Shattered (Reflections Book 2) Read online

  “Lay back,” I demanded.

  He looked at me through hooded eyes. “No.”

  “You’re not in charge anymore.” I gave him a squeeze that wasn’t hard enough to inflict pain, but enough to assert my dominance. “So, do what you’re told and lie back.”

  If your woman is holding your dick and tells you to lay back, you do what you’re fucking told. I hadn’t gone into this with the expectation of it being reciprocated, but I would be a damn liar if I said that I didn’t want her mouth on me. I’d been thinking about putting that mouth to work since the first time I met her.

  I slowly climbed off of her and let my body collapse onto the oversized couch. When Ma had picked this ugly thing out five years ago, I thought it was too big and imposing for the living room at a massive forty-five inches deep. Now, I was damn grateful for the extra real estate it provided me and the beautiful conqueress above me.

  Raquel flicked the button on my chinos and lazily pulled down the zipper. She hooked her fingers around the waistband of both my pants and boxer briefs, my ass lifting as she dragged both of them over the curve of my glutes.

  My cock jutted out at her, long and proud, and desperate for her touch. I caught the small bob of her throat as her eyes remained riveted to my length, totally hypnotized by what she saw. It was one thing for her to feel me, but it was an entirely different thing to see me up close and personal, and in living color.

  “I really didn’t think they made them that big,” she remarked.

  A laugh shook in my chest. “They do.” I captured her wrist in my hand, my thumb working over her knuckles. “But I’d like mine to be the only one you think about going forward.”

  Frankly, I wanted mine to be the only one she ever saw again, but I wasn’t about to tell her that for fear of scaring her off and jumping the gun.

  She surprised me when she leaned forward and placed a firm kiss on the crown of my cock. The sensation girded me for what was to come, my heart rate picking up speed behind my chest. Her hair fell forward as she bent and dragged her tongue along the stretch of my shaft, flicking her tongue at the tip in a way that made a tremor roll through me.

  Her lips opened up around me, and I was all but gone, lost in the intoxicating warmth of her hot mouth. One of her hands held my shaft, the other pushed her hair back. I raised onto my elbows in time to see her eyes fasten on me, and at that precise moment, the suction of her mouth drew me in especially hard in a powerfully erotic sensation. Cold hit me when she popped me free, her hand circling my shaft, thumb lightly tracing the vein that ran along my underside.

  I reached up and swept all of her soft hair over one of her shoulders, circling a fist around it to keep it out of her way. I wanted to watch her take me in without a curtain of hair blocking her pretty face.

  Raquel’s lips hovered over the head of my cock, which jerked against the tip of her tongue as she teased me before sinking her head down and enveloping me once more into the hot heat of her cavernous mouth. I watched her through hooded eyes as her cheeks hollowed and she bobbed and sucked, my pulse filling my ears as she worked me, her hand fondling the heavy weight of my balls, sending a current through me that had me throttling a groan. When she retracted, my hips chased, and she received. I jerked my hips forcefully and watched with abject horror as tears of surprise sprang in her eyes, her gag reflex working after I hit the back of her throat too hard.

  “Shit, baby, I’m sorry—” I reached out to thumb the tears from the corners of her eyes, but she swiped my hand away, her mouth coming down harder on me. She recreated the motion on her own accord, and my body fucking buzzed, getting lost in the sensation of my cock hitting her throat, over and over again.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I was about to lose my load, I tapped her head in warning but that only seemed to spur her enthusiasm, like she had a point to prove…a point that involved swallowing.

  She moaned against me, the vibration a hummer that shot pleasure down my shaft that settled into my balls, and I was fucking gone. My hips lurched forward as I exploded down her throat, the fingers of one hand tightening in her hair. White dots invaded my vision, a muffled and breathless groan leaving me as the most mind-numbing orgasm of my life coasted into her mouth.

  My hold on her hair loosened as my breaths raked out of me.

