Asa (Marked Men #6)

by Jay Crownover

  Asa’s hand slid across the back of my neck under the heavy fall of my hair, and I felt his lips at my ear. It was so dark I could only feel him, not see him, and that was erotic and stimulating as hell. He made my breath catch when he whispered in my ear, “I really am sorry.”

  I watched as a leggy blonde obviously trying to channel Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca slithered onto the stage.

  “I know you are. I just wish you didn’t have to be.” And that pretty much summed up how I felt about all the things he was sorry for in his life. I was glad it was so dark because suddenly I felt moisture, hot and pressing in my eyes. It was a date I would never forget and I didn’t mean that in any kind of good way.

  CHAPTER 13

  Asa

  If she had merely been mad at me, annoyed that I purposely played her into thinking that we were doing something wrong, doing something illegal, I could have simply kept kissing her neck and rubbing her arm and I knew she would’ve forgiven me and let it drop. But she was hurt, disappointed that I had ruined our evening out together, and had done it on purpose. I wish I could say I hadn’t known what would happen when I took her, with no explanation, to the middle of nowhere to a place that looked like it should be in a movie or a comic book, but I had. Somehow all of the what-I-had-done and the what-I-would-inevitably-do had converged, and it seemed like a good idea to see how far she was really willing to go for me. I wouldn’t really ask her to do anything wrong—hell, I had spent a solid month trying to keep her from doing regrettable things—but the way she was under my skin, the way she somehow shined light into my darkest places, made me want to challenge her.

  She was sitting stiffly next to me, her arms crossed over her chest while she held herself ramrod straight to avoid leaning into the arm I had thrown across the back of her chair. Her eyes were locked on the stage as half-naked girl after half-naked girl shimmied and shook her stuff. If I hadn’t been such an asshole she would probably have enjoyed herself. As it was, her pretty mouth was in a tight, flat line and there was a delicate flutter in her cheek as her teeth clenched. It made it clear to me that we should probably go and I should probably leave her alone—like I had known from the very start. This was what it was going to be like when I finally did end up doing something that was unforgivable. Only then, hearts would be involved and it would feel a thousand times worse.

  I moved my fingers so they could brush against her long fall of hair. In the almost dark of the warehouse it looked darker, with none of the pretty red tones in it, but it still felt like silk. I had said I was sorry and I meant it. If she didn’t want to forgive me, I would never blame her for it.

  Suddenly her head turned and her dark brown eyes locked on mine. They gleamed in the ambient light and I hated myself just a little bit more when I realized that the reason they were sparkling was the light catching the moisture trapped in their depths. I was supposed to be past the point in my life where I made beautiful, strong women cry over me, and the urge to get on my knees and beg her to forgive me, to plead with her to understand that I tried, I really did, almost overwhelmed me.

  Suddenly she moved her chair closer to mine so that we were sitting hip pressed to hip. I curled my arm around her shoulders as she burrowed her face into the curve of my neck. Her lips hit right below my ear as she whispered softly, “Is it always going to be like this with you? Never knowing if this is all real or if it’s all a game because you are a broken bastard?”

  My fingers flexed against her bare shoulder as one of her hands flattened against my stomach, making the muscles there tense at her touch.

  “I don’t know.” I might not be able to give her an answer that she liked but I could be honest with her. I never wanted to lie to her—or anyone, for that matter. “You are the only woman I’ve ever spent time with without having a hidden agenda. Most of my life all my time was spent trying to convince people I was on the level, a good guy. I lied about who I was and what I was about with every single breath I took. With you, I seem to be doing the opposite and trying to prove to you every chance I get how awful I can be. I keep giving you the worst and you keep taking it.”

  She sighed into the hollow she was snuggled into and a tremor raced down my spine when the wet tip of her tongue started to trace along the vein that throbbed right there.

  “Why can’t you just be here with me, right now? Why do you have to try and prove anything, how good or how bad you are? I’m well aware of how things in the past worked with you and I am very aware of what might happen if we keep this up, Asa. What I don’t know, what I want to experience, is this moment with you. This exact second in time where it’s just you and me together and what has happened and what could happen doesn’t exist. Why can’t we do that? Just for a little bit.”

  I wanted to tell her I couldn’t do it. I was holding on so tightly to every single thing I had done to keep myself weighted down in order to prevent those same devious deeds from happening again. I was forever stuck between the past and the future. The present drifted by me, which had been fine until she blazed into my life all tragic and resilient, full of a defiant fire. I wanted to take her to the dark places and let her light them up. I couldn’t tell her any of that, though. I wasn’t ever going to be a burden she had to bear. Instead I was going to ask her if she wanted to go. I could take her back to her place, take her to bed, and not worry about the past, present, or future. I never got the words out because between one pretty naked girl on the stage and the next, Royal had her small hand inside the top of my pants and behind my belt much like it had been the first night I kissed her.

  I sucked in a breath, which gave her more room to maneuver, and she tilted her head back to look at me with lingering sadness and mischief in her coffee-colored eyes. “There are amazing things happening right here in the moment with us, Asa. It would be a real bummer for you to miss any of them because you can’t let go of the past and because you’re too busy trying to sabotage the future.”

