Charged (Saints of Denver #2)

by Jay Crownover

  I could tell he was struggling with the past and the way it was piling on top of his present, but I couldn’t hold back the giggle that bubbled up when he told me how he had ended up with his unusual moniker. “Dennis? You don’t really look like a Dennis, but I can be persuaded to try it out the next time we’re in bed.”

  He cut me a hard look and didn’t respond at all to my gentle teasing. “I don’t know what a Dennis is supposed to look like, but I know that a Quaid is a lot harder to forget. It was always about trying to be more than I was, even with my name.”

  I leaned back into him and wiggled my backside against the front of his jeans. “Well, regardless if you’re a Dennis or a Quaid, I like you just the way you are, too.” I felt him exhale a deep breath behind me and his iron grip finally loosened around my middle. Once I had room to squirm free, I moved back to the edge of the rocks and turned to look at Quaid expectantly over my shoulder. “I think we should jump.” The idea floated around with all the clarity and lightness the brisk outside air brought with it. I started to pull off my borrowed leather jacket as I looked at Quaid expectantly.

  His pale eyes widened and his mouth dropped open as he shook his head firmly in the negative. “No way. It’s been too long since the last time I did that. Who knows if the water is deep enough? If something goes wrong we’re out in the middle of nowhere, with no help. It’s too risky, and I brought you here to keep you safe.”

  I dropped the leather jacket on the rocks by my feet and bent to pull the laces on my boots. “I want to jump. You wanted to come back for a reason, to remember the good with the bad, and I want to give you that.” I wanted to give us both that, because somewhere deep inside of me, I knew that I was a lot like this place and his memories of it. With me, there was also a lot of good, somewhere in there buried under piles and piles of bad. If I could give him this good back, maybe he would remember the good in me the same way when the storm that raged between us passed.

  I hopped around on one foot as I got one boot off and went to work on the other. He watched me with disbelief stamped clearly all over his handsome face. “I can have the memories without risking my neck. Stop pulling your clothes off, Avett. This is ridiculous.” I was popping the button on my jeans and wiggling the denim down my legs when his hands landed heavily on my shoulders. “You need to stop. This is foolish and unbelievably reckless. I’m not that kid anymore.”

  I unbuttoned my shirt and let it fall open so that I was exposed to both his probing gaze and the wilderness that surrounded us. “No, you’re not, but no matter how hard you try and deny him, that kid is somewhere down deep inside of you and he wants to jump with me.” I cocked an eyebrow at him and told him matter-of-factly, “You’re also not the guy that needs all the things in order to prove his worth. You are someone spectacular, with or without the things, Quaid.”

  His brow furrowed, and before he could argue with me further, I slipped out of my shirt so that I was clad in only my underwear and a lot of bluster. His eyes dropped to my practically naked chest and then dipped lower. I saw his Adam’s apple bob up and down as his hands curled into loose fists at his sides.

  “And you’re someone beyond all the careless moves you make, Avett.” Was I? Had I finally outgrown the girl that was always trying to punish herself? Had the girl that felt like she had to suffer endlessly for her poor choices made it to a place where forgiveness seemed possible and obtainable? Had I finally, after mistake upon mistake, learned that redemption was possible if you allowed yourself to be forgiven? Had I reached the point where instead of doing nothing or the wrong thing, I could do the right thing without thought, because even though he looked like he wanted to strangle me, I knew taking this leap was the right thing for me to do. It wasn’t a leap of faith; it was a leap of life. I was taking my life back from blame and guilt, one step at a time. This step just happened to be off the edge of the cliff where young Quaid had lived wild and rough.

  I shifted my gaze from his burning blue one to the serene azure below. I took a deep breath and looked back at the man staring at me like I had lost my ever-loving mind. I smiled at him with every ounce of lucidity and illumination that was now alive and viable inside of me. I felt like I had woken up from a deep slumber and for the first time in a long time was seeing things the way they really were, without the taint of all my faults and failure coloring them.

