“Are you insane?” I couldn’t help myself this time. I grabbed her by the elbows and made her look at me. “You are the most beautiful, the most entrancing woman I have ever laid eyes on. And you’re witty, and smart, and talented, and creative, and brave.”
She snorted, shaking her head.
“You are,” I told her. “And fuck, Stig, you are so goddamn sexy. Without even trying. You’ve driven me out of my mind since the moment you moved across the street.”
“And now you’ve had me,” she said, her eyes meeting mine with a despair. “So, what more is there? What could I possibly have to offer you?”
I closed my eyes against the pain those words sent echoing through my chest. Without a word, I tugged her wrists until she had no choice but to go where I led her, which was right into my lap. I pulled her to straddle me, letting my hands trace every curve of her until I held her face in my palms, her focus on me.
“I hate myself because I know that I’m part of the reason you feel this way about yourself.”
She tried to look away from me, to shake her head, but I held her still.
“No, it’s true and we both know it. La cagué. I fucked up. And it doesn’t matter that I didn’t know it was you, that it was my girl I was hurting that day after practice in high school. Because it was you, the girl I didn’t know but should have wanted to, the girl who was brave enough to approach me when I had such asshole friends and every eye in school on me.”
“I don’t blame you for not giving me a second look. I was—”
“As beautiful then as you are now,” I said before she could finish. “It was me who was el idiota. Me. Okay? And I will spend every second of every day on my knees to make it up to you.”
Mary waggled her brows. “On your knees, hmm?”
I cherished that smile, that lightening in her mood, but I wouldn’t let this go until I knew I’d made myself clear. I slid my fingers back into her hair, my thumbs lining her jaw as I met her gaze.
“You want to know what you have to offer me?” I asked. “Todo. Everything. A chance to start over. A chance to be myself. A chance to have what I’ve always wanted. You offer laughter and adventure, spontaneity and challenge, life,” I said. “You infuriate me,” I added with a smile. “In the best possible way. You make me want to be better, and you make me mad with the need to touch every inch of you until I can map your body out with my eyes closed.”
Chills broke on her skin, and I pulled her closer, resting my forehead against hers.
“I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m so, so fucking sorry. But I’m here. And I want you, Mary, you. All of you. Exclusive. No bullshit, no wondering what’s next, no games.” I looked at her again. “I’ve never felt anything for anyone else but you — even when I didn’t know it was you all along. You’re fucking it for me.”
She choked on a sob, nodding and leaning into my palm.
“This is the real thing, Stig. You and me, right here, right now. I want it. I want us.”
“I want us, too.”
She barely got the words out before I was swallowing them, savoring them, devouring every syllable before my mouth crashed down on hers. I wrapped her in my embrace as her own arms threaded around my neck and held me to her, deepening the kiss. She held me there like I’d disappear if she opened her eyes, like this kiss was our last.
“I’m yours,” I promised her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She nodded against my kiss, but still clung to me as if I were a dream.
My alarm went off on my phone, and I blindly felt for it and shut it off before tossing it across the room.
“You need to go,” Mary tried to tell me, breaking our kiss. “You can’t be late to practice.”
“I have just enough time.”
“To what — get dressed?”
“To make you come,” I said, grinding my hips against where she was straddling me. She whimpered a bit as I nipped at her bottom lip. “And then get dressed.”
I didn’t give her the chance to argue before I was slapping her ass and helping her off my lap. When I had her standing, I stripped her between kisses, shedding a layer for her and then me, back and forth until we were both bare.
“Goddamn, Mary,” I said appreciatively when she was naked, scanning her with my eyes and hands both. I took in every curve, every inch of softness, every piercing and stretch of ink across her skin.
And now, it was mine.
She was mine.
I pulled her into me with possession humming through every vein, and she hissed when I ran a hand roughly between her thighs.
“Fuck,” she cursed, lurching away. “Damn pole kisses.”
I blanched. “What?”
“I’m… I’m bruised, from the stupid pole,” she explained, gesturing to her thighs. I glanced down, and with the soft light of dawn starting to break through, I could see a shadow of the bruise she was referencing. I could also see it wasn’t the only one she had.
“Damn, baby,” I said, frowning as I traced a circle around it. I was careful not to touch it as I guided her back to the bed, laying her in the sheets and propping myself between her legs. Then, I kissed my way down, stopping when I started noting the bruises again.
I pressed my lips lightly to the first one, and Mary moaned.
“Does it hurt?”
“A little,” she confessed, but the way she writhed under me told me it was the good kind of pain.
I smirked, running my palm flat and warm over her stomach, her hip, skating my fingers through the maze of bruises until they slid up and ran the length of her wet center.
She arched into the touch, and when just the tip of my finger dipped inside her, I kissed that bruise again, a little harder this time.
I was rewarded with another, louder moan, her fists twisting in the sheets.
“My little masochist,” I teased, and then I slid my finger all the way inside her, biting down around her bruise at the same time.
“Yes,” she breathed, shuddering under my touch.
It was maddening, how sexy she was, how much she turned me on when she spread her thighs wider for me and peered down at me over the swells of her heaving breasts. I hated how much I was under her spell just as much as I loved surrendering to it, like a dying man taking his last breath before letting the earth take him back.
“You’ve got two minutes to fuck my hand and come for me,” I told her, curling a second finger inside her. “Can you do that for me?”
“No,” she said, panting.
“No?” I repeated with a challenge, working my fingers inside her as I lowered my mouth to her clit. She bucked her hips when I sucked her into my mouth, and the moan she let out told me she was lying.
“I mean, I can,” she amended, panting. “But I want you.”
Her hands reached blindly for my hips, and the way she was tugging at me, I understood what she meant. My cock twitched at the invitation.
But I wanted this morning to be about her.
“You want me?” I teased her, slowly crawling my way up her body as I kissed and sucked and licked. “What do you mean?”
“I want you,” she said again, and this time she wrapped her hand around my shaft, pumping me once, slow and long and torturous.