Tracy Wolff - Shredded

So I clutch at his hair, tugging at him until his face is level with mine and his hips are between my thighs. “Now,” I tell him. “Please. Right now.”

Except he’s pulling away, straightening up. Leaving me. “No!” I gasp, clutching at him. I’m not ready for this to end, not ready for him to leave me again. Not yet. Please, not yet.

“It’s okay,” he tells me, reaching for his jacket and unzipping a secret pocket on the inside. “I need a condom.”

Right. Because that’s who he is. The guy who carries condoms in his snowboarding jacket. And probably his pants and his wallet and his car, too. I need to remember that no matter how crazy he makes me or how much pleasure he gives me, I’m just one of a crowd.

Which is fine. This isn’t about love or forever or any of those other things. It’s about forgetting.

Then he’s back, kissing me, sliding into me. I kiss him back, try to lose myself in the sensations ripping through me. But it’s too late. Z might be a better lover than Remi—and I feel a little guilty even thinking it—but he doesn’t care about me.

Which was fine the other day, when I didn’t care about him, either. But now … now it’s not so easy. Because he isn’t just some guy looking to win a bet anymore. He’s the guy who’s helped me out nearly every time he’s seen me. The guy who somehow wormed his way under my defenses and made me like him way more than I should.

“Ophelia.”

Z’s voice brings me back. I open my eyes, find his face only inches from my own. His eyes are dark with desire, his jaw clenched against the need to come.

“It’s okay,” I tell him. “I’m good.”

He bends his head, nips at my bottom lip, hard.

“Hey!” I exclaim, bringing my hand up to soothe the hurt. “What was that for?”

He doesn’t answer, but then he doesn’t have to, because already I can feel the heat spreading through me. The pain grounds me, brings me right back to the precipice of desire I’d been balanced on only minutes ago.

Z’s watching me closely, and he must be satisfied because he starts moving again, thrusting into me oh so slowly. I can feel every inch of him stroking through me, and heat starts building inside me, spiraling my own desire up, up, up.

It scares me a little. How easily he can make me want him—and how much. Part of me wants to disconnect again, to take a step back out of sheer self-preservation. But Z’s having none of it. He chooses that moment to lower his mouth to my neck and bite me again.

“Z!” I gasp his name as fire sizzles along my nerve endings, and I clutch at his shoulders. He laves the little hurt with his tongue, even as he slips a hand between us and strokes my clit.

That’s all it takes. I come apart in his arms once more, and this time he comes with me.

This girl is going to be the death of me. It seems stupid to say that, to even think it considering what I’ve done in my life and what I’ll continue to do, but I swear, it’s the truth. What years of snowboarding haven’t managed, Ophelia is going to take care of with just a look. A smile. A touch.

Outside, a strong gust of wind blows, whistling through the trees even as it has the windows rattling in their frames. Ophelia is still asleep, but some part of her must feel it, because she burrows deeper under the covers, snuggling closer to me until her ass is pressed right up against my cock.

I want to slide inside her, to be the first thing she feels when she wakes up. The first thing she sees out of those gorgeous green eyes of hers, eyes that I now know turn a deep, verdant jungle green when she comes. But we made lo—

I freeze before the words are fully formed, force a do-over in my own head. We were together (because saying we fucked doesn’t fit any better than saying we made love) four times last night. She has to be sore and tired, and I need to be considerate.

But part of me doesn’t give a damn. It’s the same part of me that can’t stand when she slips away from me, when I’m holding her or loving her and she just disappears. Just goes somewhere else in her head. That part of me wants to fuck her again and again and again, until all she feels or smells or tastes is me. Until she understands that I’m not just going to let her slip away. Not now. Not yet.

Just the fact that I’m thinking this way freaks me out. I don’t date. I don’t pine after a girl. I don’t do anything but fuck—and even that is more about letting the pressure out, feeling something even if it’s just for a minute, than it has ever been about the person I’m with. Except last night wasn’t about trying to feel—at least for me. Last night, and this morning, I feel much more than I’ve ever wanted to.

Determined to gain a little distance—or at least a little perspective—I roll away from her, start to climb out of bed. But she follows me, scooting across the bed in her sleep in an effort to keep her body pressed to mine.

