Reese
He stared at the black lace pushing up my breasts, then slowly lifted his eyes to mine.
“You need to be sure,” he said each word deliberately. “You need to be sure, because I can’t resist you on my best day, and this… this is far from my best day.”
His hands dug into my hips, like he was holding himself back from touching me until I gave him the word.
In a single deft move, I reached down and cupped his hard dick, stroking it softly in my hand.
“Fucking hell, Reese.” He growled, and I barely had time to lock my legs around his waist before he carried me the short distance to his bedroom.
After yanking the blankets off, he laid me carefully in the center of the bed, then hovered over me, his hands on either side of my head and his knees bracketing my thighs.
“This isn’t going to be some sweet, gentle lovemaking, Reese. I need you too much. I need to feel you squeezing every long, hard inch of me deep inside you until that’s the only thing I fucking feel. Until my universe begins and ends between your thighs. Until I fucking feel alive again.” He dragged one finger down my throat, through the valley of my cleavage, until it curled into the dip of my bra. Then he raised an eyebrow, as if offering me one last chance to change my mind.
“Waiting for an invitation again?” I plucked the hair tie from my bun and shook my head, letting my hair fall wildly around me.
His eyes darkened to emerald green, and he leaned down to capture my mouth, his hands working together to tear my bra off at the same time.
The kiss was raw, all teeth, tongue, and reckless angles. He fisted the hair at the back of my head, holding me in place as he attacked my mouth with a desperation that brought tears to my eyes and a rush of dampness between my legs.
He took everything I had to offer and demanded more, claiming my lips over and over, until I was drunk on his taste. Until the imprint of his mouth was seared on mine.
Somewhere along the way, the rest of my clothes disappeared, my attention distracted by the scratch of his stubble along my cheek and the hot promises he whispered in my ear.
“You’re fucking soaked for me, aren’t you, Reese? If I touched you right now—”
His finger traced an achingly slow path up my seam, delving into the heat at my core.
“It’s your fault,” I panted. “I need—”
I bucked my hips, trying to keep his finger in my slick channel.
“You need me.” And it sounded like a vow.
Then his mouth was right there, those clever lips closing around my clit and sucking hard, while he pumped his hand inside me, adding a second finger, then a third.
Even though he’d warned me, I didn’t know pleasure could build this fast, this steep, this quick.
His free hand pushed my thighs up and out, spreading me wider for his erotic assault.
Bolt after bolt of electricity shot down my spine, and I raised my hips higher for more, more, more of his demanding touch.
I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t speak. One of my hands fisted the sheet near my hip, and the other clawed at his shoulder, pushing him away, pulling him closer, trying to prolong the inevitable and chase the explosion all at once.
And when he curled those beautiful, talented fingers of his, finding that special spot along my front wall, things like gravity and death and truth seemed so insignificant. So tiny in comparison to the sonic boom of pleasure he’d just unleashed on me.
I was still blinking in a languorous daze when he entered me in one hard push, burying himself to the root.
My eyes shot to his, my parted lips hanging open soundlessly, as he set a punishing rhythm above me.
“My mom left a year after Garrett died. Physically, she left I mean. Emotionally, she died when he did.”
His hand grabbed my thigh, lifted it around his waist, and my boobs jiggled between us from the force of his thrusts.
“My dad blamed me. For everything. For Garrett’s death. For Mom leaving. For business deals that fell through and shitty weather and the mailman being late. I’ll never be good enough, never compare to the legend of Garrett, the golden son who died too young.”
Laird rotated his hips on the downstroke, rubbing his pubic bone against my sensitive clit.
It was hard to focus on his words, to absorb the horror of his childhood in the midst of the hot tension that was already building between my thighs again.
“And Marco. That fucking prick hurt you. He hurt you and I didn’t even know because you’re so fucking strong, so fucking stubborn and I get that, Jesus Christ knows I get that, but to find out later? After the fact? It’d hurt less to get shot, Reese.”
He dipped his hand between our slick bodies, circled his thumb on that perfect spot so softly. The contrast between the gentleness of his hand and the ferocity of his cock made me rake my nails down his back until he arched and groaned and drove into me even harder, even faster. I reveled in his response, that I made him as crazy as he made me.
“I spent hours going through the security tapes. I found the first time he tripped you on the curb during band camp. Yeah, I watched the tapes back that far. And I found the one from the night in the stadium. Watched him stare at you on the ground, crumpled and bleeding. Watched him pat your head and then walk away. Watched the video of him leaving out of the tunnel, not even looking back.”
He pinched my clit suddenly, and the euphoria erupted again, more intense this time, if that was possible.
But he didn’t stop. He buried himself in me over and over, relentlessly, refusing to let go.
Tears sprang to my eyes as I realized he was punishing himself, refusing to let himself come until he finished confessing to me.
My mouth was dry, but I reached up to cup his face, to bend my fingers behind his neck and force his tormented gaze to mine.
He pressed his cheek into my palm, but never slowed.
My thighs ached as he pressed closer, thrust harder, his motions becoming more erratic.
“I turned the videos in. To the band director, to the athletic director, to the dean of the whole fucking school. I sent copies to anyone I thought might help me. They expelled him for breaking the moral and ethical code of Rodner University. And after he got the news that he’d destroyed his future, I broke his fucking pretty boy nose.”
I gasped, and Laird pulled my other thigh around his waist, until I locked my ankles behind his back. With each drive of his hips, he lifted both of us off the mattress.
“And… and Eli.” His eyes were damp, but I couldn’t tell if it was sweat or tears or both or maybe just my eyes watering so badly that he looked blurry. “I was going to be alone on Thanksgiving, you know? Dad hates me, Mom left, Garrett’s dead, you were gone. I went to see Eli, to see what time he was eating so I could come and keep him company tomorrow. And his room was fucking empty, Reese. Martha was there putting fresh sheets on the bed, and I thought maybe he’d been discharged early, but then she told me he fucking died. Some fluke reaction to the same chemo he’d gone through a dozen other times. He died and I never even said goodbye. Never told him I loved him. Never got to—”
His voice broke off, and he shook his head before burying his face in the crook of my shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Reese. I’m so fucking sorry. I failed you, failed everyone. I’m so damn sorry…”
I tangled one hand in his hair, and wrapped the other around his back, crying from his pain, wanting to absorb it into myself and take it away from him.
He sucked my earlobe, his breath hot and fast against my neck, and his hips changed tactics, switched to short, quick drives, his ass flexing beneath my heels, his pelvis doing a drumroll on my clit.
Finally, finally I found my voice.
“Laird.”
I chanted his name, whispered it against his forehead, shouted it at the moon, felt it vibrate through every cell of my body.
And when my body tightened up again, impossibly finding another release, he finally let go, pulling out and pumping his cock furiously with his fist until he erupted in hot spurts on my stomach, marking me as his.