My blood rushes to my cheeks at such a bold, sexual statement. I would once have assumed that surge of heat and color was caused by shame, but I know better now. It was caused by desperation. I would never have been able to give him what he just asked for three months ago. I would have been too mortified by the words he’d used, too horrified by the vulnerability they would demand. The time we’ve spent licking, and sucking, and fucking each other recently have stripped away any sense of embarrassment, though. The guy’s had his tongue in my asshole, for fuck’s sake. There’s nothing left to be embarrassed about.
“Off,” I pant. “Take it off.” I fist the bottom of his shirt, urging him to start there, but I mean all of it. Pants. Boxers. The works. I want him naked and inside of me right fucking now. If I have to wait another second, I’m going to lose my mind.
Pax laughs, his hands resting over mine as he stills my frantic tugging. “Steady. I like this shirt. You’re about to rip the buttons off.”
“Too many words. Not enough stripping.”
Pax laughs again, the amused, wonderful sound lighting me up like signal flare, while working quickly to unfasten his precious buttons.
“Fuck,” I whisper. My head spins at the sight of him—packed slabs of muscle, marked with swirling, intricate swathes of ink. The elaborate designs covering his pecs and his abs flow like a beautiful river down, down, down further still, curling over his hip bones, leading right down to the cut vee that dips below the waistband of his jeans.
Holy mother of Mary.
A low, animal rumble works its way up Pax’s throat; I glance back up at him, and his quicksilver eyes have darkened to molten steel. “You wanna be careful, looking at me like that. I’ll have no choice but to punish you for your audacity…and I don’t think you can take that level of attention.”
“You’d be surprised,” I mutter. “I’ll take whatever you can give.”
His lips curve, a devastatingly suggestive smile spreading like sin across his handsome face. The next thing I know, his hands are sliding underneath me, lifting me up away from the bed, and he’s sitting up, settling me into his lap. My legs are still wrapped around his waist, his cock still butting up against me—even harder now, stiff as reinforced steel, and it feels…
Pax’s hands clamp over my hips, locking me in place. “Nuh-uh, naughty girl. Stay still. You don’t get to rub yourself on me ’til I say so.” The gleam in his eye only becomes more wicked when I let out a frustrated moan. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” He strokes my hair away, out of my face. “If you’re good, I’ll give you what you need. Open your mouth.”
I obey him, anticipation coiling around my insides. When he slides his thumb into my mouth, I close my lips around it without having to be told, swirling my tongue around it, gently grazing the pad of it with my teeth.
Pax hisses, giving me a loose, open-mouthed grin. “You want my dick in your mouth, Firebrand?” I nod, sucking hard enough to show him how good it’ll feel if he lets it happen. “Jesus. Ahh, fuck.” He draws his thumb free from my mouth, pulling it free with a pop, and then rubs the pad of it over my lips, wetting them.
Not quite satisfied, he flicks my top lip with the very tip of his tongue, wetting me with that instead. Meanwhile, his hands go to the hem of the black, formal dress I wore for graduation. He rips the thing off in one go, purring when my tits spring free—but he falls deathly silent, going very still when he looks down at my body.
Unlike him, I don’t have black ink covering most of my upper body. The damage that Jonah inflicted on me when he dragged me down into that basement is still very visible.
“Jesus wept.” He stares down at my ribs. The loose, cocky grin he was wearing is long gone. “I’m gonna murder that motherfucker.”
I avoid looking down at the black and blue fingerprints on my ribs. I don’t want to see them. I hate the fact that I let that monster mark my body; in time, the bruises will disappear, but that doesn’t make it okay that they’re there right now. I’ll have to watch them turn green and yellow while they fade, like the bruises that are already fading on Pax’s face. I do not want to think about that right now.
I want to feel good, not afraid. I want to have sex with Pax because I’m wildly in love with him and I need him inside me. What I do not want is to feel like a victim.
“No.” I curl my index finger, using it to lift Pax’s head. Even with his head raised, he doesn’t look at me. He glares at the damage to my ribs, hate flickering openly in his eyes like a raging wildfire. I duck down, moving into his line of sight so that he has no choice but to look at me. It takes a second for his pupils to refocus; I wait until I can tell that he’s really seeing me, and then I say, “Don’t. Please, Pax. Not now. This is just for you and me.”
He opens his mouth, a thousand furious curse words likely on the tip of his tongue, but he must see the pleading look on my face, because he closes his mouth shut again, clenching his jaw. He doesn’t like it, but he won’t head any further down that path.
Taking a deep breath, I do something he told me not to and I roll my hips against his erection, rubbing myself against him. A reminder of what we started. Of how good it felt before he took my dress off and saw my injuries. His eyes shutter, his shoulders shaking as he releases the tension in his body.
“That’s a dirty fucking trick,” he says roughly.
“One I’ll employ as many times as I need to if it’ll bring you back from the edge.” I crook a lopsided smile at him. To make my point, I roll my hips again, this time exaggerating the movement, stretching it out and deepening the contact so that I shudder against him.
Six millimeters of fabric: the thickness of his boxers. His jeans. My panties. That’s all that stands between the silk-wrapped steel of his cock and the wet, glossy heat of my pussy. I resent those six millimeters of fabric like I’ve never resented anything before in my life. Digging my fingers into his ass, I tremble against him as, for a moment, he allows his full weight to rest on top of me, right there, where our hips meet.
“I swear to God, I’m going to destroy every last scrap of clothing on your body if you don’t get naked right fucking now,” I pant.
He huffs, grinning like a fiend as he peppers my mouth, my jaw, and my neck with rough, searing kisses.
“Please. Please. God… please.” I chant the plea like a prayer, undulating beneath him, and his teeth nip aggressively at the sensitive skin of my neck.
“I’d find a way to rip the goddamn moon right out of the sky if you begged me for it,” he rumbles, and my toes curl so hard, the soles of my feet ache. Closing one hand around my throat, he inches back until his eyes lock with mine, and the hotel, the horrific events of last week, all of it falls away. There is nothing else. There is only Pax, and the fierce look of possession in his eyes.
“I thought I could walk away from you. God, what a fucking idiot.” He shakes his head, wonder flicking across his handsome face. “I knew it when you opened your eyes on the floor outside the hospital and you looked at me for the first time. It was like part of me snapped. I thought you’d broken something inside of me. I hated you for it. And then I realized that you hadn’t broken anything. You’d—you’d fixed it.”