Chapter Ten
Ryder was having a hard time keeping his hands off Juliet. Tonight was a big deal. A night to acknowledge the success of the Australian women’s rugby team, who were kicking ass all over the world. And Ryder was as proud of what the women’s teams had achieved as he was any of the Smoke achievements because they’d had to fight harder for recognition.
But…Juliet’s dress was making it hard for Ryder to feel anything other than impatience. To concentrate on anything other than her. He hadn’t seen her in a dress before, and all he could think about was getting her out of it.
It was black and satiny to the touch and strapless, clinging to her figure all the way to her knees before it fishtailed out around her calves. Her beach-blond hair was loose around her shoulders with a curl or two to give it some bounce. But it was the long, long zip that went from the top all the way down past her ass that was seriously melting his brain.
His fingers had itched to pull on that sucker since he’d realised it was there, which had been the moment they’d sat down in front of all this company. If he’d realised it in the car—they would have been very late indeed.
He pressed his mouth to her ear as one of the head rugby honchos gave a speech. The room lights were down, but the elegant candelabra on the tables cast a vibrant glow over the proceedings. “Let’s go home.”
Home to Ryder had always been a rugby pitch or a locker room or a vast outback cattle station. His apartment had just been another place to lay his head—albeit a nice one. But suddenly it felt like their own private cocoon.
She didn’t shift her attention from the speaker, but he could see the slight upward curve of her mouth. “We’ve been here for an hour,” she said, her voice low and throaty.
Yes. He’d felt every bloody second. “And I’ve been hard for an hour.” He kept his voice low too. “I think it’s about to fall off.”
“Poor baby.” She kept her eyes trained firmly forward. “You’re the one who insisted I come here tonight. Practically bribed me with—” She turned her head to nuzzle his temple. “Oral. I would have been perfectly happy at home making sure your poor cock never got into this situation.”
Home. He liked hearing that word on her mouth.
She turned her attention back to the stage, but under the table her hand landed on his upper thigh and slid to his crotch. The muscles in his ass and thighs snapped to attention. Her fingers wrapped around him and gave him a squeeze. Ryder half growled, half groaned into her ear as his dick moved perilously closer to strangulation.
“That was before I knew how good you look in a dress, and how much I was going to want to tear you out of it with my teeth.”
“You’ve seen me in a bikini.” The words were said in a very prim little whisper. Like her hand wasn’t stroking his cock beneath the tablecloth. “You’ve seen me naked. It’s just a dress.”
Oh no. There was nothing just about it. Juliet was wearing a walking hard-on. “With a zip.” He fought the desire to close his eyes and rut into her hand. “That goes on forever. I can peel you like banana.”
“Oh?” She glanced at him, her deep red lipstick all glossy in the candlelight, her mouth forming an innocent little moue as one delicate eyebrow lifted. “You like bananas?”
“I fucking love bananas.”
Her other eyebrow joined in the game. “That much, huh?”
“I like to eat them. I could eat them all night.”
Her laugh and the low growly noise from the back of his throat got swallowed up by the round of applause as the speaker finished his speech. Juliet released his cock to clap and Ryder almost collapsed forward from the sudden release of tension in his ass and thighs.
The emcee came on and announced the main meal was about to be served and Ryder took advantage of the sudden chatter all around them. “Scoff that down, quick. We’re leaving after main.”
“No dessert?” she asked with a smile, continuing with her faux-innocent routine.
“You’re my dessert.”
“Okay, Jesus,” Spidey grumbled. “You two really need to get a room.”
If there’d been a room within bloody cooee, Ryder would already have dragged Juliet into it. Not that she would have cooperated. She seemed hell-bent on making him pay for the way he’d used his tongue on her to convince her to accompany him.
He wasn’t sorry though. Or he hadn’t been, anyway. Until the dress.
“Aww, leave them,” Matilda said. “They’re so cute together.”
There were eight others at the table. Matilda and Tanner. Dex and Harper. Linc and Em. Spidey and Donovan were the two single and dateless guys rounding out the numbers.
Bodie rolled his eyes. “Seriously, it’s like you’ve all got some disease.” It had been a couple of years since Bodie’s long term girlfriend had walked and he was, to put it mildly, still down on love. “Back me up here, Dono.”
