Breathe Me In (13 page)

“What? No.” Her hand went back into my hair and tugged, and I wasn’t sure if she meant it as ironic or not. “Kane. The hair pulling and the biting was because I felt all this…” she gestured to her chest. “Desire. Like, I didn’t even know what to do with it. I’ve never been turned on like that. Ever. I just needed to yank my way through it.”

Was she lying? Probably. But then again, you couldn’t fake a wet pussy. Well, maybe you could. But she didn’t have the money to fund a bottle of lube.

“Why should I believe you?”

“Let me show you.”

Her eyes did look like they were glassy with lust. I figured you could fake that too, but unless you were a porn star, you probably couldn’t fake that moment during orgasm when a woman got really wet. Did I want to play this game? My dick certainly did. But what did my brain tell me?

Nothing that I was willing to listen to.

“Fine. Show me.”

I wasn’t even sure what the hell had compelled me to be honest with Kane. It was just so hard to lie when I looked at him. He oozed integrity. I didn’t want him to think I had been faking my attraction to him. If anything, I owed him big time for showing me that I could actually enjoy sex. That somewhere, buried inside me, was still a woman. Not just a stupid girl struggling to survive with nothing more than grit and determination. But a woman, who was whole.

Maybe, somewhere in my subconscious, it had occurred to me that if I wanted to get, I had to give. Whether that meant honesty, or affection, or pleasure, it didn’t matter. I couldn’t spend my life in a defensive posture and still expect to get any of those things in return. It mattered to me that Kane, who had shown enough interest in another human being’s situation to make sure Asher and I had a meal, and who had agreed to meet with me despite my rude and weird behavior more than once, knew that I was in fact seriously, painfully, aroused by him.

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” I told him. “I’ve never been good at being sexy.”

“You’re plenty sexy. And I don’t want a show. I don’t want choreography. I want you being you.” His voice was low, rough.

I could feel his erection under my ass and I traced his bottom lip with my finger, my chest rising and falling with both desire and anxiety. His masculinity excited me. Kane gave off the feeling that he could handle anything. He could fire a gun, chop wood, change a diaper. The modern everyman.

Shifting so I could sit facing him, I put one knee on either side of his thighs and leaned in towards him. The apex of my thighs merely brushed his erection, but didn’t make any sort of noteworthy contact. Just a tease, and yet, it made me want him even more. I kissed Kane, slowly, languidly, tasting the inside of his mouth with my tongue, trying to let go, trying to get him to take me. It was a nice kiss, but he didn’t react much. This was harder than I thought. It felt calculated, not spontaneous.

Running my hands over his chest, I just kept at it, wishing for some sort of seductress wand to appear in my hand. Little help here.

There was a knock on the door. Not exactly what I had been hoping for, but truthfully, I was grateful for the interruption. I pulled back. “I take it that’s the pizza,” I murmured.

“I would imagine so.” He lifted me off of him and stood up, adjusting his cock in his jeans.

Well. That was something. At least I could inspire a boner in him. But I couldn’t seem to inspire him to do anything about it. Which was stupid. He wanted me to do something about it, to prove that I wanted him. He wasn’t denying he wanted me. God, when had I become so neurotic about guys? Not guys. Just this guy.

Flopping sideways on the couch, I propped my head up with my hand and sighed. I stared at Kane’s butt in his jeans as he opened the door to his apartment and spoke to the pizza deliveryman. The guy actually glanced over at me and gave me a tentative smile. I smiled weakly back out of politeness. I really kind of wanted to give him the finger. He was about my age, cute in a nerdy way. It was probably easy for him to have sex. He didn’t get neurotic about it. I rolled onto my back and sighed, staring up at the ceiling. I couldn’t face people. I couldn’t face Kane.

The front door closed and I could sense Kane moving towards me. There was a smack when he dropped the pizza box down on the coffee table but I refused to turn my head and look.

“Why are you pouting?” he asked. “Don’t you like mushrooms or something?”

Was he for real? He thought I was upset about the pizza toppings? I turned my head and frowned at him. “I don’t give a shit what is on the pizza.”

“Then what do you care about?” he challenged, hand on his hip. “Tell me, Anya. Tell me what you care about.”

