It’s not enough. I want it harder, I want it faster, I want him to ruin me.
I want him to make me forget my own name.
He stops spanking me the instant I moan.
Panting, he says, “Talk to me.”
The only thing I can manage is a breathy and broken, “More.”
He smooths his hand over my burning bottom, then bends down to kiss it. Then I hear the sound of a zipper being ripped open. A moment later, the head of his hard cock nudges my entrance.
Through gritted teeth he says, “Repeat the safe word.”
“Cheesy.”
“Good girl.”
Gripping my hips, he shoves inside me with a guttural grunt.
This time, my moan is one of gratitude.
Then he fucks me. Hard and fast, his fingers digging into my flesh. I feel the cold bite of metal on the back of my thighs and realize he didn’t pull his jeans all the way down before taking me.
He couldn’t wait any longer, either.
He bends over, reaching beneath me to squeeze my breast. Panting and pulling on my hard nipple, he drives into me relentlessly until my moans are so loud, they echo off the walls. My pussy clenches around his cock.
“Don’t you dare,” he hisses.
The warning only makes me hotter. I flex my hips in time to his thrusts, straining to get him as deep as he can go inside me, until suddenly he falls still.
Breathing hard, he moves his hand from my breast down between my legs. He slides his fingers all around, then strums his fingertips back and forth over my swollen clit.
As he undoubtedly knew it would, that instantly makes me orgasm.
Crying out, I jerk violently. My pussy convulses, clenching over and over again in hard, rhythmic waves.
“Come, baby! Ah, fuck yes, come for me!”
He sounds triumphant.
I understand then that forbidding me to climax was part of this game, that he knew every minute I’d hold back would add to my pleasure when I finally let go, and I’m stupidly grateful that he knows what he’s doing because this is exactly what I needed.
He’s exactly what I needed.
A handsome stranger with secrets in his eyes and a way of looking at me as if he already knows everything there is to know about me. As if I’m a book he’s read a thousand times and highlighted all his favorite passages.
As if he already knows how this is going to end.
He falls on top of me, pushing me flat onto my belly on the mattress and trapping me with his weight. With both hands clenched in my hair, he thrusts hard a few more times, then moans my name.
Shuddering, he empties himself inside my body.
I close my eyes and brace myself against the huge wave of emotion cresting to a peak above me, then surrender to its churning darkness as it crashes down and carries me, tumbling, far away.
19
Afterward, we don’t speak.
I don’t know if he’s feeling as emotionally raw as I am or if he simply has nothing to say, but he rolls off me and goes into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.
The faucet runs. The toilet flushes. He reappears carrying a wet washcloth and a hand towel. He silently pushes me onto my back and wipes the washcloth gently between my legs as I lie there feeling as if all my bones have turned to liquid.
He dries me off with the hand towel, then rises and flips off the light switch. Then he crawls onto the mattress beside me, rolls me to my side, pulls me against his chest, and buries his face in my hair, inhaling deeply.
When he exhales, it sounds as if a hundred years of pent-up frustrations leave his body in the same breath.
Eventually, his breathing slows to a deep, even cadence that tells me he’s asleep.
I lie there in the dark enveloped in his warmth and think about Michael.
Was I a good wife?
I don’t know. I tried to be. More than anything, I wanted to make him happy. He wanted me to be happy, too, and I thought we were perfect for each other. All our jagged little pieces matched. We fit.
But our relationship was nothing like this.
I know it’s unfair to make comparisons. I also know it’s unfair that I lied to Aidan about being separated from my husband instead of simply telling him the truth.
But he caught me off guard. I had no idea anything even remotely like this would happen. I wasn’t prepared for the extent of our attraction, for the force of it, for the way I’m drawn to him with an intensity I feel strangely powerless to resist.
And so I simply let him believe Michael was still alive. Part of me wants to believe it as well. Part of me wants to believe this isn’t the truth:
My husband is dead.
He fell off our boat and drowned.
I watched it happen.