by Maria Luis
It’s officially now or never.
With feigned confidence and a rapidly beating heart, I pressed my palm to his abdomen. Even through the fabric of his sweater, it was impossible to ignore the hard ridges of his muscles and the way they flexed with every breath he pulled into his lungs. I counted those inhalations like they were my own, and nearly gave into the little devil on my shoulder, which whispered for me to push his shirt up and touch him, skin to skin.
As I all but petted him, his blue eyes never veered from my face. If I were weaker, I’d let the intensity of his stare get to my head—let myself think more of this moment than what the facts bluntly told me.
And the facts were simple: tonight was about lust only, nothing more.
I shifted my hand upward, needing to level out the playing field. “Your heart is beating fast, Sergeant,” I murmured, loud enough to be heard over the crowd. “Don’t tell me you’re nervous.”
Mouth firming into a thin line, his hand locked around my wrist again. “Don’t twist this into something that it’s not. I don’t get nervous.”
I lifted my brows. “Because you’re such a stoic cop?”
“Because I don’t do commitment.”
“Perfect,” I said with a small nod, “I’m not looking for that either.” Jerking my chin toward the front door, which sat beyond a sea of grinding couples, I added, “Should we go?”
His grip tightened. “What changed your mind?”
He had changed my mind. With my back to the police station and his big hands on my body, something in me had cracked. Broken free. Like a drug, I was hooked on the feeling of liberation already, and Asher had only given me a small taste of what might come after submitting to the pleasure he wielded. Refusing to show him that he held the upper hand in our little dynamic, I shot back, “Why do your scars look like they’ve been busted back open?”
Lincoln Asher responded exactly as I expected him to—a careful mask that concealed every trace of emotion. No twisted lips, no narrowed eyes, no steam that billowed out of his nostrils like a cartoon caricature from my youth. No, Asher was stone silent, his rugged face appearing only more tormented with its new pinkish tint to the old, flattened scars.
Old intersecting with the new. If I thought he’d tell me what had gone down, I would have pushed harder.
As it was, he eliminated the remaining distance between us, forcing me to tilt my head back or cut eye contact and cede this round to him.
“If we leave, I’m going to fuck you,” he murmured, all games tossed to the side. “Do you get that? There’s no third chances. You either agree or you go find someone else to play this cat-and-mouse chase.”
I was grateful that my hand was on his heart and not the other way around. Mine thundered in my chest with ridiculous fervor. “I’m not running away . . . Does that answer your question?”
In a million years, I never could have anticipated the way he lifted my hand and pressed his mouth to the soft skin of my inner wrist. Heat, scorched heat—it licked at my feet as Asher’s blue gaze zeroed in on my face, his mouth hovering a hair’s breadth over my wrist. “Your pulse is beating fast, Avery,” he said, voice low, a wicked glint in his eyes, “don’t tell me you’re nervous.”
A gasp lodged in my throat as he caught my fingers with his and turned to wind through the crowd, never severing our connection. Throngs of people pushed inward, forcing me to squeeze through or be left behind.
But Asher never released me.
His shoulders were wide, his back broad, his waist trim, and the only thought on repeat in my head was, This is about to happen.
Katie would be so proud, and I was . . . at odds even in my own head.
I wasn’t ready, not fully prepared for stripping my control and handing over the reins, the power, to a man I hardly knew, but I couldn’t say no. Couldn’t walk away. He did this to me. Twisted all my emotions inside out and set me on fire with nothing but the rough way he uttered my name.
The air outside was humid, thick, and my hands immediately turned clammy.
I’m not nervous, I reminded myself as we cut to the right, around a group of people mingling outside, smoking cigarettes.
I’ve got this, I told myself as Asher tugged me down the next street, onto St. Phillip.
Act confident, I ordered myself as my back gently hit the wall of a building and all I saw was Asher.
“Hands on the brick,” came his low command.
He’s recreating the other night.