Dono, who, courtesy of his Maori heritage, looked like he’d been squeezed into his suit, and had never been known for his chit-chat, just shrugged. “Lovers gotta love, man.”
“Dude.” Bodie appealed to his teammate with outstretched hands. “Us single guys gotta stick together. Where’s my love, huh?”
Dono gave him a sardonic smile. “You’re not my type.”
“Maybe if you baa’d some more, Spidey?” Linc suggested.
The guys cracked up. The obligatory New Zealand sheep jokes never got old. As always, it slid off Dono’s massive shoulders. “Not even if he baa’d fucking rainbows.”
Ryder laughed some more, trading smack talk with the guys as they ate their dinner. The fact it was lamb set off another round of sheep jokes involving Dono. Everyone was having a good time. Everyone except Juliet.
She’d gone quiet and tension radiated from her frame in waves. The sexual heat seething between them before dinner had evaporated into thin air. He suspected Matilda calling them cute and Dono’s lovers gotta love was the reason.
Ever since the great toothbrush incident, Juliet had been hypersensitive to any suggestion that they might be anything other than what they were. Which was, as she was at pains to point out, a mutually beneficial sex thing.
For some reason, she seemed to think that dating screwed with that dynamic. That somehow it officially made them more than a sex thing. A couple maybe?
Fucking was fine but dating wasn’t.
Ryder knew that would pretty much make her the perfect woman to a lot of guys. A manwhore’s wet dream. Hell, maybe once upon a time she might even have been Ryder’s ideal. But they’d practically lived in each other’s pockets for the last three weeks and she wasn’t just a warm, eager body to him.
He didn’t think he was just a warm, eager body to her, either, and her insistence that they stay within those boundaries was starting to grate.
Sure, she was out with him tonight, but he had played dirty to get her here and it was clear she was exceedingly uncomfortable at being thought of as a couple. Hell, he wouldn’t be surprised if she stood up right now, announced that she was just using him for sex, and bolted from the room.
He understood where her fears came from. That she was determined not to repeat past mistakes. But it killed him that she was so set on moving forward she was holding herself back from him.
Not physically. She didn’t seem to be able to get enough of him physically. And the feeling was entirely mutual. But it felt like she’d compartmentalised herself. That he and their relationship were in one section and the rest of her was somewhere else.
A place he couldn’t reach.
And no matter how many times he was inside her or how deep he was buried, he’d never be able to reach.
He knew they had an end date. He knew she was leaving. She’d been upfront about that. But damn it all, was it wrong to want all of her while she was still here?
She waited a few minutes after everyone had finished their meal before leaning in close and murmuring, “Let’s get out of here.”
Ryder’s dick twitched despite there being nothing seductive or suggestive in her request. He hesitated, suddenly reluctant to leave. The feeling that she was about to run sat heavy on his chest and he didn’t want to give her the means to do so.
“Maybe we should stay for the next speech.” Said no one ever…
Her lips buzzed his ear. “I thought you wanted to peel me out of this dress?”
His dick twitched again. Fuck’s sake. Even though every male instinct he owned told him she was leading him by his cock, it didn’t seem to care.
It was dumb as a rock.
But then she said, “Please, Ryder,” and they were in his car—a dual cab Ute Juliet had named frat boy for all its beefed-up swagger—ten minutes later.
“Everything okay?” he asked as he started the car.
“Fine.”
Bloody hell. Ryder might be some kind of unsophisticated ring in from the country, but a guy with four sisters knew fine meant about a hundred things other than fine.
Ordinarily, he’d leave it the hell alone. Ordinarily, if some chick he was seeing got in a snit, he’d bail and wait til she got over it—in his experience they usually did. But Juliet wasn’t in a snit. And she wasn’t just some chick.
She was Juliet.
And she was obviously struggling with something. Her jaw was tense, her profile a mask as she looked out the window. She was a statue compared to the relaxed woman who’d flirted and teased him about how hot he looked in his tux on the way to the function.
He pulled up at a red traffic light. “Are you…mad at me?”
“I said I’m fine.” But her hands tightened in her lap.
He waited a beat before he pushed some more. “You seem quiet. And…tense.”
Her lips pursed as the lights changed to green. Her brow furrowed as she continued to look out the window. “I knew I shouldn’t have gone tonight.”
