Hold Me Close(56)

“I’m sorry,” she said again and got up from her chair to go around the table so she could slide onto his lap. Straddling him, Effie cupped Heath’s face and turned him toward her. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

He allowed her to tip his face to hers, and his hands went to her hips to steady them both, but his expression remained shuttered and tight. He’d closed himself away from her, and she couldn’t blame him, could she? Even if it broke her to see it.

She kissed him. He did not kiss her in return. Effie pressed her forehead to his, then her cheek.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated.

“You don’t even know what you’re apologizing for,” Heath said.

They sat in silence for a moment or so before she nuzzled his neck. When he didn’t resist, she pressed her teeth there and then, helpless against the taste of him, her tongue. She sucked his flesh into her mouth. He tasted better than sugar to her. Better than anything.

When he groaned, Effie grinned. Triumphant. She rocked against his crotch, feeling his cock harden between them. She cupped his face again. Brought his mouth to hers. The long, slow slip of her tongue between his lips. The soft intake of his breath, stealing hers.

“I miss you, Heath.”

He’d closed his eyes to her kiss but opened them at her words. “Good. I hope it f*cking kills you. Every day.”

“Hush.” Effie sat up, her hands on his shoulders so her thumbs could toy with the sides of his neck. “Don’t be a dick about it.”

“You make me so goddamned crazy. You know that?” His hands moved above the waistband of her skirt, fingertips questing beneath the hem of her shirt. “You make me hate you.”

Effie shivered. Her nipples tightened. She ran her thumb over his bottom lip, opening his mouth at first gently and then hooking her finger inside to tug harder. Her breath caught when he moaned.

“I love it when you hate me,” Effie said into his ear before she took the soft lobe between her teeth and bit.

With a low, muttered cry, Heath stood, lifting her with one arm around her waist to hold her. The other hand swept the table clean, sending the cardboard bakery box thumping to the floor. The mugs clattered, shattering. She was on her back seconds after that. Heath yanked her hips to bring her to the edge of the table. He tore her panties halfway down her thighs, then with another hard tug, all the way off.

Effie lifted her hips, offering herself to him. Heath opened his belt and undid the zipper of his jeans with the same swift desperation. Gripping his cock, he pushed inside her but did not thrust. Instead, he took her clit between his thumb and forefinger. Locking his gaze with hers, he pinched her sensitive flesh. Released. Again. Over and over until she was losing her mind.

“Fuck me,” she breathed.

“No.” His cock deep inside her, Heath refused to move anything but his fingers in the steady, inexorable squeezing of her clit.

Effie arched her back. Her shoulders pressed the table’s hard wood. She would ache later, but oh, f*ck, it was so good right now that anything that came after would be worth it. She gripped the table’s edge, then her knees as Heath pushed them upward. The new position opened her deeper to him, but no matter how she begged, he still would not move.

“Shut up,” he muttered. “Just shut up, Effie.”

“Tell me how you hate me.” She focused on his face, watching for the flare in his eyes. She gave a sobbing, breathless laugh. At the next slow tweak of her clit, she writhed, made helpless in her pleasure.

“Shut up!”

“Fuck me like you hate me,” Effie said.

With a groan, Heath withdrew. He took his cock in his hand and rubbed the head of it over her slick, engorged clit. “No.”

The torturous squeezing had been bad enough, but now this steady, rhythmic stroking of his cock head against her, sliding through her folds and up over her clit but never, never inside... He was going to kill her with this, and she would willingly die.

She came, then again, hard on the still-rippling edges of the first. Floating, distant, Effie was aware of her low, endless cries but could do nothing to hold them back. Nor the helpless, frantic shaking of her entire body. She looked between them to watch as Heath came all over her belly, and one final shudder of pleasure racked her. Heath, however, came in silence, not so much as a gasp or a whisper or a single syllable of her name.

When it was over, he moved away from her and went to the sink to dampen a clean cloth and wipe himself off before pulling up his jeans. Effie watched him, her elbows hurting from pressing the wood. So did the edge of her ass. She didn’t want to pull her blouse down over the mess he’d left, but she did cover her bareness with the hem of her skirt. When he came to hand her the cloth, Effie reached to pull him down by his shirtfront for a kiss. She held him there longer than she needed to, and when he made to pull away, she kept holding him until he acquiesced and stayed still. Then she let him go, took the cloth and wiped him off her.


She had told him she was sorry, but that wasn’t quite the same as asking him to forgive her. Effie rinsed and wrung out the cloth, formulating the words. So many hours, so many times they’d never needed to speak at all, and now she found herself unable to think of the right things to say. Heath knew her inside and out, upside down, frontward, backward, side to side. There wasn’t a thought in her head he wouldn’t have been able to determine without so much as a single uttered vowel.