“Morning,” Dover said when she tiptoed up at his side to peek at the coffee.
Harlow was so focused on the java that she almost missed him dipping to kiss her cheek. “Is it ready?”
“Couple more minutes,” he said, showing his amusement with a half-smile. “Nightingale’s a caffeine addict.”
“Oh, you have no idea,” she said and bent over, propping her elbows on the counter to watch the coffee drip through without even caring her panties were probably on show.
“Ryske is in the shower,” Noon offered. Harlow just huffed and kept watching the coffee. “Maze is at work.”
“Work?” she asked and straightened up to look at them. “Where does he work?”
Dover put an arm around her shoulders, so she slid hers around his waist. It was nice to have a broad, solid man to lean on before breakfast. “He does freelance tech support.”
Rolling her eyes, she yawned. “How come when you guys tell me things, I always get the feeling you’re not really saying what you’re saying?”
“Because you’re a smart girl, Nightingale,” Dover said and bowed to kiss the top of her head.
She flashed him a smile. “You smell good in the morning.”
Narrowing an eye on her, he feigned suspicion. “Hitting on me, babe?”
“Maybe after coffee,” she said and pushed away to stretch again. “I’m going to wash my face. Call me when the coffee’s ready.”
Heading out of the kitchen, she swung a left and went into the bathroom. Even though the shower was on and occupied, the door didn’t even pretend to be closed. The room was filled with steam. She’d guess Maze had been in too; Dover had sure smelled clean. This building had to have a great water tank to accommodate all the bodies that had to shower each day.
The mirror was fogged, but she leaned over the sink and used the arm of her shirt to wipe the mist away. Staying close, she checked her skin and picked out Ryske’s toothbrush to brush her teeth again. She had just finished and bowed to splash water on her face when she heard the whistle.
Peeking over her shoulder, she spotted Ryske in the shower. He’d swiped away some of the mist from the glass, and was looking out at her. “Morning, beautiful.”
“Good morning,” she said, turning to the mirror again, tucking her hair behind both ears. “I came to get washed.”
“Easiest to do that in here. I have water… and soap… and hands ready to lather you up…”
The man never missed an opportunity to make a move. “I’ll lather myself when you’re done.”
“Doubling up saves water,” he said. “You’ll get the full package with me.”
Harlow ignored him until the window he’d cleared of fog began to mist again. Guessing he’d gone back to his shower, she went for a quick pee and washed her hands.
In the shower, Ryske was muttering the words of a song she couldn’t figure out. She’d never have pegged him as the type to sing in the shower. She couldn’t remember him doing it at her place. Maybe this was a one off. Being trapped at Floyd’s would give her the chance to find out personal, maybe intimate things about Ryske, and the rest of his crew.
Whatever was going on between them, they just couldn’t seem to stop growing closer. Fate, or whatever higher power was screwing with them, seemed determined to keep Harlow in Ryske’s path. The man had his own gravitational field and she was caught in it.
Not that Ryske was averse to having her around. If she hadn’t put the brakes on the previous night, he’d have joined her in bed. The man was brazen, happy to take liberties with women, to make his interest known. There was no shame in him.
Wondering how often others matched his confidence or gave him a taste of his own medicine, Harlow thought it was time someone put him on the spot in return. Leaving the sink, she felt herself drawn closer to the oblivious man in the shower.
Hoping to take him by surprise, she turned on her discerning eye, and slid back the shower door. Ryske whipped around fast, but he wasn’t shocked to see her. A half-smile formed in time with the glow of a satisfied feral light in his gaze.
Lunging forward, he grabbed her wrist and yanked her into the water.
“Crash!” she shrieked.
Water cascaded through her hair and into her mouth, silencing her.
His fingers were already working on the buttons of her shirt while she sputtered the water from her lungs. “Oh, what a shame,” he said without an ounce of sincerity. “Your shirt is wet, Trink. Let me help you with that.”
He peeled it from her shoulders and lobbed the sopping lump of fabric into the far corner. She’d taken off her bra in bed last night, and he didn’t waste any time cupping her breasts or bowing to kiss them.
“No,” she said when he hooked his thumbs into her panties and bent to draw them down her legs. Though she’d objected, she held his shoulders for balance as he guided her feet out of them. “I don’t like shower sex.”
Throwing the panties up over the top of the shower stall, they landed somewhere in the bathroom far out of her reach.
“You haven’t done it with the right guy,” he said, taking her hips to back her up against the wall.
Ryske tried to find her mouth, but she tilted her head out of the way, so he settled for her neck instead. “I’m not doing it with you either. Showers are for washing, not for sex.”
“I said I’d take care of that for you too,” he said, grabbing a bottle of his shower gel to lather the soap between his hands, which he proceeded to run over her body.
“Ryske,” she said, trying to sound unimpressed.
The amount of time he spent on her breasts and ass made her want to laugh. He was like a kid getting his first chance to play with the toy that had been wrapped under the tree and out of his reach for a month.
“Want to wash your hair too?”
As if to distract her, he thrust a bottle of shampoo into her hands. It wasn’t her usual brand; it wasn’t a brand she recognized at all. Harlow was still reading the label when she noticed Ryske pouring more soap into his hands.
