“Stay open for me,” I said, positioning her feet wide apart on the edge of the bed. “Just like that.”
Unbuttoning my shirt, I yanked it out of my waistband but left it on. Let her peel it off me once she’d come all over my face. If I could manage to drag myself away from her perfect little pussy.
The room was lit only by a low-wattage lamp, but I could still see her tight lips glistening with wetness. Our kiss had done this to her, just as it had made me insanely thick and hard.
“So wet,” I murmured, kissing up her slim, silky thigh. “Why?”
“I love the way your mouth tastes,” she said. Her fingers were delicate in my hair, stroking, tracing my ear and the back of my neck.
“Pretty soon it’s going to taste exactly like you.”
“I can’t wait,” she said.
“You won’t have to.”
I parted her with my middle fingers and inhaled, smelling how delicious and female she was. Every woman had her own unique scent, but this woman had a scent that hit me like a drug. It went straight to my brain in a nanosecond and switched on every primal impulse.
I teased her with the tip of one finger, running it lightly from her clit through her swollen inner lips and back again. Her juices flowed, covering my finger and dripping onto the sheets like sweet, sticky honey.
“Drex, please,” she begged, writhing under my touch.
I grabbed her hips in both hands and held her still. “It feels too good, doesn’t it?”
“Way too good,” she said, fighting my grip. “I need…” She voice caught on a sweet little sigh.
“What do you need, Blue Eyes?”
“Your tongue.”
“Please,” I said.
She whimpered. “Please.”
“Where do you need my tongue?”
“On my pussy. Inside me.”
“Oh,” I said. “You want me to fuck you with my tongue, is that it?”
She arched her back in response. Tiny goosebumps appeared on her legs as she shivered with pent-up desire.
“But I fucked you hard five hours ago. Wasn’t that enough?” I breathed against her skin, letting her feel how warm and eager my mouth was.
“Not even close,” she said, pulling up the hem of her dress even further. I loved seeing her open and needy, wanting me in spite of everything that had happened tonight. Maybe because of it.
“You’re mine, you know that?” I asked, and lightly pressed the tip of my tongue to her slick little clit.
She gasped and moaned softly. “Yes,” she whispered.
“Yes, what?”
“I’m yours.”
“You’re mine even if you’re someone else’s. Is that clear?” I lapped the velvety skin of her outer lip, tasting its delicate, womanly perfume.
“Yes.”
“You’re not his anymore. You belong to me. You know how I know?”
“How?”
I licked her, long and slow, from her entrance to her clit. “Because of the way you respond to me. Your body knows what it wants, and it knows who.”
Though my mouth was slick from her juices, I wanted more. I wanted to drink her, eat her until she was begging for mercy after too many powerful orgasms. “I don’t care what happened before. No man ever wanted you like I do.”
“I know,” she said, and lifted her hips. Right now, I was the luckiest man on Earth. Somehow this angel had crossed my path, and she deserved to get the best pussy-licking of her life.
I knew my tongue could work magic, but this was ridiculous. As soon as I flickered it over her clit and sucked the tender sliver of flesh into my mouth, she let out a high-pitched cry that was music to my ears. Already she was on the brink of coming and I’d barely touched her. We should spend two frustrating hours getting interrogated more often.
“Don’t tell me you’re that easy to please,” I said.
“With you, I am,” she whispered.
“I’ve just started.” She shivered under me as I lapped her. Pushing my fingers inside her, I lavished her clit with hungry kisses.
“Oh, Drex,” she breathed. I smiled at the hitch in her voice. A hot mix of rough and gentle was key to her pleasure, and it just so happened that was what I did best.
This was the ultimate high-end male fantasy – a gorgeous woman in a form-fitting gown, panties pulled to her ankles, offering her drenched pussy to devour.
I licked her until her legs quivered and her moans were hoarse. Two orgasms less than five minutes apart, but who was counting? I’d have been happy to go on like this all night.
