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  Insecurity rears up and threatens to clobber me. He really seems to want distance between us. But my body is clamoring for his touch and if I don’t at least try to get his hands on me, I’ll regret the missed opportunity. For all I know, he’ll catch the perpetrator tomorrow and disappear all over again.

  “Murph…” Reminding myself I’ve been named one of People’s sexiest women alive, I lean back on my hands and let my thighs open slightly. “I was thinking…I’ve been thinking a lot, actually, about the t-time we wrestled.”

  “Christ, Angelica. Don’t bring that up,” he rasps, pausing halfway to sitting down. “Besides, that wasn’t wrestling. That was…taking advantage of you.”

  “What?” I wrinkle my nose. “How?”

  “Your father trusted me. You trusted me. You were asking me to teach you a self-defense move and I…I hadn’t been with a woman in a long time.” The tips of his ears turn scarlet. “I didn’t stop to think of what it would feel like. Rolling you underneath me like that. I couldn’t…help it, but that’s no excuse. No excuse.”

  “So…you were just…in need of sex.” Disappointed, I swallow hard. “That’s why it happened?”

  It could have been anyone and he would have reacted the same?

  Why does my heart fight that belief so hard?

  Murph is staring at me stonily beneath his pinched brow. “We have to stop talking about this, kid. We shouldn’t be talking about sex.”

  “Why not?”

  He barks a humorless laugh. “I’m twice your age. You’re my best friend’s kid. A million reasons.”

  A niggle of indignation sneaks under my skin. Before I can second guess myself, I peel the thin straps of my nightgown off my shoulders and show him my bare breasts. “I’m not a kid,” I whisper, lifting my hands to cup them. “You can call me that as often as you want. That won’t make it true. I’m a woman, Murph.”

  “You’re nine fucking teen,” he grits through his teeth. “Cover yourself up or I’ll put you over my knee, so help me God.”

  I raise my chin, refusing to listen.

  “You want me to come over there?” he says, his scowl fierce enough to make a grown man cry. But I have the confidence of knowing he’d rather die than hurt me.

  “Have you been with a woman lately?” I breathe the question, not sure I really want to know the answer. “Or would you…find satisfaction if you wrestled with me again now?”

  That barrel chest is heaving. “Angelica, that’s enough.”

  I squeeze my mounds, the sensations making my eyelashes flutter. “Come play with me.”

  He groans loudly, gripping the bulge between his huge thighs and massaging it roughly. “No, goddammit. No.”

  I’m going to lose this battle if I don’t appeal to his protective side. When it comes to me, that part of him wins out over anything. “Please?” I inch my legs open a little bit more, drawing his darkening eyes to the secret flesh I’m revealing. “I was scared tonight. When you touch me, I feel safe.”

  It’s one hundred percent the truth.

  It’s just not the whole truth.

  The whole truth is that I have a mega crush on Murph and I always have. That night on the living room floor woke up something a lot less wholesome than a crush, however, and I’ve spent a year aching to explore what it is. Even if I’m just a convenient female body to relieve his male needs.

  As expected, my plea has given him pause. “Angelica…”

  Dropping my hands away from my breasts, I recline onto my back, rubbing my back on the comforter like a feline. “Come wrestle.”

  A moment later, he’s standing over me with a bunched jaw, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. “This will…comfort you?”

  I bite my lip and nod, very aware that I might as well be naked. In front of Murph. The man I’ve been secretly fantasizing about for a year. Sure, I dance around on a stage in abbreviated costumes for a living, but there’s nothing intimate about that. This is inhibition. This is real. “Yes. Being touched will make me feel better.”

  His voice is a deep scrape of sound. “We shouldn’t be doing this, kid.”

  Ordering myself to have courage, I shimmy fully out of my nightgown, extending the dangling material toward Murph with my big toe, before letting it drop. “Turn off the light. Whatever happens in the dark can stay in the dark.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he growls, raking me with hungry eyes. “Gorgeous as fuck. Every sweet little inch.”

