Chapter 3 #2
My body locks. Every muscle goes rigid in a single breath. His fingers are on my bare hip and for one terrible heartbeat my body throws me back to that floor. Fifteen. Pinned. Fighting. The panic fires through my nervous system bright and fast and vicious.
Then it dies. Because these fingers aren't grabbing.
These fingers are tracing. I know these hands.
My body knows them from a different moment, a different kind of touch, and the girl on that floor trusted these hands before she trusted anything else in the world.
I exhale and the sound shakes on the way out but I let my muscles unclench one by one.
He pauses. Reads the shift. Doesn't ask. Just slows his touch and waits until my breathing steadies, his thumb drawing one patient circle against my hip bone.
My body arches into his touch. Every nerve ending is lit up, desperate, aching.
His mouth drops to my neck. His lips graze the hollow of my throat and his tongue tastes the pulse point where my heart is hammering against my skin.
The scrape of his beard burns a trail down my neck and across my collarbone and the rough texture against soft skin makes me gasp.
"You taste incredible." He murmurs it against me, and his breath rolls warm over my chest. His mouth travels lower.
Between my breasts. His lips close around one nipple and the sensation is so sharp, so immediate, my back lifts off the bed and a sound tears out of me that I have never heard from my own throat.
"That's it." His voice is dark and approving against my skin. "Let me hear you."
Well, that won't be a problem. I have zero control over the sounds coming out of me right now and honestly I've stopped trying.
His mouth moves lower. Down my stomach, lips dragging across the sensitive skin below my navel, breath hot and deliberate.
Every muscle in my body tenses because I know where he's going.
I inhale deeply and hold it until my lungs burn.
I want it so badly my thighs ache with need and I can feel how wet I am, hot and aching.
He settles between my legs. His broad shoulders push my thighs apart and his hands grip my hips, holding me still. His beard scrapes against my inner thighs, rough and electric, and I jolt. His breath hits me first, warm and close, and I squeeze my eyes shut and dig my teeth into my bottom lip.
The first press of his mouth against me is so gentle, so achingly tender, that tears prick the backs of my eyes.
He takes his time. His tongue strokes flat and slow, learning every reaction, adjusting pressure when my hips buck, easing off when my breathing gets too ragged, then building again.
The pleasure layers, one on top of another, tightening and coiling deep in my core.
My fingers grip the sheets. My head presses back into the pillow and my mouth falls open on a silent cry.
My bare feet dig into the mattress, toes curling into the sheets, and I don't care about anything except the pressure building inside me.
"Good girl." He says it against my clit and the vibration of his voice makes me throb.
I cry out, loud, hips bucking against his hands.
He holds me down. Doesn't stop. Slides his fingers inside me, one then two, curling until he finds a spot that sends lightning up my spine and drags a moan out of me.
"You're doing so well." His thumb replaces his tongue and his mouth moves to the inside of my thigh, teeth grazing the tender skin, then kissing the sting away. "Let go for me."
The orgasm rips through me. My whole body seizes.
My thighs clamp around his head and my fingers yank the sheets off the corner of the mattress and his name crashes against the back of my teeth so hard I have to bite down on my tongue to keep it inside.
My eyes squeeze shut and my back bows off the bed and I am shaking so hard the headboard rattles against the wall.
He works me through it. Slow strokes that ease the aftershocks while my body trembles and my lungs fight for air. I'm still off balance when he rises over me, pressing his lips to my forehead, my cheek, the corner of my mouth.
"Beautiful." He brushes hair from my damp forehead. His eyes search mine, warm and dark and full of a hunger he's still holding on a leash. "Are you okay?"
I nod because words are a lost cause. I just had the most intense orgasm of my life and the man responsible doesn't even know my name. Happy birthday to me.
He reaches past me to the nightstand, finds a condom, tears the foil. I watch him roll it on and the size of his thick cock sends a spike of genuine panic through the afterglow.
"Get it together," I mouth to myself. He doesn't hear. Or if he does, his only response is a slow smile that makes my stomach flip.