“Ryske,” she said again because her body was more than clean.
Ryske didn’t heed her tone, he just leaned in to kiss her and went on soaping her body. The length of his intimidating erection hung between them. Her gaze snagged on it when he returned to watching his hands run across her body. Harlow swallowed away her trepidation. If he tried to come anywhere near her with that in here, there would definitely be an accident.
Deciding to distract herself with the shampoo and to let him keep soaping her as it kept his hands busy, Harlow washed her hair and let the suds wash away. It only took a few minutes and she thought when the soapy foam was gone, they’d both be finished.
Ryske had other ideas and pinned her to the wall instead. “Now, let me show you how a real man does it,” he mumbled in her ear and scooped her sopping hair out of the way to close his mouth around the curve of her neck where it met her shoulder.
Opening her hands on the wall that was holding her up, she didn’t want to encourage him. “Shower sex is dangerous. With your luck, if you try it, you’ll fall and crack your skull.”
“Not this hard head, baby,” he said, his hand snaked down from her breast to cup her between her thighs.
Sliding a finger through her folds, he circled her opening then curled his digit to begin stroking her clit. “I said no,” she whispered.
Her head fell back against the tiled wall and her eyes closed. She said the words, but there was no conviction in them.
“I heard you, Trink,” he murmured and kissed her jaw. “God, you tease me.”
Rolling her head on the wall in a lazy shake, her resolve weakened. “No.”
“No?” he said and trailed his lips down to her neck. “To me… or the tease?”
Harlow couldn’t think straight. Being so close to him felt so good. Being touched by him… “No,” she said again and his finger slid into her. A long breath of euphoria slipped from her lips. “Oh, damn you, Cr
ash.”
“Feel good?”
Harlow could hardly manage to listen, but she forced herself to respond. “Mm.”
“I promised to make you feel good, didn’t I, baby?”
His lips touched hers, just for a second, while his hand still managed to work her clit and finger fuck her at the same time. “I’m mad at you. I said no sex.”
“This isn’t full sex.”
The smile in his voice betrayed how she amused him, but she couldn’t open her eyes to see it. Semantics gave her an out. “Your hand can have sex with me,” she said, moaning and moving with his touch. “Oh, fuck, you’re good at that.”
“My mouth’s good at it too,” he said. “My tongue will feel better down there.”
As if to convince her, he kissed her again, this time slipping his tongue between her lips, giving her a sample of the delights her pussy could look forward to if she let him loose. His hand didn’t miss a beat and she was right on the edge of orgasm, so close that she was beginning to lose the ability to refuse him anything.
“You both in there?”
The third voice shattered her haze and made Harlow gasp and shove at Ryske’s chest, separating them.
For a few seconds, she couldn’t remember what had been happening. With wide eyes she blinked left and right trying to convince herself that she hadn’t actually just been caught in flagrante delicto.
“Noon, fuck off,” Ryske said, sliding a hand up the wall and leaning in again, pressing her to the tile.
Harlow shook her head and pushed at him. Losing herself to him hadn’t been her intention when she’d slid open the stall. His friend had done her a favor by bringing her back to her senses.
It sounded like Noon was peeing. “One bathroom, man,” he said.
These men didn’t seem to have any boundaries. But she couldn’t judge them given where she was and what she’d been about to do. Resting her forehead on the heel of her hand, she couldn’t believe common sense had abandoned her.
“One girl, and she’s mine,” Ryske responded to the man beyond their glass walls.
Noon laughed. “Don’t see anyone fighting you for her,” he said and flushed.
“Won’t keep her long if you bastards force me to neglect her needs.”
Harlow nudged him away when he tried to reach for her again. “I’ll take care of my own needs.”
Ryske groaned. “Oh, I’d love to see that, Trinket. Promise me a front row seat?”
She just scowled at him, but he grinned.
Noon interrupted again. “Dover said to tell you the coffee’s ready, Nightingale.”
She took a step backward toward the open shower door. “Baby, come on,” Ryske said, snagging her wrist.
Harlow shook her head. “I can’t,” she whispered, begging him to let her go.
Sealing his lips to take a deep breath through his nose, he reached back over his shoulder to slide his towel off the top of the screen behind him. Handing it over to her, he was careful not to get it wet in the spray.
“You’ll enjoy it with me, Trink,” he said and winked while she wrapped herself in the towel. “Soon.”
There were no rules in this abode. The unrestricted movement and open living shocked her less than her own fickleness with Ryske. It was a bad idea. A good idea. She said stop then encouraged him. Ryske wanted her and she was attracted to him. What were they doing? Where was this going?
Harlow didn’t believe in giving a man mixed signals. She liked to be open and honest and believed in communication. But Ryske was… she didn’t know what the hell she was doing with him.
She was tucking the corner of the towel between her breasts when she left the stall. Noon was brushing his teeth and bobbed his brows at her as she crossed to the door. Harlow offered him a tight smile and kept on walking.
