“Hunterrr!” Her fist slammed into the mattress. “So help me, God.”
No, God help him, because he grabbed his aching cock, lined himself up, and sank in, gritting his teeth against the need to pull back and thrust hard.
She went wild under him, rocking up, working him deeper, oblivious to the recklessness she courted. “Yes…yes…yes.”
“Careful. Careful. Careful.” He kept saying the word, while she took no care whatsoever. Instead, she flattened her palms against the mattress, lifted her hips even higher, and showed him somebody had been diligent with their Kegel exercises.
That little trick wrung the last of his caution right out of him. He took hold of the leg still braced against his hip, pushed it toward her shoulder, and held her there, open, his fingers digging into her slim thigh while he drove deep.
The rake of fingernails stung his ass cheek, but the burn only spurred him on. Eyes squeezed shut, face tipped to the ceiling, he pistoned his hips. The sound of his breathing clogged his ears. His pulse hammered in his head, his chest. His brutally needy cock. She met him thrust for thrust, best she could with only one heel for leverage. He wasn’t so far gone he didn’t register her participation, but some shred of courtesy compelled him to pry his eyes open and check on her—make sure nothing in her expression suggested she was reconsidering the merits of cowgirl, or ass-up, or her own devices.
She had her back arched, and her head tossed way back, presenting him with the long, pale column of her throat. Her gorgeous breasts bounced with every thrust. He wished he could get down there and rain kisses on them. Feel her heartbeat against his lips. But it wasn’t going to happen. Not when her body trembled under his. While he watched, she brought one arm up and crossed it in front of her face. The move worried him, but before he could re-establish a connection between the speech center in his brain and his vocal cords, and ask her if she was all right, she stiffened. She shoved her knuckles against her mouth as her inner walls tightened and released in rhythmic spasms around his shaft. He fought on for a few precious seconds he knew damn well were borrowed time, thrusting once, twice—doing his best to hit her clit and make the orgasm so intense she’d feel it for weeks. And then time, borrowed or otherwise, ran out, and all he could do was bite back her name before it tumbled from his throat at baby-waking volume, and brace his weight on his arms to keep from collapsing into a shuddering heap on top of her.
…
A low groan rumbled up from somewhere near the head of the bed. “If I wasn’t numb from the neck down, I’d swear someone just kissed my ass.”
She smiled and moved her lips to the next small, red, crescent-shaped indent. “You’re not the only one who knows how to tend to an injury.” So saying, she bestowed another kiss.
Hunter raised his head and inspected the damage, then turned back around and propped his chin on his crossed wrists. “Shit girl, that’s not an injury. That’s the mark of a job well done. And unless you actually break the skin, you’re not obligated to kiss it better.”
“Oh, well. If that’s the rule…” She sank her teeth into his highly bite-able glute.
“Ow!” His head popped up again. “Remember the two-can-play rule.”
The idea of him returning the favor set off a tiny burst of tingles low in her belly. Apparently she’d gotten the extended release orgasm. She kissed the new marks and then the dimples on either side of his spine, at the small of his back. “Truth is, I’ve been having naughty fantasies about this butt since the day you showed up at the hospital and bagged the baby supplies from the bassinet.”
“Huh. And here I thought you liked my smile.”
“I do. Both of them.” She teased her tongue into the very top of his “smile.”
He sprang up, quick and lethal, and in the next second she found herself flat on her back, with two hundred pounds of rock hard man pinning her to the mattress. “I like your smile, too, Madison.” The wicked look he leveled on her would make Satan blush.
“Don’t.” She tried to say it sternly, but her lips kept twitching. Her pulse fluttered, too, which he probably knew because he had his hands banded around her wrists. She tested his hold and then let her arms go limp. She didn’t have a prayer of breaking free. “I’m ticklish. You know I am.” Okay, stern-face, Madison. For real. “You’ll wake the baby.”
