Walk On The Wild Side (12 page)

She shivered against him and he sucked her bottom lip between his teeth, nipping at her, feeling like he could devour her any second.

A strangled sound of pleasure told him the moment she lost herself with him. Her body relaxed into him as her arms wound around his neck. Her fingers threaded in his hair as she parted her lips under his, her tongue eagerly tangling with his.

A familiar, dark triumph rose in him. He might have been powerless against the circumstances of his family or how people treated him, but in this, he always had the power.

He might not be able to give Molly the picket fence life she wanted, but tonight, he could give her what she needed.

What they both needed.

Chapter 6

Molly moaned against Brady’s mouth as he abruptly lifted her off the floor and started carrying her down the hallway. Presumably to the bedroom, but frankly she didn’t care as long as they were destined for a flat surface.

He set her on her feet, and she opened her eyes to confirm that yes, they were in a bedroom—his bedroom.

She barely had time to take in the simple furnishings—a queen bed on a simple metal frame, a wooden nightstand that matched the dresser in the corner—before he curtly ordered her to strip.

She kicked off her boots and pulled her sweater over her head while he did the same with his t-shirt. A niggle of something that felt a little like fear pulsed through her at the expression on his face.

Grim and broody, not at all the expression of a lover anticipating a night of passion. Although, as he shoved his jeans and boxer briefs down his legs in one motion it was clear he was—hello—more than ready to perform.

Done with his own clothes, he helped her with hers. He unclipped her bra and yanked it down her arms, unfastened her jeans and shoved them down her hips so forcefully he almost knocked her off her feet before picking her up and laying her across the bed.

She swallowed hard as Brady climbed on after her, every muscle bulging in stark relief as he held himself over her.

Obviously whatever he’d been dealing with on the phone had left him edgy and frustrated. And it looked like he was planning to take it out on her.

In that moment, she didn’t know what was scarier: Brady himself, or the fact that her body responded by sending a pulse of heat and wetness between her thighs. Instinctively she parted her legs, wanting him to know she was ready and willing to take anything he wanted to give her.

He groaned as he settled between her thighs, his breath hissing as the tip of his cock brushed against the soft skin of her belly.

He braced himself on his elbows as his fingers coiled in her hair, holding her still for another one of those ferocious kisses. She felt a prickle in her scalp as he pulled a little too hard, and to her shock, another pulse of heat at that little taste of pain.

“Fuck, Molly,” he groaned against her mouth. “I can’t go slow tonight, need you too much.”

“You don’t have to.” She took one of his hands in hers and guided it between her breasts, down her stomach until it rested between her thighs. “Feel that.” Her eyes drifted closed as she pressed his fingers against her folds.

His low rumble of pleasure echoed her moan as he rubbed her clit with his thumb and a finger inside. “God, I love how wet you get for me.” Another finger joined the first as he continued to circle her clit in firm strokes.

Her stomach muscles tightened and she could feel herself nearing the edge. She wrapped her hand around his wrist, to stop him or to urge him on she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that in the space of five minutes she’d gone from slightly fearful to almost orgasmic and she was loving every second of it.

“Please,” she managed to gasp. “Inside me. I want to come with you inside me.”

His big, muscled body exploded in a flurry of activity. She heard a fumbling and the slamming of a drawer and then he was stroking a condom down the rock hard length of his cock.

He buried himself deep with one hard stroke and she felt the slight pinch as her body struggled to accommodate him.

He pulled almost all the way out before slamming back home, and that was all it took to send her over the edge.

###

“Yes!” Brady couldn’t hold back the triumphant shout as Molly stiffened and shuddered beneath him. He’d been worried before, as he’d realized that no matter how loud his brain shouted for him to slow down, to ease up, at the first taste of Molly’s mouth he’d lost all control.

He was used to using sex to drown out his anger. But no matter how dark things got, he always managed to keep a tight leash on himself and his needs.

Until now. Until Molly, who managed to turn him on with a single sidelong glance. Who’d unknowingly been twisting him in knots and keeping him in a constant state of arousal for the past year.

