Iron & Bone (Lock & Key #3)

by Cat Porter

  “I finally refinished the floors. I’m a traditionalist at heart.”

  She peered into my living room. “It seems big for someone on his own.”

  “I like open space. My own, especially.”

  She only nodded.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I completely understand. I haven’t had my own space in a long, long time.”

  “You’ll get there.”

  She raised her head and let loose a small smile. I captured that sunbeam in my chest and felt its heat diffuse in my system. But the distance between us remained like a cold slab of stone separating us.

  “Jill, come here.”

  Her posture straightened. “I came over to apologize for the other night and tell you that we don’t have to keep this charade going.” She let out a breath she’d seemed to be holding on to forever.

  “What charade?”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “I thought after the other night on the couch—”

  “Jill, I wouldn’t have had you in my bed that first night at the club if I didn’t mean it, if I didn’t want you there.”

  She fidgeted, one hand rubbing up and down her opposite forearm.

  “Firefly.” I reached out my hand toward her.

  She stared at it, and my throat burned.

  “Jillee, please, baby.”

  She took three steps toward me and laid her hand in mine. Cool, soft.

  I brought it to my lips. “I’m sorry for getting up and leaving the way I did that night.”

  “No, I’m sorry. I went overboard. I usually do. Not that I usually…you know…” She blushed. “What I mean is, I’m sorry I brought up all those difficult memories for you and made you uncomfortable, then I only made it worse when I said your name.”

  I pulled her in close, and she finally pressed into my chest.

  All the tension I’d been carrying in my shoulders and back released. “Stop. You didn’t do nothing wrong. I overreacted.”

  “But if that’s the way you feel, Boner, that’s the way it is.”

  “I’ve never shared my past with anyone before. Only Dig.” I smoothed the soft waves of her hair from her face. “But I couldn’t stop myself from telling you the truth. I wanted you to know. But when I heard you say my name—”

  “You see her in me, don’t you? Your cousin, Inès?” Her face reddened, and she shifted her weight. “The wanting to keep me safe, like you kept her safe. I get that.”

  Jesus Christ. Nothing could be further from the truth, but I couldn’t tell her that now, I couldn’t tell her the whole horrible tale. I couldn’t.

  I swallowed hard. “It’s not about her. This, what we have, is about you.”

  Her eyes searched mine.

  “When I lost Dig and Grace, that old futility came washing back over me, chaining me. I lost everything all over again. Couldn’t save anybody. But you—you’d survived your shit. You survived, Jill. I knew you would.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I ran you off club property—at least, what? Twice?”

  She nodded.

  “I watched over you for a year after that, making sure none of them found you. Making sure you hadn’t told and that other assholes weren’t taking advantage of you. I made sure.”

  “You watched me?”

  “Going to school. Going to church. Youth group meetings. Going to football games with your girlfriends. Going on dates. To your therapist. I watched you.”

  She stiffened in my hold. “I saw Dready off and on, but then he stopped showing up.”

  “I came up a few times after I’d told Dready to stop. Until I was sure you had settled back into normal.”

  “Normal? Nothing was ever normal after that!”

  “The last time I’d come up, was when you had just gotten your Honda. I was on my way to Montana, but I stopped at Ellston and trailed you from school. You’d left alone that afternoon and headed for this strip mall in the next town. I parked my bike across the street and followed you into one of the offices.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment and could still picture that big black plastic plaque on the door with the doctor’s name on it.

  “You were getting help,” I said. “It was a year after your abduction, but good times at Ellston High and a bi-weekly serving of God hadn’t been enough to keep the boogie man at bay. You were there at a therapist’s on your own, maybe your parents and your friends knew about these visits, maybe they didn’t. But either way, fuck, you were getting the help you needed, doing something about your pain, facing it, wrestling with it in order to move on.”

  “Dr. Linda Hoskins,” she whispered. “Specializing in children and adolescents and issues related to family conflict, sexual abuse and neglect.”

  “Yeah.” I studied her face, a faraway look in her eyes.

