by Maria Luis
Intriguing. My thumb drummed a steady tempo against the rumpled blanket beneath me. “And when that business is done, you’re going to leave?”
“Never let myself think that far.”
“Because you don’t think you’ll ever take that step?”
He paused, the silence drawing out. And then, “Because I never really believed I’d be alive long enough to make a decision like that.”
14
Avery
My stomach dropped at his gritty confession.
“Cap,” I whispered, trying to stifle the horror in my tone, “don’t talk like that. You’re invincible.”
He chuckled. “No one’s invincible, sweetheart. Not even me.”
Sweetheart.
Lids squeezing shut, I edged out, “It’s my turn. Let me ask my question.”
There was the soft ruffling as though he were repositioning himself, and then, “Shoot.”
Dammit. Did he always have to bring me back to that? The man liked his guns—a fact I knew pretty well by now. Rolling up onto my shins, I set my hands on my baggy sweatpants at the knees. It was now or never.
You can do it.
I reached up to tighten my ponytail, just to buy myself time. A second trickled past, and then another. Swallowing hard, my chest heaved with courage. Fake courage, but courage nonetheless.
“I want you.” Keep going. I squeezed the band of my ponytail loop again. “I know I shouldn’t. I mean, for one, we’re all wrong for each other. And second . . . about what Big Hampton told us—”
“I don’t give a fuck what he said.”
I blinked, startled. Glanced behind me in case he was actually talking to someone else. “I’m sorry,” I said, “what?”
Lincoln’s hands touched mine, lowering them from my ponytail and setting them on the hard planes of his chest. “I don’t give a fuck what he said. You and me? Strangers until three weeks ago. I didn’t know you. You didn’t know me. If anyone has something to say—and why the hell would they when you don’t even go by your legal name?—then that’s on them.”
Laughter warmed my chest. “You make it sound so easy.”
“It is that easy.” With a gentleness I didn’t anticipate, he cupped my cheeks, his thumbs brushing over cheekbones. “I admire you. You admire me—”
“Don’t push it, buddy,” I muttered, though I was sure my smile belied my short tone.
He continued on as though I hadn’t interrupted him at all. “You admire me, Ave. It might just be for my cock, but hell, I’ll take it.”
I set my hands on his knees, nails digging in as I waited for him to make a move. Although I’d never go so far as to say that I was submissive, by any means, he was the aggressor in our relationship. The one who’d pushed me up a wall and made me pant into the curve of my arm. The one, when seated in a room of people all having sex, who tore my panties straight off my hips and proceeded to make me come with his tongue and his fingers.
He pushed and I gave back, tenfold.
It was our thing.
But as I sat there with his thumbs caressing my cheeks and my hands on his knees . . . he did nothing but watch me. Haint-blue eyes tracking my face, dipping down to my neck, but he never moved closer. Never crashed his lips down on mine and made me beg for more.
A minute passed.
Then a second.
And all the while, my core tightened and my toes flexed in my shoes and my breathing grew more erratic as I wondered when he’d push me back and stake his claim.
“Take what you want.”
My gaze snapped up to his. “What?”
His head dipped, mouth finding the curve of my ear to nibble on the flesh, and oh God, but that felt good. Mouth rasping against my skin, he murmured, “I’m teaching you a lesson.” Another sharp bite at my ear, and then his tongue smoothed away the sting. “I told you—sometimes you gotta take what you want or you’ll end up with nothing.”
“What are you saying?”
“Don’t be coy, that’s our first rule.” His hands fell from my face and he sat back, so that my fingers slipped off his knees.
“And our second?” God help me, but I already sounded turned on. I squeezed my knees together, but the pressure did nothing to alleviate the way my core pulsed.
Lincoln shook his head. “Tell me, Ave, what did you like about the times we hooked up?”
I laughed nervously. Reached up to tug at the neck of my T-shirt and pull it away from my skin. “It, ah, felt good.”
“Goes without saying,” he said, “but that’s not what I mean. What did you like about it all? What made you go from, I want to smash this guy over the head to I just want to fuck him?”
Oh. That.
Shifting my weight farther back on my heels, I mustered up the confidence to get the words out. To really think about what it was that sent me from zero to one hundred in under a second. “I . . . I liked—” Jeez, this was not easy. I wet my bottom lip, then swung my gaze over to the brightly lit downtown area. “I liked—”
Without waiting for me to finish my sentence, Lincoln stood. He let out a low groan when his right knee straightened, and I grimaced in sympathy. No doubt he was still feeling the pain from Big Hampton’s asshole lackeys.
My gaze trailed him as he moved the food off the blanket, and then as he circled around me to stand at my back. He kneeled there, my lower body sandwiched between his legs. The unexpected close contact made me jump, but I settled down as soon as his hands fitted themselves at my hips.
“I’m gonna tell you exactly what I liked.”
Oh, God.
A shiver carved down my spine at his deep baritone by my ear, rustling the baby-hairs that hadn’t made it into my ponytail. “All right,” I managed to get out, wondering what protocol was when it came to my hands. Should I put them on his arms? Let them hang by my sides? Tangle them in his hair?
In the end, it didn’t matter.
