She shifted and took him deeper, his cockhead grazing the back of her throat.
Fuck.
His lungs burned and his heart hammered out a war beat. “I’m giving you what you want, Gia, but you steal that gift from me, I’m gonna be pissed.”
Another bob of her head, this one paired with a needy groan.
He fisted his hands, ready to force her away.
But she lifted her head, her breath coming fast and her lips slightly swollen. While she might have given him a reprieve from her mouth, her clever hand still worked the base of him. “You realize you’re the pot calling the kettle black, right?”
In the real world, she had a point. But not here. Not now. “You want to debate this later, I’ll do what I can to share the jacked-up male logic going on in my head. Right now, you’re gonna have to accept it’s a big fucking deal and make a concession.”
For a second, he thought she’d argue. Or worse, storm away and leave them both miserable. Instead, she licked her lower lip. “I don’t have condoms.”
Thank you, Jesus. “In my pocket.”
She scrambled off the bed and snatched his discarded jeans. “Which one?”
“Front.”
As soon as he answered, her hand slipped free of the denim, at least four condoms filling her palm. “Not just a Boy Scout, but a confident one, too.”
“Got more in the other pocket.”
She cocked one eyebrow, tossed his jeans to the foot of the bed and straddled his hips. “Now that’s just being cocky.”
“Not bein’ cocky if I can pull it off.” He palmed the outside of her knees and stroked up to her hips. “Now, you gonna glove me up, or are you gonna delegate?”
“Neither.” She tossed the packets to the bed and leaned over him, her hands braced on his shoulders. “You did say you wanted to watch me get off.” Centered perfectly above his dick, she widened her knees and brought her folds flush against the base of his shaft. She flexed her hips. “Far be it from me not to deliver.”
And here he’d thought he’d bought a reprieve. God, she was wet. Drenched and coating him with each sultry grind. “That’s it, baby.” He dug his fingers into her hips, the need to shift and plunge inside her a white-hot demand. “Work that pretty pink pussy on my cock.”
She sucked in a sharp gasp. “Beckett.” A command and a plea. Her nails dug into his shoulders and her head dropped back, her hair spilling more than halfway down her back. Back and forth, she worked him with her sex, rolling her clit against his hard length with each downward stroke. But it wasn’t enough. She knew it. He knew it. The trick was getting her to admit it. Assuming he lived that long.
“Inside,” he all but grunted. “Glove me up and get me inside.”
Lost, she rolled her hips again, but a tiny frown marked her features.
“Gia.” He flexed against her on her next glide, dragging his glans against her clit. “Baby, you need to come. Glove me up, or let me take over.”
With a tiny whimper, she eased back, swiped a packet and ripped it open, the tremors moving through her nearly making her fumble the condom.
“Goddamn it, Gia, give in.”
“No.” She slid the condom on and guided him into place. “I’ve got this.”
No, she didn’t. Not even close. But he was done trying to prove a point. All that mattered now was easing the frustration that gripped her body and giving her what she needed. He might not have full use of his hands, but she hadn’t said shit about not using his mouth. “Know what I’m thinking of right now?”
She notched the tip of him inside and her sex vised around him. “You’re thinking?” So breathless. Her nails dug into his wrists as she sunk a little lower, shattering his control bit by bit. “I must be doing this wrong.”
“Not wrong.” No touching. “You just don’t have the view I do.” No driving. No taking over. “Can’t see my cock sinking inside your cunt. Stretching it.”
A spasm racked her. Not the release he was after, but a powerful warning shot. “And all I can think about is how your bare pussy felt on my dick. How I’ve never hated a condom so bad in my life. How I want to drive deep inside you with nothing between us and fill you up. Mark you with my come.”
“Oh my God.” Her eyes slipped shut and she took him to the root, slowly finding a rhythm and chasing her release. Up and down, she rode him with a building wildness. A desperation that twisted his gut and made him grind his teeth.
