Chapter 4 Chris
CHRIS
I’m going to be her first.
I’m going to claim her.
My hand is in her hair, my tongue is in her mouth, and I can feel the whole of her soft body against mine. The tender plumpness of her eighteen-year-old tits against my chest, the way her hips are angled forward, begging me to teach her.
She’s making a sound with her throat. It’s not quite a moan but almost like a helpless baby bird that reveals her want. Her need.
And that makes two of us.
I break the kiss and look at her. Just stare at her beauty. Her sundress is slightly wrinkled. Her hair is messy from the wind at the pier. She looks like she belongs in a sunny art studio surrounded by her photographs, not anywhere near a criminal like me.
And yet she’s here. With me.
Her lips are swollen from mine, her eyes are shining, and she’s breathing with short, shallow gasps that make her breasts rise and fall against mine.
Her fingers drift to the strap of her dress to adjust it, causing the neckline to drop an inch lower, exposing even more of the plump swell of her young breasts. My cock stirs behind my zipper, hardening even more.
She has no idea what she’s doing. What effect she has on me.
She doesn’t know that the slight fidget with her hand sent all my blood rushing south. She has no idea that the flush on her chest is broadcasting her arousal that hides behind such an innocent face.
She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I’m overtaken with desire, but I’m also terrified.
Not of her. Not of what’s about to happen.
I’ve had plenty of sex, but it was functional and uncomplicated with women whose names I don’t remember. Nothing that left a mark on my heart.
It won’t be like that with Avery. It will be different.
If I take her, it will expand what I’ve already let form within me.
A weakness. Something I will not be able to walk away from.
I need to stop. There’s no room in my life for a perfect woman like this.
“I don’t do this,” I tell her. She pauses, her hands warm against my chest.
“Do what?”
I don’t even know how to answer her—how to find the words for what’s happening to me. After all, it’s never happened before.
“Let anyone matter.”
She looks at me like she’s almost sad for me. But at the same time, she looks pleased. She wants me to be her first. And she knows that in a different way, she’ll be mine.
Her brown eyes hold nothing back. They’re warm and open offering trust, access. And beyond that, something much bigger. A chance at a life that I’ve never known.
“Do…I matter?” she whispers, like she’s afraid of my answer. And that’s when the last bit of my control fails.
I walk her backward, my mouth enveloping hers. She stumbles over herself, but I catch her with one hand, keeping her upright, my tongue deep and hungry in her mouth.
Down the hallway, past the bathroom, and into the bedroom where the sun is pouring through the window, turning everything amber and gold.
At the foot of the bed, I break the kiss. She sways toward me, her eyes glazed like she’s drunk but expecting.
I find the straps of her sundress and slide them off her shoulders, watching her face as the fabric begins to fall. She doesn’t stop me. In fact, her breathing quickens as I unwrap her.
The dress catches at her breasts, then slides down and bunches at her waist. No bra, just like I suspected when I saw her come out of the bookstore.
Her tits are perfect. Just like her. And the sight of her like this—half naked, backlit by the sun—makes the muscles in my chest so tight I can barely breathe.
This gorgeous girl comes from a different world than mine. A world where trust is offered, not weaponized.
She is the light, and I am the darkness. I should let her go. But I know I can’t.
Reaching in, I push the dress the rest of the way down her hips. It falls to the floor, leaving her standing before me in nothing but pair of white bikini panties.
I nearly smile when I see the wet spot. Yes, she does want this.
She makes a small sound, and her arms twitch at her sides, as if she’s about to cover herself. But she doesn’t. She stands still and lets me look. Admire.
And goddamn do I ever.
Her body is perfection. Her breasts are full enough to fill my hands, with light pink nipples that stand out straight, begging for my mouth. She has faint tan lines from her bathing suit, and the contrast between her sun-kissed skin and the paler flesh beneath has my mouth watering.
Her stomach is flat and her waist is thin, but her hips curve out with such femininity.
“You’re an angel.”
She blushes hard, like no one has ever given her this kind of compliment. And the thought that Avery doesn’t fully understand the devastating effect of her own body causes something feral to rise within me.
Possessive thoughts take over. A dark voice snarls in the back of my skull.
Mine.
I move forward and cup her breasts with both hands, my palms full, feeling the warm weight of her perky flesh. Her breath stutters and her head falls back as a whimper escapes her parted lips.
