by Julie Kriss
He looked up at me, surprised again. He was an unbearably sexy sight sprawled on his back, his hair against the white pillows. I moved so I was between his legs, and then I leaned down and kissed the flat of his stomach, dragging my tongue over it, letting my hair tickle his skin. He tasted good. I licked downward and felt his body go still.
I lifted my mouth from his skin. “You don’t get a choice,” I told him. “You don’t get soft. You only get dirty.”
“Jesus Christ,” he said.
I sucked the tip of his cock into my mouth, then moved deeper, deeper. And once again, against my will, for a split second I saw McMurphy.
I couldn’t help it. This was the first act we’d ever done, and he’d pressured me. Pushed me. I’d given in, and I’d done it, but his forcefulness had left me skittish about it, unwilling. The more unwilling I was, the more McMurphy forced it on me—he fed on that, the play of power, making me give in each time. This particular act, more than any other, had been an endless self-feeding argument between us: the more he wanted it, the less I wanted to do it, which only made him want it more. When I left, I’d thought maybe I’d never do this again.
But like everything else, it was different with Cavan. I didn’t feel demeaned; I felt sexy, powerful. I felt unstoppable. I felt like while I gave him pleasure, I owned him. And that was what I wanted—to own him, body and soul, even if it was for the few minutes it took before he came.
I could feel my body tensing, an old reaction, so I pushed McMurphy from my mind and made myself relax. This was Cavan. I inhaled, and the scent of him, musky with sex mixed with my own wetness, made everything disappear. I took him in my mouth again, savoring him, taking him deep.
He pushed himself up on his elbows, looking down his body at me. He knew, of course he knew—he knew everything. “Dani,” he said.
I let him go and licked my lips. I didn’t need saving, not now. “You think I don’t want to?” I asked.
He watched me. Even in the dark, he saw everything. “Take what you want,” he said at last. “Take all of it if you want. But I’m going to watch you do it.”
My blood pulsed thick and hot again. I liked that—I wanted him to watch me. I wanted him to see. I licked the head of his cock, ran my lips over it, listened to the catch in his breath. I took him in my mouth, and this time there was no fear, no memory. His skin was hot and smooth, and he tasted good, and I just let myself go and let it happen, let myself do it while his body tensed beneath me.
After a minute I took a break, tracing the head of his cock with my tongue while he made a sound of pure male frustration. “Is it good?” I asked him.
He was still on his elbows, watching me, and when I met his gaze I already knew the answer. “Yes,” he rasped. “It’s very fucking good.”
I licked the head again. “I want it to be the best blow job you’ve ever had,” I said, teasing him and telling the truth at the same time. I knew what the girls who came to the club were like. They liked to give the men head, and they were good at it, and they didn’t have hangups like me. How many women had he done this with—ten, twenty, thirty? It was suddenly important that he forget them the same way I was forgetting McMurphy. I didn’t want to think about who he’d been with, and what he’d done with them, and whether he’d liked it—and I didn’t want him to think about it either.
He gave a laugh that was thick with frustration. “Are you serious?” he said. “No fucking contest.”
It was a nice thing to say, and I wanted to believe it. I ran my tongue down the side of his cock like it was a popsicle. “You promise?”
His hand cupped my cheek, his thumb brushing my cheekbone. It was demanding and affectionate at the same time. “I promise,” he said. “Fuck, Dani, I want to watch you swallow my come.”
I wanted that too. I took him in my mouth and started again. He kept his hand on my cheek, his body tense as his hips tried to press him further into my mouth. “Yes,” he said as I worked him. “Like that, baby. Like that. Don’t stop. Don’t fucking stop.”
I didn’t. He came with a growl, his come spurting into my throat. It was hot and dirty, and I liked it. I liked it, and I didn’t care if that made me dirty too. I swallowed all of it, like he told me to, and when he pulled me up on the bed and wrapped his arms around me, wrapping us both in the thin sheets of the motel bed and curling his body around mine, as he turned out the lamp and we lay together in the darkness, it took me a while to realize that both of us were shaking.