He shouldn’t push it. Shouldn’t take advantage of the promise he’d given, but he needed more. Anything to ground him. He skimmed his hands from her hips down the outside of her thighs then up the inside, pausing just inches from her sex. “You’re clit’s so swollen, sweetheart. Your pussy tight around my cock. All you have to do is say the word and I’ll take over.”
“No.”
A little closer with his thumbs, almost to the seam where her legs met her sex. “You, on your back, hands pinned above your head and my cock pounding inside you. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“No.”
“Or maybe on your hands and knees with me driving into you from behind.”
“No.”
“No shame in it, Gia. You’re a woman. My woman.”
Her eyes snapped open, the raw fear and need behind them spearing to the heart of him. “Beckett.”
“Give me the word.”
Her lips parted.
“Now.”
“Yes!”
One brutal kick from his heart and he was in motion. Her back to the bed. Her hands pinned to the mattress beneath one of his. He hitched one of her knees high with the other, dipped his hips and drove home.
Her eyes slid shut and her back arched, a moan of pleasure and relief ripped up the back of her throat.
He tightened his grip on her wrists to get her attention. “Eyes open, baby. Look at us.”
Her eyes fluttered open and locked on him.
So beautiful. Splayed open. Held down. Tits bouncing with every advance and those gorgeous brown eyes staring up at him. Trusting him.
“You’re safe,” he growled between thrusts. He stroked his hand from her knee to her sex. “Feel it.” He slicked his thumb along where they were joined. “Right here, all you need to be is a woman.” Coated in her wetness, he dragged his thumb up and around her clit, the sweet nub painfully hard beneath his touch.
“Beckett.” A throaty plea paired with a flutter in her sex.
“No control. No expectation.” He strummed harder, his hips slapping against hers. “Just my woman. Taking my cock the way she needs it.”
Her pussy tightened around him.
“Fuck, yes. Own it, baby. Let go. Swear to Christ, I’ll catch you.”
Her heels dug into his back and her back bowed, her cunt fisting and releasing in the sweetest vise on earth. So strong. As potent and powerful as the woman beneath him, her sweet cry as she came undone flaying him wide.
His cock jerked inside her, the slick, hot grasp of her sex forcing his own release. Stealing his come. Milking him in a greedy, demanding grasp. Releasing her wrists, he gripped her hips and ground himself against her. Willed his body to make a mark. To burn an impression so deep inside her, she couldn’t forget him. Could never walk away.
In and out, he pumped inside her. Watched his dark, hard shaft disappearing into her pretty pink heat. Wished he could see his release mingled with hers. That he could feel her scalding flesh with nothing between them.
Mine.
He didn’t dare say it out loud. Couldn’t risk giving her reason to run or doubt where they were headed, but the claim was there. A brand he’d never thought he’d want, let alone bend over backward to take.
But she was his. And he’d level any and every obstacle to make sure she stayed that way.
He slowed his hips, the demanding throb of release easing to
a languid pulse.
Gia’s touch registered on the tops of his hands, her featherlight fingertips dancing over his brutal grip at her hips. “Beckett?”
A rumble in the room registered right behind her soft voice. Fuck, was he growling?
He unclenched his hands, white spots where his fingers had dug into her flesh flashing before they blended in with the rest of her flushed skin. “Shit.” Lungs chugging like he’d sprinted ten miles uphill, he smoothed his hands over where he’d manhandled her. “Gia, I’m sorry.”
She stilled his hands with her own. “I’m not.” She stared up at him, what was left of the walls she’d kept between them eradicated. This was Gia. The unvarnished woman, bared in so much more than just flesh. Her touch skimmed higher. Up his forearms. Over his triceps and shoulders. Cupping his neck. Fingers trembling and eyes wide with fragile trust, she urged him closer. “I liked it.”
So sweet. Honest and open. Braced on his knees, he leaned into her, dipped his head to kiss her sternum and gave his hands free rein. Petting her glorious body and grounding himself in the process. Her thighs. Her belly. Hips, breasts and neck. But this was more than just feeding his sensory needs. This was gratitude. Deep, abiding gratitude.
She speared her hands in his hair, not fighting him. Just taking what he offered. Feeling it. Riding what she seemed to understand he needed. “You were right.”
