After grabbing a quick bite to eat, Leo and I dragged our asses back to The Pit. The exhaustion from the night before combined with the adrenaline crash from tattooing had me yawning every two seconds, and one look at Leo when we kicked our shoes off at the door told me he felt the same.
It was quiet in the house, and I checked the time on my phone. “A little early for everyone to be asleep already.”
“Tomorrow is our first real practice with the depth chart set,” Leo reminded me. “Coach will start kicking our asses at the crack of dawn.”
“Guess that means you should get some sleep, too.”
“Shouldn’t be an issue,” he said around a yawn.
“Do you want the bed tonight? I feel so awful that you’re still on the—”
Leo cut my words off with a roll of his eyes before he reached out, snagged my wrist in his hand, and tugged me into him.
“I’m fine, Stig,” he said with a smirk aimed down at me. “And I like having you in my bed.”
Chills erupted from where his breath whispered along my lips all the way down my spine.
His body pressed against mine, his hold on me so comfortable and confident, like he’d done it a million times, like I belonged nowhere if not in his arms.
I swallowed when he brushed my hair out of my eyes, tucking it behind one ear.
“Is it okay that I call you that?”
My heart skipped a beat before picking up double time. All I could do was nod, because all my awareness was zeroed in on where one of his hands held my waist, the other cradling my jaw.
Suddenly, I wasn’t tired anymore.
I watched as Leo’s throat bobbed with a thick swallow, like he just realized how close we were, too. He slowly slid his hand behind my neck, pulling me into him for a hug.
“Thank you for tonight,” he said softly.
I closed my eyes, inhaling his scent as my fingers curled in the fabric of his t-shirt. I couldn’t be sure how long we stood there like that, but I knew when he finally put space between us, I felt so dizzy I had to brace a hand on the wall to keep from falling.
“Well,” I said. “Goodnight, then.”
Leo shoved his hands in his pockets. “Goodnight.”
I climbed the stairs in a daze, somehow managing to brush my teeth and wash my face before stripping out of my clothes and throwing on the largest t-shirt I owned. I crawled into bed, ready for exhaustion to take me under, but as soon as my head hit the pillow and the distinct smell of Leo surrounded me, every cell in my body buzzed to life again.
A deep inhale of him had my eyes closing, and I curled up in the sheets only to huff and throw them off me in the next breath. My nipples peaked under the cool air, adding to my already-over-sensitized nervous system as I stared up at the ceiling.
“Go to bed,” I told myself, like saying it out loud would give me the restraint I needed.
But it didn’t.
Instead, my breathing intensified, eyes racing over the lines of the ceiling fan above me. He wasn’t even there anymore and I could feel his hands on me, feel the way he surrounded me when he pulled me into him, how he sighed into my hair like holding me was all he ever wanted.
I could see his eyes, the way they heated when they took in my dress last night, how they dragged over me so slowly my skin burned with every centimeter of that stare.
I could hear him, all around me — his laugh, the stiff breath he held when I was pressed against him, the deep baritone of his voice when he verified what I felt to be true at the shop — that he wanted me.
All of me.
He knew who I was now. He knew me past and present, the girl he hurt and the woman who grew strong despite him.
I pressed a hand to where my heart thumped loudly under my rib cage, waiting for good sense to find me and give me some reason why I couldn’t have Leo, why I shouldn’t let him have me.
But that voice had quieted.
I no longer heard the girl of my past screaming in pain, no longer felt her constant reminder of what he’d done to me. A softer version had moved in, one armed with the truth about that day, about everything that had happened since.
And now, all I could think about was the past couple of months, about late nights with him and the guys, video games and parties, him cooking for me, the candles, the rooftop, the jacket, last night at the bar, today at the tattoo shop.
He’d offered me a place to stay when I had nowhere to go.
He’d given up his bed for me without thinking twice.
My heart kicked so hard I sat upright.
Because now, the one overwhelming thing I felt was that I wanted him in that bed with me.
I didn’t let myself overthink it, didn’t consider how it might hurt in the morning. I threw the rest of the covers off me and scrambled out of bed, all but tripping over my bare feet as I lunged for the door. I yanked it open so fast the air blew my hair back.
