A Love So Dangerous (To the Bone #1)

by Lili Valente

  She sighs into my mouth and arches her back. I follow her cue and intensify my attention, teasing and rolling and pinching first one nipple and then the other, until her hips begin to roll in little circles and I reach down, cupping one ass cheek in each hand, shifting the angle of penetration until my pubic bone presses against her clit.

  Her gasp as her next hip circle provides friction confirms we’ve found the sweet spot. I circle my hips, nudging at her clit with thrusts so shallow my cock barely moves inside her tight, slick sheath. My balls ache and my stomach clenches with the need to pull back and drive inside her, again and again until I explode, but this isn’t about me. Not yet, not until Caitlin comes.

  I drop my lips to her breast, pulling her nipple into the warmth of my mouth, flicking my tongue across her tip as I continue to rock gently against her and her breath comes faster and her fingers dig into my bare shoulders.

  “God, Gabe,” she pants, back arching, legs spreading wider, meeting each of my thrusts with increasingly desperate thrusts of her own. “God…I can’t…this feels….”

  “Good?” I smother her response with another kiss, blood pulsing faster as she moans into my mouth and reaches down, digging her nails into my ass.

  “So good, so good,” she chants, breath puffing against my wet lips. “God, Gabe, God…I think I’m…I think…”

  “Come for me, baby,” I say, fighting for control as our tempo grows more frantic and I feel her inner walls tightening around me. “God, I want to feel you come on my cock, Caitlin.”

  “Yes,” she says. “Yes!”

  She cries out, a sound I echo as her pussy grips me tight, her orgasm rippling through her with sharp waves I can feel massaging the aching length of me until my vision blurs and every bit of blood in my body surges to the eight inches buried inside her and there is no more holding back, no more control.

  I pull out to the end of her and surge back in, thrusting in and out of her sweet pussy that is so wet and hot and tight and perfect. Perfect. Like her, like the way she fits against me, like the way she makes me feel like there is finally someone in the world who understands.

  And then her hands are on my face and she’s pulling me down for another kiss as she wraps her legs around my hips, pulling me deeper with every thrust. I pump into her, faster, faster, until there is nothing but the sound of our hungry bodies pounding against each other and our moans and sighs as we kiss and lick and bite, fighting our way toward the end of this, the moment when there will be nothing but pleasure, nothing but her and me and God…

  God….

  I call her name as I come, my orgasm rocketing through me until I can’t breathe, can’t see, can’t think of anything but this bliss. It’s so good, like this, with her, so much better than it’s ever been before. I am broken and made whole; I am shattered to pieces and put back together with her kiss. I need her, crave her, want to keep her here in this bed with me forever. This is more than a way to forget, so much more.

  And I am so very fucking screwed.

  By the time I collapse on top of her, catching my breath as my cock twitches with aftershocks of pleasure, I know I’ve made a horrible mistake. I curse, smothering the sound in the crook of Caitlin’s neck as her fingers drift up and down my sweat soaked back, hating myself. Hating how weak and pathetic and soft I am, soft as any dumb kid with his first crush when I thought I was so hard no one could ever crack the shell around my heart.

  I hadn’t even been sure I had a heart, at least not the way other people did. I thought I would always be on the outside of that type of emotion, too warped around the edges to fit with someone as perfectly as Caitlin and I fit.

  It’s horrible. And wonderful. And pointless, and suddenly I feel trapped in this room, smothered by the tender way she touches me.

  I have to get out. I have to be alone, find someplace where I can think.

  “Don’t,” she says, holding me to her when I try to pull away. “Stay.”

  “I can’t,” I say, throat so tight I can barely force out the words. “I told you at the beginning of this—I’m leaving at the end of the summer, even if I am your first. I just…I can’t. I won’t. This is going to end in two and a half months, no matter what happens.”

  She cups my face, urging me from her neck. I allow her to move me, but keep my gaze on the blank wall behind her head. I can feel her looking up at me, but I don’t look down. I can’t look her in the eye, not yet.

