Bury the Hatchet (30 page)

He gave me a cocky grin right before his lips landed on mine. He swept his tongue along the seam of my lips, gliding back and forth until I opened on a sigh. I fisted my hand in his hair and drew him deeper, steadying myself with my bandaged hand on his shoulder.

Slowly but with all the confidence in the world, Hunter eased his hands back to slide them over my butt and down my thighs. “You’re shaking,” he murmured against my lips as he broke the kiss, his eyes half-lidded.

He wasn’t exaggerating. I might as well have been in the middle of an earthquake with the surges of adrenaline coursing through me. “Anticipation,” I said.

That made him grin again.

He nibbled along my jaw, making a path to the sensitive spot just behind my ear. “Can I tell you what I want?” he whispered, and I shivered.

“Yes.”

“I want you handcuffed to my bed while I make you come so many times you won’t remember anything but my name, and the only reason you’ll know that is because you’re going to be crying it out so many times it might as well be branded on your lips.”

I ought to be offended. Any sane woman would run for the hills when the man she was falling in love with said something as crazy as that, wouldn’t she? For a moment, time froze. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything but marvel at the fact that, instead of making me want to run as far and as fast as I could, I was on the verge of agreeing to what he’d suggested. In fact, there was something very appealing about the thought. It didn’t make sense. I’d spent my entire life being told what to do, how to do it, when, and for how long, and now that I had a hint of freedom and could make decisions for myself, I wanted to let my husband take what little power I had away from me. No,
wanted
wasn’t right. I
craved
it. In fact, I might even
need
it.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Hunter murmured. He set me back from him, far enough that he could look in my eyes. There was a worried crease between his brows, a serious set to his mouth.

“I’m just confused, is all.”

“You don’t have to agree,” he rushed to say. “We’re married, but that doesn’t mean you have to do something you don’t want to do, you know. I’ll never ask or expect you to do something you don’t want. You can say—”

“Yes,” I cut in, breathing fast and hard. “I can say yes.” Because it finally made sense in my head. All those years when Mama and Lance had controlled every aspect of my life down to the tiniest detail, it had been forced upon me. It hadn’t been my decision. But this? This was entirely up to me, and that made me feel more powerful than I ever had in twenty-one years. For the first time, I could choose what I wanted. Hunter was giving me that freedom.

“You don’t have t—”

I stopped his argument by kissing him as fiercely as I wanted him to kiss me. My tongue tangled with his, gliding back and forth in a familiar dance. A few seconds of that, and his hands were moving again, like he meant business. He had my pants undone and sliding down my hips so fast it left my head spinning.

I wasn’t a passive party by any stretch of the imagination, working the buttons of his shirt loose and pushing it down his arms so we could be skin to skin, chest to chest.

“Fuck, baby,” he said, kneading my bottom until I arched my back, thrusting my breasts up toward him. He kissed the hollow of my neck, nibbling lightly. “Have I ever told you how much I love your tits?”

“Not in words, no.” I laughed, but it came out as a sultry sound I didn’t recognize as my own.

Then he was up on his feet, drawing my legs around his waist. I put my arms around his neck and held on as he carried me first to the kitchen for the condoms and then to his bedroom. When we got there, he flipped on all the lights and lay me back on his bed. He pitched the condoms next to me and skinned my pants down my legs, dragging my panties with them, and tossed it all to the floor. Then he stripped the rest of his clothes and added them to the pile.

Hunter sat on the edge of the bed, one hand resting on my upper thigh. I wriggled closer to him, wanting his touch in a far more intimate place. With one finger, he stroked the outer lips of my sex.

My breath caught in my throat. I wanted him to do what he’d said. I wanted him to cuff me to the bed and make me come like he’d described, but he was just sitting there and caressing me with the lightest of touches in a way that left me desperate for more.

I wanted him hard and fast and now, but he didn’t give me that. Instead, he drove me wild with tender strokes and gentle kisses, his tongue tracing patterns along my overheated flesh.

“Hunter,” I whined.

He flashed his eyes up to mine, not removing his tongue from my belly button, where he was currently wreaking havoc on my senses. The muscles in my abs jumped like they had a mind of their own.

I held out my hands to him, offering them up so he could handcuff me. I was ready. I wanted it. I wanted everything he would give me and more.

He licked a line up the center of my torso, my chest, my neck, slowly and deliberately, only stopping when his mouth was over mine. But he didn’t kiss me. He held his body above me, keeping his weight fully suspended. I rocked my hips, trying to get contact, and then he flattened himself over me, crushing me to the mattress in the most perfect way. He took my arms in his hands, gliding them up and over my head and holding them in place.

“Oh,” I said, the air rushing out of my lungs.

He kissed the end of my nose, his hands drifting downward over my arms until he could tickle and tease my underarms. “We have a minor problem.”

“What’s that?” I had to force myself not to laugh. It wasn’t condoms this time. I couldn’t imagine what was keeping him from following through with all those deliciously naughty promises he’d made.

“No handcuffs. I could go buy some, but—”

“You have ties.” No chance I was going to wait around while he got dressed, went to the store, and bought something. That could happen later.

A wicked smile stole over his face, and his eyes glimmered with mischief that left me squeezing my thighs around him.

“Gonna let me up to get one?” he asked.

