Taking Control Read online

  The memory of her excitement at swallowing my hard length spurs me on. Her voice—hoarse after I’ve fucked her throat hard—telling me how much she loves sucking me off echoes in my head, a mental soundtrack I replay repeatedly. I need to hear her screams now. Those noisy affirmations of how much she needs me are the most amazing morning wakeup calls in the world.

  I’m too horny right now to lick her slowly. I need to feel her orgasm all over my face, to have her thighs clench my head in a vise grip, as if nothing is ever going to separate the two of us.

  I suck at her lips, separating the folds with my tongue. Placing my thumb—wet from her arousal—on her clit, I tease her with tongue and lips until her thighs are moving restlessly beside my head, bumping my ears.

  The taste of her is making me wild. My cock is thick and hard and even the expensive sheets are chafing my sensitive skin. Inside her, my mental caveman grunts. Need inside her.

  I thrust my fingers inside, curling them forward until I find that small, spongy spot that makes her cry out.

  “Oh shit, Ian.” The hand on my head tightens and my scalp begins to protest, but the pain brings a smile to my face. She’s getting there. It’s heaven down here. I could live here, her essence sustaining me for days. Opening my mouth wide, I engulf her pussy. Every little crevice is explored and sucked until her whole body stiffens and arches in front of me. Her soft walls are starting to convulse, and her thighs tighten.

  “That’s it, bunny. Just let go.” I lap at her, maintaining the rhythm that brought her to the peak. She pulses her hips against my fingers and mouth. I torture her with my lips, tongue, and fingers until she’s crying out my name and pulling and pushing against me at the same time. Wrapping my free arm under her thighs and up around her waist to hold her against my mouth, I devour her as she bucks against me. A wild, keening sound erupts from her, and I suck down her come as it streams onto my tongue.

  “Have I told you that I love you?” she whispers and pulls me to her for a fierce kiss. Her teeth nip at mine and then our mouths are fused. For long moments, the only air that we breathe is through each other. Breaking away, she pants and presses soft kisses along my jaw and down my neck.

  “Only once today.” I smooth her hair back. We’ve made a mess of it. The long blonde strands are tangled and matted, but she’s never looked sexier. My gut tightens at the thought that others have seen her in this just-fucked state.

  “What’s that look for?” she asks, smoothing a hand across my sweat-dampened skin.

  “I’m a jealous fucker.” Roughly, I kiss her as if I can brand her with my mouth. No one but me will ever get to see her this disheveled again.

  “Are you just figuring that out, because it was pretty evident a few weeks ago when you dragged me out of the bar by my hair.”

  “It was by your hand, but if you’re okay with the hair dragging, I can pull that off the next time we’re out.”

  She pinches me lightly. “No, I’m not into the hair dragging thing. I’m not against a little hair pulling, though.”

  “Is that right?” My tone is light, but her words have made my cock harder than marble.

  “This can’t be comfortable.” Her hand dips down to stroke me and I shudder at the caress.

  Comfortable? No. “It’ll go away if you ignore it,” I lie.

  “I don’t want to ignore it. I want it inside me.”

  I shake my head. “You’re too sore, bunny.” I rub a finger over her lips, shiny and plump from our kisses. “I’ll hurt you.”

  “I’ll feel worse if you don’t,” she pleads.

  Her gentle begging makes me even harder, and I feel a twinge of guilt that her helpless desire turns me on even more. A decent man wouldn’t feel good about hearing his woman beg. Hell, a decent man probably never refers to his companion as his woman. But since I raised myself from the age of thirteen, I’ve developed my own rules and my own code.

  I want. I take. I keep.

  Tiny belongs to me now, and I’m not letting her go. She’s mine to love and to care for. Right now that means not fucking her again no matter how hard she begs for it.

  TWO

  MY ENTIRE BODY PROTESTS AS I gently pull her hand off my cock. It’s about as easy as walking into a fifty mile-per-hour headwind and I’m sweating with the effort, but I manage to put about two inches of distance between us.

