Her soft embrace provoked a frightening flare of heat in him. He spread open her jacket and shoved her T-shirt up over her collarbone, rough and urgent. She twisted against him in protest. “Seth, don't.”
Her breathless words lost their meaning as his warm hands stroked and soothed. “Just this. Just let me rub my face against your skin. I'm starving for it. So soft. I love the smell of you. Please, Raine. I need this.” His voice was a pleading rasp, and he caressed her breasts through the spandex sports bra. His tender, ravenous mouth tongued the hollow of her throat, licking the soft skin above her bra.
It was easier to just let herself believe that he was giving her a choice, she thought, as he discovered the zippered front of the sports bra and growled in approval at the convenience. He yanked it open, folded the flaps back and bent his head to her naked breasts.
That was it. She was lost. He held her breasts, one in each big hand, suckling both nipples in turn, licking the plump curves. His breath was a warm caress that generated a wild chaotic heat There was no stopping him. He could take whatever he wanted, and make her beg him to keep taking and taking, until he'd taken everything.
He lifted his head. “Quit Lazar.”
“What?” She was disoriented, the moist skin of her breasts cool where his suckling mouth had been. “What?” “You heard me. Quit the bastard. It's not a healthy place for you. Don't go back there at all. Don't even call. Just blow them off.”
She shook her head, bewildered. “I can't just—” 'The place is poison for you, Raine. You know I'm right” Hah. If he only knew. Her mind raced, seeking a plausible excuse. “I can't just leave. Where would I go? Even this house belongs to—”
“Come with me. I'll take care of you.” He slid his hands under the waistband of her leggings and delved inside her panties, his fingers tangling in the warm nest of curls between her thighs.
She squeaked, grabbing his wrist with a nervous laugh. “And what do you want in return for taking care of me? Do I get to be your, um, mistress, or something? Your little love slave?”
His tongue slid along her open lips, probing and dancing against hers, drinking in her nervous, panting breaths. His hand probed deeper, his gentle fingers seeking the wet, silky heat hidden in her soft folds, and finding it. “That sounds good,” he said huskily. “Mistress, love slave, either one works for me. Never had a mistress before, but it sounds like fun.” “Oh, please, Seth. I was just kidding. I can't possibly—” Her words cut off in a sharp gasp as his hand thrust deeper. “It would be perfect,” he said. “I want to look after you, I want to protect you, and I want to have sex with you. Every chance I get Front, back, sideways, up against the wall, in the shower, everything. Call it whatever the fuck you want. Just come with me.”
“Seth, slow down,” she said, wiggling. “Wait. I—” “Humor me,” he muttered, biting her throat. “Please, Raine. It'll be OK. I've got lots of money. Ill make it worth your while.”
His words were like a splash of ice water. She shoved him away and yanked his hand out of her leggings. “You bastard!”
“What?” He sounded completely bewildered.
“Worm my while? All that carrying on about how you're so sorry, you were wrong about me, and now you're trying to... to buy me!”
He let out a sigh of disgust. “Raine—”
“Let me out of this car.” She flailed in his tight embrace.
“I wasn't calling you a whore.” He pulled her back against his chest. “I just phrased it wrong. I guess I figured having money might be relevant information to put forward while trying to persuade a woman to abandon her livelihood and become my mistress. All I mean is that you'd be covered financially. Money is not a problem for me. Got it?”
She stopped struggling, but her whole body still shook with anger. “You are rude and crass,” she informed him.
“Yeah. I've been told that I lack social skills,” he said sourly.
“You were told right.”
“OK. Sorry. I swear to God, I didn't mean to insult you again. It's the last thing I wanted to do. Forgive me. Please. Again.”
The frustration in his voice was very real. She studied his taut profile for a long moment, nodded and slowly took his hand in hers.
His sigh of relief was audible. “OK. Rewind, erase, and let's take this again from the top,” he said. “Never mind my money. Forget about it. Do it for the sex. Do it for pleasure, Raine. You know I can satisfy you. I can make you come until you pass out And I will. Remember how it was today? You all spread out on the bed, sweet and sticky like taffy, with your legs draped over my shoulders? You liked that, didn't you? That’s how it'll be. All the time. As much as you can take.”
