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  My breath catches in my throat and I press myself tighter against him so he won’t notice how much I’m shaking. Elijah doesn’t notice, though, he just walks us backward until his legs run into the bed and then there’s nowhere else for us to fall.

  My breath leaves me in a rush as his weight settles on top of me. I’m running a mantra over and over in my head: Don’t chicken out, you want this, you want him. Though my hormones and my lady parts are certainly on board with handing Elijah my virginity on a silver platter, I don’t think my head agrees. It’s coming up with excuses as to why I have to flee from his motel room.

  Maybe Elijah senses my hesitation, because he pulls back and glances at me with a bemused smile. I must look like a deer, caught in headlights. He opens his mouth and I think he's about to comment on how much I’m shaking, but instead he kisses the tip of my nose so gently I barley feel it. He eases his weight off of me, and I’m about to protest when his mouth glides over my collarbone and lower still, until he’s kissing my breast and taking my nipple in his mouth.

  I arch against him. His calloused hand palms my other breast and then he’s trailing his lips over my tummy, licking and kissing his way down until his warm mouth covers me, underwear and all. Elijah shifts on the bed until he’s lying between my legs. His fingers curl beneath the waistband of my kickers and he peels them off, painfully slow, and tosses them somewhere over his shoulder. I’m laid bare before him.

  He slips a finger into my wetness and slides it up to my clitoris, circling gently. I want to tell him to stop, or to go faster, or to just wait a minute and let me breathe, but none of that is necessary because all at once his hands are replaced with his mouth and his tongue is gently laving at me. His arms border my thighs. His hands lie flat against my stomach with just a hint of pressure.

  My hands fly to his hair and tug on the length of his faux-hawk. I’ve never been more glad that his hair isn’t cut in a conventional style; for one, if there was any more I might pull it all out in the throes of ecstasy. Too little of it, and he’d be sporting claw marks on either side of his head.

  Elijah circles his tongue around my clit before sliding the length of it downwards, until he’s buried as far inside me as it will go. The stubble on his chin and jaw prickles as he pushes his face into my soft flesh, but it’s a sweet pain, and one I wouldn’t give up freely. He lets out a moan and then lifts his head. There’s a light sheen of moisture covering his mouth and, though I feel like I should be more ashamed, or even a little disgusted, I have to admit I don’t think I’ve ever been so turned on.

  He smiles like he knows exactly what I’m thinking and then his mouth is on me again, sucking this time. I feel him take that tiny bundle of nerve endings in his mouth and the sensation lays waste to all other thought, all other feeling than my whole world collapsing in on itself.

  I throw my head back and cry out, buck beneath him and clutch at his hair for dear life as he brings me to climax.

  Twice.

  Or maybe it was one long, uninterrupted surge of bone-melting pleasure. Either way, by the time he comes up for air, he’s panting as hard as I am.

  Elijah swipes the back of his hand over his chin and smiles at me with both dimples popping out. He crawls up the bed toward me and as I watch his predator-like movements, the waning fire inside my belly ignites with new passion. His weight settles over me, his jeans still on. He feels harder now than he was before, if that’s at all possible. I look up into those chocolatey eyes and feel myself falling. I know this is more than likely just the endorphins talking because, when it comes to Elijah, I really know nothing about him. How can you love someone you barley know? No. I know I’m not in love with him, but for a moment I let myself believe I am because I can’t think of anything more I could want.

  I don’t know what’s going through his head but his dark eyes bore into me as he gently strokes the side of my face. For a split second I think I see him grimace, like he’s in pain, but it passes quickly and then his mouth is on mine and he’s kissing me deep and slow, and the fire in my belly is so distracting I can think of nothing else. After a minute Elijah pulls back and whispers, “It’s never just a kiss, Ana.”

  Chapter Eight

  Elijah

  When I wake, I’m flat on my back with wood the size of Mt Kosciuszko throbbing at my jeans and Ana hovering over my hips. She’s still completely naked and completely fucking unbelievable, even though her make-up is smudged and she has one serious case of bed-head.

