Beneath the Burn (36 page)

She nudged him backward two paces and his back hit the door. She hopped off the counter and her fingers followed the strip of hair from his naval to the close-trimmed patch below the spread of his fly. The anticipation fanning in her womb exploded into a fire. “Commando.” She swallowed. “Smart. No panty lines.”

He groaned something thick and indistinct.

She placed a kiss on the arch of his pecs and leaned back. “I want to see you in superhero briefs.”

A smile flitted across his mouth and he shook his head. Eyes locked on her hands, his thumb strolled up and down on her neck.

As tantalizing as his pants were, she wanted them off. She hadn’t willingly explored a man in three years and the thought of tasting him produced a rush of wet heat between her legs.

She pulled at his waistband and yanked it down the hard lines of his thighs. Her squat forced his hands to her head as his erection sprang free. Swollen and uncut, it curved up, waiting. She licked her lips.

His legs shook beneath her hands, but he didn’t drive her head forward. Rather he tried to pull her back. “Charlee, don’t do this.” His deep voice reverberated from her nipples to thighs.

Heat throbbed between her legs. Never had she experienced such a demanding desire as the one pulsating between them. Could he take her to the place she sought through punishing pain, where bygones and dead endings didn’t exist? Could he stretch her body and bruise her flesh until it was safe to let go?

A dark sea of thoughts stormed inside her as she curled her hand around the tip of his shaft. The Doms had coached her to focus on relinquishing control rather than making it about pain. She wanted both. She wanted to lash out with her safe word and use the pain to drown the sexual memories that always came when she released.

His erection jerked in her hand and her sick desires fissured, oiling her arousal and swelling her clit. What made it real made it shameful, and the overwhelming hunger for things she shouldn’t want rose, and rose, until a fever broke out through her body.

She looked up into his heavy-lidded eyes, gripped the soft uncircumcised skin and slid it downward, slowly releasing the folds as she reached the bed of wiry hair.

Could she do painless sex? She’d experienced it with one man, but Noah’s sweet nature came at a time in her life when she almost felt…healed. She would never appreciate that level of gentleness again. After his death and her second imprisonment, she was quite possibly more fucked up than the man trembling above her.

Startled out of her thoughts, she realized she was stroking him frantically, wringing her grip along his length, her other hand digging into the hard brick of his ass. His chin fell to his chest and his jaw stretched through his panting, spurring her to continue the pace.

The indentions of his muscles bunched over his torso, and veins bulged in his rigid arms. What a stunning sight. She wanted to crawl up his body and drive them both beyond their mental and tactile boundaries. Maybe she was already doing that. She
was
touching him. Was he cured? Or would he need a distraction every time she initiated touch in the future?

She laced her fingers together and hugged her palms around him. Squeezing up to collect pre-cum—slicking down, up, down—she lured ragged noises from the back of his throat. Maybe she could stroke him past the point of restraint until he wrenched her head back, bent her over the sink, and took whatever he pleased. God help her, she trembled to please him.

His chest heaved with his grunts and his hands tangled in her hair as he watched. “Charlee.” A plea. “It’s unreal…your hands…on me. I can’t believe how good it feels.”

Nuzzling the crown with her lips and nose, she inhaled the arousing blend of suede, musk, and man. “If the touch gives more than it takes, isn’t it always good?”

He stared at her like he was on top of a new world, looking over the edge. “Yeah, Charlee. You’re showing me that.” He tugged the lock of hair wrapped around his finger and jerked her head back. “My turn to give.”

The twinge from his tug simmered the ache between her legs. Oh, the pain he could give, it would free her. It
would
. “Harder.”

His brows lowered over narrowed eyes, and he unraveled his fingers from her hair.

Shit. He’d never agree to hurt her. Her shoulders slumped. But she still had
his
climax, and it would be something to behold. She took him into her mouth, circling her tongue and raising her eyes.

His jaw opened and closed in soundless groans with each pump of her mouth. After a few minutes, he cupped her neck with both hands and halted her movements. “Come up here.”

Not yet. She released him with a slippery pop. Her kisses glistened over his foreskin. “Do you tan in the nude?”

He laughed, but it strangled as she drew him back into her mouth and strengthened the suction. Gasping, he let go of her face to catch his sag toward the counter’s ledge behind her. “Enough.” He jerked his hips away.

She sat on her heels. “I want you to finish.”

“No.” In a half-crouch, he wedged his fingers under the backs of her thighs, shifted her around his hips, and sat her on the leather bench seat that hid the toilet. As he yanked up his pants to cover his gorgeous ass, rejection punched her in the gut. That was until he settled between her knees and pinned her with a scorching stare. “I want to look in your eyes and feel your gasps on my lips the first time I come in you.”

A viscid, foreign feeling adhered to her heart, gluing her to him from the inside out. She closed her eyes. Their unexplainable bond took root over the three years that separated them, but in one day, they had knocked down a physical barrier, and he was weakening emotional walls she hadn’t acknowledged in a long time. “This is madness, Jay.”

He kissed her softly. “The comforts of madness are plenty. Enjoy them with me.”

When she opened her eyes, his were regarding her with a strength of energy that pulled her mouth back to his. The air around them stirred with their breaths. His lips rolled over hers, his whiskers abraded, and the fingers along her spine emitted electric shocks. His tongue moved in a rhythmic tenor, flicking and twirling. She rocked her hips and dragged her nails over his scars before she could stop.