And that was exactly what I planned to do.
It was the middle of the night before I was finished with Jane. Or was it she who was finished with me?
All I knew was that she was on top of me and naked except for stilettos. I had fucked her senseless and come twice, and she – well, I’d lost track. In the last three hours, we’d probably broken some of noise ordinances and damaged my bed frame in the process. I’d never fucked so hard I’d busted the furniture, and I was damn proud of it.
When I could walk, I got a cold bottle of wine and a pint of chocolate ice cream from the kitchen and brought both to the bedroom with one glass and a spoon. I liked sharing with Jane, tasting her lips and her candy-flavored tongue.
Smiling as if there were nothing she’d rather do than eat ice cream and sip wine with me, she kicked off her heels and sat cross-legged on my duvet. Never had a woman looked so sweet, innocent, and sexy.
“Open wide,” I said, holding up the loaded spoon.
“Haven’t I been doing that for the last two hours?” Her voice was husky and her hair gorgeously disheveled. I guided the spoon into her mouth and watched, fascinated, as she slowly licked it clean.
“Yum,” she said. “This is fun.”
“Isn’t it? The whole town is asleep and we’re up indulging ourselves.” I took a bite of ice cream and washed it down with a swig of Pinot Gris. “I wish I didn’t have to work in the morning. I’ve never been an early riser.”
“Maybe it’s habit,” Jane said, snuggling against me. “All those late nights playing pool.”
Leaning back against the leather headboard, I wrapped an arm around her. “True. Even though I haven’t played competitively in a long time, I’m still a nighthawk at heart.”
“How did you learn?” she asked. “Did your father teach you?”
I never liked admitting how rough a start I’d really had, but with Jane, it didn’t feel right to gloss it over. “It’s not a glamorous story,” I said, feeding her another spoonful of ice cream. “I started going to bars with my dad when I was nine years old. My mother worked the night shift as a nurse, and the bar was like my babysitter.”
“Not exactly the best place for a kid,” she said, her voice quiet.
“I thought so, too, for a while. I got so bored listening to these drunk clowns spout off about their jobs and their marriages. I used to throw darts until I couldn’t see straight, and when I was nine I started messing around with a pool cue. The tables were all beat up and the cues were cheap, but as soon as I picked one up, I knew. This was something I wanted to do well.”
She looked at me, her eyes wide and interested. “So you’d go to the bar with your father and practice?”
I nodded. “Nobody took me seriously at first, and for good reason. Thanks to my father’s example, I was used to skirting the rules and doing things my way. With pool, that didn’t fly for long. This old guy named Henry used to watch me from his stool every night and yell at me when I tried to cheat or cut corners. Once in a while he’d get up and show me a couple of tricks, and that’s when I realized how damn good he was. He’d never made money at it, he wasn’t a pro, but he understood the nuances. The little things that helped me perfect my stroke.”
“I must say you have your stroke down,” she said with a barely-suppressed smile. “It has to be all that practice.”
I swallowed a sip of wine. “Some of it’s just natural talent
. And it helps to be playing with a worthy opponent.”
“Opponent, huh? You mean, there can’t be two winners?”
“When you’re playing with me, losing is just as fun as winning.”
“If not more so,” she said.
“Right.” Her smile faded as a shadow crossed her face. “What is it?” I asked.
“Nothing. It’s just…” Her breath came out in a huff. “I can’t tell you what happened when I was nine. I can’t describe the people I knew. Sometimes I feel like an empty shell.”
I pulled her closer. “You’re not. You’re still you.”
“But it’s like I was born ten days ago in this body, with this mind, and I have no idea how I got here.”
I was about to blurt out something sentimental as hell, but I couldn’t help it. “Think about it, though. If this hadn’t happened…we’d never have met.”
She was quiet for a minute. “I can’t imagine that.”
“Unfortunately, I can.”
