Page 179 of Dirty Rival
“You’ll come, just not until I’m ready for you to come.” And just that fast, he’s moving, sliding down my body, pausing to kiss my bound hands, his eyes reaching for mine, his fingers catching my nipples, tugging and twisting with a rough touch that has my legs clenching together. “Now I’m going to lick you,” he says again, and he’s lowering himself between my thighs, and then he’s doing just as he promised. He’s licking me, and oh God, is he licking me. His tongue is everywhere that I need him, and I’ve forgotten I’m even tied up until I reach for his head and dive my fingers into his hair, that silk wrap controlling how I can move. Actually, it’s me who wants to control how he moves because I want to come. I need to come and he’s promised to deny me.
And he does.
I’m so right there, about to tumble over, and suddenly, he’s flipping me over onto my knees, and yanking my backside up in the air. Adrenaline spikes through me, but I don’t have the time to anticipate the spanking. His fingers are stroking me, sliding inside me, preparing me for what I know is coming, and I can’t seem to care. I just want him to keep touching me.
Chapter eighty-nine
Carrie
Apparently being bound and on my hands and knees doesn’t bother me when Reid is touching me, especially considering he’s now denied me his mouth and an orgasm. He strokes his fingers along my sex, pumping his fingers inside me and then he denies me yet again. He pulls them out, pressing one hand to my belly, and the other to my backside. “What am I going to do now, Carrie?” he demands softly, caressing my backside, warming it for his palm, I think, or maybe he’s just teasing me with what comes next.
“Spank me,” I pant.
“Yes.” He squeezes my cheek. “I am. How many times?”
“Five,” I whisper.
He caresses a path back to my sex and starts to pat, the sensation driving me crazy, little darts of pleasure shooting through me. “How close are you to coming?”
“Reid, damn it.” I look over my shoulder. “Stop teasing me. Spank me and then fuck me already.”
He answers me by smacking my backside, the sting shocking me and I arch into the touch while Reid is suddenly pressing inside me in a long, hard thrust. I gasp with the unexpected rush of sensation, only to have him spank me again, followed immediately by yet another thrust. Heat rushes over me. I am hot, so very hot, and aroused, every nerve ending in my body on fire. He pumps and spanks, pumps and spanks, and it’s bittersweet when we reach the final smack of my backside, this one being the hardest of all. It bites and stings and as surely as he delivers it, he’s driving into me again and I just want more. So much more. I’m in the center of a tunnel of sensations and this man just keeps pushing me to a new place, a deeper place, a darker, more erotic place, until here, now, I’m over the edge. I shatter, literally, it seems as this deep ball of pleasure starts in my sex and radiates through my body. I lose everything; time, space, reality.
Reid’s low, guttural moan pulls me back to the present, and he grinds into me as he begins to quake. I smile with the intensity of his body’s eruption and soon he’s rolling to his side and dragging me with him, my back to his front. He slides his leg between mine and then strokes my hair. “You okay, baby?”
I relax into all that hard perfection of his body. “I’m pretty perfect right about now. You?”
He doesn’t answer, in fact, his fingers that were absently caressing my bare hip go utterly, completely still. “Reid?” I ask, confused by his reaction.
He exhales as if he’s been holding that breath, and then catches my hip and pulls me even closer. “You have no idea what you do to me, woman.” He cups my face and tilts my head back, his mouth finding mine, and he kisses me, a slow, emotional kiss that isn’t about sex, but love. This kiss is filled with so much love. “No one but you ever asks me if I’m okay,” he says when his lips leave mine.
“You’re not, are you?” I ask. “Talk to me, Reid,” I plead, my hands going to his hand on my face, and I try to twist around, but he’s still inside me, he’s still holding me in place.
“Of course, I am,” he says, the word defying the fact that he won’t let me turn and look at him. “I’m laying here naked with my future wife. I’m fucking perfect.” He kisses me again and then he’s shifting us, reaching for my hands and untying them. “Don’t move, baby,” he orders. “I’ll get you something. I’ll be right back.” He stands up and I roll over to watch him walk away, all naked, sinewy muscle, to the bathroom where he disappears. I stare at the doorway that he doesn’t immediately exit and decide he’s not okay. He’s not even close to okay.
I stand up, grab some tissues from the nightstand, and then find my robe lying on the floor by the bed. I snatch it up, slip it on, pulling it around me as I cross to the bathroom to find out what is going on with my man. Entering the open door, I find him now in a pair of sweats facing the sink, his hands on the counter, his chin to his chest, torment radiating off of him. My gorgeous man, who I’d once thought without real feelings, is hurting, and I fear that in some ways I’ve opened up his wounds. I’ve cut him where he was already cut.
I close the space between us and press my hand to his shoulder. “Reid?”
He pulls me between him and the sink, his hands on my waist, his face buried in my neck. “You smell like me.”
My hand goes to his face. “I want to smell like you for the rest of my life. Talk to me.”
He’s slow to move, but he inches back and fixes me in a blue-eyed stare. “Old wounds, baby. You know I have them.”
“There’s more to tonight than the old wounds I know about. What haven’t you told me?”
He studies me for several long beats. “I need a drink.” He kisses my temple. “I’ll meet you downstairs.” And then he pushes away and walks out of the bathroom.
I stand there, staring after him, and confused by what just happened, by the closed door that was just slammed in my face. I swallow hard at the stab of his rejection that I know comes from my own old wounds, that part of me that fears loving and losing.
I force myself to set aside my emotions and think about Reid, just Reid, the way he did for me when I was bound in the middle of the bedroom. And so, I process what just happened, all the way back to dinner and I decide that he needs a few minutes alone to gather his thoughts, and that’s okay. Love and marriage don’t mean that you don’t ever need space. I walk to the closet, pull on sweats and a tank, and then walk to the window in the bedroom, staring out at the beautiful night sky, stars speckling the night, the lights proving this city never sleeps.
I love Reid. I love him so much and just as he understands how my past affects me, I need to understand how this affects him. He will have triggers. He will want to withdraw and I suddenly realize why tonight set me on edge, why being tied up in the silence got to me. He wasn’t completely with me. He’d already withdrawn. He’s wanted more from me, but he’d been giving me less. I felt it even before he walked out of that bathroom door. The question is: Do I let him withdraw? I think I have to. I can’t force him to be here with me one hundred percent, but I can’t marry him if he can’t. I suck in a pained breath. Maybe that’s what he’s decided. He can’t be here, not all in, not all the way.
I press my hands on the glass, hating how badly that idea hurts, but his withdrawal triggers my abandonment issues. These two things are bad in combination, and for the first time since the proposal, I fear we can’t make this work. “Carrie.”
Reid’s voice sounds behind me and I turn to find him approaching, already back, and with two glasses in his hand that say he was thinking of me, of us, not of ways to keep us apart. “I brought you wine,” he says, studying me a moment before he sets both glasses down, catching my hips and pulling me around to him.