Couldn't he be hot and sexy and a jerk? That would make my life so much easier.
But no, he had to be hot and sexy and a sweetheart. God damn it.
The hand that wasn't on my ribs moved up and touched my lips softly. “These are still hurting too.”
Oh, god. I wanted him to kiss me. No, strike that. I needed him to kiss me. I didn't care about it being a bad idea. I didn't care about having to regret it. And I damn sure didn't care about my sore lips.
“Kiss me, Cash,” I said, my voice an airy whisper.
His eyes rose to mine and watched for a second before the hand on my ribs moved up to cup the back of my neck. The other stayed gently resting on my cheek. “Well, if you insist,” he said with a cocky little grin before he pulled me toward him and his lips pressed down on mine.
It was soft, gentle, but it wasn't simply the promise of something more. It was consuming. It was strong, yet sweet and I felt it down to my toes, making them and everything in between feel tingly, making my soul feel lighter than it had in ages. My hands moved to rest on his shoulders for a moment before they went completely around the back of his neck, making our bodies meld together. My hips sank down and his hardness pressed up against my heat, but I didn't move against him, I didn't try to calm the pulsing desire there. All that mattered was the kiss, was the feeling of his lips on mine.
My mouth opened on a quiet sigh and his tongue slipped forward, tentatively toying with mine. It wasn't hesitation, like he was expecting me to pull away. It was teasing. It was him trying to get a response out of me no matter how softly he touched me, no matter how brief or light the touch. And it was... working.
His hand stroked down from my cheek to my neck, brushing gently over that sensitive skin and making a tremble vibrate through my body.
My hips stroked reflexively, making me break away from his lips as I felt his cock hit the sweet spot and a whimper escaped my lips.
Cash's eyes opened slowly, looking as heavy as mine felt. The hand at my neck started moving lower, over my clavicle, lower. His fingers brushed over my breast, his thumb stroking over my hardened nipple before his hand splayed and squeezed with just the right amount of pressure.
“You want this,” he said, taking my nipple between his two fingers and rolling it.
He was right. I wanted that. I wanted that and so, so much more. I wanted everything. And I wanted him to be the one to give it to me.
“Yes,” I said unnecessarily as he squeezed my nipple and had my hips dropped harder onto his, enjoying the pressure there.
“You gonna let me give it to you?”
Even not knowing what, exactly, he was asking, I felt my head nodding. “Yes.”
“That's what I wanted to hear,” he said with a small smile. His hand left my breast and moved downward, sliding down the center of my belly, getting to the triangle above my sex and pausing there, pressing hard for a moment before slipping suddenly downward and cupping my sex. I bit into my lip slightly, ignoring the pain in doing so, to stifle the groan that threatened to be loud enough to echo through his quiet house. His free hand moved upward and touched my lips as he pressed into my clit with his middle finger. “I want to hear you,” he said and my teeth released my lip. “Good girl.”
Normally, a man calling me a good girl, least of all a man younger than me, would be laughable, but when he did it, like with everything else he did, it was hot.
My hips shifted upward, giving him better access and he grunted in approval as his hand slid upward, slipping into the waistband of my panties and moving down to stroke through my wetness, letting it coat his fingers, his motions lazy and unhurried. I writhed into the sensation, the pressure becoming almost unbearable, inching toward the point of actual pain. Then, as if sensing the feelings creating chaos in my system, his finger pressed fully inside me. I felt myself tighten around him as I groaned, my hips moving against his hand, shamelessly seeking relief.
“You want more?”
“Yes,” I said, arching my ass back so the palm of his hand pressed against my clit. He let out a low groan that sent a shiver through my insides as he slid another finger inside me. “Oh, god yes...” I whimpered, my eyes closing, head falling back as he finally started thrusting in and out of me.
