by Warren, Rie
I stumbled back, deliriously happy, one part suspicious. “Are you sure that’s not just the shock talkin’?”
“I’ve been in worse situations.”
We both have.
“Really? I mean the love you part?” I asked again.
“Really.”
Aaand streams of water still dripped off her hot as hell body.
She twined her arms around my neck, and I dropped the towel. The next touch of her lips hit me hard. My hands sliding up and down her back, I held her lightly. The kiss was sensuous, slow . . . unbearably hot. Feeling her again, tasting her, having her in my arms, I kept nuzzling her lips. When our tongues met, an electric shock jolted through me. I guided her head back so I could kiss her more deeply.
Making out with her, unhurried and unrushed, was entirely new. I went back for more, easing the pads of my fingertips up her sides and around her shoulders.
When she whimpered in my mouth, I pulled away.
Sweeping the wet hair from her cheeks, I bent my forehead to hers. “I love you, V.”
She smiled sweetly, caressing my face.
Eventually I retrieved the towel and tied it at my hips. I grabbed another one, patting her dry. With a fluffy white robe wrapped around her, I led her back to the bedroom.
“Hungry? Soup and maybe some juice?” I flicked through the menu.
Now that she was back, my body’s needs made themselves known and my stomach grumbled loudly.
“Someone sure sounds hungry.”
“I didn’t eat. Didn’t sleep.” I glanced at her.
She ducked her head. “You had to find me.”
“Yeah. No other option.” My throat thickened.
She took a long breath in and let it out. Her head raised and she offered a watery smile. “Soup, juice, then whiskey to take the edge off.”
While we waited, she dried and brushed her hair until the colorful red lengths crackled and glowed. I checked, double-checked, and then rechecked all possible entryways into the room.
She didn’t comment on my little compulsion, but my lips curled into a small grin when I knocked on my head and said, “Still got some work to do with Doctor Cartwright.”
After we ate and splashed some whiskey down our throats, we lay together in the bed, only one low light on. All I wanted do was look at her until I really believed she was here.
She was safe.
I held her hand between us as we faced each other. “I can’t believe you were on the run all those years.”
“Technically not on the run. In hiding.” She smoothed her hand through my hair. “You know what that’s like.”
I did. But that had been my job. For her it had been a choice between life and death. It seriously shook my shit up. “But who are you now?”
“I’m me. The woman you know. The woman I want to be. The woman you love.” Her fingers traced the lines of my face.
“Is it okay if I still call you V?”
“Yes. It’s what—” She faltered. “What my family always called me. When you said it, when you say it . . .” Tears glimmering in her eyes, she shook her head. “This is who I am.”
I captured her hands, holding them against my lips. “I know everything that happened with the Iron Coffins too.”
She tried to draw her hands away, but I wouldn’t let her. “I never wanted you to know. I did bad things for all the wrong reasons, and I can’t . . . being cut off from my family was a small price to pay, Bo.”
“And I didn’t want you to know all the bad shit about me either. But you do.” I kissed the soft heart of her palm then her wrist as the big robe slid down her arm. “Think that’s why we get each other?”
“Yes.” She pressed forward, gliding one leg between mine.
My nostrils flared. I ducked away from her kiss.
Barely grazing my fingers down the triangle of skin revealed by the parted robe, I pulled my hands away from her. “I want you so much. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t.” She flipped open the tie of the robe.
When she sat up, it fell off her shoulders to pool at her hips.
Need for her shook me. “Are you sure you’re okay?” Lightly, I skimmed my fingertips over the crests of her breasts. “Bruises? Nothing broken? I could just hold you.”
Veronica untied the knot in my towel and pushed it away. “I need to feel you. I need you to ground me.”
With a hungry growl, I turned her to her back. Her lips. I could kiss them forever. And I did, until she panted and arched beneath me. Her long legs scissored on the bed. Nibbling down her neck, licking every sensitive spot, I circled my tongue in the dip of her collarbone.
“Ahhh,” she moaned.
