by Stacy Gail
I just wanted to hear your voice. Becks froze in her mental tracks, stunned by a few words that somehow were the most important and impactful she’d ever received. They echoed in her ears before settling in her soul to lie there, glowing with an all-encompassing warmth. It was probably stupid, her reaction, and he wouldn’t even remember saying those words twenty-four hours from now.
But she would.
In her lonely world, those words were more precious than gold.
“If you had called, you wouldn’t have heard anything except the techs pulling out half the wall at my place to install the new intercom.” She rested her hand on his thigh and drank in his body heat, loving the way his muscles flexed in automatic response to her touch. “Thank you, by the way. Buying a new security system for the whole building was incredibly generous of you.”
“It needed an upgrade, especially since your landlord mentioned he was pretty much the only gatekeeper for your entire building.” A frown darkened his face before he leaned in to his mouth against her temple. “Did you know that sweet old guy offered to let me stroll right on in when I mentioned I was a friend of yours? I could have been anyone, and he was ready to hold the door open for me.”
“Mr. Janek recognized who you were, Payne. In his estimation, the possibility of your being a professional ax murderer was low.”
“Still, I feel better now that the new system’s in place.”
“So do I, so thank you.” She settled back against the curve of his shoulder and smiled up at him. “And thank you for wanting to hear my voice. I wanted to hear your voice too.” Leaving her hand on his thigh, she reached across with her other one to touch his lean, scruff-roughened cheek. “And I wanted to see your face.” Warmth threatened to boil over into scorching heat as she stretched her neck up to kiss him. “And taste your mouth.”
“Becks. Jesus, baby.” The hand behind her shifted so that his palm cradled her head, and the tautness of his fingers conveyed a tension she could suddenly feel in the leg beneath her palm. “What do you say we get out of here? Your place is looking real good to me right about now.”
“Not yet.” Stuffing her own impatience down along with the need to move her hand to the now-noticeable bulge in his crotch, she glanced up just as a large basket of tortilla chips appeared and Claire emerged from the restroom, bouncing Mia on her hip. “Soon.”
Chapter Ten
Payne figured it must be a bad sign when a man had to consciously remind himself that no one had ever died from the discomfort of a stiff dick.
The two hours spent over beers and dinner with Becks and her friends were both the best of the day and the longest. Thomas, once he’d arrived, was as laid back as Claire was hyper, a mellow hum to his wife’s bouncy enthusiasm. Their kid was cute too, though he had to admit he couldn’t remember a time when dinner conversation had centered so naturally on the mysteries of a three-month-old’s diaper contents.
Then there was Becks. He had no clue if she was deliberately trying to tie him in knots or if she was a naturally gifted seductress. He could only hope she was trying. Otherwise, he was a doomed man if she ever consciously tried to bring him to his knees.
Everything about her turned him on. The way she tilted her head to one side when someone spoke, showing she cared enough to listen to whatever was being said, even the trivial shit. The way she licked the rim of her beer bottle after Claire’s animated “help” with a wedge of lime, then wrinkled her nose at the tartness. The way she fed him a chip with her favorite roasted red pepper salsa, solicitously holding a hand under his chin to make sure he was well protected. The way she surreptitiously checked her watch under the table before giving his knee an encouraging squeeze, letting him know without words he wasn’t alone in his unspoken torture.
He loved that part most of all.
At last all plates were cleaned and the last of the sopapillas with honey were devoured, and Payne offered his car to Thomas, Claire and Mia. Not only had he lost track of the beer count, but he wanted to make sure the little family was well on its way out the door with no opportunity to turn around like a boomerang and interrupt his time with Becks.
Becks.
They didn’t speak as they walked the short distance back to her loft, her hand laced tightly with his. He held his breath as they made their way inside the vestibule and up the stairs, certain her well-meaning landlord would pop out of nowhere and hang them up all the more. But all was peaceful and still as they pushed their way into her loft.
