“Har-har,” she answers dryly. “And you care about your family. If you were irredeemable, you wouldn’t care about Caylee and her wedding. Right?”
“Yeah,” I agree less reluctantly this time, knowing she won’t let me duck away from her hard-nosed brand of self-help therapy.
I’ve got walls of concrete, built on a foundation of bedrock, and designed in a labyrinth of a maze, but she’s busting through like a bulldozer, going right for my center. It’s not an ooey-gooey soft place by any means, but the fire there suits Poppy. Instead of being burned by it, she’s acting like the embers of my soul are perfect for making some yummy s’mores.
“You didn’t ask me to stop stealing.”
Poppy looks at me in surprise. “Why would I?”
“I’m a thief with some obviously tortured feelings about that fact, but you didn’t tell me to just stop.”
“When, and if, you’re ever ready,” she says with a quiet, certain confidence, “you will. Or you’ll figure out a way to put your skills to work for good.” She offers me a brilliant smile, daring me to argue. “Because you are good.”
She doesn’t know everything, doesn’t know half of it, but she’s closer to the real me than anyone has been in a long time. I feel like myself, not a weapon or tool to be used by people in power.
With Poppy, it’s just us, and I want to fall into that, even if only for a little bit. I give in, taking her hand in mine and kissing her fingertips. “Thank you,” I whisper.
She’s given me more than she could ever imagine, but I want more. Her kindness makes me desperate for more. Just once. I need a physical way to shut off this emotional storm she’s conjured.
I swallow thickly.
“What are you thinking?” she asks softly, sensing the change in my mood.
“That I want to fuck the shit out of you.” Maybe by stripping all the feelings out of it, by being crude to the point of insulting her, she’ll understand.
But instead, she just grins. “Okay.”
My eyes widen. “What?”
“I said, it’s about fucking time,” she says and then giggles. “Get it? Fucking time. Here or my bedroom? Kitchen?”
She points as she offers choices of where I can take her, where I can have her.
“Poppy . . . you didn’t ask me to stop stealing, but I need you to tell me to stop now. Or I won’t be able to. I want you too much.” I growl the confession, wishing I didn’t have a shred of decency left in me. Then, I could fuck her rough six ways to Sunday and not feel a hint of remorse.
“Connor,” she says, climbing into my lap to straddle me, her hands on my cheeks so I can’t get away from her direct gaze—the one staring into my soul, “if you don’t fuck me on this couch right now, I’m going to get myself off. Watch if you want, or don’t, but your being all . . .” —she waves her hands through the air, encompassing what I’m guessing is supposed to be me— “is really sexy, and I’m a stroke away from coming already.”
I place my hands on her hips and pull her against my raging cock, letting her feel what she does to me. She moans, so I do it again, and again, finding a rhythm that elicits sexy sounds from Poppy’s throat. “Are you going to come already?”
Her head falls back, her hair hanging down her back to tickle my hands. I gather a bit of it in my hand and pull gently, testing her waters. She hisses out, “Yes.”
I can feel her heat through our jeans. Remembering last night, I bury my face into the soft T-shirt covered mounds of her breasts, sucking and biting through the cotton. She cries out, her hips bucking against me as she braces herself on my shoulders, her fingernails digging in.
“Shirt,” I growl against her skin, and she nods, letting go to pull her shirt off. The soft, creamy mounds of her breasts almost spill into my face as she leans forward, finding the catch on her bra and shrugging it off to drop, unneeded, between us.
Perfection. Her breasts are perfect lush teardrops on her chest that are capped with pale pink nipples that are already pebbled up and ready for my eager teeth and tongue. I latch onto one immediately, sucking and licking as she thrashes in my lap.
“Connor . . . Connor,” she cries out when I find what she likes. I’m not surprised she enjoys a rougher touch, her hips jerking when I stop sucking and bite her nipples softly, tugging and letting my teeth rasp against her silky skin. Her thighs tremble, tightening around my hips, and suddenly, she stiffens when I nip a little harder. “Fuck!”
Feeling this woman fall apart for me is heaven in itself, and I hold her secure in my grip as a climax jolts through her, watching her hungrily as she moans. She sags, and I hold her, only releasing her when I hear a twin pair of worried yappings around our feet.