Page 66 of For Pleasure Or Worse

Natalia was sprawled out on a lounger, her crown high on top of her head, a plastic cup tilted to her lips against a small smile. She watched on as the boys jumped in the water and took a turn playing chicken. Ophelia was on Pike’s shoulders wrestling with Sam mid-air while Sam was off-balance on his brother's, towering over her.

Tally's sisters bopped along in the small wake of the pool water, yelping and laughing. Everyone was perfectly distracted.

"Why don’t you get down there and join the action?" I gestured with a nod toward the backyard. “Meet you there.”

Angelo clapped his hand over my shoulder, shaking it empathetically, then slipped down the stairs to the poolside. I slid my phone out of the pocket of my shorts, keeping my eyes on Tally the entire time as I sent her a message.

Me

Go upstairs to our bedroom, and be naked when I get there.

chapter twenty-two

Mateo

We’d donethis a thousand times before—more than that, by far. It was part of our life, a staple of it. Where there was a Natalia and me, sex followed. It had from the very first date.

This was different in all the ways I’d never expected it would be. It felt like a reckoning. Like coming home after a long time away, like I was returning us to a place we’d traversed so far from that we never thought we’d get back. In reality the past few weeks were nothing, and our life together would be long and full of hardships, but this was the first time we’d ever had to come back to each other. Fight for each other.

She was going to know exactly how much I missed the feeling of her underneath me, riding me, spread out, shivering, taking exactly what I gave to her. The thought of what lay beyond the bedroom door as I walked toward it was enough to have me half hard and full of adrenaline before I even turned the handle. But the image I was greeted with immediately pulled my cock to stand at full attention.

My heart thudded hard against my chest. “That is so fucking perfect, Angel.”

Natalia sat on the bed, fully nude, knees parted just so to where the pink petaled center of her peeked out. I took astaggering breath and met her half-lidded, seductive eyes. She knew what she was doing to me, the same way I knew her. But this night was not going to be even. It was going to be fair. Fair to me was taking my place at the edge of the bed and wrenching her ankles apart so I could see what was mine.

She let go of a sigh, shocked and recentering as my hungry gaze devoured her, top to bottom. Her nipples hardened like I’d touched them, and the small bursts of air in in her chest jilted her abdomen. I could read her like a book. She was trying to stay aloof and that wasfuckingadorable. It only spurred me on more.

“Ran up here like a lovesick puppy when you got that text,” I said. “Obedient little pup you are, Tal. You must really be wanting something.”

“I know where I get my bones.” She wrinkled her nose, and I swatted at the inside of her thigh, hard enough to make her jolt at the sting, but revel in the small promise of pain that it brought.

“I’ve been waiting to have you alone since this afternoon. I’m going to take advantage of this.” I dragged her by the ankle to the edge of the bed. I was a step away from rocking myself into the cradle of her open legs. She was looking at the tent in my swim trunks as if she wanted exactly that. To feel the friction of my clothes and the ridge of my cock against her clit, to have something beyond the cool air in the bedroom. I pressed my hips forward.

“Fuck.” Her head fell back, exposing her neck, and that long dark hair cascaded backwards and splayed out on the bed. “It’s been too long, Matty.”

“I know.” I wandered a gentle hand up her body, fingertips scraping against her ribcage as she arched into it and ushered me to take a handful of her heavy breast. “I’m going to take care of that.”

I thrust my hips forward again and took her nipple between my fingers at the same time, rolling the soft flesh, tugging it to the precipice of pain. Her limits waxed and waned. At the peak of her orgasm I couldhurther, and she’d beg me for it. I liked to work our way up to those moments as torturously slow as possible, because I got off on it, on my end. Edging myself on her pleasure, watching her come undone. The longer I could let myself go without being touched or being inside her, the harder I came, and it was never not worth that hard-earned euphoria.

Natalia started wiggling her hips toward my shorts, sliding herself over the bulge of my erection. I dropped forward and notched myself there so she could writhe and took the breast I wasn’t already playing with into my mouth. Her legs latched around me and her ankles crossed at the small of my back, keeping me in place.

“So fucking desperate, baby. How does it feel to be so desperate?” I lifted my chin and found her gaze was focused on where our bodies connected, her eyebrows pinched together in frustrated concentration. I wanted to reach up with a thumb and iron out the wrinkle settling at the base of her nose, but instead, I pushed upward and surprised her with a hard kiss.

That kiss fell into another, and our lips parted on a dime, tongues tangling like they always did. Kissing Natalia was warm and familiar, but she could still take the air out of my lungs after all this time. We’d learned every single inch of each other's bodies, and our mouths were no exception. She pulled back and sank her teeth into my bottom lip, tugging on it, and my mind was made up about how the rest of this night was going to go. In this bedroom, locked away, compensating for the last few weeks of wasted time in only the ways that Natalia and I could. Because I’d never had a partner like her, I’d never been so comfortable with anyone this intimately before, and I’d neverfelt so confident to do what I was about to do with another soul besides Natalia Russo’s.

“I have something for you,” I murmured. “A surprise.”

“Right now?” She ground her hips again and I hissed through my teeth. It was becoming harder to hold out. I wanted to feel her skin on mine in the worst way. I pinned her hip down with my palm so she couldn’t continue to move against me and she whined insolently.

“Behave.” I slapped her nipple, blowing on it afterward to relieve the burn. “There are rewards for girls like you,” I said. “And there are punishments. It’s entirely up to you which of those things you’re interested in, Tally. Both suit me, because at the end of it I’m going to fill you with my cum so deep it gets you fucking pregnant.” Her eyes rounded. They were the deepest, get-lost-inside brown eyes, and they turned even darker as she processed my promise.

Natalia’s entire body dropped back against the bed, heaving, as I stood and crossed the floor to our discarded luggage. I pulled my T-shirt off over my head and tossed it, adjusting myself in my shorts to alleviate the ache as much as I could, but I knew it wouldn’t go away until shemade itgo away.

“It’s kind of funny,” I started saying, “how forgetful you can be when you’re in a rush. It’s something we always stressed in Delta, tying up loose ends. Not leaving a trace or a trail back to you. It’s a lot different when it’s not life or death, of course. But some self-preservation is always a good idea. You don’t want to get caught doing something you might have wanted to keep to yourself. You know what I’m saying?”

She had no fucking clue what I was going on about, which made it all the more exciting. I could see the confusion on her face clear as day. I grinned, pushing a breath of amusement through my nose, as I removed a travel bag from my suitcase and unzipped it.

“You forgot something, Tally.” I turned back around, holding out the bright pink toy she’d left in our shower back home. The one I’d come nose to nose with beside the shampoo bottles after work the night before. Such a small mistake on her part that had been weighing on me for twenty-four hours while I waited patiently to get her exactly where she was right now.

---