And then I froze, because Leo stood waiting on the other side.
His jaw was a hard line, the muscle of it ticking under the skin as he stood perfectly still. All he had on was a pair of black sweatpants, and my eyes trailed the hills and valleys of his tan abdomen before they snagged on the fresh ink marking his chest.
My ink.
My art.
Mine.
The word echoed inside me the longer I stood there, hand still wrapped around the doorknob. Leo’s hands were balled at his sides, like he’d been restraining himself to keep from knocking. His eyes flicked between mine with ragged breaths leaving his chest like he was in absolute agony.
The entire universe teetered precariously in that moment, the stars and planets stalling as if one wrong move from any of them would alter destiny’s plan.
Slowly — so achingly slowly that my chest seized with the pressure of watching it — Leo lifted his hand. He stretched it out, toward me, his eyes following the movement until his fingers found my t-shirt. He caught it right above my hips, and we both stopped breathing with that one singular touch.
Then, he twisted his fist in the fabric and pulled me into him, catching me as we collided in a kiss that shattered time.
It was like a first breath and a last all at once, how we both inhaled together, our lips melding with a firm, delicious pressure that sent heat all the way down to my toes. My chest loosened with relief all while my heart surged and swelled and came alive.
He was everywhere.
His hands ran roughly up the length of me, a deep groan vibrating my lips as he traced every curve until he held my face in his grip. I felt that groan like my own heartbeat, his body pressing into mine, backing me up one heated kiss at a time until we were in his room and he kicked the door shut behind us.
Back back back, he pushed and invaded until my spine hit a wall and he could properly surround me, caging me in as if I’d ever want to escape now.
So many times I’d imagined what it would feel like to kiss him, to feel want radiating off him and know it was for me. Not just when we were younger, but here in this house, when I felt that tension so tight between us that one long-lasting look could have snapped it.
Now I knew that nothing I could have dreamed up would have ever compared to reality.
“You have consumed me for months,” Leo breathed against my neck, maneuvering my head so he could kiss along the column of my throat before working his way back to my mouth. “Para años.” A bruising kiss punctuated that anguished confession before he pressed his forehead to mine, our breaths hot and frantic between us. “I couldn’t sleep one more night without making you mine.”
I whimpered at the words, at the way he sealed them with another punishing kiss that jolted me to the core. His thumbs held my jaw steady, fingers curling around the back of my neck possessively and holding me to him as he coaxed my mouth open and swept his tongue inside.
Another moan, another jolt — this time hotter and wetter and pooling between my thighs. I squeezed them together, as if that could bring relief, as if I could do anything to spare my body or my heart from the hurricane that was Leo Hernandez as he crashed upon the shores of my soul.
“You couldn’t either, could you?” he asked, nipping my bottom lip. “You were coming to find me.”
“Yes,” I breathed.
“Tell me you want this, too,” he begged, and for a moment, he held me still, eyes searching mine. “Tell me you need me.”
My chest rose and fell in time with his, every breath louder and hotter than the one before it. With my eyes on his, I wrapped my hand around his wrist, guiding him away from where he held my face. I dragged his hand over my collarbone, over my chest, over the swells of my breasts, savoring the groan he let loose when his thumb brushed over the metal piercing my right nipple. Down, down, down, his palm surveying my hips and ass until I swiped his hand up and under my t-shirt and guided him where I needed him most.
“I think this speaks louder than words,” I said, lining my fingers behind his as I pressed him to my core, slicking both of us with just how badly I wanted him.
“Fucking Christ,” he cursed, and then he was kissing me again, pushing me so hard against the wall with his body that I felt pressure everywhere. But none of it compared to where he spread my legs wider with his thigh, skating one digit through my wetness before dipping the tip of his finger inside me.
I gasped, arching into him, and he visibly shook at the contact, burying his face in my neck as he toyed with my entrance before pressing just a little more inside.
“Sweet, perfect fucking pussy,” he praised. “Wet and ready for me. I should just turn you around and fuck you against this wall right now. I’d slide inside you so easy, fill you to the fucking brim.”
