Loverboy (Dartmoor Book 5)

by Lauren Gilley

  “I want to fuck you,” he said through his teeth. “I look at you, and I think of…things. And I want to fuck you. Is that what you want to hear? It isn’t like our nightmare talks. This is the truth, Whitney: my dick is very interested in getting better acquainted with you.” He exhaled in a rush. There, you happy?

  Her eyes went big as saucers. Big as the teacup saucer she’d gotten down for him to use as an ashtray; he had a saucer reference now. But she took a deep breath and said, “Okay.”

  “What the hell does ‘okay’ mean?” he growled.

  “It means I hear you, and I believe you.” She lifted her brows. “Okay?”

  He took a deep breath, let it out. “Okay. Yeah.” Then he pressed his palm over his eyes. “Shit, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to…”

  “Talk to me,” she urged. She let out a low, uncertain laugh. “I think we’ve already gotten the worst of it out of the way, right?”

  “Right,” he echoed, not believing it.

  “So…”

  Another deep breath. “We’ve been bringing up a lot of stuff in therapy that’s hard to talk about. A lot of…sex stuff. And tonight, I just…and you were leaning against me…”

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t think. I should have–”

  “But I liked it,” he rushed to say. “Too much, actually. That’s why…” He gestured to his crotch. “Sorry.”

  She looked at his erection for far longer than he would have thought, then licked her lips and glanced away. Cleared her throat. “Does – does your therapist have any ideas? Tactics to handle it?”

  “Ha!” An explosive, mocking laugh burst out of his lungs. “Yeah, right. My therapist…” Is maybe more fucked up than me, he added in his head.

  She frowned. “He ought to be helping you with coping strategies.”

  “Coping?” he echoed.

  She nodded. “Jason was in therapy for a while.” She rolled her eyes. “It didn’t take, obviously. But they were working on his cravings. The doctor gave him some coping exercises to run through when he got too wound up. So maybe we can come up with some to help with your…” Her eyes flicked back to his crotch, an unconscious glance. “Cravings.” The way she said the word made him want to drag her up on her toes and kiss her.

  For starters.

  He swallowed hard. “Strategies like what?”

  “Strategies that…” Her eyes came to his face, full of doubt. “I don’t really know. He didn’t like to spell anything out for us. But I’m sure we could research something,” she hurried to add. “We need to think of ways for you to get your mind away from the harmful thoughts, and onto positive things.”

  “Positive things,” he echoed, numbly. Really, he wanted her to shut up, because he really needed to know if her bra opened in the front or the back at this point.

  A small, logical part of his brain acknowledged that he was in that hazy sexed-up headspace that he’d never been able to talk himself out of. Heroin, sex, or, lacking either, his left hand were the only things that could shake the fog.

  She was starting to look a little impatient with him, and it was cute as hell, the way it warmed her cheeks. “Yes. Even though you mope around all the time, you do have some positive things in your life.”

  He wanted to trace her eyebrows with a forefinger, a thought that startled him. Sex-fog or no, he didn’t usually have those sorts of thoughts.

  “Your friends for one,” she said. “Your club. Your job, your bike–”

  “You,” he said, and her blush went from impatient to embarrassed.

  She ducked her head. “I’m not–”

  “You are. Which makes me really, really hate that this is happening.” He gestured to himself, shame burning his face.

  Face still downcast, she murmured, “Not that I’m an expert or anything, but I’m pretty sure it’s called being turned on, and it’s totally normal.”

  “Nothing that happens in my head is normal.”

  “False.”

  A grin tore at his mouth, sudden and painful. “You don’t get to say ‘false.’ You don’t know.”

  Unflinching, she met his gaze and said, “I know you let those men in Don Ellison’s basement do awful things to you to protect me. Given that.” She took a shaky breath, but her eyes never wavered. “Maybe ‘normal’ isn’t what you should be trying for. You’re too brave for normal.”

  She might as well have punched him, the way pain flared behind his ribs and all the air left his lungs. Such was the shock of such absolute support.

