Fit to be Tied (Marshals 2)

He scrambled out of reach and then flipped around and tugged the towel from my hips. “Could you…. M.”

He wanted me down on the bed, so I quickly complied, loving that he dove for the nightstand to get the lube.

Already painfully hard myself, it was agony when he slicked me fast and then straddled my hips.

“Go slow, okay?” I cautioned, hands on his thighs. “It’s been a while and—”

“I need you inside because you’re not dead. If you’re here, with me, you’re safe.”

It was not a fast plunge; he didn’t impale himself like a porn star. Instead he eased down steadily, slowly, taking his time so I felt every ripple of muscle, every release of tension, and every second that he shuddered against me.

He was so strong and powerful, his skin was like warm silk over steel, and when I was all the way inside him, buried, the second he moved, I felt my body flush with heat.

“You feel too good,” I warned him. “I’m gonna come.”

“Not yet,” he whispered, curling over me, hands fisted in the covers as he started to rock back and forth, rising and lowering, setting a gentle rhythm that quickly increased, eliciting a low moan from deep in my chest. “I need you.”

I knew what he needed. “If I can, if it’s up to me, I’ll always be here.”

“Right here,” he rasped as his muscles clenched around me, and I saw him visibly fighting to keep his orgasm at bay.

“Yes.”

“With me.”

“Yes.”

“I know we can’t promise,” he whispered, and I saw his jaw clench, his lips pressed in a tight, hard line.

“No,” I agreed, reaching to cup his cheek. “But we’ll try as hard as we can.”

His attention never left my face even as his movements became frenzied, riding me, not caring about anything but reaching his climax. He didn’t touch himself, and I couldn’t, capable only of grasping his thighs, holding him tight, my fingers digging into his muscles. When he spilled over my abdomen, lost in the throes of release, I yelled his name as I came deep inside his body.

Before Ian, I’d been selfish in bed. I had tried to make the other person feel good, but in the end, my pleasure was paramount. That had all changed when my partner joined me. With Ian I made sure: I wanted to hear my name in a breathless moan; I loved the smell of him, his taste, but more than anything, seeing him sated afterward, replete, panting beside me, on me, draped in a boneless sprawl… that was what I craved. To know that I had cared for him, loved him, made my heart swell almost painfully.

“God, Miro, I better not have ripped your stitches,” he said gruffly, rising off me gently, the small gush of fluid running down my cock and balls.

“I don’t think so, but who cares.”

He bent to kiss me, but I turned my head. “What’s with—”

“Think where my mouth was last,” I reminded him.

“I don’t care, you don’t care,” he growled, capturing my face in his hands. “I wanna kiss you.”

He mauled me until his head finally clunked down over my heart and his eyes fluttered shut, even with how hard he was fighting sleep.

I put my hand in his hair and massaged his scalp. “You should turn off the light.”

“You turn off the light,” he mumbled.

There was no more discussion after that.

TALKING TO the staff psychiatrist, Dr. Johar, was something I really tried to put off, but two weeks later after lunch on a Saturday—Kage scheduled the meeting himself—I had no way around it. He’d brought me into our meeting room, where we normally talked to people entering witness protection, and had my file, complete with pictures of my injuries in living color, spread out in front of him.

We were quiet for long minutes before I finally asked if he had any questions for me.

“I do,” he answered, smiling. He was older, early fifties—I’d never thought to ask—but as Kohn had said on a number of occasions, he looked like a shrink, with his mustache and beard, all dark chestnut brown, and his pale blue oxford, charcoal gray tie, and black cashmere sweater. He’d taken off his suit jacket, also black, which I thought he always did to make us feel more comfortable.

“So, normally I don’t talk to the other marshals about one another, but in this instance, I needed to know what they thought about you.”

“Okay.”

“Are you curious about what was said?”

“I dunno.”

His grin was warm. “They said you’re normally quite the clotheshorse.”

It was true, everyone knew that. I’d grown up poor in lots of foster families with nothing of my own. In reaction, I now had too many clothes, too many shoes, and I’d made sure that one of the first things I ever acquired was a thirty-year mortgage on an $800,000 home that had only become manageable after I became a marshal. When I’d first bought the house on my detective salary, my budget had been meager. Now, I could eat, buy clothes, and pay the bank on the fifth of every month.