Busted (Barnes Brothers #3)

by Shiloh Walker

She was watching him, his face, the way his blue green eyes went dark, then started to blaze hotter as she dragged the zipper down and tugged at the waistband.

  The hunger was eating her alive and she didn’t give a damn about the ink, didn’t care, she just wanted to get him out of those damn jeans—absently she flicked a glance over at his hip.

  Ressa stopped. Cocked her head as she studied it.

  “Is that like . . . a warning or are you bragging?” She slid him a sly look as she stroked her finger over the number inked onto him and to her delight, a faint blush crept over his face.

  He snorted and then, as a laugh spilled out of her, he reversed their positions. “You can’t mean to tell me you aren’t familiar with that number,” he said, pressing his mouth to her neck and then moving lower.

  “Well. Maybe. Although I was kinda hoping you were . . . advertising.” She groaned as his tongue slid along the scalloped lace edge of her bra. His fingers danced along her side, moving lower and lower until she was arching up against him. More . . . “Are you telling me that you tattooed 9¾ on yourself because you’re a Harry Potter fan?”

  “Well, you tattooed a robot on your ass.” He flicked at the catch between her breasts and she caught her breath as he sat up, straddling her thighs. “I figure you don’t have much to say about my Harry Potter tattoo.”

  “I . . .” She had a comeback for that. Really. But in the next moment, her brain went blank and her lashes drifted down. Long-fingered, skilled hands cupped her breasts and she instinctively arched into his touch. Her hands came up to cover his, a whimper falling from her lips. “Trey . . .”

  The bed shifted under her and she opened her eyes just in time to see him bending down. She didn’t quite manage to muffle her cry as he caught one nipple in his mouth.

  * * *

  Her hands cupped his face and she held him like the thought of him stopping would just absolutely end her. Trey could have told her there was nothing to worry about there—the need inside him was a vicious scream. Take take take . . .

  No. He wasn’t going to rush this. He focused on the scent of her skin, the way her hands tangled in his short hair, the way she arched close, like she couldn’t stand any sort of distance between them.

  Stretching his body out against hers, he slid one hand down and cupped her, pressing the heel of his palm against her. She was wet—he could feel it through the silk of her panties. His cock gave a hard, demanding jerk.

  “Please . . . just . . . will . . . Trey!” Broken words, none of them connecting or making sense, fell from her lips, but the hunger behind them, that he understood.

  Trey pushed himself to his knees, ripping his shirt off and throwing it away. Then he caught the bra that was still tangled around her shoulders, tugging it away before he hooked his hands in the panties that rode low over the sweet swell of her hips. “Condoms. Where?”

  She blinked, her gaze unfocused, hot. Then she pushed to her elbows, her tongue sweeping out to wet her lips as she looked around. “My bag. I don’t . . .”

  He shoved off the bed and spotted the deep purple leather lying a few feet from the door. He snagged it and was back on the bed in seconds. She caught it in her hands and upended it with an urgency that might have made him smile if he hadn’t been tempted to start pawing through everything that came tumbling out.

  She caught a strip of foil in her hand and he tore it from her. Then, with a quick sweep of his arm, he swept as much of the stuff from the bed as he could. “I’ll apologize for that . . . later,” he promised.

  “Like I care. Just hurry.” Her eyes roamed over his body and he could feel it almost as if she’d been touching him with her hands.

  Then she was and that made his hands shake. He fumbled with the strip of condoms, managed to tear one off and then tossed the rest near the head of the bed. She scraped her thumbnails over his nipples and he swore, feeling that touch echo all the way down to his balls. As her hands moved higher, he shoved the condom packet in his mouth and shoved his jeans and boxers down, hands unsteady.

  “What’s this . . .” A low, husky murmur escaped her as she slid one palm over the black head of the raven that curved along the top of his shoulder.

  He ripped open the rubber, tossed the foil down. “We can talk tattoos later, darlin’.” He didn’t think he’d fumbled with a condom that much since his first time, but he finally managed, and then he tumbled her back down onto her back, cupping her face in his hands.

