Seeing Red (15 page)

And he was glad to do them. “Of course. Name it.”

“Will you make love to me? Distract me? Maybe I’ll avoid a panic attack this time.”

“Being with you isn’t exactly a chore.” That was an understatement, and he knew it. The fact that she even asked him blew his mind. She could have just taken what she wanted, and he would happily comply.

“If you say so, but could you…” She eased back away from him, and the bed shifted a bit as she pushed up onto her elbows. “I feel like a dirty whore for even thinking it.”

Intrigued, he sat up, too. “What?”

“I want you not to hold back. You always treat me like you’re going to break me. You’re not. If it hurts in a way I don’t like, I’ll tell you. I promise.”

“You want it rough, is that what you’re saying?”

He didn’t want rough with her. Rough was what the women who only wanted him once or twice asked for.

“I want you to fuck me so hard I can’t think straight. I don’t want to think, Sergei.”

That made two of them.

Chapter 12

“Are you sure about this?” Seth trailed his fingers up and down Meg’s naked spine with a featherlight touch that made her core contract and skin tingle.

How many times did she have to tell him? She’d given her consent repeatedly, five times at her last count. She really couldn’t understand his hesitance. With any other man, there would have been less discourse, more intercourse. “Please.”

He planted his hands on the bulbs of her ass and paused, briefly, before raking his fingers down and parting her lower lips. His cock’s head pressed against her opening, and her muscles contracted, waiting on him to do something—anything—besides tease.

She wriggled her hips, and behind her, he sighed, increasing his grip on her waist and stilling her.

“No need to—” She couldn’t get the words out, because he worked one of his large fingers between her lips and pressed down her tongue at the same time he shoved his naked cock into her in one intense thrust.

When she cried out, he swirled his finger around her mouth and removed it, pulling his dick out of her slow and easy now that he’d engaged her wetness.

The finger that had been in her mouth moments before found her clit’s hood, and he leaned over her back, thrumming the swollen nub like a guitar string as he increased his pace behind her.

He nudged her legs farther apart and growled out between clenched teeth, “Touch it. I need my hand.”

So she did. She took over the rubbing, squeezing, and plucking he’d been doing, and moaned at the fullness she felt.

With his hands on her hips, he was pulling her back with every thrust he made so his head hit the very end of her, but she could tell he was holding back. His lovemaking seemed scripted rather than unfettered. He was giving her what he thought she should have, instead of what she wanted.

“Harder,” she growled. “I want to feel it tomorrow.”

He grunted something low and foreign and increased his thrusts even more, so the front of his thighs slapped the back of hers, and his balls bounced against the hand she pressed to her mound.

Thick and long, he filled every inch of her, stoking sensitive zones and sending pleasurable contractions up to her belly and tingles down to her curled toes.

“Now you’re cooking with gas, big boy.”

He slowed. “What?”

“Never mind. Do that again. Deeper.” She tried to wriggle her hips again, but his grip was too strong.

“Do you have limits, Megan?” He loosened his hold on her thighs and continued thrusting while reaching beneath her to grab her nipples between his fingertips.

She could only moan as he twisted and squeezed, and her body began to feel boneless and weightless as all of her nerve endings came online at once. “Limits? Yeah. One man at a time.”

He resumed his previous upright position with his hands on her hip bones, and pulled her against him so hard, their skin made a slapping sound. “What else?”

“I—I don’t—” Now wasn’t really a great time to be talking. She vaguely registered lightning streaking the night sky outside and thunder rumbling nearby, but the only thing that seemed important at the moment was her breathing and hoping her heart didn’t stop. She clawed at the rumpled sheets for purchase and dipped her back lower, changing her angle because she feared her legs would give out.

“What kind of toys do you use?”

“You name it.” She drew in a breath and had to clamp her bottom lip between her teeth to hold back the squeaking noise that threatened to erupt from her throat. “I’ve probably bought it and used it. Nothing as big as you, though.”

“Which is your favorite?”

He was asking her that at a time like this?

“Uh…”

He did some swirling, figure-eight thing inside her that made her squeak wordlessly.

“Fuck!”

“Tell me,” he said, voice strained.

She’d been so busy cataloging her own sensations she hadn’t considered that perhaps he might be close, too.

“Uh, it’s a dildo. It’s lifelike.”

“What do you do with it?”

“It’d be…” She pulled her lip between her teeth again and curled her toes against his legs. “It’d be easier to tell you what I don’t do with it. I’ve been single a while.”

“Oh. I see.”

And then she was near, her eyes watering and breath ragged. She was coming hard and loud like she always did with him, and suddenly he pulled out, leaving her ass exposed for seconds before his cockhead pressed against her tighter entrance.

“Lube, where is it? Quickly.”

“Th-that drawer,” she said breathily. “On the right.”

He leaned over her and reached for the drawer with his right hand while massaging her clit with the other.

God
.

He was working her up to a peak again, and she’d hardly come down from the first one.

She felt the warm slick of lubricant between her cheeks, and he kept rubbing her as he worked himself in. Her body shook and breaths came out in pants as he pushed past the tight sphincter.

This time he didn’t ask if it was okay, because really—he already had and she’d more or less told him to go for it. He pushed in farther, pausing at each little bend, and stopped when he could go no more.

Thank
God
, he couldn’t go anymore. She worried she’d burst and whimpered as he pulled and flicked at her clit.

She clawed at the comforter—her eyes watering as he made punishing thrusts into her—and came again when he clamped her tender nub between his fingers.

And then he pulled out, flooding the dips of her back with his hot seed and lowering her belly to the bed.

