Keep Me Closer (A Dangerous Tides Novel)

by Rhyannon Byrd

  Um, wow. There wasn’t anything in the entire world that could have prepared her for that.

  They were both shaking, muscles tremoring with little aftershocks of pleasure, when he finally set her back on her feet, his hands gripping her upper arms to help keep her steady as she swayed.

  “Huh,” he grunted. “Look at that.”

  “What?” she wheezed, concentrating on not falling on her ass.

  There was a deliciously raw, husky edge to his voice as he said, “The floor is wet. My cum’s dripping out of you.”

  “Oh, God.” He was right, it was. And it was so freaking sexy.

  She didn’t think she would have thought so with another man. No, she would probably be worrying about what he thought of her, or how it looked, letting her head get in the way of appreciating the moment. But there was no way to look at the sight of Alex’s cum dripping out of her as anything other than hot as fuck. Maybe it meant she wasn’t nearly as refined as she’d thought she was, but she didn’t care. She felt more desirable in that moment than she ever had before, and she would have thanked him for it if she’d had the ability to do anything more than pant.

  Her gaze lifted to his cock, and she licked her lips as she watched it grow thicker, harder, the head so succulent and ripe, gleaming with their combined juices. She wanted nothing more than to lean over and taste him. But Alex had a different plan, because he suddenly turned her around, putting her back to his front, and bent her over the table. She felt his rock-hard erection brush against her ass, and jolted with surprise.

  “Already?” she asked.

  “Brace yourself.” He gripped her hips and leaned over her, pressing his lips to the middle of her spine. She felt the intimate touch of his tongue to her skin, the soft drag as he licked his way up to her nape, and her insides clenched so hard she actually whimpered.

  His voice sounded savage as he said, “No way I can see something like that and not want to just blast you full of more.”

  “Caveman,” she breathed out, knowing he could hear the smile in her voice.

  He reached under her, using two of his callused fingertips to work her clit, and she nearly screamed. “Maybe,” he murmured into her ear, biting the lobe. “But while I might fuck you raw, Doc, I promise I won’t leave you hanging. I’ll make you feel good.”

  “You do. You make me feel incredible. I think maybe you have a magic cock or something. What’s your secret?”

  His chest rumbled against her back as he laughed, and she almost cried when she felt him press a tender kiss against the damp skin at her nape. Softly, he said, “I think it’s you, Doc. I think it’s all you.” Then she felt the weight of that succulent cockhead nuzzling inside her swollen vulva, and he pushed himself back inside her, making them both moan low and deep in their chests.

  She was even tighter now, her inner tissues even plumper after his previous possession, and he was careful to work her carefully until some of the tension in her muscles eased. The air filled with the wet, slick sounds of their bodies moving together, and he picked up the pace, making her breath catch.

  “Can you take it harder?”

  “I can take anything you can give me. Anything.”

  He groaned, the sexy sound low and male, telling her how much he liked her response. Her lips started to curl with another smile, until she felt him pulling the cheeks of her ass apart, completely exposing her to his gaze. She gave an embarrassed squeal that made him chuckle, the wicked sound blending into another throaty groan.

  “Um, Alex?” she choked out, peering over her shoulder. “What are you doing?”

  * * *

  “I’M LOOKING AT YOU,” ALEX GROWLED, PULLING HER LUSH ASS CHEEKS even farther apart. He was mesmerized by the painfully erotic sight of her tiny pink asshole, and beneath it, the breathtaking view of her juicy cunt being stretched and reamed by his greedy cock. “Jesus, Doc. I can’t stop. I can’t stop watching your sweet little pussy when I’m fucking it. It’s so goddamn beautiful. The view back here is incredible.”

  “Mmm.” She suddenly sounded as caught up in the moment as he was. “I wish I could see it.”

  “Aw, shit, you’re killing me,” he muttered, knowing he couldn’t hold back. Moving one hand to her chest, he squeezed a plump nipple while he reached around her hip with his other hand, pushing two fingers against her clit again. “I need you to come now, baby. Right the fuck now!” he roared, his head going back as he started spurting blast after blast of his cum inside her, her lusty cunt squeezing down on his cock in tight convulsions, milking him for everything he could give her. Every single fucking drop.

  He didn’t know how it was possible, but he was unloading even more into her with this second release than he had with the first one, and as he dropped his head forward, Alex stared in shocked amazement at the sight of his milky semen squeezing out around his thick root, spilling down her silky thighs.

  What the fuck was happening to him? He’d never come like this in his life. Was his body trying to kill him? He wasn’t eighteen anymore, damn it. Not that he’d ever felt this kind of gut-clawing need at that age. In fact, he’d never felt it like this. Not until Brit. And that should have had him running hard and fast for cover. But it didn’t. Instead, he pushed a little deeper inside her, enjoying the combined slick of their cum soaking his shaft, her snug, muscular cunt clasping him like a hungry mouth. She was still pulsing, still trying to draw more out of him, and his eyes nearly rolled back in his head when he gave another hard spurt that drained him dry.

