The whole thing hurt so much more than a mere sexual rejection, because she honestly cared for this man. If she hadn’t already believed herself in love with him before tonight, she would now, after having spent the evening with him, laughing and smiling—and of all things…talking. And yet,
talking
with Mark had been like its own kind of foreplay. Their conversation had been vivid, taking on a life of its own, instead of the self-absorbed drivel that men usually poured out to her. Each word had been like a seduction, the string of sentences like an invisible line drawing them closer together, leading up to the ultimate moment where he’d actually admit that he
did
want her for more than talk, more than mere conversation.
But she’d been wrong—blinded by lust or love or who knew what—only to realize now that her initial conclusions had been right all along.
Maybe it was like a sickness. Even the most virile of men who came into contact with her became sensitive souls looking for nothing more than warm companionship and a great gal to talk to—saving all those savage urges for the women who made them burn. The frustration of it made her want to pound her fists upon that solid, mouthwatering chest, the details of which she could so easily make out beneath the thin cotton covering of his soft T-shirt.
And damn it, she wasn’t going to stand for it. She wanted to toss him to the ground and show him just how
wrong
he was about her. If she could only have him for a friend, then by god, she at least wanted one night of knowing what it felt like to be
taken
. She deserved it! Mark Logan was every bit as fun and entertaining as she’d known he’d be, and she knew she was already in far too deep for emotional safety. When you threw in the heart-tripping sexual attraction, hunger so sharp it cut, it was enough to make her want to lay him out on her bed and ride his bad boy ass until neither one of them could move.
A single night. Just once. Was that really so much to ask?
He stared down at her, the dark heat of his gaze sending a shiver through her watery limbs, and took her still half-f beer bottle from her trembling fingers, setting it on the end of the step behind her, along with his own. Then his hands lifted to the sides of her face, long fingers sliding up through her hair until he held her head between the controlling pressure of his palms.
“What are you doing?” she gasped, as he tilted her head back at an angle that had her looking up into the hard lines of his ruggedly chiseled face, and for the first time ever, she realized how dangerous he could be. Not that she was afraid of him. No, she knew, no matter how angry he might become, that he’d never physically harm her. But there was a danger about him all the same. An electric, sizzling force that rode the powerful lines of his long body, thrumming beneath her fingertips as she pressed her hands to the hard muscles of his broad shoulders.
“I’m getting ready to give you a taste of my reputation, sweetheart. Isn’t that what you wanted tonight?”
She swallowed, struggling to sort out the tangled, hazy mess of her thoughts. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Now why would you think anything’s wrong? I just wasn’t reading your signals right, Mel. If you wanna come, you gotta open up and let a guy know before he gets blinded by those big brown eyes of yours and is afraid of going too far. If you’d told me up-front what you were looking for, I could’ve saved you the trouble of dinner and dealt with this hours ago.”
“Mark,” she said carefully, blinking up at him. “I don’t think you understand.”
“On the contrary, honey,” he disagreed in a silky, seductive drawl, “I think I’m finally figuring it all out. Now either tell me to get my hands off you and walk away, or shut up and put that mouth to better use.”
The look in those brilliant, smoky green eyes was almost frightening, smoldering with the sharp, dangerous edge of anger, shimmering and wild, like…like the predatory eyes of a leopard gleaming out from between wet green leaves after a violent summer rain in the jungle. There was something very wrong here, but the second his mouth touched hers, she couldn’t grasp onto anything long enough to put a name to it. He didn’t gentle her into a kiss, but took her with a full-fledged, consuming hunger that wiped her brain clean and sent her body tumbling into a frantic, sexual urgency that had her kissing him back in ways she didn’t even know she was capable of. Her lips moved against the rough-silk of his delicious mouth, his masculine, devastatingly male flavor drugging her mind with erotic images of that powerful body moving over her, within her, holding her down and making her scream out her release over and over and over again.