  Unlike the last time she had her hands down my pants, it wasn’t cold and we weren’t alone outside. No, this time we were surrounded by people, even though it was dark and the velvet covering the table obscured what she was doing. If anyone bothered to stop and take a closer look, there’d be no mistaking the delicate up-and-down glide of her hand under the fabric of my pants or the way my breath was rushing in and out, making my chest rise and fall rapidly.

  “Royal?” It was part question, part plea. Her palm glanced over the tip of my dick as it went from interested to rock hard with the sweep of her fingers. I felt my balls tighten up and I shifted in my seat as she continued the little butterfly-light caresses and brushed her lips lightly across the side of my neck.

  “Some games can be fun, Asa, but when one person has to lose before we even start playing, there’s no point.”

  Her fingers curled around my thickening shaft as I went still as stone when the cocktail waitress suddenly appeared next to the table. I gulped and fully expected Royal to stop what she was doing but she didn’t, and she didn’t bother to look up as I strangled out that we were fine and just needed the bill. The girl gave me a look full of knowing and, if I wasn’t mistaken, approval before she walked off. I curled my fingers at the back of Royal’s head until they were hopelessly tangled in her hair, and lifted her head off of my shoulder enough that I could kiss her. Her hand dipped even lower in my pants and I groaned against her tongue.

  “You need to stop.” I rasped the words out because I really didn’t want to say them. We were in a public place, and while she might have a wild side, I doubted she would let me throw her on the cocktail table and fuck her like everything inside me was screaming to do.

  She sank her teeth into my bottom lip hard enough, and when she coupled that with her soft hand squeezing the base of my dick, I was ready to come on the spot. “You need to stop, too.”

  Her message was clear. She was all for games as long as they were fun and sexy, but she wasn’t going to be a pawn, and if I wanted to enjoy he
r while I had her, I better get my shit together real quick. She withdrew her hand, skating up under the hem of my shirt and letting her fingers run over the ridges of my abs. The scrape of her nails across my skin had me ready to go off like a rocket, so I threw enough money on the table to cover our bill and probably the table next to ours and dragged her out of the warehouse like it was on fire.

  She laughed and it did something to the inside of my chest. I had put tears in her eyes first, but somehow she was amazing enough to understand the stuff I did better than I did myself, and now she was laughing about the disaster of it all. It was like the sun coming through the clouds on a stormy day. She was everything bright the darkness tried to swallow and I wanted inside of her so bad that I couldn’t see straight.

  I pushed her up against the side of the battered car and closed my mouth over hers. I tunneled my fingers through the hair at her temples and kissed her with every bit of urgency I had. The funny thing was, I had to let go of some of the other stuff I was always holding on to in order to get the message across to her, and with the press of her mouth against mine, the brush of her tongue across my own, I couldn’t explain it but I suddenly felt lighter.

  “I want to take you home and take you to bed.” I sounded rough. There was no smoothness in my typically practiced twang. I sounded impatient and needy, two things I don’t think I had ever been before this girl.

  “I want that, too.” Her hands were back under my shirt and running up and down my rib cage. She was breathing hard as well and she kept stroking her tongue over the dip in the center of her top lip like she was tasting me forever and ever. Her dark gaze was softer than the night sky above us, but her eyes glittered with just as many points of light. She angled her head back so that we were looking at each other and some of the heady passion thrumming between us went the way of something more serious.

  “Before I go home with you, Asa, you have to do something for me.”

  I hated ultimatums, but for her, at this moment, there wasn’t much I wouldn’t agree to do. “I’ll do my best. That’s all I can do, Red.”

  She sighed and leaned forward so that her cheek was resting against where my heart was thundering in my chest. It was so sweet, so touching, and so unlike anything that had ever happened to me in my life that I almost pushed her away because I simply didn’t know what to do with it.

  “I like you, Asa. I like you more than I think is wise for either one of us, but I can’t keep this up. I can’t keep dodging everything you keep throwing in the way of doing this thing together if you can’t tell me one thing, one simple thing, that you like about yourself as well. I get that you did bad things and were a bad man, but part of moving past that is realizing you aren’t there anymore. If you can’t do that, I can’t do this.”

  She pulled back and I could see the resolve and the seriousness stamped all over her arrestingly perfect face. The gauntlet had been thrown down and she was making me decide what to do with it. I dug my fingers into her hips and tried to smile at her around the bands tightening in my chest.

  “I like that you like me more than is wise. Does that count?” She didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t do anything but stare at me until I sighed and let my head fall back on my neck so that I was staring up at the night sky. “One thing?”

  “Just one.” Her voice was quiet and she sounded sad, but not for herself, and I didn’t blame her. What she’d asked me to do shouldn’t be that difficult of a task to complete, but for me it felt nearly impossible.

  I was quiet for a minute. I had to think. Liking or not liking myself wasn’t something I invested a lot of time thinking about. I knew what I had done, where I had been, and I knew I was never going back there. That was what I tended to focus on, not what I was doing now that I had my sister back in my life and a whole bunch of other people invested in me. I pulled her back against my chest and rubbed my chin on the crown of her head. Something inside of me fractured off and settled into a warm hot place when she didn’t hesitate to wrap her arms back around my waist to hold me in return.

