Chapter 14

When someone tells me ‘you’re going to regret that in the morning’ I only laugh. Why? Because most of the time I sleep in until noon.

-Krisney to Hennessy

Hennessy

I nervously worried my lip as I walked, looking both ways before I crossed the street to Tate’s place.

He’d left me a note on my front door saying that he was at home whenever I got home, and to come over when I got changed into old clothes.

Why I needed old clothes, I had no clue, but I did as he asked, changing into my oldest pair of jeans from high school that barely fit. They were old, stained, and so thin in some places that there probably wasn’t much life left in them. I followed the pants up with an old black t-shirt that used to be Reed’s—yes, I’d stolen that from Krisney, too. Finally, I finished the ensemble by putting on a pair of short ankle socks, my old Nikes that’d seen better days, and my hair up into a high ponytail.

“Isn’t that Reed’s shirt?”

I grinned and looked down at it, laughing.

“Yeah, it was his old soccer shirt.” I nodded. “When Krisney and he split, she was going to throw everything away. I took it for safe-keeping.”

And wore it, because why the hell not?

The back of the shirt said ‘Hail’ with the number ten beneath it. It was obvious whose it was seeing as Reed was the one and only Hail brother that nearly went pro—so everybody knew who he was.

“Yeah,” I grinned. “Why?”

He was scowling, which caused my grin to slip away.

“What?”

His eyes came up to mine, and he gritted his teeth for a few seconds before saying, “I don’t like seeing some other man’s shirt on you, even if it was from when he was a little runt.”

I looked down at the t-shirt.

It was a large, and that was definitely not the size of Reed any longer.

Speaking of Reed.

“I saw Reed last week,” I told him, climbing his porch steps as I spoke. “Why is he here?”

Tate shrugged. “Been here the last few days, actually. Assumed he was done over there to be honest. However, I can’t give you a for sure answer without asking him, and honestly I don’t fucking care that much.”

So he didn’t know what was going on either. Interesting.

Making a mental note to ask Krisney about Germany again, I took a look around at Tate’s house.

The entire place looked like chaos. Electrical cords stretched everywhere. Tools on every available surface. Large sheets of plastic hanging down from the ceiling, and covering most of the floor.

And empty fast food cups everywhere.

“You are a mess and a half,” I murmured, taking everything in.

“I’m not usually,” he admitted. “Just fucking nice to be able to do shit that doesn’t have someone following behind me telling me I can’t. I have a stack of freakin’ clothes in my bedroom that I haven’t put into the washer yet, all because I don’t like to be put on a schedule.”

I could imagine.

I’d watched a documentary once about prisons. In it, they spoke about how the inmate’s entire life was dictated to them.

They had someone telling them when they could eat. When they could shower. When they could go outside, and what they were allowed, and not allowed, to do while out there.

Literally, there wasn’t a single thing that they could do without first having to run it past someone first.

They even had their mail read before they got it.

“Did you ever get marriage proposals from women who wrote you while you were in jail?”

His brows rose, and then he shook his head, grinning.

“No, can’t say that I did.”

“Darn, I guess you never got any of my letters,” I teased.

He burst out laughing and took hold of my hand, leading me deeper into the house.

“What the hell are you going to do with all this space?” I asked him, my eyes widening, further and further, the more rooms we passed through.

“Not a damn thing,” he said. “I’m gonna fix it up and flip it once I’m done with it.”

My heart deflated.

Knowing that he wasn’t going to be living next to me for the rest of my life kind of sucked. He would’ve looked so pretty mowing his lawn without a shirt on.

“That’s fun,” I lied. “How much more work do you have to do on it?”

He shrugged. “A lot. Another six to eight months worth if all goes well.”

I let my hands trail against the wall in the hallway, and then stopped when I saw the kitchen.

This must’ve been where he started, because it was the most finished out of all the rooms.

“Wow,” I said, trailing my hand across the cabinets. “This looks like it’s almost done.”

He opened the fridge and bent forward, coming back out moments later with two beers.

He offered me one, and I looked at it curiously.

“I’ve never had a beer before,” I informed him. “Do they taste good?”

His eyes sparkled.

“Try it.”

I watched him as I used my nails to crack it open, and when I took my first drink and nearly choked on the bitter brew, his eyes were filled with laughter.

“That’s kind of gross,” I admitted, sticking my tongue out to help get rid of the taste. “Why would you want to drink this?”

I took another sip and yep, that one was as bad, if not worse, than the first one.

“Acquired taste,” he said. “Keep drinking, it’ll get better.”

I didn’t believe him, but took another sip without grimacing.

“As to answer your question, the kitchen was the one thing that’d been started when I bought the house. I only had to put in the cabinets. The paint color was already neutral, which is what I would’ve chosen as well. The backsplash goes in Monday, hopefully, and it will be followed up by the countertops coming in on Friday.”

As he spoke, I watched his face, and realized that he loved doing this.