I sucked in as much air as my lungs would allow and then set my hands against the building. The brick scraped my palms and my fingers curled in, mimicking the way my toes did the same in my shoes.
Asher leaned into me, lending me his weight, eliminating any chance for my escape into the night. The scent of his aftershave tickled my nose, and I fought the urge to tuck my nose into the crook of his neck and smell him.
“What next?” I whispered, though I tried damn hard to sound unaffected.
Blue eyes met mine, startling me with the heat that I saw there. His face was uncompromising in its firm lines and scars, but his gaze . . . oh God, for the first time I wondered if a mistake was knocking on my door. He looked at me like I was the first meal he’d been given after years of starvation. It was carnal, the way his gaze devoured me. Needy. Raw. And when his chest brushed mine as he inhaled, every ounce of heat in those startling blue eyes of his made me feel like I’d been stumbling through life just to get to this moment with him.
This man was dangerous, wicked, and as though my brain had been usurped by someone else, I heard the words trip off my tongue: “Don’t make me wait, Sergeant.”
Like a candle being snuffed out, the intensity in his gaze wavered, flickering, before sparking back to life again with a ferociousness that had me inching back . . . but there was nowhere to go and nowhere to escape.
“Don’t make threats you can’t keep,” he warned.
“How do you know I won’t keep them?”
His hands landed on mine to drag them up until they were on either side of my head. Pinned.
“For tonight,” he growled, “you belong to me. Do you understand?”
And then his mouth was on mine, and I could only summon one word, even if it existed only in my head: yes.
13
Avery
Asher claimed my mouth as though he was starved for something only I could give him.
Blood surged in my head, clouding my vision, and I slammed my eyes shut against everything but the feel of him. The heat of his big body, the way his belt buckle was like a brand against my sweater-covered stomach. One masculine hand released mine to coast down my body, following the swell of my breasts to stop at the dip of my waist.
And all the while, he kissed me. It wasn’t gentle and it wasn’t soft and even though this was the first kiss I’d ever given a man willingly, I refused to ask Asher to slow down. To take it easy on me.
To—
A gasp broke free from my chest as he nudged my chin to the side, his lips coming to nip the skin just below my jawline. My hand, the one still locked by his to the wall, flexed forward, seeking the softness of his hair.
Asher readjusted his grip, hand splayed over my wrist. I might as well have been chained, I had no slack.
“Until I say otherwise,” he rumbled against my neck, “you’re going to have to take it.” He soothed the bite with a swipe of his tongue, making my pulse skyrocket and my heels come off the cement as I strained closer. “Can you do that, Avery?”
All I saw were the backs of my eyelids when I half-gasped out, “Anyone ever tell you that you’re a pompous asshole?”
Another nip from him, another gasp from me, and then a roughly uttered, “I’m a cop. Never had anyone call me a sweetheart before while on the job.”
If I weren’t so turned on, I would have laughed. As it was, I could hardly think straight. “Devil’s more like it,” I said, moving into complete shameless territory when I tilted my head a littl
e more in a silently encouraged, I-want-more-of-that.
Asher, asshole that he was, either didn’t recognize the request or decided to play dumb because his weight lifted from mine. “I prefer sinner, actually.” He tangled our fingers together and, before I could even plan for what he’d had up his sleeve, he spun me around, chest to the wall. “But I’m willing to play whatever role you want me to tonight.”
My chest heaved at my new position, the backs of my hands cushioning my cheek from the brick.
You’re going to have to take it.
His words rang loud in my head, and there was no doubt about it: I was in trouble.
Because Asher’s gruffness, the domineering way he put me where he wanted me, didn’t make me want to run and never look back.
Not even a little.
Instead I arched my back, seeking his touch. I twisted my upper body, my left ear taking the place of my cheek on my hands as I looked for him over my shoulder. He was there, less than a foot away, and for a moment, I did nothing but study him.
In every other one of our interactions, he’d been dressed in his NOPD uniform. The dark slacks. The jacket over the crisp button-down shirt with the shiny, gold badge pinned to his breast pocket—so respectable. Honorable. An upstanding citizen of the first order.
