Craving the Captains

My toes were frozen in my shoes, my legs shaking as much as my stinging hands.

Rugged up in my sports sweats, shirt, jacket, and beanie, I ran to my car through the dark, frosted carpark of the swimming stadium, my teeth chattering, my keys jingling.

The community pool was as rundown as the rest of my secluded hometown in the mountains, but I loved it here more than at the college pool. This pool, no one else came to.

The college one was usually filled with piranhas, food coloring, or some other shitty prank my tormenter liked to throw at me. This one was safe.

I fumbled with my keys between my frozen fingers, my teeth still chattering as I finally unlocked my small hatchback and yanked open the door. I climbed in, shoved my long orange strands of hair back, and blew into my hands, trying to warm up in the dark.

It didn’t work, so I turned my car on and blasted the heater. My car rumbled like it wanted to die on me, but I prayed to the full moon that it wouldn’t. I did not have the money to get it fixed. My scholarship to Alpine Academy did not include a car allowance.

My car stabilised, and I grinned. “Good girl,” I tapped the dash, then flicked my lights on.

I gasped when I looked up and saw another car in the dark lot. There was never anyone else here.

It was hidden in the shadows under the dying tree of the last park.

I frowned at it and narrowed my eyes.

There was no one else in the stadium, and the car had no lights on. A shiver ran down my spine, which had nothing to do with the cold, and I decided I wanted nothing to do with whatever that was about.

I spun out of the car park and headed down the street towards my home, Alpine Academy. I loved being there, in the mountains, in a place where they let me learn and swim, even encouraged it.

But that was where my love for the place ended. The people in it, specifically one, could sleep with the damn fish for all I cared. And that one person was the reason my hand tightened on the steering wheel.

He made me hate living on campus.

I wondered what new horror awaited me in my dorm room tonight as I drove. Probably another dead fish, that was his favorite. One that took me days to find.

I clenched my jaw and thought about just heading to a hotel for the night when there was a shuffling from the backseat.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I went to turn around to check what the shuffling was, but before I could, a hand wrapped around my throat and squeezed.

I screamed, and the warm hand clasped my vocal cords tighter, the presence coming up closer behind me.

Panic seized me, and I flicked my eyes to the mirror, but it was moved. I hadn’t even noticed it facing the wrong way.

The hand on my throat got tighter.

I swerved the car, and the hand released slightly.

But the owner of the hand said nothing.

As soon as I straightened the car on the dark, snow-dusted roads toward the town, the hand clamped back down, and I gasped.

I panted, forcing air through my windpipes. “Fuck off,” I snarled, trying to get free, my heartbeat thundering in my chest.

Until there was a breathy chuckle next to my ear, and I froze. I stopped panicking, and recognition sparked in my brain.

“Let me go,” I snapped, croaking out the words as I tried to slam my body forward.

The hand pinned me back against the seat, and the presence came closer until there was breath on my ear, and I shuddered.

My breath struggled to pass my throat. I tried to focus on driving, but lips pressed up against my ear.

“You know what your body does to me in that swimsuit of yours, Paige,” the gravelly voice said. His voice turned the recognition spark into a flare.

His accent hit me first, and I gulped hard against his grip. It was a Cuban accent that drove me wild in whispered dirty talk. I remembered it well, and my entire body clenched.

I squeezed my thighs together.

Luka Romero.

His hand teased my throat, breath play his favorite kind. He licked up the shell of my ear, his warm breath making my stomach tense. He couldn’t be here. I was dreaming. I had to be.

“You’ve forgotten my touch, Princess,” he whispered hoarsely as he stroked down the column of my throat.

My pussy clenched, begging to be reminded. It missed him. Hell, I missed him. For years, it had been him and I. High-school sweethearts, fucking like animals, carnal and desperate. And then reality had hit hard.

I could only afford to go to college on scholarship, and the only one I had been accepted into was Alpine.

He had been accepted into his dream college in London, as well as many others, including Alpine.

He had chosen his dream, and so had I.

So we had ended things, refusing to give up our dreams for each other. It had broken us both, but we couldn’t take each other’s futures. I was a swimmer at heart, and he had Soccer in his.

Which is why there was no way he could be here.

