He drove into her again and again, so hard she had to close her eyes, because the sight of the room bouncing around made her woozy. The room was alive with sound: the slap of skin as their bodies slammed together, the wet suck of his c.o.c.k moving in and out of her grasping p.u.s.s.y, his wild, vicious grunts every time he landed deep, her rough gasps echoing his.

Her scalp ached where he had hold of her hair. Her hands tingled from his punishing grip, and her shoulders protested the way they were wrenched back. She could still feel the impressions of his fingers on her hips.

And oh, G.o.d, oh f.u.c.k, oh sweet Jesus, it was so motherf.u.c.king good.

"Connor, f.u.c.k-f.u.c.k-" she wanted to say something to let him know how fantastic he felt, but she couldn't think enough words.

He froze. "Okay?"

"Yeah, yeah," she gasped. 'I didn't say stop. G.o.d, keep going."

His laugh sounded strained and desperate. "f.u.c.kin' h.e.l.l, baby. You got me crazy." He released her hair and pushed her shoulders to the bed as he began again, moving even faster now.

When Pilar came, she felt it in every joint and muscle, one huge clench and release that had her chewing on the bunched covers. She felt her juices running freely from her, through her folds, down her legs.

"Thank f.u.c.k! Jesus G.o.d, you're tight when you come!" With that, Connor came. She felt him arching back, his hips pressing against her, his c.o.c.k as deep as it could possibly go.

When he was finished, he let her hands go and pulled slowly out of her. As he disposed of the condom, Pilar rolled to her back and stretched out, rubbing her wrists and rolling her shoulders.

"Did I hurt you?" he asked as he sat on the bed at her side.

"Only in the good ways." She smiled and brushed her hand over his thickly muscled thigh. "You have a fantastic body."

He laughed and sat back against the wall at the head of the bed. "Thanks. You know what I think of yours."

"We should work out together sometime. Do you run?"

"Only if somebody's chasing me. I lift. Do some core s.h.i.t, knock the heavy bag around some."

"No cardio?"

With a grin and a shrug, he answered, "People chase me often enough."

She laughed outright. When she raked her hand through her hair, he caught a hank of it before it fell back, and watched as it coiled around his finger. It wasn't the first time he'd done that-that, in fact, had probably truly been the first way he'd ever touched her with real gentleness. "I'd like to watch you lift."

He met her eyes. "Likewise. We got a weight room here. Nice and close to this bed. For after."

"You're on. Not tonight, though."

"No, not tonight. I'm not letting you out of this room or anywhere near clothes until breakfast. But soon."

"You can show me how many pull-ups you can do." She raised an arm and bent it in a flex, tightening her muscles.

He wrapped his hand around it. "Nice. But I can do more than you." He flexed his huge arm, thick as her thigh.

"Care to wager?"

He rolled over on top of her and propped on his elbows. Those biceps swelled on either side of her. "Stakes?"

She thought for a few seconds. "If I win, you have to do karaoke at The Deck. In that Karaoke Idol thing at the end of the month"

"What?" His eyes went wide.

"Scared? Not a lot of confidence in yourself, I guess."

"f.u.c.k you. You're on. But if I win, we f.u.c.k on the fire engine."

She shook her head. "We really can't, Connor. In that movie, remember, a call came in while they were up there? They played it funny, but it's actually really bad. It could slow the line down, get somebody killed."

"Okay, okay, hero." He kissed her, pressing soft, light kisses to her lips, her jaw, her throat. "If I win...you have to...do that karaoke idol thing at The Deck."

That deserved a slap, so she whacked his shoulder. "Lame."

"Wait. I wasn't done. You have to do that song about touching yourself."

"What?"

"You know, that old thing, 'When I think about you...'" He sang the line-in a nice, smooth baritone.

"The Divinyls? No f.u.c.king way. How do you even know that song? I can't imagine it's your genre."

"My mom liked it when I was a kid. She used to sing it around the house. When I understood it, I was retroactively traumatized." Full of gentle touches now, he brushed her nose with his. "Scared? Don't think you can beat me?"

"If I have to sing that one, then so do you."

"Ah-ah-ah. I already agreed to your terms. You didn't specify, so I get to pick. If you lose, you have to sing that one. To my brothers."

"Jerk." But she was smiling as she said it. She was happier and more relaxed in this moment than she'd been in a while.

"You could just concede the point."

"No way. I'll take your bet, because I'm gonna win."

"We'll, see, baby. We'll see."

She could feel that he was hard again. Bringing her knees up along his hips, she whispered, "Show me something else right now."

He shifted until his lips hovered over a nipple. "I can show you that all night."

That confidence, at least, was not misplaced.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

When Connor woke the next morning, he experienced an unfamiliar sense of disorientation. And he was sore, too-his thighs and back particularly. He opened his eyes carefully, trying to figure out where he was and what had happened.

He was in his own room. So why was his whole body on alert? What the h.e.l.l?

And then his brain woke up. f.u.c.k-Cordero. Pilar.

She was lying on her stomach at his side, the cover slanted over her back and hip, her hair fanned out in a dark, wavy ma.s.s.

His c.o.c.k was extremely happy to find her there.

But he needed to think. So he closed his eyes again and lay still, ignoring the complaints of his body. At least now he knew why he was sore, because d.a.m.n. They'd done some Olympian kind of f.u.c.king.

And now she was his girl? Just like that? He needed to think.

