“I can’t wait,” I moaned.
“Wait,” he snarled, pounding into me even harder. His command came with no mercy. No compassionate slowing of his pace.
“Agggh,god,” I pleaded, desperately fighting the inevitable.
“Don’t you dare,” he groaned into my ear, but I could tell he was close. He grabbed my leg, pinning my knee to the bed, driving himself even deeper. Pounding against me mercilessly. And that was all I could take.
I shuddered as euphoria crashed over me, my body clenching around him over and over as I thrust my hips up with each wave, grinding out my release against him.
On the tail end of my crest, as waves of aftershock lapped over me, Bishop groaned and slammed into me with a mad frenzy, driving me toward an instant, blistering peak as the top of my headboard beat against the wall.
Through my own scream, I heard the sheetrock give as I came for the second time.
TWENTY-THREE
“Good god,” Bishop exhaled as he rolled over, one hand on my hip to roll me with him, draping my leg over his thigh. Still buried deep inside me. “Fucking insatiable,” he murmured against my lips between kisses that were more like ravenous little demands. “But you’reterribleat following directions.”
“That’s not fair,” I said as he finally rolled away. “You basically set me on the edge of a cliff, told me not to jump, then stood behind me and pushed.”
“It wouldn’t be a challenge if it weren’t challenging, Marshal.” He sat up and grinned at me over one shoulder, then he headed into the bathroom. When I heard the condom hit the trash can, I made a mental note to actually take out the trash. Or burn it. And to wash my sheets. And bleach every molecule of his scent from my apartment.
“I’m familiar with the concept of a challenge, but your expectations are unreasonable,” I insisted as I pulled my tee over my head.
“Eh. You’ll get there.” He grinned as he stepped back into my bedroom, still completely nude. “I have faith.”
Questions tumbled through my mind at the implication that I would have a chance to perfect delayed gratification under his…tutelage. Was he planning to stay in Buford too? With Austin?
This was growing rapidly, unsettlingly complicated.
“I can fix that,” he said as he tugged his pants up. I thought he was talking about the complicated nature of our arrangement—or maybe the impatient nature of my orgasm—until I followed his gaze to the gash in the sheetrock peeking from behind my headboard.
Bishop pulled the bed several inches from the wall to better assess the damage. “Ten minutes with some drywall compound and a trowel. You have more of this paint?” he asked, running one hand over an undamaged stretch of wall.
“I have no idea.”
He shrugged. “They can match it at the hardware store. I’ll fix that divot in your bathroom wall while I’m at it. You should really put a doorstop in there. That’ll prevent your knob from hitting the wall.”
“That sounds dirty.”
He grinned. “That was intentional. But my point stands.”
“Okay, this is weird.”
Bishop snorted. “Me talking home repair is the most mundane thing I’ve ever done in your bedroom.”
Fair point. And I wasn’t going to argue, if he wanted to fix the damage he’d caused. But… “Are you sure you know how to do all that?”
“I work in construction, Charley.” His smile grew distant. “Yvette used to ask me the same thing, though. She had every confidence that I could build whatever my day job required, but she wasn’t entirely sure I had the skills to assemble a shed in the backyard.” His gaze found mine, and it was distinctly…soft. “She’d have liked you.”
“Yourwifewould have liked me?” The woman screwing her husband? Not that I’d be doing that, if Yvette were still alive.
“Yeah. You have a lot in common.”
She liked it rough?
I swallowed the question before it could come out. I wasn’t going to cross that line. If screwing me, then talking about his wife helped him process his loss, I wasn’t going to get in the way of that by prying for intimate details.
“It’s entirely possible that you’re some kind of self-destructive phase I’m going through,” I said. “That deep down, I don’t feel worthy of sweet and gentle, at the moment. That all I really deserve, while I’m failing basically everyone I know, is…”
