Chapter 28
Robyn
I’m chasing another orgasm. I’m riding Ridge like a cowgirl and loving it.
His chest is hot under my palms. His heart is hammering.
I pant and moan and then pant some more. My breasts are bouncing, but I don’t care. I don’t care about anything except release. I’m shocked that I’m there…again.
“That’s it.” His voice has gone rough. “Look at me.”
I do. It’s intense.
He growls low, closing his eyes. When he opens them, they’re slitted. The green is more vivid.
I gasp.
They’re beautiful.
He growls again, sounding like his beast side, and it stokes my flames. I bounce faster, panting harder.
He drives up into me, hard and deep, and the tight coil low in my belly finally lets go.
I start fluttering around him. His jaw is clenched, his slitted eyes on mine.
My jaw goes slack as everything explodes. I clamp down on him as my orgasm rushes through me. My thighs lock. My back arches. My fingers dig into the slabs of muscle on his shoulders. I cry out as he growls, sounding vicious. His muscles bunch, and I feel him come in hot spurts inside me.
I keep riding him, finally slowing. I’m gasping as I finally drop my head to his shoulder.
Ridge is gasping for air as well. His hands are still on my hips.
“I might have to wear a sports bra if we do that again,” I pant out.
He huffs out a laugh. Then he lifts his face away from mine.
His pupils are still slitted.
“Your eyes,” I whisper.
“I know.” His voice has gone gravelly. He looks away. “I’ll um…get them under control in a—”
“It’s fine.” I catch his jaw with my hand, so that he looks at me. “They’re… I like them.”
He goes still under me.
Then a slow, slightly crooked smile pulls at one corner of his mouth for a moment before it’s gone.
“Yeah?” He sounds unsure.
“Yeah.”
Then things start to feel a little weird and a lot awkward. I’m on his lap with him still inside me, and I’m cupping his face in my hands. It feels…wrong for two people who are not in a relationship.
I let him go, and he lifts me off his lap and onto the mattress, and I roll onto my side away from him.
Then the bed dips behind me, and his big body slots in along my back. His hand splays low on my stomach and pulls me back against him. Ridge is still hard and is pressed up against my ass.
He puts his hand between my legs, finding my clit.
I moan because it feels good…but holy shit!
Again?
His finger keeps moving, dragging across my oversensitive clit.
“Um…Ridge.”
“Mmm?” His mouth is on my shoulder.
My hips jerk into his hand on reflex. His finger keeps working me.
He lifts my top leg. I feel the thick line of him drag through my wetness.
“Wait. Wait.” I press a hand to his forearm. “Wait. I need a minute. Just a minute.” I giggle.
He stops. His mouth is still at the curve of my shoulder. His breath is hot against my neck.
“Oh shit. Of course.” His voice has gone soft. “Take as long as you need.” He pulls away.
I push out a long breath, rolling onto my back.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I forgot that you’re human. You guys don’t have the same stamina as we do.” He looks over at me. “I haven’t had sex in six months. Apart from last night, of course. My dragon is having a little too much fun. He’s trying to make up for lost time.”
I almost can’t believe what I’m hearing. He did say that he wasn’t much of a player, but no sex for that long. For a guy like him?
I’m a workaholic cat lady – I just need the cats, and I will have spinster down pat. He’s too attractive to be celibate.
“He’s enjoying himself, is he?” I say when I realize I probably should answer him.
“He’s being a little pushy.” Ridge sounds almost embarrassed. “Don’t worry, I’ll get him under control.”
“Don’t do that on my account.”
He makes a noise that tells me he doesn’t quite agree.
“What color is he?”
“Gray with green stripes across the back.”
I laugh. “Of course, he is. Are his eyes the same as yours?”
“Yep.”
He props himself up on a pillow. The lamp on the nightstand casts a warm wedge of light across half his face. His hair is loose. His chest is wide and beautiful. I love all the tattoos.
I look away.
“Can I ask you something?” I say.
“Yes.”
“Your dragon. Do you…feel him? Like, is he a part of you, or is he separate from you? Where is he right now?”
“He’s a part of me. We share a body, a mind, a heart.
He is me, and I am him.” He pauses. “But he has opinions, and they can be strong ones. When we agree on something, it’s like being twice as sure as I would normally be.
When we don’t, it can feel like an internal war. He can be an opinionated asshole.”
“What does he have opinions on right now?” My voice sounds all breathy again. I can’t stop it from doing that when I’m around him.
“He thinks I should stop talking and put my mouth back on you. He likes you.”
“Do you agree with him?” Why am I asking that question? Why?
He huffs out a quiet laugh. “I like you just fine, Robyn. But let’s face it, you’re a little old for me.”
I choke out a laugh. “Heeeey! Only by three years.”
He looks at me a moment longer, smiling. Then his smile fades.
“In all seriousness, my dragon can also get up front and center when I’m inside you. So, if I’m being a little too rough,” he says, “you need to tell me.”
“I won’t break that easily. I like it a little rough.”
He gives me a look I like a little too much.
“Keep talking like that, and you won’t get much of a break.” His voice is gruff.
I smile.
“Can I get you something? Water? A drink? Something to eat?”
“I would love a—”
I sit bolt upright so fast my head swims.
“What?” Ridge is on his elbow, ready to launch out of the bed. “What’s wrong?”
