body where she’d have to hold him and give him the kind of peace that he craved.
She pulled away from him, but not before she nipped his bottom lip. “You’re still fighting,” she murmured and moved to his neck where she found the soft and vulnerable lobe of his ear. Then she bit down. Hard. “Good,” she laughed softly in his ear before she ran her tongue along the shell of it. “You’ll be graded based on how long you can go without saying the words…I submit.”
He wrapped his hand in her hair and tugged so that his eyes bored into hers. “This isn’t some game.”
“Isn’t it?”
That pissed him off. The fact that she sensed his weakness and was using it angered him on a level he couldn’t remember ever feeling before. He caught her up in his arms and stood, but there was nothing romantic about the way he hauled her across the room and tossed her down on his bed.
“You want this?” he barked, even as he reached for the snap of her jeans and started pulling them off her legs.
She didn’t shy away. She didn’t demur. She merely helped him by kicking them the rest of the way off.
That pissed him off, too.
He crawled onto the bed and kneeled between her legs forcing her thighs wide. His hand ran down over her exposed flat white belly then over her thighs. Not gently but with the kind of possession that a girl her age would never have understood. Still, she didn’t fight him.
Reaching down he undid the buttons on his own jeans and lowered them just enough to free his erection. He wrapped his hands around her hips and pulled her toward him and up his body. Then seeing the purple lace panties that were in his way, he tore them from her hips. She was open to him, her buttocks resting on his thighs, his sex just at the gate of her slick wet heat.
His plan had been to force himself inside her, high and rough so she would know how far from a game this was. He was so damn aroused that with a few strokes it would be over, and she wouldn’t have come close to finding any pleasure from it. That was what he wanted. She would leave him then, maybe hate him a little and that was what he wanted, too.
Her words echoed in his ears and he realized that wasn’t the problem. The problem was she saw too damn much.
“It’s okay,” she murmured then, breaking the silence of anticipation.
There it was again. He could see it in her eyes that she knew what he’d planned, and probably why, too. Just to be perverse he did the unexpected.
“Take off your shirt.”
Instantly, she lifted the shirt over her head and flung it away. She was completely exposed to him now. Her body laid out like some kind of sacrificial gift, while the only exposed part of his body was his hard cock. Out of some twisted level of respect he shrugged out of his dark T-shirt and threw it aside, as well.
Then he stared down at the body she’d unveiled. Her breasts were high and firm, he knew that already. But her nipples were impossibly tight given the fact that he hadn’t even touched them yet or taken them into his mouth.
Bending over her, he could see her tilting her chin up, thinking that maybe he would kiss her now, but somehow that seemed too personal, too intimate for what he wanted this to be. Instead, his mouth covered her breast, and he pulled her nipple between his teeth, holding her still for some strong sucking.
Her back arched, higher and higher, as his mouth got more and more demanding. Sighs and moans filled the room, all of them hers. When he lifted his head he could see that her nipple was swollen and colored to a deep brown. His tongue lapped at it once, and her whole body shivered in reaction.
Legs that had been spread on either side of his hips lifted and squeezed his sides in urging. His erection brushed against the soft hair that guarded the center of her body. He was done waiting.
“Behind you. In the drawer.”
She reached back over her head and fumbled with the knob on the drawer of his nightstand. After a second she was able to open it and reached inside for a small box. She pulled the box out and dropped it on the bed next to her. Then she found a small foil packet inside and ripped it open with fingers that he could see were shaking.
“Put it on me.”
She looked up at him, her expression uncertain. She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again there was nothing left but determination and need and desire. Desire so raw, he thought that the look in her eyes alone would be enough to get him off. With disciplined abs, she lifted herself into a half crunch and covered him with the condom. Then slowly, deliberately he knew, she lay back down on the bed in offering.
She had to know. She had to know what it did to him to see her like this. And because she did, it angered him all over again. He thrust once, and sent himself deep inside her body. He heard her high-pitched gasp, felt her wet walls close around him, trying it seemed to protect her body against his invasion, but he was too strong and too damn needy to be denied.
He stilled himself for a moment, his natural sexual instincts taking over, as he allowed her to accommodate his thick length. But then she was moving on him, twisting her body in an effort to take more, and pumping her hips feverishly in an effort to find her own pleasure rather than waiting for him to give it to her.
It unraveled him. In seconds their movements fell in sync as he thrust and she pushed. As he pulled and she lifted. His hands dug into her firm ass cheeks and squeezed them as hard as the inner walls of her body squeezed him. He felt her start to tremble around him, watched her body arch again as she dived into her orgasm and he let himself go deep inside of her.
When it was over he pulled himself from her body and discarded the condom. Then he stood next to the bed looking down at her, at her body, naked but for the damn ankle socks. Her eyes were closed and her hands were resting on her breasts as if she was trying to keep her heart inside her rib cage.
This was the moment he should have told her to leave. Do it quick and cold and she could still hate him despite the fact that she’d been pleasured during the sex. Or maybe he could wait, he decided. Just for a little while. He was so damn weary. His muscles, now filled with a postcoital lethargy, seemed to give out to the point that he knew he needed to sit or he would fall. He stripped his jeans and boxers and moved back onto the bed with her.
Instantly, she opened her arms to him. He rested his head on her breasts and felt her legs circle the back of his thighs. One hand stroked his back, the other his head.
“It’s okay,” she whispered to him. “I’ve got you.”
It was so incredibly true, he almost wept.
After an hour he woke, hard and needy. The second time he took her from behind on his knees with her facing away from him. He thought if he couldn’t see her face it would be easier. But when he moved inside of her body, she gripped his hand and pinned it to her breast so that he could feel the rapid pounding of her heart. Not surprisingly, it beat in perfect unison with his.
The third time, he let her make love to him. It was a mistake because her sincerity and devotion during the act touched his soul and weakened his resolve. So much so that the fourth time he made love to her in return.
The next morning he left her in his disheveled bed. The need to escape had been so intense, it almost felt like fear. He couldn’t allow this to happen. Allow her to happen to him. She was a child. She had her whole life ahead of her. She…
So he did the only thing that he thought made sense at the time, all the while telling himself that it was for her own good.
The next time he saw her was the following night. In honor of her promotion to field operative, the director of the Youth Adoption Program had decided to host a cocktail party for a number of politically influential people in an effort to promote the success of the program.
Quinlan recalled the exact instant Sabrina walked through the door of the director’s home, remembered the look in her face as if it was a piece of art he’d studied for years. She’d been so full of life and confidence. She’d
