It was later, after an entire morning and afternoon spent working in my mess of a garden side by side men who were, convicted or not, criminals. Still, I’d found myself charmed by one after another as we toiled away in the soil. I wondered if it had to do with bonding over something as elemental as the earth and a hard day’s work, if it was because I felt beholden to them for their charity and they were curious enough about my relationship to King to be attentive or if it was because King had rallied the most charismatic of his troops in an effort to woo me to the dark side, to convince me that at least one of the obstacles in the way of our relationship—his criminal family—was inconsequential.
It was after I’d made them all my famous pulled pork, which I’d fortunately had already marinating in the fridge and popped into the slow cooker before helping the guys in the yard. They’d inhaled the pork, slaw and brioche bun sandwiches I’d made them, decimating the food that I’d planned to use in my meal plan for the next few weeks in under half an hour. I’d never seen a group of grown men eat and it was both a terrifying and heady thing to be the one to feed them. They’d all grown silent as they devoured the food and chips I’d laid out, most even ate a bit of the simple green salad I’d made, and then complimented me with grunts, belly pats and sincere smiles. It was more satisfying than any gourmet meal I’d made William during our marriage.
So, when Nova continued to hit on me despite King’s growls, Buck belched so loudly it literally shook the table, a crazy biker named Lab Rat got drunk as a skunk on some mysterious liquid he kept in a jeweled skull encrusted flash at his hip and started speaking in really bizarre riddles, I only laughed. I laughed because it felt like living, and I loved it.
King watched me the entire dinner, his anger banked or forgotten, his eyes star bright as he showed me a slice of his family. They seemed to beckon me closer, enticing me to adopt his family as my own. He would, I knew, give everything in his life to me, unashamed, totally generous. Just as I knew that he wouldn’t expect blind obedience in return, dinners on the table at six p.m. sharp, laundry done and folded back in its drawers as if it had never been dirtied. King wanted me to live and he just wanted the opportunity to help me do it.
The men hadn’t lingered after dinner, only to respectfully leave their dishes by the side of the sink (they weren’t heathens but they were bikers so they weren’t going to do the dishes for me). I closed my eyes where I sat at the dinner table, listening to King murmur quietly to Mute while the roar of bikes started up outside. I was tired after the long day and the socializing, physically exhausted but also mentally, it was hard work struggling through a lifetime of preconceived notions to see the men who dedicated their Saturday to helping me on the other side.
So, I knew I was prepared to face King, to have the conversation I needed to have with him about boundaries, about me being the teacher and him the student. I didn’t have it in me to lie to him.
The truth was, I’d fallen in love with him in the parking lot of Mac’s Grocer five months ago and since then, I’d only sunk further. He was it for me, and it could have been the book geek in me, the eternal romantic suffering from a lifelong lack of romance, but I really believed that. King was everything I’d dreamed a man should be; a real man built of loyalty, tenacity and verve, who laughed like the world was made just to entertain him and loved like crazy. I could never have known that the other things, his youth and its resulting vigor, his lack of morality and the liberation it gave him and, by extension me, would be my kryptonite.
I was a good woman who had fallen in love with the ultimate bad boy.
Now, I just had to figure out what to do about it.
“I could hear you thinkin’ all the way in the kitchen,” King said, and I knew he was standing beside my chair, hands in his pockets, faux-casual, while his eyes burned hot on my face.
I peeked at him from under one eye. “I’ve got a lot to think about, King.”
“Care to share with the class?” he taunted me, referencing our professional relationship because he could be an asshole, especially when he didn’t think he was going to get what he wanted.
“I’m too tired to do this right now.”
“Fuck that.”
I sighed. “If I told you that your cursing bothered me, would you stop?”
“If you were my woman, I’d think about it. Hard habit to break after eighteen years, but I’d give it a shot,” he responded instantly.
Rage suddenly burned in my gut, rushing through my throat and onto my tongue like acid reflex. The unfairness of the situation, of loving a boy and of him pursuing me with this doggedness, of my husband refusing to divorce me and holding his money ransom, of my brother relying on me to somehow secure him a job through my nonexistent relationship with King… I opened my mouth and wrath spilled off my lips.
“Jesus, King, how can you expect this from me? I’m a grown woman, I’ve been married for Christ’s sake, and you’re still just a boy.”
King’s pale eyes narrowed on me, glinting in the moonlight streaming through the huge windows like the light off a blade.
