“Yes,” she whispered. “Please—”
His turbulent gaze flickered up to hers for one excruciating second. “You’re beautiful,” he murmured, and then gave her some of what she needed. The kiss was short and unbearably deep, nothing but the slow glide of his tongue into her seeking mouth, and then, too soon, its withdrawal as he scraped her lower lip between his teeth.
Helpless to do otherwise, she surged to her tiptoes, reaching for him and digging her blunt nails into his back ... his shoulders ... anything she could grip to bring him close and keep him there, but he was already breaking away, stepping to arm’s length so he could focus all that relentless attention on a new part of her body.
“Turn around,” he told her.
She did, manic now with anticipation. Every second that her legs held felt like a major miracle, and that was before those strong hands went to her shoulder blades and worked down her spine for one of those penetrating massages that bordered on pain and yet relaxed her into warm clay.
When his warm mouth settled on her nape, she sighed and surrendered in a way she never had before, passing into a dimension between full consciousness and rapture, where only the miracle of his touch existed and she didn’t have to please anyone or do anything except feel.
He made love to her with his mouth, swirling his tongue back and forth and around, sweeping her top over her head and dropping it to the floor when it got in his way. At his silent urging, she held her arms up in the air while he stroked and kneaded them from wrist to shoulder and then, to her dazed pleasure, ran his restless mouth into the curve between her neck and shoulder, latched on, and suckled.
“Oh, God.” Helpless tears streamed from her eyes because he was unraveling her, deconstructing each part of her body and reconstructing it into something new and wondrous. Reaching up, she ran her fingers into the coarse silk of his hair, holding him right where he was so he could do this forever and she could die, exactly like this. “God, don’t stop. Don’t ever stop ... don’t stop.”
A croon of deep approval rumbled in his chest and vibrated through her as he finally—finally, finally— wrapped her in those strong arms and brought her up against the hard length of his body. It was a thrilling shock. Heat flamed between them front and back, searing her as though a forked lightning bolt had embraced her.
The unyielding length of his erection rubbed against her butt, and his thrusting hips set a slow rhythm that was as primal as drums on the Nile. His hands covered her breasts, weighing ... caressing ... rubbing ... circling them through the satin of her bra cups before his fingers flicked the front clasp free and her bra was falling down her arms, exposing her swollen flesh to the summer breeze.
He paused, his thumb poised over one beaded nipple, and her thudding heartbeat filled her ears, drowning out the quieter sounds of her panting breath and his whisper in her ear.
“Should I squeeze these nipples, Kira?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm?”
“Please.” She strained and writhed against him, giving her body’s needs free reign, and the words poured out of her mouth because there was no room for hesitation or embarrassment between them. “I need you to touch me. I need it. I need—”
Why be subtle? Covering his hands with her own, she arched her back, thrusting against his palms and forcing him into a rougher grip. He was an enthusiastic learner, rolling her nipples hard enough between his skillful fingers to make spasms of pleasure shoot through her belly and incoherent noises pour out of her mouth.
All the while, that dark velvet voice kept murmuring, inside her head now. “That’s right, baby. Show me what you want. I’ll do anything you want. Anything for you. Just show me, okay? Show me.”
Mindless now, she turned within his arms, needing both his tongue and his erection inside her. Blind urgency drove her on and she searched for relief, lifting her open mouth to his and wrapping one leg around his waist.
He approved. Planting his hands on her butt, he used his curled fingers to dig into her flesh and bring her sweet spot up against the concrete of his groin. They both cried out, pouring their passion deep into each other’s urgent mouths. The kiss was raw and wet, frantic and endless, and they nipped and sucked at each other until she tasted the coppery tang of someone’s blood.
The primitive chanting continued; there was nothing she could do to stop it. “I want you so much, Dexter,” she said against his lips, caught up in the frenzy of tasting and needing him. “I want you inside me. I can’t wait. I can’t wait. Please. I want—”
The relentless begging seemed to drive him over some invisible edge. Beneath her fingers, she felt the powerful flex of his back and shoulders as he used those hands on her ass to heft her up high. Needing no encouragement, she wrapped both thighs around his waist as he swung her around to the bed, yanked the comforter out of the way and lowered her to her back against the cool sheets.
Outside, meanwhile, she heard the low rumble of thunder in the distance, and she could almost laugh because the storm out there would never match the one growing within her.
He stared down at her, his jaw hard and his eyes a blaze of blackest crystal in the lengthening shadows, and she knew, with a sudden burst of wonderful clarity.
“You love me, don’t you?”
“I’ve always loved you,” he said, sweeping his T-shirt off and tossing it to the floor before he lowered his head to gorge on her body.
Chapter 26
Wait a minute. Did they forget the ketchup?
Kerry paused outside the front door of his cousin’s tiny house, juggling a Coke and his keys in one hand and a greasy bag of burger and fries in the other. From what he could see, the clowns at the drive-through had ignored his request for ketchup, salt, and extra napkins, but he blamed himself for the dry burger he was about to eat.
