“I’m going to get myself off on you. Come all over your back. You okay with that?”
She moaned instead of answered and so he stepped forward, and slid his slickened tool along the crack of her ass. She moaned again, and he reached around with his free hand to cup her breast and tweak her nipple.
The action went from zero to sixty after that, Rose’s responses taking Payne up, up, and up. He was revved, and breathing like a race horse as he rubbed himself to the point of climax along Rose’s sweet cleft.
Stilling to prolong the bliss of impending explosion, he reached around her hip and toyed with her pussy, finding her clit, rubbing and pinching. She gasped, and then she detonated, pushing back into his body and jerking with the power of her climax.
His cock jerked too, and then he was spilling onto her skin, groaning at the sharp pleasure that rolled up from his balls as he watched his cum pool in the hollow at the small of her back. Still twitching, he brought one trembling hand up to rub his semen there, drawing some of it down to massage into his marks that still lingered on her ass, just another urge he didn’t think to resist.
When he could move, he drew her to a stand, and circled his arms about her. “Like that, baby?” he whispered into her ear, breathless, his heart slamming against her spine.
She nodded, her head lolling against his shoulder. “I love everything you do to me. I love every second of it, Payne. I love you.”
For a second he thought it was his post-climax hearing that was out of whack. Then the words sank in, and he went cold. Aw, fuck.
She’d said it. I love you.
Rose was in love with him. Which meant he’d done her very, very wrong.
In the time-honored tradition of the male homo sapien, Payne’s first strategy for the Rose problem was to stuff it into a new compartment at the very back of his brain. Left there, he could pretend the situation hadn’t happened and could hope it would go away.
She’d done that last part herself, the evening before. After the shower confession, she’d dressed, rounded up her things, and headed home to her sister’s. Payne had kicked back with some beers and basketball on the screen, losing himself in a college game decided by a single point. Cami had once asked if men were actually as absorbed by the competitions they watched on TV as they seemed to be.
Uh, yeah.
But the game always ended and a man had to find another focus to occupy the forefront of his mind, while keeping his latest problem in the back-beyond.
This morning, he was doing a car-thing. “How do you know this guy again?” he asked Walsh. He was sitting comfortably in the other man’s boring black Mercedes. Honey was in the back seat, behind her boss, thumbs at work on the keyboard of her phone.
“Met him at the gym,” Walsh said. “You’re always bitching at me about my Benz, so when he told me he had a Karmann Ghia for sale, I decided to look into it.”
“Type 34, you said?”
Walsh grunted in agreement.
“Hmm.” The 34s were never sold in the U.S., though many made it to the States through Canada. They didn’t have the sleek, bullet lines of their smaller stablemate, the 14, but Payne personally liked the stylish flare around the headlights and the trunk. Still… “It doesn’t seem like your type of car, Walsh.”
“Honey likes them. I saw her admire one once.”
The thumbs of the little admin in the back froze.
Payne cast her a smile. “Look at that, a boss who cares.”
Walsh cast him an annoyed look. “Speaking of employees, yours going to pick you up?”
“Yeah, yeah.” He’d texted her. Walsh had a meeting following this appointment, so Payne would need a ride after checking out the Karmann Ghia.
“How’s Rose—”
“Can we talk about something else?” Payne interrupted, wanting to keep the lid on that compartment. “I was thinking of taking the Berrys out. You want to come along?”
A little whisper of noise from the back seat got Payne’s attention. Damn. Honey didn’t need to hear him setting up a date for the boss she adored. “Never mind. I don’t want to share them with you.”
“I heard Rose met the triplets not long ago,” Walsh said.
“Rose?” Payne lifted his hands. “Are we talking about Rose again? Rose, Rose, Rose. I’m done with that subject.”
“Geez,” Walsh remarked, his tone mild. “Touchy, much? It’s as if you don’t like the woman.”
“It’s not a question of emotion, all right?” Payne glared out the window, and pictured that faraway compartment and the stuffing of all things Rose inside it, like a jack-in-the-box toy.
“I thought you asked her to do the books for the new yard.”
Payne mentally latched the lid. “Yeah, she’s doing the books for the new yard.”
“So why the long face?”
The damn lid popped free. “She said it. The woman said she loves me.” He wanted to strangle himself.
“Oh.” Walsh looked over, grimacing. “Shit.”
Yeah. Shit. But he tried making light of it now. What else could he do? “You say that like I’m not loveable.”
“You’ve got a lot of loving in you, Payne,” a small voice popped up from the back
Closing his eyes, he groaned. Why had he opened his big mouth in front of Walsh and Honey?
“But you’re a bad bet,” her boss added.
“You think I don’t know that?” Payne demanded. “Of course I know that.” He ran both hands through his hair. “We were raised by the fucking Velvet Lemons. We aren’t like normal people. We don’t make attachments like normal people.” He’d once told Ren that dysfunction made a shitty glue and he’d been right.
“That’s not what makes you a bad bet,” Walsh said. “Of course you make attachments. Before Cilla turned creating our tribe into her personal calling, you were the guy always phoning to meet for drinks or for breakfast. You shared your black book.”
