After Hours (InterMix)

chapter Ten


I woke when the first light of dawn kissed my eyelids. Was it five? Six? Later? For a second I cared, then the weight of Kelly’s arm registered, a pleasurable anchor draped over my ribs.

One of my hands was limp and numb and I fidgeted as gently as I could, trying not to wake him. I thought I’d succeeded for a breath, then he let loose a low, groggy noise.

I craned my neck, watching his eyes open to the narrowest slits.

“Mhh.”

“Good morning, Kelly.”

“Morning.”

Sleep had left me fearless, and the morning chill had me craving his heat. I grasped his wrist and lay his arm along my waist, wriggling closer. In the back of my head, I knew I wouldn’t be so snuggly with Kelly, were I more awake. But just now . . . No blanket was this cozy, no comforter so warm and encapsulating.

He did as I secretly wished, tugging me close. A happy noise hummed against my neck, chased by the lazy press of his lips. I luxuriated in the contact, knowing this sleepy, easy Kelly wouldn’t last. This man was by turns cold and hot, controlled and crazed. For this brief moment he was none of those things. Just warm, just calm. Just some mysterious sliver of sedate, satisfied Kelly Robak, one I knew intuitively I was blessed to glimpse. The most elusive of species.

After round one of sex, Kelly had cooked us steaks, and we ate them on his back patio with bottles of beer, sipping until the sun was sinking, shooting the shit about work.

Round two had been a frenzy. No waiting, no teasing, no games. Just straight-up nasty f*cking on his bed, fast and rough and utterly exhausting. After the bare minimum of tidying up, we’d passed out, crawling under the covers at some vague hour after our sweat had cooled.

I could smell the sex, there in his sheets. I could feel it between my legs and in the rawness of my hips and the carpet burn on my elbows.

Against my nape, the soft press of his mouth firmed to a true kiss. I craned my neck so our lips could meet, breath be damned. A romantic start to the day, I thought, my body rousing equally from pleasure and alarm.

“Morning,” he said again.

“What’s for breakfast?”

He laughed, the tiniest nasal huff. “What would you like?”

“Pancakes?”

“I don’t think I have the ingredients for that.”

“You tell me, then.” I grinned, registering my choice of words. “That’s what you like, after all. Doing the telling. I’ll answer when asked.”

He smiled back. “I’m not awake enough to be a bossy dick yet. But I got eggs and bread, and bacon, I think. It’s that or cereal and milk.”

“Eggs, then.” I rolled up onto my side and forearm, gazing down at that rare sight—Kelly, declawed. His mood-ring eyes were neutral gray, summer clouds that threatened no rain.

“Jesus,” he muttered. “You’re sexy.”

I blushed, which probably just exacerbated whatever baby-faced breed of hotness he was finding in me.

“Take a shower,” he said, tossing the covers aside. “I’ll get the coffee started.”

“As you command.”

He smirked at me as he stood, mischievous and approving. He’d slept in his shorts, and my attention got dragged down his chest and abs and crotch and those big thighs. The blush drained from my cheeks, seeking other parts to heat.

“Get your eyes off my dick and get your butt in the shower,” he said, sleepy Kelly clearly punching out and handing the reins to Taskmaster Robak.

I did as I was told, warming to the idea of his domineering side returning.

Kelly’s shower nearly flayed all my skin off, and I had to turn it way down to keep from getting bruised by the water pressure. Parts of me already felt tenderized, my labia stinging as I soaped myself, my backside sore from his slaps. Even my eyes felt overly sensitive to the bright bathroom lights.

I rinsed the conditioner from my hair, then shrieked to find Kelly leaning against the wall, watching me through a gap in the curtain.

“Jesus!”

He didn’t apologize, just let his gaze drop down and rise back up, looking like some hybrid of hungry and amused, but in no hurry to pounce.

“How d’you like your eggs?”

“However. Just not runny.”

He nodded once and disappeared, drawing the curtain back in place on clacking plastic rings.

