Riston let his gaze run over me as his lips curved upwards. “Yeah, that.”
I smiled wide and crawled to the next spot. I could feel Riston’s hot stare on my ass and loved every minute of it. Glancing over my shoulder, I looked down the length of my body and met Riston’s blue gaze. “So, do you want to screw or not?”
A wolfish grin spread over his face as he moved onto all fours and crawled over me. The feel of his hard body slinking over mine left me tingling, and tightening. The second he was completely settled above me, he pressed his mouth to my ear and whispered, “I would be more than happy to screw, Kars.”
His rapidly growing erection pushed at my ass. I knew if we didn’t have clothes on that I’d have him in me and from the obvious thrusting motion he made, he knew it too. I tipped my face up and concentrated on his lips.
Riston brushed his over mine, sending my body into a state of need. My inner thighs tightened and I found myself pushing back against him, causing his bulge to dig deeper.
Running my tongue out and over his lower lip I left him breathing heavy and simulating sex even more, adding mini-thrusts combined with tiny, breathy moans. Riston nipped playfully and growled when I began to rub rhythmically against his clothed cock.
“Mmm, enjoying yourself?”
He held his erection to me, thumping against my ass twice. “What do you think?”
“I think that something about you makes me think about sex almost non-stop and that’s never happened to me before. I’m hoping I can fuck it away. Want to help me try? I don’t want to wear you out or anything.”
Riston’s breath hitched. “You can’t fuck me out of your mind, Kars. In fact, I highly doubt that you will ever wear me out. I have what could be considered a downside by some women.”
“What’s that, a monster of a cock?”
He kissed my earlobe and chuckled. “My, you certainly are all grown up now.” Reaching down, Riston skimmed his fingers over my bare torso, coming to a stop at the top of my cut-off shorts. “Once I get started, or rather, now that I am back in the game, I’m dangerously close to falling back into old habits.”
“Which are?”
He licked a lazy line down my neck. “Mmm, needing to have sex multiple times a day.”
I let out a sultry laugh. “And women think that’s a problem? You’ve been sleeping with the wrong women, Riston.”
“You’re right, when I used to date, I always seemed to pick the wrong ones,” he whispered in my ear, his hot breath skating over my neck, making me shiver and my pussy spasm. “But I think I finally might have picked the right one. What do you think?”
“I think that I’ll need to take you for a test drive before I confirm that. I’d hate to say yes only to find that you aren’t all I think you’ll be.”
“Mmm, honey, the urge to take you here and now, to mount you is so great that I’m having a hard time refraining from ripping your clothes off.”
Instantly, my pussy began to moisten more, leaving my thong damp. Riston took a deep breath in and for a split second I was positive he could smell the changes in my body. Every ounce of me wanted that to be true. I wanted him to just know when I was hot for him, when I needed the large piece of flesh between his legs in me, when I needed him.
I’d known him less than a day and he seemed to consume me. That in itself should have sent me running from him. It didn’t. It made me want him even more. There was something about him, something I couldn’t put my finger on but I knew I would soon enough.
“You want me, don’t you?” he asked, pressing against my jean shorts in just the right spot, causing them to pull a bit and rub my clit in the process. “You want me deep in you. I can smell it.”
Still looking back at him, almost touching his lips, I ran my tongue out and over the corner of his mouth. He nipped playfully at me, causing even more moisture to settle between my legs.
“Answer me, Karri. Do you want me in you?”
“Yes.”
“How bad?”
I kissed him, no longer able to hold back. “Mmm, I’m soaked because of you and I want you to be in me more than I’ve wanted anything in a very long time, Riston.”
“What if I can’t promise to be gentle our first time, Karri? Would you still want me in you or would you still be scared of me.”
Still be scared? I thought about it and kissed him slowly before drawing back to answer him, “I trust you.”
That was an odd thing to say.
“That’s all I needed to know, baby.” The second he went for my zipper, I sensed Amber’s presence.
“Amber’s coming.”