His deep-seated desire for her combined with the darker emotions stirred up by tonight’s phone call had resulted in the perfect storm of emotional combustibility. For once, he was left powerless to fight it.

But goddamn, she took it. Not only took it, he realized with a groan as her muscles clenched tightly around him.

She
liked
it.

He hammered into her, thrusting so hard he was moving her up the bed with every stroke. She spread her legs wide and braced her hands against the wall behind her. Her hips rocked, meeting his every thrust as his name echoed on her lips.

Suddenly she stiffened against him, every muscle pulling tight. He felt her pulse and clench around his cock and realized, unbelievably, that she was coming again.

His own orgasm exploded through him with the force of a Mack truck. A groan ripped from his chest as he came so hard he felt like every molecule of his body was trying to escape through the tip of his dick.

Seconds, possibly hours, later he became aware of the gentle tracing of her fingers down his back, the softness of her body under him as he lay still cradled between her thighs.

He rolled them over so she was on top and felt his cells slowly start to come back together. It shouldn’t have been such a shock, not after last night. But as he lay there, exploring her curves with hands that could be gentle now, he marveled at how different it was with her.

No one ever left him feeling like this before.

Shattered.

But in a good way, if that was even possible.

And unlike every other time he’d tried to drown everything out with sex, he didn’t have that hollow feeling, knowing that he was as meaningless to the woman he was with as she was to him.

And for once, the anger and frustration didn’t come flooding back immediately after the orgasm induced rush of endorphins receded.

Molly stirred against him and he wrapped his arms around her, hugging her tight, and gave a contented sigh when he felt the press of her lips against his throat.

She pulled away and propped herself up on his chest. “Feeling better now?” she asked, a sly smile teasing at the corners of her bow shaped lips.

“Better doesn’t even begin to cover it,” he said as he leaned up to kiss that little smile off her mouth. His tongue snuck out to trace the curve of her bottom lip, then slid between her lips. Tasting, savoring now that the hunger wasn’t so ferocious.

“You were going full on cave man for a while there,” she said when he finally lifted his mouth from hers.

“Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be.” She shook her head, bit her lip, and then when her gaze met his he could see a naughty glint flashing there. “It obviously worked for me.”

Heat surged between his legs. “Yeah?”

She gave him an “oh please” look. “I know you were kind of off the deep end, but I can’t believe you didn’t notice.”

“True. But it turns me on to hear you admit it.” His cock surged against the soft curve of her stomach as though to offer proof.

“Yeah? What else turns you on?”

Brady grinned. “Baby, when it comes to you, the list is infinite.”

Molly rolled her eyes like she didn’t believe it for a second and Brady stifled the urge to convince her of the truth.

Instead, he rolled her to her back and spent the next hour going over the first dozen or so.

###

“The wedding must have gone well,” Dr. Stewart said with a smile as Molly settled on the overstuffed couch in her therapist’s office. “You look, well, almost radiant.”

Amazing, Molly thought with a little smile, considering she’d had less than five hours of sleep. Apparently incredible sex could do more to fade dark circles under her eyes and put a flush in her cheeks than the most expensive department store cosmetics.

“Thank you,” she said. “And yes, the wedding was so much easier to get through than I could have imagined.” To be fair, it wasn’t the wedding but after that had made the weekend more bearable, but she wasn’t ready to share that with Dr. Stewart yet.

At first Molly had balked at the idea of seeing a therapist. Not that there was anything inherently wrong with it. But growing up, Adele Tanner’s approach to adversity was to pull up her big girl panties and muddle her way forward, no matter how hard that might be.

In their family, you didn’t sit around talking about how hard everything was or how traumatized you were, you just kept moving forward until things got better.

It was Sadie who had convinced Molly that she would benefit from some outside help. “Look, I know you,” Sadie had said over the phone roughly the week after Josh had dumped Molly like a sack of garbage. “You’ll keep insisting you’re fine, you’ll never tell anyone what’s really going on. Meanwhile you have all this stuff inside you that you need to work through.”

