“Is this what you need?” he says, thrusting into me. The sound of our naked flesh slapping together echoes in my ears as he grabs a fistful of my hair, jerking my head back. “Is this what you need?” he repeats, his voice a growl as he scrapes his teeth along my neck.
“Yes.” I don’t bother holding back my moan, my back arching as I melt against him. I love the sting at my scalp from his strong grip. With each tug, he lights a fire in me, burning brighter. I’m going to come again. “Don’t stop,” I pant. “Ryan, please—fuck me. Never stop.”
Never stop trying to get closer to me.
Never stop breaking down my walls.
Never stop saying I’m yours.
Please, God, just never stop.
He cries out, hammering into me from behind. Then he suddenly lets go of my hair, and it leaves me feeling weightless. I’m reeling, my hands searching for a better grip. The hand that was in my hair snakes around my neck, and again, my orgasm flickers hotter and stronger. I’m right fucking there. I just need a little more…
“Do it,” I beg, rocking my hips against him. I drop a hand down to my clit, working the sensitive bud as his fingers tighten at my throat. “Do it,” I say again. “Ryan, squeeze. Choke me, baby. I want you to—”
“Oh, fuck,” he groans behind me, both hands going to my neck as he gently squeezes.
Our hips slam together, and I work my clit, centering all my feeling on his hands at my throat, restricting my air supply. “More,” I rasp. “Please—God—”
His hands tighten as he cries out in agony and ecstasy, trying to hold back his orgasm.
“Hold on,” I gasp. “Not yet—”
His body folds over mine, losing all sense of rhythm as he teeters on that edge, waiting to fall. “Please, Tess. God, baby, please—I’m dying—”
“Now,” I cry.
He drops his hands away from my throat and they grip the counter to either side of my hands. He pounds into me once, twice more, and then he’s crying out, coming inside me. I’m already there, my whole body wracked with trembling as my pussy holds him like a vise. It’s tearing through me, leaving me breathless and weak, standing here on shaky legs.
As soon as the high crests, I begin the fall, tumbling down off orgasm mountain into serenity sea. I don’t even realize I’m crying until Ryan is bent over me, soothing me with his hands and his kisses. “I will never hurt you,” he says between kisses, his fingers ghosting over the place he was just squeezing tight. “Tess, I want you. I only want you.” He says it over and over again. “There is no one else. Only you. God, just let me want you.”
I lie there, my chest pressed against the counter, my sweaty cheek resting on the cool granite. His warm, naked body surrounds me as he whispers sweet nothings, his hands touching every part of me he can reach. So gentle. So tender.
He wants me. He worships me. I think he might love me.
I give him the truth I denied him earlier, the truth our moment of joining has revealed. It’s plain as day for anyone to see, but it deserves to be said all the same. Linking his fingers with mine, I bring his hand to my lips, kissing his knuckles. “I want you too. Ryan, I want you.”
53
“So, how did you two meet exactly?”
I glance sharply across the table at Rachel. She’s wedged into the booth between Ilmari and Jake. I’m in the corner on our side, Ryan next to me, and Caleb on the end. It’s Friday and we’re all enjoying a decadent sushi lunch before the guys have to report downtown for some media event arranged by Poppy.
Ryan asked the question. In his defense, Rachel left the door wide open by cracking a joke about the time we were kicked out of a spin class for hacking the Bluetooth speaker and changing the teacher’s god-awful techno music.
Rachel snatches up her Diet Coke. “Umm…in Cincinnati.”
“Duh, we all know that, Seattle,” Jake teases, taking the last salmon nigiri off the sushi boat with his chopsticks. “He asked how you met. Not where.”
“She knows exactly what he asked,” Caleb says from the table’s end, grabbing the last soft-shell crab roll. “She’s deflecting,” he adds, dipping it in soy sauce.
“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” I say.
Ryan glances between us. “What am I missing? Is it a state secret or something?”
“It’s not a secret,” I reply, taking a sip of my iced tea. “It’s just a little embarrassing.”
“It’s not embarrassing,” Rachel counters.
I set my drink down. “I was stumbling drunk in a gutter, okay? Rachel literally pulled me up out of the gutter, like I was a stray cat.”
Around the table, the guys all go still.
“It wasn’t quite as dramatic as that,” Rachel says.
“It was,” I press. “It was like that scene out of Breakfast at Tiffany’s where she chases after the cat in the rain. Rachel appeared looking like…well, her,” I say with a wave across the table. “I think you were even wearing the black dress and the pearl earrings. Meanwhile, I was the stinky, wet cat hiding in the gutter.”
“Why were you in a gutter?” Jake asks, his kind eyes locked on me.
I purse my lips, trying to suppress the memories of what is arguably one of the worst nights of my life. No such luck. Opening that mental door has it all sweeping back in. I can almost feel the cold rain on my skin.
“It was my birthday,” I begin. “I was supposed to be at my not-so-surprise party, but I chose to get drunk and stumble down the streets of Cincinnati instead.”
“It was my first night in the city,” Rachel adds. “The sport clinic took all the new residents out for dinner, hence my fancy duds.”
“Why didn’t you want to go to your birthday party?” Ryan asks, giving me his full attention.
I clear my throat, unabashedly holding his gaze. “Well, seeing as earlier that afternoon I caught my husband with his pants down in his office, choking his secretary with his dick, I wasn’t feeling in all that festive of a mood. Especially not once I got to the surprise party and saw her blowing on a noisemaker with the same lips she used to blow my husband. So yeah, I bailed through the bathroom window and took myself drinking instead.”
“Jesus.” With a glare, Jake glances around the table at his partners. “If any of you ever do that to me, I’m just setting the building on fire. You’ve been fucking warned.”
“I’m sorry, Tess,” Ryan says, his hand brushing my thigh.
I shift away, snatching for my drink again. “It all worked out in the end,” I say, going for a casual tone. “Rachel took me back to her hotel, dried me off, and tucked me in on her very uncomfortable sofa. I think I cried in her arms for two hours, threw up in the bathtub, and in the morning, we ate our weight in French toast. We’ve been best friends ever since.”
Rachel gives me a weak smile. It’s hard to think about where we started and not feel haunted by that most broken version of myself. That was Tess Owens at rock-freaking-bottom. Hopeless, joyless, friendless. I was too angry and embarrassed to go crawling back to Troy, back to the house that never felt like a home. I was ready to freeze in the gutter instead. I really did feel lower than a cold, wet alley cat.
But then Rachel was there, smiling down at me like a dark-haired angel. She held out her hand and literally pulled me from my misery. She took all those shattered, broken pieces of me and helped me hold them together with tape and glue. We moved in together, we cooked together, shopped for furniture and groceries. We made margaritas in our underwear and danced in the kitchen. And god but we laughed.
She’s a doctor, right? She knows how to diagnose a patient and prescribe the proper medicine. In my case, the cure to the bottomless shame and despair I felt over my failed marriage was rib-cracking, spleen-rupturing levels of uncontrollable laughter.
And meaningless sex with hot women.
Oh, and copious amounts of Thai food.
“You’ve come so far, Tess,” Rachel says from across the table. “I haven’t seen you this happy in a long time,” she adds with a smile at Ryan. “Jacksonville is good for you.”
“So is sex with hunky hockey players,” Caleb teases. “Ouch—” He hisses, glaring at Mars, who probably just kicked him under the table.
“Yeah, well you would know,” Rachel teases him right back.