He growled and nodded, moving down. “Impeccable timing.” We settled in so we were both seated. Riston sat behind me and went to work on the bed frame again. A head of red appeared in the doorway.
“Hey, Owen is nice. His brother D is a total jackass.”
“I know.”
She grinned as she glanced at the two of us. I’d say she looked hopeful but I knew Amber well enough to know that there was no way she’d really want me making a move on Riston--not if she liked or valued the man’s friendship in any way, shape or form. “They even played along, trying to convince me that they’re cat shifters.”
Smiling, I nodded at her. “Yep, cougars. I’ve heard they’re good in bed--not D and Owen but that breed in general.”
Amber tossed her hands into the air. “You would have thought of that angle too. How do you get all of these men to play along? Ever since I’ve known you, men have done anything you said.”
“That is so not true, Amber. You just got to see a tiny portion. They didn’t want to scare you, hon and I’m only telling you what I heard. I’ve never been with one. In fact, I’ve never been with any sort of a shifter in the area of sex.”
“I’d prefer to know that you haven’t ever been with anyone,” Riston said so quietly that I almost missed it. I gave him a questioning look but he ignored it.
Amber giggled. “What’s your story for no shifters in the bedroom? I’ve got to hear it.”
A bit embarrassed by what I was about to say, I found my shoulders slumping and my cheeks flushing. “Umm, don’t laugh but whenever I’ve been around men like that I just get this odd feeling.”
“What kind of odd feeling?” Amber asked, grinning as she did what she assumed to be play along.
I wrinkled my nose a bit. “Well, I always get the feeling that I’d be crossing some imaginary line, some thing laid forth ever since I can remember. It leaves me with this overwhelming, almost suffocating feeling that if I dare cross it I’d be putting their lives in jeopardy and would be doing something that someone close to me would have a hell of a time forgiving. It’s a lame excuse, I know but it’s true.”
Riston ran his hand over my thigh slowly and I was sure with the angle he was at that Amber couldn’t see it. “Doesn’t sound the least bit lame to me.”
The ‘oh brother’ look that came over Amber made me laugh. She shook her head. “So, your excuse is that you think you’ll kill them if you screw them. Gottcha.”
“No, I don’t think that I’ll personally be the one killing them, I think it would be someone else--someone who would show no mercy regardless of who he was dealing with. That being said, when it comes to other men, men who aren’t shifters of any form, I have the strangest urge to teach that same someone a lesson, Amber. It’s almost like I feel as though this person who’d hurt other shifters deserves it. Deserves to know that what he didn’t want had to go somewhere so it chose entirely different types of lovers, ones he’d have no idea how he measured up against. Ones that he wasn’t born to lead.”
Riston let out a slow, deep breath.
“Shit, say I bought into it all,” Amber said. “Then what you’re saying is that you’re screwing men to get back at one you don’t even know.”
“Yeah.” I put my head down, disgusted with myself.
“Karri?”
I looked up at her. She crossed her arm
s. “Tell me why you look sick to your stomach about what I just said. I would have thought you’d be ecstatic. You can be hella ruthless in the area of males.”
“Because almost every time it happens--you know, the urge to take a man, toy with him, fuck him and then leave him, I try to stop it but it feels like I’m standing in front of a tornado and asking it to please stop, to please go around me, anything but touch me. It doesn’t’ work. The harder I fight it the worse it gets. That’s why I tend to....”
“Keep the men you date at arms length.”
“Yep.”
Amber leaned her head against the doorframe. “You said almost all. Why?”
“Because two,” I thought about Riston and raked my gaze over him, “okay, three men haven’t made that sick feeling in my gut appear.”
“Who?”
“I’m not answering that.”
She snorted as she came in. I watched as she seemed to trip on nothing. She didn’t fall but shook her head, looking confused. “Damn, did you see that? I tripped and nothing was there.”
Glancing towards the ceiling, I closed my eyes and could almost feel Tripp’s energy. “Ha, ha, very funny, Tripp. Yes, I was counting you as one.”