His hand slid into her leggings again, easing them over her hips. His hands were cupping her bare bottom. The reality of her situation finally hit her. All night she'd been lecturing herself about how stupid she'd been to throw herself at a stranger. Seth Mackey was still a stranger, and here she was, nearly naked in his car, about to be ravished all over again. God, was she ever a slow learner.
“Wait,” she tried to say, but his tongue was thrusting into her mouth, his hand between her legs. She clenched her thighs around his probing fingers and he murmured something in a low, approving tone against her trembling mouth. She struggled in his grasp, but he held her still, his thumb circling her clitoris. He was as slow and deliberate as he was ruthless, driving her before him straight into the heart of unknown sexual sensation.
She came, violently. Hot bursts of pleasure jerked through her repeatedly, jagged and intense.
She lay in his arms, astonished. Seth cradled her limp body, and drew his hand out from between her thighs. He raised it to his face, inhaled, and licked his fingers, one after the other. “That was heaven.”
A burst of shivery, tearful laughter shook her. “That's my line.”
He untied the laces of one of her running shoes and pried it off. “Say it the next time I make you come.”
“Wait, Seth. I don't think we—”
“You're so juicy and sweet down there.” He struggled with the laces of her other shoe. “I want to go down on you. Right now.” The shoe thumped to the floor. “I could eat you for hours.”
His feverish intensity alarmed her. “Seth, wait. Wait,” she protested, pushing at his chest. “Slow down, please.”
“Stop fighting me.” He seized her wrists in one big hand and started to pull her leggings off. “Relax. I'll make it good for you.”
It infuriated her that he wouldn't listen. She slammed her elbow into him, and he let out a startled grunt. She froze, horrified at herself.
He stared at her. “What the hell was that about?”
She swallowed over the hard, painful lump in her throat. “Don't use your strength against me.”
Raine shoved against the rigid circle of his arms, and he opened them, leaving her shivering and wobbling on his lap. She steadied herself against his shoulder, conscious of her near nudity, breasts bared, leggings yanked halfway down her thighs; at a total disadvantage. She searched for words to make sense of this tangle of incomprehension. Nothing came to mind.
“You liked it, Raine,” he said slowly. “I was making you feel good. I don't know what the goddamn problem is.”
“You use your strength too much,” she said, fighting back tears. “I want you to slow down. I can't control anything. It scares me.”
He peered into her eyes as if he were trying to read her mind. “Why should you control anything? What the hell do you think needs controlling? It was working great. You came like crazy. It was awesome.”
“Please,” she whispered. She reached out, touched his cheek with shaking fingers. “Just ease off, Seth. I can't bear it.”
He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, shaking his head in helpless frustration. “Damn. I really don't want to wreck this.”
The baffled hurt in his voice pained her. “You didn't,” she blurted out. “You haven't. But I can't just let myself go like yo
u want me to. Or at least... I shouldn't.”
“Why not?”
She threw up her hands. “Because I don't know you!”
He lifted his head. “So? You know how much I want you. You know how good I can make you feel. What more do you need to know?”
The abyss between their points of view staggered her.
“This afternoon, we both made stupid assumptions. We crashed and burned, and it was awful. I can't let that happen again,” she explained, in an earnest little rush. “I'm not the kind of person who can have anonymous sex with a stranger. It was ... a mistake.”
“A mistake?” His voice was dangerously soft. “No! I mean, yes. I mean, it was wonderful to make love to you, but it was a mistake to make love to a stranger. I don't want you to be a stranger, Seth. I can't make love to you again until I know you better.”
His silence was unnerving. “What do you want to know?” She threw up her hands. “Anything. The usual things.” He let out a short laugh. “There's not much that's usual about me, Raine.”
“Unusual ones, then,” she said desperately. “Be specific. What exactly are you interested in?” “Oh, stop making this difficult,” she snapped. “Where are you from? Where did you go to school? What's your family like? What do your parents do? What's your favorite breakfast cereal?”
