Ignoring him, undeterred, she ran her fingers downward. “It’s not ugly. It’s part of you.”
He stilled, was quiet as she traced over his scarred flesh. She noticed his jaw clenched tight; his lips compressed in a tight line, increasing the lines around his mouth. Narrowed eyes were darting as though trying to puzzle out what she was seeing; why she wanted to see. Disquiet rolled off him.
She returned her eyes to his back as he let out a gruff scoff, “Your husband know you were a poet? You need a quill and scroll?”
Cassidy didn’t pay any attention to his jibe; she recognized the defensive statements for what they were. There was a touch of cruelty, though, for him to bring up Elijah as they were standing naked in a more intimate moment than sex. Stepping even closer to him, she asked, “Can you feel this?” She made a small pattern on his destroyed back.
Standing tense, Mac glanced over his shoulder at her, clearly uncomfortable, but he answered, “No. Just pressure.”
Dropping her towel, she stepped up to him, pressing herself to him, sliding a hand around his hip to his stomach. Her other hand caressed the scar slashing across his buttocks.
His body was rigid, his breathing abrupt.
When she kissed the back of his neck, he grasped her wrist, ripping it away from him as he turned with a low rumble. The next instant, his hand was around her throat, dragging her close. Her eyes were wide, startled by the sudden, violent move.
“You’re overstepping. You’re here to get fucked. We aren’t bonding.”
She blinked up at him, her hands over his at her neck, stunned. “Mac!”
Pivoting them both, he slammed her up against the wall, crowding her. Reaching down, he grasped her thigh, hitching it over his hip, pressing his erection against her. “Yes or no?”
Apology and pleading in her eyes, she still couldn’t deny how her entire body erupted at his touch—even as rough as he was being. Christ, more so. She was as deranged as him. She managed a nod, hating that he stripped her of all pride, dragging her vulnerability out into the light and mocking it, exploiting it. With her acquiescence.
“Need to hear you.”
She swallowed, licking her dry lips; his eyes dropped there. He stared for a moment as she answered, “Yes.”
His eyes returned to bore into her, pinning her in place. He reached next to them into the medicine cabinet and withdrew a condom. Ripping it open with his teeth, he took his eyes from hers only long enough to roll it on. Then those piercing orbs returned to her, steamy and hungry and promising to break her.
“Mac, please,” she begged.
Damn it, she hated that shade over his eyes. She’d seen it lifted briefly, but she wanted to go beyond it.
And she knew he never wanted her to go there again.
Grasping her jaw, he angled her head back as he pressed closer, lowering his head and silencing anything else she may have said. At the same time, his fingers found their way between her legs, sliding slowly in her slickness before diving in. His kiss swallowed her cry, but her body convulsed against his hand, the leg around his hip pressing inward, pulling him closer.
His thumb massaged her, his fingers fucked her, his mouth devoured hers. Her arms wrapped around his neck, and she was clinging to him for dear life. Shuddering beneath his touch and crying out against his lips, she started to unravel, her head beginning to toss as she all but tried to climb him with the one leg still hooked around him. He forced her head still as he watched her.
Her leg beneath her threatened to buckle; her fingers clawed at his flesh. She bucked against him, biting at his lips in her heightened state. And when she exploded, arching off the wall into him, she watched him devour her response, memorizing every eyelash flutter, tremble of muscle in her belly, panted breath, and the whisper of his name.
She sagged against the wall, and her leg slid from his hip. She was embarrassed at how quickly he’d had her to the summit and over. Her entire body was hot and throbbing. She dragged her eyelids open. He had a satisfied smirk on his face.
“You aren’t done.” The reminder came with a dose of derision that somehow sounded sexy when it should have made her want to slap him.
Just sated, her body was once again greedy for more.
As roughly and abruptly as he’d handled her moments ago, he grasped her arm and spun her. Before she was able to catch herself on the wall, he was pulling her hips back toward him. He was at her entrance, and then, in one powerful thrust, he buried himself fully.
With a silent cry, squeezing her eyes shut as she pressed her forehead into the wall, she raised on her tiptoes. Even with the amount of her body’s natural lubricant, his size required finesse. She tried to relax her muscles around him, to accommodate him.
He gathered her hair at her nape; water squeezed from it as he pulled her head back by the wet strands, leaning down to breathe roughly into her ear. “Fuck, Day. Fucking heaven, this.” And he slowly withdrew.
Cassidy breathed in relief as he eased out of her, then just as lazily made his way back in, as though wanting to feel every twitch and convulsion of her walls as her body accommodated his size. His curses fell out of his mouth gruffly as he repeated the exercise, his chest pressed to her back, one hand still caught in her hair, forcing her head back, the other grasping her hip.
The torturously slow pace at which he moved, following such a jarring entry, allowed her body to catch up, to thrill again at every sensation. And it did, and she did, to the point she found herself pushing back against him to speed him along. He breathed out a soft laugh against her neck, causing her to shiver.
“Enjoying being inside you; don’t rush me.”