who says I want someone good for me?” she asks, her voice dripping with desire and lust. “Maybe I want someone bad, very, very bad.”
My poor fucking balls.
But I stay pulled back, not moving a muscle. My hands clamp down on the edge of the countertop behind me as she comes closer, my desire warring with my instincts. She’s making it nearly impossible to be a good guy here, especially when she kisses along my jaw, her hands curling into the hair at the nape of my neck. I could lift her onto the countertop to pull her jeans down, spread her legs, and feast on her flesh, or bend her over the wooden chair and take her roughly from behind, or tell her to get on her knees and suck me. I think she’d welcome any of those options, or even all three.
But not like this. She deserves better, and though she’s all-in right now, eventually, she’ll realize that I’m right. And I’ll be the asshole who took advantage of her.
I growl in frustration, pushing her back to put a foot of space between us. Instantly, I miss her touch, but I can’t give in to the urge to pull her back in. I won’t do that to her.
“I want you so bad, but I’m trying real fucking hard to do right by you,” I admit in a voice that sounds a lot more pained than I’ve heard in a long time. “Let me do that, at least. Please.”
Poppy looks hurt, but I can see her mulling over my words, analyzing them the way she does the ones she writes. I’ve never felt less adept at expressing myself with a random combination of twenty-six letters.
“I should go,” I tell her, taking another step, but it’s still not enough. I can smell her, feel her, taste her, and see her, so close but yet too far. Not too far away, but too far above me. She’s so good, even in her wildness. She’s simply better than me. But I’m trying my fucking best here. “Get some work done tonight. I’ll see you in the morning, and we’ll go to the pawn shop.”
She nods stiffly. As I head for the door, she calls out my name. “Connor!”
I pause, turning back to look at her, hoping she tells me to come back while praying she tells me to go. She looks so fucking sexy, with her red hair mussed from my fingers and her lips puffy from my kisses. I’m surprised I haven’t busted out of my jeans already. “Yeah?”
“Nine o’clock. I’ll be at your truck.”
I grunt an agreement and flee to my house. I do a quick safety check, but there are no alerts. Everything is safe.
Except the woman whose home I’m staring at through the kitchen window’s open blinds. In the shadows of my house, she can’t see me. But I can see her, going back and sitting at the table, looking dazed and confused. Me too, woman. Me fucking too.
She presses her fingers to her lips as though feeling me still there.
And then she smiles, reaching down to cup her breast through her T-shirt the way I did moments ago. Her head drops back as she finds a stiff nipple and pinches herself.
I don’t think, I act. Reaching down, I fumble my belt open and my jeans down, my dick springing forth as my eyes fix on the sight of what Poppy’s doing.
I can’t hear anything, of course, and the angle of the table and the window don’t allow me to see everything . . . but I can imagine. Just like she creates dialogues and scenes for her characters, I fill in the gaps as I take my cock in hand, pumping slowly.
“That’s it,” I whisper, my thumb smearing the slick precum already oozing from my tip around the head of my cock. “Play with your nipples.”
Though she can’t hear the order, she does it naturally, one hand massaging her breasts while the other dips below the table to do the same thing I’m doing over here. I can’t tear my eyes away, matching her stroke for stroke as we rise together.
In my mind, her plump, luscious lips form words of desire and want as she starts rising up and down in her chair.
I don’t know how I do it, keep myself going without rushing back to her, but we go faster and faster until, with a cry that I can actually hear between our two houses, she