by Julie Kriss
“You have a girlfriend? A wife?”
“No. She isn’t my girlfriend. She’s… I don’t know what she is. Like I say, it’s complicated. We can’t come to California yet. I have to get her out of trouble first.”
“Cavan, I don’t get it. You aren’t making any sense.”
Dani was moving around in the bathroom, and I had to get off the phone. “It won’t take long,” I told Max. “It’s just a quick stop. And then maybe we’ll come. Or maybe I’ll come alone. I don’t really know. Just tell Devon that, okay? Tell him I’ll come when I can.” If I live.
“Cavan—”
“Tell him,” I said, and hung up as the bathroom door swung open.
Dani stood there, her short hair—I was still getting used to it—hanging damply to her shoulders. She was wearing a pair of panties and nothing else. She had a towel pressed to her front, holding it over her breasts, like that was some kind of cover. Those long, slender legs, those slim hips, her dark eyes watching me. I just stared at her like an idiot. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
“Hey,” she said. “Were you talking to someone?”
I found my voice. “An old friend,” I said, trying to think of what Max was, exactly. “A friend of my brother’s.”
“What did he say?”
Still I couldn’t take my eyes off her. “That my brother wants to talk to me.”
“Oh.” She smiled a little. “That’s good, right?”
“Probably not, no. I didn’t leave on good terms.”
She nodded, understanding, and then she shifted her weight in the bathroom doorway, as if she was nervous. “I wanted, um, for you to look at my tattoo. The bandage came off and I don’t have another one.”
We locked eyes for a second, and she licked her lip. I knew what this was. This gorgeous, brave, damaged woman was making a move on me. A seduction, maybe. She wanted to get me on the bed, then pull that towel off. The inevitable happening. Her and me.
I could say no.
I could say yes.
Did I have a choice, really? She was standing there in her panties. They were pale and lacy, and I could see the dark patch through the fabric that was the hair between her legs. I felt a slow pulse of surprise and pleasure, because it was fashionable with the women in the club to shave or wax themselves bare. Dani hadn’t.
There had never been a choice. Inevitable, like I say. I had nothing to count on except Dani, and me, and the next hour. Right now, that was all I knew.
“All right,” I said. “Come here.”
Thirteen
Dani
He was sitting in the corner of the room, half lost in the shadows, but I could still see him. His shoulder in its dark t-shirt, the smooth line of his bicep, his forearm where it rested on his knee. I could see his eyes on me.
As always, Cavan Wilder gave nothing away. Anyone who didn’t know him would think he was untouched, perfectly calm. But I had spent a lot of time in his company, and I’d told him a lot of things, and I could read him now. I could see the thoughts moving swiftly behind his eyes. I could see the tension flexing the muscles in his arm. I could see the ridge of his knuckles as he slowly squeezed his hand into a fist. I could see the way his gaze devoured me without a flicker to distract its attention.
He wanted me.
I was no stranger to men wanting me. I knew I had a body and a face that men liked. There had been times, like when McMurphy had first pursued me, that I had enjoyed the attention. There had been other times when my face and body had seemed separate from my true self, which didn’t feel pretty at all. In those times my looks—and the approval they gave me from men—had seemed random, almost absurd. I hadn’t earned my beauty; it didn’t reflect anything inside me, certainly not anything angelic or superior to other women. I was as lost and flawed and fucked up as any other woman, but everyone assumed I wasn’t. It was disconnected, like my face belonged to someone else.
Cavan didn’t make me feel that way. He didn’t look at me like other men looked at me. I was sure he saw the same things that other men did—I was wearing nothing but panties on purpose—but Cavan didn’t see an angel, or a whore, or a conquest, or a trophy, or even just a pair of tits and a pussy. Somehow, he saw me.
It made me high, that look. It made me crazy. It made me want to crack him open and possess every part of him. I thought I might never get enough.
