I knew it was for the best for her anyway. She belonged with someone like Bruce, though thankfully she wasn’t with that particular dipshit anymore. He was off in college and they’d officially broken up. The way she told me she didn’t sound upset about it, more relieved I’d say. He didn’t deserve her.
But she did deserve more than me, I knew that, too. I had nothing to offer her, not a penny to my name. She deserved the whole package and I was empty-handed. So, I’d do the right thing.
OK, the 100% right thing would have been leaving without any stolen nights. But I’d never been the 100% right thing kind of guy. I’d have to settle for 90%. A few nights kissing this golden princess in a barn, and then I’d leave.
Only sometimes it got hard to remind myself of that. Later that night she fell asleep in my arms and I let her, the sound of her breathing mixing with the crickets in the night air. I couldn’t help but wonder. What if? What if she wanted to take a chance on me? Crazier things had happened. It wasn’t like she was a little kid. She was about to turn 19. I was almost 22. I had my next gig lined up, working back at that ranch turning over into wilderness tourism. I’d been promoted to manager of buildings and grounds. I planned to learn everything I could and then see where I could take it. There was a chance Kara might want to come along with me for the ride. What if I could come home to her every night?
But I couldn’t ask that of her. It was too much risk for too little reward. Plus, what exactly did I have in mind? Was I going to bend down on one knee and offer her a ring from a Cracker Jack box? I could just imagine how the conversation with Harlan would go. Hey, so, I’d like to get with your daughter. What ‘dya say?
No, Harlan was right to want something more for her. He’d been wrong about Bruce, that guy was a dumbass, but there’d be some man out there. Some strong and solid type I’d want to sock in the jaw, but he’d be her rock. He wouldn’t wake up with nightmares, panting and sweaty, the past threatening to strangle him in the dark. He’d take Kara home for the holidays with his family, decorate the Christmas tree, teach their boy how to hit a baseball and all that shit. My gut twisted, sick at the thought of her with someone else, no matter that it was some imaginary guy.
But that didn’t matter. Sometimes in life you simply couldn’t have what you most wanted. Sometimes you just had to be a man and suck it up. Most of the time, it seemed to me.
§
On the fourth night she brought me an apple pie.
“For you.” Shy and sweet, she brought it out from behind her back.
“Kara.” I shook my head. She was a freaking Betty Crocker. The kind you wanted to take, hard, over the kitchen counter.
I was leaving in a couple of weeks. It was weighing on the both of us, I knew. I thought about it all the time.
“Declan.” The way she breathed out my name, like she couldn’t get enough of saying it. She drove me wild. Fingers twined in her hair, apple pie forgotten on a bale of hay, we kissed and touched and licked and loved each other for some time. I was finding it harder and harder to slow things down.
She was making it hard. It was one thing to put the brakes on myself and tell myself to cool it. But she was heating up, getting more and more bold. She writhed against me, bringing her hands down to my hips to hold me close. She snuck a few fingers along the front of my jeans and under my shirt, touching my lower stomach, light, curious, killing me.
Kissing my throat, her tongue worked its way along, licking me, showing me how much she wanted. Pressing the full length of her body against mine, she whispered in my ear, “I want to go down to your cabin.”
“No, Kara.” I grasped her wrists in my hands. Ignoring how good it felt to trap her like that, instead I brought her hands down to my chest. There, we rested, our heartbeats steadying into one, relentless, restless rhythm. We never cooled down so much as brought the boiling down to a simmer.
My shirt had ridden up slightly, exposing a patch of skin along my abs. It wasn’t that noticeable anymore, but the scar I’d gotten years ago looked pale in the moonlight. She brought a finger down to it, tracing its length.
“How did you get it?” she murmured.
I shrugged. It wasn’t for her to know the details, how I’d been jumped at 13 for nothing more than the twenty-dollar bill I had in my pocket. My foster mother had sent me to buy her a couple of packs of cigarettes. Even after I’d been robbed and knifed in the gut, I still made it to the store. I stole the packs for her, not wanting to get in trouble returning back empty-handed. I’d nearly kept my injury a secret, too, until I’d passed out with a loud-enough thump on the bathroom floor it had caught the attention of my foster mother. Ten stitches in the ER. The following week she’d called the social worker and sent me back because I was too much trouble.
