by Tasha Black
“—we’re getting out of here. Thanks for the check-up, Doc,” West was saying.
He stood, and grabbed Cordelia’s hand.
“I’m giving you a ride,” he told her, allowing no room for negotiation.
Cordelia was relieved. She wanted to go with him, but would have given him a hassle on principle if he had asked.
Mallory gave her a gigantic conspiratorial wink, before turning crisply back to Dalton.
Cordelia felt her face reddening, but West was already dragging her toward the elevator.
The door slid open at their approach and then shut again behind them.
In the small space, West’s presence was overwhelming. Cordelia could smell his aftershave, her hand was lost in the warmth of his.
She peeked up at him.
He was staring down at her fiercely, dark eyes blazing, jaw clenched, like he was holding back something.
“Are you mad at me?” she whispered.
He shook his head.
“I was just trying to keep from doing this.”
The next thing she knew she was pinned to the wall, his enormous body pressed into hers. His hands roamed all over her, one wrapped in her hair, one on her hip. Then both met, cupping her face as he locked her gaze with his.
“I’m not doing this here. You will come home with me and I will make you never want to leave. Do you understand?” he asked.
She nodded wordlessly.
The elevator door slid open again. He led her down the dark corridor with the swinging bulb and peeling wallpaper, and out into the street.
McSweeney hopped out of the car and opened the back door.
“Miss Cross, what a happy surprise,” he exclaimed.
“Hello, Mr. McSweeney, it’s very nice to see you,” she smiled back.
West practically threw her into the backseat. She almost giggled at his impatience, and slid over to make room for him.
McSweeney closed the door behind them and walked around to the driver’s side.
“Don’t you dare talk to him, you’re mine tonight, do you hear me?” West growled into her ear.
“Westley Worthington, you will be respectful to your employees,” she whispered back fiercely.
She expected him to be mad, but instead he threw back his head and laughed.
“God, I’ve missed you, Cord,” he chuckled.
“Glad to see you’re having a nice evening,” McSweeney said, as he slipped into his seat and turned on the engine.
“Yes, it’s the nicest evening I’ve had in a long time,” West announced.
Then he wrapped his arm around Cordelia and pulled her close.
And no matter how much she wanted to keep her composure, she couldn’t quite manage to fight him.
The ride was only twenty minutes or so. West chatted obligingly with McSweeney, while Cordelia snuggled into his chest. He was so warm, and he smelled like home.
The hand he had around her shoulder moved up to stroke her hair gently.
Cordelia was almost in a trance by the time the bright lights of downtown Glacier City began to blur past them.
At last, they had arrived.
“Have a nice evening,” McSweeney said kindly as he opened the car door.
The ride up on the elevator was a blur, West clutched her in his arms, nuzzling her hair.
Cordelia was almost dizzy with anticipation.
When the door opened into the penthouse, he swept her into his arms and carried her past the dinosaur fossil in the entrance, through the sky room with its imposing view, and up the stair case to a bedroom.
The room was all soft grays and creams, with window seat bookshelves built-in under windows overlooking the city below, each partially covered with filmy sheer curtains. It felt like a cloud.
This was not the room he called his bedroom. Cordelia was familiar with the opulent room where he took the other girls during his outrageous parties. She’d had to bail him out of there more than once.
He put her down in the unfamiliar surroundings.
33
“Where are we?” she asked.
“This is my room, my real room - where I sleep. You’re going to sleep here too,” he told her.
She began to feel dizzy. Everything with West was like this, too good or too awful. There was so much that had to be explained and understood. They couldn’t risk ruining everything again.
“West, we should talk—” she began.
“No,” he said firmly. “Not tonight. Don’t pull the past and the future into this night. We have the rest of our lives for talking. Just for tonight, please, let’s make it about us.”
Although his voice was deep and steady, Cordelia saw the pleading in his eyes.
“I love you, Cordelia Cross,” he said. “With all my heart. Please just let me love you.”
It had been a long time since Cordelia’s heart and her head told her the same thing.
Go to him.
She took a single step across the grid of moonlight on the floor.
West made up the rest of the distance, wrapping his arms around her and drawing her against his chest.
She reveled in his spicy scent, the safety of those big arms, the beat of his heart against her ear.
Her body went weak with desire. All she felt was the magnetic pull of him, as if the time apart had made their bodies somehow more familiar to each other, more addicted.
Yet, when he pulled back to kiss her, though she knew it would bring their embrace closer to its consummation, she was sad to leave her place, nestled against his chest. She felt safe there, beloved.
She opened her eyes as the cool air hit her cheek.
West stared down at her, his dark eyes flashing, and his jaw set. As if going so slowly were torture.
He kissed her, slowly at first, building as his passion got the better of him.
