His regard never wavered, and he made no moves to take the jacket extended to him.
I dropped the jacket to the ground and turned my back on him. Slinking against the sink, I clung tightly to the edge of the bowl. “Go. I’ll be fine.”
“You’ll be dead.”
I hated the way his inflection barely revealed a hint of emotion. “Your complete lack of concern is painfully fucking acknowledged.”
He took one large step forward, the heat of his form rushed at me, enveloping my body in an invisible warm blanket. “For someone so brash, you can be pretty thick-headed.”
Holding up one of my balled fists, I flipped him off.
“And immature.” Taking a large leap forward, he pressed his chest against my back. “I don’t believe in motivating people by fear. When you come with me, I think you’ll find out why I don’t need to use rudimentary tools to sway things in my direction.”
“I’m sure the pretty face that makes you look unassuming gets you lots of things.” Remembering a very cocky choice of words, my forehead contracted in amazement. “When?”
“You heard me correctly. I could give you a weapon to make you feel at ease, but it’d be a false sense of safety. I’m lethal with my bare hands.”
“Criminal,” I said, answering my earlier question.
“Too simple of a term.”
“Do I have to remind you, you killed someone? You were born and raised in this country, right? I pick up an accent when you say certain words, but not enough to make me think you weren’t. You know what that makes you?”
“The human equivalent of a Rube Goldberg.”
What in the hell did that mean? “Say I made a stupid move and went somewhere with a stranger who hasn’t given me his name…then what?”
“My name is Catch. And you’ll never have to worry about your safety when you’re in my care.”
“Your name is Catch?” Laughter spilled from my pursed together lips. “I meant your real name.”
A brow angled. “Sugar?”
“It’s really Saccharine,” I replied, screwing with him, “but it confuses people. I figured I’d keep it simple.”
His neck craned from left to right, sizing me up. The pull in his eyes stripped away my lukewarm and blasé attitude. “Your decision?”
I wiggled away, removing myself from between him and the sink. I scooped his jacket up from the ground and slid my arms into it on the way out.
-4-
CLICHÉ
Uncontrollable apprehension wrapped me in discomfort. To calm my nerves, I paced the lobby of a hotel located in California Plaza on Bunker Hill. The guests and staff gawked at me as though they knew I didn’t belong here. Their judgmental stares were the last things on my mind. Melancholic thoughts over the loss of a phone, so outdated it was worthless to everyone but me, whirled around in dark smoke swirls inside my mind.
I rubbed my shoulders and shifted my weight back and forth. The hotel, while a much better choice over my previous stomping grounds, confused me. He claimed he didn’t want sex. I knew what I saw in his eyes when he studied my body in the car on the way to the hotel when he thought I wasn’t looking. He wanted to take his payment from me in the way I was most reluctant to give him in trade.
I supposed it could’ve been worse. He could’ve been someone completely unattractive, simple-minded, and lacking in personal hygiene. It didn’t bring me enough comfort to resign myself to the inevitable when we reached the room. There was nothing indicating just because he had a beautiful face, incredible intellect, and indications of a nice body underneath his clothes, it removed him from being a psychotic individual who would cut me up and dispose of my body in a back alley.
“Ready?” Catch asked, approaching me from the check-in counter.
Nodding at his question, I quickly breezed past him and into the elevator lobby.
The doors opened for us. With no one else around, we were the only two in the elevator car.
His skewed reflection and movements were mirrored in the closed gold doors of the elevator as he worked to punch in a number and used a key to unlock one of the top levels.
“Why take me here instead of your home?” I questioned.
“The place I would like to take you involves advanced arrangements for travel.”
The elevator pinged and opened to the level for the luxury suites. The doors slid open, giving me a way out of Catch’s need to encase me in fragile glass.
He held his hand on the doors of the elevator car, waiting for me to walk through first. I slid my feet across the divide and slowed my pace to allow him to walk alongside me.
