Reaching back, I rested my hands on his knees and rode him so he could see everything. His gaze caught fire, trailing from my parted lips, to my bouncing breasts, to where he slid in and out of me. I was so wet it was dripping down my thighs and filling the car with an obscene erotic noise.
He suddenly stilled me. Ran his tongue across his teeth.
“You’ve adjusted, malyshka?”
With half-lidded eyes, I nodded.
“Good.”
He gripped my hips, pulled us chest-to-chest and bounced me on his erection. Hard. Up and down, not giving me a single break from the assault. My moans and whimpers trembled in my throat with the force. My fingers splayed on the window as I searched for something to hold onto that wasn’t so consuming. So devastating. So him.
“Oh, God, oh, God.”
When I climaxed the second time, he swallowed the noise in his mouth. And, with a punishing last thrust and a shudder, he finished inside me. Then, he softly nipped my neck in a rough sort of appreciation.
Our heavy breaths filled the silence. I was so full of contentment, high on a languid post-coital bliss, as I rested my face in the crook of his neck. Curled my fingers in his hair.
“Say something in Russian.”
“Ty samaya krasivaya zhenshchina kotoruyu ya kogda-libo videl.”
“What did you say?”
“You’re annoying.”
“I would hate to be Russian if it takes that many words to say something so simple,” I mused. I didn’t believe for a second that was what he’d said.
Something thick and wet slid down my thigh. My sex-high liquefied and turned to ice in my stomach. Had I really just had unprotected sex—so unprotected, by the way his come was leaking out of me—with Allister? I did frantic mental calculations in my head, trying to calculate when I ovulated. Which was, of course, now.
He must have felt the tension in me because his hand stopped its caress down my back. “You’re not on the pill.” It was more of an assumption than a question.
I never had sex—why would I need to be?
Pushing away from him, I pulled a bra strap back onto my shoulder as an icy trickle of panic crawled up my spine. “No.”
I could only imagine if I got pregnant while my husband was on his deathbed and couldn’t conceive with a helper and a bottle of Viagra.
Nothing but a whore.
Whore.
Whore.
My lungs squeezed, tightening and tightening with a band that wouldn’t release. Tears burned the backs of my eyes.
Two rough hands grasped my face. “Breathe.”
His touch dimmed my papà’s voice in my mind. I was suddenly envious of Allister; my nightmares were terrified of him. I shut my eyes, focusing on the breathing techniques my therapist taught me.
“We’ll get a Plan B.” His thumb brushed away the tear running down my cheek.
I nodded, shaky.
He let me go, and as he put himself back together—zipping his pants and fixing his hair that I’d thoroughly mussed—something frigid settled in the air. It felt suspiciously like regret. His warmth disappeared, ice coming back to his eyes and shoulders.
If he didn’t know the extent of the baggage I carried around before, he knew now. Mortification felt heavy in my chest. Maybe this had been necessary—to make it easy not to speak to him again. Simply because I’d be too humiliated to acknowledge this had ever happened.
The panic attack soon ebbed, but it was still so cold between us. Even as he helped me adjust my dress and then used a napkin from the glovebox to wipe the come from my thighs.
CHRISTIAN
I SHUT THE CAR DOOR harder than I should have. Ran a hand through my hair to try and get rid of the soft feel of her fingers in it. Rolled my shoulders to push away the obsessive thoughts lighting up my back. Keep her. Make her want you. Make her need you.
Fuck, I shouldn’t have done it.
It was like trying to cure an addict by giving him the best goddamn hit of his life.
A bell dinged above my head as I entered the drugstore. It took longer than it should have to find the right aisle because images of Gianna still consumed my mind. Her soft eyes, lips parted, the flare of her hips, her sweet thighs as she shuddered while trying to take all of me.
My heart rate sped up, heat running to my groin.
I was already hard for her again.
It hadn’t been my plan to fuck her, but once I had my hands on her I couldn’t stop. You’d think it would have given me some relief, but all it seemed to have done was provide me with more images, noises, and real-estate to obsess over.
My eyes coasted over the emergency contraceptives, and I grabbed one to read the information on the back. My hand was shaking. Fucking ridiculous. You’d think I’d just lost my virginity.
Didn’t know if I could have stopped myself from coming in her if I’d wanted to. And hadn’t particularly wanted to.
An obsessive part of me—the one thoroughly fixated on Gianna’s every move—didn’t give a shit about consequences. Knocking her up would make its fucking day. It would finally give me a reason to throw my plans in the trash and make her mine.
Sounded good, sure—but that side of me was as rational as Gianna’s wardrobe. It had the idea she could be this pretty little fuck toy, one who’d be perfectly comfortable warming my bed all day, spreading her legs for me whenever I wanted, while keeping all her questions to herself.
In reality, she’d touch my shit. Reorganize my things. Fill my apartment with sugary cereal. And most importantly, slowly dig her way into my past. And when she did that, she’d hate me more than she already did. Maybe even be disgusted. I couldn’t stomach letting her see me in that light.
Gianna wasn’t for me.
As much as I hated it, she belonged with someone without any skeletons in his closet. Someone like Vincent Monroe.
My chest burned, rejecting the thought.
Maybe I’d take her out to eat first and hold on to the morning-after pill for a while, give the slight possibility a greater chance.
I ran a hand across my jaw.
Jesus. No.
In the end, I grabbed the generic brand.
My Cherie Amour played on the staticky radio, practically mocking me with its romantic lyrics as I set the item on the counter. The teenage cashier wearing a bored expression and chewing gum looked from my purchase to me, pausing on my neck, where I knew there were a few marks from Gianna’s sharp-ass nails.
The teenager met my eyes.
Popped a bubble.
Beep.
Gianna hadn’t said a word to me since we left the parking garage. She couldn’t have made it clearer that the idea of being stuck with me horrified her—she’d had a full-blown panic attack, for fuck’s sake.
I would have found the will to hold myself back if I knew how she’d react. Watching tears fill her eyes was like a stab and a twist to the chest. I didn’t fucking like it.
Gianna wasn’t in the passenger seat when I headed outside—she was across the street, handing money to a homeless man who looked like he’d just been released from the state penitentiary.
Panic bled into my veins. All I could think about was if she’d walked up to me when I was a teen living on the streets. I would have taken advantage of it so fast.
“Gianna,” I snapped.
She tossed me a look over her shoulder.
“Car. Now.”
Her gaze flared with annoyance.
The rain had stopped, but her dress hadn’t dried enough to be decent. Thankfully, she’d had enough sense to put my jacket on and button it before getting out of the car, unlike earlier at the club. I was still agitated about that little scene, aggravated she’d so visibly regretted sleeping with me, and frustrated I couldn’t take her home and fuck her again and again, until she was so thoroughly out of my system I’d forget her goddamn name.
She said some parting word to the man—probably about what an asshole I was—and then drifted back to me.
“He was hungry,” she explained when she reached me.
“He’s heading toward the liquor store as we speak,” I said dryly.
“So, what if he is? Everybody needs something to get them through life.”
“Right. Must have forgotten I was talking to Miss Blow International.”
She rolled her eyes and disappeared into the passenger seat. When I sat beside her, I said, “You’re going to tell me why you used a few weeks ago eventually.”
The slightest amount of tension rolled through her, but she tried to mask it by looking at her nails. “Please hold your breath.”