Sweet Ache

His fingers grip my hair and pull just tight enough that I am forced to look into his eyes. “I was trying to protect you.”

The sarcastic laugh takes me by surprise. “Really? Wow, you sure have a funny way of showing it, Hawke. What are you trying to protect me from? You?”

“Yes.”

“Nice try, rocker boy,” I sneer at his pathetic excuse. My anger drowns out the sincerity tinged with shame that is in his tone. My emotions war as what I think I should do and what I want to do clash against each other. I try to push him off me again, hating and loving and wanting and not wanting the warmth of his corded muscles against my body.

“Quin. Me. The shit in my life. All of it … Hunter was behind you,” he grunts out as he blocks my knee from connecting smartly. “I didn’t want him to mess with you. To hurt you to spite me.”

And the fight leaves me. My mind spins with the comment, with how hard that confession was for him to make.

Our breaths are panting with our exertion, our faces are close and his eyes search mine to make sure I understand. Suddenly there are so many questions I want to ask and he must see them all because not a second passes before his mouth crushes to mine and takes once again without asking. The difference is this time I let him.

I open up to him as his mouth searches for the answers to the problems his own eyes tell me he can’t find. I never understood when people said a kiss tasted this way or that way. I thought it was part of that fairy-tale princess world that I don’t subscribe to.

But I was wrong.

When our tongues connect, when his lips bruise mine, I can taste his desperation, understand that he needs something, someone, right now to help dissipate the pain and confusion that is rifling through his eyes.

And I may not understand it, in fact I may never know the truths that lie in those depths of gray but I do know that a man rarely admits he needs anything and when he does you better sit up and listen. And I’m listening.

I let him take, let him lead so the control he seeks is beneath his fingertips, willing and wanting and tangible. Where our connection earlier today was more a mutual meeting of frenzied desire, right now I can feel his need for so much more from me. To control so that he can calm, to sate so that he can feel whole, to have the release so that he can ease some of his restlessness.

And I’m here for him. I throw my threats from earlier out the window because he needs me and right now I’ll give him whatever he asks for to clear the pain from his eyes and the grief from his countenance.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes into me and I just nod my head in acceptance as his mouth claims mine once again. He kicks the door shut behind us without skipping a beat. His hands palm my breasts through my tank and mine slide beneath his shirt to feel his skin heated and taut with anxiety. I pull his shirt over his head and he does mine in turn and then my fingers unbutton his jeans earning me a pained groan as my hands find him hard and ready beneath the denim.

I shove his jeans and underwear down his hips and encircle him. He tears his mouth from mine, his head falling back as my name slips from his lips in a desperate moan. As I place a trail of openmouthed kisses down his exposed neckline, his fingers tighten on my arms when I sink to my knees on the floor before him.

I look up the plane of his defined torso to study him, jaw set, eyes burning, nostrils flaring, and when we lock eyes, I take him into my mouth. His hands immediately fist into the messy ponytail at the back of my head, wrapping the hair around his hand as he hisses in pleasure. “God, Quin.”

I may not be able to fix his problems or even know the answers to them, but this? Making him feel so much pleasure he can’t think otherwise for a bit? This, I can do for him.

His grip tightens; one of my hands is on his forearm while the other is holding his cock so that I can take it in my mouth. He holds my head still and fucks my mouth so that he hits the back of my throat before grinding his hips with a moan of ecstasy and then pulling back out. Where I’d normally explore more, tempt and taunt, I can sense from the volatility of his emotions, as well as the muscles tensed beneath my hand, that niceties aren’t welcome. He’s in this for the endgame, for the pleasure that might dull the pain, even if for a bit.

He holds my head still and moves his hips into my face. I know he’s close, can feel him hardening in my mouth but this time he presses himself a little too hard, a little too long so that I gag on his length. I hear his curse, feel the immediate release of my hair and his hands on my shoulders dragging me up, apologies on his lips as tears burn my eyes and I cough from the intrusion.

It’s really not a big deal, just a hazard of the act, but it’s almost as if something breaks within him because of it. He’s gone from angry and pent up to confused and regretful, trying to gather me into him and apologize. I’m sure it’s a mix of the alcohol and whatever happened to him today that has pain and grief written all over him and is the cause of his emotional instability. I’m probably so far off in my thinking, but my gut check reaction is that the only way to calm these manic extremes is to put him back in charge, tell him what I want, force him to finish this out.

And I have no clue what I’m doing, but I act on instinct, and what I can read in his expression.

“No, Hawke …” I try to push myself out of his arms. When I look into his eyes, I see emotion swimming within them, and press my lips to his in a no-holds-barred kiss. I force my tongue between his lips, thread my fingers through his hair, wrap a hand around his cock, and begin to pump it in my hand.

At first he doesn’t react but then my actions begin to spark him back to life. “Fuck me, Hawke. I need it hard, fast, rough.” I breathe my demands into his mouth and nip his bottom lip as I pull back and meet his eyes again, but this time I see the haze of desire begin to darken them as need washes over him.