Raw Deal

by Cherrie Lynn

“I’m here.”

  Savannah reached for him, and his weight came down on the bed beside her in the darkness. Hard, warm, reassuring. God, she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed his arms around her, and it had only been a few days. His chin nestled into her hair, his lips pressing against her head. She closed her eyes, absorbed his strength, and fell right back to sleep within seconds while he held her.

  A few times she woke afraid she’d dreamed him there, only to find him sleeping beside her, still in his clothes. The next time her eyes opened, gray dawn bloomed outside her bedroom window, showing her his face. Hard lines, soft curves, all so peaceful in sleep. If only we could bring that peace back with us when we wake up, she thought, and snuggled against him to try to find her own again, however brief it might be.

  He’d driven all night to reach her when he knew she needed him. She doubted there was even one other person in her life who would have done such a thing.

  “You okay?” he murmured sleepily, his arms going around her again—at some point in their sleep, they’d lost their grips on each other.

  “Am now,” she whispered. His full lips curved in a trace of a smile, and then he was out again. Savannah wanted desperately to kiss those lips, but no doubt he was impossibly tired. She should have tried harder to talk him out of making that trip, but if she had, she wouldn’t have this.

  And this . . . this was divine.

  Sheets of rain began pattering her window. She dozed again briefly, but it was her natural waking time and her internal clock wouldn’t allow her much more sleep. Luckily, she had no appointments until later this morning, but she might be able to get one of the others to cover those. If not, she would just have to go in, though the thought of leaving him was almost unbearable now that he was here. She wanted to lie all day in the shelter of these powerful arms and not have to face the world.

  His lashes fluttered against his cheeks, and she wondered what he was dreaming about, what those intense eyes were seeing behind his closed eyelids. Her dream about Tommy came back to her . . . casually telling her to choose with the wry humor he’d always had in his voice, as if he had not a care in the world.

  How could she ever choose anything but this?

  Then her mind drifted to Rowan waking up in an empty bed this morning, probably hanging over a toilet with morning sickness. And her face last night . . .

  Savannah rolled onto her back, breathing hard, a hand to her mouth. How dare she find comfort when there was none to be had for Tommy’s wife, her sister, her best friend?

  “Savannah?” Mike’s voice was sleep roughened but sharp, his eyes heavy lidded but wide awake. He rose up on his elbow beside her, searching her stricken face with both gaze and gentle fingertips.

  “I’m fine,” she said, reflex taking over as she scuttled from his touch and then from the bed. “Just give me a minute.” Making a beeline for her little bathroom, she shut the door and sat on the edge of her claw-foot tub, sobbing quietly into her hand.

  This had all been a horrible mistake. She was so fucking confused she had no business making any decisions for herself. Now she’d brought a wonderful man from his bed to drive five hours overnight to get to her, and she’d just run from him as if he had the plague when he hadn’t done a fucking thing to deserve it.

  Get it together, her mind screamed at her, but her heart still beat agony through her veins.

  Minutes ticked by, and she tried, she really did. She splashed cold water on her face, washed the tears away. Tried to plaster on a smile for her reflection, but even to her it looked fake.

  “Okay, I’ve given you a minute,” Mike said from outside her door, and she wondered how long he had been standing there. “Talk to me, Savannah.”

  It reminded her of telling Rowan about him through the closed dressing room door at the Galleria. Somehow it had made it easier to say difficult words. Not this time. She needed him as much as she wanted to run from him.

  Sighing, she pulled the door open, not even trying on her fake smile for him; he would see right through it.

  He stood with one arm braced on the door frame, head lowered slightly but eyes trained directly on hers. His very presence eclipsed her bedroom. “Should I not have come?”

  “I’m glad you did,” she said, sounding small. “I just . . . last night . . . and thinking about how hurt she still is . . .”

  “I get it.”

  “How is it that I deserve this? Deserve you?” And how damn long would he put up with her erratic emotions?