Her voice was clipped. Annoyed. And Ryder didn’t need a crystal ball to divine what she was really saying.
I’m pissed at you for going down on me and making me say yes.
“I thought you were having a good time.”
She turned then, her neck snapping around, her eyes hostile. “They think we’re together.”
Ryder wasn’t prepared for the level of disdain in her voice. His tempter stirred. “We are together.”
She snorted impatiently. “You know what I mean. Why would they think that? Matilda and Harper and Em know I’m going to live in Italy. I know Bodie knows. He told me you’d told them about it.”
“Little known fact about rugby guys.” His voice was as dry as his suddenly parched throat. “They’re incurable romantics.”
The glare intensified. “Be serious.”
Ryder sighed, gripping and ungripping the steering wheel. “What the hell does it matter what they think about our relationship?”
“It doesn’t,” she snapped. “I just don’t understand why they’d think we were together, when I’m leaving the country to live on the other side of the planet in a month?”
It was Ryder’s turn to snort. “Well gosh, I don’t know, Juliet. Maybe your hand on my cock was a clue.”
She sucked in a breath, her eyes glittering now. “They could not see that!”
“They didn’t have to,” he bit out. “We were practically humping each other at the table.”
She stared hard at him for a long moment, her lips two furious lines in her face, her breathing harsh, then turned away, obviously lost for a suitable comeback when faced with the fact that they had been all over each other like a rash.
He smiled despite the situation then drew in a calming breath. “I don’t understand why you’re blowing this way the fuck out of proportion, Juliet.”
“Because, Ryder, the only way they could have that impression is if you’ve led them to believe there’s something more to our relationship than sex, and that’s bad. Really bad, because I know exactly what we’re doing, but you apparently don’t. What happened to just sex? I thought we had a no-commitments deal?”
Ryder wondered if he’d entered an alternate universe. He’d been brought up to show women respect and usually the ones he took on a date were more than happy to be treated like they had more to offer than their bodies even if they’d both known it wasn’t much more than a glorified booty call.
But not Juliet, apparently. No. That just pissed her off. As long as he lived, he’d never understand women.
“So, let me get this right.” He braked at a traffic light and yanked at the edges of his bow tie, reefing the knot undone, leaving the tails flapping open. “You’re pissed at me because my friends don’t think you’re just some kind of fuck buddy?”
“Well, it’s what I am, isn’t it?” she demanded, glaring at him again.
The fact the description didn’t bother her annoyed him. His fingers slid to his collar, buying himself some time in case he blurted out that he’d never thought of her as a fuck buddy. Because in this truly bizarre conversation, that wasn’t apparently what she wanted to hear.
One handed, he twisted open the top two buttons of his shirt. Interestingly her gaze dropped and lingered on the patch of throat he’d exposed. Blue heat shimmered in her eyes and for a wild moment he thought she might lean across and lick him there.
She dragged her attention back to his face. “If you’re going to renege on our deal, Ryder, if you want to turn this into something else, then speak up now. Because I am going to Italy. In a month. I’m not going to change my mind.”
Her little speech might have irritated him more had it not been for the distracting glow from the traffic signal on her skin. The red light played on the golden tan of her arms and shoulders and throat and spotlighted the agitated rise and fall of her breasts.
He didn’t think the rhythm had much to do with her being angry. The same went for the glitter in her eyes and the hardening of her nipples. There was something much darker and primal than rage at work.
It was probably really wrong for him to be turned on right now but fuck, she was hot.
“Well?”
His gaze lifted from the neckline of her dress to find her watching him, the cock of her eyebrow telling him she knew he’d been checking her out. He stared back, refusing to be cowed by her censure. If she expected him to be contrite about it she was very much mistaken. He’d seen, touched, and licked what was inside that dress about a hundred times already and he was much too pissed off at the moment to apologise for being a dude.
If she wanted to just be his fuck buddy, then she could get used to him ogling her tits.
The lights changed to green and he screeched the tyres a little as he took off. “I’m not going back on anything,” he said, his hands tightening around the wheel. “I’m fine with our…arrangement.”
He saw her nod in his peripheral vision. “Good.” She turned back to the window.
Good? Like he was a naughty boy who’d just been chastised by his teacher. He didn’t think she meant it to be a turn on.
But it was.