Once dry, I pulled on yesterday’s skirt, clasped a bra and found a clean tee shirt from my bag. I skipped underwear, liking how it felt. Like a secret, just between me and the cool morning air, until Kelly came prowling and found me out. I dabbed concealer under my eyes, threw on some mascara and declared myself presentable.

Following the ambrosial smell of bacon, I found Kelly in the kitchen, scrambling eggs in a glass bowl.

“Coffee’s ready.”

I filled a mug and stood on the other side of the counter. The condom wrapper was still there, and I picked it up and studied it, smirking.

He poured the eggs into a pan with a sizzle, then fetched glasses from a cupboard.

“Orange juice or milk?”

“Is there any champagne left? We could have mimosas.”

Kelly swapped our tumblers for stemware, and grabbed the bottle from the fridge. At some point he’d corked it with a rubber stopper, and it came out with a limp pop. I poured us each a measure and topped it off with OJ.

Soon enough he set plates on the breakfast bar, heaped with scrambled eggs and bacon and toast—two Kelly-sized servings. Then again, I’d need my strength, if today’s sex-a-thon was going to be a repeat of yesterday’s.

We pulled high stools to the counter and Kelly held up his glass. I tapped it with mine, not bothering to ask what we were toasting. To more nasty sex, I thought. F*cking cheers to that.

I sipped my mimosa. “There’s something awfully satisfying about a cocktail that’s socially acceptable before noon. Makes me feel like I’m getting away with something.”

“You’ll love Larkhaven then, if you stick around long enough to attend any inter-ward meetings. Anytime there’s an off-campus powwow to discuss some policy change, people come in totally hungover the next morning.”

“I noticed everyone seemed pretty thirsty at that going-away party.”

He nodded. “It’d be exhausting doing any of our jobs for a regular eight-hour shift. Make it twelve? That’d make a hobbyist drinker out of anybody.”

I stabbed at my eggs, thinking. “Do you ever worry about drinking? You know, because of how your dad was.”

He shook his head. “He wasn’t my biological father.”

“Oh. Do you know who was?”

“I think so.”

“Did you ever meet him?”

“Kind of.”

Kelly wasn’t normally one to be cagey, and I wasn’t normally one to pry, but curiosity had me pressing. “Did you always know your stepdad wasn’t your real dad?”

“No. Not ’til he got real drunk and told me, when I was about thirteen.”

I waited patiently to see if he’d continue. After a few forkfuls of egg, he did.

“I remember it like it was a movie I’ve seen a hundred times. We were in the den, watching the Lions play the Vikings in Minnesota, and they lost. Bad. My dad was wasted, which is like saying the sun rose that day. I was just hitting my growth spurt and I was marinating in angry hormones all the time. I’d just realized I was too big and too quick for him to wale on, and how to detect if he was too drunk and tired to bother trying. So I’d goad him.”

I grimaced.

“He was complaining about one of the players, saying what a bum he was, how he’d peaked years ago. I said something like, ‘Yeah, Dad, like you’ve done anything worthwhile in your whole miserable life.’”

“Oh dear.”

Kelly drained his glass. “He didn’t get angry. He got this glazed look in his eyes, and just stared at the screen a long time. Then he told me, ‘I’m not your dad, you know. Your real daddy’s some f*cked-in-the-head vet your mom spread for, the summer before she met me. Now he’s in the pen, and I’m stuck with you.’ And I just went all numb and cold, because as much as I wanted to hit him, I kind of hoped it was true. I wanted to believe him. I didn’t want that sloppy, alcoholic shithead’s blood in me. I didn’t want to share anything with the guy. Not my house or my mom or my f*cking DNA.”

“Did you say anything?”

“No. And it never came up again. I doubt he even remembered he told me that, the next day.”

“And your mom never mentioned it?”

He shook his head.

“So you don’t know anything about your real father?”

“I know some. Enough. I dug around and found my birth certificate, but it had my stepdad’s name on it. So I went to the library and got somebody to help me search the local records, to look for the names of any guys who got incarcerated in the months before I was born. I found one guy’s name who it could have been, and his photograph, in an old article about his arrest. James Mahoney, his name was.”

