The Love Coupon (Stubborn Hearts 2)

“It’s better that way. I can’t control—” He swept a hand down his body to finish the sentence.

“Better that you don’t have something you like?”

“It’s a small thing for me.”

“It’s denial, and if you get off on it it’s a valid choice, but that’s not it with you.” She put her hands on his knees and slid them up his thighs, watched his eyes for revulsion and got his mouth to drop open, his lids to go heavy. “You sacrifice because you don’t trust yourself. You want me on my knees.”

“God help me, yes.”

“You want to wreck my mouth. You want me gagging and teary.”

He covered his face with his arm. “Yes.” His mouth was a tight line of anguish.

“Then you get it.”

“Oh fuck, Flick. No.”

She sat back on her heels. If he really meant no, then it was no. This was different to egging him on. She wasn’t that kind of tormenter and Tom was his own victim.

He still wore his shirt because the cuffs were buttoned; it was pushed open so the tension in his body was easy to read, bunched muscles, a quiver in his stomach. She reached across him and unbuttoned one cuff, the one on the wrist he had jammed into the sectional seat. It was more of a housekeeping

movement to make him comfortable than to strip him. He lowered the other arm and looked at her, his expression crumpled with dismay while she undid that cuff too.

“I like making you feel good. I want to give you what you like. But not if it’s not what you want. There are lots of ways for us to enjoy each other.” No one needed to volunteer for bad sex—it was all too easy to achieve.

She shuffled back on her knees and came to stand, put her hands up her slip and wriggled out of her panties, taking it slowly, drawing his eyes. Her heart was swollen and stuttering in her chest, nerves, anticipation, desire for a man who was tentative to act on his own lust.

“You choose, Tom. What do you want to feel?”

Hailee Steinfeld sang “At My Best” with Machine Gun Kelly. The song had that line in it from Tinder profiles about taking a woman at her worst to deserve her best. She said it to Tom on the first night she’d tried to seduce him. She quirked a shoulder and he smiled for the first time since he’d come in. A smile on Tom—oh, a smile that took away all the hard lines of his face, all the anxious disapproval and the self-contained loss.

He held a hand out. “You. I want to feel you. Take my hand. You let go if it gets too much.”

They touched fingertips, palms, entwined fingers. She went to her knees, rested her head on his thigh, his quad jumping under her cheek.

The fingers of Tom’s other hand played in her hair. “Trust you,” he said.

She said, “Trust you right back,” and then commenced taking him apart, using her hand and teeth on his briefs, until he relented and helped, until she could lick him thick root to blood-flushed tip and back again, getting him slick with his own pre-come and her spit.

When she licked over his cock head, the sight, the salt warmth of him, her own excitement got the better of her and she moaned. He squeezed her hand and she stopped and lifted her face. “Okay?”

“Better than okay. You like this.”

That hitch of surprise in his voice made her sad. “You weren’t listening when I told you I did.”

He shook his head. “Brain freeze.”

She licked again. “Stand by for brain damage.”

Good Catholic boy, he called on the help of multiple iconic religious figures when she lowered her mouth over his crown. She pulled off and did it again with a slight graze of her teeth that squeaked on his skin, making his hips shift, his head drop back on the sectional cushion. He didn’t say stop and his grip on her hand was light when everything else about him was drawn tight and vibrating with tension.

Every subtle movement of her hand, lips, tongue, her hollowed cheeks made him less and less able to be passive, to sit still and stay quiet. And all of this, his helpless acquiescence, his want and faith, was doing wondrously agonizing things to her. Her nipples were so hard the silky fabric of her bra felt like a rough cement surface. She was sticky between her legs and achingly empty.

“God, Flick. God, that’s good.”

Ah, his voice was so deep it sounded smoked, like he’d been shouting and drinking and partying till dawn. She wanted more of that sound, of the knowledge she made these alterations to him, took his stoic heroic act and gave him a chance to be human.

Deep breaths and an excellent gag reflex on her side, she took him to the back of her throat, only just avoiding his knee as it flew up, alerted to the effect on him by a spurt of semen and the loud clack of his teeth. He might’ve broken her shoulder, bitten his own tongue off.