“You always fall for girls,” James said skeptically.
“You have specifically mocked me for doing so, so yeah, I’d say that’s true. I always fall for girls, too fast and too hard. Then they end up leaving, and you mock me.”
“Thank you for that rousing portrait of me as a friend. What I’m saying is that you’re into the girls. You say nice things about them. You
think
nice things about them. You will give them a key to your whole life if they blink at you. But you don’t fall for them. Not really.”
“What’s the difference, then? How is Della different?” I was bullshitting, though, because Della
was
different. I just didn’t know why. Beautiful, yes. Classy, yes. The greatest lay I’d ever had, yes. But there were other women. What made this one like honey, so sweet I couldn’t get enough?
James shrugged. “How many times did you e-mail Chelsea while you were overseas, huh?”
“I was undercover. Kind of hard to send her cat gifs and corny lines.”
“You didn’t e-mail her. You didn’t call her. You barely mentioned her. Bet you didn’t even jack off to thoughts of her.”
“Come on.”
“Come on, what? You’ll give them money, your apartment. You’ll give them anything they want, except yourself. You’re a fucking bleeding heart, but you don’t let girls in.”
I stayed silent.
His tone softened. “Compare that to now, where we’re out having some secret vigilante meeting just for this girl. And you can’t stop talking about her. It’s Della this and Della that. You practically broke my arm when you realized how late it was.
Have to check on her
.”
“This is what I’m talking about. The mocking.”
“The mocking is just because I’m an asshole. But this girl is doing something to you. It’s like black fucking magic, and I’m not gonna lie, it makes me nervous.”
* * *
Something had changed in the hour I’d been gone. The house felt different—the air sharper, the lights more eerie.
“Della!” I called, my heart pounding. She would be okay. She had to be okay.
“I’m up here,” she said, and I released a breath of pure relief.
“I’ll just shower,” I said from outside her door. “I smell like smoke now.”
Maybe it was presumptuous to assume she’d even care what I smelled like. Just because we’d had sex the past two nights didn’t mean we’d have it again tonight. And she might be feeling raw from having told me all that personal stuff. I wasn’t going to push that part, but I did want to sleep with her. Like actually lie in the same bed with my arm around her waist and hold her all night.
After stepping out of the shower, I toweled off and pulled on a loose pair of sweatpants. Her door was still closed, and I wanted to check on her. Hell, I wouldn’t push the sleeping together thing either, but I had to know she was okay.
I knocked on her bedroom door, lightly. When she didn’t answer, I called, “Della?”
More knocking went unanswered. More calls went unacknowledged. Shit. What if she was sleeping? Or what if she was in trouble? I couldn’t just leave her without checking.
These were the moments I wondered if I was being too aggressive with her. Wondered whether I’d even know the line between aggressive and protective anymore. I imagined some courtroom, dissecting the mental breakdown of a special ops soldier. Exhibit A, paranoid delusions. Exhibit B, ignored social cues, like the fact that failure to respond to knocking usually indicates lack of interest.
Exhibit C, called “I’m coming in,” and stepped inside the room, uninvited.
Exhibit D, stopped and stared at the beautiful woman wearing a black and red lace bra and matching panties. Black garter belts covered her legs for miles. And those heels. Oh Jesus fuck, those heels. I’d dream of them walking on me for the next ten years, while jerking off to the ruby red of her lips.
“Where are you going?” I said, standing there like an idiot. An uninvited idiot. Get out. She’s obviously not lying on the floor bleeding. But I couldn’t move. Couldn’t stop staring.
That half smile was fucking lethal. “Who says I’m going anywhere?”
“Uh.” Good question. It was just that she had changed into fancy underwear and put on makeup, so it seemed like… “What?”
She laughed. “Come here, soldier. I did this for you. Got dressed up for you.”
“Oh fuck.”
“Do you like it?”
“I’m about to pass out because I forgot how to breathe, so yeah, I like it. But listen…I wanted to tell you, you don’t have to do this. Not just what you’re wearing but even just having sex. I don’t want you to feel like you have to do it to get me to help you.” I met her gaze, trying to convey how much I meant this. “I’m gonna help you no matter what.”
Her eyes were clear and fathomless, the sapphire of a deep ocean cavern. “I know.”
And in that moment, I believed her. She knew I would help her. She trusted me.
Then she stood up, and I stopped thinking. My brains shorted out as she swayed over to me in those obscene shoes. My eyes couldn’t figure out where to land—the shadowed valley of her cleavage, the taut curve of her belly, the incredible slope of her hips.
She reached up and pulled me down, wrapping her arms around my neck. Her lips found my jaw and sucked on a patch of skin. A rough sound came out of my chest, and my hips jerked. This was moving fast. Too fast. Alarm bells sounded in the back of my mind. What had changed while I went out for drinks?
Then she was palming my cock through the sweatpants, and I forgot to ask what had changed. Forgot to care about anything but the talented stroke of her hands, the swivel of her hips as she pressed her ass into my palm. God.
“You’re so beautiful,” I said. Inadequate but true.
Her smile was less brilliant this time. “I know.”
How many times had some asshole thought she was pretty? More times than I could imagine? So why the fuck was I here? Why had she let me in? That thought wanted to take root, but then she crouched down, taking my pants off as she went. Her fist circled my cock; her mouth sucked me in. My back bowed in response, chest heaving. I groaned as her tongue moved like a goddamn miracle all around the head of my cock. She kept up a steady rhythm that should have had me coming in thirty seconds—but then she pulled back. She edged me until my cock was aching with forced restraint, turned purple and leaking precum in her hand.
“Let me come,” I gasped. “Please let me come.”
