Rough Rhythm: A Made in Jersey Novella (1001 Dark Nights) (7 page)

“You don’t think I know you enjoyed it?” He drew her top up, past her breasts, baring them to his stark hunger. “You’ve spent every minute since that night trying to tempt me back here. Pressing your tight backside against my lap, then apologizing with those big, innocent eyes. Calling me into your dressing room, nothing but a scrap of fabric running between your legs.”

“I’m not sorry,” she breathed. “You should have given in.”

He drew a circle around her right nipple with his index finger, bringing the pink bud to a sharp point. “I held back that night, Lita.” His hand closed over her breast, squeezing. “Rough as I was, you
enjoyed
a restrained version of me.”

Yes, she did know that now. He’d only allowed her a small glimpse of his dark tastes, hoping to send her running. But it had backfired. Now her curiosity ran neck and neck with unrepentant desire. With the mention of his harsh treatment of her, James’s eyes were taking on a faraway look, though. Was he remembering? She needed to keep him here with her, in the moment.

Lita leaned up to bury her nose against his chest, his scent sending her pheromones into a swoon. “You smell so good.”

“Yeah?” James scrutinized her, a muscle jumping in his cheek. He clasped her wrists and drew them over her head. Slow, so slow. The higher he placed them, the harder his arousal ground against her center. “Enjoy it now. Because in around an hour, I’m only going to smell like your pussy.”

Lita started shaking. James had never spoken to her like that. Even that first night, he’d been so full of visible tension, every command had been issued through his teeth.
Holding back.
This man looming above her was one she trusted, but the nuances, the sudden edge to him excited her beyond words. “I want to smell like you, too.”

“Oh, you will.”

His hips were so heavy between her legs, creating such sweet pressure. And when he moved them in a rough circle, Lita’s eyes rolled back in her head. “Now.
Please
, now. I need you inside me.”

“
Goddammit
, Lita.” He dropped his head into the crook of her neck on an uneven groan, his hands tightening around her wrists. “Let me fix my mistake.”

Right. This was their do-over. His chance to replace his guilt from that night with something good. Something better. With his big body weighing her down into the mattress, his breath rasping in her ear, she was losing focus of that goal. But she couldn’t. It was too important. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “You’ve taken care of my ankle. Fed me…kissed me. What w-would you have done next?”

His stubble slid against her cheek as his head lifted. “First, you’ll say out loud what I did to you. I don’t want to be let off so easy.”

Lita swallowed and focused on the ceiling, her memory calling forth sounds and touches in the dark. “You tied my hands to the headboard…above my head. Then you…”

“Say it.”

“You put yourself in my mouth.”

He released one of Lita’s wrists to tilt her chin up. “That was after. After I made you crawl to me like a beggar,
after
I slapped the hell out of your sweet ass. That’s when I propped my knees on the pillows and I fucked your little mouth. Didn’t I?” He visibly attempted to center himself but didn’t succeed. “You needed a savior and you found Satan, instead. Took you so many times, so many filthy ways in the dark, I lost track. And not once was I gentle. Did I leave anything out?”

Afraid that if she spoke, her words would be incoherent, Lita only shook her head.

Despite the regret he projected, she could see he was turned on. To an immense degree. Could feel his erection bulging against the inside of her thigh. Both of them were panting into the scant space separating them, heating the air. “You liked those things I did to you?”

“
Yes
. My answer isn’t going to change.”
Goals. You have them
. “The do-over ends at midnight, you know. We just have to make it to midnight and you’ll have made up for what happened.”

James’s frown was thunderous. “You’re making this up as we go, aren’t you?”

By way of answering, she lifted her legs to surround his waist, loving the way his eyes glazed over. Empowered by it. “I remember how you tasted in my mouth. Your ridges sliding over my tongue. How heavy you are down there.”

 “I hear your little sucking noises in my sleep.
Fuck
.” His hand tightened its grip on her face but loosened as he exhaled. “I’ve had my turn, though.” He released her jaw, coasting his hand down her thigh and hiking up her skirt. “I’ve apologized to you, now I’m going to repent between your legs.”

James’s hand cupped her damp flesh, forcing a cry from Lita.