  Son of a bitch, he thought, collapsing over her in utter exhaustion. His chest felt like it was on fire, heart beating so hard he probably needed medical attention, while every inch of him was drenched with sweat. Panicked, he pulled back so suddenly it actually hurt his dick, and he winced, hoping like hell he hadn’t hurt her as well. The curve of her spine was beyond graceful as she pushed herself up, her gleaming hair falling over the side of her face as she turned her head and looked at him over her shoulder, a question in her beautiful eyes over why he’d pulled away from her so abruptly.

  He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. In that moment, he couldn’t have found the right words to say to save his life.

  She waited, breath held, plush lower lip caught in her teeth. It was painful, seeing that worried, fragile hope in her eyes that he knew she wouldn’t want him to recognize. All it would take was a few simple words to make things right. Stay with me. Sleep with me. Let me hold you. But he couldn’t seem to find the way to get them out. Wasn’t even sure that he wanted to say them, when there was a good chance he might fall apart.

  Finally, she lowered her flushed face and knelt down to pick up the ruined remnants of her dress. She clutched them against her chest as she stood, as if she needed to shield herself from his view, one shaky hand lifting to tuck her gleaming hair behind the delicate shape of her ear.

  She shot him a wistful, pained, regretful smile, then turned and walked away. He listened to her light footsteps on the stairs as he hiked up his boxers and jeans and dropped into a chair, elbows braced on his knees as he lowered his head into his hands.

  He didn’t know if he’d just saved himself or made another colossal mistake.

  But whatever it was, she’d made her mark on him.

  And he was so fucked—so desperate for her—he didn’t even care.

  7

  WHEN HE WAS FINALLY DONE WITH SITTING ON HIS ASS AND WORRYING about how he was going to make things right with the doc after the silent brush-off he’d just given her, since it sure as hell wasn’t going to solve anything, Alex pulled off his boots and socks. Then he jumped up, went into the kitchen to wash his hands, and started working on finishing dinner. His stomach growled when he found cheese-covered enchiladas cooking in the oven, and the ingredients for a killer salad set out on the counter. The timer on the oven showed that the enchiladas had another fifteen minutes
to cook, so he started dicing the veggies for the salad, hoping like crazy that Brit was planning on coming back downstairs to eat with him.

  Of course, once she did, he was probably going to have to do some serious groveling in order to get back in her good graces. Not that I’ve ever actually been in those, he thought with a grimace. She hadn’t fucked him because she cared about him, or even liked him. That had been about nothing but good old-fashioned lust. And he would use it. Exploit it. Press it to his advantage, and thank any higher powers who might be out there listening for the chemistry that allowed him to experience being inside her.

  God knew his personality couldn’t have gotten him there. Hell, it probably couldn’t even get her through his front door.

  She came back down a few minutes later, fresh from a shower, her wet hair gleaming like red silk as it curled over one shoulder, her curvy body dressed in a slouchy pair of sweats and hoodie that she probably thought would hide her gorgeous figure from him. But it was a pointless try. Every inch of her beautiful, mouthwatering form had been burned into his brain like a brand. It was so fucking perfect he’d probably be seeing it on the back of his eyelids when he took his last breath.

  And while her choice of clothing said a lot about how she was feeling at the moment, he was relieved she wasn’t trying to avoid his company, joining him in the kitchen instead. They spoke in murmurs, neither commenting on what had happened between them.

  She seemed surprised to find him helping out with dinner, but she didn’t try to shoo him off. It was a nice change, after living with Judith, who had always been such a control freak. If he’d tried to cook something that wasn’t to her specifications, she would rant and bitch until he finally just let it go and stopped helping. But Brit seemed happy to give him free rein, and even went so far as to compliment the salad he’d put together. Her praise made him go a little hot around the ears, and he was thankful as hell that Mike wasn’t there to see his ridiculous reaction. His brother would have been a total douche about it, and then Alex would have had to kick his ass, and dinner would be ruined. And it smelled too damn good to go to waste.

  Thinking it might be awkward sitting at the dinner table, after they’d just fucked each other’s brains out on it not thirty minutes ago, Alex suggested they sit in the living room and watch something on television while they ate. Once they were settled with heaping plates and ice-cold glasses of tea, he switched on the TV. An episode of his favorite crime drama was starting, and he almost set the remote back down, before realizing this was probably something Brit wouldn’t want to watch. Judith had always given him hell whenever he tried to watch anything with the slightest bit of bite to it. But he should have known not to expect the usual from the surprisingly easygoing doc. She curled up on the opposite end of the sofa with her dinner, and started watching right along with him.

  All in all, it was a pretty fine way to spend a Friday night.

  Fuck, who was he kidding? Even with all the questions and worries crowding his head, between the mind-blowing sex and her company, this was the best damn night he’d had in . . . Hell, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d felt this good. This . . . excited about what might happen next. There suddenly seemed to be a sense of . . . of possibility that hadn’t been there before, and he liked it. Probably more than he should have, but he still had all those damn endorphins running through his system, and for the moment he was determined to just sit back and enjoy himself.

