Her amused voice broke into his drive to satisfaction. “No tats?”
“Not yet. I want to plan them properly. No half-assed ink.” He’d planned a full work but the experience of his band mate Jace, who’d gone through agony to get his admittedly gorgeous dragon, had convinced him to go all-in or nothing. So far, not.
She traced her tongue around one nipple, leaving him frantic to feel all of her against all of him. He held on to his reason by a thread and decided to give as good as he got. Sex with Cyn was an erotic battleground with fulfillment at the end of the road. At least the temporary finish before the journey began again.
“So pretty,” he murmured, shifting his position so he could find his pants and a condom. Before he got there she slapped a packet into his hand. “And resourceful,” he said, completing his movement by relaxing back onto the floor. Shit, he’d buy her a decent carpet. This bastard burned his backside every time he shifted. Not that it would stop him.
He glanced around, grabbed a towel from a nearby chair and shoved it underneath his ass. As she giggled he sheathed himself one-handed and reached for her. Abruptly the giggling halted when he hooked a hand around her waist and pulled her closer none too gently. The sight of her, the way she’d teased him, he longed for her more than ever. Desperation seized him. “No more waiting. I’ve waited long enough.”
He had, far too long. When the tip of his cock touched her wet crease, he gave a small, involuntary sound, halfway between a grunt and a sigh. He met her gaze, her eyes dark and intent as his must be. No laughing, just mutual need. When he slid inside, his eyes rolled up but he stopped his sigh of pleasure in favor of a kiss when she bent to seal their mouths together.
This was what was missing, just this. Being inside her, the woman who—no, only the woman. No, stop. He’d made that mistake before, his enthusiasm dragging him from adventure to adventure until he left her behind.
Anywhere Cyn was felt like home. Especially this way, with his cock seated deep inside her pussy, her wetness bathing him, soaking his balls.
He plunged his cock and his tongue deep, letting sounds of appreciation fill his throat and bliss invade him. He’d stay here forever, as long as she did. Miss the concert tonight, everything. Nothing mattered more.
Even as the notion crossed his mind, automatically contradictions rose to battle the feeling. Always, always he had something else to do.
She finished the kiss, lifted her head. “Where are you, Riku?”
He smiled. “With you, right here.”
“And a million other places. I won’t share, lover.” She smiled back but the heat didn’t reach her eyes. “You know that. It’s me and me alone, or it’s you and all your stuff.”
“No contest. It’s you.” When he tightened his ass muscles and drove up, sure enough, the sensations returned. The soft, wet heat felt like nothing else, like nobody else and her smile morphed back into passion. Exactly where he wanted it.
They watched each other as they settled into a rhythm. All he wanted was to watch her come apart and then let her see him do the same thing. He didn’t like showing his lovers complete surrender but it had always been different with Cyn.
After half a dozen thrusts, he gritted his teeth. Her gentle, teasing voice floated over his head. “Oooh, do I see veneers?”
He laughed. “Fuck off, Cyn.” But her comment did the trick and the edge went off a little. Her laughter urged him on to stop her and after another push, she gasped, the sound cut off in a sudden rush of arousal.
She clutched him, gripped his shoulders and he relished the bite of pain when her nails bit into his flesh. Grasping her hips, he forced her down. “Take everything.”
Her breath caught in her throat and she sucked in air in little, throaty inhales. Oh shit, the only woman he knew who did that. He kissed her neck, licked the side of it, the sensitive part that made her sigh. She didn’t disappoint him.
Their cramped position on the floor, barely fitting between desk and wall, meant they had to move carefully or they’d jog the furniture and someone might come. Not that he cared but he guessed she might. Store managers weren’t supposed to spend their days fucking the customers. Even if they were Riku Shiraishi.
Fuck, he was so conceited these days. So fucking stupid. All that mattered was her and him—no, her. “Ah, Jesus, fuck, you’re killing me here.”
With a sigh of surrender she worked him, responded to his drives deep inside, plunged on him, slamming against his groin, stimulating his balls, while his cock happily rooted inside her. He went beyond words, until the precipice of his orgasm loomed in front of him.
Then he let go with a torrent of sound, wordless cries, while he shoved her hips down hard. A primitive need to come deep inside her seized his mind and body.
A rush of liquid heat flowed from his cock head, his spine, numbing every other part of his body. He held on.
Cold air flooded between them when she lifted herself off him. He heard the dull thump as he let his hands drop to the floor on either side of him and watched his chest heave in sharp spasms as he slowly regained his senses.
Cyn was already on her feet, dressing. He watched her cover her gorgeous shape, wished she didn’t have to. “I’ll just lie here and watch you.”
Her softened gaze caressed him and returned to his face. He felt her vision as if it was a living touch. “Get up and I’ll make you another cup of coffee.”
“If it’s as good as the first, I’m in.” With an effort he sat up then discovered it was easier to stand. Grabbing his T-shirt, he dragged it on. When he emerged he caught sight of a flash of gold from his hair as it swung over his cheek. “Still there, then,” he said. “If I’d left gold leaf on your floor would you have scraped it up and used it?”
