Turn Up the Heat

by Serena Bell

  He yielded. He listened. He held himself back. He did it more gently, and it was still good. Sex was good.

  Even if there was something missing for him. Even if after a span of time—months at most—the thing that was missing was too big to ignore, and he carefully explained why he needed some time off, some space to find himself, some room to think.

  Before prison, he’d been a nice man, and nice men were gentle. Nice men didn’t foist rough sex on their lovers.

  But when you’d gone to jail for nearly killing a man, when you’d held his life in your hands, poised at the edge of your knife blade—when you’d corralled violence, made it yours, and unleashed it on someone—

  That changed everything. That changed who you were.

  You weren’t a nice man, because clearly nice men didn’t go to prison for assault. No one spent seven years, seven months, and eleven days doing time for being nice.

  He was not a nice man.

  The thought was liberating.

  If he was not a nice man, then maybe he was the kind of man who would have sex with a woman he barely knew. Maybe he would have sex with her in an alley behind the diner where she worked, her skirt rucked up around her waist, her green silk panties twisted to one side. Maybe he would pin her against the brick wall, hold her wrists fast with one hand, and maybe he would thrust roughly up into her so her back scraped the brick.

  Maybe she would whimper when he pinned her, then yield under the pressure of him, melting but not disappearing. Fierce in his arms, kissing back, held captive and unrestrained.

  Maybe she already had. Already was.

  Bad idea, called his gut. Like a whisper at the bottom of a canyon. But he heard it, and he started to prepare himself to go. To walk away from this. From sweet and tough, from this fantasy come to life, even though his hand fisted convulsively, it wanted so badly to be around her wrists. He wasn’t a nice man anymore, but neither was he a free man, and doing what he wanted to do to Lily was a free man’s privilege.

  “Kincaid?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She put her hands up over her head. Against the brick. Wrists together. An unmistakable sign of surrender. Need kicked in his chest, desire clenching his gut.

  “I’ll tell you,” she said. “I’ll say ‘uncle’ if I need you to stop.”

  The warnings screamed, Don’t do it. Walk away. And Kincaid heard himself ask, “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  He watched, as if from a distance, as if out of his body, as he put his hand up and caught her wrists in the vee between his thumb and fingers. Closed the cuff tight. She struggled against the restraint and then, as he edged toward her, against his body.

  There was so much power in her, like a whip unleashed in the space between him and the wall. She thrashed and fought, then yielded suddenly and let him kiss her, limp against him while she whimpered again, the sound muffled this time by his mouth. She struggled to press her breasts against his chest, and he crowded her closer to the wall, using his free hand to cup her through her underpants. She worked herself against his hand, grinding and rubbing, and the sounds she made got shorter and higher pitched until she was squeaking into his mouth, which just about did him in. He could feel the strain in all her muscles, that she was locked up tight, coiled to spring—and so was he.

  He broke the kiss, fumbled with his jeans, and managed one-handed to get the button undone and the zipper down. He freed his cock from its confines and glided his fist once over the head and down the shaft. It felt good—too good, and better when Lily strained against his grasp over her head. He had a moment of self-doubt—was she genuinely trying to free herself?—before she said, “Gimme that,” and took another stab at getting a hand loose. Then she tried to drop to her knees, so he had to hold almost all her weight in his hand and deny her—and himself—the wet clasp of her mouth on his cock.

  Instead, he held her tighter and wedged his thigh between hers, turning slightly to the side and locking himself in the grip of his fist again. “Like this?” he demanded. “You want to do this?”

  They both watched the thick, dark head emerge from the cocoon of his fingers, watched the skin stretch and a bead of moisture appear. Lily groaned and tried to buck against his thigh. He pinned her more firmly with his hip, and she thrashed. “What? What do you want?”

  “Bastard,” she hissed.

  He could do it in another three strokes, good, hard, bearing-down strokes that squeezed the base and twisted the head. He showed her one, a perfect jerk that dredged a long, gripping sensation up from the bottom of his spine. And counted. “One,” he said.