Tonight, he looked like the devil I’d claimed him to be, and it was an intoxicating contradiction.
Dark jeans, the even darker sweater with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
But it wasn’t the clothes that had my heart racing, nor even his powerful body.
No, it was the wild look in his blue gaze. With the shadows splicing across his face, his features were drawn tight, almost savage in the way he watched me. Drawing in a steadying breath, I licked my lips and wondered if the darkness in me had found its echo in him.
“Don’t make me call you an asshole again for making me wait,” I whispered, then mentally cursed myself for coming just short of begging him.
If he reacted with a smile to my hot retort, I couldn’t make it out as I turned back to the wall.
I did, however, hear the clip of his heavy boot hit the cement. One step. Two steps. And then he was there behind me, hands coming to rest on the building, bracketing me within his embrace. “You going to let me take you right here?” he drawled softly. “Is that what you want?” With one hand, he gently swept my dark hair over one shoulder, and then—oh God—he fisted the strands and everything in me snapped with instant awareness.
Fight or flight.
Not me.
Letting instinct overrule all rational thought, I ground my ass backward, right into his crotch, just like every couple in the nightclub we’d left twenty minutes ago. I was rewarded for my boldness—his guttural groan echoed in my ear, his hand clamping down on my hip to still . . . no, no, he wasn’t even stopping me. If anything, he crowded me further, eliminating whatever distance remained between us. Shielding me from the street.
My heart was a torpedo in my chest, a torpedo with no destination in sight.
Like I was hurtling forward as opposed to standing still; like my skin was on fire though I’d pulled on my sweater earlier this evening to ward off the chilly, nighttime breeze from the Mississippi River; like if I wasn’t careful, I’d let Asher take what I’d given no other man, right here on an empty, semi-dark street with music blaring from Bourbon not some three-hundred feet away.
I wasn’t this woman. I’d never been this woman.
I was more likely to whip out my taser and stun the hell out of a dude for stepping too close, but here I was. My ass driving back into Asher’s very obvious hard-on. My fingers digging into the ridges of nineteenth-century brick. My core tightening as though Asher was already inside me when he’d done nothing but steal my breath with a kiss.
To put it simply, I was screwed.
Maybe literally.
At the sensation of the waistband of my jeans loosening, it hit me that Asher had popped the button on the sly. “You’re playing with fire, Avery.” I couldn’t hear the teeth of the zipper coming undone over the strands of jazz, but my brain filled in the blanks with acute precision. “You have three seconds to tell me that you don’t want this. You hear me? Nod yes.”
Like I’d already told him twice before now, following orders wasn’t exactly my thing.
I snagged him by the wrist, and, sucking in hot air, went for gold—namely, his hand down my pants.
Thank God for oversized sweaters.
Asher cursed violently under his breath, his fingers so tantalizing close to where I wanted them. “You’re off your fucking rocker,” he bit out, and then he shifted to bind me to him with his left hand, although if he pulled any harder, we’d become one.
“I figured I’d speed up the process,” I said, then fell into a small pause. “Unless you were just trying to scare me, and you never planned to follow through on your whole I’m-going-to-own-you speech.”
Maybe it was my imagination, but I swore I could feel the thud of his heart beat against my back.
“I planned to follow through.” The words came out sounding both tortured and arrogant. Typical man.
I swallowed my remaining nerves and gave him a taste of his own arrogant-I’m-a-badass-cop medicine. “I’m losing faith with every second.”
A beat passed and then another, and then I was the one sounding tortured as the pad of his finger collided with my clit. Oh, God. My knees quivered when he pressed down, sensations spiraling through me, and I shifted my head so I could bite down on the outer part of my hand. Music might be blasting but I needed to keep quiet; I needed to be inconspicuous. And, yeah, I knew how ridiculous that sounded, considering the fact that I had Lincoln Asher’s hand down my pants. In public.
