He wasn’t in much better shape.
He pressed a kiss to her big toe and pulled back. He quickly got rid of his clothes. Watching her, he crawled up over her. She pushed back the covers, and her hands swept up his sides. He lowered himself atop of her.
“I need you now,” he said, his voice like sandpaper.
She messed him up so bad, but he needed her to get through his days.
Gliding his hand up her ribcage, he spread his hand over her breast. She inhaled deeply, and her nipple pushed into his palm.
Coming up off the pillow, she kissed him. Her breasts pressed intimately against his chest, and her tongue glided against his own. He was drowning in the feel of her when an inquisitive touch made his hips jerk.
“Roxie,” he groaned. She had his erection in the palm of her hand. Her fingers had wrapped around his girth, and they were adept.
Her brown gaze was steady on his. “I need you, too.”
She settled back on the bed. Her hair spilled over the pillow and her sleek body cradled his. It was the naked expression on her face, though, that cut through everything else.
He knew that look. He knew how it felt to not want to be alone.
Her legs shifted, parting, and her hips lifted. Her breaths were deep as her chest rose and fell. He eased her back against the pillow and lowered his weight until the mattress cuddled them both.
Something sultry and slow was coming from the bar’s jukebox. Outside, a breeze rustled the trees. He swiveled his hips, watching her eyes the entire time. Down below, her hot touch guided him to where he was dying to be.
With a slow thrust, he entered her.
And nearly came.
Billy’s heart started pounding so hard, his ribs shook.
She hadn’t made him put on a condom. He looked at her quickly, but his jaw locked down tight. If she had second thoughts, he’d pull out, but he wasn’t going to do anything to yank himself out of the purest pleasure he’d experienced in years.
She felt like heaven around him—hot, soft, and tight. His breaths worked in his lungs like bellows as he waited, but her eyes were closed in pleasure. Her head was thrown back, her neck arching as a soft cry left her lips.
He ventured deeper, and she felt like flowing, red hot silk.
His head dropped, and he let out a groan.
He’d forgotten how insanely good it was to be with her like this. Connected, body and soul. Sealing his mouth over hers, he began to move. He didn’t want to pull back, but the glide was right. He pumped back in again, seating himself, and tingles gripped the base of his spine.
From that moment on, there was no conscious thought in his head. Everything turned visceral.
Roxie knew what she was doing. She was breaking her hard and fast rule, but right now, this time, she needed him this way. Close, with nothing separating them.
The way they moved together was so intimate and sensual. He felt big inside her as he stroked steadily. Deep and slow. Hot and wet. Her fingers dug into his back. The muscles in his butt flexed, and she palmed him. She loved what he was doing to her, inside and out, but it was more than that.
He’d scared her with his words—just reached inside and squeezed her heart. What if they’d never met?
Was he right? The idea that someone had needed her consumed her. He hadn’t had a good time of it as a kid either, and her heart broke over that. Had she helped him?
She undulated beneath him, meeting his thrusts. His chest pressed hot against hers, his weight plumping her breasts and making her nipples ache.
“Ooooh,” she cried.
She clutched at him, feeling the orgasm rising within her. When she came it was like the end of a long race, when the fast and furious pace slowed into smooth, endless victory laps around the track.
So good.
He was the only one who could do this to her, the only one who could make her feel this way.
It wasn’t even impulse that made her wrap herself around him. It was more than that; it was primal instinct. Her legs circled his still pumping hips and her arms held him tight. She squeezed her internal muscles, holding him there, too.
“Christ. Roxie!” His head snapped back, and his hips jerked forward.
Then he was coming.
The feel of his hot essence spurting inside her made Roxie come all over again. Closing her eyes, she clung to the sensation. The pleasure. The sense of being one.
In the aftermath, the room felt heavy. Emotion had clogged the place before, but now it was pushing at the corners. The remaining daylight outside wouldn’t let her hide, so Roxie tucked her face into Billy’s neck. Deliberately, she made her mind go blank.
But niggling thoughts started poking for a way in.
Billy said nothing. He was still as he lie atop her, one hand wrapped around her hip and the other tangled in her hair. His breaths were ragged, and his body radiated heat.
She clung to him, to the moment, but the real world was pushing back in. She refused to regret what she’d done, and she didn’t want to make him feel bad.
Yet eventually, she wiggled her hips.
“No.” His voice was firm in her ear.
She didn’t want to fight about it. Digging in her heels, she tried to slide upward on the mattress.
As heavy as he was, that was a no-go.
It went from difficult to impossible when he flexed his muscles, adding his strength to his weight. He pinned her on the bed and looked into her eyes. Their noses brushed as his green gaze bore into hers.
“Not this time.”
Roxie didn’t want to get into this, not now. She’d gone through enough emotional upheaval today. He’d just helped her through what she’d thought was the worst of it.
The stubborn look on his face became clouded with hurt. “Why do you always push me away?”
She pressed her lips together.
And then he pissed her off by rocking his hips, thrusting even with his softened erection.
She slid the hands that had been holding him so possessively up to his shoulders and pushed. “Because it’s probably for the best.”
