by Elise Faber
That was when I saw the chair.
Or rather the blanket and pillow sitting in the chair.
Along with his shoes resting beneath the wooden legs.
“You didn’t!” I exclaimed.
Golden eyes on mine. “Didn’t what?”
I nodded toward the chair. “Tell me, you didn’t sleep in that chair all night.”
He hesitated, gaze drifting behind him to said chair then back to mine. “Okay, I didn’t sleep in that chair all night.”
It was the emphasis on all that got me.
“Talbot!” I poked him in the chest.
He caught my finger. “I like it when you call me Tal better.” A nip to the tip, his expression teasing. “Don’t worry about where I slept or didn’t sleep. Did you want a shower before I make you breakfast?”
“My arm . . .”
“My assistant came by this morning and bought this”—he crossed to the bathroom, brought back a bag—“it’s a cast cover, but Dr. Stevens said it’ll work fine for this when I spoke to her this morning.”
He’d run out?
He’d spoken to the doctor?
Aw. Seriously. Really, really aw.
But also, what the fuck? As in, what in the fuck was this man doing? With me? To me? No, with—
No. The prepositions in this didn’t matter.
What did, however, was the reason behind all of it.
“What are you doing, Tal?” I asked, using the shortened name before I could catch myself.
“How do you mean?”
I just lifted my eyebrows and waited. It was my Cop Look. One my brother had once said should be patented because it was so effective at getting people—including him—to spill their guts. It was also one that I’d perfected because I’d received it so often from my dad before he’d died.
But it didn’t appear to have any effect on this man.
He simply wrapped his fingers around my uninjured arm again and tugged me up from the mattress, walking me slowly, but inexorably, across the floor and into the biggest bathroom I’d ever seen in my life.
The. Biggest.
It was like a spa had thrown up in here.
Which probably wasn’t a fair assessment because that implied that it wasn’t tasteful, and this space was incredibly tasteful. It was just . . . there was a shower and a bath, a sauna, a room off to one side with a door that was open revealing a urinal and toilet.
Yes, a urinal.
I wrinkled my nose then focused on the vanities.
Two huge sinks surrounded by marble and sitting atop ornate cabinets.
Plus, all around, there were baskets of towels, tiny, elegant bottles on the countertops, all matching the color scheme of grays and whites. It was plush. It was gorgeous. It was—
I frowned, turned to face him. “Didn’t you say that you were moving?”
He didn’t seem taken aback by my abrupt question. “Yes, I am.”
“But . . . why?”
Talbot stepped a little closer, and I tried to ignore the heat of him as he bent to examine my arm—or well, I realized as I tore my gaze away from the urinal again, he wasn’t studying it, but instead removing the bandage.
“Shower?” he asked, unwinding the gauze.
“Yes, but—”
He turned and left the bathroom, returning a few moments later with the cast cover and a fresh pair of sweats and T-shirt, all of which he set on the counter. But he didn’t stop by me again, and I definitely wasn’t missing his touch on my skin. Nope. I wasn’t. No freaking way. I didn’t care about that touch as he walked to the shower, turned it on.
Still in that towel.
With most of his gorgeous body on display.
“How often do you work out?” I blurted, staring at the rigid lines of muscle on his back.
He straightened from adjusting the knobs, slowly turning around, and I would have to be blind to miss his raised eyebrows, the surprised look on his face. I was a little nearsighted, but it wasn’t enough to save me from my embarrassment of that expression.
From the pleased look creeping into his.
From the slow, hot smile that curved his lips, that flashed a dimple in my direction, that . . .
I spun around, marching toward the cast cover, happy that my muscles were loosening up. My arm barely hurt, and though my knees stung a bit from where the sweats rubbed at the abrasions, I knew I’d be okay and back to normal soon.
Maybe I could even make my theme park visit for the next day.
That lure of churros and soft pretzels in my future took my mind off the critical embarrassment of me asking this man how often he works out.
Who did that?
What kind of woman did that?
I might as well be asking, “You lift, bro?” God, it was so ridiculous. It was . . . so . . . me.
“I’ll work out twice as hard if you keep looking at me like that.”
Chapter Nine
Talbot
She gasped and whirled around, her shoulder—thankfully attached to her arm that wasn’t hurt—colliding with my chest and knocking me back a step.
I felt the towel around my waist shift and loosen and quickly grabbed it.
But then she spun back, her hands coming up to her cheeks, and took a step as though to run out of the room.
Unfortunately, she’d discounted the too-big sweats.
One long stride had her stumbling, had her falling toward the floor.
I let go of the towel and reached for her, catching one hand, slipping an arm around her waist and stalling her fall. The downside of this?
My towel fell.
Another downside?
I tripped over said towel and stumbled, ass-first onto the cold tile, bringing Tammy down in a heap on top of me. We both grunted. I cursed—because cold fucking tile—and her cheeks went red.
Very red.
Her palms were on my chest.
Her legs in those baggy sweats were straddling my hips.
Her mouth, lush and pink and so damned tempting, parted.
“Wow,” she whispered, her hands convulsing.
I bit back a groan.
“Tal?” she asked.
