Burly

“You’re nine fucking teen,” he grits through his teeth. “Cover yourself up or I’ll put you over my knee, so help me God.”

I raise my chin, refusing to listen.

“You want me to come over there?” he says, his scowl fierce enough to make a grown man cry. But I have the confidence of knowing he’d rather die than hurt me.

“Have you been with a woman lately?” I breathe the question, not sure I really want to know the answer. “Or would you…find satisfaction if you wrestled with me again now?”

That barrel chest is heaving. “Angelica, that’s enough.”

I squeeze my mounds, the sensations making my eyelashes flutter. “Come play with me.”

He groans loudly, gripping the bulge between his huge thighs and massaging it roughly. “No, goddammit. No.”

I’m going to lose this battle if I don’t appeal to his protective side. When it comes to me, that part of him wins out over anything. “Please?” I inch my legs open a little bit more, drawing his darkening eyes to the secret flesh I’m revealing. “I was scared tonight. When you touch me, I feel safe.”

It’s one hundred percent the truth.

It’s just not the whole truth.

The whole truth is that I have a mega crush on Murph and I always have. That night on the living room floor woke up something a lot less wholesome than a crush, however, and I’ve spent a year aching to explore what it is. Even if I’m just a convenient female body to relieve his male needs.

As expected, my plea has given him pause. “Angelica…”

Dropping my hands away from my breasts, I recline onto my back, rubbing my back on the comforter like a feline. “Come wrestle.”

A moment later, he’s standing over me with a bunched jaw, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. “This will…comfort you?”

I bite my lip and nod, very aware that I might as well be naked. In front of Murph. The man I’ve been secretly fantasizing about for a year. Sure, I dance around on a stage in abbreviated costumes for a living, but there’s nothing intimate about that. This is inhibition. This is real. “Yes. Being touched will make me feel better.”

His voice is a deep scrape of sound. “We shouldn’t be doing this, kid.”

Ordering myself to have courage, I shimmy fully out of my nightgown, extending the dangling material toward Murph with my big toe, before letting it drop. “Turn off the light. Whatever happens in the dark can stay in the dark.”

“Jesus Christ,” he growls, raking me with hungry eyes. “Gorgeous as fuck. Every sweet little inch.”

“Thank you,” I say on a joyful exhale. It doesn’t matter how many people have told me I’m attractive. It’s only ever seemed to matter that I’m attractive to this man. And this attraction is what I have to work with. He might not want a relationship with me, he might want to keep me at a distance, but his appetite is ravenous enough to make him want me physically. If that’s all I can get, I’ll take it.

Murph leaves the edge of the bed long enough to slap off the bedroom light, casting the room in black with a slight glow from my porch light filtering in through the window. He does this move, this flick of his wrist that untucks his blue button-down shirt, almost like he’s mad at himself for wanting me. He hesitates and I know I have to push him, so I come to my knees—grab hold of the front of his shirt and pull with all my might, bringing him down on top of me.

A great shudder passes through his brawny frame, a choked sound leaving his mouth, and that massive arousal between his legs prods me, denim against naked flesh, pumping against it once, twice, Murph’s hands fisting in the bedclothes on either side of my head. “Never thought I’d feel that little thing pulsing up against me again.” His hips buck and he gives a closed-mouth shout. “Jesus, kid.”

“Not a kid. A woman.” I rub the arches of my feet up the backs of his legs. “But we can still play. Wrestle me, Murph.”

His erection swells almost violently, his breath coming in scalding pants that bathe my forehead. “It’s not exactly a fair match up.”

“Maybe that’s what I like about it,” I whisper. “Maybe I just want you to throw me around. Maybe I just want you to take.”

Another one of those glorious shudders goes through him. “I lied. It wasn’t just that I hadn’t been with a woman. Can’t believe you bought that for a second.” He groans. “It’s you. Jesus, the things I want to do to you should be illegal.”

“Do them.” His confession sends a thrill shivering down my spine, blasts me with confidence. Relief. “It all stays in the dark.”

Before I know what’s happening, I’ve been flipped over onto my stomach, that hard-packed body coming down on top of me, lap to backside. “I’m not fucking you.” He knees my legs apart and thrusts into the space he creates, grunting, driving me up the bed. “I know you’ve still got that juicy little cherry.”