Chapter 17
“What problem?” Charlie knew he was pushing it with her. Her need to get away from him was palpable. That didn’t stop him; it just made him want his wife even more.
“I’m leaving, Charlie.” She motioned to the cursed manila envelope on the counter. “If we have sex now, we’ll just confuse things.”
Charlie shook his head. “I’m not confused.”
He grabbed her wrist, gently enough that she could pull away if she tried at all. Then he dragged her hand down his body, gratified to see her pulse increase speed at her neck. When he pressed her hand against his cock, she cupped him. It was excruciating. From the flush of her neck, she was on the edge herself.
Close to coming, he grabbed both of her hands and wrapped her arms around his neck. Her body flush with his shifted and moved. He was about to embarrass himself just from standing there in front of him.
“I’m not confused when your fuck-hot little body squeezes my cock while I’m riding it.”
She bucked against him, but he wasn’t going to let her go until she heard him out. “I’m not confused about being the one who makes sure you eat something before I get my dessert.”
She stopped moving, relaxing into his embrace. “We shouldn’t.”
“I want to say goodbye to my wife.” He lowered his head so his mouth was close to her ear. Even sweaty from exertion, the scent of her made him mad. “Are you going to give me that?”
She glanced towards the closed door. “Here?”
“If I let you go, you’re not going to let me have it.”
“It?”
“That thing that I only feel when I’m with you.” He maneuvered both their bodies to the door so he could flip the lock. Even in a small room, he knew he would lose her if he stopped touching her. If she couldn’t feel how hard she made him for a split second, she would deny them both.
And he needed to give her one last, good fucking before he bid her goodbye. He needed to take his time with her, getting her off before he could let her leave him for good.
He wanted to make sure that she couldn’t get off with any of the motherfuckers who would try to get in her pants once they found out she didn’t belong to him anymore. Needed to be imprinted on her mind and her body forever.
He’d moved them over to the couch, the one where he had made her come with his mouth. At first, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with her. The only guidance his brain gave him was a primitive chant of: take, plunder, fuck.
“You want this, don’t you?” Instead of listening to the caveman part of his brain, he was able to use his words. He searched her face for any sign of hesitation. All he found there was her lust-darkened gaze, and a stain on her cheeks that he didn’t think was entirely the result of stage makeup.
“I do.” Her words were too close to wedding vows, too earnestly spoken.
Instead of responding, he kissed her and pressed her down to the couch. He licked inside her mouth, ate her moans as he flexed his hips against her open legs. Within moments, they were dry humping like teenagers, and he was close to coming. The only thing that stopped him from letting himself do that was the thought that this was the last time he’d be with her.
When he pulled back, her bun was askew, and her lipstick was smeared across her face. Her costume remained in place, but he intended to change that. He thought about ripping the thing off of her. After all, part of his money had paid for it. But he didn’t want to do that. Needed to slow down and savor her.
“Sit up.”
She followed his instructions, and it satisfied that part of him that became feral with this woman. His fingertips brushed down her spine as he unzipped the red fluttery thing that she’d seduced the entire crowd with. Obediently, she lifted her hips so he could pull off the dress and the tights she wore underneath. Once he got to the ribbons on her toe shoes, he let himself rip. She gasped.
“I’ll buy you new ones.” He winked at her. “Consider it alimony.”
When she was finally naked, he let himself look at her. Lithe and graceful everywhere. Her feet bruised, battered, and ugly in a beautiful way. He cupped her high arched feet, and spread her muscled legs. Even though she could probably crush bones between her thighs, she melted like butter for him.
She cried out when he finally let himself touch her clit. He’d slept with a respectable number of woman, but none of them had ever responded to him like this. He’d spent enough time with Laura to know when she was faking something with dance. She never faked anything when they were together.
“You can’t pretend with me, gorgeous.” He pushed one finger inside her and let her squeeze him inside of her. “I know you’ll miss this.”
She didn’t respond because he pressed his thumb to her clit on every stroke. And he went slowly, so slowly. He knew she’d probably start complaining about his pace soon. But, if she was only going to give him a few stolen minutes before telling him to get lost, he was going to take every damned one of those minutes.
The minutes weren’t damned—they were blessed and sacred. It was he who was damned to love a woman that he couldn’t hold onto. He wanted to punish her for leaving him by giving her so much pleasure that she forgot why she had to go.
He let her get close to coming—hips pumping, creeping flush on all of her naked curves—and then he withdrew his fingers, licking them clean. Right then he decided that he wouldn’t give her his mouth. That part was to punish himself. He wanted to remember the night of their wedding reception as the last time he had that. On his knees for this woman who couldn’t love him back.
He crawled up the couch until he straddled her waist.
“What are you doing?” She pressed her hips up against him; his aching cock protested fiercely.
But he had a mission. He started pulling bobby pins out of her hair. He needed to bury his hands in it almost as much as he needed to bury his cock inside her. There was something different about her when her hair was down and wild. She was beautiful when she was all gussied up for a performance, when she was dancing and far away on a stage, but he needed the real, close-up Laura. He wanted her to be just as wild and primitive as his desire for her.
“You’re wasting time.” She sounded irritated, but he didn’t look down at her face, just concentrated on his task. Already, she was turning from the woman he loved into the woman he’d torture himself to be with. He could even see months and years down the road that thinking about her irritated voice and the way she lifted her chin that said I’m too good for this shit, would make him have to stroke himself off. “Are you going to fuck me or style my hair?”
He actually growled at her. Like an angry bear. She’d wounded him fatally, and now she wanted him to rush his death scene? He couldn’t do that, wouldn’t even try. “I’m going to fuck you.” He pulled out the last pin, and wrapped her ponytail around his fist. He moved her head so their gazes met, but he was above her. “But you’re not going to rush me, gorgeous.”