  He wet his lips. “Just…just don’t,” he whispered. “Please.”

  “Why not?” she asked. Gently. Oh so gently. She didn’t seem to move, but somehow eased into his personal space. Had she been anyone else, it would have been a practiced, subtly alluring movement. But on her it was just as if she was drawn to him, unable to help it.

  God help him, she cared about him, in a way that she shouldn’t. And she didn’t even understand the threat of him, was so clueless, it made him ache in a way that was all bound up in the relentless sex of it all.

  “Are you a virgin?” he asked.

  She blinked and looked wounded.

  “Are you?”

  “Why does it matter?”

  “You know why.”

  Her lips pressed together, paling. “Don’t make me out to be some sort of good girl, Kev. That isn’t fair and you know it.”

  “It’s safer–”

  “Shut up about safety!” Her voice went shrill, quavering with emotion. “Do you think I’m afraid for a second that you’ll hurt me? The only way you can hurt me is if you get back in the bathtub and slit your wrists again!”

  She spun away from him and hurried deeper into the apartment, hand pressed over her mouth.

  Tango stood rooted, her words moving through his brain in a sequence of dark pulses. He watched her go to the kitchen sink and clutch at the counter, shoulders shaking, head bent so the incoming light from Bell Bar frosted the hair at the crown of her head.

  He’d wanted to keep her out of reach, hadn’t he? A little afraid of him, safe on the other side of awkward emotional barriers.

  No. He didn’t want her crying silently over the sink. He didn’t want any of this.

  “Whitney.” He came up behind her and put a hand on her trembling shoulder. Even through her sweater, he could feel the faint warmth of her skin. The slick satin of her bra strap. “Whit, I’m sorry.”

  She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, jerky, furious movements. Dashed beneath her nose. She turned to look at him with blame in her gaze. And pain. And naked longing. “I just don’t understand what you’re doing.”

  “I don’t either.” And he pulled her into his arms.

  Fifteen

  Everything about her soothed and aroused him all at once. The conundrum that was Whitney: comforting as a warm blanket, intoxicating as quality cocaine. That was Tango’s interpretation, anyway.

  She pressed her face into his collarbone and clenched handfuls of his shirt in back, trembling in the circle of his arm.

  He’d never had this before, an honest, vulnerable, emotional woman holding onto him. He held no ill feelings for Jazz – in so many ways she was the only thing that had turned him from the fractious, confused boy he’d been into the man who rode in Ghost Teague’s phalanx of warriors. But Whitney was something new and precious to him. Something he’d never been within reach of before.

  He knew good women – Maggie, Ava, Holly, Sam, Emmie…all the old ladies. Strong girls with fast draws, and flawless aim, and gentle smiles when he needed them. But they belonged to his brothers, they always had, and he’d never been jealous, or pined for any of them, or thought anything inappropriate. He just hadn’t ever thought…hadn’t begun to imagine…that there could be someone like that for him.

  And having her in his arms, knowing she was real, and solid, and trying hard to get her emotions under control, stirred him in a dangerous way.

  In
his mind, it was impossible for her to want him. She could say she did, and she might even mean it. But there was a difference between idle wanting – that skin-deep curiosity, wondering what it might be like – and his brand of want. The kind of craving that made his bones ache, and set his teeth on edge. She didn’t – couldn’t – understand how deep the want ran, how nothing careful and chaste could satisfy it.

  It was terrible. He wanted to push her a little and let her see why she ought to be frightened. And he wanted to love her platonically, like a brother, like the friend they both needed, because she deserved so much better than what he could give her.

  In any event, as his brain whirred through its normal cycle of guilt and self-loathing, his hand moved of its own accord, sliding down the ridge of her spine. Pausing a second at her waistband, before it moved lower and cupped her ass.

  She stiffened. “Oh.” Only a second, then she pressed closer.

