Page 19 of Gluttony

Self-recriminations, hindsight, guilt, and regret had burned his gut and churned in his brain for hours. He’d slept for shit last night, and he expected it would be just as shitty every night moving forward until he finally had his woman in his bed. Writhing beneath him, bouncing on him, cuddled up beside him, her face tucked into his neck, her lush body pressed against his hard one. He had no doubt in his mind she’d fit against him perfectly—she was made for him, and once he had her, memorized her curves with his greedy hands, devoured her lips, and claimed her body, she’d know it, too.

Got to find her first, jackass!

Fuck!

He’d spent all day yesterday hunting down his slippery, brilliant, cyber ninja woman, and the only trace of her he’d found was the back of her head as she exited Cool Hands…right after he did. With the fucking blonde. She’d followed him outside, stood at the edge of the parking lot, watching him and the blonde as they took off on his bike. He couldn’t see her face in the footage, but he noticed her body language—stiff, tense, like she was waiting for something…until his bike disappeared from view and her shoulders slumped, her head dropped, and every ounce of life drained from her frame. Seeing that hadmade the backs of his eyes burn as he fought the urge to cry. Fuck, he’d hurt her, and he hadn’t even noticed her standing right there, observing his betrayal in real time. It took her long minutes to finally move. Apparently, she’d parked in the back lot where the camera had been obscured by tree branches blown into the camera angle during a storm two days before. The fuckers at Cool Hands hadn’t cut down the branches yet, so Red couldn’t see anything through that camera except maple leaves flapping in the goddamn wind! After that bullshit, he’d tried tracking her using the cameras along the street, but Scranton hadn’t updated their neighborhood security in that area since the whole fucking town ran on coal. So he knew nothing actionable—like license plate, or car make or model.

So, he wasn’t any closer to finding her than he was the day before and the day before that. That meant that, since he couldn’t get to her, he’d get her to come to him.

And that’s what his appointment that morning was about; he was going to make a loud statement she couldn’t possibly ignore.

You know she’s stubborn—this might not work! She seemed awfully committed to going no contact.

Yeah, but he also knew his woman was curious as fuck.

A grin, slow and crooked, spread across his face as he slipped from his bed. Hisnewbed. He’d taken out the old one and burned it last night. He’d bought several gallons of gasoline, and had a bonfire in his backyard, and his nosey as fuck neighbor almost called the cops on him once she’d seen the black smoke. The mattress, frame, and every single hair tie lit up and burned to ashes in less than an hour, and he’d watched the whole damn thing, his eyes riveted to the sight, his heart and soul recognizing it for what it was—a funeral pyre. He was putting to death his old life, his old mistakes, and he was starting fresh. His new bedframe was a handmade Amish oak frame from a place in La Plume. His new mattress, one he’d ordered and had deliveredfrom a specialty mattress store in Meshoppen, was waiting for its brand new thousand-count sheets from Boscov’s. He was a beast in the sack, but he was also a creature of comfort, having spent too much fucking time in the barracks on a foam ground mat on top of a nylon folding cot, wishing his skin was made of steel so the fucking drab wool blanket didn’t give him goddamn hives.

Also, only the best for his woman. Once she was finally in his bed, she’d only ever feel pleasure there, and that meant comfort and cunnilingus in equal measure.

Smirking at that thought, he stalked by his desk, his gaze catching on the full-color printout of Val’s image he’d taped to his second monitor the night before. It was a screen shot straight from his recording of their chat that night, when he was gifted with his first glimpse of her.

And it might be your last, fucker!

As he searched for her, his gaze kept drifting back to the image of the perfection of her face, the beauty of her luscious form—big, round tits he wanted to suffocate between, creamy skin he wanted to taste, flushed cheeks he wanted to caress with trembling hands. He kept recalling the blazing fire burning in her eyes—a fire he couldn’t wait to stoke until she exploded into flames, catching him and the new bedroom furniture on fire.

Fuck.

Now he was hard—again.

