by Tricia Lynne
Declan brushed a palm over my knee, shifted, forcing me to meet his eyes. “No, you are definitely. Not. Kat.”
As we looked at each other, I searched his face for motive, but all I found was my reflection in his eyes. When he brushed my bottom lip with his thumb, my lips parted on a soft exhale.
“Fuck it,” I whispered with a shrug, and Declan’s face split into a grin as I leaned in, grazing my lips over his in the barest of brushes. His lips were so soft, warm, and inviting. Declan’s hand framed my jaw, gentle at first, then his rough palm circled my nape, holding me in place and every nerve ending in my body came alive. Jesus, what this guy did to me. Unreal.
He pulled at my bottom lip. Sucked it between his, damp and full, soft as silk. When he dug strong his fingers into my waist, I tried to shift away—the last thing I wanted was for him to feel that small soft roll that appeared when I sat—but he gripped tighter, holding me in place. The tip of his tongue teased the seam of my mouth. I stifled a moan, felt his answering smirk against my lips.
“I like that sound,” he rasped, and Declan began to move with purpose, his tongue insistent, his hands almost bruising.
My lips parted with a breath and he sank between them in a warm, wet slide.
He was intoxicating; his mouth was decadent and dark, spicy with the hint of sweet and lingering tang of good whiskey.
Red Hots.
He slanted his mouth, pushed in deep to tangle his tongue with mine, darting in and out, back and forth. We explored each other’s dark recesses, mimicking the movement of male hips between female thighs. Holy shit, the man could kiss. Sensual, reckless, and possessive, without an ounce of inhibition. I’d read about this kind of kiss a million times, was fairly certain it didn’t exist.
It did.
Wetness pooled between my thighs. I wrapped my hand around his neck, holding him to me, and he hummed his approval. I stroked the base of his scalp, dragging my nails over the edge of his stubble, and Declan’s breath escaped into my mouth with a shudder.
He groaned, dropped his head back to push against my hand. “Christ.” His tone held both warning and plea.
“Mmmm, I like that sound.” I moved my lips over his jaw, teasing the skin below his ear.
“Damn, sweetness.” Declan’s voice was thick and grainy, strained with as much need as my body felt. He reclaimed my mouth deep and feral, anchoring strong fingers into the swell of my hips. This was the man I expected when I laid eyes on Declan McGinn. Animalistic. Raw. Barely controlled. And I wanted it. All of it. To see him totally unhinged. The ache in my belly grew critical as my sex tightened with unmet need. I ran my hands over the curves and ridges of his shoulders and chest, arms, and stomach. Everything I so much wanted to see.
His finger skimmed over the tip of my nipple. More heat, more wet, as Declan slid a hand up my side, around the curve of my breast, over the stiff peak light as a whisper. I exhaled with a shudder, my head falling back as I groaned in a mixture of pleasure and frustration.
His control, threatening to break loose only seconds before, was fully reined in, but I wanted the ferocity, to feel craved the way fire craves oxygen. It was a powerful thing, taking Declan to the edge of his leash. Wholly addictive. And I had just done my first bump.
Taking my chin with calloused fingers, Declan tilted my head to meet his eyes before large hands palmed my butt, squeezed, pulling apart my cheeks before sliding me forward to straddle his hips. He pulled on my hair tie and my hair slipped out of its bun, tumbling down my back. I arched to shake it out, pushing my breasts against him and showing off my best assets.
“Fuck, that’s pretty.” Calloused palms pushed at the hem of my top, whispering along my rib cage.
I flinched and wanted to pull away but forced myself not to as that spark of whatever the hell it was skittered over my skin. My chest expanded with heavy breaths, and the rise and fall didn’t go unnoticed.
Declan cupped my breasts in strong hands. “These,” he eyed the twins with appreciation, “are worth writing songs about.” I laughed, they jiggled, and with a deft move, he freed them from sports bra prison, slipping it over the top.
“Declan,” I whispered in a desperate plea as he cupped the undersides and I arched into his palms.