“Jeez, you could’ve been Kelly Mahoney?” Cue the fiddle music.

“I know. Man could shit shamrocks with a name like that. Anyhow, I thought he could’ve been my father, maybe. Tough to tell, from an old black-and-white newspaper head shot, but the dates made sense, and he was a vet, like my stepdad had said.”

“Did you ask your mom?”

“Nah. She had enough crap to deal with. Let the poor woman have her secrets.”

“Did you do anything?”

“Fixated on him for a while, then just kinda let it go, for a long time. ’Til I was in my mid-twenties and heard about that job in prison security.”

A chill closed over me. “Where he was locked up? Or was he out already?”

“He was inside. Still is. And yeah, you guessed it—same place.”

“Did you see him, while you were there?”

“Yeah. Every f*cking day.”

“So . . . did you take the job because of him being there?”

Kelly sipped his coffee. “I told myself I didn’t, that it was just a job, but I’m sure it factored. I’d spent more than a decade wondering about the guy by then.”

“Did you ever ask him if he’d known your mom?”

“Nah. I never said shit to him, outside of what I had to, as a guard. I didn’t treat him any nicer or any worse than any other inmate there.”

“What was he like?”

“Quiet. Not too much trouble. If Vietnam f*cked him up, he kept his wounds way under his skin. And if he knew my mom had married a guy named Robak, he never let on. He was just this tall, quiet guy, with weird eyes. Real pale hazel, like ginger ale. Kinda like mine, kinda not. But I’m pretty sure he was the one.”

“Wow.” I realized I hadn’t touched my food in several minutes, and took a couple bites of cold toast, ruminating. “Did it change things, to meet him? Or to see him, anyhow?”

“I guess. Mainly it just confused me. Now I had two men I had no clue how to feel about. One complete a*shole, but who’d at least been man enough to step up and pretend he was my dad. He sucked, but he stuck around. And this other one, some war-f*cked con who probably had no clue his son was standing on the other side of the bars, telling him it’s lights-out on Cell Block C.”

“What did he get sent away for?”

Kelly looked down at his hands. “Doesn’t matter. Just something real bad.”

Indeed, to get locked up for so long. And to make Kelly, the brashest man I’d ever met, go silent this way.

I decided not to push it any further. My thoughts had drifted to Jack. Jack, with his unconfirmed lineage. Jack, with a dad who showed up when it suited him, a dad who could do something worthy of a sentence next week and not shock a soul. With a mom who loved him but couldn’t seem to get her life on track. So many strikes against him, yet he wouldn’t even realize what they were for another eight or ten years.

“What do you think it was, that kept you from screwing up?” I asked Kelly. “Both your father figures were lousy, but you ended up a pretty good guy.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“You didn’t turn into either of those men.”

“No, I guess not.”

“Was it your mom, who kept you on the straight and narrow?”

He shook his head. “She was real weak. My dad—my stepdad—beat her down. Sometimes physically, mostly mentally. If anybody kept me straight, it was my grandfather, but I only got to see him a few times a year. And I never turned into him. He lived out in the boonies, and as fun as it was, staying with him and fishing and hunting and all that shit, it was like visiting another universe. Trying to live his life would’ve been like a junkyard dog trying to go off and live on a farm. All happy, frolicking in the meadow with butterflies, when all I wanted was a fight.”

“Huh.”

He shrugged and stole a slice of my bacon. “So I dunno why am I how I am. Why I didn’t go rotten. I should’ve, probably. Any subconscious choices I made to be this way, though, I made them out of anger. And spite. Like I refused to turn into either of those guys. Just don’t go telling yourself I’m some saint. Just a stubborn son of a bitch with real shitty role models.”

“Noted.”

“What about you?” he asked, forking eggs onto a slice of toast. “Who made you the way your are?”

“The way I am?”