A sound she didn’t mean to make goes straight to my cock and turns it to steel.
I gently roll her nipples between my fingers. She gasps and grips my forearms with both hands. Hard. Her nails bite into my skin. Her thighs press together on my bulge, and her hips rock forward in an involuntary thrust.
Her body is begging for it, searching for a touch she doesn’t know how to ask for.
“I’m going to give you what you want,” I murmur against her cheek, squeezing her breasts harder. So shapely. So supple. “Do you trust me, Avery?”
“Yes,” she replies without hesitation. It’s a word you hear often, but it means nothing from most people. Yet from her, it’s everything.
I hook my thumb into the waistband of her panties and pull them down, over her hips and the curve of her ass, until they fall to her ankles. She steps out of them and is fully naked before me.
I’m still fully clothed, and she stands in front of me, a slight tremble in her stomach, fingers curling and uncurling at her sides. Such courage to simply be naked in front of a man she barely knows.
Only she does know me. She’s been watching me for weeks, filing away details. She sees things in me that no one else does. The man beneath the discipline.
And she’s not afraid of him.
I strip off my T-shirt and toss it aside. Her doe-eyes travel across my chest, my arms, my abs, then back to the tattoo that wraps my bicep. Her gaze catches on the scar below my ribs.
A knife wound from a job in Detroit that I couldn’t go to the hospital for. It healed ugly, and her expression does something I don’t expect. It softens with such tenderness and such concern that I almost can’t process it.
She reaches out delicately and traces the scar with her fingertip, gently, like she’s touching something sacred.
“What happened?” she whispers.
“Nothing.” I shake my head. “It’s not important.”
I don’t want to tell her. I can’t tell her. All that will do is scare her away. She doesn’t need to know about the man I am when I’m away from her. This is who I want her to see. Who I am right now.
I lift her up, my hands on her sculpted ass, and hoist her off the floor. She wraps her legs around my waist, and her hot, wet center presses against my bare stomach.
A growl rises from deep in my chest, animalistic and uncontrolled. The slick heat of her arousal tells me everything.
She’s drenched. Soaking. This girl from her sunlit bookstore with her warm eyes and pretty little sundress is dripping for me, and knowing that I’ve done that to her—with my rough hands and scarred body—fills me with something dark and possessive.
I lay her on the bed beneath me. Not gently either. My mouth instantly finds her throat. Hungrily, I bite the skin where her neck meets her shoulder. Not hard enough to hurt but hard enough to mark.
She arches beneath me with a cry that vibrates through my bones.
“Chris—”
“Yes, baby. I know.” I drag my mouth down to her collarbone, tasting salt, warmth, and desire. I move lower, closing my mouth around her left nipple.
As I suck, her hips buck up against mine so hard I feel her clit grind against my stomach. My cock pulses as a long, desperate moan leaves her mouth and her fingers spear into my shoulders and pull.
I move to her other nipple and repeat slowly, sucking until the peak is swollen between my lips, then flicking it with my tongue until she’s writhing beneath me.
Her thighs open and close around my hips. Her body is begging in a language she’s yet to learn.
I kiss down her stomach, past her belly button and along the crease of her hip, stretching out the moment before the final destination.
Her body goes rigid, every muscle taut. I look up and find her propped up on her elbows, watching me wide-eyed, with an expression that is both desperate and terrified.
“No one has ever put their mouth on you here, have they?” I ask, but I already know the answer.
Still, I swell inside when she shakes her head, her cheeks red like roses.
More primal urges howl within me.
I’ll be her first. This mouth that has lied and threatened will be the first to taste her.
Me.
Mine.
“Spread your legs,” I tell her. It’s a command—soft but still a command.
Her thighs are hesitating, but after a moment, she lets them fall apart…slowly…until finally, the sight of her—
Jesus…
Her pussy is pink and swollen and glistening, her arousal coating the inside of her thighs with a thin, shiny film. The scent of her fills my lungs—hot with an intoxicating, sweet musk.
My cock throbs so hard against the mattress that I groan hard and long before I can stop myself.
She’s beyond perfection, flushed and wet, presenting me with the part of herself she’s never given to anyone.
The weight of that trust falls on me and mixes with my hunger, filling me with a lust I can’t hold back.