“Sensitive?”
“Mmmm.”
“That sound is so fucking sexy, Avery. Maddening.” His voice roughened further, if that was even possible, as he brushed his lips over my collarbone, his thumbs over the hard beads of my nipples.
My hips rolled of their own volition and his breath came heavier as I savored the slide of hard man and wet cotton against hairless skin. “It’s what you’re doing that’s maddening,” I said, sliding my hands under his shirt.
Declan’s muscles bunched under my fingers; his fingertips skated inside the waistband at the back of my boxers, and when he dipped a guitar-roughened finger over the seam between the top of my cheeks, a soft gasp escaped my throat.
His erection strained against his fly, as I rocked over him, teasing my finger along his waistband, and I caught his exhale with my mouth. Stomach tensed, his hips surged up to prod at me in the most delectable way. I wiggled against him, trying to relieve the ache growing out of control. I whimpered when he hit the right spot and pulled my lip between his teeth, anchoring my hips to his with strong hands.
I slipped a hand around his neck; the other dipped inside his waistband to break open the button as I rasped my nails over his nape again.
Declan snarled, pushing back against my palm. His eyes fell closed as his hips pushed against me with enough force to lift me off my heels, hitting that sweet little bundle of nerves.
“Jesus,” I whispered.
But his hips receded, settled against the daybed, and when his eyes opened again, they had gone cool.
“We have to stop.”
What? I leaned back to search his eyes not entirely sure I’d heard right, but his face gave nothing away. He slid my hand from his neck, the other away from his stomach.
What the fuck just happened here?
He avoided my eyes. Looked over my shoulder instead. “I can’t do this,” he said, but offered me no reason.
Aaanndd, the lead pipe in his pants suggested that, yes indeed, he could do this.
Pushing my top down, covering my exposed stomach, I slid off his lap, pulled a pillow into the hollow of my legs. “Declan, did I…” I didn’t finish. He didn’t give me a chance.
He shifted off the daybed, ran his hand over his face with an exasperated sigh before he moved to the set of doors next to the bed. He slid in a key and leaned his strained forehead against the open edge of the door.
“If I did something…” What had he touched that he found repulsive, the expanse of my butt? The bit of dimpling on my hips?
Declan blew out a long breath, sounded as if he were trying to expel some ancient demon in his soul as he gazed into the dark room.
“No.”
He didn’t say it harshly, but with a certain finality. Then he walked through the door, pulling it shut behind him.
I sat staring after him. Dazed. Uncertainty spinning out of control. What could I have done? Had he felt the cellulite on my ass or the soft swell of my stomach? I swept up my shoes, slapped the glass of the door he’d pulled open. “You dick!” As I stormed back to my room, my thoughts traveled a road I could’ve done without.
Jason and I frequented the same coffee shop every morning and had been passing smiles back and forth for a while when he’d finally asked me out. He’d taken me to a small bar in Deep Ellum where I’d learned he was an oil executive whose parents were well-known Dallas socialites. We’d hit it off, had chemistry, and, over the course of the next six months, we’d spent a lot of time together. He never took me anywhere popular or trendy; it was always little out-of-the-way places, dark bars, hole-in-the-wall
restaurants. I’d suggest the Dallas Art Museum on a Saturday afternoon and he supplied excuses as to why we should spend the day in bed. I should have seen it then.
When his parents’ silver wedding anniversary had become the talk in social circles, I’d asked why he hadn’t mentioned it, or why I’d never met his friends and family.
“Avery, I love spending time with you. I think you’re amazing, but you know why. As much as I’d like to take you home to meet my folks, that’s not an option.”
“What do you mean?” I knew exactly what he meant.
“Don’t make me say it, okay? I’m expected to be with someone who looks a certain way, lives a certain lifestyle. Comes from a certain type of family.”
