by K. I. Lynn
That was the moment I realized that she held the power to breach my walls with a simple, real smile.
CHAPTER 7
Flirting wasn’t working.
It was a stupid idea. Flirt with all the women but her. Show her I was attracted to them.
Not her.
Never Delilah.
She made my blood fucking boil. Just sitting next to her was a slow torture, but an agony I endured for some unknown reason.
Fuck. I should have told Jack “No.” Been more insistent about it.
I needed a fucking drink. A strong one.
Headlights in my rearview mirror caught my attention. Six miles they’d stayed close, and it could have been a coincidence, but maybe not. Four years of looking over my shoulder had honed my awareness of my surroundings. I’d become a paranoid motherfucker, but with good cause.
Killing Grace and leaving me at death’s door wasn’t enough for Vincent Marconi—it was only the beginning. I was right where he wanted me; locked in a purgatory of my own making.
My wife was dead. My son was dead. I was the living dead.
A few blocks from my building, the car pulled into the right turn lane, and I caught a glimpse of an SUV that looked full of kids before it drove away.
After parking my car in the lot, I started walking instead of going in. I’d seen the neon sign of a bar the other night, and I desperately needed a drink.
A couple blocks down and one over, I found my oasis, and it was within a short walk of my condo. Beer, booze, anything to numb my mind and my body from all the thoughts of the intriguing grayish green eyes that haunted me. Their emptiness that could pierce me and call out to my own emptiness.
The neon lights of the bar welcomed me, drew me in, and sang me the siren song of drinking away my troubles. The problem was the blonde my eyes immediately found sitting at the bar. A shudder moved through her as I stood, staring at her. She shot me a sideways glance, but it wasn’t needed because of this damn current that seemed to move through us.
Fucking fuck fuck fuck!
You have to be fucking kidding me!
Why was she everywhere I went?
“Can I get a Dos Equis?” I asked the bartender.
As much as I tried to ignore it, push past it and her, it never got any better.
“Palmer,” I said as I slid onto the barstool beside her. I slipped on a smirk, something to deter her from any desire to speak to me.
“Thorne,” she replied with more than a little annoyance in her tone.
It was exactly what I wanted, but for some reason, it rubbed me wrong.
“What brings you here?” I asked.
She didn’t even turn to look at me. “I’m here every Friday. Why are you here?”
“I needed a drink. I just spent the last hour trying to lose Kelly. I think she was trying to find out where I live.”
She let out a sigh. “And of course you had to land in my bar.”
“Does it have your name on it?” I asked, just to be a smart ass.
She glared at me and was about to say something when John interrupted with my drink.
“Here you go,” he said as he set the bottle down. “Wanna start a tab?”
I nodded. “Sounds good.”
He turned to Delilah. “Lila, you good?”
She tapped her finger on the glass in her hand. “One more.”
The name threw me off, and when he left to make her drink, I leaned on the bar, sliding a little closer to her.
“Lila?”
“Short for Delilah.”
I took a sip of my beer. “I’ve never heard anyone call you that nickname.”
“Only Caroline at the office does. Delilah is more professional, so only my friends call me Lila.”
Friends. Where were all her supposed friends? She sat beside me, in a bar, all alone, and from the familiarity between her and the bartender, it was a regular occurrence.
We sat next to each other in silence, my attention trying to stay on the basketball game on the screen in front of me and not on the few inches that separated us. It was a dangerous situation to be in, especially with how obsessed I’d been with her.
I finished off three beers as Delilah sipped her way through her drink. A firm grip on my bottle was all I had to stop me from reacting to the current that moved between us, from dragging her to the back and fucking her like I’d dreamt of for weeks.
“Well, I’m out,” she said as she signaled to the bartender for her tab.
I watched her, the loose way her body moved, the drooping of her eyes. She was relaxed, tired, and a prime fucking target the moment she stepped out those doors.
“See you Monday, Thorne,” she said, then let out a small giggle. “Thorne…in my side.”
It was barely audible, but I heard it. There was no way I was going to let her walk or drive wherever she was going, so I called for my check and quickly followed her out.
By the time I made it outside, she wasn’t very far ahead of me, her steps slow and wobbly. I kept my distance, not wanting to tip her off. As we passed by an alleyway, she caught the attention of two men standing in the dark.
MINE!
They stared after her, whispered words I could barely hear, but it was clear they were drunk and up to no good. I glared at them, waiting for them to move toward her so I could beat the shit out of them for even looking her way. When they finally glanced around to probably see if it was clear to go after her, they saw me.
My hands were balled into fists as I stared them down, daring them to move a fucking inch toward her. They backed down, slinking back into the dark, and I continued to follow her.
She was a fucking idiot. Walking down the city streets, in the dark, drunk off her ass. It practically screamed to the world that she was vulnerable and ripe for the picking.
Very ripe, the beast purred.
You’re no fucking help.
We would have ripped those guys apart. Then ripped her pants off and spanked her.
After a few blocks, her spine straightened, and she turned to look behind her.
For the first fucking time in a few fucking thousand feet.