He halted at the last door in the hall and used the passcode and keycard to open the door to the hotel suite, leaving it open for me.
I walked through, took a quick gander of the expansive room, and navigated my way toward the bedroom area.
Fending off my budding nervousness, I switched my hips, ignoring the pain in my ankle, and approached the bed. By the time I had turned around, Catch was standing at the doorway.
“The room? Did you change your mind about fucking me? Fine.” I threw my hands up on my hips, pretending to be at ease with it. “Can we get this over with? How do you want it and what do you want?”
With a curled-lip smile, he leaned against the doorframe and continued his unnerving habit.
“What?” I folded my jittery hands in front of my lap.
“I was being honest with you about what it takes to get to my home.” In a slow drift of his eyes, he regarded my hands. “Why do you think I brought you here to fuck you, when you were told it wouldn’t happen in the immediate future?”
“I think you are trying to make yourself complicated to screw with me.” I crossed my legs at the ankles, creating more curves than needed to my body and slid his jacket off, allowing it to pool around my feet on the floor. “I haven’t had a good fuck in a while. It would be really shitty of me not to take up an opportunity to get a man like you naked.”
“How long is a while?”
His question threw my confident stance off kilter. “Two months, I think,” I said, my words carefully and unnecessarily spaced.
“Think?” His jaw broadened and his straight eyebrows created a daunting shadow over his eyes.
“I was hungover,” I offered uneasily, scanning Catch for a reason why he’d suddenly become so…possessive. “Okay, I admit it. I was drunk. It comes back to me in bits and pieces.”
“We aren’t going to fuck tonight,” he reiterated with a scowl. “I think you’ve had enough men take advantage of you and mistreat you. I don’t think you want what you’re proclaiming you wouldn’t mind doing with me. Not yet.”
“Take advantage of me?” I laughed and repeated the question, my posture folding. “I’m not some weak, helpless girl who lets anyone take advantage of me. I’m not on the streets because I need to finance my drug addiction. I’ve never taken a narcotic in my life and never have I wanted to. I’m not selling my body, either. I kick people’s asses for the money and because I’m halfway decent at it, not because I enjoy the violence and have some kind of bloodlust.”
I exhaled an unsteady breath and sat on the bed. Leisurely crossing my legs, I bounced the top leg over the other. “I like to keep the things I can control in my life simple.” I fished in my pocket for a condom I began carrying shortly after my drunken one-night stand, in case of emergencies. I held it out to him.
He stepped forward, his eyelids partly shuttering his violet-hued eyes, and glared at the condom.
I tossed the condom on the floor; it landed in front of his feet. I leaned back on my elbows, sure I couldn’t hide the severe frown sinking my face. “Why are we here, Catch? What do you really want from me?”
“We’re not here so I can pay you for your temporary time and fuck you. I’m here to convince you.”
“Convince me to do what?”
His long lean legs worked to make confident strides toward me. “To accept my offer for a
job that will get you out of whatever situation you are currently in.” Soft-spoken words laced with assertiveness lured me like a voice actor seducing his listener.
I sighed and showed my agitation over his lack of transparency. “You haven’t told me what you want me to do.”
“It will have to be enough that you know what I don’t want you to do.” He bowed over my position and clenched my chin between his fingers. Pushing up abruptly, he jerked my head up to stare at him.
A rolling in my gut pinched and nearly ached. It wasn’t lingering pain from my fight. It was deeper, underneath the muscle and skin.
He gently thumbed the split in my lip, examining it as though he wanted to make sure it didn’t hurt me. “This is how we’re going to begin. With a test. You’re not to talk unless I ask you a question. I’m beginning to catch on to your need to talk to deflect, and I want to make you feel.” He released me and stood upright. “Take a shower, clean yourself thoroughly, and come back to bed in only a towel.”
“I thought you didn’t want sex?”
“Failure number one.”
Failure. I loathed the word and it instantly made me want to comply. I pushed off the bed, intending to head into the bathroom. I hesitated.
