Anticipation skated across my flesh as I walked down the hallway on the twentieth floor, as I raised my fist, as I rapped on his door. It was nearly one a.m. My flight had been late—I was slated to have landed at nine. And while I’d toyed with emailing him from the plane, I’d opted for the surprise.
There was something both comforting and appealing in knowing the other person would like the surprise . . . of you.
In less than five seconds, he opened the door, looking sleep-rumpled and impossibly sexy. He wore black pants and a striped button-down shirt. The top two buttons were undone, and the shirt was wrinkled. His black hair was a mess, his jawline was thick with stubble, and his blue eyes twinkled.
A slow smile spread across his face as he drank me in, then before either one of us said a word, he tugged me inside, ran his fingers through my hair, and kissed me like crazy. I wanted to melt in his arms and spend the night like that.
When he broke the kiss, I nearly stumbled, woozy and drunk on him. He reached for my arm, steadying me, then he brushed a few loose strands of hair from my face, searching my eyes.
“Forgive me,” he said, his eyes vulnerable, his expression contrite.
A lump formed in my throat. “For what?” I asked, needing to hear it from him.
“For the things I said. I handled things poorly in Paris. I’m sorry for being distant and pulling back. I love you so much I lose sight of things. But I need you to know I love the woman you are. I love your heart, your strength, your character. You are so tough, so resilient, so giving. And so true. And I am not letting you get away.”
A smile gripped me, deep inside my soul. “I don’t want to get away. I want you to have me, and I want to have you.” I took a beat, pausing to collect myself even while this wild riot took place in my heart. “And I’m glad you know that this—now—is our time. Let’s not let it pass us by.”
“I won’t,” he said, cupping my cheek, making a promise I believed thoroughly. A grin curved his lips. “So, what brings you to town?”
I collected my thoughts, shifting away from his kiss. “You.”
“Me?”
I nodded. “You.” I cast my eyes to my suitcase. “Is it presumptuous for me to not have booked a hotel room for the next few days?”
He shook his head, taking the suitcase and shutting the door behind me. “It would be a travesty for you to stay anywhere else.”
I glanced around, taking in his home for the first time ever. His was sparse and neat. A wide gray L-shaped couch looked out on a glittering view of the city. A metal coffee table was littered with magazines, papers, and a silver laptop. In a cabinet was a huge TV screen, with a stereo system perched beneath it. I suspected Michael listened to music more than he watched TV. On the walls were framed photos of his family. His brothers and sister, a black-and-white border collie, and a picture of Michael and his father from many years ago.
But my interest in the setting waned quickly. I had more important matters on my mind, and in my heart.
“Did you get my letter?”
“I did. I loved it,” he said with a simple smile. “And I wrote one for you.”
My heart thundered. “You did?”
He handed me a sheet of white paper, folded in half. I opened it, my pulse hammering hard with joy before I even read it.
Yes. It is always yes with you. Yes, come fall in love with me. Yes, come see me. Yes, I’ll come see you. You have all my yeses. Always.
And that was all it took. I was unleashed. I was free. I’d flown across an ocean to surprise him, I’d come to his home to tell him what was in my heart, and I was no longer going to let my fear of losing rule the day.
And he wanted what I had to give.
I had everything to give. I had my whole, healed, gigantic heart. It was big and full, and it beat madly for him.
“I love you,” I blurted out, standing in the quiet entryway of his home.
The corners of his eyes crinkled. “You do?”
I nodded and couldn’t stop the grin from bursting across my face. “I love you, Michael. I do.”
“You’re not just falling in love with me?” he asked, his eyes sparkling with mischief.
“I’m. In. Love. With. You.” I took my time enunciating every word, then I held his face in my hands. He sighed happily and closed his eyes. I tilted my chin to kiss him, brushing my lips over his. “I love you.”
“Feel free to say that all night long,” he said, tugging me closer.
I met his gaze. “I love you, and because of that, now I’m terrified of losing you. Even so, I won’t let that stop me from feeling everything with you. Because I do feel everything, and I want to keep on loving you. Just let me love you with all I have.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he nodded. “Yes. It is always yes with you. You’re all I want. Now and always.”
“The same,” I whispered. “It’s the same for me with you.”
“In fact,” he said, his gaze drifting to his couch. A corner of a small suitcase poked out from next to the arm. “I’m booked on the morning flight to Paris to tell you I love you.”
A wild grin spread across my face. “You are?”
“I needed to see you. To apologize in person. To love you in person,” he said and I didn’t think it was possible to be happier, but here it was—it had happened.
“Better cancel your flight.”
“I will.”
I pressed a kiss to his chest then traveled up his neck, layering his throat with kisses, his jaw, his ear. I nibbled on his earlobe, and he groaned. Then he scooped me up in his arms, strode across the hardwood floors of his apartment, kicked open the door to his bedroom, and set me down. Whispering sweet, dirty words, he stripped off all my clothes as I took off his shirt.
“I missed you,” he said, his voice soft and vulnerable as he pushed my red panties to the floor.
“I missed you too.”