He broke the kiss to trail his mouth over her cheek, the sensitive column of her throat, and there was something so wonderfully erotic about the feel of his lips moving against the damp heat of her skin, while one calloused hand suddenly gripped her ass through the thin fabric of her skirt. His touch was hard and possessive, fingers bold and greedy, rubbing through the sensitive crease of her cheeks. Back and forth they stroked, making her gasp into the brutal, vicious heat of another kiss as his mouth slashed across hers and his hand moved lower. His fingers dipped, stroking over the cloth-covered heat of her sex, and she nearly died. Nearly came from the stroke alone. From the sheer sensation of having Mark Logan touch her body.
A sharp, husky cry broke free from her throat and he swallowed the sound with a stifled snarl, fitting his mouth more tightly over hers, sealing in the sounds of their lust as it broke out of them in raging, ragged bursts of sound. Strong hands lifted her hips, turning and pressing her against the smooth wall of her apartment building, the weathered wood feeling startlingly cold against the warm flames of fire he’d sent licking across her fevered skin, teasing her, urging her on. Her legs trembled as her feet touched the grainy surface of the concrete, and then those strong, rough hands moved to her thighs, pushing them apart as he pushed up her skirt. She swallowed a soft, sibilant sound of surprise, and then he was touching her flesh to flesh, those long fingers digging into the giving cushion of her thighs, his rough calluses dragging over her tender skin in a blatantly male touch that made her inner muscles clench. Her sex felt heavy and swollen between her legs, hungry for whatever mind-blowing, sexually powerful things Mark Logan could do to her.
“I take it you’re ready for that fuck now,” he said so coldly she actually winced. But she didn’t push him away. She couldn’t. She simply straightened her shoulders and stared up at him in the heavy darkness, aware that his body trembled against her own.
“Mark?” Suddenly, Mel didn’t know what she had been thinking, or where exactly things had gone wrong. What was happening between them? Why had the fact that she wanted him sent everything careening so madly out of control?
“Are you wet for me, Melanie?”
His dark, roughly spoken words rasped temptingly against the pulse in the base of her throat. He lowered his mouth to her skin, and her head moved restlessly against the wall, neck arched to give him better access, while her passion-dazed brain struggled to comprehend his mood.
“Answer me, Mel. Are you
wet
?” he demanded in a husky, provocative rumble, even though she knew he already held the answer. His deft fingers rubbed against the thin, soaked panel of her panties, swirling confidently through the drenched evidence of her arousal. “Are you juicy and hot just thinking about what I’m going to do to you?”
“Yes,” she whispered shakily, her mind thick with the powerful pulse of need surging through her veins, intoxicating her. Making her feel drunk with want for this man. For whatever she could have from him. “God yes,” she breathed out on a low, frantic moan. “Mark…please.”
“Please what, Melanie?” he asked with a hard smile as he lifted his head to look down at her.
A part of her heart broke at the lack of tenderness in his shuttered, guarded stare, but she swallowed against the hurt and focused on the burn of physical hunger she could see smoldering in those smoky green eyes. “Please, Mark. God, just touch me. Put your hands on me.
Please
.”
The sound of his name on her lips, of her begging for his touch, was nearly his undoing. “Don’t worry, Mel. I won’t leave you wanting tonight,” he growled against the moist heat of her mouth. He lost himself in the drugging flavor of her lips, in the lush taste of the warm, sweet well that lay deeper within. The sleek, tender textures of her eager, sweetly unskilled kiss sent his head spinning. “There’s not a force in heaven or hell that could stop me from touching you now.”
With a rough groan, he shoved his hand into the front of her panties and cupped the wet, damp heat of her pussy in his palm. Oh Christ, it nearly killed him. Soft, slick, slippery and smooth. He wanted to drool. Wanted to howl and bury himself inside her more than he wanted to breathe. She jolted in his arms, and he gave her a moment to get used to his touch, rasping her delicate folds with the scrape of his calluses, feeling her melt against him, all warm and deliciously wet. There was no doubt that she wanted him. No, she was creamy and hot, all but dripping, and the pain in his cock took on a new dimension. A raw, pumping knot of need that seemed to beat in time with the powerful thumping of his heart.
