Up in Smoke Page 20

  Her mouth fell open on a sharp exhale. “Yes, Connor.”

  She wasn’t looking at him the same as she had a moment ago. There was a new awareness. He didn’t know if he loved that or hated it. Should he exult in her acknowledging this side of him or be nervous that it would change what they had? He was too far gone to decide. The line had been crossed and he couldn’t turn back. Erin’s gaze ran the length of him, and although he wanted to touch, to arouse her more, he waited for her to look her fill. When her attention lingered between his legs, he came up on his knees to loom above her. “I’d love to let you suck it, sweetheart. I can see how bad you want to, but I’ve gone four days without you. The second you deep-throated it, I’d come like a fucking freight train. I could tell you not to let it past your teeth, but you’d do it anyway, wouldn’t you? You love every inch.”

  Her mouth looked swollen, begging to be breached. “Yes, I love it.”

  He fisted his shaft. “I haven’t touched myself since you left. Do you remember why?”

  Excitement shimmered all over her, like she’d been dusted with magic. “Because you only come inside me.”

  “That’s right. Spread your legs and show me where.”

  She wet her lips as she hesitated. Only a few beats passed before her legs fell open on the bed. He longed for rope to bind her ankles to the bedposts. He also knew if this situation got any closer to perfect, it might kill him, so it was a good thing he didn’t. Jesus, her thighs were enough to captivate him with their smooth lines, their slight quiver of anticipation. As he laid a hand on her right inner thigh, he watched her face for panic, but saw only trust. Good girl. Brave girl. His attention was arrested by the exquisite flesh at the apex of her thighs. Still wet and flushed from her shower, it begged for invasion. Begged to be mastered.

  “You’re going to need a safe word, Erin, because I’m about to do such obscene things to your pussy with my mouth, you’re going to scream for me to stop even when you want me to keep going.” He slapped her between the thighs with his weighty erection, groaning at the sound of their most sensitive flesh connecting. “Pick a word to scream if you can’t take it.”

  “Um.” He slapped her again with his cock, making her head thrash on the pillow. “S-skillet.”

  Any other time that might have struck him as funny, but right now he had only one goal. Taste her, fuck her. Own her. “Look at me.” He waited until she complied. “I will listen if you say that word. I will listen and stop. Always.”

  Her eyes cleared of everything but lust. “I know.”

  He dropped onto his stomach between her legs and plunged his tongue inside her. Wood creaked as she screamed and begun to chant his name. His only regret was her fingers not being free to pull at his hair, but he more than consoled himself with her already-spasming flesh, the thighs that locked around his head like a vise. The knowledge that she was entirely at his mercy. Finally.

  “Oh God, oh my God. I-I can’t.”

  Yes you can. Recognizing the ecstasy in her tone, Connor kept his tongue inside her and added his middle finger, moving them in and out, devastating her with the smooth rhythm. Christ. The taste of her could keep a man alive in the desert. Possessiveness caught him in a stranglehold. Not a man. Him. He could live off her, the taste of her keeping him alive. Living to keep her satisfied. She was warm, wet woman. Ripe and delicious. He would never get enough. Never. But he couldn’t get close enough because her hips worked feverishly in time with her hoarse cries of his name.

  “Hold still,” he commanded, crooking two fingers inside her to play with her G-spot. “I need to get my lips around your clit. I’m going to suck that little bud until you pass out. You’ve been keeping her from me, but time’s up, sweetheart. She’s mine.”

  Erin started to shake, eyes going blind with her orgasm. The most beautiful goddamn thing he’d ever seen in his life. “N-no more. No more. I can’t—”

  He suctioned his mouth over her clit and took a long pull. She shot off the bed, heels digging into his shoulders as she moaned. He took her ankles in his hands and held her legs open on either side of him while he worshiped the most sensitive part of her body. After she’d come once more, he gave her back his fingers and worked her hard, getting her ready to be fucked. His head was swimming with her, turned on by every lithe, desperate movement of her body. He pictured her as she was, stretched out on the bed, wrists bound as he mouth-fucked her, and it drove him crazy. His hips started to roll against the edge of the bed, pushing and dragging his cock along the mattress.