“What, I’m sad because I got dumped by someone I’ve been with since high school? I’m sad. It’s not some complicated issue I have to work through.”

“For over ten years you clung to a relationship with a guy who was clearly not as into it as you were.”

“It wasn’t clear to me,” Molly mumbled as the lump that had taken up permanent residence in her throat swelled larger.

“Well it was to everyone else,” Sadie said, exasperation clear in her tone, “but you never wanted to hear it.”

“Oh,” was all Molly could manage around the sensation of a knife twisting in her chest. She’d thought she couldn’t be more humiliated by the way Josh broke up with her. “Great, so basically everyone has been thinking that I’m a total idiot.” She felt like she was going to throw up the few bites of toast she’d managed to choke down for dinner.

Sadie sighed. “Nobody thinks you’re an idiot. You’re loyal. But you were loyal to Josh well past the point when he deserved it. Don’t you want to figure that out so this doesn’t happen the next time?”

At the time, she hadn’t been able to even contemplate a next time, but she conceded that Sadie had a point. If seeing a therapist could help her remove her blinders and keep herself from getting walked all over again, she might as well give it a try.

Sadie had recommended Dr. Stewart herself. “She’s the one I went to see for a while after my mom left.”

Molly remembered, and was ashamed to say that at the time she’d agreed with Molly’s father that it was “a goddamn waste of time and money.” So her parents split up. What was the big deal? Molly’s parents had been divorced for years, and she was doing just fine.

Years later, as she sat alone in her darkened living room, gutted by a break up that everyone but her had seen coming, she realized she might have been a little too quick to call it good.

Though Molly had been apprehensive about seeing her, Dr. Stewart immediately put her at ease. She was in her forties, old enough to impart an air of wisdom but not so old she couldn’t relate to Molly’s relationship struggles. And it helped that her office was furnished like a comfortable living room, with the couch where Molly sat while Dr. Stewart sat in an armchair across from her.

Molly had struggled with the first few sessions, having grown up in a family where you didn’t burden other people with your problems. When she’d shared that Dr. Stewart responded with a smile. “Don’t look at it as burdening me with your problems. Look at it as an opportunity to learn the tools to help you work through the grief you’re going through now, and to help you make better decisions for yourself in the future.”

After that Molly had opened up, and she and Dr. Stewart were slowly working their way through the issues that had landed her in Dr. Stewart's office in the first place. Issues aside, Molly discovered that it was really nice to have someone to talk to who wouldn’t judge her for the sometimes ugly thoughts that popped into her head.

Like how much she’d been dreading her beloved sister’s wedding.

“So tell me why you think it went so much better than you’d feared?” Dr. Stewart leaned against the back of her chair.

Because I had the best sex of my life that night after the reception.
She kept the thought to herself. “You know how I was so worried about being there alone, without Josh? How it was my first big family event or holiday without him in so long?”

Dr. Stewart nodded. “You were worried about people’s reactions to you.”

“I was, and there were a few looks, a few comments. And that stung,” she acknowledged. “But I realized it was actually easier, not having him around. I didn’t have to worry if he was late, or that he’d call and tell me he wasn’t going to show up after all.” In hindsight, the way Josh regularly blew her off was a red flag the size of the state of Texas that she had blinded herself to for far too long.

“And if he did show up, I didn’t have to worry about if he was bored, or having fun. When I look back, I see how much of the time I spent with him that I was stressed about keeping him interested, keeping him entertained. It was like deep down I knew he wasn’t nearly as into me as I was into him, but I thought if I could dance fast enough I could somehow change that.”

“So it was actually a relief, not having him there?”

“It was. I was able to focus on having fun with my friends and my family.” She was silent for a moment. “If anyone ever told me Josh would leave me for another person and I’d be relieved, I would have thought they were crazy. I mean, it still hurts and I miss parts of our relationship. But I’m starting to feel kind of free.”