Concerto (North Security 2)

Why does she think I would stop? My cock is hard enough to split in half, made of marble, brought to the breaking point. She’s soft and ready for me.

I reach to shove down my jeans. There’s no time for anything else; I push aside the wet fabric of her panties. A small pile of curls and slick flesh. Heat races chills along my spine. I press the head of my cock to her—and push push push.

A short, muffled scream of pain pierces the air.

SAMANTHA

Liam stops moving, but it does not quiet the chaos. The pulse beating in my ears, the ache in my breasts. The throbbing between my legs. I shouldn’t have made a sound. I tried to be quiet. Everyone knows the first time will hurt, but it took me by surprise—both the flash of pain and the fullness. God, the fullness. It’s like having a club inside me. Or maybe the curved head of a violin. Something that most definitely does not fit.

“You’re not a dream,” Liam says, his voice thick as honey.

“A dream?” I say faintly. My legs are spread wide, his body shoving inside me, and he thinks I might not be real. I have the sudden wild urge to giggle—wholly inappropriate. The words a condom is mandatory float through my mind. Preposterous, things like practicality, in the face of his wild animal need.

This is nothing planned or careful. This is two animals mating in the jungle. There is no place for latex here.

“I thought—” He makes a low sound of grief. “You’re so beautiful and warm. And wet. Samantha, you need to stop clenching like that. It makes me—”

“I’m sorry,” I say on a breathless laugh. I’m on the other side of the looking glass now, my old life strange and boring in light of the terrifying wonder before me. “I’m not doing it on purpose.”

One thrust of his hips and he pushes in another inch.

I won’t survive it. “How much more?”

“I’m not fucking you,” he says, unsteady, but there’s no conviction in his voice. How can there be when he forces himself another inch?

He’s a large man, but I never worried that he wouldn’t fit inside me. Men and women perform this act every day. Surely I can figure it out. The theory is nothing more than a smooth water’s surface—a mirage replaced with sudden violence by the reality of him. His shoulders loom above me. His muscular thighs hold mine open as wide as they can go. And his cock burrows deeper into my body.

This is everything I’ve ever wanted, and now that it’s here, I can’t take it. My body refuses. I wriggle instinctively, trying to get away, to find relief, and he clasps my shoulders in an impossible grip. “No, don’t,” he gasps, green eyes hazy. “Don’t move. Not like that.”

“Hurts,” I say, barely able to squeeze out the word.

“Sorry. Sorry.” He drops his head to taste my shoulder in an openmouthed kiss. “I need to get off you, to stop touching you. To stop fucking you. I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t stop.

His hips pull away only long enough to let cool air soothe my tender skin. Then he pushes back inside with a grunt. I might as well try to stop a boulder rolling down a mountain, picking up speed as it goes. And I don’t want him to stop, not really. It’s only that I want this terrible pressure to ease. It makes me pant and writhe.

I don’t know whether he’s exceptionally large or I’m exceptionally small. Maybe both. It would be only right that we would be mismatched this way, when everything else about us is also wrong. We are not meant to be together; it’s only the force of our wills that makes it work.

“No, no,” he mutters to himself, fighting it even as he fucks me, thrusting deep inside me, going slow enough that I feel every ounce of friction against my intimate walls. His eyes are wild and angry and somehow frightened. “Make me stop,” he says.

I press a kiss to the only part of him I can reach—the bulge of his pecs.

He flinches beneath my lips.

My chest aches with something that has nothing to do with his cock. I’m hurting for the man who thought I’d leave for my tour with a cheerful goodbye and never come back. For the man who thought that would be best for me, as if he’s been nothing but a vending machine, a place where I got safety and comfort without ever caring about him in return.

“It’s okay,” I whisper. “I want this. I want you.”

With a groan he thrusts hard inside me. I can only close my eyes, tears leaking down my cheeks. Thank God it’s too dark for him to see. He’s not looking anyway; his head is down, hips moving swift and fierce. His shout is both masculine power and utter surrender. His body turns taut, straining against me, pushing me into the mattress so hard I can’t breathe.

A sense of victory expands in my chest. It’s like we climbed the tallest mountain or fought an entire army. That’s what we did together, and I stroke his head, feeling the impossible softness as his muscled body weighs me down.

He stirs in slow degrees, his hips moving experimentally, his cock nudging me in an intimate place. I wait for him to pull away. He’ll probably leave the bed now. I have no illusions about his reaction to this. I’m the one who started touching him, knowing it would lead to sex. I’m the one who made the overture. He’s the one who will retreat.

Except he doesn’t leave my body. Instead he thrusts back inside, as if we’re still having sex. As if he didn’t just flex and spurt warm liquid into my body.

“What are you doing?” I whisper.