  “Good morning.” She gives me a shy smile through a curtain of hair which I brush out of the way in order to see her better. I grip her hips and push them down so I can feel her, so I know she’s real.

  She has that look about her this morning, wide-eyed and a little skittish, like she’s going to bolt. Even though I know that would probably be the best thing for both of us in the long run, I can’t let her walk. Just the fact that she’s stayed this long in this scummy motel room with someone so undeserving of her time makes me feel things I shouldn’t.

  She frowns and chews on her lip a little before saying, “Hey, where’d you go?”

  “Nowhere,” I say, and slide my hand from her waist up her back until I’m gripping the nape of her neck. She’s such a tiny little thing. It’d be nothing for someone like me to overpower her, and that scares the shit outta me. It scares me so much I find myself pulling her down until she’s wrapped in my arms and our chests are flush with one another’s. “I’m right here.”

  I kiss the top of her head and she raises it up and offers me her lips instead. It doesn’t take long for things to escalate to the point where we’re both panting hard. Her hips are riding my own and it would be nothing to free myself from my jeans and slide into her, but even though it seems like this morning was made for burying myself inside her and taking her slow and deep, I know that’s not something she’s ready for.

  When I first met Ana, the fact that she might have been a virgin never even crossed my mind. No way had that cherry not been popped. I mean, fuck, if I’d gone to high school with her, I’d have made it my sole mission in life to get this girl beneath me—and obviously, I haven’t grown up any.

  The minute those words came out of my mouth last night as I held her up against the side of her house, I knew how wrong I’d been about her. It’s why I walked away before it was too late, before I couldn’t. Despite her dating that fucking wanker Scott, it seems like she was smart and never gave it up. Which I’m both glad and ungrateful for. I mean, there’s a fuck-load of pressure on me right now. It’s not that I’ve never had a virgin before, but more that I’ve never been the guy who earned the right to such a gift. I still don’t think I’m deserving of it, but she makes me want to be. So I guess that counts for something.

  “Ana, baby.” I sink my fingers into her hips and hold her there until she can no longer move. Fuck, for someone so inexperienced she certainly knows how to drive me crazy. “Stop. Please.”

  I shut my eyes. I can’t believe I’m saying this. When did I become such a pussy? Oh right, the second Ana Belle walked into my life.

  “Did I do something wrong?” she asks, and her eyes dance around the room as if she’s looking for an escape. She’s terrified that she’s said too much.

  “No, darlin’.” I prop myself up with one hand and take her face in my other so she’ll look me in the eye and not down at the bed. “You’re perfect, but if you want me to be, you need to stop now.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she says indignantly, and folds her arms over her chest. I’m not gonna lie, it’s really fucking hard to take her seriously when she’s naked and straddling my hips and her perfect rack is in my face. I let out a small, good-natured laugh, and it’s like a switch is flipped. Suddenly, I’m all too familiar with that temper her dad warned me about last night.

  “Ana, how many men have you been with?”

  “What kind of question is that?” She scowls down at me before scrambling off the bed and tearing the
place apart, searching for her underwear. “I haven’t asked you how many women you’ve been with.”

  “Too many to count,” I respond quickly and try not to grimace at the way her mouth drops open. I can’t lie to her when I’m trying to get her to confide in me, so instead I relish in it. Yeah it’s a shitty answer, but it’s the truth. “Your turn.”

  “No. It’s time for me to leave.”

  “You’re overreacting.”

  “Overreacting?” she asks. “Screw you, Cade.”

  “Now, isn’t that what we were just discussing before you overreacted and started tearing up my room for your underwear? Which, by the way, you’re not getting back.” I pull the little lacy knickers from my back pocket and dangle them before her with a shit-eating grin on my face. She makes a grab for them, but not for the first time in my life I’m thankful for my Godzilla status. She’d have to climb me like a tree to reach these babies. That thought rattles around in my head for a bit and suddenly I’m hard again. My voice is low and thick with lust when I say, “Finders, keepers.”

