After Hours (InterMix)(29)
But he felt too good. Sinful, the way his warm palms stroked my shoulders, the way he wedged his knees between my thighs and loomed over me. His body was tense in the glow of my reading lamp, at once heavy and lean like some rare predator, every inch of skin and tendon and muscle seeming to thrum with life and impulses. Reflexes.
He braced one hand at my side, and trailed the knuckles of the other down my arm, up my ribs and along the edge of my breast. I held my breath, flesh tightening under his caress. He traced the curve with his thumb then closed me in his heat, squeezing softly. His gaze jumped to my face and snatched the air from my lungs.
Tell me I’m beautiful.
Kelly’s hand slipped from my breast and he leaned in close. “Turn over.”
The words sounded ominous in his deep, dark voice, but I did as he said. A strong hand settled me against him on our sides, his chest melting my back muscles like butter. I felt his cock just below my butt, hard and hot through his underwear and my pajamas. He stroked my thigh, kneaded it, then coaxed it up.
His mouth brushed the back of my neck; soft, slow kisses fogging my brain so thoroughly I didn’t protest as his hand crept closer, closer. His palm slid over my mound, cupping me, the other hand tucked beneath my ribs. Something in his touch told me to trust him, so I let him hold me, feeling warm and fragile and protected, a captured bird.
He told me things without uttering a syllable. The kisses behind my ear said, You’ll give me anything I want tonight. The palm heating my sex added, And anything you don’t offer, I’ll take. Promises, not warnings. I’d always been a girl whose spine stiffened the second she felt a man trying to sweet-talk or pressure her, but not with Kelly. Had to be the voice, or maybe the hard length of him pressed to my ass. One dose of Kelly and I went docile, welcoming the surrender.
He plucked at my hem, and without thought, I helped him take my shirt off. There was cool air on my bare skin, then the hot whisper of Kelly’s lips across my shoulder. I shut my eyes as he freed the bow of my pajamas, slackened the waistband with a tug.
You hadn’t even kissed him twenty minutes ago, and now you’re going to let him touch you? Down there?
Fucking right.
He slid his hand inside, the tips of his fingers tracing me through my underwear. I reeled. His hips shifted, cock pressing harder at the juncture between my thighs.
What if he wants actual sex?
That question grounded me. Surely he did want actual sex, and I wasn’t on anything and I didn’t have condoms. Even if he’d come prepared, I’d have to tell him no. That was too far, and as good as these horrible mistakes felt, I’d have to find out what happened when Kelly Robak didn’t get what he wanted, how he wanted it.
What if he gets mad?
Better to find out now than in a few minutes, before I gave him too much implicit permission.
“I can’t go all the way tonight,” I murmured. Oh Jesus, I sounded like a scared-shitless high schooler in the back of some horny upperclassman’s car.
Kelly said nothing, just kept whispering things with his hips and fingers. You’ll go where I tell you to go, they informed me. I imagined the worst, of his pressing the issue and my not telling him to stop. Us, as we were now, but my underwear gone, my body ready, Kelly pushing his shorts down and sliding inside me. The breaths heating my neck would deepen to grunts, the fidgeting of his hips speeding to thrusts.
I wanted all those things as badly as I feared them. I wanted to know what he sounded like as the need mounted, what he’d say as he chased his pleasure. A man so in control, coming undone. I didn’t know which of us I distrusted more, on this bed.
He made me curious—me, the girl who’d always planted her feet firmly in place when the other kids wanted to race after trouble. I was in my sister’s shoes now. Shoes that felt like roller skates, bad ideas like magnets and me dipped in steel. I’d glide right into whatever Kelly wanted, I could feel it. And I hated myself for it.
But you can’t f*ck him unprotected.
He’d be the one f*cking, silly girl.
Still. If that happened . . . it’d feel awful, come the dawn. I’d feel foolish and reckless, and any pleasure that giving in might offer, it’d sour to days or weeks of disappointment, cast a shadow over my working relationship with this man, maybe even wreck the professional trust I’d already invested in him.
“Where’d you go?” Kelly whispered.
I’d turned still and stiff, I realized, brittle with regrets I hadn’t even earned yet. “I’m right here.”