  “Don’t tempt me. You’re too sore, and I’d cut off my right nut before I’d hurt you.”

  “Your right nut? That’s some serious talk. Usually a guy only offers his left nut.” She erases the two inches and slips a leg over mine. My little head tells me that if I don’t impale her within the next five seconds, we’re all going to die. I take a few deep breaths to regain some self-control and inch backward.

  “You can’t talk about another guy’s nuts in our bed. It makes me want to mark my territory.”

  “Come on then, take me.” She rolls on her side and strokes a hand down my chest, trailing her fingers across my abdomen and the hard planes of my obliques. Each little kitten touch is making everything harder. Jackknifing out of bed and away from her clever fingers, I head to the bathroom, rubbing my hair in agitation. Soon I’ll be rubbing something else, because I won’t be able to step foot out of my house without being arrested for public indecency if I don’t do something about this goddamn erection.

  Behind me, I hear her footsteps.

  “Is your dick hard, Ian? Do you want me to lick it?” There’s glee in her voice as she mocks me.

  Fuck yes.

  “No, bunny. I want you to lie down and rest.” Inside the shower, I flick on the full array of sprays.

  “I’m not an invalid, and you’re sucking up at least half the Hudson with that thing,” she says.

  Turning back, I see her, completely nude, leaning against my black marble vanity. She looks like a goddess. I hit the temperature controls. I’m going to need it to be refrigerator cold inside the shower to get rid of my hard-on.

  “Good thing the ‘Bruce Wayne fuckpad’ has a direct drain back into the river.” I use her nickname for my Meatpacking District home.

  “How cold is it in there?” She’s crept closer to the shower, and I can still see her naked body through the water-spattered glass. I turn the water even colder. “Because I think I can see my breath out here.”

  She purses her lips and blows, her cheeks hollowed and her lips a perfect circle. I swear she’s doing this to purposely torment me. Taking my cock in hand, I lean against the glass with the other and stare at her while I pump my shaft. She drifts toward me until there’s nothing separating us but the sheet of glass. The water drives against my back like thin needles but my cock is on fire. Her gaze never wavers from mine and even through the drops of water and the clear glass wall, I can see both her love and her lust.

  I don’t need her hand on me. I just need to see her. She reaches out her hand so that it mirrors mine, the action causing her body to elongate as she stretches. Her breasts press against the glass, the nipples hardening due to the cold, due to me. They’re so hard that they resist flattening, instead poking forward like darts and displacing the soft tissue surrounding them.

  My mouth waters. I’ve had those precious tits in my mouth a dozen times but I can’t wait for a dozen more. I want my tongue flicking against those hard tips. As if she can read my mind, she reaches down and cups one of her breasts. Her fingers roll one hardened nipple between them.

  Breathing choppily, I jerk faster until my thighs are shaking and my balls are ready to burst. “I’m going to come now,” I pant and she nods her head. In understanding? Agreement? I have no idea, but the orgasm rolls up from the base of my spine until I spurt against the glass and on the floor, my hips pumping into the air. I let loose a groan and Tiny’s mouth opens as if she’s swallowing the sound. The air is filled with the musky scent of my ejaculate. She licks her fingers and smiles, an evil temptress smile. God, I fucking love her.

  Without the adrenaline of arousal,
the water is far too cold. I switch the hot on and soap up, lifting the handheld showerhead to wash away the evidence of my jacking off. Tiny has disappeared. I’m simultaneously disappointed and relieved. Disappointed because I want her with me always, and relieved because I don’t think my heart can stand another round right now.

  As quickly as possible, I finish my shower, sticking my head face-forward into the stream and cleaning off. When I turn off the sprayers, a towel is shoved in my face. “Thanks.”

  “Does jerking off feel as good as coming inside me?” she asks, having dressed in the embroidered silk robe my personal shopper insisted I had to own. Tiny’s the only one who’s ever worn it, and it’s so big on her that the front lapels always gape, showing the rounded inner curves of her breasts.

  I gape at her. “Are you kidding? Nothing feels as good on my cock as your hot pussy.”