“I know you're trying to imagine this is my cock,” he said, curling his fingers inside of me, “but I want you to look at me.” My eyes opened slowly, feeling weighted as I focused on his face. “You'll get my cock, honey. But right now, be with me here.” His fingers stayed curled and started working over my G-spot, no longer soft, sweet, or slow, they were rapid and demanding and I felt my orgasm building quickly at the sudden change of pace. “So fucking tight,” he groaned, leaning up slightly to take my mouth again, his lips as insistent and wild as his fingers. If there was pain, I was beyond experiencing it as his kiss seared into me, branded me in a way I hadn't known was possible, in a way that I was sure when all was said and done between me and Cash, I would still feel his lips on mine when I was lying in bed alone at night.
My breath hitched, his thumb pressed into my clit, and my world went white with the blinding pleasure. I cried out my release into his mouth, my fingers digging painfully into his back as my legs tensed up through the waves of pulsations.
“Cash,” I gasped when I could draw a breath as the waves started to taper off, my body shuddering hard once.
“Fuck me,” he said, moving away so he could look at my face, his head shaking like he couldn't quite believe something. His hand moved up to rest on my cheek again as I struggled to get some semblance of control over myself.
That was intense. As in, I felt almost vulnerable from it, as in... I was almost a little teary-eyed and I needed to get it the fuck together. I was not, was absolutely not going to cry in front of him. No way. That would be humiliating. And, given the reading of my romance novel sex scene not long before, I was pretty sure I was at my mortification quotient for the day.
His fingers shifted upward slightly as if he could sense the battle I was fighting as if, oh fuck, he could see the water in my eyes.
I needed to get. it. together.
“You can take your fingers out of me now,” I said, trying for casual and being pretty sure I nailed it.
“What if I don't want to?” Cash teased, his lips twitching, but there was a depth in his eyes that I didn't trust.
“You're going to do it anyway,” I said, brows raising and I jerked my hips backward until his fingers slid away. He took his time removing his fingers from my panties. When he finally did, I slid off his lap, snatched my book where he left it on the arm of the chair, “If you don't mind, I am going to go finish myself off,” I said with what I could only call an unfriendly sneer. I couldn't be weak, not around Cash, not around any man. I needed to get alone and get myself calmed down. If that meant I needed to bruise his ego a little in the process, well, that was unfortunately just going to have to be alright with me.
“Finish yourself off?” he asked, twisting his head around to look at me. And then, to my absolute horror (and maybe absolute delight) he raised his glistening fingers to his mouth and slipped them inside, licking my taste off. “Honey,” he said, sliding them out, giving me a grin, “I have it on pretty good authority that I finished you off just fine.”
“One orgasm, Cash?” I started, not adding that it was one all-consuming, life-changing orgasm. “What is this... amateur hour? I expected better from a man with a reputation like yours.” Then I took up off the stairs fast enough for me to want to cry out in pain in doing so, but not fast enough to look like I was running away. Which was exactly what I was doing. I was running- away from Cash, away from the twisted mix of feelings I had toward him, away from the rush of feelings he brought out of me. I was fucking running.
Thirteen
Cash
The woman was going to fucking kill me. Death by utter fucking confusion and the most severe case of blue balls known to man. All I had to
do was look at her and I was hard. One kiss and I was ready to forsake all other women. She was what I wanted. If I were honest, she was who I had been thinking about every time I sank inside another woman since I met her a year before. She had been invading my thoughts way before I suddenly found her in my house.
I adjusted my jeans to get more comfortable, well, as comfortable as I could be with a raging hard-on, listening to her slam the bathroom door upstairs and turn on the water.
She didn't need a shower. She needed a couple of minutes away from me to put her walls back into place because with the orgasm I had just given her, they had come crashing down, leaving nothing in front of me but the most beautiful sight I had ever seen in my entire god-forsaken life: the real Lo.
As soon as the tremors stopped shaking through her body, her eyes found my face and all I saw in hers was raw, almost painful vulnerability. It was so shocking I almost couldn't believe it belonged to her. She was always so strong, so unflappable. But, I guessed, that was why she had all those walls, all those guards: to keep anyone from seeing the woman underneath, a woman that had been through something, who had endured, who had survived by locking it all away so no one could ever use it against her.
