Homecoming (Dartmoor Book 8)

by Lauren Gilley

  Her face was in his throat, and with every breath she was inhaling his cologne, and the scent of heated skin. She could feel it when he swallowed; feel it when his pulse picked up again, a steady hard throb this time, and not the flutter of nervousness.

  Her own pulse was starting to pound, all throughout her body, a drumbeat echo – one that was more and more concentrating between her legs. Her skin prickled with heat and awareness. Her breasts were crushed to his chest, and her nipples hardened when she thought about the negligible amount of satin that separated them.

  He kissed the top of her head, and then her forehead again. Her temple. Her ear. He gathered her hair and pulled it aside, and then he was kissing her throat, slow and deliberate.

  The last traces of her amusement evaporated. Heat bloomed beneath her skin wherever his mouth touched, and spread outward, a flash-fire rush that moved through her whole body in a matter of moments. She tipped her head, giving him better access, and he opened his mouth against her pulse point; painted it with his tongue.

  His other hand slid back to the clasp of her bra, and he opened it with a quiet clip.

  Her breath caught, and then she breathed out sharply against his throat, goosebumps shivering out across her skin.

  He parted the halves of the band, smoothed them apart slowly. His kisses, open-mouthed and wet now, trailed down to her shoulder, out to the point of it – and he reached deftly to draw the strap of her bra down. One, and then the other, and then it was falling away, and she was digging deep grooves into his biceps with her nails as his hands slid forward along her ribcage, and he took her breasts in his hands.

  Kissing, it turned out, wasn’t his only passionate skill. He stroked her with deft fingertips, feathery touches interspersed with firm squeezes, her breasts small but aching in his hands, cupped perfectly in each palm. He traced her nipples to even stiffer peaks with his thumbs, while he nibbled at her collarbone.

  The careful preciseness of his ministrations left her tingling with sensation. No rough pawing that became a blur; she felt each glide of his fingertips, each firm flick of the pad of his thumb; could feel the shapes of his teeth as he bit her now, harder, until she gasped, and raked her nails up to his shoulders.

  His mouth came back to hers, and he kissed her again, tongue forceful and demanding. His hands found her hips, gripped her, and in the span between kisses he hoisted her effortlessly up onto the counter.

  “Oh,” she murmured as their lips parted. His face was a little below hers, now, upturned, so she could see that his pupils were blown, and that his mouth was as pink and swollen as hers felt.

  “Bad ‘oh’?” His voice was rough.

  “No. Definitely not.”

  He smiled, fleeting and sharp, and leaned in to place his lips at the hollow of her throat. A slow, thorough kiss there, hot press of his tongue, and then he moved down. Lips trailing down her sternum – and then feathering out across the top of her breast. He licked her nipple before he sucked it into his mouth, and then he latched on hard, and Leah gasped.

  Her neck felt liquid, and it was an effort to hold her head up, but she managed, eyes slitted stubbornly open though they wanted to close, because she couldn’t miss the sight of his golden head bent, of his lips pink and pursed against her. She was so, so sensitive there, and he seemed to know it, teasing at her with the edges of his teeth, little nibbles, and then hard sucks that had her thighs clenching where they were splayed on either side of his chest.

  He went back and forth, from one nipple to the other, until she was slick, and gleaming, and sore. His hands petted her sides, and back, and her quivering stomach – and then found the button of her jeans and popped it open.

  He didn’t lift his head to check this time, but he didn’t need to; could read the way she spread her legs a little more, and tilted her hips in offering. She gripped his hair with one hand, and the counter with the other, bit her lip and watched, pulse a hard, steady throb in her sex, where she was already wet and growing wetter.

  He eased her zipper down, and folded back the halves of her fly. Leaned in to press butterfly kisses against the tender skin of her lower belly, just above the satin waistband of her panties.

  “Mph.” She couldn’t hold back a shocked little sound, and she saw his lashes flicker in response.

  He tucked his thumb in the waistband, and flicked it back and forth, lower, lower, lower…When he brushed her clit, she said, “God.”

