Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Anna
“ T hat was intense,” I say, pressing my fingers into my eye sockets on an exhale.
“Life can be like that.” Cyrus palms the wheel of his huge black SUV as we pull out of the parking garage at the hospital.
He made sure Brittany had about a hundred x-rays, an MRI and these little electrodes on her head to measure her brain activity. The doctor tried to take charge and protest, but Cyrus backed him up against the wall with a glare that told him there was no room for negotiation. He also made sure they understood if anything were to happen to Brittany due to their lack of care, he would come looking for them and nothing would be able to save them.
I’m surprised they didn’t call security and have him escorted out, but he has a way about him that makes people fall in line.
The doctors gave her the all clear, but they are keeping her overnight at Cyrus’s suggestion. A nurse will be with her through the night and one of the care managers from the center will stay as well, so we felt comfortable leaving.
“You hungry?” he asks, and as much as part of me wants to say yes, I need to get home. I have a huge day tomorrow with meetings at Welsh Center and with my father and some of his business partners, and I need to be prepared.
As well, I know this man, as wonderful as he has been, is not for me.
“No, not really.” I lie. I’m starving. “You can just drop me back at my car at the ball field. I need to get home.”
“Where’s home?” His voice washes through me like a warm breeze.
“Well,” I chuckle, holding my hand over my smile for a second before revealing my current living situation. “I still live with my parents, sort of. They are old school, you don’t move out until you’re married type of deal. I live in the guest house though. I managed to negotiate that much freedom.” I smile and see him nod, his face tense and serious like he’s analyzing and taking notes on everything I say.
I steal little glances at him as he drives. It’s so sexy how he lets his fingers dangle over the top of the steering wheel, controlling it with just the side of his hand. The radio is on some old R & B station. The volume is super low but I hear “Ain’t No Sunshine” come on and watch as Cyrus starts bobbing his head to the beat, singing the words in a low, gravely mumble.
Marvin Gaye got nothin’ on this man.
The swoony, deep bass of his voice rumbles into my heart as he sings without inhibition like it’s the most natural thing in the world to be doing right now.
It’s so sexy I want to climb on and take a ride to wherever he wants to take me. My underwear takes another direct hit as I think about how his chest looks under his tightly stretched t-shirt.
There’s the perfect hint of dark hair around the neckline and the definition of broad, thick pecs have me thinking about running my tongue over every ridge and groove in his torso, leading down to those crazy, amazing ‘V’ sort of muscles some guys have near their hips—
“Are you going to answer me?” His voice snaps me back from my fantasy.
“ Uhhh , sorry. What did you ask?”
A wave of heat trails down my back along with a bead of sweat as he reaches over and rasps his knuckles over my cheek.
“You feel okay? You’re hot.”
So are you.
“Yeah. Just, hot in here.”
“A/C’s on high. You sure you’re okay?” He bites into his bottom lip like he’s trying to hold back a smirk.
I make the A-okay sign with my fingers. “All good over here.”
“Okay, so what’s with the other guy. The coach or whatever on the other team. I picked up on something. He’s not a friendly, is he?”
I sigh, crossing my ankles and adjusting myself in the leather seat which makes my sweaty thighs squeak as I move.
“No, not a friendly. He wants my job. And, he’s just sort of an asshole. Probably wasn’t breast fed as a baby.” The words tumble out and Cyrus lets out a low chuckle. “Sorry, that wasn’t appropriate.”
“Don’t ever need to be appropriate around me, baby.” A shiver races through me at that word and I swallow hard as he finishes with, “Just be you. That’s all you need to do with me. Just be yourself and we’re all good.”
There’s a knot in my throat preventing any air or words from moving through as he takes the last turn toward the ball field and my car sitting alone in the dark parking lot comes into view.
I reach down and gather my bag as slows the vehicle and puts it in park. “Thank you. For everything today, you were really amazing.”
“You were too,” he counters, then he’s out of the SUV as I stare wide-eyed watching him stride around to my side and open my door.
His eyes are set deep, lips tight, and I hear the crack of his teeth as he clenches his jaw.
“You okay?” I ask. “You look like you’re in pain all the sudden.”
“I am,” he says as I screw up my face on a squint and he clarifies. “It hurts that you’re going to get in that car and drive away. I’m considering not letting you go.”
