Headlights approach from the street, then turn and bounce up onto the driveway, and silhouette Franco’s form. His head is down, arms swinging loosely.
He’s leaving?
As I walk up to the front of the property, I notice that the gate is tall, and looks like it was handmade from metal piping and rods and spindles; it’s heavy but well-balanced on oiled hinges, swinging open slowly as I give it a push. Behind me, the fire flickers orange at the far end of the yard, and Imogen and Jesse are small, conjoined shadows. Just as I turn to close the gate behind me, I see Ryder and Laurel slip back to the fire and sit down.
A car door opens and I hear a voice identifying Franco. The vehicle is a late-model Kia sedan with a pink LYFT sign on the front dash, driven by a middle-aged man in a Sikh turban. I’m lit by the headlights as I approach, and the driver turns to see if Franco wants to wait for me.
He leaves the door open, one foot in the car and one on the pavement. I stop beside him, staring down at him.
I don’t say a word; neither does he.
After a silent moment, energy crackling between us in a storm of unspoken tension and awareness, Franco slides over and extends a hand to me.
I place my palm in his, and lower myself into the car, and shut the door.
“Ready to go?” the driver asks, his voice quiet and soft and thickly accented.
No, is the thought that runs through my head.
“Yes, thank you,” Franco murmurs.
With a few taps of the cell phone in the hands-free holder suctioned to the windshield, the driver begins the journey; I recognize the address as being a street in the subdivision near my condo complex—the street in question is a lovely, sleepy, quiet little avenue, tree-lined, with small, tidy houses on large lots.
We’re going to Franco’s house.
My eyes meet his, and my heart squeezes, flutters, does flips to match the somersaults in my stomach, and the tremble of my hands.
Chapter 9
It’s a slow, silent drive from James’s house. The driver has the radio on very low, playing wailing, skirling, toe-tapping Indian music at odds with the tension in the car between Franco and me. The driver’s head bobs in funny little sideways shakes in time with the rhythm, and he mutters something under his breath in his language, as if he’s singing lyrics to the song that aren’t present in the radio version.
There are about six inches of space on the seat between Franco and me; we’re both buckled in, my purse on my knees, his hands loose on his thighs. I want to meet his eyes, but I’m scared; if I look at him, I’ll say something, and I’m not sure what that would be. So I keep my eyes on his hands, noticing little scars here and there hidden among the lines and fine hairs. They are strong hands, powerful but careful, and skilled and gentle.
I have a split-second image rushing through my head: his hand stutters down my hips, clutching at my thighs. I blink, shake my head to clear the image, but the damage is done. My stomach clenches, and my thighs press together. I drag my eyes away from his hands, because no part of him is safe to look at right now.
Even his nose is a danger zone: I remember the way it felt, nuzzling against my skin as his tongue lapped at my core.
I feel my nipples harden, and I notice his eyes sliding sideways, flicking down to my breasts, and lingering there.
I glance out the window to distract myself and see that we’re passing my condo complex, which means we’re less than five minutes from his place. We turn right into a subdivision, and the trees arch overhead, obscuring the waning half-moon and the few twinkling stars visible in the Chicago suburbs. A left turn, and then a right, and the street we’re on now is narrow and paved in old, uneven cobblestones. The houses here are older, well-kept ranches and bungalows, and the trees lining the street are thick, venerable old oaks with wide-spreading branches and broad leaves and gnarled roots that threaten to ruck the sidewalks out of true.
The driver pulls into a narrow driveway in front of a low-roofed ranch with gray siding and white trim, a bright crimson door, and neat, simple landscaping consisting mostly of box shrubs. There’s a picture window to the right of the front door with a flower box underneath, planted with a neat line of red geraniums. Even from the outside, I can see Franco’s handiwork everywhere, and his penchant for neatness and order. The grass is neatly mowed and edged and fertilized, verdant and green, the landscaping beds cleanly mulched and clearly defined. There’s a detached garage beside and behind the house a ways, with Franco’s truck sitting out in front of it, and I can see a hint of the backyard.