  She colors at my coarse words, which I find immeasurably charming how one minute she can be an animal and the next a few sex words has her ducking her head like a school girl. I step out of the shower and lean close to kiss her flushed cheek.

  “I just wondered. I mean, I love watching you do it.”

  “Really?” I raise an eyebrow. I knew it turned her on, but hearing her admit it stirs me.

  “Yes.” She bites the left side of her lip and then rushes her words out. “Your body is so expressive. The muscles in your arms flex as you, um, pump, and your stomach clenches as you get close to your big moment.”

  “Big moment?” I can’t fully suppress a smile and the corner of my mouth twitches upward.

  She gives me a baby punch in the arm, and I pull her against me, heedless of my still-damp body. Dipping my face into her warm neck, I take a deep breath of her special scent—a blend of lemon body wash and her own personal aroma. I’d like to bottle it so I could have it with me everywhere. Or just have her with me everywhere.

  “What’s on your agenda today?” I ask.

  “Work. And Sarah called the other day, so we’re trying to meet up for lunch. Maybe today.”

  Exerting some self-control so she doesn’t see a frown of disappointment that I won’t be seeing her until the end of the day, I squeeze her once more before releasing her. “If I’d known that, I would have allowed you to take advantage of me this morning.” I’ve gotten addicted to our lunchtime quickies.

  “I guess you’ll think twice about turning me down tomorrow morning.”

  “No doubt.”

  Tiny is currently working for Jake Tanner, a friend of mine who runs a security firm that provides everything from in home alarm systems to personal protection services to investigative work. He does a lot of insurance company jobs, which he describes as dull but lucrative.

  After Tiny was fired from her bike messenger job for missing work, she took over as his receptionist and dispatcher. He’d recently been given a medical discharge from the Marines and decided to start a security firm instead of rolling around in his family money.

  “Sounds like a plan. I’ll have Steve drive you.”

  She fidgets slightly with the lapels of the robe. Tiny isn’t really that small, but she’s nearly a foot shorter than me and the robe makes her look young—too young to be out in the big, bad city without me. I’d like for her to stay here, in my converted warehouse, where it’s completely safe. Everything she could ever want can be delivered right to our doorstep. As a former bike courier, she should know that, but I know that if I suggested this plan she’d turn on her heels and walk out.

  “What am I doing here, Ian?” she asks finally. Her exhale is so heavy that her entire chest heaves.

  “Making sure I don’t have to jerk off every day?” I say lightly.

  “No, really.” She tightens her belt and shoves a hand through her hair. Because of the tangles, her hand gets caught and she jerks it away from her head with a small curse. “I feel like a complete freeloader. I’m working a job that you arranged. I live in your house. I’m driven to work by your driver-slash-bodyguard. You won’t let me spend money on anything. If you really had your way, I’d be lying on the roof working on a tan.” She throws out her arms in exasperation.

  I’d known she’d been feeling discontent, but I hadn’t realized how deep it went. Worry creeps in and I have the urge to take her back to bed. Imprint myself on her. That’s healthy, I mock myself silently.

  I tip her head up so she’s looking me in the eyes. “Your mom just died. You were grieving. Still are. You aren’t freeloading. You’re allowing me to take care of you, which is a gift.” I press a kiss against her forehead but am deeply concerned by the tension that is vibrating through her frame.

  “What about Richard Howe?” she asks.

  I jerk back in surprise. “What about him?”

  “Maybe if you’d let me help you take him down, I’d feel better. Like I did something for you for a change.”

  Little furrows appear between her brows. I try to smooth them away with my finger. “Let me worry about Howe.”

  “But, Ian,” she protests. “He’s a boil on the ass of humanity. He needs to be gone.”

  She isn’t saying anything I disagree with. I was thirteen when my father died and fifteen when my mother committed suicide. Both events I related directly to Richard Howe. He needs to be finished, but the last thing I want is for her to get more deeply involved in my revenge scheme—a scheme that I had to revise because I couldn’t bait the hook with another woman because that would hurt Tiny.