“Do I look like a boy to you?” he asked, his eyes locked on me while he drew his hand, a hand I knew to be strong and rough with calluses, along the ridges of his abdomen I could see even through his shirt.
I was arrested by the sight of him as he unfastened the first few buttons on his jeans. He paused, his eyes pulsing like a beacon. It was a dare for him to continue. I gritted my teeth against the desire that lived between my thighs, burning hotter than lit coal. It was irritating that King always pushed me, forced me up against the boundaries of my propriety like he wanted to fuck me from behind in front of an audience of my personal demons. It was even more irritating that it made me feel electric with tension and vitality, that the colors of the world grew neon and sharp.
He took my hesitation as the positive encouragement it was and dipped his hand under the denim. “A boy knows how to please a woman like you? How to make her feel like a Queen?”
I swallowed drily as he wrapped his fingers around the ridged length trapped against his thigh beneath the unforgiving denim. Slowly, deliberately, he tugged himself upwards so that the swollen purple tip of his cock appeared above the waistband, the head wet with precum that I wanted badly to paint across my panting mouth, lick off with my eager tongue. I licked my lips, lost to the fantasy.
My gaze clung to his groin but I knew he watched me, knew his eyes would be bright with power and longing. He played me perfectly, manipulating me with his beauty, teasing me until I was on the precipice of begging to see his dick.
“You want this cock, babe?” he growled.
My God, but I did.
My mouth was too dry to answer so I nodded.
“Grown women don’t get on their knees for boys, do they Cressida? So, you have a choice. You can tell me to get out or you can get on your knees for me now and I’ll show you how a real man treats his woman, starting by letting you worship my dick with that beautiful mouth of yours like I know you’re aching to.”
My mind emptied of everything as the power of his words, his stance and challenge washed over me. Unconsciously, my body swayed towards him, caught in the current of his persuasion. Before I could help myself, my knees were hitting the cold hardwood at his feet and my mouth was open, tipped up and waiting for him to grace it with his dick.
He stared down at me, his face fierce and harsh with longing but touch gentle as he reached out to slide his hand around the back of my head, tangling in my hair as he brought me closer.
“Good girl, you made the right choice. Now take me in your mouth and show me just how much of a man I am.”
My tongue flicked out to lick the bead of moisture off his tip, the flavor exploding on my tongue as a low groan exploded from King’s throat. I stared up at him as I gripped the edge of his jeans with my teeth and tugged hard. The denim fell to the ground, his belt dropping with a clang, and I was rewarded with the sight of his gorgeous cock, thick and long against his hard belly.
“Fuck, that look in your eye,” King groaned, both hands sinking into the hair above my ears. “You look like you want to fucking worship me.”
“I do,” I breathed. “I shouldn’t want to but I’ve never wanted anything more.”
I’d dreamt of this since puberty but only in the darkest hours before morning, my fingers sticky from my leaking pussy as I imagined all the ways I could be made to please a man who had the power to bend me to my knees. Now, I had the freedom to unleash my dirtiest fantasies on a man who was too sexy to be true.
As if he knew I needed it, his hands pulled back my hair on each side of my temple and fisted there, tightly. He tipped my head up so that I was looking into his stern face.
“Tired of you fighting it. Tonight you’re mine.”
“Yes,” I panted, mouth inches from his pulsing shaft.
“Get to work.”
I moaned as I immediately pressed my cheek to his hot skin, nuzzling my face into his groin to drag in a deep lungful of his manly scent. My tongue darted out to lap softly, teasingly at the base of his cock, over the skin of his balls. His hands tightened in my hair as I suck hard at the junction there, tasting his salty, delicious flavor.
He was exceptionally long and as I traced the thick vein on the underside of his shaft, I worried that I wouldn’t be able to take all of him. Determined to try, I lapped my tongue over the sensitive underside of his head, looking up at him to see him watching me with ice like melting ice. I shivered with bone deep pleasure as I opened my mouth wide and took him deep.
“Motherfucker,” he cursed softly, as his hands spasmed in my hair.
I groaned wantonly, aware of the vibration of the sound all around his dick as I nestled it at the back of my throat. King tried to rock his hips forward but I gagged around him.
One of his hands found my throat, pressed lightly there as he instructed me, “Open that throat, babe. Gotta get in there.”
I moaned again, desperate to do as I was told but unsure how to do it.