He learned her by touch, letting his fingertips slide through her folds, separating her, opening her, and she shivered between the press of his warm, aching body and the cool wall. His lips found the sweet heat of her scalp, and spoke his words into the fragrant silk of her hair.
“So soft and sweet, Mel. Did this hungry little pussy go all warm and slippery when I had you against that wall at
Caza’s
, letting you feel how hard you’d made me? Has it been this way ever since? I swear you’re so ready, I think you could spill against my hand any second now.”
“
Oh shit
,” she moaned, eyes closing as her head fell back to bang against the wall, rolling from side to side, and a low laugh rumbled up from his chest at the sound of a cuss word leaving her lips.
Bracing himself on one forearm beside her head, Mark cupped the slick heat of her mound, his jaw hardening at the feel of it, like smooth silk, so warm and ready. Her unique, feminine scent floated on the air with the gentle stirring of the breeze, and she quivered as he drew a deep, satisfying breath into his lungs, knowing he could get high on this woman’s scent. It was that powerful, that erotically intoxicating, and he wondered what her taste in those intimate places would do to him. If he’d be able to survive it, or if it would leave him pitifully addicted.
“So tight,” he groaned, his voice strained as he stroked the swollen ridge of her vulva, dipping the thick tip of his index finger carefully inside, testing her. “How long’s it been since you had a hard cock shoved up this tiny opening? How long since you had this sweet little cunt crammed full of dick and fucked ‘til you screamed yourself hoarse?”
“Mark?” she panted, her own voice coming ragged and breathless, while her shivering body shook in his arms.
“Months? A year?” he demanded, grunting from the incredible feel of her as she clenched around him while he pressed deeper within, penetrating her, stroking the rough tip against those slippery inner tissues. The strong muscles resisted, struggling against his invasion as he forced himself into her. He cursed softly under his breath when the narrow walls trembled, fluttering around him, milking his finger better than any woman he’d ever taken with his body.
“T-t-two years,” she stammered, holding onto him as if she expected him to save her, to keep her safe, to offer her some kind of tenderness, when deep down he now knew the ugly truth. Those misty, big brown eyes might burn with warmth and promises, but there was only a basic need hiding beneath. Just a hungry urge to use him and lose him. Yeah, that kind of urge he knew all too well, having gone through more women than he could remember, making use of them to ease his own physical needs. With his reputation, the women he’d known had looked to him for a rough-and-tumble, intensely satisfying ride, which had always suited him just fine, since he was ready to move on the next day anyway. Hell, he was usually ready to move on after a few hours, once he’d screwed them through the mattress and spent himself dry. What was the point in staying after that? His own bed was bigger, less crowded, and a hell of a lot more comfortable than waking up with someone he didn’t have two words to say to.
No, the women he’d known knew better than to look to him for the long term, and he didn’t look past what he could get out of them. All in all, it’d been an even exchange, all parties satisfied, no unexpected or unpleasant emotions weighing the whole thing down, muddying the water…until Melanie Green moved her sweet little ass to town. Until then, he hadn’t realized what he was missing—hadn’t understood until he’d found it. Until he’d found
her
.
Before meeting Melanie, he’d considered himself lucky that women understood him for what he was and didn’t nag him for more than he could give.
But the fact that she looked at him the same way made him sick.
Hell, it probably wasn’t any less than he deserved, but why did it have to be Melanie? Why the
one
woman who’d ever managed to slip her way into his heart, so smooth and easy, he hadn’t even been able to mount a proper defense?
Why did she have to be so sweet? Why did she have to feel so fucking right in his arms? It wasn’t fair. It was hell.
Shit, it was a goddamn nightmare.
With the softness of a butterfly’s wings, she reached down and pressed the warm heat of her palm against the painful, heavy ridge of his cock, then turned her hand to stroke the thick shaft with the backs of her fingers. “I-I didn’t really believe all those rumors,” she whispered, “but they were true.”