He slid a finger between my legs. “And I missed fucking you.”
“God, I missed that so much too.”
“And making love to you. And hearing you come. It’s my favorite thing in the world—making you come,” he said, dipping his head to my neck, sucking on my flesh as he rubbed his finger across my hot center. “The sounds you make. How you say my name.”
I gasped. “I love it all with you. I want it all with you.”
“Now?” he asked in a sexy growl.
“Now, please now,” I said, begging as I unzipped his pants and he kicked them off.
“Show me how wild you are for me,” he said, rough and commanding as he sank down on the bed, patting his chest. “Here. Ride my face, my love. I need you to come on my lips before I fuck you.”
Sparks zipped across my skin as I climbed over him, straddling his face. With strong arms and a ravenous look in his eyes, he pulled me onto his mouth.
“Oh God,” I cried out, and in seconds, we found a rhythm. I rocked against his face, and he gripped my hips, his strong fingers digging into the flesh of my ass as he devoured me.
He wasn’t teasing. He wasn’t playful. He was a hungry man, and he was eating me. With each lick, a savage pleasure tore through my body, twisting and coiling inside me. I thrust against him, moaning and fucking his tongue. With my hands braced against the wall, my hips moved in a frenzy, and he consumed me, sucking, kissing, licking until I was mindless with pleasure and aching to come.
Then a hot flush raced over my skin, and desire curled inside me, shattering in a white-hot neon burst in my body. His name tumbled from my lips as I cried out.
I barely had time to come down from my high when he shifted me off him, tugged me down the bed, and spread my legs wide. He stroked his rock-hard dick, staring between my legs. “So beautiful. You taste so fucking good. I want to have you in every way,” he said, then lowered himself between my legs and sank inside.
In one deliciously intense thrust.
My eyes rolled closed, and my back bowed. “God, it’s so good.�
�
He pushed in, thrust deep, then lowered his chest to mine. “Do you know why?”
“Because I love you,” I answered in a murmur.
“Because I fucking love you too.”
And that was it. That was why I was in another world with Michael Sloan, fucking and falling and loving and living and feeling. So much feeling. Every nerve snapped, every cell blazed, everything else faded as he fucked me with so much passion, so much need, and so much love that I nearly burst. I wanted him now, I wanted him always, and I wanted him to know that he was mine, and I was his, and I would give him everything. As the pleasure built inside me again, nearing another crest, I tugged him even closer, whispering in his ear. Nothing complicated. Nothing artful. Just the three simple words that I knew he’d longed to hear. I’d never known anyone to love so deeply, so intensely, and I wanted him to have everything he wanted.
Me.
I could finally give him myself.
“I love you,” I gasped, as another orgasm crashed into me, and he fucked me through it, chasing his own release.
66
Michael
“Well, that was a helluva surprise,” I said minutes later, flopping on my back next to her in bed.
She laughed. “Glad you liked it.”
“My favorite surprise ever,” I said, then rolled to my side, resting my head in my hand. I traced a line down to her waist. “So, how long are you here for?”
“Four days.”
“Let’s make the most of it,” I said, and that started with grabbing my phone and cancelling my flight.
“We always make the most of our time together.”
“That we do,” I said, setting down my phone, and traveling across her stomach with my fingers, letting her know which terrain I meant. “I want to do everything with you,” I whispered, squeezing her rear, letting my meaning register.
She met my gaze with wide, earnest eyes. “Anything. You can do anything with me,” she said in her sexy, vulnerable voice. “I’m yours and I want it all with you.”
But before I got wrapped up in her, again, I remembered Ryan. “I should tell Ryan I’ll still be in town. I asked him to cover for me while I went to see you.”
Annalise gave me a wry grin. “Tell him to cover for you while I’m here.”
I dropped a kiss to her lips. “You’re brilliant.”
I sent a quick note to Ryan, then turned off my phone. “I bet he’ll have no problem with that.”
“He likes you. He wants you to be happy,” she said, and then straddled me, pinning my wrists in her hands, the ends of her red hair tickling my chest.
“I’m a likable guy. And look at you. You like me too,” I said playfully.
“I do like you. I’m in love with you. Just like I was all those years ago. Just like I wanted to be again when there was no forwarding address. Do you want to know what I said in that letter?”
"Sure,” I said, because of course I did.
She stared at the ceiling, concentration in her features. “Dear Michael, I have never stopped thinking of you. I’ve finished school now and I’m free. Free to see you again, if you’ll have me.”
My heart thundered, and I played out a thousand what-ifs. What if I hadn’t graduated early. What if I’d received it then? What-if, what-if, what-if.
But I was done with what-ifs.
I wanted the present and all the wonder of it.
“We have each other now,” I said.
“Yes, we do Michael Sloan.” Before I could respond, she tilted her head, as if considering what she’d just said. “Michael Sloan,” she repeated, like my name was new to her. “Funny. The first boy I fell in love with was named Michael Paige-Prince. Now I’m in love with this Michael Sloan guy.”
“Same guy?” I asked, arching an eyebrow.