The moment the lock clicked in place, he pulled her keys and bag from her hands, dropped them without looking where they landed and nailed her back against the door with the force of his kiss. There was a wildness inside him, a rampaging desperation to get back all those minutes where he’d had to share Becks with others. She was his. With every glance, with every incidental touch, she had assured him that all she was belonged to him, but at the time he hadn’t been able to do a fucking thing about it.
But he had her now. And he was determined to make up for every lost second.
“Easy.” Her gasp rang in his ears when at last he broke from their kiss to bite at her neck, sucking the taste of her, of Becks, into his mouth until it was all he knew. “Easy. You’re going to push me right through the damn door.”
“For two hours I had to pretend I didn’t want to be inside you, fucking you until you screamed my name. You take it easy.” With that, he took out a line of half a dozen linked condom packets from his pocket, pressed them into her hand, and focused on removing the infuriating barriers of clothing that kept her from him.
Her breathy laugh whispered through the stillness while coats, shirts and shoes hit the floor. “Six condoms? Feeling ambitious, are we?”
“You misunderstand.” He tore at the fastenings of their pants while she tossed her black lace bra aside. Dear God, she was gorgeous. “What I feel is an obsession to be inside you every waking moment. Six condoms won’t be nearly enough, but they were all I had.”
“Oh.” The last of their clothing was dispatched, and as he filled his palms with the subtle, rounded perfection of her hard-tipped breasts, she slid a condom into place. Her hand lingered there, her fingers contracting on his hardened flesh until he shivered with teeth-gritting delight. “That sounds… kind of beautiful.”
“You’re beautiful. My eyes can’t get enough of you. My hands can’t feel enough of you. I can’t bury myself inside of you deeply enough. But none of that will stop me from trying. And trying. And trying.” With his ability to speak vanishing under a wave of pulverizing need, Payne wrapped his arms around her and once more leaned into the door, lifting her until she was level to meet the hungry demand of his mouth.
The press of her naked body against his was better than he had imagined. The delicate softness of her breasts flattened to his chest, and the sensation burned along his nerve endings until he half-believed the heat of her body had branded him. The night before had been the stuff wet dreams were made of—public sex pounded out while his woman cried her pleasure with her knees up around her ears. Only later, when he was by himself and hating that he’d let her go back to her place alone, did he have the time to regret he had no memory of her nakedness to torment himself with. It had driven him fucking nuts that he hadn’t discovered all the heavenly secrets her body possessed, just waiting for a smarter man than him to uncover.
No.
He bared his teeth at the unbidden thought. No one would have her intimate secrets but him. He wouldn’t blow it this time. Or more specifically, he wasn’t going to stupidly blow his wad like some brainless horny school kid without first wallowing in every feminine delight her naked body had to offer. He would know everything about her. Sight. Texture. Taste.
Everything.
Then he’d blow his wad. Hopefully several times.
She was marble-pale, an erotic living statue that had come to magical life. Hungrily he gripped the backs of her thighs to lift her higher against the door. A feverish thrill stabbed through him
when the muscles beneath his hands quivered with a tension he understood all too well.
“I love how you tremble.” His breath was short, as ragged as he felt while she stretched against him sinuously, as though she needed to feel all of him with all of her. His brain threatened to go into a complete meltdown, his cock filled with blood so molten it was an excruciatingly blissful torture to endure. “I love knowing I make you tremble.”
“I love that I make you this excited.” With her legs clenched around his waist like a vise, she reached between them to stroke him, and he was so hard it didn’t surprise him it rose almost straight up between them. He hissed, a borderline-pained sound he couldn’t stifle when she guided him to her threshold. Jesus, she was so hot, so hot, so hot… “Get inside me where you belong.”
The words shattered him in an indescribable way. Not just physically, but deeper, in that solitary place that was the core of his control, the place that housed his sense of self, the ego that drove him relentlessly. She obliterated all of that with her sensuality and unselfish eagerness to share herself with him. Her openness was overwhelming, and he loved being overwhelmed. For the first time in memory, he was happy he existed not for himself, but for her.
God, he existed for her.