“You mean a size two, right? A Southern belle with a twenty-four-inch waist and big blond hair. A woman who says ‘Bless your heart’ after church, gets in her Mercedes to drive home, and bitch at the household staff while talking shit about her friends? That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
The warm brown eyes I’d become fond of turned cold as his jaw ticked. “Well, yeah. It’s what’s expected of me. And I’m not about to jeopardize taking over my father’s company. If that makes me a bastard, so be it. You don’t understand my world.”
“No, Jason. I guess I don’t. I’m not going to be your chubby little secret anymore.”
He shifted under the weight of my glassy stare, rubbed at the back of his neck. “You might as well hear this from me. My parents’ anniversary party, I’ll be proposing to Rebecca.” Rebecca was the daughter of longtime family friends; they’d dated through college. “She’s right for me and her family is in cattle. She has connections. But I care about you, Avery. I don’t want to stop seeing you.”
Ah, so it wasn’t only my curves. My daddy wasn’t in cattle or oil—he was just a lowly union plumber who’d shunned his firstborn. I didn’t have the right body type, attitudes, or social status to be with a man like Jason. “So that you can get your fix here and then go home to her? Just get out. No fucking way will I be your side-piece.”
Clenching his jaw, he stared at the floor and refused to meet my eyes.
Right. I already was his side-piece.
“Just get the hell out, Jason.”
* * *
—
When sleep finally came, it was fitful. Riddled with dreams of sweat-slicked bodies and the scents of sex. Moans, pleas, whispered requests on lovers’ lips. Naked skin and lifelike tattoos moved in shadow and light. The muffled sounds of electric guitar echoed far off as tiny fairies flitted about like moonlit divinations.
I stood on the outside of a velvet rope. Watching, needing, aching to be touched. Squeezing my breasts, palm pressed between my legs trying to relieve the tortured ache, but relief wouldn’t come.
Only remain on the periphery. Elusive and mocking, dancing just out of reach, much like the fairies and beautiful people inside.
Outcast. With a whispered word on a warm breeze.
“No.” Echoed through my soul.
Chapter 7
“Ohmygod!” My cellphone yelled and I shot upright in a tangled mass of sheets. I had to change that ringtone. Eyes wide, I wiped slobber from my chin and answered.
“Huh?”
“Wakey, wakey,” Kat caroled, fully awake and cheerful to boot. Barf.
I threw my head back against the pillow.
“I ordered breakfast and sent it to your room.” She wasn’t only a morning person, but the I went out and got shitfaced last night but you’d never know it kinda morning person. I found it revolting.
“Not. Up. Bitch.”
“It’s 10:30. Get. Up. Bitch.” Click. We needed to have a talk about phone etiquette.
My body started to settle back into sleep mode. Eyes fluttered. Heart slowed. The shock of adrenaline leveled out. Then the pounding on the door started. Not a feminine tap, tap, tap; but BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, with the side of a balled-up fist. Shaking off the slide back into sleep, I crawled from the bed, tripping over my own feet.
“You’ve got a goddamn key,” I yelled, rubbing sleep from my eyes as I opened the door.
“Yeah, but if I used it, you’d still be in bed.” She breezed by me in a cotton pajama top two sizes too big, on mile-long legs and bare feet. “Breakfast is on the way. You are not sleeping all day.”
“I had a bad night.”
“You look like shit. You need to hydrate.” Kat pulled the electrolyte water from the mini-bar and threw open the balcony doors. Wincing at the light, I gave her a gonna kill you and hide the body look.
“Come on, we’ll eat out here.”
I made for the bathroom, then flopped in a chair across from her, pulling a foot up.
She poured the baby water over ice and pushed it at me. “Drink. Not like you to get this hungover, girl.”
“I’m not hungover. Maybe a little, but I didn’t get much sleep.”
“Why? I slept like a rock.”
I blew out a long breath disgusted with her. “I couldn’t fall asleep so I decided to wander around the hotel.” I yawned. Sipped. “I ran into Declan….”
Her amber eyes went huge in her face. “Ooooohhhh, Oohh. Did you bang him? Is he here?” She bounced in the chair like a toddler on a sugar buzz. “He’s not in the shower, is he?”