  I had rubbed my gloved hand over the engraved letters of the doctor’s name on that plaque in front of her office. “Help her,” I’d whispered to them.

  Jill’s anguished voice from that first night at the club had come back to me as I stood in front of that therapist’s office: “Just a girl. Just a stupid girl.”

  “You fucking are not,” I’d muttered to myself.

  Dready and I hadn’t seen the usual signs of a teenager acting out in Jill—smoking, wearing skanky clothes, or heavy makeup, anything obvious that from an otherwise normal kid would have said “I’m flipping the fucking bird at you, world.” And there she was getting professional help.

  I’d gotten back on my bike and ripped down Route 90 toward Montana. Toward business. Back to my day to day.

  Away from Jill forever.

  “You followed me back then? You?” she asked, her soft voice bringing me back to the present.

  “Lots of times, and I’m glad I did. Watching you, I’d thought to myself, ‘there’s one less fucked up person in the world.’ Two parents who gave a shit and showed it, school, friends, therapist, a system that worked. You’d gotten into college, had a boyfriend. You were golden. If any of us had a shot at normal it was you. After about a year I stopped. You didn’t need me no more, for whatever it was worth.”

  Her fingers pressed into my flesh. “It was worth a lot. I didn’t even know.”

  “I needed to make sure.”

  “You did that for me?” She whispered. “Why?”

  “You were worth it.”

  “Boner.”

  “I didn’t want you collapsing in on yourself—like I had, like Inès had done. You were around the same age as she was when shit went south for her.”

  “Bone—”

  “I figured I could believe in a little bit of good for a change after seeing you do well.”

  “Boner!” She gripped my arms. “My parents got killed the following year.”

  “What?”

  “They were driving back from a cousin’s wedding in Oklahoma, and there was a tornado. The motel they were at, it—”

  “No.”

  “Yes. I had to quit school. I lost their house, lost the boyfriend, got a job and then another.”

  “Baby—”

  “Plenty of not-so-great boyfriends and not-so-great jobs. I bounced around the area, every time thinking a new place, a new town would make the difference. But it didn’t. Not when you had the same lessons to learn and still refused to, not when you sank yourself into a dark place and couldn’t find the way to climb out. Then, I met Catch, and I thought I found my answer, but that didn’t work out so great, but it gave me Becca.” She sucked in a breath. “I named her for my mom, Rebecca.”

  “It’s a beautiful name.”

  “It is.”

  “If I’d known, I would’ve—”

  “Offered me a job as a stripper?” she said, a crooked grin on her face.

  “No. No, I don’t know.”

  “We met again anyway.”

  “We did.”

  We held each other’s gazes.

  “Yeah, we did,” I repeated.

  Her eyes filled w
ith water.

  “Jillee, what is it?”

  “It’s just that, all this time, I thought you and Dready and whoever else you’d sent up to check on me were doing it to intimidate me only.”

  “Well, yeah, that was part of it.”

  “Part of it. Not all of it?”

  “I had to make sure—”

  She put her hand on my arm. “It means a lot to me. Look, I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable when I said your name.”

  “It surprised me, is all.”

  Her watery eyes shot up at me and held mine with that steely confidence. “It made you sad. I don’t ever want to make you sad. I care about you, and I don’t want whatever we have to make you sad.”

  “Firefly,” I whispered, my heart twisting in my chest.

  My thumb rubbed over her lips. “You took my breath away, coming on my tongue. I did that to you, and it was so beautiful to watch, to feel. And then you said my name, and I lost it. You do that to me, Jillee. Every time we’re together. Every time I think of you.” I leaned my forehead against hers. “You.”

  What had she said to me?

  “Get lost.”

  She’d dared me.

  I am lost, baby.

  Lost in you.

  Lost without you.

  Fucking lost.

  But I couldn’t afford to get lost.

  I took in a breath. “I have to get dressed. I’ve got some business to take care of with Butler. Should be back tonight.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do me a favor. Stay home today. You got appointments and stuff?”

  “Yeah, actually, I do.”

