Buckled (Trails of Sin 2)

“Killing me.” He groans and pets my hair, shifting restlessly beneath me. “Come here.”

He hauls me up his chest and takes my mouth, plunging his tongue past my lips and licking my depths.

Having just found release, we should be sated. We should be slow and purposeful and thinking about getting out of the rain. But we’re not. If anything, we’re even more worked up, grunting wildly and grinding together.

His cock bounces and strains against my pussy, nudging forcibly, intending entry. How is he still hard?

He rolls me to my back and hovers over me, lips swollen, eyes black, and the heavy, engorged length of him hanging between us.

I no longer feel the pelt of rain, hear the clap of thunder, or see the violent illumination in the sky. The storm has suddenly passed.

But something else churns the air.

Anticipation.

Hunger.

Inevitability.

He grips his shaft and rubs the head along the seam of my pussy. “Let me.”

“We don’t have protection.” A swallow sticks in my throat.

“I’m clean.”

“But—”

“I want children with you.”

“What?” My heart stops.

“You heard me.”

“Children? Have you lost your mind?” I scramble out from beneath him.

“I don’t mean right now.” He stands and tucks himself into his jeans. “I just… With you, I want marriage and kids and all of it. You’re it for me. Today, tomorrow, and all the tomorrows after.”

I feel like my eyes are going to pop out of the sockets.

“Stop looking at me like that, dammit.” He stabs a finger in my direction. “I’m fucking serious. If you’re not ready, I’ll wait. However long it takes.”

“You’ll wait for what?” I hug my bare chest, trembling and soaked.

“For you to accept this.”

“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.” I thrust my arms out to the sides, agitated and baffled. “I’m naked, in the middle of nowhere, and you’re discussing marriage and kids!”

He remains motionless, blanketed in shadows, but I feel him glaring.

“I assume women have proposed to you? Cozied up beside you in bed, drunk on sex and musing about having your babies? I bet you thought they were crazy.”

“Now I know how they feel.”

“When did you have this epiphany? Before or after I jerked you off?”

“Don’t do that.” Blackness bleeds from his expression, his anger palpable, shuddering the air around him. “I fucking know you feel this, too.”

Where are my clothes? I spin around, searching the stillness, covered head to toe in grass and mud and rain and confusion.

“You belong to me.” He prowls closer. “I’ll piss a circle around you if I have to. I’ll move mountains and rearrange my entire existence. I’m not giving you up.”

“You don’t even know me.” I spot the fence behind him. My dress won’t be far from there.

“Bullshit!” He advances, forcing me backward. “I know how your mind works. You’re brilliant and genuine. You’re passionate about what you believe in, and you’re not afraid to fight. I know your expressions, your smiles, the octaves of your laughter, the loneliness behind your frown. You store your soul in your eyes. You fidget with your hair when you’re nervous, let the ice melt in your soda before you drink it, and you hate to be alone. You’ve never had a one-night-stand.”

“How do you—?”

“I know, Maybe. I listen when you speak, and I hear everything you don’t say.” He closes in, his strides long and determined. “I know you wear high-heels to feel professional, but you’re not a news reporter.”

“What?” My face chills, and my stomach bottoms out.

“I know you’re not here for a job.”

I stagger back, my boots squelching with each wobbly footfall. I’m naked and exposed, bereft and lost in the consuming glow of Jarret’s eyes. “If you believe I lied—”

“I don’t care about that.”

He moves with me, shifting direction when I try to dart past him, blocking me from sprinting toward my clothes. But nudity isn’t my biggest vulnerability.

He knows.

I’m not sure exactly what he’s figured out, but he knows I’m not here to write a news story.

Why is he circling me like it doesn’t matter? Why hasn’t he kicked me out? Why is he staring at me like he wants to…? I grip my hair at the roots. Marriage? Children? I can’t even.

“I’m a fashion journalist.” I stumble away from him, maintaining several feet between us. “I write about clothing and makeup.”

“I want you, Maybelline.”

My breath stutters at the sound of my name on his lips. This is too much, too big. I have to push him away. “I don’t want kids. Not now. Maybe not ever.”

“I still want you.” His boots squish in the mud as he chases, his arms stiff at his sides, his chest glistening with residual rain.

“I can’t marry you.” I hug my ribs, shivering in a curtain of cold, drippy hair.

“I’ll change your mind.”

My mind isn’t the problem. Marrying him is a tangled, complicated impossibility. “I’ve only known you for nine days.”