Deep (Chicago Underground #8)(42)

I placed a hand on his arm, feeling the ripples of tension in his muscles. “You’re not letting me do anything. I’m doing this of my own free will.”

He shifted abruptly and stared out the dark window, his agitation filling the room like water, thick and heavy.

He wasn’t really turning away from me. He was turning away from closeness, from intimacy. From caring about someone who might end up hurt.

“I could lock you up,” he said, low enough that I barely heard him. “No one would ever be able to find you.”

My heart clenched. He wouldn’t… would he? The safe house was far out in the country. No one would hear me scream. No one would find me if he didn’t want them to.

Control. He fought any man that tried to hold control over him—whether they were other criminals or cops. Something dark tainted his past, something deep. And that experience would mean he knew what it was like to be made helpless, to be used and twisted and held down like had happened to me. How could he do it too?

“Don’t,” I said softly, my hand on his chest, feeling his heart beat. Don’t threaten me. Don’t fight this. Don’t push me away so that you can keep me safe, because it’s really you who’s scared.

“I want to,” he muttered. “It’s hell wanting you, needing you. This is hell.”

I pressed my cheek against him, feeling his shirt grow damp. “I don’t want to die, Philip. But this, sitting, waiting. Letting them scare me. Letting them control me. That isn’t living.”

He cupped my face in his large hand, holding me still for his dark gaze. The callused pad of his thumb rasped over my cheek. It felt more like a claim than a caress. “And what about me?”

He said that I had control over him. That isn’t living, I’d said.

“Do you wish you hadn’t come to me?” I asked.

His fingers tightened on my face, five points of pressure, of pain. He leaned close. “I should have come sooner. I should never have let you go back, all those years ago.”

My whisper came without thought, without warning. “I wanted you.”

Without a word he led me to the sofa—thick cream and white bars with a dark wood frame. Large hands touched my back and gently shoved. Soft cushions caught my knees as I fell. My hands grasped the square wooden backing as I held myself up.

He grasped my hips, his voice low. “This is what you get, understand? This is what I can give you. My hands on you, my mouth on you, my cock deep inside. This is all I can give you.”

Only sex. “Please.”

He made a low sound—abruptly cut off, as if he stopped himself. Of course he did. The control wasn’t only for me. It was for himself. He kept the whole world like that city out there: under glass, both protected and possessed.

His arm snaked around my waist. His other hand smoothed up my side and cupped my breast. I gasped at the sudden warmth of him, the surprising tenderness. It was as if our bodies had been made for each other, gears interlocking, space filled. I rocked my hips back and met the hardness of his body, hands reaching back, grasping for him: the breadth of his chest, the plane of his abs. The jutting cylinder of his cock.

That much couldn’t be controlled—desire.

He undid my jeans and pulled them down.

I shuddered as cool air brushed the bare skin of my ass, taunting me, exposing me. “God, kitten. Look at you. Every morning wood, every goddamn shower. This is what I imagined. And it wasn’t even close to how lovely you are, how f*cking beautiful.”

My sex clenched at his words, muscles tightening around nothing. I wanted him inside me, hard and unforgiving—exactly how I had imagined him in bed and in the shower.

His hands brushed over the top curve of my ass and down the outsides of my thighs. I felt him kneel behind me, and squirmed at how close he must be—how much he must see of me. He leaned in, and I felt his breath warm against the lips of my sex.

“Fucking beautiful,” he muttered again.

“What are you—” Then he swiped his tongue along my seam, and I rocked up. “Philip.”

He pushed me forward again, and I caught myself on the cushions. “Stay where I put you.”

My body trembled, fighting the desire to hide myself, fighting the desire to push my hips backward and beg for more. In the end I managed to press my forehead to my fist and squeeze my eyes shut—staying where he put me. Barely. “Can’t.”

“If you move, I’ll stop.”

Oh shit.

Then he pressed his mouth against me—and this was no kiss. Not even a lick. This was an invasion of his tongue, thrusting hard into my channel. My whole body clenched tight with the strain of staying still, my thighs trembling. I was still bent over the sofa, but he pushed me lower, and my arms dropped from the back of the seats to the cushions below.

“You taste so f*cking good,” he said, his voice rough. “How could I stop now? How could I let you go now that I know how you taste?”

He curled his tongue around my clit in an evil caress, driving me closer to the edge. One hand held my hip steady; with the other he pushed two fingers inside me.

“I’m coming,” I whispered, face pressed tight to my arms, fighting it, losing.

A sharp slap against my hip pulled me back. “Not until I tell you to.”

I moaned a protest, and he just laughed—but it was unsteady, as if he felt the same thrill inside him that I did, the sensation of finally having something I had always wanted, the rush to feel everything I had dreamed about before it was snatched away again.