  I was wrong to allow that shit to even touch her, and now I’m paying for it. Wrapping her in my embrace, I try to rub out the anxiety I feel with long sweeps of my hands down her strained back.

  “It’s just not something you need to be concerned about.”

  I feel her open and then shut her mouth. She tries again, her throat a little hoarse with emotion. “I just feel like one of us deserves to have their mother. Cancer stole mine, but he took yours from you. I want him to suffer. I want him to feel pain. I want him to be afraid to close his eyes at night because of the nightmare we inflict upon him. I hate him. I hate him for you. I hate him for me. I hate him for us.”

  Though her fierceness makes me love her more, I don’t want her even breathing the same air as him. I try to explain this to her.

  “I want you to be safe,” I say quietly. “To that end, your role in this fiasco is done.”

  “You can’t give up on taking him down,” she protests breaking away.

  “I have no intention of giving up.” I just don’t want her involved anymore. “But I can’t have you flirting with him, touching him. I don’t want you to look at him. I don’t want him to even think about you in any manner. It ruins me.”

  “Ian, if you’re baiting the hook with a woman, that means you have to spend time with her. And that would ruin me.” She stabs a thumb into her chest.

  “Which is why we should drop it.” Letting go of the past is a bitter and hard pill, but as I told my friend, Kaga, Tiny is far more important to me. At the very least, I need to re-analyze my options.

  Her eyes are grief filled. “I didn’t realize what a monster he was. I just can’t stand that he’s breathing and she’s not.”

  On the last word her voice catches and the tears she’s so valiantly tried to hold back spill over. She’s not crying just about Howe. It’s about loss in general. The loss of her mother. The feeling of being out of control and helpless. I understand all of it.

  “I hate that I’m crying. I’m blaming that on Howe, too,” she says, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes.

  “Crying isn’t a sign of weakness.” Tiny hates being viewed as fragile.

  “Oh, right. I see you bawling all over.”

  “Not crying doesn’t make me the better person. Just an emotionally deficient one.”

  When I got to jail and was told my mother had hung herself with the scarf that I’d brought her the day before—at her request—I wanted to howl in grief, but I didn’t have anyone to hold me or to stand w
ith me.

  “You are not deficient,” she says fiercely.

  “And you are not weak.”

  I try to pick her up and carry her back to the bedroom, but she pushes away, wiping the wetness with the back of her hands, the overlong sleeves of the robe dragging across her face. While she struggles for control, I grapple with my own desire to fix everything for her.

  “Stay home today,” I suggest, but when she glares at me I realize it’s the wrong thing to say. By suggesting she stay home, I’ve inadvertently stamped her as too frail to survive a full day. I revise. “Let’s both stay home today.”

  “I’m tired of sitting here moping,” she says and stomps to the dressing room. At least I’ve distracted her momentarily from the Howe thing by making her angry.

  In the closet there I’ve cleared space for her amongst the mahogany shelves that house my myriad suits, jeans, T-shirts, and other clothing, all purchased for me by my personal shopper. I dumped out the contents of one whole set of drawers for her a couple of weeks ago.

  Frank, my shopper, had apparently set aside one drawer for each accessory—sunglasses, watches, belts, and ties all resided in their own separate cases. I threw all the shit in the belt drawer. Anything that didn’t fit got tossed out.

  He’d probably have a coronary, but making sure Tiny felt at home was more important than the careful arrangement of a few Patek Phillipe timepieces. And who needed more than one pair of sunglasses? I kept one pair of Aviators and sent the rest to be donated.

  But many of the drawers remained empty, and the hanging space I cleared looked bare. Tiny still hadn’t let go of her fifth-story walkup. “My rent is paid,” she’d said mulishly when I brought up the topic. She also had belongings at Central Towers, a place where she and her mom had lived temporarily before her mom passed away four weeks ago. Tiny went back once, took a look at the bedroom where her mother had slept, and walked back out. I grabbed a few of her things, and we left. She hadn’t yet returned—at least as far as I knew.