Things We Hide from the Light (Knockemout Series, 2)

I wasn’t cold inside. Not now. Maybe not ever again. I was an inferno of anger, frustration, need.

Everything I wanted, she held the key to, and I’d been waiting my entire life to unlock it.

I crushed my mouth to hers. Hot. Wet. Hard. It wasn’t a kiss, it was an act of desperation. Those soft lips that had taunted me for weeks were already parted and I inhaled that sexy little gasp she gave when I backed her against the wall.

I plundered and took. I punished her with my tongue. And when she surrendered to me, I felt power ripple through my veins.

I managed to tear my mouth from hers for a split second. “Am I hurting you?”

“Don’t treat me like I’m fragile,” she rasped a second before her teeth sank into my lower lip.

My blood simmered. My body roared to life with a need unlike any other. I didn’t know if I could survive this and I didn’t fucking care.

At least this time survival was a choice.

We devoured each other, breathed each other in, then dove beneath the surface again and again.

My hands cruised her hips, her waist before finding their way to the promised land.

The throbbing in my cock turned painful when I filled my palms with her breasts. Soft, inviting flesh. Her nipples pebbled against my rough hands through her top.

Her moan went thready at the contact. The noise, the shudder that rolled through her, the feel of those peaks straining for more drove me out of my mind. It was my hands she wanted on her. No one else’s. There was power there. And gratitude.

Lina tugged hard on my belt buckle. The zing of leather against metal made me desperate for more and reminded me what “more” meant.

“Wait.” I gripped her fingers at my fly.

“What?” she whispered, her breast heaving against my other hand.

“I need this to be good. Need you to feel good.”

“I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

I shook my head and tried to get the words out. “I haven’t…since. I don’t know if I can… And I really need to make this good for you.”

That lovely face softened in the shadows. Not in pity but in sweetness. She cupped a hand to my cheek. “Hotshot, trust me. You’ve already made it good for me.”

“Angelina, I’m serious.”

“So am I.” She looked at me earnestly. Then winced. “Damn it. You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?”

“Say what?” I was having trouble focusing with her fingers an inch from my aching dick.

“Oh my God. You already got me off. Okay?” She squeezed her eyes shut as the words came out in a rush. When I didn’t say anything, she opened one of them.

“Baby, I’m pretty sure I’d remember that.”

“Not if you were sound asleep. The first time we slept together? When we woke up practically dry humping?”

I held on to her gaze, her words like they were lifelines.

She rolled her eyes. “For Pete’s sake. I got off. Okay? Accidentally. My shirt was all bunched up and you were hard and in the right place. All you did was move your hips one time and…”

“And what?”

“I–I came apart.”

Fuck me.

I didn’t need to hear any more. I shoved my hands under her arms and picked her up. She let out a little trill of nervous laughter when I boosted her onto the counter and then wrapped those long, lean legs around my waist, hooking her ankles at my back.

I yanked the buttons of her blouse open as she finally unzipped my fly.

The world stopped when those strong, slim fingers found my shaft.

“God. I’ve been waiting so long for this,” she said on a moan.

So had I. My entire life.

My jaw clenched and my breath caught in my chest. The rise and fall of her high, full breasts was hypnotizing. I wanted to taste, to suck. I wanted to forget everything that I was and take what she was offering.

Her grip on my dick tightened and a haze began to creep into the edges of my vision. Desire. Craving. Need. It pulsed up my shaft under her hand in a frantic beat. Something clawed at my chest, begging to be released, and I realized it was the breath I’d been holding.

She turned me into something primal, primitive, an animal driven by the need to mate. After so much numbness, this tidal wave of emotion scared the hell out of me. At the same time, I wanted nothing more than to dive into it headfirst. But I needed to be careful with her.

She cupped my face with her free hand. “Nash, look at me.” Her eyes were glassy with desire. Her lips were swollen and parted as she panted in short, sharp breaths. “I don’t want the gentle good guy right now. I want what you have inside you.”

God help me. I wanted to give it to her. Wanted to cut myself open and let the pain, the cold bleed out so she could fill me up with fire and put me back together again.

“It’s not pretty,” I warned, nipping at the base of her throat.

She tightened her thighs around my hips. “I’m not worried about breaking you, hotshot. Do me the same favor.”

With that, I dove forward, taking one dusky nipple into my mouth and sliding my hand up her short, plaid skirt.

Jesus. They weren’t tights. They were thigh highs. There was nothing between my fingers and her molten core but a pair of silky underwear. I rewarded us both with a long, hard suck, and her nipple swelled in my mouth.

She let out a whimper that had moisture welling up out of my cock, coating her fingers. I was going to lose it. My first time back in the saddle and I was going to come before we’d even gotten started.

I released her breast and pulled back so I could look at her, drink her in.

She was wearing a plain, white thong. The innocence of it drove me wild. I coasted my fingers over the transparent wet spot in fascination.

“Yes,” Lina hissed, using her heels to pull me closer until the tip of my cock lined up with the wet spot on her panties.

We both shuddered. One layer of white silk was the only barrier between us. Driven by need, I tugged the material of her thong up so those soft, wet lips parted on either side. Then I ran my knuckle between them.

Her legs spasmed around me as her head fell back, knocking into the cabinet.

I did it again and then again as I lowered my head to lap at her other pert nipple.

I couldn’t get enough of the soft, inviting curve of her breast against my cheek and jaw.

But we were in public.

Anyone could walk in and find us like this.

We had things to settle.

But none of that mattered in this moment. The only thing that did was fucking my way into her until we both lost our damn minds. Somehow I knew once I did, things would make sense.

I dragged the head of my cock between the lips of her sex. Up and down the silk of her thong.

“Oh my God,” she chanted. “Oh my God.”