“Why do you work at the shop with Travis and the Hails when you could be doing this full time?” I questioned him.

He shrugged.

“They have insurance.”

I burst out laughing.

“I’m sure that’s not the only reason,” I teased and took another sip of the beer he’d handed me.

It wasn’t as bad that time, but still, I placed my drink down on the counter and started to inspect his work.

My eyes went to the wall where the wood trim met the wood of the walls. “Is this shiplap?”

He grunted. “I was doing it before Joanna Gaines.”

I started to giggle. “I guess you were otherwise occupied when they got famous.”

He gave me a droll look, then took my hand. “Grab your beer, I’ll show you the rest of the house.”

I grabbed my beer and followed behind him, periodically taking a drink while I took in everything he wanted to do to the place, and everything he was going to leave as it was.

By the time we’d reached the second floor—and his bedroom—I was in love with the large, old house.

“This place is going to be magnificent when you’re through,” I told him. “I’d love to live here. Mine is nice, and I’d love to own something similar, but it always seemed like a lot of upkeep, so I’ve never taken the owners of the house up on their offer. I’m not really cut out for doing this kind of stuff.”

His eyes twinkled.

“Sure you are,” he said, pushing the bathroom door open and letting me get my first glimpse of the master bath.

And I fell in love. Utterly in love.

“Wow,” I breathed. “It’s a clawfoot tub! Is this the original?”

He nodded his head and followed me inside, taking in the room with a much more critical eye than I was sure that I had.

“This will be perfect once you get a fresh coat of paint on the walls. The floor is odd, with all that mismatched wood, but I love it.”

He looked down.

“This being the bathroom, I wasn’t sure I was going to leave the wood. Wood rots when it gets wet, but my uncle did a fantastic job at keeping the water off the floor in here. The floors in the other bathrooms have already been replaced with tile, but this one is all original.” He scuffed his boot on the floor, and smiled down at it.

I agreed. This floor was pretty beautiful. The slats of wood were a lot smaller than I was used to seeing as hardwood floors went.

“I think you should shiplap that wall,” I told him, pointing to the wall that was closest to the tub. “Make this room really pop.”

He walked over to the wall, with its dark green wallpaper, and reached up to the ceiling—yes, I said the ceiling—and took a hold of the corner of the left most piece, then pulled it down.

It didn’t all come down in one piece like I was expecting, but what it did do was show me enough that there was already shiplap on the walls behind the paper.

“Why would anyone want to cover that up?” I mused. “The nerve of some people.”

He grunted. “They’ll probably say the same thing about us in twenty years when they get a load of what we’re decorating with now.”

I agreed. They probably would.

I walked up to where he was standing and started to peel off more of the wallpaper that I could reach. He helped, and in twenty minutes, we mostly had all of the paper off the wall, and I was amazed with what was revealed behind it.

“It’s like a perfect little farmhouse wall,” I told him. “I wouldn’t do a single thing but maybe sand this to get all the stray pieces of wallpaper off it.”

He didn’t say anything, causing me to look up at him. When I did, it was to find him staring at me with amusement.

“What?”

“I thought you said you didn’t know anything about fixing up your own house?”

I blushed.

“I could probably do the easy stuff like this,” I said. “But I’ve never sanded. Never cut a board. Never done much of anything like that.”

He trailed one of his fingers down the length of my neck, and a shiver stole over my body.

“I can teach you anything you want to know, little rebel.”

I huffed out a laugh.

“Little rebel?”

He fingered my now very short hair that was now cut and styled around the top of my shoulder. It was much shorter than I would’ve liked, but it did, I had to admit, look cute.

“Little rebel,” he confirmed. “You’re a little rebel that doesn’t care what anyone thinks. I like that in a person.”

I licked my suddenly dry lips.

“We shouldn’t have done what we did,” I admitted softly…hesitantly.

He knew what I meant, but I couldn’t make myself say any more.

I didn’t want it to be over with. I didn’t want to admit that we’d taken it too far.

“Probably not,” he agreed. “But we’re going to do it again.”

I winced. “We crossed a moral line.”

His eyes felt like they were lasering into me as he said, “Do I look like a man that gives a fuck about moral lines?”

I bit my lip.

“You, maybe not. Me? Do I look like a woman that doesn’t care about moral lines?”

His hand curled around my head—yes, I do mean my entire head…he had big hands—and he pulled me to him until I was inches away from his mouth.

“How about you let me worry about your morals for a little while?”

I hesitated. “I don’t want you to go back to jail.”

It was purely selfish. The reason I didn’t want him to go back to prison had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with me. I knew that I wouldn’t like not seeing him.

Sure, I’d be worried for him if he had to go back, and honestly, that was pretty big too.

However, I just plain didn’t want him to go, because I would miss him.

“Not going back to jail, sweetheart,” he told me bluntly. “Got out on good behavior. Saved a guard from getting himself dead. Trust me when I say, I’m not going back.”

