and pressing my ass to his crotch. I feel his hard length against me and catch my breath. He wants me. It makes me flush with heat. I’m faint and breathless, not sure what’s happening.
Lazarus seizes both of my wrists and pushes me face down on the desk. I gasp. Not cool. He’s going to hurt me. I thought I’d be happy to let him do anything he wanted, but now I’m not so sure. I’m breathing fast, frightened. Wanting to fight him off, to knee him in the nutsack and run for the door.
But something else is happening as well. For some weird reason, my whole body is coming alive and a thousand sensations are rushing in. I grab the edge of the desk with both hands. Lazarus leans his hard, muscular body over me. I feel his hot breath in my ear and it makes me shiver. His voice is low and fierce.
“Don’t move.”
And I don’t. He straightens up and steps back. For several moments nothing happens, but I can sense him there, enjoying the sight of me bent over the desk. Then I feel the hem of my skirt tugged upward until it’s bunched at my waist and my ass is exposed. Again, there’s a pause, but this time I can hear his long, slow breaths. I don’t move a muscle. The desk is hard and cool beneath me. My fingers ache from gripping the sharp edge. In my core there is a mounting pressure I’ve never known. The heat inside is unbearable. I am feeling. Everything.
Suddenly, his palm comes in hard, smacking my ass. The loud slap is startling in the silence and I cry out with surprise. My skin stings and throbs with the pain. Adrenaline rushes through me, smothering the panic and the pain. Another one comes. Slap! I cry out again. The sensation is jolting, but not painful this time. In fact, it awakens every last sleepy cell in my body. It comes again. And again. Harder and harder each time. The tingling heat. The energy surge. I’m alive. I’m finally alive.
The realization overwhelms me like an avalanche. I’m not a child. I’ll never be a child again. I’m a grown woman in charge of my own life. I have power. No one can hurt me again unless I let them. The epiphany takes my breath away.
“Stand up,” Lazarus commands.
I push myself up, the skin of my ass on fire, and turn to face him. His eyes burn into me, cruel and smoldering. But I’m not afraid anymore. I’ve never felt less afraid in my life. And so I focus on the mounting pressure between my thighs, the fire roaring through me.
“Get up on the desk and sit on your hands.” Though his voice is steady and strong, I can see the anxiousness in his face. The desperate hunger.
I move so quickly, so forcefully, he doesn’t see it coming. My hands thrusting at his chest, I slam him against the wall. He grunts loudly in surprise. Before he can move, my body is pressed hard against him. I lift my face to his, hellfire in my eyes.
“I don’t think so.” My voice is a husky whisper.
I let my hands go where they please, raking over the strong chest, which seems to emanate heat. Lazarus is so shocked, he doesn’t move. The hardness in his eyes has been replaced with uncertainty. But the hunger is greater than ever. I run my fingers over his flat, corrugated abs. They are so hard and perfect that I sigh loudly. This is unexplored territory; a land I’ve only known in dreams. A man’s body. A beautiful man’s body. The perfect man.
As I touch him, Lazarus’s breaths accelerate wildly. His eyes explode with fire. His hands hang limply at his sides, as if paralyzed, allowing me free reign. His head tilts back and he closes his eyes, waiting to see what I’ll do. I don’t even know what I’ll do. My mind has gone cloudy with reckless lust and I don’t want to think at all. My fingers fumble with the buttons of his shirt, but at the first glimpse of smooth skin revealed, I go crazy. I have to see his body. To touch him. To make him mine. Now. With a strength I don’t recognize as my own, I yank open the shirt,
Missy Tippens, Jean C. Gordon, Patricia Johns