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She doesn’t give me a chance to reply. Quicker than a heartbeat, she pulls me into my office, plops me onto my chair, and then empties her purse onto my desk.
It’s brimming with an assortment of items—including the Band-Aids I sought when she slipped on wet tiles the night we met.
I huff, amused, when she commences ripping open a strip of Band-Aids. I entered my office seeking a stapler. A sterile strip isn’t going to cut it.
“Y-yes, you’re right,” Mara says, tilting to my right to ensure I have no trouble hearing her whispered words. “You need something more d-durable than Band-Aids.”
Her search ends when I nudge my head to the stapler, and then her cheeks whiten.
“We can’t s-staple your wound together.”
“Why not?” I ask. “I’ve handled worse than a staple piercing through skin.”
I cuss under my breath when sympathy sparks through her eyes. I said too much, but mercifully, Mara is as adapt at making people feel comfortable as she is beautiful. “Be-because every seamstress knows you only pin before s-sewing to ensure you get the perfect seam.”
I’m lost on her metaphor until her hand moves for a mini sewing kit hidden under a travel-size bottle of hand sanitizer.
When I nod, approving of her plan, she opens the lid and threads one of the needles. Once she has everything ready, she moves in close and gathers my injured hand.
Her briefest touch jolts electricity through my body. Mara’s response seems the opposite. A rush of nausea makes her giddy, and she sways uncontrollably.
“Are you okay?”
She stumbles before nodding as if she didn’t. “I just realized I can’t st-stitch your wound. My kit isn’t sterile. You should probably go to the h-hospital.”
“I don’t want to sit in the ER for hours for a handful of stitches.” The shield she is trying to force between us slips away when I curl my uninjured hand around her stuttering ones, and I say, “And as I said previously, I’ve endured worse.”
I stare at her, and she stares back, the intangible string between us growing stronger with each passing second.
Honesty does that. It has you knocking down barriers you were certain would never topple.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she eventually whispers, her dour tone incapable of weakening my excitement that she’s more concerned about me than the reason she stutters.
Heisn’t on her mind right now.
I am.
With the knowledge of that sending all the blood to the lower extremities of my body, my wound seems more superficial than life-threatening. It doesn’t drip a droplet of blood when I raise my hand to Mara’s face to free her lip from her menacing teeth.
Her moan when I drag my thumb over her lips coagulates my blood, mending both my wound and my heart. Not an ounce of consideration is given to any consequences I may face when my thumb fills the gap between her parted lips.
My cock knocks at my zipper when she sucks on the tip of my thumb before she swivels her tongue around it. When I picture her mouth doing the same to my cock, another first I can’t wait to experience with her, it leaks pre-cum from the crest.
Almost desperately, I lunge for her.
My kiss is violent. Needy. It shows how unhinged she makes me and how desperate I am to let go of the reins as Rafael is suggesting.
I’ve lived my life governed for years, long before I started my political career. Not a single decision I made was for me. It was to keep my family’s secrets and bury them deeper than anyone could find them.
It was to hide years of shame.
They aren’t featured in my exchanges with Mara. Nothing matters but how many moans I can entice from her and my hope that they’ll be delivered without a stutter.
14
MARA
With his fingers knotted in my hair and our tongues dueling like they’ve danced together for years, Ark kisses me until his office window fogs up and my needs are too potent to ignore for a second longer.