by Tessa Bailey
She shook her head. “It’s a mirage. There’s a trap set for me.”
Motherfucker. Why couldn’t she say what needed to be said? The words weren’t coming out right. He was going to think she was crazy. Just like everyone else.
Connor was silent a beat. “Tell me what you need.”
Erin leaped, no idea where she would land. “Take. I need to take.” Yearning struck her in the belly, thick and undeniable, but it teamed with regret. “But I can’t give anything. I—”
He cut her off with another step. Closer. So close. But not touching. Light spilled in through the window and highlighted his strong jaw, clenched so tight. His chest and arms, carved with muscle, should have been forbidding, but the smell of freshly rubbed wood and pine, combined with his quiet strength, made him a haven. He stood without moving and let her look him over, not trying to rush her into a decision or make her mind up for her. It made her need him even more. Her flesh pulsed between her legs, nipples tingling behind the material of her shirt. It had been so long since she felt desire of any kind, and it crashed through her now, obliterating the fear. She had no choice but to cling to it. To him.
Erin slid her fingers around his biceps, sucking in a breath when they flexed hard under her touch. She reversed their positions, bringing his back up against the wall. Frustration was evident in every line of his body. Leashed restraint. She was the one leashing it, along with her own fears. This wasn’t the type of man who let a woman handle him. The power in that settled over her like a thick cloak. She pressed his hands, palms down, against the wall and implored him with a look. No touching. His only acknowledgment was a tightening of his muscles. Bracing himself.
She didn’t, couldn’t, waste another second. The craving to touch, to release, was growing and she needed to appease it before it took her over. Connor watched through fevered eyes as she unsnapped the button of her jean shorts and let them fall to her feet. She could see the outline of his substantial arousal through the sweatpants and moaned into the silence. That was for her. He was aroused for her. Wearing only her panties and T-shirt, she grabbed on to his broad shoulders and hiked her legs up around his waist.
“Fuck.” The back of his head hit the wall. “Fuck.”
“Oh, God.”
Her hips circled once and she whimpered, wanting to get closer and unable to. She needed pressure right there. It ached so badly. Connor seemed to comprehend her predicament or share it with her because he braced the breadth of his shoulders against the wall and pushed his hips out, tilting them at the perfect angle. “You won’t let me touch you, Erin? You sure as hell better ride me rough for the both of us.” He gave an upward thrust of his hips. “My cock is big and angry because you made it that way. That makes it your responsibility. Move.”
Erin dug her fingernails into the muscles of his shoulders and started bucking her hips. The fact that he could support her weight and the frantic movements of her body made her burn with lust. Intense hunger radiated from him, scorching her, forcing her to move faster. Her writhing motions, the back and forth of her hips, caused a groove to form along the seam of her damp panties, widening with her every movement to cradle Connor’s erection. If the thin material of her panties and his sweats were to vanish, he would have been inside her in a heartbeat. They were that close to being joined.
“Look at you. Grinding that little pussy on me.” His voice sounded raw, heated. “I’d fill you with every goddamn inch so quickly, you’d scream for me to take it back out. Maybe it’s better this way, giving just your clit a ride. But know that I’d like to be pounding you full of me, Erin. Full.”
His words should have made her nervous, but reassurance shone in his eyes, swirling through the heat. No matter what came out of his mouth, he wouldn’t break his silent promise. Thank God for that, because Erin’s thighs were starting to shake violently, the beginnings of exhilaration firing in her belly, lower. Oh yes, lower. Her panties had grown so wet, the cotton had taken on a different texture and it dragged perfectly over her clit. She gripped his hips with her thighs and bucked faster, faster. A new sound filled her head, sending the other one running with its simplicity. I need him and he’s giving me what I need and I need him and he’s giving…
A sob burst past her lips as her orgasm loomed closer. “Please, Connor. Connor, please.”
