Battered Not Broken (19 page)

He gripped her sweater and cami in both hands, then slipped them over her head, sending her hair sweeping over her shoulders as he set the garments aside on the arm of the couch. Afterward he made short work of her bra, unhooking the clasp and sliding the straps over her shoulders. When her breasts bounced free, an answering throb in her core tightened her pussy.

He cupped both her breasts, palming, caressing and squeezing until her clit swelled against her panties and the seam of her jeans, the little bit of friction her clothing provided a distinct but inadequate source of pleasure.

She straddled him fully, facing him as he sat on the couch, the movie forgotten.

He cradled one breast and lifted it, simultaneously lowering his head so that her nipple brushed his lips. It shrank, the areola pebbling as her nipple stood hard and ready for the demanding heat of his mouth.

He drew it past his lips and teeth, simultaneously caressing her other breast with his free hand, teasing her nipple with his fingers to the same rhythm he sucked the other.

She leaned into him, letting his cock press against the apex of her thighs, teasing her clit from beneath several interrupting layers of clothing. She rocked her hips, stirring up enough friction to make her core pull tight again.

He leaned back, releasing the nipple he’d had in his mouth and moaning, sliding a hand between their bodies.

In what seemed like less than a minute, she was naked, the jeans she’d wriggled out of with his help draped over the arm of the couch with her other clothing. Her panties rested on top of them, the soft lace wetted, temporarily stained a darker pink where the fabric had touched the lips of her pussy.

He cupped both her ass cheeks, urging her to straddle him again.

She complied, relishing the feel of his firm thighs beneath hers and the kiss of room-temperature air against her sex. It felt cool in comparison to her heated skin, a marked contrast to the wet heat that was escaping her, threatening to slicken the insides of her thighs.

He leaned back against the couch, his gaze trained on her breasts as he exhaled and pulled his jeans zipper down. After a moment of repositioning denim and cotton, his cock was free, the wide head peeking from above his fingers as he gripped his underwear in his fist, pulling it down. The sight of his knuckles scraping his shaft held Ally spellbound.

“Damn,” he breathed, one hand in his lap and the other on her hip.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m going to have to ask you to do the last thing I actually want you to do – let me up.”

She slid from his lap, unable to resist letting her fingers trail across the exposed tip of his erection.

“Be right back.” He rose and started toward the door to the right – his bedroom door. As he walked, his jeans rode sinfully low on his hips, threatening to slip below the muscled curve of his ass, exposing the untouched skin beneath the lower border of his tattoo.

When he returned, he held a small square package.

He sank onto the couch, taking the seat he’d so recently left. When he finished sheathing his cock in the tight, transparent sleeve, he reached for her. “Just like before,” he said, caressing the swell of one of her breasts. “I want to see and feel you come while you sit in my lap.”

She straddled him again, her nerves humming with satisfaction as she resumed their earlier position. Her inner walls quivered as she anticipated the girth of his shaft stretching them.

He was still dressed, the parted zipper of his jeans exposing his cock, but nothing else. The contrast of the raw erotic view and the fully-clad rest of his body prompted Ally to sink lower, widening her thighs so she could claim those thick, veined inches of exposed flesh with her own body.

He flexed his hips, sending the blunt tip of his erection sliding against her slick skin. “You’re so wet.” He slipped a hand between her legs, rubbing his fingers against her tingling lips as if he couldn’t resist feeling for himself. After teasing her for a few moments, he succumbed with a moan and gripped his shaft, angling his dick toward her entrance.

When he slid inside her, it felt every bit as astonishingly good as the first time. He tunneled through her channel, stretching its sides and fulfilling the throbbing ache that pounded inside it.

She leaned down, bracing herself with one hand against the back of the couch and the other against one of his shoulders as she let her lips brush the rim of his left ear. “I know.” Her voice trembled slightly as she made her admission, the thrill of telling the simple truth heightening her senses. “Thinking about what it will feel like when you slide inside me makes me so wet it hurts not to have you here.” She rocked her hips faintly, stirring the place where he was lodged inside her. “I’ve been thinking about it ever since Saturday morning.”

He growled like she was killing him with her words.

Meanwhile, satisfaction unfurled somewhere between her heart and her pussy. She wasn’t used to talking dirty – if what she’d said even counted as that – but she wanted him to know what that morning had meant to her. She couldn’t explain fully how their first time together had destroyed the little bit she’d known about sexual pleasure and plunged her into a new world where her sexuality was as much a part of her as eating, sleeping and breathing. But she could at least give him pieces of the truth and let him know that she’d enjoyed it, that he’d literally been on her mind 24/7 since.

He plied her with thrusts that were slow and deep-reaching, silent as she swayed in his lap, her nipples brushing his shirt at the end of each stroke.

“Will you think about this,” he breathed, “after you leave tonight? When you lie down in your own bed to sleep and when you wake up in the morning... Will you think about me inside you like this, Ally?”

Her throat trembled before she even managed to make a sound. She clutched his shoulder hard, letting her nails dig into his skin. “Yes.”