“Hmm?” I was trying very hard to stifle my moans of pleasure, having her over me, her thighs straddling mine, her hands on me. Each of those was chipping away at my control, making it very difficult for me to remember that she was hurt and I couldn’t flip her onto her back, slide those sweats down, and get my tongue inside her pussy.
“Do you really like me?” she whispered. “Or is it a pity like? Or a hero complex like? Or a—” She pressed her lips together.
I was still attempting to harbor control.
I was still failing.
Even as I knew I had to say something, say anything, say . . . anything!
Get your shit together, Green!
My head finally started working again, and the one above my neck, rather than the one positioned so gloriously between her thighs. “I like you, sweetheart. I liked you even before you came to my rescue.” I lifted my hand, cupped her jaw. “And this is definitely not a pity erection.” I curled up, snaking an arm around her waist and drawing her closer to me. “This is an I-want-the-sexy-woman-on-top-of-me erection, and I want her quite desperately.”
Her mouth parted, her breath coating mine.
“Oh,” she whispered.
I tucked the strands of honey-blond hair behind her ear. “Yeah, oh.”
Hazel eyes changing color, swirling with gray and green and amber.
Then . . .
She bent and pressed her lips to mine.
At first, I couldn’t move, I was so stunned. Her lips were surprisingly soft, especially considering the night before this woman had single-handedly taken down a man six inches taller and probably fifty pounds heavier than her with ease.
And considering the chip she wore on her shoulder.
Most women melted at the first smile I tossed their way, and that wasn’t ego talking. That
was plain truth and just a product of the world I lived it. I could give them something—notoriety, a job, connections they could exploit.
That was my reality.
This—a woman who didn’t melt at a flash of my dimple, who didn’t care that I was in movies, who couldn’t give two shits who my friends were—was the most incredible thing I’d experienced in a long time, and I’d been lucky enough to experience a lot of incredible things in the last few years.
My childhood had been shit.
The world knew it.
Many people had tried to exploit it.
But not Tammy. She didn’t know. She wasn’t trying to use me.
She’d saved me.
And then had stared at my body like it was a temptation she was desperate for, her hands on my skin, and now her lips against mine.
It was . . . nothing and everything and too much and not enough. It was nothing because it felt like this was a kiss she had given me a million times before. There wasn’t any learning, any fumbling my-nose-goes-this-way, yours-goes-that-way delays. Our teeth didn’t click. Our mouths didn’t miss. This was nothing extraordinary. And yet, it was also the most incredible thing I’d ever experienced. That familiarity, that sense of being home and completely comfortable was tangled with desire, with need, with heat. Her tongue wasn’t shy. It slipped between my lips, stroked alongside mine, coaxing it into action. Her hands drifted up to my shoulders, the short bite of her nails the sweetest pain.
But it wasn’t enough because those hands didn’t move, other than to knead at the muscles on either side of my neck. I didn’t band my arms around her and yank her lithe body against mine, didn’t flip us and stroke home, plunging into her heat and taking us both into oblivion. And it was too much. Because I’d had this sense of the world shifting since the night before in the garden, an abrupt jar of my place on this planet, the axis tilted to the side, my normal orbit adjusted without warning, and this kiss increased that feeling.
I felt both completely changed and also completely myself.
The juxtaposition was intense.
A soft moan slid up her throat, vibrated across my tongue, filled my mouth with the sweet taste of her pleasure, and then I wasn’t trying to quantify this moment. I was just in the moment.
I threaded my fingers into her hair, tilted her head, slanting our lips, deepening the contact, tasting every inch of her mouth as the golden locks tickled the back of my hand, made me wish I was feeling it drag across my chest, down my stomach, drift over my cock as she took me deep. My other palm slid down her back, not stopping until I was cupping the delicious, curved globes, her moan as I stroked and massaged them, making red edge into the corners of my eyes.
She bucked, thighs widening, pressing tighter against me.
My towel was long gone, but her sweats were in place, a frustrating barrier that I was desperate to get rid of.
I slipped my hand under the waistband on her back, felt the velvet roughness of the lace encircling her hips, the band dipping down between her cheeks. I followed those lines, tracing every inch of her ass before shifting my fingers around to the front of her, moving it down, sliding into damp heat.
She gasped, bucked again, and fuck, that felt good.
I slid a little deeper, circling the bundle of nerves, tracing light patterns over her labia, making her mouth break away from mine, her head fall back, her eyes slide closed. “Tal,” she whispered. “I—”
“Should I stop?” I murmured, kissing my way up her throat until I reached her ear, my tongue darting out to taste the sensitive spot just behind it.
Stillness.
And I felt an answering motionless enter my body, freeze my every cell and nerve in place.
Then she pulled back slightly, and I prepared myself for her to pull out of my embrace, to find her feet. Her hazel eyes connected with mine, held, and I found myself immobile for a completely different reason as the moment stretched and she was silent in my arms, the only noise the sound of our rapid breathing and the shower running in the background.
No words. No sense of what was going through that mind of hers.
Her lips parted, her tongue dipping out to taste the bottom one. My cock twitched, but I didn’t consciously move a muscle, not when it felt as though my new orbit hinged on what she decided in this moment.
