Singe (Guardian Protection #1)

He glowered down at me. “No, what’s mean is you prancing your sexy ass out here in nothing but a pair of panties”—he caught my hand and used it to cup his thick erection—“getting me hard as a fucking rock, knowing I can’t do the first damn thing about it until I’m done for the day.”

I scowled and jumped off the table. “You could do something about it. You are just choosing not to. I have no sympathy for you.”

He scoffed. “Bullshit. Leo knows I’m fucking you. But he’s not paying me to fuck you. When I’m at work, I’m at work, Rhion.”

Keeping my glare up, I walked to my robe and snatched it off the floor. “Perhaps you should start doing your work upstairs, then, so I don’t distract you.”

He fisted his hands at his hips, his cock tenting the front of his pants, and replied, “Perhaps I should.”

I shrugged the robe on, roughly pulling my hair out of the back as I said, “Perhaps you should do that now.”

His jaw ticked as he watched me tie it closed. “Perhaps I will.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

Unmoving, we defiantly stared at each other.

His emerald-greens locked on my baby-blues.

I licked my lips.

He adjusted his cock.

My nipples hardened.

His face flashed with conflict.

My hands went back to the belt of my robe.

His gaze darkened, honing in on the movement.

I untied the belt and allowed it to fall down my shoulders until it pooled on the ground at my feet.

His breathing sped.

My heart raced.

“Fuck,” he growled.

And then we both exploded forward, not stopping until our bodies had collided and our mouths had connected.

Palming my ass, he lifted me off my feet, and I folded my legs around his waist. Our hands and lips were frenzied as he carried me down the hall. He bumped into the wall, sending pictures crashing to the ground and glass shattering everywhere. Neither of us gave them a second thought as he proceeded to my room.

With three long strides, his legs swallowed the distance to my bed, where he dropped me, and just as quickly, he rolled me onto my stomach and stripped my panties down my legs.

“Ass up,” he demanded.

The sound of him undoing his belt and then his zipper made me shiver. Desire sank low in my belly when his wallet landed on the bed beside me, followed by the familiar crinkle of a condom.

Smiling, I pushed up onto my knees, taunting him with a sway of my hips as I watched him roll the latex down his shaft.

“Wipe that fucking grin off your face,” he growled. His palm landed on my ass with a slap that made me jump. “This can’t happen again.”

I moaned as the bite of his hand traveled over my entire body, nipples to clit.

I’d barely recovered when he drove in.

Hard. Fast. Deep.

Stretching me beautifully.

“Jude!” I cried as he slid his hand into the back of my hair and pulled, forcing me to push up onto my arms and arch my back.

His other hand roughly cupped my breast, and he nipped at my earlobe. All the while, his hips never faltered in finding a punishing—and magnificent—rhythm.

“My job is to keep you safe, Butterfly. If I’m fucking you, I’m not planning.” With an intoxicating tug on my hair, he planted himself at the hilt. “If we have no plans, shit will go wrong.”

A strangled moan tore from my throat, the biting pain at my scalp swirling with the intense pleasure of his cock filling me.

“Jude,” I breathed.

“Shit goes wrong, it might not just be scars this time. I could lose you.”

“More,” I begged, circling my hips.

Another tug on my hair.

A slow withdrawal before a deep thrust.

An explosion of euphoria short-circuited my wanton brain.

His voice was gruff as he declared, “I will not fail you again.”

The mixture of pain and pleasure was my favorite delicacy, but his words were salt in a wound.

The same wounds that covered twenty-seven percent of my body.

The ones that had healed long ago—at least for me.

One sentence felt like he’d taken a sandblaster to them all.

“You didn’t fail me the first time,” I breathed, my orgasm rising to the surface even as my heart ached in my chest.

“I did. Because I wasn’t fucking prepared. That shit will not happen again,” he groaned.

The peak of my high had begun to fade out of my reach as tension built in my chest. “That’s not true,” I argued, my voice thick with emotion. Reaching back, I caught his wrist and tugged it around to the smooth, unmarred skin at my stomach. “You did this, Jude.”

“Don’t.” He jerked his hand away.

But I intertwined our fingers and moved them up to my pounding heart. “You feel that? You did that, too. The fire—”

“We are not fucking talking about the fire while I’m inside you!” he seethed.

I clenched my muscles so they pulsed around his length. “We’re always talking about the fire, honey. It doesn’t have to be words, but every time my heart beats, every time air fills my lungs, every time I wake up in a warm bed and not six feet in the ground, it’s a conversation about that night.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he rasped.

“I’m alive,” I breathed, reaching back and gently resting my hand on the scars at the back of his neck.

His whole body tensed, and an agonizing groan rumbled in his chest. “Shut up, Butterfly,” he ordered on a pained whisper.

I inched my fingers up and brushed the tips over the ridges of his hardened flesh. “And that’s because of you, Jude.”

“Jesus, fuck,” he muttered, his patience snapping.

Releasing my hair, he folded over me, forcing me to slap my hand down to keep from faceplanting into the mattress. His ribbed abs and sculpted chest came down flush with my back, his shoulders rolled forward, and his weight bore down on me. Shoving his agile fingers between my legs, he imprisoned me against the bed with his tall frame.

I threw my head back, the erotic combination of simultaneously being trapped and freed triggering my release to rear up again.

His hips began a torturous pace, coaxing me closer to the edge, all thoughts of the fire disappearing as I became lost in Jude.

His mouth at my neck, biting and sucking, while our growls and moans joined in a feral symphony.

Angry.

Raw.

Primal.

Over and over, he mercilessly drove in, stretching the invisible rubber band within me tighter each time.

“Jude!” I cried as my orgasm tore through me, slingshotting me into oblivion.

My body shook as the aftershocks ravaged me, but Jude never slowed.

Not his fingers. Not his cock. Not even his mouth.

“No place I’d rather be, Rhion,” he panted. “All day. Every day. Never doubt that.”

I pressed my ass higher against his hips in unspoken understanding.

“But this…this is not going to keep you safe.” He finished on a drawn-out rumble as his body went taut. “Oh fuck, baby,” he groaned, collapsing on top of me, his weight crushing me, as he twitched and jerked through the wave of his release.

“Can’t. Breathe,” I squeaked out, and he quickly pushed up onto his elbows to hover above me.

We both lay there for several minutes, too sated to move as we caught our breath.

Jude finally broke the silence with an ordered, “Say you understand.”