Chapter Twelve
His eyes narrowed at her tone. “What the hell does that mean?
“I don’t know,” she said flatly. “You tell me.”
“How would I know?”
Roxie tried to shift underneath him. “I don’t want to get into this.”
“I do.” Billy braced himself over her on both arms. They were eye-to-eye, face-to-face, and most importantly, still intimately connected. She felt the tension that snapped through his body and heard the way his breaths changed.
The other shoe was dropping, and there was nothing she could do about it.
“Those words are your fallback. It’s how you justify everything.”
His forehead wrinkled. “Like what?”
“Like when that kid stole my money.”
His eyes widened. “Jesus. Are we going all the way back to that? Roxie, he pulled a knife on you.”
“You want something more recent? How about when you came back to town and found out that Loud Louie had died?”
“What the— He had cancer. He’d been suffering.”
Her jaw set. “It’s also what you said when we found out I wasn’t pregnant.”
Heaviness settled over the room, the kind that made it hard to breathe.
Billy’s fingers curled, straining the sheet.
“You were happy about that,” she whispered.
While she’d been devastated.
“I hate those words,” she said, swallowing hard. “They’re what you say whenever you turn on me.”
“Turn on you?” he growled.
This time when she pushed at him, he backed away. Their bodies, still warm and lax from shared pleasure, stiffened and disconnected. Roxie pulled the sheet over herself and moved until her back was pressed against the headboard. Watching him defiantly, she wrapped her arms around her bent knees.
Billy’s hands fisted. �
��I’ve had your back since Day One. You’re the one who gave up on us. You’re the one who walked away from what we had.”
What they’d had…
Life had been crazy back then. They’d been trying to figure out how to live in the real world. They hadn’t had much, but they’d had the building blocks. They’d had each other, an apartment, and an old Ford that Billy had fixed up. He’d had his job at The Ruckus. A baby hadn’t been in the plans, but once the idea had set in, Roxie had gotten excited about it. The possibility that she’d finally have a real family, someone to belong to, had been a dream come true.
Until it hadn’t.
“You didn’t want a baby then; I’m just making sure we don’t have any ‘accidents’ now.”
“Bullshit.”
The curse cracked across the room like a rifle shot. Roxie’s head snapped back, but Billy’s gaze was fierce.
“This has nothing to do with biology. I know you’re on the Pill. I saw it in your medicine cabinet. You just don’t want to let me close.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Tomato, to-mah-to.”
“Because you’re scared.”
The blunt words were like a jab, and she forced herself not to flinch.
“You don’t think I’d make a good mother,” she accused.
And that burned. She remembered her mom, faint as the memory was. She remembered her long, dark hair and her lavender perfume. Most importantly, she remembered the feelings associated with that memory.
She’d make a great mother.
“God damn it, Roxie. I’ve never said that.” Climbing off the bed, Billy found his jeans. He pulled them on and planted his hands on his hips. “I think you’d make a kick-ass mom, a real mama bear.”
“Then why was it ‘for the best’?”
“We’ve been through this. Because we couldn’t care for a baby. The two of us, Roxie, not just you.” The words exploded from his lips, and he raked both hands through his hair. His abs were cinched up tight, and his eyes had gone dark green. He paced the room one time and then turned back to her. “We were teenagers fresh out of the system. We were barely getting by.”
“We’d been out for two years.”
“You were just graduating from high school.”
“Billy, we weren’t some big-eyed, wet-behind-the-ears kids. We had to grow up faster than that.”
“Did we? I raced every goon that looked at me funny, and how many times did Charlie catch you shooting street craps? That’s why it was for the best you just let that money go. You won it in an illegal game!”
He jabbed a finger in her direction. “You can’t get everything you want. Sometimes life kicks you in the ass, but then you find out why you needed to go down a different path.”
“You think I don’t know I can’t have everything? My ass is sore from all that kicking, but I expected you to be with me, Billy. It’s called being supportive. I trusted you.”
“And I trusted you,” he snapped. “You like to pretend you’re so tough, that you can go it alone. If anyone takes one step wrong with you, you hold them off. No second chances. I deserved better than that.”
She pounded her fist against the mattress. “We could have done it.”
“They wouldn’t have let us!” He paced another lap around the room. “You know they would have been watching us. There was more than one Albert Fenton who wasn’t happy with how we gamed the system. One slip and the authorities would have said we were unfit.”
His voice was quiet, but whip sharp. It cut through Roxie’s hurt and anger, startling her. They’d had arguments about this before, but he’d never said that.
He stopped and wrapped his arms around his middle. The leather cuff and the tattoo made him look dangerous, but for once, his wide shoulders seemed scrunched in. “We never would have been able to fight them, and the last thing I’d ever do would be to let a kid of mine grow up the way I did. I stand by my word. It was for the best.”
Roxie’s shoulder blades dug into the headboard.
“I don’t ever want kids. Especially with someone who won’t let me close in the most important way.” His green eyes burned. “And I’m not talking about sex. I never turned on you. You’re the one who shut me out as I was looking you in the face.”
