“I didn’t forget. There’s room for her. Besides, your apartment is a shithole.”
Harsh. Even worse, he was right. “You’re completely frustrating.”
He raised one eyebrow, which somehow proved my words irrelevant in one smooth swoop.
I set down my fork, taking his offer seriously. “We barely know each other.”
“We know each other enough,” he said. “From the first it was different.”
It was only the truth. Ever since my sordid proposition at the bar, there had been something between us. A spark, or maybe just recognition that he could handle my brand of crazy. I’d tried to ignore it and had even gone back to the bar to disprove it, but nothing had worked. What was this thing that felt like trust but looked like lust?
“But why?” I said, desperate to deny him or find some excuse to accept. “Just tell me why you’d even want that?”
“I have reasons.”
“But you aren’t going to tell them to me.”
“It’s okay, what happened before.” He pulled me close. “You’re with me now.”
The words were pitched perfectly, but they bounced off the wall of secrets I kept between us. I’d left out the most important part. What would he do if he found out?
I shivered, and he encircled me in his arms. Keeping me, for now.
“Can you spend the night?” he asked.
“Yes.” I had already put Bailey to sleep in Shelly’s bed. This was the third time in as many weeks, but Shelly graciously claimed not to mind about the loss of income.
“Good,” he murmured.
He took me to his bedroom upstairs. It was just as plain as all the other rooms, just as casual. Home, but I couldn’t think about that. Instead I tried to psych myself up. Please him, pay my dues, when all I really wanted to do was have sex with him. I wanted to rip off my clothes and his. In my wildest thoughts I wanted to push his face down between my legs and tell him to do that thing again.
Instead I just stood there in his bedroom like I’d never been inside a man’s bedroom before. Which was almost true, except for Andrew’s.
He turned down the sheets. When he glanced back, his eyes softened. “Come here.”
I averted my eyes while he tugged my dress over my head. He gestured to the bed, and I kicked off my shoes and climbed in, still in my underwear and bra. After stripping down to his boxers, he followed me in.
I wished I didn’t feel this strange nervousness. It felt almost like a wedding night. How awful.
Colin turned me away from him. I expected him to take off my bra or fuck me from behind, but he was working from a totally different playbook, because what he did was pull me in close to his body and cuddle. Christ, we were spooning. And not as a sexual position. Although there was a certain hardness pressing into my ass, it was doing absolutely no nudging, no rocking, and no thrusting. Whoever heard of a hard, docile cock?
Ah, hell. We’d skipped the wedding night and gone straight to married.
Well.
I pushed my ass back slightly, gratified by the catch in his breath. His arm tightened around my waist, but his hips remained still. Another nudge of my ass, this time triggering a twitch of that hardness.
Yes, that’s it. I rocked back into him. He had wanted me, the slut. And sluts were for sex. No more thinking, no more feeling. No more worry. At least for tonight, I got to play the slut and still be safe.
When I felt his hand drift around to my hips, my lips curved into a smile. Gotcha. Then his hands skimmed over my stomach and beneath my panties, and my smile slipped and my eyelids lowered.
Rough fingers prodded me open. One finger worked inside me, a little deeper each time my hips rocked into his hand. And thank God—finally!—his hips pushed against mine. At the knowledge that he was into this, a participant, my mind slipped a little closer into that blissful space of submission. But God, I wanted so much more. He was capable of more.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered.
“You want this, don’t you?” He repeated his words from earlier, still worrying over my consent. No, nothing like the others. Tears sprung into my eyes, and I was grateful he couldn’t see them.
“I want this. I want you.” I could only hope he took the thickness of my voice for arousal. “I want you to give it to me hard. Be rough, Colin. Do it.” Even before I’d finished speaking, his fingers inside me and his cock rubbing against my ass sped up, roughened.
His other arm slipped under me, holding me flush against him. As if I was going anywhere. But I was totally cocooned now, at his mercy. His fingers hit a certain spot inside me, and a soft cry escaped me. My hips jerked in a frantic rhythm, reaching for it, begging.
But it wasn’t his fingers rubbing me that took me over. It was the sharp pant of his breath on my neck. His excitement, mine. And as my climax took me, I shook in his arms, falling apart, held together.