No Strings Attached

Chapter Eleven

His eyebrows dropped into a frown, “You don’t get it Shannon – you think you’re setting me free just because you’re pushing me away? You think I’m going anywhere?”

“You really should be,” she whispered, her eyes running over each angular plane of his face – his dark eyes penetrating hers as she did so, involuntarily her lips moved to his, “You should be running away, I can’t be good for you... I’m just ... damaged goods, I’m a bargain bucket girl, you deserve more than me ...”

“Fuck you,” he muttered harshly, his hand circling the nape of her neck to bring her closer, “You’re everything to me. Everything I’ve done has been for you, I’ve killed for you - I’d die for you! But I won’t lose you, don’t ask me to live through that ... especially not now.”

She was tethered to his lips as he pulled her mouth to his forcefully. With one hand still bracing her neck, he cradled her entire body with his other arm, so that she felt tiny in his arms – delicate and fragile – and protected, even as his lips were savage against her. Even as his frantic panting breaths crashed and mingled against hers, he completely consumed her physically – even if she’d wanted to, she couldn’t have moved away.  

“Don’t ever say that ...” he begged against her lips, “Please don’t say that ...”

Her hands squeezed through the millimetres of space between their bodies to grasp at his collar, to run over his dark hair – to drag his lips back to hers – for him not to say another word, because she couldn’t bear to hear this proud, beautiful, dominant man beg the likes of her for anything.

Slowly he rose to his feet, bringing her up with him – cradled in his brawny arms, “Where’s your bedroom?” he murmured, as she nodded in the direction before she resumed kissing a trail along the thick pillar of his throat as she lay against his frantic heartbeat somewhere beneath the expansive spread of solid muscle across his wide chest.

He laid her body out on the large bed, stripping off his jacket as he knelt on the soft carpet next to her, stroking his finger along her tanned skin – lightning sizzling violently in the wake of his touch along her inner arm and she clenched her fist on empty space, desperate to reach out and touch him in kind.

“I feel like I just want to stay here,” he whispered, “And just ... worship you.”

His haunting grey eyes looked up to meet hers reverently – lust and turmoil at war in his eyes in a tempestuous storm of emotion.

“I didn’t do anything ...”

His fingers inched beneath the pale pink camisole she wore, pushing the material up and away from her sensitized skin so that the chilled air whispered over her flesh, until she had to lean up so that he could pull it over her head and throw it back over his broad shoulder. He pressed his lips softly to her stomach, before laying his head on her flesh as though he was listening inside for a whisper of sound.

“You did,” he nodded – the short strands of his hair abrasive against her tender skin, “After everything you’d been through ... you took our child, and you nurtured her, offering her every part of you to make up for my mistakes. You went to a place where nobody knew you, or your past, and you were willing to bring our child into this world ... alone, even after I was the worst kind of prick for what I said to you.”