I wanted to know what she had been through. I wanted to know her story. And seeing as, many times, I barely stuck around long enough to learn a chick's last name, that was really fucking terrifying. The problem was amplified by the fact that it didn't make any sense.
Why her? Why the only woman I had come across in years, hell a lifetime, that I didn't like? Why would she be the one who was different?
I had just jumped off the couch to storm up the stairs and get some kind of clue as to what was going on in her head, when there was a knock at my door. I, unlike my brother, didn't hide the fact that I had my own place. Guys from the club, women I fucked, they all showed up from time to time, usually without calling. It was nothing out of the norm.
Opening the door and finding Wolf, however, was.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, brows drawing together.
“Got some shit...” he started and trailed off with a shake of his head.
“Yeah, man,” I said, letting out a humorless laugh. “I got some shit too. Want a drink?”
Wolf inclined his chin and stepped inside, following me to the kitchen where I poured us each some whiskey. We each threw back the first round, needing the burn to settle inside, needing it to loosen up the words we weren't ready to share yet.
“You gonna talk about it?” I asked, pouring us each a second round.
“Are you?” he countered and I shook my head, looking down at my boots. If only it were that easy. Besides, what could I say?
Wolf made a grunting noise, staring off out the darkened window as I heard footsteps on the stairs. Shit. How had I not heard the water shut off? Before I could even call out a warning, Lo stepped into the doorway in yet another of my tees, this one a little tighter, a little shorter, white. You didn't even have to look hard to see the little pointed peaks of her nipples through the thin material.
Lo stopped short, her red-rimmed eyes going wide. Focusing on those eyes, on the fact that she had been upstairs crying in the shower, I missed the look as it spread across Wolf's face. I didn't miss, however, the low, lethal, chilling growling noise that came from somewhere deep in his chest. It drew my attention away from Lo, finally finding his face and seeing the kind of blind rage there that scared men much greater than me to their bones. He was looking at Lo's face, her bruises and cuts, her tear-stained cheeks, her swollen eyelids.
The sound came back louder, making Lo take a step back, watching Wolf like she might need to spring into action at any time. But Wolf wasn't looking at her. No, he was looking at me and there was nothing but accusation and a bitter kind of hatred there. Shocked, I felt myself straightening as his lips thinned out.
“Wolf what's...”
“A woman?” his deep voice boomed loudly, making Lo jump slightly, her eyes moving around to, I imagined, locate a weapon.
“A woman?” I repeated, at a complete loss.
“Her. Fucking. Face.” Each word was its own sentence. Each word got louder and louder until the dog next door started barking manically.
Jesus Christ.
He thought I did it. He thought I busted up her face.
“Seriously?” I felt myself asking, feeling anger- foreign, very unlike me, bubbling up under my skin, making me feel like I wanted to claw it off. “You don't fucking know me better than...”
I didn't get the rest out because suddenly he wasn't across the room from me anymore. He was right in front of me and his fist was cocked backward. I'd been hit plenty in my life before. It came with the job. It came with being a member of a biker gang. It came with fucking whatever skirt I wanted despite her relationship status. I could take a punch. That being said, Wolf in full rage-mode was like being hit by the Hulk.
“Wolf, no!” I heard Lo screech, making Wolf start, his arm still cocked, as he twisted his head to look at her.
“Shouldn't fucking hit you,” he ground out, the words barely coming out from how hard he was clenching his jaw.
“Wolf, Cash didn't hit me,” Lo said calmly, reassuringly. It was the same tone someone used when talking to a scared child or a skittish dog. Low, almost melodic. Wolf's hand fell, but his body was still tight, practically pulsing with rage. “Cash would never hit a woman,” she said with so much conviction that my eyes stopped watching Wolf for a sign that he might pounce and moved to look at Lo. As if sensing my inspection, though her gaze was fully focused on the bearded, light-eyed, rage monster in my kitchen, she went on, “He's an asshole and all, but he wouldn't do that.”
