She pulled close to him, gripping the back of his head now. His cock felt like steel against the softness of her belly.
“Let me love you,” he said.
She pulled away and looked him clear in the face. The word, so loaded, wasn’t so much a declaration as a signal balloon sent up through the darkness.
“Yes,” she said.
He drew a finger down her cheek, watching her eyes with the curious sensation that he knew her and that her secrets were endless.
He kissed her then, relishing the quiet softness of her lips. He usually tore into women like a devouring fire, but he wanted to feel her, not consume her.
He pulled off his glasses and tossed them onto the other bed, then pressed his tongue thick into her mouth, finding hers, circling hers like a slow dance turning gradually electric. Need surged in him and he pressed up flush to her. He felt a shiver go through her, as though her body was his own.
“Angel,” he said.
“Say it again,” she said. “Just like that.”
“Angel.” He kissed her neck, her collarbone, movements becoming more furtive. “Angel.” He started unbuttoning her shirt. Dimly he became aware of more sharp pains in his shoulder, but he didn’t care about his stitches. He cupped her ass and lifted her body, setting her up onto the dresser.
Everything was different. His stitches were ripped to hell and his heart was open wide—dangerously wide, vulnerable to everything. It was okay. His open heart was a good wound.
She lay back a bit on the dresser, propped back on her elbows, and she wrapped her legs around his waist.
“Love me, then.” The request was a dare and a plea, and it was the hottest thing ever because it was a little bit brave, because she was letting herself be on display to him.
Him.
He finished unbuttoning her shirt. The sides fell apart to reveal her lacy bra. He grabbed the tops of the cups and pulled her up to him, belly to belly. He didn’t like her apart from him. He lowered the cups down under her breasts, letting his knuckles graze her hardened nipples, and he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her, trawling light fingertips along the undercurve of her breast, getting lost in her. He dragged his whiskery cheek along her skin, as if to mark her with sensation, with his body.
She gasped as he took her nipple into his mouth, sucking, palming her other breast, pinching the nipple to a hard peak, enjoying the way she clutched at his back. He felt laid out before her, like a sacrifice, but also like a god, surrounding her, pressing his fingers into the delicious softness of her skin.
He tore the rest of her shirt off. Her breath sped as he pushed down her pants. Feverishly, she helped him, kissing him everywhere. He was vaguely aware of her hot breath in his ear, her teeth on his earlobe, biting down just enough to make him crazy. She slid her fingers into his back pockets and kissed and bit his shoulder, his neck. It was sweet and dirty and he loved how her bites sharpened as he caressed the outsides of her thighs.
He pulled his hips back enough to press his hand down between them, working his fingers over the outside of her silky panties, over her heated core, then he found his way in and drew his fingers along her slick folds, enjoying the increasing raggedness of her breath as he found where she was most sensitive.
Her fingers closed over his ass inside his pockets. He stroked her and rocked and rocked, and she breathed harder. He felt lost in her.
“Angel,” He pulled away. He had to get her panties off, and all the rest of her clothes, too. She laughed at the furious tangle of their movements.
“Your friend…”
“I know,” he said, heading to the bathroom to grab a condom from the box that was in the toiletries Macmillan had brought over. Crass of Macmillan to leave them there. Crass and inspired.
She had taken her bra off. She was completely naked. He stalked back to her and placed a hand on her thigh and slid it up to her hip, gazing into her eyes. He liked just to touch her.
“Come here,” she said.
He stayed. “You are so beautiful.” She began to protest and he put his fingers to her lips. “You are. Just take it.”
“So come here.”
He smiled and lightly ran the corner of the foil package up the inside of her thigh.
She drew up a little at that. “Cole.”
“Yeah?”
“Just that,” she said.
He drew the foil packet back down toward her knee, pin-soft, staying with her eyes, feeling they were sharing sensations, as though they were linked, as though in looking at each other they’d opened to each other. It stunned him that looking could feel so unbearably intimate. He felt suddenly unsure what to do with all the honesty. He was used to being on the outside looking in, scribbling his equations, trying to solve everything.
She snatched the condom from his fingers and ripped it open, watching him playfully. “How about I do this.” She extracted it from the foil and rolled the condom over his hard cock, then raised her eyes to his, grazing her knuckles over his washboard stomach. “Cause you know I need a piece of this, baby. It’s all I’ve been thinking about.”
He laughed and grabbed her hands and kissed them, and then he placed them on his stomach. “Enjoy.”
She bent forward and kissed him there, and stupid as it was, it made him feel magnificent. He stroked her hair, loving how they’d found this lightness together. There was everything to find with her.
He half thought she might suck him with the condom on, but it would taste like latex and chemicals, and he didn’t want that for her, so he grabbed her hair and pulled her up, looked clear into her eyes.
“Break out the ABBA, darling,” he said. “Cause it’s time to fuck.”
“Cole.” The laughter in her eyes turned to heat as he guided himself into her. Pressed into her.