  “What is it?”

  Her eyes widened. “Just something quick in town with Nina.”

  “I’ll call Sy and have him tag along.”

  “What’s wrong? Is something going on?”

  “Just being cautious. With me out of town, I want to make sure you’re safe.” I eyed her. “It’s an Old Man/Old Lady thing.”

  She laughed.

  My heart thumped in my chest like an excited horse’s hooves on dry earth. This girl. “Need a kiss, Firefly.”

  She pressed herself in my arms and kissed me, completely opening up to me, taking, sharing, giving me her warmth.

  So unlike Inès.

  Jill’s fingertips skimmed my scar, and I let out a hiss of air.

  Inès had folded and blasted our house of cards with a cruel grin on her face. She’d turned into someone I didn’t know.

  And so did I.

  But this was the opposite of all that.

  “Boner,” Jill’s breathy voice and warm hands on my skin brought me back to my fucking spectacular present.

  She ripped the towel from my waist and flung it on the floor.

  There’s my Firefly.

  HE RAISED ME IN HIS ARMS and pushed me back against the front door, growling, grinding his erection into me. The creamy soap scent of his freshly washed skin and the press of his taut bare muscles made me rabid.

  He tore off my T-shirt.

  His green eyes electrified. “Is that the bra that—”

  I had gone back and bought that peach bra and panty set that I’d teased him with when we first walked into the store at the mall.

  “It makes me feel pretty, sexy, like you see me. I think of you on me when I wear it.”

  His face softened, and he let out a groan as his fingers stroked my skin. They worked quickly, unsnapping the hook at my back, releasing my breasts, and I let out a gasp. He wrapped the bra around my wrists, raised my hands above my head, and attached the bra up on the empty coat hook on the back of the door. His hands smoothed down my wrists, my arms, in between my breasts, my tummy, around my hips. He shoved my straight cotton skirt down over my hips, down my thighs.

  He was on his knees, looking up at me. I was on display for him, hanging on the door. I squirmed as his tongue nudged at my clit over the thin satin of my panties, wetting the fabric, his burning heat penetrating my seismic center.

  My pulse jumped as he peeled down my panty, sliding it down my legs, stopping mid thigh. All I wanted to do was thrash and smash my body into his mouth, but my legs didn’t have freedom of movement with the panty and the skirt bound around them.

  “Ah, fuck,” he murmured as his thumb slowly stroked up and down my strip of curls, tantalizing every nerve ending. The dark god coaxing me to enter his sensual underground.

  I didn’t need persuading.

  My grip on sanity loosened as his thumb sank over my throbbing clit, his focus riveted on my pussy.

  “Oh!” My back arched.

  He let out a groan as his nose gently nudged at my center, the invasion of its hard edge causing explosions along every bunched nerve in my body. My eyes rolled in the back of my head, my fingers gripping the bra at my wrists. His hands clutched my bare ass as his hot wet tongue explored my pussy, the tense tip swirling up and down, teasing my slit.

  “Oh, Bone.”

  His tongue lapped at me in long, slow licks. I was going to die of pure sin and pure pleasure. Die here, hanging on the back of his front door. His fierce eyes locked on mine as he teased me, adored me. His lips latched on to my clit and sucked. I was bolted to the fucking door by his mouth.

  Pure sin, pure pleasure.

  I shuddered, my brain jamming, my body his desperate prisoner. His teeth lightly grazed me, and I cried out.

  His eyes grew heavy, a devious slant to them. “You like that?”

  “Yes,” I whimpered. “Shit, I knew it. I knew it.”

  “What did you know?” He licked my pussy again.

  “I can feel your heart pounding through your mouth,” I said. “Just like I told you.” My head sank back as my hips arched toward him. “Just like I told you…”

  He sucked with intention. I didn’t know which end was up any longer. I didn’t know where I began and if I ended.

  “Let it go.” His voice rose over my burning skin. “Don’t hold on to it. I’m gonna give you plenty more.”

  Boner buried his face between my legs, two fingers toying with my ass.