Sensing my conflict, King widened his stance and rotated his hips slightly back and forth, fucking my mouth in shallow thrusts.
“Swallow as I press forward.”
His hot shaft pulsed forward again, breaching my throat and I swallowed convulsively.
“Ah, fuck, that’s it,” he growled, thrusting forward slow and steady until he was rooted deep down my throat.
I swallowed again, drool running from my stretched lips and down my chin as I looked up at him. My thighs were slicked with moisture at the thought of how shameless I looked like that, mouth filled with cock, cheeks flushed from the struggle of taking it so deep.
“You look fuckin’ gorgeous with my cock in your sweet mouth,” King rasped out, dragging himself slowly out over my tongue. “Stick your tongue out for me.”
I did, not feeling silly or ashamed as he slapped his swollen purple head against it once, twice, three times before I caught it between my lips again. My mind emptying of everything, each care and worry I wore like a heavy mantle sloughed off and I focused only on the man that stood before me like my King. It was the sexiest thing I’d ever done, licking and sucking on him freely, sloppier and sloppier as I made him wet with my mouth, loving his taste and the noises we made together.
Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer and I reached my hand down to press between my thighs.
“Stop,” he barked.
I froze immediately.
Oh my God, what was I doing?
Shame burst inside me like an overripe fruit, spilling through me until everything felt rotten. I tried to scramble away from him but his hands were still woven in my hair and they clenched painfully until I gasped and stopped moving.
“Let me go,” I begged.
It sounded like a sob and I realized that I was close to tears.
I couldn’t help it. I’d finally let myself want someone, act out that desire in a way that I knew some people thought was disgusting but I hadn’t thought that King…
His hands yanked my head until it was tilted up to him.
I kept my eyes downcast.
“Fuckin’ look at me, Cress. Where did you go?”
I swallowed hard but said nothing.
“Look at me.”
I bit my trembling lip, noticed it was swollen from him, and winced.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked, his voice suddenly soft.
When I didn’t immediately answer, he sunk to his knees so that he could look me in the eye. His hands shifted down my neck, his thumbs at my chin to tip it up gently.
“What the fuck happened there, babe? I’m getting’ the hottest damn blowjob I’ve ever got in my life and then my girl freaks. I need to know what I did so I don’t do it again, yeah?”
“You didn’t do anything,” I murmured, because I couldn’t stand him thinking it was him who had done something wrong.
I was the one who had turned to a class-A slut.
“Cressida,” he growled. “You don’t answer me, you won’t like what you get.”
My gaze snapped up to him, his threat sparking something inside me. “I didn’t want anything from you. You’re the one who made me do this so don’t be angry with me for acting like, like that.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Don’t blame me for acting like a whore!”
His face solidified then collapsed as if I’d taken a hammer to it. Swiftly, before I could even squeak, he was lifting me off the floor and into his arms. Automatically, I wrapped my limbs around him to hold on as he moved us across to the kitchen. He deposited me on the scarred counter but kept one arm wrapped around my lower back while the other found and gripped my chin.
“Cress, babe,” he started saying before I could open my mouth. “You gotta know I don’t think that of you. Trust me, you are the furthest thing from a fuckin’ whore that I have ever seen. You think I’d want you the way I do if I didn’t think you were a Queen?”
I drank his words down greedily but ducked my head to press my forehead into his neck so he wouldn’t see my blush. “I get a little… carried away sometimes.”
“Yeah?” he asked, dreamy surprise in the one syllable. “Babe, you think I’m gonna complain about that, you got another thing comin’. Never, not ever, seen something so hot as me in your mouth like that. If you’d stop bein’ ridiculously insecure about it, I’d have you on your knees again in a minute.”
A shocked giggle burst from my lips. “Really?”
“Yeah, babe,” he confirmed, using the hand around my back to take a handful of my ass and give it a squeeze. “Really. Only reason I was tellin’ you to stop was so I could be the one to make you come.” He smiled boyishly. “I’m greedy like that.”
“My, ugh, my ex-husband wasn’t a fan of it,” I explained even though it mortified me to do so.
“Already thought the guy was a fucker, didn’t need more of a reason to hate ‘em but I’ll take whatever you wanna tell me, if it makes you feel better.”
That was sweet, sweeter somehow even than his telling me I wasn’t a whore.
“You didn’t hurt me,” I decided to divulge. “I like having my hair pulled.”
