by Zoey Parker
I wanted her. More than I should have, but I couldn’t help it.
Dragging her into this mess with her brother was a bad idea, but he was being reckless. He was reckless the moment he took a job offer from Mickey, but that would have smoothed over easily enough if he’d simply done what he’d been hired to do. Mickey was a shrewd man, but he paid you what you were worth. Do a good job, and he’d make it worth your while. All Logan had to do was not screw Mickey.
Which was the one goddamned thing he did do. And now Madeline was caught in the middle of this. If I could find her, someone else could. Someone who maybe didn’t appreciate that, though related, she didn’t have anything to do with her brother’s stupidity. And what if Mickey decided she was a liability?
He wouldn’t go after her…unless her dumb brother decided to show up and ask for help. And I had the distinct impression that he wouldn’t be completely forthcoming with her about the details.
The urge to protect her was almost as strong as the urge to strip her and plunge inside of her. An urge I didn’t seem able to resist. Ignoring her request, I closed the space between us and grabbed her, pulling her flush against my body. Her breath caught and her eyes went wide, but I didn’t give her any time to think. I kissed her hard, like I’d wanted to since that night. Like I’d wished I’d done every night since then.
She resisted at first, her small hands balling into fists and trying to pound my chest, but she couldn’t make me budge. Her punches were like love taps, and I wouldn’t let her go for anything. Nothing in the damn world.
I slid my tongue against her lips and I felt her shake, trembling not with anger, but desire to match my own. She was beginning to give in, her fists unclenching and her arms rising until her hands could slip around my neck and pull me closer. When my tongue passed over her full lips again, her mouth opened, and when I slipped my tongue inside to taste her, she moaned into me.
My hands slid down from her upper arms to wrap around her little waist. I wished she were still wearing that little summer dress so I could yank it up, pull it high enough to expose those luscious thighs and maybe just rip off her panties then and there in the middle of the living room, take her on the floor.
Instead, my hands slid lower until they hit the waistband of her short little denim cut-offs. Still kissing her passionately, holding her against me, I let my hands dip between the denim and her body so I could feel her firm, full ass in my hands. When I had one cheek in each hand, I ground her against me so she could feel my hard length against her thighs.
I wanted her to know how much I wanted her.
When she broke the kiss and gasped, I knew I had her. I kissed a trail of fire down her neck until I hit the collar of her t-shirt. Growling in frustration, I pushed her away from me—I was pleased when she made a sound of protest—just far enough so I could jerk that damn t-shirt up over her head. I tossed it to the side, pleased to find she was wearing a black lacy bra too small for her full breasts. They were practically half out of the cups, her cleavage spilling noticeably as her breathing caused her chest to heave.
I went to her shorts next, undoing the button and the zipper. Her hands went to my shirt at the same time, undoing the buttons quickly and then tracing over the expanse of my chest. I groaned at the contact, my body aching for more.
When her shorts were off, I yanked my shirt the rest of the way off and undid my belt. She watched me hungrily as I undid my slacks and pulled them off, revealing my large, aching erection.
I needed her. Now.
I pulled her to me and thrust my hand into her panties, searching out her wet folds and sliding a finger into her hot core. She cried out and I was surprised to find she was still just as tight as that first time. A thrill ran through me. She’s only been with me. I began to pump into her opening over and over again, her body arching and her hands gripping at me desperately. I added another finger, beginning to stretch her so she could more easily accommodate my girth.
When I added a third finger, she begged me, “Please.”
Losing myself, I laid her down on the floor, dragged down her panties, and aligned myself with her wet pussy. She was already panting, flushed and whimpering, needing me.
I let myself have a moment where I slid myself along her opening, collecting the moisture there, then I put my head against her entrance. Meeting her eyes and holding them, I gently slid inside her, slowly, inch by inch.
She winced, but urged me forward still. I knew to be gentler with her this time, though there had been no complaints with my aggression last time.
When I was finally fully sheathed inside her, we truly began. My rhythm started out slow, my pumps deep and hard, but the slow pull as I took almost my entire length out of her was sweet agony for the both of us.
That didn’t last long. I needed to pound into her, hard and fast, and I wasn’t one to enjoy waiting. Pinning her hands above her head, I thrust into her as deeply as I could, my speed building. I watched as her breasts, still encased in that tiny bra, bounced and collided with each other, as erotic as anything else I was doing.
Madeline moaned and arched her back and begged me, whispering again and again, “Please, oh, god, please, Nikolai!”
Hearing my name fall from her full, bruised lips was enough. I lost myself in her, jerking and thrusting erratically as I spilled myself inside of her. I collapsed there on the floor next to her, pulling her tightly into my arms where I could keep ahold of her a little longer before I had to really think about what I’d just done and what it really meant.