  He breathed a humorless laugh against the top of her head. Shit, he needed to move his hand. He shouldn’t touch her like this. But the command got lost somewhere between his brain and the nerves in his arm. “Just that makes you say ‘oh’?” He’d meant it to be degrading, to scare her back a little, but it came out soft, and full of longing.

  “I wasn’t expecting it.” No way was she expecting half the stuff that happened during sex. “But I like it.”

  “Shit,” he muttered.

  Whitney squeezed his waist and drew back, bringing her hands up to wipe away the last of her tears. She offered an unsteady smile, and he finally managed to let go of her. “Sometimes,” she said, like an admission, “I wish you weren’t such a good guy. But that’s not fair, because it’s one of the things I love most about you.”

  Love.

  The word electrified him. Started up a rapid beating in his chest that rivaled the old reliable throb of desire.

  “Can I make a suggestion?”

  He nodded, afraid his voice would come out low, and husky, and betray him.

  “Neither one of us can sleep. Let’s share the bed together tonight.”

  “Um…” He didn’t have the energy to rehash the conversation they’d just had, but apparently it needed to happen. “You know that’s a terrible idea, right?”

  “I trust you,” she said, killing him with her wet, blue eyes.

  “Well, you shouldn’t.” He had no doubt that the second he started to drift, he’d move toward her, reach for her through the sheets, and as vulnerable and idealistic as she was, she’d let him touch her, damn it.

  “Kev.” She put her hands on his chest, feather-light. “I’m not…” She sighed, and looked disappointed, for some reason. “I’m not coming onto you. I’m just talking about sleeping. We both need to sleep.”

  He shook his head, but he could already feel the deep, inner delight unfurling inside him. The idea of sleeping beside her, smelling her skin that close, hearing her breathe as she slept. Like when they were in the cells together, and she was holding his hand.

  “No,” he said, throat closing up. But he knew he would cave. He always caved.

  ~*~

  He caved around midnight.

  At bed time, when Whitney came to him in her loose, threadbare sleep shirt, thin pale legs bare, hair loose down her back, he took one sniff of his soap on her shower-warm skin and insisted she take the bed, and that she lock the door if she didn’t feel comfortable.

  Why the hell she didn’t just pack up her shit and leave right then, he had no idea.

  He stretched out on the couch and spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how best to avoid the bad springs under the seats, hating himself for ever allowing Whitney to sleep on this thing. He was an asshole. He was an absolute monster. The second she turned up on his doorstep, he should have put her back in her car and offered to drive her to a hotel. He’d let her stay for completely selfish reasons.

  Trust himself a little, Mercy had said. He should trust himself. That’s what every addict had to do at some point, right? Trust that they could get within arm’s reach and keep from touching what they wanted.

  Oh, but he wanted…

  At midnight, not at all sure he could, in fact, trust himself, he got up off the couch, crossed the room to the bedroom door, and tested the knob. It was unlocked. He took a deep breath and held it as he turned the knob, eased the door open…

  And found Whitney awake and sitting up against the wall where a headboard would have been on a decent bed, pillows propped behind her, a notepad balanced on her upraised knees. She looked small, and worried, and so very sweet in his bed, that he couldn’t linger at the doorway, instead let his feet propel him fully into the room, right up to the edge of the mattress.

  He swallowed the dozen things he wanted to say and said, “What are you writing?”

  She tapped her pencil against the pad. “Sketching, actually.” Her smile was small and tired, but she softened her face in a way that told him, without any doubt, that she was glad to be talking to him. That was something she always did, he thought – made him feel like he wasn’t bothering her. And if she wasn’t sleeping, he guessed he really wasn’t.

  “Can I see?” he asked.

  She patted the empty spot on the bed beside her.

  Here went nothing. He exhaled – it felt like he’d been holding his breath for a full minute – and eased slowly, deliberately down onto the bed, giving her time to flinch away if she wanted to.

  She didn’t.

  He mirrored her position, back to the wall, knees pulled up, and glanced over at her sketchbook. She had a photo taped into the top left corner, two smiling little girls, and she’d loosely sketched their faces on the paper. The pencil marks were faint, but he could already see the realism of the sketch, the way the girls were going to come to life in graphite.

