Cannon (Carolina Reapers Book 5)

by Samantha Whiskey

  “Of course,” I repeated dutifully, taking in the clean expanse of his desk.

  “What did you want to talk about? I thought you handled Michael quite masterfully.” She toyed with her fingers, spinning her engagement ring as she placed herself in front of me.

  “You kissed me,” I accused.

  She blinked, her lips parting. “Oh, that.”

  “Yes, that.” I backed up a step to give us some space, but she took it right back.

  “I wanted to show you my support.” She turned those eyes on me with a pursed, worried set to her mouth. The same mouth that had been on mine moments ago.

  “Then you pat my arm or give me a high five,” I snapped.

  She pressed her lips in a line as laughter danced across her face. “A high five? What am I, one of your teammates? Because if that’s the case, I should at least get to pat your ass, not your arm.”

  I shoved my hands in my pockets to keep them off her. I’d never wanted a woman like I wanted Persephone. Never been taken to the maddening edge of obsessive need without so much as a kiss…except she had kissed me, and it wasn’t enough. It was too much. It was all fucked up.

  “Rule number five specifically states—”

  She scoffed. “Rule number five says no sex. It certainly doesn’t say anything about kissing you. Are you saying we need to negotiate our verbal contract?”

  “It should be covered under rule five,” I argued.

  Her eyebrows popped high. “What? Why? It’s not like I gave you a handjob or oral—”

  “Oh my God, stop talking,” I begged, spinning around so I could get the hell away from her. The imagery in my head was sinful, and I couldn’t help but wonder if her fingers would manage to wrap all the way around my cock, or if she’d come up just a little short. I parked my ass at the edge of her dad’s desk and gripped the heavy wood of the top.

  “For being one of the NHL’s baddest boys, you sure are a prude.” She folded her arms under her breasts, drawing my eyes to her impressive cleavage and the single strand of pearls that nestled at her collarbone.

  “Prude?” I snapped.

  “What else would you call all this fuss over a little kiss?” She walked closer.

  “I’d call it looking out for your best interest.”

  She arched an eyebrow in challenge but kept moving toward me.

  “Persephone, if you had any idea of the things that go through my mind regarding that mouth, that body, you wouldn’t just casually kiss me. You’d run the other fucking direction,” I warned.

  “Oh, really?” She stopped right next to me, her thigh inches from brushing mine. “You don’t scare me, Cannon.”

  “I should.” How many times did I have to warn her? Did I have to spell it out for her?

  “Tell me why I can’t kiss you.” Her gaze darted to my lips, and I muttered a curse.

  “Why? Because it’s not just a kiss. Hell, I wouldn’t even call what happened in there a kiss. It was an invitation to things that you don’t want and aren’t ready for.” My grip tightened on the wood as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ears.

  “You don’t know what I want,” she accused softly. “Tell me why I can’t kiss you,” she repeated.

  Guess she really did need me to scare her off. Being platonic and careful around her had given her some misguided sense that I was one of the good guys. Fine. That was an easy enough mistake to remedy.

  “Why can’t you kiss me? Because I don’t want a kiss. Not from you.”

  Her face fell. Good.

  “I want way more than just your lips on mine, Persephone. I want your body splayed out naked beneath me, bared for feasting, begging for my mouth and hands. I want your mouth open for my tongue, and then I want to see those pretty pink lips wrapped around my cock.”

  She gasped, her lips parting, and her eyes widening slightly. Excellent. She was starting to understand.

  “I don’t want you to give me some little peck of approval in front of your friends so we can play out a lie. I don’t want your feigned interest and fake, polite sighs of appreciation. I won’t lie about need, and I won’t let you, either. Not when I want you screaming my name with your legs wrapped around my hips as I drive into you, so fucking lost to your own desire that you don’t care who the hell hears you or what your friends think because all you need is one. More. Thrust. To get you there.” I stared at her lips, letting everything I’d said show in my eyes, letting the leash slip just enough to scare her off.

