Instead of going into the main house, Decker led me over to his truck, opened my door, and gave me a hand climbing in.
“I do better work alone,” he said, getting in on the driver’s side.
“Do you want me to stay here?”
“No.”
I continued to stare at him. His jaw was tight, and I didn’t remember him having a toothpick in his mouth when we were riding.
“Sorry,” he said, reaching over to hold my hand. “I’d say you don’t count, but that isn’t the way I mean it at all.”
I laughed. “Good.”
“It’s just that I’m still alone when you’re with me.” He shook his head and looked away.
“That wasn’t much better, Decker.”
“I know. Third time’s a charm, right?”
“Fourth. Maybe. Gimme what you’ve got.”
“I want you with me every minute of every day, every week, every month, every year—for the rest of my life.”
“Wow.” I had to catch my breath.
“Too much?”
“Uh…it definitely made up for the first three.”
I knew my cheeks were flushed; they felt like they were on fire. I still hadn’t fully recovered when Decker pulled into the garage.
“Stay there. Wait for me,” he said, noticing me grasping the door handle. When he opened my door and I turned toward him, he put his hands on my waist and lifted me out of the truck. With me still in his arms, he leaned his back up against the truck and pulled my body flush with his.
With one arm still around me, he gripped the side of my face with his other hand. He was close enough to kiss me, but he didn’t. He just stared into my eyes. “I know I sound crazy, Mila, but I can’t help it. I meant every word I said.”
Before I could respond, Decker kissed me harder than he ever had before. God, I wanted this man, and I didn’t want to wait.
“Decker, let’s go inside.”
His eyes searched mine.
“I need to be closer to you.”
When his breath caught, I took his hand and led him into the house. I didn’t stop when we got to the door to his office, or in the kitchen, or in the living room. I walked straight past the guest room and continued down the hallway until I reached the room I knew was his.
The king-size bed was on a platform and covered by a brightly colored Navajo blanket. The walls were mottled in copper and black, and behind the bed’s leather headboard hung a tricolored cowhide. Shelves full of hardcover books flanked each side of the bed, and at the foot, there was a leather-upholstered bench that matched the headboard. Like the rest of the house, everything seemed to be in its place. The bed was even perfectly made.
Decker stood behind me and wrapped one arm around my waist. I turned to face him and then backed out of his grasp.
His eyes flamed as I put my hands on the hem of my shirt, pulled it over my head, and tossed it on the bench. I reached around and unfastened my plain white bra.
“God, Mila,” he gasped as I slid it over my arms and tossed it on top of my shirt.
He took a step forward when I unfastened my jeans, and I shook my head. “Don’t stop me, Decker. Please.”
He dropped his hands to his sides; the look on his face mirrored the need I felt for him. Hooking my thumbs inside my panties, I dropped them with my jeans. Before I could wiggle out of either, I giggled and toed off my boots. So what if my first time stripping for a man wasn’t terribly graceful?
He smiled and held out a hand to help keep me steady enough to finish what I’d started.
“Mila—”
I put my fingers to his lips. “Let me do this. It’s what I want.”
Standing before this man completely naked, I felt no fear. I took his hand and rested his palm on my breast. “Show me how it’s supposed to be, Decker.”
26
Decker
It was all I could do not to rip my shirt from my body, but if I did that, I’d scare her. It wouldn’t be impassioned; she’d see it as the same violent experience she’d suffered in the past.
I drank in every inch of her perfect, naked body, silently thanking God for creating the breathtaking woman standing in front of me.
With a deep breath, I steadied my shaking hands and unfastened the pearl snaps on my shirt one by one. I eased it from my shoulders and froze when Mila put her hands on my bare abs. Her touch seared me, and I groaned.
Like her, I toed off my boots. Before I could unfasten my belt, Mila’s hands were on my waist. Her eyes met mine as she pulled the end from the loop and unhooked the tongue from the prong. With my hardness straining against the fly, it wasn’t going to be easy for either of us to release the rivets on my jeans.
I stilled her hands. “Before we go any further, I want you to know that I don’t have anything on under these.”
She pulled air into her lungs and then slowly released it, her anticipation and blatant desire almost driving me insane.
As I eased my jeans over my cock, I heard her take another deep breath when it sprang free, hitting my stomach.
I walked her backward to the bed and lifted her up on the edge. “Open for me, baby,” I said, gently easing her legs apart. “I can feel your heat, and I haven’t even touched you yet. God, Mila, we’re going to combust when I get inside of you.”
I cupped her breasts, gently kneading them, flicking her nipples with my thumbs. “Beautiful,” I murmured with a rasp when I saw the flare of desire in her eyes.
I took my time running my hands over her body, roaming and appraising, and then bending to take her nipple in my mouth, sucking and teasing until the scent of her arousal overwhelmed me.
Mila tunneled her fingers into my hair, holding me to her breast. “That feels so good,” she moaned.
Backing away, I knelt in front of her and skimmed my hands slowly up the inside of her legs, feasting my eyes on the patch of blonde curls at her core.
“So soft,” I murmured, allowing my fingertips to drift into her wetness. “God, you’re so hot, so tight,” I said at the same time she cried out.