  Shit, I hadn’t meant to do that. I watched as she gingerly retracted, her heated eyes meeting mine. If I had expected her to recoil with disdain, I was wrong.

  I reached up to straighten the ends of her hair that had kinked from my fist, watching breathlessly as she sat up on her haunches, eyes locking on mine as she swallowed my seed down her pretty throat. I swear, that act alone nearly sent my cock back into half-mast mode. Her lips tilted into something satisfied.

  She could give it as good as she took it, and I wanted her to take all of me.

  Even my heart.

  “Put your pants back on,” I commanded. “I need to be buried inside of you, and I’d prefer us to be in my bed when that happens.”

  I didn’t have to ask her twice.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I could barely concentrate on anything but Sean during the short twenty-minute drive to his house. He had kept his big palm resting on my thigh the entire time, as though trying to ground himself, and the connection wasn’t something I wanted to break. The pressure on my thigh would change intermittently, sometimes gripping me like he was having difficulty controlling himself. Other times, it was a gentle caress, as if he had all the patience in the world.

  I loved his hands on me.

  Sean’s house was situated on an idyllic street that sported a collection of Cape Cod styled homes that rocked single-story frames with steep gabled roofs that drew my eyes skyward. His house had white beaded siding and two decorative dormers that bumped out in the roof. A wooden portico with a bench abutted the front door with three concrete steps that dropped into brick pavers that led to the driveway where he parked the Wrangler. A massive northern red oak stood sentinel and barren in the middle of the dooryard. Flower beds that I imagined were meticulously kept during the spring and summer had been cleaned up, with the existing hedges wrapped in burlap for the imminent winter.

  The ignition quieted, silence falling between us. Sean studied me in a manner that suggested he was still trying to make sense of it all. When I draped my hand over his, interlacing our fingers, his eyes trailed from my face down to where our hands had seemed to fuse together against my thigh. He worked his thumb back and forth over my knuckles, sending a small, inexplicable shiver rolling through me. In the darkened calm, Sean’s thoughts were as loud as a locomotive in the dead of night. I knew he was questioning whether this was real.

  “Don’t think so much,” I whispered, needing to say something.

  He lifted his eyes from where they had fastened to our intertwined hands to meet my gaze, disbelief filling his features. “How can I not when you’re finally here with me?”

  I sucked in a breath, the declaration momentarily rendering me mute. The thing that I was learning about Sean was, despite his penchant for sarcasm, for games disguised as sexual torture, and his wry and impish smiles—he felt things deeply. So deeply, that the force of the sentiment sometimes made me feel like I was drowning. The thing with drowning of any kind is that your body instinctively tells you to tread water over the fight-or-flight receptors that goad our bodies to thrash in panic. Only my body didn’t tread water, nor did it thrash. It sank, and I let it because there was nothing I wanted more than to be caught up in the whirlpool of his affection, even at the expense of my own breathing.

  The smile I sent him was soft. “If you still have time to think, I’m not doing a very good job.” I ejected my seatbelt, letting it slide back into place. “So maybe we should go inside, and I can help you unthink.” My skin prickled with awareness, tingles spearing me from my toes to every single strand of hair on my scalp, like individual lightning conductors that drew the familiar strike of the heated electric current
sparking between us.

  He blew out a breath before his bottom lip was lost between his teeth, then gave me a quick nod. We both climbed out of the Jeep, and I followed him up those brick pavers that led to the front door. His keys jostled in the lock, and then the mountain berry-colored wood door swung open. Sean flipped on a light switch and stepped aside, ushering me forward with his hand firm against the small of my back before following me inside.

  I was expecting the house to feel sparse and barren, but it was surprisingly warm. The foyer spilled into the living room on the right furnished with an overstuffed sectional, a mounted flat screen TV affixed to gray stonework that was a feature to the wooden mantel and fireplace beneath it. Just beyond the foyer was an archway that led to a decent sized kitchen with dark cabinetry and an eat-in-breakfast area.

