Take Me Harder

by Jackie Ashenden

  This time she could do something about it.

  Sure, but do you really want your first kiss to be in a strip club with him drunk?

  Well, there was that.

  Ava reached up and closed her hand around his strong wrist, pulling his finger away from her chin. “Not here. I need to keep something in reserve to ensure your good behavior.”

  For a second it looked like he was going to ignore her, his gaze fixed on her mouth, his wrist like iron in her grip, the muscles of his chest flexed and hard.

  Then he grinned, and before she could move, he leaned forward and brushed his mouth over hers. It was the lightest kiss, the very lightest. But it transfixed her, seared her. It sent flames licking all over her skin, scorching her all the way through.

  She couldn’t move, could barely breathe.

  Rush laughed. “Sorry, baby,” he slurred. “I couldn’t help myself. One thing you’re gonna have to learn about me is that I never, ever do what I’m told.”

  Like she didn’t know that already.

  Get it together, idiot.

  Ava sucked in a long, silent breath, trying to ignore the way her mouth was burning. Okay, so first kiss achievement unlocked. She could use more, though. Definitely more. But not here and not now.

  Curling her fingers in his T-shirt, she gave it a tug, imitating the flirtatious look she’d seen the stripper give him. “That’s because no one’s ever given you consequences,” she said, unable to mask the breathiness in her voice. “Maybe you should learn some.”

  “Oh, I can get onboard with that, believe me. I’m an equal-opportunity kind of guy.” He straightened, swaying slightly and making a sharp grab for the bar. “Whoa. Think you need to get me back to your place quickly.” His hand dropped to the front of his jeans where he adjusted himself shamelessly. “This isn’t gonna last long. Fucking bourbon.”

  Bracing herself for the impact of getting even closer to him, she let go of his T-shirt and slid an arm around his waist. “Come on then, big boy. Let’s get you home.”

  “Hell yeah, I’m up for it.”

  Afterward, she had no idea how she’d managed it, hauling a drunk and stumbling Rush from the strip club and into her car. He was heavy and hot and kept whispering filthy things to her, things she barely understood. A couple of times he muttered something about his father, about how getting drunk didn’t mean he was an alcoholic because it wasn’t like they were even related anyway. Which was a strange thing to say.

  She didn’t really have time to think about it, though, not when they finally got home and she had to virtually pull him out of the car and cajole him to put one foot in front of the other to get him up the steps to the front door. He leaned heavily against her the whole way, by this stage silent, which wasn’t any better than the dirty things he’d said earlier. Because then all she had to focus on was the hard-packed muscle of his body against hers, the scent of bourbon and Rush surrounding her. A scent that wasn’t at all unpleasant, not in any way.

  Once she’d gotten him inside, she briefly debated leaving him to sleep it off on the couch, but Joyce, the housekeeper, was due first thing the next morning to give the house a cleaning, and a drunken Rush was the last thing she needed to see.

  So with a mixture of threat, enticement, and brute strength, Ava managed to somehow get him up the stairs and into her bedroom. Once there, he seemed to perk up, reaching for her and muttering something about the fact she was wearing too many clothes, but she gave him a gentle push back onto the bed, and he just lay there.

  “Don’t think I can get up again, honey.” The words were almost inarticulate as he gestured toward his groin. “Feel free to hop on, though. I don’t mind.” His lashes fell closed. “Though I’d kind of like to be awake for it.”

  Actually, she’d kind of like him to be awake for it too.

  Ava waited a moment, watching him. The lines of his face had lost that hard-edged fury she’d seen in the strip club, relaxing into sleep, the scars white against his golden skin. He looked young and vulnerable, and while she knew that was just an illusion of sleep, she couldn’t quite kick the feeling that despite his scars, despite his dirty mouth and his hard, muscled body, there was a vulnerability to him that no one saw, that no one knew about.

  No one but her.

  Her heart twisted in her chest.

