Why was this so hard? I fought every instinct to surrender to my wild, emotionally crazed ex-boyfriend who had taken me so many times before. We couldn’t do this.
My lips refused to breathe the word no, but what would happen if I didn’t refuse him? If I let him back into my life? My bed?
My body.
He unfastened my jeans, and my breath squeezed too tight in my lungs. God, I was unraveling. I was always a few chocolate chips short of a functional cookie in his presence. Now, I melted at his feet. His stare was too much to handle while my memories danced through our every romantic moment and passionate embrace.
I couldn’t free myself from his grip. The zipper on my jeans lowered.
I quieted. He didn’t have to hold me. Maddox could’ve pinned me to the wall with just his raptor gaze.
“If you knew how much I missed you.” His voice boiled, a slow and dangerous rumble. He traced the exposed patch of my belly hiding under the zipper. “I spent every minute of my sentence thinking of you.”
What might have been romantic only made this so much harder. “Maddox—”
“I worried about you.” His hand tightened on my wrists. I heard the bite in his words, but it hung as a fearful question rather than a lunge for my throat. “Were you safe?”
I nodded.
“Don’t lie to me.”
My voice wavered. “I’m not lying. I was fine.”
“Someone burned down your store, Sweets. You almost died. I had nightmares that they’d try again and I wouldn’t be there to protect you.”
My heart pounded. “I’m not yours to worry about anymore.”
“Like hell.”
He released my hands if only so he could hold me with both of his. His lips crushed me, and he pressed me into the wall. I shivered, trapped between heat, muscle, and an undeniable desire that layered me in the goose bumps only he could create. Every shift of his body churned a deeper, desperate urge for his touch, his kiss, his…
Everything.
I groaned against him. Maddox tugged my jeans down. My panties tucked inside the denim. I had only a moment to prevent this mistake.
I was too slow.
Maddox remembered everything about my body, including how to tease where I was the most vulnerable. He stroked between my legs, finding shamefully slick folds. I learned how to pleasure myself once he was gone, but nothing rocked me harder than the flick of his fingers against my clit.
Fireworks and sprinkles and a crash of desire.
It had been so long since anything felt as good as his invasive, dominating, and skillful fingers. I’d humiliate myself by coming before my jeans were even kicked off or I could reprimand him for his behavior.
Before I could tell him no.
“You’ve always been mine,” Maddox whispered, as if he could read the unspoken words falling from my parted lips. “You promised me, Josie.”
“So much has changed…”
“We’ll change it back.”
Like it was that easy. My voice trembled. He pinched and rolled and flicked my clit, doing everything he could to weaken me before I could push him away. I wasn’t strong enough to oppose him, but a single whisper would bring him to his knees.
“We can’t.” I shuddered as his finger dipped into my wetness. “We broke up. You went to jail…”
“I was innocent.”
What was more torturous—his adamant denial or his harsh strikes against my sensitive, overwhelmed clit?
“It’s complicated, Maddox.”
His voice dropped. “Is there someone else?”
Just the thought destroyed me. “No. Never.”
And that truth declared my complete submission to him. Maddox always loved that he was the first and only man who’d ever touched me. He’d taken my innocence, trained my body to accept his fierce desires, and celebrated as my arousal turned to addiction. I wasn’t myself when I shared his bed. I became someone passionate, raw, wild. Whipped with lust.
I only escaped once the world crashed around us in violence and frightening flames. Without him in my life…my head cleared, but my heart broke. It wasn’t a trade I would have ever made. Now I suffocated once more and betrayed my newfound independence with the slick promise inviting him between my legs.
Maddox lifted me, breaking my protests with a harsh kiss. He slammed me against the wall and forced my legs over his waist. I clung to him as his lips nibbled mine. My mind swirled. Everything tempted shivers, even when his teeth bit hard into my neck.
His cock swelled within his jeans, pressed against the part of me that craved it the most. We used to fuck like this—so wild and overwhelmed by each other we had no choice but to surrender to our instincts wherever we were. Everything in his arms felt so natural then.