“Here you are,” the driver says, putting the Kia into park. “Thank you, and please to enjoy your evening.” He draws the last word into three distinct syllables: EVE-en-ing.
“Thanks, you too,” Franco replies, exiting on his side.
I get out on my side and follow Franco up the driveway; he has his phone out, tapping to rate the driver and apply a tip, and then the device goes back into his rear pocket and he’s digging out his keys. He bypasses the front door in favor of the side, unlocking it and pushing it open, letting me in first. The side door leads directly into the kitchen, which is small but feels spacious, with dark floors and light cabinets, concrete countertops and stainless steel appliances. The light over the stove is on, shedding a low, inviting yellow glow. After Franco closes the door behind him, he relocks it out of habit, tossing his keys onto the nearby counter.
There’s an abrupt silence following the initial jangle of his keys on the counter.
It’s cool in his house; my skin pebbles, and my nipples harden further into diamond points. Or…maybe it’s just because I’m alone with Franco in his home.
I’m standing in the middle of his kitchen, my arms crossed over my chest. Franco doesn’t look at me, just withdraws his phone from his pocket, plugs a charger cable into it and tosses it onto the counter near his keys; his wallet joins it. He’s wearing flip-flops, which just seems weird, as he typically wears boots of some kind. He kicks them off and uses his feet to line them up neatly next to the door, beside his familiar steel-toed work boots and a pair of battered cross-trainers.
God, the tension.
It crackled between us all afternoon and evening, sparked and caught fire in the car…now, the tension is a raging inferno. All I’m aware of is him. Every particle of my being is attuned to Franco, and only Franco. He’s just standing there by the side door, hands at his sides, his eyes on me. That inscrutable blue gaze is fixed, laser-like, on mine.
My thighs are pressed tightly together, and my core is weeping with frustrated, agonized need. The last few days I haven’t even been able to bring myself release, unable to reach climax on my own. I tried several times but failed, and failed, and failed, leaving me a worked-up, frustrated disaster. Only several brutally punishing workouts have saved my sanity.
Now I’m here, and he’s here, and I have no idea what to say, or if I should make the first move, or if he will. I don’t even know what that move should be, or what I want it to be.
The tension has burned away any remaining haze from my buzz, leaving only need and awareness of Franco.
His eyes leave mine, raking slowly down to my protruding nipples, clearly visible through the thin dress. Down again, to my center—his nostrils flare and his brow furrows and his jaw grinds, and his hands flex at his sides.
And his zipper tightens.
Yeah, you bet your ass I notice that.
How long have we been standing here, staring at each other in silence? Seconds? Minutes?
Franco lurches forward unsteadily, dragging in a harsh breath. He’s not drunk—at least not on alcohol.
It’s me. Us. Need.
“Goddammit,” he breathes.
“Franco, I—”
I have no idea what I was going to say. But it doesn’t matter.
Before I can get out another syllable, his mouth slams up against mine, his lips scouring, tongue slashing. I whimper in surprise, stiffening all over at the unexpected as
sault of his mouth on mine, but then need takes over and the taste of his mouth takes over and the heat and wet of his lips and tongue take over, and I melt up against him. My arms are trapped between us, and I slither them out from between our bodies so I can feel the crush of my breasts against his hard chest and the hammer of his heart beating just like mine. I cling to his strong neck and hold him and—I kiss him back.
Abruptly, he rips away, panting. “I had to.”
“I know,” I whisper.
He turns away from me, breathing hard. And then turns back an instant later, his eyes blazing. His hands assume control then, and I’m powerless to stop him even if I wanted to: he plucks at the knot at my nape and the top of my dress sags forward, and then he tugs the top down to my waist. My nipples can’t possibly harden any more, and now they tingle and ache, and my breasts feel heavy and full under his ravenous gaze. He buries his face against my shoulder, and I feel his teeth nip the thin, sensitive skin on my shoulder blade, and then his tongue slides down. I’m gasping under the warmth of his lips, but his hands are busy as well as his mouth. He pulls the rest of my dress away, and hauls down my thong, and I’m naked in front of him. My core tightens and clenches, and desire seeps out of me and I know he smells it.
