Obsession (Magnetic Desires Book 4)

by Misti Murphy

  Spent, we lay there, neither of us moving. Hell, I never wanted to move again. I kissed her mouth, her chin, her forehead, while her eyelids drifted closed. Then I rolled onto my side and pulled her into me. “Still want to tell me you don’t believe we belong together?”

  “Tiger,” she mumbled. She twitched as she dozed off, too exhausted to answer me.

  I squeezed her tighter, curled my legs up underneath her. I’d missed this. This moment right here where she would inevitably fall asleep before me, and I could hold her close, breathing in the smell of her cocoa and cinnamon shampoo, and the whole world would be right again, no matter what the day had brought. Today had been a shit storm in a teacup. All my plans had gone out the window, but this right here made it a perfect fucking day.

  Chapter Ten

  Mellie

  “Umph.” I groaned and rolled onto my back, prying my eyelids open the bare minimum. A crystal chandelier hung above my head, and I blinked. I didn’t own a chandelier, or cream-colored walls, either. Come to think of it, this wasn’t my bed.

  Glancing around, it became obvious by the ensuite off to the side and the layout that I was in a hotel room. I bolted upright, and scratched my head, my fingers getting tangled in my bird nest hair.

  I’d taken off like a bat out of hell after the scene at Lola’s. Hadn’t even bothered to show up at Mike’s, too much in a hurry to run away from the man I hated, and all the reasons why. I’d drowned him out with quality scotch, but I hadn’t managed to lose the one person I’d really wanted to get away from. But then there weren’t many options for getting away from one’s self, were there?

  I chewed my lip and stared at the ceiling. Probably wasn’t a good thing, thinking like that. I’d been an A grade bitch last night to the one person who understood my crazy. I’d wanted him to hate me, like I hated me, like I hated my father for reminding me of where I came from, who I was, no matter how hard I tried not to be. I’d taken the one relationship that really mattered to me and destroyed it because that’s what he’d taught me.

  Thank God, by the time Mike had dragged me, or rather, carried me out of Casablanca, I was on the steady decline from off-my-ass drunk to merely inebriated.

  “How are you feeling?” Mike shut the door softly behind him and shuffled across to the bed, where he plunked down and scooted a bag of croissants and a carry tray containing two coffees between us.

  Wincing at the way my stomach rolled, I folded the covers around me. “I was awful last night, wasn’t I?”

  He shrugged, the movement jerky. “I’ve seen worse.”

  “Did I tell you anything?” I shuffled closer, popping the lid off the coffee and sniffing at it. “My father showed up. Lola invited him.”

  “Yeah, I know.” He bit into a croissant, chewed on the mouthful. “She came by the house when she couldn’t get hold of you.”

  “I better call her.”

  “I already did, when I went to get breakfast. I told her you’d call in a day or two.”

  “Thank you.” I buried my head in my hands and groaned. “Why the hell do I let him get to me?”

  “Because you lost your entire family in a matter of weeks, and that man was a big part of why.” He took my hand and lightly squeezed it. “He was supposed to be there for you no matter what. He was a selfish asshole, but that isn’t on you. That’s all on him.”

  “They all left me.” I shrugged, buried my thoughts in my coffee. “It shouldn’t matter, but seeing him makes me feel like I’m fifteen all over again.”

  “But you’re not.”

  “You left me, too.” I winced. The wound never fully healed, the ache was almost as fresh as it had been in those first few weeks without him.

  He let go of my hand and rubbed the top of his head. “I went away for a couple of weeks. I didn’t leave you, and I didn’t have an affair. Will you ever be able to see that?”

  “I get that you didn’t have an affair. I believe that. I saw things that weren’t there. But you were already gone before I came to that conclusion. We were living in the same house and I don’t think I’d ever felt so alone. It was like we were strangers. It hurt so much to see you turn away from me, to stop wanting me. And that was when you did come home.”

  “I can’t change it,” he grumbled, folding in on himself. “All I can tell you is why, and hope you see I didn’t fucking want it to end that way.”