  She’d never seen this side of him, not even when she’d been younger, mainly because she’d only been a kid and hadn’t understood adult stuff, while he’d been ten years older than she was. But now, as an adult with her own wounds, she could see he was trying to dull the edges of something, some pain he kept well hidden.

  Was that the source of his anger? Why he was drowning himself in strippers and booze and rudeness? And was it all those years in prison that had done this to him or was it something else? God, so many questions and not enough answers. Perhaps, though, it was time she got some.

  She almost reached out then, almost touched his dark hair, glowing with strands of gold against the white of her pillow. But she didn’t want to wake him, because he was asleep now, his breathing deep and regular.

  So she turned off the light instead and left him to sleep.

  Chapter 9

  It was the light that woke him eventually, like someone was shining a fucking searchlight right into his eyes. He cursed and flung an arm over his face, trying to go back to sleep, but his head hurt like a motherfucker and his mouth felt like the bottom of a birdcage, not to mention tasted like one.

  Dammit. Another goddamn hangover.

  Rush sighed and removed his arm. Braced himself. And cautiously opened one eye.

  After the initial pain of the light hitting his eyeball and boring a hole straight through into his brain, the first thing he noticed was that he was definitely not in the suite he’d taken over from his father back at the hotel.

  For a start, there was chintz happening with the thin curtains that didn’t do a goddamn thing to stop the sunlight shining through them. Then there was gingham in the cushions on the window seat under said curtains. And not even plain old white gingham, it was fucking pink. And when he turned his sore head to the side to check out more of the room, he couldn’t help but notice that the bed he was lying on was a single. And it had a fucking ruffle around the bottom of it.

  Holy fucking Christ. Had he died? Was this hell? He certainly felt like hell, so maybe.

  He scrubbed a hand over his face, but the chintzy pink room remained. On the wall at the end of the bed was a CSI poster and another featuring Cagney and Lacey above the little white desk pushed against the wall opposite the bed.

  Pink gingham. Chintz. And…fucking cops on the wall.

  Shit. This was Ava’s room, wasn’t it?

  Dimly, memories of the previous evening filtered through his aching brain. He’d come back from the Rusty Nail wanting to kill someone. Instead he’d gone straight to Sugar Daddy’s and had gotten absolutely shit-faced. Then there’d been Candy and some kind of negotiation, only to be interrupted by…fuck. Ava had come to find him, hadn’t she? And he’d been a douche to her.

  In which case, why the hell had she dragged him back here?

  Turning his head again, he caught a glimpse of a glass of water on the nightstand and a couple of aspirin next to them. Thank you, Jesus. Grabbing for the water, he downed it along with aspirin and then forced himself to stand up.

  His head ached like a bastard and he felt like a men’s bathroom at a truck stop, but at least he could remain upright without embarrassing himself.

  Pulling open the door, he glanced cautiously down the hallway.

  Lots of pale carpet and beige walls, the sun, that offensive motherfucker, glaring off all of it. There was no sound, the silence cool and soothing.

  Well, he could leave without saying anything, just creep out like a thief in the night, but he didn’t feel right about it. At the very least he needed to say thank you to Ava for dragging his sorry ass back here.

  And maybe tell her about
what’s going down at Troy’s ranch?

  Fury, like a snake, slithered though him, but he forced it back down. No, he didn’t give a shit about what Dev had told him. It didn’t make any difference at all. Seriously, it was only the confirmation he’d been searching for, right?

  He moved silently down the hall, pausing beside the open doorway to the bathroom before making a quick diversion to clean himself up, though he suspected that was a lost cause.

  Turning the shower to cold, he didn’t bother with stripping entirely, peeling off just his T-shirt before thrusting his head beneath the water. The temperature hit him like a punch to the face, so he kept his head there for at least five minutes to clear the last of the muzziness. Then he turned the water off and grabbed a towel, giving his hair a cursory drying. Lifting the T-shirt, he sniffed at it experimentally. Yeah, maybe not. There was nowhere to put it, so he slung it around his neck before glancing at the vanity. Of course there was toothpaste, so he did the old finger scrub of his teeth and then rinsed, because Ava didn’t need his bourbon breath adding to her morning.