  “Gabe,” she says, a smile in her voice. “Gabe look at me.”

  I don’t, not until she laughs beneath her breath.

  “What’s so funny?” I glance down to find her smiling up at me.

  “Nothing,” she says, with a gentle shake of her head. “I just…you don’t have to worry. I told you, I wasn’t holding on to my virginity like some prize possession. I wasn’t saving it for someone special. It didn’t mean anything to me.”

  I scowl. Her words are exactly what I want to hear. So why do they hurt? Why do they make me want to storm out of here even more than I did before?

  “I love what we just did,” she says, cooling the anger building inside of me. “And I feel really close to you—now, and even before, when we were planning everything together, but…” She strokes a hand down my face, her touch calming and exciting at the same time. “But I don’t want anything more than the summer, either. I have too much going on in my life to get swept up in some big relationship…thing. I’m not going to make any demands. There won’t be any tears when we say goodbye.”

  She pauses, drawing in a breath as her fingertips trail across my ribs and around to my back, making me very aware that I’m still buried inside her and not feeling near as spent as I did a minute ago. “I just…I love this,” she continues. “I love spending time with you, and I have never felt more alive than I did tonight. I don’t want to give that up, and I don’t want you to feel like you have to run away because I’m falling for you.”

  “You’re not?” I ask, holding her gaze, keeping my expression neutral.

  “No,” she says, smiling again. “But I would really like to do this again. Soon. Like…really soon.”

  My lips curve despite myself. “You’re not in pain?”

  “A little, but…” She lifts a bare shoulder as her gaze falls to my chest. “But I kind of like it. It makes it feel more…real, if that makes any sense.”

  “It does.” Everything she says makes sense to me, she makes sense to me in a way no one else ever has.

  She may not be falling, but I am.

  Falling, falling, fallen.

  I’ve never been in love before, but I’m pretty sure this is what it feels like, at least for me. Like I’m drowning and never want to come up for air, like I live for her sweet, sexy smile. Like I would walk to the ends of the earth for just one more kiss, and I would rip apart anyone who dared to hurt her with my bare hands.

  I was worried I might hurt her—that she was getting as swept up in all this as I am—but she’s made of tougher stuff. Her head is still on straight and her eyes wide open. She’ll be fine, and I don’t really matter, not the way she does.

  So maybe it’s okay for me to love her, to cup this secret fire in my hands and see how big it can grow before it’s snuffed out at the summer’s end.

  “What are you thinking?” she asks.

  That I love you. That I’d do anything for you.

  Aloud, I say. “Let me get rid of this, and I’ll show you.”

  I dispose of the condom and return to the bed and in moments we’re tangled up in each other all over again. It’s slower this time, sweeter. We take our time, lingering over each kiss, each rush of breath over sweat-slicked skin, and by the time I push inside her a second time I am even more lost than I was before.

  For the first time, I understand what it feels like to make love. Not fuck, not screw, not have sex. I make love to Caitlin, am destroyed and reborn in her arms, and I fall asleep barely noticing the dull ache at the base of my skull.


  The ache that warns that there is no pleasure without pain, no love without hate, and no happiness without sacrifice.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Five weeks later

  Caitlin

  May you have the hindsight to know where you've been,

  the foresight to know where you are going,

  and the insight to know when you have gone too far. -Irish proverb

  I race around the side of the squat, concrete building, boots pounding against the asphalt as I sprint toward where Gabe leans against the chain link fence surrounding the storage facility. I push hard with everything in me, heart slamming against my ribs as I fight to put distance between me and the nasty surprise that was waiting for me in locker seventy-three.

  “Get back here!” The man’s shout comes from behind me, but not far behind.

  Not near far enough.

  I push harder, arms pumping up and down like pistons, becoming flashes of black that blur at the edges of my vision.

  “That’s my fucking money!” the man shouts. “Stop, you piece of shit!”

  I reach Gabe, grabbing a handful of his black shirt as I round the corner, dragging him along with me. “Run!” I gasp when he trips and nearly falls.

