Harder (Caroline & West #2)(53)

When she takes a step toward me, I grab her at the waist and pull her in.

I get her right up against me, get my hands in all that hair, and I kiss her as if I’d never stopped. As if we can start right up again, right now, and pretend everything in the middle never happened.

She tastes like she always did. Hot and eager, wet and sinuous. Amazing.

Amazing is all I can think as I’m filling my hands with Caroline, breathing her in, licking over her lip and giving her my tongue, taking every eager pant like it belongs to me.

I strum my thumbs over her nipples, the beat of the music inside me, the vibrating bass in my balls, driving intrusive seeking urgency in my dick, in my hands on her ass, my knee between her legs pushing her back to the bed, knocking her down.

I’m going too fast, too eager, but she’s keeping up with me, lifting her hips into my hard cock with her legs spread, biting the tendon in my neck and sucking at me like she needs it this way, too. Fast and hard and important.

God, it feels as important as breathing, the way the pressure builds when you’re holding your breath underwater, your eyes closed, that urgency for air pounding away at you until you can’t take it anymore, you just have to.

I have to.

We have to.

She gets her hands under my shirt and rakes her nails down my back. Grabs my ass so hard I feel the bite of her nails on my taint.

I keep kissing her. It’s not a seduction, it’s an invasion, an attack, clashing swords, clanging shields, both of us desperate to get at each other, get inside the other, get there.

“Take this off,” she demands, and I sit up and whip off my shirt, grab hers by two fistfuls of cotton from the bottom and pull and pull until it’s gone.

Her bra is white and lacy.

Her bra is sailing across the room to hit the locked door with a soft tap, and I’m sucking half of her breast into my mouth and flicking my tongue over the tip while I massage the other and she’s gasping my name. “West. Jesus. Don’t you think—”

I’m not interested in thinking. I kiss the words off of her mouth, push them aside, reach down and jerk at the laces of my boots and somehow miraculously manage to get them untied on one side while I start kissing her again.

The other side gets knotted up.

Whatever. I’m not f*cking stopping over boots. She had slip-on shoes that she’s already slipped off, so I go up on my knees and work at her button and zipper, shoving her jeans and panties down before she can say anything, because I’m afraid she’ll see reason and make me stop.

I get my hand between her thighs, my fingers in where she’s slick and hot and soft, swollen, and I’m a safecracker working at Caroline’s *. I know everything she likes, know it like I know how to spell my own name, so I spell my name all over her cunt, working two fingers inside her, my thumb pressing on her clit, not too much, just the way she likes.

Her cheeks are blazing pink, her eyes closed, forehead wrinkled up like she’s going to cry, and she says my name on a sob, “West.”

“Don’t stop me,” I’m pleading, and she says, “No, no,” which is exactly what I’ve been afraid of, although part of me recognizes the sanity of it.

I mean, this is stupid. I know it’s stupid.

This could ruin everything, ruin it worse than it’s already ruined, and until tonight I didn’t know there was anywhere we could end up that was worse than where we already were, but there is.

There’s this. This one thing I haven’t f*cked up yet.

My hand stills.

My head drops to her neck, and she slaps my shoulder so hard.

“No, West, I meant don’t stop. Don’t, don’t.” She’s f*cking herself onto my fingers, lifting and pushing at me, slapping the flat of my shoulder like I’m a balky horse and she wants me to get a move on. “Please.”

I never could say no to her.

“You have condoms?” I ask.

“In my desk.”

“Can you hold on while I get one? I don’t want you to die on me.”

Now she’s laughing, patting my shoulder where it’s got to be red, she hit me so hard. “Hurry.”

I’m already up and moving, yanking at the boot laces I’ve managed to tangle up so bad, but there’s no hope for them so I just pull the f*cking thing until it comes off, nearly dislocating my ankle in the process.

I take off my socks, and I can feel the music in my bare feet.

The condom’s where she said, where I keep mine in my own desk at the apartment, and it strikes me in the chest like it means something, but I don’t stop to think about what that might be. I sit down on the edge of the bed, condom in hand, looking at her spread out on top of the covers like every fantasy I ever had.

I jerk myself a few times because it hurts and I can’t not.

She sits up, replaces my hand with hers, pulls on me fast and tight so that I lose whatever I had left of a brain and turn into an animal.

“Lie down,” I tell her, and it’s an order, my voice so low, so violent I barely recognize it. She doesn’t object. She seems to know what it means, which is just that I want her so bad I can’t talk or think or do anything but roll that condom on fast, get my hands under her ass, push inside her and yank her onto me at the same time, graceless and fast, hard enough to shut her mouth with a snap of teeth.