Then I’m looking up at him. Chiseled muscles, body hardened by a rough life, a rough career, marked with tattoos and the occasional scar, and his face — a ready smile, a smirk that makes my knees weak, and bright blue eyes that hold nothing back.
He fills me again. His face contorts in pleasure, and his eyes gaze at me with naked desire. I shake with each thrust, rock my hips against him, guiding his cock to fill me at just the right spot that tickles each of my nerves with fire. He adjusts, he listens, responds, cares, and fucks me exactly how I want.
But I still want more.
He makes me want to submit. Makes me feel safe to submit.
While pleasure thrums and builds inside me, I part my lips and whisper to him. “Put your hands on my throat.”
It takes a second for my words to reach him, to break through the formidable wall of pleasure. When it does, he looks me in the eyes.
“Is that what you really want?”
There’s no judgment in his voice; I nod.
“I feel safe with you,” I say.
He reaches down with one hand. Easy, just gentle pressure. Enough to feel him. Enough to send a forbidden thrill through my body — this is a powerful man I’m giving my body to.
My gasps and moans get a little shorter. My breathing gets a little harder. My head swims, my body hums, pleasure building and growing, intensified by the sensation of being wholly controlled by him. I shut my eyes, listen to him — his breathing, his moaning, the intensifying urgency of his lust as he approaches his climax.
I want to finish with him.
As he nears his peak, I lock my legs behind him. Clench tight to him with the legs he lusts after, and I pull him into me.
“I’m not letting you go.”
Five words break him. Turn this hardened titan to jelly. He clenches, he thrusts his hands onto the mattress to keep himself upright, and I feel him lose himself.
He doesn’t hold back. Because this man can’t hold back. His lips find mine, they hold them in a tight embrace while our bodies stay intertwined. It’s bliss.
In time, we part just enough for him to roll to his side on the bed.
“Fucking hell, Tiffany, you nearly killed me,” he gasps, falling to the side. “Give me a second to catch a breather and then I’ll be ready to almost die again.”
Laughing, I scoot closer to him, feel his arms envelop me, rest my head on one massive pectoral and listen to the thunderous rhythm of his heartbeat. I hope he knows my heart is beating for him, too.
I’ve never been this close to a man. With everyone else, it was about ambition, but with him, it’s about vulnerability. Honesty. Compassion. With my ear to his chest, I can hear the pump of the thing about him that I love the most: his tremendous heart.
But my brain won’t let me just enjoy the moment. This supreme and novel closeness; I never could rest on my laurels, even if it’s a kind of emotional contentment that’s better than I could have ever imagined; I need to be striving, working, thinking, doing.
I sit up. Look into his eyes. My damned brain overrides my heart — the part of me crying out to just enjoy the moment — and I say, “What do we do next?”
His eyes are only half open. Slightly-lidded, slightly-closed, and they turn lazily to me. There’s still a smile on his face, but it’s faded a little as I prod him back to work.
“What do you mean?”
“You went to this construction site. You saw Anna, her father, and the foreman meeting. There was nothing else, no details, nothing you heard or saw, that could be useful to us?”
Those lidded eyes look away from me and toward the ceiling. His heartbeat shifts, and a sigh fills his chest. The happiness behind my smile flees my face, and my lips stay curled upward only by force of will. Something’s off. Why do I feel like he’s withdrawing from me?
“Nothing, Tiffany. I told you everything I saw at that construction site.”
“You’re sure?”
“Would I lie to you?”
I think he might.
Chapter Eighteen
Blaze
“I don’t think you’re lying, I just want to make sure you’re telling me everything. Maybe there’s a detail that you don’t think is important, but could actually be important. Are you sure there’s nothing you’ve left out?” She says, taking her head off my chest and propping herself up on an elbow.
“I saw what I saw. And I told you everything,” I say.
It kills me to lie to her, but the last thing she needs to know right now is that her old man is neck-deep in this mess. She’s too fragile, she’s been through too much, and something like this could break her. As much as it hurts to keep this from her, it’d be harder for both of us if she was a wreck right now. There’ll be time to deal with her father later.
“Fine. I believe you, Blaze. But this leaves us in a tenuous position. We need more information to help your mother, but neither of us can exactly waltz back in to Southwest Regional and start asking questions and requesting paperwork.”
“And the lawyer wasn’t any help?”
“He wasn’t. No.”
“That seems crazy to me. It’s been my experience with lawyers that they’re happy to earn some cash and take on a case, even if it doesn’t have much hope of winning. Those bloodsucking bastards love money, no matter how they get it.”
She shrugs. “Well, this bloodsucking bastard wasn’t very interested in helping.