  “Cannon,” she whispered.

  We locked eyes, and the temperature in the room rose by at least five degrees. God, I wanted her in every way I’d just detailed and so much more. I’d wanted her from the moment she’d fallen into my arms almost two years ago. She was everything right and good and pure in a world that had only shown me unimaginable cruelty.

  “Cannon,” she whispered again, moving that inch so our thighs touched through layers of clothing. She may as well have branded me.

  “Persephone.” I shook my head slowly, warning her not to do what her eyes already told me she was planning.

  She leaned forward, giving me every chance to back away. I should have. I needed to. I didn’t. Instead, I watched her lips part and her eyes close a second before she kissed me. Her lips met mine in a gentle recreation of the kiss she’d given me in the ballroom. This time she lingered, her lips incredibly soft against mine. I meant to hold back, to teach her with my lack of reciprocation.

  Instead, I kissed her back, gently sucking on her lower lip.

  She cupped my face and leaned in for more. Fuck me, I could fall into this woman and never resurface for air. The thought jarred me, and I grasped her wrists lightly and pulled them from my cheeks as I broke the kiss.

  Hurt flashed in her eyes, but it didn’t overpower the desire I saw there. Or was that my own reflected back at me?

  Bad idea. Horrible idea. Really fucking awful idea.

  I abandoned her wrists, took her waist in one hand, and the nape of her neck in the other, and kissed her. She gasped with surprise, and I ran my tongue along the soft skin inside her lower lip. Then I took total possession of her mouth, stroking my tongue over the roof of her mouth and the line just behind her teeth. Fuck, she tasted like strawberries and champagne—all sweet and heady.

  I groaned when her tongue rubbed against mine and nearly lost my shit when she licked that sweet little tongue into my mouth, exploring me the same way I’d just done with her. I tilted her head so I could kiss her deeper, then took her over and over. It wasn’t enough. I needed more.

  As if she’d heard my thoughts, she shifted her legs, looped her hands around my neck, and used me as leverage to climb. My grip shifted to her silk-clad ass as she settled in my lap like she’d been there a thousand times, her knees braced on either side of my hips.

  Our mouths met in a fury of want and desire too long ignored. We were ravenous, as if we could sate the need of the last two years in this single kiss. Her fingers shifted to my hair as her hips ground over mine, drawing a groan from my throat as my cock swelled.

  I wanted to touch her, to find out if her skin felt as soft as the fabric of her dress, but my hands were occupied keeping her from falling on her ass. I stood, carrying her slight weight, then spun to deposit her on the desk.

  She didn’t blink at the switch in positions, but merely took hold of the tie we’d fought over earlier in the evening, and pulled me down to her as she lay back against the expanse of cherry. Holy fucking turn on.

  I sent one hand into her hair and closed my eyes in surrender as my lips found hers again. She was hot, spun silk, from the skin of her shoulder to the hair that spilled over my hand as I sank into her kiss. She was better than I’d ever imagined. How had I lived this long without knowing her taste?

  She arched up against me, and my mouth traveled a path from her lips to the impossibly soft skin of her neck. She whimpered, her hips rolling over mine as I kissed her pulse. My girl had a button, and I’d just fou
nd it.

  I tongued that little patch of skin, and she cried out, her fingernails biting into the back of my neck. When she rocked against my hips, sending shockwaves of pleasure through my cock that shot through the rest of my nerve endings, I switched my grip, sending one hand to her knee.

  As I traveled south, caressing each millimeter of her neck as I went, my hand journeyed north, following the silk of her stockings until I reached a lace band and—

  “You wear garters?” I growled against the base of her throat.

  “Are you complaining?” She shifted so my hand slid further up her thigh, following the small strap that connected her stockings to the lingerie above.

  “Fuck no. Everything about you is incredible.” I lifted my head.

  Her smile was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen in my life.