Had he checked the bag before he pulled away from the window? Had he remembered that the cupboard was bare and he had a better chance of being awarded the Medal of Honor than finding ketchup in his fridge? No, he had not. He’d been so anxious to get back into the semi-safe confines of his new little home away from home that he’d forgotten the Leo Getz rule from one of his favorite movies of all time, Lethal Weapon 2:
“They fuck you at the drive-through.”
Yeah, he was fucked. Ketchupless and fucked.
Fucking idiots.
Fumbling everything into his left hand, he unlocked the door with his right and stepped into the evening darkness of the living room, wishing he hadn’t promised Kira he wouldn’t drink that Jack. He was in the process of swinging the door shut behind him when terror clamped a vice grip around his throat and tightened the screws.
He was standing on a crackling sheet of plastic that had not been there half an hour ago when he left to get dinner.
Instinct made him drop, roll, and lunge back to standing as he yanked his piece out of its ankle holder and flipped off the safety, determined to face his attacker like a man. A worthless man, yeah, but still a man.
Useless moves? No question. He would die tonight, and there was no getting out of it. Hell, it was almost a relief. That didn’t mean he had to make it easy for the motherfucker, whoever he was.
He was gripping the pistol with both hands, getting his feet under him and looking for somewhere to aim in the shadows, when there was a movement beside him and a sudden, white-hot slice of pain in his side. Stunned and wheezing, he dropped again, to his knees this time, and felt the sickening warmth of his blood as it drained from his body and hit the plastic with a steady patter that sounded a lot like the rain outside.
The gun fell out of his hands, and he squinted into the darkness, wondering what had happened because he hadn’t heard the sound of a shot.
Had he ... Had he been stabbed? With a knife?
Who did he know who rolled with a knife rather than a gun?
But he knew, of course, even before he saw the hint of white in those dark eyes ... the gleam of his satisfied smile ... the cold glint
of a blade that was made for gutting deer and other large animals, not people. Only someone who truly hated him would bother to get up close and personal enough to slice him and feel the primal thrill of blood on his hands.
This was, in other words, pleasure, not business.
The voice, as smooth and smug as ever, only confirmed it.
“Did you miss me, Kerry, my brother?”
Kerry loosened his jaw, gasping in a futile effort to get enough air into his mouth and down to his heaving lungs. Summoning more strength than he’d known he possessed, he grabbed the back of the chair and stood up, sagging against the wall and pressing hard against the side to keep his guts inside his body, where they belonged. Not that it mattered, because he would bleed out soon, but he had a couple of things he’d like to accomplish before he did.
“I can’t say that I did, man. Where you been?”
Kareem, always willing to brag about his thrilling exploits, was only too happy to answer. “Outside Miami. I’ve got people.”
“Of course you do.” Another gasp. Another searing flash of pain lighting up his body. Another ounce of his strength, gone forever. “What brings you back now?”
Kareem stilled, all his delight at being in the catbird seat leaching away in favor of a cold fury far beyond anything Kerry had ever yet seen him display. “Funny you should ask,” he said, examining the blade from every angle and running his thumb along its fine edge. “I have a few questions for you, so I hope you don’t die too quick.”
“I hope so, too,” Kerry said. Kareem didn’t seem to appreciate the humor. He moved closer, bringing his black malevolence with him, so much that Kerry felt the chill down to the last cell of his body. Or maybe that was just the blood loss making him shiver. “How did you find me?”
“You can discover all kinds of interesting shit when you buy your wife’s cell phone, and of course you and I hung out at old Cousin Ernie’s house back in the day—did you forget?—but I’m the one asking questions now.”
He leaned in, as though he wanted to be close enough to smell any lies that might come out of Kerry’s mouth. “What made you flip on me and tell the feds about the warehouse ?” There was a wounded note in his voice, as though he couldn’t quite understand why Kerry hadn’t chosen him to be on his team for a kickball game. “Didn’t we grow up together? Didn’t we ride our freaking Big Wheels up and down the street together in the neighborhood? Didn’t I bring you along with me when my business grew? Wasn’t I good to you?”
Kerry’s knees were shaking now, giving way on him so that he slid down the wall inch by inch. But the longer he kept talking, the longer he stayed alive, so he prayed to God for help, and then asked God not to spit in his eye because he didn’t want the help for himself.
“Maybe I got tired of being a parasite, K.J.” The use of Kareem’s childhood nickname during this final conversation seemed eerily appropriate because they had meant something to each other once. They had been brothers. “Maybe I didn’t like the way you shot Yogi in the back of the head. Maybe I didn’t like what we became.”
Wrong answer, apparently. Kareem’s face twisted in the darkness, becoming grotesque, as though Picasso had rearranged the features on a demon, and he raised his arm and brought it down with a vicious slash.
Kerry’s cheek screamed, and the scream ran across his chin and then lower, across his neck, leaving a gaping cut so deep Kerry could swear he felt part of his soul leak out of his body.
He cried out and, hearing his own voice, cursed Kareem for toying with him like a cat with a cricket when he could just as easily have finished the job with that stroke.
“Bad answer, my brother.” Kareem walked right up to Kerry now, close enough for a good-bye kiss—close enough for those merciless eyes to be the only thing Kerry saw as he died—and held the tip of the knife at Kerry’s jugular. “Try to do better with this question, because this is the thing I really want to know: did you think you could get away with fucking my wife?”