Fifteen
Cavan
Sometime around two o’clock in the morning, I woke up thirsty. I was still tangled up with Dani, both of us naked, the sheets knotted around us. I blinked in the dark and got my bearings.
Dani was asleep, her leg hooked over mine, her foot wedged beneath my thigh, her cheek against my shoulder, her hair tickling my skin. I had my arm around her, my fingers curled over the back of her neck. It should have been uncomfortable, but I didn’t feel a thing. My body, it seemed, was in a state of complete fucking bliss. It hadn’t worn off. I wondered if it ever would.
I slid my arm out from under her and looked down at her. I could see her thigh, the curve of her hip, one sweet breast and its cherry-pink nipple. Jesus, I was losing my mind, and I hadn’t even fucked her yet. I was naked in bed with the one woman on earth who would get me killed, and I had no desire to leave her.
But apparently it was thirsty work to lick the sexiest woman I’d ever seen, then watch her swallow as I came harder than I had in my life. So I reluctantly disentangled the rest of my body and slid out of bed. Dani didn’t wake, but she gave a dissatisfied sigh when I left. It could be very easy, I thought, to get used to hearing that sound.
I found my jeans and pulled them on, commando, my feet bare. The room smelled like cheap synthetic carpet and sweaty sex. I was a fucking billionaire, for God’s sake—Dani deserved better. I’d find a way to give it to her. In the meantime, I could at least get her a drink.
I found some of my cash and slipped out the door onto the motel veranda, which was dark and quiet. Gently closing the door behind me, I looked around. The street past the parking lot was silent, the lot itself half empty. The stretch beyond the motel had gone mostly dark, except for a far-off strip club and a bar with its lights still on. The motel itself showed no signs of life; even the front office was closed and locked.
At the end of this stretch of rooms I saw the glow of a drink machine, so I headed for it, the boards of the veranda quiet beneath my bare feet. A breeze blew over my skin and I felt goosebumps between my shoulder blades in the warm California night air.
The machine had soda, water, and juice. I was pondering the selection, and was slipping a dollar bill into the slot, when the sound came behind me.
My reflexes were faster than my brain, recognizing the sound before I could fully categorize it: the stomp of motorcycle boots against the boards of the veranda. Whoever it was had come from the parking lot. I turned without thinking, bracing myself against the machine and kicking my foot out just as a big guy in a leather MC cut came at me full speed. I had already put my heel hard in his gut before it registered that I didn’t recognize him. And then it was too late to do any more thinking.
I’m not a fighter. I never have been. But when you’ve grown up rough, then spent ten years living in the viper’s nest that is the Black Dog MC, you either learn a few skills or the brothers will stomp you into the dust. Men like the Dogs can smell weakness—it calls to them, drives them wild. The key to survival is never to show fear, even for a second. So I learned early to hit hard, hit quick, and hit first. I learned to sense when a hit was coming my way, and I learned not to wait for it.
I didn’t wait now. When the Dog bent double, I punched him on the side of the head as hard and as fast as I could. My fist hurt—his skull was fucking hard—but I was pretty sure I rang some bells in his head for a second.
I had to get back to the room, back to Dani. I didn’t know how many guys he had with him. But
before I could move he was on me, fast for a big guy, shoving me back into the vending machine and making it shake. His big hands had my shoulders. He smelled like stale beer. I had no idea who the fuck this guy was.
“A little warning from McMurphy,” he growled. I saw his fist coming and ducked, but he still clipped me on the hard bone just above my eyebrow, making my head crack back onto the glass of the vending machine. My vision doubled for a second. I kneed him in the balls, making him grunt in pain, and when his fist came again I dodged it this time so he punched the glass and I got out of his grip.
I punched him low, slamming his kidneys as he twisted toward me. From the parking lot came the roar of a motorcycle engine, and then another.
In a second, my attacker was gone, taking off into the darkness. I had time to see the Black Dog insignia on the back of his cut before he vanished.
