He chuckled low and deep and shifted so that I was the one with my back to the wall and he was pressed all along my front. My nipples immediately contracted into tight points and my legs found their way around his narrow hips without me having to think about it.

“I didn’t have to let happiness in. She forced her way in while I was being a jackass.” This close, his words smelled like bourbon and he tasted smoky and rich when his tongue found its way to mine. “This house isn’t the only place I belong, is it, honey?”

He urged me to lift my arms above my head so he could work my sweater up my torso and off my body. He popped the clasp of my bra with one hand, wiggled his eyebrows at me when I made a face at him, and ran the tip of his nose along my now naked collarbone. “I don’t want to be a guest in your life, Poppy. I’m not interested in visiting your heart. I want to move in, stake my claim, and plant roots so deep nothing will ever be able to move me out. I don’t want you to ever have to replace the memories you have of me with something better.”

“There isn’t anyone better than you, Wheeler. You are the only person I made room for in my heart, so if you want to live there it’s all yours.” I looked into his eyes as he struggled to get my pants unfastened without putting me down. “You need to get some furniture if you plan on staying, though.”

He rolled his eyes at me and begrudgingly dropped me to my feet so I could wiggle denim and lace down my legs after I kicked my maroon Free Bird boots off. Naked, caught between him and the wall, I’d never felt more safe and secure in my entire life. He wasn’t the only one that knew how to slay demons and exorcise ghosts.

His lips landed on mine, his hips rocking seductively against mine as his hands found their way to my backside so he could lift me back up all while he pressed between my legs. I wound my arms around his shoulders and let my head loll to the side against the wall behind me. He licked a long line up the side of my neck and nibbled delicately on the curve of my jaw. It made me whimper and had my thighs tightening where they were wrapped around him.

His teeth grazed my earlobe and one of his hands moved between us so that he could free himself from the confines of the slippery material of his pants. I loved him in his torn jeans and his dirty coveralls but I liked the ease of access those running pants offered a whole hell of a lot. It took no time at all for his hardness to meet my wetness and we both groaned at the contact. After that morning in the hotel room, I’d gone on birth control. Knowing how good he felt, how good we felt without anything between us, made the decision easy. He shifted his hips, lifted me up higher so that just the tip of his erection dragged through my damp and quivering folds. The friction made my breath shudder and had my fingernails digging into the solid muscle of his shoulder, and when the tip knocked stiffly into my swollen clit, I felt like I was going to come out of my skin. He repeated the motion over and over again while he dropped biting, wet kisses all along the side of my neck and across the top of my chest. I was going to look like I’d been eaten alive tomorrow and I wasn’t even the slightest bit sorry about it. He was definitely handling me rougher than he normally did when we had sex, but I loved everything about it.

His chest pressed into my sensitive breasts as his hips kicked forward. My body moved against him, opened for him, and welcomed him. Usually he took his time, prepped me, played with me, and worked me up so much that I was beyond ready for him to be inside. This time there had been no foreplay, no warm-up, so I felt every single inch of him as he slid inside. My body had to adjust, had to soften and relax in order for him to move. He groaned as the slight resistance forced him to slow down, but he did it because he was perfect and I was right to trust him. He was never going to hurt me and I was never going to be afraid of him.

He lifted a hand to my breast and started to swirl his thumb around my puckered nipple. The other was holding me up and keeping me braced against the wall, so his eyes blazed with heated demand when he ordered me to touch myself. “Touch your clit the way I touch it. Get yourself off the way I usually do.”

I sucked in a breath as my hand skimmed over my chest and across my stomach. The winter in his eyes thawed by several degrees as I did what he asked. I started circling slowly with my fingertips, exactly the way he did. The backs of my fingers brushed against his cock as it pounded in and out of me. Every time he pulled out and sank back in, my body went more liquid and took more of him in. It only took a sweep of my thumb across the stiff little nub for everything inside of me to go molten. His hips ground into me and my fingers rasped against that happy trail that led to heaven.

“I told you, I’m not feeling very nice today and I told you to touch yourself the same way I would. If I had a free hand, I would be showing that pretty little clit how nasty I can be.”

His words made me whimper and my fingers reflexively closed tighter on the sensitive bundle of nerves. It stung in a delicious way but I knew it would feel even better if it was his callused, rough hands doing it. I tossed my head from side to side as he did his best to fuck me through the drywall, then on a strangled scream I demanded that he touch me. I needed more, wanted all the not nice he was promising me.

Wheeler swore, and before I could blink or protest I was yanked from my position pinned against the wall and laid out like some kind of sacrifice across his barren living room floor. It was just as hard as the wall, so no more or less uncomfortable, but in this position we ended up with him stretched out over the top of me, his weight braced on an arm above my head as his eager lips found my breast and his talented fingers found their way between my legs. There was the scrape of teeth and the graze of rough fingertips. It all felt so good that I didn’t have any room for the uneasiness that usually overtook me when he was above me. I didn’t feel trapped or threatened in any way. No, all I felt was pleasure, burning hot and bright everywhere we touched, and his desperation as his body pounded relentlessly into mine.

I wrapped my fingers in his hair and lifted myself up to meet his frantic thrusts. I shoved my eager nipples deeper into his mouth and writhed across his fingers and he continued to torture me with his touch. I was going to have bruises and a sore ass tomorrow. He was going to have claw marks among his tattoos and there was a good chance he was going to be sporting a bald spot by the time I got my hands out of his hair. He was relentless with my clit, unrelenting against my nipples. His cock wasn’t taking any prisoners as he wrung first one then another orgasm out of me, all while his much bigger, heavier body hovered over mine.