She laughed. “Hoovered it up and thrown it away. I’m not that desperate, although gold prices are outrageous.”
He tried not to appear ruffled but he was in more than appearance. Cyn had completely and literally floored him and she was hopping around this office like a woman trying to avoid something.
Aha.
The deep connection they shared had slotted back into place with the effortless precision of cogs in a watch that someone had rewound after a long break.
Sadly, she was probably right to try to avoid the deeper link. Their trajectories lay in opposite directions, always had, and the sexual connection they had didn’t cover the flaws their relationship also held. They didn’t have the same ambitions. Still, why shouldn’t they have fun while he was in town?
The realization hit him like a wet gunnysack. He didn’t want fun. He wanted more.
Chapter Two
What the fuck had she done?
Fallen on an old boyfriend as if she’d starved for him and him alone. Maybe sometimes, when she was with somebody else she’d closed her eyes and imagined Riku fucking her, but that had always warned her that relationship had run its course. Sometimes one night was enough. But she’d never had her fill of her big man. Never would, as far as she knew. Now he knew too.
Fuck.
Trying hard not to mutter the curse word under her breath and clue him into her feelings, Cyn busied herself rinsing and refilling the glass coffeepot from the tap at the tiny sink. She fussed about filling the filter with fresh coffee. “What, no pods?” he murmured, sliding his arms around her waist and gently pulling her back against his warm body. He felt like nobody else. She’d know him in the cold and the dark by the barest touch.
“There’s a great store nearby selling fresh-ground coffee. If they thought I’d moved to pods it’d break their hearts.” The idea pulled her away from the intensity of what they’d just done. Not for the first time she longed for the convenience of a shower here. She’d have to look into it.
He drew a deep breath. “I missed that. Coffee doesn’t taste the same anywhere else but in New York.”
“Not even Los Angeles?” The band had been there and San Francisco on the first leg of their world tour.
She tried to ignore his burgeoning erection, currently pressing against her back. How could he want sex again, after the intensity of what they’d done? Or maybe it wasn’t intense to him. Maybe she’d experienced the devastating emotion of surrender on her own. “You can get mud here, same as anywhere else.”
He kissed the junction of her neck and shoulder. Cyn suppressed her responsive shudder. “We can’t. I mean it. I’ll give you coffee but we’ll take it through to the store. My manager’s overdue for her lunch break. I’ll have to give her a bonus or extra time off to compensate for it. I’m surprised she didn’t knock.”
“Would you have noticed?”
No. “Of course.”
He sighed, the breath whispering against her sensitized skin. “Sure. Let’s do the right thing.”
The water dripped steadily through the filter to fall as coffee in the pot. Its scent spread through the office, masking the headier aroma of lovemaking—no, sex. They’d had sex, Cyn told herself firmly. That was kind of the idea since she didn’t want this cup any more than she’d wanted the last one.
She moved to the side, gathering the cold leftovers and dumping them in the sink, busying herself rinsing the mugs.
He didn’t release her, only loosed his hold enough so she could move the amount necessary. “Are you coming to see Murder City Ravens?”
“Yes.” A small pause. She tried to lighten the atmosphere. “I want to hear what you’ve done with your expensive education.”
He chuckled. “Two conservatories couldn’t do it, so I did something else.”
“Couldn’t do what?”
“You know.”
She wasn’t sure. She wanted it spelled out. “No, I don’t. Do what?”
“Turn me into a concert pianist.”
His words shocked her so much she turned to face him, revealing her expression of disbelief. “Everywhere I read you’re the best keyboard and effects man in the world. Not to mention your achievements on guitar. How can not becoming a concert pianist bother you?”
“At one time it cost me everything.”
Afraid at the sudden intensity in his gaze, she quickly turned around again when the machine gurgled to a halt. She couldn’t face her emotions from that time, not this soon, not after she’d successfully rebuilt her life. “It cost you very little,” she said briskly. “Don’t pretend you’ve been yearning for me for the last—what is it?—eight years.”
He did release her then. “Didn’t you yearn for me?” He touched his heart, fluttering his lashes in a parody of a lovelorn maiden. “I’m devastated. Besides,” he added, reverting to normal, “it’s more like eight and a half years.”
She didn’t want to think about it because the truth? Yes, in a way, she had. She hadn’t put her sex life on hold like some lovelorn medieval princess, but she did compare every man to Riku and he usually came up wanting. Not fair, she knew it but she couldn’t help it. The way Riku had left her trembling after their unexpected bout of rampant fucking—she didn’t want him to know how much he still affected her. “It happens when you’re young.”
“We’re not exactly old yet.” He didn’t have to point that out, damn him. She’d been painfully inexperienced, when she’d met the wildly talented and just plain wild Riku.
She poured three mugs of coffee, careful to ensure her hand didn’t shake, and then moved to the small refrigerator to find the cream. Riku watched her but didn’t change his position.
After a swift check in the mirror, Cyn picked up two mugs and let Riku open the door for her. He’d taken the time to drag the knitted cap over his head, covering his distinctive hairstyle. It didn’t help to disguise his identity, not in her sight, but he must have gotten here somehow and she’d met him in the street with not a bodyguard in sight.