His first thrust shook the door in its frame. Gritting his teeth, Payne buried his face in the sweat-damp curve of her neck and undulated his hips because he could do nothing else. The slick heat sheathing him felt so good, so addictive, he couldn’t stop himself from plunging into her as deeply as he could. Shudders of pleasure rippled over him, through him, became a necessary part of him. He needed that pleasure, a deafening, blinding pleasure only she could give him, a pleasure as different from animalistic fucking as diamonds were from rocks. It ebbed and flowed with each relentless move, filling, retreating, impaling, withdrawing, the devastation of rapture dancing just beyond his reach. If he pushed harder, harder, harder, he would be able to get it…
A broken cry suddenly erupted from her, a cry that was his name, even as the hot depths gloving him contracted until it was a sweet kind of agony. He watched as her head strained back against the door while her body writhed, before he was coming with her in a sudden explosion of ecstasy. But even as it faded into rippling echoes, the sight of her at the height of her climax lingered.
Without even giving it conscious thought, he knew it was a sight he’d never forget.
When the sky was clear, the sunlight that streamed in through her work area windows was perfect first thing in the morning. Seated in her chair and leaning back against her drafting board with her sketch pad propped up on her knees, Becks let the charcoal pencil fly. Sunlight slashed across the mess that was the bed that looked as storm-tossed as if it had been hit with a hurricane. It had, metaphorically speaking. Nestled among the pillows and partially veiled by a tangle of bedclothes, Payne slept on his stomach with his face half-buried in the pillow, oblivious to her intent stare.
He was beautiful. So out-of-her-experience beautiful it almost hurt her to look at him. His golden-hued arms were folded under the pillow that half-hid his face. Both shoulders and upper arms were covered in tattoos, and the right lower arm was completely sleeved out thanks to the memorial tattoo he had of his mother. From shoulder blade to shoulder blade were the words Strength and Honor in Olde English script. A Celtic cross went down the middle of his spine with a colorful dragon beneath that, and in the small of his back was a detailed cityscape that had a stark pen-and-ink, graphic novel feel to it that she loved. Along the tops of his shoulders were a bunch of Roman numerals, and hidden from her view for the moment was a New Yorker-style caricature on his left pec of a mother holding the hand of a child. Blankets covered some of his ass, but the side that was closest to her was unveiled all the way to his foot. She could see everything, from the elegant slope of shoulder blade down to his lean waist and beyond. The rise from the small of his back up over the well-defined muscles in his buttocks looked as though it had been carved by a master’s hand. The flow down into the sinewy column of lightly hair-dusted leg—also liberally decorated with ink—was graceful, masculine perfection.
She couldn’t call herself an artist in good conscience if she didn’t at least try to capture such a magnificent visual feast.
By the time the sun made it across the bed to touch the dark fan of his lashes lying against his cheek, she had his image fairly well-defined. She was just getting the details of the House Of Payne logo that he’d had placed over the curve of his butt cheek when he began to stir. She stilled, the artist in her impatiently willing her subject back to motionlessness so she could finish her work uninterrupted. The woman in her, however, yearned to trace her tongue over every inked part of him.
How lucky she was, to be so torn.
He sighed and, without opening his eyes, reached across the empty expanse of the rumpled bed. “Mm. Becks.”
As she watched him from her perch by the window, something closed around her chest and squeezed it tight. “I’m here. Go back to sleep.”
Predictably his eyes opened to blink over at her. “Come back to bed.”
“I want to finish this. Don’t move,” she added when he started to do just that. She frowned at the shading of his exposed glute, then stared for a long minute at that part of his anatomy. No. The House Of Payne logo wasn’t quite right. “I’m almost done.”
He tucked the pillow more firmly under his chin. “Are you drawing me? Like one of Jack’s French girls?”
She had to laugh at the Titanic reference even as she rubbed at the line of the hamstring leading up to the bottom of the gluteus maximus. “I’m a better artist than Jack ever dreamed of being.”
“True. Are you looking at my ass?”
“I’m drawing your ass. That means I need to study it in minute detail.”
