I exhale. “Beagles are cute.” A retriever would make me sad, thinking about Ellis.
He kind of rumbles, and with slow, deliberate moves, he lifts me off his lap, lays me down beside him, and shifts so we’re both on our sides, face to face. He reaches down and tugs off one of my shoes and then the other, tossing them behind him onto the floor.
Instead of letting my left leg go when he’s done, he hikes it over his hip, holding me in place with a hand on my thigh, cracking me open for him. His hardening cock bumps my pussy, but he doesn’t push inside.
“Wrap your arms around my neck.” It’s an order, but on a frequency maybe only I would be able to hear, it’s also a plea.
I do what he says, pressing my breasts to his chest, nestling our hips together. Heat rushes to my core. I feel raw and on edge, but also held. Sheltered.
He kisses me. Carefully. Tenderly. I kiss him back, and he groans. “Cora, I want you so fucking bad.”
“I’m right here.”
“Say you want me back.”
“No.” I kiss him instead and rock my hips forward. He thrusts inside, and I moan as he fills me.
It feels nothing but good this time as he strokes in and out in a perfect, steady rhythm. My clit swells, needy and taut, and my breasts ache. A few drops of milk dribble onto Adrian’s chest, and he growls in his throat, pumping faster, cupping a breast, raising it to his mouth to lap me clean. I whimper and wriggle. It’s too much, but also, I want more, harder, faster.
I rock my hips harder, chasing the feeling twirling and tightening in my core, grinding my clit on the flat plane of his pelvis when it glances against mine.
“Say you want me,” he demands again, working a hand between us to play with my nub, pushing back the hood to torment me with his thumb. He saves this move for when he wants to drive me over the edge. I love it, but only when I’m almost there, panting and writhing on his cock, which I guess I am now.
“Say it.” He stops moving his thumb, but he’s too late, I’m already surfing a wave of gnawing pleasure until I crash into an orgasm that contracts every muscle in my body as it sweeps through me, clearing all the lingering remnants of hurt and fear and pain away to leave a quiet, steady peace in its wake.
“Goddamn it, Cora,” Adrian snarls, jacking his hips and coming with a tortured groan. “When did you get so stubborn?”
I hide my smile in his chest. “You don’t always get everything your way,” I mumble into his skin.
“I’m learning that.”
My limp leg falls off his hip, and he uses the opportunity to roll onto his back and drag me with him so I’m lying on top of him. He strokes my spine, slowly, from the nape of my neck to the tip of my tailbone and back.
My eyelids drift close.
“Nope. Not yet.” He kisses the top of my head. “Not until Farhadi gets here.”
“You suck.”
“I suck,” he agrees, wrapping me in his arms.
I haven’t felt safe since that night at the apartment in Maddox Towers, but this is close. I see him more clearly now, and the clarity isn’t safety, but it’s solid. There’s something aboutreallyknowing someone, even if they’re not a good person.
Maybe it’s the closest thing to love you can actually get in this life—being real with someone who’s real with you.
I’m still puzzling it over when a knock comes at the door and Adrian rushes to grab our robes so the doctor can check me out and see if anything else is wrong with my head.
17
ADRIAN
I wakeup back where I want to be, in my bed, my wife curled up in my arms like a shrimp, my cock nestled into the cleft of her ass. Last night flashes through my mind. Delaney strutting into the room, and the light leaving Cora’s eyes. The elevator door shutting seconds before I got there. My mad dash to the emergency stairs and then the screech and stink of rubber and sickening crunch as the Scorpion crumpled on that column like an accordion.
No more supercars, no more sports cars, no more Italian cars, period. Large SUVs only from here on out. Or minivans. They don’t look that bad, right? At least not from the inside.
My heart is still stuck in the back of my throat. I tug Cora closer by her hips, even though she’s already tucked tight against me. She’s dead to the world. Hasn’t moved all night since Farhadi gave the all clear and left.
What the hell do I do?