Having him stare me down like that made me want to either run away or lash out. Both were methods I’d used to cope over and over throughout my life. But if I took off now, like I had two weeks ago, that would only prove to myself that I wasn’t capable of growing, of changing. Of giving. He had a right to ask me what the hell I was thinking. What I was doing. I sat up.

“I care about you,” I said, fiercely. “I care about your opinion of me.”

“My opinion of you hasn’t changed since I first met you,” he said. “I think you’re a survivor and a great mother. I think you’re defensive and prickly and sexy as hell. I think you’re mistrustful but I also think once someone earns your trust, they have your loyalty forever. I think that you’re a lot of things but what I don’t think you are is a girl who sits on the couch and pouts like a brat.”

No, I wasn’t. He was fucking right about that. The way he described me, he almost made me sound… worthy. Like I was worthy. He was hot and sexy and I wanted to taste him, touch him. Blend my body with his. I stood up and yanked my shirt off over my head. “You’re right. I don’t pout on the couch.”

I moved around the coffee table so fast that when I reached to put my arms around his neck I slammed into him, knocking him back off his heels. I kissed him, hard. Fingers entwined in the hair at the nape of his neck, I tore my lips off his. “I want you so much. I don’t understand it, but I like it. I like you. And you make me so hot and horny that I want to climb on and ride you until I come.”

With each word I spoke his eyes darkened and his grip on my forearms tightened. “Then ride me until you come.”

He ripped my bra off. There was no other way to describe it. There was just lots of yanking and snapping and suddenly it was on the floor and his mouth was over my nipple, sucking hard. What was it about us that spawned rough? I didn’t know, but I loved it. Kane made me feel so desirable, so out of control, in the best way possible. I grappled with his shirt, wanting to feel his skin, his muscular chest.

“Get this off,” I said, when the thick henley shirt kept sliding back down over my hands, frustrating the hell out of me.

Kane used one hand at the back of his neck to jerk it all the way off.

I drank in the view of him eagerly. “You have such a good body.”

He was already taking his jeans off. “Ride it. Ride me.”

My fingers were trembling. I could feel the heat from his body radiating towards mine. My hair was in my eyes but I ignored it, wanting to join us sooner than later. Wanting him now. I’d worn leggings and they came off easily, landing on the floor inside out in a ball of black cotton. Kane reached out and took the waistband of my panties. I expected him to skim them down over my hips but instead he ripped them with one hard yank.

“What the fuck?” I breathed, shocked. Who did that? And God, it was hot.

“Sorry, I was impatient.”

Oh, yes, he was. He was already cupping my pussy with his hand, the heel rubbing my clit in a teasing up and down motion. And I was impatient too because I rubbed against him like a needy cat, wanting him to touch me more, to stroke inside me.

So I pressed the top of his shoulders down. “Get down on the floor, Kane.” He had carpet. We could make this work.

He bent down, going onto his knees and taking me with him. We fell on the floor in a tangle of legs and arms, and the minute we landed, I kissed him over and over, breathing hard, my touch more enthusiastic than skilled. They were deep kisses, with lip biting and hot breath. I was half lying, half sitting on him and without warning, he slapped my ass. Hard. I narrowed my eyes at him. He gave me a smirk.

Then spanked me again.

“Stop doing that,” I said.

“You can take it. I bet you can take a lot of things.”

“I can take your cock, if that’s what you mean.” I was moving my hips so that I was sliding over the length of him, not taking him inside, but teasing us both with the slick torture. I reached down between us and grabbed the length of him, so that I could move the tip back and forth over my clit. I wasn’t sure what compelled me to do that but it seemed like a good idea and damn, was I right.

He groaned. I groaned. I squeezed him harder.

“Anya,” he said.

“Do you believe that I want you?” I sank him just a smidge inside me where I was dripping wet. “Do you think I’m faking this?”

“No.” His voice was tight.

I could feel the press of his fingers into my hips and I knew I would have bruises. I welcomed the thought. I wanted his mark on me, just the way I wanted to make him so hard that I’d leave a figurative mark on him too. I wanted all the women in his future to pale in comparison. That when he was ninety he would look back and remember when he met the crazy ass bitch from New York who rode him on the floor of his apartment until he exploded.

