Take the Heat

He reached around my body. His hands were rough on my breasts, mauling me, hurting me—on purpose. Spoken insults would not be enough for him. He had to show me, with a hard grip on soft flesh and a cruel pinch of my nipple. I cried out, and he grew slightly more gentle, but his hands still roamed me with utter possession. They roamed over my hips and low over my belly to the space between my legs.

“How do you like it?” His breath was hot against my temple. “Not rough, I know that. Do you like it soft and slow, with music playing in the background? Should I have hired a violinist to seduce you first?”

He was mocking me. I jerked in his arms, but he subdued me quickly—with just a single finger. He reached under my skirt, and when his forefinger slipped beneath the hem of my panties, I froze. He moved lower until he brushed the private hair there.

Then he froze too.

We waited like that, while he touched such a private place. Just touched, nothing more. It had become a Rubicon—that coarse, trimmed hair. Any farther and there would be no turning back. We both knew it. But that was the thing about rivers; they couldn’t control when they were crossed.

“Say yes, Grace.”

“Do I have a choice?”

His voice turned gravelly, his breath erratic. “Say yes.”

I didn’t really have a choice, because it wasn’t only about this moment with him and me. It was about my brother and our childhood. It was about all the circumstances that had led to this. Maybe it was inevitable that he and I would be together. Maybe everything had been leading to this.

“Yes.”

He took me at my word, dipping low to the damp lips of my sex. I shivered with the sudden touch, but just as quickly, it was gone. He spun me around and pressed me back into the wall.

His mouth fused to mine, a sudden onslaught I should have been prepared for but wasn’t. I gasped, and that gave him the opening he needed. He pushed inside, all tongue and teeth and a need I couldn’t have predicted. He touched every part of my mouth, reaching inside, hungry for it. For me.

I stood there, passive, in a state of shock. I couldn’t comprehend all the ways he could touch me. Hot and wet with his mouth. Firm and controlling with his hands. His whole body was flush against mine, pulsing with his arousal. I could feel his erection against my belly, could feel his excitement in the pant of his breath. And deep inside, I felt him too.

My body stirred, preparing itself for him. That’s all this was, a clinical procedure. He would be inserting, and I would receive him. Lube was required for such an act, and so my body produced it, slickening my folds and throbbing with readiness.

Except nothing about this felt clinical, not the old-world penthouse or the man almost rabid with need. Nothing about this felt real, and I let the magical pretend quality float me away.

This was a dream. A thing that wasn’t really happening.

I could enjoy it.

“Kiss me back,” he muttered as his lips moved over my jaw.

The first touch of my hand on his chest, tentative, made him groan low in his throat. I curled my fingers around his collar and tugged gently. He pushed hard against me—no finesse, just shoved me straight into the wall with his body, as if he could join us that way. Not with his cock or his tongue, just pressing so hard that we’d be one person.

When his lips met mine again, I opened for him. I let him inside and did more than that. I touched my tongue against his. I was trembling. A leaf on the sidewalk, moving with the wind. He should crush me with that kind of force, but all I did was flit and tumble, turning over and over, dizzy with passion.

I woke up though, a little, when he pulled away. It was impossible to remain completely dazed when he looked at me that way. My shirt was pulled up, revealing my breasts. My skirt was around my waist—the work his hands had done. I was exposed for him, but he didn’t look at my body.

He looked me straight in the eyes when he said, “I’ve wanted you for so long.”

Then it felt all too real, and I didn’t know what to do with that. I didn’t know where to put these feelings inside me except in the bins marked wrong and gullible and stupid little girl. I wasn’t a girl anymore. I shouldn’t want him at all.

I couldn’t stand the way he looked at me. As if I wasn’t a child, and not just because I could have sex now. But because he wanted something deeper from me, something more meaningful than a girlish crush. Except I had nothing left to give him.

Desperate to direct his attention away, I asked, “Where’s the bedroom?”

Disappointment flickered in his eyes, so briefly I might not have seen it. Might not have recognized it, if I hadn’t felt the same thing five years ago when he’d told me no, he wouldn’t be my boyfriend.

He said he’d wait for me.

But it had been a long time since I believed a word he said. He may not have meant that promise to a teenaged girl, but I could only hope he followed through on this deal with Benny’s debt. I had sold him my body but not my heart. He could use one all he wanted. I wouldn’t let him touch the other.

* * *

The bed was a bad idea. It had been my idea, so I couldn’t even pin this on Liam. I could pin the whole blackmail-coercion-sex on him, sure, but the bed had been my lame attempt at distraction, and here we were.