“Yeah. How’d you end up like a rabid raccoon, scrapping with your sister’s loser boyfriend?”

“I don’t know. I basically raised her. It must be some maternal-type instinct.”

“What’s your mom like? She still around?”

“She’s around, back near Dearborn. I don’t talk to her very often. She was never built for motherhood, but she kept food in the fridge and a roof over our heads. She worked really hard. I can’t fault her for that.”

“Bet you can fault her a few other things, though.”

Yes, yes I could. “Doesn’t help anything, dwelling too much.”

“What about your dad?”

“He was never really in the picture. They reconciled when I was little, for maybe a year. Long enough for Amber to show up, then he took off again. Like a kid who begs for a pet and promises to take care of it, then changes their mind the second it stops being adorable. The whole family thing was a passing novelty to him.” My throat felt tight and sore, talking about it, and I had to work to swallow a bite of toast. The sensation surprised me. I’d thought I was numb to that old resentment.

“Where is he now?”

“Last I knew, he was living in Cleveland. Some kind of menial, warehouse-type job. He was never abusive or a criminal or anything, just . . . I dunno. Irresponsible. Like it didn’t register that he had a family unless he got it in his head that he was going to suddenly turn up and be Superdad, like a TV father. He showed up on Christmas once, with bikes for both of us. Amber was about eight and he got her a tricycle. I was thirteen and mine was pink, with streamers. He was clueless. We were just some project he’d pick up when it suited him, then he’d lose interest again.”

“Ouch.”

“Amber got a bike out of it, at least. A pink one with streamers.” I smiled dryly.

“I’d say woe is us, but I don’t know anybody who had a great childhood.”

“I’ve known a few, but they all had other problems.”

“Amen.”

We were quiet for a couple of minutes, finishing our breakfasts. Kelly had to help with mine, polishing off my bacon and eggs. Without a word, we carried our plates to the sink and he rinsed them. He took my hand in his damp one and led me silently down the hall, back to his bedroom.

I lay across the rumpled covers, resting my head on my hands, flexing my feet. Kelly stripped down to his shorts, then joined me with his fingers laced atop his belly. After a minute he shifted, propping himself on his elbow to stare down at me.

“Yes?”

He brushed stray strands of hair from my face and without a word, he moved to his knees between my legs, gently pushing my thighs open. I saw recognition in his eyes as my skirt slipped up and my bare p-ssy greeted him. All the laziness left his expression, intensity hardening his features and voice.

“Get me ready.”

I touched his neck with one hand and clasped his already-stiffening cock in the other through his shorts. He shoved them down, clearly in no mood for waiting. He pumped his hips, f*cking my hand, and with a dozen thrusts he was hard and thick, and my awareness had sunk low in my body, heat building between my thighs. He knocked my hand aside, wrestling his shorts the rest of the way off. My lips parted. His naked body was fascinating in the daylight. I memorized it, proud to know the secrets that lay behind Kelly’s drab gray Larkhaven uniform and stony professional persona.

I peeled away my shirt and got my bra off as he leaned over to grab a condom from the side table and sheathed himself. Then all at once, my impatient lover froze, cock in hand. His gaze softened, wandering up and down my body.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just lemme look at you a minute.” He seemed caught between two sets of emotions, hesitance playing tug-of-war with his usual greediness. He looked at me like we’d never met before, like he was trying to figure out what this woman was doing on his bed.

The moment passed and his roaming gaze steeled. He braced himself on one arm and guided his crown to my lips.

As he drove inside, everything was different. I wasn’t wet yet, and his cock felt pleasantly intrusive with only the condom’s lube to ease the way. I welcomed the pressure, a contrast to the accessibility I sensed, staring into his eyes.

He was still taking what he wanted, but what he wanted felt more tender than yesterday, more personal. His wrists pressed tight to my ribs, arms locked, thrusts deep and slow. His eyes were steady, but softer. Sadder, or something. Something that passed for vulnerable in Kelly’s impassive emotional repertoire.