  “Wow,” he said, and meant it.

  She rolled her eyes in a self-deprecating way. “Faces aren’t my specialty. But I’m trying to work more on my figure drawing. Nobody wants to be a one-trick artist.”

  “Pony,” he corrected, smiling.

  “Not that either.” She smiled back.

  They were sitting on the bed together. He knew that, and had known that’s what he was doing when he climbed into bed, but the realization hit him hard, then, after she sent him that smile. He became all too aware of their closeness, the faint heat of her skin, the soft clean scents of her.

  God, he was so tired of this. It was exhausting: wanting, and worrying, and berating himself, and fearing that he’d hurt her.

  Shut up, he told his fevered brain. Shut the hell up.

  “I was wondering,” he said, and heard a note of shyness in his voice, “if we could try to get some sleep.”

  Her expression eased with relief, smile widening. “Yeah. That sounds good.” She handed him the sketchpad. “Would you mind…?”

  He took it carefully and set it and her pencil on the nightstand. “Ready?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’m good.”

  He clicked off the lamp and they booth scooted down so they were lying flat, heads on the pillows. Whitney was beneath the covers and he was on top of them, but he figured that was for the best. Less chance of inappropriate touching that way.

  He lay flat on his back, hands linked on his stomach, shivering beneath his skin. Would he even relax enough to sleep? Probably not.

  But he heard Whitney let out a deep sigh and heard her snuggling down into her pillow. So at least she was relaxed. At least this nearness was good for her. And that was more important than anything, really.

  He closed his eyes, though he knew it was futile…and fell asleep before he had a chance to be surprised about drifting off.

  ~*~

  Not a nightmare this time, no. Just a dream, but a solid one; he felt the tug of gravity beneath his boots.

  He was at The Nest, its familiar black walls, pink neon, shining glass bar. He smelled the old smells: sweat, and cologne, and arousal. Heard the electronic music, a low bass t
hump through the hidden speakers.

  This place had been his home for three years. His personal hell.

  It was empty now, nothing but the music, and the vibrating lights along the edge of the stage.

  He glanced down at himself, and saw that he was wearing his cut, a white t-shirt, jeans. He was covered with ink, all the tats he’d let Ziggy needle beneath his skin after he finally left this place for good.

  He felt his voice welling in his throat; felt the urge to call out. But he didn’t, just started walking instead, because he knew that, this being only a dream, he wouldn’t find any demons tonight. At least not the kind he was afraid of.

  The music dimmed as he headed down the back hall, replaced by a low sultry jazz that echoed softly beyond the closed doors that lined the walls.

  It was room number eight, because it always had been. Ian’s favorite.

  Ian, a small voice chimed in the back of his mind, the sound mournful, full of longing, like he’d lost Ian somehow. None of it had ever been Ian’s fault, not even what Ian had become.

  He didn’t knock, but let himself in, already knowing what he’d find. Ian knelt on the mattress, shirtless, his form pale and slender and perfect, wearing the black leather shorts that were his trademark, hair a straight shiny sheet over his shoulder, eyes ringed in kohl. He wasn’t alone. Daniel knelt in front of him, and they had their hands on one another, kissing in that deep, thorough, relentless way that Ian always kissed.

  Heat coiled tight in Tango’s stomach.

  Ian broke the kiss, hands still cradling Daniel’s face – such elegant, long-fingered hands he had – and turned to Tango, eyes sleepy with lust.

  Daniel was breathing hard, his mouth wet and red, eyes sparkling. He’d always been so beautiful in a natural way, not in the feminine, painted-up way that Ian and Tango had been made to look.

  “Come here, darling,” Ian said, and Tango went.

  And then he felt the familiar lurch and slide as the dream became a nightmare. It was no longer Daniel on the mattress, but Miss Carla now, in that awful pink negligee she’d worn when…when…when she…