Page 41 of Ice Cold, Red Hot
“Maybe ask if I’m okay?” I raised the bruised hand, and she flinched as she looked at it.
But then she straightened, her eyes taking on a steely glint. “No. I’m not going to ask. Because I did ask, and you shut me down. You made it clear you don’t want me near you. So this?” She pointed at the door. “This is me respecting your wishes.”
That desperation rose again inside me and my mouth started working before my brain. “Didn’t stop you the other night.”
“That was before,” she whispered. “You made it clear it didn’t mean anything, that it was nothing.”
“It didn’t feel like nothing.” Why was I goading her? Why couldn’t I say the right words, the ones that wouldmake her eyes soften and her lips lift into the smile that she’d given me this summer?
“You came to my apartment,” she hissed.
“You didn’t stop me from touching you.”
Silence. She stood there, staring at me as the heat from my body evaporated and I started to feel cold. I suppressed a shiver. With the dissipating heat, my anger seemed to drain from me, the desperation I’d felt to keep Celeste near replaced with acceptance. This was an impossible situation. I shook my head. “What are we doing?”
She watched me deflate, and the pain I saw in her eyes twisted a knife in me. I saw sympathy there. Pity, maybe. “Nothing. Not anymore,” she said, she turned to go, her hand on the door.
I was on my feet without intending to stand, my hand reaching for her. My voice shook as I whispered her name. “Celeste.”
She turned, eyes wide as they moved from my face to where our hands met, my bruised fingers touching her wrist.
She moved, reversing the hold so that my hand lay in her palm, and she softly closed her long, elegant fingers over my swollen, bruised ones. A tiny sigh escaped her, and she raised her eyes to mine. Every molecule around us froze, the room suddenly in a universe removed from this life, this problem.
“Celeste. Don’t go.”
One step. That’s all she took before she was in my arms, her mouth crashing into mine.
I spun her, and the clipboard clattered to the ground as I lifted her to the training table. Her legs wrapped my waistas my mouth found her throat, tasting every centimeter of her skin like it was the last taste of anything I might have.
Her hands grabbed at the skin of my back, her nails digging into me as she pulled me closer with her thighs, her center hot on my waist. I found her mouth again, our tongues thrashing as if in battle, and a low moan escaped her throat, making me so hard it was painful.
“Not here,” I said, picking her up from the table. There were private dressing rooms off the sauna, and she slid from my body, retrieving her clipboard and following me into one, locking the door.
Inside the close space, we stood for a second, facing one another, chests heaving, eyes locked.
“This is a mistake,” she said, but there was no heat in her voice.
“I don’t give a fuck,” I told her.
And then she was on me again, bolted to my body in the close space, her hands pulling at the shorts I wore, peeling them from my skin as she dropped to the floor on her knees. She looked up at me, and my heart stopped. This image would be seared into my mind forever—her big brown eyes framed by thick lashes, her hair a wild mane around her gorgeous face, and those perfect lips pressed against the tip of my cock.
But I couldn’t let her do it, not after the way I’d treated her. I dropped to my knees to face her, and kissed her gently. Then I got to work removing her clothing. The sweatshirt fell easily from her arms and she lifted them so I could pull off the tank she wore beneath it. Skin…so much skin. I bent down to kiss her shoulder, licking, biting, as she moaned.
I pulled her back to standing and untied the joggers she wore, pushing them down with her panties all at once. She toed off her shoes, and stood before me in her bra and nothing else—every inch of her perfect.
But the delicacy of the moment couldn’t last. It was too much, too tender to support the anger between us. So it broke. It snapped and frenzied lust took its place as I dropped a hand between her legs and took her mouth again. She moaned as I pressed her against the wall, hard, my hand relentlessly teasing, stroking.
One of her legs wrapped my waist, and I pulled my hand away, soaking wet. I stroked myself once, her moisture enough for both of us, and I couldn’t repress a deep groan. She was so fucking hot. Angry, tender, it didn’t matter. I’d take her any way she was willing to give herself to me.
As I slid into her wet heat, inch by devastating inch, she moaned my name.
I had never been this hard, I was sure of it.
Sounds erupted from each of us, nonsensical words, syllables laced with need, with tension, with the unraveling of whatever this was we shared.
“I can’t...”
“Oh… fuck.”