“The chicken.” I scrub a hand down my face. “I put chicken in the oven earlier, before you got here. It’ll be burned to a crisp by now.”
“Stay there,” he tells me. “I’ll check on it.”
Then he rolls out of the bed and dashes for the hallway.
The oven door opens and closes. Then the faucet runs.
A minute later, he comes back, and I have to stop myself from blatantly checking him out.
Ridge is naked, muscled, and covered in tattoos.
He’s freaking gorgeous.
He’s carrying two bottles of water and what looks like a damp hand towel.
“Dinner is dead.”
He hands me the warm towel.
I groan. “It was herbed chicken with new potatoes.”
“It is now charcoal.”
“Wonderful. Just great.”
I clean myself between my legs.
“I ordered pizza. I hope you like pepperoni?” He lifts his brows.
My stomach grumbles.
“I love you,” I blurt.
Oh no.
Oh no, oh no, oh no.
What did I just say?
Craaaap!
Ridge’s eyes widen a fraction.
“Pizza,” I say very quickly. “I love pizza. Especially pepperoni. Love it. Adore it. I’m so hungry.”
He stares at me for a beat longer and then his mouth curls into a smile.
“I love pizza too.”
“Who doesn’t?” I ask. “Pizza is everything to me. Now, if you’d added pineapple, you would have been marriage potential, but alas, you didn’t.”
“Nope, I did not. I don’t believe that pineapple belongs on a pizza.”
I gasp. “Shut your mouth. Take that back right now.”
“I can’t.”
“We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one.”
“We will, indeed.” He cracks the cap off the water bottle and offers it to me.
“Thank you.” I take it from him and drink deeply.
He gets back on the bed, lying on his side facing me, propped up on one elbow. He twists his bottle open, tips his head back, and drinks.
And he manages to make something as silly as drinking water look sexy. His Adam’s apple works, and I find myself wishing I were the bottle.
I’m officially pathetic.
I force myself to stop staring and look at the ceiling instead.
We lie there in silence for a bit. I glance over at him, and it looks like he’s deep in thought.
“Are you okay?” I say it quietly.
“I’m fine.” He answers a beat too fast for me to truly believe him.
He’s not fine.
I roll onto my side so I’m facing him.
“You’re thinking about your friend, aren’t you?”
For a second, it looks like he might deny it. Then he nods.
“How is Magma doing?” I ask. “That’s where you were today. I mean, I’m assuming that’s where you were.”
He sighs and nods.
“I tried to see him, but they wouldn’t let me.” He scratches the back of his neck. “He was busy being processed and questioned. I got him legal representation. At least he now has one of the best advocates on the island. That’s all I can do for the moment. I doubt he’d agree to see me, anyway.”
“He accused you of ‘knowing’.” I keep my voice gentle. “When the guards were taking him out. He looked right at you and said you knew.”
Ridge’s jaw tightens. He rubs a hand over his face and sighs.
“I’m sorry.” I shift my position and touch his arm. “I’m prying. You don’t have to tell me anything. It’s just that I can see how wound up you are. It can’t be easy, since he’s your friend.”
He doesn’t move his arm from under my hand.
“I did know that he was being investigated,” he says.
“Oh…shit. That sucks.”
“Yep.” His eyes lift to mine. “It’s part of the reason I was assigned to the hospital. Reed wanted me out of Security Central and away from Magma. I didn’t think they’d find anything on him. I really didn’t.”
“You told him you believed in his innocence.”
“I do, despite everything.” His hand fists the sheet between us.
“That’s the thing. I didn’t think they’d find anything, so I didn’t think it was necessary to tell him he was under investigation.
Even if I had wanted to, I couldn’t have.
I was gagged by the Council. I’d be in jail right now if I had said a word. ”
I stare at him.
“That had to be hard.”
He licks his lips and bites down on the bottom one for a beat.
“You have no idea.” There’s a roughness underneath.
“You feel bad.”
“I feel fucking terrible. Like I let him down.”
“Do you think he’s being framed?”
“Yes,” he says. “I do.”
I push up onto my elbow.
“What are you going to do about it? Surely you have a plan to prove him innocent?”
“I can’t do anything.” His mouth is a flat line.
I frown. “It isn’t like you to sit on your hands.”
He laughs but it has no humor in it at all.
“That’s just it; you don’t know me, Robyn.”
Shit! He’s right.
He gets this sheepish look. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be an asshole.”
“It’s fine. You’re right. I don’t know you at all. I’m sure you don’t want to talk about something like this to me.”
“You’re right. I don’t. Not when we can be doing other things.”
Then he sits up and takes the water bottle out of my hand. He puts it on the nightstand and turns back to me, and the look in his eyes has changed.
They’re heated again.
“We’re not supposed to be talking,” he tells me.
Ridge shifts on the bed and rolls me onto my back, his thigh pushing between mine. My legs fall open for him. He sinks down between them, the weight of him pressing me into the mattress, and then he is lining himself up and pushing into me, slow and steady and deep.
“We’re fucking, remember?”
I make a sound that I hope he interprets as an affirmation.
My breath catches as he bottoms out with a low sound. He dips his head into the crook of my neck.
“Ridge,” I choke out.
He starts to move.
And my mind goes blank as my nails dig into his back.