So why was I punishing myself now? What did I protect—my heart from breaking or Maddox from…everything?
He freed himself from the jeans as he silenced me with an invading tongue. His inescapable grip on my hips would bruise. I’d heal. It didn’t matter. I panted against him.
I was appallingly wet.
He loved it.
“We planned a life together…” Maddox broke the kiss. His words lost the edge as he ground against me. His touch wasn’t soft, but his arms were always so safe. They’d protect me from everything but my own lust. “I’ve never wanted anyone but you, Sweets.”
“I know.”
“Say it.”
I whimpered over his kiss. “There’s never been anyone else.”
My admission strengthened him. He growled, low and deep. “We’re gonna start again, Josie. You and me. Right now.” His breath tickled my ear. Was I supposed to fight him or surrender to a fantasy I thought was all but lost? “I’ve already planned our life together. Imagined it every day.”
“We have to talk.”
He shifted me, and my slit struck against bare cock—hard and thick and throbbing for me.
“No talking,” he said. “We don’t need words now.”
“It’s too complicated. Everything’s changed.”
“Only because we let it change.”
“That’s not how life works.”
“Bullshit. Of course it is. If you want something, you take it.” His eyes burned, hot and feral. The corners of his lips twisted into a dangerous smile. “If I want you, I take you. If I want a life with you, I make it.”
“Wait—”
“We planned for it before. Don’t pretend like it meant nothing to you.”
“It meant everything to me, but…”
“Then I’ll give it to you. I’ll get you the life you wanted.” His kiss was a bluff. I knew he shifted my hips. I held my breath as he whispered his promises. “We’ll be together, Sweets. Share a life. A house. Your store.”
“Maddox—”
His grip tightened. “And we’re finally going to have a baby.”
My eyes widened as his cock thrust into me.
Completely.
And nothing had ever compared to him.
That thick, impossibly large cock was made to punish me in a dangerous game of pleasure, dominance, and lust. Maddox always overwhelmed me. Tonight was no different.
He pounded me, burying deep, deep, deep until I could only cling to him and beg to wait, to stop, and to give me everything he had promised.
He filled me completely, bottoming out until we were skin to skin. It had been a year since I last felt him, and I had no idea how I survived the separation.
He didn’t fuck me. He claimed me. He sheathed in me to prove my body was made for him. He embedded himself to remind me that he was the only man who I ever let take me. He thrust to ensure I heeded his every word.
He wanted me to be his again.
Except…he’d never lost me. What I did, I did because I’d loved him.
And he could never know.
“I missed you…” His words rasped as he withdrew his cock. He teased me, watching as I whined, wiggled, and begged for him once more. He slammed inside me, and I rocked against the wall. My core clenched, surrendering to a pleasure only he could give. “I needed you.”
“I’m here,” I whispered.
“You’re mine.”
His cock stretched me too much, too deep, too hard, too fast. So why did my body shudder in wicked delight with another aggressive grind?
“I want all of you.” Maddox grunted. “Everything, Sweets. I have to be a part of your life again.”
“We can’t.”
“I don’t believe you.”
My fingers tightened on his arms. His strokes stole my breath, hitched with each crazed slam against the wall. I couldn’t think, but I could feel. My heart told me I was doing the right thing. My body ordered me to obey him.
“We have to stop.”
He only moved faster, harder. “I already have you, Josie.”
I bit my lip.
“I’m fucking you,” he said.
I whimpered.
“I’m in your head. Your heart. You and me are made for each other.”
I cried out as he sliced inside me, completely sealed within me. Every fierce and unyielding stroke of his thick cock whipped me into a shameful pleasure.
“We aren’t good for each other,” I whispered. “Not anymore.”
“You’re lying to me.” His fingers tightened. “Tell me you haven’t imagined this moment every minute of every day since I was locked up.”
Of course I had imagined it. His body and touch and fierceness lived an endless fantasy in my mind. In the darkest moments of the night, I longed for nothing more than to be pinned under him again, to be taken as his obsession and his prize.