“Mmm. So wet. Does that mean she’s in a forgiving mood?” Lita didn’t dare answer as James slid his middle finger inside her. Pushed in deep on a low growl. “Yes, she knows. She knows I made sure no one touched. Kept her safe inside those panties, away from hands and mouths that weren’t mine.”

James dragged his mouth down between her breasts and lower, licking at her belly button twice before settling between her splayed thighs. Lita could barely wrap her mind around the image of James so close to her private flesh. She’d imagined it so many times, but the visual reality—James licking his lips and draping her thighs over his shoulders—almost climaxed her. Illuminated only by the distant bathroom light, he was a dark god, sent down to earth with one intention. To feast and give pleasure.

When he leaned forward and dropped a kiss over her clit, she strained on the bed, hands twisting in the comforter. “Oh,
please
.”

He laid another gentle kiss on her flesh. “So, so sorry, little girl.” His voice was a thick murmur. “I saw my Lita and got carried away, didn’t I? Couldn’t handle the way she made me feel. The bad things she made me want to do.” He parted her flesh with big fingers and gave a long lick through the middle. “Bad things I still want to do. To her. Only, ever, her.”

Lita’s thighs attempted to close, but only succeeded in hugging James’s head. That single stroke of her clit had already drawn her toward the finish line. So long, she’d waited so
long
. No fair that it could be over so quickly.

“Will your pussy forgive me for being a greedy bastard?” James flicked his tongue over her clit. Fast, too fast. “For not giving her what she deserved?”

“
Yes
,” she moaned. “Oh God, I can’t
take
it.”

“I wasn’t finished apologizing.”

Before she registered his movement, James rolled over, reversing their position on the bed. It left her straddling his face, her hands clutching at the bedclothes for purchase. “What—” She broke off on a scream when he slipped his tongue inside her, drawing it in and out. “
Ohhh.
Don’t stop.
Don’t stop
.”

The sweet torture lasted a few blissful moments, before he stopped to tug her clit between his lips. “Now I’m the hungry one, Lita.
Feed
me.” He gave her bottom an encouraging pat and she could feel his restraint in the touch, knew he wanted to give her a hard slap instead. After that, she could barely think at all because he stiffened his tongue, a silent command to ride. Lita leaned forward, fists planted above his head. She rolled her lips faster and faster, goaded by masculine hands digging into her backside, propelling, encouraging. The buildup of heat was swift and unforgiving. It sang in her veins like an operatic solo, but her mouth could only repeat
James, James, James.

He groaned each time she slicked over his waiting tongue, the sound growing louder until it vibrated her clit. Their erotic position, the absolute possession in his eyes, the grip of his hands, her own wheezing breaths…they combined and lifted her past the point of no return. She started to fall forward when the orgasm blasted through her system, but James grabbed her thighs and pressed his mouth closer,
closer
, sucking her clit with such ferocity, another climax wracked her muscles on the heels of the first.

“
So good, so good. James. I can’t. It’s so good
.”

Finally he released her legs, allowing her to pitch sideways and land on the bed, her body covered in sweat, chest heaving. The skirt was twisted up around her hips, but she didn’t have the energy to pull it down. James entered her line of vision, looming above her in the near-darkness. He watched her in that intense manner, that inscrutable stare of his never wavering until her body cooled. His fingers raked up and down her thighs, pausing only when her attention landed on the erection outlined by his jeans. As if he could feel her attention there, his breath turned shallow. “I’ll wake you at midnight, Lita.”

Something about the way he said the words bothered her, but she didn’t pinpoint the reason until the second before sleep claimed her. And she realized what she’d heard in his voice.

Dread.

Chapter Five

James stood beside the motel room’s water-stained window, watching the streetlight flicker over the empty parking lot. He could hear Lita’s soft breathing coming from the bed behind him. She hadn’t shifted once since slumping onto the mattress and passing out, a fact that caused tenderness to build every time he glanced over. Tangled hair lay across her cheek, the way he’d seen it countless times when she woke on the tour bus, but it looked different now. Now, he could put his hands in it. Stroke it. Twist it in a fist.

