The Problem with Peace (Greenstone Security 3)

I stepped inside the apartment. Barely anything had changed since the last time I was here. There weren’t any photos in the living room. He’d upgraded his television and sofa. The coffee table was the same black glass top. It had a couple of neatly stacked paperbacks on top. There was a laptop open on the sofa.

His kitchen had a couple of new and expensive appliances. The counters gleamed. There was a beer sitting on the breakfast bar. Nothing else. Because it was Heath and he was all about order.

The differences between his stark, empty, clean apartment and my cluttered, mismatched and messy one were comical. Or they would’ve been if they weren’t metaphors for the differences between us.

“Beer?” the offer echoed through the empty apartment.

I turned to see him watching me wander around his living room, looking for something to grasp onto, some sign that he had finally found a home. Found peace.

“No,” I said, my voice a little more than a whisper. “I’ve had enough.”

“You drunk?” he asked.

I shook my head.

He nodded once.

I wanted to say more. To say everything, but even with this empty apartment, there wasn’t enough room for it all. I didn’t have enough energy for it all. Weariness settled suddenly on my shoulders and I struggled to stand under it.

“Tired?” he asked, seeming to see the wave of tiredness that had hit me.

I nodded.

He drained his beer, rounded the kitchen, threw it in the trash and then came to stand in front of me.

“Let’s go to bed then.”

And we did.

Went to bed. To sleep.

He handed me a tee. I went to the bathroom to change and brush my teeth with his toothbrush.

He was in bed when I came out. We didn’t speak. The covers were set aside for me. His eyes held invitation that he didn’t articulate.

I didn’t hesitate to curl under the covers and into his arms.

“Home,” I whispered.

He jerked.

But he didn’t speak.

And I fell asleep.

“No,” I said once my mind had finished going over the events of the night. “I wasn’t even that drunk—”

I didn’t get to finish since Heath hauled me up his body, grabbed the back of my neck and wrenched my mouth down on his. I should’ve worried about morning breath and about how scary I looked with my curls escaping from the braids and wild around my face.

I didn’t think about anything but his mouth on mine and the fact his tee had ridden up, like all the way up since my legs were splayed on either side of his hips and my panties were grinding against a definite hardness between his legs. He let out a fierce growl into my mouth as I moved against him out of instinct out of pure hunger, out of desperation.

He pulled my head back to stare at me in a way that had wetness pouring into my already soaked panties. “I’m not gonna be able to be gentle, Sunshine,” he rasped. “Not now. Not even the second time around. I can’t promise you I will be able to fuck you gentle for a long time.”

My stomach jumped as my pussy clenched at his words. “I don’t need you to be gentle,” I said. “In fact, I couldn’t stand gentle right now.”

My words were swallowed by another brutal kiss and his tee was no longer covering me. Heath’s hands were everywhere all over my naked torso, and then his mouth was right there, right on my nipple. I cried out as his teeth grazed the sensitive nub, my orgasm threatening to bowl me over with his mouth alone.

Just as it became too much to bear, his mouth was gone.

“You’re gonna ride me, Sunshine,” Heath growled, yanking at the sides of my panties. “And it’s not gonna be sweet. There is no sweet left for us, Sunshine,” he said. “There’s no more of that kindness left for us. Because we’ve chipped away at us, at this, until there was only the truth left. And the truth isn’t kind or sweet. But sweet doesn’t fill you up, babe, no matter what you tell yourself. I’m going to fucking fill you up.”

The tear of the fabric echoed through my brain like a roar. It mingled with his words, the literal enforcement of his words. Of the truth in them. The beautiful, ugly, fucking hot truth. He had just ripped my panties from my body.

I struggled with his sweats, desperate to free him. Desperate to free the both of us from all the shackles that had been strangling us.

He lifted me enough to pull them past his hips. His gaze bore into me as he hovered me above him. “You ready, baby?”

“You know I am,” I whispered, my voice throaty and low.

“Don’t you take your fuckin’ eyes off me,” he commanded.

As if I could.

He didn’t move me and my blood ran hot through my body as the need for him to be inside me drove me wild.