I sprinted for my door, ducking inside as more motorcycle engines started up. Dani was sitting on the edge of the bed, the blanket wrapped around her, her arms hugging her body tight.
“Are you all right?” she cried.
“I’m fine,” I said, coming toward her. “It’s a message. Just wait.”
She nodded. Messages were a pretty common Black Dog tactic: show up, give a guy a few hits, hopefully scare the hell out of him, and leave again. They weren’t meant to be deadly; they were only meant as a threat, though a serious one.
This one had come from McMurphy. My attacker had made that crystal clear.
I sat next to Dani on the bed, and we waited. Outside, the bikes in the parking lot roared, the lights blaring through our window. Four men, by my count. They took a circle around the lot, and then another, the sound vibrating through the room. One of them finished it off by shooting a bullet into the air, making Dani flinch with the noise, and then they roared away, the motors fading into the distance.
I looked at Dani. She was stoic: chin up, expression shuttered. “They found us,” she said.
I had the impulse to put an arm around her, but it was the wrong thing to do. “Someone did,” I said. “But not McMurphy. One of the satellite clubs.”
When had it happened? I thought back. When we’d stopped to gas the car? When we’d stopped to buy food? When we’d checked into the motel? Dani had been with me then. McMurphy had probably put the word out far and wide on the Black Dog network. And someone, somewhere, had seen Dani and me and made a phone call.
And McMurphy had sent a message.
“He sent someone,” I said to Dani. “I didn’t know this guy. McMurphy didn’t come himself. That means he’s not close.” If McMurphy had heard of our whereabouts, he would have wanted to come himself. That he’d sent someone told me that maybe he wasn’t as hard on our heels as we’d feared. Sure enough, he’d lost us after I’d ditched Dani’s phone in the first motel.
“But he’s coming,” Dani said. She switched on the bedside lamp and turned to me, still holding the blanket around her. She saw my face. “Cav, he hit you,” she said, her voice distressed.
I rubbed the sore spot over my eyebrow. I felt like someone had given my brain a shake, but otherwise I was fine. I’d gotten off easy. “Don’t worry about it,” I said.
“It’s red. It’ll bruise.” She brushed her fingers over the spot. Then she said the words I knew she was going to say next: “This is my fault.”
I looked into her dark eyes. She was distressed, but she wasn’t afraid. She was worried for me. For a crazy second it almost struck me as funny, because no one ever worried for me. “I can take a hit to the head,” I told her gently. “It’s nothing. And it isn’t your fault.”
She opened her mouth to argue, then pressed her lips together briefly as if biting it back. “What do we do?” she asked me.
“Rest,” I replied. “They’re not going to come back tonight. We’ll move in the morning.” There wasn’t a rush, because we weren’t running anymore. McMurphy knew where we were. It was only a matter of his choosing when to close in.
Except I wasn’t done yet. Far from it.
We turned out the light, and I took off my jeans and got naked in the bed with her. To my surprise she rolled over and tugged my arm, pulling me with her. So I spooned her back, my knees bent behind hers, my arm over her waist. Her sweet, round body was against mine, her ass pressed up against me, and though my body hummed with its own ideas—men are fucking animals—I was content to just lie like that. I’d never slept in bed with a woman like this, and I was twenty-nine years old. What the fuck had I been doing for the last decade? Where had I been?
It took her a while, but she fell asleep. I felt it. But I stayed awake, breathing her scent and thinking.
I’d left the door unlocked behind me when I left the room, but McMurphy’s goon hadn’t touched it. He hadn’t even looked at it. I’d let my guard down, and that asshole could have come right in the room and had Dani. But he hadn’t.
Instead, he’d come for me.
My taunts had worked. McMurphy wanted me dead. Dani was collateral damage.
What he wanted was me.
That made things simple.
As Dani slept, I lay awake in the darkness, making a plan.
Sixteen
Dani
We got up just after dawn and showered, packed, got in the car. We didn’t talk. I put on my jeans, a t-shirt, the sneakers Cavan had bought me. I raised my hands a dozen times to tie my hair back before I remembered each time that I’d cut it all off.