  “I like that even though Ayden and I don’t see eye to eye on everything, and even when she has really pissed me off, I’ve never not loved her. Even when I didn’t know how to love, when all I was doing was looking out for number one, I still loved her, and I like that I know how to do it right now. I like that I haven’t wasted the second chance I was given to be her big brother and ruined it … at least not yet.”

  She made a whimpering sound where she was buried into the center of my chest and I felt her fingers curl into the base of my spine right above my ass.

  “Have you ever told her that?”

  I blinked a little as she pulled back and smoothed a hand over her long hair.

  “No. But I’ve apologized to her more times than I can count.”

  Her long lashes dipped down over her gaze as she stepped all the way out of my embrace. “When she comes to town next week, tell her that, Asa. Apologizing for what happened or what might happen is a waste of an opportunity to tell her that you like who you are for her now. That’s the moment you need to focus on with her.”

  We stared at each other for a long, intense moment until she reached up and put a hand on each of my cheeks and pulled me down for a smacking kiss. “Now take me home and take me to bed.”

  Thank fuck. That was something I could do without all the introspection and soul-scraping thought.

  I kissed her back and put her hastily in the Nova so we could race back to her apartment on Capitol Hill. When I parked in front of the Victorian, it was a stroke to my ego that she seemed just as eager to get through the front door as I did. She threw her purse absently on the small table by the door and her keys hit the floor with a clatter as I shut the door behind us. She turned around to face me and I felt every predatory instinct I still harbored claw at me to pounce on her to make her submit and give me everything I wanted. I started to prowl toward her, and whatever she saw on my face must have startled her because she took a stumbling step back. Finally she was getting smart and running away from me. Too bad she had nowhere to go and was now trapped in a room with my raging desire and the raw, unsatisfied edge she had sharpened with her little game at the warehouse.

  “I might not be able to pick out a whole lot of things that I like about myself, but I sure can pick out about a thousand things I like about you, Red.”

  She kept backing up as I stalked toward her, her dark eyes wide in her face as her tongue darted out to slick across her bottom lip. “Is that so?”

  I nodded and kept advancing on her until the back of her thighs hit the side of her couch that took up most of the available space in her living room. It brought her retreat to a sudden halt and allowed me to trap her between my hips and the arm of the couch as I caged her in.

  “Yep. I like that you won’t sway your thoughts on right and wrong. I like that you stand your ground and call me on my stupid shit.” As I talked to her I snaked my hands down the outsides of her toned thighs until I got to the hem of her skirt where it hit her knees. I heard her suck in a breath as I started to work the fabric up her legs, making sure to drag my fingertips across every smooth inch of her skin that I could reach. “I like that you have no problem watching girls take off their clothes and dance around. I like that you have a penchant for putting your hands down my pants in public.” I grunted in surprise when my hands got high enough to grab ahold of the sweet curve of her ass. I was a little surprised that a whole lot of naked skin was what greeted me, but then I remembered that she had shown up at my place in the middle of the night in nothing but a trench coat, and a grin of appreciation pulled at my mouth. “I really like that you seem to detest underwear and that I now know the next time we go on a date I should be the one putting my hands in your pants.”

  Her eyebrows shot up high and she didn’t say anything as she started to work the buttons loose on my shirt. Her eyes were locked on mine and I could tell she was weighing the validity of everything I was saying
to her, so I made sure to be as blunt and honest as possible. I squeezed the firm flesh of her backside and put a knee between her legs once I had her skirt all the way up around her waist so that she was naked and exposed where our hips pressed together.

  “I like that even though I almost made you cry, you still let me come home with you. I like that you obviously want for me to be better than I am but you’re willing to settle for what’s right in front of you. And I really, really like that even though we both know you deserve so much better, I’m the one you want.”

  She flattened her hands on my chest after she had worked all the buttons loose on the front and smoothed her hands up across my pecs, taking the fabric with her. I shrugged it off and reached a hand up under her fancy top so that I could wrap a palm around the heavy weight of her breast. Her nipple immediately puckered and stabbed into my palm as her eyelids drooped a little and she whispered, “I do want you. This you, Asa, not a better you. Only you.”

  I brushed my thumb back and forth over the turgid peak, pressing hard into my hands until she was grinding her center against the thigh that was pressed high between her legs and she was bending backward trying to get closer.

  I leaned closer to her so that I could kiss her throat where the elegant line was bowed in pleasure. Her hands curled around my biceps to keep herself upright while I nibbled and sucked a tantalizing trail all the way up to her ear. Once I reached it, I traced the tender shell with the tip of my tongue and told her, “And I more than like that you’re going to let me turn you around and fuck you against this couch.”

  She gasped just a little and tried to put a little space between us, but her hands tightened reflexively on my skin and I could feel her heartbeat skip under my still-questing lips. I captured the nipple I was still playing with between my fingers and gave it a tweak that was just on the edge of too hard and her mouth fell into a surprised O.