Page 56 of Badd Ass
“It’s me, Mara,” I whispered, leaning close, lips to her ear. “You’re in bed with me. You’re safe.”
She stayed tense and frozen for a moment, and then gradually began to relax, muscles softening, breathing resuming. She wiggled back against me, twisted her head sideways. Her hand slid up to cup the back of my head, pulling me toward her.
“I’ve never enjoyed waking up so much before,” she murmured. “Normally, I’d have been disoriented for a lot longer.”
“Waking up with you in my bed…I can’t think of anything better,” I whispered, the guilt and the feelings of inadequacy still powerful inside me, but not enough to erase or minimize the potency of what it feels like to have this woman in my arms.
She pulled me closer, touched her lips to mine, softly, hesitantly, her eyes open and wide and searching mine from centimeters away. “No? You can’t think of evenonething that might better?”
And then Mara pressed up into the kiss. Claimed my mouth as hers. The kiss was gentility personified, tenderness and silk and heat and drowning sweetness and beauty. I groaned as we kissed, my palm grazing up her thigh and under her shirt to explore the warmth and softness of her flesh. She reached down behind herself and tugged at my shorts, helping me kick them off, leaving me naked under the blankets, her ass grinding against my throbbing, aching, hard-as-iron erection.
“Mara…” I breathed, palming her breast.
She just hummed hungrily in response, claimed another kiss, a hotter one, a harder one, a deeper, fiercer kiss. She used one hand to peel her shirt off, and then slipped her hand between our bodies again. She grasped my cock, angled me between her thighs, shifted her hips, and then I was sliding into her silky wet heat, snug and perfect. Bare and beautiful. She whimpered against my lips and rolled her hips, taking me deeper, and her hand clutched at my ass, pulled at me, silently begging me. Whimpered again as I pushed against her, thrusting deeper, and then she was kissing me, and the kiss was something I’ve never experienced before; a delirious, drowning hypnotism.
An expanding, all-consuming, white-hot, heart-throbbing glory.
Enveloped by Mara, subsumed within her.
Surrounded by her warmth and softness and heat, our movements in perfect unison, exchanging breath and driving our kiss higher and hotter.
I felt her hand slip between her thighs to circle at herself wildly, her other hand on my ass, clawing deep into the flesh and muscle, pulling at me, encouraging me to move harder and faster and deeper. Her mouth on mine, her lips moving, her tongue seeking. Her soft breast in my hand, her hair spread out in a tangled golden cascade.
Lost in her.
Buried in her.
Kissing, moving, joining.
I felt her twitch and heard her groan, tasted her whimpers on my lips, felt her clamp down around me as she shattered in my arms, and I let go with her, poured myself into her, kissing her through our mutual concussive luxuriating release. I groaned and writhed and breathed her name and devoured her, sucked her breath into my lungs and reveled in the way she gasped my name a thousand desperate times.
When we finished, we were gasping in synch and sweating together, still joined.
I moved to pull out, and she shook her head, holding me in place. “Just…stay with me. Just like this.”
“Okay.”
And so I do.
We fall back asleep together, joined like that.
And, like Bast said I would…
I just…know.
Chapter 11
Mara
The week passed in a blur. Zane and I spent every waking moment together whenever Zane wasn’t working. Even when he was behind the bar, more often than not, I’d be parked in the booth closest to the service bar, sipping beer and catching up on all the reading I’d been meaning to do. My TBR list had gotten kind of out of control—my Kindle library was filled with books I’d purchased and had meant to read but had never gotten around to. So, for the six or eight hours that Zane worked behind the bar or on the floor, I caught up on reading and let myself get a little tipsy.
Xavier would bring me food, whatever he felt like making, and one of Zane’s other brothers would scoot into the booth with me now and then and chat me up. I met all of his brothers except Bast, who was still on his honeymoon.
Brock was sharp-witted and sweet and a great conversationalist, and possibly the most absurdly beautiful human being I’d ever met— think young Paul Newman—that was Brock, tall and lean and effortlessly smooth, with rich silky brown hair neatly parted and swept to one side, a few strands always in his eyes, a brilliant, dazzling smile and warm brown eyes.
Baxter was the complete opposite, rough around the edges, blunt, hysterical, vulgar, but still sweet, and sexy in his own way—bulky, brawny, heavy with massive muscles, physically intimidating and yet easy and fun to be around; Bax was nearly as tall as Brock, but half as broad and very muscular, with the same dazzling white grin and brown eyes, although Bax’s gaze was always on the move, and glittering with humor. His hair was the same rich brown as Zane’s, but Bax kept his clipped close on the sides and long and messy up top, wavy and tangled in a permanent just-fucked look.
When Bax slipped into the booth the first time, he did so affecting a dramatic limp. I snickered as he grabbed his thigh and pretended to have to haul his leg in after him, as if his entire leg was game.
