Chapter 11

Roses are red

Beer is delicious

I use paper plates

Because fuck doing dishes

Baylor

She was scared.

I could read it in the line of her body, and the way she wouldn’t look me in the eyes.

It was also the reason I stayed.

I could tell that something was bothering her, and I didn’t want her to be alone.

Normally when I knew I wasn’t wanted, I’d leave. It was never fun to be somewhere you weren’t wanted. This time, not so much.

I didn’t like knowing that she’d be here, alone and sad.

I didn’t want to go party with my brothers and family while Lark was over here purposefully not enjoying herself.

“What are you scared of?”

She shut me up by placing a gentle kiss on my lips.

“You think a little kiss like that is going to distract me?” I asked her.

She flushed.

“It’s going to take a lot more to distract me than that.” I got up and towered over where she now stood, backing her further into the counter where she’d retreated to after she’d kissed me. “You want to try again? Give it all you’ve got this time?”

She trembled.

I was close enough to her to feel the heat of her body without actually touching it.

It was maddening, but I wouldn’t budge.

I might come off as laid back and calm, but I wasn’t. I was probably the least laid-back person in this town.

That’s why I walked everywhere. Why I purposefully stayed the hell away from people who I knew could make me say something I might regret later.

That was why I felt so connected to this woman who was currently inches away from me.

She was like me, only better looking.

And I fucking liked that there was someone else like me.

It was exhausting hating everyone by myself.

“You hate everyone?” she breathed.

I paused, not realizing that I’d said that last thought aloud.

“Ummm,” I hesitated. “Is that a bad thing?”

I’d always been on the outside looking in.

In high school, I wasn’t a football player or a soccer player. I was a cross-country runner. That was about as alone as you could get in terms of high school sports. Then in the military, I was assigned to a unit that was made up of a bunch of obnoxious assholes. But I loved those assholes, even if I did so from afar.

When I took a different route that led me into a more covert role with the Marines, I found my true calling in life.

I loved being holed up alone, gathering information. Sitting, watching, listening. Those were my strong suits.

And when I was hurt while on leave, my life completely changed.

Gone was the anonymity I enjoyed. Gone was my free time that was my time.

Gone was the peace and quiet of my once orderly world.

Gone was the feeling that I could breathe.

“You feel like you can’t breathe?”

Guess I was still saying some of this aloud.

“Sometimes,” I admitted. “Then I get around you, and all of those anxious feelings start to drift away. It’s the only time the noise turns off and I get any silence in my head.”

I closed my eyes and leaned forward until my forehead rested against hers. “You make me feel like it’s ok to be this way, like I’m less of an outsider.”

She stared at me, and suddenly, she wasn’t standing inches away from me any longer. Now she was throwing her arms around my neck and slamming her mouth onto mine.

I did the only thing that any sane man would do in that situation.

I picked her up, urged her to wrap her legs around my hips, and took her entire body into my arms. Then I prayed that my knee wouldn’t give out.

Which ended up being a mistake.

I immediately switched our positions so that my back was leaning against the counter.

Since my accident, my knee couldn’t sustain the weight that I used to be comfortable lifting. Since my recovery—and I say recovery loosely since I still wasn’t back to what I used to be—I hadn’t missed the old me…well, at least not too much.

I had yet to be in a serious relationship, and I hadn’t had anything more than my hand in a really long time. I hadn’t realized my limitations. Hadn’t missed what I used to have because I hadn’t realized I was missing it.

But now, knowing that I couldn’t hold her up? Yeah, that burned.

But she kissed it all better by letting me up for air and staring into my eyes.

“Take me to the bed.”

I would have. I really would have.

But then she took her shirt off, and I got distracted.

She wasn’t wearing a bra. How had I missed that she wasn’t wearing a bra?

“I don’t have to wear a bra,” she admitted.

I’d asked that question aloud, or maybe she’d read it in my eyes.

Either way, I didn’t care.

Not when I was faced with those beautiful breasts of hers.

Her nipples were bigger than any of the ones I’d ever seen, the areola taking up a larger portion of her breast. The tips were juicy, thick, and darker than any I’d ever seen, too.

I wanted to devour them.

I wasn’t sure where to start.

The left? The right?

She answered that burning question for me by offering up her left breast like one would their finest dish at Thanksgiving dinner as she latched onto my head with the other hand, guiding it down.

I didn’t dare not do what she was asking.

I dropped my mouth to her breast, licked the edges of her areola, and then went even further by sucking her pretty nipple down deep into my mouth.