  Our mouths met in a kiss that was even hotter than the last, our tongues as urgent as our breathing. My hand reached the top of her thigh and nearly trembled with restraint. How the hell had I not known she’d worn this under all that prim and proper fabric all night? I grazed the line where thigh met hip with my thumb, then followed it down until I found the edge of her panties—they felt like lace.

  My mouth watered at the thought of burying my head between those thighs and finding out if she tasted this sweet everywhere. Instead, I dragged my thumb down the very center of her, using the friction against the lace to drive her higher in her need.

  She yanked her mouth free, sucking in lungfuls of air as her eyes locked with mine, which narrowed slightly, daring her to stop me, to tell me she’d had enough.

  The woman rocked against my fucking hand.

  I hissed, feeling the lace grow damp beneath my fingers.

  “More, Cannon,” she pled, then rocked again so I knew exactly what she was asking for. Then she gripped my neck and pulled me back into her kiss.

  Fuck, the woman kissed with a reckless hedonism that had thoroughly intoxicated me. My thumb drifted to the band that separated lace from flesh—

  A soft click sounded, and I jerked my hand to her knee as the door opened behind me. I moved to instinctively cover Persephone, only to realize she was fully clothed. We both were.

  The woman had driven me to the brink of madness with just a kiss.

  “Oh!” Her mother laughed from the doorway. “There you two are!”

  “Kill me now,” Persephone mumbled, burying her face in my neck and holding me against her.

  “We’ll be right out,” I replied, hoping I didn’t sound as turned on as I felt. Fuck, my dick was harder than the desk.

  “Oh, don’t rush. I know how young lovers are!”

  I felt Persephone cringe.

  “It’s just that your sister started in on the Hampshire boy and now she’s…well…she’s already broken three champagne flutes…”

  “I’ll be right there, Mama. Just give me a second to right myself,” Persephone called out over my shoulder.

  “Take your time, love birds! I mean, of course we want a grandbaby, but do be careful with the desk! It’s an antique, you know!” The door clicked shut.

  “Is she gone?” Persephone asked.

  “She is.”

  She released the death grip on my neck, and I backed away like she’d bitten me. Space. I needed space, or I’d be right back on that desk, finishing what we’d started. Where the fuck was my self-control? My ability to shut it all off?

  She just kissed it out of you.

  I held out my hand against my better judgment, and congratulated myself when I managed to step away after helping Persephone off the desk. She smoothed the lines of her dress and ran her fingers through her hair.

  “Do I look okay?” she asked, her eyes wide with worry.

  “You look exquisite.”

  She offered me a tentative smile, but it faded as she looked me over. “Umm. Are you going to be…okay?” She glanced at my beltline.

  “I’ve had worse. I’ll be fine. Get out there and help your mom.” My cock throbbed, calling out my lie.

  She hesitated.

  “Persephone, go. Before someone else marches in here.”

  She nodded, then walked out of the study, taking a second to lift her chin and transform into the VanDoren everyone expected.

  Thank God I’d met her mother two weeks ago, or I might never have recovered the first impression. I got my body under control and headed out of the study, barely dodging the man I’d had yet to meet as he walked into the room.

  “Mr. VanDoren.” I held out my hand.

  The older man was fit, and rather distinguished, with hair that leaned more toward salt than pepper and with a grimace where a smile should have been. He looked over the tattoos that sprawled from my wrist to my knuckles and tensed before meeting my gaze.

  “Mr. Price.” He ignored my outstretched hand. “Let’s forgo usual pleasantries, shall we?”

  “I prefer it that way,” I answered, lowering my arm.

  “Good. Let’s get one thing straight. You’re not good enough to marry my daughter.” His eyes narrowed in challenge.

  “You’ll get no argument from me on that.” He may as well have said that the sky was blue. Duh, asshole.

  “Any man who spirits a young girl off to Vegas for some Elvis wedding without asking her father’s permission for her hand or letting her mother attend isn’t worthy of being a VanDoren.” He folded his arms over his chest.