He swore and reached down to sweep up the rest of his clothes. “Every time I’ve managed to crack that door open, you eventually slam it again. So yeah, it’s probably for the best that we split up, too. This time, I think it’s going to take.”
In two steps, he was out the door.
He was gone so fast, Roxie didn’t have time to react. His words had been like blows and, for a moment, she was dazed. They’d argued many times in the past, sometimes about kids and sometimes not.
But they’d never gotten that deep.
“Billy?” she called shakily.
He didn’t respond.
She heard his muffled footsteps cross her living room and the door to her apartment open before slamming shut. It was the sound of his footsteps on the staircase, though, that prompted her out of her paralysis.
“Billy!”
She sprang from the bed, ripping the sheet right off it. Flying out of the room, she barely avoided her favorite red chair as she rushed to the door.
His footsteps were out of hearing range now. Her breaths were too loud in her throat for her to hear anything.
She skidded out into the hallway, barely remembering to cover herself. When she rushed down the stairs, the sheet billowed behind her, making her look like a haunted woman in white. Coming to a stop on the second floor landing, she pounded on the rental unit’s door.
“Billy? Open the door.” She knocked harder, pounding until her pinkie finger felt numb. “We’re not done.”
A door opened, but it wasn’t the one she was expecting.
“What’s all this racket?”
She spun around. The grouchy old man in 2A glowered at her, but then his caterpillar eyebrows jumped.
“So that billboard wasn’t touched up,” he muttered, his old voice cracking.
She followed his stare down to her chest. Her impromptu toga had slipped, baring her breast. The old pervert.
She tugged the sheet higher and turned her back on him. Switching to her other hand, she began pounding. “Billy!”
“He’s not there,” 2A bellowed. “He just came down this staircase like a team of Clydesdales. There are other people in this building, you know. We deserve some peace and quiet.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Roxie muttered, already moving along. If he wanted peace and quiet, he shouldn’t live next to a bar that stayed open until two in the morning.
She hadn’t made it three steps when his croaky voice stopped her again.
“You won’t find him down there either,” 2A said, thumping his cane. “He tore out of here in that truck of his like a bat out of hell. I couldn’t hear my TV program because of it.”
Billy had left?
Left, left?
She took the remaining stairs two at a time. The sheet clung to her legs, trying to trip her. The first floor lobby area was empty as she rushed across it, 300-count polyester whooshing all around her.
She hit the door going practically full speed and lurched out onto the sidewalk.
The truck was gone. The parking spot on the curb was empty.
A cry left her lips as her chest squeezed. Oh, God. What was happening?
Down the street, two guys walking into The Ruckus whistled at her. Feeling pain rifling through her, she slowly lifted her head. She turned on them like a vengeful banshee, hair whipping in the wind and let out a shriek. Their eyes popped and both muscle-bound bikers hurried into the bar.
Roxie’s fingers curled, balling the sheet right over her heart.
Where had he gone? Was he just blowing off steam?
“When I leave this time, I won’t be back.”
His words echoed in her ears, spurring her into motion again. Ignoring 2A’s concerns about quiet, she raced back up the
stairs, feet pounding. She grabbed the keys Charlie had given her in case she needed to show the empty apartment. She opened the second floor rental, her hands shaking, and slapped at the light switch.
She quickly scanned the apartment. There were furniture and kitchen appliances. It was a furnished unit, but she was looking for anything personal. Anything of Billy’s. She searched the living room before moving on to the bathroom and then the bedroom.
His duffel bag was nowhere to be found.
She bit her lip.
He couldn’t leave now. She’d known he eventually would, but not now. They couldn’t leave things this way.
Feeling panicked, she wandered back to the nondescript living room. It held nothing of his, but why would it? He’d been ready for this. He’d been ready to hit that door.
There was nothing left to show he’d ever been here.
Except…
She went still when she saw something on the floor beside the sofa. She took a step in that direction, her knees feeling wobbly. She knelt down, the sheet pooling in a white puddle against the carpeting.
“My boots.”
Her favorite ones. The ones she’d thought she’d ruined.
She gathered up the black leather stompers. Holding them carefully, she turned them this way and that. A sound left the back of her throat. They were polished and flawless. She ran her thumb over the heel. She couldn’t tell it had ever been broken.
He’d fixed it.
She took a shuddering breath and hugged the boots to her chest as she stood. It took a moment before she was able to move again. When she made her way back up to her apartment, she was on autopilot. Once inside, she sank onto her own sofa.
His words kept playing through her head. Painful words. Honest words. He’d stood by what he’d said. There’d been no apology.
But there had been a ring of truth, one she couldn’t ignore. Had she been the one who’d turned on him?
She stroked the boots she was still holding like a lifeline.
How was she supposed to process this? What was she supposed to do?
The bass line of the music playing at The Ruckus infused the room, thumping unendingly. Her thoughts swirled, refusing to straighten out and move in a straight line. She tried to pluck out pieces that made sense, but they were like scraps of paper in the wind. Every time she thought she had one, it would switch directions and move out of her grasp.
Roxie Page 17