Her eyes drifted closed, and she let out a breath, as if his cock was so giant that it pushed air out of her lungs. Her heat gripped him like a silken glove, and she clung to him as he thrust into her.
He stilled, kissed her lips. Her eyelids. “Open your eyes, baby,” he said.
She opened her eyes and he fucked her slow and sure, watching her, letting it build. She grabbed his ass, wanting to speed things up, but he wanted it to last. He wanted to make her feel better than diamonds.
“Pull my hair,” she said.
“This isn’t that kind of fuck, Angel.”
“I want you to, though.”
“Sorry.”
She sat up, kissed his chest. “Come on,” she whispered. “Please,” she breathed.
He grabbed her hair, wrapped it around his fist, but didn’t pull. “I think you’re just using me for my jerky personality.”
“No,” she said, “not just that.”
“Not just that?” He pulled her hair then, playfully. “What else?”
She panted, on the verge. She liked that. He liked it, too, and the slow fuck was out the window. He slid a hand around to her ass, gripped her hard. “What?” he demanded, just to demand something.
“You’ll never know,” she panted.
His hunger was like the hunger of fire, never sated. Being inside her only made him want to consume her more. His strokes became relentless.
“What else?” He pulled her hair harder, exposing her neck, grazing the tender skin with the rough of his whiskers.
He let his strokes go slow and commanding. Relentless. She broke apart under him. He sucked in an uneven breath, savoring the way she felt as she came, pussy milking him.
He tried to make it last, but the need was taking him over and he thrust into her once, twice, and then exploded inside her, holding her. His orgasm spun him higher, on and on. When it was over he stayed.
He couldn’t believe it, just the miracle of her, inexplicably, unknowably perfect.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Angel stretched out on the bed, dressed only in a sheet, feeling drowsy and happy. “Stay like that,” he’d said.
She loved being with Cole. She love
d everything about him. He wasn’t merely her type. He was the original, the ultimate, the man she’d been looking for all along. She could love them but she could never save them—that’s what she’d always said about her type. A chill went over her. It didn’t have to be true.
The furious sound of ripping bandage wrappers came from the bathroom. Cole, re-patching himself with butterfly bandages from the kit.
He hadn’t wanted her to help, to see him all bloody. As if she would care. And then he came out, naked except for his glasses and the new white bandages. He gave her a roll of tape. “Can you tape the back one better?”
“Of course,” she said.
He sat on the side of the bed. She scooted up, ripped off a piece of tape, and pressed it over the side of the gauze he’d affixed to the back of his shoulder. She ripped off another bit of tape, kissed him on a new spot, and put the tape over it.
“Thanks.” He turned to her. “Thanks,” he whispered again.
“Anytime.”
She could love them but she could never save them. But just because something was in the past, it didn’t mean it had to be in the future.
He stood and went to the window, casual in his nakedness. He pushed the curtains aside, peeked out, then came back to her.
“What’s wrong?”
“He’s been gone a while,” Cole said.
“He said he might be. I believe he used the word days.”
“And he’s not answering his phone.”
“Because of the mole.”
Cole gazed at her darkly. “You need to stop talking like you know what’s going on with us. You need to stop thinking you know anything. Fuck.” He pressed his palms to his forehead. “I need to get out of here.”
“Macmillan said to stay put. That Borgola has eyes out for us. Do you think Borgola wants us back in the dungeon?”
“No, he’ll want us dead now. Borgola needs to kill us to restore his cred. I have to get out there and help Macmillan find the mole.”
“But he said to stay put.”
“Stop reminding me what he said.” Cole went back to the window.
“Or what?”
“You know what.” His glance over his shoulder sent a bolt of lust through her belly. He let the curtain go and walked back to her, slid onto the bed. He grabbed her foot and kissed her toe.
“Will you plan B me?”
“Plan B went out the window as soon as I knew you,” he said.
“That’s not how you made it sound back in the room. After we hit the safe.”
“Because I wanted you to think it.”
Her stomach churned. “Why would you let me think it? It was horrible.”
“Angel,” he shook his head, like the explanations and problems were too unruly to capture in words.
“You were opposite training me.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Don’t do it anymore.”
His grip on her ankle tightened minutely. “I can’t make any promises to you.”
“Because of the Association.”
“You have to stop saying that.”
“Because you’re a spy or agent. And you infiltrate places.”
He frowned.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell. I just want to know about you. And you’re into math equations.”
“Logistics,” he said.
“Isn’t that, like, trucking and shipping?”
“In its simplest form it is. But the way I do it, it’s looking at three puzzle pieces and knowing what the other 97 are.”
“El león se conoce por sus garra,“ she said. “My dad used to say that. It means, by the claw you may know the lion.”
“The rat and the hole, the lion and the claw. Sounds like your dad was into instructive sayings.”
“Isn’t that what dads are for?”
“I didn’t have that kind of dad,” he said. “But yeah, I use the claw to visualize the lion.”
“That’s what your equations do?”
“That’s enough questions.”
“Tell me,” she whispered, mimicking him from earlier. “You must tell me.”