“Yes,” I said, the word a breath and a plea.
Leo smiled against my lips, but then his hand withdrew, and I shuddered at the loss.
“No,” I whined.
“If you think I’m going to fuck you without worshipping this perfect fucking body first, you don’t know me at all.”
“Fuck now. Worship later,” I managed before wrapping my arms around his neck. I climbed into his arms, surprised that he lifted me so easily, that he held me like I didn’t weigh more than he did.
He held me sturdy with one arm wrapped around me, and it had pulled up my t-shirt just enough to expose the bottom half of my ass. Leo’s lips curled up again as he reared back and laid his palm against the exposed skin with a slap.
“I’ve played by your rules all summer,” he growled. “Tonight — you play by mine.”
I didn’t have an argument left in me when he tossed me back into his bed, the scent of him invading me once again. But this time, it wasn’t just the sheets. It was his hands bracing either side of my head, his triceps flexing under my fingernails, his hips pressing into my middle, thighs spreading my own for him as he settled between them.
“Te ves tan bonita en mi cama,” he said, eyes raking over where my hair splayed out over the pillow. “You look so fucking pretty in my bed.”
Then, he leaned back on his knees, grabbed my t-shirt in a fist again, and pulled me up until he could peel the fabric up and over my head. He tossed it somewhere behind him and then wrapped his hand around my neck, gently guiding me down until I was splayed naked in the sheets under him.
He squeezed, just a little, enough to make my toes curl before he dragged his palm flat down my neck, sternum, stomach, and just the top of where I ached for him before he sat back on his heels again. He shook his head, licking his bottom lip before he pinned it between his teeth, letting his eyes sear every inch of my exposed skin.
Instinctively, my knees folded in toward each other, and I was on track to cover my stomach when Leo caught my wrists.
“Oh, hell no,” he said, shaking his head. “Fuck no. You’ve been teasing me for months in those little boy shorts, wearing no bra, giving me just enough to drive me fucking insane.”
He moved my hands until they were above my head, then sat back again, gently pressing his fingertips against the insides of my knees until I had no choice but to spread.
“Open these legs wide for me, baby.” He pushed and pushed until my hips hit their maximum, until I was completely at his disposal. “Let me see my girl.”
His words were like little prods of electricity, so filthy and yet so hot I couldn’t help but squirm with need beneath him.
I watched him smirk as he took in every inch of my body, and I didn’t feel self-conscious then, didn’t feel like I was too heavy or curvy or too much in any way. I felt like a goddess, like a prize he’d won in the fight of his life, like he could do nothing but sit there and rake his eyes over me and be perfectly content for life.
His eyes snagged on my breasts, and he groaned, bending until he was leaning over me again. “These fucking tits,” he swore, balancing on one palm while the other cupped my right breast. “Tan perfecta.”
He tested the weight of it, another growl of appreciation at how it wouldn’t all fit in his hand. He circled my nipple with his thumb before flicking it over the rose gold bar that spiked it, and he didn’t know how that metal was like having an exposed nerve, that the slightest touch felt like a waterfall of pleasure.
I bucked my hips, arching into his touch with a moan of ecstasy.
“Mmm, so that’s the spot, huh?” Leo mused, and he gently rolled the metal between his fingers as I whimpered again. “Let’s add a little heat, shall we?”
He lowered himself, eyes cast up at me until the moment he covered the swell with his tongue, running it hot and flat up and over and around where I wanted him most before finally delivering. When he did, he swirled the tip of his tongue around the metal, and I heard it lightly click against his teeth before he sucked and gave me the warm, wet pressure to push me closer to the edge.
I loved my clit to be played with as much as the next girl, but for me, it had always been about my tits. And the way Leo worshipped them, the way he palmed and massaged one while his mouth devoured the other, it was like having a vibrator held on the perfect spot. Add the fact that it was Leo Fucking Hernandez who was bringing me those little shocks of pleasure, and I was a goner.
“More,” I pleaded, and my hips writhed beneath him as I threw my head back and focused on where his mouth sucked my nipple. “So close.”
He stopped immediately.
