"Cash or credit?"
"Cash."
The man had no reaction to her slightly squeaky response. He simply told her the total.
Anna quickly counted out the bills, then took the bag from him.
The heat of Cole's gaze immediately hit her as she exited the store, almost making her stumble off the curb. A moment later, she slid into the passenger seat, tightly gripping her new purchase.
"Not knowing what you've got in the bag, but knowing it's going to be damn good, whatever it is, is killing me, sweetheart."
She looked at him, realized his knuckles were showing white on the gearshift. All because she'd gone in and bought a sex toy.
For him to use on her.
She closed the bag tighter. The balance of power had shifted between them. Yes, he'd all but ordered her to walk into the sex shop and buy a toy, something she never, ever would have thought she'd want her husband to do.
But now she knew better.
It was exactly what she'd wanted.
He hadn't just had her do it for him, solely for his own pleasure. Instead, he was forcing her to face her secret desires, so deeply hidden she hadn't dared admit them even to herself.
He'd done it for her pleasure too.
Once more he was pushing her outside of her comfort zone. Not to a place she didn't want to go--she already knew he wasn't the kind of man who would ever do that. Instead, he'd walked hand in hand with her to another, higher ledge and told her it was okay to jump.
Her body was already so aroused, so sensitive to the slightest brush of fabric against her skin, that she hadn't thought it would be possible for her feel more. But the swelling in her chest had nothing to do with sex--and everything to do with her heart.
A heart she'd vowed to protect at all costs back at the stadium.
* * *
Cole hadn't come this close to losing it in his pants since early adolescence. But from the minute Anna had walked out of the sex shop holding that brown bag, he'd been using every mental trick he knew to try to hang on until they were back at his house, when he could put his mouth, his hands on her. At this point, it didn't even matter what was in the bag. He just needed to possess her, to feel her warm and soft beneath him, to drive into the wet clench of heat between her legs and know that she was his.
Somehow he let her walk from his car to the house on her own, rather than just cavemanning her and dragging her in by her hair so that he could f**k her like the savage he really was. But once the door clicked closed behind them, once she turned around with that look in her eyes that was part anticipation, part apprehension, he was lost.
Completely f**king lost to wanting her.
"Take your clothes off, Anna."
Each word was clipped, his teeth clenched together so tight he was on the verge of chipping them.
She looked around the empty living room. "Here? But I thought--"
She stopped at the look in his eyes, at his slow approach. "Take them off before I rip them off."
The brown bag dropped from her hands. "Okay, but shouldn't we--"
"Not fast enough." He didn't have a prayer of keeping his hands off her, of stopping himself from ripping her silky shirt straight down the middle.
"Cole."
He took her lace-covered nipple in his mouth even as his name left her lips, the single syllable melding with a moan. He lifted his head from her sweet breast and rasped out, "I can't make it another second, baby," the only warning he could give before he yanked apart the zipper on her jeans and tore them off her legs, her shoes coming off along with them.
Somewhere in the back of his head he heard her little yelp of surprise, but he couldn't stop now, not when he was so damn close to what he wanted.
To what he needed so desperately he was going crazy with it.
She was over his shoulder a second later, then flat on her back on his wide leather couch.
His hands moved without any help from his brain, ripping her panties and bra off, and then she was lying there, her eyes wide as she stared up at him, her thighs splayed open on the dark leather.
Cole could barely drag in enough oxygen as he stared down at the slick pink flesh between her thighs, her soft brown curls already slightly damp for him.
Maybe, he thought later, he would have been able to stop himself from taking her without any foreplay if he hadn't already seen the proof of her desire. If he hadn't known that she was just as desperate for this f**king as he was.
His zipper was down, his c**k in his fist a moment later.
He positioned his throbbing head in the center of her drenched pu**y lips and drove into her, high and hard, with such ferocity that she slid halfway across the couch.
"Cole!" Anna's scream ricocheted through the high-ceilinged living room.
He gripped her smooth, naked ass in his rough hands so that he could hold her where he wanted her, then drove into her again and again, harder and harder.
Lost to everything but the feel of her clenching heat around his cock, so damn tight he could already feel his balls pulling up tight, the buzzing sensation at the base of his spine moving around the front of his groin, it took him several seconds to realize that Anna's hands had come around his shoulders, that her fingernails were scratching down his back.
When had her legs come around his waist to pull him closer? When had she pulled herself up so that she could kiss him, driving her tongue into his mouth with the same pounding rhythm as his cock?
Her inner muscles contracted around him and then she was begging against his chest,
"Please, Cole, oh God, more, more!" and then her tongue and teeth were scraping across his nipple.
The feel of her teeth flipped a switch inside, the one that meant he couldn't hold back anymore, couldn't protect her from his too-strong needs, his too-big body.
But just as he was about to unleash everything he was into Anna's soft body, he looked down at her, her slim arms and legs wrapped so tightly around him, and saw just how small she was compared to him.
Fuck. He'd never taken anyone this hard. No matter how good the sex had been, he was always aware of how big he was. Knew how much damage he could do to a small, feminine body. Which was why, subconsciously, he'd always dated tall women, women that could handle him.
But Anna, his small, sweet Anna, was pushing him harder, and faster, than he'd ever let himself be pushed. His c**k had never been this hard, on the verge of total obliteration. Jesus, it was going to kill him to pull back. But he had to.