“I hope you're not expecting any pretty stories.” She was taken aback by his flat tone. “No. Just the truth.” He laid his hands on tops of her thighs, stroking her skin. “I grew up in L.A.” he said. “I don't know much about my father. Neither did my mom. All she could tell me was that his name was Raul, he spoke only Spanish, and I look just like him, only taller. They didn't communicate much, except in bed. That's the sum total of my knowledge about him. My guess is that he was her supplier, and she was screwing him to get whatever her drug of choice was at the time.” She stared at him, aghast. “Oh, God, Seth.” “She OD'ed when I was sixteen, but with all the junk she did, she was pretty much dead to me a few years before that. There was a sort of a stepdad for a while, but he meant less than zero to me. I raised myself, more or less,”
She wrapped her arms around his neck. He stiffened as she pressed her cheek against his hot face. “Don't get mushy on me,” he muttered. “That's not part of the deal.”
“Sorry.” She pulled away. “How did you survive?” “I don't know. I ran pretty wild. Got into lots of trouble. Fights, lots of fights. I'm good at fighting. And sex, of course. I started real early with sex.” He hesitated. “I'm good at that, too,” he added.
He paused, trying to gauge her reaction. She waited patiently.
“My mom liked pills, and my stepdad liked booze, but my drug of choice is adrenaline. I'm good with my fists. Good with a knife, too. I was a talented thief. I can pick locks, I can hotwire cars. I was into drag racing for a while, that was a lot of fun. I was good at that, too. And I was an awesome shoplifter. Never got caught once.”
He waited. She gave him an encouraging nod, petting his hair.
“I never did deal drugs, though,” he said. “Watching my mom turned me off to that but good.” He stroked his knuckle over her cheek, a slow, lingering caress. “Am I scaring you yet, Raine?”
His tone was almost taunting, but she heard the message behind it as loudly as if he were shouting it. It could not be easy for a man like him to tell her such painful and intimate things. His blunt words were a sacrificial offering. She was moved by the gesture.
He didn't scare her. He broke her heart, maybe, but she wasn't intimidated in the least In some ways, his childhood had a lot in common with her own. The alienation, the loneliness. Probably the fear, too, though she was sure he would rather die than admit it.
She stroked the short, soft hair at the nape of his neck and rubbed her face against his scratchy cheek. She smiled at him,
“No,” she said softly. “You're not scaring me at all. Go on.”
Chapter 9
Raine's words sent another tremor of raw emotion through him. He was jacked up and out of control tonight, his armor suddenly cracked. The grisly details of his past were nobody's else's goddamn business, but the words had just fallen out of him. She was the one with almost no clothes on, but he was the one who felt naked.
He splayed his fingers around the yielding softness of her waist and tried to remember if he'd ever discussed his hard-luck childhood with any of his other women. It wasn't much of a turn-on, as conversational topics went. Seemed to work for Raine, though. There was always the possibility that she was pumping him for info for Lazar, but when he looked at her shadowy eyes, her soft, trembling mouth, he doubted it.
Her hands were so gentle, petting his face. It distracted him.
“OK,” he muttered, trying to gather his thoughts. “So one day I'm burgling this guy's house, and he pops up out of nowhere and sticks a Para-Ordnance PI4-45 in the back of my neck. Turns out he was a retired cop, a guy named Hank Yates. He roughed me up a little, just to teach me a lesson, and he started to haul me down to the station—”
His throat closed down. He swallowed, and stopped. He couldn't go into how Hank had grabbed him by the scruff of the neck to shove him into the car, and realized that the smart-mouthed, thieving kid was burning with fever and coughing up blood. In the end, he'd taken Seth to the emergency room instead of to juvie, where he'd been diagnosed with pneumonia brought on by untreated bronchitis. When he recovered, the gruff, self-righteous old bastard had felt so bad about having smacked a sick kid around that he'd taken it upon himself to rescue Seth from a life of crime. God, how embarrassing.