  “I’m a Price, but you do have my apology for that. I’m afraid we got carried away.” It was the most I was going to back down, and I only did it for her.

  “Well, you’re done getting carried away. I know all about your temper. I’ve read all about your lack of control, and I’m telling you that if you harm one hair on Persephone’s head, I’ll destroy everything and everyone you love.”

  Well, that turned all Godfather with a quickness.

  “Mr. VanDoren, I would never hurt Persephone. You have my permission to cut me limb from limb if I ever so much as touch her in a way she doesn’t appreciate.” For the few months I’ll be married to her.

  He bristled, but his shoulders relaxed a little. “Good. Fine. Your purpose here is to make my little girl happy and keep her mother ecstatic for all the time she has left. Then I’ll deal with the legal mess you two have created with your recklessness.”

  He turned and left me standing in the doorway of the study as he headed back to the party.

  People like him with their preconceived judgments were the reason Persephone and I would never happen. Not for real. They’d remind me at every possible turn that I wasn’t good enough for their first-class life because I’d been born into steerage.

  It didn’t matter how Persephone and I fit together, or how our chemistry ignited on a nuclear level. Nothing that happened between us back in that study would do us any good in the long haul, and yet it hadn’t mattered when she’d been in my hands. The world could have burned down, and I wouldn’t have cared. That was dangerous to both of us.

  I had to keep my fucking hands off my wife if I wanted to come out of this marriage as sane as I’d been before going in.

  6

  Persephone

  “I want way more than just your lips on mine, Persephone.”

  Cannon’s words replayed in my head over and over.

  As did the memory of his lips on mine. His body pressed against me, winding me up like a coiled spring. The way he’d effortlessly lifted me and splayed me out on the desk as if we had all the time in the world to explore each other, taste each other. And sweet heavens did he taste so good. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about that kiss. About the way his touch had seared me to my very soul. And I wanted more. So much more—

  “Why are you staring at me like that?” Cannon asked around a mouthful of cereal. “You’ve never seen a grown man eat Rice Krispies before?”

  I blinked a few times, backing out of the memory but losing none of the heat pulsing in my blood. Hunger, fierce and brutal, nipped at every inch of my bod
y. A need I never knew existed until Cannon had set his lips on me.

  Lips that currently closed around another spoonful of cereal as he leaned over the kitchen island, eating breakfast. It had been a week of this—a week of pretending like that kiss in my father’s study didn’t happen.

  But it did happen, and try as I might, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  He continued to stare at me from over his bowl, eyebrows raised.

  Waiting for an answer.

  Oh, right.

  I situated on my barstool, my phone with an email pulled up on the screen in my hand. “I was thinking of how to respond to this email,” I said. “But naturally, you would think eating cereal makes you irresistible.” I doubted my eye roll was very convincing because he gave me one of those rare laughs I’d started to look forward to.

  “I never said anything about me being irresistible, Princess,” he said, swirling that spoon along the edge of the bowl. “But I’m glad to know this does it for you.” He brought the spoon to his mouth and somehow—though I didn’t think it possible—he ate the bite in a sinfully seductive way that made me want to throw the cereal box at his head.

  I scoffed and returned my focus to the unread email—despite having read it three times. I couldn’t focus. Not with him and his spoon licking.

  My cell vibrated in my hand, a text flashing over the screen.

  Sister: The parents kicked me out. I need a place to crash. Be at your new hubby’s in ten.

  I jolted in my seat, the phone dropping from my hand.

  “Shit!”

  “What?” Cannon was instantly at my side, so quickly I hadn’t seen him move, his cereal bowl forgotten on the other side of the island.

  “My sister,” I said, my heart racing, “is on her way here!” I bolted off the stool, my bare feet padding against the hardwood as I hurried to my room. “Help me, Cannon!” I hollered behind me, though I knew he’d followed.

  “Help you what?” he asked as I darted into my room and into the en-suite bathroom.

  I grabbed everything I used daily, cradling it against my chest as I booked it past Cannon and toward his room down the hall.