Years now, he’d known her. Watched her hold her own in a world that insisted she could never be an equal to her peers. He’d be damned if he let her feel anything less than equal here. He pressed a kiss to her shoulder and lifted his head. “It wasn’t about me being right.”
Her lips trembled and her eyes got wet, just enough sheen to let him know she was perilously close to showing a side to herself few other people had ever seen. “What was it then?”
He smoothed her hair away from her face and swept one thumb along her cheek. “You knowing that, with me, you can just be you. A business owner. A friend. A badass.”
She smiled huge, the sudden shift nearly knocking a tear free. “I like that last one.”
“You are the last one.” He cupped the side of her face and held her steady. “What you don’t seem to get, gorgeous, is that you might not be like other women, but you are all woman. The fact that you get off having someone else be in control with sex doesn’t mean you’re weak. It means you know what you want and you’re not afraid to make it happen.”
“Well, I kind of was afraid to make it happen.”
He grinned and rolled his hips, wishing like hell he didn’t have a fucking condom between them. He’d have to work on that. Pronto. Though, how he was gonna broach that subject this fast without freaking her out escaped him.
“I think we’re over that hurdle.” He nipped her lower lip, his cock stirring at the highly promising ideas floating through his head. “But if you want to practice for good measure, I’m stocked up and absolutely on board to volunteer.”
Chapter Thirteen
“That’s quite a strut you’re sportin’ for a Monday afternoon.” Axel’s smooth voice hit Beckett the second he stepped across the threshold to Crossroads’ dark conference room. Situated on the third floor of Jace and Axel’s club, Crossroads, their offices flanked the wide room on either end and gave a bird’s-eye view of the main dance floor below. “Thought the girls in the office were gonna break their necks watchin’ you stroll through the lobby.”
Per usual, Axel looked like something out of a men’s fashion magazine—tailored black pants, a gray button-down, and leather shoes that probably cost a mint. Braced with both hands on the oblong table, he looked up from a blueprint rolled out in front of him and grinned, that long red hair of his as wild as ever.
Beckett glanced at the big flat screens mounted on one end of the conference room wall. As big as Crossroads was, there was no way the four monitors could cover everything going down in Dallas’s premier hot spot, but the one aimed at the lobby seemed to have gotten the job done this time. He ambled to the industrial stainless fridge built into the long wet bar lining one wall. Given his primary agenda item for today’s rally, a beer was definitely in order and the options Jace and Axel kept on hand were cream of the crop. “Remind me next time I do an install for you to work in some kind of override.”
“He’s just jealous,” Jace said from his place in a plush black leather chair at the far end of the table. He glanced up from the swath of manila folders thick with documents stacked in front of him, a dirty smirk quirking one side of his mouth. “Only one thing that puts that much swagger in a man’s step and I know damned good and well our Don Juan’s on a dry spell.”
“Dry spell my ass,” Axel grumbled. “More like self-preservation.”
Jace’s smile deepened. Where Axel was an odd mix of suave and Scottish warlord, Jace was more the old-school biker type complete with longish dark hair, goatee and a white Led Zeppelin tee with lettering so faded it could have been from their debut tour. He was also perceptive as a hungry wolf. So much that almost nothing got past him, and the way he was staring at Axel, Beckett had a good hunch there was more to Axel’s dry spell than either of them were letting on.
Tempted as he was to do a little digging and see if he could get Jace to offer up a few clues, Beckett snagged a Bell’s Ale, popped the top and left well enough alone. “Anyone need a refill?”
Axel grunted, snatched his nearly empty tumbler off the table and meandered toward the bar. “Don’t let that bloody bastard have one. Not until he’s done with my paperwork.”
Jace chuckled and went back to studying the doc in his hand. “Pretty sure every other legal document I’ve filed for you the last thirteen years was founded on Scotch. You sure you wanna break that streak with your pet project?”
