Wait For Me (3 page)

His eyes met hers, the blade warming against her inner thigh. “Do what?”

“C-cut me. My shorts.”

“I’m not going to cut you. I’d never do anything to mar that baby-soft skin of yours, but your shorts are a different story. They’re keeping me from what I want.”

“So let me take them off. You don’t have to ruin every piece of clothing I’m wearing.”

“Maybe you should have come to me naked then.”

Mel opened her mouth to protest, but again, what could she really say to that? The man did have a point. She knew exactly what she was getting into showing up unannounced, pissed, hurt, and horny. Plus, he’d already ripped through her shirt and cut her bra off. It wasn’t as though walking away buck naked would be much worse than just walking away topless.

She leaned back on her elbows, her heavy breasts swaying with the motion. He watched them, and the longer he stared, the more pointed and tight her nipples became.

“God what you fucking do to me,” he muttered, turning his attention back to cutting her shorts off.

The clippers easily sliced through the soft denim of her shorts. The tip of the blade teased her, lightly touching the outer lips of her pussy. She was careful not to move, not to jerk, or hardly breathe. They played this game from time to time. She liked the danger and the darkness that Vin always wore about him like a piece of clothing. He was easy to smile and friendly, but there was an edginess about him and she was drawn to it like a moth to a flame. He was the bad boy, yet he wasn’t. He was a very good man, a hero to those who knew him, and he always came back for her.

Lying was never something she did, whether to herself, to him, or to anyone else. She was the brutally honest one. She might hedge for a while, she might even try to deny things, but in the end, she was truthful.

Vin ripped at the denim he’d cut through and tore it out from under her bottom. She was completely naked but for the sandals on her feet. He stepped back, pushed her thighs wider. “
Fuckin
’ A, Mel,” he said, his voice rough and filled with admiration. She loved it when he cursed, when he talked when he was aroused. “Your pussy is still as pretty today as it was when I saw it the night of your eighteenth birthday.”

Six years. She’d been his lover, his girl for six years. She’d never been outside their hometown and he’d been all over the world. She was a woman who could wield a screwdriver, a drill, and a hammer as well as or better than any man that lived in a hundred-mile radius, but she’d never seen or done anything but live the life she was born to. She was a handywoman and had taken over the family hardware store when her uncle died, having grown up playing with tools instead of dolls. Not that she minded. She was needed and she was liked. Small town life suited her. She’d never known any different and had never sought out any different. She’d fought for one thing in her life, and that was the man in front of her.

Vin was a…she didn’t even know, but as she sat there on his workbench, naked and open and on the verge of another orgasm given the way he was looking at her, she realized it didn’t matter to her what he did when he went away. He was in the Army. He served his country. He came home when they let him and that...that was all that mattered. Wasn’t it? He came home, he came back to her.

He reached out with rough fingers to fondle her. There was no hesitation or finesse in his touch. There was only a surety that he had the right. She thrust herself into his hand, unashamed of her need.

“That’s my girl. You do love this, don’t you? This naughty side of you that belongs to no one but me.” He pulled her to the edge of the table, worked two fingers inside her cunt and pressed his thumb to her clit. “Your cunt is so smooth, so soft,” he murmured. He licked his lips as he stared between her legs and she widened them farther. Lust permeated the air around them and the wave of pleasure she’d been riding intensified. She was on the verge of coming again when he pushed the middle finger of his other hand against her asshole at the same time he leaned forward and latched on to one of her nipples.

Filled, teased, and suckled, Mel thrashed against the onslaught. “Jesus,
Vinny
.” She rolled her hips and fucked his invading digits, unable to stay still, unable to keep from participating in the orgasm that was pressing down on her.

He licked her nipple, then the edges of his teeth dug into the tender flesh and he bit down. Her grunt of pain as it mixed with the pleasure of her orgasm was as unladylike as she could get, but she was beyond caring. Her muscles contracted around his fingers as he pumped them in and out, as his thumb continued to rub against her clit. He didn’t ease up, he didn’t cease the motions, he didn’t even falter in his masturbating of her pussy, but soon his fingers were gone, replaced by his cock.

He was the one doing the fucking now. He kept the rhythm she’d set, and inside her ass, he added another invading digit. She didn’t have anything to hold on to, nothing to grasp for purchase as he screwed her into the table at her back. He lifted up and stared down at her. The side edges were too far for her to reach and even when she tried to pull herself up to grab on to him, he pushed her back down. “Can’t see your tits that way, baby. I love how they bounce when we fuck. So big and real. The best tits…”

Only
Vinny
could talk to her like that and get her off. Again.

“Oh yeah. That’s it, Mel. Come on my dick just like that.”

And only
Vinny
knew her better than she knew herself. That’s how it had always been, since the day she met him. Her hard-on for him was legendary and a well-known fact in their hometown. It was also a fact that she’d be lucky to be able to walk when he was done with her. She had months of stored-up orgasms, months of pent-up lust. If she hadn’t experienced it, she wouldn’t have believed it.

He slipped his finger from her bottom and wrapped his other arm under her to pull her up. He held her close and she breathed in the earthy scent of his skin. Her heartbeat slowed even though he was still hard inside her.

“Let me ask you, Mel,” he started. “Why Dane? Hell, why anyone else at all?” He feathered kisses against her hair and a lone tear slid down her face at his questions. He was supposed to be answering her questions, giving her the answers she needed, but instead he turned it back on her.