Chapter 11
Madeline
I awoke to a beeping sound, tangled up in someone else’s limbs. A very sexy someone’s limbs. It took me a moment, but when I blinked and cleared the haze of sleep from my gaze, I saw it was definitely Nikolai holding me to him. He looked to be asleep, just as I’d been, and for a moment, I couldn’t wrap my head around what had happened.
He showed up at my door. He accused my brother of stealing. I told him to get out and never come back. He fucked me senseless.
I shuddered at the memory and found myself beginning to ache and throb where he’d so thoroughly pleasured my body.
The beeping sound came again and I cursed quietly when I realized what it was. My phone. My phone was in my bag now, which was dumped on the floor not far from where we were lying. Carefully, I extracted myself from Nikolai’s warm, muscled arms. I crawled naked—my bra had come off later, after the sex and before the sleep—across the floor to my bag and dug around for my phone. When I found it, I saw I had a text.
From Shawn.
I winced when I realized I was supposed to have given Shawn an answer—and that I had been planning on a “yes” answer before Nikolai showed up at my door. I typed out a quick message, letting him know I was home safe and mentioning only that I’d fallen asleep, not that I’d fallen asleep with another man, the father of my baby.
That was too much for Shawn and way too much for a text message. I needed to think about this before jumping to conclusions. Just as I’d hit send, I heard his gravelly, sleepy voice.
“Who was that?”
I swiveled around, still on my knees and still naked, holding the phone. My eyes were wide and I was sure that I looked guilty as sin—which, I supposed I was now. Biting my lip briefly, I let it go and answered, “No one. Just a friend.”
A friend I’d been thinking about marrying, I thought, but didn’t add out loud.
I hoped my lie was quick and convincing, but when Nikolai stood, he walked over to me, holding his hand out for the phone. I shook my head. I was not giving him my phone.
But then, before I could even think to react, he snatched it from my grasp and looked through it. I saw his face harden and his eyes flashed. He was pissed, I could tell.
“Who the fuck is Shawn?”
I folded my arms across my chest, causing my breasts to push together and spill over the tops of my arms. “I told you. A friend.”
“A friend?” he re
peated, unconvinced. “Then should I tell him what we’ve been doing, Madeline?” he threatened, eyes glittering with danger and making my heart beat more from lust than fear like it should. “Should I tell him how I’ve plunged my hard cock into your waiting, wet, hot pussy until you screamed and begged me for more? Should I do that in a text message or a phone call, do you think?”
I shivered. His threats made me angry, but his words, his description of what we’d just done made my body ache with a dark lust that I was so unfamiliar with.
Oh, how I still wanted him.
But right then, my anger was stronger than my lust so I spat at him the first thing that came to my mind, “He’s my fiancé!”
Which was probably not the right answer. If I thought he was angry before, he was livid now. He came on me in a moment, pinning me to the floor, our bodies pressed together, skin to skin. His hands held my arms up by the wrists, keeping them pinned tightly to the hard floor. As though on autopilot, my legs fell open to let him settle between them. I could feel his member along my thigh and when it started to grow, it took all I had not to moan and beg him, as he’d said.
“Fiancé?” he repeated, his voice low and deep and thick with his accent. “What sort of woman sleeps with another man when she’s engaged?”
I didn’t have an answer and I didn’t have the chance to answer anyway. He pressed his mouth hard against mine. I worked hard to keep my mouth closed, even when I felt his tongue against my lips. I wouldn’t let him in, not this time.
When he pulled away, he was taunting and teasing as he said, “He must not be much of a man if he can’t satisfy his woman the way I can.” And when I felt one hand release my wrist to slip between my thighs, I didn’t protest. Just like I didn’t stop him from kissing me again and I didn’t keep my lips sealed together. When his tongue touched them again, they parted immediately and I tasted him and tongued him as eagerly as he did me.
His hand brought me to climax and as I was coming, he shoved himself inside of me, giving me the greatest pleasure I’d had yet. He claimed me as his yet again and I didn’t put up the fight that I should have. When he finished inside of me, I couldn’t bring myself to be upset about it. All I wanted was to once again sleep in his arms.
Chapter 12
Nikolai
I dressed while Madeline still slept. She was exhausted, as she should be. I’d put her body through quite a workout, for which I was rather pleased with myself. But it wasn’t enough to completely erase the other emotions I was feeling.
I was angry with her. More than that, I was hurt. How could she be engaged to another man? Didn’t she know she belonged to me, body and soul? There was no one else for her – I was certain of that much, at least.
Maybe I wasn’t the sort of man who could have a wife, children, a family, but that didn’t mean I didn’t understand what it meant to have something. And I did. I knew what was mine, and Madeline was. There was no question of that. And I would claim her as many times as it took until she understood that in the very core of her being.