“Selfish,” she said like an admonishment. She yanked my balls while I choked out an apology.
“I’ll make you come. Please. Let me lick you. I want to—”
“I have a better idea. You trust me, don’t you?”
Holy fucking alarm bells. Did I trust her? Sure, I trusted her to say things that were mostly honest, as long as I verified them with my own personal fact-checker. So no…not really. That wasn’t trust. That was inappropriate interest. Borderline obsession. Trust would have to be later, when a major criminal player wasn’t trying manipulating her.
And now I’d stayed quiet too long.
She went to the dresser drawer and pulled something out. It was long and black and shiny—and for a split second, I thought it was the barrel of a gun. My pulse raced, and it didn’t slow when I figured out what she was really holding. A strap on. A rubber cock. I knew exactly what she meant to do with it, and my ass clenched in refusal.
Meanwhile my cock throbbed with desire.
“Wait,” I said.
Her smile was lopsided. “Don’t have all night, soldier. You want me to put this away, I will.”
I didn’t want her to put that away, not after I’d seen her. I wanted her to use it on me very much, but it seemed fast. And something about her demeanor was off. This whole setup with the lace and the garter belts. It felt like a seduction, like a trap I should avoid, and I wasn’t sure why since we’d already had sex.
Not this kind of sex, though.
“Bend over the bed, Clint,” she said so softly I almost didn’t hear her. But I saw her lips move, so red and plump I wanted to get down on my knees and worship her. So I did the next best thing and obeyed her.
The bedspread was cool against my chest and against my cheek. I rested there and clenched my ass together so tight it felt like nothing could breach me. She didn’t try to force it in. Not yet. Instead she trailed a finger from my nape all the way down my spine. I shivered as her finger traced lightly over the puckered hole. She ended the caress at the base of my balls.
“I want this to be special for you.”
“It’s already special,” I gasped out.
She proved me wrong. What we’d done before seemed tame now, as I lay there exposed to her. She pressed a kiss to the top of my spine, where her finger had touched. Then her lips traced the path down my back with slow, meandering kisses.
I gasped at the sensation of her lips and tongue on me, of her nipples pressing against my skin. And I knew exactly where she planned to go, because she’d already showed me with her finger.
She kissed down my lower back until she reached my ass. I grew so tense, so clenched that she couldn’t possibly reach between my ass cheeks—and that was for the best, really. Even though the thought of her mouth on my ass excited me, I didn’t want her to do something like that for me.
Didn’t want her to debase herself for me.
I would have rimmed her in heartbeat if she’d let me, but she would never have to return the favor.
“Wait,” I gasped again, futilely. “Della. Not there. Not-there, not-there,” I said, my voice slurring.
“Not where?” She slid her finger between my taut ass cheeks. Tapped on my asshole. “Here?”
“Please,” I murmured, out of my mind. What was I asking for? To get fucked? Not to get fucked? I wanted everything from her, impossible as it was. I wanted both more and less, every single breathless feeling and the sweet nothing-bliss of finding release.
“We’re gonna go real easy, okay? Have you done this before?”
I shook my head against the bedspread. “Just…fingers. And thought about it.”
“Yeah, I’ve thought about it too. Never done it. I’m going to go slow, though. Won’t hurt you. Okay? And I’ve gotten fucked in the ass plenty, so I’ll be careful with you.”
Oh shit. The way she said it, like she knew exactly how it felt to get fucked soft—and fucked hard, the kind of ass fucking that tore and injured. “Della.”
“Don’t make me gag you, soldier. You need another pair of panties to hold between your teeth?”
I groaned, imagining it. It had been so fucking hot to taste her arousal while I’d been fucking her.
She pressed two fingers inside me—fast but careful. I sucked in a breath at the pressure and the cool feel of lube. It warmed up quickly inside me, especially with the friction as she fucked me with those fingers. Too fast. Something’s wrong. Alarm bells.
Then I heard slick sounds as she must have been lubing up the rubber cock. God, just the thought of her doing that. I couldn’t quite see with my face pressed into the bedspread, but the mental image of her stroking her rubber strap-on cock was enough to make me rut against the bed.
“That’s right,” she murmured. “You fuck that mattress. That’s the only thing you’re going to fuck tonight.”
I had to bite down on my tongue just to stop myself from coming.
Something slick and wide pressed against my asshole. Her cock. I shuddered, tensed. Just as quickly, the light pressure was gone. Air swept along my back as she moved away.
“Wait,” I begged. “Come back.”
I was too far gone to have any pride. Too far gone to be lucid or even conscious. I existed only in the sex-dream world, where my fantasies came true and the witches wore red and black lace.
“Something is missing,” she said, her voice muffled. I heard her rummaging through the drawer, and then she was back, her legs between mine, pushing my ankles wider apart. “You’re squirming too much. It’s not right.”
I rocked my hips back, desperate. “Baby. Fuck.”
Not coherent. Not making sense. Just strung out on the edge, with my cock rubbing against the wet spot it had made with precum. The drops would have been warm when they leaked out of my cock, but the spot was wet. My dick was burning up, and the contrast threatened to set me off.
Something appeared in my vision. Black leather cuffs with a silver chain. And beside it, a long, thin metal chain. A spreader bar, my porn-watching brain supplied. She wants to use these on me.
“You ready?” she asked softly.
I was ready to get fucked by her, but tied up? That was different. Do you trust me? she had asked, and the answer had been no. Then I remembered James telling me I didn’t give a shit about these girls, even when I thought I did. More importantly, I didn’t give them myself. Just my apartment or my time. Not myself. Not what Della wanted from me.