Seeing him fight for me, struggle against someone bigger, someone stronger, just to make sure I’d be able to get out, to get to safety, had made me fall for him. That had been the night I’d realized the special thing between us hadn’t been just teenage lust or a crush. That had been the night I’d realized I’d fallen in love with him.
And now that we were facing another situation not unlike that one, where our opponent wasn’t stronger in the traditional sense but in the sense that he had a power we couldn’t touch, I couldn’t stop the worried ache gnawing at my gut …
What if we didn’t get away this time?
It was well after midnight, but sleep still eluded me. After a day of talking to Aaron and both of us brainstorming, of hacking into whatever we could—and coming up with dead ends each and every time—Riley and I had finally both crashed on the bed. Since we had slept together twice, I didn’t see a point in keeping up pretenses. Riley had fallen asleep quickly, no doubt exhausted from the last several days. He was on his side facing me, his arm wrapped around me while I lay staring at the ceiling, trying to figure a way out of this mess.
Riley shifted, tucking his arm farther around me and tugging me enough so he twisted me onto my side, my back against his chest. “Your thinking woke me up.” His voice was scratchy and rough, heavy with sleep, and hearing it transported me back to when I was sixteen, curled up on the couch in his and Gage’s apartment. My sleeping troubles had started not long before I’d met Riley, and although it’d been comforting being in his arms, it hadn’t helped. Even with his warmth behind me, his arms protecting me, I’d still found it difficult to sleep. Except at that time, what had kept me awake was something altogether different from what was causing my insomnia now. Something equally terrifying—at least to me—but something that hadn’t affected anyone but me.
Riley gripped my hip, his thumb slipping under the cotton of my tank top and rubbing a soothing circle against my stomach. Pressing his nose to my hair, he inhaled deeply, then moved the loose strands out of the way so he could brush his lips against my shoulder. “You okay?”
And, really, what could I tell him? No, I wasn’t okay. I hadn’t been okay for a very, very long time, and now I didn’t see how I ever would be again. I didn’t see how I could possibly get out of this alive, but more than that, the fact that I didn’t see how the people I loved would get out of it alive was what truly terrified me.
Mustering up as much sincerity as I could, I said, “Just couldn’t sleep.”
Riley didn’t say anything in response, and just when I thought he’d call me on my lie—because I had no doubt he knew I was lying—he pressed his hand flat against my stomach and pulled me back to him, curling around my body. “I could probably do something to help you with that…”
He didn’t wait for me to respond before slipping his hand completely under my tank and reaching up to cup one of my breasts, his thumb whispering a circle around my nipple. And I knew this wouldn’t help anything, just like it hadn’t any other time we’d slept together. But it’d let me get lost for a bit, allow me to feel something other than hopelessness and the fear that had been eating me alive for so much longer than just the past five years.
I shifted, tilting my hips so my ass rubbed his cock. He was hard already, his length pressing against me, and I reached back and slipped my hand into his boxers. I gripped him, ran my thumb over the silky smoothness of his thick head, down the length of his cock, and gave him a couple quick pumps.
His answering groan echoed into my ear, his lips resting against the shell, his seeking fingers pausing on my breast while I tried to drive him out of his mind with teasing strokes. And though this wouldn’t solve anything, wouldn’t get me any closer to the end of this mess, it would give me back something I’d had stolen from me so long ago. Something I craved with every ounce of myself.
Power.
I loved it, needed it. And here, in the bedroom, had been the one and only place I’d gotten it on my terms. That control in knowing I was the one calling the shots, that I was able to lead us however I wanted. Knowing, too, I was the one who could make it stop in the blink of an eye.
And knowing, beyond anything, that Riley would stop. Without question, without pressure or groaning or coercion, he’d stop. And that gave me the freedom to keep going.
“Touch me,” I whispered, reaching up with my other hand and guiding his lower, down to where I was already getting wet for him. He took my plea, slipping his hand into the front of my boy shorts and not stopping until he came in contact with my clit. Before being with Riley again, I’d forgotten how good it felt to be touched by someone who knew my body almost as well as I knew it myself. Who knew how fast I liked to be stroked, what parts I liked to have focused on, the exact rhythm I needed to get off.
And Riley was an expert at playing my body.
He propped his elbow on the bed, lifting himself and leaning over me, bending down to steal a kiss while the hand he had in my panties drove me crazy. He didn’t play, didn’t tease or draw out the torture. He traced his fingers down my slit, slipped one inside me, and then slid it back up, stroking the wetness around my clit. I moaned, squeezing his cock harder in my hand, and I wanted to make him go as weak as he always seemed to make me. I wanted to make him drop to his knees and beg for more.
RILEY
Her hands were like heaven, stroking me, her thumb playing with the head of my cock, and I wanted so badly to pin her to the bed and drive inside her. Hook her knees over my arms or prop her ankles on my shoulders and fuck her until she screamed. Make us both see stars.
Before I could do just that, she rolled over and placed a hand on my bare chest, guiding me onto my back. And when she slid down my body, pulling my boxers off before she wrapped her fist around my cock and licked a line straight up my length, I certainly wasn’t going to say no to a blow job, especially from her.
“Christ,” I groaned, my head falling back to the pillow, pressing into it while I squeezed my eyes shut. She licked the head of my cock, swirling her tongue around it a dozen times, before she engulfed it in her mouth, sucking on just the tip while she pumped my shaft with her fist.
I reached out for her, gathering her hair in my hands and holding it away from her face so I could watch her lips stretch around the head of my cock. As much as everything else with her was familiar, especially sex, all it took was the simple act of holding her hair back to remind me that everything wasn’t familiar.
While the way she was swirling her tongue around me and the rhythm of her strokes were both things I remembered intimately, the mass of hair I held in my fist was so at odds with the memories I had. Before, her hair had always been short. Blunt styles that I’d loved because it made her look like the badass girl she was, the girl who took no prisoners, who got what she wanted, when she wanted it. But Evie now? She was such a contradiction—her innocent-looking face dotted with freckles combined with her bombshell body, her fiery red hair—and I loved that I knew who she was behind the illusions of her outward appearance. I loved that she looked like nothing more than a pretty girl to others, but she could drop you in thirty seconds. I loved that she knew how to fight, how to take care of herself. That she could get any bit of information out of just about anyone, knew all the tricky ways to get what she wanted, and wasn’t afraid to do so.
I knew what she was like behind closed doors, behind that mask she put on for the world. Only me, and I fucking loved it.
Evie flicked her tongue against the underside of my cock, then blew a gust of cold air against it, and I wanted back inside. I wanted to feel the warm wetness of her perfect little mouth, wanted to feel her tongue massaging my shaft. Gripping her hair just tight enough that she lifted her eyes to mine, I said, “Open up. Take me inside again.” My voice was scratchy and low, and when she didn’t acknowledge me, I thought she didn’t hear.