I remembered way too well what my life was like before Jane, and the memories weren’t worth the brain space they occupied. Nights out with the guys, doing shots and hitting on anybody who looked passable from twenty feet away in dim lighting. Working even when I was home, and working all weekend. Politely asking girls to leave at three in the morning when I was finished with them and disgusted that I’d fucked them in the first place. Giving the real part of myself to my dogs and a few close friends.
How long could I keep that up? Or was I done with it, thanks to Jane?
In two weeks, she’d shown me what my life could be. And all I’d given in return was some new clothes and a lot of smokingly hot sex. Pure selfishness, Cougan-style. I was so good at taking what I wanted from a woman, and really shitty at knowing what she needed. And what Jane needed now, more than anything, was to know who she was.
Fun as it was, she deserved a lot more than earth-rocking orgasms and pretty evening gowns. She deserved to have her life back.
Even if it took her away from me, goddamnit, I would do everything I could to give her that.
The next morning, I spent my first three hours at the office trying to find news about Jane.
I called police stations all over the Southwest, and when that turned into about twelve dead ends, combed the internet. Jesus. How had so many women gone missing?
There were news reports from Seattle to Savannah, but none of the photographs looked remotely familiar. Some stories were about young girls, gone for months or years. This one kidnapped, that one a runaway, another one gone without a trace.
A lead weight settled onto my chest. There were a hundred head-spinning things that might have happened to Jane, and not one was good.
Giving Blue Eyes her life back might be even harder than I thought. In fact, it might be impossible. I could build a booming business from nothing but some barroom skills and my wits, but I couldn’t whip up information that didn’t exist. It was fucking infuriating.
I was staring blankly out the window behind my desk when I heard a knock. “Yeah,” I called. I spun around in my chair as the door opened. It was Brooke in full resting bitch face, wearing a sleeveless purple pantsuit that looked like nightclub gear.
“Can I talk to you?” No greeting, no smile, no how-are-you. Just pure entitled Daddy’s girl.
“Yup.”
Looking determined, she stepped into my office and shut the door. Maybe, just maybe, she was finally starting to take her job seriously. She might finally be taking the initiative on something – hopefully the mall project in New Orleans. Or working with Stef and Thomas had inspired her a little bit, and she was ready to start earning her place in the company.
A gust of dark, spicy perfume came in along with her. I pinched my nose to keep from sneezing. “Take a seat,” I said.
“I’d rather stand,” she said. “This is…this is difficult.”
Holy crap, she was going to quit. Do what I’d wanted her to do for three years and go do something else with her life. Something she was cut out for, like fashion or television or marriage.
She stood at the window, her profile pointy and her mouth tight. Wait a minute – she wasn’t going to quit. This was about something else. Something personal between her and me.
“Listen, Drex…”
If this was going to be yet another conversation about getting back together, I wasn’t up for it. I didn’t want to hear about what a great power couple we’d make, or how happy her father would be, or the beautiful kids we’d bestow upon the world. We’d gone over it and over it, ad-fucking-nauseum.
“Now, Brooke, I’m busy, and –”
She turned to face me. “Your brother called me.”
I frowned. “Pierce? Why?”
“Well, first of all, we’re friends.”
Acid boiled in my stomach. “Friends? Come on, Brooke. He just uses you when he wants to stir shit up.”
“That’s not true. Believe it or not, we actually like each other.”
Why? I almost asked. Because you’re both crafty and manipulative takers who enjoy the hell out of sowing chaos? “That’s great. Now, I have work to take care of and so do you.”
Her expression stayed cool and calm. “And I’ll get to it in a minute, once you explain to me what you’re doing with that Jane woman. From what Pierce said, she’s not exactly an asset to your reputation.”
That fucking son-of-a-bitch. “He’s got his opinion and I’ve got mine. In this case, mine is the one that counts.”
Her cold eyes didn’t budge from my face. “He wouldn’t go into all the details, but apparently she has a very loose relationship with the truth.”
“I’m sorry – what?”
