Nothing Comes Easy

Autumn stirred from her slumber, the blaring sound of her alarm drawing a string of mumbled curses from her lips. She didn’t need to see the time to know that she’d slept for far longer than the two hours she’d planned on. She only ever felt this terrible; this abnormally sluggish when she did. It was as if after tying weights to her wrists and ankles, someone had pushed her into dense flowing water, forcing her to move against its unyielding current. Even when it wasn’t this bad, she needed a minute to regroup. Just so moving wouldn’t feel like such a chore.

“The Grinch is awake,” her brothers often teased.

Until she had a full meal, she tended to be unnecessarily rude to whoever tried having a conversation with her.

Once. That’s the number of time she’s ever heard anyone relate to how she felt in this exact moment. She’d been waiting tables at her family’s restaurant when she overheard, then openly eavesdropped on a table of girls telling each other what was the worst thing they’d ever gone through. One girl had describing the sensations she’d been submerged by after some guy had spiked her drink at a party. To hear it reflect how Autumn personally felt so accurately had been freaky, to say the least.

She sighed when she finally managed to grab her phone from under the pillow to turn the ringer off. Great, she thought as she glared at the time indicated on her screen. I’ve been asleep for a solid three and a half hours.

She waited a moment, just so she could regain her bearings. Then, struggling against the unrelenting pounding in her head, she moved to sit, her feet falling to the carpet floor in the bedroom where she’d gone to crash earlier. She’d hoped that the quick nap would help her sober up enough so that she’d feel safe once she grabbed a uber back home. However with the way she was feeling right now, it seemed like she’d just wasted her time. She was pushing against the cushy bed’s edge so she could move to her feet when she felt someone move on the bed beside her.

“Come back here,” a deep masculine voice beckoned right as its owner grabbed her by the waist and pulled her back down alongside him.

Her head fell to the pillow, subsequently clearing some of the haze that’d been fogging her brain. She drew a sharp intake of breath when he drew near, encasing her in his bodily warmth. She should’ve been tense. Especially now that she could feel the muscles on the man now holding her captive.

But she wasn’t.

Something’s wrong with me, she thought when she realized how turned on she actually was. As far as she knew, she didn’t have some kind of secret rape fantasy, yet something about this exact situation turned her on so bad that she had a hard time figuring out what it is that she was supposed to do.

This guy… he felt different. He seemed infused with the kind of tranquil strength that only those top-dogs, alpha male types possessed. She’s always thought that men like that either worked on being that way—like actors on a screen. Or they had life beat it into them, forging it into their character—like it had done for the men in her family. Yet with this guy, she could sense it all the way down to the very hand he’d pressed to her lower belly, giving her the distinct impression that it wasn’t a matter of life beating it into him.

It simply was.

She shivered when she felt a pulsing current between them. Their intimate proximity felt so natural that she struggled to remember that it wasn’t okay for her to stay like that with a guy she knew nothing about. She had to try and articulate… something. A word. A sound. Anything that would have nothing to do with the moan she’d been struggling not to let out. Autumn cleared her throat to speak, but then choked on the words, shocked.

His hand. The one he’d pressed to her lower belly. It was moving. He’d gone past unbuttoning her jeans and was now pulling the zipper down. Wait, was he seriously…? Autumn tried to move away from him, but only managed to find herself with her butt flush against his erection.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he drawled in her ear, his tone laced with the sexy husk that came from having just woken up—or too much smoking.

He sounded so familiar that she froze for a second.

Big mistake.

“Fuck,” she exhaled, the word slipping past her lips before she could stop it.

Not only had he taken advantage of that brief moment of hesitation to slip his hand past her panties, but he’d found her clit almost instantly, catching her so off guard that she instinctively widened her stance to give him better access. She heard herself emit a torn whimper when he started playing with her clit, throwing her in a storm of mind-numbing, relentless ecstasy that deep down, made her feel incredibly pathetic. She must have always had these whorish inclinations. Why else would she be allowing this to happen long enough for her pussy to grow so wet that he could probably cup her fluids like water in the palm of his hand?

The puckered tips of her breasts throbbed so painfully against her bra, she started yearning for his mouth to suck on them.