“Take me inside.” Her nails dug into my shoulders through my shirt as she rose higher on the very tips of her toes like she was trying to get as close as humanly possible. Her legs wrapped around my waist as soon as I lifted her up; the heat from her core penetrated every layer of our clothes. I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt anything better than her thighs hugging my hips perfectly. “Take me to bed.”
It was the hardest thing I’d ever done, but I managed to pull back far enough that I was able to meet her glassy green eyes. “Are you sure?”God, I wanted her to be sure. She nodded frantically. “Need to hear you say it, Chaos,” I coaxed, taking herface in my hands and peppering it with kisses. “I need you to say the words.”
“Raylan.” She blinked, her glazed expression clearing just a bit. “I’ve never been surer about anything. Take me to bed.Now. If you try to make me beg, I swear, I’ll kill you.”
My palm came down on her ass with a loud crack that made her jump in my arms. Her eyelids flew wide before her forehead pinched into a scowl. I didn’t bother to hold back the smile that pulled at my lips at the sight of all that fire. I wanted her to fucking burn me up.
If I’d been a better man, I would have stopped that.
I didn’t deserve to have her like this. Hell, I didn’t deserve to have herat all. But as I filled my palms with her generous ass, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to let her go.
The voice in the back of my head kept telling me I wasn’t good enough, I didn’t deserve her, and despite knowing I wasn’t the kind of man who was built for the long haul, the kind of man who could give Lennix all the things she deserved—the house and the white picket fence with the two point five kids to add to her current menagerie—I couldn’t make myself stop as I took the porch steps two at a time with her in my arms.
“I can walk,” she said with a giggle that made something bloom to life in my chest. Something warm and totally unfamiliar. “Put me down,” she demanded, squirming in my hold.
I hummed against her throat as she fished blindly in her purse for her keys. “Not a fuckin’ chance,” I grunted into her hair like a caveman, pulling her scent as deep into my lungs as it could possibly get. “Now that I finally have you where I want you.” I shook my head, smiling at the sight of her heated cheeks.
Her fingers flexed on my shoulders, and she circled her hips, still fighting to get down, but all that succeeded in doing was making me impossibly harder. As it was, I felt like I was walkingaround with a steel rod in my jeans. I’d be damned if I was going to put any kind of distance between us. Not now. Not when I knew how perfect it felt to hold her against me so tightly not even sunlight could get through.
I spanked her ass again to stop the squirming, and at the second smack of my palm, her spine shot straight and she let out a surprised squeak before licking her lips as her eyes lowered to half-mast. “That’s right. You keep tryin’ to get down, I’ll keep spankin’ your sexy ass.”
Lennix pulled her plump bottom lip between her teeth and bit down as her flush grew darker.Oh yeah. She like the idea of that. She liked it alot. I’d give her more. Fuck, I’d give her anything she asked for. But in that moment, I needed to be inside her more than I needed the air in my lungs or the blood in my veins. And, damn it, I was going to have her.
Finally.
Chapter Twenty
Lennix
My head was spinning. Everything felt fuzzy, like I wasn’t getting enough oxygen to my brain, but I couldn’t find it in me to care. In that very moment, I would have gladly suffocated if it meant Raylan never stopped kissing or touching me.
My body was alive, every nerve ending in my skin firing as sparks of electricity went off inside me. We were a mess of teeth and tongues and limbs as we shouldered our way into the house. How Raylan managed to carry me through the living room and down the short hall to my bedroom was a true testament to how strong he really was. I wasn’t exactly light, but he made it seem like it was no more taxing than carrying around a pillow stuffed with feathers. The fact that he managed it without stepping on an animal was downright impressive.
The sound of the bedroom door being closed was punctuated by the whine of both Havoc and Ziggy. But as quickly as any dog mom guilt came on, it disappeared when Raylan lowered me to my feet at the foot of my bed and dropped to his knees.
There was something about the sight of that big, strong man on his kneesfor methat made it impossible to focus on anything else. The edges of my vision started closing in, narrowing until he was all I could see. All that existed in that very moment.
My whole body began to tremble when he nuzzled his face against my stomach. His back expanded on a deep, audible inhale, as if he was trying to replace all the air in his lungs with my scent. A sharp gasp was ripped from my throat when his teeth caught the hem of my top and tugged it upward so he could run the tip of his tongue over my skin, circling my belly button. I managed to pull in a choppy inhale and looked down at him, my gaze locking with swirling mercury.
“Fuck.” That single word sounded like it had been ripped from the deepest recesses of his chest. “You have no fucking clue how bad I want you.”
My hand shook as I brought it up, sliding my fingers through his hair and pushing it back from his forehead. “I think I might have an idea,” I managed to get out, my words barely above a whisper.
This was all I’d wanted for as long as I could remember. I’d dreamed about him touching me and kissing me. Fantasized about what it would be like to take him to bed. I’d created a million different scenarios in my head of a moment just like this one, and in my head, I was confident and sexy and seductive. But now that it was really and truly happening, that self-assured badass was nowhere to be found.
Instead, I was nervous and jittery. I wasn’t a virgin, but my experience was sorely lacking when compared to Raylan’s. I’d slept with a total of three guys—the first being the boy I lost my virginity to in high school. Those brief, frenzied encounters barely counted, considering they didn’t even last a handful of minutes and I never got anywhere near completion. I tried again not long after I took over The Tap Room from my parents. It hadbeen... okay, I guess. Then there was Mitch. He was older and more knowledgeable than the first two guys, but I still felt like I’d been missing something every time we were together. The thought occurred that maybe the problem wasn’t them, maybe it wasme. And I suddenly worried I wasn’t going to be able to please Raylan like all those other women.
Women who’d always been statuesque, tall, and willowy. Women who looked nothing like me.
I hadn’t always been so confident in my own skin. It had taken me a while to accept that I was a plus-sized queen, but once I had, I loved and appreciated every single inch of me. That was a mentality I’d worked to gain, and now I owned that shit and held my head high everywhere I went. But as Raylan rose to his feet, his fingers catching the hem of my shirt and slowly bringing it up, up, up, I was suddenly overcome with discomfort.
My belly was soft and rounded. My hips and ass were wide. My breasts were bigger than average, and I had cellulite and stretchmarks. Rationally, I knew that none of that made me unworthy or ugly. Most days I loved the skin I was in, and I’d never really lacked for male attention. But there was something about the fact that it wasRaylanwho was about to see me naked that made me feel raw and uncertain all of a sudden.
I was feeling self-conscious in a way I never had with Mitch or those other guys. But they weren’t Raylan. The man I’d practically been in love with for half my life—the one I compared all other men to, setting those relationships up for failure before they even had a chance to start.
Raylan reached his full height, towering over me so that I had to tilt my head all the way back. I squeezed my eyes closed as he slowly dragged my top over my head and couldn’t find the courage to open them again as I heard the rustle of him tossing it aside.
“Ah, fuck me,” he groaned, the words sounding almost pained, like they were being torn from his throat. My hands came up immediately, my fingers splayed wide in an effort to cover my stomach.