“Franco,” I whisper.
He just grunts, continuing the journey of his mouth toward my breast. I paw at him, rip at his shirt, tear it off and throw it aside. Claw at his flesh, raking my nails down his broad rippling back and then scraping them up the ridges of his stomach and over the hard slabs of his chest, and then I yank at his shorts, too impatient and desperate to feel him and taste him to bother with zippers and buttons. But the stupid shorts actually fit properly, so I have to slow down and take my lips from wherever it is they’re kissing in a frantic barrage. I have to stop kissing him so I can pop his fly open and yank down the zipper. Then, finally, I can shove the shorts off him, along with his underwear.
As soon as his erection bobs free, I grasp it, moaning at the feel of him in my hands. I caress him as he sucks my nipple into his mouth, and I stroke him as he kisses my breasts with the same wild passion as he kissed my mouth. He groans at my touch, and I’m whimpering, and we’re still just standing in the middle of his kitchen.
His teeth saw at my nipple and then he suckles on it, and my knees go weak, shaking, and then give out. Franco catches me, lifts me up, and scoops me into his arms.
Dammit, dammit, dammit—my heart is palpitating and hammering and flipping, and my stomach is fluttering and every nerve and synapse and sense is singing and attuned to Franco, to his body and his strength. His eyes are on mine… and mine are on his lips. I’m so close.
But I don’t kiss him. I don’t dare…do I?
I’m still breathless from his kiss and his mouth is right there, and I need to taste him again, need to feel that moan as his mouth slashes across mine. Screw it. My arms tighten around his neck and my lips slant over his, my tongue finding his lips and then his tongue and I’m breathing him, tasting him. The kiss is breathless. Aching.
Exquisite.
Heart-rending.
Perfect.
How long? I don’t know, but not long enough.
Finally, his arms shake from the exertion of holding me there. He moves into another room, and I have the brief sense of being in his living room—a couch, a TV, a glass coffee table, an easy chair. And then he’s twisting again and I’m weightless—he’s thrown me onto the bed. I land with a whump onto a firm mattress covered by a thick comforter—there’s no time to breathe or to move or to assess his room.
There’s just Franco.
He’s crawling across the bed to lever over me, filling the space above and around and everywhere with his male scent and heat. We don’t touch, for a moment; he stares down at me and I stare back, his eyes flicking with blue fire. His fists press into the comforter beside my face. He’s searching me—looking for what? I don’t know.
The same thing I’m looking for when I stare back into his glacier-blue eyes: something I know I’ll find in him, if I only look hard enough.
But do I want this?
I hate this sense of falling, the vulnerability I feel in myself as I gaze up at him, my desperation for his touch, my acquiescence to his kiss…my need for another kiss and another, when I’ve gone years without kissing anyone simply because it’s too intimate and too real and too connective—
Deep down I’m terrified of connecting with someone again and having them rip it away from me. I only barely survived that betrayal with my sanity intact—I’m stronger now, but also far more fragile. A strange dichotomy, but true.
Dammit—goddammit I feel something hot stinging my eyes, a prickling dampness blurs my sight as Franco stares down at me and there’s nowhere to hide.
His big, rough thumb brushes gently across the corner of my eye, and he lowers his face slowly down to mine, and this—this kiss is unlike the previous ones. This one is not desperate or wild.
This one is slow.
If the other kisses were manic with unbridled passion, this one is deeply, intentionally fraught with it, constructed with precision and elegance to prove what passion truly is.
I fall into his kiss effortlessly, tumbling into it without even thinking. My hands are buried in his long silky blond mane, and I feel his stubble under my palms, feel his cheeks moving as he kisses me into utter stupidity.
The prickling in my eyes is only made worse by this, and I hate how my heart twists and unfurls and reaches upward as if to soar past my slashing tongue and into his mouth and into his chest to braid and twine around his heart.