“Same. But different too,” she said, and with a sharp burst of clarity, I understood completely what my sister had meant—understood it because I felt it deep within my bones, all the way through my blood, and right into my heart.
67
John
With the Thomas Paige investigation closed, and both TJ Nelson and Luke Carlton in jail awaiting trial, I’d taken on a few new cases, digging into another complicated homicide that demanded my attention.
With a crack-of-dawn run behind me, I headed into the office before seven, ready to tackle the workload.
But as I studied the evidence folder at my desk and downed my first cup of coffee, something nagged at the back of my mind about the Paige case. The limo company.
We’d studied it from stem to stern.
No red flags.
No issues.
It was almost too neat. Too clean. But if TJ Nelson had worked there, if he shook down another employee, was it truly neat and clean? And there were the extra work trips, the suspicious logbooks. The missing rides.
That didn’t spell easy.
That spelled complicated.
And that’s why something didn’t entirely add up. Because something about West Limos was a little too easy. There was one more thing . . .
As I hunted for the case file, my phone rang.
“Detective John Winston here,” I answered.
“Hey, Winston. This is Special Agent Laura K. Reiss with the FBI, Las Vegas division. We’ve got a case we’re working that might have hooks into one of yours.”
I returned to my chair, spun around, and said, “Tell me more.”
68
Michael
“I’m betting this place has amazing breakfast potatoes because the fries I had a few weeks ago were out of this world,” I said as I held open the door to the diner where Mindy and I had met Morris recently. It seemed almost like a lifetime ago.
“Can’t wait. I’m famished,” Annalise said, after she told the hostess we needed a table for two. The woman in the pink dress showed us to a booth, and Annalise ordered a coffee.
After the waitress vanished, Annalise flashed me a smile. She was radiant this morning—freshly showered, barely any makeup on, and her hair swept into a clip on her head. Then she yawned. “Jet lag.”
I nodded. “I think we’ll both be dealing with that a lot these days.”
“We definitely will.”
Even though I wished it were possible to see her more, I would take what I could get. I would live off the time we were able to carve out together until hopefully someday we could find a way to be in the same city more regularly. For now, I at least had faith in the two of us, and that was a beautiful thing.
“So what brought you here a few weeks ago?” she asked, after we ordered eggs and the waitress brought coffee. “This diner isn’t exactly down the block from your house.”
“The private detective I hired wanted to meet here to share some leads. The info about the piano shop that helped break the case open.”
“Ah,” she said with a nod, reaching for her mug.
I picked up the tea I’d ordered. “And you were incredible in helping us put the final pieces together.”
She shook her head, as if what she’d remembered was no big deal. “It was nothing. Just a tiny memory. But I want to hear more about how it all went down. We didn’t talk much about it in Paris. I sensed you didn’t want to get into the details then, but you know me. I’m always curious.”
I smiled. “I do know that about you.”
And so I started to tell the story.
69
Annalise
As Michael spoke about the night of the last arrest, a memory tugged at the back of my mind. It was of my last conversation with his father.
The morning before I left Las Vegas, I’d gone out to breakfast with Michael and his dad. We’d ordered eggs and toast—standard diner fare. We’d discussed plans for how the two of us could see each other again. I’d always loved that about his father. He was so supportive of our young love.
It was so odd that a little more than twenty-four hours later, he was gone.
I shook my head briefl
y, chasing away the memory. Being here with Michael now, at another diner, took me back.
“And one of the gang members they’d already nabbed had tipped off the cops about where TJ could be,” Michael said, when a faint buzz sounded from his side of the booth.
“Is that your phone?”
He glanced down, patting his back pocket. “Yeah. I’ll get back to whoever it is,” he said, then continued the tale, and I tried my best to focus on what he was saying, but my mind kept tripping back to that day in the past.
Conversation with Thomas had been easy, even when Michael went out to the car to grab an umbrella. Rain had started to fall, and he said he didn’t want me to get soaked when we left the restaurant after breakfast.
“He’s so chivalrous,” I said to his father. “He takes after you.”
Thomas smiled. “He’s a gentleman. Makes me proud.”
“How is everything going at work? Were you ever able to sort out the missing details you were looking into?”
He scratched his chin and shifted his hand like a seesaw. “Sort of. It seemed like I was getting closer, and I was really hoping it would help me get the job, especially since the company was worried about being audited.”
“What happened then?” I asked, catching sight of Michael yanking open the car door in the parking lot.
Now, though, Michael’s phone buzzed again at the table.
Grabbing it from his back pocket, he silenced it without looking at the screen. Worry prickled at the back of my neck. “What if it’s important?”
He inhaled deeply and shot me a small smile. “I’m sure whatever it is can wait for us to finish eating,” he said as the waitress returned with our plates.
“Eggs and our famous breakfast potatoes,” she said, depositing our meals, as a bearded man in a black windbreaker passed behind her.
When the waitress left, Michael finished his story. “So, they set up a trap, basically, at the club. The gentlemen’s club we do security for.”
My Sinful Love (Sinful Men Book 4) Page 23