“I wanted a second sometimes when it came to the women,” he mumbled.
“You kept up with the girls, too, and even got Reed out of his bat cave on a semi-regular basis.”
Payne had to smile at that. Coaxing the reclusive horror writer out of his dark imagination had been a challenge. “Okay, I’m a saint.”
“You’re a shit,” Walsh corrected. “Because we all love you, you big dumbass golden boy, but every one of us is scared out of our minds that you’re going to kill yourself.”
“What the hell?”
“With the racing, Payne. You’re speeding away from something.”
This conversation was getting out of hand. “What could I possibly be running from?” he scoffed.
“That’s what we’d all like to know.”
Then, luckily, they reached the gym friend’s place and Payne spied the beauty of the 34, which led him to open his auto expert compartment and ignore all the others.
An hour later, he was still a little dazzled by the 34. He’d been under its hood, beneath its undercarriage, in the passenger seat during a test drive as Walsh guided it on nearby Mulholland Drive. He’d gone too slow, of course, dinky-driving it like he did in that old man Mercedes, but Payne had felt the potential.
Now, Walsh had driven off with Honey, and he was just kicking it in the gym friend’s driveway, waiting for Rose. The pink slip was Walsh’s now, but he wanted to pick up the 34 later.
And later than that, Payne thought he just might talk his good buddy out of the sweet ride. It was too good for Walsh.
Just like Rose was too good for Payne.
Christ, she kept popping up like that jack-in-the-box. To distract himself, he took another look inside the car. The dash set-up was simple, no bells and whistles like modern vehicles, but Payne appreciated the masculine elegance. The body of the car had lines that would be appealing to a feminine eye, but inside—all man. He grinned. A little like himself.
Vain asshole, an inner voice taunted, sounding a lot like Walsh’s tone when he called Payne a “big,
dumbass golden boy.”
Every one of us is scared out of our minds that you’re going to kill yourself.
He closed his eyes a moment, and when he opened them, he noted the keys were in the ignition. Mr. Oh-So-Wise Walsh had left them behind. Payne reached in to pull them free, then hesitated. God, getting behind the wheel would go a long way to clearing his head.
Without another thought, he climbed in.
Mulholland was the natural choice and he wasn’t going to dinky-drive it. Payne ate up the windy road, the view of the San Fernando Valley on the north and the view of city L.A. on the south blurring by. On a weekend or a different time of day he’d be in a line of motorcycles or commuters, but this was the sweet spot in terms of traffic and the road was taking Payne to his own state of bliss.
Road, speed, a machine under his command.
Complete control.
It was the gas gauge that ended his good time
Hell, no, he wasn’t going to finish on a sputter. So he spun the car around to retrace his route, pushing it a little more. Turning back onto quiet residential streets, he edged off the accelerator, but couldn’t resist keeping it a traffic-ticket levels.
His adrenaline had kicked in twenty miles ago, with the wind whipping through the open window, the day smelling like sunshine, the pungent scent of sage scrub and chaparral, and tires on blacktop. He wasn’t ready to give up his drug.
As he approached the dead-end street where the gym friend lived, Payne goosed the gas. Then, from nowhere, a figure stepped into the street, distracting him.
For a moment, the car wobbled and, heart in his throat—he overcorrected. The 34’s ass shimmied and he fought for control, finally coming to a sliding stop, half a foot from damn-her-hide Rose Dailey.
He jumped out, sweaty and a little sick. “What the hell were you doing stepping into the street?”
“Looking for you. Why are you driving?”
His stomach was still rocky and he grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “I could have killed you.”
“Why are you driving? You can be such an idiot.” She looked more than a little pissed-off.
He was the one who was pissed-off! She’d said she loved him and now that wasn’t staying where he’d stuffed it, in its safe little compartment. One look at her and he remembered everything about the moment. Her trusting weight against him, the smell of his shampoo in her hair, the curve of her ass against his softening cock.
If he was really going to die, that would be the moment he picked.
Well, the one right before she said that goddamn phrase. His fingers tightened on her. “You’ve got to take it back.”
“No.” Her eyes narrowed. “You are an idiot. You’re not cleared to drive.”
“Not that. You’ve got to take back the loving me.”
She went still and her eyes turned watchful. “Why?”
Because it wasn’t going to stay safely in the damn compartment! “Because you can’t. You don’t know who I am.”
“Of course—”
“Where I came from.”
“Yes, I do.”
“What I wanted to do to you that night.”
Her mouth opened, closed.
Yeah, now they were getting to it. Something he’d never wanted her to know, but now it was the only thing that was going to save her from himself.
“I was an eyelash away from fucking you that night at the Velvet Lemons compound.”
She jerked in his hold.
“That’s right, my girlfriend’s little sister.” He let that sink in. “I hadn’t fucked the girlfriend, but I was all ready to do the girlfriend’s fifteen-year-old little sister.”
“I was a week away from my sixteenth birthday.”
“You were jail bait nonetheless, and yet I wanted you so bad…” Dropping his hands, he turned away from her. “That’s when I knew how corrupt I was.”
