No Limits

by Alison Kent

  “Did I know what?” she asked, breaking her vow of silence. She really was incredibly weak.

  “You have never smelled like you came out of a bottle, or like you bought the same scent dozens of other women pour on like they’re watering grass, hoping it will grow.”

  He was talking about fragrances. Did his dejection have something to do with Michelina Ferrer? Had he finally met her, been snubbed, and come here to settle for the easy second best he was used to?

  Uh-uh. She wasn’t going to be anything but his first—if even that. She pushed off the porch column and turned back to the house.

  “Hey, wait. Where you goin’, chère?”

  “I’m in the middle of making dinner. I don’t have time to listen to you ramble—oomph.”

  He’d snuck up to the edge of the porch, reached out and grabbed her wrist, and spun her around. She slammed into him, his face at her waist. “What’re you cookin’? Something hot and spicy? The way I like it?”

  Weak, weak, weak. She was tingling between her legs when she should be pushing him away, keeping him at a safe distance; was there such a thing? At times she wondered if living on the moon would be far enough away for safety.

  She held his head to her waist, his hair so thick, so soft, ignored his hands where they played so deftly with her ankles just beneath the hem of her skirt. “Crab balls and hush puppies and rice.”

  “Enough for two?”

  For two, yes. Not for three, but for some reason she hesitated mentioning Terrill. “What are you doing here, King? Shouldn’t you be working?”

  “I could ask you the same thing,” he said, tickling the backs of her knees with the mouth of his beer bottle.

  She should have stepped away. She’d never been able to step away. That’s why she had to tell him to go. “Lorna closed the office early.”

  And then she realized the import of what he’d just said. He hadn’t known she’d be home when he’d come here. Obviously he’d seen her car when he’d arrived, but he’d come here without expecting to find her home.

  He’d come because…why? For what reason? Was he looking for something intangible? That thing she gave him? That he got nowhere else? Had he come to wait for her to get home from work because he was in the mood for sex?

  If so, why had he wandered deep into the yard instead of coming into the house? And what in the world was he doing with that longneck beneath her skirt? “King? Why aren’t you working?”

  “I am working,” he said, lifting the hem of her tunic to blow on her belly.

  She needed to get back to dinner, to get away from him. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “You’re not nagging me now, are you, chère?” He brought the bottle higher between her legs, rubbed it back and forth at her crotch. “Why would you be doing such a thing?”

  She braced one hand on the porch column, found herself widening her stance, damn him. Damn him. “I’m not nagging. Just asking why you’re here and not at work.”

  “I don’t know why you’d be asking me that question when you’re the one who had Red relay news that threw off my whole day.” Taking hold of the fabric from inside, he tugged the waistband of her skirt down to her hips, kissed, nipped, and licked his way across her stomach.

  He’d said something about news she’d relayed. Had she? She couldn’t remember. What day was today? And was that his thumb toying with her clit? It couldn’t be. It was too smooth, too hard and cold.

  “You don’t remember, do you? Or at least you can’t remember just now. You can’t think of anything but this,” he said, sucking at her pussy through her skirt and her panties both, releasing her only long enough to pull the garments down to the tops of her thighs.

  She was bare-assed on her back porch, letting the man she didn’t want to see again slide his tongue, his fingers, the hard mouth of a longneck bottle through the folds of her sex. She threaded her fingers into his hair and pulled.

  “What are you doing?” God, that squeak. Was that her voice?

  “Making love to you with my mouth, chère. Making you forget.”

  She hadn’t forgotten a thing. There was nothing she needed to forget. He, on the other hand…“I called Red and told him if he saw you to tell you about Simon coming by the office. He fired Lorna.”

  “Ah, you remember. Seems I’m not working hard enough here,” he said, then shoved his tongue inside her, wetting her, readying her, pulling out to circle her clit while twisting the longneck into her sex and using it like a thick glass dildo to fuck her.

  She knew dildos. She knew vibrators. She’d played with clamps and rings and plugs. She’d been with two men at once. She’d been with women. Her life in New Orleans had been work and sex, clubbing and sex, drinking and drugging and sex. Coming here had been in large part about getting her act together, and what had she done but hook up with a man who was all the men she’d been trying to escape?

  That didn’t mean she was going to stop him. In fact, she slid her hands down to cup her pussy and open herself further, playing there while he tongued her and fucked her until it became too much.

  He pulled gently on the bottle to free it from her body, tossed it over his shoulder to the ground, and vaulted onto the porch. His hands were at his fly before she could get to him, and he was lifting his cock free at the same time she was stripping out of her skirt.

  She wanted to taste him, to fill her mouth, to take him to the back of her throat, but she wanted him inside her even more. She braced herself against the porch column, wrapped her hands around his neck, and jumped when he palmed her ass and lifted her. He was buried deep inside before she’d even locked her legs at his back.

  He dropped his forehead to her shoulder and thrust like a piston, driving in and out with a stroke that was clean and deep and sure. She was strung so tight that she knew she’d be done in seconds, knew he would be as well. And she didn’t care what he’d said the last time about keeping their sex about sex. She wanted him to know all of who she was, all of what she wanted.