“Are you stalking me now, Thorne?” she asked as she walked backward for a few steps, then turned back around, her feet unsteady as she righted herself.
“You wish, Palmer,” I lied. “I’m headed home myself, and making sure you get home all right in your drunken state. Last thing I need is to be implicated because your drunk ass was last seen with me before you disappeared or wound up dead.”
“I can take care of myself. Don’t worry your pretty little head.” She stopped in front of a building and grabbed hold of the door.
A very familiar building.
“Well, I’m home, so off you go.”
Fuck my life.
It was my building.
I followed her in, cursing whatever fate put us so fucking close together. She waved to the night guard, whose name I hadn’t gotten yet. I gave him a nod and continued behind her into the awaiting elevator.
If there were erotic nightmares, I was fucking in one. Where you were hard all the damn time and you couldn’t fuck the girl, so you were left in an almost constant state of blue balls. That about summed up my life from the day I met Delilah Palmer.
“Seriously, Thorne, you can go home now.”
It was so hard not to grab her and pin her against the wall.
Do it.
No.
Her aggravation amused me, and I let out a chuckle as I leaned down to her ear. “I am going home.”
Smells so good. Taste her. Lick her neck and fucking taste her!
She staggered, and I reached out to steady her. The gasp that passed her lips didn’t go unnoticed, especially when it turned into a moan. Neither did the humming that moved between us where I held her. My whole body tightened, even my grip on her.
“Do you really live here?” she asked.
The beast rattled in his cage, unrelenting, angry, and lu
st filled. It took every fucking ounce of strength I possessed not to give in, to drag her up to my condo and give in to the overpowering force of my dick’s will.
“Fourteenth floor.”
“You’re telling me I can never get away from you?” she asked as she looked up at me, her eyes glassy from the alcohol.
“What, you think because we live in the same building that I’m going to come find you?” I ripped my arm from her. “Dream on, Palmer. You’re not that pretty.”
The words were to put her off, to get her to respond by slapping me or getting angry. Despise me. Hate me. Anything to make an inch of space between us.
But she flinched instead, stumbling back, head down, as she refused to look at me. “I know that, asshole.”
A chuckle bubbled up, but then ice raced through me. “Wait…What? You’re agreeing with me?”
There was no way she could be serious, but by the way the beast rattled inside me, I knew she was.
The one person to tempt me in years, to draw me in like no other and make me beg for mercy, my enigma, thought she wasn’t pretty? She was beyond pretty. Gorgeous. A broken beauty whose water-filled eyes tore at my chest.
“Of course I am. I’m not stupid,” she said, her teeth clenching as her bottom lip quivered. “I know I’m plain, boring and a workaholic…useless.”
Her hand flew up, covering her mouth, but the damage was done. Literally. Darkness poured out of her, despair and loneliness radiated. The beast clawed to be closed, to absorb it all.
I wanted to comfort her, but I couldn’t. So I stared as she rocked, one arm across her chest like she was holding herself together.
“Lila?”
I started to reach out, but stopped myself, balling my fingers into a fist. It was the space I needed.
She sniffed and attempted to smile, but it was a poor attempt. Even more so if she was actually trying to divert attention away from what she just revealed.
“Sorry, I’m a depressed drunk.” Just then, the elevator chimed for her floor, the doors sliding open. “Have a good weekend.”
My mouth popped open to respond, but I had no words and the doors closed. All alone and suddenly feeling even worse, the guilt eating at me. Something hurt her, and I had a feeling there was so much more than she was letting on. There was so much pain, so much anguish pouring from her.
I wanted to give her peace, but it wasn’t my place. In fact, I had no place. Not in the world and certainly not in her life.
CHAPTER 8
Delilah’s impromptu confession did nothing to sway my curiosity. In fact, it flamed the fire of her draw.
I just wanted to make it through the day, just one day, without thinking about her, but she was always fucking there, in my periphery. The smell of her perfume was a constant torture. If we weren’t office mates, working together and she was just some girl at the bar, I could fuck her, get her out of my system, and be done.
Instead, I was left ready to explode like a ticking time bomb, just waiting to go off at any moment. Anger and frustration mounted, and the sight of her made me furious.
I resented her, absolutely despised her for making me want her in the first place.
I didn’t want the need that churned inside me. I didn’t want the crawling hunger to fuck her like she was the last fucking woman on the planet. I didn’t want to crave her with her pretty vacant eyes and her plump, perfect all.
I didn’t want her.
Liar!
Shut up!
Arguing about it with myself wasn’t helping either, because the beast vibrated in his cage as wave after wave of agonizing desire rolled through him, leaking into me. I couldn’t get a grip, slowly losing my mind to the insanity within. All because I hungered for the taste of one woman.
It was all made infinitely worse because I woke up late and didn’t have time to get off before heading to work. Meaning it was a simple equation—me turned on plus Delilah in my vicinity equaled a fucking recipe for a catastrophic explosion if I didn’t watch myself.
Turned out it would have been better if I’d been ten minutes late.