“You have a dirty mind.” He cocked his lips into the lazy grin she’d forever associate with him. “I meant this smile.” Those lips brushed hers, and then he drew back and gave her a serious look. “I’m glad to see your smile. It disappeared over the last few days.” He kissed her again and rested his forehead against hers. “I missed it.”
“I should have talked to you. I just…” Didn’t want to burden you with my worries and be the damsel in distress to your white knight yet again.
He shifted his big frame off her and settled back on the bed. The arm he extended across the pillows offered her head its favorite resting spot in the hollow between his chest and shoulder. She snuggled in and, because she couldn’t resist, traced her nails down the groove in the center of his chest.
Idle fingers stroked her hair. “Talk to me now. Why didn’t you tell me about running into your ex?”
The question came out neutral, but she heard the disappointment beneath his non-accusatory tone. She released a breath and flattened her hand against his heart, as if she could press some understanding directly where she needed it most. “Partly for the reasons I gave this evening. I thought I was being paranoid. To Officer Langley’s point, Cody’s not some super-spy or criminal mastermind. He’s a loser who occasionally got desperate enough to do something like break into his idiot ex-girlfriend’s apartment and steal the stuff she left lying around because she stupidly thought he would take no for an answer.”
“If I hear you trash his ex-girlfriend again, I’m going to make you eat your words.”
Yeah, well, there was the thing. Trash seemed to stick to her since she’d taken up with Cody. Shaking him off, and shaking off the trashy feelings, proved harder than she’d imagined. Which led to the other reason she’d kept her mouth shut. “She did precisely one smart thing where Cody Winslow was concerned—packed her bags and removed herself from a pathetic cycle of getting taken advantage of. One lousy thing.” She shook her head against his shoulder. “And I really wanted to believe I’d done it right and left all his drama behind. I didn’t want to give up that feeling—that sense of accomplishment. Even after running into him that day in the parking lot, I told myself he hadn’t followed me here, so he couldn’t get to us.”
“He can’t.” Two small words, said so firmly they might as well have been carved in granite. “I meant what I said. You don’t need to worry, Madison. You and Joy are safe. I’m going to keep the damn windows locked. We’re going to use the alarm. I’m off work the next four days, so Joy will be with me. You’re off work the following three, so she’ll be with you. Nelle knows the situation, and she’d never leave the baby unattended.”
“I know.” She sighed. “Just like I know I overreacted today.” Rational or not, the fear had been instant and crippling.
“Know one more thing. Stern and Langley are probably right.” He brushed her hair away from her cheek as he spoke. “Most likely some kid happened across the open window and decided to see if he could score some free shit. Bad timing, and shame on me for making it easy for him, but chances are, Atlanta PD won’t get a hit on the prints.”
She nodded her head against his chest and tried to reason herself out of her fears. “Even if he did know, my head tells me kidnapping Joy and selling her to some baby peddler falls below even Cody’s slippery moral bottom line. Breaking into the apartment we used to share, stealing a bunch of baby supplies he could sweet-talk a Walmart salesclerk into accepting for a full cash return without a receipt? Sure. That’s still a long way from stalking me, staking out this house, and stealing Joy.”
“But?”
So much for reasoning with herself. She swal
lowed and looked into Hunter’s eyes. “But he gets in over his head, with scary-bad people. I don’t know them, and I don’t want to know them…and I don’t think any of them would do his dirty work for him and call it even. I do think they’ll start breaking his bones if he doesn’t come through with the cash he owes.”
Hunter linked his fingers through hers. “You think he owes ten grand?”
She reviewed their conversation in her mind, including how he originally tried to lowball her for five thousand. “Uh-uh. I think ten grand buys him some breathing room. He probably owes way more. Ten grand was his bottom line.”
“All right.” He planted a kiss on her forehead. “We’ll be extra cautious for a couple weeks.”
“Until the fingerprint results?”
“Honey, if he owes scary-bad people way over ten grand, the fingerprint results are irrelevant. He’ll either find a way to pay them in the next week or so, or they’ll…well…let’s just say, he’ll default. Permanently. Loan sharks don’t offer deferments, or extended payment plans, or forgiveness programs.”
