Solstice (Midsummer #3)

3. Lex

3

Lex

T here were times when Miri let me smack her around or when Carter wanted it with nails and teeth and burned skin. But when I figured out what Ivy needed from me, it sent me into a whole new level of desperation.

Ivy got feminine adoration from Miri and gentle praise from Carter. But from me? No one else could match her intensity or drive for combat, maybe because we had instilled it in each other.

And now that I had a defeated, pliable, willing Ivy Washington under me, what was a boy to do?

I yanked off her leggings, dragging her panties with them, and chucked them somewhere behind me. Next came her hoodie… Carter’s hoodie…up over her head and down the hall.

Then she lay naked and splayed out in front of me the way she had that night in our old condo.

My fingers itched for my camera. I’d document this whole night if I could.

But no.

It was just us; I’d promised her and myself. The only proof of its existence would be the scratches and bites we left on each other’s bodies. She let me roam my fingers down either side of her torso to where it dipped at her waist and flared again at her hips, and I memorized how tantalizingly warm her skin was.

“Oh, come on, Lucifer,” she said, bucking her bare pussy against my yearning cock, growing harder behind my sweatpants. “You’ve waited your whole life for this. Don’t you dare go soft on me now.”

I snarled and slapped one of her breasts, pleased with the way the fleshy sound boomed off the walls. She gasped, more shocked than hurt, and slapped me back in the same spot, sending a surge of venom-laced pleasure right down to my balls. She squared her jaw, my cock jolted, and I wrapped my hand around her throat to hold her down.

“I told you to stay still.”

“You slapped me.” She tilted her chin up in defiance.

I leaned in close, my throbbing dick rubbing against her cunt again. I dragged it painfully over that wet skin, relishing the ache, drawing it out. “You liked it.”

She grumbled and snapped her teeth millimeters from my mouth, only missing because I reared my head back in the nick of time.

Oh, I liked this side of Ivy, and judging by the way she wrapped her ankles around my waist, she liked this side of me, too. I reached over my head to rip off my shirt, tossing it in the direction of her hoodie, and hovered over her again.

Last chance. One last out before I drive this home.

“Say mercy,” I whispered against her mouth as I tugged the waist of my pants down to my mid thighs, positioning my dick at her warm, inviting entrance.

“Never.”

I surged home. No preparation. No foreplay.

Correction: This whole night had been foreplay—the dinner and the chase and the torment. We had an entire lifetime of foreplay before this, and the moment I was fully seated inside her, I let out a noise that sounded like a hiss and a moan, completely humiliating me for how unprepared I was to hear it. She fit like fucking heaven, so wet and tight and perfect. It made my arms shake.

“Fucking hell,” she said, arching into the touch, and I laughed, falling forward to cage her head in between my elbows, holding myself up while I rocked inside her. Hard. Deep. Halfway out. All the way in.

She turned her head to the other side and sank her teeth into my arm, the agony only urging me on, making me go faster, driving me in deeper.

“I shouldn’t want you like this, Lex,” she mentally said, entering my mind with no consent needed. We were already so close, so intimately connected.

“Want me however you want, X,” I replied. “I love you. I love you.”

I chanted it over and over again in her head, terrified that speaking it out loud would be too much. It would ruin the moment. It would ruin the game, the one where I made her do this, the one where I took this from her, releasing her from having to admit how much she wanted it herself.

I buried my teeth in her neck, right over that pulsing pink X, and her pussy tightened around me as she gasped and arched into the touch. I took her roughly, pushing her against the carpet with each desperate thrust, digging my fingers into her shoulders, her throat, anywhere I could touch her. The pressure was amazing, building in every part of us, growing in the small, tense space between us.

She moaned and tilted her head back, clenching her eyes shut as her emotions poured out of in her thick, heavy waves, and I kept going. Harder. Rougher. Deeper. Meaner. Until her orgasm overwhelmed her and rattled through me, through our connection, through whatever link made it so easy for us to slip inside each other’s minds. Fuck, it set off mine, and my balls tightened with awareness I was on the brink of the most spectacular climax I’d ever had. I didn’t know where we stood on fluid bonding, so I’d just been about to pull out, but Ivy locked her legs around me.