  “Thank you,” I say on a joyful exhale. It doesn’t matter how many people have told me I’m attractive. It’s only ever seemed to matter that I’m attractive to this man. And this attraction is what I have to work with. He might not want a relationship with me, he might want to keep me at a distance, but his appetite is ravenous enough to make him want me physically. If that’s all I can get, I’ll take it.

  Murph leaves the edge of the bed long enough to slap off the bedroom light, casting the room in black with a slight glow from my porch light filtering in through the window. He does this move, this flick of his wrist that untucks his blue button-down shirt, almost like he’s mad at himself for wanting me. He hesitates and I know I have to push him, so I come to my knees—grab hold of the front of his shirt and pull with all my might, bringing him down on top of me.

  A great shudder passes through his brawny frame, a choked sound leaving his mouth, and that massive arousal between his legs prods me, denim against naked flesh, pumping against it once, twice, Murph’s hands fisting in the bedclothes on either side of my head. “Never thought I’d feel that little thing pulsing up against me again.” His hips buck and he gives a closed-mouth shout. “Jesus, kid.”

  “Not a kid. A woman.” I rub the arches of my feet up the backs of his legs. “But we can still play. Wrestle me, Murph.”

  His erection swells almost violently, his breath coming in scalding pants that bathe my forehead. “It’s not exactly a fair match up.”

  “Maybe that’s what I like about it,” I whisper. “Maybe I just want you to throw me around. Maybe I just want you to take.”

  Another one of those glorious shudders goes through him. “I lied. It wasn’t just that I hadn’t been with a woman. Can’t believe you bought that for a second.” He groans. “It’s you. Jesus, the things I want to do to you should be illegal.”

  “Do them.” His confession sends a thrill shivering down my spine, blasts me with confidence. Relief. “It all stays in the dark.”

  Before I know what’s happening, I’ve been flipped over onto my stomach, that hard-packed body coming down on top of me, lap to backside. “I’m not fucking you.” He knees my legs apart and thrusts into the space he creates, grunting, driving me up the bed. “I know you’ve still got that juicy little cherry.”

  Panting, my fingers curl into the comforter. “How?”

  His mouth is up against my ear. “If you’d been fucked, if you knew what it felt like, you’d be petrified of a cock the size of mine. What it could do to that tight-ass body you’ve got.”

  Nonsense. He would never, ever hurt me. “But…you want to have s-sex with me?”

  The pain in his laugh is the only confirmation needed. “If your daddy knew how long, he’d have shot me dead.”

  Liquid heat spreads between the folds of my sex, the flesh there swelling and growing heavy. “He’s not here. We are.”

  The words have barely left my mouth before I’m thrown onto my back once again, my breath whooshing out, Murph’s whiskered jaw raking down the center of my naked body, his teeth nipping at my navel, before racing back to my neck, leaving goosebumps everywhere it touches. “Taste like fucking sugar, baby.”

  Murph calling me baby is the sweetest music I’ve ever heard. Way better than my bubble gum chart toppers. His touch, his larger-than-life presence, has distracted me from the secret I’ve been keeping from him. But I’m seconds from being overwhelmed so it’s now or never. With a smile curling my upper lip, I hook a leg around Murph’s and twist with all my m
ight, turning him over onto his back and climbing on top of his mountainous body. Giggling over his astonished expression, I lean down and purr, “Told you I’d take those self-defense lessons.”

  I’ve never seen him smile like the one he gives me in that moment. He’s already ruggedly handsome, but his impressed grin takes his sexiness to another level and I can’t help it. I can’t help but lean down and seal my mouth over the top of his, kissing him for the first time—and it’s nothing like I expected. I thought the first time I kissed a man it would be romantic. Or there would be heat. A whipping of hormones. I never expected all of it at the same time.

  The slide of our lips bowls me over, intoxicates me. I am powerless to do anything but get more, more, more. I open my mouth, he opens his at the same time with a moan and we introduce our tongues, rubbing them shamelessly while I make the same movement on his stiffness, riding my sex up and back, undulating eagerly, the friction there, along with our mouths, driving me to the brink of a place I’ve never been before. “Murph,” I whine brokenly against his lips, before being taken again, again with thorough sweeps of his tongue, one of his huge hands rocking me on his lap, the other one fisting the back of my hair.

