CHAPTER NINETEEN
“I’m already starting to question my sanity.”
BY THE TIME WE get to the house, I’m thoroughly seduced by his music selections. Like it’s some kind of foreplay. But if he thinks he’s going to get me all riled up then deny me, he’s got another think coming.
Inside the house, I stop to take my shoes off and he walks by me, not offering to help this time. Hm.
He pauses by the kitchen and looks over at me. “Can I get you—”
“No.”
“How do you—”
“No,” I repeat with added emphasis as I struggle to undo the stupid straps on my stilettos. “I’m not thirsty, or hungry, or sleepy. I don’t want anything. You don’t need to get me anything.”
“No? Nothing?” he asks with an arched brow. “Oh, okay then.”
Son of a bitch.
He disappears upstairs, leaving me to fight with these damn shoes on my own. Why did I think stilettos with six straps to unbuckle was a good idea for tonight? I want to punch them in the face for cock-blocking me.
Once I’ve at last rid myself of them, I make my way upstairs. All the lights are off, but the soft glow of blue running lights along the floors of the hall lights it up like an airport runway. Whoa. Hadn’t seen that the first time I was here. Pretty cool.
I brake and try to remember which of the rooms was the master, but then a faint yellow glow spills from under the only door on the right, as if a lamp has been switched on. Can he sense me hunting him?
I rush to it and barge in, like a hunter about to attack its prey, but as soon as I cross the threshold I’m pulled to the side and caged against the wall. Caught in his trap. He’d been waiting for me, the bastard.
He’s shirtless and barefooted and his eyes are on fire.
I glare up at him, nipples tight and aching. “Why do you—”
His lips seal to mine, and I’m so ready for it this time that I throw everything I am into kissing him back, with every pulse in my veins. My blood is like lava under my skin, blazing hot and roiling with desperate, urgent need for him, to feel him all over me, on me.
I scrape my nails down his chest, meeting every lave of his tongue with the same energy.
When he lifts me up, my legs involuntarily lock around him and my hips undulate, needing friction.
“Ohhh…” I whisper in a scratchy rasp when he drags his mouth from mine and down my neck, licking and biting and kissing.
He pins me in place with his hips so his hands are free to slide down the shoulders of my dress until my breasts are on display for him. He’s dexterous, gentle and rough at the same time, sending thrills of desire through me with each ministration.
“I want…” I gasp in shameless desperation, “I want you so bad.”
Taking me from the wall, he carries me over to the bed, setting me down.
He gazes down at me with searing intensity, his palms gliding down my thighs. “My Hellcat,” he hisses in a tone that borders on reverence and frustration. It feels almost like he’s angry with me and himself at the same time. There’s a war raging within him, and I can’t let the part of him that doesn’t want this to win.
I thrust my hips up, pelvis tilted, and he slides his hand under my dress, right to my center, dragging two fingers along the material soaked with my arousal.
A zap of pleasure sprints through me and I close my eyes with an audible sigh.
“Can I taste you, Alexa?” he asks scratchily, using my given name, and I want to scream profanities at him because, what the fuck. Of course I want him to fucking taste me. Why else would I be here offering myself up in a restless ball of gasps and moans?
“Yes, yes,” I say, dangling off the serrated blade of impatience. “Please, yes.”
“So needy.”
Asshole. He likes to mess with me, this man. And I always play right into the traps he set for me.
He fists my thong and pulls it down and off me, leaving me bare, wet, and quivering.
“Fuck,” he mumbles to himself as he drops to his knees, grips my thighs and drags me closer to the edge, my legs falling over his shoulders. “Pretty pussy. So much prettier than I imagined.” He presses his nose to me and inhales deeply, whispering something inaudible.
“What?” I ask, trembling with anticipation.
In answer, he puts his mouth on me.
My head falls back and a long, sinuous moan spills from out of me like smoke toward the ceiling. He laves at me with prowess, like the artful strokes of a painter’s brush, with confidence and unhurriedness. Eliciting mewls and moans from me that sound foreign to my own ears. I writhe and squirm, restless and overwhelmed, filling…filling…filling…on the verge of overflowing…until I’m jerking in staccato, my legs locked tight around his neck, my arms stretched wide on either side of me, sheets gripped tight in my fists as I chant, “OhgodOhgodOhgod…”
I’m riding high on the rippling waves of my orgasm, barely half-conscious when Trent flips me over to my stomach and drags me up by my hips until I’m on all fours.