  Not good enough. Nowhere near good enough. Inside her. Get inside her.

  He tore his mouth away with a growl and crawled over her body. The head of his length slipped through her pussy and his breath shuddered out. Taking hold of himself, he was poised at her entrance when he searched her eyes. What he saw there sent him reeling. Sent him even higher.

  She looked…tamed. Owned. From the sweat-dampened pillows where she struggled to catch her breath, she was a woman looking up at her master. It humbled him. It filled him with an unbreakable determination never to live without that trust from her. That trust owned him as much as he could ever own her.

  “I was coming back to you,” she whispered.

  A weight crushed down on his chest. In the crystal clarity of the moment, with her handing over her terror and doubt to him, to share, to repair, he knew she meant it. “I know.”

  The exhilarated smile that spread across her face reached inside Connor and mended every damaged corner of his being. It mended him. Made him whole. It made him want to live forever so he could see the same smile as many times as God would allow. There was no choice before him but to press their bodies together and kiss her.

  Erin had lost any sense of space or time. She was everything Connor decided to give her. Everything he decided to make her feel. His to conquer and direct. Yet at the same time, she was there with him, moving in the same patterns, accepting every gift of sensation with a sureness that he would provide with it. There was no uncertainty here, only revelry. The overwhelming intensity of being tied up, trapped, had been transferred to him until he became all she could see, feel, taste. Her all. His mouth moved over hers, hard and delicious, vanquishing any reminder that her arms were bound. He was the only thing binding her now.

  This kiss started out slow and savoring, but it built. Oh, it built until they were struggling to wrap their bodies around each other. Growls of desperation, bucking hips, licking skin. His hips wedged between her thighs and even without being inside her, he was already fucking her. His bulky erection slid through her wet flesh, over her sweaty belly and back down to nudge her entrance.

  Instead of thrusting into her like she was physically begging him to do, he took hold of his length and teased her clit with the smooth head, jaw loosening as he groaned. The green of his eyes had turned almost gray in the dim light. His massive body hovered over her like a predator, muscles catching the light and shadows, highlighting every valley and ridge. For the first time, she wished for the use of her hands if only so she could explore that unbelievable body, touch the man who was about to take her. He was fucking magnificent. And by some twist of luck, he was hers.

  His head dipped so he could close his mouth around her nipple, watching her through hooded eyes as he sucked. When she started to writhe, he moved to her other breast and licked it reverently. “After tonight, we won’t talk about how you left ever again. For my sanity, Erin. We won’t discuss it.” With a drive of his hips, he plunged inside her and held her there, pinned, without moving. She couldn’t breathe or think beyond the pressure already building in her abdomen. “For tonight, though, we won’t forget.” He spoke through clenched teeth. “I’m a man who lost his woman and I’m going to fuck her very hard until she knows what it did to me. I’m going to make sure she never does it again.”

  She wanted to soothe him. To tuck herself into the space between his neck and shoulder and croon to him. But there was another, equally poignant side to
her that wanted it rough. “Go ahead, Connor. Show me.” She worked her hips and his chest shuddered. “Make me sorry.”

  Until she said the words, she didn’t know they were there, ready to spill out. It was as if some unknown part of her had communicated with Connor on a different level. As soon as the challenge left her mouth, the air around them changed. Thickened. Her heartbeat echoed in her ears as he withdrew from her and knelt beside her on the bed. She stopped breathing. What was he going to do?

  Her question was answered when he clutched both of her ankles in one big hand and lifted the bottom half of her body off the bed, as if she weighed nothing. The position left only her head and shoulders resting on a pillow, hands still connected to the bed frame, the rest of her dangling from Connor’s grip.

  His breath rasped in and out. “Make you sorry, Erin?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.” His calloused hand smoothed over her naked backside. “Use your safe word, goddammit. I’m drowning, sweetheart.”

