Cross My Heart. AM Hartnett

between them as he rubbed a small dollop around her clit, then licked his fingertip and dropped the tube on to the floor.

      His hand hovered. ‘Do you want something else?’

      ‘No, just you,’ she told him. He was so damned good with his fingers that she couldn’t bear to waste a drop of that stuff on the buzzing tip of a vibrator.

      Ryan pushed up on to one elbow and used it for the leverage of his slow thrusts as he worked the lube around and around the fleshy hood and the hardening bud beneath.

      ‘That’s my baby,’ he whispered, then let his words settle over her as he strummed on her clit.

      He knew what he did to her when he called her his baby, and she knew what it did to him to say those words. As the months went on, this thing they had kept evolving, and his pet name went from a saucy barb to get her going to a sinful endearment that had slipped into their everyday banter.

       How did you sleep, baby? See you after my shift, baby. Pick me up some coffee cream on the way home, baby? Right there, baby, keep doing it just like that. Lie back and let me come in your pussy, baby.

      Evie rocked slowly as not to overtake him, but let the sounds of pleasure fill the bedroom. Not too loud, though. Here in Ryan’s top-floor apartment she didn’t have to worry about her noises carrying downwards. If they had been in her apartment, Seth would find himself privy to every moan Ryan invoked and every creak of the bed. There was no one downstairs but the fish she had fed that morning, but noise still carried.

      To Ryan, it was a challenge to make her pant and beg, and so as he raised his hips and thrust harder, he rubbed half-moons around her clit.

      ‘I hate it when you work late and I have to wait for this,’ he murmured, and after a quick glance over her shoulder at the television he lurched up.

      In the time it took to draw a sharp breath, Evie was on her back with her head crooked against the end of the bed. Ryan reached aside for the remote and cursed as he mashed the buttons with his fingers. The soundtrack in the room went from sitcom laughter to alternative rock, and the blinking lights coming from the concert stage on the television made the room flash with false lightning.

      Cock arced just above her pussy, Ryan loomed over her, white light flickering in his eyes as he worked her fat clit with one hand and penetrated her with the other.

      Evie could fill a notebook with the things she did with Ryan that made her feel so good she could have wept, but this was by far her favourite. There was nothing mystical about the way he used his fingers. There was no magic sparking from the tips and he was no sorcerer. He was just good at getting her off, laughing at her attempts to stay anchored as he worked her inside and out.

      She pressed the balls of her feet into the mattress and thrust her ass up to meet him, but as the moans poured out she clamped her hands across her mouth.

      ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, stopping so quickly her whole body juddered with the sudden absence of the torrid thrust of his fingers.

      She gulped a deep breath and lifted her head. ‘The window’s open. Seth is down–’

      ‘Then let him shut his window or listen to me getting you off,’ he hissed. ‘If he doesn’t like it, he can write up a warning and slip it under the door. If you want my opinion, he’s probably down there with his cock out.’

      Ryan dropped to his knees and hauled her to the edge of the bed. Slinging her legs over his shoulders, he spread her slippery lips apart and sealed his mouth around her soaked mound. His tongue picked up where his fingers had left off. Evie covered her mouth again, but as he went to the knuckle once more and his shoulders rolled, her lungs couldn’t take it.

      She grasped the bedding around her head and tried to suck in one deep breath, just one, but she couldn’t do it. There was too much desperate energy moving through her body. She took short puffs and expelled them in cries that pitched higher each time until she forgot all about the open window and the man sitting and smoking not far below.

      Ryan’s flicking tongue and the lube he had smeared upon her made a devastating combination. Opening up completely for him with her feet pressing into his shoulders, she turned her grasp on him. Two fists in his hair, she ground up, pushing and pulling as hard as she could. Ryan could take it. Hell, he’d want more if she could give it to him – she’d left her mark on him more than once: angry red streaks over his shoulders and down his back, criss-crossing his ass, complemented by teethmarks when she could get her mouth on him.

      The rough stuff only spurred him on. Ravenous moans and splutters exploded from between her legs, then vanished in the pulsing red tornado he’d created. She meant to push him away as she became hyper-sensitive, but her body wouldn’t obey, instead bucking up for more.

      It was Ryan who relented. Evie finally got her deep breath, only as a gasp as he rose and turned her over. He pushed her leg until she was sprawled out and bent at the knee. His shadow eclipsed her from the glow of the television, moving like a demon against the canvas of the bed as behind her its flesh-and-blood counterpart filled her.

      One hand on the bed alongside her head and the other on her neck, Ryan shoved fast and deep. Just like she knew how much he could take, he knew how much she could take, and how much she wanted.

      ‘That’s my bad girl,’ he said, words coming ragged from all around her, and then close and sinfully quiet. ‘I think not-so-deep down you like the idea of Seth hearing how much you love this.’

      She’d forgotten about the open window. She dragged a bunch of duvet to her mouth and sobbed into it as the fat length speared her over and over.

      ‘Maybe the next time you come up that fire escape you can bring Seth on up with you, and we can give him the live show. Or maybe…’

      He laughed and pinned her as her feverish mind filled in the rest. Pushing through the reddish-black fog was the picture of Seth sitting in the cheap club chair in the corner of the room, tattooed chest bared like it had been when he’d been retiling the foyer in the heat of the previous summer, rubbing himself through the boxers that had peeked from the waist of his shorts.

      She forced the vision away and quickly replaced her landlord with the blurred outline of some other man, some faceless intruder they’d one day take to bed, who leaned forward with a grin at Ryan’s slow withdrawal.

      Ryan’s sly chuckle was swallowed by a moan as he slammed into her again. It was as though he could see through her skin, see the thump-thump-thump of her heart; he matched it with his thrusts, the slight sting of his damp belly against her ass and the pulse of every pass of the head over her G-spot.

      It didn’t take long. Once he abandoned his hold on her neck and grasped her hips, Evie spat out the duvet and grasped the edge of the bed. Unlike hers, with its massive iron headboard that knocked the wall to the rhythm with which he rode her, his bed was a low platform that withstood lust’s fury. She saw stars bursting before her eyes as he fucked her. She tried to push up but couldn’t gather the strength against his, and so she simply bowed to him, ass up and face down, and fought for breath as he pumped her to the finish.

      His grip would leave bruises. It always did when they played at his place and didn’t have the aid of restraints tied to the head- and footboards to keep her under his thumb.

      She welcomed the nip of pain as she felt his strength flooding out of her. It didn’t matter which way he twisted her up when they were together. No matter what he said, whether his words were soft and coaxing or frothing through his teeth, in the end it was Evie who was victorious.

      She did this to him, and as he shuddered she wanted the entire world to know.

      She whimpered at his last shallow thrusts, then shuddered at his retreat. He crashed next to her, flat on his back, forearm draped over his eyes.

      After a moment, when she was ready to slip into sleep, his voice broke through the veil.

      ‘You need to eat.’

      Evie giggled and rolled awkwardly