His lips curve. “You most definitely get tacos.”
“Well then,” I say. “A T-shirt and tacos. I’m a keeper.”
He catches my hand and walks me to him, the rush of attraction between us in that touch. “I liked you better with the lipstick on your nose,” he says, his voice pure masculine seduction.
So much so that it takes me a moment to process what he’s just said, at which point, my eyes go wide. “You knew I had it on my nose and you didn’t tell me?”
He chuckles and leads me past the living room. “Hard to miss. It was right there on your nose.”
We are teasing and laughing as we return to the living room we’d left, and he convinces me to sit on the rug in front of the table and closer to the fire. Once we’re cozy on the rug, he opens the lid to two boxes of six giant tacos. “Who else are we feeding?” I ask.
“I wanted you to get to try them all.”
It’s a sweet gesture that I don’t miss. “I doubt I can eat even one of those tacos. They’re huge and you ordered twelve.”
“Twelve good bites might equal most of a taco. If you really dig in.”
I shake my head, smiling, and I don’t recall smiling so much with any other human being so easily. He starts explaining all of the sauces and I relax into the next half hour, munching with him, and trying everything.
“One more bite,” he urges after I have had my twelve bites and then some.
I wave him off. “I can’t eat one more bit. I only ate what I did because the food was so good.” I turn away from the table, offering it my side view. “Now I have to workout extra this week and it’s your fault.”
He shuts the box and rotates to face me, one leg up, at my side. “I have a great home gym here that I use every day. You’re welcome to it but I do believe I could keep you otherwise occupied.”
“You are bad.”
“I am, Aria. For you.”
My lashes lower and then lift. “So you keep telling me. Maybe it’s me who is bad for you.”
He moves then, dragging me to him, his hand tangling in my hair almost roughly, his lips now a breath from my lips. “You are bad for me, Aria. Because you make me forget things I can’t afford to forget.”
I make him forget.
I suddenly want to make him forget. Greedily, against all that I have been taught all of my life, of what is expected of me, I want to know this man. I want to push him to let me know him.
“I have never needed what is bad for me more than I need it right now,” I dare.
His grip in my hair tightens to a biting, erotic pull, and he drags my head back, his teeth scraping my neck. My nipples pucker as if he’s licked them. My sex clenches with the hope that he will soon be inside me. And when his lips tickle my lips, I am panting as he warns, “You should run away, Aria.”
“Later,” I whisper, and I’ve barely spoken the word before his mouth is on my mouth. His tongue strokes deep and I can taste that dark part of him that he’s warned me of, that dangerous part of him. And God, how I want that part of him. Perhaps that part of him is exactly why I’m here. But in his darkness is my freedom. And I have been caged for so very long.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Kace drags his T-shirt over my head and then drags me onto his lap. His mouth captures mine, and he is kissing me with a torment, an almost angry demand, and I like it. I like it because it tells me that I have found another piece of the real man, a little piece of the real man he hides behind the rock star and I can’t help myself. I want more.
One of his hands splays between my shoulder blades, and the other once again closes around my hair, his grip biting as he drags my head backward, his mouth pressed to the delicate skin of my neck. Goosebumps lift on my skin as he lowers me further, toward the floor, his powerful arms holding me, his teeth scraping my nipple with an erotic pinch he licks away with his tongue.
Now, my hands are in his hair, and I’m the one holding on, and not gently. A low, rough sound escapes his lips and suddenly his mouth is back just above my mouth, but he doesn’t kiss me. “You’re playing with fire, baby. You know that, right?”
“Am I?”
“You are.”
“What if I like it? What if you like it, too?”
For long seconds he holds me there, his big body arched over mine, before he says, “Damn it, woman,” his voice sandpaper rough with desire. “You will see, and too soon for me, I know.” He lays me back, settles me on the blanket, dragging my legs to his hips, my back arching, breasts thrust in the air, his hot stare traveling my body.
