Catching Sin, page 23
“I’m going to make you come and then I’m going to work you back up to the edge.”
She tries to say something, but then my mouth takes over. My tongue juts out, entering her body with a single thrust, loving the way she slides forward and then back. My hand grasps her hip, so she doesn’t fall. This is more than eating her out. This is more than giving my girl pleasure. This is my face bonding with her body. It’s me acquainting myself with the pussy that I will devour forevermore. The one that will eventually deliver my babies. Yes, that’s Isabel. I had a premonition the night I met her, but it’s only grown stronger since, and now? Now, I can’t envision my world without her in it. Young? Sure. My assistant? Absolutely. Involved with the mob boss to end all mob bosses? Without a doubt.
But right now, it’s just me and her, and I need her to feel how much I love her.
My hand clasps harder to her outer hip, my face unable to hold back. She bucks against me. So uninhibited. So wild. The moment I thrust another finger inside her, splaying them out as best I can, she comes, her back arching and her legs shaking as she loses her grip and falls forward. I catch her before she face-plants, savoring the taste as the last of her orgasm releases.
“Please,” she gasps, finding the mattress and rolling over to face me.
Breathing hard, her breasts anxiously await my mouth. I drop without thinking about it, pressing her down and covering her nipple with my mouth. Her fingers rake through my hair, scratching my scalp as I gently bite on one, sucking on the tender flesh until it’s nearly purple. I switch to the other, marking the hell out of them, loving the way she squirms and moans beneath me. But I need her ready. I need her ready to explode again before I can enter her.
“Maddox, I need you now. I’m ready.”
“Rub your clit.” She does so instantly, and I pull away from her chest to watch the show. Her hooded eyes lock on mine as she rubs herself in small circles. “Does that feel good?”
“You feel better.”
“Slip two fingers inside yourself and tell me what it feels like.”
Isabel smiles, a brow quirking as she glides lower and slips two fingers inside her pussy. I’m a rock of a man on the edge of an avalanche.
“I’m warm,” she starts. “So wet.” Motherfucker! “Oh, Maddox,” she moans loudly. “I’m so tight.”
“Fucking tease.”
She laughs and nods. “Yes. But I’m ready all the same. Please. I need you.”
Taking a condom out of my wallet, I sheath myself up. Stroking my cock lazily, I watch her wet entrance as I try to picture a world where I don’t blow my load instantly. The threat is real. “Baby, stand up.” She does immediately, and fuck if that doesn’t make me harder. “I’m going to lay down and you’re going to lower yourself onto me. You’re going to be in control tonight. Go at your own pace. I’m a rotten bastard, but I’d rather die than hurt you.”
“Okay,” she agrees softly, her nerves finally starting to show.
Climbing onto the bed, I position myself so I’m sitting up, my gaze staring up at her. I could die now and know that I lived happily. My life has been a mess. Heartbreak and death and fucking anguish. But Isabel? This woman sets me free. Makes me feel worthy of this second chance.
“I love you,” I tell her again, because before she slides down on me, she needs to know it for sure.
Her soft smile tells me everything I’ll ever need to know. “I know.” Cheeky brat. “Crazy, right? We’re crazy.”
“Maybe. But that doesn’t make it any less real.”
She leans in and plants a soft kiss on my lips, then straddles my thighs. Slowly, so effing slowly!, she lowers herself onto me. “Oh,” she hums. “Ah!”
“Take a breath.” I do the same because holy crap. I need to move so bad, but I force myself to stay frozen. Her expression is etched with pain and that breaks me. I reach up, cupping one of her breasts, trying to get her body to relax. “You have to breathe. Relax.”
“It hurts.”
I clasp her hands, intertwining our fingers. “Take your time.” My lips meet hers, kissing away her pain. Whispering anything I can think of to soothe her. I feel her body start to meld to mine, her muscles releasing from their tensed position. “You okay?”
She nods jerkily before trying again. She makes it two more inches and my head rolls back, my eyes with it. It feels so good. God, she feels so good. “Isabel,” I groan.
“Maddox,” she cries out. “Thrust up and end this.”