  “How many?” she demanded, teeth gritted, and wrenched her wrists again.

  “Three, maybe,” he said. “But you first.”

  “How am I—?”

  He let go of his cock and slid a hand into her panties. She was swollen and drenched, and without effort his fingers found her opening and spread her wetness over her equally swollen clit. He experimented—a light touch made her jerk away, a firmer one made her rock against his hand. Firm it was, then, and he got one finger inside her (“One,” he said, making her buck), then two (“Two,” he said, and she moaned), with his thumb circling her clit.

  “I wish I had another hand,” he said conversationally, and then, “Three,” as he inserted a third finger and she began to come, thrusting herself down on his hand and calling out hoarsely.

  Then he used her moisture to ease the slide of his hand over his cock.

  “Two,” he said, making sure she had enough leverage to rub herself on his thigh, unable to take his eyes off her face. She couldn’t seem to stop staring at his cock, popping out of the tight clutch of his fist, and her lower lip was full and quivering with pleasure, her tongue peeking unconsciously out.

  On three he watched her watching him—the squeeze at the base, the twist of the head, the sight of her slipping her tongue across her bottom lip, her pupils huge and dark, her dampness leaving a wet spot on his jeans, and then, surprising her, surprising him, a flush rose fast and hard up her chest and into her face and she came again, flailing and bucking and rubbing herself as hard as she could against him, while his orgasm boiled over, the familiar feel of held-back pleasure ripping up his spine, of his cum spilling over his hand, a hundred times more potent while he had her trapped.

  —

  Her arms hurt. She knew her wrists would be bruised where his hand had cuffed her, suspended her above the ground when all she wanted was to drop to her knees and take him in her mouth. Her crotch was sore where she’d ground it against him, much harder than she’d needed to in order to come—but she’d done it because they both seemed to be getting off on it. Like they’d both gotten off on the scrape of the brick against her bare behind, like they’d both gotten off on her trying to get free, on his refusals, on the rough thrust of too many fingers in her.

  She hadn’t come that hard since—

  Well, ever.

  He released her hands and they sort of—dropped out of the sky. Her arms weren’t really holding them up anymore. In fact, she wasn’t sure how much of her body still worked. She was pretty sure she would have slumped to the ground if it hadn’t been for his leg between hers.

  He stepped back, taking the heat of his body, his support, away.

  He wouldn’t meet her gaze.

  She had a shame flashback, to the way Fallon had shrunk from her, literally and figuratively. In a way this was almost more disappointing. Because she’d sensed from the beginning with Fallon that he wasn’t really there. When he’d pulled away, it had been only his body—his mind had already left the scene.

  Kincaid had been there. All in.

  So she’d thought, anyway.

  He was cleaning himself up as best he could, wiping his hands on the brick, on his jeans. Wetness was cooling, on her thighs, between her legs. So sordid. So unromantic.

  She lowered her top. Covered her panties with her skirt, but couldn’t do anything about the dampness.
Two minutes ago it had been the sexiest thing she could imagine—like Kincaid’s hand clamped around her wrists—and now it was just same old, same old. When she should have learned.

  Kincaid zipped his jeans, the sound loud in the alley. She wondered how loud they’d been, and whether there was anyone around who might have heard. It was quite late, Tierney Bay was generally deserted at night, and there were no residences near the diner, but that didn’t mean that there couldn’t have been someone close enough to overhear. Yet another potential mistake.

  “Your car,” Kincaid said.

  For a moment she couldn’t catch up—it seemed so nonsensical.

  “I was supposed to be walking you to your car.”

  Part of her was stunned. So he wasn’t even going to acknowledge what had happened. He wasn’t even going to pretend he was going to call her.

  And the other part of her knew it was how these things worked. She’d had a choice—stick to the program, or follow the easy impulse—and she’d let her lust and her anger at Fallon point the way. She couldn’t be mad about the outcome now.

