The Other Man
Page 6He pushed my hand away, dragging it behind my back, along with the other, gripping both of my wrists in one massive hand. The other went to my braid, twisting again, wrapping it around his fist, tilting my head back.
My lips parted, eyes closing as I realized that he was finally going to kiss me.
It wasn’t what I expected, that kiss. After all of his blunt statements, I’d expected him to be rough, to ravage from the start. He did not. Instead, his lips were soft, coaxing, easing mine open for the shockingly tender onslaught of his tongue.
His body shifted, crowding mine against the counter, his hardness digging into my leg.
I moved against him, impatient for more contact.
He deepened the kiss until I was moaning. I tasted and sucked at his driving tongue as it plunged repeatedly to mate with mine.
He groaned, shoving his enormous erection hard, hard, harder into my thigh. So hard I wondered if I’d have an oversized boner shaped bruise there tomorrow.
He ripped his mouth away from mine, gasping. “Bedroom,” he said curtly, taking his hands off me and pulling away.
I nodded, then began to move on unsteady legs toward my room. I could feel him at my back, his breath on my neck every drugging step of the way.
I paused in the doorway to my bedroom, but his hard body nudged me all of the way into the room. That made me shoot him a glance over my shoulder.
Every line in his face read unapologetic, so I knew it had been deliberate.
“Raise your arms over your head,” he ordered me.
His nostrils flared, and he stepped close behind me, so close I could no longer crane to see his face.
His big hands settled on my hips, gripping into the fleshy part, testing it in a way that made me tremble.
My arms started to lower, but a rough, “No, keep them up,” in my ear stayed them.
His hands started skimming under my shirt, teasing at my belly.
Abruptly he pulled it up and over my head.
A muscle quivered in my stomach as the skin of my abdomen was bared.
My shoulders drew up tight as, with rather impressive speed, he unsnapped my bra and tore it off my arms, tossing it carelessly to the ground.
His hands ran from my shoulders to my fingertips with a feather light touch. I could hear my own breath panting out of me as he folded my wrists behind my head, held together close to my nape.
He used that hold to nudge me, moving me closer to the bed.
“All this needs is a bag over my head, and we’d have a perp walk,” I said, my wry tone spoiled by the fact that I couldn’t seem to breathe properly.
He liked that, I could hear it in his voice as he responded, “If this is a perp walk, I need to do a better job of patting you down.” As he spoke, he shifted my wrists to one hand.
“You’re trembling,” he rasped into my ear, making me tremble all the more. “Fear or excitement?”
I licked my lips and gave him the truth. “Both.”
“Are you wet?” he asked, hand snaking down my body, pushing into the waistband of my pants and going unerringly, aggressively, for my sex.
“Yes,” I gasped, though he’d already answered his own question, his fingers rubbing over my slick folds.
“You don’t normally do things like this, do you?”
“Bring strange men home and lead them to my bedroom? Um, no. This is not a habit of mine.”
“I’ll be sure to make it worth your while, then.”
Somehow, impossibly, I believed that he would.
CHAPTER FOUR
Abruptly, he released my wrists, and I turned to look at him.
He backed away, one step, and then another, his eyes on my breasts as his hands went to the bottom of his T-shirt. He shrugged it off, the material straining to the point I thought it’d rip as he dragged it off his shoulders.
Scars were painted all across his granite torso. I don’t know why, I think it may have been his face, which was so handsome and young, and unscarred, but those markings caught me completely off guard. They were all shapes and sizes, ranging from several little round ones (two of which were still fresh and pink) to long jagged cuts, the worst being a particularly big one that drew up along his side in a way that made it look like someone had literally tried to gut him with a knife.
Somehow, I knew not to ask him the first question that popped into my head, which was, What happened to you?
Instead I studied him for a long time, his cold eyes on me, his jaw held hard as he studied me back. Finally I settled for, “You’ve been shot recently.” It was an understatement. He’d been shot many times, and knifed, and if I had to guess what some of those marks were, he’d even been branded and burned.
Tortured, I realized.
This man, who was much younger than I was, had been brutally tortured. Repeatedly.
Something inside of me, my strong maternal side I was sure, went soft for him.
“Yes, I’ve been shot a time or two,” he grumbled out, sounding pissed. “Is that a problem?”
I shook my head, even while I wondered if it was. Was he a criminal? He didn’t strike me as a cop, so what was the alternative?