Under His Hand. Anne Calhoun

      “Miss me?”

      Did doubt linger under his taunting question? It was so hard to think with his hand pressed flat to her abdomen, his cock hot and hard against her bottom. Nuances aside, the answer flowed easily from her parted lips. “I always do,” she whispered, and felt his breath hitch in response.

      The eight-inch difference in their heights didn’t deter him. He simply bent his knees, wrapped one arm around her waist to hold her up on her toes, and braced the other arm next to her face. His thick cock parted sensitive flesh only beginning to swell and dampen with arousal. He drove in, and she winced.

      He went still. “You okay?” he asked, his voice roughened, strained.

      No…maybe… “I…yes.”

      A soft, almost unwilling groan eased out of him, then he began to thrust, deep and hard. Experience had taught her that although the first time would be fast and furious, she could come from the intensity alone, riding the waves of Drew’s weeks-long adrenaline rush. Sometimes they made it upstairs before he was buried deep inside her, but more often than not he had her up against the door or on her rickety kitchen table. Watching Drew drive into her body, then shudder in her arms, reduced her to female at its most primitive. Taken. Possessed. The spoils of battle, even. She would come under the sting of his teeth on her shoulder, the brutal grip of his hand on her hip.

      Tonight was different. Tonight the remnants of shock entwined with lust in her veins, and she added submissive to the list of adjectives describing how she felt when he had her spread and penetrated within thirty seconds of walking in the door, or, as the case may be, climbing through the still-open window. The unorthodox position left her off balance, straining up on tiptoe with her forearms braced in front of her face, pushing back into each thrust to avoid smacking her forehead on the wall. Her helpless acceptance made him growl again, low and deep in his throat.

      His strokes were relentless, almost punishing, as was his arm around her waist, clamped down on her slippery flesh. The fingers of his other hand gathered her loose, sweat-dampened waves of hair at her nape and turned her head to the side so he could look at her. Her eyelids fluttered, on their way to closing as desire surged with each slick stroke, but an unfamiliar tenseness flashed behind the familiar hot need in his blue eyes.

      For a brief moment she surfaced from the whirlpool of erotic sensation, but he angled his hips forward, stroking over a spot inside her that sent hot, electric pulses zinging through her. She succumbed to the immediate. The ribbed undershirt chafed her nipples each time they brushed the wall, and pleasure swelled in her clit. She shivered and moaned over the sound of his abdomen slapping against her ass.

      With an inadvertent tug that made her gasp, his damp hand stroked down through her hair and across her rib cage to cup the top of her sex. One fingertip circled her taut, slick nub. She threw her head back, straining into his unmovable body as he maintained his pace, fast and hard. Her orgasm slammed into her a split second before he ground his hips against her bare bottom and gave a stuttering groan. His cock swelled and pulsed inside her convulsing channel as he mouthed her jaw and neck through slow, jerky orgasmic strokes. Then he exhaled against her shoulder, letting his weight slump into her body.

      As the waves subsided she sagged in his grip, waiting for her jellylike muscles to firm up enough to hold her weight. When they did she tossed a languid smile over her shoulder, her needy gasps turning soft with satisfaction. That was beyond the heat of a normal welcome home fuck, well into incendiary, and surely sex that amazing negated the issue of the naughtily open windows.

      He didn’t smile back. A deep red flush stood high on his cheekbones, visible even under his perpetual tan. Sweat trickled through the blond stubble on his jaw. “I missed you, too, Tess. Now you can explain about the windows.”

       Oh shit.

      He withdrew as he spoke. Given the hint of steel under his soft tone, she did not want to be naked for this conversation, so she pushed herself upright and yanked up her panties. The cotton resisted, clinging to her damp skin as she peered at his back, headed for the bathroom.

      “Don’t move.” The words were tossed over his shoulder in a curt fashion that made her freeze.

      Definitely a panties-up conversation.

      When he came back into the bedroom he stopped in the same strip of moonlight she’d occupied when he’d ambushed her. His short blond hair lay plastered forward, serious stubble shadowed his jaw and the planes and curves of his face were expressionless in the pale swath of light as he considered her. She expected him to look at her body. Her tank—his tank, really—was soaked with water and sweat and therefore practically see-through, and her nipples pushed pertly against the material. Tiny white string bikini panties cut high on her hip covered her trimmed curls, and her legs were bare all the way to her painted toenails. Under normal circumstances his gaze would be all over her, but instead he focused intently on her face.

      She twisted her hair into a loose knot at her nape, crossed her arms and stared right back. His black cargo pants were up and buttoned, his T-shirt plastered to his muscled torso. Bizarrely, he was barefoot. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him where his boots were, but she bit back the question as irrelevant, given the currents swirling in the hot night. His first hours back were always dark and intense—whether from long-suppressed need or a sheer human desire to reestablish a connection, she didn’t know or care. Usually by this point they were sharing a shower, but his distant demeanor felt like a bucket of ice water poured over her head.

      After a solemn, purposeful glance at the windows, he looked back at her, his blue eyes glinting in the darkness. “What am I going to do with you?”

      Tess kept quiet. He’d told her what he do if she slept with the windows open, but if he didn’t remember, she wasn’t giving him any hints.

      He approached her with measured strides, his eyes never leaving her face. His palms closed hot and firm around her wrists, turned her and lifted her hands back to the wall, just above shoulder height. With a gentle tap of his bare foot against her ankle he urged her legs a little wider apart. Heat flamed in her cheeks as she bent forward, her ass tipped toward him. Having sex like this was one thing, but it was quite another to have a conversation with him at her back. This was a power play, a conscious and unsubtle one. Drew knew exactly what he did, and worse, how she’d respond.

      “Didn’t we just do this? And what the hell were you thinking to scare me like that?” she asked, nerves stiffening her spine, vertebra by vertebra.

      He didn’t answer, and if he wanted to avoid a fight about the windows, he’d gone about it the wrong way. She drew breath to lay into him, but when he shifted between her spread legs and laid his warm, damp chest along her spine, she softened back into the sensual aftermath. His movements calm and easy, he gathered her hair in one hand and sent it cascading in dark waves over her left shoulder.

      “Your hair was pink when I left.”

      Okay, she could talk about her hair. “I felt like a change,” she said, breathless and again off balance.

      He braced his hands just outside of hers, bent his head and pressed a kiss into her right shoulder, making his torturously slow way to her neck before nudging her head to the side and kissing along the soft skin under her jaw. Each openmouthed kiss, the only point of contact between his body and hers, resonated in her hard nipples and, more potently, in her still-eager clit.

      “How long do you think it took me to climb up on the porch roof, open the window and get in here?”

      Dammit. She wasn’t going to be able to duck this or make it up to him the old-fashioned way. Worse for her, one hard, fast fuck hadn’t been enough—not in her sultry, stifling bedroom, not after twenty-six days without him, not after the scare of her life—so distracting heat licked at her skin while she tried to estimate how long she’d been in the bathroom, brushing her teeth. Thirty seconds? The American Dental Association recommended brushing for two minutes, twice a day, but she never lasted that long. She gave up and split the difference. “A minute?”

      He