Chapter 24: Chapter 24

Deeper. Harder. Faster. Tucker was wilder than Talia had ever experienced. He was unhinged, his thrusts bordering on violent. Just the way she liked it.

Bent over the foot of his bed, he had her hands pinned behind her back, clamped together by one of his own. In his other hand, he held a hank of her hair, pulling hard enough to keep her head elevated. And that was a good thing, because Talia was chugging air like it was going out of style.

“You like that, sugar?” he grunted.

She couldn’t form a response if she wanted to. Her throat was raw from hours of yelling and moaning, her voice long gone. They’d been going at it for hours, covering every inch of his room and bathroom with their combined sweat and juices. She’d lost track of time, of how many rounds they’d gone. At this point, it was all a blur. They were just two animals, rutting on each other because they could, because they couldn’t bring themselves to stop. It was an addiction as much as an affliction, their need to touch and grab and squeeze and fuck overriding everything else, even the need for sleep.

“Not gonna answer me?” Tucker asked. When she still didn’t respond, he released her hair then used that same hand to slap her bare ass. Hard.

“Ah!”

“There’s my girl’s pretty voice,” he purred. Slap! Talia grit her teeth against the sharp sting. “You’re going to deny me? Think again, sugar.” Slap!

“Ahh! You bastard!”

He had the nerve to chuckle, and damn her twisted hormones, but the smooth, husky sound of it made her even wetter. “Mmm, I feel your pussy flooding even now. You like to pretend you don’t like it rough, but your body betrays you every time.” His hand caressed her burning flesh. “You color up real nice, sugar. I like the way my hand looks on you.”

“Why don’t you stop talking and get back to fucking,” Talia grunted, pushing her hips back against him. “Every time I get close, you ruin it with that mouth.”

She was only half lying, and they both knew it. Tucker timed his conversations with her orgasms. Every time she got close, he slowed down and got chatty. But his voice alone was an aphrodisiac. If only it provided the friction she needed, she’d have finished a dozen times already.

“Is that any way to talk to the man in charge of giving you pleasure?” Snatching her hair up again, Tucker pushed instead of pulled, mashing her face into the tangle of blankets. “You take what I give, sugar, and you like it.” Then he thrust hard and deep, his solid length hitting her cervix and ripping a muffled shout from her at the same time her orgasm reignited, barreling through her like a freight train on a collision course.

He knew exactly what he was doing, how to play her body just right to do what he bid. Picking up the pace, Tucker unleashed every ounce of brute strength and lethal control in a series of short bursts. With every thrust, his hips smacked against her ass, his balls tapped against her clit, and she moved up an inch on the bed. As the cosmos came together behind Talia’s closed lids in a fantastic rainbow-colored light show, she felt as well as heard Tucker follow her down.

Coming down was a torturous process, revealing every spot on her body that had been used and abused. With some effort, Talia turned her face so she could breathe in the humid air, while Tucker continued to slowly slide in and out of her, milking his pleasure for as long as he was able. Shudders racked him, and eventually he slowed to a stop, then collapsed over her, his sweat slicked body a suffocating blanket of heat that was oddly welcoming.

“You’ve sucked the life out of me, she demon,” Tucker muttered against the back of her neck. Then he kissed her there, followed by a long, slow lick from the base of her neck to her earlobe where he clamped down with his teeth gently.

Talia’s pussy clenched in response. “Me? You’re the one that kept saying one more time,” she said, lowering her voice to mimic his. “You’ll be lucky if you don’t have to carry me out of here.”

“Oh, sugar, it would be my pleasure.” He rocked his hips against her, forcing the hand he still held captive between them to fondle his flaccid cock.

Talia groaned. “Please tell me you’re not gearing up again. I don’t think I can take another round.”

Tucker released her and rolled away. “Lightweight,” he scoffed.

“You call”—she looked up at the alarm clock and gasped at the time—“five hours lightweight? I call that a damn marathon.”

“Then you haven’t run one with me.” Winking, Tucker strode toward the bathroom.

Talia, apparently unable to get enough, watched him every step of the way, admiring his sculpted ass as it shifted atop those thick, muscular thighs. Mmm, he was a fine specimen. When he was out of view, she rolled onto her back, cataloguing every ache and pain from her head to her toes. Stretching her arms over her head, she arched her back and extended her legs over the edge of the bed and breathed deep. Yes, she would definitely need some assistance later when all her muscles atrophied. But she couldn’t complain. There was nothing better than feeling well-used by a sexy man who couldn’t get enough.

“You should stay exactly like that all the time.”

Relaxing back into the mattress, Talia looked to find Tucker standing in the doorway, watching her with a lazy smile.

“It would be really hard to get any work done.”