  She bit her lip hard and said nothing, suddenly craving what would come next. Anything. She wanted anything he could give her. All of it. When the first slap came, it wasn’t hard, but it knocked the breath out of her. Something akin to pleasure danced along her nerve endings, turning her nipples to tight peaks, but there was an underlying harshness to it. A harshness she was responding to. A burn. A flame-like edge. Yes, yes. More. “Please.”

  He released a sound of frustration, but it was coupled with lust. “Please, what?”

  “Another.” She could barely speak around the blanketing need. “Do it again.”

  Connor’s growl ricocheted off the walls. His palm landed on her bare ass harder than before, sending reverberations of bliss through her middle, gathering at her core. Again and again, the firm smacks rained down, each one sensitizing her skin slightly more until she felt like a barrier had fallen. There was nothing to stop the vibrations from reaching her, the sharp licks of pain from biting her where she needed them. This was how her body was meant to be used. She’d been avoiding touch? No. She’d just never been touched by the only person who knew how.

  One slap came incredibly close to the needy flesh between her thighs and she came off the bed with a cry. Oh God, if he didn’t do that again, she would die of neglect. Connor’s fingers dug into the cheek of her ass, distracting her from the sting. “Liked that, did you? Twisting and moaning like a greedy little girl. We know just what you need now, don’t we? Is this what it’ll take to make you stay put? Because I will hook you to this bed and land blows on your ass all fucking day. Do you doubt me?”

  “N-no.” Slap. “No.”

  He dropped her lower body back onto the bed, letting her bounce once before he shoved her legs apart. “Can’t wait anymore. Want.” He inhaled on a curse when he gripped his erection and led himself between her legs. She expected him to slide home right away, but he fell forward instead to press their foreheads together, hand still wedged between their bodies. “Where do I come, Erin?”

  “Between my legs,” she breathed. “Inside me.”

  He rammed home with a hoarse shout against her neck. Sensation spearing through her belly, she automatically tried to circle his hips with her legs to account for the pressure, but he palmed her knees and kept them open. “Don’t try to limit me. I get all of you. I rule every goddamn inch of that pussy.” He rocked out slightly and thrust deep again, hissing between his teeth. “All tied up for me. Thighs spread. Tits begging for another suck. I’ve got you where I want you, so hang the fuck on.”

  Erin barely had the presence of mind to reach up and wrap her bound hands around the headboard before Connor started to pound. A scream was rent from her throat, long and loud. Oh, Jesus. He was huge and hot inside her, filling and stroking her slick walls with merciless drives of his hips. Beneath her, she could feel the bed inching along the wooden floor, hear the accompanying scrape. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide from the building pleasure. It gathered like a darkening storm as he rode her body, used it in a primal manner reserved only for starving, desperate men. She’d made him this way. Driven him to this state of blind abandon, where he snarled into her neck and fucked her like he might die.

  She would die, too. If he were snatched away now, she wouldn’t survive it. No me without him. No him without me. There was no separation between their bodies, just sweat-slicked, intertwined limbs writhing together on the bed. The storm began to break, trembling beginning in her thighs and traveling up to encompass her entire body. Her back bowed to accept the rush of pleasure, and Connor, sensing her oncoming release like only he could, shoved his forearm beneath her ass to angle her perfectly. His name fell from her mouth over and over, in time with the powerful rolls of his hips.

  He gripped her jaw in his hand, forced her chin up. “You look at me when you come.” His pace increased until the sound of flesh slapping in the room was enough to speed her even closer. Connor leaned down and spoke very precisely at her lips. “You might escape everywhere else, but you can’t escape this. Me. I’m where you live.”

  Erin launched into her climax, floating for an extended moment in the gripping euphoria of it before time sped up again and she was back to shaking and calling out for God. Connor. Both. He panted above her, his powerful body’s movements growing uneven. He closed his eyes and threw his head back, but she would have none of that. Equal measure. She would give him everything, every damn broken piece of herself she had to bargain with, but he would do the same.