I curled my tongue around the tip while I sucked, flicking it lightly while dropping one hand from her ass, and smoothing it up her side to curl around her breast.

I bit down lightly when she tried to push me away—to take away my play toy—and she gasped.

“Mine,” I told her, breaking away to glance up at her eyes.

She looked dazed.

I grinned and went back to my new favorite meal—her.

I devoured her nipple, sucking, licking, and teasing, while I ground myself against her.

She moaned and started to pull on my hair, and it was only when I felt that she was ready to break that I pulled away.

My mouth was wet, and her eyes met mine. There was a need so great written all over her face that I let her slide down until her feet rested fully on the floor.

My eyes moved down her chest.

One breast looked angry and aroused, needy and wanting. The other nipple was pebbled, but it didn’t have a beard burn, or suck marks dotting the expanse of it.

I grinned at how she looked.

Those hickeys would be there for days.

Maybe even a week.

“Finish getting undressed,” I ordered.

She turned her back on me and went to do just that.

Then she got to her pants.

And I thought her nipples were my new favorite thing…I was wrong.

It was her ass.

She started to scramble toward where I assumed was the bedroom, losing her clothes along the way.

But the moment she pushed those pants down over her hips, I stilled her movements by hooking one arm around her waist and pulling her to me.

We were in the living room. Her front door was wide open, and I could see outside, which meant other people could see in if they bothered to look.

But I didn’t change what I was doing—because by doing that, I’d have to let her go. And I didn’t think I could—not ever.

It was also the reason that I couldn’t make it another step.

I bent her over at the waist, pulled her thong—nothing more than a tiny, pink scrap of fabric—to the side and smoothed a finger over her slick pussy.

“Godddd,” she moaned. “Baylor.”

The gasp that left her mouth was enough to make me smile.

I started to unbuckle my pants.

“Baylor,” she moaned, wiggling her ass against me.

It was then that I growled.

The sheer flexibility of her was amazing. She was standing straight legged, her feet side by side, and was leaned over so far that she had her hands on the floor next to her feet.

Later… later, I would explore this more. I would see what other sexual positions I could bend her into in the future, really find out what she could do.

But for now?

For now, I was going to fuck her. I was going to shove my fat cock into her and not stop until we were both coming.

“Condom?” she breathed, looking up at me from the side of her leg.

Her breasts were pressed to her thighs, and she circled one arm around her legs so she could peer up at me.

“No condom.”

She opened her mouth to retort, but I shook my head.

“I saw you were on the pill,” I told her. “Was with you when you were taking your trash out, remember?”

She snapped her mouth shut, and I lowered my jeans so that my cock could slip free of the confines of my pants—and no, I wasn’t wearing underwear.

Underwear was too confining.

The only time I ever wore them was when I was running—there was only so much dick swinging I could handle on a long run.

“Oh, yeah,” she whispered.

“I’m clean.”

I let go of my dick, and it reared up and hit her pussy with a meaty smack.

She jumped and then moaned.

“Get back down,” I ordered.

She cleared her throat but nonetheless did what she was told.

She dropped back down.

“Curl both hands around your legs,” I told her. “I’ll make sure you don’t fall.”

She did that, too.

I pulled back until I had my dick lined up with her entrance, then swirled just the tip inside.

She moaned, and I tightened my hand on her hip.

I rimmed her entrance with ever-widening circles until her wetness was spread not just all over my cock, but all over her as well. There wasn’t a dry place where we touched, and I fucking loved it.

I’d never gotten this messy before—not without my come being involved.

Sure, there was some pre-come in the mix, but it was mostly because of Lark’s excitement.

Her need for me.

“How long’s it been, sweetheart?” I asked her, pushing against her entrance now.

She moaned. “Too long.”

I pulled back away, and she seemed to understand why.

“Three years, two months, and a few days. Four, I think. Maybe five.”

I grinned.

“Was it a bad day for you to remember that exact?” I questioned, pulling her back toward me.

This time my cock breached her entrance, and I didn’t pull back.

Mostly because the feeling of her surrounding me had rendered me unable to make informed decisions.

I was drunk on her pussy, and I didn’t care.

Fuck, did I need her.

I withdrew a bit and then pushed inside another inch.

My eyes crossed.

“Please,” she keened. “Please.”

I pushed another inch, my eyes squeezing tightly shut as I groaned.

“God,” I breathed. “I don’t think that I’m going to make it all the way inside of you without blowing.”