“I can’t. It’ll hurt.”
“Please. I can’t do it. I need you to rip off the Band-Aid.”
Jesus Christ! “Isabel, look at me.” She opens her eyes and stares down at me. “Tell me.” She shakes her head. “Dammit, woman. Tell me.”
“I love you.” I thrust up just as she finishes her words, my lips smashing back into hers. I kiss her through it as she whimpers into my mouth, holding her against me as her body is finally fully seated on mine. I slide back down a little only to thrust up again, and her head flies back on a screech. My thumb finds her clit, rubbing it in circles. I hope it helps her along. She’s frozen forever, and just when I start to reach my breaking point, she grinds forward against me. “Better.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. Keep doing that.” I do. I rub her clit like my life depends on it as her body rocks back and forth against me. “So good now.”
You have no idea. I sit here like her vessel, my arms wrapped around her, and allow her body to consume mine. She grinds against me. Slides up and down with painfully slow strokes. It takes her forever to fully acclimate to my size. To having me inside her body. She’s wet. Slick as hell. But it doesn’t matter. I’m big for her and it hurts, but once she’s ready, she starts to bounce on me, and I lose all control. My hips thrust up, meeting hers. My thumb and forefinger roll her clit. My mouth is on her nipples, and when she finally comes, she does it hard, clamping so tight around me, my vision blanks out in a flash of white light. I follow her over the edge in a mass of loud grunts and groans that likely make me sound like the savage I am with her.
She falls against me, both of us covered in sweat. Nothing has ever been so good in the history of the world. I’ll swear under oath to it. I hold her, kissing her hair softly, feeling her heart beat against mine. I never want this night to end. Getting up, I dispose of the condom and return with a warm wet cloth for her. I press it against her, and she hums in delight.
“I meant it,” she whispers, her head pressed against my shoulder once more. “I think I really love you.”
“I know I do.”
Twenty-Five
ISABEL
* * *
An ache to change the direction of the tides swims through me. I’m spent. My body lacking the rigidity of bones as I lay here on my bed in a heap of sweat and skin. Maddox flips me over against my will, drawing me in against his body. His arms wrap around me, holding me so close my breaths become his breaths. I just lost my virginity in the most epic display of fireworks. It hurt in a way that reminds you God might actually hate women, but once that pain subsided, Maddox isolated every pleasure sensor I own and tweaked them just right.
“Are you okay?”
“I have no idea.” It’s the truth. I feel incredible, and yet I feel broken. Not sure how those two opposing forces meld together, but they seem to be inside my vagina right now.
Maddox props himself up on his elbow, staring down at me like I’m his reason. “You have to help me out more than that. What can I do? Did I hurt you really bad?” He’s already replaced this warm, wet towel twice. It feels good, but I caught sight of the blood on it and it makes me not want it near me.
“Sleep here tonight.”
“Done. Anything else?” I stay quiet. “Isabel. You have to tell me the truth.”
“The truth?” I snort. “It’s a beautiful and terrible thing and therefore should be treated with caution.”
Maddox laughs. “Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it.”
“Holy shit,” I gasp as he returns my quote with another one. “You’re a Harry Potter geek.”
He laughs harder, smiling down at me as he presses a kiss to my nose. “So are you. But I think everyone pretty much is, so maybe that doesn’t make us so unique. That quote always resonated with me.” He leans in and kisses my lips.
“How so?”
“That’s a story for another night, my beautiful smart girl.”
“Is that who I am to you?”
Staring at me in the darkness, considering my question, he smiles softly. “I see you as many things, Isabel. Smart. Beautiful. Mine. Yes, you are all of those things to me and more. But it doesn’t matter how I see you. It matters how you see yourself. I’m not sure you fully know who you are yet.”
His honest assessment of me, his words so strong and forthright, sting. He’s right. Maybe that’s what hurts the most. I lose myself in books. I read everything and anything I can get my hands on, much of it with no real practical use in my life. I learn languages I’ll never use. Read textbooks for classes I’ll never take. Lose myself in fictitious worlds. I let Anthony Conti call the shots in my life because every time I try to mix it up or do something on my own, he thwarts my attempts. Sometimes with force. I have no identity. I am a pretty face with a nice body and that’s all I’m ever seen as.