  “Shit, you deserve someone a hell of a lot better than me. If I weren’t so fucking selfish I would leave you alone so you could find him.”

  “You’re one of the least selfish people I think I’ve ever met. I mean . . . you’re here.”

  “When I shouldn’t be. I should be getting up to hit the gym with Jon but I don’t care.”

  Her heart, rattling around somewhere around her feet, lifted a bit when he said that. Maybe he really was moving away from that life, the one that she didn’t think she could ever be a part of again. Especially now, hearing how damn easy it was for an old injury to spell a fighter’s demise. It amazed her it was so rare.

  And it took her mind back to Rowan. She’d fallen in love, planned for forever. Counted on it . . . only to have “forever” with Tommy cut brutally short.

  What a precious, fragile thing it was to have Mike in front of her right now. Reaching up for his face, she felt the rasp of his stubble against her palms, marveling that he was real and he was here. Hard blue eyes bored into hers, warming as they stripped through her layers of anguish to seek a depth inside her she hadn’t known existed. Then his mouth found hers while thunder rumbled through the skies overhead. There was so much she wanted to show him now that he was with her, but at the moment there was only time for the feel of him against her, of his mouth moving slowly over hers, questing for entrance. She gave it eagerly, standing on tiptoes to reach him. She loved how small he made her.

  “Fucking missed you,” he growled against her lips, and she whimpered as his big hands crept around to cup her ass cheeks and squeeze her against his groin. She climbed him, lifting her legs to wrap around his narrow waist, her hands tugging at back of his snug black T-shirt to get to the hot bare skin underneath. Needing him naked, needing him between her thighs making her forget all the bullshit in her life.

  “You know,” he murmured, depositing her on the mattress amid her rumpled white sheets, “I wanted to wake you up with my mouth between her legs.”

  “Oh, God, why didn’t you?”

  “You seemed a little emotionally fragile last night. You seem that way now, too.”

  “That’s a damn good reason to get your mouth between my legs,” she insisted, stripping his shirt off now that she had room to do so.

  He grinned, goddamn gorgeous in the gray morning light with his shadowed jaw, chiseled body, and that mouth that was mere moments away from driving her wild. Here. Now. In her bedroom. He’d come to her. It was almost too much to believe.

  Raising up on his knees, he tore at his jeans without looking away from her face. She’d yet to touch him but she could see the hard ridge of his cock through the denim. When he shoved his jeans away and she wrapped her hands around him, remembrance surged through her belly. She could almost feel him inside her before she got him there, thick, stretching. And Jesus, those obliques, pointing straight to paradise.

  Savannah sat up to give him a few loving sweeps of her tongue, but he didn’t let her linger long. She found herself pushed back down with impossible strength, and he held her there while his other hand tore her panties down her bare legs. She went liquid with a need so acute that she squeezed her thighs together against the ache. Michael only wrenched them apart as she gasped and squirmed, whimpering and clenching her fists as he took a long, hungry look at her most intimate place.

  “You,” he breathed, sliding one hand up the inside of her left thigh, “you are heaven.” And he dipped down to taste, one long lick
after another, looping his arm around her thigh and holding her open with his thumb and index finger. Oh, God, the pleasure of it was too sharp, she was too sensitive, but every move she made to blunt his assault on her senses was thwarted. And she loved it, shoving both her hands through his short hair and pulling up little tufts of it between her fingers.

  “I’m going to come,” she warned, only in case he didn’t want her to, in case he wanted to feel her ripple around his thrusting cock. Then she pretty much realized no, that was what she wanted. “Fuck me, Michael, do it now, please . . .”

  He crawled up the length of her while she shivered and panted and put her arms around him. “Condoms are in the bag across the room,” he said, but she heard a question there.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay—” She’d barely gotten the repetition out before he nestled at her entrance, teased her mercilessly, and pushed himself so deep an embarrassing wail rent from her throat. No barrier between them to blunt the heat and friction of his entry. Already caught on the precipice as she was, it sent her over, and she bucked her hips against him to squeeze every drop of pleasure she could from his intrusion while he ground out curses that practically made her blush in the middle of an orgasm. And for some crazy damn reason, made her apologize over and over while he chuckled in her ear.

