Forbidden Lust: 3 (Lust for Life)

by Jayne Kingston

  Leni, who’d released her and turned to see what Eva was staring at, turned back and quietly said, “I’ll bet you can’t wait until he’s out of your hair.”

  Eva looked at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “You haven’t heard?” She winced. “Maybe I’m not supposed to say anything.”

  “Well if you’re not supposed to, then you definitely have to tell me.”

  Leni hesitated, then nodded toward the tent where food and drinks were spread out buffet style. They were waylaid several times by friends and family greeting Eva and wanting to hug the bride, but eventually they got drinks and found a relatively quiet corner where they could talk.

  “The guys had another meeting about the new shop a couple of weeks ago,” Leni started. “They want to open the new place as quickly as possible, but they were worried they wouldn’t be able to find someone from Chicago to be the anchor artist.”

  After Leo had fallen in love with Joy, whose roots were firmly planted in Chicago, the guys had decided to open a second Lust for Life in the Windy City rather than dissolve their partnership with Leo. Leo, who’d been the shop’s manager and head body piercer, had in turn decided he was going to live mainly in Chicago but keep his house in Toledo since he planned to come back frequently for work and family.

  “So they decided Oz was going to be the one who would move.” Eva glanced over to where he was still talking with her brothers.

  Whatever he’d said made Jamie and Diego throw their heads back and laugh, but, in typical Oscar fashion, he barely cracked more than a small smile. Funny how Eva didn’t feel much like smiling either, and she really didn’t like the way the news he was going to leave made her feel a little sick instead of happy.

  “Good for him,” Eva said, tearing her gaze away and forcing herself to look at Leni.

  Leni’s eyes narrowed. “That is so not the response I was expecting.”

  Eva shrugged. “He’s never been able to stay in one place more than a few years. Maybe Chicago is where he’ll finally find his roots.”

  He certainly hadn’t found them in New Orleans, where he’d lived for a couple of years after he’d graduated high school. He hadn’t found them in Colorado or Washington or New Mexico or California either.

  God she was lame for knowing everywhere he’d lived over the years.

  Leni was smiling. “Maybe someone doesn’t hate Oscar as much as she thinks?”

  “Oh I hate him,” Eva assured her. Hated him for humiliating her the way he had the night before. She sipped her soda and turned her back toward him. “It’s hard to feel all warm and fuzzy for someone who’s gone out of his way to make my life miserable.”

  “He’s pretty much left you alone since he let you out of your apprenticeship, hasn’t he?” Leni asked with a tilt of her head.

  She snorted derisively. “Yeah, you could say that. We went from a two-year-long boot camp in hell to him barely speaking a fucking word to me unless he has to.”

  “Jamie says he went easy on you.”

  Eva shot her an incredulous look. “Easy? I was nothing but his unpaid errand girl for months. He didn’t let me tattoo anyone for ages. By the time he put a tattoo machine in my hand and actually let me work on someone, I was so nervous I almost choked.”

  “But you did it, right?” There was a sparkle in her eyes. She was enjoying this.

  “Damn right I did,” Eva said, unable to hold back a smile.

  “And now your books are full how many weeks in advance?”

  Eva narrowed her eyes. “You’ve made your point.”

  Looking beyond Eva, Leni straightened. “My husband is summoning me,” she said, kissed Eva on the cheek, and walked away.

  Confused by the abrupt end to their conversation, Eva turned to watch Leni hustle away and came face-to-face with Oscar. “Oh fuck me,” she muttered.

  Her fight-or-flight instinct kicked in and she tried to step around him.

  “Wait.” One word, spoken without force, made her stop in her tracks. With her stomach a riot of butterflies and her face burning with embarrassment, Eva waited.

  “I know you’re angry about last night, and I don’t blame you,” he said, and damn if she didn’t feel her temper come down a couple of degrees.

  She shook her head, unable to look at him. “I can’t do this, Oscar.”