“I said I wasn’t going to fuck you tonight,” he assured me, “and I meant it.”
It had been about a day since I’d been able to take a hot shower inside a clean bathroom. The sample sizes of shampoo and body wash were perfect. I took my time, washing the city’s dirt and grime off my body and out of my hair. I slathered myself in a lavender-scented moisturizer and left a touch of the hair conditioner in my hair, combing it through with my fingers.
Taking a few breaths previous to exiting the bathroom, I opened the door.
In the suite, Catch sat in a chair across from the bed, reclining back with his thumb rubbing the speckling of stubble on the bottom of his chin. “On the bed, spread your legs, and put your hands behind your head.” He gave me directions, barking orders while hardly acknowledging me.
I turned toward the bed to do as ordered.
“Don’t move.” The command was a soft dart, pinning me in place. His steps plodded toward me.
He gathered my hair and shifted it over one shoulder. The unexpected touch of his fingertips on my shoulder blades knotted the muscles in my shoulders. An electric chill shocked my senses as he traced the two ravens sharing one leafless branch on either of my shoulder blades. “When did you get this?”
“Two months ago,” I told him. Shortly before my first fight, I wandered into a tattoo parlor. I had no idea what I wanted at the time. I was torn between two birds: a raven and a crow. The look of the raven helped me remember a piece of beauty when my life was drenched in ugliness.
“Why did you get it?”
“It’s personal,” I answered in a soft undertone to my audible breaths.
The heat and pressure of his presence receded, leaving me shivering in the wintry chill. “Get on the bed.”
I crawled up in bed and settled myself into position, folding my knees, pushing my heels toward my ass, and readjusted the towel to cover all the private pieces of myself.
Hovering over the side of the bed, he brushed his hand across my collarbone, tickling me with the light touch of his textured fingertips. “Legs down, flat against the bed.”
I slid my feet down until my legs rested on the mattress.
Unfastening the towel from my chest at a leisure pace, he unwrapped it from around my body like I was a present whose contents he’d expected to receive. The back of his fingers traced a straight line down my sternum and stopped at my belly button, circling the not quite flat surface. He placed his palm flat against my stomach, allowing it to rest on my damp skin. His hand might as well have been doused in a searing flame; it heightened my self-consciousness to a level beyond normal.
I had my ass and my tits to thank for my thicker size. I inherited my mother’s classic Coke bottle shape and was cursed with a waist to ass proportion that meant jeans were my arch nemesis. I didn’t love my body, but I didn’t hate it, either.
With Catch, my body became a battleground. I fought to detach, and he demanded the opposite with his touch. I wasn’t used to feeling anything with anyone. While I’d only had sex with one man in my life, none of the men I’d been with outside of the single experience touched me the way Catch had. It was rough, if they bothered to touch me, and it involved the only places they thought I’d reap pleasure: tits, ass, or pussy.
I jerked at the sensation rifling over my skin when he raked his fingers down my pubic bone. I sucked in a breath, releasing it slowly and unsteadily.
“I don’t think a single word you’ve said to me since we met has been the truth.” The tonality was seductive and mild in volume, worsening the affect he had over me. A hand crept lower, stopping a few inches above my clit. He circled the area with a feather-light touch.
The sizzle burned my skin raw, increasing the sensitivity. Looking into his eyes worsened the sensation. My fists clenched into tight balls. My nails dug into my palms. Every muscle in my body clenched.
Seeking a little reprieve, I kept my eyes on the ceiling instead of Catch’s face. “I thought you didn’t want to fuck me.”
His fingers brushed against my chin. “You can’t seem to follow directions, and you definitely lack in reading between the lines.” His occupied hand continued its descent. When his fingers slid down the lips of my pussy, my mouth fell open, releasing a sharp hissing sound.