I pursed my lips. “If you weren’t going back, what’s with all the business of anger management with me, or the fact that you have to see the parole officer?”

He pulled me in closer—which I didn’t think was possible—and spoke only millimeters away from my lips.

“Bureaucratic bullshit,” he admitted. “They have to play the part. The man I saved, though? He was someone important. Didn’t know it at the time, but now I do. We’re talking the nephew of the goddamn president important. Why he was working in a prison, I still have yet to find out, but whatever. I was seriously minutes away from getting pardoned completely when I told them I didn’t want the easy way out. They gave me this.”

“But why?”

The thought of him getting out, completely unscathed, for something that he’d done was appealing. Who wouldn’t want to be pardoned? That was like getting a ‘get out of jail free’ card. I’d have taken it in a New York minute.

“Because that’s cheating,” he admitted. “And I’m no cheater.”

I bit my lip and looked at him.

He was so close my eyes almost had to cross to see him clearly.

However, the only thing touching me was the warm, huge palm of his hand that was still curled around my head, and nothing else.

Just as I was about to reach out and touch him, he stepped away, dropping his hand from my face as he did.

“I talked to your father.”

And that was the one true way to turn everything off inside of me.

I looked away from his intense gaze. A gaze that was taking everything about me in, and missing nothing. Not one single thing.

He saw the flinch that I couldn’t stop.

He saw the way my face paled, and my forehead instantly broke out in a sweat.

He also noticed the way my hand automatically went to my hair—or where my hair would’ve once been.

“How many times did he cut your hair like that when you were younger?”

I shrugged. I’d lost count.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “A few.”

A lot.

But who was counting?

“I can count eleven instances,” he said. “And that was when I was home.”

I started to study the planks on the wall, trying to think about anything but what he was saying.

Eleven.

I wanted to laugh.

It was more like forty-five, but again, who was counting?

Not me. No, sir.

I was a lying whore.

I knew the exact number of times.

I looked down at my arm.

I remembered sliding that cool piece of metal over my wrists.

I’d never broken skin. No, but I remembered the slide. The slight sting. The way there was a red mark there for days as it slowly faded to nothing.

“Then I started to think about the times that you weren’t at church, or with your father when he was out and about in town,” he continued as if he weren’t breaking my heart. “I remember that time at the town Christmas tree lighting when you were a senior in high school. I’d seen you that morning. I’d said hi. You’d told me how much you were looking forward to watching the tree lit up…then you never showed. I looked for you.”

That time…yeah that had been a bad one.

I remembered seeing Tate that day. He’d been wearing a green long sleeved Carhartt t-shirt, brown boots, and faded blue jeans that were dirty as hell. He’d been working on his car or something, because he’d had grease all over every available surface of his clothes.

He’d been home on leave, and I’d been so freakin’ excited to see him that I could barely keep the excitement out of my voice.

What he thought was excitement for the tree lighting ceremony had actually been excitement at seeing him home, healthy and whole.

“Then I thought about all those times that Krisney went to dances, football games, and such. When people would ask her where you were, she’d tell them that your father was strict, and wouldn’t let you attend school functions…or any functions where he couldn’t be there.”

I pursed my lips.

My father hadn’t allowed me to go to those. In fact, he hadn’t allowed me to go to much of anything unless it was the grocery store—because who the hell could get into trouble going there?

Apparently, I could.

That same day of the tree lighting, I’d gone to the grocery store, which was where I’d seen Tate. My father had allowed me to go to the grocery store by myself, but being the evil bastard that he was, he’d followed me there.

He’d always been suspicious. Things that I thought were normal—like saying hi to a man that had been deployed and had come home—were not normal to him. What they were to him, were immoral.

I’d been talking to a man. I’d been having lustful thoughts about a man that he’d hated.

Hence why he’d beaten me so badly that I could barely stand for a week afterward.

Luckily, it’d been Christmas break, allowing me to hide in my house for weeks and heal instead of going to school and having to explain away my stiff gait.

It was bad enough that Krisney assumed she knew what was going on. Though, she always assumed something much tamer than what was actually going on.

Krisney thought that I just had a strict father—one that thought I should have short hair.

What she didn’t know was that on any and every occasion that my father saw fit, he’d teach me what he thought was the way of God. Thou shalt not lust after a man. Thou shalt not have impure thoughts. Thou shalt not curse, lie, or steal.

The one and only time that I’d cursed had been in the kitchen when I’d slammed my finger in a drawer. It’d been the word ‘crap.’

My father had heard it, and had come barreling out of his office while ripping his belt from his belt loops.

“The day that you wore those pretty clothes at the church picnic,” my stomach clenched. That time had been one of the worst that I’d ever experienced.

Giving him hours to stew, to think about what he was going to do to me as he waited for the church picnic to be over, had been one that I never wanted to think about ever again.

I started to lift my shirt, yanking it up and over my head as I stared at him with a challenge in my eyes.

