I twist my head, pressing my lips against his. If he doesn’t want to talk, we won’t. His beautiful, sulky mouth has a fresh bruise at the corner. He’s been fighting, and he’s been hurt enough. I nip, harder than I should. He grunts, deepening both our kiss and his caress as his hand rubs my butt again, sliding back up between my cheeks and pressing against my pucker. Barely touching me, but I know what it feels like when the big, bad wolf comes knocking at my door.
Good.
It feels good.
“Do you like that?” He rubs his erection against my butt. That is a little vague, and we’re in unfamiliar territory, but I’ve always liked everything Vik has done to me. With me. For me. I nod enthusiastically and he taps the back of my thighs.
“Open up. I’ll make you feel better.”
My knees know who they trust. Unlike my head, they don’t need to think shit over or come up with a plan. They part slowly, but they hold nothing back. They let him have everything and anything.
A fingertip traces the seam of my folds, teasing. I whimper, trying to force him deeper. Vik’s such a gentleman, because he dips his finger deeper and then strokes slowly up. Down. Everywhere he touches me I’m hot and wet, my body aching, begging for more. The tension builds, my body taking over because I’m about to come and I’m right here, bent over Vik’s bed and on the edge of falling off into the world’s biggest orgasm ever and—
He stops.
“If you didn’t come here for sex, you don’t need this,” he growls.
Logically, I know I can’t die from not coming. Vik, however, is looking at a death sentence because I’m going to kill him.
“This night going according to plan, babe?”
He holds me still with an arm at the small of my back when I try to wriggle upright. He is such a bastard.
“I came here for you,” I hiss. “Not a hookup.”
“This is all I have to give you, babe.”
I hesitate. “I want everything you have to give.”
He’s wrong. He’s so much more than a talented set of fingers or a big dick. I need to tell him that, make him understand, but he grabs my hips and positions himself at my entrance.
God, he’s huge.
And impatient.
He shoves himself deep inside me, driving home, and fuck words. I scream, letting everything I’m feeling out. Being facedown on Vik’s bed helps with that—the sound’s muffled and it’s just him and me. It feels good and it feels raw and I don’t want him to stop. He pounds into me, creating a raw burn that becomes the brightest, strongest pleasure ever. It’s like the night we re-met and he inked me, the pain and discomfort becoming a doorway I step through to somewhere pleasurable. I’m making noises and he’s grunting, his hips slapping against my ass with each hard stroke. Right now, he’s all mine.
And like the pain when he inked me, my anger changes, becoming something else. It’s a connection, a feeling, a heated, pissed-off, burning, fucking fantastic sensation that I refuse to feel guilty about because it’s not PC. He pushes me open, slamming into me hard and with none of his usual finesse. It’s as if everything inside him has burst open, too, and now he can’t or won’t hold back. My head hits the mattress with each rough stroke, my thighs bowed wide, and it’s so impossibly good.
He comes first, holding me wide-open as he empties himself into me, stretching me so he can fill me up. I cry out because he can’t leave me behind, not this time, not when it matters so much that we go somewhere, anywhere together. But fuck him. I can take what I want, I can—
He pulls out, flips me over and covers me with his mouth. I’m dripping wet with his come and my own wetness, and I still want more. I ride his face and it’s fast and brutal. He pushes me toward my orgasm ruthlessly, tonguing and kissing and sucking me. I come apart in seconds, crying out and squeezing his head between my thighs.
“Harper.”
He says my name, and I’d like to think I hear other things in that one word. Things like I’m sorry and stay and be mine. But this is dirty hookup sex, not a box of candy hearts. I don’t get my choice of sweet messages. I don’t get his heart.
My dress is still up around my waist, and I’ve completely lost my panties. And my mind.
“This isn’t a booty call,” I whisper into the sheets. Then I say it again, louder, with different words. “This matters. We matter.”
He looks at me and time slows down. I want to grab his shoulders and shake him. Kick him hard in the balls because maybe then he’ll finally feel something for me. It’s so stupid, wanting more from a man who’s told me over and over that he can’t. That he won’t.
“I love you,” I say and wait.
There’s a long, painful moment of radio silence. I roll onto my side, and he lets me go.
“Fuck, Harper,” he says finally.
That is so not an I love you, too.
His hand comes up, like maybe he’s about to brush the hair back from my face, but I bare my teeth at him and he backs away before I bite his finger the fuck off. It’s obvious that can’t and won’t mean don’t and never fucking ever. So it makes no sense for me to stick around. To stick with him. He’s not in love with me.
I get up.
I get dressed.
And then I leave.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Vik
WHAT’S WRONG WITH straight-up sex?
Harper’s been my dirty girl, my fun girl, my one-night stand on