“What?” Amber asked.
“I was talking to Tripp ... err ... about you tripping. Yep. Funny. Glad you weren’t hurt though.”
She snickered. “You are so strange but I love you all the same.” She went to a box and opened it. Bending down, she began to unpack it slowly. “Well, Jean-Paul seemed to hang around a lot. Did he give you that weird feeling? The blood-sucking piece of shit is sexy but not right for you. I can’t believe he’s still in your life. Stop hanging around eccentric people. They’re bad for your health.”
I arched a brow. “Then does the same go for you because I’d miss you as my best friend? Especially since you’re one of only two girlfriends I’ve ever had. The rest of my friends are male. They suck when it comes to just talking. Well, most of them do. Matty, he was here early this morning. The one with the chin-length auburn hair. He’s really good but it’s because he’s also an empath in addition to be a cat shifter so he flat out senses my mood before I do.
“Seger’s not too bad when it comes to heart to hearts but he’s also taken a very odd protective stance that’s always there. I asked him about it once and he told me that it was instinctive--like he felt compelled to assure himself that I was delivered safely somewhere. We never did figure out where that somewhere is.” I laughed. The bad Karri damn near got the man to break that private promise earlier.
“What about that Branson guy? You know the one with the beard?” Amber asked.
“Uhh, hell no. He’d do anything for you but heart-to-hearts aren’t his thing. It’s weird. I got caught in his cross-fire about a week ago and that first night I wasn’t worth a shit in the ‘know what’s going on around me’ category but I’m positive that Branson sat that talking to me the entire time.”
“What was he saying?” she asked, not looking the least bit skeptic.
“I think he was telling me the story of who he is, where he comes from and all of that because when I felt better I just knew everything about him. I can’t even tell you how amazing that feels to me. Men hide things from me all the time. Most because they assume I can’t handle it or some have ulterior motives. Not Branson, no, he told me everything and I’ve never had a man trust me like that before. I thought that about one other had but I found out I was wrong.”
I couldn’t help but look up. Finding out that Tripp had been sent by my mother, even if in the end we fell in love with one another hurt. He should have told me the truth. “The guy held things back, important things and that hurts. If you ask me something I’ll be open and honest about everything in my life. All I ask is that it is offered in return.”
“I told you everything about me,” Amber said, winking.
“And you are the only family I have. Does that tell you anything?”
“Now, I fell like it’s you who is getting the short end of the stick, Karri.”
I rolled my eyes and held the frame for Riston who was making rather painful sounding noises. My guess was the hard on he had wasn’t enjoying being denied, yet again. “Knock it off. You are the best thing that could have come into my life, Amber. I think they sent you to replace the sister I would have had. Well, that’s my theory anyway. Though you’re older than she’d have been now. She would have been six years younger than me.”
Riston dropped a screw and banged his head on the rail. “Umm, a sister? You were an only child, Kars.”
“That all depends on how you look at it.”
He touched my arm lightly. “Explain.”
“Before I went to sleep the night my parents passed away, my mom kissed me goodnight and said that dad would stop in as soon as he could. I knew that, he always did. But I felt something different about her. I know now what the feeling is. But then it took me a minute to understand it. The second I figured out what it was, I blurted it out. She laughed and confirmed my suspicions. She’d just found out that she was pregnant but hadn’t told dad yet. She made me swear not to let him know until breakfast when she’d make him pink pancakes again.” I laughed. “Apparently, she did some sort of pink everything meal when she found out she was having me. She was like that--very out of touch with reality but wonderfully so. I’ve also come to find out she is, umm, was quite the sex kitten.”
“Yeah, gee, I wonder where you get it all from,” Amber mused and I knew she was trying to keep the mood light.
I waited, holding the frame for Riston. “Amber, you know that you don’t have to walk on eggshells when it comes to them or their passing. I, uhh, recently had a chance to see how I would deal with it. I’m okay.”
