I am buried deep inside her..
“Fuck.”
I give it to her harder, dropping my hips onto hers. I get one of her legs up over my shoulder and the change in the angle makes her cry out and grab at the blanket above her head.
“Oh… right there. Don’t stop.”
Fucking her harder, I work until her thighs are shaking around me, and then I pull out and roll her onto her stomach and pull her hips up to me. She grips the blanket with both hands and presses her cheek to the wool. Her ass is in the air, her back arched.
Pushing back into her from behind in one long stroke, I get my hand at the small of her back and hold her down. My other hand reaches around, my fingers working her clit, as the slap of my hips hits her ass.
“I'm going to come.”
“Come on my cock this time like a good girl…”
I work her clit faster with my fingers as I move, and she comes a second time, tight around me.
I pull out and roll her onto her back again. She is flushed all the way to her chest as I get her thighs back up around my waist.
“I want to see your face when I come. Look at me.”
Pushing back into her as she gasps, I keep the pace slow and deliberate, holding myself back until we’re both ready.
“You’re mine. Say it.”
“I’m yours. All yours.”
The third time she comes, I go with her, buried as deep as I can get as I come inside her, hot and hard, with my hand fisted in her hair.
She is crying a little. “Reed.”
“Yeah, princess?”
“I think I love you.”
I close my eyes and kiss her forehead, drawing her even closer against me.