He felt a shiver move through her body, as though she was both frightened of the way she was affecting him and exhilarated by having him manhandle her. He shouldn’t have acted this way. Should have been on his knees and indulging them both in the way she moved over his face. She should be crying out again and again. And then he should be slipping out of the room.
Maybe it was because this time was different. This was a farewell that neither of them wanted. But she was too afraid to fight for them. And he had too much pride to beg her to stay, knowing that she’d leave him in the end regardless.
“Do you want my cock or not?”
“I—I want it.” He loved it when her voice got all shaky.
“Then you’re going to take it on my terms?”
* * * *
Laura didn’t know the man on top of her. It couldn’t be the one she’d married. None of that sunny, laid-back dude was left. That man who she craved had maybe never entered the building tonight. Instead, she was at the mercy of a barbarian who looked like Charlie Laughlin, even sounded like him, but there was something fundamentally changed about him.
And she fucking loved it.
Maybe everything Charlie did to her she would like? Maybe there was something wrong with her that the feel of his hand against her scalp and the prickle of pain she felt every time she tried to move her head on her own power made her so wet that she could feel the arousal dripping down her thighs.
She’d never been into the seemingly cold dominant thing, but that wasn’t this. His breath was labored, as though he’d been running. But no, he was just holding her down. There was emotional weight here. When his finger had been inside her, when he’d ripped that orgasm away and licked her off his hand with a mean look on his face, she realized that she’d caused this.
In that moment, she’d wanted to lay herself out like his sacrificial lamb. Needed to be both the sacred and the profane for him. The wife and whore.
If he needed to use her like a fuck doll in order to let her go, she wouldn’t just bear it. She’d fucking love it and never be able to come again without thinking of his long fingers strung through her hair or playing with her pussy.
He kissed her again and she tasted her arousal in his mouth. She felt too naked and exposed to him and worked the buttons on his dress shirt. She wished she’d thought ahead and stolen one of them to take with her. She knew she wouldn’t get the opportunity to do so again. He’d given her all the time and attention that he was willing to give, and she’d have to live with that.
This sure-to-be angry fuck was going to kill both of them. And it was going to be the headstone on their fucked-up failed marriage. One of his buttons got stuck and her sob of frustration ended up in his mouth. He pulled back, and pushed her fingers away.
Instead of removing his shirt, he grabbed her hair again and turned her around, so she was facing the back of the couch, the wall. He was going to deny her the opportunity to look at him.
“I need to look at you.” Her whisper was ragged and wanton. She felt pathetic begging him, but she needed to see the man who almost made her give up everything when he pounded into her.
“You want my cock, and I’m going to give it to you how I want to.” He punctuated the statement with a hard slap on her ass.
The shock of it made her pull at his grip, which didn’t fail. The impact didn’t turn her off, though. She needed him even if he was going to take her like a stranger.
It hadn’t felt like this the first time. She missed his worshipful touch from that first night they’d spent together. But maybe it was better that he was ending it like this.
“Is anyone still backstage?” His question caught her off guard.
“The crew, maybe.” She didn’t know how long she’d been back here between the adrenaline of the show, the job offer, and Charlie—always Charlie.
“Then bite down on the cushion.” She didn’t know what he meant until she heard the sound of paper ripping, and felt his sheathed cock at her entrance. “So fucking wet for me, wife. You may not want me anymore, but this pussy needs me. What are you going to do when you move away from me? Are you going to stroke it yourself?”
She bit down on the cushion to stop herself from saying yes.
“Gonna try to replace me?”
He entered her and she screamed, and when he didn’t move, she tried to push her hips back into him. She needed him to move. To fuck. To take her like he’d promised with every touch that came before this.
“Don’t move.” He pumped his hips a little, but not enough. Then, he stroked down her spine and spread her ass cheeks. “I want to see where I’m seated so far in my wife that I made her scream.”
She shook her head, but released her bite on the cushions to say, “Yes. Yes.”
As though that gave him permission, he started moving again. With every drag of his cock against and inside her most sensitive flesh, she saw stars. His animal grunts, which would have taken her completely out of the moment with anyone else, turned her inside out until her movements were shaky and writhing.
He pulled her on and off of him by the hair, which burned and ached. It made her feel used, and she hated that she loved it. She hated that she loved him, and she’d turned him into a rutting animal. Even if her body loved it, her heart was breaking.
All of her guilty conscience, the only thing that was keeping her from coming apart, fled when he reached around the front of her body and rubbed her clit. She couldn’t think. And, even though, she couldn’t see him with her vision, she could picture his face—all of his expressions. Sacred. Profane. Love and hate all mixed up.
Again, he took his finger away right before she came. He pulled her up so she was flush with his still clothed body, which made her feel even more cheap and used.
“Hold the back of the couch.”
Even though she shouldn’t want this degradation, she followed instructions. Her knuckles went white when he slammed inside her again. After another brief rub on her clit, he had her over the back of couch. Her clit rubbed against the upholstery with every stroke. She would have frozen when he touched her back entrance with his thumb had she not been so close to coming that her back teeth were grinding together.
Instead of saying a word, making him stop, she canted her hips back and gave him permission. She wanted him to overwhelm her, take her over completely. She needed him to punish her body. But she didn’t expect it to feel good. And it felt so different, so dark, but still so much pleasure all at once broke her.
She bucked and screamed, and if anyone was in the hall, they certainly heard her. But she didn’t care. Not when he slammed inside her for the last time. Not when she wished there hadn’t been barriers between them. Not when she wanted to take it all back and stay married to him.