  “Those risks have led to the worst and the best stories, Quaid. And right at this moment, I’m kind of in love with the fact that I’m here to tell them, because they’re mine and I earned every single one of them.” I wriggled my fingers at him in a little wave before I turned and hurled myself off the side of the ledge. My name ripped from his lungs, echoed across the hills, and slammed against my own shriek as the wind rushed around and out of me as I dropped towards the water. Everything whirled around me in a green and blue blur as I plummeted faster and faster through the air. It was a thrill unlike any other. The weightlessness, the freedom, the rush of the water in my ears, and the sting of the breeze against my bare skin was exhilarating in a way that I could only compare to the best sex I’d ever had. That would be the sex I had with the man standing at the edge of the rocks, watching me as I fell. I could hear him cursing me and the pounding of my heart as the water got closer and closer. I barely had time to suck in a breath and clamp my nose closed with my fingers before I hit.

  I went instantly numb the second my skin made contact with the glasslike surface of the water. It was so cold that my muscles locked up and my blood froze still in my veins. The impact was jarring and enough to rattle every single one of my bones; for a second I panicked, and because I was so cold, I wasn’t sure I was going to get my paralyzed limbs to work in order to push myself back up to the surface. I flailed wildly until I realized that even though it was frigid and my body was pissed off about it, I still had control of my arms and legs. I calmed down and pushed hard at the glacial liquid that surrounded me. It only took a couple of strokes to break the surface and, once I did, I couldn’t pull air into my lungs fast enough.

  “You’re certifiable, do you know that?” Quaid’s booming voice bounced through the ravine. I had to crane my neck back so I could see where he was scrambling down from the high point where I had jumped to a lower outcropping that I was going to have to swim to in order to get out of the water.

  I raked my shivering hands over my wet hair so it was out of my eyes as I started to make my way towards him with the icy water coating my skin and impeding my progress.

  “Weren’t you the one that told me that crazy has it’s time and place?” I was trembling so hard that I really had to concentrate on what I was doing so that the water and its arctic grip didn’t suck me back under.

  “I don’t think that miles from civilization and hours away from any kind of medical help is the place to pull the crazy out of retirement.” He reached the rocks and put down a bundle that I assumed was my discarded clothes. I watched as he lowered himself to his stomach and reached one of his arms down over the side so that I could grab it and he could pull me up.

  I was freezing. Colder than I had ever been in my life, and I wasn’t sure I was going to have the dexterity to reach for his offered hand when I got to him. I looked up at his too-pretty face set in concerned and annoyed lines and it hit me like a bolt of lightning what Asa meant when he said he always saw Royal at the top so he never stopped trying to climb up from the bottom.

  With Quaid looking down at me, worried about me after I made yet another questionable decision, I knew that I wanted to not only keep swimming no matter how cold I was or how hard it got, but that I also wanted to reach for him. I wanted to make my way from the bottom to the top, or as close to it as I could come after years and years of purposely failing and falling.

  I finally reached the lower outcropping; all I had to do was lift a hand out of the water, and Quaid had me. He pulled me up and out of the water like I weighed nothing and like I wasn’t a quivering mass of uncooperative limbs th
at couldn’t and wouldn’t move. My teeth were chattering together so loudly that I didn’t try to protest when he took his own leather jacket off and wrapped it around my quaking shoulders. The leather was warm from his body heat and I huddled into it as he ran a hand over my dripping hair and shook off the excess water that was still coursing over my skin.

  “I can’t believe you used to do that for fun.” The words tripped over themselves as he pushed his hands under the opening of the jacket and began to rub them vigorously over my chilly sides. I was covered in goose bumps and I was pretty sure my lips were an attractive shade of blue.

  “I outgrew the need to pursue danger for a thrill, and now only chase after it when it serves a purpose or a greater good. The rush lost its appeal when Harrison snapped his arm in half. We need to get you back to the cabin and in front of the fire before you start forming icicles on your eyelashes.”

  I jerked my head from side to side and leaned into him. “Too cold to walk.”