  “I need to stop kissing you, baby. So I can give you what you need, but fucking hell, you taste incredible. I can’t get enough.” Once again, I’m rolled onto my back, my mouth attached to Murph’s, his lips devouring mine, our moans mingling, hungry, savoring. There is no art to what we’re doing, there is only trying to taste as much as possible, consume as quickly as we can. Tongues lick, his jaw scrapes my cheeks, my chin, our hands are everywhere at once. It’s sinful. It’s wonderful.

  Just as I’m running out of air, Murph breaks the kiss and moves down my body, kissing every inch of me he passes, his tongue trailing over my distended nipples, swirling in my belly button, his teeth biting my hips, my belly. I’m going to be covered in marks and I wouldn’t want it any other way—

  He pushes my thighs open and grinds his face against my sex.

  I scream. I scream because it’s so raw, so visceral, his mouth on me there, wetness transferring from me to his tongue, his jaw and lips. His calloused hands are rough on the insides of my knees, holding me open, his tongue bathing me in a long, possessive lick. Like he’s staking his claim on me. Wanting to commit everything about the moment to memory, I look down and every one of my muscles contracts at the sight of what he’s doing. At the difference in our sizes.

  And then the ability to think is stripped away when his tongue finds my clitoris, polishing it gently, gently, then with more insistence, his grunts vibrating all the way up through my hair follicles, my fingertips. He drags a rough hand down my inner thigh, slicking his thumb through the split of my sex, massaging that sensitive nub with his thumb in between licks.

  Oh. Oh, and a powerful storm begins to brew inside of me. I don’t recognize my own voice or the sounds coming out of my mouth. Don’t know who I am anymore as I grab fistfuls of his hair, lift my hips and beg. In that moment, I finally understand what so many songs are talking about. Lust. Connection. The power of physical pleasure. Breathing is almost impossible, there is only the incredible tensing of my limbs, the unbearable quickening in my tummy.

  “Murph,” I whimper, my lower body twisting, only to be pinned down hard by his forearm. “I think…oh, God, I think I’m going to h-have an orgasm…”

  “Good girl,” he growls, pursing his lips around my clit, applying light suction that shoots me higher, higher, toward some incredible peak. “Jesus Christ, I could live off this tasty little pussy, baby.”

  With that, he pushes a long, thick finger inside me, twisting it in a circle, his tongue batting my clit relentlessly and the storm breaks, pleasure ripping through me from head to toe, arching my hips off the bed and milking, milking, milking my sex until I’m not sure I can stand it. I clamp my thighs around Murph’s head, riding my flesh all over his stiff tongue, the sound of his deep moans burning me alive.

  I assume my body’s frenzy is going to end when my climax wanes, but it doesn’t. I’m still frantic. Out of my head with purpose. The purpose of helping Murph experience the same euphoria he just gave me.

  My fingers curl in the collar of his shirt and I pull with all my strength, guiding Murph up and onto my still-trembling body, wrapping my thighs around his waist. “Do it,” I whisper in his ear, my hands dragging up and down his muscle-yoked back. “Use me to get relief.”

  “Fuck. Fuck. Need it.” Murph’s erection is like steel between my legs, wide and pulsing. Excitement burns through me when, looking pained, he reaches between us and unzips his jeans, dropping his heavy shaft between the juncture of my thighs, his hips beginning to pump eagerly, desperately, tunneling his thickness up and back through the valley of my wet sex. “Not popping that cherry, but I can damn sure tuck you in tonight, dripping in my come.”

  His crudeness makes me gasp, but that show of outrage only seems to encourage him. Excite him. Turns his eyes a deeper color, his jaw flexing.

  “Shouldn’t be doing this,” he grits out through his teeth. “Shouldn’t be touching my angel with this big, dirty cock.”

  An intuition prods me. He likes a little shame.

  That realization almost pushes me into another climax.