A low growl rumbled through his chest, vibrating against my lips where they were pressed to his golden throat.
“Babe, you’re killin’ me.”
“I like it when you talk dirty to me and are a little rough with me,” I continued.
“Shut up,” he ordered, as he whipped my concert tee over my head.
“And when you put your hand on the back of my neck to hold me how you want me while you take my mouth.”
“Babe,” he warned in low voice that sent a thrill of fear and desire shooting straight between my legs.
I squirmed as he made quick work of my jean shorts and plain white panties, tugging them off while he lifted me with one hand.
“I think I’d like it even more if you put your mouth on me,” I ventured as I leaned in to run my tongue up his neck.
He tasted so good, all clean salty male. I groaned.
“You want my mouth on your pretty cunt?” King said as he tipped his head down to stare between our bodies at the apex of my thighs.
I followed his lead and watched as he slid his index finger from the tiny patch of hair over my clit through my wet slit all the way to my opening. He dipped his finger inside me then drew over my clit lightly with one knuckle. I shuddered violently against him then again when his smoky chuckle wafted over my ear.
“Tell me you want it.”
“I want it.”
“I expect you to say my name when I make you come, babe. I want you to own that it’s me between these pretty thighs,” he said as he dropped to the floor.
My breath came fast and hard through my parted lips as I watched him spread me open with his fingers, swipe his knuckle over me again and again.
“So fuckin’ pretty,” he murmured before he replaced his knuckle with his mouth.
I gasped, my hands flying to his hair to steady myself as he tugged me further to the edge of the counter. I was perched precariously but I didn’t care, not when his mouth was fused to my wet folds, mapping them with the expertise of a cartographer. He moaned into my flesh then took my throbbing clit into his mouth and sucked hard.
“King,” I said as I tipped my head back, my long hair brushing the countertops.
I caught our reflection in the floor-to-ceiling windows beyond the kitchen and living room and bit my lip to keep from whimpering. The yellow lights of the kitchen perfectly illustrated us against the black night outside. King on his knees, his impossibly broad shoulders pushing my legs wide and his golden hair a halo in my dirty hands. Strangely, it was the sight of me, bowed with pleasure but riding him like a seasoned jockey, that ratcheted my arousal into the stratosphere.
“Wanna taste your cum, babe,” King growled against my swollen flesh as he eased two fingers inside me and curled them wickedly. “Be a good girl and come for me.”
And I did, spectacularly.
I lost sight of myself in the blackness that reared up inside me, swallowing me whole and turning me inside out. Vaguely, I realized that King had stood up, shoved his jeans down and wrapped his beautiful dick in a condom.
“Fuckin’ beautiful,” he grunted as he took my lax legs in his hands, tipped my hips and plunged into me in one hard thrust.
I screamed, still riding the tail of my orgasm so that the intense sensation of his length inside me sent me spinning into another, smaller climax.
“Fuck, dreamed about it, it was never this good,” he bit out then clamped his teeth on the side of my neck and rode me hard.
I knew he was leaving a mark but I loved the way the pain beat around the pulse in my neck like a second heartbeat, one that pumped pure pleasure through my veins. I wanted the pain he could give me, I wanted his tongue and teeth to write his poems on my skin, wicked ones written in bruises and sweat, flourished with tears and cum.
“Yes,” I hissed, tipping my head to give him even more surface area to bite.
My legs convulsed around him as he continued to beat into me. His cock played my wet pussy like a drum, pounding over and over in a delicious rhythm that had me vibrating and emitting sounds I’d never heard before.
Just as a third, seemingly impossible, orgasm was about to claim me King nipped my earlobe and said, “Love the feel of your tight, hot pussy all around me. Gonna fuckin’ live between these thighs, gonna make you give it up to me all the time. Claim you in your bed before school then make you teach class without any panties, watch my cum leak out of you while you talk about Eve’s fall from Eden.” My breath hitched as I wavered on the edge of my climax. “Yeah, you like that, babe? Thinkin’ of my cum trickling down your thighs, knowing how hard it would make me to look up under one of your skirts as I did the homework you assigned?”
“Fuck,” I cried out as pleasure electrocuted me.
My legs shook almost violently around his lean hips and my nails raked down his back to pull him even closer to me. I heard him curse, thrust once, twice more, hard pumps that prolonged my own orgasm, before he held himself deep inside me and came with a manly, sexy as hell grunt.