I smiled against her silky flesh. It had been too long since I’d had her completely. At the peaks of her tits, I couldn’t hold off. Cupping the mounds in my hands, I teased one deeply colored nipple with my tongue while lightly rubbing the other beneath my fingertips.
“I missed this. I missed you,” I murmured.
“Bo . . . ohh, yes.”
Her breath left on a hiss when I sucked the first nipple between my lips, flicking it with my tongue.
“I love your tits.” Pushing both breasts together, I laved the crests at the same time.
She shook with each stroke, her hips steadily rocking against mine.
When she reached down to take my erection in hand, I gently knocked her fingers away, whispering, “Just let me worship you. Let me show you how much I love you.”
I meandered down her body with little nips and long wet licks across her belly. I ran my fingers then my tongue through the little patch of fiery red curls. Her knees rose around me, her feet planted on the bed, but I hooked her thighs farther back until her pussy and her ass were right there in my face.
“Look at how wet you are.” My fingers flat, I slid them over her puffy slit, spreading the silky moisture.
She lifted her head, swiveling even farther up when I dragged my hand away.
“Oh my God. What are you—”
I slipped a finger into her. She pulsed around me. Withdrawing it, I plunged slowly back inside. I kissed and sucked the skin of her smooth inner thighs, gently fingering her. Her entire mound and her ass glistened, plump, hot, and ready. Pulling my fingers out, I slurped them loudly as she groaned.
Then I was on her. No more teasing, I needed to taste. I lapped her sex, dipping my tongue inside and dragging it up to her tiny throbbing bud of flesh. I pulled the tender lips into my mouth and tapped the tip of my tongue against the side of her engorged little clit. I sucked and slurped and ate her out, slowly, hotly, wetly. My tongue toyed with the very bottom of her sweet opening before moving lower, down to the cleft of her luscious ass. Holding her up, I licked away the juice that had dripped there.
She yelped.
I circled the rosy star of flesh.
Her ass jiggled around my face, and I gave a low thrumming laugh. “I should fuck your ass sometime.”
She gasped and tried to pull back, but I was too intent on this sexy new treasure. Hell yeah. My fingers toying with her pussy, playing with her clit, every so often unexpectedly driving into her slit, I lapped and licked and rubbed my face all over her cheeks and in and around the tightest hottest cherry I’d ever seen.
By the time I pushed my face back into her cunt, slowly lowering her legs and hips, she was one long lick away from orgasm.
With an incredibly sexy moan, she shattered apart. My cock ached as I rose to kneel between her spread thighs. I stroked it just once with my wet hand, letting go quickly.
Her cheeks tinged pink. Her mouth parted. Her eyes drifted halfway open as she squirmed beneath me. “I don’t know whether to say thank you or tell you off?”
Bending over her, I kissed her until low whimpers became loud moans. “Thank me.”
“You are a naughty man, Bo.”
“You like it.” My face hardened, every part of my body tensed. “No condom?”
“No. Never again. All of you. I want it now.”
I clasped one hand in her hair, the other around her waist, and speared her with a deep, long thrust.
“Oh fuck yes!”
Making love to her this time was slow and intimate and so fucking intense. The naked feel of her flesh wrapping around me blew my mind wide open. We connected all over, our bodies moving together, our hearts joined just the same. Kissing and gasping, grunting and moaning. Her hips rolled with my deep, never-ending thrusts.
And then faster. Harder. My muscles strained. I punched up on my fists. She arched, those tight nipples brushing the hair on my chest. Her legs curled around my flexing, driving hips. Her hands at my ass pulled me harder. She gripped me inside, clenching and juicing me.
Bowing up, I bellowed her name. The scalding hot flooding rush jetted up my cock and pounded out of me as I froze in place.
I bucked into her again and again, pushing more come into her. Some deep-seated male part of me wanted to watch it seep from her pussy.
Veronica shuddered a last time before relaxing back. I followed her right down to the bed, pulling her into my arms.
I kissed her on the forehead. “You go to sleep now. And I’ll be right here.”