  I pushed the blankets away and moved closer to him, grazing his jaw with my palm. He didn’t pull away, didn’t flinch. His chest rose and fell, his warm, even breath tickling my fingers. I was a hurricane of crazy and he never flinched away from me. “I’m never going to get over you, am I?”

  He placed his hand over mine, his eyes widening, the lines around the edges deepening. “I hope not.”

  All the running around I did. It never helped. I could never bury the way I felt about him deep enough, and I didn’t know what to do with that. “Truth is, you pushed me away. How long until you stop wanting me and push me away again?”

  “How long?” He leaned closer, grazing the pads of his fingers over my cheekbones and tilting my face to his. My breath hitched and I darted my tongue over my lip, suddenly parched. The slight tension in his hands cradled my face. I tried to drag my gaze from his but he held me there, trapped. His voice was rough, whispering over my nerve endings and setting off a million tiny electric charges beneath my skin. “How long am I going to want you?”

  “I don’t know. Not long enough.” The words scraped my throat as they slipped from me, tearing at my tear ducts and making me swallow hard against them.

  He moved closer, if it was possible and yet not be consumed by the atmospheric crackle between us. Soft lips tickled mine, and my heart kicked in my chest. “You’re still assuming I stopped wanting you. That at some point I got enough of you. But you’re wrong.”

  “Am I?”

  He traced his fingers down the side of my neck, each blunt digit taking its own path. “Do you even know how you came to be known as Hurricane?”

  “Because I’m crazy.”

  “Crazy?” His mouth finally met mine with force, nipping my lip between his teeth, his tongue snaking over my captured flesh. “Yeah, you’re crazy, but that’s not why you’re called that.”

  “Then why?” I breathed the words. Last night I’d convinced myself I knew why they’d called me Hurricane. It had made so much sense to push Mike away, before he got caught up in the storm. Before I destroyed him, destroyed what we had left.

  He gripped my hips, dragged me into a straddle on his lap, forcefully pulling my legs around him while he devoured me.

  He massaged the knots along the nape of my neck in a circular motion. “The first time I took you to Wolf’s, I was talking to Angel about you, while you destroyed Wolf at pool. I don’t even remember what I was saying, but she could see you’d flipped my world around. That’s why we called you Hurricane. Because you’re a force of nature. One taste and a man’s world gets flipped around so hard he can never go back. Don’t you know that?”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  Pushing me down, he shifted over me and laced my throat with his mouth. “You caught me up, spun me around from the very first day. You’re a rush, sexy legs. You slammed into my life, and claimed me hard. I thought I had the one up on you with my demands, but you didn’t even flinch. You pulled me into your whirlwind and claimed me, your mouth wrapped around my cock while I drove you home.”

  “Then I stayed, like a damn alley cat,” I whispered. “You let me stay.”

  Hooking a digit into the sheet between us he tugged it down, exposing my breasts to his gaze. “I knew I was going to have you. There was something…”

  “Lust.”

  “More.” He flicked a nipple with his thumb, causing the nub to tighten. “You were the first girl I met who didn’t hide behind stupid games. There was no pretence in the way you owned up to what you wanted, and I was just fucking lucky it was me. You decided I was yours and you
didn’t hold back. How could I not want that?”

  “I’m pretty hard to ignore. And a little too easy to have.”

  With a chuckle, he bent down and darted his tongue over the nipple he’d been playing with. “You’re anything but easy. But I never said I wanted that.”

  “What do you want?” I arched off the mattress when he sucked the bar, rolling his tongue over the metal.

  Then he started a slow descent over my ribcage. The wings of a butterfly couldn’t have been lighter than his lips on my skin. Each brief flare of heat over my belly was accompanied by the covers slipping lower. My nerves prickled, the slide of soft cotton almost torturous as he moved unbearably slow. Fingers tangled in his hair, I clung to the only solid thing in my shifting world.

