Chapter 12: Why not
The kiss was a circuit completed, a live wire sparking in the quiet apartment. It was all hunger and promise and anger on her behalf. It was deep and consuming, a physical answer to every ugly thing she’d told him. She met it, her hands fisting in the fabric of his shirt, a small, desperate sound vibrating from her throat into his mouth.
He broke the kiss only to lift her, her legs instinctively wrapping around his waist as he turned and set her down on the edge of the kitchen counter. The laminate was cool through her thin leggings. He crowded into the space between her knees, his hands sliding up her thighs to her hips as he ducked his head, his mouth blazing a trail down the column of her throat. He tasted salt and lavender soap.
He thought about the bathroom in CVS, the frantic, stolen minutes where he’d made her come just by touching her tits over her clothes. The rush of conquest, the cheap thrill. Fuck, her chest was hot. He could feel the heat of her through her sweatshirt now.
This time he would be different. He wasn’t in the rush of a locked public bathroom. He was here, in her sanctuary, with the morning light and the smell of their eggs still in the air. He slowed.
He cupped her face again, his thumbs stroking her cheekbones, and kissed her deeply and slowly, a kiss that felt like a confession he couldn’t yet speak. He poured every unsaid thing into it—the fury at Derek, the shock of her intelligence, the terrifying need to protect her that went beyond any debt.
“Sweetheart,” he murmured against her lips, the word rough.
He then picked her up again, her arms locking around his neck, and carried her the few short steps to her bed. He didn’t toss her down. He set her gently on the flowered comforter, as if she were something precious. He straightened, his eyes never leaving hers, and pulled his shirt off over his head in one swift motion. The tattoos across his chest and shoulders shifted with the corded muscle beneath.
He covered her with his body, bracing his weight on his forearms, and started to kiss her again. Mya was moaning, a continuous, soft sound of surrender, her hands sliding up the hard planes of his back. She wrapped her legs around him, locking her ankles at the small of his back, pulling him flush against the aching heat between her thighs.
The kissing turned into him grinding into her, a slow, relentless roll of his hips. The friction, even through their clothes, was maddening. She cried out, a sharp, broken sound, her head falling back against the pillow.
“Craig…”
“I know, baby. I know.”
He moved down her body, kissing his way south. He pushed her oversized sweatshirt up, revealing the simple cotton bra beneath. He hooked his fingers in the waistband of her leggings and her panties, dragging them both down her legs in one motion. The air hit her damp skin, and she shuddered.
He looked at her, completely bare and open to him, her curls a messy halo on her pillow, her chest heaving. Her eyes were wide, not with fear, but with a stunned, wanting haze.
“So fucking beautiful,” he breathed, and lowered his mouth to her.
He ate her out slowly, taking his time. This wasn’t a means to an end. It was the point. He used his tongue, his lips, the careful pressure of his fingers, learning her rhythms, what made her hips jerk and what made her toes curl. He brought her to the edge twice, his name a sobbed plea from her lips, and backed off, letting the sensation ebb before building it again, higher, hotter. The second time she came, her body bowing off the bed, a raw, guttural shout tearing from her, he didn’t stop. He gentled his touch but kept going, until she was shaking, oversensitive, her hands pushing weakly at his shoulders.
“Too much… please…”
He relented, kissing his way back up her trembling body. He took a nipple into his mouth through the cotton of her bra, sucking hard until she cried out again, the sound ricocheting off the low ceiling. He moved to the other, biting gently, then soothed it with his tongue.
“Craig!” His name was a prayer and a curse.
He kissed her, letting her taste herself on his lips. He fumbled with the button of his jeans, shoving them and his boxers down just enough to free himself. He was painfully hard, thick and aching. He lined himself up at her entrance, the blunt head pressing against her slick, swollen heat.
She looked nervous for a moment, a flicker of uncertainty in her blue eyes. He cupped her face, forcing her to look at him.
“Look at me, baby. I’m right here. I’ll be gentle. I swear I’ll be sweet.”
She searched his face, seeing the intensity, the barely leashed control. She nodded, a tiny, trusting movement, and pulled him back into a kiss.
He slowly pushed in.
She was impossibly tight, a hot, clutching vise around him. He had to grit his teeth, his whole body trembling with the effort of going slow. He got halfway, feeling her inner muscles flutter and tense around him. A pained whimper escaped her, her nails digging into his biceps.
He froze, kissing her jaw, her cheek, her closed eyelids. “Breathe, Mya. Just breathe. Let me in.”
He felt her take a shuddering breath beneath him, felt her body gradually, incrementally, relax. He pushed again, a slow, inexorable slide until he was fully sheathed inside her, buried to the hilt. They were both sweating, panting. He rested his forehead against hers, giving her a moment to adjust to the sheer, overwhelming fullness.
“Okay?” he whispered, his voice strangled.