“What are you begging for?” The question cracked like a whip. “You’re the hottest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen, thighs spread wide open as you dry-fuck me to insanity…and I can’t even touch you. I should be the one begging.” He groaned as she picked up speed, angling his hips more, giving her everything. “I’ve never begged a fucking day in my life, but you’re going to make me, aren’t you?”
Her muscles clenched. The flesh between her legs seized. Yes. Yes. “I can’t. I don’t…”
“You will,” he gritted out. “Jesus Christ, look at you. You’ll be worth my pride.”
Erin got lost in a flash of blinding light. The climax sped through her with a force that her body almost couldn’t withstand. A scream launched from somewhere deep inside her chest, but ended in a violent shake. She couldn’t plant her feet because they were dangling off the ground, couldn’t run from the intensity. It was ceaseless; the tightening at her core wouldn’t stop. Before she registered her own actions, she’d fastened her mouth to Connor’s and just as quickly, she found her way out of the blinding light into a soft, gentle glow. There were jagged edges here, but she knew how to navigate them. She heard his fists connecting with the wall as she pushed her tongue deep and tempted his to meet hers. To bring her down from the heights to which he’d sent her. The second his mouth opened to hers with a deep growl, her body went boneless, sliding down his rock-hard frame.
Connor’s rigid length dug into her belly and she could feel the pain coming off him in waves. She lifted the hem of her shirt so she could feel it against her stomach, and smooth flesh greeted her. The head of his erection was visible over the top of his sweat pants, round and damp. Her hands itched with the need to touch him there, but she hesitated. Could she please a man like him? She’d learned how to intimidate men by being overtly sexual, but she hadn’t called her own bluff in so long. No, she would try for him. After what he’d done…
Above her, his breathing grew stunted and shallow, as if it were being ripped over razor blades. “I can only take so much, Erin.” He skirted past her and strode away, toward the bathroom. The door shut behind him and silence fell in the apartment. Not complete silence. Her pulse still pounded loud enough to echo in her ears. But his presence leaving the room had the effect of a mute button being hit. She closed her eyes and listened, finally hearing Connor in the bathroom. Heavy breathing, the occasional groan. Something anxious twisted inside her at the realization that he was touching himself. A multitude of emotions had her drifting toward the bathroom. Curiosity, lust…affront that he’d taken the privilege away from her.
She opened the door and stopped in her tracks.
Chapter Four
Connor felt Erin behind him in the bathroom. He’d left the door unlocked for a reason, but when he made eye contact with her in the mirror, that reason seemed unworthy of the moment. Out in the living room, she’d made him feel useless and exultant at the same time. The latter made no sense, so he’d focused on what she hadn’t let him do. She hadn’t let him touch her, taste her. He’d stood there like a rodeo bull and let her use his body to get off. So yeah, when he’d walked into the bathroom, raging with lust so thick he couldn’t breathe, he’d thought, fuck it, let her see. I’m not ashamed of a damn thing.
He’d mistaken the fact that she’d humbled him for taking away his pride.
She stood behind him now with her lips parted and cheeks flushed, watching him stroke himself off like a hormonal teenager. It shouldn’t have made him hotter, not when he didn’t fully understand the problems she obviously had knocking around inside her beautiful head. He should stop now and make her explain, tell her she couldn’t to
uch him anymore until he knew what she was going through. But there wasn’t any turning back. Not right now, not with his cock heavy in his hand, ready to erupt.
In the mirror, he could see her fingers smoothing against each other, as if she were imagining what it would feel like to replace his hand with her own.
Jesus. He liked having her watch. If her expression had been any different, it might have been another story. The look of wonder, the renewal of arousal that transformed her as she came slowly closer, had him clenching his teeth to prolong the moment. Fuck, though, it hurt. The front of her panties were wet from riding him until she came. Her flat stomach peeked out under the edge of her shirt, reminding him once again how crazy he was to yank it up and see what she hid underneath. At the same time, she looked like an innocent who’d stumbled upon something very, very bad happening and God, it made him want to corrupt her even more. Sick. I’m sick. His balls drew up tight…the tingling began at the base of his spine…
“You should leave,” Connor grated, squeezing his eyes closed. Christ, any minute now…he couldn’t wait any longer. Looking at her, knowing he couldn’t touch her, was killing him. At the same time, his mind was projecting images in a desperate attempt to send him over the edge and find relief. Erin straddling his face, hands cuffed behind her back. Erin’s eyes going blind, ankles around her ears, as he drove into her like a madman. “Go, Erin.”
