Southern Sinner (North Carolina Highlands 3)

It’s beautiful. No doubt the cushy sofas and silk rugs cost a fortune. Same as the designer who probably selected them for Hank. And while the rooms are magazine-worthy, there’s also something . . . a little sterile about them? A fire crackles in the fireplace in the center of the room, but the structure itself is unblemished, no fire-darkened stone or bed of ashes from previous fires; the hammered brass fireplace tools don’t bear a single mark. The pillows on the sofa are perfectly placed and expertly fluffed, while the marble-topped coffee table gleams in the light of the fire, not a single scratch or speck of dust marring its surface.

It doesn’t look like someone actually lives here. Then again, Hank has been gone for almost a year, so that makes sense.

Still, questions bloom inside my head. Has he always lived alone? Why have this big house for just one guy? Hank may be cocky, and he may like nice things. But he doesn’t strike me as super flashy, the kind of man who’d have a big house just to have a big house.

There’s a reason behind it. One I don’t want to think too hard about, so I don’t.

Hank shuts the front door, and I turn around to see heat in his eyes. The same heat I feel all over. A beat of silence throbs between us as we drink each other in.

“I’m baby?” he asks with a smirk, making his dimple pop. The backs of my knees tingle, a happy, sudden rush.

I drop my tote bag on the floor. “If I’m honey.”

“You gonna share that honey with me?”

“Is that the gross euphemism I think it is?”

“Two minutes into the weekend, and already you got my mind in the gutter.”

We lunge for each other at the same time, our bodies colliding in a tangle of limbs and mouths and hunger. I’m grabbing his fly and unzipping his jeans. He’s gliding one hand up my shirt and the other down my pants. His fingers slip inside my panties and find my slit. He glides them inside, a smooth, confident motion that ignites a fire inside my skin.

“Fuck.” He breaks the kiss, leaning his forehead against mine as he pulls out his fingers and looks down at them. They glisten. “You’re soaked.”

“Been this way since I woke up.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

I meet his eyes. “Could you do something about it in front of Christopher?”

“Watch yourself, honey, or I’ll fuck that smart mouth of yours.”

“Sounds lovely,” I say with a grin.

Hank pulls down my pants and underwear and roughly spins me round. He gathers my ass cheek in his hand and gives it a hard, quick squeeze, making me yelp and yearn all at once.

“Bend over,” he grinds out. “Hands on the table.”

I do as he tells me, gripping the edge of the beautifully weathered antique console set against the wall. A foil packet rips. Hank curses again. Then his hands are on my ass, and he’s spreading my cheeks, and I feel the pressure of his broad crown against my entrance.

Firming his grip on my body, he buries himself inside me with one hard, almost brutal thrust. I cry out. His hips hammer again and again, fingers curled into my ass, holding me in place.

I turn my head and watch our reflections in the window beside the door. Hank’s jeans are pooled around his ankles. My shirt is hiked up my back, and my tits hang heavy and full, bouncing with every punishing thrust.

Hank reaches around and runs the pads of his first two fingers over my clit. He uses that hand to hold me even tighter against him as he plays with me. I feel simultaneously trapped and safe, expertly handled and wildly at risk, like the train we’re on is about to blow off the tracks and flatten us both.

I want to come, and I don’t. I want to make this last forever.

The throbbing in my clit coils tighter, and it’s my turn to curse, head falling back. My knees are jelly now, but Hank holds me up, hand firmly on my hip, fingers of the other hand still between my legs. The table bangs against the wall, but Hank doesn’t seem to mind. I roll onto the balls of my feet to meet his thrusts, arching my back to swallow him deeper. To feel more of him.

Hank responds by reaching inside my shirt and cupping my breast, swiping his thumb over my nipple through the silky fabric of my bra. Sensation bolts from the pebbled tip straight to my clit.

“Come for me,” he rasps. “I’ve been waiting for this all fucking week. C’mon, honey, give it to me. I wanna feel you lose your mind.”

He folds his body over mine, and I turn my head to meet his eyes, and he captures my mouth in a searing kiss I didn’t know I needed.