His attention slipped downward, and he drew his hand up. Rubbing his fingers together, he separated them in front of my view, presenting his dripping wet fingers as a source of my shame. “You’re soaking wet with the truth, sweetheart,” he drawled. “It’s not about what I want, but what you want. Do you want more? Are you aching for me to fuck you, Sugar? Is it the reason you continuously broach the topic of sex between us?”
I didn’t answer.
He crept on top of the bed, sliding up my body, pressing me down onto the mattress with his weight. Pushing his legs between mine, he directed them to spread around him. The gap in my thighs widened. The lips of my pussy stretched, opening to reveal more of what Catch’s presence did to me. The seam in his jeans rubbed against my clit, provoking and teasing me. My body worked in direct opposition with my closed-off and sheltered mind, screaming at Catch without the words spilling from my mouth; I wanted more.
His closed fists bowed either side of the bed as they held his upper body up and apart from me. The piercing stare wouldn’t release me. “Change my mind. Use everything you have.”
I slid my hand down my body, damp from the shower, or maybe from the salacious feelings he pulled from me. Between us, I opened myself a little more with two fingers. He pushed up, his biceps swelling and tensing to accommodate his weight while he watched the movement of my hand.
Sliding my middle finger between my slick slit, I moved up and down. Moaning and writhing around with my eyes closed, I pretended to come on the spot. “You like the way I play with my pussy? Does it make you hard?”
A strong grip on my wrists stopped the movement of my hand. My eyelids flew open in surprise. Shaking his head, he made a clicking sound with his tongue against his teeth.
“I’m doing what you said.” My voice cracked and became heavily laden with hoarseness.
“And it’s part of the problem. The other? I want you to feel this, not pretend you feel things you don’t.”
“I can’t,” I shot back.
He pointed a glance to my pussy. “I can see my reflection between your thighs, and I have a feeling that doesn’t happen very often.” He sank his teeth into his bottom lip and squinted at me. “Wearing panties is going to be a problem for you when you’re around me.”
Never had I heard the inflection of the word panties sound so obscene.
“What do you need, Sugar?”
“I need…spank bank material.” I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. The last
thing I needed was a catalyst to make me pant for him. Unfortunately, my time machine wasn’t readily available; the statement couldn’t be retracted.
He searched my eyes for a moment and straightened his spine. A glint of a hidden motive was behind his eyes. Methodic in his actions, he grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head, throwing it onto the nearest chair. Gazing down at me, he brushed a hand over his hair to move it away from his forehead.
His body…fuck, his body. It kept my focus prisoner. The curve of his pecs. The bumpy ridges and dents in his torso. The veins running down his arms and the bulge of certain muscles. He was covered in a tattoo of a barren forest. The roots were winding and gnarled as it extended down his abs. The tops of the trees were bleak and spread out across his chest onto his shoulders and arms.
My hand extended, wanting to touch a part of him.
He gave my hand a cutting glare. I thought he was going to break my fingers. I quickly removed it from the air, laying it to rest at my side.
When he unbuckled and unzipped showing a tuft of closely cropped dark hair and only a few inches of the base of his thick, flaccid cock, I lost control of my fight to remain numb.
My hand manipulated my pussy, immediately moving faster. “Why aren’t you hard?”
“Mental fortitude.” He grabbed the hand resting at my side and touched it to the bottom of his supple lips, caressing my fingertips with his mouth.
My body wanted to burst open and reveal my secrets. My mind fought against breaking the seal. Considering me with a fierceness that plundered the oxygen from my breaths, he slid my hand down the peaks and valleys of his ethereal body. His skin was tepid and tense underneath my palm. He halted my hand shy of tracing the trail of dark hair extending down from his belly button.
Shuttering my eyes, I moved my hand in small circles against my wet nub.
“Sugar.” He took my hand and brushed it against the base of his cock, coercing my fingers to touch the shaft. “I don’t care where you decide to set those eyes, but I need to see all of you.”
Lies & Lullabies Page 4