  She dug her fingers through his hair to his scalp and lifted his head, looking into his eyes as she came, bringing her mouth down to cover his before she had finished, before he had begun. She kissed him with her lips and her tongue and her tears.

  She’d been prepared for him to fight her. Not for him to slow down, to pull back and stare at her, his eyes glassy and wet, to admit to so much pain.

  “I went to see Simon.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, stroking his hair from his face, knowing he wasn’t talking about the land but about the rift with his only flesh and blood.

  “There’s nothing good in my life.”

  “Shh,” she soothed. “I know.”

  “This is the only thing I can give you.”

  “It’s enough,” she lied, burying her face against the side of his neck and holding him until he came.

  Thirty

  M icky would have been happy to stay in the shower the rest of the day, but Simon wouldn’t let her. They had stayed quite a while; she was a real prune when she finally left the small fenced enclosure.

  Before the water had gone cold, however, she’d discovered more of his scars, found a ticklish spot on the back of one thigh, learned that her mouth, as big as it was, was no match for his erection. She’d suspected as much the first time he’d pushed into her and hit bottom.

  She honestly didn’t remember sex being this good. She’d had fun, she’d had orgasms, but she’d had as much pleasure giving them to herself as she had receiving them at the hands, mouths, and dicks of men. The feel of Simon’s body, his warmth, his fingers, the way he seemed to surround her, consume her…none of those sensations were in her experience.

  What they’d done in the shower over and over had gone beyond fun and games. Their connection had reached a place so deep inside she knew it was her soul. Even when he’d hurt her—never on purpose—but when easing into her to do things she’d never known she wanted to do, even then the pleasure had been
worth every sting of pain.

  Of course, now she wasn’t walking so well, and sitting wasn’t as simple as it had been before he’d taken over her body. She yelped when the truck hit a bump in the road, grimaced as she searched for a comfortable position on the seat.

  He glanced over briefly. “If the pharmacy’s still open, we’ll pick up more tape and gauze and do a better job covering up your arm. I never stopped to think about you not getting your stitches wet.”

  She hadn’t thought about it, either. “It’s not my arm that’s hurting.”

  “Oh,” was all he said.

  She leaned forward and toward him to get a better look at his face. “Simon Baptiste. Are you blushing?”

  “I’m sunburned.”

  Liar. And a funny one at that. “You are not. We weren’t out long enough to burn.”

  “We were out almost two hours,” he reminded her. “You’re just lucky the hot water tank’s the size that it is, and the shower is built to conserve the flow.”

  That had been nice, but not so much of a concern. She would have stayed with him had the water been cold; he had heated her up plenty. “If anything, I’m lucky that no one else dropped by to visit. And that I didn’t need a wheelchair to get back to the house.”

  He cleared his throat, coughed. “I didn’t know I was that rough.”

  “I’m not complaining. A girl needs a good horse fu—”

  His hand came up to cut her off. “Don’t even say it.”

  She had to laugh. “Surely all your preconceived notions about me have long been shot to hell.”

  He chuckled at that. “You have definitely made this the most personally interesting two days I’ve lived through in a while.”

  “What? After all those billboard conversations, there was a doubt in your mind?”

  “There’s always a doubt in my mind,” he said, checking his rearview mirror. “That’s why I never take a single day for granted.”

  Micky pushed her hair away from her face. “Well, you carpe diem quite nicely. More than nicely, if you want to know the truth. And I’ll have to agree with you on two days that stand out more than any other lately.”

  Simon didn’t respond right away, as if weighing how well he could control this particular topic, if he could keep the intensity, the potency that had had him hauling her into the shower, in check. “I’d think with the life you lead most of yours would.”

  “It’s a lot less glamorous than it looks, I promise.” Still shivering at the memory of seeing him give in, she didn’t mind the segue. “All you have to go on is what you see from your patio.”

  “I’ve enjoyed the view and the conversations.” He hesitated, cleared his throat. “But nothing beats live and in person.”

  “That’s good to know. I’d hate to think you found guarding my body a waste of time.”

  He was quiet for a long moment, and she wasn’t sure what she’d said wrong—if anything—but then he glanced toward her and said, “I’m not in the bodyguard business anymore. Not exactly.”

  Full disclosure? She blinked, uncertain why he was telling her this now, if it should set off any alarms, or if it even mattered. “What do you do”

  “I work for a private firm. We take on cases that fall through the cracks of law enforcement jurisdiction.”

  “Is what you do legal?”

  “Depends on whom you ask,” he said with complete seriousness.

  She wondered why he suddenly felt compelled to admit the truth, to reveal something that she couldn’t imagine him making public knowledge on a whim. Was that job what had brought him to Louisiana? Was he here to do more than check on his house and his cousin?

  Was he doing something clandestine he didn’t want anyone to know? A small tickle crawled up the back of her throat. “You know, I think you’re starting to scare me.”

  He didn’t soothe or hesitate but jerked the truck over to the side of the road, shoved it into park, and shifted on his seat to face her. “What have I done to frighten you? Tell me. I want to know.”