  I’m so out of breath I can barely form the word, but my lookout seems like he’s in worse shape. Gabe rights himself and stumbles toward the sidewalk, unsteady on his feet. Not skipping a beat, I hook my arm through his and pull him along beside me, past the entrance to another, low-rent storage facility, a shuttered bail bondsman’s shop, and on toward the residential part of this faded Charleston neighborhood.

  I wonder what’s wrong with him, but there’s no time to ask. The man who caught me breaking into his storage unit is nearing fifty, but he’s in good shape. A hell of a lot better shape than you’d expect a man to be in after spending twelve years in prison.

  Of course, according to the Federal Bureau of Prison’s Inmate Locator, Grant Harrison is still in prison, so…

  “Give me back my money!” the very not-still-in-prison Harrison shouts. His footsteps slap the pavement behind me as he barrels down the middle of the deserted road, shouting that he was robbed, setting dogs to barking behind the rickety fence of a house on my left and my heart leaping up to lodge in my throat.

  I haul Gabe alongside me as I run, cutting down a dark side street before emerging on another main road. My lungs feel like they’re full of acid and a cramp knifes into my side, but just when I’m sure I can’t keep going with Gabe leaning even a third of his weight on my shoulders, he seems to recover.

  He stands up straight and picks up his pace, pulling ahead as we cut through the backyard of an abandoned house and sprint toward the sagging shed where we parked the van. By the time I slam into the passenger’s side, Gabe has the engine running and his foot on the pedal.

  He roars out of the shed, tires squealing as he shifts from reverse to drive and peals down Pinewood Place, headed toward the highway.

  “He’s not there. He didn’t see us pull out,” I pant as I turn to look out the rear glass, making sure Harrison isn’t going to be able to identify the make and model of the van.

  “Fuck,” Gabe curses.

  “And I got the money,” I add, ripping off my mask. “We’re good. We’re fine.”

  “We’re not fine.” Gabe yanks his mask off, tossing it to the floor at my feet as he takes a right on Ferncrest, then an immediate left, following the escape route we planned in advance. “Harrison is supposed to be in prison. How the fuck did he catch you breaking in?”

  I shake my head, still catching my breath as I turn back around and reach for my seatbelt with trembling hands. “I don’t know, but he’s obviously out, and sleeping in that storage unit. He woke up while I was going through the trunk.”

  Gabe curses again.

  “Yeah. I about peed my pants when he started yelling. Scared me half to death.” I clutch the bag of money in my lap, drawing strength from the hard lumps inside. It’s full of tightly rolled one hundred dollar bills, at least thirty or forty thousand dollars, earned by the abuse of Grant Harrison’s daughter, Cathy, when she was a little girl.

  Back in the early two thousands, Harrison made kiddie porn featuring his underage daughter and sold it on an underground website, making a mint before he was caught. All of his assets were seized by the federal government, but his daughter insisted there was more money, that her father had hidden it away somewhere. Cathy hired Gabe’s dad to sue her father, but overdosed before the case could go to trial, losing a lifelong battle with drugs and addiction that started when she was ten years old, when her father used to roll her a joint to help her relax before he filmed her.

  Gabe and I read Cathy Harrison’s file yesterday, and only spent a few hours last night researching the job. The file said that Grant’s sister, Marjorie, had leased a storage unit shortly before Grant was convicted. Gabe and I did some digging and learned Marjorie had moved to Florida, but that the storage unit was still in her name and paid up for the next four years. We googled Grant to verify he was still in federal prison, did a drive-by of the storage facility to make sure they didn’t have anyone on duty at night, and swung into Charleston to acquire industrial strength bolt cutters for the lock on the fence before calling our preparation finished.

  Since that night at Pitt’s, Gabe and I have hit two private residences, a nursing home, and a medical practice, all without a single hitch. We secured Pitt’s resignation with a blackmail note—ensuring Danny was passed into the eighth grade—did our part to avenge the innocent people hurt by an embezzler, an identity thief, a crooked doctor, and a serial rapist, and have made ourselves a hundred thousand dollars richer in the process.