I left the apartment quietly. I locked it, having found a spare key, to make sure no one would bother her as she slept, naked on the bare floor of her apartment. I’d brought a blanket from her bedroom, or what passed for it, and slid it over her to keep her at least partially warm until she awoke.
Now, I was heading down the stairs to my car. It didn’t matter that I’d laid claim to Madeline King or that she was the little sister of Logan King. I had been hired to do a job and I would do that job regardless of the consequences. That was because I was good at my job, yes, but it was also because I knew Mickey. If I refused to do the job, he’d hire someone else to do it. Someone who wouldn’t care about dragging Logan’s little sister into the mix.
When I got into the car, my phone went off. It was a friend of mine, Peter, who worked at a bar downtown. Technically, it was his bar, but it was only through the good graces of Mickey that he did so well. It meant he was my friend and went out of his way to do Mickey favors.
“Nikolai, I heard you’ve got a new job.”
“I do,” I answered calmly. Peter was good; he wouldn’t let anything slip over the phone. Just in case.
“Well, your coworker is here getting tossed, I think. You should come and get him before he does anything stupid.”
The message was clear: Logan had been spotted. He was at Peter’s nightclub and he was being handed to me on a silver platter. I didn’t hesitate, just peeled out of the parking lot, doing my best to leave all thoughts of Madeline far behind me.
I had work to do.
Chapter 13
Madeline
The floor was cold beneath me and hard, though a blanket draped across my naked body helped seal in at least a little bit of heat. My body felt achy from lying there for as long as I had, though there were other contributing factors, too. As soon as I moved my legs and felt the soreness aching between them, I flushed as I recalled the things I had just done.
Nikolai.
He’d been furious. And I’d been furious. And then we’d made love—I wasn’t sure he would call it that; he’d probably say “fucking” but it was making love for me—twice right there on the floor, as though it was the only way to deal with the feelings raging between us.
I probably should have felt guilty. This man was accusing my brother of all kinds of things and my reaction was to sleep with him? Not just a lost in the moment kiss or a momentary lapse of judgment either. I’d let him get my clothes off in a hurry, desperate for there to be only nakedness between us, and even after he did passionate, naughty things to my body, I hadn’t come to my senses.
I’d craved it when he took me the second time, too.
This was not what I’d been raised to think and feel and act about sex. I was supposed to be married and then I was supposed to be careful, demure. It was okay to want sex, but only in the sweet way. In the “innocent” way, as much as possible, anyway. I wasn’t supposed to want things like sex on the floor or sex in the shower, and definitely not sex with men I barely knew.
Just one man, a voice in my head reminded me, and I acknowledged that it was true. I only wanted one man. Nikolai.
Thinking of him made me stand—gingerly and stiffly, stretching out my aching body slowly to try to work out some of the kinks—and look around for him. My apartment wasn’t that big, so there weren’t a lot of places for him to be.
Clutching the blanket, which I recognized as pulled from my bed, I looked around for him, but I knew before I’d checked in the bathroom and behind the curtain of my bedroom that he was already gone.
Niggling despair worked its way through my chest. Of course he wasn’t there. I should have known better that whatever passionate, crazy sex we had together, it was simply a carnal urge on his part.
But he came back.
I frowned. Was coming back a sign that he maybe wanted more than just the physical stuff? I wasn’t sure. He’d been talking about my brother and it made me worry that him showing up had more to do with Logan than anything else. But then, he had been really angry about Shawn.
I winced as soon as I thought of my best friend. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to speak to him ever again. After all, now I knew I would have to turn him down. I couldn’t marry Shawn while I let Nikolai’s body consume mine and devour me whole.
That wasn’t fair to anyone.
Just then my phone started buzzing an electronic version of “Lean On Me”—Shawn’s ringtone. I started to panic a little bit, debating whether or not to answer at all. I wasn’t sure I was ready to have this conversation with Shawn yet. Except I knew if I didn’t talk to him now, he’d get worried. And then he’d rush over here. And then he’d know, because after the passion that had swallowed me with Nikolai, I knew it had to be written across my face in plain block lettering, screaming of the dirty things I’d done.
Things I couldn’t bring myself to regret.
With a steadying breath, I picked up my phone and accepted
that I was just going to have to talk to Shawn and tell him the truth. Well, part of the truth anyway. I wouldn’t be able to marry him and I’d have to admit that to him, but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to tell him about Nikolai. What would he think of me to know that I’d let the man back into my bed? Well, onto my floor anyway.
“Hello?”
“Madeline! Jeez, I’ve been worried sick! You never called me back or texted or anything.”
I could hear the undertones of worry and panic and almost rolled my eyes at him. Shawn had always been sweet to me, but he was also very overprotective and tended to worry too much. I often wished he’d give me a little breathing room; after all, I was an adult and could take care of myself, even if some of my choices lately hadn’t been the wisest.