Better for my sanity, which was slipping. Bad enough I had Delilah on my mind, but of course she was wearing the skirt that drove me wild. It was a black pencil skirt with a flirty hem that hugged her body perfectly.
It was not the day for a distraction, but all I could think about was catching her, pulling that fucking skirt up and plowing into her. My cock had been between semi and full hardness all day. I could barely concentrate on the case file in front of me, having stared at the same piece of paper for almost an hour. So unfocused that I told Jennifer we’d have an almost unattainable task done in two days.
“Jesus-fucking-Christ, Nathan!” Delilah snapped. “I would like to leave sometime this century.”
We’d been at each other’s throats all week, annoyances grating and compressing against the four walls that surrounded us. The building was long empty, even from the cleaning crew.
I narrowed my eyes on her. It wasn’t all my fault we were there so late. I wanted to go home as well.
“Well, I do believe this is your fucking fault for telling Jack we could have all of these contracts done by Friday morning!”
“Yes, well, it wasn’t a fucking problem until you told Jennifer we would have her contracts for the Sampson takeover ready by Thursday!” she snapped back.
Jennifer was the most annoying of my admirers, and the most aggressive. I didn’t know if it was her tits fucking staring at me or my cock twitching with each annoyed sigh that passed Delilah’s lips, but something distracted me from realizing just what I agreed to.
“If you had informed me of your agreement with Jack, we wouldn’t still be here,” I hissed, my lip twitching up toward a snarl.
She slammed her fingers on the keyboard in front of her. “If you read your fucking email, you would have known.”
Three “fucks” from her beautiful mouth and I was no longer half-cocked.
“You’re saying fuck a lot tonight, Delilah. Something on your mind?”
She turned to me, that fucking annoyed glare that only set the beast off more.
Tick.
Spank her. Bite her. Shove my cock down her throat. Fuck her.
Tick.
YES! Finally we can have her!
“Get your mind out of the fu—just get moving so we can leave, okay?”
I couldn’t stop my mouth from drawing up. First one side, then the other, my tongue slipping out to wet my lips. I watched her cheeks turn pink as she attempted to avoid me.
Each ticking second that passed, I felt the beast’s arousal roll through me. Hairs stood up on my arms, a ripple flowed down my spine, my hips shifting.
Sanity was gone. Control obliterated. All that remained was want. All movement and thought taken over by desire and a need that was on a cellular level.
“With all the times you’ve said ‘fuck’ tonight, I think I know what you really want. What you need, Lila.”
Me.
She shifted in her chair, her spine straightening, but the way her thighs rubbed together didn’t go unnoticed. “What is it that you think I need?”
“Cock.” No fucking pussyfooting around the issue. “You need a fucking hard cock in your tight little pussy.”
My fucking dick shoved all the way in, making you cream all over it.
A shudder rolled through me. All that kept me in place was the death grip I had on the chair. The last bit of reasonable thought I had left in me.
Her demeanor shifted between many things, probably wondering what game I was playing. No game, only a seemingly unquenchable hunger for her.
Her mouth popped open in the most perfect O. Lips that begged to have me rub the tip across them.
“You’re an expert on what my pussy needs?”
Fuck.
Fucking fuck. My dick was about to burst through my pants. My veins were overloaded with lust, and I didn’t know how much longer I could hold myself back.
“Yes, and it needs a cock to fuck it.”
“What makes you think this?” she asked. Her voice was slow, unsure, her posture shifting. I didn’t know if her head bowing was a conscious move or her body responding to the aura my own put off.
“I can tell.”
I could. She was responding to me, fucking calling me to her.
She straightened again in a willful attempt to break out of the powerful energy that consumed us.
“Well, fucking finish so I can go home and get off with my B.O.B. He might not be flesh and blood, but he gets the job done.”
I imagined her legs spread, one hand on her tit, the other slipping a vibrator across her clit. Her body jumping at the intense pleasure that jolts through her, before slipping the tip of the vibe between her pussy lips, filling her.
My brain short circuited, the vision of her playing with herself the final blow, leaving me defenseless to my own greed.
I was around my desk and pulling her from her chair, slamming her against the wall before I even comprehended it. I had her arms pinned above her head, ready to break her body like she’d broken my will.
MINE! Mine!
Her body arched into mine, a desperation flowing from her that fed into my own.
“Does that turn you on?” I asked in a whisper against her ear.
Shuddering breaths left her, a soft cry as she searched out my mouth. Her eyes were heavy, and I was certain they were close to matching my own.
“My, aren’t you a naughty girl, panting for it,” I taunted her. “Tell me, Delilah, are you a dirty whore that likes to be fucked?”
An open-mouthed gasp, hips searching out the one thing that could help us both calm the madness within.
“Answer me.” I pulled her arms above her head with more force than I should have. “Are you a dirty whore that likes to be fucked?”
I heard the words coming from my mouth, but could hardly believe them. They were always there, hiding, but my anger and hatred toward her brought them to life. She was responsible for my descent into a new level of hell. Her call, her scent, and her submission were all elements that set me off.
She sucked in another ragged breath, eyes completely glazed over. “Yes.”