  Jesus Christ. One thrust. She was pathetic for him.

  “Oh hell, no. Don’t be sorry. Never be sorry,” he whispered against her ear. Slowly, he pulled from her almost to the tip and pushed back in, the silky slide along her hypersensitive flesh almost more than she could take. He was almost more than she could take. She clutched helplessly at him, tears squeezing from her eyes. Not sad tears. I just came so hard I pulled something tears. Maybe he wouldn’t see them, though he probably felt them as they trickled over her temples into his skin. If he did, he made no mention.

  He only made love to her like he was trying to leave part of himself inside her, with his hands and kisses and words as intimate and passionate as his leisurely, rolling thrusts into her body. Deep, so deep. She’d been needing this as soon as she’d left him. He curled his fingers through the iron lattice of her headboard while she curled hers into his firm ass, feeling the bunch and release of muscle and the rising surge of pleasure he stoked with every movement. For him to make her come again after the first one would prove he was a miracle worker indeed, but damn if it wasn’t happening. And the squeaking of her bed, always an annoyance before, had never played such an erotic tune. Something else for her to remember once he was gone.

  “If you don’t want it,” he growled in her ear, thrusts sharpening, “tell me now.”

  Savannah locked her legs around him. He wasn’t going anywhere. “I want it, oh, God!” she panted as her entire world constricted to where he claimed her. His hands left her headboard to find her own, his fingers lacing through hers, gripping hard enough to crack her bones as she cried out in unison with him. Their mouths fused as he pushed to the hilt and throbbed inside her, holding deep while he came, filling her with his warmth and pulling her with him as every muscle in her body tightened at the pleasure tearing through her. It left her a sobbing, trembling mess, left her floating without a single thought or worry in her head as he kissed her gently back down to earth.

  Since she still wore her nightshirt, he pushed it up her body to bare her breasts and lavish attention on them, her nipples still hard from that soul-wrecking explosion. Still, she craved his mouth on them, sucking, licking, soothing. She craved that mouth on her everywhere.

  “I see your heart beating,” he murmured, and she looked to see his gaze locked on the fluttering pulse in her throat. He leaned in to hungrily kiss her there, sending shivers through her entire body. God, she could fall in love with him. Hell, had she not already done so, at least a little? She’d never let another man come inside her, not even when she was in committed relationships, despite being on birth control since she was eighteen. Why the level of trust and affection here was so off the charts that she wanted every part of him, she couldn’t fathom.

  She felt his heart beating as well in the way his chest was pressed to hers. Maybe it was a stupid romantic notion, but she thought they almost beat the same rhythm.

  Slowly, she was able to relax her grip on him, not minding at all when he took his new freedom to rain kisses all the way down her stomach.

  “Gonna find this fucking heart today,” he muttered, and she burst out laughing, sliding a hand down her face. He was still determined to locate her last elusive heart tattoo.

  “You know,” she confessed, “it was sort of a thing I did to determine who I was going to marry. Just to warn you.”

  His head raised, but if there was any alarm in him at all, he didn’t show it. “Oh, yeah?”

  “I was a little drunk. And heartbroken. It’s probably stupid. But I thought, if someone can find all four of them, then he would know every inch of me.”

  Mike’s hand stroked a strand of hair away from the corner of her eyes. “I’ll never understand how anyone could break your heart.”

  You could, she thought, but couldn’t bring herself to say it. Because he might try to deny it . . . and he would be lying. “Yes, well . . . he did.”

  “Did you want to marry him?”

  “I thought I did at the time.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Four years.”

  “Pretty young to want to get married.”