My hips gave a short, hard thrust forward and we both stared down, transfixed at the sight of my tip disappearing between her folds. The only thing keeping me from going deeper was that strip of white silk.

“Nash, I need you,” Lina whispered before she grabbed me by the shoulders and sank her nails in.

I thrust again and again, nudging the tip of my dick against her clitoris. Her breasts bounced with every short drive of my hips, teasing another shot of precum from me.

“Don’t you fucking come until I’m inside you,” I ordered.

“Then you better hurry the hell up,” she said through clenched teeth.

She didn’t have to tell me twice. I was harder than I’d ever been in my life when I yanked the wet silk of her thong to the side. I’d never wanted anything this badly. My hand shook as I guided my aching cock through her silky, soaking folds.

I wanted to go slow, to ease into her, giving us both the chance to get used to the fit. But the second I felt her heat sucking at me, all good intentions burned away.

Holding her by the back of the neck and the hip, I drove home.

Her cry and my shout were triumphant. And loud enough that she slapped a hand over my mouth. Our eyes locked and held. And in hers I saw my future.

Tight. So tight I could barely see, barely breathe. Her inner walls had me in a death grip that felt like agony and ecstasy wrapped around each other. And I never wanted to leave.

“Fuck! Condom,” I gritted out against her palm.

I had never once forgotten protection. Liza J’s boys were raised right. We might have played fast and loose with the rules, but we were always careful with what mattered most.

Lina’s muscles locked down on me as if she was afraid I was about to pull out even though I couldn’t have if my life depended on it.

“You think I’d let you get this far without a condom if I wasn’t on birth control?” she panted.

“Are you sure? Are you okay? Am I hurting you?”

The throb in my cock was getting more insistent by the second. If she told me to pull out, I’d come all over those wet panties.

I closed my eyes to ward off that visual. My balls were drawn up so tight they ached. But there was something else here. Something fucking magical.

I was surrounded by heat. Slick, wet fire that had me in its grips. I was finally warm. All the way through. This was what I needed. To be brought back to life, reanimated. She was the lightning strike that cut through the cold and the dark. That cleared out that icy fog that had clung to me.

Lina pulsed around me, an undeniable reminder that I was alive. I was a man.

“Nash, please. Give me more.” Her broken whisper from those swollen lips was music to my ears. Every sense I had came online and fired up at once. The shroud of numbness vanished as if it had never been.

It was because of her. Close. I was closer to Lina than I’d ever been to another human being. Not just because I was sheathed in her to the hilt but because she pulled at me, teased me apart, and somehow managed to put all the damaged pieces back together again.

“Hold on to me.” It was a command and a plea.

When she tightened her grip, I reveled in it. She was an anchor, keeping me from floating off into the abyss. True north. The way home. And I loved her for it. I didn’t have a choice.

Testing us both, I slowly pulled out an inch, then two, only to sink back in.

Heaven and hell intertwined, turning pleasure into an exquisite torture. I wouldn’t survive this. But I already knew I couldn’t survive without her.

Her brown eyes were glazed with lust, but there was something else in them. Nerves.

“Angel.”

She shook her head, reading my mind. “Don’t you dare stop.”

“Am I hurting you?” I asked again.

“More like scaring the hell out of me,” she admitted, her fingers digging into my shoulders. “This doesn’t—I’ve never felt this.”

“Baby, if it makes you feel better, I’m scared to death right now that I won’t be able to take a breath without you wrapped around me.”

I needed someone who didn’t need me. Someone who had no intention of sticking. Someone I was guaranteed to lose. And I still couldn’t stop myself.

She hitched her knees higher on my hips and I growled.

“Keep scaring me, Nash,” she whispered. Her body trembled against mine and then I was moving.

I wanted slow. I wanted control. But neither of those were an option with my cock buried in Lina Solavita for the first time. I imagined it would take fifty or sixty tries before I could manage to take it slow.

Her eyes were locked on mine, those long damn legs wrapped tight. Her fingers dug into my flesh. And I rode. Hard and fast. Out of my mind as I basked in the slick heat she offered me.

It was too much. My muscles screamed as my hips pumped mercilessly. Sweat dotted my skin.

I needed to shift her. I needed to get deeper. So I plucked her off the counter, and still buried inside her, I carried her to the table. I hinged over her, forcing her back just enough to change the angle.

I felt it then. The end of her. Pinning her to the table, I let go and thrusted like a wild animal. The table slammed into the wall.

But her gaze never wavered from mine.

A pleasure so intense I knew I wouldn’t survive it swept over me and I didn’t fucking care. The only thing that mattered was that Lina had let me in. She’d surrendered to me. Given herself over. She trusted me with her body.

The table banged into the drywall with every hard thrust I delivered.

Her walls quickened around me, those muscles dragging against me each time I pulled out and fighting me on every thrust. I felt powerful.

“Angelina.” Her name was a snarl that abraded my throat.

“Now, Nash. Now!”

On instinct, I covered her mouth with my hand as I slammed home.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Angel!”

I couldn’t stop. The churning in my balls had won out. Heat streaked down my spine, then up my shaft and erupted.

Just as I ejaculated, she closed around me, vise tight. Our releases—thank fucking God—detonated together.

Her cry was muffled by my hand, but I felt it in the depths of my soul.

Lina didn’t come delicately. Her entire body locked down, wrenching more semen from me. Over and over again. She demanded it all, even as her arms and legs went slack.

I kept coming, kept pumping into her as she closed around me, holding me to her, in her. Endless. Warm. Glorious. Fucking beautiful.

I’d never felt this. Never lost myself inside a woman like this.

Angelina was my goddamn miracle. And I would absolutely step across the line of black and white into the gray to protect her.