  I let it go and burst like a ripe berry in his mouth, my body jerking in his hands, helpless, on fire. He kept on kissing, sucking, nuzzling as I came down, his eyes on me. That intense fervor pulsating through me made me limp in his hold. I was a gaping wound, an overflowing rushing river of emotions and feelings. I was high, laid bare on Boner’s altar of sensation.

  And I loved it.

  He slowly wiped his mouth on my thigh, kissing it, nipping it with his teeth. He tugged my skirt and then my wet and twisted peach thong down my legs, pulling them off my feet. I let out a moan as his hands lightly swept up my legs, my middle, and over my swollen breasts. His fingers tickled up the underside of my arms and unhooked them from the wall, tossing the bra to the floor.

  Eau de Jill lingered on him, and something wild and savage overtook me.

  I kissed him hard, my hand digging into his hair, then down to his waist, over his hard ass, and around to his thick, very thick, very hard cock.

  Glory be to all that is holy.

  I wrapped my fingers around his warm flesh and stroked him up and down, my hand twisting over his stiff length.

  “Ah, fuck me,” he rasped, his mouth hanging open. The gleam of his bared teeth sent a shiver razoring through me.

  Hungry black wolf and his willing mate.

  Yes, that was what I wanted, to mate with him like the untamed creature he’d turned me into.

  He pulled me to the edge of the long burgundy sofa as my heart hammered in my chest. “Lie back.”

  I did as I was told and brought my legs up. On the sofa, he sat on his knees in front of me with his hands gripping me, and slid inside me with one smooth, slow thrust.

  I struggled for air. So full, so full, and he wasn’t even all the way in yet.

  He let out a deep groan. “Fuck.”

  I rocked my hips toward his, and he gripped them tighter, holding me closer to him.

&n
bsp; “Oh, yeah.” My hands pressed into the ridged fabric on the sofa. It was velvet to me, it was satin. I was suspended in air, in sensation, in his beautiful eyes.

  He burrowed his way deeper into me. “Fuck, you’re like silk.”

  We moved together, desperate to find one another, more of each other, to make a precious and hidden small dream come true. We wanted to touch it, touch the light it gave off with every hot breath, every grunt and gasp, every slide of our bodies.

  “Tell me if I’m hurting you. Tell me. Damn it, Jill…”

  He slowly thrust out of me, and a long cry escaped my throat.

  I pushed my hands against the arm of the sofa behind me. “You’re not hurting me. Keep going. Don’t stop.”

  He drove inside me once more, angling his hips a few degrees to the side. “You feel so good. Fuck, I missed you.”

  His face looked pained as he finally buried himself deep. I felt the pounding of it through my heart, my lungs, my throat.

  “You like my cock, Jillee? You want more of me?”

  “I love your cock. So damn perfect. I need it.”

  He pumped into me in steady strokes, and I relished the stinging sensation of his tight grip on my flesh, the burn of his thickness moving inside me, demanding its place. Yes, demanding, and I willingly surrendered.

  All I wanted was to feel him, feel everything about him, the good and the bad, the dark and the shadowy, and feel it all over me.

  I was blowing apart into little bits and never coming back the same.

  My one hand went between us and stroked my clit and the other squeezed a breast. I was greedy.

  He sucked in a hiss of air. “My fucking dirty girl.”

  “That’s not so dirty.”

  “Baby, on you, it fucking is. Trust me.”

  My head fell back. “I want to be dirty for you.”

  Boner’s jaw tightened as his beautiful lean body worked its glorious magic over me. His long dark hair hid part of his face from view, but I could see his brilliant eyes. They smoldered a hole through my heart, a hole that I knew only he could fill.

  Only him.

  His shoulders bunched with every intense movement. My insides surged as the drumming pulse of our shared pleasure overwhelmed me, echoing through every vein and every hollow in my soul.

  “YOU NEED HIGHLIGHTS, LAYERS, THE WORKS. You’ve got such great color, Jill, but you haven’t touched it in a while, and it needs something. How about a dark red color along the bottom half?”