Shadowboxer (Tapped Out 1)

She shuddered. “I don’t know if I’ll like it. It might be too much. Before—”

A wave of blinding fury seized me at the mere mention of her past. Not now. Not here. If she so much as mentioned that bastard Darren Winthrop, I’d search out his grave to unearth his bones from the dirt, just so I could light them on fire and watch them burn.

I only strengthened my hold and growled into her hair. “Mia.

”

“Yes, Tray. Please.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Mia

He whirled me around and lifted me onto the bar. His sea-colored eyes gleamed with violent sexual intent. He wanted to take me. Hard. Fast. No mercy.

I would let him. No, I would beg for it, as I just had.

Oh God, what had I asked for?

Tray’s hard stare made me shrink back until I remembered I wasn’t some weakling. Or, even worse, an innocent. Intellectually, I understood what he wanted to do. If I dug through my fuzzy memories of that time in Darren’s basement, I’m sure he’d done that to me. Maybe more than once. But this was something different entirely, because Darren’s touch had never inspired anything beyond revulsion. Even those times my body had betrayed me, my mind had never submitted.

Right now, with Tray…no part of me rebelled. Fear flickered and died in my belly, turning to another sensation, one I only knew with him.

Desire.

So why was I pressing my chin into my chest and shutting my eyes? This was no different than sex. I liked sex. I liked him. Too damn much.

“Baby, shh.” He ran his hand up my shoulder to cup my cheek.

I didn’t know why he’d told me to shh until I heard the frantic breaths echoing in my chest like wind through a barrel. As much as I wanted to brazen my way through this, my body had already begun to resist. Sometimes it felt like my mind was a separate entity from the shell that held my organs. I could steady my thoughts, but I couldn’t stifle my system’s natural inclination to fight.

“If you really don’t want this, if you want to just get dressed and go, that’s fine.” His tender voice soothed me even more than the words. “This is about you and what feels good. That’s all.”

I took a stuttering breath and unknotted my fingers from the edge of the bar. I never ran from a fight. Ever. It’d be ridiculous if I ran from pleasure.

“I’m okay.” Opening my eyes, I repeated the words until I believed them. “I’m okay.”

His roughened palm cupped my cheek. “You’re more than okay.”

“So just do it already,” I muttered.

He gave me that crooked grin that rocked my world every damn time. “It’ll only hurt for a minute.”

I couldn’t help it; I laughed. And while I was laughing, he started to kiss me, just rubbing his lips over mine, his stubble gently abrading my skin. His palms cradled my cheeks while he kissed me so thoroughly that I forgot where I was. Forgot that the glass bar top was so hard and cold that my butt had already gone numb. Forgot that sex still seemed weird and unnatural to me.

Forgot that I was afraid.

He trailed his fingers down my torso to the hem of my shirt, then pushed it up over my bra. I tried to look away, but his visible reaction to the black satin and lace held my gaze in place. He dragged in air before he lifted eyes heavy with want. They were like turbulent ocean water, rolling for me.

Then he pressed his swollen lips to the top of my cleavage, covering me with kisses that made my skin pucker in the coolness of the apartment. My nipples were already so tight that they tingled. He nudged the satin down with his chin and licked and tasted until I clutched his hair and practically shoved my breast at him.

His kisses continued downward, veering off to taste each freckle and mole. He spent extra time on my bruises, and I threw up a brief thanks that Friday’s fight hadn’t left me as rainbow-colored as some in the past. At my belly-button, he paused and gave me a reassuring look, telling me without words I had nothing to fear.

If only that were true. With Tray, I had more to fear than I ever had before.

He slowly worked off my shorts. By now, I was way past the point of trying to change his mind. I just wanted to know. To understand why the girls at the bar and at the gym never talked about the awkwardness of having a guy down there, just that it felt like heaven. Hell, Kizzy could practically write a poem about a guy giving her head. I think she might’ve, actually.

More panic mental babbling. Thank God he couldn’t hear the hamster on the wheel in my head.