Right then, that tattoo nearly all I could see, my sleepy brain filled with all I’d experienced with him recently and waking up for the first time in my life beside him, I lost hold on all that. I lost control of my ability to separate the Creed that used to be from the Creed that was sleeping beside me. I lost the stranglehold I had on me.

I had my head on the pillow but my body was close to his, my side brushing his, my eyes level to his shoulder. His head was turned away from me.

We were both on our stomachs, his leg crooked, my leg crooked with his, the inside of my thigh resting on top of the back of his other leg which was straight. I had my arm curled around his back.

Yes, me cuddling Creed (kind of).

The sheets were over our legs and when I lifted my head slightly and looked down, I saw they were mostly over Creed’s ass but I could see the top of it wasn’t covered. None of mine was.

My eyes moved up, my arm shifting and I caught the flowered “Sylvie” in the dent of his lower spine.

Seeing my name inked in that vulnerable dent in his spine, a vulnerability surrounded by the power of his defined muscles, the beauty of the image of our place, my body moved before I told it to do so. My mouth hit his back at the lake then it glided down. His body twitched, shifted and I put my hands to him, one between his shoulders, one at his ass and pressed down lightly.

“Sylvie.” It came out as a sleepy growl and went straight between my legs.

My lips kept moving down his back, over his waist, soaking in the tat, soaking in our place, soaking in us. Then my lips moved up the curve of his ass. Pushing the sheet down, I bared my teeth and nipped his flesh.

“Fuck,” he whispered, his big, powerful body shifting again.

Against his skin, I murmured, “Stay still, baby.”

“Fuck,” he whispered again and I shoved my hand between his legs, curled it up and found his cock.

It was hard.

Yes. I loved that. I wanted it. Needed it. Already.

My mouth drifted up and there I was.

Sylvie.

In flowers.

On our pier.

Slow, so fucking slow, taking my time, my hand wrapped tight around his hard cock, I traced my flowered letters with my tongue.

I got to the “i” and Creed was done.

He rolled, disengaging me, knifed up, grabbed me, pulled me over him, his hand at his cock. He slammed me down, impaling me.

My head shot back.

Yes. Just what I needed.

Exactly what I needed.

His hands slid up my back, his fingers curling around my shoulders holding me down as his forearms pressed deep, holding me to him.

He felt good, hard, big, filling me.

I was gone. Seriously gone. Already close. I had to move.

I righted my head and looked at him. “Gotta move, Creed,” I whispered.

“What’d he take from you?” he whispered back.

His tattoo in my head, our place still on my lips, my name in his skin on my tongue, all I was learning that was him filling my head, his cock inside me, I worked against those odds and tried to bury it.

I failed.

Still, I breathed, “Don’t. Let me move.”

“Tell me what he took from you. I’m giving it back.”

Shit.

“Creed –”

His hips bucked up and my breath hitched.

God, that felt great.

“You wanna move, baby, tell me what he took from you.”

“Don’t wanna, gotta,” I whispered, pressing my breasts into his skin and dragging my nails lightly down his back, two things I knew, fucking Creed copiously the last few days, he liked. A lot.

It didn’t work.

“He held you down, Sylvie, I’m gonna hold you down. I’m gonna show you it’s good. You can trust it. You can enjoy it. I’m gonna give you that back.”

“Please –”

“He tied you down. I’m gonna tie you to the bed, baby, and you’re gonna love it.”

Fuck.

I needed to move and his words, the heat behind them, the determination weren’t helping matters.

“Baby –”

“When I’m done, you will fear nothing. Never again. I’m gonna give that back to you. Now, what else did he take from you?”

“Creed –”

His hips bucked up and it pulsed through me.

“What did he take from you?”

I shoved my face in his neck and ground my hips into his.

“Sylvie –”

“My ass.”

His fingers at my shoulders dug in.

“He took your ass?” he growled.

“Yeah,” I breathed then, on a plea, “I need to move.”

“Didn’t make it good for you?”

“That shit’s not good, Creed.”

“That shit’s fuckin’ awesome, Sylvie,” he returned, his voice rumbling through me. “I get you ready, you’ll come so hard with me up your ass, you’ll think you’re comin’ out of your skin.”