In this head, he turned over the events of the night before. Just a typical Friday night. He'd been in a foul mood most of the day, and he'd almost bailed on the party and just gone to his folks' house to crash there in the quiet. His dad had left just before nine, as had become his custom over the past year or so.

He'd been sitting there at the bar, watching the crowd, trying to decide if he had really come to the point in his life where he was leaving a party at nine on a Friday night. Because that would have been a depressing state of affairs.

There had been some new girls, but for the first time in a long time, the thought of playing the seduction game with a nineteen-year-old just made him feel tired. And old. Also a depressing state of affairs. But then Tina had slunk up and handed him a fresh beer. She was still fairly new but had been around long enough, and consistently enough, to be considered under their protection, on the roster.

He'd decided that what he needed was a simple, straightforward, uncomplicated f.u.c.k.

Then Pilar had stormed into the Hall, and those adjectives had become meaningless. Nothing about what had happened after that was simple, straightforward, uncomplicated.

And now she was his girl.

He opened his eyes. She hadn't moved, and he fought the urge to reach out and sink his fingers into that wild hair.

She was his girl. Did he want that?

After a couple of aborted attempts at relationships, each of which ending dramatically, with the woman he loved, or thought he could love, deciding he was a monster and running as fast as she could from him, Connor had put some effort into building a life that didn't require that kind of connection. Allie, the woman he'd actually loved, had really loved...f.u.c.k. She'd left in the middle of the Perro bulls.h.i.t. The club had had to threaten her. She hadn't known much; Connor was of the mind that club women should not ask questions. But she'd known enough to know that a threat to go to the cops would get a rise out of him. He and his father had forcibly moved her away and threatened her family to keep her quiet.

That was the kind of man he was. The kind of man who would threaten a woman's family to keep his own safe.

But Pilar insisted that she knew him, knew his life. That she understood. And that was the thing: he wanted her to understand. He wanted to believe that she could. He couldn't get her out of his head.

So now the question: did he want to lay himself open like that again? For this woman?

She was demanding and argumentative. She had a troublesome family, a troublesome history. She was strong and smart. She was funny. She was cynical, but she believed in heroes. She f.u.c.king was a hero. She was hotheaded. She was gorgeous. She wanted to be hurt, overtaken, but she was proud of her own strength. She was f.u.c.king complicated, a puzzle through and through, from the wavy hair on her head to the little, horseshoe-shaped birthmark on her ankle.

She was his bottom that came on like a top.

She was his girl. No-she was his woman.

Did he want that?

Yeah, he did.

He scooted closer and put his arm around her. She stirred, moaned quietly, and then rolled to her side, pulling his arm more tightly. Curled around her in that way, Connor felt relaxed and cozy. He felt trusted.

So he ignored his swollen c.o.c.k. He closed his eyes, tucked his head against his woman's shoulder, and went back to sleep.

He woke again in the middle of an intensely erotic dream, so vivid that his body was moving, and even after he woke, he could feel the touch of soft hands on his c.o.c.k.

No...no...that was no dream. Pilar had turned to face him and had been jacking him off in his sleep.

Oh, Christ, he was close. He groaned and clutched her shoulder.

"Hey." Her voice was sultry and smiling. "Finally. I thought you were gonna come and never even wake up."

She didn't need to know how close that was to true. He smiled and brushed her hair back from her face. "This is a.s.sault, you know-taking advantage of me while I sleep."

"You want me to stop?" The sincerity of her question was compromised by the way her hands clenched and pulled.

"No, no," he groaned. "a.s.sault away."

Shifting, she pushed him to lie on his back, and then she moved downward on the bed. When she took his c.o.c.k into her mouth, sucking him down, he reached up and grabbed the pillow, taking handfuls on either side of his head.

Just as he thought he was going to go, she backed off and attended to his b.a.l.l.s instead, laving them with her tongue, sucking each one fully into her mouth. His muscles twitched and contracted as though an electric charge had been applied, and he could feel his sack tighten against her tongue. He couldn't take this.

"Baby, come on."

"You want to come?"

What did she think? "Yeah. f.u.c.k, yeah. Come on."

He wasn't going to come unless she was on his c.o.c.k directly. Even as a kid, he'd never had wet dreams. He'd had crazily erotic dreams and woken up feeling like he was having a d.i.c.k hernia or something, but he'd always had to jack off to get relief. So while she was down there smiling up at him, lightly licking his b.a.l.l.s, all she was doing was making him absolutely f.u.c.king crazy.

"How bad do you want it?"

He lifted his head off the pillow. "What the f.u.c.k?"

She grinned, seemingly unaffected by his distress. "Beg for it."

"What?" Even to him, his voice sounded almost panicky. What was her game?

"Say please."

Oh. Sure, yeah, okay. Whatever. "Please. Please, baby."

Her grin was utterly debauched. She shifted again, moving over to kneel between his legs. Hovering over him, she pressed her t.i.ts together around his c.o.c.k and rocked back and forth, bending her head to suck and lick at his tip as she jacked him off with her t.i.ts.

It wasn't the first time a woman had gotten him off that way. There had been a club girl a while back, Ember, who'd been known for it. But there was something about seeing Pilar like that that...s.h.i.t-Christ-f.u.c.k-G.o.d. He came explosively, his back arching, but she moved with him, stayed on him, finishing him completely.

When he relaxed, she smiled up at him, a drop of his s.e.m.e.n at the corner of her pretty mouth. And that was the hottest thing he'd ever seen in his life.

Then her tongue darted out and lapped it up, and THAT was the hottest thing he'd ever seen in his life. He was already hard again.