  The front door closed softly, and I turned to find him pressing his back against it, eyes squeezed so hard his brows came together like a tight endless line above them.

  “Sean?” I stepped close to him, settling my body against his as worry flanked me. “You good?”

  “Yeah,” he croaked. He threaded his fingers through his hair, opening his eyes. “From the first moment I saw you, this was what I wanted.”

  “To fuck me?” I chuckled, but it died when he didn’t join in.

  He shook his head, his expression almost appearing pained. “To be with you, just like this.”

  My heart thumped inside of my chest, the sound filling my ears to the point of deafening me. “I’ve never wanted to be with anyone more than I want to be with you, Raquel. Not just physically, although that part’s really nice…” He trailed off. “You’re spectacular.”

  Me? Spectacular?

  I exhaled all the oxygen in my lungs, our gazes locking. I always thought the idea of staring into someone’s eyes like this would be awkward, but I felt surprisingly overwhelmed with emotion that had me swallowing a lump in my throat. I had never understood his fixation with me. I’d tried in vain to figure it out beyond his interest to fuck me, which in a man’s world, neither required explanation nor that much effort.

  He didn’t speak, instead held his arms open to me, stuttering my heartbeats. My arms circled his waist as his came around my back. I tucked my left cheek between his pecs, my lids drawing shut when he pressed a kiss into the crown of my head. I had hugged more people in the past couple of weeks than I had in a lifetime, the hugs carrying various messages that had evoked different kinds of feelings.

  But they all paled in comparison to the force of this one.

  “Why me?” I asked the question into the fibers of his Henley, getting lost in the smell of the leather of his jacket that tangled with the scent of detergent and his spicy body wash.

  His hands rose to my biceps, pulling me back just enough to encourage me to look up at him.

  “Why not you?” His hands slid across my shoulders and up the length of my neck until he cradled either side of my face with his big, callused palms. “You’re everything I’ve ever wanted.”

  “I’m a mess,” I argued, though it came out sounding feeble and kind of pitiful.

  “So am I.” His laugh was short, his stare locked on mine. “But I want to be messy with you.”

  His thumbs caught the unexpected tears that left two parallel streaks down the course of my cheeks. Was I fucking crying? Shit. Penelope would have had a fucking field day if she knew I was blubbering right now. I moved to step out of his hold, but he kept me in place, wiping each inconvenient tear that dared to spill over with a quick swipe of his thumb.

  “You don’t have to say these things to get me to sleep with you, y’know.” I sniffled.

  His laugh was a jovial, breathy sound that reverberated in his ribcage as he looked down at me. “Hemingway,” he began with a soft shake of his head, “I’m not working this hard so you’ll sleep with me. I think that’s already a guarantee.”

  I swatted his hip playfully, but he simply tossed me a shit-eating grin. His ruddy dark eyes met mine and that smile collapsed, his seriousness returning. “Every action I’ve taken right up to this very moment has been in hopes that you’ll learn to trust me enough to fall in love with me.” His throat weaved, as if he planned to say more, but stopped himself.

  Fear ensnared me, the nerves jerking me out of his hold, but he caught me by the wrist. “I’m not saying it has to be now,” he amended softly, his thumb working over the tendon in my wrist, pressing against my pulse. “But someday, I want to be the one your heart beats a little louder for.”

  A burn settled in my lungs as his mouth unexpectedly found mine. The fear that had edged my brain faded off into nothingness. It would have been justified to be weary. We had argued, and fought, and were working against odds that weren’t stacked in our favor. And yet, where fleeting fear had lived, a wash of calm and certainty filled my mind. His declaration had ignited something ardent and all-consuming inside of me. I had been trying not to fall all this time, but with the wind at my back, and the laws of Newtonian physics propelling me forward, I plunged with my arms outstretched into a free fall over that precipice.

  I was prepared to land wherever I may, as long as he was there, too.