Breath slipped free, coating my skin with humid warmth, mixing with the steam of the shower, heat seeping into every inch of me.
That heat turned into an inferno when she whispered, “No.”
A match in dry tinder. A forest bursting into flames from multiple strikes of lightning. Nothing but leaves and sticks and grass and trees, but then one instance and . . . flames along every inch of the foreseeable landscape.
“No,” she said again, fanning those flames, throwing gasoline on the fire. “I don’t want you to stop.”
And then she kissed me again.
Fuck, that was good.
Our lips and tongues dueled, but this time her hands didn’t stay on my shoulders. They slid up and down my torso, fingernails grazing my nipples, shooting pleasure down my spine, drifting lower . . . and encircling my cock.
Now my head dropped back, my hips lurched up, and my dick went even harder.
“I want you,” she whispered, tugging her mouth free, the words soft puffs against my throat. “I shouldn’t want you. It’s dangerous and stupid, but”—her tongue darted out—“I want you anyway. Will you . . .” Her eyes came up. “Will you have me?”
Pink dusting her cheekbones, desire in the depths of her gaze.
But also . . . courage. So much courage inside this woman, to ask for what she wanted, to not hide her need. I didn’t like the dangerous and stupid tag—though after last night I couldn’t deny the former. But the wanting me, the having her. Those I could work with.
When I didn’t immediately answer, the pink deepened, her stare drifted away.
“Yes, Hazel Eyes,” I murmured, using one hand to cup her jaw, to tilt her head back toward mine. “Yes, I’ll have you.” I ran my thumb back and forth over her skin, loving that she shivered at my touch. “As long as you’re sure that the pills haven’t gone to your head, that you won’t regret this later.”
Her eyes were lucid, but I had to be sure. I didn’t want her to look back and hate herself or me for doing this.
Shadows in her eyes. Her hand lifting to cover mine. “I have lots of regrets,” she whispered. “But I can promise you this won’t be one of them.” A beat as she swallowed, her chin lifting. “So, will you take me, Tal? Will you have me?”
Forever.
I’d have her forever, take her forever, keep her forever.
My lips found hers, tasting deeply as I rose to my feet, as I moved us into the bedroom and back across the space. I set her on the mattress, pausing only to tug off the overly large sweats, to ease the shirt over her head.
Black lace.
No bra.
And fuck but her breasts were all that I’d imagined. Lush handfuls, the pink nipples pouty and demanding to be kissed. Her body was gently curved, the evidence of her job in every muscle. Strong arms, shoulders, and legs, a slender waist, hips a man could hold on to.
“Tal,” she whispered, crossing her arms beneath her breasts, the injury on her arm visible and infuriating.
Hurt because of me.
Hurt that was my fault.
But I was going to make her feel good.
I reached into the nightstand, extracted a condom, and set it on the wood. Then I turned my full attention to this woman, to discovering what gave her pleasure. I climbed onto the mattress, nudged her legs wide, and I kissed her, careful to brace my weight with one hand.
The other slid down her side, cupped her breast, capturing one beaded nipple between thumb and forefinger.
She moaned, her head thrown back, her hips bucking against mine. “Please.”
It was a whispered plea, her uninjured arm lifting, fingers threading into my hair and tugging my
head down to her breast, and I’ll admit that I got lost there for a minute. For . . . much longer than a minute as I lavished her breasts with my tongue, with my teeth, with my lips. I nipped at the delicate undersides, sucked the sensitive tips deep, traced the soft skin with my tongue.
A soft sheen of sweat coated her body, kissing the tip of my tongue with salt as I dragged it lower, across her torso, delving into the soft dip of her navel, the creases on either side of her pelvis.
Then along the folds of her labia, nuzzling into the damp heat, using my lips against hers so I could taste her sweet musk. Her fingers, still in my hair, convulsed, drawing me nearer, and I focused on the spot that had made her react, filing away what made her squirm, what made more of those soft, breathy moans emerge, what had her head tossing back again, her hips jerking and grinding against my mouth.
“Tal—”
Her voice changed, hitched, her skin glistening in the sunlight, making me so damned glad that I hadn’t closed the blinds, so fucking thankful that I could see every expression on her face, every line of her body. The play of desire through her eyes, the way her lips deepened to a dusky pink, the cords of her neck standing out in sharp relief. Her breasts heaving in time to her breath, her rib cage expanding and contracting, her thighs wrapped tight around me.
And then she froze.
And then she made that hitched sound again, and I knew she was there, that she was ready to explode, that I just needed to nudge her over the precipice.
I pressed the flat of my tongue to her clit, slipped another finger inside, and I put every single trick I’d garnered over the years, everything I’d learned about her body over the last minutes to good use.
To good benefit.
Because her breathing sped up, the movement of her hips increased, her moans rose in volume, and then . . . she crumpled.
Her moans softened. Her thighs went limp. Her fingers loosened their grip.
I slowed my strokes, slipped my fingers free, gently dragged my lips from her, brushing them light over either thigh, pressing a light kiss to each before moving up her body and lying on her uninjured side.
