Page 47 of All Superheroes Need PR
I frown a little and take a step away from the bed. I debate covering him up better with the blankets, but it’s pointless. He stole the covers all night anyway—not that I needed them. He was wrapped around me like a snake with a score. I’m not going to be able to wear my flannel pajamas tonight if he plans on the same arrangement. My cheeks burn at the thought. It had been my first time sleeping all night through with a guy. I didn’t think I’d be able to—had always told myself it’d be too annoying to sleep beside someone else—but it was easy. Better than easy. It was nice.
The floor creaks under my feet, and he releases a heavy sigh. I freeze, not wanting to be caught peeping.Pervert. As luck would have it, his eyes stay closed as he kicks one knee up and rolls onto his back. His knee flops open. His elbows are spread wide, his right arm cocked up, his left hand draped over his stomach. The blanket is barely—barely—covering his ... um ... equipment. I can see his chest andhis ribbed abdomen and his tree-trunk thighs and his arms, and he’s ... my goodness, he’s a good-looking guy. And with his beard and hair long and scratches covering most of him, he looks like some marauding Viking berserk who stormed the castle and plans to stay a while.
I cover my mouth with my hand, worried that I’m drooling. What am I? A dog salivating over a bone?Pervert.I’m leaving, I swear ... only I’m not. I’m still staring.Pervert!And now I’m getting closer to him because I start to notice something funny on his left pec. I thought I’d noticed a scratch last night, deeper than the others, but now that I’m able to focus on it uninterrupted by, well ... him being awake—perv—I can see marks on his skin that look more organized than any scratch would be. Almost like a tattoo, if a tattoo were raised and only slightly darker than his skin tone. Like scar tissue. A brand maybe?
I’m not wearing shoes and carefully creep right to the edge of the bed. I lean over him and inspect the nontattoo a little closer. What I find puzzles me. A series of lines, organized into a shape that looks only partially complete. It’s like a subway map where the lines all lead off into different directions before vanishing. There’s a circular line winding through the web ... yeah. That’s what it’s like. A spiderweb. Both organic and too organized at the same time. There are ... I count ... eleven lines branching outward, a circular squiggle connecting them. But regardless of where they lead, they all intersect within the circle. I see my finger enter my vision like it doesn’t belong to me. I tell it to stop what it’s doing, what it’s intending, but it doesn’t listen.
I press the tip of my pointer finger right into the center of the circle. I barely touch him, only the feather of my skin across the smooth lines of his ... but that doesn’t matter.
Hands grab my shoulders, rip me off my feet, and whirl me around. My back lands on the bed, the mattress bouncing beneath me. I blink and he’stherelooming over me, his stare angry before it morphs into surprise. “Nessa, the fuck are you doing?”
“Peeping!” I blurt—pervvvv—and I don’t give any more explanation than that. Because all my awareness is currently zeroing in on the fact thathe hasn’t let go of me. In fact, his hand has shifted its hold to my neck. He’s not squeezing, but the position is menacing and intoxicating—I can feel every inch of his palm when I swallow nervously—and it’s exacerbated by the fact that he’snaked, and he’s shifting his weight further on top of me, pressing me into the bed, hip to hip, putting us in a position that I’ve only been in with a man two other times. All he’d have to do is slip his knees to the insides of mine and ...
I swallow hard. He hasn’t said anything. His glare has released. His lips are parted, and somehow he doesn’t smell like morning breath, despite the fact that he hasn’t brushed his teeth, but rather still smells like smoke. Like the sun.
“We should have called you Ra,” I say, brain firing in every direction. I should push him off. Ireallyshould push him off.
But I don’t.
Humans crave touch from one another. I know this objectively, butpersonally, getting to the point where I can feel comfortable touching someone and being touched by them like this ... well, let’s just say that the last time it happened, I’d had to work up the courage over months. College boyfriend. He didn’t last long after we ... hooked up. I rebounded after him with the help of a lot of beer. The sex was better but not worth repeating. We fizzled after that.
But this? I’ve never felt tension like this. Need. Want. Pure and unbothered by stupid questions such as, Whose hands go where, and who does what to whom, and how do I know what you like if I’m too shy to ask you? There’s just him dragging me underneath him and looking down at me like he’s going to do whatever he wants ...
And I’m going to let him.