He waits for me to ease into the soft rug, to relax before his hands caress up and down my legs, up and down, a promise of every place his hands will soon travel in that touch. “I’m going to kiss you now,” he declares, his voice absolute, his thumb sliding into the slick heat of my sex. “So wet,” he says. “So ready for my tongue.”
My nipples tighten with the words and I bite my lip. No one has ever talked to me this way. No one has ever lit up my body so completely. He slides down lower, his breath a hot tickle on my clit. “You do want me to lick you, don’t you?”
I’m already melting for him, melting as I’ve never melted for a man when his mouth is suddenly closer, his breath teasing my clit, his fingers sliding inside me, driving me wild while his gaze finds my gaze. I gasp and he orders, “Say it. Say you want my tongue on your—”
“Kace,” I whisper urgently before he can say the word, my lashes lowering, my hips lifting into his touch.
But already he’s denied me that touch.
His fingers are gone, no longer inside me, but my legs are over his shoulders and his mouth is right where I want it. He licks my clit, and I gasp. I’ve barely recovered when the warmth of his mouth is around me. Already, I’m spiraling inside the pleasure, so close to orgasm, so very close. I want to fight it. I want to slow it down, but I can’t. His tongue is everywhere I need it. His hand is on my breast, my belly, my hip. He licks me and licks me and I can’t breathe with the demands of my body for release. His fingers slide inside me again and I’m over the edge. I gasp and then tense before my body spams around his fingers. I tremble and quake and then it’s over. My body that had been tense and arched into him, collapses onto the floor. He eases my legs down and then he’s over me, hand on my head. “You were always going to be on my tongue. We both knew it.” And then his tongue is in my mouth, the taste of me on his lips. And when he tears his mouth from mine he says, “You, woman,” he says, “are trouble.”
“I keep telling you that,” I whisper, but he’s moving, his big perfect body no longer over mine.
I gasp in shock as he rolls me to my belly and pulls me to my knees. He’s behind me, his hand on my backside, and when I think he might actually spank me, his palm caresses upward, a path to the center of my shoulder blades, where it rests. He’s beside me now, and leans in close, his mouth at my ear. “Stay just like that. Don’t move.”
“Kace,” I whisper, and I’m not sure if it’s a plea or a demand.
“I will never hurt you. Ever. It’s all about pleasure and escape, about anticipation.” His hand slides down my spine and over my backside before returning to my shoulders. “And you look fucking beautiful. Wait for me.”
I’m exposed, my backside in the air, my weight on my elbows, and my heart is thundering, but I want what this man offers me. I want the escape. I want all of what he offers me. “Yes.”
He cups my breasts and then removes his hand from between my shoulder blades, replacing it with his mouth. His lips linger there for long moments, and then he’s gone, his touch no longer warming me, the shift in the air telling me that he is now standing.
Now, I’m vulnerable again, exposed, and I can feel the shift of him standing up. I can feel the heat of his stare. I’m reminded of his warnings of himself, but I do not feel fear. I’m aroused. I am ridiculously aroused if not nervous. Seconds tick by and the rip of plastic tells me he’s putt
ing on a condom, but still, he does not return. More seconds tick by and I can’t take it. I can’t stay here like this and I rotate to find him towering over me, his cock thick and hard, jutting forward.
“You, woman,” he says, coming down on top of me and taking me back down to the floor, “do not follow orders well.” His cock settles thickly between my legs, his big body lying heavily on mine.
“Why would I want to take orders?”
“Hmmm,” he says, his lips brushing over mine. “Pleasure, baby, remember? Tell me you didn’t want me every second you waited for me.”
“Yes, but—”
“No buts, Aria. When it’s done right, in bed, of course, the exchange of power is an escape.”
“For you or me?”
“Both of us or there is no purpose,” he says, his fingers teasing my nipples, my lashes lowering and lifting as he adds, “One day maybe you will allow me to show you that.”
One day, as if there will be another day.
