IREALIZED THERE WASsomething completely different about Mark the minute he came home.He was rougher and edgier than I’d ever seen him before and I noticed that Vic gave off the same vibe.
I hadn’t expected to be escorted home by Ricardo and Alex after work. I had expected Mark and my mind went to weird places when I didn’t get him. It didn’t help that he was later getting home than his brief text implied. He made it sound like he’d run to the convenience store for some beer, but the look on his face when he came through the door said differently.
What made it worse was when he pulled back from me when I went to greet him with a kiss. “I need to wash his stench off of me,” he told me in way of explanation. I was certain my eyebrows disappeared into my hairline, but he didn’t stop to clarify what he meant.
Vic was fast on his heels up the stairs to the bedroom. I assumed he was going to the room he’d been sharing with Hammer, but I wasn’t exactly sure in that moment. I must’ve stared after them for a few minutes until Hammer’s laughter rang out behind me. I turned to face him and he held two beers in his hand. He held one out toward me.
“Take this up to Deacon while he showers.” He gave me a crooked smile and then said, “I can tell by their body language that they’ve been on a mission.” His words caused my heart to calm a bit. “If we’re smart, we’ll follow them up those steps with a cold beer for our men and find out what they learned because I can tell they have new information.”
He knew this side of Mark a lot better than I did and so I wasn’t about to question him. I took the offered beer and the two of us set up the stairs after our men. Mark was standing in the shower with his legs spread to balance his weight as he braced his upper arms against the tile wall as the water beat down on him.
I opened the door and held out the cold beer for him to take. Instead of taking the beer, he grabbed my forearm and hauled me fully dressed into the shower with him. Only then did he take the beer, but it wasn’t to drink; he set the cold bottle on the shelf and pulled me tight against him and ravaged my mouth with a kiss.
His swift possession took me by surprise, but I didn’t hesitate to part my lips and welcome him inside. His large hands stripped my clothes off of me and tossed them to the tiled floor before he turned me so he could have access to my ass.
“I need you, Mitch,” he said, while reaching for the lubricant we kept in the shower. “I have to be inside you now.” He sounded desperate, as if being inside me was the only thing that could save him. I didn’t know where his mind was at the moment, but I didn’t care. He needed me and I needed to please him.
I braced my arms on the shower wall and spread my legs so he could stretch me to receive him. What I expected to be a swift possession wasn’t at all. Mark kissed and nibbled my neck while he teased me open with his fingers. Words of want and need were whispered against my skin that had pebbled with anticipation and not from the chilled air touching my skin where the hot water didn’t hit me.
I felt him pull back to roll on a condom and then I felt his body heat return, right where I wanted it – pressed against me, wrapped around me, and soon to be inside me. “Mitch.” My name was a whispered word of longing and belonging as he pushed inside me until he was fully sheathed inside me. “Mine,” he growled into my ear as he linked his hands with mine above my head and began to move.
“Yours,” I told him. There was something about him that night that needed soothing and I wanted to do everything I could to give him the peace he needed. Since it was a side I’d never seen of him before and didn’t know what he needed, I turned myself over to him heart and soul. “Take what you need, Mark. I’m right here.”
His answer was a throaty growl and a sharp bite to the tender flesh on the back of my neck. His hips thrust forward hard and fast, sending up sharp echoes of flesh on flesh every time his pelvis connected to my ass. I pushed back against him wanting more and he answered my silent pleas. He drove into me hard and fast; I loved every single second of his possession – from the tight grip he had on my hands, to the way his leg hairs rasped against mine, and to the needful moans that escaped his mouth as he was lost in the pleasure he found in my body.
“Fill me up, Mark,” I told him once I felt my orgasm pressing on me. It wouldn’t be long and I wanted him with me.
Mark angled his hips and pounded my prostate until I saw stars and my words became incoherent ramblings of a man too far gone. Mark tightened his hands over mine as if he was afraid of letting go and sent us both over the edge and into the abyss. Mark covered my body with his when the last ripple left and I gladly supported his weight. I loved the hot feel of his breath against my ear as he tried to get his breathing under control.
“Well,” I said playfully, “I’ll have to send you out on more secret missions if that’s the way you’re going to behave when you get home.” I thrust my ass back at him as if I was ready for round two. I was rewarded with a dark chuckle before he slowly pulled out and removed the condom. I looked over my shoulder and saw him reach for the beer I brought him. He downed about half of it in one gulp. “Hey, I think I earned a drink of that.”
Mark pulled the bottle from his lips and handed it to me. I tipped it back and took a long drink. I had worked up quite a thirst and the ice cold beer felt smooth going down. I handed the bottle back to him and turned to face him, stepping into his embrace. Later, I’d think about the changes in his demeanor while he fucked me against the shower wall. In the past, it seemed like he held a part of himself back and for the first time I thought I got a glimpse at the real Mark. I didn’t know the reasons why he held back from me in bed, but I wanted to make sure it ended going forward. He’d never be satisfied in a relationship if he couldn’t cut loose when he needed to. In the meantime, I was happy to just have that private moment with him.
He pulled back from my embrace after several minutes and reached for the shower gel. “I probably do reek like that little weasel.”
“See,” I said with a mock grimace, “telling me you need to wash another guy’s smell off of you probably isn’t the first thing you say to your man when you disappear without an explanation.”
“Yeah, probably not,” he agreed, smiling ear from ear. “That sounded kind of bad.” Mark threw his head back and laughed heartily.
I was glad he thought he was so damn funny. I reached out and twisted his right nipple hard and it only seemed to make him laugh harder. I reached for the left nipple but he grabbed both arms and pinned them behind my back.
“Careful, Mitch, or I’m going to get the impression that you want to play rough and dirty.” The deep timbre of his voice sent thrills down my spine and zapped my balls awake. He smiled when he felt my body responding against him. “Save that thought for later,” he said and then nipped my bottom lip with his teeth. “I want to get cleaned up then I need to tell you what I learned today.”
I hated to leave the warm, intimate mood of our shower, but I could see that my fearless warrior was starting to replace my passionate lover who stood before me. The sooner we got business out of the way, the sooner I could get my man back up to our bedroom and see what other facets of himself he was keeping from me.
“I’ve never had food this good,” Hammer said as he dug his fork into another bite of Edna’s amazing Mexican lasagna. “There’s no doubt it’s helping me heal.” He rubbed his stomach appreciatively.
It seemed that Edna liked having to feed and fuss over the lot of us. She glowed under his praise and patted his shoulder after she finished refilling his glass of iced tea. I reached for her hand and gave it an extra squeeze as she passed by my chair on her way to the kitchen. She’d become so much more to me than a housekeeper in the years since I hired her. She saw through my devil-may-care attitude and set about feeding my soul as well as my stomach.
“Okay, you two,” Hammer said, pointing his fork back and forth between Mark and Vic, “tell us what you found out today.”
“I don’t know why we didn’t look harder at the alarm company,” Mark said. I could hear the disgust he felt in his voice. “We shouldn’t have been so eager to accept the stories given to the cops.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“It just occurred to me during lunch that we didn’t follow through on the first official threat against you. We didn’t dig as deep as we should’ve, so I had Vic get the names of the two guys fired for not doing their job.” Mark stabbed a bite of lasagna angrily before he ate it.
“We picked the guy who lived closest and boy did we hit the jackpot.” Vic smiled before he told us what they’d learned in less than twenty minutes.