“I want to keep going.” The scratch in his voice was at odds with the gentle stroke of his knuckle sliding over her cheek, down her neck, and circling her breastbone. “I don’t know if…” He pulled his hand away and rubbed his eyebrow. “I mean, I know you’ve been working through some things in your…sessions.” He gritted his teeth and looked away.

She touched his jaw, tried to smooth out the stiffness. “Outside of contractual sex—” His eyes squeezed shut, and she rushed on. “I honestly don’t know how I’d respond. I want to try.”

He interlaced his fingers with hers on his face and pressed a kiss on her palm. Then his eyes flashed open, branding her with their heat. “We are
not
too fucked up to make this work.”

It was a vehement promise. Holding his face, she slid a hand across his shoulder blade and traced the first raised edge she encountered. “Your pain brought us together.”

Tenderness melted his eyes. “I came to you that night to erase it, so I wouldn’t have to remember.” His cheeks lifted beneath her hand. “And you gave me something I never want to forget.” Shaking his head, his gaze shifted to her mouth, down her neck…

Her nipples tightened and her breasts grew heavy under his scrutiny. He moved his hands to glide them over her arms. Then he cupped them. First, one breast, then the other. The muscles in his back rippled under her caress and his breathing picked up.

He rotated his hips against the seat edge, his hands lifting and molding her. She caught sparks from each tug and twist, the sensations zipping straight to her womb.

Panting, he lowered his mouth and laved a nipple with the flat of his tongue. She arched her back. He flicked it with teasing laps. “I’ve wanted to do this since you first took your shirt off in your apartment.”

The air whispered over her kiss-soaked skin, chilling her. “Sorry about my indecent—”

“I’m not. I’ve never been this attracted to anyone. No one compares to you, Charlee.” He slid his torso up hers and found her lips. “This is what your three-year absence did to me.” He removed her hand from his back and pressed it against his erection. Warm and bare, pushing through the unfastened zipper, it seeped moisture on her palm.

“So what you’re saying is it’s been a
hard
three years?” She squeezed him.

Pressing his face into the crook of her neck, he groaned a strangled chuckle. “Funny thing is—Oh Jesus, I can’t tell you this.”

Tracing his ear with her tongue, she worked her hand over him in long twisting strokes.

“Ah fuck, you have to stop doing that.” He gripped her wrist, stopping her, and slid his mouth to her injured earlobe. The gentle kiss he placed there bathed her in tingles.

“Tell me what you were going to tell me.”

He rested his forehead on her shoulder. “I used to have the damnedest time maintaining an erection. Then I met you and…” He let out a shaky breath. “I’ve been hard for three years.”

She knew he hadn’t been celibate for years. He was trying to tell her he hadn’t been satisfied. Determined to fix that, she shook off his restraining hand and rotated her wrist, winding and compressing him with steady pumps.

“Unngh. Charlee, stop.” The force in his voice matched the lurch of his hips as he broke away. “Keep doing that and I’m going to come so hard, I’ll blow all the clouds from the sky.”

She burst into laughter. “Oh my God, that’s the cheesiest—”

His punishing kiss stole her capacity to think. “Ready to feel?”

The throb in her pussy ignited. “Don’t be gentle.”

47

Jay curled both hands around Charlee’s neck and attacked her mouth. His sudden aggression sizzled every cell in her body. He tasted and teased, deepening the kiss and swallowing her gasps with each thrust of his tongue. Their breaths became one and their hips rocked, reaching to close the gap between them.

The spicy scent of his mouth and skin overpowered her senses and magnified her hunger. She wanted him to bite her. Hard. She pulled at his waistband. Wanted him closer. Trembled to pull him inside.

He consumed her lips, pushing his tongue against hers, giving her glimpses of his gorgeous smile between nips. His hands moved over her shoulders and down her arms. When they bypassed her tingling breasts, she groaned in his mouth.

A laugh rolled over his tongue, half-suppressed by his rough exhale. His hands lowered to her belly, tickling a squeal from her, and slipped beneath the elastic at her hips.

He dipped his tongue for another taste and fluttered kisses over her cheekbone to her ear. “Lift.”

Body vibrating and head spinning, she arched her hips. Her leggings and panties lowered with his hands, bunching at her thighs.

“You’re shivering.” His naked chest pressed against hers, hot and silky with sweat.

“I’m not cold.” She combed her fingers through his hair and held onto his head as his nose stroked down her neck and over her breast.

Holding her gaze, he moved down her body and ran his lips over her stomach. Then he lowered his eyes.

Inhaling deeply, he twirled a finger through the wet hair between her legs. “Christ, Charlee. The red is natural?”

She nodded, slumping back. Her nipples ached so badly, she grabbed them, wiggling them up and down with pinched fingers to release some tension.

“Aw…God.” Eyes on her hands, he gripped the base of his dick and squeezed, his shoulders curling forward and his head dropping. Breathless seconds passed. Once he seemed to compose himself, he bent awkwardly in the confined space, tackled the laces on her boots, and yanked them off.

The rustling descent of her leggings and panties mingled with their heavy breaths. That done, her garments smacked the wall behind him. His hands shook as he spread her legs for his view.

A spasm hit her as suddenly as her thoughts, and she tried to close her legs. He was too close. He would see too much. Her scars…her shame.

He scooted her ass to the edge of the seat and looked up out of hooded eyes. “You okay?” He stroked a finger over her slit as he studied her face. It slid easily through her folds and chased away some of her fear. As long as he didn’t look inside. Her legs, bent over his muscular forearms, trembled with each touch. A wanton noise escaped her lips.