Page 69 of Edge of Ruin
The earliest flight we could find with seats available left the following morning. Way too long to wait, but we had no choice. We checked into an airport hotel. When we were locked in our room, Jack laid his pistol on the kitchenette counter.
“I’m taking a shower,” he announced. “You all right out here?”
He waited for my nod, his eyes still doubtful. “Don’t open the door,” he added.
Hah. As if I would. I rolled my eyes, and he disappeared into the bathroom.
I felt like a puppet with strings cut when I didn’t have his hot, vital energy to struggle against. I curled up on the bed and thought it through.
I had to be realistic. Hard-nosed. I had nothing to offer Jack except a crushing burden of danger, financial drain, and constant, grinding stress. He’d already risked his life, dodging bullets and knives, diving into wild water. A man couldn’t marry a risk like that. Or plan a future. I’d be stupid and selfish to demand promises from him now.
This, however, did not mean that I was going to deny myself the comfort of his body. Life was short and uncertain. I was seizing every day and night from now on.
I listened at the bathroom door to the shower hiss. I caught a glimpse of myself, in the prim, daisy-spattered warm-up suit, and sputtered with laughter.
I stripped it off, folded it carefully, and waited for the shower to stop, shivering in the air-conditioned chill.
When I opened the door, his startled face made me smile, catlike. I laid the gun on the counter by the bathroom sink. The room was a fragrant fog of steam. The bruises on his face were taking form.
Maybe I was presuming too much. Maybe he was too stressed, too injured and exhausted—or, um ... maybe not. His cock pointed straight at me, in seconds flat. That seemed promising.
“What’s this, Viv?” he asked.
I touched the dripping, gleaming contours of his body. “I’m just living in the moment, Jack.”
He flinched. “Don’t throw that in my face. We need to talk.”
“No, we don’t,” I said. “No past. No future. Just now.”
He looked worried. “How long do we have to play this game?”
“How long is irrelevant, when you’re in the moment,” I told him. “Only now exists. You should know that. Aren’t you the expert?”
He stared at me with haunted eyes. “You’re a real hard-ass, Viv D’Onofrio, you know that?”
“I’ve had tough teachers.” I gazed into his face for a moment, and finally relented. “Look, if I ever have a normal life again, with no axe hanging over me, and you still want to have a conversation about our future, we can have it. Until then ... no.” I reached out, seized his cock and stroked it boldly.
“And until then, you just want to fuck me?”
My mouth twitched at his sulky tone, and I sank gracefully to my knees. “I ask it ... respectfully,” I purred, trying not to smile.
He let out a stifled burst of laughter as I swirled my tongue around his cockhead. “Oh, God. I’ve never gotten respect like this in my life.”
“Your time has come,” I murmured, then sucked him into my mouth.
He was so thick and broad and hard, but I was inventive, hungry, and aching for his every shudder and gasping sigh of pleasure. I used my hands, my tongue, and, bit by bit, pulled him deeper into my throat, long suckling strokes that made him quiver and groan.
I kept it slow, kept him trembling on the brink until the ache of my own yearning grew too sharp to bear. Then I rose up and turned to face the mirror. I parted my legs, arching my ass so he could see everything. How flushed and gleaming wet and eager I was for him. “Take me,” I said.
He seized my hips, stroking them. “I don’t have condoms.”
“Of course you don’t. You’ve been too busy saving my life to pay attention to stuff like that.”
He looked worried. “Viv, this is exactly the kind of thing we need to talk about?—”
“No talk. Give it to me before I start to scream.”
He eased past my body’s resistance, sliding and circling his cockhead around in my lube, deliciously seductive and teasing. Then drove himself slowly, deeply inside me, surging tenderly, sliding over my most sensitive spots. I clutched the kitchen counter, staring at my own flushed face, whimpering at each slick, slamming stroke. We held each other’s gaze in the mirror as if the fate of the universe depended on it.
