BIG: (A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance) (12 page)

Annalesa froze under him as he stayed utterly still, bringing his ragged breathing back under control. His chest softly met her nipples with each slowing exhale. It excited her beyond words to know that he wanted her that much.

This much.

Moving slowly, clearly still straining to hold back, Ric braced himself on both forearms and kissed her forehead. Then he dipped his head and started moving his hips.

His sheer width was enough to send her senses soaring, but the additional tilt of his hips each time their bodies completely melded made her clit yearn for more. She met him, rolling her pelvis, daring to grind back, and Ric groaned softly at that, his mouth close to her ear.

But he knew what she wanted and he gave it to her. His cock pounded deeper, bottoming out, a hot, sticky rutting with every stroke. Annalesa bit her lip to keep from crying out. Even if no one was around to hear them, they had to be careful.

Even so, she panted into his ear, whispering his name, trying to keep as quiet as she could, when what she really wanted to do was scream loud enough to bring everyone running, wondering who was getting murdered in Ric’s room.

“Ahhh Leesa,” he gasped when her muscles began those little butterfly flutters that were a precursor to her climax. “Ohhh fuck.”

“Yes,” she urged, lightly raking her nails over his scalp, down the thick ropey muscles in his neck, over the tight mass and sinew working in his back. She felt him holding back again, wanting it to last, but her pussy was spasming, hot little pulses of pleasure that pushed her closer and closer to the edge.

“Just a little more,” she pleaded, panting hotly against his throat, licking salt from his Adam’s apple. “Please, just a little more.”

He grunted, staying focused, intent, driving himself into her over and over again until a tremble ran through his body and his thighs bunched hard against hers.

Close, so close.

Knowing he was trembling, on the verge, forced her over.

Her pussy clamped around him as she came, a cry rising in her throat that Ric swallowed with a hard, aggressive kiss. He took her orgasm into him, drowned in her silenced scream of pleasure as she shuddered beneath him. Her back arched as she felt her juices releasing in a flood of hot convulsions. Ric muffled his own climax against her mouth, his cock swelling and throbbing inside of her, every fiery blast of his cum forcing a little whimpering cry from her lips.

It took forever for her to come back to earth. She felt deliciously wrecked, too tired to move. Ric slid himself slowly out of her and lay on his side, scooping an arm beneath her and enfolding her against his chest so they were belly to belly. His pulse seemed to settle at the same pace as hers. She tucked her face into his neck, loving the smell of him. At some point she’d need to get up. But not yet.

“I wish we didn’t have to be quiet,” he murmured. “I mean, I love kissing you, but... not as a silencer.”

Trust him to come up with a gun reference. She stroked his side, willing her energy to return.

“I know. I’d love to hear you.”

His hand moved over her hip. “I want to make you scream.”

Annalesa froze, hearing movement somewhere below. She held her breath until the sounds faded away. Ric’s fingers traced a shivery route from the back of her neck down to her bottom, which he stroked with a lightness she hadn’t even realized he was capable of. She kissed the tattoo on his neck.

“What are we going to do? Meet at hotels?”

“We’ll figure something out.” He sat and reached over to turn on the lamp beside his bed. Her eyes widened at the sight of a tattoo—Mjolnir, Thor’s hammer—stretching across the small of his back.

That one, she recognized. His other tattoos were a busy riot of color in the dimness and she squinted as her eyes adjusted to the light, trying to figure them out.

“What’s the tattoo across your shoulders?”

“Want a guided tour?” His teeth flashed bright as he smiled. “That one’s Yggdrasil, the world tree. Down my left arm, there’s Jorgmungand, the World Serpent. Down my right, Heimdall—”

“Guardian of the Bifrost Bridge,” she supplied smartly.

“All hail the Avengers.” He chuckled and lay back down, gesturing to the tattoo that spread across the right side of his chest and up to his shoulder. “This one’s not so well-known. Tyr, the one-handed God of Justice, who put his hand in the mouth of Fenris Wolf to save the other Norse gods and goddesses.

She peered at the impeccable outline, so crisply black against his smooth tan. Fenris hadn’t been finished. It was sketched only down past his shoulders. The tattoo artist had rendered Tyr built like a tank. Then she noticed that the Norse god still had both hands, which didn’t exactly follow the myth.

“He still has both hands?” Annalesa asked. “So this is the bef0re-Tyr, not the after-Tyr?”

“For now.” Ric looked away. “I have plans. I wanted before-Tyr tattooed first. While I was before-Ric.”

Before-Ric.

Interesting phrasing, she thought, seeing the thoughtful look on his face.

“There are still a few things I need to do. To leave my past behind me. Then I plan to have the tattoo finished. And the hand removed.”

She looked at him, incredulous. “You had the tattoo artist ink the hand—only to have it taken off again later?”

“No pain, no gain.” He smiled up at the ceiling, and the hard look in his eyes made her swallow.