“Yes,” she gasped. “It’s… you’re so…”
He began to move. A slow, deep withdrawal, then a push back in. He set a rhythm that was almost agonizing in its patience, each stroke deliberate, each thrust aimed to brush that perfect, sensitive spot inside her. The sounds were filthy, wet, obscenely intimate. Her moans were breathy, escalating with every roll of his hips.
“Fuck, you feel good,” he groaned into her neck. “So fucking tight and wet for me.”
His control began to fray. The pace increased, driven by the building pressure in his groin and the way she was meeting him now, lifting her hips, taking him deeper. The headboard started a soft, persistent knock against the wall in time with their joining.
The knocking became a frantic drumbeat against the plaster, each thrust punctuating the humid air. Craig’s world narrowed to the sweat-slick glide of their bodies, the choked sounds she made, the sheer fucking miracle of her wrapped around him. His careful control shattered.
“Is this what you want, baby?” he growled, his pace turning brutal and demanding. “This what you needed?”
“Yes—god, yes—” she gasped, her head thrashing side to side on the pillow.
His hand slid between them, his thumb finding her clit, rubbing hard, relentless circles as he pistoned into her. The dual assault was overwhelming. She chanted his name, a broken litany that fueled his own desperate drive. He felt the coil in his gut tighten, a white-hot wire about to snap.
“Come for me, Mya,” he commanded, his voice raw. “Let me feel you.”
Her internal muscles clenched around him, a fluttering, insistent pulse that began deep inside. Her whole body went rigid for a searing second, a silent scream on her lips.
Her whole body went rigid for a searing second, a silent scream on her lips.
Then it broke. A raw, shattered cry tore from her throat as the climax ripped through her, violent and total. Her inner muscles clenched around him in rhythmic, fluttering pulses, a sweet, milking pressure that dragged a guttural groan from the depths of his chest. He held himself perfectly still, buried deep, letting her convulse around his length, her nails scoring his skin.
The sight was addicting. Her body, so sensitive, came so easily for him, so submissive in its surrender. He buried himself to the hilt, not moving, just pushing deeper into her and grinding the hard bone of his pelvis against her clit. A fresh, oversensitive shockwave made her jerk.
“Oh God,” she moaned, gripping his shoulders, her knuckles white.
He didn’t move. He stayed locked there, a thick, unyielding fullness stretching her apart. She started to whine, a high, desperate sound in the back of her throat. “Fuck, I can’t, you’re too big, hmm—”
Her head rolled back as her breath came in ragged pants. Her hips gave an involuntary, weak buck, trying to create friction, to make him move.
“But you’re taking every single inch,” he breathed, his own control a thin, fraying wire. He leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of her ear, his voice a filthy, dark whisper. “You like it, don’t you? Being stretched out by me. You love being my little cock sleeve.”
She cried out, the words a direct, obscene hit to her nervous system. “Move, please,” she begged, her hips bucking again, trying to fuck herself on him.
“Come, and I’ll move.”
She whined, a tortured, beautiful sound. Then he felt her tighten around him, a fresh, internal clench that had nothing to do with her previous climax. She let out a choked cry as another, sharper orgasm seized her, a bright, shocking detonation that made her back arch clear off the mattress.
He groaned, a sound of pure male triumph. “That’s my good girl.”
He ground into her, not pulling out, savoring the frantic, fluttering pulses around his cock. “Craig!” she cried, sobbing, overwhelmed.
He kissed her deeply, swallowing her cries. Then he moved, rearranging them with a rough, practiced efficiency. He put her legs together and draped them over one of his shoulders, opening her at a deeper, more punishing angle. He grabbed the wooden headboard for leverage, the old frame protesting.
He pulled out slowly, until just the tip remained, slick and glistening. He watched her face, her dazed, wrecked expression. Then he rammed back into her, so hard her thighs moved in a wave and a punched-out moan was driven from her lungs.
He growled, the animal sound filling the room. He watched her tits bounce with each brutal thrust, the sweat-slicked skin, the way her swollen nipples peaked in the air. He pounded into her, making the entire bed squeak in a frantic, unhinged rhythm against the wall.
She was incoherent, so lost in the pleasure-pain that words had dissolved into mindless, hungry sounds. Her eyes were closed, her mouth slack.
“That’s it,” he snarled, driving into her without mercy. “Get drunk off my cock, sweetheart. I’m gonna fill this pussy up. It’s fucking mine.”
He fucked her harder, deeper, the slap of skin echoing. “Come for me again. Now.”
“Fuck, baby, I’m so close,” he groaned, his own release a boiling pressure in his balls, coiling up his spine. “You’re so tight, fuck—”
His body bowed, a tendon in his neck standing rigid. His thrusts lost all rhythm, becoming frantic, final drives. He shoved into her one last, deep time, his hips stuttering, and came with a raw, broken shout. Heat flooded her, pulse after thick pulse, as he held himself locked inside, shuddering.