Page 31 of Cross To Bear

How could I feel the most bitter of jealousy and the purest of pleasure? That’s what it was to be in a sleuth. The four of us were tied together closer by bonds stronger than blood, so it felt like it was my lips on hers, not Razor’s, even as I was painfully aware they weren’t. Because when his hand sank into her hair and he tugged her away, tucking her legs around his waist, I knew exactly what he was about to do, because I’d do the same. Press her into the doorway of her bedroom, all fucking control lost.

“Fuck…” He bit the word off. “Fuck, Maddie…”

He began to move against her, a slow undulating movement that had her moaning. At first, it was an uncertain sound, probably because she was still sensitive and my fingers flexed, ready to tear him away if he was hurting her. But then her hands clapped down on his shoulders, holding him right where he was.

“You like that?” My voice was low and hoarse as I sidled closer, leaning on the wall, then darting closer. “You like the feel of him?” She could barely nod, though that wasn’t enough. “He fucking wants you so damn much, Maddie. He’d do anything for you.” I tilted her lips my way. “We would. Tell me you want that, want us.”

This wasn’t the right way to extricate confessions for her, but a bear just hunts, doesn’t think too much about the consequences of those actions.

“You do, don’t you, Maddie?”

She answered me the same way she had him, grabbing me around the neck and hauling my lips down to hers.

Heaven, that’s what I fucking felt when she kissed me, a sweetness so fucking sharp it cut through me straight to the bone, branding me as hers. As if I wasn’t the moment I saw her. My breath whistled in my nose as I kissed her and kissed her, unable to pull away for a breath, even as my lungs started to burn. But hers would be too, that forced me back.

Us back.

“Fuck…”

I’d seen Razor crazy, on edge, spoiling for a fight, though not completely off centre. He stumbled back from her, touching his lips as if he wanted to store the feel of her kisses away for later.

Perhaps because he might not ever get another one.

“I’m going.” His voice made clear he was persuading himself as much as her. “I’ve gotta go now or…” He straightened up. “Otherwise I’m throwing you down on that bed and fucking you so damn hard the bed frame breaks and you don’t want that right now.” Her fingers trailing along his arm made that less clear. He just shook his head before staring at me. “We’re leaving.”

He was right. Fuck him, but he was right. I moved in to the spot he’d vacated, to cup her jaw in my hands, not plunder her mouth this time.

“One of us will be back here in the morning to get you to work. You need to be there by nine am?”

“Eight,” she corrected breathily, then blinked, coming back to herself.

“Eight am it is.”

It hurt, pulling away from her like that, walking out into her lounge room that stank of sex and then out her front door after we locked it. Once it was closed with a click, Razor looked back at me, that wild smile back.

“Our girl wants to get a little wild? We’re the boys for that job.” He stared back through the window at the empty lounge room, then nodded. “We’ll give her everything she wants and more.”

“And then she’ll decide whether that’s enough to make her stay.”

I didn’t want to be the buzzkill, not when I still had her scent in my nose, but I couldn’t keep it back. I never could when it came to her. Every sleuth went through their trials when they found their fated mate, though finding her didn’t mean winning her.

“Let’s get home,” Razor said, slapping me on the shoulder, “and let the boys know what’s happening.”

Chapter 19

I’d talked so brazenly about getting myself off in front of the two men, so I guess it wasn’t surprising I was trying to do just that when they left. I’d blinked at their abrupt departure, perhaps because the tide in my blood they stirred, then satisfied, was rising again when both of them kissed me against my door. While mentally I was relieved when they pulled away, glad someone had the presence of mind to stop things where they were, physically I wasn’t so happy about it. Because of Razor’s little speech. It pushed some buttons I didn’t even know I wanted pressed.

It wasn’t hard to imagine that tattooed hand going around the back of my neck rather than the front, pinning me to the bed, grinding my face into the bed coverings as he… I moved my little buzzing vibrator faster, feeling the arousal spike from simmering to boiling hot.

What would it be like, if Razor gave into his base needs? If instead of this aching emptiness, I had everything I needed filling me. No, more than that. He threatened to fuck me so hard he’d break the bed, so it’d be long, hard, fast strokes, pulling out to almost the tip before slamming back in again, making my hands claw at the bed as I was sure he’d be bursting inside me, instead stringing my pleasure along until I was a sobbing mess. Then another hand would go under my chin, breaking Razor’s hold, using it to tilt my head Bjorn’s way as he knelt before me.

I had a fair idea of what he’d look like. I’d seen him stripped to the waist in his mother’s pool often enough, telling myself I was looking at his many chest tattoos, not the man himself. Like I didn’t notice the smattering of light brown hair on his chest, melding with the massive tattoo of a bear across it. I saw it now, in my mind’s eye: Bjorn’s lips twisting into a smile as his hand slid down his washboard abs. To draw my attention to it, his hand wrapped around the base of his cock then eased it down, so the head was almost grazing my lips.

“You’re gonna suck my cock down like a good girl, aren’t you, Maddie?” That’s what had me clamping down on dream Razor, on my actual fingers as I struggled to get them high enough, deep enough to stroke that spot that ached the most. “You are, aren’t you?”

It was his tone of complete self-congratulation, fraying the moment my lips touched him, then his ragged exhalation, that had me coming apart in my dream, as well as in reality.

So why didn’t it feel that great?

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