  She pointed. “It’s that way.”

  “That—” He gestured to encompass what had just passed between them.

  Oh, so he was going to acknowledge it.

  “That was good,” he finished.

  Damn, that made her breathless.

  He still wouldn’t meet her eyes, though, and she knew it wasn’t enough. Good didn’t mean he wanted more, didn’t mean he’d do it again. Good didn’t mean he was interested in her.

  And she didn’t want or need him to be. She wanted and needed to do her work, earn her money, get the heck out of Dodge. She wanted and needed to move to Chicago, get a kitchen job, climb the rickety ladder of chef success.

  Still, it meant something, if only a little something, that it had been good for him, too. That was a first for her, after all. So she said, “Yeah. It was.” And their eyes met then. A flash of understanding. Him telling her with those icy-warm eyes—

  What? What was he telling her?

  She wasn’t sure, because he looked away then, and started walking in the direction of her car.

  They reached it and she sprang the driver’s door with the key remote.

  “Hey—” he said suddenly.

  This was where he asked for her phone number and pretended he’d be in touch.

  What he said instead surprised her. “Thanks.”

  It was so perfect, and so inadequate, that she could only laugh. He laughed, too, then, all the hard lines of his chiseled face softening.

  He opened the driver’s side door and held it for her.

  She climbed in.

  “Hands safe?” he asked. She put them on the wheel, and he slammed the door and gave her a short wave. Patted the car’s top above her door, a farewell, and then walked away, down the alley they’d come from, and disappeared.

  Chapter 6

  “There’s nothing I can do,” Kincaid’s lawyer, Grant Devin, said for the third or fourth time.

  “It doesn’t belong to him. He stole it.” Kincaid tried to make it a dry recitation of facts, but his anger rang through.

  “So you say,” Grant said.

  “Are you on my side, or not?” Kincaid demanded, then was pissed at himself, because of course Grant was on his side. No one could be more on anyone’s side than Grant had been on his.

  Grant winced. “I’m sorry, I was just—it’s habit. Cataloguing what’s court-admitted fact and what’s hearsay. You know how I feel about him. I hate him every bit as much as you do.”

  “No, I’m sorry.” Kincaid thumped himself on the chest, a my bad gesture.

  Grant stroked one side of his mustache, a habit he’d had as long as Kincaid had known him. Grant and his now-ex-wife Jeannie owned land near his grandparents’. They’d been his grandparents’ close friends, and after Kincaid’s grandfather’s death, Grant had played surrogate to Kincaid, taking him fishing and mountain biking from time to time on the conservation land that bordered both properties. Kincaid had always liked Grant a lot—he allowed no bullshit and treated him like an adult. And Kincaid liked him even more now, because the guy had given up so much—everything, really—to try to save Kincaid’s ass.

  “He abused her. And now he’s living in her house—”

  My home.

  Most of the time, Kincaid tried to blot out the sights and scents, but when his defenses were down at night, they crowded his mind. As a child, he’d played soldier, cop, adventurer, pirate, on his grandparents’ land, heavily forested, rich with fir, spruce, and ponderosa pine, and still worth a fortune to the timber company that had unsuccessfully wooed his family. When he was done playing, he ran to the small house, where his grandfather had cleared trees long ago to create an oasis of sun in the middle of the woods. His grandmother—Nan, he’d called her, because her name was Nancy, and she was too young for “Grandma”—fed him chocolate chip cookies, warm from the oven, or, at dinnertime, long-simmered stews, roasted chicken, meaty Bolognese. As he drifted to sleep, strawberry bubble bath wafted down the hall, the scent of his grandmother taking a much-needed moment to herself.

  “Caid,” Grant said gently. He was in his late sixties, bitterly divorced, deeply invested in his work. In fact, Grant’s endless devotion to Kincaid’s case had been the final straw for his beleaguered wife, who had gotten herself a dental degree, opened up shop as a dentist, and declared that she’d be happier—and better cared for—on her own.

