The girls chitchatted, but I couldn’t focus on much of anything but the roar of need inside my blood and the swell in my jeans. I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat.
It wasn’t until Nicole peered underneath the table that I snapped out of it. Was she checking out my raging hard-on?
“My curiosity was piqued.” She smiled sheepishly. “I needed to see if you have hobbit feet.”
“Uh, no.”
“He’s not a hobbit,” Paige said and patted my shoulder. “His nickname is SamRam, for some reason, but not even his older brother will tell me why that is.”
“That’s a national secret,” I said. “I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
“I once knew a boy who I swore was a turtle or a dinosaur. I couldn’t decide.” Nicole blinked her bright green eyes in my direction. “I’d like to braid your hair.”
“Uh...” I looked at Paige for some kind of compass in the redhead’s land of crazy, but she just shrugged. “Maybe later. Let’s blow this joint. We can go to my place or somewhere less...” Dangerous? Soul-corrupting? Bursting with a man who could rat me out in front of my girl?
Charlotte played with the label on the beer bottle in front of her. “Less heroin-ish?”
My heart stuttered. I looked at her sharply. “What?”
“Pretty sure I saw two girls snorting up in the bathroom.” She shrugged as if it was no big deal. “Maybe that’s why the cops are outside.”
Paige screwed up her face in disgust. “Okay, yeah, we’re leaving.”
“So soon?” a deep voice asked.
I turned to see a man I’d never seen before standing by our table. He had a muscular build and a square jaw that reminded me of Superman. His gaze kept straying to Nicole across from me, whose hair formed a curtain around the severe blush on her face.
“William!” Charlotte said, batting purple eyelashes at him. She shared a secret smile with Paige. “Fancy meeting you here. Whatever made you decide to come?”
He looked around with barely reserved contempt. “Honestly? This isn’t really my scene.”
“Which is why we were just leaving.” I tried to scoot out of the booth, but his width blocked me.
He didn’t seem to notice, though, because his attention had once again landed on Nicole. “Hi, Nicole.”
She curled in on herself like a roly poly so that her hair completely covered her face.
“Use your talking words, Nicole,” Charlotte hissed.
“Um, Charlotte,” Paige began, “why don’t you go get Nicole something to drink? Her sore throat must be getting to her.”
“Money, honey,” Charlotte said to Nicole.
Nicole worked a hand loose from the edge of the table and placed it palm up, empty.
“I already bought you a strawberry daiquiri with an umbrella.” Charlotte nodded at the empty glass in front of her then shook her head at the ceiling. “Fine. Scoot.”
Nicole rose from the booth, avoiding all eye contact with William, but then tripped on the floor or the air or something. William caught her elbow. When she steadied herself, she finally looked up at him.
Paige gripped my thigh, stirring my dick, and leaned forward with an enormous smile on her face to watch them. Was this some kind of match-making thing happening here?
Charlotte stood from the booth, her smile sliding into twisted pain.
“I can go, Charlotte,” Paige announced, frowning at her friend.
“I got it.” She held up a hand and hobbled off.
“Are you all right?” William asked Nicole.
“It’s my socks,” Nicole said.
William frowned and looked at the socks in question. I did, too, out of curiosity. Below her knee-length black skirt, she wore stars and cats with laser beams shooting out of their eyes. This redhead was a trip.
“I like your socks,” William said with a genuine smile.
Paige squeezed my thigh then took her hand away and sat back, a satisfied grin on her face. My whole body burned for her touch once again, but I settled on entwining our fingers on the seat between us.
She looked at me, her mouth opened slightly, her gaze drifting from my eyes to my lips and back again. I traced her fingers with mine while I rubbed a slow circle into her thumb. The turbo charges from the skin-to-skin contact were enough to drive me mad.
“Are there police cars outside, William?” Paige asked without breaking my gaze. Her chest heaved with an uneven breath.
Something had changed between us, a physical connection that wasn’t just about fucking. I saw it in the new way she looked at me, at the way she stroked my fingers back. It was like a promise she intended to keep, but for some reason, I thought the promise was more for her. A promise to herself. Sweet Jesus, she’d spun me about until I made no fucking sense, but I was okay with it. More than okay.
Tonight, she was laughing again after two weeks of...not silence exactly, but not my usual Paige. My Paige. The sound of that inside my head fueled me with enough balls to conquer the whole fucking world. I wanted her to be mine. I wanted that more than anything.
“I didn’t see any cops,” William said as he and Nicole settled themselves across from us. “Why? Is there trouble?”
“Maybe they left,” I said in an attempt to cover up my lie. “But this club isn’t the safest. I’ve heard stories, and apparently there are people snorting up in the bathroom. We should go.”
“We should,” Paige agreed absently, her gaze flitting down to our clasped hands on the seat.
“But Charlotte,” Nicole said. “My drink.”
Paige dug in her purse for her phone. “I’ll text her.” When her phone’s screen lit up her face, she stared at it as if she was a deer caught in headlights. An unhappy deer.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and my guts dropped to my knees. Probably Hill asking where I was. But it wasn’t from Hill. Rose’s duck face picture smiled from the top of the screen. And underneath, it read:
There is no debt.
