Page 70 of Second Story

Adrenaline spikes at being put exactly where Joe wants me. I don’t fight the way Luke said was only human nature, and there’s no way I’m thinking about fleeing or freezing. What I am one hundred percent on board with is fawning over someone who kisses me like I made his night, his week, his whole year with a single sentence.

I repeat it as soon as his mouth moves lower.

“Theyshouldmiss you.” That isn’t supposition. It’s been my truth since I was left to hold my brother’s broken heart together. I had to ignore that my own had shattered. Had to keep going through protective motions for someone the justice system had left crushed. Maybe protectiveness is a muscle—mine flexes now for Joe. “They should, becauseIdid. I missed you so much.”

His mouth lifts from the side of my neck. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. All the fucking time.”

I love this smile on him, even if only the moon lights it. It starts small before expanding, and then we’re kissing again, connected from mouth to hips to ankle, and I stop thinking about other people.

Joe’s the one and only man on my mind each time he grinds down, hard and heavy.

I could lie back and take it forever. We have time. I still feel an urgency, a frantic need both to stop time and to hurry. I don’t even try to verbalise that contradiction. I push instead, and here’s more proof that yes, I’ve seen him raise his fists to spar with shadows but gentle fits him so much better. He proves it by rolling off me nice and easy, smiling again as if he’s dazzled when I straddle him and have to kiss him.

I only stop when a frown flickers, then I lift off in a hurry.

“Shit. Too much pressure on your back?” That’s where he’s marked the worst by someone I’d hunt down if our nightly conversations didn’t mean I know that they already served their sentence. It’s the men at the top I’d keep chasing, the ones who gave the order, if I had the power to track and trace them. Joe only shakes his head and twists to reach underneath him.

He pulls out my usual bed partner, moonlight silvering the sprayed edges of a limited edition hardback. Joe squints at the cover. “Dragons do it for you?”

Nope. He does.

Joe’s my incentive to toss a book that I once stood in line for, that I needed to read more than breathing back when fiction was my motivator.

Who needs book boyfriends? Fuck dragons or their riders, even if their onyx eyes promise violence. My man’s eyes are moonlit.

He kneels over me and looks down.

Reading is life, but Joe melting the second I reach up to touch his face is even better. His lips brush the pad of my thumb, all while he hurries to get naked. Joe starts with his fly, and I get to work pulling off my shirt. His hands pause, breath stilling, as if it’s the first time he’s seen me bare-chested.

It isn’t. We’ve fucked already. He’s got up close to me in a shower and on an armchair, let alone via a phone. Heat still blotches my throat at his close inspection—at him soaking up what the moon shows him, which is wild when I’m nothing special. Not like him. I’m lean where he’s all bulk. Narrow where he’s so fucking powerful.

Joe can’t think so.

“Keep going. Take it all off.” He’s so gruff that another crab line pulls tight between us and vibrates. I’m hooked. By his gaze. By him wetting his lips. And by him getting both hands on me to get rid of the rest of my clothes until I’m naked.

He isn’t.

Joe’s shirt hangs open. So does his fly. The head of his cock is visible over the black band of his boxers as he shifts over me, and more books topple from the far side of the bed.

They can fall. All I care about is getting a hand on his dick.More than that, I have to taste him.

I lick a smear of his precome from my palm, and Joe strips in a hurry, his cock thick and bobbing while mine aches. So does my heart, at scars I’d never quit trying to make someone pay for.

I can’t help it, like I can’t help worrying about how and where to touch him.

Joe knows what works for him—we end up side by side. I’m a six to his nine, our matched height in our favour. I mouth the head of his dick while he does the same to mine, getting each other wet and exploring. His balls pull up as I suck and lick, all while tracing fat veins that pulse and inhaling musk that only gets me harder.

I was already aching. Already wanting to thrust each time Joe’s tongue flicks my frenulum before taking me deep, then deeper. I want to fill his mouth, his throat, his whole fucking chest like he fills mine, so I pull him closer, then choke as soon as Joe finds my hole and presses.

He must have wet his finger. It presses again, and I lift a leg, sayingyesandmoreanddo me right nowwithout speaking, but Joe still checks in.

He’s gravelly. “Really wanna fuck you.”

I’ve never rolled onto my front faster. Never been laughed at in bed either.

No.

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