“I know what I want to be.”
His thumb glides across my bottom lip, his eyes tracking the movement. “And what’s that?”
“Free to make my own choices. Free to go out and explore the world.”
Maddox sucks in a stuttered breath. Maybe he thought I was going to say I want to be a teacher or a doctor or a stay-at-home mom who runs the PTO for her kids. Whatever it was, he certainly didn’t expect that. It’s a sobering thought to know you’re a caged bird, with the wide-open world just on the other side. I didn’t need Anthony Conti ripping up my acceptance letters in my face to know I wasn’t leaving this town. I didn’t need him ripping me off the stage in front of the entire club to understand that my decisions are not my own to make. I certainly didn’t need him tying me to a chair for kissing a boy to know that I belong to him. And I really didn’t need him telling me he loves me to know that when he’s ready, he’ll own me for good.
By that point, he’d already proved himself to me.
Does that make me weak? I’ve often wondered and gone back and forth on the answer. I don’t want to be weak. Despite my age and inexperience with the world, I like to imagine I have what it takes to conquer it. But the basic truth is Justin. The ugly truth is a fundamental lack of self-worth, confidence, and trust in my decisions. All of which has been drilled into me for years. I’m working on fixing that. Inside, I hate being at anyone’s mercy. I hate being their practice target, hate that my compliance is a foregone conclusion. I love Maddox, but I’ll be damned if I allow another man to call the shots in my life and claim possession of me.
“You will be,” he says to me with so much conviction in his tone and expression that my insides quake. “I promise you, Isabel. Whatever you want for your life, for your future, you’ll have it. Whether that’s with me or not. Soon enough, things are going to be very different for you.”
“Do I want to know what you mean?”
Maddox shifts, staring out into the blackness of my room. His arms wrap tighter around my body, holding me so impossibly close our bodies are one. “People fear Anthony Conti because they don’t understand him. He’s ruthless. He’s a killer. He takes what he wants, when he wants it, without asking for permission or fearing the consequences. He doesn’t have limits or rules, and that strength makes others feel weak and vulnerable.”
“But not you?”
I catch a glimpse of his smirk before it’s gone. “He doesn’t know my limits. He doesn’t know who I am past what he’s seen and what I’ve made sure to show him. But most importantly, he views me as inferior in every way.”
It’s true. Just sitting in that meeting earlier today, with him laughing off about how inept he is with security, I knew it was a lie. Maddox is quietly brilliant. Anyone who dares peer closely enough, dares to pay enough attention, can see that. But to the lazy or disinterested, he’s a brainless thug with a high-profile job he didn’t earn.
“Even after you killed Fiona’s husband?”
I’ve been dying to ask him about it forever. Dying to know more. Believe it or not, there isn’t much about it out there for public consumption. The internet doesn’t always know everything.
He puffs out a heavy breath. So heavy I feel its weight settle in the air and all around me. “Can I trust you with a secret?” He finds me, holding my face in his large, warm hands. “This is a no joke secret. It impacts more than just my life. I’ve never told anyone, and I will take it to my grave. Can you handle something like that?”
Holy crap. How do I answer this one? I nod slowly. “Yes. But if you don’t want to tell me, I understand.”
“I didn’t kill Fi’s husband. A friend of mine did, but I took the hit for it because that’s the way it had to go. I don’t regret it and I wouldn’t change it. And if push had come to shove, I would have pulled that trigger without a moment’s hesitation.”
I suck in a rush of air. I think that makes me love him even more. I think he might truly be my hero.
“But yes, even with Conti believing I killed Fi’s husband, he still sees me as the fool. And that’s how I’d like to keep it. At least for now.”
Pushing Maddox back, I climb on to him, straddling his thighs and ignoring the growing ache in between mine.
“I see you,” I tell him, running my fingers across the muscular planes of his chest and abs. “I know who you are. The real you. It’s why I’m here with you now. It’s why I never stood a chance.”