  “Real mature, Cade. I’ll be thinking of you as I freeze my bum off on the ride home.”

  I tuck them back in my pocket and, surprisingly, she doesn’t make a grab for them. Instead, she zips up her dress, the one that she tossed in a heap on the floor last night and, if her nipples are anything to go by, is still soaking wet.

  “You’re not riding home in that.”

  “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do. You’re not my father.”

  “Thank fuck for that! This’d be one twisted daddy–daughter relationship if I was.”

  “This isn’t a relationship, it was a mistake.”

  “Baby, this is the furthest thing from a mistake.”

  “No? Obviously trying to hand you my virginity all tied up with a big red bow was a stupid move on my behalf. You don’t want it. Why would you be interested in some small-town, doe eyed virgin when you’ve clearly had so much better?”

  “Shut up,” I say, just to throw her off the mental path she’s heading down. If she thinks about it for more than a minute she might realise she could do way better than some fucked up man whore with a shady past and nothing to his name but a motorbike and a string of bad decisions.

  It looks as though she may have already figured this out because she opens her mouth to say something but I thrust my hand into her hair and pull her toward me, smothering her mouth with my own. For half a second she doesn’t kiss me back, but when I scoop her up into my arms she wraps her legs around my hips and melts into me, her kisses as fierce as my own.

  I all but throw her on the bed before me and her breath catches in her throat as she leans up on her elbows. I nudge her knees apart with my own and lean my weight into her so she can feel just how truthful the next words out of my mouth are. “I want it. More than you know, but you can’t just hand it to me on a silver platter. You should make me work for it, make me earn it.”

  She looks confused. Confused and aroused. I don’t blame her. I’m both of those things, and yet I’ve just guaranteed that my balls will be blue for all eternity, because there’s no way that I could ever deserve a girl like this. Not in this lifetime. Maybe not even in the next.

  “We can’t go five minutes without wanting to tear one another apart,” she whispers, and her eyes dare me to deny it. I don’t. It’s the truth, after all.

  “So we’ll tear one another apart and put each other back together, piece by piece.” I slide my hand over her hips, down the damp fabric of her dress. While my room may be warm already, it’s not so warm that she won’t end up sick if she keeps this thing on. I ease up onto my knees and pull her up so she’s doing the same. My hands snake around her waist to the zip at the back of her dress. She looks at me questioningly as I glide the zip down. “I thought you said I needed to make you work for it?”

  “Darlin’ there’s a million other things I can do to your body without shoving myself inside it.”

  She’s covered in chills as I pull the fabric over her head and I desperately want to erase them with my tongue, but Ana’s shaking on the bed before me and finally, I remember why I removed it in the first place.

  I ease off the bed and open the cupboard, pulling out one of the hangers I never use. I hang the dress in the window, where it’s in full sunlight. I know I should probably close the curtains, but when I turn and see her naked body spread before me, highlighted by the sunlight spilling in through that window, I can’t bring myself to do much of anything. I shed my jeans that have been so tight since she stepped foot in this room last night and cover her body with my own.

  For a long time we do nothing but maul each other with our mouths and roll around on the bed, and then I slide my hands between us and make her come in about two seconds flat, and yeah, I’m not gonna lie, the fact that I can get her off so quickly makes my heart swell with pride—shut the fuck up, it’s a guy thing.

  My heart’s not the only thing swelling, though, but for now I’m content to leave it at that as I watch her bask with that freshly fucked glow, because in all my life I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more spectacular sight.

  She cracks an eyelid and whispers, “Stop staring at me, it’s weird.”