What a royal pain in the ass that had been. Hank had been a stiff-necked authoritarian, a solitary widower who had long ago alienated his own grown children. He and Seth had clashed violently at first, but after a very stormy period, they had both recognized that they needed each other. Hank had meant well, and in his own way, Seth was grateful to him. Particularly because with Hank's help, Seth had been able to make sure that Jesse got a fighting chance, too.
At least until ten months ago.
Raine was patiently waiting, still stroking his face. He struggled to remember at what point he had left her stranded in the tar-pit of his childhood. “Where was I?” he demanded.
“Hank was about to take you to the station,” she reminded gently.
“Oh. Right. Well, he didn't. He decided to straighten me out instead, and after a while, I decided to let him do it. I was just smart enough to realize that there wasn't much of a future in my lifestyle.”
“Yes?” she prompted. “So?”
“It's a long story, but basically he just bullied me and hassled me into getting my GED. Then he bullied and hassled some more until I ended up in the Army. Hank was an Army man.”
God, it had been so long since he let himself think about all this stuff. His brain was churning out memories all on its own, like watching an old movie. He could actually hear Hank's gruff voice.
“Come on, kid, where else are you gonna learn that tech stuff that you like? They'll help put you through school, too. Can't beat that. Got eighty thousand bucks stashed in a mattress someplace to go to Stanford? Got any rich relatives? Gonna rob a bank? No. Stop. Don't answer that.”
But Seth was already grinning. “Bet I could, you know.”
“That ain't funny, kid.”
“Who's joking? Who's laughing? “
He shook himself again. This weird inability to concentrate was pissing him off. “Where the hell was I?” he snapped.
“The Army,” she reminded him.
“Oh. The Army. Yeah, they made me take all the tests, and figured out that I actually had a brain underneath all that attitude. They sent me to Rangers school, and I ended up in the 75th Rangers regiment. And bam, I was hooked. I did my time investigating threats to national security. Counter-intelligence, antiterrorism, antiespionage, you name it The discipline was pure hell on earth, but I knew if I was a good boy they would let me play with their toys. It was actually worth it to me. So I stuck
with it.”
“Good for you.” She kissed his forehead.
He grabbed her wrists, gripping them hard enough to make her squeak. “Get this straight, Raine. Fm not telling you about my childhood to make you feel sorry for me, because I don't feel sorry for myself. I'm telling you for two reasons. The first is because lying is a big waste of time.”
She hesitated. “I agree.”
“Good. I'm real glad we're on the same page with that one. The second reason I'm telling you my life story is because, if I understood correctly, you won't have sex with me again until I do. And I want to have sex with you again. Soon. Right here, in fact. You cool with that?”
A tremor went through her body, but she didn't pull away. “Um, yes,” she said softly.
“OK,” he muttered. He let go of her hands and seized her waist again. “I wanted that to be perfectly clear. No more misunderstandings.”
“Crystal clear.” She gave him an encouraging nod. “Go on.”
His hands slid down and settled on the swell of her hip. “So to make a boring story short, I ended up serving part time in the Reserves. I enrolled at UCLA on the GI bill. Got some scholarships, scraped together the tuition somehow. Got a degree in electronic engineering, teamed up with some other egghead geeks, and Mackey Security Systems Design was born. My status as an ex-thief gives me a unique edge when it comes to designing surveillance and countersurveillance systems security, but I don't tell potential clients that. I play up the Rangers angle instead. It tends to inspire more confidence. So I'd appreciate it if you kept it to yourself.”
Her shadowy, appreciative smile made his cock pulse and throb painfully. He had to wrap this up and get back to seducing her before he exploded. 'There it is, babe,” he concluded. “My life story. I'm damaged goods, but I can fake it when I have to. Money covers up a lot of warts.”
She cuddled up against him. “You're very cynical.”
He snorted. “Yeah.” He splayed his hands wide and gripped the warm, smooth cheeks of her beautiful bare ass. “So? Anything else you need to know about me before I make you come again?”
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