I held him to me as we both came down from it, my hands fluttering tenderly along the defined ridges of muscle in his back. There was a deep dip down his spine, delineating the muscles like a crevice between mountains. For some reason, feeling that made my mouth water.
“How often do you work out?” I asked lazily, my eyes closed and my chin perched on his shoulder.
His body rumbled with a low chuckle. “Shit, she’s even funny after I’ve fucked her senseless.”
“I was genuinely curious,” I protested tiredly, yawning into his neck.
“Still funny, babe.” He shifted his arms tighter around me, slipping them under my bum to lift me in the air.
I murmured a little protest but wrapped my heavy limbs around him as he started walking us through my little house. Already half asleep, I was only slightly aware of King stopping to turn off lights and lock the doors before he carried me up the stairs.
“Heavy,” I protested as he climbed.
He snorted into my hair, gave my ear a little nip that almost made me stir again. “You can’t be more than a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, Cress. Trust me, I got you.”
And he did. My body felt like warm wax as he maneuvered me into my bedroom then the adjacent bathroom where he propped me up on the little counter there. He left me to my business then came back in a few minutes later carrying one of my little cotton nightgowns, this one pale pink with gold lace edging. It was then that I realized he was buck-naked and I was still wearing most of my clothes. My eyes conducted a brief but thorough search of his nudity before I could control myself. I hummed my approval, too exhausted to mind that I sounded like a harlot.
“Need help putting this on?” he teased me as he handed over my nightie.
“Did you snoop through my things, King Garro?” I asked with faux indignation.
Truly, I was too tired to care and so attached to him after he’d gifted me with three consecutive, mind-blowing orgasms in a lifetime of mediocre sometimes but not always finishes with William, that he could have broken into my bank records, email and the tiny safe I kept tucked at the back of my closet and I still would have forgiven him.
He chuckled. “You have a spare toothbrush I can use?”
I blinked up at him, my levity forgotten. “A spare toothbrush?”
“Yeah, babe. Like the taste of you but I’d rather kiss you with a clean mouth before we head to bed.”
I blinked again. “Oh.”
It was a bad idea, him staying the night. I knew there were a lot of reasons for this, but for the life of me, my sex-addled brain couldn’t rummage them up.
“Under the sink in the blue plastic Tupperware,” I said instead of telling him to leave.
His resulting grin was wide, his lips even pinker than normal from kissing me so much. “Get into bed.”
“Okay,” I mumbled, scrubbing a hand over my freshly washed and moisturized face as I shuffled out of the bathroom.
It was strangely intimate to hear another person getting ready to join you in bed. I crawled beneath my pretty patchwork quilt and cream-colored sheets and put my pink facemask on my forehead in preparation for sleep. I felt awkward laying there waiting for him to join me. I’d never had a man other than my husband share a bed with me and I was suddenly conscious of all the ways I could embarrass myself in sleep. Did I snore, toss and turn, expose every dark secret I had (though there were few)?
I was still obsessing over it when King entered the room, flipped of the light and crawled onto the right side of the bed as if he’d been doing it all his life. My breath whooshed out as he snagged a strong arm around my middle and hauled me over to him, settling my body so that I lay mostly on top of him instead of the mattress.
“This can’t be comfortable for you,” I mumbled.
It was amazingly comfortable to me. I never could have known that a body made from marble could feel so good beneath my slight curves.
“Wouldn’t put you here if it wasn’t,” he responded.
“I need the facemask or else I wake up at the butt crack of dawn,” I explained. “And I don’t know because I’ve only ever slept with my ex-husband but I may snore or, I don’t know, fart in my sleep or something equally horrific so I apologize in advance and I won’t be offended if you want to go home.”
King’s hand stroked warm and heavy down my back and it was lulling me to sleep despite my anxieties.
“Doubt you do anything gross, Cress. You’re a fuckin’ lady if ever I met one.”
I tried to shrug but my position sprawled across him wasn’t conducive to it. “Just warning you.”
“How ‘bout I let you know in the morning if you’re anything other than fuckin’ adorable, yeah?”
“That’s fair,” I whispered, already half asleep.
King’s soft chuckle rustled my hair. He reached over to tilt my facemask down over my eyes for me and then fitted his hand in the groove of my hip as if it had been carved out just for him.
“Get some rest, babe. Gonna wanna have you in the morning too.”
“Perfect,” I tried to say, but I was already gone.