  He leaned into her line of sight. “Do what?”

  She looked up into his dark eyes, which were more freshly brewed coffee than solid onyx in the bright afternoon sun. “I can’t be your whipping post anymore.”

  She stepped around him and headed for the house. She had plenty more to say, but she was not going to stand there and hash it out in front of everyone. Yes, it would have been satisfying to rip him a new asshole, but she was exhausted. It was too much, not knowing from one time to the next if he was going to pretend she didn’t exist, or if he was going to say or do something that would make her angry.

  It was time to stop letting him get to her the way he did. Cut off his power by the goddamn balls. Let him go to Chicago. Good fucking riddance.

  Eva made her way to the bathroom on the second floor and locked herself in. She closed the toilet seat, sat down and pushed the pristine white curtain aside so she could look out the short window that in turn looked down on the backyard.

  She could see Jamie and Leni taking their places under one of the white tents her father kept for big family gatherings. She needed to be down there. She needed to be around her brother and sister-in-law so she could draw off their happiness. But on top of being absolutely drained from lack of sleep, she was also miserable over how much she’d wanted Oscar to show up the night before and prove he hadn’t been lying.

  Because she wanted him despite the way he treated her. Desperately.

  From the moment she’d come to realize boys were more than just handy for showing her how to ride a skateboard or choke up on a bat so she could hit her first home run, she’d had the worst crush her brother’s quiet, gorgeous best friend.

  Eva got a washcloth from the linen cupboard and ran it under cold water. She dabbed her heated face without smudging her eye makeup, gave herself a stern look in the mirror and forced herself to open the bathroom door.

  “You don’t know what I was going to say,” Oscar said, bracing his hands on the doorframe, leaving no room for her to pass.

  He caught the door when she tried to close it and stepped inside. Instantly enraged, she opened her mouth to say something, but the door shut with a sharp click, surprising her into silence. And then his hands were on her, one on her waist and the other on the back of her neck and holy mother of the little baby Jesus he was kissing her.

  For a long moment nothing existed but his hands, his warm, soft mouth and those liquid-sin eyes looking deep into hers. Slowly, she became aware of the rushing sound of her pulse in her ears and the trembling that had started low in her belly.

  She felt the tip of his tongue and her mouth opened for him as if it had a mind entirely of its own. A whimper rose out of her throat and his dark eyes drifted shut dreamily as he dove deep into the kiss.

  Eva wrapped her arms around his neck, wanting him to go deeper each time his tongue tangled with hers then retreated in a slow, deliciously agonizing tease. Her entire body had ignited the instant he’d touched her. She couldn’t get close enough to the sinewy hardness of him, couldn’t be held tight enough by his strong arms, get enough of the heady smell of him or, God help her, the taste of his gorgeous mouth.

  She was aware they were moving and then she was pinned between the edge of the vanity and his body. His cock, which was just as hard as the rest of him, pressed into her belly. Eva could feel her panties getting soaked through as the instant throbbing in her clit caused her pussy to go hot and wet and open for him.

  She let go of the death grip she had on him and raised herself up to sit on the edge of the counter, parted her knees and wrapped her legs around his like some kind of wanton hussy. His arm wrapped
tighter and lower around her waist and his cock pressed against her clit, making her gasp sharply and thrust against him.

  Now, her body was screaming. This man, right this very fucking minute, Eva.

  He broke free from her mouth with a gasp and pressed his hot forehead to hers. She shuddered as if he’d trailed his fingers up her spine when he whispered her name.

  “We can’t do this here in my parents’ bathroom,” she told him weakly, because she wanted to do all kinds of this to him, right then and there.

  His head shook almost imperceptibly. “We can’t do this at all.”

  She leaned back and waited until he opened his eyes.

  “Then what was the point of that kiss?” she asked quietly, her eyes burning with the threat of frustrated tears. He could not let her down again. She wouldn’t survive it.