“No.”
She quirked a perfectly arched brow. “Walk of shame?”
I shook my head.
“You didn’t nail him?”
“If you shut up, I’ll tell you.” Blessedly, she did.
I recounted the make-out session with every detail I could remember while I fought to wake up, drank the water, and waited on coffee and eggs. I told her how intense the connection had been—like a guitar string ran between us, vibrating from the strum. How I would have jumped him right there if he hadn’t had done such a quick about-face.
I didn’t get it. I knew he was into it. I could feel it nice and hard in his pants, and the man had me so ready I could’ve come from the suggestion. And the way he kissed me…Christ. Like he was drowning and I was the air he craved. My skin still hummed from the ghost of those calloused fingers. Then, boom. He just shut it down and walked away. I was humiliated. All I could think about was that he must have felt the cottage cheese on my thighs, or maybe I had cut off his circulation and he decided I wasn’t worth the effort.
“Noooo. Just like that?”
“Just like that.” I snapped my fingers.
“Whiskey dick?” She was such a delicate flower.
“No, definitely not. And Kat, we didn’t just have chemistry; it was on a different level. I’ve never felt anything that intense. Then he just…stopped.” What the hell did no mean, anyway? No, it wasn’t me, or No, I’m not doing this, or No, I’m married and have kids.
“What the hell was he thinking? Why, I tell you—” A knock on the door announced the arrival of breakfast and Kat unfurled from her chair, mumbling.
“Good mornin’, ladies, how are you finding our fair city this morning?”
Kat directed the older gentleman to the balcony. A face lined with thousands of memories, he elongated each syllable with the unmistakable drawl of someone born and raised in Louisiana.
“New Orleans is captivating.”
“This your first visit, then?” He went about setting the table.
“Yes, and I’m falling for her already.”
“Well, it’s not hard to do. Should be a lovely day today. Cooler. Good day to take in the Garden District or one of the cemeteries.” He handed Kat a black receipt book and she signed for the food. “Enjoy your breakfast now, and have a lovely day,” he drawled as he let himself out.
Kat poured coffee from a silver service as smells from the covered trays wafted up. He’d even brought flowers. A small milk glass vase held a grouping of miniature pink carnations w
ith an envelope leaning against it; “Avery” was scrawled across the front.
“Did you charge breakfast to my room?”
“Yes, but you watched me sign for it.”
I picked up the envelope and broke it open. “Is this part of our plans?”
“Nope,” she said around a mouthful of eggs. “What’s it say?”
Silver-edged hotel stationary held thick black ink.
Avery,
I hope you slept well; I sure as hell didn’t. Jamie has plans with Kat tonight so I’ll be by your room at eight to pick you up. Be ready to go. And for fuck’s sake, don’t wear those goddamned shoes on that ankle again.
Please accept this humble offering as consolation for your poor sense of balance.
Declan
I dug into the envelope and pulled out two all-access tickets to see Flogging Molly at the House of Blues New Orleans. The concert was the night before we went back to Dallas.
“Well? It’s from Declan, isn’t it?” She snatched the note from me and read it, that Cheshire grin of hers spreading over her face.
“He says he’s taking me out tonight.” And he didn’t ask me—he fucking told me. That shithead. First, he makes me feel like a cheap piece of meat that he’s decided to send back to the kitchen and now he’s ordering me around? My humiliation was giving way to ire. This guy had no idea who he was screwing with.
“Alpha males.” Kat chuckled, sipped her coffee. Her smile wasn’t hidden in the least by the delicate cup. “Eat, Avery. We need to get going.”
“What in the hell are you talking about? Alpha males. And when were you gonna tell me you have plans with the guitar god?”
“I don’t, didn’t. This is the first I’ve heard….” Her face screwed up in a look of disbelief. “Do you really think I’d dump you to go out with Jamie?”
“You haven’t talked to him?”
She shook her head, looked hurt. “And have I ever ditched you?”
“Well, are you gonna go?”
“Dunno. Do you want to go out with Declan?”