“You think you have that sort of power?” I say as I flush and a burst of nervous laughter rushes out of me, trying to process that I’m here in the middle of an empty parking lot with a gangster type who just said he’s not letting me go…this is either romance fantasy fuel or it’s going to end with a police report.
“You don’t like anyone to know you’re scared.” He braces his massive arms on the sides of the open door, caging me in.
“I’m not scared.”
He snaps his tongue over his teeth, then looks around the dark lot. “Fear can be your friend. Fight or flight, baby.”
“Can you stop calling me baby, please?”
He shakes his head. “No. Don’t think so.”
“What’s your deal?” I snap, my heart racing, blood rushing in my ears as adrenaline surges through my system. “You save the day and now you want your reward? Is that it?”
I slip under his thick arms, doing everything in my power not to touch him as I set my feet on the pavement, rooting in my purse for my keys and feel the cylinder shaped handle of my mace spray.
He turns around and his dark eyes are not those of a man ready to harm me, but he’s also the last guy that should be making me feel all swoony and wet-between-the-legs.
I cover my nervousness by flipping my hair back with my other hand and forcing a indifferent look onto my face.
“Of course I want a reward. You want one too, don’t you? I can see it, Anna. You like to do the right thing, but you also like when someone notices. You’re tough, you don’t need to prove it to me.”
“And you like when you intimidate people. You use it to your advantage. Built like you are, with that look.” I stab to fingers toward his stupidly sexy eyes. “You like seeing people squirm.”
He crosses his arms standing silent for a beat, his eyes softening when I expect him to be angry.
“Seems we both have at least something figured out about each other. You have a praise kink and I like to be in charge. Sounds like a match made in heaven if you ask me.” He winks and it’s so out of place on the hard angles and furious knit of his brow I can’t help it when a laugh spills from my lips. “Fuck, baby. I just found my new kink.”
I take my hand out of my bag and look up at the tall, dark dream and ask, “What’s that?”
“Your laugh.”
I take a deep breath. Filling my lungs until my chest aches. I’m overcome with the wash of feelings I’ve been holding back and I step forward and run my hands up his chest, feeling the thumping of his heart against my palm.
Just do it, give in for once. Stop thinking everything to death.
That new, daring inner voice is louder than the once trying to talk sense into me and I hear myself say. “You should kiss me,”
My entire body vibrates from my shoulders down to my thighs as I lean into him.
“Now, that’s something we can agree on, baby.”
Warmth from his hands slips down my back until his fingers are digging into my ass, pulling me up and onto him in one swift motion as I lock my legs around his back and he groans, crushing his lips to mine.
I’m mounted against the hard planes of his body. The hard, cool metal of my car presses into my back and I drown in the warm, wonder of the kiss.
He’s rough but soft. Demanding but giving. He’s a concoction of puzzling intensity and I immediately feel drunk as he leans into me, his hips spreading me wide as inhuman sounds rumble from his throat.
The tip of his tongue glides along my lips instead of just ramming through my lips. The hard length of his erection between my legs makes me clench as he starts to explore my mouth with a raw but delicate urgency that has the world spinning and me re-thinking all my assumptions about this intimidating man.
Our mouths and tongues move and tangle in a fury of moans, warm breaths and pained noises. My heart is flopping around in my chest, banging against my flipping stomach like all my organs are rearranging themselves.
The hard metal of the car holds me steady as he presses his massive weight against me.
His hips start to churn, and the friction pushes me closer and closer to the edge.
With every thrust against me, his tongue spins around mine like he’s licking my clit and fucking me at the same time and I’m soaking wet and my nipples tingle and tighten until they hurt.
Pained noises rip from his chest as he pulls his face away, lowering his mouth, working it down, down until he’s raking his teeth along nape of my neck and I can’t help but let my head fall back and take everything he’s willing to give right now.
I shouldn’t be here. Doing this. Not with him. Not with this kind of man.
But I’m lost in the lust and power he has over me. My thoughts turn hazy and dreamlike, and all my limits and plans about who I should be with someday flutter into the night sky like feathers on the wind.
All the expectations of my parents and arrangements and putting family first are lost and far compared to the feelings coiling around my heart and down in my soul.
“Cyrus…” I manage, my fingers digging into his shoulders, desperately clinging to a small shred of reality. He’s not for me, but God, I never want his lips to stop what they are doing to my neck right now.