  He teased her there a minute, and she wasn’t too proud to squirm, to seek more contact.

  Then he stood.

  “Oh, come on–” she started.

  He gripped her jeans in one hand, held her steady at the waist with the other, and tugged them down over one hip, and then the other. Leah braced both hands and lifted up, helping him, and then the jeans were down, and off.

  He plucked at the toes of her socks – big purple flowers on white – grinned, then pulled them off. Both hands skated up her legs: shins, knees, thighs, to her hips. He found her gaze – and, God, his face like this, so wonderfully unfamiliar in its heat, intensity, and confidence. He knew he was good at this, was proud of the fact, and damn if she wasn’t going to eat it up and love every second.

  His thumbs smoothed back and forth across the waistband of her panties, and he lifted his brows in silent question.

  She was flushed – she could see the blush across her whole body, from her peaked, aching nipples, to her belly, and thighs. She was panting, but she managed to say, “If you don’t, I’ll hit you.”

  His grin was a wicked flash of teeth, and then he skimmed her panties down with a few expert movements, dropped them, and it didn’t figure in her mind to worry about sitting totally naked on her kitchen counter, because he was urging her thighs wider, and stepping between them, touching her face with one hand – and the very top of her thigh with the other.

  Again, her breath caught. His gaze arrested hers, and so she was looking only at the blown-out blue ring of his irises when his hand shifted inward, and he brushed her wet sex with the backs of his fingers for the first time.

  Even that bare contact had her inner muscles contracting, and her pulse skipping erratically.

  He touched her again, fingertips this time. Bolder. Explored her folds, gliding through the wetness there, slicker as more welled, as her body opened in anticipation of him. He found her entrance and tested it. Pressed in with one finger – and then two. Thrust in and out of her, slow and deep, his gaze never wavering, holding hers relentlessly.

  She hadn’t expected this. He’d managed to surprise her again, because this wasn’t the fast tangle she’d imagined, sloppy kisses and fast thrusts and starbursts. He fucked into her with his fingers, over and over, and she knew he had to feel her clenching around him, and getting wetter, and wetter. Her lips parted, and she breathed in quick little gasps, every nerve alight and sparking, wanting. The pressure was building deep in her core, and this was so good – it felt obscene, almost, with his eyes locked on hers, his touch purposeful. If she hadn’t been so wildly turned on, she would have wanted to cover herself; thought fleetingly of grabbing his hair and dragging him into a kiss.

  His thumb swept across her cheek, cool against near-feverish skin, and another understanding dawned. How many times had she called him a sex fiend? Joking, yes, but he was experienced – beyond experienced. People looked at him and saw beauty; and now people looked at him and saw the center of wild stories and debauched orgies.

  Look at me, his gaze said. I can make you feel like you’re flying. Don’t pretend this is sweet and gentle with me, ‘cause it’s not.

  He liked sex. He was damn good in bed, she’d realized by this point. He wasn’t used to fumbling around in the dark and praying for the Lord’s forgiveness afterward.

  Let me show you, he seemed to say.

  Okay, she thought, melting another fraction. Show me.

  She wasn’t used to being encouraged in her pleasure like this, but she wasn’t afraid to try and
figure it out.

  She wet her lips with a deliberate sweep of her tongue. A little showy, but she was gratified by the way his eyes followed the movement. Then she spread her legs a little wider – his fingers plunged deep, and she didn’t bite back a sound this time, a high little huff of breath – and sat up straighter, arching her back. She smoothed her hands up her stomach, her ribs, until she cupped her breasts. The movement drew his gaze, and his throat bobbed as he watched her caress herself; lift and shape herself.

  She pinched one nipple hard between thumb and forefinger, and slid her other hand back down her belly, until she could stroke her own clit. He crooked his fingers inside her at the same time, and, “Oh, God,” she murmured. She moved as best she could, a roll of her spine, hips seeking, and then her chest. “Carter. Take your pants off.”

  “Yeah.” He was grinding against the front of her cabinet. “Yeah, shit.”