“I don’t want to talk about this,” I told him.

Then I started in on my pants.

I knew that a man could be distracted by sex, and that was what I needed—a big distraction.

I knew that my body wasn’t beautiful.

Hell, it wasn’t even cute.

I had stretch marks on my hips from my hyperactive growth as a child—at least in my mind’s eyes.

I was five foot seven. If I had heels on, that was.

Five foot four if I didn’t.

But apparently growing from four foot eight to five foot four in six months was enough to make my hips hate me forever.

Then there were my boobs.

They were too big for a short girl like me, and it was hard as hell to find anything to fit them that didn’t look completely at odds with my small stature.

My hips were round, and my thighs left a lot to be desired.

They would never not touch, no matter how much I may want them not to.

And my arms—well the fat on them would always swing in the wind if I had the windows down.

But for some reason, Tate seemed to like my body.

He seemed to find the things I hated most, attractive.

“We’re not done talking about this,” he said as he watched me work on my pants. “Not to mention I didn’t invite you over here to do that.”

I froze with my pants halfway over my ass.

Then I felt stupid.

Bringing them back up into position, I started buttoning them.

I was going to cry.

Literally, tears were stinging my eyes, and I wanted nothing more to do than go home and put this god-awful, shitty day behind me.

Tomorrow, I’d start over.

Tomorrow, I might very well look for a job somewhere else.

I knew better than to come home.

Stupidly, I’d let Krisney convince me, though. She didn’t know about all that went on with my father. I should’ve told her. Maybe then she would’ve encouraged me to go to a different city.

Maybe then I’d be living the dream somewhere else, without my father breathing down my back, or the allure of a man that I knew didn’t really want forever with me.

Tate wasn’t a forever kind of guy.

Not that I didn’t think that he wasn’t capable of giving me forever, but because I knew he didn’t want forever. If Tate Casey didn’t want something, then he didn’t do it. It was as simple as that.

I wasn’t sure if I could ever move on from him…

A mouth slammed down onto mine, and I took a deep breath in through my mouth, gasping in surprise at the ferociousness of the kiss.

“Get.” He pressed another hot kiss to my mouth. “Out.” Another, this one even deeper. “Of your head.”

I moaned and felt my knees get weak.

I’d kissed men before, sure. But kissing men, and kissing Tate? That wasn’t a comparison I was willing to even entertain putting a number to.

Tate wasn’t in a league with other men. Tate was in a league of his own, one that only he could compete in. Honestly, it was unfair.

He had the power to take everything I had to give, and I wasn’t sure he was willing to give anything back.

Did that stop me from threading my arms around his neck? No.

Did that stop me from pressing my breasts into his upper belly? Again, no.

Did that stop me from spreading my legs when his hand went down the gap in the back of my jeans? Hell no.

I was his puppet.

He could do anything to me that he wanted, and I’d do everything in my power to make it easier for him. Why? Because I was a whore for Tate.

Other men, no. Tate? Hell fucking yes.

“Don’t like to see your face lookin’ like that,” he told me, pulling back so that I could see his eyes.

My eyes were likely dazed, and I knew that he knew what he did to me.

Again, I did nothing. Said nothing.

“This look, though?” he grinned that devilish grin. “Fuckin’ love it.”

Hearing ‘love’ come out of his mouth was damn near debilitating.

In fact, my heart was now pounding even harder, even though he’d done nothing but say a simple word.

I swallowed thickly when I felt the tip of one large finger swirl around the wetness of my entrance.

My eyelids grew heavy, and I bit my lip as I held my breath.

Everything inside of me screamed for me to urge him on, tell him anything to make him give me more.

But I knew better. Tate did what he wanted when he wanted. He didn’t work on anybody else’s time table but his own.

So when he just kept teasing—kept swirling that finger—spreading my wetness further and further out in broadening circles, I did nothing but spread my legs wider. I gave him what he asked for without actually asking.

He growled low in his throat, and then dropped his mouth to skim over my brow.

“You’re so short,” he said. “It’s a good thing I have long arms.” He paused. “But it makes it hard to do anything more.”

Before I could offer him an alternative, he took matters into his own hand, and picked me up.

With one hand still in the back of my pants, and the other around one ass cheek, I did the only thing I could do and wrapped my short little legs around his waist and held on while he moved.

My back hit the mattress, and he followed me down, crouching over me on the bed while continuing those maddening circles.

With the way I was practically lying on his arm, I couldn’t see how that was comfortable for him. He didn’t seem to care, though.

“Lift your shirt, let me see those pretty, big titties.”

I bit my lip and raised my shirt. When I went to lift my bra up next, he shook his head.

“Take them all the way off,” he ordered. “You gave me the greatest tease earlier and then took it away. I want them back.”

I stared at him, reading the earnestness in his eyes, and then reached for my shirt and shucked it all the way up and over my head. Once I threw it to the ground, I reached for the clasp of my bra, thankful that I’d put the one on that was easy to undo.