  Leaning forward, I pressed onto the tips of my toes to level my mouth against his. He met me halfway, his eager mouth coaxing mine open, the gentle swirl of his tongue mingling with my own. My mind buzzed under the influence of his kiss, too drunk to formulate a thought in its entirety.

  With our mouths still melded together, my hands found the opening of his jacket, my palms coasting up the solid wall of definition that made up his chest, my fingers creeping up, until I curled them around the jacket collar and all but peeled the thing off of him. He emulated my movement, my jacket soon meeting his on the floor. His scruff scratched my skin, warming my blood as I all but kicked the shoes off one at a time, losing the extra inch of height they had provided me with.

  Sean’s hands found my ass, hoisting me off of the floor with an ease that created a pulse in my core and twirled my insides with euphoria. My legs went around his waist, my arms twining around his neck, his mouth locking on mine once more. I buried my fingers in his hair, his fingers clutching me hard against him as he walked us through the house.

  He set me down on my feet at the foot of the bed, his lips still fused on mine as his fingers traveled to the hemline of my shirt and drew it up. We separated only long enough for my shirt to hit the floor, goosebumps breaking out across my chest at the loss of clothes. An appreciative growl crawled through the back of his throat as his hands cupped the swells of my small breasts over the lace of my bra, making them all but throb at the contact. With a deft pinch of his fingers, the front hook of my bra snapped open. The calluses on his palms sent an eruption of goosebumps down the length of my arms as his hands settled on my shoulders, sliding my bra straps down.

  My hands reached for his shirt. He broke our kiss only long enough for his head to slide out of the neckline. My throat went dry at the sight of his naked chest for the first time. His waist dipped into a V-line just like I had fantasized it would when we first met, and extended into a set of hardened abs that my palms all but glued themselves against now, reveling in the delineation. He smiled against my mouth, but whatever smart ass thing he was going to say, he apparently thought better of it.

  He popped my jeans free, the hiss of the zipper like ASMR for my brain. That tingling sensation spread from my scalp all the way down my spine and chest, pebbling my nipples.

  This was it. What we had been waiting for.

  Sean’s hands slid into my pants, his hands settling around my ass, kneading the muscle there, which produced a whimper of relief from me.

  “That sound is the only thing I want to hear all night,” he said on an exhale, his grip loosening on me so he could peel my pants and panties down my legs. I steadied myself against the width of his shoulders as he dropped to a crouch to help me step out of them.

  Truthfully, I could have finished the undressing
part myself—I think he just wanted another reason to put his tongue between my legs, and I wasn’t complaining.

  “Hold onto me,” he murmured, his hands sliding up my bare calves, my legs voluntarily parting for him like the damn Red Sea. His touch was a fucking religious experience. My weight sank into the balls of my feet as his hands coasted the insides of my thighs and his head bent forward to meet his nimble fingers at their destination.

  His mouth was hot against my core. My lungs screamed with demand to draw air through my mouth, but all cognizant thought left me as the tip of his tongue laved against my clit. My legs wobbled at the contact, but he reinforced me by clapping his hands against my ass, bolting me against him while his mouth latched onto my most sensitive spot. My head dropped back on its own accord, my breathing growing labored with every sweep of his tongue. My hips jerked with need when one of those big hands that had kept me rooted in place slid across my entrance. His index finger coated itself against my dripping arousal and a gloss against his lips. I was entranced at the sight, watching through hooded eyes as he dragged his finger back and forth against my opening, never quite sliding inside. His eyes met mine as he dipped his finger inside, his lips parting with unspoken approval as that suppressed moan from an hour earlier escaped me and resonated throughout the house that had surprising acoustics.

  I watched with rapt fascination as he worked his middle finger inside of me to join his index finger, the tips curling as he thrust his hand forward, his thumb rubbing against my clit. I tightened my grip on his shoulders, my hips swiveling with greed against his hand as the building pleasure mounted inside of me and spilled over the edge. The cry that left me was raw, a sound so foreign and unlike me that I felt like I was undergoing an out-of-body experience and didn’t recognize the person who looked so much like me.