“Kids being kids,” was the version I told Kara with a kiss to her soft hair.
She shuddered against me. “I have a feeling the kids you grew up with were nothing like the ones I did.”
I nodded in agreement.
“Did it happen in juvie?” she whispered. My hand froze in her hair. What did she want to know about and why? “I’m not trying to pry,” she added, hands against my chest, her face up to look into mine. “I’d never try to make you tell me things you don’t want to.”
“How did you know I spent time locked up?”
“Um.” She looked down, getting uncomfortable. “My friend, Mandy.”
“Warning you off of me?” I guessed. I was right, I could tell, by the way she still wouldn’t meet my gaze. “She’s right, you know.”
“No,” Kara protested, looking at me with those adoring eyes.
“Yes, she is. Whatever she told you, I’ve done worse. I’ve lied and cheated and stolen from people.”
“I’m sure you had to, Declan.” So eager to soothe me, to make everything better. Some things couldn’t be washed away. Kara didn’t know that yet.
“No one has to steal, Kara.” I brushed the hair away from her face, amazed by the trust in her eyes. “I’m not a good man.”
“Yes, you are, Declan. I don’t care about the past. I know you. And you are…” She left off, her eyes glistening, her emotions brimming up. “I see how hard you work. How much you take care of here. How you are with me.” Her voice wavered and I wrapped my arms around her, bringing her mouth down to my own. I held her there on the blanket in the hay, showing her with my lips, my tongue, my hands everything I felt and wouldn’t say.
The more we clung to each other, the more the fever inside me burned. I’d thought it couldn’t get worse, the fire I felt for Kara. Typically, about the time I tasted a girl I started losing interest. With Kara, each taste made me crave her more. The past few nights together were almost worse torture than before, so close but still not having her, not the way I wanted.
Kara ground against me. Her thighs parted, her skirt riding up, nothing but a thin slip of panties covering her sex as she pressed against me, full into my steel length. I had to force us apart. I was going to lose it. She didn’t know what she was doing to me.
I couldn’t think straight. She was like a drug and I was so high off of her. I just watched her lazily as she sat up and pulled her shirt clean off of her head. She kneeled there in the moonlight, three a.m. in the barn, in nothing but a short skirt and a bra. She was breathing fast, her ribcage moving in and out with her pale, soft skin. Her breasts stood out, two perfect globes round and lush and beckoning me. And then she took off her bra.
I groaned, watching her in the moonlight. Her breasts jiggled, set free from their entrapment. Her nipples stood out large and dark pink against the strawberry cream of her breasts.
“Declan, I want…” she began, shy. I lay there, my hands by my sides, unmoving in shock. “I need you to touch me.”
Christ, there was nothing I could do to resist that. I crushed her against me, then brought her down where I could explore and touch, taste and pleasure at my leisure. So soft, I’d never felt anything so pliant, so giving and wa
rm. I could bury myself in her breasts forever. My mouth left a trail, licking between them, around them, my fingers up to caress and knead, gentle and worshipping. Her breathing came faster and faster, her hands up at my shoulders grabbing me, digging her fingers into my skin, making fists against my muscles.
“You’re so beautiful, Kara.” I gazed at her in the moonlight, worshipping her. I couldn’t believe I got to do more than look. She’d been up on a shelf for so long, it was a challenge sometimes to flip the switch in my brain. Especially since she wasn’t mine, not really. We were stealing a few nights together away from the watchful eye of her father. But this wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. Which was why I had to take full advantage of my one and only opportunity.
I took my time, mesmerizing every inch of her delicious curves, slowly kissing and stroking. She was so sensitive. Each lick, each touch coaxed out whispered sighs and moans, her fingers fisting in the hay, at my shoulder, in my hair.