She squeezed. “I just need you inside me. I think all it’ll take at this point is feeling you fill me.”

She was not wrong.

The moment I drove inside of her fully, filling her with all nine of my hard inches, she came.

I didn’t follow suit.

Instead, I held still, waiting for the ripples of her pussy around me to subside before I pulled back and began to thrust.

Not too hard, but not gently, either.

Just right.

She moaned as she curled her chest even closer to her legs, squeezing her eyes shut so tightly that I could see the crinkled, little lines beside her eyes.

Her face was resting on one knee as she gasped for breath.

I growled as I kept the same pace, thrusting into her over and over again, but being sure to cant my hips so that I hit a different spot inside of her.

She didn’t disappoint me.

The moment that I hit that spot, she gasped, and her eyes flew open to find mine.

Her mouth formed an O as she forgot how to breathe.

“Feel good?” I asked.

She could only nod.

I grunted as I pulled back and then shoved myself forward again.

This time I brought her hips back with enough force to make her feel every inch of me.

She did.

And then she started to come again.

Later, I’d relish the fact that I’d made her come within five strokes of having my cock in her. Later, I’d think about what it all meant.

Right now?

I was going to keep fucking her.

I picked up the pace and fucked her hard, fast, ruthlessly.

Gone was the sole focus on her pleasure—she had gotten off on it so I knew that she felt it no matter what I did.

I also knew that she might be getting uncomfortable in this position, but with the way her eyes were directed at me, and her hair was nearly dragging on the ground as she stayed plastered to her legs, I realized I didn’t care.

If she became too uncomfortable, she’d say something. In the meantime, I was going to take her how I’d been dreaming about taking her for a long time.

Hard and fast.

The sound of our skin slapping filled the air around us, and at one point, I looked up when I spotted movement.

It was Harold.

He was standing beside Lark’s mailbox, and he was dropping a fucking ruler into her grass to measure the height.

I growled as I increased my pace.

“Fucker,” I muttered.

My muttered curse was lost in the scream that left Lark’s body in the next instant.

One second she was a warm, willing hole that was soft and pliant. The next she was clamping on my cock so hard that I saw stars.

My come was pulled from my cock in the next instant.

It shot inside of her like it was searching for a new home.

Rapture consumed me.

My balls were tight. My dick was the hardest it had ever been, and I was winded.

I. Was. Winded.

I never got winded.

That was the good thing about being such an avid runner. I ran a lot—like miles. On a bad day, I did five. On a good day, I did ten or more if I could. But those good days were rare.

I ran because I loved it. I did it to keep my body in shape. I did it because it was embarrassing when, after my accident, I couldn’t go up a flight of stairs without my body screaming out in agony and my lungs pumping like I was doing a high-intensity cardio.

So, for this woman to make me winded? That was saying something.

I smoothed my hand down her back, trailing one finger back up the length of her spine when I reached her tailbone.

“You made me come.”

That soft reply brought me away from the contemplation of her hips and back. Of how fucking sexy the arch of her neck was and how I wanted to grab all the hair at the nape of her neck and fist it just so I could see the delicate curve.

“I wasn’t supposed to?” I chuckled as I pulled away.

She didn’t lean up, instead staying exactly where she was as her breath continued to come out in shallow pants.

The way she was bent over, still holding her legs while I held her hips, was likely compressing her lungs in an awkward position.

But since she didn’t care, I didn’t move her.

Why?

That answer was the trail of my come leaking out of her entrance.

I’d never seen that before.

Well, not in person with it being my come.

I’d watched porn and seen it, but this?

Yeah, this was something altogether different.

This was my come. This was my woman.

I growled and felt my cock stiffen back to its full length.

I didn’t put it back in her, though.

Instead, I let one hand move from her hip and trailed it down the lips of her sex. When I reached her entrance, I widened my hand and spread her lips, exposing her to me even more.

“Push it out.”

My voice didn’t even sound like my own.

It sounded like some other man’s voice that was much deeper and huskier—not a sound I’d ever heard coming from my mouth before.

Why?

Because she was the most erotic thing I’d ever seen. She clenched her sex and even more of my come leaked out of her, falling out of her and trailing down to her clit; I was gone.

I couldn’t take it anymore.

I had to have her again.

And I did.

Over and over and over again.

This next time we at least made it to the couch.

I was so caught up in what I was doing—who I was doing—that I didn’t give the man who was now staring at us a second thought.

I should have.