“You smell like fucking candy.” He drops his face to my hair and inhales deeply. His nose drags over my skin up to my temple and then back down to my neck. He breathes against the column of my throat and then nips the space under my ear with his teeth.
I gasp, the sound punching into my lungs. I swallow, and his fingers tighten just a fraction ... just enough to make my eyelids flutter and myback arch. My legs squirm against each other restlessly, and my hands, my treacherous hands, reach up from their awkward positions at my sides to touch his ribs. And the instant my fingertips graze his hot skin, he hisses, shifts his hand, and fully bites the side of my neck.
I moan loudly in a way that can only be described as carnal. There’s no doubt that it’s a pleasure sound, and it deepens when Rollo slides his hands underneath my ass, dressed in jeans—because what other masochist but me would wear jeans in their own house—and down my thighs ... and repositions his legs between mine.
The sounds I’m making are embarrassing.Embarrassing. Not because the sounds are ...sounding, but because of how desperate they are. I’ve never been touched like this, but the strangest thing is the feeling in my chest telling me that even though I might not know this type of touch, I miss it. Badly.
My eyes burn. The blankets are tangled between us, and Rollo yanks them away. Something tears, but I don’t care. Not when his hips leave the valley between mine and he sits back on his heels and reaches for the button on my pants.
“Not gonna fuck you,” he says, and I don’t know if he’s talking to himself or me because, if he’s talking to me, I’d tell him he’s gonna make me weep. Need has bludgeoned me with a cudgel, and I can’t articulate how big it is. It’s too big to get past the barrier of my teeth.
His gaze flashes bright white as he looks at me. “But I need these off.”
I nod feverishly, my head buried in the pillows behind me as I stare down the length of my T-shirt-covered body to his naked everything. His shoulders look enormous from this angle, like wings, tapering down to narrow hips between which a prominent erection stands stiff, reaching for me. His brown skin is flushed red, almost purple, over the massive domed head, which is fully visible with the foreskin drawn back, veins streaking down the sides making my mouth water like a sex-deprived succubus.
I reach down to help him with my jeans because he still hasn’t moved, but he bats my hands out of his way. “Hands up. Over your head. Don’t move them until I tell you you can.”
I’m going to pass out. My throat is totally dry. My arms feel like they’ve been pricked with pins and needles from shoulder to fingertip as my hands fold neatly above my head in a bed of my hair. His eyes are blazing with questions I don’t have answers to because I’m on a game ofJeopardy!right now; he’s my opponent, but I can’t reach for the buzzer because he told me I’m not allowed.
“Christ,” he huffs. He rubs his hand through his hair, and that image, that picture of him all scratched and scarred, looking at me like I’m something soft he can fall into. The vision is searing and one I know will be burned into my memory until the day I die.
His fingers tug my button free, and the sound the zipper makes as it descends is salacious. “Hips up.”
I comply, and he drags my jeans roughly down my legs until he reaches my ankles. He moves gently after that, freeing one foot and removing the sock I’m wearing before moving to my other foot and freeing my brace. He kisses the side of my ankle brace very gently, and I don’t like the feeling that balloons in my stomach when he does that. The lust takes a new shape, a form that begs my surrender.
My hands twitch. He glares at them, and I move them back into position, holding my right wrist with my left hand as if I might keep it from doing anything crazy. Then Rollo gently lowers both of my legs and reaches for the simple black underwear I’ve got on. I can wish I’d chosen better looking panties till the cows come home, but I’m a psycho who buys her black, full-coverage underwear in bulk. Though ... he doesn’t seem to mind.
His eyes are unfocused, black pupils covering so much of the pink as he hooks his fingers between my skin and the upper band of elastic. He drops forward onto his other fist and tortures me, just a little bit, skimming the backs of his fingers over my skin as he settles my underwear back into place.
“Mhm,” I whimper. It’s a loud whimper too. Oh my gosh, shoot me now. I sound just as needy as I feel. There’s no seduction here on my side. There’s only obvious disbelief that this is happening and an even more blatant desire for him to continue. My hips lift.
“Nessa, don’t,” he snarls, sounding a little mean and making me flinch. “I’m hanging on by a hair here. You move when I say you can move.” He pauses, leaning back on his heels, lifting away from me slowly and inhaling between his teeth. I didn’t see him straining like this on TV when he was trying to move a mountain. “You okay with that?” His hands fit to my hips, his thumbs firm as they press into the soft skin just above my pubic bone.