Not when he spoke as though the words were a piece of his soul, selected and chosen just for me. “I like the way you fit against me.” His hands swept up my sides, following the indent of my waist to the slight weight of my breasts. “I noticed these first, how perfect you were on top.”
Small as my breasts were, I still gasped when he pinched my nipple over the fabric of my T-shirt, pelvis bucking unintentionally.
“I like that too.” His mouth dropped to my jaw, and he pressed a kiss there. “For a woman, your voice is so unique. Throaty, I thought once. But that’s not the way you sound when you’re in my arms. Your gasps”—he slipped his hand under my shirt—“make me hard in an instant. Your cries”—please, I thought, as he circled my nipple and tugged, hard—“are addictive enough that you’ve ruined me forever.”
“Lincoln—”
His other hand went to the center of my back and gave a gentle push. It caught me off guard, and I went down willingly, landing on all fours as I twisted my head to try to look back at him.
“I like this, too,” he growled, that big palm of his sliding down, down, down the ridges of my spine until it rested over the crevice of my butt. “I like how quick you are to put someone in their place, but with me, all you want is pleasure.”
I want to be wanted.
“You look gorgeous, but I think . . .”
I waited for him to finish that thought, my ass suspended in the air, my braless breasts loose beneath my shirt. My neck strained as I held the position, my arms quivering with every effort it took not to turn around and demand to know why he’d stopped.
But then I felt a rush of cool air on my backend, and—
Oh. My. God.
He’d tugged down my sweats until they were pooled at my bent knees.
Thighs squeezing, I slammed my eyes shut. I should argue. Tell him to cut the shit and then yank the material right back into place.
“Spread your legs for me, sweetheart.”
Cutting a glance through the darkness to the levee, I did as he ordered. There was no one around.
Just him and me, us, with a Louis Armstrong song playing off in the distance and the quiet hum of cars as they drove along the other side of the levee.
At the barest touch of his finger to my inner thigh, my head dropped and my fingers curled into the blanket beneath me.
“You know what else I like?”
The pad of his finger hit home base, circling my clit with the slightest hint of pressure, wrenching a sob from my mouth. He pressed down on the sensitive nub, brought another finger into play, circling and circling and circling until my voice cracked out his name.
His low chuckle echoed in my ears. “I love how wet you are. How eagerly your pussy drips for me. How just being out here, with the possibility of anyone seeing us, turns you on so much that you’re already shaking.” He thrust two fingers inside me, curling them just right, right off the get-go, so that my spine arched and my core squeezed around him.
“Why is that?” he demanded, and then my ponytail was lifting off my shoulder and being wrapped around a masculine fist. “Don’t be coy.”
His first rule.
His only rule.
The truth hovered on my tongue, but his thrusting fingers stole my attention. Greedily, I sank my hips back, seeking more of that deliciousness. God, it felt so good. I wanted more of that pressure, more of that friction that only he could give me—
He pulled on my ponytail, and my teeth cracked together.
Like he’d flicked a switch, the words spilled from me on a harsh gasp: “I’m tired of hiding.” His hold on my hair loosened and I immediately missed the contact, however wrong that was. “I want to feel alive. I—Lincoln, please. Yes, yes, just like that.”
He worked another finger into me, that sensuous slide feeling that much tighter. It was almost too tight, but I knew—oh, I knew, that his cock was bigger. Thicker. Sweat beading on my forehead, I bared my soul and whispered, “I want to be loved. I don’t care who knows. I want to scream it from the rooftops, and not care who sees me, us.”
“Fuck.”
As his fingers slipped from my core, I bunched the blankets in my fists and prayed that I hadn’t just made the biggest mistake of my life. But I wouldn’t hide—he’d asked for my truth, hadn’t he? He’d asked me what I liked.
I’d be damned if I apologized for any of it.
“The next time we do this,” came Lincoln’s hard voice, “it’s gonna be somewhere private. Iron bars sort of private. But there’s not a chance in hell that I can . . . Christ, you’re beautiful. Turn over onto your back, Avery. I want to see your face when I sink into your body.”
I flipped over—like there was really any other choice.
There wasn’t.
For some reason, Lincoln had walked into my life. I wasn’t a huge believer in fate, despite the fact that I read tarot cards for a living.
And yet, it seemed like fate had a hand in tonight. Not a single soul walked past up on the levee. It was just me and Lincoln, and when he reached down to pull off his shirt, I felt myself grow warm. Or warmer, as the case might be.
“Cap,” I said, almost reverently, kicking my sweatpants and underwear off completely, “you’ve got some ink on you.”
It was too dark to make out the details, but there was enough light to note the dark tattoos covering his chest and the upper parts of his arms. His shoulders were big, biceps even more powerful. Unable to stop myself, I propped myself up on one elbow and traced the hard ridges of his abdomen with my other hand.
He was . . . godlike.
“Thor.”
I felt him tense. “What?”
“I think that”—oh man, now was not the time to begin suffering from verbal diarrhea—“Katie may have been mistaken in calling you Captain America. Thor might be more . . . appropriate.”