Turning on the shower, he tugged off his black briefs, wet from his precum, then tossed them into the waiting hamper. Once the shower water was only slightly warmer than “arctic,” he slipped inside and closed the frosted sliding door behind him. Turning his face into the cascading water, Red heaved a sigh.

Dirty. He felt so fucking dirty it was like his skin was too tight.

Never in his life had he felt such…guilt for something he’d done. No, it wasn’t his intention to hurt Val, but the fact that his intentions were selfish was enough to stir up a cesspool of remorse and self-disgust. He was a red-blooded male, he loved sex, he loved pleasure, he loved exploring his boundaries and experiencing all the delicious delights a woman’s body could provide. Not once in all his years of fucking had he felt as sick to his stomach as he had looking into Valentina’s eyes when she told him she was cutting him off because he’d broken his promise to her—that he’d betrayed her trust, that he’d put his own desires above her and what they could have.

And she’d been right. He had done that, but….

Fuck.

What was he even thinking? He’d known when he’d made that promise that he had no intention of remaining celibate, butshehadn’t known that. Their definitions of wait were so far apart you could pilot a US aircraft carrier—a small floating city—between them.

Talk about miscommunication—but it wasn’t entirely Val’s fault; he’d never been upfront with her about what he meant when he said he’d wait, so the woman had been expecting something he hadn’t planned to deliver.

Again, the image of her face, those beautiful brown eyes filled with agony, hurt, grief—she’d been grieving the death of them, of what they had, of what they could be, and he’d been so caught up in making excuses, in trying to find the right words to explain his deliberate betrayal that he hadn’t stopped to just say, “I’m so fucking sorry.”

But he’d have his chance, because he wasn’t fucking giving her up. No fucking way would he go back to that half-life, that dark and ugly and heavy and desolate life he’d had before she’d slipped into his DMs and changed him irrevocably.

And he’d rather die a thousand deaths than ever go back.

Another image of Val appeared in his thoughts, and in this one, there was fire in her eyes. Her face was flushed, her mouth in an angry pout, and her pale skin glowing with an inner light that called to him. To the deepest, most primal parts of him. The part of him that wanted to mark her, mate her, and fill her with his seed. To wrap his hand around her throat and watch as she submitted to him, to feel it as her pulse raced beneath his fingers, to feel the tension leave her body as she gave in to the panic…the pleasure. A burn in his blood, he was near death with the desperate fantasy that had been replaying in his mind the last couple of days. In the fantasy, nothing stopped him—distance nor regret nor the woman herself—from reaching out, grabbing her hips, and lifting her into his arms. Nothing stopped him from planting a possessive kiss to her collar bone, sliding his lips along her heated flesh to press another kiss beneath her ear on her neck, where he’d flick his tongue over her pulse, making her gasp. Where he’d nibble and make her moan as goosebumps speckled her skin, as her nipples hardened to diamond peaks against the hardness of his chest. In his fantasy, there was nothing to stop him from grabbing a hold of her big, juicy ass, and leaving fingers prints in her soft flesh as he pulled her into him, her pussy wetting the fabric of her pants, her heat radiating from her cunt and onto his greedy cock where he was grinding it against her. In his fantasy, her clothes disappeared in a blink, leaving her plush, soft, curvy body on display, her lush thickness cradling him, sliding against him, their bodies pressing together until every inch of her was covered by him, until every inch of his throbbing cock was coated with her slickness. In his fantasy, she looked up at him with scorching need in her lust darkened gaze, with cheeks flushed by desire, with lips parted in delicate, panting breaths. In his fantasy, she flicked out her pink tongue, licking her plump lips, silently begging him to devour them. Inhis fantasy, he took a deep breath, inhaling the scents of their potent arousal, making his mouth water to taste her.

In his fantasy, she was his…and she was there with him.

But she’s not here….

Shuddering, he blinked away the sex delirium, his chest pinching at the loss of those images, of that conjured intimacy, of the vision of Valentina in his arms.

Grunting, he slammed his fist against the slippery wall tiles as the images he tried to banish from his head morphed into a scene straight out of his most filthy daydreams.

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