Part 7 (1/2)

He laughed softly at the way her voice trembled. ”Haven't you figured it out already, babe?” he said in her ear. ”When it comes to s.e.x, I like to run the show. I'm a control freak.”

”Only when it comes to s.e.x?” she repeated in a mocking tone. Then her breath caught in her throat. ”Wait a sec. You mean a regular control freak or the super-deluxe, yes-master-no-master-collar-me-and-put-me-on-my-knees-master version? Because frankly I don't-”

He barked out a laugh. ”Just the regular kind, sweetheart. I love any scenario where I'm dominant, but I don't go for slave fantasies. Or for pain. No collars, no whips, no cans, no s.h.i.+t like that. Although you can call me master anytime you want. I won't mind.”

She gave him a scowl. ”Sure, because you need the extra encourage-”

That last word died on her throat as he splayed his hands over her stomach and caressed her, feeling her flesh clench under his touch. Then he moved higher, over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He couldn't feel any skin under his fingers, just hard material.

”What's that?” By the feel of it, a roadblock the size of Alaska.

”What? Ah, vintage bra.”

He glanced over. Yep, it looked like those bras from the fifties, hard cups and a death trap of hooks almost reaching to her midriff.

Then it dawned on him. ”Ah, now I get it. The long sleeves, the tight jeans, the belt, the vintage bra. All this is to keep me out, right?”

She harrumphed. ”For all the good it's doing me, I shouldn't have bothered.”

He laughed. ”Oh, sweetheart, all you have to say is no.”

”Really?”

He nodded and kissed her jaw, nibbling and licking down her neck, feeling her pulse beat madly against his lips while he cupped her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and she shuddered. ”But you can't say no, can you?”

Her nipples were so tight he could feel them through the thick material. As he began playing with them, she let out a soft moan and strained against him. ”No...I can't say no.”

Thank f.u.c.king G.o.d. For a second he'd feared she was going to turn him down. Cole would have walked away from her, howling at the moon from the injustice of it, but he would have. He was relieved it wasn't the case, because he needed to touch her, all over. Delve between her soft thighs. Feel again her p.u.s.s.y clenching madly around him. Like the other night, when she'd started coming right away. So d.a.m.n s.e.xy. That hot pressure was probably going to be permanently imprinted in his brain.

He hadn't gotten any sleep. His s.e.xed-up imagination hadn't let him. He'd tried very hard not to think about her soft t.i.ts, her heart-stopping a.s.s, her killer smile. The way she nibbled at her lower lip and blew her bangs away from her eyes. He'd tried not to imagine how it would feel to have her splayed open for him, her t.i.ts bouncing as he nailed her. But he'd failed miserably. The more he'd tried to stop thinking about her, the more aggressively the images popped into his mind.

Christy on all fours, so tempting, her p.u.s.s.y dripping wet, her folds puffy and ready for him. Christy turning to him, her hair cascading over her arm, those s.e.xy lips of hers swollen from his kisses as he moved over and mounted her, no preliminaries, just straight in to the hilt, with his hand gripping her hair, his body jackhammering her to the bed. And now he was done imagining. Done denying himself. Done fighting the attraction. He was going to throw himself into it and pray really hard it wouldn't backfire on him.

As he began working the b.u.t.ton on her jeans, she stiffened, but he turned her face to him and took her mouth, stealing any protest she might have uttered. Christy's body softened right away. She tasted so good. He wasn't too big on kissing, never liked the intimacy and closeness of it, but, boy, could he get used to sucking at these sweet lips.

”Your skin is so smooth and soft, I love it,” he whispered to her while his fingers brushed the waistband of her panties and dipped under it.

She jerked. ”Cole, stop. We need to talk,” she said, trying to wrench his hand away from her crotch.

”Okay, babe, let's talk.” He stilled his touch. He didn't know whether he'd be able to listen to a d.a.m.n thing with the way his blood was pounding in his ears, but whatever, he'd give it a try.

She squirmed, but he kept his hold on her, his hand cupping her mound proprietarily, his middle finger sinking between her folds from all her writhing.

”Cole, this would work much smoother if you remove your hand from between my legs.”

”Why? Are you gonna be talking with your p.u.s.s.y?” They could talk, but he needed the contact.