Every time he angled that hard mouth over hers, tasting and claiming her, it was as if they were in a sinking ship and she was the only lifeline. She wondered fleetingly if it would always be that way. When they had been together for a long time, would he kiss her that way at the movies? What about when they were gray-haired, drinking tea on the front porch?
And then he slid his hands under her shirt and she forgot to think of anything else.
One warm rough hand, and one cool one, smoothed up her belly and over her breasts. But they did not linger. Instead, he lifted her shirt over her head and threw it to the floor.
When they had fooled around in the backyard garden in Cobble Slope it had been so dark, and he’d only unbuttoned her shirt partially.
Now, he was pulling back to look at her and there was no place for her to hide.
Cordelia knew, down to her bones, that she was beautiful.
But compared to the actresses and fashion models West had dated… well, Cordelia considered herself more a matron than a minx.
And that was fine with her. If it wasn’t with him, she guessed it was his loss.
She stood proudly, offering him herself, just as she was. But at the last second, she turned her face, so as not to have to see his expression as he examined her.
“Cord,” he breathed, “My Cordelia.”
She ventured a look.
His face was transported. As if in slow motion, he reached for her, gently sliding down the straps of her bra.
Every touch abraded her skin, as if she were so sensitive she would burst like ripe fruit.
She closed her eyes and felt one hand at her back, unfastening her bra.
It slid to the ground.
West fell on her breasts instantly, the roughness of his stubble making her acutely aware not only of where his mouth was, but where it had been.
He licked her right nipple into his mouth, his tongue flicking mercilessly against the swelling bud.
She whimpered and tried to hold still.
West wrapped his hands around her ass, dragging her backward until he sat at the edge of his bed.
He slid his hands
around her body, curving around her belly, sliding up her ribcage, and over her breasts, teasing the nipples with his thumbs, then replacing his left thumb with his mouth, licking and sucking her distended nipple until Cordelia found herself arching against his mouth.
As he released her left nipple and turned his attention to her right, she felt his hands slip back over her rear, to tug down the zipper on her skirt.
When it pooled on the floor at her feet, West followed it down.
Cordelia gasped when she felt his breath against her thighs.
“West, I,” she began, trembling at the memory of what he had done before.
But he was already shredding her panties with his prosthetic hand as he had that night in the garden. He groaned with satisfaction as he pressed his face into her.
The feeling threatened to overwhelm her. Cordelia fought to remain standing as West nuzzled and mouthed her sex.
At last, his tongue pressed against her, parting her.
The sensation was sweet and so pleasant it was almost frightening. Cordelia felt herself swell under his attention.
Her hands found their way into his hair and she stroked and tugged it dreamily.
West lapped and flicked, until every fibre of her being was concentrated on his mouth, as she ached and throbbed for relief.
Calling on resistance she didn’t think she had, Cordelia stepped back, out of his reach.
“Cord,” his voice was ragged with need.
“No,” she told him in the coolest voice she could manage, nearly losing it when she saw the shimmer of her own juices on his mouth.
“Why?” he asked. There was a glint of interest in his dark eyes.
“Because I want you, all of you,” she told him.
A strange expression came across his face.
“West, is this what you want?” she heard herself ask.
He didn’t answer. He turned his head slightly to the side and darkness swallowed any clue of what his expression might have told her.
“Are you having second thoughts?” she asked, fighting back tears.
He rose at that, and crossed the room to embrace her.
“You made me, Cordelia. I was nothing. You pulled me out of a gutter. I’m as sure about you as I am of the sun rising,” he whispered in her ear.
West swept her up in his arms as if she were weightless and strode back to the bed, laying her gently down. He brushed a strand of hair from her face, the tender gesture at odds with the hugeness of his body, the heat pouring off him.
Then he backed up and began to unbutton his shirt.
“I remember before the accident,” he told her, sliding the shirt over his shoulders. “You were drawn to me like a moth to the flame.”
Though she had seen him shirtless since he’d had the prosthetics, Cordelia was able to look at him now. Really look, not just steal a glimpse. His abs rippled like something off the cover of a romance novel. His broad chest led on one side to the bulging biceps the eye expected. The other arm was smooth, contoured prosthetic.
He slid off his shoes and socks, and kicked them carelessly across the floor.
Then his hands went to his belt-buckle.
This was new territory.
“I had a whole body then,” he told her, “though I didn’t appreciate it. I spent half my time defiling it, and the other half fighting. Fighting with my body, with myself.”
He hesitated.
“And now here we are. You, a beautiful, whole woman, and me,” he gestured to himself, trousers hovering at his hips. “What’s left of a man. Do you really want to see what’s behind the mask?”
Cordelia was reeling. She sat up.
“West, is this a body image issue?” she spluttered. “Seriously? Between us?”
He cocked his head.
“An artist made those limbs,” she told him. “You should be proud.”
“That’s not what I meant. I’m really lucky—” he began.