There are possibilities in those words, we’ve agreed don’t exist but he is kissing me, already he is turning me, rolling me to my side, and he’s behind me. He wraps his body around mine, his hand on my breast, and then he’s pressing inside me, thick, hard, so very hard. I arch into him, and he thrusts deep. I gasp with just how deep he goes. He cups my face and drags my head back, his mouth slanting over my mouth, his tongue seduces me, even as his cock drives into me.
I can’t touch him, but his hands are all over me. His body moves with my body. I lose myself in this man, everything else fading away. We are wild one moment and tender the next. He said he would own me and he does. I fade into bliss and tumble into orgasm, my sex clenching his sex. His teeth scrape my shoulder, a low groan sliding from his lips as he quakes with his own release.
Long moments later, I relax into him and the warmth of the fire. He is draped around me, holding me, his face buried in my neck. My belly is full and my body sated, the warmth of the man and the fire overwhelming me. I shut my eyes and let it all wash over me, let it all take over me. Let him own me if only for a few more minutes.
Then I’ll go home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I blink awake to sunlight and disorientation, the flickering blue and red of a fire in the fireplace in my line of vision. For a few moments, I just stare at it, lost in the flames, uncertain if I’m dreaming, uncertain of where I am. I inhale the scent of spice and man on my skin and reality comes to me hard and fast.
Kace.
I’m at Kace’s apartment and it’s now morning.
I jerk to a sitting position, and the blanket I don’t remember pulling over me falls to my waist, exposing my naked breasts. I gasp and pull it to my chest, and it feels as if I am sitting on the Hudson River, that is how close the water is to the windows, miles, and miles of water. What isn’t close, is Kace, who is nowhere to be found. He’s not here with me, which means he does not want to be here with me. Or not. I don’t know. Right now, my mind is running wild.
Embarrassment is at the core of this, the dreaded morning-after-sex hangover, and it is brutal. It stabs at me and I scramble to my feet, holding the blanket around me, while my gaze darts to the floor by the piano where my clothes should be, beside the piano where we were naked, so wonderfully naked just hours ago. And while memories serve me a mighty experience, my clothes are not to be found. Not even my shoes. My purse, however, is on the piano and I quickly grab my phone, checking for messages, to find only one. It’s from Alexander: Still waiting on that check to be cashed.
I don’t even think about replying. I grimace and in rejection of Gio’s silence, and Alexander’s lack thereof, I set my phone on top of my purse, pressing my hand to my forehead. Where are my clothes? And Lord help me, there’s still a stupid Goodwill sticker in my dress I couldn’t get off.
I inhale the scent of coffee and decide Kace is in the kitchen. At this point, I have two options: I can call out to him or I can hunt him down in a blanket. Hunting him down feels slightly less humiliating, though I really don’t want to know how I look right now either. I need a toothbrush and a hairbrush. I need a shower. I need to just get out of here and end this with steamy memories and nothing more because coming here will not be a regret. Overstaying my intended time here might prove otherwise.
I decide calling out is rather offensive and demanding of Kace in his own home. On to plan B. Inhaling a calming breath that is not calming at all, I remember Kace telling me the kitchen was just up the stairs off the main living area. Heading in that direction, I find the gorgeous granite tiled staircase and I start the walk, adrenaline firing through my blood with each of the ten wide steps. I don’t know what to expect. I don’t know how it will feel seeing him this morning.
Clutching the blanket to me, I plod my way up the remainder of my path, to step into a kitchen of stainless steel and gray granite, the square dark gray island the centerpiece of the spectacular room. Kace is standing behind that island, in the nook of a window, his back to me as he talks on the phone, those miles of ocean before him. He must sense that I’m here because he turns, and the instant his eyes find mine, his gaze does a hot slide up and down my blanket-covered naked body. “I’ll be there,” he says, to whoever he’s talking to. “I have to go now.” He disconnects and slides his phone into his pocket, ringlets of damp dark brown hair at his temple, a sexy dark shadow roughing up his jaw, a simple but quite perfect black T-shirt stretched over his chest. Simple is all a man as perfectly male as Kace August needs.
