His lips curl devilishly high on one side. “Three.”
Stunned, I crash back against the wall. “What?”
“Changed my mind. Gonna chase you down and fuck you raw anyway.” He bounds forward with grabbing hands, laughing as I scream and sprint along the hall. I bump into the wall, bouncing away and cackling. My hair flies in my wake, my speed lifting the locks clear off my shoulders, then I skid to my doorway and attempt to duck in. But Ollie’s muscular arm wraps around my stomach and sweeps me clean off my feet.
I squeal, equal parts delight and fear clawing along my throat, and when he carries me into his room and tosses me onto his bed, my heart pounding, breath racing, chest lifting and falling faster than I can keep up, I crawl backwards on the mattress and watch him through the gap of my bent legs.
“Say it again, Rosaline.” He unsnaps his belt with a slow, deliberate flick of his wrist, his eyes scorching me into submission. Peeling the leather away, he tosses it to the floor and goes to work unbuttoning his shirt, opening the fabric to reveal his broad, muscular chest. “Say you love me. Say it on a scream, because that shit turns me the fuck on.”
He sets his knee on the mattress, the bed dipping under his weight. He’s so beautiful. So hungry. So powerful and perfect and, even when he’s a hunter and I’m the prey he’s already cornered, never does my racing pulse translate to fear.
Just anticipation. Desperation. Need.
“Look into my eyes,” he snaps.
Obedient, I swing my gaze up and gulp.
“Tell me you love me.” He wraps his hand around my ankle and tears me down the bed, then he crawls over me, resting with his balled fist right beside my head. “Say it like you know you deserve it.” He peels my shirt up, scrunching the fabric beneath my chin and dragging my bra down until my breasts pop free. He doesn’t touch. He doesn’t taste. He merely looks. And licks his lips. “And when you say it, that’s it for us. Three months. Three years. Three fucking decades. I’m not letting you go when I fuckingknow,” he slips his hand into the waistband of my sweats, dipping his fingers into my pussy, “I know you belong with me. You could have ended up anywhere, in any state, any town, any fucking ER. But you came to mine.”
He pumps his fingers ruthlessly. Tormentingly. Furiously drawing my release to a precipice long before my body is ready to let go.
“You were hand fucking delivered to me by a universe that knows what she’s doing.”
“Ollie—”
His abdominal muscles fire and flex, his core tightening as he straightens out and unsnaps his jeans, pushing the denim down and dropping his pants to the floor with little regard for where they go. He tears my sweats along my legs, peeling them off and throwing them away, then he crawls over me again, his fist by my face and his fingers drawing me closer, closer, closer to the edge of insanity.
Smug superiority burns in his eyes. In the upturn of his lips, nibbling on mine. “How does it feel knowing you’re so fucking special? So insanely significant that the universe knew she had to step in and put you here?” He steals his fingers from within me, swallowing my cry of despair, only to slam forward and fill me with his cock.
“Ahh!” I cry out.
“You were living the wrong life,” he grunts, sliding forward and filling me to bursting. “Wrong town.” And again. “Wrong everything. But she knew where you belonged.Whoyou belonged with. So she brought you to me.”
I claw at his powerful shoulders, pulling my legs higher and latching my teeth onto his straining neck. “Don’t stop,” I pant, suckling on his sweat-tanged skin. “Please don’t stop.”
His fingers bruise. They mark my skin and burn themselves into my flesh for all time. “Say it, Rose.” He digs in under my chin, his hair tickling my jaw. “Say it like you know it’s true.”
“I love you.” I gasp, trapped in an unforgiving orgasm that shatters me whole. “Oh, God. Ollie. I love you.”
He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t slow. He fucks me mercilessly, sliding his tongue across my chest. My breasts. My nipples. His shoulders burn red from exertion, his breath racing, sprinting to keep up with his pace. Then he nods, growling. “You taste like you fuckin’ belong to me.” He turns frantic, pounding his hips against the underside of my thighs. “I love you, Rose.” He throws his head back and snarls, his cock shuddering, his seed bursting forward to brand me from within. “You’re mine.”
ROUND FORTY
ROSE
Cliff’s office is not the back-of-his-house setup I expected of him when he first offered me a job. It’s not a dirty basement, Netflix-special space I’d prepared myself for.
Not that the man himself is a basement-dwelling type. But when a guy offers you a cash job, and he spends more time at the gym than he does at work, I think it’s reasonable to assume he was leading me toward a relaxed kind of setup and my cash job would last a week or two at best.
But that’s not my reality. Instead, I stride through Clifford Troopman’s multi-level, warehouse-style showroom office with massive floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a picturesque town slowly, painstakingly crawling its way out of a brutal winter. With my arms overloaded with files, I make a beeline for the filing cabinets where he keeps the CAD drawings he designs himself.
He’s not just a handyman. Not just a builder, carpenter, or Jack-of-many-trades. He’s a draftsman, too. With an architect’s eye and an interior designer’s skills. And every December, he closes the place down and competes in a fight tournament known as Stacked Deck.
Something about world champion fighters whostuck it to the man, broke away from the traditional competition scene—the one Tommy fights in—and decided to create their own barely-legal knockout event where anyone can join and skill determines the winner.
Despite Cliff’s wonderful heart and hard work at the gym, he’s yet to walk away with the title.
But he’s one of thosein it for the adventure and experiencetypes, so losing doesn’t seem to bother him the way it would others.