My thoughts scattered completely when he rubbed that finger in tight, little circles. Slowly. He did it so slowly that there was no denying that he wanted to make me pay for wrestling control of our hookup from him. Faster, I needed him to move faster, and even though I’d never felt sensations like this before, I instinctually knew that the languid pace he’d set would only get me so far.
Standing on my toes and shoving my hips back into his hard-on did the trick.
Those languid circles sped up, just enough that I couldn’t keep quiet. I needed air, and I loosened my jaw as I turned my head—only to have a masculine hand clamp down over my mouth.
“Stay quiet,” Asher muttered by my ear, and I could hear it, how that tortured note deepened the pitch of his voice. Another finger landed on my clit to join the first, and those tight little circles grew in pressure and speed. “Unless you want to be caught, stay quiet.”
I’d be quiet when I was dead, which might happen soon, I was so wound up.
My belly caved in when I inhaled sharply through my nose. This time, I nodded the “yes” he’d wanted earlier.
His hand fell away from my mouth, and though his touch hadn’t been rough, I imagined the way my lipstick must now be smeared, my chin and cheeks painted a blush pink from my makeup.
“More,” I whispered, sounding drugged, forehead pressed to the back of my hand, “more. Please.”
My jeans were tugged down, far enough that Asher snaked his hand farther between my legs, and then I did die.
One broad finger sank into me, and I disobeyed once again by releasing a small whimper. It wasn’t at all the experienced front I’d wanted to portray.
“Jesus, fuck,” Asher muttered almost incoherently, “you’re so tight.”
I felt tight. No, I felt like I was being cleaved in two.
My chest ached, though it was nothing in comparison to the way my hips now curled away from Asher—fight or flight. My confidence waned, my boldness slithering off into the dark, and all I could do was breathe through the stinging happening between my legs and hope that Asher didn’t notice—
“Avery.”
Cold. He sounded so very, very cold.
My eyes squeezed shut. Dammit. Dammit, dammit, dammit. “Please, don’
t.”
“Don’t what?” His finger left me, trailing up past the sensitive nub he’d worked like a magician, to rest at the waistband of my jeans. “Don’t mention how fucking tight you are? That you cried out in pain?” His hand left me completely. “Tell me the truth.”
It was in my very nature to defy, but I couldn’t do so now, not in front of him.
And I’d be damned if I drew out this conversation any longer than it had to be. He wanted the truth? Then he’d get it, and there was no point in mincing words.
Pulling up my jeans, I glanced over my shoulder to meet his gaze. The blues of his irises looked nearly black, but there was no mistaking the fury lingering there.
I was right—he was the devil personified.
But I wanted him anyway.
Swallowing past the lump in my throat, I broke my silence and prepared for the worst.
“I’m a virgin.”
14
Lincoln
A virgin.
It wasn’t a word that existed in my vocabulary and hadn’t been since I was twelve years old and fondling a girl from the grade above me in her daddy’s fancy office. It was the one and only time I’d ever set foot in a house as nice as that, and the only memory I had of the experience was coming in my hand while the girl’s great-grandfather glared down at me from his portrait above the gold-leaf mantle.
Nothing about that orgasm was particularly spectacular, aside from the fact that it was my first, post-virginity-loss.
Shrewdly, I slid my gaze down Avery’s frame.
She’d appeared at the club tonight like an angel designed by my imagination. One minute I’d been seated with Josiah Templeton, a colleague who’d heard about my suspension from the NOPD and wanted to “talk it out,” and in the next I’d been at her side, Templeton summarily dismissed.
From the moment I’d spotted her in Jackson Square, I’d craved her. But right now, when I felt raw to the core after being thrust back into a life that was as familiar as the gun I always kept holstered on me, desperation demanded that I take her. Avery made me feel alive. With her smart mouth and her expressive hazel eyes and the way she watched me like she didn’t know if it was in her best interest to put her stun gun to use or climb on my lap . . . I felt more alive in her presence than I had in my entire life.