“Declan,” she moaned as I licked along the sides of her breast, palming it and bringing it up to my lips. Her nipples pebbled hard, two aching points throbbing, needing my attentions. But I kept it gentle with her. The beast within me wanted more, wanted to suck and mark, to see how she’d respond to that. I remembered the night a few weeks ago when she’d sought shelter in the barn during the sudden storm. I’d bit her then, bringing my teeth to her swollen nipples. She’d liked it. She’d pressed her breast into my mouth, moaning, wanting more.
But I promised myself I’d hold back. I’d stay controlled and sweet. I needed to go slow with Kara. She deserved it. And once we got started down that path, getting nasty and wild, I didn’t know if I could stop. I doubted I could.
So instead, with a light tongue, I lapped and licked my way to her nipples. Then I brought my mouth down lightly to lick. She gasped, arching up into my hand. “Yes, oh, Declan!”
“Do you like that?” I asked, hot and thick, as I did it again.
“Oh my God, yes!” she cried out. I knew I should put a hand over her mouth to keep things quiet, but I couldn’t, not now, not when I loved every sound that escaped her lips.
I played with her that night until the sun threatened once again to rise. In the ghostly pale of early dawn, she shivered and quaked in my arms, gasping and panting and grinding against my thigh. I could tell she was wet, though I forced myself not to touch. It almost made me lose my mind, the sounds she made, the abandon with which she bucked against me. At first, she’d been shy, but as I kissed and sucked her breasts she grew more wanton. She snuck a leg up and around my thigh. Our hips up against each other, she ground her pussy into my hard, driving length, all through our clothes. Lots of barriers, but I could still feel her heat. I could tell how slippery wet she grew, the sensual smell of her, her molten core, begging me to draw near.
Instead, I kept my hands above the waist. There, I touched and stroked, palmed and licked. The feel of her, crazy and wild with desire beneath my hands. The sounds she made, moaning, panting out my name. I’d live on it, playing it back, remembering her exactly as she was at that moment. I knew Kara would stay with me long after she was nothing more than a memory. After it all ended, her ghost would haunt me even after my arms and hands were empty.
Now
I heard a strange noise when I walked into my penthouse. It was a noise I didn’t think I’d ever heard in there before, a noise that rarely made its way into my day-to-day life: humming. Cheerful, feminine humming.
It was coming from my office, definitely a first for that room. For a second I wondered if a new cleaning crew was at work that day, but they always came on weekday mornings when they knew I’d be out. Sunday afternoon, not a chance.
Then I noticed the flowers. They burst out on several surfaces throughout my apartment, in the kitchen, the living room, on top of the bar for God’s sake. And these weren’t elegant white calla lilies in a sleek black vase. These were a riot of color, a wildflower explosion with every hue in the rainbow represented and then some. I walked over to the nearest one on my kitchen island. The base looked old with unfinished wood and the thing had a handle and six compartments. In those compartments stood six vintage glass milk bottles. And out of those bottles sprung daises, dozens of daises, poking up and around in every direction.
Then the doorbell rang.
Kara came rushing out with a giddy laugh. “Oh, I didn’t even know you were here!” She brushed right past me to open the door and welcome in a delivery guy holding a large shopping bag. She thanked him profusely, taking the bag from him and sent him off with a tip.
I watched as she took her bag back to the bedroom. My bedroom. The flowers on the table next to the couch could not be pinker. Light pink, dark pink, bright pink, pale pink. What was happening here?
I hadn’t even put my briefcase down yet, or the black shopping bag I held. I’d stopped in a store myself that afternoon, taking an uncharacteristic break from work to make a few personal selections. It was a crime to have a body like Kara’s and not lace, strap and showcase it in scorchingly sexy lingerie. I was doing nothing more than being a law-abiding citizen when I picked up a few things for her, lacy bits I couldn’t wait to have her model for me, ideally in some stacked heels.
“Do you like it?” she asked, rushing at me with exuberance. She threw her arms around me and kissed me swiftly on the cheek. Then seeming to remember that wasn’t our routine, we really had no routine at all, she quickly pulled back. I instantly missed her warmth, her soft curves, her smell like vanilla and honey.
