Page 26 of Unconditional

I could’ve taken the opportunity that had presented itself to me and ran off to get Susie and call the police.I could have ran out and gotten the first cab out of here.Any number of things that I probablyshouldhave done… yet I chose to strip down naked and climb into a steaming shower with the man who’d blackmailed me.

What made it all the worse was that he looked so remorseful; like he truly regretted what we’d done only shortly before.He looked guilty.Even as lust shown heavily in the shadows of his eyes, even as his hands took hold of my hips, even as he returned my kiss with fervor, I could feel the guilty restraint radiating off him.

I didn’t want guilt or remorse or panic.I certainly didn’t want to feel bad for seducingthisman of all men.I wanted to feelgood, and now I knew he could give that to me.

I bit down on the skin of his neck hard, forcing him out of his own thoughts.

“Fuck me again, Talon.I want you to.”

He blinked down at me with shining brown eyes, his growl heady as I felt it vibrate through my body, sending goosebumps over every inch of my skin.“You,” he said, taking my mouth again in a dirty, sloppy kiss.“Are a goddamnedterror.”There was no more protesting.His large hands gripped my ass and effortlessly lifted me to wrap my legs around his waist.

Slamming me into the vintage tile wall, he squeezed one cheek before sliding his grip along my thigh.“Mmm, these legs.I’ve been dreaming about these legs for months.”His lips trailed along the delicate skin beneath my ear lobe.“What they would look like bare.What they would feel like wrapped around me, just like this.”

My head fell back against the wall behind me, giving his mouth better access to nip down to my chest, sucking a stiffened nipple between his lips.I gasped, trying like hell to rotate my hips enough to find the friction that I was needing, that I was desperate for.“Months?”

His pause was so swift I wondered if I imagined it.Seeming to decide he didn’t care if I knew, he answered, “All damned year, Blondie.These legs haveterrorizedmy fantasies since I first laid eyes on you in that shitty bar.”I shivered.Yes.Just as his eyes had terrorized mine.The way that narrowed expression, so hot and cold somehow simultaneously, banished thoughts of any others.

I couldn’t tell him that though and never would.Instead, I squeezed my thighs together tighter around him and rocked my hips, layering my lips over his again.Taking my cue, he aligned himself with my entrance, this time pressing inside slowly as he observed my expression.My eyes squeezed shut tightly and I felt my jaw go slacken.The way this man fit inside of me was consuming.

Rocking again, I took him to the hilt, a small cry escaping me.When my eyes opened, I was tempted to slam them shut again.What right did he have to be so fucking beautiful?The muscles in his face relaxed while he stared down to where our bodies intertwined, the fingers that gripped me, squeezing as he began to thrust.His breathing was uneven, those stupid brown eyes shining as if he were hypnotized.

I blinked, throwing my head back again just so I wouldn’t have to look at him.I didn’t need to look at him to feel him, and he feltsplendid.I rolled my hips to meet him, somehow taking him deeper and deeper with every thrust.Between the sensation of Talon’s cock finding nerves I hadn’t known existed before and the small shower cubicle rapidly filling with steam, it was growing difficult to draw in air.

I felt my orgasm right on the threshold but I wasn’t ready.I wanted to ride this out, literally and figuratively, for just a little while longer.My gaze caught the ceiling tiles above, likely older than both of us, and I said the first thing that came to mind.“How many people do you think have fucked in this shower in the last hundred or so years?”The words were raspy and chopped, gasped between each rough stroke.

My eyes flicked back to Talon to find his were narrowed on me, in that way that tells me he cannot believe I said what I just said.“Do you ever—” He thrust upward again, one of his thumbs moving to start working circles around my throbbing clit.“—shut the hell up?”

Unbidden, my lips split into a wicked grin that stretched across my entire face.“Not if I can help it.”