Cold vines twined up her spine, despite the heat coming off Hunter’s body. “Oh.”
“Got any plans for February 29th?”
The sudden shift of topic left her blinking, and then her stupid heart soared. He wanted to make plans. With her. Like people in a real relationship did. Maybe she was more to him than a damsel in distress? “Um, it’s a Saturday, right?” She pulled the following weekend’s schedule into her mind. “Aside from work that morning, not really. You?”
He folded an arm behind his head. “I do, actually.”
Her soaring heart nosedived. “Oh.”
“Beau’s wedding.”
“Oh.” Pick another response. “They’re getting married on Leap Day? How romantic.”
“Try cheap and lazy. He only has to deal with his anniversary every four years.”
She smacked him on the shoulder. “It’s romantic.”
“Yeah, well, I’m glad you think so, because I’m hoping you’ll come with me. You and Joy. She should be up to a little interaction by then.”
Her heart took flight without requesting clearance for takeoff. Again. Had he really just invited Joy and her to join him for an important event, packed with his closest friends and their families? A man didn’t ask a woman to a wedding out of a sense of duty, or because she happened to be living in his house and sharing his bed, for the moment. He genuinely wanted them there with him. “We’d love to.”
“Good.” He grinned down at her and looked strangely relieved. “That takes a load off my mind, because it’s an out-of-town wedding, and I don’t think now’s the time to leave you and Joy alone overnight…
He went on about logistics, but she didn’t hear him over the sound of her heart shattering upon impact with the cold, hard truth. He wasn’t looking for a perfect occasion to introduce her and Joy to his friends, or send her a sign he wanted to expand their…arrangement to something ongoing. This invitation sprang from a sense of duty, after all. He didn’t want to leave Joy and her alone in the house for the better part of a weekend. This was Hunter Knox in rescue mode. No good. She couldn’t do it. “I-I can’t.”
He paused in the middle of whatever he’d been saying. “Can’t what?”
“I can’t go. I have to work that Saturday morning.”
He sat up higher in the bed, which she read as him preparing to get his way. Not going to happen. Not this time.
“Talk to your manager. Get the weekend off.”
She sat up, too. “I need my shifts, Hunter. I need the money. You’re not the only one with goals around here, you know.” Okay, that landed in left field like a big ball of psycho. His wary expression said as much.
“Madison, I’m not trying to interfere with your goals. I know how important it is to you to stand on your own two feet. I’ve been there.” He leaned in, fearless as a lion tamer, and kissed her temple, her cheekbone. “I understand.” His mouth wandered to her earlobe, and she felt her resolve draining away like bathwater. Against the underside of her jaw, he murmured, “I just want my girls with me.”
My girls. Oh, God. She was going to give in. Even if the invitation sprang from his deep-seated need to ride to the rescue—the temptation to be “his girl” for a few precious hours proved too hard to resist. She wanted to be his girl, forever, but realistically, forever wasn’t in the cards. Their trajectories were moving them apart, not together. They had the here and now, and she didn’t have the strength to forfeit it.
“If Nelle’s available to babysit, I could leave Joy with her Saturday morning, work my shift, and then pick her up and drive to Magnolia Grove. We’d make it just in time for the ceremony. What do you think?”
He smiled against the side of her neck, and his rough jaw tickled her skin.
Dangerously charming.
“I think I’d better save the first dance for you.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Any news on the ex?”
Hunter swallowed a handful of fries and shook his head at Beau. “Nope. Atlanta PD won’t have fingerprint results until next week, at the earliest, but Madison hasn’t seen or heard from him.”
His partner nodded, took a drag of his soda, and stared through the windshield at the Monday lunchtime traffic on Peachtree Road. “Good. Although part of me wishes he’d try something, so you can kick his ass, the cops can haul him off, and Madison can have some peace of mind.”