  Kincaid was fairly certain Grant hadn’t bought new clothes since Jeannie left, if the jeans and flannel shirt he was wearing were any indication. Seven years after the fact, Grant still had a quality of bleary post-divorce confusion about him, but Kincaid got the feeling he was happy to be able to work any hours he wanted without harassment.

  Kincaid shook his head. “There was a will. I know there was. Nan talked about it all the time. She wanted everything to go to Safe Haven.”

  From the time Kincaid was a young teenager, his grandmother had volunteered at Safe Haven, a shelter where homeless kids could also receive an elementary education. She ran clothing drives, assisted in classrooms, and eventually served on the board.

  I take care of strays of all kinds, she would tell him, patting him on the head—that was when she was still a couple of inches taller than he was, which didn’t last long. And she did. Not just the children at Safe Haven, but him, of course, as well as dogs, cats, and small wild creatures. She took them in, healed them, fed them, loved them.

  She’d tried her best to fill all the gaps and patch up all his wounds. Still, he’d gotten scared sometimes, because she was older than everyone else’s parents. Because his parents had died and his grandfather had died and he knew people died, just like that, without giving you any warning. Without giving you time to get used to the idea or to make plans. But she’d told him not to worry. She’d promised him. No matter what, Kincaid, I will always take care of you.

  She’d died only a handful of weeks after he’d gone to prison, had a fatal heart attack. And he’d blamed himself for that, too, for the stress he’d put her under and the beatings he hadn’t, in the end, managed to save her from.

  “It’s the only thing I can do for her. She took care of me, and the only thing I can do for her is make sure her money ends up where I know she wanted it to go. And not—”

  Not in Arnie Sinclair’s hands. Not in the hands of a man who did the opposite of taking care. Who hurt and destroyed.

  Grant sighed. “But there’s no will.”

  “He hid it, then. Or destroyed all the paper copies.”

  “So you say,” repeated Grant, his skepticism written on his grizzled, bearded face.

  Kincaid didn’t bother to fight him this time. The guy was a lawyer; he couldn’t help it.

  Grant poked a finger against the surface of his desk. “The reality, from a legal perspective, is that there’s no will, and Arnie Sinclair was married to your grandmother. He’s her next of kin, and th
e money and the land, everything, is his.”

  “He coerced her into that marriage.” It had been during the late stages of the trial, one of the final blows to Kincaid’s equilibrium. I couldn’t save her from that, either.

  Grant shook his head. “No. She was just—she was a softie, Kincaid. She probably thought she could save him. You know, turn him away from the dark side.”

  Grant was almost certainly right. Nan had once said to Kincaid, I’m a sucker for the wounded and the feral. Arnie had been the latter, for sure. But that wasn’t the point. “He hid the will. He stole her money.”

  “Kincaid, I know how painful this is—”

  “I can’t just let it go.”

  “You can, and you have to. There’s nothing you can do.”

  “I can find that will.”

  “No, you fucking can’t,” said Grant.

  Kincaid had never heard Grant curse, had never seen him this angry.

  “You make one wrong move and you’re back behind bars. You so much as breathe near your grandmother’s property, you so much as bare your teeth in Arnie Sinclair’s direction—I don’t have to tell you the cops in Yeowing hate your guts. You’ll be back in prison so fast, you won’t even have time to call me. Ten years ago, Arnie Sinclair had everyone’s sympathy because he was an ‘older guy.’ Now he’s an old man. How do you think it’ll go down if you’re caught on his property? Messing with his stuff? Threatening him?”

  Kincaid knew Grant was right. And since the assault Arnie had spent almost ten more years in the town where Kincaid had grown up, establishing even more deeply his right to be there, the compassion of his neighbors, the “fact” that he’d been innocent of the abuse Kincaid had accused him of. The law had declared that Kincaid was a criminal and Arnie was above reproach.