“She told him she lost her memory.”
I felt like I’d swallowed rat poison. “So?”
“So…what kind of person says that to someone she just met?”
I sat back in my chair and crossed my arms. “She does have an unusual sense of humor.”
“She was the same way with me,” Brooke said, chin lifting. “I couldn’t pin her down about anything. This is the woman you take to a party and introduce to your investors? Reputation is everything for you, Drex. You know that. You’ve had trouble enough with yours as it is.”
It was all I could do not to hurl my paperweight into the wall. “Look,” I said, “what I do on my own time is my business. I don’t remember giving up control of my decisions to you, your father, or anyone else.”
She almost smiled. She wanted me to get pissed off and defensive, and I was stepping right into her devious trap. “You wouldn’t be angry if I hadn’t struck a nerve,” she said.
“This isn’t angry, this is busy. This is me with a lot of responsibility on my shoulders. This is me with employees and investors depending on me. Now if you don’t have anything better to do but disparage my girlfriend –”
Brooke couldn’t have looked more shocked if I’d slapped her. “So this woman who appears out of nowhere and makes up wild stories is your girlfriend?”
I shrugged. “She’s whatever I say she is.”
“Does she know that?”
“Of course. Now, we have two openings coming up and a lot of publicity to coordinate. I’m surprised I have to remind you of that.”
Brooke’s eyes shot fire across my desk. “I’m only trying to help the company. Your company.”
“This isn’t help, it’s gossip, and it’s a waste of time. If you’re too occupied with spreading rumors to work, I can appoint Ruby to your position. This morning.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “You’d give a personal assistant my job? She’s twenty-four. You can’t be serious.”
“Nobody works harder or cares about this company more.”
“You know what?” Brooke said with an imperious head-toss. “I don’t think my father would like the way you’re speaking to me.”
I leaned back in my chair. “Fuck him.”
She gasped. “Excuse me?”
I’d care
d too long about Scott’s opinion, and it stopped today. “I’ve never toned down the truth, and I’m not going to start now.”
Brooke stood with her arms at her sides, fists clenched. “Wake up, Drex. I don’t have a problem with the truth, you do.”
With a flip of her hair, she turned her back and walked out.
My concentration was shot for the rest of the afternoon. I stared blankly at contracts and had to force myself to pay attention during conference calls. Yeah, I was fucking furious at Pierce, but he was just being his young, stupid self. I hadn’t expected better from him.
What really bothered me was something else. Something I could hardly stand to think about.
Maybe Brooke was right, after all. I didn’t want to hear what she said because it really was the truth.
I didn’t want to know how it sounded to other people, because it sounded insane. It sounded like bullshit to Pierce, to Brooke, to the police. Even Jane knew her story was far-fetched and insane.
Apparently, the only person who’d fallen for it completely was me.
As if I hadn’t done that enough in my life. Seen a woman in need and stepped in to help, damn the consequences. Take Mia, the girl whose education I’d helped fund because she seemed sweet and down on her luck, and she’d grown up in lousy circumstances way too similar to mine. And how had that turned out?
After four years of purely platonic generosity, she had her college degree and an unhealthy obsession with yours truly. It had taken four months of stern talks and changing my number before she’d finally given up. I hoped to hell she’d found somebody to care about her.
I should have learned my lesson then, but I hadn’t. Not by a long shot. Apparently, I still had something to prove, to myself at least.
I wasn’t like my father, a user and abuser of people who didn’t do anything unless it benefitted him. Yeah, my rise to the top hadn’t been by-the-book, and I’d stepped over a lot of bodies on the way, but I wasn’t Elijah. I could care, I could give. I just had to keep doing things that convinced me of that.
Unfortunately, caring and giving almost always came at a steep price. It was one thing to keep bailing out my father and brother, but a woman I’d found walking half-naked down the street? A stranger whose past wasn’t just mysterious, but nonexistent?
Descended (The Red Blindfold Book 3) Page 17
