Pierce: You in handcuffs yet?
I snickered as I typed out a reply.
Me: Your faith in me warms my heart. Seriously. Stop. I might swoon. Also, shouldn’t you be in court right now?
Pierce: We’re on a brief recess. I wanted to see how it went. You save the day?
Oh man, this guy. Even when he wasn’t near he could make me melt.
Me: Let’s hope so. I did my best.
Pierce: Then I bet everything’s going to be fine.
Me: Stop being sweet when I can’t kiss you.
I imagined his smirk as he read over that message.
Pierce: Can’t help it. You bring that out in me. By the way, you look beautiful today.
I was being sarcastic earlier, but as I strode across the street to my car, I swooned so hard my knees nearly gave out. For safety purposes, I waited until I was in my car before responding back.
Me: How would you know? You haven’t seen me today?
Pierce: I don’t need to see you to know you look beautiful.
Yep, I thought to myself as I started my car and headed back toward Hope Valley. I am most definitely falling for the Ice King.
24
Marin
I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood as I struggled to keep from crying out. It was just too much, too good. My orgasm didn’t just wash over me. It wasn’t a slow, tantalizing buildup to the pinnacle. No, it slammed into me with all the force of a battering ram. In the past few days I’d been with Pierce enough to know he was a freaking rock star in bed, but somehow the intensity of my release always seemed to catch me by surprise.
“Fuck, I can feel you,” he grunted from beneath me. I fell forward, bracing my hands on the solid wall of his chest as I drove myself down on him, riding his cock with all the strength I had as I urged my climax on, wanting to drag it out for as long as possible until there was absolutely nothing left. “Give me another, baby.”
“Oh God,” I breathed. “Pierce, I can’t—”
My protest was cut off when he knifed up, grabbing hold of me and flipping me onto my back. He took over, pounding into me with a relentless, unforgiving rhythm. “Yes you can, Marin. I want another one. You’re so fucking close.”
His hand came up just then and spanned the width of my throat. His fingers pressed ever so gently into my skin with just the slightest bit of pressure.
My eyes went wide, but not with fear, with amazement at the touch. It was something I’d never experienced before. He wasn’t trying to choke me. It wasn’t like that at all. As I looked up into his clear blue eyes, I saw him staring at his hand on my throat in a way that stole my breath, and I knew then what he was doing. The hold was one of ownership. He was making me his. Claiming me.
“Christ, so beautiful,” he grunted as he drove into me again and again. “Always so fucking beautiful.”
“Pierce,” I whispered. That coil in my core tightened to the point I was actually afraid of how intense the release building inside of me was going to be. “It’s too much.”
“Never,” he grunted, beads of sweat dotting his forehead. “It’s never too much with you. It never will be.”
At that declaration, I snapped. My back and neck arched, my nails dug into his back so hard I knew he’d have marks for days, and I swear to God, I felt like my body was levitating as I came harder than I ever had.
Sensing I wasn’t going to be able to keep quiet for much longer, Pierce slammed his lips against mine in a searing kiss, swallowing down every noise I made until he grunted with his own release, filling me with spurt after spurt until his arms finally gave out and he collapsed onto me.
I lay there, basking in the glow of some rather exceptional early morning nookie before reality came back to me.
“You have to get off me, honey. I need to clean up and get out of here before Eli wakes up.”
Since the trial started, almost every waking hour of Pierce’s day was consumed by it. Yet, as exhausted as he was, he still seemed insatiable when it came to me. I never in my life would have imagined he’d be such a tactile person, and after only a week and a half, I was already addicted to his touch.
With his crazy schedule, I’d had to stay late every night except the ones when I worked the club. Pierce would roll in, looking completely exhausted, but when I got up to leave that first Monday, he’d grabbed me by the hand and stopped me. “Stay.” It had only been one word, a simple request, yet it was more powerful than when boyfriends in the past had told me they loved me. “I want you to stay with me.”
“What about Eli?” I’d asked. My question seemed to pull him out of a daze, and I saw the indecision and unhappiness warring in his expression. So I’d said the only possible thing I could. “I can wake up early. Leave before he gets up.”
“You’d do that?”
I gave him the God’s honest truth. “If it meant I got to spend time with you, there isn’t much I wouldn’t do, Pierce.”
And thus started the pattern. Each night I’d go to sleep with his long, solid body wrapped around mine in the comfort of his huge bed. He’d wake me up before the sun had risen, then he’d proceed to either make love to me in a way that almost brought me to tears, or he’d fuck me so hard it was up in the air whether or not I’d be able to walk once he was done. Either way, it was guaranteed I’d get off, and I’d get off in a very big way.
After we finished, there was the post-coital cuddle that he always seemed to initiate, then I’d have to clean up, get dressed, and sneak out like a thief in the night, going back to my own apartment that now felt horribly cold and lonely.
I’d usually catch another few hours of sleep before my day had to start, then it was wash, rinse, and repeat.
“Fuck, I hate this arrangement,” he grunted into my neck.
My whole body went stiff as a board as those words washed over me. Was he ending this? Was he tired of me already?
A million miserable thoughts ran through my head in less than five seconds, and when he lifted his head to look down at me, I braced for the inevitable heartbreak about to come.
“Obviously now isn’t the time to discuss it, but once this trial’s over you and I need to sit down and discuss what we’re going to say to Eli so that you don’t have to leave every goddamn morning before the sun’s even all the way up.”
“You—” Wait. What? “You want to tell Eli about us?”
“I mean, he’s only six. It’s not like he’ll really grasp the nuances of what our relationship means, but yeah. I just figured it’s time we stop sneaking around like we’re doing something wrong.”
Damn it, Marin! You will not cry. Pull yourself together, woman!
I cleared my throat and tried my hardest to keep my expression as blank as possible. “Y-yeah. Sure. I mean, that sounds good. If you want to. Cool. Cool, cool, cool.”
Those glacial blues of his glinted as he grinned down at me. “I see you really like the idea of that.”
I shrugged casually. “I mean, it’s . . . whatever.”
He wasn’t buying my act, not even for a second, but he let it slide and bent down to rub his nose against mine before rolling off of me and moving to the bathroom. “All right, then it’s settled. Monday’s a federal holiday, so the courts are closed, how about we discuss it then?” he asked as he returned to the bedroom with a warm damp washcloth in his hands.