She raked her hands down my back, her body rocking helplessly against mine, and I began to move again, thrusting into her deep and hard and fast. The orgasm was already starting to stir inside of me, the sight of her like this enough to push me closer and closer to the edge – fuck, did she have any idea how much she turned me on? Any idea how much it aroused me to see her like this? I kissed her again, harder this time, tongue in her mouth, teeth catching against her lip, and listened to the ragged breathing she could hardly control as she inched closer and closer to her release...

And then, at last, I felt it, the moment she came. Her pussy squeezed around my cock, pulling me in deep like she needed more of me, needed every inch of me she could take. She moaned against my mouth, a deep, throaty noise that rose up from some place far down inside of her. I could feel her throbbing around me, against me, her entire body trembling as I held her there in my arms. I rocked into her a few more times, savoring the feel of her orgasming pussy around my cock, until, moments later, I felt myself tip over the edge and into my own release.

I slipped deep into her as I filled her with my seed, plugging her with my cock and holding myself there. I knew that the noises she was making were sure to attract attention, but how could I give a damn about any of that when she felt so fucking perfect?

I was breathing hard as I slowly pulled myself back from her. She let out a reluctant little whine, as though the last thing she needed right now was to be away from me.

"Fuck," she gasped, as I gently put her back on her feet, guiding her upright once more. She giggled as she tried to adjust herself, pulling up her panties and smoothing down her skirt quickly.

"I can’t believe I just did that," she laughed, leaning against me and dropping a kiss on my neck. I closed my eyes, wrapping my arms around her.

"You need to stop that," I warned her. "Or I’m not going to bother going back to the bar."

"You think anyone knows what we’re up to?" she asked me, biting her lip playfully.

"Oh, hell yes," I replied. "They saw the way I was looking at you."

Her eyes widened.

"You really think?"

"Of course," I replied, dipping down to drop a kiss on her lips. "But trust me, nobody would blame me. Not with you looking like that."

Her cheeks flushed slightly, and she slipped her hand into mine.

"Come on," she told me, tugging me back towards the bar. "I think you at least owe me a drink for that."

"You can get anything you want for that, baby girl," I promised her.

I could see the flush creeping around to the back of her neck at hearing me talk to her like that, and I grinned. Damn, I liked making her blush. She might have been all kinds of confident and outgoing the rest of the time, but when she was with me, some of that seemed to fall away, and I loved nothing more than watching her squirm.

Except maybe figuring out exactly how I could get her to do that on top of my dick at the end of the night.

Chapter Twelve – Abbey

I fidgeted as I checked my phone for the millionth time. I still couldn’t believe she had actually agreed to meet with me, but I had no idea if Iris was planning to turn up or if she was about to let this slip through her fingers.

When I had reached out to her the day before last, she had sounded pretty nervous about coming to see me in Atwood. When I had explained to her that there was something going on with Franco and I wanted to talk to her about it, I could tell that she wanted to just hang up and be done with it. But she took a deep breath and told me that she was willing to see me to talk about what she had been through.

And now, I was waiting at a coffee shop not far from my apartment, wondering when she was going to make her arrival. I didn’t want to call and hassle her as to when she was going to get here, but there was part of me that was getting impatient. No, not impatient, it wasn’t that – I was getting nervous. Nervous that she wasn’t going to show up at all.

Or that Franco might have gotten out in front of her and stopped her from coming to this meeting. That was the part that freaked me out the most, the part I knew I couldn’t handle. If something had happened to her because of me, because of what I had done, I knew I wouldn’t have been able to forgive myself. I had to believe that this was the right call, even though, the more time that passed, the more doubtful I became that it was...

Chuck had no idea what I was doing today, and that’s how I wanted to keep it. Not that he wouldn’t have helped me, of course, no - I knew he would have done everything he could to make this easy on me. But I didn’t want him to know how freaked I was about everything that was happening with Franco. I didn’t want to ruin the fun we were having, the good times that we were sharing, by pulling him back down to Earth with the reminder of my ex. I could tell that there was something going on inside his head when Franco got brought up, and I was curious to know just how far down that went. At the same time, though, things were going so well between us. Why would I let my shithead ex get in the way of that when I could just relax and have fun instead?

Finally, the door to the coffee shop opened, and I practically sprang to my feet when I saw Iris heading through the door. She’d texted me a picture of herself, making sure I wouldn’t be fooled into meeting up with someone else. I grinned, waving her over, and she tucked a strand of dark, curly hair behind her ear and came over to join me.

"Hey," she greeted me, offering me a slight smile.I wondered how much convincing she’d had to do to herself to get her out here at all. She seemed terrified, eyes darting this way and that, like she was expecting Franco to leap out from behind a corner at any given moment.

"Thanks so much for meeting with me, Iris," I told her. "I know it can’t have been easy for you. My friend Rina told me about you, said you’d been through some of the same stuff I had..."

She let out a long sigh, picking at a spot on the table where the whorls of the wood met beneath her finger.

"I’m so sorry you had to go through it, too," she muttered. "I told myself that he would never do that to someone else, he was just stupid when it came to me, but...but if I’d known he was going to pull something like this on you, too, I would have done more to stop him."

"It’s not your fault," I told her firmly. "It’s his. You have nothing to be sorry about. He’s the one who should be apologizing."

"Yeah, but..." she trailed off, then shook her head. I could tell how hard it was for her to even talk about this, the weight of it still hanging heavy on her mind.