Free Lawless by Tracey Ward

a lock dying to be sprung, my lips parting and welcoming his tongue with mine. His hand slips back into my hair, holding me more firmly to him, and I whimper somewhere in the back of my throat. A small needy sound that sends his breathing ragged and brings him closer to me. He’s nearly on top of me and I want him there. I want him pressing down on me. I want his hands. I want his breath, his lips, his scent, his eyes.
    I want him .
    And he knows it because Lawson Daniel always knows.
    He reaches around and pulls a lever that lowers my seatback. He guides it down slowly until I’m lying on my back, but then he’s gone. He’s over the center console, into the back seat, and he’s pulling me with him. He’s helping me climb and fumble back with him until he’s laying down and I’m straddling his waist and my shirt is disappearing along with his shorts. Then mine. Then his shirt. My bra. His boxers.
    It happens so fast, like magic or lightning. One minute I’m asleep the next I’m in nothing but my underwear looking down into those perfect green of his eyes as he rolls on a condom, and I’m wondering how I got here. I’m wondering how long I can stay.
    Lawson touches me slowly. He caresses every piece of exposed skin he can find, searching for more until I’m naked and shivering, writhing against him, and he’s groaning in this tortured way that makes me feel alive and beautiful. Powerful. I run my fingertips slowly across his skin, gently as though I’m feeling out a new piano, and I feel it pebble with chills and excitement. With the rush.
    And I want it. I want it more than my next breath. I want it more than I want sex, more than I want him. More than I want to leave this town and so much more than I want to stay. I want to feel that excitement, to feel like I crave and fear something so much that my body reacts to it in a primal way.
    He looks up at me with hooded eyes full of everything I’m feeling and his hands are on my hips and I’m hunching down as I rise up, hovering above him. I slip down slowly, letting him in. All of him. Every inch, every ounce, every breath he breathes and shuddering gasp he makes is mine inside my chest. I echo it and I feel my entire body come alive like fire as I move against him.
    “Rachel,” he grunts, his voice breaking on my name and crumbling like stardust across his skin where I can feel it under my fingers mixed with his sweat and the sea salt air. “I want to hear you say it. I want to see you feel it.”
    I smile faintly, smoothing my palms over his chest and leaning my body down against his. My leg burns with the movement but I don’t care. I get as close to him as I can, take him in as deep as my body will allow as I press my lips against his ear, and I whisper his name once.
    “Lawson.”
    I say it right this time. I know because I feel it everywhere. I feel my skin prickle with excitement. My stomach knots with an anxious energy, and when he wraps his arms around me to hold me to him tightly, his teeth sinking gently into my shoulder with a tender bite, I feel my body detonate in a showering explosion of life and lust and fear that makes me cry out tremulously.
    Lawson growls deep in his chest, a rumbling I feel through my breasts and my body as he rocks it back and forth over his hips, and then he’s clinging to me. His hands are in my hair pulling hard and his breathing is erratic and desperate.
    When he stills I move to roll off him, but he holds me in place, pinning my body to his. I lift my head to look down at him and he moves his hands to push my wild hair aside, unburying my eyes. When he finds them he kisses me softly on the lips.
    “Stay,” he whispers roughly, his face tired and happy.
    “I should go home,” I tell him, not knowing exactly why. It’s not what I want.
    Thank God Lawson knows that.
    He nods solemnly, running the pad of his thumb over my cheek. “I know. And I’ll get you there. But for now I’m asking you to stay with