“Payne—”
He turned back. “You showed that to me with that one sloppy, awkward kiss.”
Her face went red.
“I had plenty of opportunities 24/7 to get off at the compound. Since I was like twelve.”
She blew out a breath. “I know that.”
“And that night there was a big party and I could have had sex with women with enough expertise to tie my dick in a knot like other women tie the stem of a maraschino cherry.”
“Lovely,” Rose said, frowning.
He ignored her. “But I was totally ready to take you back to my room after that one kiss. Seduce you. On the way I would have scrounged up some disgustingly sweet wine cooler or made you a big glass of lemon drop martini, all the better to get you buzzed. Then I would have laid you down on my sheets and stolen your virginity.”
“But Payne…” She lifted her arms, let them drop. “You didn’t do any of those things.”
“Yeah. And not touching you that night was the one noble thing I’ve ever done, Rose.” He had to make her see. “On the heels of that one noble thing, I vowed never to give a woman the wrong idea about me and what I can offer to her. So I drag out the Lily excuse if I have to or I date women like the Berrys who want nothing more than a good time.”
“Those women have fake boobs,” Rose said, scowling.
“And shallow hearts, just like mine, where love won’t take root. That’s why we get along so well.”
She drew in a long breath. “Payne…”
“Please, Rose.” He ran his palms down her arms and then linked their fingers. “You have to take it back or else I never truly did that noble thing.”
Her big gray eyes widened.
“Please.” He squeezed her fingers. “You’re too nice to take that away from me, Rose.”
A long moment passed, then she yanked her hands from his. “Fine then,” she said, with a decided flounce and a fierce scowl. “I don’t care a whit for you. But I’m not taking back the idiot part.”
Since he often thought that himself, he decided he was satisfied.
Chapter Thirteen
“Males make me furious,” Rose said to the one in her arms. Then she bussed her nephew’s tiny nose. “Present company excepted, of course.” She shifted her weight on her feet, rocking the baby who’d been fussy since his parents left for an afternoon out.
Marcus stared at her, then his mouth quivered again.
“No, sweetheart, none of that,” Rose crooned. Lily had left a bottle, but she didn’t think it was hunger that made the little boy unhappy. An upset stomach, she suspected, since he’d spit up on her not ten minutes ago. Though he’d mostly hit the towel she’d thrown over her shoulder, she suspected the back of her shirt wasn’t entirely clean. “Shall Auntie change?”
But he wailed when she tried putting him down, so she shrugged and gathered him close again. “Okay, okay. Don’t worry. Auntie’s going to make it all better.”
But who was going to make it better for her? Or what would make it better? So far, she’d been stoking her ire at Payne as a way to assuage her humiliation. You’ve got to take back the loving me.
Why had she blurted that she loved him in the first place?
Because she’d seen through all his moves in the shower. At first he’d treated her like fragile glass, washing her with such care, until he’d caught himself. Then he’d transformed, thinking his raw sexuality would somehow warn her off.
As if. She’d loved it.
So she’d admitted she loved him.
The words had slipped out and his instant rejection of them—the way he’d gone stiff and silent—had made clear they weren’t welcome.
The next day—You’ve got to take back the loving me—he’d made absolutely certain there was no confusion. Standing on the asphalt, he’d been so serious, so intense. Talking about shallow hearts, where love couldn’t take root.
Talking about those triplets.
She frowned. Maybe she didn’t love him after all.
And maybe she should never have come to L.A. looking for adventure.
The bell rang again. Marcus keened.
Fine. Rubbing the baby’s back, Rose stomped toward the door. “This better be important,” she told her nephew.
Throwing open the door, her line of vision was taken up by a huge floral arrangement made up of at least three dozen roses in every color. Her heartbeat tripped. Payne?
Then the bouquet lowered and she stared, even more astonished. “Blake?”
“Hi, Rose.”
It was her ex. There was no mistaking the man’s tailored suit, striped tie, meticulous haircut, and polished shoes. “What are you doing here?”
“I brought you flowers.” He shoved them toward her, but with her hands full of baby, she could only step back.
So he stepped in, looking about. The small foyer opened to the living room and she gestured toward the coffee table with her chin. “You can set them down there.”
Once he did so, Blake turned, and slid his hands into his pockets. “Well, Rose.” His gaze roamed over her, then his eyes narrowed. “What are you wearing?”
What was she wearing? Glancing down, she understood his surprise. Her suitcases were still unopened and she continued to dress herself in Lily-wear. Today it was a pair of white jean shorts that had been tie-dyed in bright pink, blue, and green. She’d topped it with a matching green tee and wore a pair of Lily’s gladiator sandals—white leather with ties that criss-crossed all the way from her ankles to her knees—just because they were kind of funky and she’d wanted to try them out.
They also exposed her brightly painted toenails.
In Seattle, she’d always selected muted polish to go with her muted, accountant personality.
Instead of explaining all that, she shrugged. “It’s warm here,” was all she offered.
Blake’s gaze moved to the little boy who was snuffling against her shoulder. “That’s the baby?”
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