Her argument had been irrational and now she was giving him the silent treatment. But the hollow at the base of his throat still tingled from the way her gaze had lingered. Somewhere along the way the atmosphere had changed from hostile to heated.
Add to that the way the streetlights strobed intermittently over her as they whizzed past, lighting her bloody dress up like a flare every few seconds, and he was back to thinking about peeling her out of it again.
Her cleavage played peek-a-boo at the same time the deep red of her mouth flashed like a warning signal. The combination was enough to keep him half hard all the way to Coogee.
But a minute from home she was still staring resolutely out the window, obviously still annoyed. She hadn’t said a word since good and not even he was idiotic enough to think their plans to go back to his place and get naked would still be on.
Besides, the parts of him that weren’t turned on were still pretty fucking annoyed, too.
He took a right turn onto her street. She frowned as she glanced at him. “Where are you going?” There was less of an edge in her voice now, but she was clearly still pissy.
“I’m dropping you at your apartment.”
She frowned at him some more then folded her arms. “I thought we were going back to yours?”
Her voice was tight again. She looked cranky, thwarted, and miffed all at once. He tried not to think about a dominatrix, but she was in almost head-to-toe skintight black.
“Well yes, but…frankly you look like you’d happily poison my drinking water at the moment and maybe we could both do with a night to calm down?”
“Calm down?” Her voice went really low, her eyes glittering. “Don’t tell me to calm down. I’m so freaking horny at the moment and all I want to do is fuck. You got a problem with that?”
Her words slammed into his groin. He should have a problem with it. She was pissed at him but still perfectly fine with using him. There was something really fucked up about that.
Unfortunately, no part of Ryder had a problem with it.
All of his anger coalesced into an urgent need to bury himself balls deep inside her. His cock, now sporting full wood, was gunning for action.
“Hold on.” He braked quickly and executed a U-turn. “We’ll be there in two.”
…
Juliet had no idea why she’d pushed Ryder so hard tonight. It wasn’t rational to feel this angry over something so trivial. He’d accused her of blowing things out of proportion and he wasn’t wrong, rationally she could see that, but she hadn’t been able to stop, either.
She’d felt possessed. But she’d lost herself to a man before in tiny, trivial, insignificant degrees and she’d…panicked.
And now they were both angry.
Juliet exited Frat Boy when Ryder opened the door for her, but he didn’t speak to her or attempt to touch her. They didn’t speak or touch in the elevator, either. He just stared at her from under the brim of his Akubra, his gaze hot on her, his knuckles white against the railing behind him.
He looked like he was barely holding himself in check, and she knew exactly how he felt. Her need for him warred with her irrational anger. It drummed slow and thick through her body, pounding in her chest, fluttering at her temples, raging between her legs.
She didn’t know how she could be so mad with him and yet want him so much. But she did.
God help her, she did.
She’d been suppressing the urge to throw her leg over his lap at every traffic light and she was just about at the end of her rope. All she could think about right now was him thrusting into her hard and thick and good. So freaking good. And the way he was looking at her was not helping.
The lift dinged and she practically ran out of it like it was on fire. Given how close to combustion she felt, it easily could have been. He stalked out after her, his gaze like a brand between her shoulder blades, the heat of his body getting closer.
They reached the door at the same time, his chest and thighs herding her against it, trapping her there, grinding his erection into her zipper as she thrust her key into the lock. Juliet swallowed and shut her eyes, breathing hard, her mouth brushing against the wood, as she somehow managed to coordinate herself enough to turn the key.
The door gave and she went with it, his arm sliding around her as he urged her over the threshold with his hips. He shunted her to the closest wall, pressing her front to it with his front, flattening her breasts with the weight of his body.
Something brushed past her arm on its way to the floor, his hat, maybe, she was too far gone to really tell, her arousal hindering her night vision. His seemed twenty-twenty though as he found her zipper. She moaned as he reefed it down.
Tiny came out of the room and Ryder growled, “On your bed,” before the dog even stepped a foot outside the doorway.
He spun her around and yanked the dress down, leaving it to pool around her ankles, a lace thong the only thing between her and naked.
“Fuck.” His breath hissed out at the sight of her bare breasts, the two pale triangles of flesh glowing like a torch in the subdued light. His gaze locked on the slight swing of them and Juliet’s gut clenched.
