1. “I DON’T GIVE A DAMN ‘BOUT MY BAD REPUTATION” #4
Neither of them was unaffected by this. That’s where the danger lay. Whatever it was, it had them in a chokehold, one they wanted to surrender to as much as they needed to escape.
He worked her slowly, dragging the heel of his palm against her swollen clit as his fingers swirled and teased, rolling past that moment where a lesser woman might beg for mercy. She gripped the wainscoting with white knuckles as her forehead dropped against the wall.
His unseeing focus settled on those chipped fingernails, jagged from typing as if they never knew a proper manicure.
“Fuck,” she panted, losing her power over words.
“Give in. Stop holding onto control.”
She growled as he worked her faster, and the sound splintered into a moan.
Her body clamped around his plunging cock, greedy and furious, as she rose onto her toes.
The slick sound of her arousal coating his sliding flesh filled the narrow hallway with too much obscenity for Joan Jett to drown out, and soon Jocelyn’s needy cries dominated the house.
The fight for denial carried in her voice, despite the obvious pleasure he delivered, but soon enough, he’d win her surrender.
He knew her body like the back of his hand.
Knew how to make her come in seconds flat.
Knew what she liked and what made her voice pitch to a sound only dogs could hear.
But it was her refusal to let him win easily that maintained the performance barrier they both needed to keep going this way.
It was a game. Two enemies with the chemistry of a summer lightning storm.
Chaotic and powerful. Electric and enthralling.
“My Vikings would never leave a woman waiting this long.”
“What did I tell you about measuring me against your fictional fuck boys?” He pulled his cock free, punishing her for the comparison.
“Ink and paper can’t fuck you like I can.
” He rimmed her wet opening with his glistening length, refusing her until she admitted the truth. “Whose cock’s better now?”
She pushed back against him with shameless urgency. Maybe it was her rawness that got him so hard—the lack of modesty and performance. There was something animalistic about both of them when they stopped hiding behind walls. Something he never found with anyone else.
“Soren, you dick, stop fucking around!”
The more she wanted it, the more he wanted to keep it from her. He pulled back until she growled in furious frustration.
“Big moon tonight.” He slapped her ass, sharp enough to leave a pink handprint against her pale skin, and her spine stiffened.
“Fuck. Off.”
He gripped her hips, hitching her back as he dragged a hand up her spine to angle her forward.
He guided himself between her thighs once more, teasing the tight, wet mess he made of her.
The head of his cock notched against her entrance, but didn’t enter.
He lived for tormenting her. “I think you meant to say fuck me.”
“You wish.”
He could drag it out. They lived in an endless game of chicken, always challenging each other while refusing to be the one to break first. But goddamn, her pussy felt amazing. Hot and gripping, luring him in like a siren at sea.
“Soren…” The soft plea of his name on her lips was the closest she’d come to begging, and it broke his control.
Driving into her in one long, merciless stroke that punched the air out of both of them, they each groaned with deep satisfaction. Her body squeezed around him, hot and impossibly tight, and the raw response she gave was guttural enough to shake a primal nerve loose in his chest.
Soren didn’t give her time to adjust. She didn’t want him to.
That was the unspoken contract between them, the understanding that tenderness would require an acknowledgment of feelings both would rather die denying.
So, instead, they met each other in the violent, breathless territory where want didn’t need a name.
His pace was punishing from the first thrust, his fingers digging into the swell of her hip, sharp enough to leave marks she would trace in the morning and likely regret.
The lies would come after, insults blanketing a broken promise that this would be the last time, though they both knew this nightmare was far from over.
They were both stuck in a game of fuck it out until it passes, like an endless fever that had to be suffered to the end.
He thrust deep, and the wall absorbed the impact as her palms braced flat against the surface. The hallway filled with the percussion of skin and the ragged exchange of breath that neither of them could control.
Each time he buried himself to the hilt, she answered with a roll of her hips that dragged him deeper, as if depth were the only language left between two people who weaponized every other form of communication.
“Harder.” The raw command was a wrecked plea, stripped of its usual sarcasm, and it almost undid him.
He wrapped one arm around her, pulling her back against his chest, changing the angle until the shudder that ran through her entire body passed into him like a current.
His mouth found her neck again, teeth grazing the tendon that strained beneath her skin.
She reached back, gripped his hair, and pulled with the kind of violence that blurred the line between holding him closer and tearing him apart.
“Your pussy’s choking me.” His voice buried itself in the damp curve of her throat.
“Good.” She clenched around him so tight his vision whited at the edges. “Now, stop talking and make me come.”
His body took over with single-minded brutality. One hand slid up her chest and closed around her throat, not squeezing, just holding, as every sound she couldn’t suppress vibrated against his palm.
Her pulse hammered beneath his fingers, wild and unguarded. That tiny vulnerability proved that, beneath the armor, the attitude, the bratty, sexy mouth, Jocelyn Collins was just as destroyed by their chemistry as he was.
She cried out, shamelessly claiming her pleasure in a way that sent him hurtling toward the edge faster than pride could pull him back.
He made sure she always came first, because he would sooner choke on his own ego than let her have that ammunition.
Her orgasm tore through her with a full-body convulsion that locked her spine against his chest, as her voice pitched, unfiltered and greedy, nothing like the theatrical moans he heard from partners in the past.
One final thrust, and his release ripped into her with enough force to buckle his knees. Hips jerking, he made sure she received every drop. Something about finishing deep inside of her always felt like victory, even if it never amounted to anything.
His forehead dropped to her shoulder as a shiver raced up his spine. Hand loosening on her throat, his touch slid down to her collarbone, where her rapid heartbeat pounded against his palm. His hips stuttered through the last aftershocks, and slowly, the hallway stopped spinning.
For a long moment, neither of them moved. Their breathing synced without permission, chests expanding and contracting in tandem as the sweat cooled between their bodies.
Soren’s lips rested against Jocelyn’s shoulder, her heartbeat decelerating under his palm. The intimacy of it was worse than the addiction itself.
The sex he could explain away. But the part where he didn’t pull out immediately, where he stood with his face pressed into her hair, breathing in that familiar scent of incense and ink and taking some sick, twisted sense of comfort from an act that should feel like poison… Yeah, he wasn’t supposed to enjoy that.
His thumb traced absent circles on her damp skin, intimate as a secret, and she moved, breaking contact and forcing his cock to slide free. The warm house felt cold outside of her comforting heat, but he said nothing.
She bent to retrieve the kimono from the floor. “There’s a fresh bottle of bourbon on the bar.”
He tucked his cock away. “I know where it is.”
“Then stop standing in my hallway like a lost retriever and pour me one.” Still naked, she disappeared into the bathroom and shut the door.
He bathed in the strange awareness like a specimen under observation, awkward and exposed despite now standing alone. The lock inside the bathroom clicked with casual finality.
Glancing at the kitchen, he debated whether he wanted a drink. He should go. It was late, and where he and Jocelyn were concerned, alcohol only further complicated things.