“Uhm. Sure.”
Without turning around, he held the open box over the floor and dumped it upside down. Colorful O's tumbled around his feet. He stepped side-to-side, crunching them into a satisfying dust of sugar.
Her breathing grew loud and rushed behind him. “Oh my God.” Then louder. “Why?” She released an ear-splitting shriek. “I just mopped the floor!”
And he would clean it later. He wasn't a damned slob. Sure, he slacked on the laundry and didn't give a fuck which shelves the cups went on. But she wouldn't find moldy food or mouse droppings or hoarding stashes of crap falling out of the closets. He pivoted slowly to check on her.
Pressed into the gap of the open fridge door, arms wrapped around her rib cage, shoulders curled in, and eyes wildly darting over the floor, she definitely struggled to hold it together. He was about to make it worse.
He emptied the last of the box, tossed it on the mess, and strode toward her with an air of calm and focus. His unyielding grip on her elbow shuffled her sideways as he closed the fridge. Then he backed her into the counter and put his face into hers. “You will not clean up after me.”
Her strong-willed chin appeared, jutting up and out, ready to fight. “I can't live like this. This” —she thrust a trembling finger at the floor— “is not okay.”
“That's right. So here's how it's going to be.” He clutched the counter on either side of her hips, arms straight, with two feet of tension rotating between them. “As long as you are obsessively clean, I'm going to be obsessively not clean. For every inch you give, I'll match it. We'll eventually meet in the middle.” He lowered his head so she could see his eyes. “Got me?”
She didn't look at him, her gaze locked-and-loaded on the floor as if waiting for the crumbs to sprout hundreds of tiny stingers and attack. He knew what was coming, tipped off by the slow deep inhale and the twitch below her eye, and he let it happen.
Her knees bent fast, her body dropping to the floor. Free from the corral of his arms, she scrambled to the mess, sweeping and scooping, her breaths rushing in her frenzy to shove tiny handfuls into the box.
With an even pulse and loose muscles, he lowered to sit beside the huffing tornado. Cereal crumbled beneath his ass and legs as he leaned his back against the cabinet. She didn't seem to notice him, too consumed with black and white, linear numbers, and clean floors...her tragic need to perfect everything.
He'd had enough. She didn't weigh more than a buck-ten soaking wet, so it didn't take much effort to drag her, chest-down, across his thighs. With his forearms braced on her back and legs, she was effectively pinned.
Furious eyes flashed over her shoulder, and her legs kicked uselessly against the floor. “Let me go,” she snarled, her fists still clutching handfuls of cereal.
Without moving the arm on her back, he yanked her shorts to her knees. Beautiful, bare, and blotched with tiny pink bruises, her ass flexed and prickled with goose bumps. The arnica gel he'd rubbed into her muscles the previous night would've reduced a lot of the swelling and stiffness. But he caressed a palm over the silky skin to make sure.
Her glutes didn't flinch, her fight still concentrated in the thrashing of her arms and legs. And what a fight, all muscle and soft skin and seductive curves writhing on his lap, her ass right there for the taking.
He was already hard—it was inevitable. He shifted her hips so that her clit lay directly over the swell of his erection through the open zipper, ensuring that every wriggle would stimulate her. And him. Then he waited for the next buck of her ass.
It rose. Fell. She gasped as her clit hit his dick. Fuck.
He swung his arm, laying into her round cheek with a solid, stinging smack. She writhed, the movement grinding her bundle of nerves against him, tormenting him. He spanked her again, over and over. Her flesh heated beneath his hand, her breathing catching and releasing, growing louder, and staggering into a chorus of moans, hers and his.
After the fifth whack of his hand, he trailed the tips of his fingers over the glowing burn. “Who am I, Amber?”
Her arms slid across the floor, the cereal evidently forgotten beneath them, as she snarled with a thick voice, “Van Quiso. Filthy spawn of the devil.”
He gave her five more fiery strokes of his palm, harder and more concentrated than the first five. Then he pinched the heated sore flesh. “Try again.”
She released a hiccupping wail, her attempt to squirm away from his grip fruitless. “Mm-m-master.”
“Good girl.” He glided a finger between her legs, slipping through her slick heat and thrusting to the knuckle. Tight, pulsating muscles gripped him, sucking him in, speeding his pulse.