“What exactly have you been up to?” I asked, undoing the top button of my shirt and finally putting down my things.
“It was such a fun day, thank you so much. You’re going to love the baby gift.” She ran off to the bedroom, ostensibly to retrieve something to show me. I felt the tug of a smile pull at my mouth. I’d been in meetings most of the afternoon, phone calls and in-persons, getting information, calculating risks, making decisions. Typically, I’d come back to my place and do more of the same—an empire didn’t build itself, after all. But apparently today was going to be a little different.
“Feel how soft this is.” Kara pulled something out of a bag and held it to my cheek.
“What is this?” I looked at the blue thing she’d touched me with.
“A baby blanket. And wait ‘til you see this.” She held up some other sort of blue thing. Her eyes flashed with joy and I could instantly picture her at 18 again, filled with such energy and exuberance, like a colt galloping fast as it could just for the hell of it. She still had that light in her now, at 24, but this was the first time I’d seen it shine full on.
“Look!” She laughed with delight, holding up what seemed to be something else for a baby. “Can you imagine?” The smile at the edge of my mouth broke free. I honestly didn’t know what she was talking about, but her happiness was infectious.
“Thanks. Brett’s a good guy. I’m glad you got something nice for him and his wife.”
“I want to get them some champagne, too.”
“Spare no expense?” I couldn’t resist teasing.
Her face fell. “Declan, I’m really sorry if I spent too much money. I’ve never spent so much money in all my life. I don’t know what got into me.”
“Good.” I stepped closer, tipping a finger under her chin to tilt her head up. “I’m glad you did. I wanted you to.”
She looked up at me, hesitant. I traced her cheekbone with my finger and she shivered, her eyelids fluttering closed for a moment. I loved how she responded to me, as if every touch stroked her to the core. I continued to caress her face, bringing my finger down to her lips. Lightly, I drew the pad of my thumb across the lower edge of her mouth. Her lips parted slightly, opening for me.
I’d never met a more naturally sensual woman. I’d met plenty who tried, using every trick in the book to wax, tweeze and dye themselves into a mold: The Femme Fatale. Like pizza, it usually did the trick. Until you had the real thing, actually traveled to Rome and waite
d outside a restaurant in a cobblestone courtyard drinking chianti until they brought you out something so perfect, with such an unexpected blend of chewy and crispy and salty with a bit of sweet that supposedly came from their ovens but clearly had dropped straight down from paradise. It made everything you’d had before then taste like chalk.
I brought a hand to the small of Kara’s back and she leaned in to me, reaching a hand up to my shoulder and resting it there lightly as if she were still shy about touching me, still getting used to it but unable to stop herself nonetheless. Her hair felt like silk between my fingers, long, cascading, shimmering waves of it.
The doorbell rang. We stepped apart like kids whose parents had come home early.
“I’ll get that,” she mumbled, biting her lip.
I watched her move, the unstudied sway of her hips. Her rear, so perfectly round and lush and tight. I wanted a bite.
She opened the door to two more delivery boys bearing bags upon bags of what looked like…stuffed animals?
“Oh, perfect!” she exclaimed, telling them they could put them down near the couch. I acted more quickly this time, handing them a crisp couple of bills before she had the chance to tip them herself. I closed the door and turned to watch Kara.
Giggling, she started pulling out colorful things from the bags and putting them on my living room furniture. Pillows, I realized. Throw pillows, lots of them.
Seven went onto my couch, the long, black leather couch made in Italy that had set me back about $8,000. My designer had called it “minimal contemporary modern” or some such nonsense. Whatever the label, I liked it. Sleek, clean, uncomplicated.
Now it bursted with fruit flavor. One needlepoint throw pillow had an American flag on it. Another, a big red star. A few more with stars, another with stripes. I sensed a pattern.
“Feeling patriotic?” I managed, eyebrow arched as I watched her fuss over it all. Humming again, she put a big decorative pillow there, a small one here, then switched everything back up where they’d started.
Unleashed: Volume 2 (Unleashed #2) Page 9