His intensity was unnerving—and so was his dedication to having both of Tyr’s hands inked, only to be have one of them removed by laser some time later.

“So what are these other things you have to do?”

Something her mother had said about him becoming bitter had stuck with her. She thought again of Heathcliff from
Wuthering Heights.
The tragic hero, thwarted in love, bent on revenge.

“Loose ends.” He shrugged one big shoulder.

“Hm.” She studied the set of his jaw in the dimness. He’d always been stubborn and determined. Nothing had changed there. She had a bad feeling about this.

“What?” He cocked an eyebrow at her.

“I just... I know you.” She sighed. “I hope you’re not planning something you’ll regret.”

“Trust me.” A slow, grim smile curled at the corners of his mouth. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Don’t dig two graves.”

“Huh?”

“That’s what they say about vengeance, isn’t it? A man who seeks revenge digs two graves. One for himself and one for his enemy.”

“This isn’t about revenge. Let’s call it... closure.” He rolled quickly over, propping his head on his hand and landing a light kiss on her lips.

He seemed to want to close the book on this discussion.

She felt like he was keeping her at arm’s length, not telling her things. Well, maybe she deserved that. They’d been out of touch a long time, and had fallen back together, into this, very quickly.

He’d have plenty of time to let her in again, she thought. Besides, tomorrow night, he’d be back in Norway and she wanted to enjoy her time with him while she could.

“You have an empty spot.” She traced the unmarked, bare skin over the left side of his chest with her thumb.

“I have plans for it.” He reached over to the bedside table and grabbed his cell, rolling his thumb across the ID button and flicking through his photos. “This is the Valkyrie I want to put there.”

The design was beautiful, a clear line picture of a girl with long dark hair in a flowing dress cinched at the waist by a wide band.

But Annalesa gasped when she zoomed in and looked at the Valkyrie’s face.

“She looks like me!”

“I know. She’s supposed to.”

Annalesa glanced at the date-stamp on the picture. Months ago.

Before they’d even started speaking again.

She blinked fast, eyes burning. Had he been thinking about her, even then? She’d certainly been thinking about him, wishing they could bridge the gap between them, one that felt deeper and wider than any ocean separating continents. He really had been serious when he said he’d always felt this way about her. Serious enough to consider putting her likeness in ink on his body.

Annalesa knelt up, leaning over him to put his phone on the night stand, her motion forcing him to lie back on the bed. She swung a leg over and straddled him, seeing him smiling up at her, fingers laced behind his head.

Two long, slightly shiny scars ran from behind his elbows up into his armpits. Annalesa traced her fingertips from his collar bones down over his chest, under the hard ridge of his pecs. Two more scars there, winging round his sides and almost up to his armpits. And the last, a continuous pale pink line from the top of both hips, following the V down and flattening out at the bottom between them.

“I’ve also got them on the backs of my thighs.”

She nodded, sad, thinking about him going through his surgeries alone. If only he’d told her, shared with her. She would have jumped on a plane in a heartbeat, dissertation be damned. It wasn’t like she couldn’t have written it from beside his hospital bed. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how much pain he must have been in.

“Did you have it all done at the same time?”

“Oh, no way. Chest and stomach first, then arms, then legs. Three surgeries. After the first surgery—it was the big one, the torso—I could barely stand. I couldn’t move without a walker.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “I’m sure you can understand why I didn’t want anyone seeing me like
that
.”

She nodded, still wishing she’d been there, as she noticed the scar running beneath the right side of his pecs blended in with the inked ground Tyr was standing on.

“Are the tattoos to hide the scars?”

He hesitated, thinking about that for a few minutes. “I’m not hiding them, no. The ink’s about more than that.”

“I like the ink. And I think scars are kind of sexy.”

“I’m proud of them,” he admitted. “They’re a reminder. Each surgery was a rite of passage. Each tattoo a marker.”

“I can read Norse mythology on your skin.” She ran her fingers down the center ridge of his abs and circled below his navel, feeling him shiver. “I never realized you felt so connected to your ancestry.”

“I’d love to go to Valhalla when I die.”

Annalesa slid back, her knees on either side of his thighs. He watched with bright eyes as she spread her hands on the mattress beside him and dipped her lips down to his scar line.

“The scars are still sensitive.” He shivered again.

“Hurt?”

“No... just sensitive.”

Annalesa smiled, kissing a path down the fine line of dark gold hair that led toward his cock, which was already half-hard again, much to her delight.

“Wait...” She lifted her head. “To go to Valhalla, don’t you have to die in battle?”

“There are worse ways to go.”

“There are better ways to go too.”

Annalesa brushed her cheek up the full length of his cock, which thickened even more under her touch. She lifted the tip to her mouth and hummed around it, feeling him harden faster against her tongue and palate.

He brought his hands down to the mattress, gripping fistfuls of sheet. His hips lifted and she held them down, increasing the suction on his cock, taking him to the back of her throat.