So did her sex.
He swooped down, his mouth opening over a nipple and Juliet almost screamed it felt so good. Hot and wet, the suction almost brutal. His hand squeezed the other breast and she arched into it, his fingers pinching the diamond-hard tip.
It hurt. It hurt so freaking good.
“This what you want, huh?” He pulled her hips off the wall with his spare hand to fit snug against his body. “Me using you like this?” His head lowered to her other breast, replacing the pinching with suction, soothing the stinging tip as his fingers tortured the other.
Yes. This. Them using each other. That was what she wanted. What the hell was wrong with that?
The irrational anger she’d felt in the car boiled up in her again. “Fuck you,” she panted, grounding her head and shoulder blades against the wall as her left hand ploughed into his hair and she twisted her fingers hard.
He didn’t even flinch and that just made her madder.
She shoved his jacket off his shoulders, pushing it halfway down his arms, deliberately restricting the movement of his hands. About the only thing he could reach was her hips and he did, his fingers biting into them.
But his mouth was still free. Free to lick and nip and suck, relentless on her breasts, ravaging them until she thought she might just die from the flood of pleasure and the tiny daggers of pain as he grazed his teeth against the sensitive tips.
She groped in his back pocket for his wallet, pulled it out and quickly located the condom he always stashed there. Blindly, she reached for his fly, not bothering with buttons or press studs, not caring whether his trousers were on or off, just needing access to his cock.
She found the metal tab and reefed it down. He grunted at the noise then groaned as she quickly freed his dick from his underwear. Her nipple slipped from his mouth, his forehead pressed into her chest.
He was smooth and big and lethal and hers and Juliet’s heart sped faster at the thought of him being inside her.
“This is what I want.”
She ripped the condom open and groped between them, fumbling. He panted into her neck, hot little puffs of air, his fingers loosening and tightening on her hips involuntarily. A guttural noise of triumph escaped when she finally managed to sheath him.
“Now”—her hands slid to his hips and dragged them flush with hers—“fuck me, damn it.”
He didn’t need to be told, his hands, trapped at her hips, were already rolling her underwear down, pushing the itty-bitty thong as far as he could reach before sliding the hard, thick length of his cock through the slickness between her legs.
He notched himself at her entrance and Juliet lifted her leg, gripping his hip with her inner thigh. Her underwear hindered the exercise, but she ignored it, her calf clamping down hard and urgent across his butt.
“Ryder.” She panted into his neck in frustration, rutting against him as he held still, trying to wiggle herself on to him. Her heart was beating so hard she thought it might burst through her chest. “Do it, damn it.”
He did it. Flexed his hips and in one quick thrust ploughed straight into her, right in to the hilt. He groaned and she gasped out loud, her head rocking back against the wall. “Yesss.”
It was perfect. Just right. Just what the raging, frothing she-demon inside her needed. The demon that had driven the stupid argument between them and nothing short of his possession was going to drive her out.
Revenge sex had taught Juliet that it wasn’t possible to screw the angry out, but if anyone could, it was Ryder.
She moved restlessly against him as he held himself high inside her. “Again,” she demanded. “More.”
“Christ.” His breath was hot on her neck, his voice strained and clearly pissed off. “You’re so fucking bossy.”
But he gave her more, his hands clamping hard on her hips, locking them into position, using them for purchase as he pulled out and slammed into her again.
And again. And Again. Over and over. His hips bucked with absolute precision, like a machine, pistoning in and out, ramming his cock right to the hilt, her entire body jerking with every thrust.
He didn’t try to kiss her. She probably would have bitten him if he had. This wasn’t nice sex. It wasn’t considerate. This wasn’t the kind of sex lovers had. It was two angry people trying to fuck each other into submission.
And she’d never been more turned on in her life.
Juliet’s climax spiralled up out of nowhere with a startling ferocity. The angle of their hips caused all the right pressure in all the right places. One second there was a tight fist of rage in her gut and the next it had imploded, spewing hot waves of pleasure from its centre. Waves that rolled through her thighs and ass, her belly and her breasts.
He joined her a beat or two later, his whole body trembling suddenly, his fingers digging into the flesh of her hip bones, his groans turning to grunts as he jerked harder and faster, his rhythm discordant now but no less effective, sustaining them both in the rapture.