“Abbi, please—”
He broke off as she squeezed on him and worked faster still.
“You want me to ride you, Joe?” she asked, rising up so only the head of him remained inside her.
“Abbi—” His voice cracked as she smashed back down onto him, taking him whole. Squeezing and rocking and rubbing.
“Abbi.”
She wasn’t stopping. She wasn’t ever stopping.
“You still want more?” she asked, smacking the palms of her hands back on his chest, using his solid strength to work against.
“You,” he answered. “I want you.”
Love, happiness, pleasure exploded in her heart.
She reached forward and kissed him again. Kissed him like she’d never kissed him before. She sucked on his lips and lashed with her tongue—deep and demanding and pouring every ounce of her passion into him. Because he was gorgeous and giving and commanding and she wanted to embrace it all—every aspect of him. She wanted to be the one who filled that gap that she was sure was within his soul. She wanted to love him.
And as she poured all that had to remain unspoken into her kiss, her whole body shook as she took him—loved him. Her own orgasm caught her by surprise.
She tore her lips free, her head falling back as she groaned in frustration and tried to ride him harder still. But all her energy had been expended in that intense orgasm; she cried out as she slowed. But Joe answered. He thrust up in one final, fierce movement, the veins in his neck popping, his muscles bunched and straining as his release ripped through him and into her.
“Abbi.”
She collapsed over him, wrung out and weak, his harsh cry echoing in her head. That one word, her name, so raw. So filled with need.
Abbi lay quiet, blanketing him for a few moments. But then she moved, deftly undoing the knots in her now-even-more-favorite scarf. She needed to feel his arms around her. She needed to be held.
He lifted his head to kiss her skin as she reached over his face to free his wrists, then wrapped his arms around her, carefully rolling her off him so she lay on her back.
He sighed—a deep, ragged sigh—and bent over her. He ran his tongue from her wet slit, over her clit, up her belly and between her breasts to her neck, finally to her mouth. His kiss was deep, demanding. She tasted herself on his tongue as he claimed possession.
He lifted his head just enough to look into her face. He looked for a long time. Abbi stilled as she tried to read the fast-flickering expression in his eyes. But then his lashes lowered.
“Red, sweaty, sated,” he muttered. “Just how a well-screwed woman should look.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Maintain the mystery.”
It had been a jerk-ass thing to say. Deliberately so. Bastard that he was.
But he’d been so exposed. Had felt raw. And he’d retaliated. Rejected the intense intimacy that had built between them. He’d had to push back. Push away. He’d left not long after. She hadn’t even been able to look him in the eye.
Regret tasted so bitter. Joe couldn’t spit the taste from his mouth. But it was for the best, right?
He’d have put her off the last lesson for sure. He’d probably never hear from her again. And wasn’t that a good thing? Wasn’t that what he wanted? His space?
It was best for her anyway. She’d be better off without him.
In the end, everyone was. And shit, as piteous as that sounded, it was what worked for him.
But he couldn’t concentrate on work. He’d taken extra classes just to fill in time, to try to exhaust himself, but really he’d only gone through the motions. He hadn’t bothered with dinner. Now, two nights since he left her, still restless, he went to his desk and pulled out the plans for the third gym conversion. Already he’d lined up a space in a city a couple hours away. Time to extend his reach and build his empire. Again it was a warehouse conversion. He liked the rough-hewn industrial vibe. The apartment at the top was identical to the one he had here. It had just the essentials.
All he needed.
…
Abbi clutched the bills in her hand, ready to toss them at the taxi driver. She was not backing off from this crazy plan.
Joe’s throwaway parting words the other night had crushed her. She’d made love to him—wild and frantic and desperately trying to convey with her body just how much she wanted him and liked him and yearned for things she had no business wanting…
But he’d just been treating it as another of her lessons. That she should enjoy being the boss, enjoy extracting her pleasure, that she shouldn’t be afraid of getting red and sweaty during sex, shouldn’t be embarrassed about how she looked when she was with him. And then he’d made the excuse of work, again, and left as quickly as he could.