“Come inside me,” she said.

A small part of me said I should stop and think about this, but who the fuck cared, right? We were getting married in a few months. She was on birth control, but even if I got her pregnant, so be it. In the heat of the moment, something about impregnating Ivy Washington slammed a kink button I didn’t even know I had. I wanted to see her belly big with my baby, knowing this night, the night she finally let me win, was the night we created an even more special bond.

I never imagined having children with her, but as my climax hit me everywhere all at once, making my head swim and my knees tremble, I emptied myself inside her and whispered, “Mine.”

I didn’t mean to say it. She wasn’t meant to hear it. But she ran the tips of her fingers down the center of my spine and moaned an appreciative noise before saying, “Mine,” in return.

After I peeled myself off my fiancée, we lay in the center of the hallway, naked, panting, and sweating down our hormones, the weight of what we did between us. For the first time in our lives, our connection burned bright and vibrant. Ivy smiled at me, and I grinned back, the sting from the various scratches and bites adding a necessary torment to our unconventional bliss.

“Are you okay, X?”

She nodded and sighed, digging her palms into her eyes. “I can’t believe we did that.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not supposed to be like that.”

“Yeah, it is.” I couldn’t help my giddiness. Nothing had ever felt more perfect.

She shook her head and stared up at the ceiling. “What if the only reason we feel this way is the fairy curse? What happens when we break it?”

That had been her argument for months, and we were no closer to finding Siobhan today than we were when we stumbled our dumbasses into the woods on Samhain two years ago.

“Ivy.” I took a deep breath and shook my head, sitting up to push back against the wall. “We would have ended up right here no matter what.” She curled upright and scooted next to me, my fingers itching to touch the carpet rash on her back, but I settled for staring down into her eyes. “Our parents have been conspiring since we were children. If there’s no way out of it, we might as well revel in it.”

I meant that. I truly did.

Four years ago, I would have agreed with her. I knew better now. I had a man’s viewpoint of my childhood memories. In all that time I’d spent hating her, I hadn’t really despised her. If I were honest with myself, I’d been desperate for her attention. Even when she appeared to like Marcus more than me, even when she’d befriended Miri before I met her, even when she stole my boyfriend and flaunted him in my face for years.

Part of me feared I could never be separated from Ivy Washington, and if I were, I’d shrivel into a husk of the person I used to be. I didn’t know who I was without her, and though it had been buried deep in my subconscious, I’d known that since I was born. It was one thing to understand that myself, and another to make her see it.

I led Ivy to the shower, and we washed each other, taking time to kiss and caress any remaining marks from our escapade.

“Is that what you think this is?” Ivy finally asked. “Reveling?”

“I enjoy you.” I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her closer so our soapy skin touched everywhere from our chests to our pelvises. “You’re worried about what happens when this is over, but it’s never over, X. Not between you and me.”

She tried to move away and pull up her mask, but I wouldn’t let her. I twisted her back around and forced her chin up, so she had to look me in the eye. She couldn’t run from me anymore; I caught her fair and square.

“We were in this together when we were kids,” I continued. “We’re in this together now. We’ll be in this together when we find that fairy bitch and make her take back her gift.”

Ivy stared at me with her incinerating gaze, perhaps trying to figure out if I was sincere, so I opened my mind to her, letting her in through our touch.

I’d never been so sure of anything in my life. I couldn’t explain how I knew; I just did. Call it a punch to the gut. A throb in my heart. The damn near certainty that, if not for her, I’d be an insufferable, lonely prick. Ivy squeezed her eyes closed and tears streamed over her cheeks, but I cupped her jaw and wiped them away with my thumbs.

I kissed her, brushing my mouth against hers, tracing the bite mark from earlier with my tongue. She sighed and wrapped her hands around my wrists but didn’t agree, at least not verbally. I felt it buried in the deepest parts of her mind, even if she didn’t want me to see it. Ivy felt the same; she just couldn’t admit it yet.

That’s fine, the monster inside my head whispered. We’ve got a long time to convince her.