  Hurry, hurry, hurry . . .

  His hands shook and that feeling of losing control, of panic, seemed to edge closer. As he slanted his mouth over hers, he settled between her thighs. She brought her knees up, rocked against him. “This is crazy,” she said, her mouth moving against his.

  “I’m fine with crazy.” Then he reached down, caught her knee.

  She slid one hand between them, wrapped her hand around his cock. The feel of her hand on him shoved some of the panic back—he wrapped his hand around hers, squeezed until she tightened her grip and then he thrust into her hand, practically mindless.

  “If you make me wait much longer, I’m going to hurt you,” she said, her voice cutting through the fog.

  The laugh that ripped out of him was half-need, half-desperation.

  Tucking the head of his cock to the heart of her, he held his breath. Then, a shudder rolled through him. He could feel her, and it was the sweetest thing. He could feel her heat, and how wet she was, how hot—slowly, as his nerves bled away, he sank inside.

  She closed around him, a snug, hot fist. When he pulled back, then surged back in, she gripped him tighter and tighter, milking him in a taunting, tormenting way.

  “Aw, hell . . .” He caught a fistful of the duvet in his hand, clenched it while his balls drew tighter and tighter against his body.

  She surged against him and he felt the tight buds of her nipples dragging across his chest. Half-blind, he shifted until he could catch one of her breasts in his free hand, then he pushed it up. She filled his hand to overflowing, her nipple plump, and when he caught it in his mouth and bit down, she shrieked and bucked against him, pressing him tighter and tighter.

  Control splintered, shattered.

  * * *

  Ressa couldn’t breathe.

  He shifted back up and caught her mouth with his, demanding and hungry, damn near ruthless and she couldn’t get enough and she couldn’t breathe—

  Tearing her mouth away, she turned her face to the side, panting.

  “I can’t . . .” He tugged her face back to his, his teeth scraping along her lip. “I can’t breathe . . .”

  “Do you have to? Kiss me, Ressa.” His voice was a rumble against her lips and she opened for him with a sigh.

  Who needed oxygen?

  Even the small bit she’d managed to pull inside her evaporated as he stroked inside her, so deep, so hard—he filled her to the hilt, and then even after he’d buried himself within her, he flexed his hips, like it wasn’t enough. It had him rubbing against her clit. Desperate for more, she worked herself closer and shuddered around him as hot little shivers started to race through her.

  Blood pulsed, hot and thick, through her veins, and every beat of her heart drew her tighter, pulled her even deeper into the need. He pulled out, slow, lingering—it was as though he couldn’t stand the thought of not being inside her, and then, as he surged forward, she felt the pulse of his cock. It had her heart stuttering and her skin started to feel too small to hold everything she had inside her. Again, as he buried himself completely inside, he flexed his hips, held there—that light friction against her clit was too much.

  When he started to pull out, she caught his hips, her nails digging into his ass as she worked herself against him. “Don’t . . . just . . . ahhh . . .” Blind to everything but the orgasm rising inside her, she held him within her and then, as it started to explode through her, he snarled.

  When he started to move this time, she couldn’t stop him.

  There was
nothing slow and lingering about his movements now. Hard, brutal, fast—and even as she started to drift down from the vicious pleasure of her first orgasm, another slammed into her.

  Without even having the breath to scream, she clung to him as he stiffened over her.

  Trey . . .

  His name echoed through her. Even when she didn’t have the breath to speak it, even when she didn’t have the ability to think past the pleasure, that simple thought remained.

  Trey . . .

  * * *

  Ranged out over her trembling, damp body, Trey barely had the energy to keep some of his weight braced on his elbows. It was enough that he wasn’t crushing her into the mattress, but that was all he had in that moment.

  He couldn’t move.

  His mind was just . . . not there.

  He could almost imagine it had completely shut off. Ressa curled her arms around him and stroked a hand up his back.

