“Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Don’t stop.”
It’s an order. It’s a plea. It’s a breathless incantation tumbling past my lips in cadence with my hips thrusting into his face. I’m at the precipice, peering over the edge into an unlit well—a mystery my body begs to solve. Jared adds his finger, a thumb inside of me, while his mouth lavishes that bud of nerves that has become the center of my existence.
And I tip over.
I fall headlong into a wave of unmitigated pleasure that shakes my body. Entirely. Not a cell, an atom, a molecule is left intact when the orgasm touches down on my body like a tornado. Bones, flesh, muscle, sinew, blood. Insecurities, fears, reservations—everything I’m comprised of dissolves. I squeeze his head between my knees. I twist his hair in my hands. My body is wholly selfish, consumed by and taking the pleasure he promised.
“God, Banner.” Jared laps at the wetness inside my left thigh and grips my legs. “Better than I remembered.”
He rises from kneeling. Looms over me, pinning me to the desk with one hand and one look. The supplicant becomes the master, but I’ve marked him, wreaked the same havoc on him that he wreaked on me. I’ve twisted his hair into gilded chaos. I’ve poured myself over his lips and left them wet, shiny. I’ve never felt so possessive of anything in my life as I do when I see myself all over Jared Foster, but the hard set of his lips, the storm in his stare tells me it’s his turn.
Our eyes remain locked while he undoes his pants, the belt buckle jangling and the zip hissing in the deserted office. There is no way back, and as much as I know guilt, condemnation, shame await me on the other side, I can’t turn around. I want to rush ahead with him. He jerks me by my thighs to the edge of the desk.
“You have to say it.” The rough timber of his voice calls the hairs on my arms to attention. “Tell me yes.”
Ragged breath. Feral gaze. Dick like a brick against my thigh. He is the picture of primitive male, demanding entrance, but still offers me one last chance to escape. I know I should. I’ll regret this. I close my eyes and see Zo’s dear face, hear his voice saying he loves me, but it’s not enough. It’s never been enough, and my only sin was not telling him, not facing the truth that I don’t love him that way. That was my only sin.
Until now. Now I add another.
“Yes.”
The whisper barely clears my lips before Jared’s inside me. I’m translated from one state—empty, yearning—to another. Completely full. My walls strain to accommodate the girth of his passion. He’s big and aggressive. He does me like he does all things, ruthlessly, mercilessly. He pushes his hand under my blouse, traverses my belly, captures my breast and squeezes hard, his thumb scraping the nipple again and again in harmony with each thrust.
“Shit.” My startled curse is accompanied by my body contracting around him.
Loose papers rustle beneath me on the desk every time he pounds into me. He grabs my knees to anchor us, to hold me still while he plunders with no end in sight. Long, languorous strokes turn short, frantic the longer he goes. Jared tips his head back, the strong column of his throat working as he loses himself in the pleasure of these treasonous moments.
I want to touch him. I have to kiss him. I sit up, our bodies still joined, an unbroken line of carnality, and slide my fingers into the cool, shorn curls at his nape. He immediately takes my mouth captive. The kiss tastes desperate. Urgency tinges his touch along my thigh, climbing my torso and squeezing my face.
“Don’t regret this, Banner,” he says fiercely. “You don’t get to regret this.”
I drop my forehead to his, already crying even as another orgasm builds from the center of my body and fans out over every limb and extremity.
“I can’t promise I won’t regret it.” Tears slip over my cheeks and between our lips, sealing our kiss. “Only that right now, I have to have it. I have to have you.”
Our gazes hold. Mine, passion and apology. His, disappointment, determination. In a flash, we both know where the other stands. Then his head falls back and he growls.
“Fuck, I’m coming.”
Liquid heat rushes inside of me, and I link my ankles at his back, fitting our bodies together like lost puzzles pieces. A jigsaw joining that moves the desk with the force of his climactic thrusts. Papers fly, picture frames fall, my laptop slips over the edge and crashes to the floor. Everything topples around me. Everything inside shatters. My promises, my integrity, my relationship—my world falls apart. I’ve destroyed everything, and I can’t even care. With Jared’s body possessing mine, heart to heart and clinging to each other, I can’t even care. I can’t feel anything but this man’s name burning my lips.
22
Jared
“Never do anything you can’t live with
or walk away from the person you can’t live without.”
-Pee Wee Kirkland, Basketball Legend
* * *
“We didn’t use a condom.”
I say it, adding to the growing list of my transgressions. It’s the only one I care about, though. I don’t care that I made love to Banner because she is mine. It’s jungle-level, my understanding that Banner is my mate. Fit for, fashioned for me. It’s not civilized or rational. It doesn’t acknowledge Zo or what other people would view as infidelity. To them, what we did here was wrong. To me, it was the most natural expression of the truth, even if it’s truth at its most vascular. In my blood, in my veins.
I hesitate to say heart. I don’t know Banner’s heart. I easily read her body, all the signs that signal she wants me. That she likes me even though she may not always want to. I’ve never handed my heart over to anyone, and I’m not sure I should start with a woman who regrets me. Who sees the most earth-shattering sex of my life as a mistake.