24. Arden
Arden
Mars pulls back and looks down at me, his golden mane of hair now covered with flour and his eyes a deeper blue than I’ve ever seen them, and I don’t have to guess to know what he’s thinking.
I don’t know how he got here or what his childhood was actually like, but I’ve seen enough to know that people don’t often try to take care of him.
Hell, I don’t think people often take the time to even see him, and I watched his face register all of that when I said I was baking cinnamon rolls for him.
I watched him take it in, turn it over, and come to a range of conclusions about what it might mean.
And now, for the first time, he’s looking at me like I’m more than just his step-niece and the girl who barged into his life when he had the bad luck of saving her from a kidnapping.
Or rather... no, it’s not the first time he’s looked at me like this. But based on the intensity of his stare, it is the first time he plans to do something about it.
He puts his hands to my cheeks, cupping my face like I’m the most precious thing in the world, and then leans down and brushes his lips across mine. The kiss is light, airy, almost nonexistent. A question more than an answer.
An offering that he’s leaving on my doorstep, his hands unsure when he drops it off.
But I don’t have any doubts at all. My body is singing with his touch, my heart hammering slow, steady beats at how close he is to me.
I fly into his arms and throw myself at him and just like that, his kisses become hot and needy, his teeth sharp and his tongue insistent as it sweeps into my life.
And my God, for a man who lives his live by the rules, he lights like a flame when he gets something he wants.
He picks me up and wraps my legs around his waist, then turns and sweeps everything off the counter like some hero in a romance book.
“Mars!” I gasp. “My cinnamon rolls!”
He sets me calmly on the counter, his eyes dangerous and his voice a growl. “I’ll bake you more once I’ve had you.”
“You don’t even have the recipe!”
He puts his mouth to the spot under my ear and his hands reach for the hem of my shirt. He pulls it up over my head, then unhooks my bra and takes my breasts in his hands, and it happens so fast that Ive barely caught up before he leans down and takes the shell of my ear in his teeth.
“Then I’ll torture you until you give it to me,” he breathes.
Holy fucking hell, I’m going to explode.
My blood heats so quickly it should be illegal and the space between my legs floods with moisture.
He kneads and pinches my nipples, bringing them to eager peaks, and his teeth are busy on the skin of my neck, biting and scraping at the sensitive skin.
I’m writhing in need already and he’s just now put his hands on me, but this heat is so abrupt, so unexpected, that my body doesn’t know how to react.
“And if I say no?” I gasp.
He yanks my shorts off, leaving me in nothing but a thong on the counter, and spanks my thigh lightly.
“Then it’ll be torture,” he mutters. “Like I said.”
God.
I don’t know whether to give in or hold out and make him carry through on this torture idea. And honestly, it doesn’t matter. Not even a little bit.
Because either way, I get him, and that’s currently all I want.
I reach up and touch his cheek lightly, then realize I still had icing on my hand and it’s now on his cheek.
Cocking a brow, I smear some on his nose, too, and by the time he realizes what I’m doing there’s a line of it down the bridge of his nose.
He puts a hand to his nose and it comes away sticky with frosting, which makes him shout.
Which makes me laugh with delight.
He grins and starts laughing as well, and the tension of his stance melts away until we’re laughing like children, giving each other deep, cinnamon-flavored kisses and spreading flour and frosting everywhere with our actions.
I feel drunk, though I haven’t had any alcohol.
But we’re flying together, both of us so relieved, so happy, that the chemistry is lifting us up into the sky in all our flour-dusted glory.
I can’t stop laughing and I don’t want to, even when he pulls my panties to the side and runs his tum along my seam.
My body jerks in the sudden pleasure of it and I groan aloud and start panting for him when he reaches my clit and begins to rub it.
The laughter is still bubbling in me though, and it leaks out in between my moans.
When he pinches my clit and I come for it, I give something caught between a sob and a laugh and he catches it in his mouth, his lips descending on mine like he owns me.
I’m not finished coming yet when he shoves his fingers into me and crooks them to hit the spot that makes me want to scream.
And now the laughter does die, because he’s playing my body like it’s a fucking violin and he’s the only one who can make it sing.
He moves his finger until I’m riding them, desperate for release, and then, right when I’m about to reach that crest once more, he removes them.
He takes them to his mouth and licks them slowly, his eyes on mine.
I think I might die of the tension he’s building.
“You’re as sweet as icing,” he whispers.
“That’s awfully romantic,” I respond.
He lets his jeans drop to the ground and pulls his cock out then, rubbing it up and down my seam, and God, he’s big and so hard, the head of his cock pausing at my entrance and pushing in just enough to stretch me.
“I keep telling you, Arden, I’m not a romantic.”
“Liar,” I whisper, my voice strangled.
When he finally pushes into me, I have a full second when I don’t think I can handle him.
He’s too big, too full. Then he lifts my feet up and sets them on the counter, my legs spread wide and my core totally vulnerable to him, and my body shifts to take him deeply.
He pulls out, watching me, and then slides back in, his actions slow and controlled and intense, and I nearly sob at the emotion bleeding out of me.
He pulls out one more time, then cups my jaw and forces me to watch him as he starts to move more quickly, his thrusts getting longer and harder as he takes me until he’s slamming into me, hitting me in a place I didn’t know existed again and again and driving me up and up and up toward a peak I don’t understand.
One I’m not sure I can manage.
“Say my name,” he suddenly demands.
I’m so far gone already, so lost on a cloud of lust and pleasure, that for a moment I don’t understand what he means.
“Arden. Please,” he gasps.
And I see how much of a toll it’s taking on him to hold back. How hard he’s working to be careful with me rather than scaring me or hurting me. He’s using everything in himself to hold back, but he needs to let himself go.
He needs me to take care of him, this time.
And his name is the key.
“Mars,” I whisper.
His expression crumbles like someone has just giving him the secret of life and his actions become frantic and full of need. He thrusts again and again, his hands on my hips and his forehead dropping to mine as he seeks his own release, his instincts taking over.
And I know how to hold him there.
“Mars,” I say again. “Mars, Mars, Mars.”
It’s not even difficult. My body is strung so tightly I can hardly breathe, but I know who’s doing this to me. I know who to call for as I get closer and closer to the edge and finally jump off it with my arms spread and a whole dark expanse below me.
But I’m not scared of that expanse, because I know Mars will catch me before I fall.
Just like I’m here to catch him.
“You can’t eat those!” I shriek. “They’ve been on the ground! Besides, I thought you were going to bake me new ones. Wasn’t that your threat?”
He scoops another cinnamon roll off the ground and hands me one of them, then raises his own cinnamon roll in a toast. “This is way easier. And the floor is clean.”
“It’s a floor, Mars. By definition it’s dirty.”
He makes a face, then stares me right in the eye as he takes an enormous bite of his own roll. “Tastes perfect to me.”
Oh, I could get used to this reckless version of Mars.
I make a promise to myself that I’m going to do whatever it takes to see this version more often, and then I take a bite of my own pastry. He’s right; they are delicious. Though I’m sure they’re also now covered in dirt.
And I don’t care.
“I never thought you were a romantic,” I say finally, my mouth sticky with icing. “But eating cinnamon rolls after sex is pretty next level.”
He rolls his eyes. “Not romantic.”
I give him a sticky grin. “Totally romantic.”
“I hate you,” he mutters. “
“No you don’t. You love me.”
This pulls him up and the sarcasm leaves his face. He stares at me for a long moment, and then shrugs.
“Maybe.”