“Wait, I want…” I trail off on a trembling moan when I feel him prod at my entrance.
“What, Lexi?” He slaps my ass cheek. Hard. “What do you want?” Another slap. “What the fuck do you want?”
A delicious sting permeates across my ass cheeks, and I’m so ready and eager for him that I don’t even remember why I stopped him or what I was going to say. There’s only one thing I want right now and it’s him, inside me, so I push my ass back, encouraging, welcoming, and the head glides in just a little. My walls clench greedily, eager to latch on once he’s in.
“Nothing. No—I mean, you. I want—”
He slams into me.
“AhhfuckingyesTrentyes!”
He fills me. Completely. Entirely. To the brim.
Oh, sweet hell…
To get a firmer grip of my hips, he shoves my dress further up until it bunches up around my torso, and then his fingers dig into my flesh as he begins fucking me.
And it’s everything.
Him…our connection…our mingled sounds of ecstasy. It all feels so….
With each touch, with each caress, I experience these strange, indescribable waves of….
What I am feeling right now isn’t just pleasure that is expected from great sex. It’s…more. Distinct. New. Unprecedented. It feels as if I’ve finally found something I didn’t know I was looking for.
Driven wild, I push back, meeting him, matching his rhythm, thrust for thrust. Until he pulls out and flips me over again. I scramble up on the bed and he follows me like a prowling beast. His jeans are still on, shoved down to below his hips, but he moves unhindered.
Welcoming him, I part my legs. He glides two fingers through my sopping heat, massaging my clit as he settles between my thighs on his knees. He pets me until I’m right on the brink of another orgasm, then stops abruptly, pulling a cry of protest from me.
The bastard immediately grips my thighs and buries himself to the hilt. It’s all that was needed to send me over the edge.
My walls snap around him like a vice as tremors overtake me, utterances of pleasure spilling from my lips. He fucks me without pause through the waves. When my eyes finally flutter open, they find his staring down with such torrid intensity it terrifies me.
Too much. Too much.
I start to look away but am stopped by a sudden feeling in my chest. A feeling that’s both warm and chilly, spreading through me from head to toe. It’s so sudden and unexpected. Like an implosion. Like a seismic shift in the earth.
I grip his biceps, and I must look terrified because he stops and frowns down at me, concern etched in every crease. “What happened? Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”
“I-I…” I stammer out, so confused. “Did you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
I wait for a couple beats. This is California, it had to have been an earthquake. Otherwise…I don’t know what the hell that was.
“Feel what, Lexi?” Trent prompts when I don’t respond. “What happened?”
“Didn’t you feel it?” I ask him, hoping I don’t sound crazy. “Like—like a small earthquake, I think.”
He makes a slight shake of his head, his dark eyes narrowing.
The aftershocks still linger, in my chest mostly, but all over. My fingers and toes are both hot and cold. My head feels light, like a floating balloon. And as I gaze up at him, I know it’s no fucking seismic shift.
It’s something.
I don’t know what.
But I also don’t care. Because I don’t believe in nonsense like this. In “electric sparks” and “fireworks” and “soul mates.”
So I turn my head and close my eyes, shutting it all out.
“Lexi…”
“Fuck me.”
There’s a long pause, but then, he does as I demand. He presses his palms to my pelvis to keep me in place and fucks me so I feel every inch of him.
Hard, deep, merciless.
I whisper his name like it’s a prayer as he hits home over and over, stirring me up all over again. I’m so wet, so hot, so greedy, needing more and more and more and more.
Shifting from off his knees to hover above me, he hooks one of my legs in the crook of his muscled arm until it’s almost to my chest, and then he drives into me.
He’s ferocious now. Mad and wild. Holding nothing back. Giving me everything.
It’s too much. More than I should be able to take. But my body loves it, because before I know it, I’m surfing the roaring waves of another orgasm, jerking my head forward to sink my teeth into his shoulder.
“Fuck, Lexi, fuck,” he groans into my neck. “Wanted this for so long. Wanted you for so long. You’re—fuck.” He thrusts harder, faster. “So sweet. So fucking sweet. Shit, baby, I can’t—”
A feral growl rips from his throat he as plunges deep into me and stills, his cock pulsing inside me, his face buried in my skin.