She harrumphed but let it go. ”My body...my body is not like yours.”

”Thank G.o.d for that.”

”I'm serious, Cole. I mean your body is...well, your body is d.a.m.ned perfect. Mine isn't.”

”Bulls.h.i.+t.”

She ignored him. ”It didn't bother me this much when I was with other men. Their bodies were normal, but yours is breathtaking. It makes me more self-conscious than usual.”

He clenched his jaw. He so didn't want to hear her talk about being with other men. He was going to interrupt, but she hurried on. ”I was fat, Cole. Very fat. I'm not talking about panicking for being five pounds overweight, or for eating one extra carrot. No, I'm talking about seventy extra pounds. I'm talking about years and years of gaining and losing dozens of pounds, shrinking and ballooning like a...like a frigging puffer fish. I was either on my way up, bingeing my brains out, or I was on my way down, starving myself, which, believe me, never lasted. At my heaviest I was two hundred pounds. Two hundred pounds, Cole. I don't think you realize what that is.”

”Babe, I weigh more than two hundred pounds.”

She snorted. ”Duh! Hard muscle all of it, not to mention you stand at six feet four. I was six feet four...wide. I know it's difficult to imagine now that I'm more or less a normal size, and I look more acceptable...”

Acceptable? She thought she looked acceptable? Cole couldn't believe what he was hearing. He'd seen her bossing his men around in the library, and although she'd said she was just a programmer, Annie had mentioned that Christy was considered something of a software genius. It was unbelievable how someone as confident and as smart in other areas would now look so vulnerable and unsure when talking about her body. A body that was making his c.o.c.k stand so hard for so long he feared it was going to crack at the base every time he tried to separate it from his stomach, where it had taken up permanent residence since first seeing Christy.

”I don't know what you see in the mirror when you stare at yourself, sweet thing, but this is what your body does to me,” he said, pressing his throbbing erection against her. ”I've been hard since the first moment I saw you. You've hijacked my brain and my body. So much so that nowadays I count myself lucky the mornings I wake up with a motherf.u.c.king b.o.n.e.r instead of coming all over myself. You're more than acceptable, honey. h.e.l.l, any more acceptable and you'd give me a stroke.”

”Maybe while dressed I'm acceptable,” she interrupted him. ”I'm better now, I lost the extra weight, but my body still bears the scars. And I'm thirty-four, not one of those extremely skinny twenty-five-year-old bimbos with t.i.ts pointing north who run after you. I'm not what you're accustomed to.”

That ticked him off. ”What would you know about what I'm accustomed to? Have you seen me ever f.u.c.king any of those bimbos? No, you haven't, because I don't. They are just kids. I'm thirty-seven. I like real women, with real t.i.ts and real a.s.ses. Half-starved Lolitas don't turn me on.”

She pressed on. ”Before I got a hold on my craziness with food, I managed to do some harm to my body, Cole. I've got cottage cheese thighs. And m.u.f.fin top too.”

”m.u.f.fin what?”

”You know, that fat that comes over the waist of the jeans?”

He chuckled. ”You're nuts.”

”My belly is covered in stretch marks,” she told him.

”This belly?” he asked, caressing it. ”I feel nothing but smooth, soft female skin. And no m.u.f.fin top either.”

”I used creams. The marks are small, but they are there. And there's not only that.” Now that she'd started, she seemed eager to let it out. ”My body jiggles. My muscles aren't as firm as they should be. Neither are my b.r.e.a.s.t.s or my thighs. Or my a.s.s, for that matter.”

He stroked her thighs, then moved up to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. ”These thighs? These b.r.e.a.s.t.s? The a.s.s that is actually torturing the h.e.l.l out of my poor d.i.c.k? To me they feel perfect.” They'd feel better without all these clothes in between them so he could kiss and suckle them freely.

”They aren't. And that's why me and s.e.x don't mingle well. The guys I was intimate with were...harmless. I always turned down the ones that I sensed could take me out of my comfort zone. You take me out of my comfort zone, big-time.”

”Glad to hear it.”

Her expression was worried. ”I'm not sure it's a good thing.”

”Trust me, it is. Going out of one's comfort zone is what turns s.e.x into a mind-blowing experience.” He moved his hands downward again.

”Cole...”