  He shivered a little as her fingers traced the raven.

  “I saw you.”

  He tensed at the words.

  “What?”

  “Running.” She slid a hand up his spine. “I’ve got a confession to make, Trey. I’ve been half in lust with you from the first time you walked into the library and I’d just watch for you . . .” She pressed the flat of her hand to his spine.

  He focused on the touch, his skin prickling under her hands. His mind tried to spin away on him and he lashed it down, focused. The guilt—the guilt he’d half expected earlier—tried to rise up and bite him on the ass and he set his jaw.

  “Trey?”

  Her voice was sleepy, but even he could hear the concern in it.

  He reached behind him and caught her hand, twining their fingers. Pressing the back of her palm to his thigh, he forced his mind to work, focused on her words and not on the mess inside him.

  “You saw me out running,” he murmured. He found himself smiling, to his utter shock, over the insanity of it. “I was there because I wanted to see you.”

  He felt her reaction in the way her hand tightened on his. Slowly, he levered his weight away from her and sat up. With his back to her, he smiled over his shoulder at her.

  Ressa followed suit, settling behind him with her naked breasts to his back. “Is that a fact?”

  He dragged in a breath and caught a headful of her scent—it was on him now, all over him and just that simple thought was enough to have his cock twitching.

  “Yeah.” She eased back and ran a hand down the tattoo. “I was almost positive it was you. I saw this tattoo and that just drove me a little more crazy than I already was.”

  She pressed her mouth to his shoulder.

  He closed his eyes, felt her tugging her hand free of his. But when she went to scrape her nails over his lower belly, he stood up. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said gruffly.

  A minute later, locked alone in the bathroom, he discarded the condom in the trash and washed his hands. Then, hands braced on the counter, he stared at his reflection in the mirror.

  His face was pale, eyes darker than normal.

  Son of a bitch.

  Closing his eyes, he blew out a breath and braced himself, waiting for the rush of guilt to return. But it didn’t.

  Instead, there was . . . relief. And that crazy, desperate need he’d felt almost from the first moment he’d laid eyes on Ms. Ressa Bliss.

  Chapter Eleven

  “It’s a raven.”

  Trey lay sprawled facedown on her bed.

  There was a box with a few bits of crusts and one half-eaten slice of pizza. They’d destroyed the better part of a bottle of wine. Okay, she had destroyed the better part of a bottle wine. He’d taken half of a glass, and she couldn’t say for sure if he’d even taken a sip of it.

  And out of the five rubbers she’d had with her, there was only one left.

  It was one in the morning and both of them were exhausted but she couldn’t sleep. The burning edge of hunger had eased, yet she couldn’t sleep.

  Didn’t want to sleep.

  Bent over his back, she took her time studying the amazing beauty of the raven on his back. The eye was red, glinting with a wicked light that spoke of omens and warnings. Save for the eye and the beak, just about everything else was black and the raven took up just about all of Trey’s back, its head tucked against his shoulder, curved, as though he was looking up at the man, wings outspread.

  “Ding, ding, ding,” he said.

  She slapped his butt. Then, because his butt was yet another work of art, she squeezed. “Why a raven? Another literary thing?”

  “Quoth the raven.” He popped one eye open and smiled. “One of my brothers does tattoos.”

  “Hmmm. I know. Zach.” She leaned forward and grinned down at him, but he seemed too busy looking at her breasts. When he finally looked up and met her eyes, he looked abashed, but she just winked at him. “I know who he is. I have that TV series on Blu-ray. Love it.”

  Trey groaned and buried his face in the pillow. “If you tell me you’re one of his zealots, I’m leaving.”

  “No.” She laughed, all too familiar with what he was talking about. Over the past few years, Zach had developed a huge following on Facebook. They called themselves Zach’s Zealots and they followed him with a zeal that would have driven Trey nuts. Zach ignored them—completely. He had cut himself out of Hollywood like that part of his life had never existed.

  “Did he really tell a TV show producer that he kept the bodies of ex-girlfriends in a freezer?”