His body was as powerful as ever, looking as strong and exciting and cut as it did in my fantasies. He owned me in smooth, explicit strokes. But it was the noises he made that had me aching. The tight grunt each time his hips met mine. There was helplessness in that plaintive sound. Something that said, Let me in, a plea trying to pass for an order. I hugged my legs to his waist and welcomed him to take what he needed.

He didn’t say or do anything to address my pleasure, and for some reason, it was incredibly hot. This strong, greedy man needed to come—needed me. A peevish voice said I should feel overlooked, but all I felt was wanted.

And I knew implicitly that I could touch myself if I felt like it, no permission needed, come when I was ready. But excited as I was, I simply wanted to watch him. I might never again have a chance to see him this way.

Powerful and rough . . . and needy. Always a contradiction.

He found the rhythm he craved, taking me with swift, rough thrusts and grunting in time. Still, he didn’t offer to get me off. He must’ve felt as I did that this was somehow about him. Maybe it was just another facet to his role for these two days, a more subtle flavor of selfish. No games or threats, just him using my body to take what he wanted, when and how he wanted it.

I stroked his soft, short hair. I rubbed the nape of his neck, his shoulders and back and arms, admiring the man who’d given me the best sex of my life. The most intense and unsustainable sex I’d likely ever have. I relished the temporariness of it. It made every stroke and thrust and kiss more forbidden and fleeting, knowing all of this would be nothing more than memories in a few hours’ time. I might never feel this again, but I could go forth knowing that once upon a time, I’d had mind-blowing, wild-animal sex with a huge, cut, bruised-up beast of a man. I could move on, knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that I wasn’t missing out on anything.

Kelly moaned. “F*ck. I’m gonna come. I’m gonna come.”

I held his shoulders. “Good.”

“Oh. F*ck.” The climax seemed to have crept up on him, as though he weren’t ready for the sex to be done, but helpless to stop it. His body slammed into mine for a dozen frantic strokes, then every muscle locked, cock pushed as deep as it could go. Four times he clenched, each punctuated with a groan, then I felt his weight on me as his body softened.

He shoved his arms under my back, pressing his face against my throat. He took a long, ragged inhalation and let it out in a sigh. I grazed my fingertips up and down his back, secretly savoring the moment.

I assumed the sex and the early hour would leave him soft, in both cock and demeanor, but as the haze lifted, I saw mean Kelly shining in his eyes. He left the bed and stripped the condom, never dropping my gaze. I gasped as he grabbed my ankles and pulled me across the bed, until my butt was at the mattress’s edge. He dropped to his knees between my legs, pushing them wider. I propped myself up on straight arms.

Everything felt intensely real, in that instant. The morning light slipping through the blinds was warm, draping his shoulders in golden stripes, illuminating the dust motes drifting in the air.

He slid his fingers over my mound and fisted the hair there, rough enough to pull a little yelp from my lungs. He held me as he might steady my head while his cock owned my mouth, the gesture echoing all that aggression while promising precisely the opposite act. With his other thumb and finger he spread my lips, and he breathed me in.

“You ever been f*cked by a man’s mouth?”

The way he said it, I knew he wasn’t talking about any kind of oral I’d experienced. I’d been teased and spoiled and serviced by guys’ mouths, but no, I hadn’t been f*cked.

“No.”

“Good.”

His tongue delved deep, firm and wet and filthy. My legs bucked. His stubble rasped my most tender flesh as his nose brushed my *. Another lap, and another, savoring before he penetrated again. His thumb slid up and down my outer lips, doubling the sensations. I felt wet and vital, as ripe and slippery as a mango and decadent as a steak, and Kelly feasted. He clutched my curls tight and I wished I could return the gesture, if his hair were longer. Instead I drew my nails along his scalp, and he replied with a soft scrape of his teeth over my *. I moaned, as shocked as I was aroused.

His fingers abandoned their teasing. He made a spearhead of them and eased it inside me, freeing his mouth. I could feel his wedding band each time it glanced my lips.