  He swore under his breath and pulled me closer to him. I snuggled into his much warmer body and sighed in contentment as his heat started to soak into my frozen skin.

  “Was it worth it, Avett? You’re ice cold and you’re lucky you didn’t get hurt. Was the risk worth it?”

  He sounded pissed off, so I tilted my head back so I could meet that wintry gaze. I pressed into him further and let out a tiny gasp as one of his big hands worked its way under the clingy lace of the bra I still had on and smoothed over my breast. My skin instantly warmed where he touched, and my already tight nipple pulled even tighter as pleasure pushed past the chill that engulfed me.

  “Ask me after.”

  His eyebrows danced upwards on his forehead as his fingers started to play with the velvety peak that was begging for attention.

  “After what?”

  I lifted an arm up around his shoulders so that I could get my hand on the back of his neck and couldn’t hold back a grin as my icy touch made him squirm. “Just after.”

  I pulled him towards me so that I could get my mouth on his. The sensation of my icy lips melting against the warmth of his had me shivering for a reason other than the cold. His tongue tangled artfully around mine and his long finger moved to trap the peak of my breast between them. He rolled the sensitive nub back and forth, creating heat and friction that I felt between my legs. One of his hands smoothed down my still-shivering spine and cupped me under the curve of my ass so that he could pull me more fully into the length of his big body. I groaned into his mouth when I felt the press of his stiff erection against my stomach. My underwear was still soaking wet but the skin under it was getting tingly and hot as Quaid worked his big, rough hand under the delicate lace.

  “They do say the quickest way to get warm is to share body heat.” The dry humor in his deep voice did wonders on its own to warm up my sluggish blood.

  I moved a hand to his waistband so that I could start pulling his dark gray Henley out of the waistband of his pants. “Well, sharing is caring, so let’s get to it.”

  He helped me get both layers of his shirts off over his tawny head and when his taut, burnished skin pebbled up in reaction to the chilly outside air I pulled my mouth away from the invasion of his and started chasing over those bumps with my tongue. That majestic eagle once it was revealed looked like it belonged here, like it was a part of his very essence that had been waiting for years and years to be returned to its rightful place. I rubbed my fingers over the impressive design and lost my breath as the hand that he had wrapped around my backside began to move.

  It was a very short trip for his questing fingers to reach their destination, the soft and slowly melting point between my legs that lately felt like it was created only for him, but I was surprised and jolted a little when one of those wandering digits disappeared into the crevasse that I had never had anyone venture into before. It was barely the brush of a fingertip, the barest hint of a caress, but his blue eyes radiated with passion and curiosity and his unexpected touch on that hidden place made me vault up on my toes and cling even tighter to him. He always seemed to find a new way to test me, to spark my curiosity about things I didn’t ever think about before he came into my life, be they things related to sex or things related to something deeper and more meaningful, like whether or not I was the only one solely to blame for everything that happened the night everything changed. I didn’t know I had those kinds of boundaries and I reveled in the fact that he pushed me to cross them and to redefine them.

  His mouth moved across my cheek and I could feel the tip of his tongue chasing water droplets that still clung to my skin. The sensation of hot and cold did wonders to spark arousal in my still-chilly and sluggish blood. His lips skimmed my ear and my legs went weak when his skilled fingers found their way to the one part of me that was most definitely not cold. In fact, it was scalding, burning, and melting into a liquid puddle of desire, all for him. “I’ve wanted a lot of things in my life, Avett, and I’ve spent more time and money than I care to think about trying to get them.”

  I muttered a useless noise into the side of his neck because he had dipped a finger inside of me and was busy swirling the scorching heat he generated around the stiff point of my clit. The slickness of my own pleasure contrasting with the rough, damp, and chilly fabric of my underwear was enough to have my entire body feeling like it had received an electric charge. I whimpered his name and clung to his broad shoulders uselessly as his fingers moved between my legs, owning and playing with my wanting body while his words worked at fully possessing my head and making their way inside my difficult heart.