I couldn’t help the involuntary shudder that ripped through me, or the way I cried out, reaching for him. But Leo caught my wrists again. He kissed each palm before sliding my hands into his hair.
“Not yet.”
I could have cried if it weren’t for the fact that he started kissing me again — first, my lips, then a blazing trail all the way down to my hips. He sucked and nipped at the skin from hip bone to hip bone before pressing a feather-light kiss to my clit, the cool metal of his chains just barely brushing against the hot, sensitive skin as he settled between my legs.
I shivered again. “You are the fucking worst.”
“Hate me again?” he teased, and the motherfucker licked my clit so subtly, just a quick lashing of his tongue that it did nothing but cool my already-sensitive bud.
“So much.”
“That so?” he asked, and this time he ran his tongue along my entrance, up and over my clit, licking everywhere but where I wanted him to.
“Leo,” I begged, squirming.
“Fuck, I love it when you say my name like that.” He rewarded me with a brief suck of my clit that made my legs quake around him. “When I let you come, that’s all I want to hear.”
“You don’t own me,” I said, trying to scoff even as I writhed beneath him.
“Oh, but I do, cariño,” he said, and his eyes stayed locked on mine as he swept his tongue up the length of me. “And you own me, too.”
Those were the words dancing in my head at a dizzying speed as he lowered his mouth, contrasting the brief connection he’d given me before with an all-encompassing sweep of ownership. He covered me with his wet heat, lapping and licking and sucking all while his hands wrapped around my thighs and held me in place so I couldn’t move away, so there was no break, no relief from the sensuous torture.
As expert as his tongue was where he worked me, that wasn’t what drove me to the edge. It was looking down at his head buried between my legs, watching the fervor with which he delivered each pleasurable lash of his tongue. He ate my pussy like it was a goddamn privilege, and it was that vision that made me peak.
“Ohhhh, fuck, Leo,” I cried, and each word was long and melodic like I was singing him a fucking song, writing an anthem in his honor. It was all the affirmation he needed to reach one hand up and find my breast, and he held the weight of it while his fingers rolled around my piercing.
I combusted.
I didn’t come in the cute, show-worthy way porn stars do. No, I flew apart at the hinges, legs violently shaking and body twisting in the sheets like that orgasm was an exorcism. It burned me from the inside out, and I cried out Leo’s name over and over and over until every last wave had passed through me and I was bone-heavy and limp.
I didn’t realize how hard I was breathing or how fast my heart was racing until I came crashing back to earth, and I ran a hand over my slick forehead and into my hair, shaking my head.
“Holy shit.”
Leo chuckled against my core, kissing me there one last time before he crawled his way up. When he took my mouth with his, I tasted myself on him, and I lit up like a fucking Christmas tree at the fact.
“That was something,” he murmured against my lips.
I flushed, burying my head in his neck, but he tilted my chin with his knuckles until I had no choice but to look up at him.
“Don’t hide. That was fucking hot, Stig.”
I rolled my lips together as another blush heated my skin. Then, I dragged a nail down his chest, carefully avoiding his fresh ink, and loving the way he broke out in chills at my touch. I drew that line over each swell of his hard abdomen before tucking my fingertip in the band of his pants.
“I want these off.”
At that, he smirked, climbing off me and standing by the bed. He kept his eyes on where I was still sated and spread out in the sheets as he slowly stripped his sweats off and kicked them away once they were around his ankles.
I sat upright with wide eyes, my jaw damn near hitting the floor.
Because straining against the black fabric of his briefs was a thick, massive length that I was almost certain my pussy could not handle.
I’d seen the outline of him through his sweatpants and shorts around the house. I knew he was packing, but I thought it was in the normal way, in the that’s a nice dick kind of way.
I was not expecting a fucking anaconda under those pants.
His cock twitched a little under my stare, and my pussy fluttered as if the bitch could actually take that beast.
“Mary?” Leo asked.
I blinked, dragging my gaze up to his. “Mm?”
He smirked, and I knew he was reading right through me in that moment. But he only held his chin a bit higher, biting the corner of his lip like my orgasm had only been the appetizer.
“Come here,” he said. “I want you on your knees.”