But then I looked down at the one thing that would confirm how real he was.

A tattoo on his hand of an upside-down cross, the column of it lining the scar I gave him the first time he’d used his hand on my throat and fucked me.

It had made me cling to him, rake my nails down his hand as I came. So he’d tattooed the nail gouge there.

I looked down briefly at the inverted cross by my throat, and everything inside me tightened all over again.

I breathed hard, almost panting as I realised he was actually here.

And how much I wanted to hit him for it.

He hadn’t messaged. He hadn’t called.

He had left and acted like we hadn’t been best friends for years.

He had abandoned me.

I had messaged him, written letters, and even tried to reach out on socials. But silence.

And now he was in my car with a hand on my throat, and thought I would just let him back?

“I think I need to remind you,” he said, his other hand slipping down into my jacket, down the curve of my breasts over my shirt to the band of my sweats.

My breath hitched, and he groaned in my ear, his grip tightening on my throat.

“You could have just told me who you were, Luka. I thought you were kidnapping me,” I snapped breathily.

“I bet that made you wetter,” Luka chuckled just as breathily, slipping his hand inside my pants. I didn’t stop him, both hands clutched on the wheel.

Fuck, he still knew me too well.

I tried to clench my thighs tighter, tried to tell my body to stop being so desperate. He was not our friend anymore. It had been two years without him; we could survive another.

But my pussy was excluding herself from that narrative.

His fingers dipped under my panties, and I sucked in a breath as he stroked along my clit.

His own breath hitched as he cupped my jaw with his spread hand, the clawmark at my chin. “Mmm, that’s my girl,” he panted, slipping his fingers inside my soaked, traitorous pussy.

I moaned and lifted my hips to his hand.

My hands tightened on the wheel as pleasure sparked deep in my core, doused in the gasoline of my memories.

Fuck.

I swerved the car into a park on the side of the empty, dark street in the middle of town, grateful no one was here at this time of night. I turned the car off, then spun to him.

His face hit me as hard as it had all those years ago, handsome, dark olive skin with sexy stubble on a defined jaw, and those damn soulful hazel eyes that smiled at the edges all on their own. He wore a beanie, but I knew there was soft brown hair under there, and I needed it between my fingers.

He smirked at me and leaned back.

He had me, and we both knew it. So instead of telling him to get lost, as I should have, I scrambled over to the backseat and climbed on his lap.

As soon as I was on him, his full lips crashed on mine.

Heat raced through my body, and he yanked my jacket off me. I had missed him. So damn much. He had broken my heart, I had broken his, we hadn’t followed each other, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. Not when his body was under mine.

He kissed me roughly, his hands stripping my clothes off with jagged, awkward movements in my small car.

He had gotten bigger than I remembered. He was stacked with lean muscle that rippled beneath my fingers as I got his shirt off, too.

He grasped my hair with savage fingers, yanking as he turned my mouth so he could push his tongue along mine.

I moaned and ran my hands down his impressive tattooed body, his legs firm and bulging with muscle they hadn’t before.

Sure, he had been ripped, but nothing like this.

He groaned and kissed me like he was trying to breathe me in, like he was trying to erase our years of being apart.

He gripped under my ass and lifted me before he turned me and pressed me down along the back seat. His lips moved with mine, and I desperately tugged at the longer strands of hair on top of his head, throwing his beanie somewhere in the car.

My brain stopped computing and sank into the feelings he gave me. Warmth and comfort flooded back, our years of learning each other’s bodies, right there in every touch.

I moaned, arching as he peeled my bra off my body, releasing my breasts.

He cupped them, lowering his mouth to circle the peak before he kissed down my stomach. Breathing hard, I watched, my body pulsing with heat and tension.

Luka yanked off my shoes, then my jeans. I tried to help, kicking them off, laughing as my foot got caught.

He left my jeans hanging on one foot, then covered my body with his. He held himself up by leaning on my door, rearing over me as I licked my swollen lips. I met his eyes, those hazel eyes searing into me as much as they had the first time we had made out.

I was not strong enough to resist him, even if I knew this was a bad idea.

He leaned down and kissed me softly again. His hand dragged down my body, over my thigh, before his fingers slipped between my legs.