  “This isn’t why I followed you up here,” he said, trailing the backs of his long fingers over her cheek, his gaze traveling over her face as if he was memorizing her. “I only wanted to apologize.”

  “Good apology,” she said, going for light, but her stomach had gone sick again.

  He spoke her name once more, his head moving slowly from side to side as he put some space between their bodies without moving completely away. He licked his lips, drew in a deep breath, let it back out in a long, slow, controlled exhalation. “I only wanted to make you understand.”

  She found great satisfaction in the fact that he seemed to be having just as hard a time getting control of himself as she was.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she droned, rolling her eyes. “You want me but you shouldn’t have me because you’re old, or some bullshit like that.” She shrugged and glanced pointedly at his erection, still straining against the front of his jeans. “You probably can’t keep up with me anyway, so it’s a good idea if you quit while you’re ahead.”

  He looked mildly incredulous, then that damn dimple appeared and he graced her with one of his rare smiles. Her heart knocked erratically against the inside of her rib cage and sent a new, powerful surge of tingling through her nipples and her clit.

  He took her face in his hands. “Eva Rodriguez, I do believe you are the devil.”

  “If that’s not it, then what do you want me to understand?” She slid her hands around his waist and pulled him close, because now that he’d touched her, now that he’d devastated her with that first kiss, she wasn’t going to be able to stop touching.

  Fucker.

  “Do you want me to understand that you want to fuck me?” Her hands skimmed the curve of his very fine ass and his cock settled back into the hot apex of her thighs. “I figured that out all on my own, Oscar.”

  “Diego,” he said in a quiet, strained voice, his eyes on her mouth, thumbs softly stroking her cheeks. “He will kill me for touching you.”

  She brushed her lips over his and shivered at the answering hot rush of his breath.

  “Diego isn’t the boss of either of us.” She touched his bottom lip with the tip of her tongue. “He’s my brother and your friend. That’s it. He doesn’t dictate anything that happens in your life or mine. You and I do.”

  With a huge amount of reluctance—because she wanted nothing more than to draw him in and suck face until neither of them could see straight—she gently pushed him far enough away she could slide off the counter and stand on her wobbly legs.

  “I never give anyone a second chance,” she told him with a surge of confidence she thought she’d lost after he’d stood her up the night before. “Don’t fuck it up.”

  Chapter Four

  Eva was brushing her teeth when she heard the unmistakable sound of a Harley out on the country road in front of the Smiths’ farm property. She rented a spacious one-room apartment on the second floor of what used to be a carriage house but was now Del Smith’s garage, where he customized cars when he wasn’t working the farm.

  She could hear the bike idling at the four-way stop in front of the big house for a moment before it took off. And then the sound stopped abruptly. After a long minute she could hear the low rumbling of its engine again, this time from behind the garage.

  She gave herself a wide-eyed look in the mirror before she ran to the kitchen area that was along one wall of the room. Through the open window over the sink she could see Oscar making his way up the private drive that led from the corn fields to the back of the building, moving slowly so the sound of his bike wouldn’t wake up the family that lived in the big house at the front of the property.

  The sound of the bike engine shutting off snapped Eva out of the shock that had rendered her paralyzed for a moment. She realized her toothbrush was still sticking out of her face, so she ran back to the bathroom and rinsed, started to take the ponytail holder out of her hair and stopped. After all the years she’d been putting up with his shit, she shouldn’t care about making herself look nice for him.

  She sat on the edge of the bathtub and put her head between her knees, panic rising hot in her chest as she reluctantly admitted she wanted to look nice for him. In fact she kind of desperately wished she hadn’t already washed her face or changed out of her dress, because she loved the way he’d been looking at her the past couple of days.

  Eva sat up with a gasp when he knocked. She looked around the room wildly for a moment, not knowing what to do, then closed her eyes and willed herself to be calm.

  She’d brought this on herself. She could handle it.