She supposed she owed him that, owed him the truth. She took a deep breath that shuddered through her when she exhaled. “They fill the spaces while you’re gone. I never know when or if you’re coming back. You never say goodbye. Why don’t you understand I don’t want to live like that? I want to live a whole life with you, not a half life without you.”

“And do they make you whole, Mel? Do they make you whole the way I do?”

“No. But then you’re gone and I’m left behind. It’s not like this with anyone. It’s never like this with anyone. You don’t know though. You don’t know what it’s like around here when you do that to me.” She was crying now. Openly sobbing and she knew it couldn’t have been a pretty picture for him to look at. “What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to sit at home? Am I supposed to lock myself away until you manage to come back?”

“Tell me.”

Chapter Two

Tell me.
The words rang in her ears. The softness of his voice, the tenderness in his eyes, and though she tried to stem the flow of her tears, when he caressed them away with the rough pads of his thumbs, more fell to meet his touch.

“Tell me what it’s like.”

She didn’t want to answer him. She didn’t want him to know, not really. He’d feel bad and when she’d come here mad as a rattler and ready to lay into him, give him that ultimatum that had been brewing inside her since the last time he up and left... Seeing him quelled everything but the need to feel him, to touch him, to hear him tell her he loved her.

She didn’t want to answer him, but she would. “P-pity. They look at me with pity. Everyone knows about us, what happens between us, what I feel for you and then, when you go and break my heart like you do, every single time...” She poked at his chest for emphasis until he put a little space between them. But his cock, just the head, still filled her, still physically connected them. “So yeah, I go out. It’s not like you think it is. It’s me, guys, and girls. Friends. We’re all friends and we hang out. Is it just me and a guy? Is that what you really want to know? Yeah, sometimes. They make the loneliness disappear for a spell. Might be five minutes over pie or a couple of hours through a movie and some ice cream. What the hell else am I supposed to do,
Vinny
?” she asked again. “What do you expect me to do? You’ve never made me any promises. You’ve never asked.” He was blurry from the tears pooling in her eyes, and the more he wiped them away, the more they fell.

“You’re supposed to love me enough to wait for me,” he said softly.

“Love you enough?” She kicked him in frustration, in anger. He didn’t move an inch but his cock jerked against her opening. “You don’t think I love you?”

“Not like I love you, baby girl.”

She scoffed through a hiccup and her tears. “You expect me to believe that when you go on these missions, your secret missions somewhere in some part of the world that you…that you don’t…” She couldn’t finish the question. She didn’t want the answer and her mama raised her to know that if she didn’t want the answer, she shouldn’t ask.

“That’s exactly what you’re supposed to believe because it’s the fucking truth. I don’t screw anyone but you.” He reached out and pulled her forward, her ass on the edge of the workbench again, and was fully inside her once more. Her legs wrapped around his hips, her hands gripped his arms for the sole purpose of holding on. “I don’t fuck anyone but you. I don’t make love to anyone but you. It’s always been you, Mel.” He thrust harder and deeper with each word he uttered through clenched teeth. “Always. So don’t give me shit about what are you supposed to do. I can’t tell you what I do when I leave. All you need to know is that I’ll come home to you.”

“B-but, Vin, I—”

“No. Stop. This is what you signed up for when you jumped into bed with me the second you hit eighteen. You knew I was going into the service. You knew I was in love with you, too. I told you that first night that if we went through with it, if I got inside you and popped that cherry, you’d be mine.”

“And I am, you fucking asshole. I am yours but I’m not going to sit by the window waiting for someone who’s never asked for more, who’s never asked for what I’d give.”

“
Dammit
, Mel.” He picked her up and pressed her back to the nearest wall. She held on to him as he braced his body against her. He lifted his hands to the wall and fucked her into the wood by sheer force. She wasn’t a light woman. She wasn’t a skinny woman and only he could carry her, hold her off the ground as though she weighed no more than a feather.

He pounded into her, touched his lips to the side of her neck, bit into her skin and suckled. He would leave a mark on her, visible for all to see.

She watched his body move, the way his abs contracted, the way the muscles in his arms flexed, the way sweat slid down his brow and throat. He was the most powerful man she knew, the most mysterious to ever come out of their small South Carolina town, and whatever his faults, which she’d never really found, he loved her. She believed him. If he came back home for any reason, it was because of her.

His home and land belonged to parts of his family long gone and he made sure it was kept up in his absence by hiring some of the local kids. He must have paid them good too because he had the best-looking grass and prettiest shrubs and flowers of anyone else in the county.

“I do love you, Vin,” she whispered.

“Then dump him,” he growled into her throat while slamming his hips into the space between her thighs.

“I...” What was she going to say? It wasn’t like Dane or any other man meant anything to her beyond a few innocent outings and her realization every fucking time that no man would or could compare to Vin.

“If you don’t leave here to dump his sorry ass, I’ll tie you to the bed for a month.” He lifted his head and pierced her with a gaze that took her breath away. His body drove the point home. “He won’t want you after I get through with you. You’ll be marked by my hands, my mouth, my dick. You said everyone knows about us? Well, evidently they don’t know enough if the assholes keeping coming back to sniff around as soon as my back is turned. No one will doubt who you belong to this time.”

“
Vinny
you can’t ruin me for…for…anyone else.” That was the stupidest thing she’d ever said and she knew it before she even uttered it. She’d been ruined for any other man years ago when she did exactly what Vin had said. The second she was legal, she crawled in his bed and never looked back. He was two years older than her, and though she’d been hungering for him since she was a kid and at first didn’t understand the feelings she had for him, as she grew up she started to. What she felt for him was different than what she’d felt for anyone one else. He was more than a crush.