  A hundred, fucking, thousand dollars. After tonight, we’ll be close to one hundred and forty. It’s mind-boggling, more money than I would have earned in four years working my job at the diner, and it’s been so easy.

  Maybe too easy. And maybe Gabe and I are getting careless.

  “Do you think he got out of prison today?” I ask, breath finally returning to normal. “I mean, I guess that’s possible.”

  “It’s more likely there’s another Grant Harrison in federal lock up,” Gabe says, turning onto the highway, heading back toward home. “We should have made sure the one in Edgefield was ours before we hit the storage unit. And I should have been the one to go in, while you kept lookout. You can practice your lock picking when your life isn’t in danger.”

  “There was no way we could have known anyone was in there,” I say. “And I got away. I’m faster than I was even a few weeks ago.”

  “You’re not faster than a bullet,” Gabe says, sounding grouchier than I’ve ever heard him. “What if Harrison had had a gun?”

  My brow furrows. “You weren’t worried about that when we robbed the pawnshop.”

  “Things are different now,” Gabe says softly. “We’re different.”

  I’m silent for a moment, refusing to acknowledge the way his words make my heart do a giddy flip in my chest. We are different now. Back then, I wasn’t even sure I liked Gabe; now, I can’t imagine my life without him in it. Now, I want to spend every waking minute with him, and go to sleep next to him every night.

  Now, I am completely screwed, because even if Gabe loves me the way I think he does, I know he’s serious about this only being for the summer. If he finds out I want more, he’ll leave. He’ll leave and I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t know if I’ll be able to hold it together all alone now that I know what it feels like to have a partner, someone who makes me feel beautiful and fascinating. Someone who gets every part of me, even the parts that aren’t polished, or pretty, and don’t like to play by the rules.

  “I think it’s time to take a break,” he says, his tone as deflated as I’m feeling.

  A break doesn’t mean the end, but there’s something in his voice, something that makes my heart feel bruised.

  “Okay,” I say, forcing an upbeat note into the wor
d that I don’t feel. “Slowing down isn’t always a bad thing.”

  Which reminds me…

  “Are you okay?” I turn to face him, studying his profile in the shifting yellow light of the headlights streaming down the other side of the highway. “What was up back there? Did you feel sick, or something?”

  “I don’t know,” Gabe says, eyes focused on the road ahead. “I felt all right, but when I tried to run…” He shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m fine now. I must have gotten overheated standing there sweating my balls off in long sleeves. It’s fucking hot as hell tonight.”

  “Does that mean you’re not going to sleep over at the Cooney sweat lodge?” I ask, brushing away a brown curl that’s stuck to his forehead.

  A smile flickers on his lips but it’s gone by the time the next pair of headlights sweep across his face. “Not tonight. My parents saw me go up to bed. If I don’t come back down again tomorrow morning, they might notice. The Alexanders occasionally notice each other on Sundays, and they’re my alibi so…”

  “Okay,” I say, ignoring the disappointment that flashes in my chest. “But I’ll see you tomorrow for dinner?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” he says, passing a battered pickup truck going fifty in the fast lane.

  Sunday night burger night in the backyard has become a tradition. The kids look forward to it every week, and so do I. I love seeing Gabe relaxed and happy, playing soccer with the boys, or giving Emmie a ride on his shoulders so she can peek over the fence at our crazy cat lady neighbor’s new kittens. He’s so good with the kids. It makes me wish…

  I press my lips together and stare out the window at the dark woods flashing by, banishing the thought before it can find its tail end. It doesn’t matter what I wish. This is only for the summer, and it will be over before I can blink.

  We don’t talk much more on the way home, and Gabe doesn’t even try to sneak a peek as I change out of my blacks and into the clothes I was wearing when I left the house. The air in the van is quiet, thick with tension, like the air before a storm, and all too soon Gabe is pulling up in front of my house.