Much later, after we’d snoozed, V spooned against my chest, I woke her with my palm skimming up and down her thigh.
She mumbled and smacked her lips.
So fucking cute.
She turned her head, eyes still closed, and nuzzled my jaw. “Mmm. What?”
“How are you so much better at hiding yourself from me?”
Rolling in my arms, she snaked her tongue out to cruise along my bottom lip. “I didn’t. I can’t. Not from you.”
I scooped her on top of me. “I met your guy Jenkins, by the way.”
“What?” Her head shot up. “How did you find him?”
“I kind of assaulted him when he turned up on your doorstep yesterday.”
“Ohh. Jealous?”
“Hardly. Don’t figure you for a stuffed suit type of woman.”
“Oh yeah? What type of woman do you figure me for?” She sat up on top of me, tracking her fingernails down the deep ridged muscles of my chest.
“Mine.” With her legs hooked around me, I quickly pinned her to the bed.
My cock stood hard and ready between us.
“You belong to me.” I buried myself inside her.
“Yes, Bo!”
Afterward, I maneuvered Veronica on top of me as she stifled a long yawn.
Clenching her closer, I pushed through the stone lodged in my throat, blinking up at the ceiling, glad the room was dark. “You’re free now.”
“What?”
“No more Iron Coffins. No more Iron Nails. You still need to testify, but you can go home to your own family now. I cleared it with Jenkins.” I brushed her hair back.
“What did you say?” She rose above me.
“No more threat. You’re free to be with your family.”
“Oh my God. Oh . . . God, Bo!” She buried her face in the nook of my neck. “Thank you. Thank you.”
Her hot tears spilled over my skin, and her body wracked against mine. A few of my tears silently joined hers.
I held her as her relieved sobs slowed and she fell off to sleep.
“I love you,” I whispered. “I’m gonna miss you.”
Chapter Seventeen
V WOKE LANGUIDLY. SHE cuddled against me, soft and warm.
“Hey, babe.” I kissed her the rest of the way awake until she reached up for my lips. Chuckling low, I asked, “Remember what we talked about last night?”
“Hmm?” She fluffed the hair from her face with a frown. “What now?”
“About your family. Your parents in Santa Fe?”
She’d slept soundly. I on the other hand had paced a strip into the rug before getting on my phone in the late hours of the night.
“What about them?”
“I arranged flights. For today.”
“What?” She hopped off the bed. “I’m not ready to see them!”
“’Course you are.” I masked my breaking heart, approaching her. “You got me to go home. One of the best weekends of my life. Let me return the favor?” Except it wouldn’t be just one weekend for her.
She had an entire family she’d been cut off from for almost a decade. They thought she was dead or she’d disappeared into thin air. She could go back to them now, have her life back. The one she’d lost.
The one that didn’t include me.
“What if they won’t forgive me?” she asked, her lips trembling.
“Stupid question.” With her in my arms, I rocked her back and forth. “You were young. You did what you had to do. You also kept them safe.” I peered down at her. “And you are remarkable.”
“You’ll come with me?”
“Only if you put some clothes on ASAP.”
Seriously. That ass was gonna be the end of me.
She dressed. I helped a little bit. We ate breakfast in our room, holding hands. As I gathered our things to leave, she pressed against my back.
“Thank you, Bo.” Her arms wrapped around me, her voice nothing but a whisper. “Thank you for this. I’ve missed them so much. I thought I’d never get to see them again.”
I choked out a harsh you’re welcome. “We should get moving so we don’t miss the flight.”
I held her hand all the way from the elevator to the lobby. I couldn’t look at her, or I’d never let her go. On the bottom floor, the Retribution men waited, taking up space and looking totally at ease while they wore black leather, goatees, bold ink and seemed completely out of place.
“Wait.” V hauled me back. “How are you getting the Hummer back to Charleston?”
“Tuck’s taking it. Renting a trailer to tow his bike,” I grumbled.
“With the Dobermans riding shotgun?”
