Page 68 of Ransom
I tried to come. The vice grip he had on my balls wouldn't let me. The orgasm gathered and broke against his hand, and I was left shaking against him, my whole body trying and failing so hard, I thought I'd cry.
His hand eased.
I climbed again. He let me get close. His fist tightened on us both, his thumb working the heads, and I was right there, right there —
His hand on my balls clamped down.
I cursed and whined, and he held my face against his neck and shushed me like I was a child throwing a tantrum. All the while, his hand never stopped moving.
My back was on fire from his nails and my shoulder ached from his teeth and his hand kept catching me at the edge and pulling me back from it, and I bit my own forearm where it was braced beside his head because there was nothing else to bite, and I rocked into his fist and shook against his grip and could not come.
"Stubborn," Ransom mumbled, and his hand on my balls finally went slack.
I thrust into his hand and came so hard it made my balls ache even more. I bit down on the meat of my arm and shook through it with my face shoved against his neck. I felt his cock pulse against mine a moment later. His hand kept stroking us through it, slowing to a stop a moment too late.
For a long second, neither of us moved.
Then his hand let go of us. It stayed between us, slick, resting on my stomach like he'd forgotten he owned it. His breathing slowed under me, his eyes closed, his mouth softened. He was already half asleep.
I propped up on my elbow and looked at him. The neon from the parking lot cut a red bar across the wall above the bed, and that was the only light in the room. It painted his cheekbone and missed his eyes.
My shoulder throbbed. My back stung. My balls ached up into my stomach. I had marks coming up on me that'd show in the morning, and I'd asked for every piece of it, but it wasn't enough.
I wanted more. Not just more of this, more of him, more drunk nights, more dark days, more hours of silence spent in a borrowed truck. I didn't want to go back to El Paso and sit in my pristine white office in my boots and tie and check boxes on paperwork. I didn't want to go back to my mother alone, or stand over my daddy's grave alone, or ever sleep alone again.
And I wanted him to do that to me again. Not in spite of what it had been. Because of it. The mean grip and the held edge and the hand that wouldn't let me come until he decided I could. I'd known what it was while it was happening, and I wanted it again anyway. I wanted him grieving and cruel and gone behind the eyes and using me to hold himself together. I wanted him present, too, when he could be. But I wasn't going to lie to myself about which one I'd take if I could only have the one. I wanted him even when he wasn't here. Especially then.
Winston, I thought, you old selfish bastard.
I reached for the corner of the comforter and wiped the mess off my stomach and then off his, rough and not particular. He made a sound that wasn't quite a grunt, half awake. I eased off him and started to roll away to give him space on the bed.
His hand came up off the mattress and caught the back of my neck before I could get far, and he pulled my head down againsthis. His breath came out warm against my lips. We were so close to kissing, but a million miles from it.
He held me there for a long second with his face against mine. Then his hand fell, and he was asleep.
His head went slack on the pillow, and his face slid an inch off mine. His mouth had dropped open. His breath came warm against my chin in slow, even pulls.
I stayed where I was for a while and looked at him. The neon cut a red bar across the wall above us, and his lashes threw a small shadow on his cheekbone. Handsome for a hitman. Always had been.
After a while, I eased onto my side facing him and tucked my arm under his ribs. His hand fumbled to land over mine, but when it did, he threaded his fingers through mine.
His breathing evened out inside a minute, but his fingers stayed hooked through mine even after he was asleep.
I woke up todaylight I didn't deserve and a body that agreed with me.
The motel room came into focus in pieces: the popcorn ceiling, a water stain shaped like a bat, curtains that blocked nothing. The air conditioner hummed in the wall and pushed stale, cold air across the bed. My mouth tasted like tequila and regret, and something underneath both that was just Ransom.
He lay face-down beside me, one arm shoved under the pillow, his back bare and brown in the thin light. Someone had pulled his jeans off at some point. Probably me. His boots sat side by side at the foot of the bed, lined up straight. He hadn't moved. His breathing came slow and deep through parted lips, his face turned toward me on the pillow. He looked younger asleep, with his mouth open and his hair mussed, and one hand curled loose on the sheet between us.
I'd held that hand last night. He'd let me.
It was also the hand he'd put on my throat, on my jaw, on my balls. I knew it by professional instinct, the same way I knew themake of his rifle and the caliber he carried, and I was lying in a motel bed taking inventory of what it had done to me.
I started at the top.
My shoulder ached deep in the joint where his teeth had set in and held. I rolled it once and felt the bruise wake up under the skin. There was a half-moon of broken capillaries above the collarbone I could see without a mirror, and another, lower, where his mouth had moved on. My back stung when I shifted against the sheet. He'd opened me up with his nails, and the cotton clung in places it shouldn't have. The mark on my forearm I'd put there myself. Teeth marks, mine, in the meat below the elbow, dark purple and clean as a brand. I'd bit down because there was nothing else to bite. My balls were a low, dull ache that climbed into my stomach if I thought about it too long, and I made the mistake of thinking about it.
He'd held me at the edge until I'd cried into his neck, and he hadn't been there for any of it.
