slide across to my earlobe. He suckles with the tiniest nip of teeth against my skin before moving down my neck. I sigh. I want him to kiss me everywhere.
“Mortar…I need you.”
“I know.”
He spins me and pushes me up against the brick wall behind us. I’m trapped between a wall and a man who is every bit as permanent, but for some reason, I’m not scared, not even a little bit. It feels right, like I’ve stepped into a shelter that was designed for me and me alone.
The lingering rational part of my brain tells me that this is insane, borderline suicidal. If Grady stepped out here, we would both be stone cold dead before we could blink. I’ve seen him rage at a passerby tossing a casual compliment in my direction. Full on infidelity is a death sentence.
That’s what this is, after all. I’m officially married, in the eyes of the community and the church and whatever cruel God is subjecting me to this life. To be kissing Mortar here and now is breaking vows that are hardly an hour old.
But this is a deeper vow. Mortar made me a promise. He swore to take me away, to protect me from the man imprisoning me. I don’t know if I can trust him yet, although my body responds to his like they speak the same language. He is, after all, a criminal, a drug dealer, a bookie, an outlaw in every sense of the word. Even more so than those surface details, he is the type of man who always has an angle. The type of man who always wants something. I don’t know yet what he wants from me.
But he made me a promise. Between him and Grady, there is only one choice. I choose Mortar—at least until I can find another way.
Mortar pulls up my skirt to push his hand beneath. His fingertips tracing along my inner thigh is everything I was imagining and more. It’s heat right along the edge of my lace panties. It’s pressure on my mound, with just the barest screen of fabric between his touch and my hot pussy.
He bites on my neck as he pushes aside the last barrier between us and inserts a slow, steady finger inside me. I clamp down on his shoulder to stop from crying out. The hours and days of waiting and dreaming that have intervened between that first kiss and now have built up an unbearable pressure within me.
I spent so many nights tossing and turning while I replayed that moment in the studio. This is what I had been anticipating. I’d hoped for it to happen but never dreamed that it actually would. Even when I admitted out loud that I wanted it, there was always the cool, logical voice telling me that it would be the closest thing to asking for death by Grady. My body knew all along though that this was what it deserved: Mortar’s thumb rubbing heated circles on my clit while he pushed two fingers inside me and stroked.
“Let go,” he breathed into my ear. “Come for me.”
It took only a few more strokes before I did what he wanted. I came hard, shuddering, sending juice sliding down his fingertips while I spasmed under his grasp.
“Mortar,” I moaned. I pressed one hand on my own breast and felt the nipple peaking as the waves gripped me in a relentless ebb and flow. Mortar pressed his palm against my mound while I came to steady me against the vibrations.
When the orgasm eases, I know I want more of it, right now. I can’t wait any longer. “Here, now, please,” I gasp. He knows what I mean. My brain is completely shut off. No more voices telling me this is wrong. The only thing I can hear is the heavy panting of my breath and the endless ringing of my body in the throes of the deepest hunger I’ve ever felt.
“Not here.” His eyes are so steady. I feel like I’m centered on them. I was falling and they caught me, or something like that. “Come with me.”
“Okay.” That’s it. The last bit of my resistance falls away. I’m barely aware of what I’m doing: running away from the man I just married, mere hours after the ceremony has