  The loss of his fingers was tragic – but she replaced them with her own, sliding in with two and reaching not as deep, but at least not staying empty.

  “Christ,” he muttered, gaze trained on the movement of her hand as he tore at his belt and fly. Pushed down his jeans and boxers without ceremony. He fumbled with his boots a moment, and then gave up, left them on, crowding in close to her again.

  The angle wasn’t right, they weren’t lined up perfectly – but it didn’t matter, Leah thought vaguely, as ripples of heat surged through her. She wouldn’t last, and she didn’t figure, judging by the proud jut of his fully-hard cock, that he would either.

  He was flushed, and leaking, and this part of him was as pretty as all the rest. With the hand that was wet and slick from seeing to herself, she gripped him, stroked him root to tip.

  He hissed through his teeth – and then his fingers were back at her sex, three this time, pushing in, stretching her. His thumb found her clit and rubbed.

  Leah pitched forward, braced a hand on his shoulder, and worked his cock in long, firm pulls. Until his hips were kicking, and he was fucking into her fist, the slide wetter on every pass as he continued to leak.

  He dipped his head, and she lifted hers, and they surged into a clumsy kiss. It was mostly panting, just breathing against each other, little bites, and flickers of tongue. She started moaning and couldn’t stop, vocalizing every breath. His fingers were so good, but his cock would be even better; she clenched around him, with her sex and with her hand. He fisted his free hand in her hair, pulling just hard enough to send little shocks of sensation along her scalp–

  And that was what tipped her over.

  She gasped against his mouth, twisted her wrist, and felt the hot jets of his release against the insides of her thighs as she came in a shocking blast of pulses and, yes, the hoped-for starbursts.

  ~*~

  They leaned against one another for long minutes, catching their breath, working one another through the aftershocks. And then they reclaimed their respectively slippery hands, locked gazes…and laughed. Low, tired, deeply warm laughter that unknotted the last of the day’s tension in Carter’s chest.

  He felt like an idiot kid, coming all over her and not inside her, but she’d come, too, hard, his palm full of slick, his fingers crushed tight; the sounds she’d made. The way she’d touched herself, bold and hungry and…Jesus.

  Even as the afterglow set in, he wanted her again. Wanted inside her.

  “Did you say something about nachos?” he asked, still panting.

  She gripped his neck in both her little hands, heedless of his release spattered across the one, and dragged him down into a kiss no less heated, even if it was slower and lazier.

  “Fuck nachos, take me to bed,” she said.

  Thank God. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Thirty-Five

  Ava hovered over Millie’s temporary crib, debated leaning in to kiss her sweet, round cheek, and decided not to disturb her sleep. Over on the bed, both boys were sacked out, exhausted by a rousing game of indoor tag that had thankfully resulted in only one bumped-into table, and one skinned knee. Clean, all snuggled into their pajamas, they slept on their sides facing one another, dark hair and light, both with Mercy’s luxurious black eyelashes fanned on their cheeks.

  Night, babies, she said silently, heart overflowing with love, and stepped out into the hall and eased the door shut, baby monitor crammed in her back pocket.

  She and Mercy were going to spend the night in the dorm right next door, and he must have come in while she was checking on the boys, because she could hear the faucet running through the open door. She slipped in and closed it; set the baby monitor on the dresser.

  The door to the en-suite stood open, too, and Mercy was at the sink – he had to bend down a little because he was so tall, and the vanity had been set at a height for average-size Dogs – thoroughly scrubbing his hands, soap suds spread up to his arms while he worked a bar of harsh soap against his nails. When Ava propped a shoulder in the threshold, and glanced down into the sink basin, she saw that the water swirling down into the drain was tinged pink.

  The soap was yellow.

  “Hey, baby,” he greeted, lifting his head to meet her gaze via the mirror, grinning. His smile was full of gladness and affection, but his dark eyes still had that faintly-glazed look they always had after an interrogation. His blood was still up, even as he washed the blood from between his fingers. “Kids okay?”

  “Fast asleep next door. They had an exciting day.”