I added a second finger, slowly stroking in and out, and Mila fell back against the bed, her hands in her own hair.
Easing her legs farther apart, I lowered my head, sweeping my tongue over her folds before pressing my mouth to her sex. When her hands grasped my hair, trying to move me away, I dove in deeper, my mouth and fingers driving her wild.
“Decker, God,” she groaned.
“Hold on tight, baby. This is a ride you’ll never forget.”
Mila arched her back, and her wet heat clenched around my fingers. Her hips jerked, and her mewling cries were almost enough to bring my release far sooner than I wanted. I covered her trembling body with mine and kissed her neck, her cheeks, her eyelids before finally bringing my lips to hers. My tongue tangled with hers, and she wrapped her legs around me.
“I need more,” she groaned, pressing her sex against my hardness.
“Do…not…move,” I said, pushing myself up and off of the bed. I walked into the bathroom, opened the middle drawer, and gave a silent prayer of thanks when I spotted the unopened box of condoms I’d forgotten I had. I grabbed a handful and went back into the bedroom.
“Good girl,” I said when she’d only moved to writhe.
I lay by her side, running my fingertips over her damp, heated skin. The way this was playing out wasn’t anything like I’d envisioned. It was heated, passionate, frenzied. It didn’t feel romantic or loving or gentle.
She looked up at me with such longing. “Please,” she whispered.
I brought my lips to hers in a soft, slow kiss. “We aren’t going to rush this, Mila.”
Before I’d hurried, not anymore. There were so many things I wanted to do to her, so many experiences I wanted to share, so many ways I wanted to show her how intimacy between a man and a woman who cared for one another should be. And I did care for her, more than any other woman I’d ever known.
She shuddered as
I kissed my way across her body. I ran my tongue under the soft underside of her breast. When I got to her shoulder, I nipped her skin, and then ran my hand down her arms, remembering how I’d longed to reach out and touch her when I met her at the airport. Somewhere in the house, a phone was ringing, and I didn’t give a shit. Whoever was calling, whatever they wanted, could wait. Mila, the woman I’d waited for, somehow knew would walk back into my life, was in my arms, and nothing else mattered.
When I shifted my body and rested my head on Mila’s tummy, she moved her hand to my leg. “Do you want to touch me, baby?” When she nodded, I took her hand and rested it on my hardness. I let her explore, running her fingers up and down my shaft like I’d done when I took my time running my hands everywhere on her body.
“Show me, Decker,” she whispered.
“Like this,” I said, wrapping her hand around me and then covering it with my own. I guided her, first soft and slow, and then showed her that she wouldn’t hurt me if she held tighter, went faster. I closed my eyes, but only momentarily. On the brink of an orgasm I wasn’t ready to have, I stilled her hand.
“Did I hurt you?” she asked with wide eyes.
“No. The opposite. It feels too good.”
Mila pushed my hand away and continued stroking me. I closed my eyes, willing my body to wait, and felt the tip of her tongue run the length of me.
“God, Mila,” I groaned. “I don’t want you to ever stop, but, baby, I need you to stop.”
Rather than just moving her hand, I shifted my body so we were side by side. Her eyes were open wide, darting back and forth, studying me.
I leaned forward and captured her mouth with mine, kissing away her insecurities. “The first time, Mila, I want to be inside you. I want you and I to share that, both of us, at the same time. Do you understand?”
“I want that too. I don’t want to wait, Decker.”
“There’s no hurry, sweetheart.”
She reached for me again, and I swatted her hand away. She giggled and pushed me back on the bed, resting the upper half of her body on my torso.
I drew circles around her nipple with my fingertip. “Now you see, if we hurried, we would miss out on getting to know each other’s bodies.” I wrapped my arm around her waist and rolled until she was beneath me. “And I want to know every single inch of this body, Mila.”
“You really need to get that,” she murmured when the phone rang for the tenth time in thirty minutes.
“I could just turn it off,” I said between nibbles on the back of her knee.
“It could be an emergency.”
“It’s a five-minute ride from the main house here. If it were an emergency, someone would be banging on the door.” As if on cue, we heard the sound of someone pounding on a door near the front of the house.
“Dammit,” I mumbled, getting up and pulling on my jeans. “Do…not…move,” I said like I had earlier. “And if you have to move, do not put any clothes on.”
Mila smiled and rolled to her back. I took one more lingering look of the body I doubted I’d ever get enough of.
I’d brought myself back from the brink so many times, my cock ached, but it was worth it. When Mila was naked next to me, I wanted to savor every moment, never rush, never let her leave feeling anything but well sated…and loved.
Halfway down the hallway, I stopped and put my hand on the wall to brace myself. Love? Where in the hell had that come from? I couldn’t deny it, though. I wanted to love Mila Knight. Her body, her soul, her mind, everything about her.
Since whoever was pounding on my door seemed relentless, I took a deep breath and went to answer it.
“Sorry,” said Grinder, dropping his hand. “Edge needs to speak with you.”
“Why me specifically?”
“Because Adler Livingston is headed this way.”