“Think about my cock,” he ordered.

I shut my eyes. I conjured every thick, pulsing inch he’d fed me the night before, and imagined that was what filled me now. He’d feel even better. Deeper, harsher, and his face would be above mine, eyes staring me down. Or maybe I wouldn’t be allowed to see his face at all, just hear his primal groans and grunts behind me, as he took me on my hands and knees. He suckled my * and suddenly I didn’t care how it happened. My very life depended on our f*cking again. Soon. And hard. The position didn’t matter. All that mattered was his body pounding into mine. Rough sex, rough hands, rough voice. Rough Kelly, taking what he wanted.

His fingers were making me crazy, a hot, dirty reminder of the thing that felt even better than this. “I need your cock.”

His mouth left me. “Do you then?”

“Please.”

And he was on his feet, grasping my ankles and hauling my legs back onto the bed.

As he climbed between my knees, he was hard again, like he’d never come. A condom materialized from the bedside table, and he looked me dead in the eyes as he rolled it down his cock.

He moved to my side, sitting up with his arms braced behind him. “Straddle me.”

I got one leg over and he did the rest, jerking me down, entering me hard with a sharp pang.

“Oh f*ck.” I grabbed the headboard, rushing to keep up with the motions his hands were demanding.

“Ride me. Hard.”

“Jesus, hang on.”

He eased up enough for me to find my way, negotiate the angles, get a rhythm going. When his bossy pulls resumed, I welcomed them. He could tell me what he wanted, beg for it with his hands, but for once I was in control of the sex. How deep, how fast.

“Yeah.” He shut his eyes, leaning back. “F*ck me.”

I slowed nearly to a halt. “Say please.”

His lips quirked, eyes opening. “Please.”

“That’s better. And f*ck you how, exactly?”

“Rough. And fast.”

“We’ll see.”

Those bullying hands forced my motions for a few thrusts, long enough that I couldn’t care about teasing him anymore. What he wanted felt too good. When he stopped dictating, I kept up the rhythm and intensity he’d established.

“Yeah. F*ck me.” His eyes were half-closed, lips and nose pink, expression drunken.

Charged by the moment, I held his face, cupped his ears and dug my thumbs into his cheeks, drawing his lips back just enough to expose a glimmer of teeth. I raked my nails over his scalp and felt him vibrate with a deep, low moan.

“Rough?” I asked, filled with dark mischief.

He nodded. “Yeah. Rough as you can handle.”

And I hit him. Slapped him with an open palm right across his face and jerked his head sideways.

I didn’t even know what made me do it, if it was anger or lust or blind impulse. But it felt good. He blinked for a second, gray eyes bleary.

He reached behind to clasp the headboard with both hands, gripping so tight a vein stood out along his triceps. “Again. Harder.”

My slap landed with a noise like a sound effect and left a pink mark rising beside his mouth.

“Good. Now f*ck me.”

I did. I f*cked him so fast and rough it felt like we were fighting, like my hips were possessed by a demon, like my life depended on it. He kneaded my ass, spanked me, spurred my motions with harsh pulls and growled commands—faster, harder, use my f*cking cock.

I adjusted my thighs so my * rubbed his base each time I eased my hips back. The fight-f*cking was hot, but the contact was breathtaking. I was nearing the edge within seconds, the feedback loop of friction and conflict and the sight of Kelly’s body and face speeding to a blur as the pleasure boiled up inside me.

“F*ck, you feel good.” I started laughing before I got all the words out, drunk on the sex.

Had I even ever had sex before Kelly? Like I’d thought I’d gone swimming, splashing in the bathtub, but now here I was dropped in the middle of the f*cking ocean. I wrapped my arms around his neck, ignoring his hands’ orders. My * was calling the shots, and I ground against him in tight, honed motions, doing exactly what the pleasure demanded. I cupped Kelly’s head and let him hear every ugly noise the feeling squeezed from my lungs, every whimper and moan and grunt. His fingertips whispered up and down my back, hips tensing in time with my rhythm.