Reluctantly, I released my grip on him. He rolled off me and got up. As he headed for his closet, I rolled over and watched. Hunter really had the perfect body—long and lean, strong muscles that stayed just this side of being too much. He had a tight butt and sculpted thighs. I’d already known about the dragon on his arm. Now I realized he had another tattoo on his butt, a pair of manicured women’s hands, one gripping each cheek.

I bit down on my lip to keep from laughing as he disappeared into the closet. A moment later, he came back with a couple of ties in his hands.

“What’s so funny?” he demanded, trying to sound gruff but failing miserably.

“Not funny. Just surprising.”

“The hands on my ass?”

I nodded, raking him in with my eyes.

He sat on the edge of the bed again and reached for one of my hands. “Blueprints,” he said. “That’s where your hands should be when I’m inside you. If I don’t have them tied, at least.” Then he winked.

My pulse had gone rogue, starting and stopping and stuttering and sprinting, giving up all pretense of a regular rhythm. In no time, Hunter had my wrists strapped together and tied to the headboard.

“That doesn’t hurt, does it? Not too tight?” He traced a finger down my arm, tickling the inside of my wrist and elbow as he went.

I shook my head.

He put an extra pillow under my head, then picked up a couple more. “Raise your hips for me,” he said.

As soon as I did, he put the cushions beneath me, angling my hips up.

He settled himself between my thighs, spreading them apart and opening me to his view. And he didn’t just look. He devoured me with his eyes.

With the lights on like that, I suddenly felt insanely self-conscious. I was used to being meticulously examined, but only after I’d been thoroughly plucked and waxed, my makeup airbrushed, every detail of my wardrobe gone over with an exacting eye, not a single hair out of place. This was entirely different. The longer he looked, the more uncomfortable I became. I tried to bring my thighs together, but he put a hand on the inside of each knee and pressed my legs up and back, until there was nothing hidden at all.

“Keep them open for me?” He phrased it like a question. Like it was something I could do for him. And I wanted to give to him as much as I took, but I wasn’t sure I could give him
this
.

“Can you turn out the lights?”

He cocked his head to the side, meeting my gaze from a different angle. “I want to see you.”

“But I feel so exposed,” I said. Not to mention vulnerable. He might as well be able to see straight into my soul with the way I was laid out before him, like a feast just waiting to be eaten.

Hunter’s gaze filled with heat. “What don’t you want me to see?”

I shook my head, confused. I just wanted him to touch me. I wanted him to be inside me. I wanted him to…
make love to me
, I realized. I didn’t want sex; I wanted love. And that wasn’t something I knew how to ask for. Love wasn’t something I’d had a lot of. Daddy loved me. I supposed Mama had in her own way, for whatever that was worth. Hadn’t she? Did she love me now? I honestly wasn’t sure, since I’d hardly had any contact with her since Hunter and I had married. But the two of them were really the extent of my familiarity, the only experience I’d had with love. But this, whatever it was I felt for Hunter? It was big and only getting bigger, consuming me. It might swallow me whole if I let it, especially if he didn’t love me, too. The thought of telling him what I was thinking, what I was feeling, when he might not ever share that love with me, was enough to rip me into shreds.

Hunter slid a finger between my folds, my slickness easing his path. “I already know you’re wet for me, so surely you don’t need to hide that. You’ve got such a pretty pussy, Tallie. Pink and perfect.” He moved that finger up until he found my nub, tracing circles around it that had me bucking my hips toward him.

“It’s not that,” I forced out when he slowed his movements.

“Then what?”

He fell into a constant rhythm, around and around, until I couldn’t stop myself from squeezing, trying to grasp and hold on to something that wasn’t there. Hunter lowered his head and suckled my clitoris, shifting to slide his finger inside me. That was all it took. I exploded as he licked me, easing me through the reverberations of my release.

“Tell me,” he said as my orgasm subsided. “What are you trying to keep hidden?” But now his fingers were pumping inside me, working me up again. He turned his hand so his palm was facing upward, and he curved his fingers so they rubbed against a part of me I’d never known existed before. Each little touch, every sensation, brought me closer to a new crest. He kissed the inside of my thigh.

“Hunter,” I pleaded.

“You want to hide from me?” he teased.

“No.” I huffed out a breath, and the hair that had fallen into my face went flying. “I just… I need— I need to come again,” I quickly amended before admitting the truth. “But I don’t think—”

“Don’t think, baby. Just tell me. Whatever it is. Let me know what you need.”

Hunter came up over me again, staring down into my eyes while he stroked me higher and higher. He kissed me, long and deep, seeking out my clitoris with his thumb and building up the most perfect pressure that bordered on pain without falling over into that territory.

This time when I came, I shattered. It was as though everything within me broke apart, splintering into thousands of tiny shards.

Hunter broke off the kiss, raising his head and lifting his free hand to brush my cheek with the pad of his thumb. “Why are you crying, baby?”

I shook my head, afraid to give it words, but it was impossible to stop them. “I need you to love me.”

He chuckled and gave me a smile just before kissing my cheek. “What did you think I was doing if not making love to you?”

But then, before I could process his words, he put on a condom and pressed his cock to my entrance, and I was lost to the sensation of being completely filled by him. It was only later, after he’d released my arms and was gently massaging them and kissing them, that I was able to think again.

What did you think I was doing if not making love to you?
That was what he’d said to me. But did he equate making love with being in love, or to him was it just sex?