The hunger built, rising, rising. Crowding out everything until I couldn’t inhale without feeling him in every pore. He took over everything. Became everything. Each sensation piled together, multiplying the intensity of them all.
He slid his hard, thick length so deep that I tipped backward, freefalling with only his strong hands to anchor me. The stream hit me full in the face, and he pressed his open mouth to my throat, sucking, licking, leeching the water from my flesh. Pulling more from me than I’d ever given before, then returning it tenfold.
My shoulders met the shower wall, and he didn’t stop thrusting, driving me up until I could look down through the spray and meet his hazy blue eyes. So blue. Even the one that was puffy and sore. Focusing on me had to hurt him, but he never looked away as I neared the peak, then shot right over it.
He whispered things, dirty, muffled ones. Then sweet, loving ones. Mixing them together until his voice and the endless flexing of his hips tripped me into another orgasm, stronger even than the first. I couldn’t keep from crying out—or latching my teeth on his shoulder and biting down, hard.
Quivering, I wrapped myself around him and kissed the closed eyelid of his injured eye. He had wounds too. He’d bled.
I’d made him bleed, and he hadn’t run yet.
He drew back with a harsh gasp, yanking himself from my body a second before his hot release pulsed over my belly. While I was still recovering, still processing, he cleaned me off with a handful of cool water and gathered me up in his arms. He turned off the water while I stared up at him, stupefied into silence.
How did he keep doing this to me? He unraveled me with a look, a touch. Turned me into this trembling, feeling creature who not only craved pleasure, she even believed she deserved it.
He stepped out of the shower and let my feet lower to the floor. But he didn’t let me go. “You never have to get on your knees for me. I’m not like those other men. But want you? Want you?” Pressing his forehead to mine, he gripped my chin with shaking fingers. “Jesus Christ, Mia, if I wanted you any more, I wouldn’t be able to breathe.”
Before I could fumble through a response, he bundled us both in towels, then swept me up in his arms and carried me out the door. Past my wide-eyed, gap-mouthed sister, who still had her arm raised as if she’d been about to knock. Past his dog, who trotted toward us until he caught Tray’s beady-eyed stare and plopped his butt on the rug.
“We’re going to bed,” he said over his shoulder, presumably to Carly. She might’ve answered, but I was too busy burying my flushed face between his shoulder and neck to hear. “Goodnight.”
Without another word, he carted me, towel and all, to my tiny ass twin bed and hauled me so close that his heart beat a steady rhythm against my back. I still hadn’t wiped the dazed smile off my face when he softly started to snore.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Tray
I woke to the smells of sausage, eggs, and various baked goods. Rolling over, I pressed my cheek into a pillow that smelled like Mia and savored the heavenly scents wafting over me.
Then the arguing began.
At first it was a low hum, like a hive of bees exiting their nest. It rose steadily, punctuated by an occasional expletive-rich outburst. I already had a headache, and their shrieking didn’t help. Then came an unholy screech and “I’ll screw him if I want to and you can’t stop me!” followed by the vicious slamming of pots and pans and the incessant beep-beep-beep of a smoke alarm.
I figured that must be the crescendo.
Eyes still closed, I fumbled on the floor for my pants. They weren’t there. I opened my one functional eye and peered around, searching for something that resembled my clothes. No dice. They must still be in the bathroom. Or else Mia had burned them in effigy during her war with her sister.
At least I still had my towel. I got up and hitched it around my waist, deciding to skip a bathroom run until I ascertained no one was dead and the place wasn’t actually on fire.
Yawning, I headed down the hall and stopped dead on the threshold to the small kitchen. It looked like it had been attacked. Smoke curled up lazily toward the ceiling from a simmering pot on the burner. Flour and other powders spilled over the counter and littered the floor. On every surface were open boxes and bags of ingredients, most of them erupting their guts. Even my dog lay atop a pile of cornflakes, happily gnawing on a bone I hadn’t given him.
In the center of chaos stood Mia and Carly, both of them covered in substances I couldn’t identify.
And they were staring at me.
“Where are your clothes?” Mia snapped.
“Don’t get dressed on my account. Really.”
Mia slapped her hand over Carly’s eyes, which earned a high-pitched squeal any weasel would’ve been proud to call his own. So that sound Mia made when she was pissed was a family trait. Good to know.
“Fox, at least put on your damn pants.”
So we were back to Fox. Figured. It had been nice while it lasted.
I strolled over to the stove and leaned up to fumble with the still screeching smoke alarm. Once I’d silenced the noise, I snatched a cooked sausage link and turned to face the frowning women. “This is great,” I said, chewing.
“Glad your stomach’s satisfied.” Though Mia didn’t sound glad at all.