  “I guess.” Now that it was all over and done with, she could look back on the fond memories Grant had left her with, memories that weren’t so eclipsed by the outrage of finding out her boyfriend was cheating on her with one of her friends. It was one instance she could think of when Tommy had wanted to step in and kick someone’s ass on her behalf. She’d managed to rein him in; Tommy probably would have put Grant in the hospital. “I guess that was my most serious relationship. What about you? Ever come close?”

  He eased up beside her and lay down, letting her snuggle into his chest as he wrapped an arm around her. “No. Not at all. I come to you free of ex-wives or psychotic ex-girlfriends.”

  Savannah grinned, tracing the line of one of his chest tattoos. “What about the friend with benefits I saw you with at the concert? She doesn’t have a claim? Or think she does?”

  “Hell no,” he said so quickly she laughed. “That was . . . that was just . . . pretty much what you said. Friends with benefits. I hadn’t seen her in weeks before that night. I still hate that you saw her there.”

  “It’s all right. She was hot, I gotta hand it to you.”

  “You’re hot.”

  She’d been told that before and, depending on her mood, even believed it, but somehow she was able to believe it a little bit more when he said it.

  It was all very disturbing.

  “You know,” she said, grabbing desperately for a change of subject, “I’m not exactly off work today. I could be, but I need to get up and make some phone calls.”

  “I don’t want to keep you from work. You go if you need to, babe. I can entertain myself.” He kissed her forehead, immediately making her want to do nothing but stay in bed with him all day while the rain pattered down and thunder rattled her windows.

  But there were things to do. “Let me go find out,” she said, lifting her head to give him several smooches before slipping away. She had to stop at the door, though, and cast one glance back.

  Damn, he looked good in her bed, the white sheet wrapped around his narrow hips, his shredded arms popping and abs rippling as he laced his hands behind his head and grinned at her. He knows he looks good in my bed, she thought. “Oh look,” she said, grasping Oscar off her dresser and tossing the bear to him. “Say hi to your friend. He missed you too.”

  “Oscar the Ninth!” He laughed, catching Oscar easily. “You haven’t been doing your job keeping her happy, dude.”

  She giggled. Now the scene in her bed was really complete: a sexy naked man holding a teddy bear. Before she ended up attacking
him again, she blew him a kiss and reluctantly tore her gaze away.

  Savannah wasn’t one to miss work without good reason, so there were few questions when she claimed a bad night and lack of sleep—it was the truth, and her coworkers knew she’d been having a hard time. Tasha was more than happy to take one of her appointments, and she delegated a couple of others to a newer therapist who was working to build her clientele. Savannah’s was burgeoning; she could afford to share. It looked like she would get her day off after all.

  Feeling lighter than she had in days, she put coffee on and surveyed her fridge for something she could make for breakfast. If he was hitting the gym hard, he most likely wanted copious amounts of protein. She had eggs and veggies, so she could probably make a suitable omelet.

  “I smell that,” he called from her bedroom after the coffee had been brewing for a few minutes.

  “Interested?” she called back.

  “Very.”

  And so they found themselves eating omelets and drinking coffee in bed, watching the morning news on her little TV across the room. Rain likely all day, the forecast said. To her, it sounded like heaven. Sitting cross-legged in her nightshirt with fuzzy thigh-high socks on (Mike had laughingly told her those were sexy as hell), Savannah leaned over to feed him a bite off her fork after daring him he couldn’t take the heat of the liberal amount of Cajun hot sauce she’d poured over hers. Poor guy, he’d called her on it, and now he was going to suffer.

  “Goddamn, woman, what is that shit? Fucking jet fuel?”

  She tossed her head back and laughed as he sucked in air like a man near suffocation. “Told ya you couldn’t take it.”

  He scrubbed at his lips and coughed, the big tough guy. “I didn’t know you were literally trying to poison me.”

  Swallowing a huge bite and smiling at him, she pointed at him with her fork. “You wouldn’t last five minutes at dinner with my family. You’d be sweating and pouring ice water directly down your throat. And that would only make it worse.”

  “Seriously, what is that? Ghost pepper?”