Wolf huffed out his breath, slowly relaxing. It was a sight to see- how he went from inhumanely angry to the cool, collected, calm man he always was so effortlessly.
“Sure?” he asked her, his haunting honey-colored eyes unblinking on hers.
“Yes, I'm sure. This,” she said, waving a hand at her face, “had nothing to do with him. Do I seem like the kind of woman who would stay in the house with a man who beat her?” she asked, her tone oddly sharp.
“Lotta' women do,” he shrugged, putting down his full glass of whiskey and turning back to look at me. “Gotta go.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Stay. You wanted to talk about something. Let's talk about it. If it is about J...”
“No,” he cut in, the word almost angry again and I quickly shut up. I guessed Janie was a touchy subject, but who was I to judge? Lo was a touchy subject for me too.
“Then just stay. Have a drink. Lo made food...”
“Club,” he said instead, and it was a dismissal. “Lo,” he said, nodding his head at her as she moved out of his way.
With that, I heard his boots across my floor and the front door slamming before his truck roared to life out front.
“He's, ah,” Lo started, with a head shake, “a really intense guy, huh?”
“That would be putting it mildly,” I agreed with a smile, throwing back my round.
“What was with that reaction?”
“He doesn't like men who put their hands on women.”
“History there?” Lo asked wisely.
“Yeah,” I nodded, not giving her any more than that. It wasn't a secret among The Henchmen. Wolf's sordid past was common knowledge. That being said, it was private. It was for the brothers to know and the brothers only.
“You gonna share that or what?” she said, nodding at me as I poured more whiskey into my glass.
I reached up into the cabinet for another glass and poured her a round. “So are all those walls back into place?” I asked as I handed her the glass.
Her hand retreated for the barest of seconds before she grabbed it out of my hand and threw it back. “I don't know what you're talking about.”
“No? Then why have you been crying?”
Lo's eyes got small as sh
e took a breath. “I don't know what you're talking about.”
I felt the ironic smile pull at my lips. “You want to keep your private shit private, say that. Don't lie to me, baby.”
“Nothing to keep private,” she said with a casual shoulder-shrug. “And like I told you before, I'm not your baby.”
“And like I told you before, I can have you begging for me to call you that.”
“I think you greatly overestimate your skills there, Cash.”
That was the wrong fucking thing to say.
I put my glass down on the counter with a loud clank, reached inside to pull out an ice cube, and moved toward her.
“What are you...” she started, but I wasn't in the mood for explanations. I was in the mood to prove to her that she couldn't use that lame-ass argument anymore. So before she could open her mouth to object, I grabbed the front of her tee and yanked it up hard, popping her head out of the top and pulling the material down her arms slightly, pinning them to her body, seeing that she hadn't bothered to re-wrap her ribs or dig out one of her bras or fresh panties, leaving her gloriously naked before me. “Cash...”
“Yep. You're going to be screaming that in a minute,” I promised, a smirk toying with my lips before I lifted my hand and ran the ice cube down the side of her neck, making a shiver course through her body. I wasn't going to take it slow. I wasn't going to ease her into it. I wasn't going to do anything but drive her to the brink of utter oblivion as fast as was fucking possible. I wanted her creaming. I wanted her crying out loud enough for the neighbors to blush. I wanted her to beg.
I slid the ice cube over her chest then found her nipple and circled it, enjoying the hiss of breath out of her lungs. Her eyes were huge, surprised, turned on. I worked the one nipple until it was as tight and pointed as it could get before I moved toward the other which was already half-hardened in desire. Her body convulsed as I moved the ice toward the center of her chest, watching as the muscles just under the surface of her skin tensed at the sensation, making her body pull away initially before sinking into the feeling. I ran it across her hips, side to side, giving her a sly smile as I lowered myself down on my knees in front of her.
Cash (The Henchmen MC Book 2) Page 10