Jesus.
Kerry worked on keeping it together and prayed that his poker face held out better than his knees, but the little bit of oxygen he’d been getting into his lungs now seemed to be blocked by blood coming from God knew where.
He choked and spat. Prayed again.
Because maybe Kareem was only guessing about what had happened between Kerry and Kira. Maybe he didn’t really know, and Kerry was too scared and fucked up at the moment to remember what Kareem might have overheard him say to Kira on the phone. If Kareem was only guessing about their affair, then Kira’s life was in Kerry’s hands and hung in the balance right now, and the only question was this:
Was Kerry a good enough liar to save her life?
If Kareem knew that Kira had slept with him, or if Kerry admitted it now, then Kira was dead, too.
Kareem’s pride demanded it.
So Kerry locked his knees, arranged his features into his most disbelieving expression, and used his peripheral vision to track the distance between him and his pistol on the floor and, more important, between him and the phone on the side table.
Then he looked Kareem in the eye and faced down the demon, pretending he had the courage for the job.
“Fucking your wife?” he echoed. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
After a long, considering pause, Kareem raised the knife again.
Wrung out and undone, the delirium of being claimed by Dexter—touched by him, kissed by him, loved by him—threatened to swallow Kira whole. He was relentless, refusing to let her get a move in edgewise, shoving her hands away every time she tried to do more than grip his arms or shoulders.
Every part of her body was branded with his hands and anointed with his kiss. He nibbled and licked his way down her neck to her breasts, claiming each nipple by sucking it hard into the hottest part of his mouth and then scraping it free with his teeth. She pleaded with him to stop and to never stop, tears streaming down her temples and wetting the pillow, and he ignored her incoherent cries the way he ignored her fumbling hands.
At last he moved on, rubbing his sculpted and bristly cheeks over her heaving belly, tickling and scratching her until she twisted beneath him, nearly choking on her laughter.
“Stop,” she said in her fading voice, but he was moving south again, biting the meaty inside of one thigh, and then the other, and was in no mood to grant favors.
“ No.”
There was only so much her overwhelmed senses could take, and he wasn’t even inside her yet. “You’re killing me,” she complained when he nuzzled that prickly jaw in the sensitive crease between her thigh and her sex, and he raised his head to stare at her with a flash of merciless amusement.
“It’s your fault for coming early. I was going to shave.”
They shared a breathless laugh, and then the laugh turned into a stare, and his stare turned his eyes to black smoke.
“I love you,” he said again, reaching for her hands.
There was an I love you, too on the tip of her lips—how could she not? What woman alive wouldn’t fall crazy in love with Dexter Brady if given half a chance?—but she withheld it because it was too soon, too scary, and this was too much of a blessing from God for her to go screwing it up with any confessions, and, anyway, he was focused on her fingers now.
His touch transformed every part of her into an erogenous zone, and her hands were no different. When she ran her thumb over his tender lips, he pulled it into the hot suction of his mouth, making her nipples throb and her sex ache. He moved swiftly, sucking on some fingers, scraping others. They all received his attention.
She was melting into the mattress, floating in languid sensation, when he shifted his body lower and scratched his nails over the thatch of springy hair between her thighs and licked her engorged nub. With a cry, she jackknifed, trying to keep her body from flying apart, at least until he was inside her.
“Don’t,” she began weakly. “I can’t take it.”
“I think you can.”
>
Hadn’t he taken enough without ever even entering her body? Would he leave her with nothing that was still the same when he was done with her?
“Dexter, please,” she said, because she knew he was a kind man. A fair man. “What are you trying to do to me?”
Unsmiling, he raised his head. “I’m showing you that there’s only me. There was no one before me, and there will never be anyone after me. I want to make sure you understand that.”
He held her gaze for several excruciating beats, pinning her motionless with that piercing gaze, his fingers stroking her slick cleft, holding the place where his mouth had left off. When she didn’t protest, he lowered his head again, and she saw the quick flash of his pink tongue in the second before he latched onto her.
She came, her ecstasy ringing through the room on a single note of astonishment that lasted forever, or at least as long as the sharp spasms that wracked her belly.
Limp and dazed, she had only a vague awareness of his quick movements as he reached into a nightstand drawer for a shiny green package, ripped it open with his teeth, and sheathed himself. But then he was using one of his solid thighs to wedge her legs open wider, settling his weight on top of her, and the world came back into vivid focus.
Reaching between them, he gripped his penis and rubbed it against the thick, creamy, waiting folds of her flesh while he stared her in the face, a question in his eyes.
In answer, she bit the side of his neck and scraped her nails up his back.
Hard.
He groaned. Shuddered. With a dark shout that sounded like triumph, he drove inside her, seating himself to the base, stretching her beyond anything she’d experienced before.
One second of agonized waiting followed, while he braced himself on his elbows and she dug her nails into the tight globes of his ass and twined her legs around his, getting ready.
Then he opened his mouth across hers, thrust deep, and set a relentless pace that had their cries mingling with the patter of rain as it started to fall outside their window.
Deadly Desires Page 22