Once I had the snap undone, my breasts fell free of their confines.

The thing about women with big breasts like I had was they weren’t cute. They didn’t stay nicely in shape, but fell heavily to the side, making me so self-conscious that it was hard to not wince.

Tate, though?

He loved them. He worshipped them.

I cried out when I felt his hand leave from between my legs, but when he brought those fingers up, covered in my juices, then rubbed those same fingers along my nipples, I knew what he was going to do.

After sucking his fingers completely clean while staring straight into my eyes, he dropped down to my breast, and sucked one peaked nipple into his mouth.

He licked it completely clean, leaving it so engorged and hard that I wanted nothing more than to scream, and then he moved to the other nipple.

After doing the same thing to that one, he went up on his hands and knees, then leaned forward until his cock pressed stiffly against my core.

“It fuckin’ hurts,” he growled.

I knew what he was speaking of—his cock.

I wanted nothing more than to have that cock in my mouth.

He growled, pushing up to his knees and standing up on the side of the bed. “Turn around on the bed and hang your head over.”

Confused, I did as he asked, watching as he dropped his pants to his ankles and stepped out of them.

“You’re not wearing any underwear,” I mused as I stared at him. “How come?”

He grinned and went forward on the bed, his fisted hands going to either side of my hips before I suddenly had a face full of Tate’s huge cock.

Then I forgot everything but one of my favorite parts of him, and by forgetting I meant I completely got lost in him.

It was like a kid in a candy store as I brought my hands up to take hold of him. However, before I could even get them mostly lifted off the mattress, he stopped me by grabbing each of my hands and holding them down on the bed.

“Mouth only.”

The gruff response had my vagina clenching in need.

Without waiting for more instructions from the overbearing male hovering over me, I bypassed his cock for his balls, and licked the lower one, sucking softly on the sack before dragging my tongue to the other one.

I must’ve surprised him because he pulled away, then started to laugh.

“Why did I not realize you’d be different?” he teased, then lowered himself back down to my mouth.

I grinned, trying not to think about being ‘different’ and went back to work, lathing my tongue along the sensitive skin of his scrotum.

“Fuck,” he growled.

I felt a drop hit my chest, and took a moment to stop and see what it was.

My mouth tipped up into a smile when I saw the pearly white drop of his excitement running down the middle of one breast.

Was I not paying enough attention to the rest of him?

I grinned and licked my way from his balls to the base of his shaft, then did an ab curl until I could reach the head.

That was all I could reach, though, and I think that was the point. He was making me work for it.

Poking my tongue out and curling it at the tip, I reached up as far as I could go with how he had me restrained, and licked the next drop of moisture off the end of his cock.

He growled.

“Need some help, little girl?”

If anyone else had called me that, I’d have been furious.

But he wasn’t anybody. He was Tate Casey.

He could call me a dirty little slut, and I’d likely still be okay with that.

“You’re not hurting me if you don’t give me your cock,” I told him. “It’s only hurting you.”

He laughed then, letting go of one hand.

“You lift that hand, I’ll find alternate means of restraining you,” he told me bluntly, then reached for his cock.

I bit my lip, my eyelids growing even heavier.

Obediently, I opened my mouth to receive his cock. My eyes rolled into the back of my head when I had his tip inside my mouth, and I moaned.

God, it was so erotic.

The way he was being careful to only give me the tip, keeping his fist at mid shaft so he didn’t accidentally choke me.

I sucked the head roughly, swirled my tongue around it like a sucker, and then flicked the tiny notch underneath the head with the very tip of my tongue.

“Fuck me.”

I found myself smiling around his cock, and he growled. “Teasing little shit.”

At that I laughed, but quickly stopped when he gave me more of his cock.

I gagged slightly and opened my eyes only to find his eyes boring a hole into my forehead.

“Funny now?” he teased.

I shook my head and worked my tongue, which at this angle was really the only thing I could do.

Despite being slightly light headed due to the angle of my head, I didn’t complain. I especially didn’t complain when he went back to shoving his hand down my jeans—the front this time.

His fingers spread my pussy lips apart, and one lone finger found the engorged bud of my clit and circled it without touching it.

It was maddening, and I wanted more.

He slowly started to fuck my mouth, and his hand that was still holding my free hand down on the bed clenched as he worked himself into my mouth.

Though there was no way in hell I would take all of him, I did give it my best, and managed to get about three quarters of him in my throat by the time he yanked himself away and came all over my chest.

Feeling somewhat sad that he’d take that away from me, I glared.

“I wanted to taste you,” I told him.

He flicked my clit and eyed my chest, watching as the thick white rivulets slid down my breasts to the bed beneath me.

“You can taste me later,” he told me. “I’ve been dying to do that to you since you were illegal to me.”

My lips twitched, and then I gasped when he finally touched my clit with his finger.

My hips lifted off the bed, and he again pulled his hand out of my pants.