  Feeling at least semi-human, he went back out into the hallway and down the stairs, putting his head through the doorway of the living room and finding it empty.

  He had a vague memory of Ava saying something about the sheriff not being around—thank fuck. Because he was pretty sure the last thing in the world the sheriff wanted was Rush’s drunken ass in his daughter’s pretty pink bedroom.

  There was a short hallway that, from what he could remember from the few times he’d been here years ago, led into the kitchen, so he went along it, pausing when he came to the doorway and freezing in place when he saw who was inside.

  This was worse than the shower. This was like a pro wrestler had launched himself from the top of the ropes and landed directly on his chest. Feet first.

  A woman stood near the sink in a beam of sunlight coming through the windows above it, wearing nothing but a tank top and a tiny pair of sleep shorts that revealed the longest legs he’d ever seen. Her hair was loose in a coppery red cloud that reached just beneath her shoulders, and there was a lot of skin on show. It was the color of fresh cream with a fascinating sprinkling of freckles like gold dust.

  It was Ava, and he couldn’t stop staring.

  He’d forgotten her hair was curly, since every time he’d seen her lately she’d been wearing it in a ponytail. So he hadn’t seen it actually loose like this, falling all around those creamy shoulders of hers in thick, silky-looking curls that made him want to push his fingers into it just to see what they would feel like.

  He’d known that she had a great figure, though it was difficult to see when she was wearing her uniform or the unflattering civilian clothes she seemed to prefer. Now, though, he could see it. And God…

  She was leaning against the counter, a cup of coffee in her hands, half turned toward him in a way that only highlighted the generous curve of her full breasts and the toned, flat stomach beneath them. Her shorts were pulled tight across the most perfect ass in the entire history of the world, and he was getting hard just thinking about those long, slender fingers, currently wrapped around a coffee mug, wrapped around something else instead.

  Fuck. He’d suspected he was in hell upstairs, but now he absolutely knew he was. Because only in hell would this half-dressed vision appear before him in the shape of the one woman in the world he shouldn’t ever touch.

  Just then she seemed to realize he was standing there, because she suddenly looked up, copper-gold eyes widening as they met his, and she almost visibly started, the coffee in her cup nearly sloshing over the side.

  “Sorry,” he said, his voice sounding rusty. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

  She was staring now too, her gaze drifting over his chest, the luscious little rosebud of a mouth of hers opening. And because he knew women, he knew what that look meant. It made something deeply primitive and very male inside of him want to stride into the room, push her up against the counter, and tear her clothes off.

  Yeah, that’s a great start. She drags you home drunk and puts you to bed, and you reward her by screwing her on the kitchen counter because you’re a dick who can’t keep it in his pants.

  Maybe he wouldn’t be having difficulty keeping it in his pants if she hadn’t dragged him home. If she’d let him do what he wanted to do with Candy, maybe he wouldn’t be feeling like a snarling dog pulling on the end of its leash to get at its bone.

  Ava, perhaps realizing he was staring at her, went bright red and turned away sharply, putting the coffee down on the counter. “I didn’t expect you to be up so early.”

  He gritted his teeth, trying to get the complicated mix of fury and lust coiling in his gut under control. Because she didn’t need it, and God knew he didn’t either. “You need new curtains. Either that or the sun needs to be not so bright.”

  “Oh, right. Yes, they’re a little thin.”

  An uncomfortable silence fell.

  He cleared his throat. “Thanks for the aspirin and the water.”

  “No problem.” She turned and moved over to the counter on the other side of the kitchen, where there was a coffeemaker. “Do you want coffee?”

  “Does a bear shit in the woods?”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  She began to fuss around with cups and coffee capsules, and he just couldn’t seem to make himself stop staring at her. At the way her tank top pulled tight over her tits when she reached up into the cupboard to get him a cup, and how her shorts pulled tight over her ass as she bent to take a teaspoon out of a drawer.