Strobe lights circled around the message, carving it out and branding it to the backs of my eyes where it burned and bled. There is no debt. What the fuck did that mean?
Paige was saying something, and she pushed me out of the booth.
But before I could move, two bodies blocked our way.
“Leaving so soon?”
The familiar voice lifted every hair on my body to high alert. I didn’t even have to glance up to know it was Hill. I did anyway to read his intent. Or tried to anyway. He hid everything behind that creepy grin and his sunken black eyes, which were aimed at Paige in a way that twisted my stomach. He’d already taken my sister; fuck if I would let him anywhere near Paige.
“We are,” I said to redirect his attention.
His gaze snaked over to me, two black marbles that were meant to roll a deadly chill down my back. But this time, they didn’t. Besides, he was too smart to start something in his own club.
He clasped his hands behind his back. “You’re not where you’re supposed to be.”
I leaned against the booth seat and spun my beer bottle in half circles, relaxed despite the rushing blood between my temples. There is no debt. Maybe it was true. If anyone knew for sure, Rose would.
“I’m not,” I said coolly.
He could smash my fingers all he wanted, threaten me, whatever he needed to do to feel that almighty power he craved so much, but he didn’t have shit. Not anymore.
But I did. I had Paige by my side, her questioning stare scorching the backs of my ears, and that right there changed everything. If I stood a chance with her, at making her mine, then I needed to switch lanes. Anything Hill spewed from that pinched mouth of his I could deny. It was his word against mine, and who would Paige believe? A stranger? Or the man who had always been in love with her? Yeah. I loved her. From the second I first saw her.
Still, doubt could fester at the back of her beautiful brain, and I didn’t want that. All I wanted was a chance. All I wanted was something real
with her, to be her home, and that couldn’t happen if it was all built on secrets.
So, no more. Fuck Dad and Riley’s dick pics. They weren’t my responsibility. Hill could leak all of that to the press. But if my little sister didn’t owe a debt to the man who destroyed her, then she didn’t need me to put a yellow band aid around her finger to give her superpowers. She already had them.
Hill’s eyes narrowed to lethal slits. “I believe we had a deal, son. You know what happens if the deal is broken.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, pulling Paige out of the booth with me. “Fuck the deal.”
22
Paige
SUMMER RAIN PUNCTUATED the tense silence between Sam and me on the way home. He clenched the steering wheel hard as if to hold it up while his gaze darted to the rearview mirror. His lead foot careened us around corners nowhere near the route toward home.
Sam—a thoughtful, brooding, funny package who snapped at random strangers in dance clubs—was a terrible driver. Especially when focused on something other than the wet city streets. What deal could he have had with that guy? And why is it that only females are labeled as moody?
Surprisingly, I wasn’t. I felt free, more so than I had in a long time, even though I’d blown my chance at a job at the LOC. Rick’s naked pictures of me were staying on Janice’s desk. After he texted me more threats, I sent him only one.
Fuck off.
That was me taking back the fifty years of feminism I’d single-handedly lost. Maybe I should make a pin that read Scratch and Sniff for Feminism! and make it smell like bacon.
Finally, we pulled into the empty driveway, and I let out a relieved breath at still being alive when he cut the engine. The patter of raindrops unbunched my shoulders, and I glanced over at him.
He rested his head on the back of his seat, staring blankly through the windshield, while the ends of his blond hair played with the collar of the leather jacket he always wore when he wasn’t half naked. His eyelashes fanned quick shadows on his cheeks with every blink, and his stubbled Adam’s apple bobbed on a swallow. The man was a god, his very presence filling the car with a dizzying, dangerous mix of leather, musk, and sex appeal.
“You’re looking at me,” he murmured.
“Yeah,” I said simply.
He sighed and turned toward me. “Why?”
“Because you’re a hard book to read. It’s like the words on your pages are sometimes written in a language I can’t understand.”
His gaze dipped to my lips and lingered there for several long seconds, each one triggering a tighter and tighter clench to my thighs. “Maybe someday you will.”
“Maybe,” I breathed.
This thing we had, this chemical attraction, hummed between us while the rain drummed our own private beat. I could sure get used to this, sitting next to him, while he looked at me like a thing to be worshipped. And the need to be worshipped by him rushed an electrical ache through me more powerful than the burst of lightning overhead.
A half smile in place, he tipped his head toward the front door and said, “Ready?”
The next instant, we threw ourselves out of the car and were soaked by the time we made it to the porch. Moonlight slanted through the half-circle window at the top of the door and lit Sam’s face in an angelic glow. But something in his eyes flashed dark and dangerous and not angelic at all. I shivered under his probing gaze as he jabbed his key into the lock, and blood rushed in tingling waves to my center.
Once inside, I reached for the entryway light switch.
“Leave it,” he said, voice low, and took a single step toward me.
We stood so close our lips almost touched. My whole body magnetized toward him, and I didn’t bother to fight against the heat he fueled through my veins since it was a losing battle anyway. I wanted him to feel the thread of trust I’d wrapped around my heart for him when he pressed against me. I wanted him body and soul.