Serious to God. I didn’t know how, that was not my gig but the way Creed was talking about it, it was not helping.

“I need to move, baby.”

“What else did he take?”

“Creed –”

His hips bucked up and I whimpered.

“What else did he take, Sylvie?”

“He hit me.”

Creed’s body stilled underneath me and it did this so completely it felt like all the air in the room stilled with him.

“What?” he asked.

“He hit me.”

“While he was fuckin’ you?”

His anger wasn’t slithering through the room and the room wasn’t stilled anymore.

It was vibrating with fury. Every fucking centimeter.

I lifted my head but before I could look at him and answer in the affirmative, I was on my back and Creed was pounding into me.

Finally!

I opened my mouth to speak but didn’t say a word because his slammed down on mine.

He fucked me hard and kissed me harder. Then he fucked me harder and I kissed him deep. Then I lifted my knees high, wrapped my calves around him and groaned down his throat as all he gave me washed over me.

He didn’t break the contact of our mouths even while I came, while he kept thrusting hard and deep or when his heavy grunts drove down my throat with his own release.

When he was done, coming down, he slammed up hard and planted himself so deep, I swear, it was like he wanted to fuse with me.

Then his mouth slid down my cheek to my ear and his voice was gruff with his orgasm and emotion when he whispered, “My tat means to you what it means to me.” I closed my eyes tight, mentally kicking myself for giving that away and moved my hands to his shoulders but he pressed his entire body into me, negating my shove before it even began. “Kept you close every day, every night, right with me and now you know it. You just don’t know what to do with it.”

Shit, how did I let this happen?

Shit. I just had to wake up to him and I was open, bare. Fuck!

“Get off me,” I whispered.

He lifted his head and his face, harsh and intense, looked down at me. “And you won’t know what to do with it until you talk to me.”

“Sex, work, food, beer then you’re back to Arizona, partner,” I reminded him.

“I’d move here. I’d move to the goddamned, fucking moon to wake up to you in my bed.”

Holy shit!

“Just came inside you, Sylvie, no condom. That was just you and me, nothing in between. Nothing. And you know exactly what I fuckin’ mean,” he remarked and I blinked.

Shit. How did that happen?

Shit!

He pulled out, rolled off and I closed my legs, turned to the side, curled my knees up and tried to sort out the ten thousand thoughts crashing in my head. The priority of which was Creed’s badass sperm, likely Olympic-class swimming with pinpoint accuracy, inside me and whether I was up-to-date on my birth control pills.

Fuck!

Letting my mind wander to heretofore, unknown unsafe sex was a mistake. I was doing that and therefore not processing the fact that he was prowling to my mirror. I also didn’t process the fact that he snatched a long scarf I had dangling on it and was prowling back, twisting it and doing something with it in his hands.

But I processed his knee hitting the bed and his hand capturing my arm.

I shot up and tried to pull away.

“What the fuck?” I clipped as he looped the scarf over my hand, it tightened at my wrist and, even as I pulled and struggled, before I knew it, he’d tied the other end to my headboard.

My eyes shot to him and rage shot through my system.

“You fucking fucker!” I screeched.

“Look at my hand, Sylvie,” he ordered, calm as could be, the fucking fucker!

“Fuck you!” I yelled, my other hand going toward my wrist tied to the bed but he batted it gently away. My eyes shot back to him. “Let me untie it!”

“Look at my goddamned hand, Sylvie,” he bit out, calm a fleeting memory.

“Fuck you!”

He moved. My eyes moved to where he moved and I saw his fingers tug at the end of the scarf, a slight yank and my wrist was instantly released.

I froze and stared.

Then I wasn’t frozen anymore but not because I moved. Because Creed’s hand wrapped around the back of my neck, he pulled me to him and both his arms closed around me, plastering me to his body.

“That’s how you do it,” he growled in my face. “You do it so, you get tweaked, you still got control and you can get yourself loose any fuckin’ time you want. You do it and you have a safe word so, it goes places you don’t like, you say it and it… fuckin’… stops. The guy who did that shit to you, Sylvie, he was a goddamned animal, takin’ from you what you didn’t want to give. Not all men are. In fact, most men aren’t. And I’m a man who’s not.”