And…I don’t know what it is, but I’m so abruptly overcome with emotions that my eyes brim with tears.
Lifting my watery eyes to the ceiling, I try my hardest not to blink. Willing the tears to dry up, to go the hell away. What am I even crying about? Who cries after sex? What is this, prom night?
Luckily, Trent takes a good deal of time to recover from his violent orgasm. By the time he pushes up on his elbows to gaze down at me, I’ve managed to wrestle the inexplicable tears into remission.
His lips kick up in a slanted smile right before he begins kissing me all over my face, nosing me like a puppy. “Hmm, that was a nice warm up.”
My eyebrows shoot up at this. “Warm up? Are you serious?”
He kisses one corner of my mouth, and then the other. “We’ve got a long night ahead of us, Hellcat. We aren’t even fully naked yet.”
Can he really go again after all that? I’m so thoroughly screwed I don’t even know what letter comes after K.
“You’re insane,” I say, trying to get out from under him.
But he doesn’t let me. He rolls to his side, taking me with him, and locks one of his legs around both of mine.
“Where’re you trying to go?” He chuckles at me. “You poked the bear and now you’re gonna have to play with it.”
Oh, dear. “Can I at least take a power nap first?”
He full-on laughs now. “The way you were begging for it I thought you were ready to play, Hellcat.”
“I did play!” I exclaim. “Damn well, too.”
He’s grinning and it’s so damn dazzling to me because I know it’s genuine; I know it’s because he truly likes having me here with him. “Okay, you can have a power nap…on one condition.”
“I know better than to make deals with you, Trent. You’re the devil.”
“So, no power nap?”
A groan vibrates in my throat. “What’s the condition?”
“You let me cuddle you.”
A disgruntled noise climbs up my throat. “Why? I hate cuddling.”
“I know.”
Of course he knows. I’ve quite openly and miserably voiced my dislike for cuddling when Torin used to try to cuddle me during weekend movie nights on the back lawn at the Garza residence. Cuddling makes me feel caged, and hot, and…vulnerable. And I do not like feeling vulnerable.
“Then why would you want to do that to me?” I ask through a groan. “To torture me?”
“Because I’ve waited my whole life to hold you. Spent a lotta nights cuddling my pillow and pretending it’s you. Now that I’ve got the real deal here with me…”
Frowning, I breathe past the lump lodged in my throat. “Why your pillow when you’ve had so many ‘Tiffanys’ you could’ve cuddled?”
“None of them were you.” He dusts his thumb across my cheek. “Only woman I ever wanted to mold to me is you.”
Be still my heart… “Okay, I’ll let you cuddle me for five minutes.”
“Nope, all night.”
“Fifteen minutes.”
“All night.”
“Twenty minutes?”
“All night. That’s the deal. Wanna curve your naked flesh against mine. Feel your heartbeat, listen to you breathe. Wake up with your smell so seeped into my skin it’ll take days to fade.”
Oh…my… Who is this man?
I trace the tip of my finger along the side of his neck. “Men like you aren’t supposed to like things like ‘cuddling.’ Badasses don’t cuddle and listen to women breathe. They manspread and sleep with their legs hanging off the bed. Aren’t you worried I’ll think you’re soft?”
His chest shakes with silent laughter. “Nice one, but that won’t work on me. We got a deal?”
After all the energy those two orgasms wrung from me, not to mention all the alcohol I had earlier, there’s no chance I can go another round with this beast of a man without some rest, so, I grumble, “Fine. But I’m doing this begrudgingly.”
There’s amusement in his voice when he says, “You’re the one who packed an overnight bag. Told you I wanted a lot from you, Lexi. You should’ve been prepared.”
Glad you find me amusing, you manipulative bastard.
“Yeah, I’m already starting to question my sanity.” Sobering, I ask softly, “You’ve really never cuddled anyone else?”
“Never.”
“Why me, then?”
He tips my chin up so our eyes meet. “It’ll only ever be you, Lexi.”
I’m always compelled to panic and look away whenever those darkly intense and intruding eyes of his meet mine, but this time, I fight the urge to panic, the urge to avert my gaze, and instead meet his head on without cowering, without hiding. Until a calming acceptance washes over me.
Then, quietly, I whisper, “Okay.”