But she’d been the only one to give in to that deep desire. It had kept her in love with him all this time while he’d let her go and moved on.
Brant interrupted her mind drift.
“So you learned to steal because…?” He drew the question out and barely left room for her to answer before he filled in his own answers. “To get attention? To piss your family off?”
She waved off his guesses with a derisive scoff. “I did it to get the answers to exams for me and my friends or to get extra sweets. I realized I was good at it and then started pilfering things at some of my mother’s parties, and when I didn’t get caught I became braver. I studied lock-picking and safe-cracking, and learned so much on the job and from a pair of French thieves who were willing to train and share their knowledge. I loved it and I still do. It’s exhilarating.”
The only thing that had ever come close was being with Atticus.
“Except for the stealing from innocent people part,” Brant said, his judgment showing. She wasn’t surprised but she also didn’t buy into it and never had.
“I don’t really do that anymore. Don’t tell anyone but I’ve been more into the business of reuniting rightful owners with their lost valuables lately. I do it for a small fee since I don’t really need the money.” Olivia laughed at his shocked expression. “Oh, don’t look like that. I occasionally procure a bauble or something for myself. Something glittery and rare. I’m not completely reformed.”
He considered for a moment, his fingers tapping on the arm of the sofa. Olivia let him stew, mildly curious about what he could be hesitating to ask her. Probably something about Club D or Atticus. When he finally spoke, it wasn’t at all what she expected.
“I could use someone with your skills at MacKenzie.”
“What?” It sounded like he was offering her a job but that was ludicrous. “I don’t think I’m cut out for an office job, Brant. I was not born to punch a clock.”
He shook his head, his smile devilish and his body leaning forward, all indicators that he thought this was a great idea.
“This wouldn’t be nine-to-five. I could use you to test security systems, help design ones for tricky facilities. Who better to keep thieves from breaking in than a world-class thief? You could be a consultant.”
“I don’t know,” she said, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. It wasn’t that she hated the idea but the fact that she wasn’t outright turning him down that made her squirm. Did it appeal to her? Maybe it did. “I’d have to think about it.”
Brant opened his mouth to say something but the ringing of her phone interrupted their conversation. She looked down on the screen and saw Carla’s name on the display. She flashed it at Brant, who nodded when she took the call.
She listened to her friend on the line and smiled, glad that another part of this puzzle was coming together. When she clicked off with a “thank you,” she rose from her seat.
“Paulo will be at Club D in two hours. Carla told him that I will be there and hinted that I’ll be there to play. She’ll arrange a private room for us and we can grab him.”
“That’s almost too easy,” Brant said.
“It will be up to you and Atticus to get any information out of him and if that fails, I can look over his place and see if there is any indication that he orchestrated the kidnapping.”
“I think it’s a solid plan but Rush will be pissed.”
“I’ll tell him. I need to work out and he can yell at me and get over it before we have to leave.”
“So you think you can soothe the savage beast?”
Olivia shook her head. “There’s no soothing Atticus. You just let him roar and get it out of his system.”
Chapter Seven
Pushing his body to the limit was still the best way to get out of his head.
In Baltimore as a kid in foster care and group homes, he’d found solace in the gym at the local YMCA. The activities varied depending on funding and volunteers, but there was always some random stash of equipment and he would spend hours learning to use it. Building his body, developing strength and endurance was essential for a boy with no one in the world to have his back.
He’d never known his parents, never had any family. Hell, his own name had been chosen by a caseworker, a combination of the name of a character from her favorite book and a randomly selected name out of the phone book.
His strength and discipline had gotten him through BUDS training and the years of deployment and nightmare-inducing missions. Pushing his body had given him a place to shove his rage. It was therapy via barbell and boxing ring. Without the outlet he’d have lost his mind, lashed out at the world or eaten his gun.
The only thing that had ever had the same effect was Livvy. Her arms around him had soothed the monsters lurking in the dark recesses of his mind.
But she could also piss him off faster than anything or anyone.
She was his savior and his sin.
So it didn’t help when she followed him into his gym space, wearing nothing but an athletic bra and tiny boy shorts. She ignored his glare, only giving him a quick glance and a flash of white teeth in a half smile. She looked like the damn Cheshire cat, and it wouldn’t have surprised him to see a furry tail swishing in the air in triumph. She knew he was pissed and her favorite game was “how far can I push Rush?”
It was best to ignore her. She had other ideas.
“I need to stretch before we head over to Club D. Carla called and we’re on for later. The stress has my body in knots. Is this okay?”
What could he say and not sound like an ass?
“There are a couple of mats over there if you need them.” He nodded toward the corner of the gym area. “Help yourself.”
He added two more weights and inserted the pins in the slots before centering himself, planting his feet in the correct stance and squatting in front of the metal bar. He took a deep breath, gripped the rod and gritted his teeth, lifting from a core of strength he had buried down deep.
Once in a standing position, he executed three perfect lifts over his head before lowering the bar to the floor with a giant exhale and a rattle of metal. He stood and glanced over to Livvy, so glad he’d waited until the weights were on the floor before he did it.