He breathed a deep sigh, like he was both relieved and turned-on by her answer. “Good. Because I’ll be thinking about you too. When I’m this deep inside you… Fuck, I don’t think I know what pain is. You feel so good. I won’t be able to think about anything but getting inside you again.” He thrust a hand between their bodies, rubbing her clit in an insistent massage, demanding that she respond with more than just words.

Like clockwork, her channel tightened and pulsed, squeezing his dick as he pushed inside her, hitting a spot that tore the breath right out of her lungs. She concentrated all her willpower on one simple task – bearing down.

He thrust deeper than ever as she widened her legs, sinking so low into his lap that her thigh muscles ached from the strain. It was worth it – the slight discomfort was overshadowed by intense, wrenching pleasure that wrung waves of sensation from every place his cock touched. She let her breath come wild and free, hitching when she tried and failed to say his name.

It was the first time anyone had ever given her pleasure that was literally too strong for words. The revelation gripped her like her orgasm, shaking her to her core, where he filled her. She threw the arm she’d braced against the couch around his neck and clung to him as she rode out the last few moments of her climax.

When it was over she kept holding on, liking the feel of the pulse in his neck beating against her bicep.

He continued to roll his hips below, sending little bolts of aftershock quivering through her with every stroke. “Fuck yeah…” The tiniest of tremors shot through his chest, causing his shoulder to shake briefly beneath her grip, and he picked up pace, driving each stroke deep and punctuating it with a ragged breath.

She rocked her hips, matching his rhythm as he tipped his head back, hot air rushing over his lips and sending strands of her hair dancing.

She could feel him come. It was evident in the way he tensed against her as energy seemed to surge out of nowhere and into his limbs and loins, allowing him to fuck her with an intensity that made her moan, and the way his cock seemed to have grown even harder inside her.

When he stopped, she unwrapped her arm from around his neck and relaxed her feral grip on his shoulder. The dusting of little crescent-shaped red marks she’d left there filled her with dual senses of satisfaction and faint regret. Satisfaction that evidence of her touch and the pleasure he’d given her would linger on his skin a while longer, and regret that she’d caused him pain, however slight.

Or had she? He’d said he didn’t know what pain was when he was buried inside her. Just thinking about those words made her head spin and her heart speed. Smoothing her fingertips over the marks as if she could wipe them away, she leaned in and brushed a kiss across his temple, dampening her lips with the faintest sheen of sweat and letting the edge of his butterfly bandage tickle one corner of her mouth.

Her thigh muscles quivered when she rose, slowly unsheathing him. When the solidness of his cock was gone from inside her body, the memory of pressure and hardness remained, causing her channel to ache pleasantly where he’d been.

When she settled beside him on the couch cushion, he removed the condom and rose to dispose of it, walking the short distance to the trashcan in the kitchen.

The movie was over, the credits scrolling across the screen. He didn’t mention it as he approached her again, tucking his softening cock back into his underwear and zipping his jeans.

“How’s your head?” she asked when he joined her on the couch again.

Despite what they’d just done, his gaze clung to her body, slowing over her curves and lingering on her breasts. “Fine.”

Instinctively, she reached for him, gently brushing his hair out of the way so she could see the little gash that was held shut by a single bandage. “Does it hurt?”

He shook his head, sending her fingers sweeping over the curve of his skull and through the thick of his hair. “The wound is barely an inch long, if that. I’ve had much worse. Don’t worry about it.”

The blue and purple whirl of bruising that extended from his hairline certainly looked painful, whatever he said. But then, he had a hundred times more scar tissue, at least, on his thigh, where his skin had been torn by shrapnel hurled through the air by an IED. Maybe the pain of his recent wound really did seem insignificant in comparison. She couldn’t say – she’d never sustained such an extreme injury and was incapable of knowing how one like it might change one’s perception of future, smaller hurts.

“Have you had any headaches – migraines – since Friday night?”

He caught her hand in his and lowered it, intertwining his fingers with hers. “No. I’ve been fine since then.”

“I read something over the weekend,” she said, resisting the urge to take a deep breath as she hoped that her eyes didn’t betray her nervousness. “Melissa’s sister had it, and I took a look – it was a medical pamphlet, about TBI. Her fiancé is in the Army Reserve and just came back from a tour of duty in Afghanistan.”

She tried to gauge his expression, but there wasn’t much change. Was that a sign in and of itself – was he preparing to stonewall her question? “I was wondering if that’s the cause of your migraines.” There, it was out.

Chapter 11

He still held her hand. One of her fingers brushed the inside of his wrist. She could feel his pulse there, beating strong and warm beneath skin that was surprisingly soft.

“Yeah. That’s what they diagnosed me with, anyway. After the blast.”

“When I read about it, I couldn’t help but think of you.”

His mouth twisted a little at one corner as he maintained eye contact with her. “You thought right. It didn’t seem like something to mention on a first or second date, you know? And then you saw what it can do… Still, most people don’t know what TBI is. Those three letters are just out-of-sequence pieces of the alphabet to them.”

“I didn’t know what it was either, before I saw that literature. I’ve spent some time researching it since then, trying to understand what it is.”