That was the other thing about Haven’s founding brothers. Axel’s high-end clothes aside, most people wrote them off as hard men who’d lucked into their fortune solely on street smarts. The truth was, they were wickedly intelligent, both with degrees that made them a formidable pair in business—Axel in operations and Jace in corporate law.
Beckett snatched the Macallan off the shelf behind him and topped Axel’s glass off. “This the new concert venue? Thought that was all nailed down.”
“Nailed down, yes. Bulletproof, no. Got a few uptight assholes grumbling about an outdoor stage drawin’ a bad crowd to downtown.” Axel grabbed the bottle, turned and reloaded Jace’s glass. “I need bulletproof.”
Jace shook his head, a good-natured air of exasperation coloring the act, but Beckett saw it for what it was. He and Axel had grown up together the same way Beckett and Knox had, and Jace would move heaven and earth if it meant keeping Axel happy.
The security door at the bottom of the stairs slammed shut and at least two sets of footsteps pounded their direction.
The two proved to be three, Zeke finding the doorway first with Knox and Danny only a beat behind him. Zeke scanned the room, claimed a chair and dropped into it like he’d just tackled a double marathon. Given the blue trauma scrubs he had on and his tired eyes, he probably had. “Where’s Trevor?”
“Runnin’ down a loose end on Ivan. He’s five out at most.” Knox halted in front of the wet bar, planted both hands on his hips and scowled at Beckett. “Either hand me a cold one, or stop blockin’ the supplies.”
Damn. Knox seldom went for alcohol before quitting time on a workday. Maybe Beckett should’ve hauled his ass into the office this morning instead of annoying Gia in hers.
Nah. He spun for the door and shrugged the guilt off almost as fast as it had hit him. For all Gia’s fussing about him being an overbearing oaf and hogging her space, she’d liked having him there. A fact confirmed when she’d curled up next to him with her laptop on that tiny excuse for a couch in her office, tucked her feet under her legs and shown him the details of the suspects she’d narrowed down.
“Breakfast
Stout or Zombie Dust?” Beckett said, scanning the insane number of options available inside.
“Too late for the stout. Shoot me the Dust.”
“Who the fuck drinks a beer called Zombie Dust?” This from Danny, who’d given in to his nosy nature and was crowding Axel and his blueprints.
“Enough to make it a top ten beer pick for this year.” Jace flipped to the last page on his document, huffed and tossed it back to the pile. “Brings in a premium price, too, so I ain’t bitchin’.”
“No shit?” Danny eyeballed the bottle in Knox’s hand. “Lager?”
The stairway door clanged shut, heralding Trevor’s arrival.
Knox knocked back a healthy swig and let out a satisfied hiss before he answered. “Pale ale. Out of Indiana.”
Trevor moseyed through the conference room door, a little on the haggard side appearancewise and clutching a folder in one hand. He clocked everyone in one fell swoop, then locked in on Knox’s beer. “Cool. Zombie Dust.” His gaze cut to Beckett still manning the bar. “Hook me up.”
Danny shrugged and dropped into the chair closest to him. “What the fuck. Give me one, too then.”
Beers doled out and everyone with their asses situated around the table, Knox zeroed in on Trevor. “So? How was Chicago?”
A handful of words at most, but eerily effective for derailing the fifteen different approaches he’d planned for telling his brothers about Gia. Beckett volleyed a stare between Knox and Trevor. “What’s in Chicago?”
Apparently, he wasn’t the only one lost on the topic, because all the other brothers looked just as stymied.
Knox grinned. “You know how Ivan’s first background check showed nada prior to 2009? Well, we got a lead on him.”
Trevor huffed out an ironic chuckle over the rim of his beer and murmured, “More like a lead handed to you.”
“Handed by who?” Jace said.
Shrugging, Knox snatched the folder out from in front of Trevor. “Ivan.”
“You mean he slipped and shared something we could use?” Axel said.
“He made it look that way.” Trevor set his beer on the table, one of those satisfied smirks on his face. “You ask me, it was a test. No man in his right mind is gonna lay out the kind of things I confirmed today without being damned sure about the skills of the men he’s trusting.”
Stand & Deliver Page 15
