“What the fuck, Mia? What the fuck?”
I didn’t think that question was one that called for an answer. So I kept touching him, filled with curiosity and trepidation both, wondering how I could get what I wanted from this situation without letting on exactly how badly I needed things to go my way. Desperation was not a color that went well with my skin tone.
Bringing him to climax in his jeans seemed like a good way to get him on my side. All I needed was a yes. I didn’t care how I got it.
The best fighters fought dirty, and I was better than most.
I backed him up to the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the lawn, and he grabbed the pointy spokes in a feral grip. His hips flexed, and he rocked into me while I roughly jerked him off. I slid my hand up and down in quick strokes and pressed my face to his chest. His heart was beating so fast, potential heart-attack fast, and his rough gasps made me squirm with longing. He’d tasted like beer, and now I wondered if he’d made me drunk somehow, because I didn’t understand what was happening to my body. I mean, logically I understood. I’d climaxed before. But not with a guy I wanted to be with. Not so easily. So naturally.
I picked up my rhythm as his breath grew choppier. He was getting close. I’d forgotten my moves for a couple of minutes, but I’d done this with enough guys to know I could make him come quickly.
So what if he’d kissed me first? So what that I’d liked it so much I wanted more? I’d only forgotten that
this wasn’t about me and my pleasure for an instant. Now I could focus on my real part in this—
“Stop it.” He grabbed my wrist. “I’m not creaming in my jeans like some teenager.”
Swallowing hard, I raised my gaze from the sight of his darker fingers encircling my paler skin to his eyes. Nodded. Then I reached for his zipper.
“What’re you—no. No. Jesus, Mia.” He snatched my wrists and held them up by my shoulders. Trapping me in place with his virility and strength. Bile streaked up my throat from the vulnerability of my position, and I fought him like a wild animal, forgetting where I was.
Who he was.
Instead of my Vinnie’s uniform, I wore a pretty pale pink dress. The first shade past white. It was a virginal color, because I was pure and innocent.
I’d been that way once.
His leather jacket bunched around my arms, cutting off my range of motion. The harsh drags of cold air I sucked into my lungs didn’t smell like Fox’s crisp, masculine cologne, but cigar smoke, thick and rancid. My heart thumped in my head, a primal drumbeat that spurred me to fight harder, to make each twist of my body count. I threw out an elbow, kneed whatever part of his flesh I could reach. He grunted, but he didn’t release me. I redoubled my efforts even as my vision blurred.
I wouldn’t live through this again.
“Goddammit, stop it. Mia. Mia, baby, stop it. It’s just me.” He enfolded me in his arms, hauling me straight off the ground and into his arms while my legs pumped and slashed through the air. “It’s Fox. I won’t hurt you. I promise.”
When his words finally cut through the mist of terror in my brain, I went slack in his hold. As limp as a damn baby. He didn’t let me go, just kept whispering soothing words that would’ve caused me to weep if I’d had any tears left to cry. Instead I sagged against his chest while shame burned through me like lava.
“Where did you go?” he murmured, lips to my temple.
His warm exhalations made my eyes close. The alcohol on his breath was vaguely sweet, and he’d kissed me with passion and tenderness, not demand couched in concern. I wanted to soak up every bit of that passion and let it plug up the holes inside me. So many holes.
“Who hurt you?”
I jerked back and stared up at him as if he were a stranger. Because he was. I didn’t know him. I’d seen him fight like the devil himself had a pitchfork to his throat. I’d felt his lips pressed against mine. I’d held his cock, tested its power and ferocity through denim. And I’d asked him to do the one thing that had kept me going for months, only to fall apart in his arms and nix my chances.
He didn’t see me as a valid competitor now. Not that he had before. How could he? I’d tried to get him off—and not very well, obviously, or he wouldn’t have stopped me—and then I’d gone to pieces during a fight with someone who no longer existed. Darren was dead, and I still struggled against him every time a man put his arms around me. His voice echoed in my head. The promises, the lies. The praise I’d grown to crave, in hopes of avoiding the pain.
Out of everything I’d done, wanting Darren’s approval shamed me the most.
“Mia?”
Fox brushed my hair out of my face, his fingers as gentle as the falling snow on my bitterly cold cheeks. The frigid air had seeped into my bones and I felt like I’d shatter if he so much as blew on me.
“Baby, let’s go inside.”
I wasn’t anyone’s baby. I didn’t want to be.
Steeling my shoulders, I pasted on a smile and trailed a fingertip over Fox’s jaw. I wasn’t giving up. Not when I was this close. “Sorry, I have an early day tomorrow. Thanks for the walk.” I winked at him, though my face felt like it would crack from the effort. “Think about what I said. I’ll be in touch.”
Moonlight glided like transparent panes of ice over his gorgeous face. “That’s it? You rub my cock until I’m about to come and have a breakdown in my arms, then you just walk away?” The shutters came down on his eyes.