  The food turned out to be as delicious as it smelled, and he went back for seconds, refilling her tea for her before sitting back down for the rest of the show. When it ended, they went to work on cleaning up the kitchen. While they washed and dried the things that wouldn’t fit in the dishwasher, they talked about his case that had kept him busy that afternoon, as well as the lack of progress being made in the search for Shepherd.

  She was frustrated, like he was, but worried about the bastard in a way that Alex couldn’t quite get his head around. Yeah, he knew from Shepherd’s case history, which he’d had Ryder e-mail over to him, that the guy had been through some serious shit. At nineteen, Shepherd’s mother and boyfriend had kept the teenager tied to a bed for two days, during which time they beat and sexually assaulted him more than a dozen times, before a neighbor finally heard his screams for help and called the police. Shepherd was taken to a local hospital, and his mother and the boyfriend both killed themselves in their jail cells a few days later. When questioned by the police, Shepherd had told them that his mother claimed the attack had been her way of proving to him that she loved him and was the only woman for him, after she’d discovered he was secretly dating one of the girls in their neighborhood.

  The woman had clearly been a psychotic bitch who deserved to fry. But as awful as Shepherd’s history was, any sympathy Alex might have felt for the guy had been killed when he decided to endanger Brit’s life. That was something Alex couldn’t, and wouldn’t, get past.

  And the fact that he was really twisted up inside over what she was going through, instead of just protectively concerned, was something he didn’t readily have an explanation for.

  In fact, he figured it was something he’d be better off not even thinking about.

  The cynic in him wanted to say that if anything, Clay Shepherd’s story showed that love was something men were better off not knowing . . . or even looking for. But he knew that was bullshit. What had happened to that kid had nothing to do with love. That was just pure, fucked-up evil. The kind of thing you could never really wrap your head around if you were sane. That could seriously mess you up if you thought about it for too long. About why things like that happened. About why men and women carried the capacity for that kind of insane madness inside them to begin with.

  But it had nothing to do with anything good and pure. With the kind of love that Ben and Reese shared. Or Ryder and Lily.

  He wondered if the doc had ever felt like that about someone. If she’d already found the great love of her life, but lost him. Or if she was still looking, thinking he would come along one day. It made him scowl, thinking of her with some faceless jackass who swept in and wrapped her around his little finger, giving her everything she’d ever wanted. Everything a woman like her deserved.

  When the kitchen was clean and the dishwasher started, she set down the dish towel she’d used to do the drying up and gave him a long look that had unspoken words jamming up in his throat again. The feeling was definitely one he was getting familiar with. It occurred to him that they’d stopped talking some time ago, probably when he’d gone off in his head, and had been finishing up in silence. There was a new sense of tension in the air, but he didn’t know if it was coming from him, or her, or hell, maybe it was coming from both of them. She gave him time to finally make a stand and tell her what he wanted—where he wanted the night to go from there—but when he just stood there without saying a word, she turned her back on him and headed upstairs.

  The entire scene was strangely reminiscent of what had happened just a few hours ago. But this time, Alex was actually thankful for the momentary reprieve. He was so raw at the moment, there was no telling what might have slipped past his lips if they’d started that particular conversation. They were probably both better off not knowing.

  He smoked a cigarette while he sat out on his patio and answered a couple of e-mails on his tablet, before hooking it up to charge in his office. This whole time, he was still thinking his silence had been the right choice. That it’d been his only choice. But when he eventually made his way upstairs to his room, he couldn’t ignore the fact that the sight of his empty king-size bed irritated the hell out of him.

  Damn it, it just seemed wrong to sleep by himself when there was a hot, willing, incredible woman right across the hall. A woman who had given him the most intensely erotic sexual experience of his life downstairs on his dining room table. An experience he needed to repeat, badly.

  He stood
in the middle of his bedroom, shoving his hands back through his hair, his breaths quickening as he let his imagination go a bit wild, thinking of how it would be if he went to her. Then the panic set in, and he started trying to convince himself that some space for the moment would probably do him some good. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to get in even deeper than he already was with her, right? And there was no way in hell he was letting that happen.

  Too restless to stay still, he started pacing at the foot of his bed, fingers laced behind his head, every muscle in his body tensed with strain, while his brain just wouldn’t let it go.

  The way he saw it, he could continue to fuck her, and if he was careful, he could also share a certain level of friendship with her. But that’s where it needed to stop. Anything more would be venturing into territory he would fight tooth and nail to avoid. When it came to relationships, he figured he’d been there, done that, and it sucked so bad he didn’t even want the souvenir T-shirt. He just wanted it left in the past, where it belonged, and to get through the rest of his life in as whole a piece as he could manage. Judith had chipped away anything extra he’d ever possessed to give to another person, which meant things would be better for them all if he just stuck to what he knew and didn’t venture outside of his comfort zone.