“Up and get your pants off.”

“Don’t you know the word please?” I asked, sitting up and moving to the edge of the bed.

This new angle caused the release that now splattered my chest to go down instead of sideways, falling quickly toward my waistband.

“Shit,” I said, standing up.

I would really hate to have to wash these pants.

They were hard as hell to stretch back out once I’d given in to washing them.

“Fuck, that’s hot,” he growled.

Then his hand was on my chest, and rubbing those quickly falling rivulets of come into the skin of my chest, my belly, and around the sensitive areas of my nipples.

I bit my lip, halfway off with my pants, and waited for him to finish before I pushed my jeans and panties to my ankles and stepped out of them.

He watched me, his hand on his hardening cock, and waited for me to comply.

I didn’t have a reason not to, so I did as he asked, then watched him for my next instructions.

He didn’t hesitate.

“Bed. On your back.”

I bit my lip and leaned against the bed before shimmying myself up, then went even further until I was on my back, my legs hanging over the edge.

I wasn’t able to touch because Tate’s bed was a monster, but that didn’t stop me from staring up at him with my eyebrows raised.

“What next?” I teased.

Where was this woman coming from? Holy shit, but I couldn’t believe that I was acting so calm when facing this big, tall drink of water.

His face looked fierce, and his mouth was slightly parted as he stared at my body as if he were trying to decide what he should devour first.

Apparently he was to start with the inside of my knees, and that included his tongue.

“Uhhh,” I started to giggle and jerk my leg away, but I didn’t get far.

In fact, I didn’t get anywhere.

When I went to jerk away, he held strong, and my foot barely moved an inch out of his hold before he was jerking it right back to his mouth.

“Sit still, baby.” He eyed me. “Don’t want you to be tied down for this.”

Tied down?

Ummmm, what?

“You’re joking, right?” I breathed.

He stared at me, letting me read the sincerity in his eyes.

“Is that what you’re into?” I questioned. “I’m not sure I’m into that.”

He grinned. “Not all the time, no. But when I want to do it, I do it. Those are the times where I want control, and I don’t want you ruining that control.”

He pressed another kiss to the other knee, then shouldered them further apart.

One large hand encircled my left ankle, holding it securely in his hand while he kissed the other side, so I wasn’t prepared for him to tighten his hold, and then flip me over.

One second I was on my back, staring at him while trying not to squirm out of his hold so he wouldn’t have any reason to tie me down, and the next I was staring at the headboard while trying to get my knees and hands underneath me.

The knees were a no go, but the hands went up and supported my body as I looked at him incredulously over my shoulder.

“Holy crap, Tate!” I cried out. “That scared the crap out of me, and you were so fast!”

He pulled me roughly down the bed until my hips met the edge of the mattress.

“Hmmm,” he murmured, running a palm down either thigh, then back up again to cup the swell of my ass. “This ass? I wish I could snap a picture of it and pin it to the visor of my truck so I could look at it anytime I wanted to.”

That was a definite hell no, but it was flattering to know that he wanted to look at it all day long.

“Umm, no,” I said. “But you can admire it now.”

He chuckled and dropped his mouth to one ass cheek.

“We’ll see,” he teased. “We’ll see.”

I didn’t like the way he said ‘we’ll see.’ It was almost as if he knew I’d allow him to do anything he ever wanted to do to me if only he tried hard enough.

And maybe he could. Maybe I’d give him anything and everything within my power. Maybe I was just freakin’ crazy about the man.

But then all my thoughts floating around in my head suddenly vanished when I felt his teeth clamp down on the inside of one butt cheek, perilously close to my girly bits.

“Holy night!” I cried out in shock, freezing in place as he kissed away the sting.

“Get out of your head,” he ordered. “And focus on me.”

I licked my dry lips, unsure what in the hell to say.

I had been in my head…but did he have to almost bite my flappy bits? Jesus!

I would’ve said something more about his lack of finesse, but he pushed my legs further apart and took both of his big hands and spread me wide.

I felt exposed, and I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that I liked him being eye level with my junk.

“Tate, seriously.” I tried to close my legs.

He was having none of it, and stood up.

That’s when he produced a fucking rope out of nowhere, and practically hog tied my legs open.

It took him a matter of milliseconds.

“What…”

“Keep them open, I said. I won’t tie you, I said,” he teased, running his rough palm down the length of my spine. “Do you think I’m bluffing now?”

I tested the rope, tugging lightly on it with my right leg, only to feel my left leg give instead of getting the gap between my thighs to lessen.

“Untie me!” I ordered, suddenly very nervous.

“Negative, Nancy.”

“My name’s not Nancy, you fricker.”

“Fricker, ohhh,” he teased. “I’m shaking in my boots over here, pretty girl.”

I growled low in my throat and looked at him instead of the headboard which I had been staring at, and what I saw on his face was enough to cause me to freeze.

“Why do you look like you’re about to kill something?”

His eyes rose to meet mine.