I looked like a different woman in the mirror; I had faint purplish shadows under my eyes, and I wasn’t wearing any makeup. But when I looked at this woman, I realized I liked her better. Her eyes didn’t flinch. The haircut framed her face differently. She looked, I thought, like a woman who was confident. A woman who had started pleasing herself instead of pleasing other people.
I picked up my bag and walked out of the room, to where Cavan was already in the parking lot, leaning against the car. His familiar figure hit me: jeans, boots, dark gray t-shirt, the easy line of his hips as he leaned with one ankle crossed over the other. He was turned away from me. I could still taste him, could still feel how his body had flexed when he came. My body responded with a rush of heat, low in my belly, making my nipples sensitive against the lace of my bra.
Pleasing myself, instead of others. It was definitely an idea.
I came closer and realized he had his phone to his ear. He was giving someone a set of numbers, and then he paused. “How much do I need?” he asked the person on the other end. “I don’t know. How much money do you think I need to get myself and my woman out of trouble?”
I nearly dropped my bag. My woman. McMurphy’s words. I’d been his woman for seven months. The words made me cold, made my stomach drop.
My woman doesn’t leave me, Dani. It doesn’t happen. My woman doesn’t disrespect me and make me look like a fool.
Cavan wasn’t like that. At all. But still, I fought back the fear that crawled up my throat. God, I needed to get a grip. Get it together.
“Fine,” Cavan said into the phone. “Tell Devon to wait. I have to clear up some things first.” A pause. “Just give him the warning, Max, like I told you. I don’t know if the Black Dog is going to try to get to him, but he needs to know it could happen. And as for me, tell him to wait. I’ll come when I can. That’s all.” He hung up and turned to see me standing there. “Hey,” he said. “Ready?”
I hesitated, searching for words. There was a bruise forming above his eye.
Cavan Wilder was sacrificing for me. He could be on his way to San Francisco right now, to see his long-lost brother and claim his inheritance, but instead he was at a motel on the Nevada border, fighting off bikers. Now he was obviously taking money from his friend Max in order to keep us going, instead of claiming his fortune and buying a closet of custom suits, a Malibu mansion, and a private jet to take to his private island.
“What?” he said to me.
“You called me your woman,” I said. “Just now.”
> His gray eyes swept down me and up again. That one look was devastating, and every part of me went on alert. Fuck, he was the sexiest man I’d ever seen. I wanted to be possessed by him, and I wanted to run away at the same time. I was in horrible trouble.
“You don’t like that?” he asked. And then, as he always did, he surprised me. He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “All right, I won’t say it.”
I opened the car door and tossed my bag inside, throwing it harder than I needed to because some traitorous part of me didn’t like how easily he’d given up. God, I was fucked up sometimes. “Thank you.”
“But you’re not going to like it.”
I rounded the car and opened the passenger door. “I’m not going to like what?”
“The next part of the plan.”
I paused. “What plan?”
He smiled at me, and for the first time I noticed that despite the bruise he seemed easier this morning, as if a weight had been lifted off his mind. That smile sliced into me; I was helpless against it. For a second, my knees actually weakened.
“My plan,” he said. “This will be interesting. Let’s go get breakfast.”
We ate at a restaurant on the outskirts of Rio Verde, where the tourist strip thinned out on its way out of town. We hadn’t stopped at a restaurant since we’d been on the road, relying on snacks and fast food to keep us going. Now, with some of the urgency strangely lifted after last night, I found I was ravenous. Bacon, eggs, coffee, toast—I wanted it all. Maybe it was an aftereffect of the panic; maybe it was an aftereffect of a night of incredible sex with the man sitting across from me. Either way, I was hungry.
“Okay, so tell me,” I said to him when I’d devoured half my plate and my stomach had started to settle. “What’s this plan of yours?”
He’d eaten less than me; he was already finished, leaning against the back of the booth, watching me. He opened a small creamer and dumped the contents into his coffee. “First off, we need money,” he said. “I took care of that this morning.”