It made me wet, too. It had from the first minute I’d seen it. There had been a brief moment in time, seven months ago, when I’d been sexually adventurous enough to say yes to McMurphy. Since then I’d gone progressively numb, my defenses up, my systems shutting down. Sex had become a transaction I needed to make to buy another day, another few hours, that was all. But the look Cavan gave me—it woke everything up again, and at the same time it wasn’t as simple as a turn-on. It made everything inside me tangle together, and the confusion came out as need and a hot, sweaty desire for him so deep it almost made me shake with it.
I walked to the bed and lay down. I still had the towel over my breasts. He rose from his chair and turned on the bedside lamp. The dim, cheap bulb barely gave off any light, but he didn’t seem to care. I felt the mattress sag as he sat on the edge of the bed, and I caught the familiar scent of him as he bent close.
“Show me,” he said.
I lifted my arm over my head, and he moved the towel. He left it still covering my nipples, as if that was some kind of decorum when I was already laid out on the bed for him wearing nothing but underwear and a piece of terry. Then he bent down in the lamplight and looked at my inked skin. I felt his fingers touch the edges of the tattoo, pressing carefully.
“It looks okay,” he said. “Not red or infected. You have the cream I gave you?”
I nodded. In my rush to get away, that was one thing I’d remembered. “In my bag.”
“Make sure you use it regularly for a while.” He touched my skin again, making my blood sing. “I never asked you. What do the birds mean?”
Even as turned on as I was, I smiled to myself. My birds made me happy; the tattoo was one of the best things I’d ever done. “They’re flying away,” I said. “They’re free. I put them where I did because they’re coming from in here.” I used my free hand to point to the soft flesh just beneath my breastbone. “Inside me. Like if you have birds in a box, and you open it, and they fly out.” I dropped my hand. “Maybe that sounds stupid, but I like it and I don’t really care.”
“It isn’t stupid,” he said. “Not at all.” He put his hand where mine had just been, below my breastbone, and I watched my own stomach move as I inhaled a breath.
He moved his hand gently down over the skin of my belly, and I closed my eyes. It felt so good. My body remembered the feel of those fingers rubbing me, moving inside me. I was throbbing between my legs, but my skin was sparking everywhere else as well. I felt like a patient with a fever, every touch rubbing me raw.
Cavan dragged his thumb across my stomach, then slid his palm over to my hip, curling his fingers over it. “You’re very fucking beautiful, you know that?” he said softly.
In response, I pulled the towel from my breasts and threw it away.
I didn’t have much up top. It didn’t matter. I knew he liked it. He kept one hand on my hip and touched my breast with the other, brushing his thumb slowly, lightly over the tip of my hard nipple. Sensation shot down through my belly, into my pussy, and I felt my body tense. “I want to see you,” I told him.
He tore his gaze from my breasts and looked in my eyes, a quietly amused look. “Not very interesting,” he warned me.
“Trust me, I disagree.”
He shrugged—for God’s sake, as if I didn’t want to see him naked—and reached to the back of his neck to pull his shirt off over his head. It was a smooth, graceful motion that gave me that jolt of sensation again, and then the shirt was gone and there was just him. Cavan. His lean, strong chest, lightly dusted with hair that arrowed down his stomach. His flawless collarbones
, his gorgeous shoulders and arms. I put a hand to the skin of his ribcage, and he obliged me by changing his position, lying on his side on the bed next to me, propped on an elbow.
So I touched him. I ran my palm over him, memorizing his skin, his tendons, the lines of his body. He was warm and firm, the hair on his stomach surprisingly soft. I had a brief flash of McMurphy, his big blunt body, and then McMurphy was gone.
Cavan was watching me, quietly intent. When I brushed my fingers over his nipple, I felt his breathing hitch, then start again. I liked it, that I’d done that to him. Then I realized something.
“You don’t have any ink,” I said.
The crease appeared briefly on his forehead, between his eyes, making me want to touch it. “No.”
“Why not?” I cupped his shoulder, moved my palm down his arm. I couldn’t seem to take my hands off him. “I never thought a tattoo artist would have no tattoos.”
“Lots of reasons,” he said. “The art is just a job for me, not a lifestyle like it is for some people. And being clean… I guess it was a way for me to differentiate from the Black Dog. To make it clear I’m not one of them.”
