Page 16 of Liquids

“You like it slow,” he mutters into my skin.

I gasp-laugh at this. “Not sure I can take you in very quickly.”

“Mm-hmm,” he says. “Not sure I can take the heat and the tightness that fast, either. Went too quick last time. Came too fast, too. Feels so goddamn good, Carl.”

I roll my hips forward, not moving exactly, but getting more comfortable, and he sinks his teeth into my throat. Pushing at him persuades him to lie back down, and as soon as he’s lying flat, I put my hands on his shoulders and start to move, widening my thighs as I rock. His head tips back with a groan, a pulse jumping in his neck, and sweat starts to break out over his face and his chest. I feel so goddamn strong and powerful as I shift more and faster. His fingers on my hips urge me on, sliding in to find my clit, and electricity buzzes through my body and down my legs.

“Rig.” My voice is a hot gasp of need.

“Yeah, baby. Oh yeah.”

I can’t tell him how close I am, all I can do is shake my head, but he gets it because he spans my thighs with his thumbs brushing up and down my folds where he’s disappearing inside me. And oh my God, that makes me so fucking shivery when he’s stretching me like this, all my nerve endings coalescing on his moving fingers, hot and sensitive. When he shifts a finger to my clit, my orgasm moves from the toot of a train in the distance to a thousand-ton engine barreling down the tracks.

“Oh, God, Rig. I gotta …”

“I’m right there with you,” he groans.

“I’m gonna go. Oh, Jesus! Right now, right now …”

And I tip over the edge as I shake with the force of it, shudders wracking through me as he knifes up and fixes his teeth on my neck, not hard, just holding me. His big body convulses against mine, his cock pulsing inside me, the hairs on his chest rough on my sensitive nipples.

“Oh my, oh my.” I try and suck in air, patting his back like an idiot. So I still my hand and lean into him, trying to breathe, trying to reel in the golden wires my thoughts have become, flung out like a spider’s web in a hundred different directions.

When he collapses back down, he takes me with him and I close my eyes. And one wire has spooled in faster than the rest: This may not be anything permanent, but at least we now both know where we stand.

5

RINSING

My eyes blink open, and as I stare at the closet doors, heavy footsteps creak across the floor of the apartment. But my limbs are leaden, and I can’t raise the energy to prop myself up. One minute Rig’s fucking me, the next minute he’s gone, then he turns up and he’s fucking me again. What am I doing? That sex last night—or should I say this morning—was something else. God, it’s too early. I suck in a deep breath and close my eyes.

Then I hear “What the fuck?” and I blink up to find Dave standing by the bed, checked coat stretched over his broad shoulders. I turn my head sharply to an empty mattress.

“What the fuck what?” I say. Maybe I can brazen this out, though the whole thing is making me look like a slut.

“Some guy’s duffel bag is in your kitchen.”

The toilet flushes in the bathroom. A bathroom I think Dave cleaned last weekend. Ouch. Spectacular timing.

Rig appears, buck naked, welts and bruises all over his body, but he’s so impressive that I can only gawk at him. The red marks have receded a little, darkening into a yellow and purply black, like a mottled cat. Holy shit, how damaged is he?

“Oh my God!” It flies out before I can stop it.

“You’re that guy. From the fight,” Dave rumbles, looking from me to Rig and back again, and a flush starts to build on his neck. He swings toward where I’m propped up on an elbow in bed.

“You fucking slut,” he says, low and dark.

Almost before the words are out of his mouth, Rig is across the room and has picked him up and is wrestling him through into the living room. Dave is shouting through the apartment, words bouncing off the walls:

“I knew I should never have gotten back into it with you, you fucking slut! You and Marni fuck anything that moves!”

“Shut the hell up!” Rig growls.

“You’re a fucking drunk bitch …”

There’s a thud, a yell, and the creak of the door. An even louder shout ricochets through from what I assume is the kitchen, followed by a sound that is remarkably like someone falling down an iron staircase.

Holy shit.