“I’m trying to decide if I should eat you, or fuck you,” he admitted. “I want to taste you, but my cock is hard, and eating you will make my need even worse. That pussy, and you, will definitely feel ‘killed’ when I’m done with it.”

As if in answer, he fisted his cock and caused my eyes to leave his.

They traveled down the chiseled length of his body to land on his cock, and he was correct. It did look quite angry.

The head was a ruddy red, and the length of it was pulsing with veins.

It was seriously the veiniest—is that even a word?—cock I’d ever seen. If it was a word, veiny would describe it. Jesus, the man was definitely gifted in the cock department, and if the time came that I ever had to compare my current love interest to him, it wouldn’t even be a fair comparison.

“You’re staring at it like you’re scared,” he told me. “You don’t need to be scared.”

And I must’ve solved some inner debate he’d been having with himself, because he dropped to his knees between my splayed open thighs, and dropped his mouth down to my pussy to place a single chaste kiss against the heart of me.

The moment his lips touched me there, I felt my hips jerk down and my thighs quiver in anticipation.

“God,” I breathed out shakily.

Then I felt the scruff of his beard on the inside of my thighs, perilously close to everything that I wanted him to touch.

His fingers. His beard. His tongue. His goddamn nose. I didn’t care. Anything at this point would do, as long as it belonged to him.

The anticipation was killing me.

His stupid finger started to swirl around in my juices, searching, but not touching anything important.

My hips were moving along with his finger, trying to follow it to get him to where I most wanted him. Every time I moved, though, he’d move, too.

Around and round he went, touching but not touching where I needed, lulling me into an almost mindless need.

My eyes closed, and my fists clenched, and I waited for him to do something—anything.

Then…he did.

His finger penetrated me, and he didn’t stop until the webbing of his fingers was up against the slick flesh of my sex.

My breath left me in a gasp, and my pussy clenched down on his fingers.

“Your cunt’s so pretty,” he whispered.

I felt his breath on the inside of my thighs, his beard tickling my pussy lips.

Then he curled his finger, and I forgot how to breathe. How to even function.

Because he’d touched something that felt like he’d hooked my vagina up to a freakin’ electric jumper box and shot ten thousand volts into me.

My clit pulsed, my vagina clenched, and a keening moan fell free of my lips.

“Goddamn,” he grunted.

Then his other hand moved to my pubic bone, and he pressed down lightly, causing my clit to press against the heel of his hand.

And when he curled his finger down again, scraping something fucking phenomenal inside of me, I cried out as a burst of lightning tore through me.

My pussy clenched on his finger, and the orgasm slammed into me so fast, that I had no time to prepare.

One second I was there, and the next I was in an alternate universe where I was a slave to the sensations inside of me.

Things pulsed and clenched, my thighs quivered. The bite of the rope on the insides of my thighs where I pulled on the rope was a sharp sting that only added to the feelings I couldn’t quite control.

“I’m sure you’re nice and wet,” I distantly heard him say, “but I’m going to lick you, taste you, and fuck you with my tongue. That way there’s no question.”

That way there’s no question.

What he was going to do was kill me. He was going to lick me to death. Death by orgasm sounded like a perfect way to go, though.

What I thought couldn’t get better, though, did. The moment his mouth hit me, and his tongue pushed inside of my still pulsing vagina, I realized that there was so much more to this sex thing.

I didn’t think I’d ever get to a point where I’d get used to the feelings, because this was one thing that I never, ever wanted to get used to.

I was on fire. My nerve endings were electric, and my breathing was at the point where I was on the verge of hyperventilating.

The more he licked and sucked, the higher I climbed, until I was at the point where I wasn’t sure I’d be able to take anymore.

Then he pulled back, stopped touching me completely, and moved to stand between my thighs.

“Need you so fucking much.” he growled, leaning over me.

I lifted my hips as much as I could, inviting him to take what he wanted.

He didn’t disappoint.

The moment that he was pressed against me and slid inside, I felt like everything in my world was right.

He just kept coming, and coming, and coming, until finally his hips met my ass.

“Fuuuuuck,” he groaned.

I couldn’t do a thing.

My body seized, and I wanted him to hold still at the same time I wanted him to unleash the power of his thrusts on my unsuspecting hips.

“Please,” I cried.

I didn’t know what I was asking for.

Honestly, at this point, I wasn’t sure I cared.

As long as he did something.

I felt the pull of the rope, and suddenly the bite of the soft material left my thighs, giving him the ability to pull me up to my knees and get a better angle.

Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that he was able to slide even further inside.

“Oh, sweet baby Jesus,” I whispered. “Oh, God.”

His hands went to my hips, and he pushed them away.

I braced for it, knowing what was coming next, and cried out when he forced himself back inside.

Over and over, more and more, until my pussy couldn’t take it any longer.

I came. So hard that my eyes rolled back into the back of my head, and I was no longer able to hold myself up on my elbows.