He didn’t hear her move. One second she was standing at the door, the next she was standing on the rim of his bathtub, just beside his left shoulder. Closer. Her tits were eye level and it took every ounce of self-control inside him not to suck them into his mouth, right through her T-shirt. A tiny moan dropped from her lips as she leaned close, watching his hand work his stiff cock. She placed her open lips on his neck and dragged them higher, where she licked at his ear.
“What are you doing?” he demanded. Do it again.
“What feels right,” she whispered, stroking her fingers over his chest. “Tell me what you’re thinking about. Is it me?”
“Of course,” he shouted. “You don’t want to know any more than that.”
“Yes, I do.” She lightly scraped her fingernails down his back, and he growled. “I want to know what I’m missing out on. Tell me.”
Against his better judgment, he let his lips come within a breath of her straining nipples, shifting beneath her shirt with every breath. Torture. This was torture.
“You said you want to fill every inch of me. Is that what you’re thinking about?”
“Yes, goddammit.”
Her eyes turned glazed, unfocused. In his entire life, he’d never seen anything like her, vulnerable yet regal at the same time. She lifted her right hand and sucked two fingers into her mouth, before sliding them down the front of her panties. Her mouth parted on a gasp as she sank them into her pussy. “We can play pretend, can’t we?”
Connor’s body lurched with the force of his brutal climax. His vision dimmed under the weight of it, but he fought to keep his eyes trained on her hand, moving subtly inside her panties. His wild groans bounced off the walls of the bathroom as he stroked out the last of his come, aware that it was landing on her bare legs and unable to feel an ounce of regret over that fact. Right at the end, when the tremors were beginning to die down, she removed her fingers from her panties and dragged them across his lips, ripping an aftershock out of him, coating his palm with the effect.
“Dammit, Erin. Dammit.”
She slipped both hands into his hair and massaged his scalp, gently pulling on the strands. Until he swore it was the only thing holding him upright. “Gorgeous man,” she murmured. “Amazing man.”
“No. I’m not.” How could he stand this close and not bury his face against her chest? Her stomach? It felt like a ritual he was neglecting to complete. “Don’t mistake me for something I’m not.”
“I make a lot of mistakes, but coming over here wasn’t one.” He heard her heavy swallow. “I’m sorry I made you hurt. I’m sorry I can’t…”
The need to reassure her cut through everything. Her toes curled into the edge of his bathtub, chipped black nail polish on her toes. Without the bravado she’d worn like a second skin since he met her, she looked exhausted. Her eyelids drooped, making the heavy circles under her eyes look more pronounced. Now that his need had been momentarily slaked, shame plowed into his stomach like a battering ram. He shouldn’t have let the situation get away from him. Whatever she was harboring on the inside was more important than his attraction to her, mind-numbing though it might be.
He rearranged himself back into his sweatpants and took a deep breath. “Why did you come over here, Erin?”
“The window in my room might as well be painted on. It doesn’t go anywhere.”
“Explain.”
She glanced toward the mirror, flinching at her reflection, before hopping off the tub and leaving the bathroom. He grabbed a towel off the rack and followed her. When he entered the living room, he felt a flare of panic at not seeing her, but breathed a sigh of relief when she stepped into the light coming in through the window.
Evidence of his release was still visible on her legs and he put a stranglehold on the surge of pleasure it gave him, seeing it on her skin. He handed her the towel, wishing he could be the one to clean her off. She stared at the towel for a beat before comprehending why he’d brought it. As she wiped her legs clean, there wasn’t a hint of embarrassment in her expression, only methodical concentration. When she’d finished, she held on to the towel and looked out the window.