“I think you’ll probably feel that tomorrow,” he said, and eased off the bed as if he hadn’t just taken a year off her life.

“Yep.” She didn’t bother testing her muscles for soreness. She knew they would be, and didn’t mind a bit.

He returned with a warm, wet cloth and wiped her clean in a tender, though somewhat institutional fashion. Then he discarded the cloth and returned to the bedside, digging around in the piles of discarded clothes and plucking out his boxers.

“Leave ’em off,” she said and patted the bed beside her.

He seemed to make a study of her in the dark for a few seconds, but finally dropped the shorts and climbed onto the bed to her left. Pulling the covers over them both, he said, “I would never hurt you, Megan. Not on purpose.”

That seemed out of the blue, but she couldn’t really see his face in the dark to infer context. She moved closer to his warmth and threw her left leg over his. At the contact, he laid a hand on the small of her back.

“Are you talking physical or otherwise?” she asked.

A long pause, then, “Both.”

“I didn’t think you would. What makes you say that now? Are you surprised I like a little rough play with my sex on occasion?”

“How often is that?”

She shrugged but realized he couldn’t see it. “I don’t know. I like it different ways. I like having options. Sometimes I want a low, slow burn, and sometimes I want a quick, hard come. Do you have a preference?”

“I think I may be on the low, slow burn end of the spectrum. I always have to be careful, so no one has regrets the next day.”

He sounded like he spoke from experience, and if so, that was a goddamned shame.

“Low and slow. Like the first time, then. I’ll remember that.”

He chuckled and moved his hand up and down her back again, warming the skin with the pleasurable massage. She liked this—this afterglow. This unhurried recovery. He made it easy.

“Maybe not that slow, kitten. That was excruciating.”

“Sorry.”

“But to answer your question, maybe I am a bit surprised you like it rough.”

“I give as good as I get.”

“Should I expect you to tie me up next? Flog me?”

She pushed herself up onto her forearms and looked down at his shadowy face, though she couldn’t really discern its features. “No. I think I’d prefer to be the one tied up.”

“Really?”

She shrugged. “Never tried it.”

With him, she would. He could be her perfect dominant. Safe, sane, strong.

If only she could get him to pick up the leash. So far, she was just dragging it along behind her. She needed him to be the kind of man who picked it up and put her where he wanted her…at least in the bedroom. Outside of that, all bets were off.

Chapter 13

Seth didn’t know where his head was, but it certainly didn’t seem to be screwed on in the way God had designed it to be.

The confusion began after waking up very early Monday morning in a pretzel of limbs, some his, some Meg’s. She hadn’t moved during the night; if anything, she’d insinuated her body closer to his in a way he was entirely unequipped to respond to.

He’d wanted to stay there, in that warm place with her face nestled into the crook of his neck and her arm slung over his waist. Her left leg had been wedged between his two, more or less pinning her beneath him.

He’d laid there for a while, toying with the ends of the wavy hair that’d fallen over her face and rubbing his other hand down her naked back.

With her asleep, life was perfect. He didn’t have to pretend he didn’t care or that this thing they were doing wasn’t a big deal. He could just pretend that all was well and right, that this was how their mornings were supposed to be.

When Toby had walked into the room, rubbing sleep-crusted eyes, he’d stopped at his mother’s bedside, eyed Seth for a long moment, and asked for a bowl of cereal. Seth had no choice but to get up. Meg hadn’t stirred, but by the time he’d showered and gathered his things to leave for Fayetteville, she’d padded out of the bedroom wearing her bathrobe and an inscrutable look Seth worried was the final nail in his coffin. She hadn’t even been able to make eye contact.

So, all Monday and Tuesday at work, he botched simple calculations, forgot to save and back up his work, and hardly remembered to eat. The word “lovesick” came to mind. It was a term in the English vocabulary he’d never grasped before then. Why would love make a person ill?

Now he understood. Love didn’t do that. That nauseous feeling in his gut was a gift from his old friend Fear. In the past, he feared he’d die alone. That he’d never meet his match. He’d thought perhaps all those old friends of his grandmothers had lied—that Sharon had lied. There was no one for him. No one willing to put up with all his eccentricities and quirks. He wasn’t an alpha or even beta male. He defied categorization, because he not only wanted hearth and home and the family that came with it, but he wanted a woman to challenge him. Make him think, react, and plan. Someone who gave enough of a shit to keep him decent. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever find it, but right now, he felt as if he was as close as he was ever going to get…and it was all a sham.

On Wednesday, he gave up altogether and left work early, finding himself at the gym where he clapped far too much weight unto the bar and squatted almost a hundred pounds more than he was used to.

When he let the weights drop to the rubber mat, his on-and-off trainer sidled over and crossed his arms over his chest, scowling. “So, like, where do you go to work out when you don’t come here?”

Seth rolled his eyes and unfastened the Velcro on his wrist wraps. “I only have membership at one gym.” And maybe that was one too many. Extortionists.

“Bullshit. You’re gonna tell me you just slapped on eighty-eight pounds from the last recorded lift weight I have for you and squatted it with no prior practice?”

“Yep.”

“Then I want a sample of whatever shit you’re taking.”

Scoffing, Seth wiped down the bench he’d used and shook his head. “You’re welcome to it. The drug is called unmanaged stress and—” He was going to say heartache but stopped at the last minute. Wouldn’t do for people to think already that there was trouble in paradise for Meg and her big red stud. That’s what the gossip bloggers called him. Curt thought it was a hoot. Seth didn’t mind so much, but that morning he’d gotten a visitor at work that had really unsettled him, and he didn’t know how to handle it…or if he should handle it at all.