He settles between my thighs and the head of his glorious cock presses against my entrance. The pressure is firm, slow, and my body tenses on instinct. A sharp sting blooms and I suck air through my teeth. My fingers dig into his shoulders hard enough to leave marks.
He freezes. His whole body goes rigid above me, every muscle locked.
His eyes drop to my face and I watch the shift happen in real time.
His brows pull together. His lips part. His eyes widen and then soften into an expression that holds equal parts shock and tenderness and a protectiveness so fierce it cracks my chest down the center.
"You've never done this before." He says it carefully, like the answer might change everything. Yeah, he already knows the answer, but he's giving me room to say it out loud.
I hold his unwavering golden gaze. My bottom lip trembles. My body already told the truth and there's no point pretending otherwise. "No. I'm sorry if I gave you any other impression, which me just being here probably did. Not that it's a bad thing. It's just not my thing."
He pulls back. Not away, but enough to take his weight off me, and frame my face in both hands and study me.
His thumbs brush over my cheekbones. His eyes move across my features and I watch him recalculate, adjust, reorganize everything he thought he knew about the woman in his bed.
I've never seen a man recalculate so fast.
His jaw loosens. The furrow between his brows deepens. When he speaks, his voice is rough and gentle at the same time.
"Then we do this right." He drops his forehead to mine. "You tell me if anything hurts. You tell me if you want to stop. You tell me and I stop. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"Say it."
"I'll tell you."
He reaches between us and wraps his fist around his hard cock.
I bite down on my bottom lip and watch him guide himself to where I'm slick and untouched.
I can't look away as Massimo gives me all of him inch by agonizing inch. His eyes lock on my face, reading every flicker of pain and pleasure. The stretch of his cock pressing into me burns and I dig my nails into his back and breathe through the mix of pleasure-pain.
His chest presses against mine, skin to skin, and the heat of him covering me, surrounding me, filling me, is so overwhelming my eyes sting.
His jaw is clenched so tight the muscle jumps beneath his ear.
The cords in his neck stand taut. He's holding back and I can feel the restraint vibrating through his entire body.
Holding himself still while I adjust to him.
"Breathe, tesoro."
The word dissolves into my bloodstream. I breathe. The pain dulls. The fullness remains and beneath it a pressure builds that is new and overwhelming and makes my vision blur.
He moves. Slow, deep rolls of his hips that send waves of sensation crashing through me.
His hand slides from my jaw down the column of my throat and his fingers wrap around my neck.
His grip tightens. Not enough to cut off air, just enough that I feel the pressure of each finger against my pulse points and the steady squeeze of his palm narrowing around my throat.
My airway constricts just barely and every breath I pull comes slower, thinner, forced through the cage of his hand.
My pulse hammers against his fingers and I know he feels it.
He watches my face as his thumb presses into the soft spot beneath my jaw, tilting my chin up, forcing my eyes to his.
A man's hand around my throat. A man's hand controlling my body. Every rational thought left in my wrecked brain screams that this should send me back to that hallway. That I should fight. That I should run.
But these hands. God, these hands. The fingers pressing against my pulse right now are the same ones that came through that door when I was fifteen.
These hands have never taken from me. They have only ever given me safety, and right now they're giving me something I never thought I'd trust anyone enough to feel. Permission to let go completely.
The pressure of his grip anchors me to this bed, to this moment, to him. The control he holds over my next breath makes me wet and desperate and aching for more. I don't want him to let go. I want him to tighten his grip and take everything I have left to give.
A whimper escapes my lips. My hips roll against his, begging, and my hands fly up to grip his wrist. Not to pull him away. To hold him there.
My lashes fall over my cheeks.
"No. Look at me." His voice turns rough, commanding, and every nerve ending in my body responds.
I open my eyes and find his burning into mine from inches away.
His pupils are blown wide, dark swallowing whiskey, and the look on his face is barely leashed control.
"Stay with me. Don't you dare close those beautiful eyes, tesoro. "