My hips stayed where they were by the power in Tate’s hands, but my face met the mattress, and I didn’t even have the strength to turn it so I could draw a full breath of air.

Despite all the other orgasms he’d given me that day, he still accomplished the impossible.

By the time that he started to grunt his release as his body stiffened behind me, my body also followed the same path.

He hit the bed beside me, finally releasing me, but I couldn’t even turn my face to tell him that he’d broken me.

I could do nothing but lie there, sated and so freakin’ confused, that I couldn’t move.

Could do nothing but concentrate on my breathing.

Seconds…minutes…maybe even hours later, I felt the hair at my face slide back, exposing my face and eyes to the harsh bedroom lights.

Once I could see from the surprise, my eyes found Tate’s smug expression.

“What?” I muttered.

He grinned. “Nothing.”

I rolled my eyes, but still didn’t move.

“If you want me to leave, you’re going to have to wait for my legs to start working again.”

His grin kicked up at one side, making my heart skip a beat.

“I don’t want you to leave, pretty girl,” he explained. “I want you to stay right here, warm and limp, and let me continue to enjoy the view.”

I smiled weakly at him.

“I guess I could do that for you.”

But when I can walk, I’m going to get the hell out of here as fast as I can.

Why?

Because something that good—Tate—wouldn’t last. Tate and his amazingness in bed…yeah, that was going nowhere fast. There was no way that I’d keep his interest long enough for me to keep his attention solely on me.

My morose thoughts had me recovering faster than I would have liked, and soon I found myself not only able to move, but also able to sit up.

My thighs burned, and when I looked down, I saw the rope burn there.

My finger went down to trace the lines where the rope had crossed my thigh. Tomorrow, I’d have a raw mark there, but I wasn’t upset about it. If I was being honest, I found it hot as hell.

“You look like you’re thinking some deep thoughts over there.”

I looked up to see Tate still staring at me, uncaring of both his nakedness and mine.

“I’m thinking that I liked this,” I told him honestly.

He laughed.

“Never thought I’d be happy to have some stupid fuckin’ rope.”

My brows rose. “Stupid rope?”

He snorted. “One day I’m going to get you to say another bad word,” he promised. “And watch Boondock Saints.”

“What’s Boondock Saints?” I questioned. “And why did you have rope in here if it wasn’t for…that?”

His chuckle was light as he stood up and started walking to the bathroom.

I watched him as he dropped something into the trash—the condom—and washed his hands, followed by his beard.

Then I blushed profusely thinking about what, exactly, was in that beard.

He came back out moments later and reached for the comforter that’d been on his bed when this had all started, brought it up to the bed, and threw it over my body before climbing under it himself.

I kneeled there under the blanket and stared at the darkness.

“This doesn’t work for me,” I told him, throwing the blanket off.

He started to chuckle, and I got to my feet on the side of the bed while tossing him a glare.

“You mind if I use your shower?” I asked him, pointing to my skin.

Not that I minded having his stuff on me, but it was awkward.

He gestured toward the shower and I took a few shaky steps in the direction before I stopped and turned to him.

“I can do this at my place, too.”

His eyes went lazy.

“If you go back to your place, then I have to follow you there. Right now, I’m pretty content to lay here and wait for you to get into the bed beside me.”

Something that felt a whole lot like hope took life in my belly.

“Okay,” I whispered.

Then I went and showered.

***

“We need to change your locks,” he said.

I looked up at the ceiling instead of staring at the man who was cuddled into my side.

The man felt like a weighted heat blanket at my side, and I wanted nothing more than to cuddle up into him and never move.

“That won’t help,” I murmured, knowing where he was going with the locks. “That’s what I did last time. I called the locksmith in town, and they came out and changed them. My father just called them and got them to give him a key. He’s the pastor, after all. He seriously can’t be shady, at least in everyone else’s eyes.”

He rolled off the bed and got to his feet, reaching down almost casually to pick up the condom—our second of the night—he’d thrown there, and toss it into the trash can, before he put his underwear on. The next thing to follow were his pants.

“I have some new locks that I was going to put on here,” he said. “We’ll go install them.”

I felt my belly tighten.

“That won’t stop him,” I repeated. “He’ll just do the same thing with the locksmith that he did the last time.”

He grunted. “Maybe, but he won’t be able to get in in the middle of the night for now. That’ll give us enough time to set up the alarm.”

“I can’t afford an alarm,” I told him honestly. “Alarms cost monthly, and I don’t have that option right now. I’m having to pay for the alarm at work, as well as insurance, and school loans. It’s just not feasible. I have it in savings, but that needs to be saved in case of an emergency.”

He buttoned his pants and then went down on a knee in the bed, leaning over me where I still lay in his bed.

“Then you’ll stay with me.”

I looked at him with barely concealed anger.

“I’m not doing that,” I told him.

“Then let me worry about the alarm. I know a guy.”

He knew a guy.

Wonderful.