“Right, that’s why you cover it in a veil of dark fantasy and paranormal instead of just saying they died in an accident. But I can understand why you do that, Karri. Seeing them pass away had to be the hardest thing in your life.”
“Do you remember all of it? I mean what lead up to it?” Riston asked, softly.
I nodded. “Sort of. Mom left the room after kissing me goodnight. I fell asleep. The next thing I knew my dad was yanking me from my bed and running full force towards the car. I remember seeing men, I think the men on his team, fighting big things that my father was somehow keeping hidden from me. They were fuzzy when they shouldn’t have been.”
I let myself reflect on things I swore I never world. “He told me that it was okay. That they weren’t really there and that when we were safe he would make sure I didn’t think about them again. I know now that he would have wiped my memory of it, had he lived. I was dazed, confused and scared. Something inside told me that I’d never be back. It told me that I needed to look hard and try to always remember because it’d be important later but I believed my dad was a god and if he said it would be fine then it would be fine.”
“Jack had a way about him. Didn’t he?”
It was such a warm feeling to hear Riston talk about my father and actually know him, even if it was through his own father. I couldn’t help but smile. “He sure did. Though, I was sometimes guilty of questioning his authority, which seemed to make the men on his team laugh so hard that some of them had to leave the room to keep him from blowing up. One didn’t. No, one was brave enough to stand there and snicker when I’d start my endless line of ‘but whys’ that I loved so much.”
“Oh, the ‘but whys’. Please don’t remind me.” Riston didn’t wait for me to question him about that comment, he kept on going, “If it’s not too much, what else can you remember leading up to what happened, Kars?”
I shrugged wondering why it was so important to him but not questioning him. “That night, when we were running toward the car, I knew that one of the men wasn’t there. That he wasn’t in the protection of the group.”
I took a deep breath and tried to keep my emotions under wraps. “I knew that he’d somehow been separated from the others who were trying
to hold off the things attacking because ... umm, I think because of me.”
“Maybe they were trying to protect you, Karri. The demons who came might have been after you for a reason so horrible that the idea of allowing them to be near a child was sickening and infuriating,” Riston said, taking me by surprise. He shrugged fast. “Just a guess.”
I didn’t comment on that.
“What about the guy who was separated from the group? Did he die?” Amber asked.
“No. Not then, anyway. I’m not sure if he’s still alive or not. But I do know that I was terrified of leaving him that night. Not that I thought he couldn’t handle himself but something inside me felt like it was tearing, Amber. Like my father was pulling me in one direction and the guy who was separated from us was pulling me in the other direction. I kept yelling for my dad to stop and, in all the confusion, he forgot RJ. He told me that he was coming and that we couldn’t wait. It physically hurt, Amber. My mom kept touching me, trying to heal whatever was happening but she couldn’t. She kept yelling at my father.”
I put my head down and sighed. “She told him that if he wasn’t careful he’d sever the bond and that I wasn’t made to survive without that in place. That’s the only thing that gives me any sort of hope that RJ is still alive. If my mother was right then I’d have died if or when he does.”
“RJ?” Amber asked. “The same RJ you spent years trying to find? The one that kept your parents’ estate out of your evil friggin’ guardian’s, Madge and William’s clutches? That one?”
“Yeah, he and my dad were good friends. I can’t speak for him but I think they may have been best friends. And I think he was my dad’s right-hand, his second in command. Why?”
“How the fuck could you have some bond with that asshole?”
Riston cleared his throat. “Hmm, that must be a common assumption.”
“Assumption my ass,” Amber bit out. “How could he hand you over to those people if he had some bond with you, Karri? Hell, even if he didn’t. How could he give you to monsters?”
She came in and sat down on the floor with us and put her hand out to me. I took it and she held mine tight. “Seriously, I get that a guy doesn’t want anything to do with someone else’s kid but to hand you to them ... gawd ... he could have kicked you, beat you and put you through hell himself and saved William the time or better yet, dumped you on the street. You would have been treated better there, Karri.”
Wicked Lucidity Page 18