I nodded, but the only way for anyone to see that difference was to see him naked, and I didn’t want to think about any other woman seeing him naked. Just the thought was like a shard of glass in my throat. “Those aren’t the only reasons,” I said, looking into his eyes.
He shrugged his free shoulder, making the muscles move in a fascinating way under my hand. “I have nothing important enough to ink onto my skin. Nothing that matters to me that much.”
I moved my hand to his stomach again, feeling its hard, firm skin. I slid my hand down toward the buttons of his jeans. “I don’t believe you,” I said.
He caught my wrist as I undid the first button, stopping me. “Fuck,” he said, looking at my face. “How old are you, Dani?”
“Twenty-three.”
He swore again, breaking the eye contact and looking away.
“You’re not that much older than me,” I said.
“Twenty-nine.” That crease again. God, it frustrated me and made me hot at the same time. “You’re so fucking young.”
“Don’t you dare,” I said. I put my hand to his jaw and turned his head so he was looking down at me again. I kept my hand there, because I liked it. “Don’t start thinking I’m a girl,” I said to him. “I’m not. I haven’t been a girl in a very long time.”
He knew the truth of that. Robert Preston’s daughter, and McMurphy’s woman, did not have the luxury of being childish. I’d left the last of it behind the first time McMurphy had hurt me. “You don’t even know what you want,” Cavan said.
I swallowed. I didn’t know what I wanted—not exactly. I wanted him, on the bed with me, touching me. I wanted my hands on him. I thought I wanted him inside me, but I’d never been with anyone but McMurphy, and deep down I wasn’t entirely sure what it would be like. If I’d like it the way I thought I would. “What do you want?” I asked him instead.
He laughed briefly, his stomach muscles flexing beneath my hand, and then he leaned over me, boxing me in with his arms. His chest brushed my nipples, making my breathing hitch, and he bent his head to my neck, brushing his mouth over my skin. “You want to know what I want?” he asked in a hot, low voice, dragging his teeth up to the soft skin beneath my ear. “I want to fuck you, Dani.”
I closed my eyes as a rush of heat came over me.
“That’s what I want,” he said. “I want your legs wrapped around me. I want you pinned beneath me on this bed.” His hand circled my wrist, his thumb pressing into the soft skin with its blue veins. “I want to hold you down, if that’s what you like. I want to spread you open. And I want to be inside you so deep, so fucking deep you can’t feel anything but me.”
I couldn’t breathe. I arched my back, rubbing my breasts against him, needing the contact. “I want,” I breathed, forcing the words out. “I want that.”
“You do,” Cavan said, nipping my skin again, “and you don’t. Don’t think I can’t feel it. I can feel everything, sweetheart, especially when you’re like this. Everything.”
“I—” There was something I was going to say, but I couldn’t remember what it was, because his hand had left my wrist and gone into my panties instead. He curled his fingers and ran a devilish, graceful knuckle over me, its ridge abrading my swollen flesh. I cried out.
“You’re hot for me,” he said, his voice gravel. “Hotter even than last time. Tell me, can I make you come just like this?” He ran his knuckle over me again. I twisted beneath him, trying to press my hips upward, trying to get more.
“Relax,” he said, his hand leaving my panties and dragging up my body, over my stomach, between my breasts, landing gently on my throat, which he stroked with his thumb. “Take your panties off and spread your legs, Dani. You want me to take over, so I’m taking over.”
I had never seen him like this—demanding, dominating, a little hard. It was like I’d summoned him from a fantasy so deep inside myself that I’d never acknowledged it. He stroked my throat again and I moved beneath him, pulling the lacy fabric off my hips and down my legs. “Kiss me,” I begged him.
His hand moved from my throat and up to my mouth, where he stroked that talented, magical thumb over my bottom lip. “You want that?” he asked, moving so his mouth was close to mine, his breath on me, his thumb between us, still stroking me. “Soft or dirty, baby?” he asked.
My voice was a rasp. “Dirty,” I said.