“Jesus,” I mumbled, walking over to the kitchen counter to pick up my phone. As I waited for Edge to answer, I caught Grinder looking me up and down. “What?”
“Sorry, my friend, but no shirt, no shoes, trousers halfway open…appears you had a bloody good reason for ignoring your mobile.”
“Damn right, and don’t say that. You’re starting to sound like Rile.”
“What’s he saying?” said Edge, answering in the middle of my sentence.
“My friend. ‘Hello, my friend,’ doesn’t that just annoy the hell out of you?”
Both Edge and Grinder laughed.
“What do you want, Edge?”
Grinder leaned forward. “He’s pissed because you interrupted him and Mila.”
I elbowed him in the gut and turned my back. “Go ahead.”
“Livingston is headed south. At first, I thought he might attempt to get onto the ranch, but he’s turned off the main road. I’ve no idea where he’s going.”
“I have a guess. Call me back when he stops and send me the coordinates.”
“Where do you think he’s going?” Grinder asked when I ended the call.
“The house Mila and Sybil lived in with their parents before the divorce.”
Grinder raised his eyebrows.
I led him outside and closed the door behind us. “I want you to follow up on something else. I need to track down Marshall Livingston’s blood type. Also, have the medical examiner confirm that Sybil’s was B-negative. Then we’ll see if we can find out Judd’s.”
“Are you suggesting Sybil wasn’t Judd’s daughter?”
“It would explain the abrupt divorce filing while his kid was recovering from surgery.”
“What’s Mila’s? Does she know?”
“A-positive.”
“Is everything okay?” Mila asked when I came back into the bedroom.
“Not really.”
“What’s wrong?”
“You weren’t supposed to get dressed.”
“I’m hardly dressed, Decker.”
I draped my body across the bed and put my fingers under the hem of her shirt. “No longer naked.”
“I just thought…if someone were to come in.”
“To the bedroom?”
Mila’s cheeks flushed. “I just felt weird.”
I kissed the palm of her hand. “It’s okay. There’s something we need to talk about anyway.”
Mila got off the bed and grabbed her jeans. “I’ll be right back.”
“Wait a minute,” I said when I saw the look on her face. “We aren’t finished, baby. We’re barely getting started.”
She looked into my eyes but didn’t speak.
“I mean it.”
She nodded and left the room, and I felt like the biggest asshole that ever lived. My desire to take things slow had left Mila feeling unwanted, and that was the last thing she should feel.
27
Mila
Tossing the jeans on the bed, I rummaged in my suitcase for a pair of shorts. I was sure I had another clean pair. Given I hadn’t planned on being here very long, I didn’t pack much. Although I really didn’t remember packing at all. Much of the last few days were a blur.
I sat on the end of the bed and put my head in my hands. While Sybil and I never got along, she was still my sister. We’d looked so much alike growing up that people often mistook us for twins, but other than the physical appearance, we’d had almost nothing in common.
If I were asked to describe my sister in three words, the first would be angry. I’d attributed it to my leaving for college shortly after our mother died, but Sybil could’ve gone to college if she’d wanted to. It wasn’t as though our grandfather was in poor health at the time. In fact, he’d only gotten sick a few months before he died.
Sybil had been angry long before that, though. But why? I’d experienced all the same things my younger sister had. Our father had left our mother when we were very young. He went on to make a staggering amount of money, if one could believe the press’ accounting. He’d been featured on the cover of several business magazines and even made the list of one hundred wealthiest men in
the world. Did it bother me that we didn’t share in that wealth? Not really. We’d been happy enough living with our grandfather. It wasn’t as though we’d never had enough to eat.
Happy enough. Had we been? While Sybil had been mostly angry all her life, our mother—for as long as I could remember—had been profoundly sad. I didn’t remember much before the divorce, so I had no idea if that was the cause of her lifelong depression. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but now that I was an adult, I realized the fact that my mother never dated again, as far as I knew, was odd. She’d only been in her early thirties when her marriage ended, yet I never remembered her going on a single date or even expressing an interest in doing so.
Sybil hadn’t done much dating either. I’d never met or heard about anyone my sister referred to as a boyfriend. Was that because she and Adler had been secretly seeing each other? The idea of it made me cringe.
I looked up and saw Decker in the doorway, studying me.
“Whatcha’ thinkin’ about, pretty girl?”
“Honestly? How fucked up my family is.”
Decker came and sat beside me. “I’d bet ninety percent of people would say the same thing.”
“What about your family, Deck? At the sheriff’s office, you said you didn’t have anyone. What happened?”
When he scrubbed his face with his hand, I regretted asking.
“The closest thing I have to a family is Quint and Z Alexander.”
“You don’t have to talk about if it’s too personal.”
Decker half-smiled. “Baby doll, we spent the last two hours exploring each other’s naked bodies, telling you about my family isn’t too personal.”
“I know, but…”
“My parents both split the scene before I turned seven. They were into drugs, alcohol, God knows what else. After that, I bounced around in the foster system for six years until I met Quint. He invited me to come to the ranch, and I did, every chance I got.”
Decked (The Invincibles Book 1) Page 12