There was a minute pause, in which I ran over every other idiotic thing that could possibly come out of my mouth, and then his hand was pressing me down into the blanket before sweeping it over my body to cup me between my legs.
A hiss escaped me, to which he only let out a dark laugh.
“Good thing I come equipped with a hammer.”
He slipped a finger into my pussy, and I didn’t know whether to moan or laugh, it felt so sinfully good. The sound that did emerge was strangled. “Put the hammer to good use, please.”
“Take off your shirt and I will.”
He didn’t have to ask me twice.
I whipped that bad boy off in the next breath, then used the fabric to hook around the back of his neck and pull him down onto me.
He caught his weight on his palms and didn’t waste another second before claiming my lips. The kiss was obsession personified—needy, raw, demanding. His tongue swept along the cushion of my lower lip, and I opened to him. Giving him anything and everything he wanted.
And he took, like he’d taught me to do.
But I’d learned the same tonight.
Letting go of one side of the T-shirt, I skirted my hand down over his chest, his abs, and then circled his cock with a tight grip.
“Not tonight,” he grunted, trying to bat my hand away. “I’m two seconds away from fucking you.”
I nipped at his jaw. “Then I have two seconds to make you lose your mind this way.”
I made good on that vow, swallowing his dick with my fist. Squeezing tight on the ride up to the head, twisting at the crown the way he’d enjoyed when it’d been my mouth doing the work at the Basement, and then diving back down to the thick base. Over and over again, until his mouth was open, and his eyes were shut, and he was cursing me and praising me all in the same breath.
Only then did he shove my hand away and reach for his wallet. There was the telltale sound of a condom wrapper being torn open, and then my legs were being pushed wide and I didn’t even have the chance to prepare because—
“Oh!”
He buried himself to the hilt, pausing only long enough to mutter, “Feel free to shout how you’re feeling to the rooftops,” before he pulled out and thrust back in.
Forget shouting from the rooftops.
If I didn’t hold on, I’d be shoved all the way out into the Mississippi River.
Wrapping my legs around his waist and clutching his inked shoulders, I looked up at the man whose soul, he claimed, was as dark as the devil’s. But that wasn’t true—he’d let his guard down tonight, peeling back his layers until he’d been completely exposed.
Neck muscles straining, he angled his hips differently. With every thrust, his pelvis ground against my clit, and it was too much. My head thrashed to the side, and as Lincoln dominated my body, I caught sight of the city that had buried me in the underworld of New Orleans.
If it weren’t for my past, I wouldn’t be here now.
Clinging to a man who could pass for a Norse god.
Moaning his name like I’d never get enough of him.
Rubbing my hands along his inked skin.
This close, I could make out that the tattoos were of numbers. They weren’t in a line. They weren’t in order. And in the back of my head, I realized what they had to be.
His kills.
Each and every one.
My breath caught, and he leaned down to capture my lips with his, tangling our tongues together.
He was powerful. He was deadly.
“More,” I whispered, one hand landing directly over his heart, “don’t hold anything back.”
Lincoln cursed, his hips momentarily pausing, before continuing the pace that sent my toes curling and my heart thudding. “You were made for me, Avery,” he whispered back, his breath harsh as he took me, “everything that you are . . . was made for me.”
He reached down, one finger landing on my clit, and that was all I needed to go over the edge. I came, calling out his name, and he followed a moment later, back strained, mouth pressed in a firm line, blue eyes focused solidly on my face. Like he never wanted to forget a thing about this night.
He was powerful. He was deadly. And for tonight, he was mine.
>
15
Avery
We fell asleep on that blanket, our discarded food scattered around us, the horizon turning into a smattering of orange and yellow and pink.
Lincoln had mentioned that he rarely slept, but his chest lifted and fell evenly under my cheek.
With the sun rising like a spotlight on my sins, I gently pulled out from his embrace and righted my tangled T-shirt. Like any other stubborn man, Lincoln had foregone wearing his shirt when we passed out, and I took the opportunity now to study the tattoos inked into his tan skin.
Numbers.
So many numbers.
Some were single digit, others two digits, some marked as though they were birthdates. In the early morning glow, it was easy to see that he’d sought to give his kills some sort of haven. Angel wings stretched across his chest, and the numbers were seemingly “stitched” into the feathers themselves.
He’d called himself a sinner.
And me a saint.
But he had it all wrong.
My gaze latched onto the firearms I’d urged him to remove last night. They lay exactly where he’d set them, and, on silent feet, I moved to that corner of the blanket and dropped to my knees. Picked up the knife that looked like something out of an action movie. Tested its weight in my grip, and then glanced back at the man who’d rocked my world for hours without tiring.
One expertly placed thrust of the knife and I could have everything I’d ever wanted. Jay Foley dead, at my hand. My freedom, finally.
Be brave.
Be bold.
Blood thundered in my ears, as loud as the tugboat foghorns we’d heard late into the night as they powered down the mighty Mississippi.
I readjusted my grip on the knife, twisting my head so I could look at Lincoln again. He shifted in his sleep, arms reaching out as though missing my heat pressed against him.
Yeah, he had it all wrong.
I was the saint, the sinner, and at the end of the day, I was the one who bled vengeance.
16
Lincoln
