Savage Hunger (Savage Trilogy 1)

I don’t give her time to reply, closing my mouth over hers and cupping her as I stroke my cock along the seam of her sex, and press inside her. I groan with the feel of her around me, pressing deep, driving into her, and then settling in to stay right there. “It’s been far too long since I was inside you, woman.” My mouth closes over hers once more, and my hand catches her leg, angling her hips and thrusting.

She gasps but she’s right there with me, arching into me, touching me. Trying to get closer and I want her closer. I cradle her against me, mold her breasts to my chest, her hips to my hips. Swaying until I roll her to her back and drive into her, catching her leg to my hip. I thrust again and again, but somehow when our mouths collide, we’re on our sides, facing each other again, and the minute my hand covers her breast, she gasps into my mouth. She trembles in my arms, her sex spasming around me and I’m undone. I’m right there with her, shuddering with the intensity of my release.

When we finally still, I don’t let her go. I hold onto her. I don’t want to let her go. “Rick,” she whispers.

I drag my hand through her hair and tilt her face to mine. “Yes, baby?”

“I—feel very confused right now.”

“I don’t. I’ll help you find your way. There are so many things I need to say to you right now but,” I stroke her lips, “you have to pee, don’t you? You always have to pee after sex.”

She rewards me with the laugh I’d hoped for, that soft musical laugh of hers, and runs her fingers over my goatee. God, I missed her doing that. “Yes,” she concedes. “I do indeed need to pee. And you have to order pizza. You always have to eat after sex.”

“Just like old times.”

Pain slashes through her eyes. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad, Rick.”

“It’s good, baby. This, us. We’re better than good. We’re un-fucking-believable. Don’t move. I’ll grab you a towel.”

“Okay.”

Only I don’t move. “You’re not moving, Rick.”

“No. No, I’m not, am I?”

She strokes my cheek. “I’m not going anywhere. It’s my house.”

Her house.

It was our fucking house.

“You’re right. It’s your house. I’ll get the towel.” I get up and grab my pants before I start walking toward the bathroom.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Candace

Rick walks in all of his buck-naked perfection toward the bathroom and disappears inside. I want to call him back. I want to lick him all over like he did me. I want to revel in all that muscle. I want to be back in the moment, back in his arms. Back in the middle of passion and escape, where tomorrow doesn’t matter and neither does yesterday. I want my best friend back.

I roll and grab a box of tissues, clean up and sit there, staring at the door. Is he upset that I called this my house? I’m confused all over again, but hurt and anger stabs at me hard and fast. I grab his shirt because it’s the first thing I can find, drag it around me, shove my arms in and roll the sleeves up. It smells all woodsy and wonderful like he does. I hug it around me, holding it close like I want to hold him. Like I want to hold onto the fantasy of all we once were and felt like again a few minutes ago. He’s still not returned. Part of me wants him to want this to be his home. Part of me thinks he has a lot of arrogance to believe he can walk back in here and just expect that kind of welcome. I cling to anger because again, it’s the safest emotion I have. It’s like a shield. I need it to protect me from what’s there brewing beneath my surface, ready to erupt.

I march to the bathroom and step inside the door to find him in his pants, leaning on the sink, chin to his chest, his powerful shoulders bunched up. Tattoos he didn’t have before are etched down his arm and back. A skull in a Green Beret hat. I didn’t even know he’d become a Green Beret. There’s more, too, things I suspect represent parts of his life I haven’t known. He’s different. He’s not the man I knew. I know this, and yet I know him. “Are you really upset that I called this my house?”

He pushes off the counter and turns to face me, more ink down his chest that I hadn’t noticed in the dark bedroom, his mouth on my body, and his body pressed to my body. A snake. A knife. “If I wasn’t upset that you called it your house,” he says, “then what would be the point of me being here right now?”