  He dragged the sheet from my legs, his gaze drifting over them to settle on my pussy. One rough digit scraped over my belly to my thighs. Air rushed from my lungs and my legs parted of their own accord. He hovered there, while my pussy screamed at him to touch her, just once, and then again, over and over and forever. I rolled my hips in an effort to find the contact I desperately craved.

  It finally came, a flick of his finger against my throbbing clit. So brief, so light, it was barely a caress, but I bucked, a whimper tearing from me. It wasn’t enough, only charged the ache that much more.

  Staring down at me, he grinned and slipped a digit inside me. “What I’ve always wanted. You, barefoot and pregnant in my kitchen.”

  “You do all the cooking,” I murmured, lost in the sensation of his touch.

  Another finger joined the first, hooked inside me and stretched me out. “There’s other places I want you, too.”

  “There always were.” My hips undulated to his strokes, obeying his commands. “But it wasn’t enough.”

  “We’ll get to that. It’s not the kind of conversation I want to have while I’m trying to show you exactly how much I’m going to want you for the rest of my life. Now spread those sexy legs of yours for me.”

  How could I not, when his gaze heated me through, making me so hot I wanted to shed my skin? My thighs, a slippery slide from his finger fucking, wanted nothing more.

  With one hand, he unbuckled his belt and undid his pants, and I pushed them and his boxers down off his hips. His rock hard cock jutted proudly between us and I scraped my nails over the hard length before squeezing it in my palm. It pulsed, hot in my hand, a drop of pre cum glistening on the tip. My mouth dry, I darted my tongue over my lips and glided my hand over the head of him, slicking my palm before dragging it up and down his erection. He grit his teeth and wrapped his hand around mine, forcing me still. “I want you so fucking much that even your hand around my cock drives me crazy, and that wasn’t what I had in mind.”

  He settled over me, his hands in my hair, his cock nudging against my slit, and I squirmed, trying to draw him inside. My palms cupping his ass, I pressed into him and groaned, “I want you.”

  “I know you do. Don’t think I hesitate because I don’t want to feel you bare against me, but we’re not ready for that yet.” He reached for his pants, and brought his hand back with a condom between two fingers. “We have a lot of ground to cover today, and for who knows how long before that’s an option. Right now, it doesn’t matter how much I want you in my bed every night, under my roof, carrying my brat in your belly. I’m not going to risk it until I know that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”

  I winced, a tear in my soul opening under the weight of his words. He’d told me he wanted me, taken me higher in the few days we’d been flirting around the edges of this broken hearts disaster and these were the words he chose to tell me how much he really wanted me. Maybe he didn’t even know it. The knife edge of both pain and pleasure bloomed in my gut. Right then and there I wanted nothing more than to give in, but the effects of last time flared.

  Blinking, I cleared my throat. “Don’t say shit like that.”

  “Why not?” He rolled away from me to kick out of his pants and strip his T-shirt over his head, sheathing himself before spooning me to his chest.

  I could feel his hardness laid out against my slit. My core throbbed with want, so many needs that he’d filled, until he hadn’t. I trembled. He was doing it all over again, filling the holes in me and turning the tide of crazy that whirled through my soul without him. “Because I want to believe you.”

  Brushing the hair from my nape, he pressed his mouth to my shoulder. “You want to because you know it’s right. You and I, we’re fucking perfect together.”

  “Maybe.”

  He parted my legs with his knee and slipped inside me inch by inch, pushing an arm underneath me to squeeze my breast, pinching the nipple between his fingers while his other trailed down to rub my clit in torturously slow circles. “Waking up with you, like this, was always high on my list of priorities. The days we didn’t were almost guaranteed to be shit. Do you know how many shit days I’ve had without you?”

  I moaned, his digits sending waves of heat through me, accentuated by the full, deep thrusts of his dick.

  “All of them. Every damn one.” He pulled back, plunging hard, the whole bed moving underneath us, my hips jerking forward with the force.