  She moved like she had no idea at all of the effect her body had on him. As if she was fully dressed and not braless, wearing a thin tank top and a pair of tiny white shorts that, if he squinted hard enough, he could almost see through, catching hints of the soft nest of red curls between her thighs.

  Virgin, remember?

  Oh yeah, he remembered. But that made not the slightest bit of difference to the hard-on in his jeans.

  This was just getting stupid now. He’d had a lot of sex since he’d come out of prison—probably more than his fair share, but then he’d been making up for lost time. Yet he’d never wanted any woman as badly as he wanted Ava St. George, his sweet little friend and the sheriff’s only child.

  Which made this definitely his own, very personal, hell.

  He cleared his throat yet again and leaned his shoulder against the doorframe, trying to focus on the pain of the hangover and not on Ava’s ass. “So,” he said. “As you can probably imagine, I’ve got no fucking clue what happened last night except for the fact that I got drunk. Wanna fill me in on the blanks?”

  “There’s not many blanks to fill.” She didn’t look at him, still fussing around with the coffee. “I came to the strip club and you were there, having had a few bourbons already. So I thought I’d better take you home.”

  “When I said fill in the blanks, I meant all the blanks, honey.”

  She put a capsule into the coffeemaker and flipped the lid down, pushing the cup underneath the spout. “Okay, unedited version is you telling me you had information, but you weren’t going to give it to me unless I paid attention to…uh…you.”

  He let out a silent breath, scrubbing a hand across his face. He seemed to recall getting up close and personal with Candy, only to be interrupted by Ava flashing her badge around and telling Candy to back off. Then he’d been furious with Ava and…he’d said some things because he’d been in a foul mood and…

  Fucking hell, what had he done? Had he hurt her?

  “What kind of attention?” he growled, dropping his hand from his face.

  Ava gave him a look. “The usual kind. Honestly, you’ve got a fixation.”

  Ah, right. She was talking about blow jobs. In which case, yeah, he did have a fixation. He was a man, after all. “So what happened after that? What did I do?”

  She leaned a hip against the counter. “You said some stuff about me getting on my knee
s, and then you kissed me.” Her tone was very matter-of-fact, but that still didn’t make it sound any better.

  He’d kissed her. He’d fucking kissed her, and he didn’t remember any of it. He must have been drunk and insane. “I kissed you,” he repeated, just to be sure.

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t make you do anything—”

  “No,” she interrupted flatly. “It was just a kiss.”

  Thank Christ for small mercies. “Then you took me home?”

  She nodded. “I thought it best. I didn’t want you to get thrown out and then picked up by the cops, especially seeing as how you’re on parole.”

  Most people didn’t give a shit about protecting him—at least they hadn’t in the past—but not Ava. He’d been drunk and rude, and by rights she should have left him there to marinate in alcohol and his own misery. Yet she hadn’t. She’d dragged him home because she didn’t want him to get in trouble.

  Something in the vicinity of his chest tightened, but he tried to ignore it. “Thank you,” he said, and meant it. “But how did you get me home? I don’t imagine I would have wanted to go.” Especially seeing as how he’d wanted to spend some quality time with Candy up in the VIP room.

  Ava’s cheeks colored, but she didn’t look away. “I had to promise you that…well…that I’d pay you the attention you wanted. But not until we got home. You didn’t have a problem with leaving after that.”

  If you ever needed confirmation that you’ve been a total shithead to her, now you have it.

  Yes, he knew he was a dick. He knew he liked pushing people’s buttons and riling them up. Because he didn’t give a fuck about anything and he wanted the world to know it.

  Except he gave a fuck about this. He gave a fuck about messing with Ava.

  “I didn’t…hurt you?” He had to force himself to ask the question, and he hated that he even had to ask in the first place. Especially given the past he was trying to find out more about. The past he’d gotten confirmation of the day before.

  She shook her head, a strange, guarded look on her face. “You didn’t.”