  “Eat me,” I reply and scoop her up until she’s lying on top of me. She sits herself up and I can’t resist trailing my hands over her gorgeous tits. She wiggles a little, like she’s suddenly ticklish, and my cock jumps around excitedly like it’s going to see some. Fuck. I feel like I’ve been in a state of perm-a-wood ever since I met this girl. She spears her bottom lip with her teeth and says, “Okay” before trailing her mouth down my neck and chest. She hovers over the tattoo on my left pec. Surprise twists her face as her eyes zero in on the name written in cursive, hidden there amongst an eerie moonlit cemetery. I tense.

  Don’t ask me about it, I think. Not now.

  For a moment I think she’s going to, and then she lowers her gaze and brings her mouth to my stomach, licking and kissing and sucking all the way. I breathe a sigh of relief.

  When she reaches my navel I grab her wrist, stopping her from going any further, “Ana, you don’t have to do that.”

  “And if I want to?”

  Fuck me! Does she have any idea what that does to a man? It looks like she might, because she smiles this sneaky little smile and dips her head lower, taking me into her mouth. Her hand follows her lips up the length of my cock and back down again.

  Oh fuck.

  I’ve never had a problem staying the course, but holy mother of nun cunts, am I about to lose my shit like twelve-year-old at his first glance of pink bits in Playboy. I fist my hand in her hair, gently at first, and then harder. The urge to push her head back and forth until I’m defiling her beautiful mouth is so strong that I force my hand to go limp, so I won’t hurt her.

  I’ve played this game too many times to count. The players are different, but the rules never change. Until now. Until her. All the rules are different now, and I’d do anything not to fuck it up. This is what I think about as her delicate little mouth milks every last drop of come from my cock. I just had the most incredible woman sucking me off and she’s got me so fucking tied up in knots that I forgot to enjoy the simplicity and base nature of it all. I missed the whole God damn thing!

  Ana smiles coyly up at me, and then crawls up the bed and tucks herself in under my arm. I automatically pull her closer and kiss the top of her head. She lets out a contented sigh, and I feel her relax further into me. We lie in the patch of sunlight streaming in across the bed and she traces the tattoos on my arms and chest until she falls asleep.

  I’m too wired to fall asleep. My brain is buzzing from the high and a million thoughts swarm my head. Despite the morning’s workout, my body is itching to move, to get up, to run. Instead, I hold Ana while she naps. I stare at the ceiling and wonder what the hell I’ve done, and what I’m going to do now. It doesn’t matter which way I look at it: when it comes to Ana Belle, I’m completely fu
cking screwed.

  Chapter Nine

  Ana

  The minute I set foot in the house Dad is on me. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You up and disappeared, without a word, Ana. Not to mention the fact that you drove while drinking.”

  “Okay, first of all, I wasn’t drunk. I’d stopped drinking at least two hours before I drove anywhere, and I told Holly where I was going—”

  “Holly is not your father!” Dad booms.

  “Why are we even having this conversation? I’m an adult, Dad. It’s time you started treating me like one.”

  “You’re not an adult, Ana. You might be nineteen, but that doesn’t mean you know what’s best for you.”

  “Oh, and you do? Okay, Dad, let’s talk about what’s best for me. Is it dating one of your biker club friends and becoming an empty shell of a woman waiting by the window for my husband to come home after he’s finished screwing clubhouse whores, like the rest of the old ladies? Is it staying in this shitty, fucked up town, marrying one of the dickheads I went to school with and running the pie shop for the rest of my life? Hey, you know what? Why not throw in raising Sammy, too, since you and your whore of a wife seem too busy with your bike club to take care of the kid she spat out of her gaping vagina? Why not just throw the kid in and hammer that last nail in my coffin?”

  “You watch your tone, missy,” he hisses.

  “No, Dad. You watch yours,” I spit back.

  “Let’s get one thing straight. While you live in this house, you live by my rules. You come home at a decent hour, not 3 pm the next day, wearing the same clothes you had on last night. That’s how shit gets started in places like this, Ana. You want more of those rumours floating around that you’re the town bike? You want me to get hauled back to the station for punching out some other fucker that’s been running his mouth?”