Maddy’s blue eyes widened when she saw it. “I knew I was right,” she said, in a voice scarcely above a whisper. “It’s him, isn’t it?”
Cyn exchanged a sparkling glance with Riku. “It’s him all right.”
“Shit!” The awed way she spoke said everything about her. “Wow. You really are something, you know?”
Riku raised a thin, black brow and she wondered if he plucked it or had it threaded. If she asked him he’d laugh and give her an honest answer. She loved that about him, the way he depressed pretension in people trying to embarrass him. He’d always done it. “We went to university together.”
“I never went to university,” he pointed out.
She shrugged. “The Creed Institute, then.” Everyone knew what it meant, in New York and worldwide. The Creed Institute only did one thing. Classical music and it was world famous for teaching and performing it.
Maddy gave Cyn an accusing glare before returning her attention to Riku. “You never told me you studied music.”
“Yeah. It didn’t work out for me.”
She might as well have said nothing. Leaving Riku to cope with his fan she went to help a customer deliberating over varieties of polished agates. She could still hear them. The agate display wasn’t far enough away.
She felt his gaze on her, the intensity so uncomfortable she had to force herself not to wriggle her shoulders. “You can get different colors by applying heat.” She smiled, desperately trying to concentrate. “No, we don’t do it, we buy the stones.”
It didn’t stop her hearing, “She was fantastic. Amazing. The best in her class, hell, the best in the school.”
“So why did she give it up?” came the inevitable question from Maddy.
“I have no idea.”
He didn’t, not really. She’d never told anybody. Never meant to either. “Yes,” she said, in response to the patron’s query. “The red ranges from palest pink to a deep garnet.” When she’d first seen the stones they’d suggested endless possibilities to her but now they looked like pieces of colored glass.
Impossible to concentrate on anything except the conversation going on behind her.
“Doesn’t she sing?”
“Sometimes but like the rest of us she sings hits andMurder City Ravens’ songs.” Oh, shit.
A pause before he said, “Interesting,” and she heard the smile in his voice.
“We’re coming to see you tonight. She never told me she knew you.”
No answer this time.
Cyn couldn’t stand it anymore. She took the red stones to the counter to wrap for the customer and left her browsing the other colors. “It was a long time ago.” She got between them and tried to sound noncommittal. “I met a lot of famous people at the institute. Most went into orchestras or the opera chorus.”
“You could’ve been one,” he said, no humor in his voice. “And you wouldn’t have joined the chorus.”
She shrugged for answer and turned to her customer, who’d chosen some black obsidian and a few blue topazes to go with her red quartz. Then she set to selling the findings. The shopper was new to the hobby. She’d probably shove the stuff to the back of a drawer when she got home, or try it and discover she liked it. Any which way it made a nice sale and kerchinged the afternoon nicely.
Then the woman peered at him closer and frowned. “You look just like—can’t remember his name—the wild one with that group—”
Cyn wouldn’t have pegged her for a Murder City Ravens fan. But these days, with the band appearing on chat shows and outside their comfort zone of arenas and concert halls, it was hard to keep track.
Riku smiled and behaved himself, saying yes, it was him and was she going to the Garden tonight? After some conversation and an autograph on the woman’s paper bag Cyn perked up. When the customer had left she leaned against the wall behind her, effectively trapping him in. “You don’t have to go yet, do you?”
She didn’t have to explain herself for Riku to get what she meant. A rueful laugh shook his big frame. “No, I guess not. You want me to earn my coffee, don’t you?”
>
And the rest, she thought, but she didn’t articulate it. He’d knocked her world sideways by appearing in front of her. She’d gotten herself into order, made something of her life and there he was again. Well she was a deal older now and she had no intention of letting him disturb her any more than he had already. The sex was spectacular, sure, but—
But nothing. The sex was phenomenal, out of this world, as if all he had to do was stick his dick in her pussy and she came. Not that they’d ever been in danger of doing that, except for their first time. As if the same artist had crafted them as a pair, made for each other. Their connection always went that way and she was sick of it. Perhaps, if she saw him again, she’d fuck his brains out and finally persuade herself he was nothing special, time to move on.
As if that had worked before.
“Take off your hat.”
Riku rolled his eyes but obeyed her. She couldn’t resist a “Good boy,” and got a pat on the butt for reward. Maddy didn’t see it, thank God, otherwise she’d never let Cyn forget it. Just as well she hadn’t caught on to what happened in the back room ten minutes ago.
The golden eagle gleamed in the deep-purple depths, a perfect, if gaudy, foil to its blazing magnificence. Some people arrived to take photos and others lined up.
In half an hour twenty people had called in and all bought something, mainly because Riku offered to sign their purchases, or the bags or tissue paper. He smilingly refused to scribble his moniker on random pieces of paper, or T-shirts, or anything unconnected with her store. Business was brisk, too much for conversation. Maddy cruised the store, chatting to customers about their choices. They sold more of the made-up jewelry than the loose stones and findings, unusual for this place, which was mainly for the craftsperson and sometimes for upmarket trade. “I have another store near the Metropolitan Museum that sells upmarket designer creations,” she said at one point.
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