  “No, you shouldn’t,” I murmur, trying to catch my breath. “You just can’t help yourself, though, can you?” I shove at his huge shoulders a little, feigning outrage. “Can’t help humping me with that filthy, aching thing.”

  Murph’s panting shout fills the room. “Jesus. Angelica. Fuck!” That massive body flattens me to the mattress and he ruts me like a wild animal, never penetrating me, but using me nonetheless for his needs. His balls slap loudly off my backside, his mouth burying in my neck, his groans thrilling me more than any stadium full of screaming fans ever could.

  Warm moisture shoots across my stomach, Murph’s mouth pressing hotly to my ear, his loud sounds of relief and pleasure and misery sending a shiver of satisfaction down my spine. More and more spurts from between his legs bathe me, mark me irrevocably, my heart soaring when his mouth stamps down over mine, as if I’m his lighthouse, too, and he needs me to get through the tumult of lust. And finally, when he grinds his shaft down against me, pressing down on my clit, another orgasm catches me off guard and I wail his name, clinging tightly, both of us shaking as we fight to the other side of the pleasure.

  As soon as it’s over, I float down on some blissful cloud and unconsciousness starts to claim me. Murph lifts his head, studying my face as if he doesn’t know what to do next, his breath laboring in and out. But I can see what he wants to do. So badly. It’s in the groove between his brows and the way he wets his lips eagerly. And he does it by rolling to my side and pulling me up against him, soothing me to sleep in his warm, safe bear hug.

  5

  Murph

  I watch Angelica sleep with my heart in my throat.

  The morning light is only beginning to fill her girly bedroom. More and more sunshine begins to reveal the delicate pink sheets, the ballet dancer painting on her wall, the sparkly high heels discarded in the corner. One of these things is not like the other—and it’s me. I’m horribly out of place.

  Even our pressed-together bodies are painfully dissimilar. I’m the giant ogre who has captured the princess, my coarse, fat-knuckled hand resting on her flat stomach, her petite feet tucked between the knees I’ve used to crush a man’s windpipe. But I can’t seem to let go.

  She only wanted comfort last night. I have to keep telling myself that.

  Angelica has everything she could ever want. Money, fame. There was something I could offer her last night—oblivion—but this isn’t a permanent job and I need to be realistic about that. For so many reasons.

  One, she can do so much better than me. Someone with equal talent who doesn’t have the horrors of the world engraved on his mind. When she does find that person, she’ll realize she was selling herself short by letting a grizzled merc
enary touch her perfect skin.

  Two, what we did last night was a betrayal of her father’s trust. Again.

  Fuck, though, I want to do it again so badly. The sugar cookie taste of her pussy, the slippery feel of it on my bare dick, has ruined me for anything else this world has to offer. I’ll spend the rest of my life fantasizing about her riding my face, her thighs wrapped around my head. I’ve never been so hard. Never come so violently, my insides felt like they were being rearranged.

  That’s only for her. It’ll only ever be for her.

  My job here is to make sure Angelica is safe. That’s why she called me. And keeping her safe will be my job for the rest of my life, whether she’s aware of me watching from the shadows or not. I need to get my ass up and start delivering, because letting her down is not an option.

  Though it’s the worst kind of pain, I disentangle myself from the sleeping angel and get out of bed. Since there is no way I can go downstairs with my cock tenting my jeans, I have no choice but to make a stop in Angelica’s bathroom. I step into her shower and press some puffy pink sponge to my nose, finding it smelling like her and I beat off roughly, my climax taking no time at all because I can still taste her cunt in my mouth. Mere seconds. God. And then I’m painting the tile wall of her shower in my semen, imagining it dripping down the walls of her womb instead.

  After I get myself together, I go to my truck, get out my overnight bag and find a downstairs bathroom to clean myself up and change clothes. When I’m done, I hear voices in the kitchen, so I make my way there and find the redhead manager and the clipboard twins going over today’s plan.

  “All right,” says Taryn briskly. “Angelica’s trainer will be here momentarily for her daily workout in the downstairs gym. We have a quick rehearsal later this morning, then a photo shoot at noon. A Zoom interview with…”

  She trails off when she sees me standing in the doorway.