The Phoenix Candidate(56)

I still, waiting for him.

Blindfolded, anticipation is equal parts torment and pleasure, making every sound, every slight touch more needful. He teases me with the head of his cock until we’re slick, and drives inside me.

“You don’t know what you do to me, how much I needed this,” Jared growls, his rhythm building. “I need you, Grace, in every way you can imagine. I need to push you and make you beg, make you want and wonder. I need this control, because I need to know you’re not controlling me.”

A little cry escapes me as the force of him steals my breath. It’s impossible to focus, and yet I think this might be the most honest he’s ever been about what’s happening between us.

“I don’t want to control you. I just—need—you.” My mind spins with that admission, that my fierce independence has been compromised by something or someone I can’t command. If I need Jared, it makes me vulnerable. It gives him power to take it away, to hurt me.

And yet. I need him. Desperately.

I buck my hips against him, rocking furiously as my climax builds, as I feel the muscles inside me clench and spasm around his length.

“You wreck me, Grace. You’re truth and beauty. You’re power and passion. You’re my drug, my clarity. And you are fucking mine.”

With his last words, our bodies slam together and I explode in a climax that forces me to shout his name, and God’s, and probably wake up the neighbors. The orgasms from our late-night phone calls are nothing. Nothing, compared to the fullness of him inside me, driving me higher and further than I thought I could go.

I’m captured, unable to touch him or see him, but he’s everywhere, his hands moving across my body, his mouth nipping up my neck, across my cheek.

His lips brush mine. So softly, so swiftly, I almost miss it. I turn toward his face, or at least where I imagine his face to be, searching for his lips again.

I get nothing. His rhythm changes, his hips buck harder. He’s pounding against me and I’m hanging on for dear life, my knees wrapped around his narrow hips, ankles crossed like he could buck off me at any minute.

I twist and move again, needing his lips to find me. How long has it been? Five weeks since that night in the bar? More? It feels like a lifetime, like we’ve grown a real relationship.

And yet he won’t kiss me.

And I’m done with that. I feel his ass clench, his muscles tense as he works toward his own climax. And my climax is building again too, threatening to sweep away my yearning thoughts that desire the kind of intimacy he won’t offer.

I’ve tried. He’s refused. And I’m left in a sea of confusion.

“Jared. Jared, I need you.”

“I’m right here, Grace,” he pants, and his hips grind harder. “I’ll give you anything you need.”

“I need your lips. Now. I need you to kiss me.”

“Grace—” His tone is warning.

“Now, Jared! Give me one fucking minute of kissing! Or get off me.”

Jared’s body goes tense, and then slack. He moves to pull out, but I don’t let him, I squeeze my thighs around him harder, my heels digging into his ass.

“Don’t you dare pull away from me, Jared Rankin,” I hiss. “Don’t you dare leave me like this when I felt your lips two seconds ago. I know you want this.”

“Grace—”

I cut him off again. “Don’t Grace me. Take off this fucking blindfold and kiss me senseless.”

Jared’s fingers slip under the silk of his tie, loosening it from my face. When I’m eye to eye with him, his cock still buried inside me, I look in his face, and I know.

I fucking know. I know I can’t let this man get away with leaving up his walls, any more than he’s letting me get away with wanting something but being unable to express it.

A little bondage? A little spanking? That’s my taboo.

Kissing? That’s his.

“Do you want me to take off your bindings, too?” Jared searches my face, his eyes crinkling with worry.

“No.” I answer clearly, deliberately. “I want you to move inside me again. I want you to touch me everywhere. But more than anything, I want your lips on mine.”

Jared rests his torso on his elbows and I feel him press forward to bring his mouth closer to mine. He chickens out, though, and goes for my cheek first.

Cheek to cheek, there’s a sweetness to this, and I struggle to get a hand free to touch him.

“Let me.” Jared’s voice wavers and he grabs my wrist. His thumb slides across my pulse and loosens the hosiery. He repeats the process with my other hand, and I’m free.

I run my hands up his arms, over his shoulders, along his neck, and feel his stubble tickle beneath my fingernails. He’s still holding back. So I push one arm and one leg out to the side, rolling us.