I gasped as he pushed two in. He turned them then fucked me with them, and I cried out at the instant pressure in my core.

Fucking hell, he still knew my body too. I raked my nails down his thick arms, leaving red marks down his tattoos.

He groaned and kissed me deeper, his tongue entwining with mine the way our bodies used to.

I opened my legs wider, my body racing to the finish line. I panted, ready to crumble when he yanked his impressive, thick cock out of his boxers and pushed my thighs apart.

I shook as I remembered how good it felt to stretch to take him. He was thick everywhere, and it made for one hell of a fuck.

He leaned in, his tip at my entrance. He cupped my face, kissing under my eye, his forehead against mine, his body pressing into me.

“You’re still mine,” he panted so quietly I wasn’t even sure if I was meant to hear it. Then he kissed the edge of my lips. “I want to fuck you bare, Princess, please tell me we’re safe?”

The way he spoke was like a guttural beg that made my pussy clench, desperate for friction.

My heart fluttered as I thought about safety and what it meant, or rather, where it meant he had been, then cleared my throat.

“You tell me,” I bit. He leaned up over me, his body so much bigger. So much stronger.

He smirked and kissed me softly. “If you think I could be with anyone else after what we were, then you’re out of your fucking mind,” he said, then locked my favorite hand around my throat.

I gasped in what I hoped would be my final breath for a while and hid how fucking elated I was to hear his words. My heart soared, and my head swam.

But I was pretty sure that was a lack of oxygen.

Luka surged inside me, and my nails broke skin down his back. I tried to cry out, but he held my throat, controlling every noise.

He kissed my mouth, under my jaw, eyeing where my throat strained before he groaned and fucked me harder, faster, going deeper with every stroke.

My body throbbed with each thrust, my blood rushed until my ears felt blocked, and pleasure filled every pore on my body.

“Mi Vida,” he whispered against my lips as my sight faded.

But I wasn’t scared. I trusted every second he took from my breath. And with every tense part of me that was desperate for oxygen, there was a nerve filled with pleasure about to explode.

I writhed, my hips meeting his. I clawed and hit the back of my head on the armrest of the door.

Luka noticed and shuffled me down, pushing me harder onto his cock.

But my body wasn’t used to the intensity after so long away, my stamina was non-existent. I was already at the finish line, ready to implode.

I clawed at his hand. He needed to let me breathe, let me feel the hit of my orgasm. My pussy throbbed in warning, heat seared up my spine, spreading through my entire body, and just as I was sure I was going to pass out, Luka released my throat.

I gasped, crying out as blood rushed back with the oxygen at full force and hurtled me into an orgasm so fierce, I shuddered and gripped him.

His lips clasped down on mine as I gasped against him, rocking onto his cock, the thickness filling me to the brim, his hips stroking me so fluidly.

It was an intensity I would never forget.

I cried out over and over as wave after wave hit me. My body pulsed, my lungs tight as my core felt every pang of his surging thrusts. It was overwhelming, and I kissed him fiercely.

Luka’s lips had haunted my nightmares for the last two years.

I wasn’t gentle, and he groaned into my mouth before he thrusted hard and shuddered against me.

He slammed inside with strokes that sheathed him fully, and I sighed as he came harshly. He buried his face in my neck, biting my shoulder. He yanked me onto him, emptying the last of himself as he panted to survive what we had done.

I ran my fingers through his soft hair, and my eyes fluttered closed. I could stay there forever, in the moment, pretending like this wasn’t a huge mistake.

He was here, but it wasn’t me he came for. There was no way it was, or he would have messaged at any point over the last couple of years. But he hadn’t.

He had ghosted me. And one little kidnapping stunt later was all it took for me to cave.

He made me weak, and I had to be stronger. But next time.

This time, I indulged.

Luka pulled back and kissed me softly.

I missed his face. He was fucking gorgeous. I had pissed off all the cheerleaders getting him.

Luka looked like he was about to say something, but before he could, there was a tap on the window, and a flashlight peered in.

“You two, get out here so I can arrest you with clothes on, yeah?” The cop in the window said, his face stoic as he looked over our naked bodies in the car.

Fuck my life, my tormentor was going to love this one.