Page 33 of Crash’s Secret

“Like this. Yeah?”

“Yes,” I moan.

He pushes back in and sets a pace with nothing careful in it. One hand spreads wide between my shoulder blades and pins me to the mattress, his thumb hooking the collar of the shirt I’m still half wearing, and dragging it aside to put his mouth on the back of my neck.

“Faster,” I command him.

I push back to meet him, hard, stealing the rhythm out from under him, and his laugh breaks off into a curse. He likes it when I fight him for the pace. He told me so the second week, and I’ve been abusing the information ever since.

“Brat,” he says.

“Slacker.”

That earns me what I want.

He hauls me up off the mattress, my back against his chest, both of us upright on our knees, and he never stops fucking me through the move—short, deep strokes now, grinding up into me from below.

His free hand slides down my stomach and finds my clit. His fingers move in the opposite direction of his cock, and the two rhythms cross, creating a storm of sensation between my thighs.

“Crash, come with me.”

“Yes, baby, yes.”

Slow heat rolls up the backs of my thighs, gathering, my whole body winding tighter on every stroke. I’m shaking against his chest and pushing back into him.

His arm bands across my chest, and locks me to him, and his fingers keep that opposite rhythm, patient and ruthless. The heat crests and goes everywhere at once.

The waves keep rolling, and somewhere in the middle of it, he turns my face back toward him and kisses me.

“Fuck,” he says, right at my ear, and his pace finally slips. “I love you!”

He finishes deep, his words dissolving into a groan against the back of my neck, his hips stuttering through it.

We collapse flat, his weight crushing me into the mattress.

“You bit me,” he says into my shoulder.

I chuckle. “You liked it.”

“I really did.” He nips at my neck lightly with his teeth. “We need our own house.”

“You say that every morning.”

“Every morning, I mean it.” He rolls off me and lies there with one arm behind his head, in no hurry to be anywhere. “I’ve lived in this clubhouse my whole adult life. It was enough. Now we share our mornings with twenty brothers, and sometimes the women they’re fucking if they’re still here. Trapper eats breakfast with us every single day.”

“You love Trapper.”

“I love Trapper. I don’t want him at my breakfast table.” He turns his head and looks at me. “I want a kitchen where I can fuck you on the countertops, whenever I want.”

“Romantic.”

“I’m serious, Cass.” He pushes me playfully. “I want a shower built for two. A whole house where everything in it is yours and mine and nobody else’s.”

“Then let’s finally get serious about buying a house.” I sit up and find my shirt on the floor. The cut he gave me is hanging over the back of the chair next to my clothes, where it lives now. PROPERTY OF CRASH across the back.

The first week I wore it, it felt like a costume. Now it feels strange when it’s not on, like leaving the house without my own skin.

“We’ll find the perfect house. But not today.” He gets up and pulls his jeans on. “Today we’ve got the barbecue.”