He whispered in her ear, “I’m going to fuck you over the kitchen table, princess. Take your panties off.”
He let her go and she took one step back, lifted her dress to reach under it, bent and came back up with a small handful of pink lace. He took them from her and tossed them on the floor before turning her roughly and bending her over the edge of the small, round table, using a hand to press her down onto the wood surface until her cheek laid there.
“Mick . . .”
“Shh.”
He flipped the hem of her dress up, baring her perfectly rounded ass, pulled open the buttoned fly of his cargo pants and pulled his cock out. Christ, he was so hard it hurt. Had to be inside her.
“Spread,” he told her, and she complied.
He reached under her, found her pussy already wet.
“Have to just fuck you, baby.” He guided his cock to her opening, rammed inside her all at once. “Fuck, yeah . . .”
“Oh!”
He pulled back, thrust hard again, needing it to be hard and fast and merciless for reasons he didn’t understand. He took one of her arms and twisted it behind her back, held it there as he plunged into her over and over.
Pleasure was like a hammer, pounding into him. She was moaning, crying out, and he felt her sex tighten around him. He reached around her and found the tight nub of her clit. He tugged on it, pinched, twisted the tender flesh between his fingers as he rammed into her.
“God, Mick!”
She came, her sweet pussy clenching around him, then drenching him with her pleasure. It was too much for him. He came in a torrent of fiery sensation, fucking her harder and harder, pleasure and heat blinding him as he shivered inside her.
“Baby, baby, baby . . .”
He could barely breathe. He’d barely stopped coming and he needed her again already.
He slipped out of her, turning her and pulling her into his arms. Hers went around his neck.
“You okay?” she asked.
“What? I’m so good, baby girl.”
And it was true. Partly. The other part he’d either ignore until it went away, or he’d just keep fucking Allie until it disappeared. It was either that or go fight. He had to admit the fucking was better.
She stood on her toes and kissed his neck.
“Come on,” he said. “I’m going to need you again in about five minutes.”
She stepped back, kicked her way out of her sandals and pulled her dress over her head. Her eyes were a smoldering gold. “Ready when you are.”
She offered her hand to him and he took it, let her take him to her bedroom, where he got out of his clothes and pushed her down on the bed.
“Hands and knees,” he told her.
He wasn’t even certain himself why he was being so curt with her. But she wasn’t fighting it, didn’t seem to mind. But when he came up behind her and started to wrap his T-shirt around her eyes, she pushed it away. “Hard limit, Mick,” she reminded him. “I just can’t.”
“No problem, baby.”
He dropped the shirt and reached under her, sliding his hands over her breasts and playing with her nipples. They went hard immediately.
“Does that feel good, Allie girl?”
“I like it.”
“But . . . ?”
“But I need you to pinch them.”
“Like this?” He twisted the stiffening flesh between thumb and forefinger. She groaned. “I take that as a yes?”
“Mmm, yes . . .”
Hearing her moans, feeling her heat up beneath him, was making him hard again. He felt the desire like a pressure inside his body, his balls, his cock.
“Gotta fuck you again,” he said, as much to himself as to her.
He arched his hips until his cock pressed against her sex. She was wet, the lips slick and swollen.
He let the tip slide there, back and forth in the liquid heat of her body, before he pushed inside.
Yes, this was what he needed. To lose himself in her. In pure, mindless pleasure. In the primal nature of fucking.
He plunged into her over and over, his grip on her lush body tightening, his fingers digging into her hips. But it wasn’t about giving her pain. It wasn’t about kink at all. Maybe it wasn’t even about sex. It was more about forgetting.
He came, his body shaking, and collapsed on top of her. It was a long while before he caught his breath and realized he was probably crushing her.
“Fuck. Sorry, babe.”
He rolled off her and she turned onto her side, looking at him. She laid her hand on his chest.
“You okay?” she asked again.
“Fine. You keep asking me that.”
“I’m just . . .” She paused, bit her lip. “Checking.”
He wasn’t quite fine. Not yet. But he would be. There was just something about seeing his family—seeing them with Allie at his side—that made things more painfully clear. But he couldn’t think about it now. He didn’t want to.
Some things were just too dark and ugly to look at in the light of a Sunday afternoon.
CHAPTER Fourteen
HE WOKE AT six a.m., the morning gray and overcast. Allie was asleep beside him, unmoving except for the gentle rise and fall of her breasts. He’d kept her up late, had gone out to his truck to get his rope bag at one point and tied her up, practicing some complicated knots on her. This morning he had to admit it had been mostly so they didn’t have to talk more than it was the pure pleasure of the rope work—either hers or his own.
He hated himself a little for that.
Flash of that cold morning when he’d gotten up and left her sleeping all those years ago. His heart in his throat as he looked at her one last time, so fucking beautiful, her head pillowed on one arm, eyes closed, long lashes against her cheeks. That tearing sensation as he left her behind. The churning in his gut for days after. The bottle of Scotch he’d finished that night while he’d justified his actions to himself over and over.
He wasn’t good enough for her.
Never had been. Allie was a good girl. What the hell had he done?
He’d hated himself then, too.
“Fuck,” he muttered, sitting up in the bed and running his hands over his head, rubbing the grit out of his eyes. “This is different.”
But was it, ultimately?
He felt twitchy, and he hated feeling twitchy. It only meant one thing.
He got up and found his clothes and came back to the bedroom, intending to tell her he was leaving. But she looked too peaceful to wake—that was what he was telling himself, anyway—one arm thrown over her eyes, her hair spread out on the pillows. He watched her sleeping for several minutes before he turned to leave.
New Orleans was quiet this early on a Monday morning. The quiet was giving him far too much time to think. About everything he could have—should have—been. And he didn’t want to go there. But it was too late, wasn’t it?
His head was pounding, his heart racing, as he turned on some music, loud, head-banging metal, and let it drown out his thoughts as he drove the all-too-familiar route to the club on the Pontchartrain Expressway. He parked and jumped out. The warehouse doors were closed. He pulled and found them locked.
“What the fuck?”
There was always someone at the club. Unless it had been raided over the weekend and he hadn’t heard about it.
He kicked the door with his boot. It hurt, the pain reverberating up his leg, but he did it again, anyway.
“God fucking damn it.”
He needed the club right now. Needed to fight.
He jumped in his truck and gunned the engine, heading for his gym instead.
It didn’t take him long to get there, only minutes to change. The place was mostly empty this early in the morning. The before-work crowd would arrive any time, though. He found Antoine on his back, bench pressing as he came out of the locker room.