“Baby,” he growls against me, and that word has a direct connection to my clit and my heart I couldn’t have imagined before. “Baby,” he says again, reading my mind as his hips hitch and drive upward, grinding our centers together as lips and tongue turn to teeth and I hiss as they pinch the sensitive flesh.
I can only hold on, riding out the pain, weaving with the pleasure.
His hands release their grip on my ass but his weight and his hips have me pinned as feral animal noises rumble out of him and I feel his fingertips brush down my chest, grabbing the V of my jersey and yanking wide.
A button pops up and hits me in the chin, another flies in an arc against the night sky as I hear the soft click as it hits the pavement.
“All this is mine. My dick has been hard since I saw you in the penthouse last night. I’ve fucked you a million times in my dreams already. Everything in my life is about you now. Every fucking thing.”
My bra is his next victim, his fingers dragging it down so my breasts pop free into the cooler night air. My nipples feel like they are on fire as he drops his face and draws one between his lips, sucking and nipping as the throbbing between my legs becomes unbearable.
He works one nipple with his tongue, then sucks again harder, harder , like he’s desperate to draw something out of me.
He flicks those dark eyes upward as he moves to the other side, pulling my drawn nipple into his mouth, deeper, deeper as he grinds his erection against my clit and humps, humps, humps me until I come completely undone.
“Fuck yes.” He mumbles around a mouthful of my tit as I buck and quiver, calling his name and swearing into the sky. “That’s my girl. Show me you belong to me, only me.”
My mind swims, what am I doing? My first orgasm with other than myself and it’s with a broody, dark member of the off-limits world where I grew up.
Besides, what about my father? What about the promises he’s made to someone to offer me up as some glue to hold our families together?
“Wait,” I push on his chest in a breathless huff as my brain function slowly returns.
“I’ve waited. I’ve waited forty fucking years for you, I don’t think there much more wait in me, baby. You have a boyfriend? You're not married are you? ‘Cuz, if so, it’s gonna suck to be them.”
I open my mouth to try to explain that my life isn’t exactly available for this… him …right now, but a roaring engine and blinding headlights interrupt as a car comes racing our way through the empty parking lot. The vehicle screeches to a halt a few feet away from the bumper of my car asboth doors swing open.
I brace my open hand in front of my eyes, the headlines making it nearly impossible to see.
“Are you okay, Miss Farkas?” A man’s voice rises above the rumbling engine and the buzzing in my ears. “Do you need us to call the police?”
What? My synapses are firing so slow but I do recognize the voice, then as the figures step closer, their faces come into view.
I make out the faces of two of the center’s security guards stepping closer.
I untangle my legs and push off from Cyrus, tugging my jersey closed, finding my feet on wobbly legs as two of the children’s center security guards stare at me, then give a wary look at Cyrus.
“No! I’m okay.” I sidestep from Cyrus who comes up behind me. “We’re just leaving.”
Their hands rest on their sidearms, sizing up the situation with shifting eyes and flat expressions. “We noticed your car here and another vehicle pull up and were concerned.”
“Really, guys. Thank you, but it’s okay.” I look at Cyrus, my cheeks burning. “I need to go. Thank you for everything.”
“Everything?” he hisses between clenched teeth and I can see the tent in his jeans in the bright headlights.
“Yes, everything.” I pick up my bag, fumbling inside until I find my keys, opening my car door. “I need to go.” I repeat, more so trying to convince myself.
It’s the universes way of giving me an out. Breaking the tension. I have a complicated life. One I need to return to whether or not it fits some girlish fantasy I’ve conjured.
Cyrus steps my way as both guards pull their guns. “The lady said she needs to go,” one of them says and I hear Cyrus grunt as slip into the driver’s seat and close the door.
After all, it was an emotional day. Trauma bonding, right? That’s what’s happened here. Cyrus is a stranger. Whatever this is, it will fade with a hot bath and a few shots of Patron.
“I’m never letting her go.” Cyrus’s voice vibrates through the car window as invisible fingers reach around my heart and squeeze.
I answer with a weak wave as I put the car in drive and cut across the yellow stripes in the empty lot.
My eyes burn as I look in the rear view, seeing Cyrus standing there with the guards watching me pull away.