Chapter 5 #3
Then we stop. Not a decision. A reflex. His forehead presses against mine.
We're both breathing hard. Neither of us moves.
The kiss cracked open a door that's been sealed since that first conversation at the livestock pens, and the air coming through it is hotter and more dangerous than either of us planned for.
His thumb traces the line of my jaw. Slow. Almost careful. The gentleness is worse than the kiss because it asks a question I don't have an answer for.
"This is still a bad idea," I say. My voice doesn't sound like mine.
"Probably." His mouth is close enough that the word lands on my lips. "You want to stop?"
"No."
The word hangs between us for a full breath. Then my hands find the hem of his shirt and push underneath, palms pressed to his stomach. He's warm. When my fingers find a scar along his oblique, he pulls a sharp breath through his nose.
His mouth moves to the hinge of my jaw, then lower, teeth grazing the tendon in my neck. My hands drag the shirt higher, and he reaches behind his head and pulls it off in one motion.
His torso is a topographic map of damage, scars and bruises layered over muscle built by decades of absorbing impact.
I trace the faded surgical scar along his left shoulder, and he flinches under the touch, not at the sensation but at being seen.
I press my mouth to it. The sound he makes is low, almost involuntary, a vibration I feel against my lips before I hear it.
"Wait." I put my palm on his chest. His pulse hammers against my hand, and the rhythm matches mine beat for beat. "I need to say something practical before I stop being able to think practically."
"Talk."
"IUD. I'm clean. Last panel was earlier this year."
"Clean. Tested at the sports medicine physical in January.
" He pauses. His hands loosen in my hair.
His thumb brushes across my collarbone with a care that borders on hesitation, as if he's suddenly aware of every place his body is touching mine and is recalculating the pressure.
Downgrading. Pulling back into the controlled version of himself.
I recognize what he's doing. He saw the flinch earlier. He heard the Oklahoma calls. He's adjusting. Being careful with me.
I don't want careful.
"Don't be gentle with me," I say. "I didn't walk over here for gentle."
His gaze drops to my mouth, then lower, and the careful restraint burns off like fog in heat. His hands tighten in my hair, fisting the base of my braid hard enough that my scalp stings. My breath catches. The ache between my legs sharpens into a pulse of its own.
"Wasn't planning on it."
He lifts me onto the desk. Papers scatter, my manifests and his maps sliding off the edge onto the carpet, and my thighs bracket his hips with the hard rim of the desk biting into the backs of my legs.
He pulls my shirt over my head in a single motion and tosses it somewhere behind him.
My bra unhooks under his fingers with a competence that makes my stomach drop, and he strips it down my arms and drops it on top of the scattered maps without looking away from my body.
His hands close over my breasts, rough palms against sensitive skin, and my body bows into the contact before I can stop it.
His thumbs drag across both nipples, slow and deliberate, and the sensation pulls a sound from my throat that I don't authorize.
He does it again, harder, his focus locked on my face while he works them stiff.
The heat between my legs tightens into a coil that has nothing to do with anger.
The days of friction that led us here have everything to do with it.
"Days," he says, low, as if he's reading my body the way he reads a bronc in the chute. "You've been thinking about this for weeks."
"Don't flatter yourself."
"I'm not." His mouth drops to my neck, teeth scraping the tendon, and his right hand slides down my stomach, fingers hooking into the waist of my jeans. "Your pulse has been running fast every time I've stood within arm's reach since Midland. You think I didn't notice?"
He noticed. The same way I noticed his attention snagging on my mouth when I'm talking, his hands flexing when I lean past him at the pens, the heat pouring off him when the distance between us shrinks below professional.
We've been lying to each other with straight faces and clenched fists, and the lie just ran out of road.
"Off," he says, tugging at my jeans, and I lift my hips to let him strip them down my legs along with my underwear.
He drops both on the carpet and steps back between my thighs, one palm pressing my stomach down against the desk surface.
The other hand slides between my legs, and the first contact of his fingers against my clit sends my back arching off the desk hard enough to rattle the wall-mounted lamp above it.
I'm soaked. His fingers slide through the slick heat of me, and the sound it makes in the quiet room is obscene, specific, impossible to pretend away. His jaw tightens at the evidence, and his free hand grips my hip hard enough that I'll feel the bruise tomorrow.
"This is what arguing with me does to you." His voice is rough, almost conversational, and the calm of it while his fingers work me open is worse than any demand. He pushes two fingers inside me, curling forward, and my hips roll against his hand before I've decided to move. "Good to know."
"Shut up."
"Make me."
My hand shoots to his wrist, not to stop him but to feel the tendons working beneath his skin while his thumb presses a slow, grinding circle against my clit.
The pressure builds from the base of my spine, spreading through my thighs, tightening in my abdomen.
I can feel every callus on his fingers. Every ridge.
Every deliberate adjustment as he reads my body's responses and uses them against me.
He speeds up when I hold my breath, slows down when I'm close, dragging me toward the edge and pulling me back with a control that should infuriate me.
It does infuriate me. It also keeps me pinned to the desk with my thighs shaking and my hand white-knuckled on his wrist.
"Look at me," he says.
I open my eyes. His are dark, focused, the same intensity he carries into the chute concentrated entirely on me.
The vulnerability of being watched while my body responds to his hands is almost worse than the pleasure itself.
He sees every contraction, every involuntary clench, every catch in my breathing.
He's cataloging me the way I'd catalog a clinical presentation, and the precision of his attention makes the ache low in my belly sharpen until it's almost unbearable.
"I want to feel you come on my hand before I fuck you."
The words land in my chest and detonate.
His thumb presses harder. His fingers curl deeper.
The orgasm tears through me from the center outward, my inner muscles locking around his fingers in rhythmic contractions that he rides with his hand, steady, relentless, drawing it out until my thighs are trembling and my breath comes in ragged pulls I can't control.
His eyes never leave my face. His fingers don't stop until my body does.
I'm still shaking when I reach for his belt.
My fingers are clumsy, uncoordinated, and I don't care.
I work the buckle open, shove his jeans and briefs down far enough, and wrap my hand around his cock.
He's thick, hard, the skin hot against my palm, and the sound he makes when I stroke him, a guttural exhale pushed through clenched teeth, is the first crack in his composure.
I stroke again, tighter, twisting at the head, and his hand slams flat on the desk beside my hip. His abs contract, the muscles standing in sharp relief, and for one second the man controlling every moment of this encounter isn't in control at all.
"Now," I say.
He pulls me to the edge of the desk. One hand grips the back of my thigh.
The other wraps around himself to line up, and when he pushes inside me, the stretch is slow and relentless.
Full. I feel every inch of him, the width spreading me open, the depth hitting a place that sends a white jolt up my spine.
My teeth sink into the junction of his neck and shoulder to keep the sound from carrying through the motel walls.