The corner of his mouth turned in a smile, and then he moved his thumb away and put his mouth on me.
There was nothing like kissing Cavan Wilder. Nothing. His mouth knew mine already even as he explored it, and my mouth knew his even as he pressed me open and kissed me dirty, just like he’d promised. He licked me, letting me taste him, and then he dragged my bottom lip between his teeth. At the knife edge of pain he let it go and kissed me again, tilting my chin back, opening my mouth again. He broke the kiss and moved his mouth to the skin of my neck, using his teeth again until I flinched, and then letting go. Then he moved down my body to my breasts.
I was on fire. He did it over and over again—his teeth on me, that brief edge of pain, and then the release. He did it on the side of my breast, on the underside, on the skin just beside my nipple. He did it on my stomach, my hip. He opened my legs and did it on the inside of my thigh, on the hot, smooth skin so close to my pussy, which I exposed to him without shame. His big hand held my knee as I flinched, then flinched again as he moved to another spot. Then he lifted his head, his dark eyes on mine, his hand still holding my legs open.
“You need to come?” he asked.
“Yes,” I breathed. I had never needed anything more.
“Beg me,” he said.
It was easy. I would have gone on my knees for him just then. “Please,” I said. “Please.”
He put his other hand on my other knee, and in that moment I was amazed at the sight of him, the most beautiful man I’d ever seen between my legs. His gaze met mine. “You’re fucking perfect,” he said, and he lowered his mouth.
I arched up into him as he licked me. His tongue did a long sweep first, from my entrance up to my clit, and then it dragged back down. I gave a strangled cry of pleasure. I’d never done this before, because the sex I’d had had never been about my pleasure. I felt like until this minute I’d known nothing about sex at all. I was starting over with Cavan Wilder and his amazing, incredible mouth.
He worked me to the edge of orgasm, and then down again. Then he did it again, and again. Three times he nearly made me come, until I was near tears, until the sheets were sweaty beneath me, until I had my hands tangled in his hair. Then he swirled his tongue over me in exactly the right place and I finally came, arching furiously, my hips pressing me up to his mouth. The pleasure came in wave after wave, leaving me wrenched and shaking beneath him.
He lifted his head and moved up my body again, gentle now. He braced h
imself over me and looked down into my face, watching for something. I couldn’t tell if he saw it. He was breathing hard, his lips damp, his hair mussed, his chest moving, his shoulders flexed with his weight. His eyes never left my face.
“Okay?” he asked at last.
I was spinning, but I was slowly coming back to myself. I looked up at him and thought I had never seen a better sight in my life. I had never seen a face I adored so much, a body I wanted so much. I wanted him with everything I was, and I never wanted to stop.
“Yes,” I told him. I put my hand on the buttons of his jeans, undoing them as I watched the surprise on his face.
“Dani,” he said.
“Cavan,” I said back. “It’s my turn.”
Fourteen
Dani
He didn’t even try to stop me. Maybe he was so turned on he was sluggish. Maybe he was just surprised. He was hard as iron under his jeans, his cock straining against the buttons. He made a pained sound as my fingers worked against his skin.
I was high, my body heavy with satisfaction, but still I was greedy. I didn’t want to cuddle, and I didn’t want to sleep. I wanted him naked. I wanted his body under my control the way mine had been under his.
I finished with the buttons and found his cock behind the cloth of his boxer briefs. I rubbed it, but he gripped my hand and stopped me. “Fuck,” he said. “Hold on.”
He stood and stripped his jeans off, his shorts, and then he was naked at last. Not very interesting, he’d said. A lie. He was graceful and strong, every line of his body a work of art. He put a knee on the bed and I stared at his cock, not bothering to hide. It was hot and hard and blunt and I thought maybe it would hurt, but I also thought maybe I’d like it. If it was Cavan’s cock, I’d like it.
I wanted him inside me; I felt empty without him. But as he lay on the bed with me again, I changed my mind. Cavan Wilder had tortured me twice now, and I decided it was time to do some torturing myself. I pushed him onto his back and straddled him, bracing my hands on his chest.
