Up in Smoke (Crossing the Line, #2)(50)

She rode him hard. After the first buck of her hips, Connor grabbed on to the edges of the seat and fell back, moaning at the ceiling. Power infiltrated every cell in her body like some mind-altering drug, urging her faster and faster. Every time she felt her body tighten and ready for orgasm, she’d switch tactics, bouncing on his rigid dick one minute and rolling at a downward angle the next. Her ass slapped against his sweaty thighs, mingling with her whimpers.

His head came up, eyes blazing with ownership as they watched her breasts shake. “Already know what I like, don’t you? When I let you lead, you lead hard.” He started to pump into her with rough upward thrusts of his hips. “You’re going to make me live for a single stroke of that tight *, aren’t you? Make me get out of bed just for that hot squeeze every day. Make me work to keep it happy. I’ll work. I’ll work you until you cry for it.”

Her flesh still oversensitive from the last orgasm he’d given her, she couldn’t prevent the contractions any longer. They seemed to come from everywhere, all over her body, but centered between her thighs where he continued to enter her faster and faster until the slapslapslapslap sound wrenched his name free from her throat and she hurtled into relief so vast it hurt. “Connor.”

“Hold on to me.” She clutched his shoulders a second before he stood, his hardness unyielding inside her, lengthening her climax until she wasn’t sure where one ended and another began. Her ass hit the kitchen table. He rammed himself deep on a growl and held himself there, pumping his hips slowly as heat flooded inside her. “All for you, Erin. I keep it all for you. This is the only place I come now. Deep inside you where only I can reach. Nowhere else.”

Her elbows stopped supporting her and she fell back, boneless, onto the table. “Yes, Connor.”

When his face loomed inches above her, she had to catch her breath. So fierce. So male. “Do you have any needs I haven’t satisfied? Do you need to be taken again? Are you hungry?”

She couldn’t move her head to shake it. “I’m satisfied,” she whispered.

He nodded once. “To bed.” Somehow she found the energy to roll off the table onto her feet. Her hands automatically went to her skirt to pull it down from where it had become bunched around her waist, but Connor made a sharp sound. “Leave it up.”

Sending him a confused look, Erin started walking toward her bedroom. Any second now, she would drop like a stone and he was acting arrogant enough without witnessing it. “’night, baby.”

Connor muttered something under his breath and strode into his bedroom. A moment later, he walked out holding a pair of handcuffs. Her spine snapped straight. She was sure as hell awake now. “W-what are you doing?”

Without answering her, he entered her bedroom and lay down on her bed. Maintaining eye contact with her, he snapped one side of the handcuffs onto his wrist. The other side, he connected to a wooden slat in her bed frame. “We sleep together,” he explained. “And I can’t trap you like this.”

Gratefulness. She’d only felt it a few times in her life. Once when that inmate had given her the Marlins baseball cap. Again when Derek had given her a chance at a life in Chicago. It didn’t compare to this feeling. It was so extreme, she wilted, exhaustion overtaking her once more. Her head swam, making it impossible to come up with the right words, so she crawled into bed and snuggled into his warm side, secure in the knowledge that she couldn’t be held down or kept stationary. She was free to enjoy this. Enjoy him.

“I’m really glad we were both early to the first meeting,” she murmured against his skin.

“It wouldn’t have mattered. It would have been the same outcome,” Connor returned. “Go to sleep, Erin.”

“Bossy.” He was wrong, she decided. Everything they did, every action and reaction, mattered with people like them. As his breathing evened, a tiny spark of doubt caught her just before she joined him in sleep. She’d been reacting on impulse, on the need to survive for so long, without a thought for another person. No one had mattered enough to hinder her actions until now. How would she react next time a threat arose and her instinct shouted at her to run? How would he react? With this job, with her past, she would eventually face danger, be it her stepfather or something unseen. Would this bond that strengthened with each passing day end up being her Achilles’ heel? Or worse, his?





Chapter Sixteen


Connor took the headset Derek handed him and slung it around his neck. Early that morning, while still in bed with Erin, he’d gotten a phone call from the captain requesting his presence at the meeting spot. Austin had gotten restless being sidelined and come up with a plan to make himself useful. Unfortunately, that plan required more than one person present and since Bowen and Sera were getting married that afternoon, that meant he’d had to leave Erin naked in bed. It didn’t help matters that she’d stared at his morning wood like it was a gift from God as he grudgingly dressed himself in jeans and a T-shirt.

On his way out the door, she’d gotten a phone call of her own. Sera wanting to know if she’d come over and help her get ready for the impromptu wedding. He’d leaned against the front door and watched the multitude of emotions flit across her sleep-softened features. Flustered surprise, self-consciousness, irritation. He’d had to drag himself out the door or he would have kissed her right back into bed. Spent the afternoon seeing what other expressions he could put on her face, starting with rapture.