“I’m not finished,” Cordelia cut him off. “Did you ever stop to wonder what I might like?”
“I-I—”
“—I like that body. I like you exactly the way you are,” she told him indignantly.
He began to smile. She could tell he was trying not to, which made her even angrier.
“Don’t smile at me, Westley Worthington,” she said.
But he only began to laugh.
And then she laughed too.
When he threw back his head in delight, she slipped to the floor in front of him and pushed at his hands, so she could unbutton his pants.
He froze for a moment, but then he very slowly moved his hands out of the way.
His breathing become shallow as she dragged the zipper down. Beneath the fabric she could feel him, straining to be released.
She slid down his pants and boxers at once.
His cock sprang free, and Cordelia couldn’t take her eyes off it.
But she hesitated. She hadn’t tried this many times. She worried she might not be as experienced as West was used to.
She slid her hands down his thighs, buying herself time. One thigh was warm, the other cool and smooth. Both were strong under her hands.
“Get back in bed, baby,” West murmured. “I’m going to take good care of you.”
But she shook her head and leaned forward, licking her lips.
34
West was on the edge of what he could take.
Cordelia was here, his Cordelia, naked, kneeling at his feet, her mouth practically on him.
“You don’t have to do that, Cord,” he whispered. Though he wanted her to do it, desperately. He also wanted to make love to her with the last of his restraint. He wanted to respect her as she deserved.
But when she leaned in with that adorable expression of determination, he was powerless to stop her.
Her velvet tongue snaked out to taste him. The first delicate stroke almost sent him over the precipice.
He closed his eyes and prayed to hold it together.
When he opened them, she was looking up at him.
Satisfied that he was pleased, Cordelia took a few more swirling tastes, and then pulled him into her mouth.
The warm wet suction was unbearably good. West groaned, and fought the urge to thrust.
Cordelia moaned in reply, the sound vibrating around him through her tongue.
He slid a hand into her hair, without meaning to.
When she pulled him in deep again, he felt the tension building, building.
“Okay, baby, that’s enough,” he told her gently, holding her back by her hair, when what he really wanted to do was quite the opposite. There would be plenty of time for games. Tonight he wanted the real thing.
She made a small sound of disappointment, but he pulled her to her feet and laid her on the bed.
When he crawled on top of her, she smiled up at him, her ocean-blue eyes sparkling in the moonlight.
Her blue-eyed smile was like sunshine, like a song. She could do what she had just done, or a thousand wilder things. But it would always be that smile that brought him to his knees.
Her eyes had brought him through the coma after his fall.
He wondered if a part of her would stay with him after the prosthetics burnt him out.
“West,” she whispered, reaching for him.
He could hear the need in her voice.
“I’ve got you, baby,” he reassured her.
Trembling, he placed himself against her.
She was so wet, so warm.
He throbbed helplessly against her.
“I love you, Cordelia,” he told her.
“I love you, West,” she whispered back.
He covered her mouth with his as he pressed himself inside her.
She sighed sweetly as he found his way home.
The feeling was transcendent, not just because of the exquisite sensation of all her delicious tightness gripping his rigid cock.
It was because he had claimed her at last, because she
was his, and he was hers.
He stopped kissing her to study her face again.
Tears glittered at the corners of her eyes.
“No, don’t cry, Cord, please,” he said.
“I’m so happy,” she smiled up at him.
He leaned down and kissed her on the nose.
Everything after that seemed to happen in slow motion.
Her arms around his neck, his mouth on hers. His hips rocking gently, the music of her cries.
The wild beauty of his buttoned down love, wantonly thrusting herself up to him.
The satisfying moment when he gave her what she wanted and felt her implode around him, milking him mercilessly until he joined her, filling her again and again with everything he had.
It was only later, when she had fallen asleep on his chest, that West allowed reality to set in again.
And he cursed himself, as his angel dreamed in his arms, for once again holding back something important.
He had allowed her to give herself to him without telling her what was really going on.
That they might not have the future she deserved. Not because he had any doubts about the strength of their love.
But because by this time next week, he’d be completely burned out. Broken beyond repair. Forever helpless.
Or dead.
And he couldn’t help but think that the second option would be much kinder to Cordelia.
35
Elizabeth Sterling stood at the edge of the Glacier City Zoo.
Though her feet rested on the smooth, fake ice of the Arctic Ring of Life exhibit, her eyes focused on the real glacier, only a few miles away. It glistened, reminding her that an inch of its mass was melting away each day.
She had a lot in common with that glacier. And if she let herself melt down too much, she would wash away the lives of every man and woman in Alpha Division, as sure as the meltwater off the glacier had destroyed the zoo’s intended inhabitants.
But life was compromise. And Sterling had no leverage with which to hold her ground. No friend to watch her icy resolve thawing under the strain.
Her men were improving, greatly so.