  She tightened her thighs around his hips and squeezed with every ounce of energy she had left over. “You look at me, too. I don’t want to escape you.” The words were choppy because she could hardly draw enough breath to release them. Connor’s head immediately snapped up, eyes blazing down into hers. Something inside her relaxed and spun wildly all at once. Again she wished her hands were free so she could reach up and grip the strands of his hair. He needed her. Needed touch, even if he might think he wanted control more. “Show me where you come, baby. Show me how. Let me have it. I need it.”

  He fell on her with a jagged groan, hips pumping once, twice, before his entire body began to quake. When a man his size shook, everything shook. Erin convulsed right along with him; their bodies were skin to skin, so close that not a breath of air separated them. Feeling his orgasm rock him almost sent her spiraling into an aftershock. She suspected that if her arms were free to hold him, it would have happened. As it was, she could only lie there and absorb his heaving breaths, his elevated body heat. It was glorious. She never wanted to leave this spot. Could live here for all eternity, just pillowing Connor’s body with her own.

  Connor seemed to come back to himself, then. His head dislodged from the crook of her neck, hands flying up to disconnect her from the bed frame. “Tell me you’re okay. Tell me.”

  One hand came free, but it fell uselessly beside her on the bed. She shook it frantically, trying to move life into it. Where a moment ago, Connor’s eyes held such command, now they were shadowed and she needed to reassure him. Amazing that she, someone whom no one had ever turned to for support, was now…needed. Even through the urgency to take away Connor’s worry, she felt a burst of something like pride. She finally got her hand to work and laid it against his jaw. “I’m better than okay. Look at me.”

  Connor’s glazed-over eyes finally focused on her. He shook his head. “Okay? No. You’re fucking beautiful.” His throat worked. “I need you to promise if I ever go too far, you’ll tell me. If I ever did something to scare you or send you away, I’d—”

  “Baby, I’m an arsonist with extreme claustrophobia and a jealous streak.” She finally ran her fingers through his hair and savored his sigh. “I think it’s safe to say we’re holding an even amount of scary playing cards.”

  His eyes crinkled at the sides, and she almost swooned over how fucking adorable it made him look. Was this really the same man who’d just spanked her? She nestled down into the pillows and held her arms out to him. He didn’t hesitate to
align his naked body with hers and tuck her against his chest.

  “Play any card you want, sweetheart,” he murmured. “I’m not budging.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Connor and Erin sat across the street from Tucker May’s house, watching his wife receive a furniture delivery. Sera had managed to get the license plate number of the SUV that continued to pull up outside Stark’s campaign headquarters, and a quick search had led them here. Derek wanted to know why the seemingly distraught Mrs. May continued to make her presence known at headquarters and what was being delivered to her curbside each time. Connor had a good idea, especially considering the high-end name on the delivery truck. Money was exchanging hands. They just needed to figure out why and prove it.

  Erin rolled the passenger-side window down, causing a breeze to lift the blond hair from her shoulders. Her scent crossed the car to sucker punch him, and Connor’s groin tightened on cue. There would be no getting enough of this girl. With each passing minute, his desire for her built like an out-of-control hurricane. He’d woken this morning to find her worshipping his morning wood with long licks and kisses, murmuring husky praise against his stomach, jacking him off in her fist. Fuck. He’d managed a strangled request to finish inside her pussy, but she’d refused to let up. Holding him down with a hand on his abs, pulling hard with her mouth, and moaning, as if she couldn’t stop.

  She drummed her fingers on the armrest, dragging him from the memory. “May’s wife must know what happened to her husband. Taking payouts to keep quiet, maybe?”

  He dragged his head out of the gutter and focused. When he adjusted himself in his pants, she gave him a sexy, knowing smile, which didn’t help at all. “Yeah. She doesn’t exactly appear to be the grieving widow. Derek interviewed some friends of the family, people at church. They wouldn’t have won couple of the year, but staying quiet about your husband being killed is a whole other level.”