She was executing her yoga moves with a sexy, sensual grace that hardened his cock in his thin shorts. She was…bendy…extremely limber. An expert gymnast, it was a skill set that helped her get in and out of tight and unusual places. It was also something he’d thoroughly enjoyed when she’d been wrapped around him and he was buried deep inside her. Damn. He adjusted his hard-on and turned to the pull-up bars mounted overhead.
Something else that working out was good for—dealing with inappropriate boners for your ex-wife.
He shook out chalk on his hands, dusted off the excess and leapt to the lowest bar, beginning the first of many pull-ups. His muscles burned in the best way, his mind easing off the ledge of anger and fear he’d had in his gut since Brant had showed up on his doorstep. Yeah, he was worried for Katrina, but now he had Livvy in the mix and her little show today had shaved at least a year off his life.
She’d been the first person he’d ever worried about, had ever been afraid he would lose. As a foster kid he’d never been close enough to anyone to care. People moved in and out, there one day and gone the next. He didn’t worry about the guys in his unit. They were trained professionals and knew how to take care of themselves. The possibility of final, deathly circumstances had been part of what they’d signed up for when they’d put on the uniform, and while you never wanted to lose a brother-in-arms, it happened. You couldn’t do the job if you were worried about bad shit happening.
But Livvy…she’d risked her neck for nothing and it made him nuts.
He gritted his teeth and pulled his body up and as far over the bar as he could, lowering himself and then doing it again. Sweat ran down his face and his bare chest but he ignored it.
A shift in the air next to him
broke his concentration and he opened his eyes and looked over. Livvy was next to him, her hands wrapped around the bar, sculpted muscles in her arms and back moving under her soft skin with each lift of her body. She was strong and sexy and he groaned with the clench of lust in his gut.
He paused his own movements, watching her as she executed her moves with precise control. A bead of sweat rolled down from her temple, disappearing into the soft hair pulled loose from her ponytail, and he licked his lips with the desire to follow its path and taste her.
“Bloody hell,” she panted, hanging suspended from the bar, her chest heaving with her exertion. She locked eyes with him, her words stuttering as she struggled for breath. “I’m out of shape.”
He scoffed and he spoke in spite of the lust choking him. “Not even close. Your body is still amazing.”
“Nobody works me out like you used to, Atticus. You’re a brutal taskmaster.”
“You were an easy student.” She had been a great workout partner, never afraid to try something new or to push her body to its limits. It was the thing that had attracted him to her the first night they’d met. Livvy enjoyed the physical, was open to push her boundaries every chance she got. She could meet him step for step, limit for limit.
Her gray eyes darkened and he knew she was remembering the same thing. He glanced down and her hard nipples were visible through the thin spandex of her top, his eyes torn away from the gorgeous sight by her movement toward him.
“What are you doing?” he asked but he knew, his hands tightening his grip on the bar when she wrapped her legs around his waist and looped her arms around his neck. He groaned, not just with the added weight but with the full, searing contact of their bodies.
They’d done this a million times before. Instead of him adding weights to his legs to increase the impact, Livvy had served as his extra measure. Ending up on the floor in a tangle of mouths and limbs was the usual result and his favorite way to end the workout.
“Working out,” she grinned, the challenge in her eyes almost blotting out the desire. Almost. “Today was stressful for both of us. I think we have some tension we need to work off.”
“Some ‘good guy’ lecture I got from Brant told me that I should say this is a bad idea.”
“Ah, but you always love the bad idea.”
“I do.”
“So, let’s be bad.”
He groaned, his muscles screaming with the strain of holding them both up and the sexual tension sticking them together like a magnet and steel. Rush gritted his teeth and glared. But he didn’t say no. There wasn’t enough willpower in the world to get him to do that.
“How many reps do you want to do?” she asked, her words coming out in panting breaths against his lips. The same words she’d said so many times before, the same woman. It was the best fucking déjà vu he’d ever had.
“Twenty.” He leaned his forehead against hers, eyes locked in challenge, encouragement, and lust. He adjusted his body against hers and his full, hard cock slid right in between the sweet “v” of her thighs. He groaned and she gasped.
You could fake the intensity of sex with hookers and people who didn’t get under your skin. Getting off was easy, but chemistry was impossible to fake and they had it. They were as dangerously combustible as homemade explosives, and he realized that this moment had been inevitable. Their highly matched sexual compatibly was the one part that always worked. This was how they relieved stress, both physically wired with their release valve tied directly to sex.
It didn’t have to be anything else. They could let off some steam and let it be nothing but a little bit of fun between consenting adults.
Livvy lowered a hand from around his neck and trailed it over his chest and around his waist. The sharp slap of her palm against his ass made them both jump. He shifted his grip on the bar.
“Get to it, Atticus. Give me twenty,” she challenged, her eyes promising a reward if he was a good boy.
He exhaled and pulled them up until both of their chins cleared the bar, and then he slowly lowered them down. Livvy’s hand slipped inside the waistband of his shorts, her palm sliding down his ass cheek, stopping only to give him a squeeze.
“One,” she said, her lips barely touching his own.
