Chapter Forty-One

Carrie

I want Reid inside me and that’s exactly where this is headed, hard and fast fucking, but some part of me pushes back, not on being owned by this man, but at the idea that I don’t own him. That’s the control issue. That’s what I’ve been trying to avoid with Reid, but it’s not about power. It’s about him letting me in, him letting down that stone wall, and while sex isn’t the way either of us owns each other, it feels like a good starting place. It was our starting place.

All is grand in the “I need control” scheme of things, but this is Reid Maxwell, and he wants to go hard and fast, and that’s exactly what he’s doing. His shirt is gone, and I’m pretty sure in between kissing him and touching him, I had something to do with that. His hands are all over me and my blouse and bra are short-lived, gone in a few quick movements. I’m now naked on a porch, on what I hope is a private beach, but considering I’m shoved against a pole, his powerful legs framing mine, his hands on my breasts, it’s hard to care. His fingers tug roughly at my nipples and I moan with the pain and pleasure of it, his cheek finding my cheek as he whispers, “I’m going to fuck you right here and now on this porch.”

Yes, please, I think, and my fingers flex on the hard muscle of his shoulders, and his mouth is on mine while he unzips his pants and my sex clenches with how soon he will be inside me, but that need to go deeper with Reid, to make him let go, stays with me. I reach down and help him with his pants, my hand wrapping his shaft and freeing him, but his hand covers mine, while the fingers of his other hand slide between my thighs and stroke the line of my sex, pressing inside me.

I pant and his mouth lowers to mine once more. “God, I love the sounds you make,” he murmurs before kissing, and it’s all I can do not to melt right here and surrender to whatever he wants. I press my hands under his waistband and tear my mouth from his. “Why are you still dressed?”

He reaches for his pants and that’s when I try to go down on my knees, but Reid catches my arms. “What are you doing?”

“I’m pretty sure you can figure that out.”

“As many fantasies as I’ve had that involve your mouth on my body now is not that time. This is about us, feeling us, not me feeling you.” He melts me with those words, even before he kisses me again and that’s it. I’m done. I can’t fight this anymore. He squeezes one of my butt cheeks and smacks the other. I yelp and he’s kissing me, lifting me as he does, setting me on the waist-high railing, and then just that quickly, he’s pressing inside me, stretching me, driving me crazy in all those indescribable ways he and he alone does. There is just something about the intimacy with this man, something that has always been there, but feels different now like it’s changing, like we’re changing.

He presses deep, burying himself as far inside me as he can and then tilting me back to look in my eyes. “If I die anytime soon, I’ll die a happy man. God, woman, what are you doing to me?” His mouth closes down on mine and his hands close around my backside, squeezing as he lifts me and then we’re in this frenzied, grinding, thrusting, insatiable dance of pure lust and need. Reid’s hands are at my waist and I lean backward as he lifts me and pulls me down, thrusting into me, and I trust him to hold onto me. I know he won’t let me fall. His gaze rakes over my breasts, hot and heavy, but it’s not enough. He seems to feel the same, and he sits down somewhere, a large chair I think when my knees hit the cushion, and then I’m straddling him, my hands on his chest, our eyes locked, the connection between us a living breathing thing that consumes me and us.

He cups my face, closing his fingers around my hair. “We might be fucking, but this is not just fucking.” He drags me to him, kissing me hard, deep, roughly even, his hand on my lower back, molding me to him, moving to the center of my back to press our bodies together, the press of my naked breasts to his naked chest undoes us both. I rock against him, and he thrusts into me, and we are suddenly wild, frenzied, trying to get closer, trying to crawl into each other’s skin it seems. I tumble into the hotspot that is the edge of orgasm, my nails digging into his shoulders and then I’m there, my body spasming around the thick pulse of his erection.

“Oh fuck,” he murmurs, groaning as I drag him along with me, and I can feel the hot, wet heat of his release, the tension in his body going from intense to a softer, gentler place. I collapse against him, my face buried in his neck, the earthy wonderful scent of him all over me and around me. He holds me, his hand firmly on my back and my hip, neither of us moving, and I try not to think about the secrets he holds or the return to reality that comes next, but there is no escaping the dampness between my legs.

Reid must feel it too. He strokes my hair and whispers in my ear. “Hold on.” He shifts, and before I know his intent, he’s adjusting his pants that he never took off, and standing up with me in his arms.

He walks inside the cottage. “Where do you think the bathroom would be?” he murmurs.

I try to look, but I really can’t see anything. “The bedroom has to have one,” I say.

“And since I don’t know where that is, the kitchen it is.”

I laugh. “The kitchen?”

“Sure. There are paper towels, we hope, and we can fuck on the counter while we’re there.”

“Even you can’t be ready for that yet,” I tease.

“You underestimate me with you, baby, but I see a door that might be a bedroom. We’re going for it.”

He walks in whatever direction he walks and I just hold on, which works out well. Soon I’m being set on a pale gray and white swirled bathroom sink, and Reid is pressing a towel between us. It’s a few beats later, when I’ve tossed the towel in a hamper, and I’m sitting naked on that counter. With him still in his pants, I feel the absence of my clothes.

Reid presses his hands on the sink beside me. “If I wanted you to hate me, I would make you hate me and it wouldn’t be subtle, or by way of Elijah. I have that in me. You know that.”

I know instantly that he’s not trying to shock me or drive me away. He’s being honest in a way that is raw and real, which matters to me. He matters to me. “Yes,” I say, “I know, and no, it doesn’t scare me, or I wouldn’t be here. Neither does the Elijah confession.”

“It wasn’t a confession,” he corrects. “It was a statement of fact.”

“That you didn’t make from the beginning,” I counter. “That says you didn’t want to tell me.”

“Because I wasn’t after your hate, as you accused me when we got here.”

“There was no reason for you to hold that back. I need you to shoot straight with me and trust me to handle even the rough stuff. I’m not unreasonable. I’m not sensitive or emotional. You didn’t know she was married. I believe you.”

He studies me for several beats, his expression indiscernible, his jaw hard, before he says, “Let’s put on some comfortable clothes and take a walk on the beach.”

I know instantly that I’m not the only one who feels naked right now. The walk isn’t about romance or conversation. It’s about escape, but it’s not a shut door, or he wouldn’t be taking me with him. And I’m coming to believe that I’m about the only person Reid Maxwell hasn’t shut out of his life and I hope that one day soon, he’ll trust me enough to tell me why.