MY CHEST HEAVES, RAPIDLY SHUDDERING in an attempt to catch my breath. There’s a ringing in my ear that I’m pretty sure is from my own screaming as I came—coming harder than I had ever come before. I blink, looking up at the ceiling only to close my eyes on a sigh when my vision is too fuzzy to focus on what’s around me.
Can you be fucked blind? If so, I’m pretty sure that’s what just happened.
I push the ridiculous thought aside and start taking stock of my over-sensitized body. The first thing I notice is the very empty feeling between my sore legs.
Shane isn’t inside me anymore.
I pout mentally at the thought, hating that I missed feeling him pull his length from me.
“Clean yourself from my cock, Nicole.”
My eyes snap open, and I jerk my head in the direction of his voice. He’s standing next to the table, the tip of his cock pointing at my face as he holds himself like an offering to me. How the hell is he still hard?
“Don’t make me say it again, Nicole. Clean my cock.”
“But you …?” His eyes narrow, and I think back to feeling him come. I know I felt him fill me up. I know it as sure as the sky is blue. There’s no way he should still be hard. “You came already … Sir.”
“I want to watch you lick your wetness from my cock. I don’t want you to use that wicked mouth to drain me fucking dry again. Later. For now, give me that mouth and clean. My. Cock.”
Oddly, the thought doesn’t gross me out. With any other man, it probably would, but that foreign need to have Shane’s praise drives me to distraction. So I roll and rest on my side, looking up at him as I open my mouth. He steps closer, pressing his thighs into the table, and pushes himself into my mouth. He controls it all. How much I take, how fast I’m given it, and all I can do is get lost in him.
“Such a good girl, mon colibri.”
I purr. Seriously, I purr from his praise. There’s no other way to describe the sounds I’m making. What kind of power does this man hold over me? He starts to pull out of my mouth, and I whine around his thick head, trying to suck him back inside when it becomes clear he’s trying to deny me. My teeth capture his piercing and I give a slight tug to keep him in my mouth. He carefully pulls free, and I watch as he slowly strokes himself, needing him once again even more than before.
“Greedy. Mon colibri is so greedy for my cock.” He doesn’t wait for me to speak, dropping his hold on his cock and hooking his arms under my arms to lift me up and into his chest. “Which way to your bathroom?”
“Hmm?” I question in a daze, quickly remembering myself. “Sir?”
“Shane, chèrie, just Shane.”
“But?” I rub my head against his chest. “Your cock is still out.”
He chuckles, the rumble against my ear sounding like heaven. “That it is, Nikki. That it is.”
He doesn’t say anything more, and I don’t press him to clarify my confusion. I imagine it’ll take me a while to get used to this whole dominant sex lifestyle, but one thing’s for sure—I’m going to enjoy the hell out of it. And if that’s the kind of treatment I get for being punished, I have a feeling getting used to this kind of sex from Shane is going to be worth it.
He takes us into my bedroom and gently lays me down on my bed, bending to press a sweet, chaste kiss to my lips so unlike the man I’ve started to know. Silently, he turns and walks into the bathroom. I hear the water start to run and the telltale sounds of my tub filling. I nestle my head against the pillow and sigh contentedly. While my apartment is small, that tub makes up for it, and after that workout, I can’t wait.
I must have dozed off because when Shane picks me up again, the sound of running water no longer permeates the air. A calm silence has taken over not only my apartment but my mind as well.
He steps next to the large garden tub and bends down, placing me in the tub with a gentle ease so unlike the man who just savagely took my body. His face is calm, somewhat peaceful, as he meticulously submerges my body in the warm bubble-filled tub. His arms glide out from under my wet body, his fingertips trailing slowly while he makes a satisfied noise deep in his throat.
Holy crap.
Then he kneels next to the tub, picks up a washcloth, and starts cleaning me.
“Uh … I can do that,” I whisper, not actually making a move to take the washcloth from him.
“I know.”
“So do you want to let me do it?”
“Hell no,” he answers with a steel-like conviction that leaves no room for argument.