“See, from here, there are twenty-two steps to the street.” Her words sounded subdued, but concise. “One step onto the fire escape, five down the first set of stairs, five down the second. One when I hop down onto the asphalt. From there, if I run at a sprint, I can be in front of the building in ten steps. There’s a security light that goes on if it senses movement, but the bulb has been taken out. It’s the first thing I did when I got to the building this afternoon.”
Connor’s chest felt like someone had lobbed a sandbag onto his chest. Dots were starting to connect, though. Escape artist. Needs to be near windows. He wasn’t ready to ponder the reason she’d developed the skill, but he had to know. It felt like his responsibility. “Your window doesn’t have a fire escape?”
Erin scoffed. “I could get out without one. No problem.” She rapped on the windowpane with her knuckles. “There’s a closed-in area below my window, only accessible through a basement door. Fifteen-foot-high cinder-block walls. I could potentially get over them, but it would kill my timing. And I wouldn’t have any visibility on the other side. It’s a trap.”
It was unbelievable, really. The way she appeared so self-possessed while calmly discussing escape routes. So unlike the unusual behavior he’d already come to associate with her. It made something inside him hurt. “Does someone want to trap you, Erin?”
“Yes,” she whispered, then shook herself. “Don’t ask me that again.”
It took Connor several moments to calm the rage. Was her need to have a way out associated with her aversion to being touched? He’d known there had to be a reason she didn’t like hands on her, but now that he drew closer to an explanation, he was afraid to know the whole story. Afraid to have his depravity confirmed. God, what he’d just done in front of this girl couldn’t be excused. Nor could the desire to do it again. To do whatever she’d allow him to do.
“I’m going to sleep here tonight.” She sat down on the floor, just beneath the window. “I’ll figure out something tomorrow…a different place to stay. This won’t work.”
No. He almost shouted the word. Maybe he’d known her less than a full day, but no way was he letting her stay somewhere he couldn’t watch her. Where he couldn’t keep her protected. Especially now that she’d admitted someone wanted to trap her. “Stand up, Erin,” he said more sharply than intended. “You sleep in my room tonight and I’ll take the spare. We’ll switch apartments in the morning.”
; She came to her feet slowly. “You would do that?”
“Of course I would.”
Her smile turned him inside out. She pushed up on her toes and laid a soft kiss on his lips. “Good night, baby.”
She walked away, leaving him holding his breath and unable to stop himself from watching her through his bedroom doorway as she nestled like a kitten into his sheets. After some consideration, he dropped down onto the couch—just in case she decided to go for another midnight ramble—wondering what the hell he’d gotten himself into. Because he knew with irrevocable certainty that he would give Erin whatever she needed, whenever she needed it. He’d help her battle her demons any way he could.
God help them both if his own demons came out to play.
Chapter Five
Erin lit a match and let it fall to the ground, crushing it with the toe of her boot. The bells attached to her shoelaces jingled, mingling with the passing traffic. She was late for the squad meeting. Risky, yeah. Derek hadn’t been playing around yesterday when he’d threatened to kick them to the curb if they didn’t fly straight. Not to mention, the reason for her hesitation to go inside was so stupid, she wanted to give herself a dead arm, if such a thing were possible.
Her hair. She’d dyed it back to blond this morning, having sneaked out of Connor’s apartment early to make a drugstore run. Gone were the hot-pink tresses that had acted as a warning to all who approached her that they weren’t in for a normal conversation. She’d stared at herself for too long in the mirror, torn between hating how normal she looked now and wondering if wearing her natural color for the first time in ages would force her into normalcy.
Nothing could. She knew that. Maybe that was the real issue. This job, this new hair color, it signaled a step away from how she’d been living her life since age sixteen, when she’d finally taken off on her own. Leaving the past behind in a dancing whirlwind of flames. It had followed her, that whirlwind, heaving its smoky breath down her neck, watching and waiting for her to falter. Waiting for its chance to devour her. She wasn’t scared of the flames, only the too-familiar face that stood behind them.