My lips feathered against his when I said, “Okay.”
We shared the same breath, searching in the dark for what the other wanted, or maybe to be absolutely sure.
“Okay,” I said again and smiled against his lips. Okay.
Encouragement completed.
He swept his fingers through my hair toward the nape of my neck and pulled, angling my face toward his, then pushed me against the wall with the force of his body. His mouth captured mine in a searing kiss. The air left my lungs from both the impact and the urgency of his tongue, but I didn’t care. I held to both sides of his face to ground myself to some kind of reality, to remind myself that this was really happening, that it was about damn time.
He undid the button on my jeans and dragged the zipper down. His hands worked the pants down my thighs in too slow of a crawl, his lips only relenting with his groan.
“You’re not wearing any underwear to rip off,” he growled.
I laughed, but it changed into a gasp when he cupped my ass. A powerful need throbbed through my body at the skin-on-skin contact.
“Sam,” I moaned into his mouth.
An answering rumble thundered through his chest and into mine, vibrating pulsing thrills down to my toes, and I lost all control. My fingers fumbled to tear his shirt off. My hips rocked against him. I melted into his hands, needing, craving, so much more.
He pulled away from our kiss for a moment, lips swollen, eyes shuttered with need, and met every thrust of my hips with his own. His stubble scraped along my cheek to nip and lick and tease my neck, and I tilted my head to grant him full access. One of his hands kneaded my ass so my hip bone grinded against his erection, and every brush of his fingertips stormed slick desire to my core. He tugged at my shirt with the other.
“I don’t know the combination to this lacey tie-up thing you’re wearing,” he said between heavy pants.
I reached behind me to pull the tie, and the thin fabric fell away from my shoulders. Sam’s heated gaze pinned to my chest and the cleavage that practically burst out of my pushup bra.
“Do you think you can handle it from here?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.
He flashed a wicked grin and unclasped my bra within seconds. His gaze roamed over my completely naked body, drinking me in with a thirst that sparked the blood in my veins to run faster. That look and the determined set of his jaw while he took his shirt off made my insides quiver. Not from nervousness or doubt, but anticipation.
Lightning strobed outside, accentuating the dips and creases of his muscled body, and the air crackled with electricity both inside and outside the house.
His gaze locked on mine, he yanked down his boxers and took his erection in his hand. Always so uninhibited.
“Condom,” I said, amazed at how calm I sounded given the flutters rolling through my lower belly.
One appeared in his other palm from his jeans piled on the floor, and he rolled it down his length. Then he stalked toward me, a silent predator, and the force of his mouth on mine drove me into the wall once again. With my back braced against it, he hiked up my thighs around his hips and sank inside me inch by blissful inch.
I gasped at the sudden fullness and wound my arms around Sam’s neck to draw him even closer. He groaned into my mouth, rumbling a shockwave to my nipples that rubbed against his chest. His body moved slowly against mine at first, but his hungry kisses promised his gentleness wouldn’t last. God, I hoped not.
Lick for lick, I urged him on until his thrusts rattled the picture frames on the wall. His fingers curled into my thighs, his hips relentlessly rolling into mine, while a delicious pressure mounted inside me. I broke the kiss with a sharp inhale and held tighter to Sam, as if to bring him with me over the edge. Closer and closer, then my whole world ignited, and I shuddered against Sam in great, quaking waves.
He dropped his head into my neck, his stubble dragging goose bumps across my sensitive flesh, and groaned, “Oh...fuck.” A head-to-toe tremble shook through him, then his hips slowed, as if he was milking the feeling to last and last.
And him, with his strong arms locked around my waist, his breath warm against my neck, his musky leather smell engulfing me... This was how it was supposed to feel like after sex, like a powerful warmth blossoming through my chest. Not guilt. Not shame. This.
He blew a slow exhale that tickled down my shoulder. “I don’t think I can stand on my own after that.”
“Then don’t,” I said and clung to him even tighter.
He chuckled. “If my rubbery legs don’t hold me up, you have my permission to fall on top of me. Actually, yeah. Let’s do exactly that.” He pulled out and away, then with an arm still curled behind my back, toppled me over.
I let out a high-pitched “whoop” before landing on top of him on the entryway floor in a tangle of limbs. Laughing into his pectorals, I straightened my body against his, relishing the perfect way we fit together.
“We can’t stay like this,” I said lazily, and my voice sounded like it was caught in a dream. “Riley could come home.”
“Let him see.” He smoothed hair away from my face and pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “I’m done hiding.”
“Me too.”
His skin was so soft against my lips that I kissed his pecs again and again until heat stirred between my legs. The growing tingling sensation bucked my hips against his, and my long sigh blew across one of his nipples until it hardened. I captured it with my mouth, licking and sucking and biting, while my hips pumped into him. With Slave, I was usually a one-and-done kind of girl. With Sam, his touch fueled an addiction I had no intention of ever recovering from.
He heaved a loud groan and roughly grabbed my ass. A loud crack rang out, followed by a sharp sting.
Wicked Me (Wicked in the Stacks Book 1) Page 19