“I’m not really sure what to do with this, Shane.”
He looks up from the soothing pass he had been making of the washcloth over my breasts and smiles a tiny smirk at me.
“Just relax. It’s my job to take care of you.”
“Oh,” I breathe, not sure what to do with him now.
“Stop overthinking, Nikki. I worked you hard, and this is part of it.”
Good heavens, this man talks in circles. “Part of what?”
“Caring for you,” he says, not looking away from my body, a small frown wrinkling the skin between his dark brows.
He continues washing me in such a soft and soothing way, and I don’t know how to handle this side of him. He’s such a contradiction. One moment, he’s holding himself back with that control he drives himself with as if it’s more an armor, and the next, he’s gentle and almost sweet. Despite the fact I’ve known him for close to two years now, I feel like he really is a stranger and I’m nowhere near finding out who the real Shane Kingston is.
“What are you thinking?” he asks, running the soft cotton down my stomach and over my sex.
“That I have no idea who you are.”
He makes a sound in his throat, a small and deep laugh that isn’t from humor at all.
“I mean, I know you, but I don’t, do I?”
“You know me, Nikki.”
“I didn’t know you would be like this. You’re hard but soft. You don’t want to give me all of you but want all of me. You’re used to … this,” I say, shrugging and letting him decipher what I mean by this since I don’t think I can come up with the right words.
“It’s not that I’m used to this, Nikki. It’s what I need. That’s all.”
“That’s all?” I snort. “You make it sound like what we just did was nothing more than a dance in the rain. That, Shane, was a monsoon we just tangoed through.”
“And? You enjoyed yourself, did you not?” He stops cleaning me and wrings out the washcloth, draping it over the spout.
“You know I did.”
“Then what’s the big deal?”
I sigh. “I think you know I’m not used to that.”
He nods.
“I’m going to be real honest with you, okay?”
Again, he nods his head, eyes open and focused solely on me.
“I don’t know what to do with the things you make me feel.”
The frown between his brow is back, wrinkling the skin. It only makes him even more attractive.
“Tell me why you made your move last night.”
Well, bingo for the naked sex god.
“What about it?”
His expression turns to one that clearly says he can see right through me and my non-answer.
I exhale, long and drawn out and full of the frustration I’ve felt since the day Seth popped back in my life. Do I admit to this man that I let my ex railroad my life? I might as well; there’s no point in keeping it from him when I’ve made it pretty clear that I’m using our mutual attraction to gain more than just one hell of an orgasm.
“Just as I said, we can both benefit from this attraction.”
“Your ex,” I start, earning another frown. “It’s been how long since you broke up?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere just over a year,” he answers.
“Right, same as me and Seth. However, just as you assumed I was still with him, until last night, I figured the same about you and her. I’m at Dirty enough to know she’s still around, Shane. But it’s the same with Seth that pushed me to make my move.”
“Explain.”
“God, you’re bossy.”
“Wrong. I don’t like surprises, Nikki. Having all the information means I can avoid that shit.”
“Right.” I shift, leaning forward, unplugging the drain and letting the water out. “Hand me a towel, please?” I point over his shoulder at the closed linen closet across from my tub.
He stands, his erection still just bobbing around. It takes a lot to keep my hands to myself and not reach out for him, but somehow, I manage. He hands me a towel, and I wrap it around my body before taking his offered hand and stepping out of the tub. He follows silently behind me as I leave the bathroom and walk to my dresser. I pull out one of my sleep shirts; something I think I stole from Ember’s husband the last time I crashed at their house. Shane steps behind me and plucks at the sleeve, standing close enough for me to feel the heat of him against my body.
“Who does this belong to?”
I arch my brow. “Probably Nate.” His eyes go hard, and I hold up my hands. “Whoa there, tiger.”
“The fuck are you doing with his shirt?”
Ignoring the hard bite in his tone, I roll my eyes and turn back to my dresser, pulling out a clean pair of underwear and stepping into them before addressing him. “Pretty sure I ended up with this when his daughter puked all over me and it was on the top of the laundry basket I had just finished folding for Ember. But who knows; maybe it was from the giant orgy I have with them twice a week and every other Sunday.”
