Part 2 (1/2)

The answer was easy. There was only one thing she needed. ”I need to come, Colin. Please, I need to come so badly.”

In a flash he rose, lifted her, and set her on her feet. She turned around and skimmed off her panties. He sank down on the end of the chair.

”Unzip my pants,” he told her. With greedy, eager fingers, she bent forward and did as he asked, tugging his pants to his thighs, then his boxer briefs, freeing his c.o.c.k. Her mouth watered as she stared at his erection-hard, heavy, and so f.u.c.king long. So many glorious, gorgeous inches that she loved to take deep inside her.

He pressed a condom into her hand, and she quickly opened it then rolled it on him, stopping only when she spotted the new ink on his hip. A simple black phoenix, akin to a stencil design. It matched the lotus, like he'd said. Matched it in symbolism.

”For new beginnings,” she whispered softly, tracing it with her fingertip. It mesmerized her, the art and lines, the placement on his body, but she shook off her reaction because she didn't want to think of beginnings. She wanted to think only of ending this epic ache in her body.

She straddled him. His fingers grasped her hips, and she lowered herself onto his shaft. She was ready to build a shrine, to make holy offerings, because he was divine. Anyone who said size didn't matter had never experienced the unmitigated erotic joy of this kind of c.o.c.k filling her up. Yeah, the motion of the ocean mattered, but so did the size of the boat. Long, thick, and steely, his d.i.c.k operated like a precision-timed machine of pleasure.

She moaned, stilling for just a moment to savor that delicious stretch of taking him all the way in, her slippery heat coating his c.o.c.k. ”I almost forgot how good you feel,” she said as she started to move on him.

”That would be a d.a.m.n shame. We shouldn't let that happen,” he said, thrusting up into her.

She clenched around him. ”No, we shouldn't because this is...”

Words stopped forming as he drove into her. Gripping her hips, he jerked her down harder, filling her deeper.

”This is what, Elle?” he asked, his voice a s.e.xy taunt, urging her on.

”Intense,” she said on an exhale, as he filled her so deliriously she nearly screamed. She was vaguely aware that there could be people nearby-workers, waiters, bartenders-and she somehow found the will not to sing and shout her pleasure to the stars. But she felt it. The intensity thrummed in her bones, sizzled across her skin. ”Incredible. It's so incredible,” she said on a moan, as he thrust into her.

Then, because he was a f.u.c.king expert, because he'd studied all the shortcuts to her pleasure, he looped his fingers in her hair and pulled hard, exposing her throat to him. That was like an electric burst of ecstasy.

”f.u.c.king you is the best,” he said, layering kisses onto her skin. ”You get so wet, and I love how it feels to slide into you over and over.”

”Tell me how it makes you feel,” she said, losing touch with the earth as he talked to her, his dirty words sending her into a tailspin. The way he spoke to her was such an insane turn on, and she was already aroused beyond her own comprehension. He kissed the hollow of her throat and drove his c.o.c.k deep into her.

”It's f.u.c.king extraordinary. Being inside you is extraordinary. And I love it when you come on me.” He slid a finger between her legs, brushed it lightly against her c.l.i.t, and her lips parted, forming an O. A silent, glorious O, containing all the pleasure in the universe. He'd flipped that switch, pus.h.i.+ng her from chasing an o.r.g.a.s.m to falling apart in his arms. She shuddered, pleasure wracking her cells, racing through her to flood every corner.

Helpless to stay quiet, she felt her silent cry turn to an audible moan as she shouted the beginning of his name. He clamped a hand over her mouth, covering her noises as he thrust up into her like a mad man on a frenzied ride, desperate to follow her to the other side. He f.u.c.ked her as aftershocks rippled through her, the sensation spreading to her fingers and toes.

As her moans subsided, he dropped his hand from her mouth and gripped her waist. She opened her eyes, watching him, loving the way he looked when he came. Nothing was s.e.xier, nothing was hotter than watching the man she wanted lose control.

All for her.

She didn't understand why, but somehow she was his undoing.

And he was hers.

He f.u.c.ked her into his own release, his eyes squeezed shut and his face contorted in pleasure. He grunted, and groaned her name before biting her collarbone, holding in all his sounds, too, as he came.

”We can't stop,” she whispered, voicing the most dangerous words. Words she shouldn't say. But her body had the reins, making decisions for her, seeking more bliss.

”We can't and we shouldn't,” he murmured, layering soft kisses on her neck.

Soon, as they came down from their high and her senses reattuned to the world around her, the tinkling of gla.s.ses reached her ears. The after party was starting...

Which meant.

She was about to become a pumpkin.

From inside her clutch purse, the alarm sounded on her phone.

”I have to go. My mom has a s.h.i.+ft at eleven. I told her I'd be home by ten-thirty.”

”I'll walk you to your car,” he said.

In the parking garage, he cupped her cheek gently, pressed his lips to hers, and gave her a sweet good-bye kiss that would linger on the whole way home.

He whispered, ”Go.”

In three minutes, she was on the road, rus.h.i.+ng to return home to her son.

CHAPTER FIVE.

Her mother's head was bent over the kitchen counter, her fingers swiping in a wild blur across her phone screen.

”Gotcha, flesh-eater!”

”Saving the world, Mom?” Elle asked, as she closed the front door to her apartment.

”Somebody has to fend off the infected,” her mom said with a final slide before she looked up and closed the game.

Elle laughed. ”I thought you were giving it up. You said it was giving you video game thumb or something.”

Her mother shook her head, her bouncy ponytail swinging with her. ”I tried. Oh lord, you know I tried. But your son... He plays a mean game of Dying Light, and he challenged me. I can't back down.”

”You're going to need to work on State of Decay next. Alex and his buddies are moving on in the apocalypse gaming world,” Elle said, dropping her keys on the counter and giving her mom a peck on the cheek. Her mother wore green scrubs with Snoopys and Woodstocks on them. ”How was he tonight?”

”Fine. Just fine. I plied him with pizza and schooled him with my survival skills.”

”No easier way to the heart of a fourteen-year-old boy, is there?” While there was plenty of truth in her statement, for her son, video games weren't just the snack-food-and-candy path to winning his teenage heart-they were essential to his emotional survival. They were the difference between him talking and not talking.

Between speech and a complete breakdown.

Some parents might worry that their kids played too many video games, and while Elle set limits, she also knew what they meant for him. Because the time before? It was the end of the world. Black, empty, cold. A true pit of despair. In those dark days, she'd have given anything-a lung, a kidney, a limb-for him to talk to her. He'd shut down after his father died, completely withered, barely able to utter a word except for the essentials-yes, no, I don't know.

Understandable, given what he'd witnessed in their home on that night three years ago.

Somehow games, zombies, and post-apocalyptic stories became a portal for him. Elle never would have predicted it, but on the days after school when Alex would come by the center, he was drawn to the gaming room, and to the raucous energy of the boys shouting at the screen. After a year of being so traumatized by what he saw he'd gone nearly mute, video games reconnected the voice inside him to the rest of the world. They unlocked the part of him that he'd kept quiet, and how she loved to hear him shouting with his friends.

G.o.d bless the living dead.

And The Walking Dead, too. Alex's favorite show had become a key part of Elle's lexicon, since she had to stay up to speed with Sheriff Rick Grimes in order to converse with her son again. Zombies. Who would have thought zombies would rescue her son from the near-catatonic state that the death of his father had sent him into?