He lifted them both again, his muscles straining with the effort.
“Two,” she counted, the briefest swipe of her tongue along his lower lip pushing him into another rep.
Rush powered through the rest of the pull-ups, his body screaming with the physical effort and his cock hard as steel against the heat of her core. Sweat slicked them both, Livvy’s muscles straining with her effort to hang on until he’d completed the last one.
“Twenty,” she mumbled around his tongue’s invasion into her mouth. She tasted like heat and spice and the coppery hint of blood from biting into her lower lip. Rush released his grip on the bar and they both fell. He maintained enough balance with her wrapped around him to adjust quickly and lower them to the mat in a controlled plummet.
Rush spread his body out over hers, grabbing her hands and lifting them over her head to pin them to the mat as he kissed her. Ate at her with his lips and tongue and teeth. Livvy kept her legs wrapped around his waist, grinding up as he thrust against her. He could come just like this. Sweaty and clothed and horny as a teenager.
He released her mouth, looking down to find her eyes wide open, pupils blown dark with her need. She bit into her bottom lip, her fingernails digging into the flesh of his hands in an echo of her frustration.
“You want to do this?” he asked, giving her an out if she also realized what a bad idea this really was. “I want to make you come, I want to come all over you, but I can go jerk off in the shower if this isn’t what you want.”
“We started out playing around.” She shook her head, leaning up to kiss him lightly. “We do sex, strictly physical sex, very well. That’s all I’m looking for right now.”
Her “right now” didn’t escape his notice, and a part of him was dying to ask if there could ever be more than “right now” ever again, but he didn’t. He scanned her face, gauging whether she was being straight with him. They’d never had a problem with honesty and sex. Just honesty and everything else.
“Come on, Atticus, drop and give me another twenty.”
He raised an eyebrow at that one.
“Okay, give me just one. A really good one.”
He smiled at that one. “You are a fucking pain in my ass, Lady Livvy. You make me nuts.”
She bucked up her hips and he closed his eyes, grinding his dick into her.
“Fine. Work out your issues on me and I’ll use you so that this is mutually cheap and superficial.” She struggled under him, her legs opening wider. “Now.”
“Goddam you…” He looked down at her, hair loose from her ponytail and spread out in an angle. Arms raised over her head and breasts thrust upward. He swallowed hard, biting back all the things he’d say if he ever had the words. He wasn’t a words guy so he got back to what he did best. “…just goddam.”
He dipped his head, taking her mouth in a deep, rough kiss. He didn’t have it in him to be gentle right now. Three years and a heart-stopping afternoon of Livvy risking her neck and he was all need and want and aggression.
Rush released her hands, finding the zipper of her athletic bra in between her breasts and lowering it. The fabric sprang back, her nipples hardening into tighter buds when exposed to the air. He licked the droplet of sweat off her skin and then sucked a hard peak into his mouth.
Livvy cried out, her back bowing off the mat, her fingernails digging into his shoulder with enough force to make him wince. His dick got even harder with the thought of his back marred with her stripes.
He kissed down her chest, scraping her pale skin with his teeth, creating his own pattern on her body. Rush eased his body lower, pressing her thighs open with his shoulders as he dipped his fingers into the crotch of her shorts, tugging them to the side to give him a
ccess to the place he most wanted to be.
“Fuck, you’re so slick,” he growled, dragging his finger across her pussy, spreading around her lube. He slid a finger inside her, burying his face against her stomach and biting down with the sensation of sliding into her tight, wet heat. He dragged his lips down, across the spandex of her clothing until he found her clit. “I want you to come hard. On my tongue. I want to taste it, Livvy.”
She lifted her head, caught his gaze, and wove her fingers into his hair. She yanked on it, the sting on his scalp only heightening his desire and forcing out a tight laugh.
“Do it. Come on.”
Her wish had always been his command, and this time was no different. The first shock of her flavor on his tongue made him shiver. The second made him shift on his knees, giving his cock more room in his shorts. It didn’t ease the ache in his balls so he used his one free hand to shove his shorts down in the front, enough to free his dick and wrap his hand around it.
“Sweet pussy,” he murmured against her flesh, dragging his teeth lightly over her swollen lips. “So fucking delicious.” And mine. He lowered his head and covered her again in his only hope to not voice that batshit-crazy thought.
He pumped two fingers in and out of her body, lapping and swirling at her clit with firm strokes and speeding up as her moans grew louder and louder. Livvy writhed under him, her heels digging into the mat with force as she pressed against his mouth in a greedy, wordless plea.
“Right there.” Her voice was low, vibrating along his skin. “Right. Fucking. There.”
She went off like a bottle rocket, her body lifting up as she rocked up onto her toes. He groaned, dissolving into light laughter when she grabbed his ears and kept his mouth on her as she rode out the last of the pleasure ripping through her body.
“God save the Queen,” she muttered and he let the sharp laugh escape. He’d forgotten that she said that after she came. When he’d asked, she said it was when she most grateful to be a free, modern female citizen of the United Kingdom. It was just natural to be patriotic.
Rush: A MacKenzie Family Novella (The MacKenzie Family) Page 5