  “Of all the things I’ve wanted most, none of them have made me feel as possessive or as desperate as you do. I want to have you every way I can think of, and then I want to invent some new ways to have you so that there is never any question about who you should be with. I want every single part of you to have some part of me inside of it, so that you won’t go a single second without thinking about me and about how much I want you.” I wondered if that included my heart because even though I knew this wasn’t meant to be, there was a pretty big chunk of him in there already, and I didn’t really want to pry him out of it.

  I tunneled my fingers into his hair as he put his mouth back over mine and leaned heavily into him as he grabbed the back of my thigh, hoisting one of my legs up over his hip so that he had better access to that sweet spot that seemed all too eager to pulse in happy little flutters as he worked his thick digits in and out of the weeping opening. He made me so wet and that wetness was trailing a molten and heated path along the bend in my leg as he hiked me farther up onto his hard body and clamped me in a tight grasp as he started to lower himself to his knees on the uneven surface of the rock we were perched on.

  I let out a cry of pleasure as the new position had me straddling his strong thighs and the distended metal of his zipper hit me right in my most tender of places. The scrape of his zipper against the lace that still covered me and the chill of it against the hot bundle of nerves, mixed with the sensations caused by his plundering fingers, took me to the edge of release in almost no time. I heard a bird squawk in irritation overhead but I was too busy trying to get my shaking fingers around his belt buckle to be distracted by the wildlife that were about to get one hell of a show.

  I wiggled so that the front of his jacket I still had on was open enough that I could get my breasts up against his bare chest. My nipples stabbed happily into his inked skin and I sighed into his kiss as I dragged the achy tips across his rapidly cooling skin. He growled at the feel of velvet and lace as it dragged across his flesh in one of the most intense and erotic caresses I had ever given to anyone. As soon as I had his pants open and his zipper carefully down around that always impressive package that was waiting for me behind it, he shifted his scissoring fingers from where they were working inside of me to where the fully exposed center of my pleasure was practically begging for their attention. My clit knew his touch, perked up under the rough pads of his f
ingers, and quivered with so much delight and tightly coiled pleasure I was pretty sure I was going to die from it.

  I moaned low and loud and was startled as the sexy sound reverberated around us as the ravine we were in echoed our pleasure and the sounds of our delight as we ravaged each other. I helped him wiggle his jeans down far enough that I could get at the goods, but not far enough that his knees were going to get torn up on the rough surface he was kneeling on. One of his hands found its way beneath the jacket and curled possessively around one of my bouncing breasts as I ground myself against his quick fingers and the hard ridge that was toying with my eager opening. Quaid knew exactly what I was chasing down as I moved on him wantonly and without shame, unafraid of the cold or the nothingness that surrounded our heaving bodies. He worked my clit until I was a blubbering and incoherent mess of need and want on top of him, his touch getting rougher and more firm the more wildly I moved and rocked on top of him.

  I grabbed his pulsating cock from where it was hovering right beyond the point I wanted it most, and lifted up barely enough so that I could drag the bulbous and leaking tip through my soaked folds. We both let out a strangled sound at the sensation and his leisurely teasing of my clit intensified to the point that I thought I was going to lose my mind if I didn’t come soon. The sensation of his air-chilled skin sliding through our combined warmth had Quaid swearing and me whimpering in desperation.

  I dug the fingers of my free hand into the side of his neck and was gratified to see his muscles straining and his veins popping as I continued to rub him through my wetness and tease him with my opening. The tip of his cock was more than wet; it was shiny and covered in both of our excitement. Personally, I thought I’d never seen any man or any man’s dick look better. Quaid looked sexy as hell covered in what he did to me. It made me moan out loud and did a lot to chase away the last of the chill lingering inside my bones. My body was doing its best to pull him inside, my inner walls quaking and clenching like they had been waiting for his cock and only his cock forever, like they were bereft and lonely without his powerful shaft to clamp down onto. I lifted up just a little so he was holding me to his chest and let that glistening and slippery rod coast through the crevasse where his curious fingers had been playing earlier. He could tease new and unexpected things, but so could I.