He grips my hips, staring up at me with a form of devotion I have yet to acclimate to. His cock hardens between us. “Not everything,” he says hoarsely. “You don’t know everything.”
“No,” I agree. “But those are just details. And right now, I’m not sure how much I care. You’re dark. But so am I. Maybe that’s what makes us beautifully sinister together.”
Maddox smirks, sliding his hand up my stomach and cupping my breast, squeezing it firmly in his large hand. “Beautifully sinister, huh?”
I nod firmly. “Maybe that’s more me than you?” I scrunch my nose and tilt my head. He laughs, raising his other hand and rolling my nipple between his far too skilled fingers.
“Badass,” he whispers, and I grin like the giddy girl he makes me feel like.
“I never wanted to be the one to take him down before,” I admit. “But now I’m thinking it has to be me.” The more I think about it, the more I know this as a truth. It has to be me. It can’t be anyone else. I don’t know the true nature of the fight between Anthony Conti and Maddox Sinclair or Jake Turner. I know there is more to it than I realize. Conti doesn’t wage war without purpose. And I can’t imagine him blindly going after these two men for shits and giggles just because he one day got a hankering for Turner Hotels. No. There is so much more going on here.
But that doesn’t make this battle any less mine.
Maddox shakes his head, squeezing me harder. “Maybe,” he hums. “But I don’t want you involved any more than you already are.”
I want to laugh at that, but the bitter taste of bile climbs up my throat despite what Maddox’s body is doing to me. “Too late.”
“Now isn’t the time for this fight.” I open my mouth to lay into him, but he sits up in a flash, putting us nose to nose. His expression has shifted. Become something else I’m not quite sure about.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking into your eyes, Miss Bogart. Checking to see just what sort of woman you are.”
My lips curve up into a devilish smirk. “And what’s your verdict?”
“That you’re easily the strongest woman I’ve ever met, and coming from me, that’s saying something extraordinary.”
My bottom lip begins to tremble of its own volition, but I do my best to force my eyes to stay dry and clear. “Then why does it feel like I’m barely hanging on?” I manage, my voice as shaky as my stupid lip.
“Beautiful girl, that’s what makes you so strong.”
Damn him. I turn away, staring into nothingness. I have to blink a few times to clear my vision and thoughts. He means it. I know he does. I could see that written all over his gorgeous and sincere face. He thinks I’m strong. I’m not. Not yet at least. But I will be. If anything, his words strengthen my resolve.
“Maybe. Now flip me over and fuck me, Maddox, before I take matters into my own hands.”
Maddox’s smile is unstoppable. “Yes, ma’am. Whatever my woman wishes is one hundred percent my desire.”
That I believe.
I start to grind against him, back and forth as I feel his cock swell between my legs. His grip on my hips tightens just as he flips us over, so he’s on top and I’m beneath him. His hips dip down, pressing into me in the most perfect of ways. Those crazy magical fingers stroke my clit, playing me like I’m his perfectly tuned instrument. The one he loves and cares for most. The one he can pluck the most perfect notes from. “You like that, don’t you? Or do you wish my mouth is where my fingers are?”
“Yes,” I pant, taking his head and shoving it down. He laughs even as he groans, kissing a slow, hot trail of lust down my belly. His kisses are warm and wet and all I can smell is him. That intoxicating blend of sandalwood, rain, and pure Maddox. “I don’t want this night to end.”
I don’t want tomorrow to ever come. I want to get lost. To act my age. To be reckless. To enjoy myself and the moment and not think about the consequences or the tomorrows or the reality of how Maddox and I are never meant to be. The world, with all its unfathomable beauty, has so many people who make it ugly.
“It’ll only end if we let it.”
I smile as I think on that. On the way he and I seem to always play the word game. Maddox rises above me, his hands pressing into my mattress, his elbows straight as he looms over me. He slides into me, slowly, knowing I’m still sore. But this time, it doesn’t hurt. It feels outrageously good. So good that I wrap my long legs around his waist, changing up the angle and allowing him to sink in deeper.