He’s not only perfectly him and dressed, he’s already showered, while I’m a mess in a blanket. “You’re awake,” he says, pressing his hands to the island, all that masculine perfection tuned in on me.
“And without any clothes,” I say, pointing out the obvious.
“I sent them to the dry cleaners. I also left one of my robes on the couch in case you woke up while I was away.”
He sent my clothes to the dry cleaners? I’m very confused about what is happening right now. “I didn’t see the robe. I was on the floor when I woke up and just went straight for my clothes. And when I couldn’t find them, well—here I am in only a blanket.”
His lips quirk. “Yes. Here you are in only a blanket.”
He doesn’t say more. He just stands there, staring at me, his expression unreadable and I am suffocating in my naked awkwardness. “When will my clothes be here?”
“Soon. I sent them off early this morning.”
While I slept naked in a virtual stranger’s house, on his floor. I’m not sure what that says about me.
“Thank you,” I say to him. “You didn’t have to do that.”
His lips quirk. “You said that. Twice.”
“I would have just left and changed at home.”
His gaze narrows, the lines of his handsome face hardening. “Because you wanted to go home last night?”
No, I think. No I did not, but he’s impossible to read right now, a deep, dark abyss of unreadable man, and I am drowning in the emptiness. “I didn’t plan or expect to stay.”
“Did you want to go home last night, Aria?”
I’m a deer in headlights, not sure where I’m to run, if I even should run at all. “I should have gone home.” Which is the truth, I add silently. Even if I do as Gio bid, and fight my way back into my namesake, it’s sure to be a dangerous battle I have yet to fight.
He walks around the island and toward me, and my God, the man is sex in denim, boots, and a T-shirt while I am a homeless person in a blanket. It’s all I can do to not turn and yes, run. Run until I at least brush my hair. But I don’t. I just stand there and already he is close. He stops in front of me, smelling like freshly showered man and delicious spice, but he doesn’t touch me. I want him to touch me. I have never wanted a man to touch me the way I do Kace.
He studies me, his expression probing, his voice soft but firm as he asks again, “Did you want to go home, Aria?” but he doesn’t wait for an answ
er. “Because I brought you here. I never bring anyone here,” he continues. “And when we laid down in front of that fire together, I didn’t want you to leave. I thought maybe when we woke up this morning I’d feel differently, but I don’t.”
The words would please me far more than they should if they weren’t hard and sharp. He wants me here, but it doesn’t please him. We have this intense, magnetic pull between us, but it doesn’t please him. I bristle, confused, embarrassed, certain I have overstayed my invitation but survival mode flares heat, and not the heat of passion. The heat of anger. “Don’t sound so angry, Kace. I’m not pushing myself on you. I would already be gone If you wouldn’t have taken my clothes.”
He catches the blanket and pulls me to him. “I don’t want you to leave. That’s what I’m telling you. I’m asking you to stay.”
My throat thickens right along with my confusion. He is close. His mouth is very close. His scent wraps around me. His words and actions dart left and right, cluttering up my mind and emotions. “You’re doing that hot and cold thing again.”
“I assure you, Aria,” he says, his voice low, raspy, “there is nothing cold about me with you.”
“You’re confusing me, Kace.”
“Did you want to leave last night, Aria?”
“No. You know I didn’t. We were—it was—”
“Yes, we were and yes it was. Right now, though, I have to go to a meeting with my agent in the Hamptons this afternoon and then it’s straight to Texas for another show with Chris.”
“Oh.” Disappointment stabs me the way embarrassment had minutes before. “I see.”
“No,” he corrects. “You don’t see. I want you to come with me.”
I blink. “What?”
“It will be a fast hop. We’ll chopper to the Hamptons and I have a private jet waiting to take us to Austin. The show is tomorrow night. We’ll be back by Sunday night.”
I’m stunned, my world spinning right and wrong. I want to say yes, but Kace is too close to my past to hide inside his world. And Gio is still missing, but is hiding the way to find him or me?
A Reckless Note Page 14