Damn you.
Why couldn’t he be content to lie beside her instead of watching the clock, waiting for midnight? Earlier, while cleaning her ankle, he’d noticed chipped pink nail polish on her toes. A detail he should have found endearing, but only made him eager to…corrupt that sweetness. Eager to have those same toes digging into his ass as he pumped and pumped, silencing her screams with his mouth, his hand. All the while, whispering inexcusable things into her ear. Things his rational mind knew were wrong, but his body liked the sound of.

How could he feel such protectiveness for Lita and want to dominate her in such a way? It was as though his two urges went hand in hand. Protect and punish. Cherish and…imprison. Keep her still and make her
take
. He’d never allowed these urges to play out with another woman, because they were only inspired by Lita. When she came into his life, he’d been searching for something without a name. She’d woken up his baser instincts, forced them to take shape, but they’d never gone further than her. Part of him wished it had extended to others, disloyal as that thought made him feel. But at least if this need didn’t have a specific target he could walk away. Leave her to a more natural relationship than the one he could provide.

Perhaps when Lita found out about the violence in his blood, she would understand his desires came from a bad place. A place he’d allowed himself to visit in a deconstructed sense the night they met, but was far stronger than she knew. Might even be stronger than
he
knew. His father hadn’t merely used his fists on James and his mother. People in town had always given the man wide berth, not knowing what would set him off. Barbeques, town meetings, grocery stores, had all been settings for bloody altercations, incited by James’s father.

James had put off college for two years so he could protect a mother who refused to leave, insisting her husband was a good man. During that time, the court had mandated anger management therapy and to everyone’s surprise, his father had attended and seen actual results. But James didn’t believe in cures. People couldn’t change. And that aggression gene had clearly found its way into his DNA.

Lita moved among the bedsheets, curling onto her side. The goddamn skirt was still rucked up around her waist and he’d left it that way, craving the lack of barrier between him and her pussy. The tempting swell of her bottom. His hands could touch if he so chose, a freedom he’d never had before. Her non-concern over being exposed proved how much this girl trusted him. Acting on the images his mind projected could damage that fragile bond, but after four years of denying himself, her invitation was a deathblow to his restraint.

James knew before looking at the clock what it would say. His body had been performing the countdown all on its own. 12:00. A flame, edged with blue, lit beneath the furnace of his body, bringing his blood to a rollicking boil. Jesus Christ, he’d forgotten the drugging rush of power that overflowed when he allowed the dam to give way. If a significant part of him felt like the big bad wolf towering over Goldilocks, his cock rigid in his jeans with the need to defile,
so be it.
He’d tried, he’d fucking
tried
, to leave Lita in peace and she’d shown up, levering green eyes on him, needing him to tend her injuries. Kissing him. Showering for him. Eating for him. Ruining even the tiniest amount of progress.

He couldn’t lose himself to the clawing urge, though. Had to remember the last time he’d lost control, how he’d felt afterward.
Keep your head.

The sound of him lowering his zipper woke Lita. Until she sat up, looking around the room in alarm, James didn’t realize the darkness hid him from her eyes. But that realization shot his pulse into overdrive. He held his breath as she eased off the bed and tiptoed toward the bathroom. “James?”

Protector. Corrupter. Which one
was
he? Reassuring words climbed up his throat, while the note of fear called to his animal nature. And he couldn’t hold it back anymore. It shouted at him to pounce.

James moved through the darkness, capturing Lita around the waist and spinning her toward a desk situated along the wall. Her muffled scream shattered the room’s silence as James pushed her forward, over the surface, using a firm hand to press her cheek down onto the wood. The roar inside him increased in volume when the sexy lines of her body remained taut, full of fight.

“James,” she said into the darkness.

“I could very easily be someone else, though. Couldn’t I?” Keeping one staying hand at the back of her head, James palmed her upturned bottom. Roughly. Christ, she would be so satisfying to fuck from behind, her little cheeks sliding up his sweaty stomach, just enough space between her thighs to accept the hanging flesh that would swing up and slap her with every drive. She had no clue how many times he’d pictured it, pictured her smart mouth in a round O when she realized he wouldn’t be slowing down or easing her in. The way a good man might.