“Eh, shouldn’t be too hard. You could work from bed instead of behind a desk. And imagine how much easier it would be to finger yourself when you get to those steamy parts that get your panties wet and your clit aching to be touched.”

“I didn’t realize you knew anything about my writing,” Talia said, her voice dipping low and seductive as he prowled toward her.

“I don’t, but my imagination is on point.” When he reached her, he was once again standing at attention, his cock begging to be used. Slowly, he knelt down on the bed and prowled over her on his hands and knees. “You want to know what else I’m imagining?”

Talia’s fingers skimmed his sides, trailing a path to his lean waist. She flipped her hands over, flattening her palms against his rigid abdomen and went lower until she cupped him in her hands. Long, hard, and thick, he filled them both and then some.

“Mmm, it’s not hard to imagine what’s going on inside that head of yours.”

“Still, I think it’s better to demonstrate, don’t you?”

Biting her lip, Talia looked up at him and nodded. “Do your worst.”

His smile was positively wicked. “Brace yourself, sugar. This time, I plan on leaving marks.”

***

“Sugar for my sugar.”

Talia accepted the large twist in a cone covered with a layer of colored sprinkles and a pair of googly eyes pressed together on one side with a smile. “You’re such a cheeseball. Thank you.”

“What’s a cheeseball?” Ash asked. Sitting between them on the bed of Blake’s pickup truck, the boy had already shoveled half his cone down his throat, and he showed no signs of slowing.

“That’s woman speak for she’s in love with me,” Tucker said, then licked the side of his ice cream, coating his tongue with a layer of sprinkles. He caught her staring and waggled his brows suggestively.

Talia’s cheeks flushed just thinking of all the places that tongue had been over the last eight hours. “That’s one way of describing it, but the way I was using it, it actually meant ridiculous man-child.” She winked at Tucker, earning a toothy grin.

“Does that mean you’re gonna get married?”

Tucker’s expression morphed from playful and happy to shocked and terrified in zero-point-one seconds. “What? No! Nobody is gettin’ married. Talia and I are just…um…”

“Friends?” she offered.

He snapped his fingers. “Yes, friends.”

Ash nodded while studying where next to attack his ice cream. “Then are you gonna go to jail?”

Both Tucker and Talia froze and looked at the boy. “Little man, where in the world are you getting this stuff from?”

Licking some melting ice cream from his cone before it dripped onto his shorts, Ash shrugged and said, “I heard Daddy say that he had a feeling you were gonna be doing life soon. He said you already had the ball and chain to prove it.”

Tucker spluttered. Talia burst out laughing. She had to cover her mouth with her hand to keep from spraying ice cream and bits of cone everywhere.

“Jesus Christ. You tell your daddy…No, never mind. I’ll tell him myself…while I’m strangling the life out of him.”

Talia snickered. “Well, as your ball and chain, I’m officially grounding you. No strangling, young man.”

“Awwww, but sugarrrrr,” Tucker whined playfully.

Talia lifted her chin. “Nope, not gonna happen, I don’t care how much you beg.”

Leaning around Ash, Tucker whispered-mouthed, “Not even if I’m on my knees?” He licked his lips, his eyes holding a glimmer of mischief and instantly, Talia’s thighs quivered.

“You’re like the Energizer bunny,” she whispered-mouthed back.

Reaching around Ash, Tucker grasped her chin between his thumb and forefinger and brought his mouth to hers. “You love it.”

“My daddy makes that face whenever he looks at Gabby,” Ash said casually.

Talia had been so caught up in Tucker, she hadn’t even noticed when Ash turned to look at them over his shoulder. Facing forward again, he bit into his cone and chewed thoughtfully, his legs swinging freely beneath him.

Abandoning the almost kiss, Tucker aimed what was left of his ice cream at a trashcan a good ten feet away and pitched it straight in—all net. “Is that so?”

“Yep, and then he says, I love you,” Ash mimicked, his voice dropping comically low for a kid his age.

Talia’s stomach flipped for some ridiculous reason, her gaze jumping to Tucker who was staring a hole into the ground. He appeared to be thinking hard, which made her want to ask…oh, about a dozen questions. But she refrained, sensing that the whole love thing was a sore subject. Had he lost someone he loved? A woman, or maybe a child? Or was he just the type who didn’t like attachments?

It wasn’t for her to say, but Talia knew one thing for certain, and that was that she needed to stop thinking about the impossible and focus on why she was there: form a connection, earn his trust, get the evidence, and uncover the truth.

Tucker made some kind of grunting sound that Talia couldn’t decipher, but it was obvious that what Ash had said had struck a nerve. Instead of stewing over it, Tucker popped to his feet, his expression bright once again. “Ready to hit the road?”