It makes me smile, makes me want to wrap myself around her and stay with her until she wakes up. But as she shifts, I catch sight of the livid bruises around her arms. Bruises that Harvey put there. Bruises that he will pay for.

With that thought in mind, I brush a kiss over Ophelia’s hair and climb out of bed. I take a quick shower. Then, wearing nothing but my boxers and the smile I can’t seem to wipe off my face, I follow the signs to the laundry room on the first floor to retrieve my clothes. I really hope nobody took them, because a text about losing my clothes is so not what I want to send to Ash this morning. Already he’s pissed that I wouldn’t upload the footage from the camera and send it to him last night so he could watch it. If I press my luck, he’ll enlist Luc to find a way to get even—probably one that involves cayenne pepper in my underwear. Luc’s practical jokes are legendary.

My clothes are there, though someone’s taken them out of the dryer and heaped them on the side counter. I slip into them quickly, cursing a little at how cold everything is. It’s never bothered me before, but then I’ve never spent a night snuggled up against Ophelia before, either. In fact, unless I’m totally wasted and just pass out like I did with Stacy, I never spend the night with a girl at all. The fact that I did last night shakes me up more than I want to admit to anyone, especially myself.

I make my way back to Ophelia’s room, hoping she’ll be up so I can talk her into breakfast and a ride home. But she’s still sacked out, and when I glance at her alarm, I realize it’s not set to go off for a couple of hours. Either it’s her day off or she’s working late today.

Either way, there’s some stuff I want to take care of, and since there’s no way I’m going back to bed, I might as well do it now. I can’t stand what almost happened to her last night, hate the fact that if I hadn’t been hiking in—due to my own stupidity—then I wouldn’t have been there and she would have had to fend Harvey off on her own. I hate even more the fact that she might not have been able to fend him off. When I caught up to them, she was almost holding her own, but he’s a big guy. Who knows what could have happened.

Just the thought of Ophelia being raped and/or beaten has rage rocketing through me, and for a minute I can almost feel the bastard’s neck beneath my hands. Men who hurt women that way don’t deserve to live.

Shaking it off, or at least trying to, I add another item to my mental to-do list. Then I bend over, kiss Ophelia’s cheek, and murmur, “I’ll be back in a little.”

She moans, pushes at my face, and I can’t help grinning. Looks like my girl is definitely not a morning person. It’s kind of cute that she’s this grumpy in the morning. Then again, it shouldn’t really surprise me, not when she’s got grumpy cornered all the other times of the day, too.

Pulling my phone out, I text Ash and Luc a quick request before throwing on my jacket and heading out on the same path Ophelia was on yesterday, only in the opposite direction. If I hurry, I can be back before she wakes up.

I pretty much jog the whole way to the resort—it’s a great morning for it. Crisp and clear with air so pure it almost hurts to breathe. Luc and Ash still beat me there, though. I find them in the main parking lot, leaning against my Range Rover and shooting the shit about some of the other guys on the snowboarding circuit.

“Well, you look like you’re in one piece,” Luc says, giving me a critical once-over once he catches sight of me.

“I told you yesterday that I was fine.”

“Yeah, well, we weren’t particularly inclined to believe you—especially when you wouldn’t let us come over last night.”

“You’re turning into a little old grandma, Luc. All this worrying. You should probably get out more. It’ll take care of that.”

He flips me off, but there’s no heat in it. “Yeah, well, you should probably go get laid. It might keep you from jumping off the side of a fucking mountain.”

At his words, I can’t help but think about Ophelia and what we spent most of the night doing. Not that I’m about to tell Luc and Ash about it. Some things are nobody else’s business.

“Where’re my keys?” I ask, holding out my hand.

“Where’s my camera?” Ash counters, holding out his hand as well.

“Right here.” I pull it out of the bag I snagged from Ophelia’s place.

“How’s the footage?”

“I don’t know. Haven’t looked at it yet.”

They goggle at me like I’m crazy. “Are you kidding me? How could you not watch it?” Ash demands. “Didn’t you want to see what you did?”

“Dude, I lived it. What’s going over it again gonna do for me?”

Luc shakes his head at me. “You’re hopeless. You know that?”