  When she came out of the bathroom he was watching her through the window on her door, looking darker and more dangerous than she’d ever seen him. He had a black bandana folded wide over his forehead. The clear riding glasses he wore at night were propped on his head and he was wearing his old leather riding jacket.

  And those killer eyes of his…oh they were raking her all right.

  She started trembling from the inside out. Her legs were moving her forward. That look was sending radiating pulses of longing through her nipples and her clit. She was already incredibly wet and they still had the door between them.

  She opened the door and a breeze brought in the smell of summer night, that high-octane aphrodisiac that was good old American motorcycle exhaust, and Oscar.

  “You have three seconds to change your mind,” he told her.

  Her pulse was beating too fast in her throat, counting out the time.

  One Mississippi two Mississippi thr—

  And then he was on her, one hand cupped around the back of her neck and mouth hungry over hers. Eva gripped the open front of his jacket for dear life and pulled him into her apartment. He changed the angle of his head and her mouth opened at the same time his tongue plunged deep. The fingers of his free hand slipped under the hem of her t-shirt and the space between their bodies vanished as though they’d been vacuum sealed together the moment he touched her skin.

  He broke the kiss with a gasp.

  “Jesus,” he whispered, more of a prayer than a curse.

  Eva licked her lips. “Yeah, I don’t think he can save either of us at this point, Oz.”

  She pushed the bandana and glasses off his head and buried her fingers in the silky thickness of his inky hair as they came together again, opened her mouth to take him deeper, unable to get enough.

  She shoved at his jacket and he released her long enough to let it drop to the floor behind them. She was pulling him toward the bed because now that she had her hands on him, her teenage crush turned into the ultimate grown-up reality, she needed him inside her, and she needed it immediately.

  She broke the kiss. “Tell me about those fantasies of yours,” she said, panting.

  “Which one do you want to hear first?” he asked, gripping the base of her ponytail and smoothing his other hand over one side of her ass.

  Her nipples tightened and her clit throbbed.

  “You want to hear about the one where I turn you over my knee and paddle your bare ass every time you roll your eyes at me?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Spanking is lame,” she li
ed.

  The idea of being turned over his knee and spanked, especially if he meant to use his bare hand, caused a flood of wet heat in her pussy that made her knees weak.

  He stopped moving and tightened his grip on her hair.

  His face was so close, his eyes so black.

  “Then how about the one where I make you get on your knees and suck me off to punish that dirty mouth of yours every time you swear?”

  Eva blanched. “Whoa. Hold the fucking phone. That’s going a little far.”

  She wanted to be offended that he’d so much as thought it, only…yeah. That was pretty goddamn hot too.

  “Is it?” he asked darkly, calling her bluff.

  “Fuck you,” she whispered, making him smile.

  He released her ponytail, trailed his fingers down her spine and she shivered as though he’d commanded it. One side of his mouth tipped up in the sexiest smile she’d ever seen a split second before he pulled her top up and over her head and tossed it aside. He immediately took his own shirt off, the St. Christopher medallion and silver cross he always wore jingling quietly together as they got stuck in the fabric and then came free and fell against his chest.

  “Tell me to stop now,” he said, his voice a deep rumble.

  She went for his belt, jerked the buckle open. “I will do no such thing.”

  She could hardly handle the way he was looking at her, openly taking in the sight of her breasts. She wasn’t ashamed that they barely filled an A cup. They were damn cute little titties, and he certainly didn’t seem to mind their size.

  It was in the way the lids of his wide eyes had gone heavy and his luscious mouth was open slightly, his breathing rough. His gaze traveled slowly up her neck, stopped briefly on her mouth and then met her eyes. The heat, the desire, the raw longing she saw inside of them was staggering.

  “Tell me to get the fuck out of here right now, Eva.”

  She got his belt free as he slid one hand up her side and cradled her breast. She lowered the zipper on his jeans and told him, “Stay.”