“A likely story. You’re an ass woman. Admit it.”
“Hmm. That too.” She looked at its perfect curve, a robust arc that flexed with power and made a spectacular cushion for her heels to dig into when she wanted him to impale her all the way to his hilt… “Ah. Damn.”
“What? Did you mess up my ass?”
“It’s not that. You’re just…” Ugh. No. She wouldn’t say it. Huh-uh. No way.
“What?”
Heat began to burn her face, and she had to take a moment to look him in the eye. “You’re just so stunning, you’re distracting to me now that you’re awake.”
The teasing light in his sleepy gaze vanished, and in its place was a look so hot it nearly scorched her. “Come back to bed, Becks.”
“In a while, I promise. The light’s perfect right now and I’ve—”
“I need you, Rebecca.”
That snapped her attention to him like nothing else. He rolled over to recline on an elbow and held out a hand in either invitation or demand, she wasn’t sure which. She was, however, very certain that his erection was the reason behind his sudden insistence, and all at once she realized her art could wait. He couldn’t.
And come to find out, neither could she.
“You have no idea how I’ve dreamed about peeling this robe off of you.” Still sounding muzzy from sleep, Payne reached for the sash at her waist as she rested a knee on the bed. “I’ve never really cared one way or another about Betty Boop, but I think I’m going to have to get a small image of her on me somewhere that’ll represent you.”
The thought of a girly tat on his all-guy body was truly snort-worthy. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but tattoos are kind of permanent.”
“No shit, really? That explains why these suckers never wash off.”
“Smartass.” She braced her weight against the pillows with her hands on either side of his head and grinned down at him. Even with a pillow crease slashed across his cheek and one eye more open than the other, Payne was still the most breathtaking man she had ever seen. “Betty Boop doesn’t make sense on a yummy, tough-guy body like yours. She’d clash with your dragon.”
“My tats a
re my life’s story, so they don’t have to make sense to anyone but me.” One tug, and the sash’s knot came loose.
“Yeah, but think how awkward it’d be, trying to explain what Betty meant to the next lady who sees it.”
“What?” The world became a whirly kaleidoscope when he caught her by the waist and reversed their positions. All at once her sleepy lover vanished, and in his place was a hard-eyed stranger who caught her wrists above her head. “Explain that.”
Whoa. “What? What did I say?”
“Why do you think I’d have to explain a tat that represents you to the next lady? What next lady? Who the hell is she?”
She stared at him, confused. What the hell was he getting so pissed about? “Um, I… I’m assuming you’re not going to live like a monk when we eventually drift along on our separate ways, so—”
“No.” The word cut her off as cleanly as any scalpel, and he pushed her wrists into the mattress with a bounce to emphasize it. “I know our getting together just sort of happened, and we’ve never actually sat down and talked about this, so fine. Let’s do that now. This isn’t a casual hook-up. This isn’t forty-eight hours longer than a one-night-stand, and this sure as hell isn’t us playing at being fuck-buddies because we don’t have anything or anyone better to do. This is serious, and it’s for real.”
Becks opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She didn’t know what to say. From the beginning she’d refused to entertain the notion that their mutual attraction could ever amount to anything more than that. Better to simply enjoy it for what it was—a happy and inexplicable quirk of human chemistry. A brilliant shooting star to light up her life. Like all shooting stars it would burn itself out, but before that happened she would enjoy the hell out of it and have no regrets when it finally vanished.
But now… now he was trying to take her down a path she refused to believe was even there. It was like finding out the world wasn’t flat.
“I’m okay with serious, but I also know that nothing is permanent.” She chose her words carefully. Now more than ever she wanted to make sure she said what was in her heart without screwing it up, because his reaction told her this wasn’t just idle chitchat. “Losing my family taught me that. Relationships that, on the surface, seem indestructible… they’re nothing more than a cruel lie. Anyone in your life can vanish in a single moment, Payne. So there’s no point in thinking about the future or in terms of always when it comes to relying on people being there when you need them. The only thing that’s real is the moment you’re currently living.”