  “Probably,” Trey said, his voice still muffled. “I don’t ask because it just feeds into his crazy. He doesn’t need that, trust me.”

  Ressa chuckled, amused by the idea. “So . . . did he do this?”

  “Yeah.” He turned his head back toward her, popping one eye open. “Zach nagged all of us, kept telling us he needed the experience and shit, but honestly, I think he just liked making us bleed then charging us money for it. I figured if I was going to do it, I’d make sure it would be something that was important. Poe and Potter—those are the kind of stories that turned me into a storyteller.”

  She studied his face. “When did you know you wanted to be a writer?”

  “Always.” His lids drooped lower again, a soft sigh escaping. “I’d been jotting stories down in notebooks for pretty much forever. Didn’t do much with it until . . . college.”

  The pause was long enough that she knew there was something else he’d been planning to say, but he’d stopped himself. Stretching herself out at his side, still absently tracing the raven with her fingers, she watched him. “It had something to do with your wife, didn’t it?”

  His back rose and fell and then he levered up on his elbows, a faint smile twisting his lips. “Yeah. Something.” Then he shrugged. “Pretty much everything.”

  He rolled around and sat up, presenting her with his back. It was a nice view and maybe under other circumstances, she would have enjoyed the view of the tattoo, but she wanted to kick herself. She pushed herself to her knees and crawled to him, settling down with her front pressed to his back. Sliding her arms around him, she pressed her lips to his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you sad. I should have left it alone.”

  “It’s okay.” He covered her hands with his. “You didn’t make me sad. I just . . . I don’t want to think about this tonight.” His body tensed. “I should probably go.”

  Common sense told her it was a good idea. But she shoved common sense into a tiny closet in the back of her mind.

  He turned his head to look at her.

  It was so easy to just lean in, kiss him. It was a soft kiss, soft . . . gentle. Tender enough to make her heart ache. She brought one hand up and murmured against his mouth, “Stay.”

  * * *

  Dawn came in like a golden ribbon through the curtains when he woke. It didn’t matter that he’d been up way too late. By his internal clock, Trey had overslept and even though he knew Clayton wasn’t going to come
in looking for breakfast, his body was already awake.

  A warm, female body was pressed against his and he closed his eyes, let himself enjoy it for another moment before he let himself start to think.

  He could do one of two things. She was still sleeping, so he could leave.

  Or . . .

  There wasn’t much thought required to make his decision.

  One night and she was already an addiction.

  As she continued to sleep, he slid under the covers, his mouth tracing over the curves he’d committed to memory last night. There was strength here. Strength and beauty and softness, so much it made him ache for more, and more.

  He caught one nipple—already tight—in his mouth. She curled an arm around his neck, mumbling, not entirely awake but getting there. But when she would have tugged him closer, he moved lower, his lips skimming along the slight curve of her belly, her hipbone, the crease of her thigh.

  “This is one hell of a wake-up call.”

  Catching the covers in one hand, he slid his gaze up over her body, staring at her in the dim light. Her eyes were still closed. He smoothed his palm along the outer curve of her thigh, watched as her chest hitched—and the way it caused her breasts to move. Warm, smooth brown skin, her nipples just a few shades darker. His mouth watered as he rubbed his lips against her pubis.

  Her hands tangled in his hair.

  “You keep teasing me like that, boy, and we’re gonna . . .”

  He laughed softly, although the feel of her, the scent of her already had his cock throbbing. “It’s not teasing so much as . . . wanting.”

  She arched against him. “Please.”

  He opened his eyes, saw her staring at him.

  There was naked need in her eyes. Naked need, naked trust.

  With a groan, he lowered his mouth to the mound of her sex. He opened her with one long, slow lick and the taste of her had him growling, jerking her closer, one hand going under her to lift her tight against him.

  “Trey—”

  It was a harsh, choked cry, her hands clutching at him. He barely even heard her over the rush and roar of blood in his ears. Not enough. Nowhere near—