I hate, too, how the kiss doesn’t seem to end, but only to morph into a new kiss followed by a pause for breath and another kiss, how our flesh slides like silk on silk and my hands know his body, know blindly and perfectly each curve and angle and plane of him. I hate with shaking ferocity the way he can make me moan when he does that with his tongue and how he can make me arch my back and shudder when he paws hungrily at my breasts and how my legs saw at his and splay apart for his questing touch—that seeking nudge, that warm press…it’s him. Him. His beautiful thick hot hard erection sliding against the tender inner flesh of my thigh and then grazing my nether lips and spreading me apart and I whimper at the touch of him, gasp at the intrusion of him as I welcome him, tipping my hips upward without hesitation to take him within me.
God, I try to tell myself I hate hate hate the way he looks at me, understands me, feels inside me, like he’s always been there, and always will be there. It’s as if him being inside me is me finally finding my home.
His forehead brushes mine, his hair falling to either side of our faces, our lips touching but not moving, not meeting not kissing, just both of us moaning in harmonic unison at the perfection of the gliding slide of our union, the wet slippery hot tightness of him moving through me, my legs wrapped around his ass and my hands clawing at his shoulders and raking down his back so deeply he’ll have marks in the morning. I feel him pushing deep, as deep as he’ll go, and I angle my hips up and draw my knees upward to take more of him. One of his hands is under my neck, his thumb brushing at my earlobe and the corner of my jaw, and the other supports his weight.
We move together.
His groans fill my ear and travel, echoing and rebounding, into my soul, his groans of such sweet abandon that I know he’s never known a moment like this any more than I have. Those sounds, those breathless gasps, those quiet feminine sobs—is that me? I’m a screamer, a shrieker, a thrasher…not this writhing, undulating, clinging, half-weeping, half-whimpering woman. But it is me—it’s me as I fall apart beneath Franco, it’s me as I understand how fully I belong to him.
I tell myself I hate it.
I fight it.
But I might as well try to hold back a tsunami.
It’s like trying to contain a supernova.
I can’t…and I don’t want to.
I can’t hate it, and I can’t fight it.
Becaus
e, at this level of intensity, hate and love are essentially indistinguishable.
Franco is panting, now. His grunts are breathless, his movements frantic. Wild. Feral. His grip on the nape of my neck is fierce and unbreakable, and I must look at him now—I have to turn my eyes up to his, have to open my eyes and stare into his drowning blue gaze and not look away, because my own movements are just as frantic, just as desperate. My body is a wild beast, undulating madly as I slash my hips against his, levering my legs around his waist and clinging to his shoulders and writhing with all my strength against him as raw unfiltered passion crashes into me and explodes through me. I feel him—all of him. I feel with every molecule of my body all that is Franco as we unite.
I feel him driving through my clenching core, and I feel him throb, feel his balls tense and shudder as he cries out, and I feel him pulse and engorge and I’m spasming around him, clamping down on him like a vise, making me feel every shudder and pulse and throb as he orgasms all the more intensely. I seize around him, wailing past sobs, my teeth sinking into his shoulder to muffle myself, and then I feel Franco tighten and stiffen above me and his movements become harsh and ravaging, and his grunts are deep and feral to counterpoint my high breathless cries.
A hot wet rush floods through me and Franco is groaning and his face is buried between my breasts and I’m clutching him against me with my whole body arching up off the bed into him and against him, and I’m unable to even scream for the paralytic power of the climax that crushes me in that moment, snatched out of me at the feel of Franco unleashing himself inside me.
We cling to each other through the smashing waves that follow, gasping and groaning and whimpering.
“Franco…” I whisper his name.
“Audra,” he breathes mine, sounding nearly as stunned and broken as I feel.
There is a long, long silence, Franco lying partially on top of me, his weight beautiful and welcome and somehow tender and vulnerable, my fingers toying with his hair, his breath on my skin, his erection softening inside me.
Drilled Page 15