  “Yeah? I bet.”

  “Seems like you did, too,” she said, smiling.

  He set the soap down, and began the rinsing process, smoothing pink-tinged suds away with his broad, tan, callused hands. “More exciting than most,” he agreed, a little smug.

  Ava had long been aware that the surge of approval she felt wasn’t exactly normal in polite society, amongst nice young couples. You weren’t supposed to be proud of your man’s viciousness; shouldn’t feel glad that he’d cracked open a tacklebox of tools and hooks and knives and forcibly extracted answers from an enemy of the club.

  She’d been aware – but she wasn’t going to waste a second on berating herself, or him. They were club; they didn’t have to be normal. To hell with polite society. The ugly things he did kept their family safe, and that was all that mattered. If he enjoyed it in the process – well, everyone needed an outlet of some sort. Mercy’s just happened to be violent.

  “What do we know?” she asked, tone sliding into more serious territory, approval shifting into readiness.

  He finished rinsing, shut off the tap, and reached for a towel. He turned to her as he dried his hands, hip leaned up against the edge of the counter. Someone else might have read his expression as concerned – Ava saw instead a quiet sort of regret. Things hadn’t played out as he’d wanted; he was doubting his approach in this particular instance. “He’s asleep, and we won’t know more until he wakes up.”

  “Too scared? Or too much blood loss?”

  “Eh. Little bit of both, I think. I went for the teeth.” He made a face.

  She nodded.

  “But what we know so far is that this is the one who was calling himself Fred. A local boy. Peter Weston.”

  “Why do I know that name?”

  “Ratchet already looked him up, said he has a younger sister your age. She probably went to school with you.”

  Ava had a sudden, stark mental image of a pug nose, and piled-up blonde hair, and the practiced, disapproving flick of eyelashes accompanied by a little tsk of disgust. “Let’s just say we ran in different circles.”

  “God, I hope so.” He chuckled, once, and then sobered. “Apparently he works for the mayor’s office, and this whole drug thing was Mayor Cunningham’s idea.”

  “Oh, great. A mayor who’s after the Dogs. That’s original.”

  “That’s what Walsh said.”

  She sighed, exhausted suddenly. “God. Talk about déjà vu.” It was all too easy to trip and fall backward into the past. To remember newspaper headlines, an
d Littlejohn following her around campus, and living with a ball of stress lodged constantly at the base of her throat. To remember the shiny gleam of Ronnie’s loafers. And Mercy, home again, the frenetic, harrowing fear and lust of those first few weeks back together again. Hating him almost as much as she loved him – but never really. Hate was just an outgrowth of love; the after-effect of love lost.

  He set the towel down and reached for her. She unwound her arms, and let him take them in his big, strong hands, and tow her up against the solid wall of his body; readily slipped her hands beneath his cut to grip the back of his shirt in both fists, his body heat an immediate comfort. It was hard to be afraid of anything when she was touching him. When he was stroking her arms, and tucking her hair behind her ears, and looking at her with a loving softness that managed, in all the ways that he was multi-faceted, to be heated and fractious at the edges, too. He was her Great Wall, and her incendiary device, too.

  “It won’t be like it was, then,” he said, voice going low, purring, his accent thickening.

  “Not to doubt you, baby. But. A city against us. A mayor against us. Sounds like old times.”

  “Yeah, but see, this time, we’re different.” He held up his left hand, his wedding band catching the light.”

  Even as she felt her insides softening, she had to say, “Because marriage conquers all evil?”

  “Nah, but we do. We’ve got our heads on straight this time.” He laid his hand on top of hers, warm and grounding. “And your dad’s a better president now. The club’s bigger; it’s stronger. Got more money, and more allies. We’re ready, fillette. We can handle this.”

  She rested her chin on his chest, head tipped back to look up at him. “I do admire your confidence.”

  “You should. It’s pretty spectacular.”

  She laughed.

  “Among other things.”

  “Now you’re fishing.”

  “Damn straight. I’m good at fishing – and not just fish, either. I hook me some gators, baby.”