“Not that I don’t welcome the opportunity to kick his ass, but I don’t think it was him who broke in. If so, I doubt he has the balls to try again.”
“You’re probably right. Speaking of balls, I can’t believe you finally grew a pair and asked Madison to be your date for the wedding.” Beau managed the insult around a mouthful of burger.
“Do not talk to me about growing a pair, Beauregard. There wouldn’t even be a wedding this Saturday if it weren’t for my balls of steel.”
Beau choked on his burger then pounded his chest and sucked down some soda to clear his airway. “How do you figure?”
Hunter crumpled his burger wrapper and tossed it in the bag. “When I picked up my phone at the ass-crack of dawn Christmas morning to hear Savannah’s little sister outline, in gory detail, every inhumane punishment she planned to inflict on your—and I quote—‘worthless dick,’ I had your back. A less steel-balled man would have told the furiously imaginative Sinclair Smith to do what she had to do to, and hung up. Not me. I stepped up and told her I’d talk some sense into you.” He folded his arms, sat back in the passenger seat, and smiled. “And I did.”
Beau made a disparaging noise. “You got me drunk.”
“I work in mysterious ways. You don’t always appreciate my genius.”
“That’s for sure. I guess Madison appreciates something about you, since she accepted your invitation.”
He shifted in his seat, suddenly restless. “I don’t know.” Even he heard the frustration in his voice. “She almost turned me down because she has to work Saturday morning. When I suggested she ask for the weekend off, she accused me of not caring about her goals. Like I’m trying to sabotage her plans to get her own place.” He kicked the floorboard.
“Okay.” Beau turned and leveled a steady stare on him. “Time for a reality check, Knox. You don’t want her to move out. How about you get a grip on your big steel balls and tell her how you feel?”
The restless feeling kicked up a notch. “We’ve been over this. She needs to prove to herself she can stand on her own two feet, and I need to clear my plate so I can concentrate on school this fall. I’m not going to lay out time, effort, and money to fail again, and that means there are certain distractions I can’t afford right now, no matter how much I want to—”
“I agreed, originally, but after seeing you two together on a night when you definitely were not at your best, and listening to you talk incessantly about her and Joy, I’ve realized a couple things. First”—he extended a finger—“you’re
not some overwhelmed, eighteen-year-old kid. You’ve learned how to juggle your fucking priorities. Second, and more importantly”—he put up a second finger—“Madison isn’t some frightened, knocked-up teen trying to cling to you so hard she drags you down. She’d be nothing but supportive of your efforts, and you damn well know it. You’re running scared, plain and simple, but instead of admitting as much, you sit here painting Madison and Joy as distractions—insulting, by the way—and justifying your cowardice as prudence.”
“Jesus Christ, all I did was show up to work today.” He crushed his fast food bag to keep from pounding his fist on the dash. “I don’t remember signing up for a personality profile, but thanks for diagnosing me as a chicken-shit bastard, Dr. Montgomery. Your expert opinion means a lot.”
“It should.” His partner turned and pinned him with a serious look. “Because I am an expert on fear, and I know a thing or two about behaving like a bastard. I recognize the signs well enough. What I can’t figure out is whether you’re afraid of failing, or afraid of how you feel about Madison and Joy. Or both.”
Fuck. Why was it so cramped in here? And hot? A headache dug into his frontal lobe like a backhoe. He hit the button to lower his window halfway and breathed in the fifty-degree air. “If Ashley doesn’t get off her ass and write me a rec letter, I don’t have to worry about failing.”
“Don’t change the subject. She’ll write the letter. She’s just making you sweat. Besides, her letter is only for the local school. You applied to, what, four out-of-state schools? You’ll get accepted to one of them. You can take your balls of steel and your fear of failure to Durham or Nashville.”
“I’m not going out of state.” The words came out fast and irrational, considering he’d spent time and money on those applications. He hadn’t even realized he’d crossed the possibility off his list until this moment.
Emergency Delivery (Love Emergency) Page 17