28
Dover was still in the kitchen when Harlow got there. The first thing she saw when she rounded the fridge was him holding up a steaming mug of black coffee. She might have kissed him if his expression hadn’t morphed to confusion.
“Take a shower?”
“Something like that,” she said and accepted the coffee. Dover sat at the breakfast bar and pressed some buttons on a tablet laid there to open a news app. “I should call work.”
“Maze is going to check that out. He’s been in their system. You’ve been marked as being on personal leave this week.”
Whatever this week had been, it wasn’t personal leave, and she hadn’t requested it. Trying to figure out why her boss would put something like that on an official record when it wasn’t true, Harlow kept drinking her coffee.
Noon appeared around the corner from the bathroom. “When you’re dressed, I’ll take you over to your place to pick up your stuff,” he said.
She hadn’t expected to get a chance to go to her apartment, and looked at Dover, expecting him to object. It took Dover a second to register the silence. He raised his eyes from his app to see her waiting for his reaction.
“The rule is you’re not allowed to go anywhere without one of us,” Dover said and must have seen her surprise deepen. “You didn’t like the idea of being stuck in here twenty-four seven… don’t think I would either.”
Rushing around the breakfast bar, she hugged Dover as tight as she could without putting down her coffee. She’d still rather have her independence and would fight for it any chance she got. But being protected by Ryske’s crew was nothing like being locked up by Hagan.
“You watch those wandering hands of his, Trink.”
Ryske’s voice made her straighten from the hug, but it was Noon’s groan that made her turn around. “Do you gotta wave that thing around?”
In his full naked glory, Ryske went to the coffee machine, but found the pot almost empty, so he came over to take her cup. Dover didn’t seem to notice, or at least he didn’t care about, Ryske’s nudity.
“You’ve got to be used to seeing it by now,” Dover muttered, going back to reading a story on his app. “Nightingale, you’ll find out there’s not a lot of boundaries around here.”
Apparently not. “I haven’t found one yet,” she said.
“There is one,” Ryske said, drinking from her mug. “An important one.”
“One?” she asked, taking the mug when he gave it back to her. “Where?”
Using his body to push her against the curved edge of the breakfast bar, he slipped a hand between the flaps of her towel. “A threshold not to be crossed… Right here.”
His fingertips just touched her pussy. Smacking both her hands to his chest, she shoved him back. “Whoa,” she said.
“A boundary for them, not a boundary for me,” he said, trying to reach for her, but she slapped his hand away.
“I’m going to get changed,” Harlow said, pinning a glare on him.
Ever confident, Ryske grinned at her.
Everything he did seemed designed to seduce or tease her. He might have touched her in intimate places, but that didn’t mean she wanted him to pick up where he left off with his friends watching.
Leaving the kitchen, she took her coffee into the room deemed the closet. It was a huge space, at least seventeen feet by twelve. Although it had once been intended as a bedroom, it wasn’t one anymore. There were racks of clothes and drawers, with overflowing hampers and a scattering of cufflinks and watches by the only mirror in the place.
It was a messy room, even the area rug was crooked. The filing cabinets were closed, but there were files piled on top and a mess of paperwork on the desk, which seemed to also be hiding a computer and printer. The couch in front of the closets faced into the room; it had a scattering of clothes on it too. These men weren’t poster boys for cleaning up after themselves.
The only way Harlow would have any chance of finding something clean to wear was to go searching through the drawers. Usually, she’d find such an invasion of someone else’s privacy distasteful. But when it was that or go outside in a towel, she’d pick the former every time.
Putting her coffee on top of one of the dressers, she began to peek in drawers. Leaving the underwear alone, she didn’t think there was any need for her to put on boxer-briefs, which seemed to be the choice of each man.
Shoes would be a problem. She’d have to wear her heels from last night.
“Your dress is right here.”
Turning away from the drawer she was exploring, Harlow discovered Ryske by the door, still naked, but holding up her dress.
“I don’t want to see that thing ever again,” she said, thinking she should’ve retrieved her bra from next to Ryske’s bed.
Heading for the door to do just that, she expected him to step aside, but he didn’t, which forced her to stop and meet his eye. “What I told you last night… Anwen and I, it was… complicated.” Raising his curled fingers to her jaw, he traced them across her skin, but she tilted her head away from his caress. “That doesn’t change this.”
“Doesn’t it?” she asked, taking his wrist to guide his hand away from her face. “You were honest with me, but… there’s something I didn’t tell you.”
Though his expression became more serious, he didn’t back off. “Nothing you could say would change how I feel about you, Trink.”
She believed him. Even knowing that he lied for a living, she didn’t believe he was insincere about his attraction to her. “This isn’t about our feelings… about us… it’s…”
His frown deepened and he shook his head once. “I don’t…”
“Ophelia,” she said. “She’s in love with you.”
The tension left him at the same time as the concern seeped away; he cupped her head, her ear in the crook between his thumb and forefinger. “She’s not your competition, Trink. That slap, it was part of the con. She wants her brother to think we’re together, she had to act jealous. I want to rile her brother, to provoke a reaction… I want him on a hair trigger with me, that’s why—”
Go With It (A Go Novel Book 1) Page 26