He yanked on both her ankles, pulled her down onto the bed. She yelped and he crawled over her. “What do I have to do to shut you up?”
Her heart raced. The way he loomed over her was so hot, and the sense of danger in the air made it all the more intense. “You know what,” she whispered.
He yanked away the sheet, exposing her nakedness to him, like he was in charge. And the way he looked at her seared her clear through. Her heart skipped a beat as he pulled off his glasses.
She tried not to think too hard about anything outside the room. There was only a specific minute, the slide of a hand across goose-bumpy skin, the keen thrill of an unexpected suck. He wouldn’t pull her hair at the end and she loved even that, how intent he was to have their lovemaking be slow and sweet.
As they lay together afterwards, she thought about them in the mirror. How ferociously he’d wanted to make her see whatever he saw. He couldn’t untwist the way she’d gotten herself all twisted up, but strangely, it made a difference that he cared that much to try. It loosened something that had been stuck for a long, long time.
They ordered a pizza later. He eyed her as he was making the order. “Everything except mushrooms,” he said. He set the phone down.
“You remembered,” she said.
“Of course I did.” He pulled on his pants. “However…” he picked her clothes up off the floor, brought them to her. “You’re going to have to revise your memory of us. Because, I must point out, you did put out on the first date. In fact, I didn’t even need to spring for a restaurant. Dinner with the boss is all it took.”
“Some boss.” She popped off the bed and took her clothes from him. She pulled on her panties, shimmied into her pants, and grabbed her bra.
Cole watched her. “I liked having you there. You were a good partner. Aside from the wasting-time-to-hold-the-diamonds bit.”
She snorted and threw a sock at him.
“Also, congratulations on your new almost client. You could’ve really had something going there if you hadn’t tried to grab his jewels.”
She pulled on her shirt. “His place is horrible. But it’s perfect. For how it reflects him.”
“The man really took to you.”
“Ugh.”
“How did you know what he’d like? How’d you know he’d go for your floral ideas?”
“It’s what I do, Cole. Or, how I do design. Some designers have a signature style, but others are more about reflecting what’s inside of the clients. You sort of tap into…their sensibility. Their inner life. And challenge them to be more, to own it. It’s kind of a journey, though ideally, I help them find something awesome inside themselves.”
“Is that what your place is about? What do I see when I go there?”
“A place where I test concepts.”
He looked at her tenderly. “Nothing of you is there?”
She reached up to him and squished his lips together again. “You’re going to say weighty things now, and I don’t want that. Okay, darling?”
He grabbed her wrist and yanked her hand away from his face. “We’re back to this, darling?”
“Not with a pizza coming, we’re not.”
A mischievous smile spread across Cole’s face. “Angel, did you tap into Borgola’s inner ugliness?”
She grinned.
“He was into it. You made him happy.”
“What can I say? It’s a gift,” she said.
A thoughtful expression appeared on his face.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing. But it’s an effective cover. On paper, you really do look like a full-time designer.”
He’d investigated her. Of course. “It’s not a cover, Cole. I’m retired from the jewels. I’ve been retired for five years.”
He adjusted his glasses. His gaze seemed more keen, somehow. “You’re retired?”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t look retired the night of the party.”
“My old gang pulled me out of retirement because I’m the only one who can do a Fenton Furst. I said yes because of Aggie. Aggie was like a second mother to me.”
“Five years you were out of the game?”
“Macy and White Jenny knew I didn’t want to come back, and they tried to get the Flesh Boys to go for a different ransom, but it was all about embarrassing Borgola with them—it had to be his rocks, it had to be his Fenton Furst. The Flesh Boys knew Furst died last month, which means his safes are fair game for the Fenton Furst-trained crackers who aren’t dead or in jail. Hell of a time to come out of retirement, huh?”
He fell silent—more of him not saying all he thought.
“What?” she asked.
“Why? Why stop stealing? If you enjoy the game?”
She lay back against him, careful to put her weight on his good shoulder. “It didn’t sit right anymore.”
He stroked her hair. “Stealing didn’t sit right?”
“I realized I was hurting people. The people I robbed and my family. It wasn’t worth it, you know? Also, I wanted to do something positive. I know you probably think designing people’s homes isn’t important. But it is to my clients.”
“You did something important today. Getting into that safe, Angel. Your skills resulted in saving a lot of people’s lives.”
A strange feeling stirred in her chest. “Those people on the boat are for sure okay?”
He stroked her hair back. “Yeah.”
She felt stupidly choked up with emotion. She’d never done anything truly important.
The phone rang.
She felt Cole rouse to attention behind her. She sat up. “It’s probably the pizza.”
Cole got off the bed and picked up the phone on the fourth ring. “Yeah?” She could hear a voice at the other end. “Thanks.” He hung up and went to the window, tipped back the curtain. “Pizza on the way.”
“You don’t like that they called? Pizza places do call.”
“Instinct. I don’t like being cooped up. I’m not used to it. He dug a few bills out of the satchel on the dresser. Something was still wrong.
Against the Dark Page 18