“Good. Use me.”

“Jesus, Kelly. Keep talking.”

He put his lips to my ear. “Ride my cock. Wreck yourself. Feel how f*cking hard you make me, and remember it every goddamn time we pass each other on the ward.”

“Kel.”

“Think about this every night before you go to sleep, and imagine me doing the same. Wishing to hell my hand felt even half as good as your cunt.”

That did it. Of all the dangerous thoughts, that one tipped me—the idea that Kelly might miss me, after our sweat dried and Saturday dawned.

My body turned frantic, a writhing knot of legs and arms and fingers whose only purpose was to master Kelly.

“Good. Good. Come on that cock, girl.”

“F*ck.” I was dizzy from wanting. The pleasure was a hook inside me, linked to some chain winching tighter, tighter, tighter. Then—

“Yes. Good.” Kelly’s voice somewhere, above me or below, inside me. I was trembling, moaning, quaking in his lap and pawing at his arms. I came like an exorcism, the harshest, most violent, barbed pleasure drawn through me and ripped back out, until I was crumpled against his chest, shaking.

He was stroking my hair, kissing my ear. If not for the thrumming pulse of his cock inside me, he’d have felt impossibly tender.

“Good,” he whispered, and cupped my head.

I let myself stay that way, panting, my chest slippery against his.

“Whoa,” I finally mumbled.

I felt a laugh I couldn’t hear and smiled, unseen.

“That was f*cking sexy.”

“Oh my God.” I sat up straight, not caring how feral I must’ve looked. Let him see what he did to me.

He smoothed my hair from my face, traced my jaw and skimmed his fingers down my throat, collarbone, breasts, waist. “Nobody’s f*cked me that good in ages.”

I laughed. “I didn’t even get you off.”

“You will. Unless you broke your hip or something.”

I shifted in his lap. “Creaky, not broken.”

“Good,” he said, expression darkening, hands beginning to tug again.

“Tell me what you want.”

“Just what you were doing. Just f*ck me.” His gaze was nailed to the space between us, thighs tensing in time with my motions, deepening the sex. In no time at all, I could feel him losing control. It spurred my own need to be in charge, to own his pleasure in retaliation for the way it felt he’d been owning mine since that night he’d forced my orgasms in my room.

“You close, Kel?”

“F*ck yes. Don’t stop.”

I stopped.

Kelly swore, grasped my thighs roughly to urge the motions, but I locked my muscles.

“Beg me,” I said with a smile.

“F*ck, please.”

“Please what?”

“Make me come.” He looked me dead in the eyes, and shot me a crazed, smarmy, powerless smile. Through his teeth he hissed, “Please.”

“Like this?” I asked, rocking forward and back, slower than he needed.

“You f*cking know how I want it.”

I quit my taunting, settling him deep inside me and moving in quick strokes.

He kneaded my hips. “Yeah. Like that.”

Pride rippled through me. I knew how to please this hard, unreadable man. I was halfway to taming him.

As I rode him I ran my nails through his hair, stroked his shoulders, watched his face turn from mean to needy to some pleasurable twin of pain. When his flushed lips parted, I knew he was losing it.

“Good, Kelly.”

“Make me come. Make me come.” He begged with more than his words. He pleaded with his hips and eyes and the fingers digging into my thighs, with every twitch of every muscle in his huge body.

He grabbed my ass as the climax hit, jamming our bodies together, burying his cock so deep I winced through a cramp. Three times he tensed, before his grip relaxed, traveling up my waist to stroke my back. His smile was sudden and guileless, catching me off guard.

He muttered a disbelieving, “Oh, sweetheart,” then dropped his forehead to my collarbone and sighed. The affection was a pleasant surprise, and I was glad he couldn’t see how poor a job I was doing, biting back a dopey grin. I stroked his hair, feeling how his flaring breaths slowed alongside the fingertips caressing my back.

He cleared his throat and raised his head. “Damn.”

“You’re welcome?”

He kissed my mouth. “That was amazing.”