Talon didn’t respond, his gaze stuck on the smile that was drawing down into a pleasure drunk ‘O.’One hand left my ass to tangle into my dripping hair, the other tucked me in as tightly to his body as we would fit.He drew my head back by my hair roughly and sucked the flesh of my neck into his mouth so hard I knew it would leave marks.I couldn’t bring myself to object.It felt good.Almost as good as the way he’d begun punching up even harder, making it impossible to draw in a proper breath.

This time when the orgasm built, I couldn’t fend it off with distractions or pointless questions.It hit with so much force I wailed out a sob, my vision going black with borderline painful pinpricks of adrenaline.Talon followed me over the edge, his breathing ragged as he spilled inside me.My ears were ringing from the aftershocks, but he could still be heard groaning, “Oh shit, oh shit,yes.”Over and over again while he watched his cum leak down my inner thigh.

He placed me back on my feet slowly, my hands gripping his arms tightly to avoid collapsing where I stood.He did not protest.His forehead leaned against mine while we stood in tense silence, the spray of water becoming cool against our heated flesh.Without a word, he turned me on wobbling legs to face the spray, lathering soap into his hands and scrubbing me down from top to bottom.

I did not speak when he moved to my hair and combed through the tresses, not even to object when he put conditioner directly on my roots.Not a whisper left my lips when he rinsed it all off me.And when he turned me to face him again, cupping my cheeks more tenderly than I thought him capable, I did not turn away when the kiss he gave me was so gentle it made my eyes prickle.

It wasn’t until he’d shut the shower off and passed me a towel, that a new kind of confused anxiety, different than what I'd been living with since Talon's arrival in Chicago, began creeping past the sensation of deep satisfaction.Something had changed and that fact alone was terrifying.With knowing eyes, Talon donned a towel of his own and went to the door.“Take your time,” he muttered in an undecipherable tone, leaving me alone in the foggy bathroom to try and fruitlessly sort out my thoughts.

eighteen

Misely

Talonwasnotinthe bedroom when I finally convinced myself to emerge from the bathroom.I’d stretched the time by combing and drying my hair, applying my facial products, and then standing and staring at my reflection in the condensation coated mirror.

He had in fact left a large mark on my neck.My cheek, still bruised from Chicago, was now rosy from the extended time it’d spent pressed into the frozen ground.Usually when I looked in the mirror, it was to prepare myself; for work, for an evening out, to just face life…It didn’t matter.When I looked in the mirror, I was reminded that I was fierce.That I stood out.That nobody and nothing would ever make me feel small.

Because I was good enough for me.I knew I was beautiful and smart and outspoken and I didn’t care if that made me vain.It didn’t matter if nobody else ever saw me becauseI did.Except now, when I looked at myself in the mirror, I did not recognize the woman that stared back at me.It wasn’t the uninhibited, unhinged sex.It wasn’t even the man I’d had it with, a thought which in and of itself was disturbing.

It was the sheer lack of emptiness I felt.I looked in the mirror and saw a marked woman and I didn’t feel numb or sad or ashamed or any of the things that had become synonymous with my detached sexual encounters.

I felt satisfied.

I stared at myself, feeling like I was high for the first time and desperate for more.It was confusing and dizzying and most of all, frightening.

When I walked back into the room and saw Talon wasn’t there, I struggled with the dueling disappointment and relief that washed over me.From the tray of lunch that had been left on the end of the bed, it was easy to assume that he had left me alone on purpose.Add that to the mind-fuck of the day— he’d left me alone, again, after I’d already run away once, without trying to detain me to the bed with handcuffs.

I took the food to the table by the terrace doors, trying and failing to conjure up the resentment I’d had for Talon only a few hours before.It shouldn’t have been so difficult.I just needed to remember how I ended up at this gorgeous hotel to begin with.I needed to remember why Birdie and Milo were forced to move all the way to Oregon in the first place.I should have remembered the surveillance my parents were unknowingly under.It should have been that easy, but it wasn’t.

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