His grumbled complaint vibrates from his chest. “Take it off.”
I turn and blink up at him with my jaw slack. “Pardon me?”
He studies me, his eyes volleying from eye to eye as his nostrils flare. I watch his hands move but just stand there in shock that he would be this angry over a shirt until his fingers push gently between my neck and the collar of the shirt. He holds my confused gaze for a beat before one brow arches; with a quick tug, he literally rips the shirt straight down the center.
“You did not just do that!” I exclaim, jumping back with the ruined shirt floating around me. I jerk it off my shoulders and toss it at Shane’s face. He catches it before I hit my mark, his frown gone as a satisfied smirk tips his lips up. “First, I was kidding. Second, I enjoyed that as a sleep shirt, and now it’s ruined. Third, what the heck!”
“Don’t like you wearing my best friend’s shit.”
“Clearly,” I huff sarcastically.
“I’ll fuck that attitude right out of you, Nikki. Find something to cover yourself so we can finish our talk.”
I continue to mumble my complaints as I jerk open my dresser and rummage around, looking for another baggy shirt but coming up empty. That’s right, you big dummy; that was the last one because all the others had belonged to Seth, and you burned them in the apartment communal grill six months ago. With another heavy exhale, I jerk open my workout drawer and pull a tank top over my head. When I turn, Shane’s eyes jump to my chest. The white tank is completely see-through; I know that for a fact after wearing a white sports bra with it the last time I went to the gym and unknowingly gave everyone a nice little sweaty wet tee shirt contest, party of one. I haven’t worn it since, but seeing as how Shane hasn’t taken his eyes off my boobs, it was a nice revenge choice for tearing my shirt.
“That isn’t better,” he groans.
“It’s all I have since you just ruined my favorite shirt.”
“Fuck me,” he hisses through clenched teeth. He doesn’t say anything else before turning on his heel and stomping through the apartment. I follow behind much slower. He stops at his pile of clothes and grabs his shirt, walking back to me and feeding it over my head a second later. I stand there while he continues to dress me in his shirt, wondering what the hell is going through his mind.
“Right. What are you doing?”
“You want more, I’ll let you know the next time I have laundry to do and you can steal all the shit you want, but any man’s clothes on your body had better be mine.”
“That’s pretty possessive for someone who claims he doesn’t want more than sex.”
He shrugs. The confusing man just shrugs. Nothing more.
“I want you to be my boyfriend. And before you get all ‘I don’t do relationships, Nicole,’ I don’t mean a real boyfriend. We go out when you aren’t working. I’ll come to Dirty, and you’ll give me some more nights like last night. For anyone watching, we look together, but for us, we’re just good friends who have amazing sex.”
“And why would we act like we’re together?”
“Because, Shane, we both have needy and crazy exes. I don’t know about yours, but mine seems to think I’m not serious about never getting back together with him because I have, in his words, not moved on.”
“So you want him to see you moving on so he’ll leave you alone?”
“Bingo, big man.”
“What do I get out of this?”
“Aside from being able to finally scrape off the shadow I’ve seen leering around you every time I come to Dirty?” He nods. “I guess you get to keep having phenomenal sex with me.”
“Phenomenal, huh?”
“You don’t need your ego stroked just as I don’t need to waste my breath when you know it was.”
I almost lose my footing when his face goes soft. “You’re right; my ego is fine.”
“I’m glad we figured that out,” I whisper, my body swaying toward him when he steps closer, taking me in his arms and pressing a kiss so unlike him to my temple.
“Let me ask you … when this is all over and both of our exes are done trying to get something they have no chance at, then what?”
I swallow, the heavy lump struggling to get down. “Well, then we go our separate ways.”
He nods, but I can tell he wants to say more. I have a feeling he doesn’t believe we’ll just be able to walk away in the end. And, if I’m honest with myself, I’m not sure he’s wrong.