Shifting, I went down onto him, driving his cock deep inside me. He swore. I moaned. For a second, I just swallowed the hot thick desire in my mouth and let my eyes roll back in my head. Then I opened them and locked my hands in his hair, using it as an anchor, before lifting my hips and pulling as far off of him as I could. Kane lay still, letting me set the rhythm as I went down again, then up, fucking him slowly at first, then with a hard desperation as my body tightened and I craved sweet release. It came with my hair swinging in my face, my back arched, and my pussy soaking wet. It came with a loud agonized cry. It came with me staring deep into Kane’s eyes and wondering what the fucking hell I had gotten myself into.

As soon as Anya’s orgasm subsided, I flipped her onto her back. I couldn’t wait another minute to pound into her welcoming body. She was so unbelievably sexy. I had zero rational thought left in my head. The pizza was going cold and I didn’t give a shit. The only hunger I felt was a deep, guttural hunger for her. I believed she wanted me. I believed that she did things for reasons I couldn’t understand and that she had lied to me and maybe right now was lying to me.

But she did want me. And it felt like my body was meant to fit inside hers. As I thrust into her, she arched her back towards me, her small hands firmly gripping my ass. Her legs were wrapped around me and with each hard thrust, I pushed her closer to the coffee table. I knew I was giving her rug burn but I didn’t stop and she didn’t stop me. She could take it. She could take me.

I knew I was going to come so I pulled out of her at the last second and used my hand to cup my dick and squeeze while I exploded onto her stomach. “Fuck,” I breathed, wishing I had been able to come inside her. “God, you’re amazing.” Collapsing next to her, I just let my hand and all its stickiness drop. “I’ll get you a towel in a second.”

“We didn’t use a condom,” she said, and she sounded a little shell-shocked.

“No.” Which was really damn stupid. We already knew she could get pregnant. “Any chance you’re, uh, on the pill?”

“No. You need health insurance for that.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll go get the contraceptive pill for you if you want.” Or in my case, the “I’m a fucking selfish and irresponsible asshole”pill.

Anya didn’t actually answer. She just rolled a little towards me, carefully. When her fingers reached out, they were trembling, and goose bumps had risen on her skin. She took a deep, shuddering breath.

It felt like she could breathe me in. That she could just take one deep pull of air with her lungs and swallow me whole. Maybe she already had.

“You’re very beautiful,” I said, propping my head up so I could look at her. I drew my finger down her cheek. “Can I kiss you?”

She just nodded, the movement jerky. I kissed the corner of her mouth, then the other side. I closed my eyes and smelled her scent, the scent of sex and oranges. Why did she smell like oranges? It must have been her shampoo, but it seemed so Anya, fresh, with a tartness overlying it. Her breathing had slowed down but when I swept my eyes over her body, I could see her chest still rose and fell rapidly, and my come was trudging a slow, sticky path across her stomach down to her hipbone. The panties I had torn were bunched down by her knee.

I kissed the back of her wrist, where she had a skull tattooed. No butterflies for this girl. I kissed down her arm, to the inside of her elbow. Then I bent over and caressed her hipbone with my lips, pretending to bite her. I felt in tune with her, tender. I liked the way she attacked sex with me, the way she was completely uninhibited.

Now she gave a soft laugh finally. I was glad to hear it. She had every right to be angry with me. I should have stopped, gone into the bedroom. Gotten a condom. But I had wanted her too much.

“I’ll get you a towel.” It was the least I could do. I hauled myself to a sitting position and leaned over to the pizza box. My hunger had come back full force. Flicking open the lid, I grabbed a piece and took a huge bite then dropped it again. As I chewed I stood up and did a quick stretch. I suddenly had a ton of energy. I moved down the hallway to the bathroom, the lukewarm pizza tasting awesome in my mouth. I swallowed and got two towels, one that I ran under the sink.

When I got back to the living room, Anya was still lying there, her fingers idly moving through the long strands of her hair. She had crossed her ankles, but otherwise hadn’t really moved. She was staring up at the ceiling, and sucking on her bottom lip in a way that shouldn’t have been sexy, but made me want to start on her all over again.

I took another bite of the pizza slice I dropped back on the box and went down onto the carpet beside her. Swallowing, I started to wipe her stomach with the wet towel. She started to squirm and shift away. “Stop. I’m getting this before it lands on the carpet.”