"Ha. Ha. Don't worry. I intend to work with at-risk families and youth," I tell him even though I doubt he gives a crap about me after I just stripped him down like that.
“You know how you could have helped yourself?” Conner asks and before I can figure out an answer he continues. “By taking the help, Mac. The money and resources that your parents have to offer you. Stop acting like you didn’t earn it. They’re your parents, and their love doesn’t have to be earned.”
“I know how parents work, Conner, thanks,” I snap and unbuckle my seatbelt. “I don’t pay my own way because I don’t think I’ve earned their support. I do it because?—”
"Because you are still trying to prove to people that you can take care of yourself," he interjects and then leans over the console between us, bridging the gap. His face is swimming in front of mine. "Instead of accepting the fact that youdeserveto be cared for.”
Boom. Conner just launched a nuclear-level truth bomb.
“Thanks for the lift,” I croak and leap from the car likeit’s on fire.
I march my way around the side of the bar, which is illuminated by a brand new bunch of motion-activated, solar-powered lights that Jordan installed two days ago. I'm sure thanks to Conner.
I’m sure I would be able to see the path to the door and everything around it as clear as day if my eyes weren’t swimming in unshed tears. Conner just stripped me bare, and I hate him for it. I’m blindly shoving the key at the door, where the lock should be but somehow I keep missing it, when a pair of hands land on my shoulders. They’re big and warm and I hate them.
“Go home Conner,” I hiss.
His hand wraps around mine and he guides the key into the lock. I shake him off and turn it myself. But when I open the door he steps inside with me. “Conner, go home.”
“I am home, princess,” he whispers, and I know he’s dipping his head to be close to mine because his breath dances across my cheek. “Being in this stupid little apartment with you is the only place I’ve felt like myself in months.”
“You can’t just attack me like that and expect to, what? Stay?” I ask as he reaches up and pulls off the knitted hat that was on my head.
“Everything I said was the truth and you know it.” His voice is a whisper but it’s firm. His palms land on either side of my face. They’re warm against my chilled cheeks. “And that’s why it makes you angry. Same reason why everything you said to me makes me want to rage.”
"So let's just leave each other alone," I mutter, but my body isn't listening to a word I say. My hands are traveling up the front of his jacket, seeking out his zipper with the full intention of lowering it. "Maybe we need a time out from each other."
“Maybe we’ve given ourselves enough time outs from our truths,” he replies. And then his lips graze mine. The kiss is softand tentative. He’s waiting for me to double down on my words and push him away. But I don’t. I can’t, even if every fiber of my being knows it’s the easy way out.
He tries to break the kiss but I lean into it and open my mouth. As my hands pull the zipper on his coat down, and then shove it off his shoulders, his tongue barges into my mouth, claiming me. And everything just comes to life. Roaring, screaming, technicolor 5g life. Every nerve ending, every artery, every thump of my heart, every flutter of my eyelashes, everything is burning and aching and screaming for him.
“Princess, you’re crying,” he gasps as his thumbs hit the wetness on my cheeks. “I’m so?—”
I kiss him, hard, because I refuse to let that word leave his mouth. I don’t want him to be sorry. Something has changed inside me. A switch has flipped and it’s awful and amazing at the same time. If he apologizes and gets all remorseful and gentle, the awful will overtake the amazing. And I want amazing. I can’t handle anything else right now.
So my tongue pushes into his mouth, taking over and forcing the word back down his throat. No sorry. No regret. No sympathy. I reach down and push my fingertips into the waistband of his joggers. Without a moment’s hesitation, I start sliding them down his narrow hips and over that apple ass of his. Damn. He’s not wearing underwear.
His cock, hard and already leaking, bobs between us. He ignores it as he begins unwrapping me, all the layers of winter wear I’m cocooned in. Like an eager kid at Christmas pulling wrapping paper off a present he tears away the scarf, the jacket, my cardigan.
I'm jerking him, slow and steady, as we make out and he finally stills his busy hands when they land on the front of my jeans. "If we don't get upstairs soon, I am going to fuck you right here in the entry, pressed up against that wall."
“Sounds like a plan,” I murmur before my thumb glides over the wetness at his tip and he shudders.
And then the ground is gone from beneath my feet. Just gone. My boots are dangling half a foot off the ground as the wall is suddenly pressed into my back. His mouth is still fused with mine, but we aren’t really kissing, we’re just breathing each other’s breaths. He lowers me gently, allowing my feet to touch the floor long enough that he can unzip my jeans and tug them down my thighs. Thank god they aren’t skinny jeans. They’re loose and so they slip right to my ankles without much more help than gravity. My underwear happily goes along for the ride.
He doesn’t waste a second before plunging two fingers into me. The moan I let out is stifled by his tongue in my mouth as he kisses me again. I kiss him back, arching my back as I ride his fingers and pump his cock with one hand and tug on his hair with the other.
“Last warning, Mac,” he pants into my mouth. “Let’s get upstairs or I am fucking you against this wall.”
“Wall.”
“Condom?”
“IUD,” I tell him and then whimper as his thumb rubs my clit and sparks coarse through my veins like fireflies. “Had STD testing after Beckett. Clean. I didn’t tell you the first time because?—”
“Because you didn’t have to. We thought we were a random hook-up,” Conner interrupts, his mouth against my ear, his hand still working magic down below. “So there’s been no one but me since Beckett?”
“No one but you,” I confirm. It should be pretty clear, from the glimpse into my life he’s had over the last few weeks, that I do nothing but eat, work, sleep, repeat.