Ever cagey, I deflected. “How very gracious of you to let me be on top.”

Kelly gave me a dry look. “I’m not into weak women, you know.” He flipped us over like I weighed no more than a pillow, kneeling between my legs and stripping the condom in a practiced motion.

“No?”

“Nah. Quite the opposite. I like tough girls, ones with a little crust to them.”

“Oh lovely,” I said, faking annoyance. “I’m crusty now.”

Kelly reached under me, urging me to arch my back. He fingered my vertebrae like piano keys. “I love how every time I push you, you go all stiff, right here. I like a girl with a rock-hard spine.”

“All the more fun to dominate, I’m sure.”

“Snark all you want, but it’s true.” Kelly braced himself on his elbows, leaning in to kiss my forehead.

“I trust I proved a worthy challenge.”

He sat back on his heels, squeezing my calves as he gathered his thoughts. “When I was about twenty-four, I was sort of dating this stripper—”

“Of course you were.”

“I was bouncing weekends at this topless bar for a few months, and I knew all the girls who danced there. They came from all kinds of backgrounds—plenty of them were what you’d expect, desperate or worn out, or supporting some habit or other. But this one chick, she had a spine made of f*cking iron. She didn’t take shit from anybody, and it f*cking blew my mind.”

I ignored the hot snake of jealousy wriggling in my gut. He was talking about someone he’d known fifteen years ago, after all, plus I didn’t want to miss a new clue into who this man was and how he’d gotten that way, just because it made me insecure.

“I mean, my mom was a complete doormat,” he said. “That was my female role model—a woman who couldn’t defend herself or her kid. I’d never met a girl as bullshit-proof as this dancer. It made me want her so bad, just knowing . . .”

“Just knowing she’d put up a fight.”

“Nah. Just knowing like, this chick doesn’t let any guy between her legs unless she f*cking wants him there. I’d gotten so used to muscling my way through life, it was like some revelation. The first woman where I thought, damn, I want to earn my way into a taste of that.”

“This is a very romantic anecdote, Kelly.”

“Shush. And I did eventually get with her. I wasn’t her boyfriend, I don’t think, but we had a thing, for a while. It just blew my mind, to be with this woman that I knew didn’t roll over for anybody. I mean, I saw this girl naked every day I was at work, but it was like the armor never came off. And I wanted to get under there, even more than I wanted to get with her.”

“Did you?”

“No. I never really did, but it still completely changed how I felt about women.”

“Did you try to like, rescue her from herself?”

“Maybe, yeah. That was sort of the only role I knew, at the time. But this woman didn’t want or need rescuing. If any guy tried to help her, there went her entire identity, you know? If she wasn’t in control, she was nothing, in her mind.”

“That sounds like someone I know.” I’d meant Kelly, but the second the words came out, I realized they could just as easily apply to me.

“I swear she had f*cking rebar instead of bone marrow.”

“What happened with you two?”

He shrugged. “She got bored of me, I think. Or got bored of me like, worshipping her. Told me to f*ck off and give her some space, so I did. Found a different job.”

“Did you love her?”

He shook his head, and I believed him. “I sort of loved how she was, but she never let me get that close. I dunno what she was really like, under that armor.”

Have you ever been in love? I wanted to ask. “And why are you telling me about some hard-hearted stripper you banged fifteen years ago, when I was nice enough to get your rocks off, twice in one morning?”

“Twice so far,” Kelly corrected. “And just so you’ll know, I didn’t come after you because I think you’re weak, like I’m looking for some easy lay. It’s ’cause I like how you tense up, the second we start butting heads.” He smiled. “You’re all soft on the outside, barbed wire on the inside. Gets me hard, knowing you wouldn’t let just any guy take you to bed.”

“And here I thought you only wanted a challenge. But maybe you just need to feel special . . .?”

He smirked at me, then sat up. “That’s enough pillow talk. I need a shower.”

I watched him go, a tower of lean muscle and scar tissue camouflaging more secrets than I’d realized.