“Yeah.” I could look forward to more dog drool in my truck. Maybe some tooth marks and scratches, too.
“Oh, shit. I shouldn’t laugh, but that’s funny,” she gurgled.
I scowled at her. “Those rabid mutts will be shedding all over my upholstery, and you think that’s laugh material?”
“A little bit?”
My laughter boomed across the lobby, and everyone swiveled toward us.
V walked up to the badass crew, hugging and thanking all of them with big tears on her cheeks.
I didn’t hear every word she said. Didn’t need to because—fuck—tears sprung to my eyes, too.
I followed behind her, shaking hands, hitting fists, slapping backs.
When I reached Tuck, I asked, “Try not to let those dogs hump the seats, will you?”
“They might just lick ’em.”
“That’s what I thought.” I groaned.
“We call it a spit shine.”
I groaned again as he chortled.
“Yeah, so. I’ll be back in a day or two.” Facing everyone, I grabbed the carryalls. “Can’t thank you enough. Seriously. Semper Fi, guys,” I said, clenching the handles of the bags in sweaty hands and ducking my head before my emotions ran overboard.
Tuck sent me the peace sign. Cole saluted with one shoulder bandaged. The others slowly clapped, but Hunter dragged me away from V and marched me straight outside. “Exactly what the fuck is going on?”
"She needs her family."
“She needs you too, dumb fuck.”
I shook my head and shook free of his hold. “Nah. Nah. She doesn’t.”
“So just like that you’re done with her?”
Dropping the bags, I rubbed my hands over my hair, shooting him a glare. “No. Yes. No. Fuck. She belongs with them, man.”
“Did you even talk to her about this?”
“’Course I did. Sort of. She needs to see them.”
“I mean about the whole cut and run thing you got going on.” Hunter prowled in front of me.
“She won’t want me when she has them.”
“That is
such utter fucking bullshit I don’t even know why you bother to pay a head doctor.”
“Back off, Hunter. This is hard enough for me to do without you getting in my face.” I took up his pacing. “You think I want this? I. Want. Her.”
“Show it. Prove it.”
Veronica appeared, placing her hand on the bunched muscles of my forearm. “Everything okay?”
“Peachy,” I spat out.
“Keen.” Hunter turned to me with a low hissed, “You’re a dumbass.”
I stalked away from him to the waiting taxi, V’s hand firmly grasped in mine.
Once Veronica and I boarded the plane, the last of my worries about her welfare washed away. But a sinking sense of desolation replaced the relief from the night before. During the cross-country flight, she dozed off and on—no doubt still in the grips of physical and emotional exhaustion.
She’d made a tear-filled phone call to her parents before we left the hotel in Jacksonville. They’d be expecting her in the evening, and I knew what I had to do. While she napped, I was content simply to hold her against my shoulder, her hand clasped in mine.
Every airborne mile increased the distance that would eventually separate us.
I watched her carefully, memorizing every beautiful detail—the lioness hair, the long sweep of her eyelashes, the relaxed curve of her lips in sleep. I touched her brow, her cheek, her chin, curling her closer.
We landed at Santa Fe Municipal Airport where I rented a car. I would’ve liked to have had one more night with her, taken her out to dinner, shit, maybe even dancing, but I didn’t think my heart could take anymore punishment.
Delaying the inevitable only meant more pain later.
On the fifteen minute drive to her parents’ in the Eldorado area I tried to stay relaxed and at ease for V’s sake, but it was goddamn hard.
I parked in front of the decent-sized adobe house she’d grown up in, keeping my face stoically clear of the turbulent emotions roiling around inside me.
“Oh my God.” She stared at the house, her hand clamped around mine.
I squeezed her fingers. “Nervous?”
“Yes. I’m scared. What if they don’t like me?”
Lifting her chin, I drew her face to mine. “What’s not to like? You’re beautiful.” I kissed her delicate earlobe. “Successful.” I dragged my lips to her cheek. “Funny. Damn smart. One woman in a million.” Setting my lips to hers, I kissed very softly, very slowly.