  I cried out his name, gripped his hips to pull him firmly against me, the ache so deep, I couldn’t get enough of him. Squirming on his cock, I begged for more, and he rolled me beneath him, dragging my ass up in the air to slam into me again and again. All the while he tortured my clit into an orgasm that thundered through me and had me cumming hard on his cock, squeezing his release from him as if I needed it to survive. His legs and arms twitched as he took us back to our sides, his deep purr of satisfaction rumbling through his chest.

  I lay in his arms for a long time. Everything he said, everything he did, screamed for me to let him in. To not hesitate. The same way it had when we’d first started out. But it wasn’t enough for me anymore. Turning to him, I rested my head on his shoulder, my lips pressed to the side of his throat. “I want to go home, Mike.”

  “Okay.” He pressed me closer. I could feel his heart pumping beneath my hand. “I got my truck. I’ll drop you at your car.”

  Shaking my head, his warm skin rubbed against mine. “No, I mean I need to go home to Hollyfields. I haven’t been back since…”

  He cradled the back of my head in his palm, his thumb rubbing the soft spot beneath my ear. “It’s a two day drive.”

  “I know, but I have to. I don’t know why, exactly. I left so quickly after the funeral, I never really said good-bye. I was so angry at her, at all of them, but I need to talk to her. How am I supposed to not be like them if I keep running away? I don’t want to run from you, but I know deep down I will, and look how that turned out last time.”

  “It wasn’t just you.” He grasped my arms, pulling me away so he could gaze into my eyes.

  I winced, my gaze flicking from his. “Maybe, but I let the past cloud my judgement. I should have known better. I should never have fucked Rabid.”

  His jaw clenched, a guttural growl reverberating through his chest. “I wasn’t sure if you remembered the details.”

  “Of course I remember. How could I forget the look in your eyes that night? How much I hurt you. I don’t think I’ll ever understand how you didn’t hate me after that.”

  “Fuck. I pushed you to it.” He slid out of my reach, grabbing his pants and T-shirt and hastily getting dressed, his back to me.

  I scrambled up in the bed and pushed my hair back from my face. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean to piss you off.”

  He turned and held my clothes out. “You want to go to Hollyfields? Get dressed. I’ll pay the bill and wait in the lobby.”

  “You don’t have to come with me. I should probably do this on my own.” I clutched my skirt and top to my chest.

  “The hell you will. You shouldn’t have had to bury her by yourself in the first place. You’re sure as hell not going back there on your own.” He stalked across
the room and out the door, leaving me to dress alone.

  Chapter Eleven

  Mike

  I called Orion and explained the situation, while I waited in the lobby. Well, not all of it. Not the part about Mellie and I, but about her father being in town and her needing to go to Hollyfields. After a short but telling silence, he finally asked what was really going on with me and her. He didn’t expect an answer and wouldn’t push it. I was pretty sure he still hoped either Mellie or I would eventually tell him what happened in the first place. I mumbled something about work and hung up. The office would run without us for a week. It had before. Right now my only priority was her.

  Mellie crossed the marble floor toward me, smoothing out the creases of wearing the same clothes from the night before. We’d have to do something about that, but the dark sunglasses perched on her nose, hiding her eyes, didn’t hide the thin line of her lips. Suggesting we go shopping first would probably not be the best idea. “Ready to go?”

  Nodding tersely, she headed in the direction of the exit, and I hooked an arm around her waist and led her outside. She hesitated briefly on the steps, and rubbed her brow before digging in her bag for a bottle of water and a small bottle of painkillers. I should have expected this allergic reaction to sunlight. She’d been off her ass drunk when I found her last night, but this morning she’d been almost radiant. I took the bottle from her and twisted off the lid, popping two small round pills in her hand before putting the container back in her bag. “Are you sure you want to do this now?”

  “I’m going. You don’t have to come.” She descended the stairs.

  I followed her over to the truck and yanked the door open for her, my newly found control on my earlier anger rattled already by the wedge she kept putting between us. “I’ve cleared our week. You’re not doing this alone.”