  She shook her head. “It’s nothing you’ve done. Unless you count the bodyguard lie. It’s more how you pick and choose what you want me to know. And the fact that I only have your word to go on that things are as you say.”

  “They are. They’re as real as everything that’s happened the last two days.”

  Had what happened been related to his visit? Did he know more than he was telling her? “So, you making fun of me and crime TV was about covering up your own expertise in fighting the bad guys?”

  “I didn’t tell you this to prove that I know what I’m doing. I told you because I want you to know me.” He dropped his gaze, shook his head, rubbed at his eyes before looking at her again. “I told you because I need you to understand what happened between us can’t ever be anything more.”

  She wasn’t sure what he was trying to tell her. “Any more sex? Or any more than sex?”

  “The latter. The first, too, if it makes it easier.”

  He seemed as confused as she was. “Easier for whom?”

  He shrugged. “You, I guess.”

  “Right,” she said, then snorted. “Because you weren’t the one who nearly snapped my wrist dragging me into your cave. I’m surprised you didn’t grab me by the hair.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  She wanted to ask him if he was talking about her tender wrist specifically, or if that included her aching bones and the raw and swollen flesh between her legs. Then again, maybe he was tossing it out there to cover anything she might later find broken or bruised.

  Like her heart.

  “Are you kidding? I’ll be as good as new in no time, walking like I’ve never spread my legs for more than my annual exam.”

  “Micky. That’s not what I meant.”

  “So you don’t care if I can walk straight?”

  “Of course I care. I—”

  She cut him off with a wave of one hand. “You might have actually done me a favor. Papi sees me waddling like a stuffed goose, he’ll be too mortified to foist me off on an un-suspecting groom.”

  “That’s not funny. Micky—”

  “You know, it’s probably a good idea if you do put me on the next flight home since I’m not needed here. I’ll hire my P.I., he can work with your man and Terrill, and maybe someone will actually find Lisa before it’s too late.” There. She’d given him an easy out. A way to get rid of her without having to worry about hurting her feelings.

  He didn’t take it. Instead, he opened up and unloaded. “What Terrill is going through waiting for word on his wife? I don’t have that in me. Putting on a good front, remaining civilized and human. I’d be ripping into anyone who crossed my path. And Terrill is only a deputy sheriff in a sparsely populated Louisiana parish.

  “I work around the world and come up against people who would gut a woman I loved in front of me for fun. Not to get me to talk. Just to prove that they can, and that they can get away with it. That they could flay me open without ever touching me at all. That’s why I told you the truth of what I do. I want you to know who I am.”

  He took a deep breath, stared for a moment out through the windshield before looking back at her, his face still taut but his voice softer. “That’s why as much as I wish things were different, it’s a hell of a lot safer for both of us if I keep getting drunk and jacking off to your billboard instead of falling in love with you.”

  “That billboard’s not going to stay up forever, you know,” she told him after a long tense minute of being unable to breathe, of doing nothing but listening to the crumbling of her heart, which ached for the life he’d just told her he led as much as for the one she was losing.

  “I know.”

  “What are you going to do then?”

  “Move.”

  She wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry. She had met the most amazing man, and what she’d shared with him was already over. Just like that. The blink of an eye. “There will always be a hot ne
w face in that spot.”

  “Last time it wasn’t a face.”

  “Lucky you.”

  “And it wasn’t a woman.”

  “Oops, sorry.”

  “Having another dude’s package in his boxer briefs staring me in the face every morning isn’t my idea of a good way to wake up.”

  Again she wanted to laugh, again felt herself fighting tears. This wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. She didn’t want to go home without him. “I dunno. I could get off to it, er, used to seeing that every day.”

  Simon shook his head. “You’re a hell of a woman, Michelina Ferrer.”

  When he leaned toward her, she held up one hand. “Don’t give me a kiss-off, Simon. Just take me to New Orleans and let me catch my flight.”

  He nodded, faced front again, and started to shift into gear. He was stopped from doing anything by a Vermilion Parish Sheriff’s Department patrol car sliding across the road to cut them off.

  Before Simon could do more than get his window halfway down, Terrill Landry was gesturing and shouting at him over the roof of his car. “Follow me! Now!”

  Thirty-one

  S imon never considered defying the deputy sheriff. Terrill had extended no greeting or explanation for the stop. He hadn’t verified Simon’s identity. And though Simon knew who the other man was, neither had Terrill offered his own name or credentials. Any of those could have, should have, given Simon pause, but it was the expression on the deputy sheriff’s face that made up Simon’s mind to follow.

  Whatever Terrill wanted with him, it was no small thing. The deputy had appeared nearly manic, shouting, gesturing. The only thing that came to Simon’s mind was that something had happened to King.

  But when they turned off the state highway and into Bayou Allain, instead of heading for the hospital or the jail, Simon decided that was enough. He needed answers. And his need grew to mammoth proportions when Terrill drove past the business district and into the residential section of town.

  “What the hell?” Simon murmured under his breath.