26. Dallas
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Dallas
I should’ve known the second she stepped into my kitchen tonight, cheeks flushed from the cold, hair soft around her shoulders, eyes too bright, that I wasn’t walking out of this evening with my sanity intact.
Hell, I’m not sure I even made it through dessert.
Lila went to bed hours ago, and Faith stayed. Not because she had to. Not because she didn’t know how to leave. But because she wanted to.
And that alone does things to me I’m not proud of.
She’s standing by the sink now, talking with her hands the way she does when she’s half nervous, half excited, something about social media strategies and color palettes, and I’m doing a piss-poor job pretending to pay attention to anything except her mouth.
I lean against the counter, arms folded, pretending I’m not cataloging every place I want to touch her.
She catches me staring.
“What?” she asks, half-laughing.
“Nothing,” I lie.
“Dallas.”
I push off the counter slowly. “You look good in my kitchen.”
Her breath stutters just slightly. She tries to cover it with a smile, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. Not because she’s hiding anything, but because she’s giving more away.
“Is that so?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Real good.”
Then I kiss her hard, tasting everything on her lips.
Her fingers sink into my shoulders hard enough to bruise. Her mouth opens under mine, needy, reckless, perfect.
Then I push her top up and off, and when that black cotton bra appears, plain, soft, not meant for seducing anyone, I feel my spine snap.
She kisses me as if she’s running from something, or toward something, and I grip the back of her neck, twist into her hair, and she moans. A sound from her throat, from her belly, from the part of her that’s done pretending she doesn’t want this.
“Fuck, Dallas.”
I haul her up onto the table by the hips as if I’m allowed to take her apart. Her breath stutters. She laughs, half wild, half shocked, and the sound drags heat straight to my cock.
Her head tips back instantly, throat bared, hair spilling everywhere. I want to wrap it around my fist, around my wrist, around her throat. I want her bent in every shape a body can fold into.
I drag the cups of her bra down, and her nipples tighten instantly, goosebumps racing over her skin before I even get my mouth on her.
When I bite, just a little, she gasps, arching off the table so hard the legs scrape.
All those soft, pretty noises she tries to swallow? I want every one. I want to pull them out of her until she can’t remember her own name.
Her hand fuses to my hair, holding me right where she wants me, but her other hand claws down my back, dragging me closer. Closer. She can’t stand an inch of air between us.
I kiss down her chest and work the button of her jeans. It catches once, and she giggles, a nervous, breathless, gorgeous sound, and I growl because I want her laughing when I ruin her too.
Then her jeans come off. Fast. Rough. The way she wants it.
Her thighs go around my waist and lock, dragging me against the heat of her. The slick heat of her. She’s trembling, already oversensitive, already desperate. I drop down and pry her knees open wider and trail my mouth up her inner thigh.
She jerks violently.
I love it.
She tastes of sweat and sweetness made for me, and when I slide two fingers inside her slowly, just to watch her face, she shatters. Her lips part. Her eyes roll. She breaks open right there, just from my hand, just from pressure and voice and need.
She’s soaked, gripping my fingers, trying to pull them deeper, and I curl my thumb up over her clit.
“D… Dallas,” she stammers, dissolving into a helpless sound that shoots straight through me.
“Look at me,” I tell her.
She tries.
She fails.
But I wait, coaxing her to the surface until she’s forced to see me, to know, to remember exactly whose mouth is wrecking her. Her entire body contracts. She mutters incoherently, maybe my name, and if she’s cursing me for this, I want double the dose.
When she comes, it’s all over her face, in the wild, silent O of her mouth, and the way she jerks, thighs clamping my head until I’m sure she’ll never let go. I lap her up, every noise and tremor, greedy as fuck.
And when her eyes finally find mine, wrecked, wanting, trusting, I nearly lose it.
She pulls me up hard, kissing me. She needs to taste what I did to her. Her hands fly to my belt. No finesse, no patience, and my breath catches when her fingers close around me.
I brace a hand on the table beside her head to keep from collapsing.
“Careful,” I rasp. “I’m close.”
She smirks. A wicked, bright thing. “Good.”
I hook my hands under her thighs, drag her to the edge, line up, and push in…
Shit.
The breath punches out of me.
She’s tight, hot, clinging to me. Her thighs crush my waist, pulling me deeper, and her nails scrape my back in lines that will show tomorrow.
I fuck her harder. She fucks me back just as hard. It’s frantic and messy, and so hard to stay quiet.
She bites my jaw, then my neck, then my shoulder, and I bite back just as her climax hits. Her whole body bows, her thighs crush me, and she screams into my shoulder. The sound breaks me, and I follow hard, burying myself deep as my vision whites out.
I don’t give her time to breathe.
The second her knees hit the hardwood, I snap loose. I drag my thumb across her lower lip, feeling the tremble there. She looks up at me through her lashes, pupils blown wide, chest rising fast.
“Open,” I murmur.
She obeys instantly.
It kills me.
I curl my fingers in her hair, not gentle, not apologetic, and guide her exactly where I want her. Her hands slide up my thighs, bracing herself. She looks devoted. Ruined. Mine.
“Look at me,” I growl.
Her eyes snap up. So obedient it hurts.
“Good girl.”
Her throat works. Heat coils low in my spine, brutal and sudden.
I move my hips, testing her, watching her lips part wider around me. Watching her adjust, accept, offer more. I can feel the soft sounds she makes vibrate through me, rattling every last piece of control I pretend to have.
I tighten my grip in her hair, guiding her deeper, watching her take it.
Watching her want it.
Her fingers claw lightly at my hips, not in protest, just overwhelmed, trying to calm herself while I use her mouth the way I’ve always wanted.
“Faith…” My voice fractures. “Fuck… you’re perfect.”
She whimpers at the praise, and I roar primally. I lose the last thread of restraint. My movements get rougher, needier, my breath coming ragged. She holds onto my legs, letting me set the pace, letting me take whatever I need.
I feel the moment I start to lose it. My spine going tight, vision going hot, body locking down like a loaded gun.
I yank her back just enough to see her mouth, her dazed hunger, the string of want connecting us. She’s wrecked. Beautiful. Kneeling for me with her swollen lips open.
“Don’t move,” I manage to grit out. “Stay right there.”
She does. Trembling. Expectant. Proud of what she’s reduced me to.
I bury my hand in her hair again, pulling just enough to angle her face up toward me. My breath shudders out of me as the tension snaps, pleasure ripping through me so hard my knees almost give.
I break apart, violently, helplessly, coming undone right over her, painting her skin, her mouth, her throat. Marking her. Claiming her in a way no one could mistake.
She closes her eyes at the first hot streak hitting her cheek, lips parting in a soft sound that goes straight to my bloodstream. Her tongue slips out to catch what she can, slow and needy, and I swear I almost collapse.
When the last tremor shudders through me, I release her hair and cradle the back of her head instead, thumb stroking behind her ear in a rare moment of softness.
She looks up at me. Wrecked, shining, proud of herself, with my need drying warm on her skin.
“Dallas…” she whispers, breathless.
And I want to drag her up and ruin her all over again.