Because honestly, I can’t think of anything more mortifying than Connor discovering that. The “hot” slipup was one I cannot, under any circumstances, repeat.
Connor says, “You’ve got that look again.”
Startled, I glance at him. “What look?”
“The one you get when your brain is tripping all over its own feet.”
I toss my hair over my shoulder and gaze off into the middle distance like a disinterested cat. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He gives me another mysterious “Hmm.”
For a moment, he just examines my face in silence. There’s a strange tension in him, a stillness, like a held breath but in his entire body. Then he abruptly swings around in his seat so he’s facing me, his massive thighs on either side of my barstool, his booted feet planted on the floor.
Trapping me.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I ask, my voice high with panic.
“Got something to say to you. It’s important, so don’t talk until the end.”
He looks dangerously intense. His dark eyes are heated, drilling into mine. His cheeks are flushed from the fire, or from something else, but I don’t have time to think about what that something else might be, because he opens his mouth and starts to speak, and my brain faints dead away, leaving me to fend for myself.
“I want you. Bad. Don’t know exactly why, you’re a complete pain in my ass and pretty much the most contrary, foul-tempered woman I’ve ever met, and you’ve made it really clear what you think about me, but every time I look at you, I have an almost overpowering urge to touch you, kiss you, do a lot of bad things to you, and I don’t know how to manage it. Yeah, it might be more prudent for me to keep this shit to myself, but I know that when you don’t talk about shit, it festers, gets worse, and if the way I feel about you gets any worse, I won’t be able to put my goddamn shoes on in the morning. So I’m puttin’ it out there.”
He takes a breath. Deeply shocked, I stare at him with my mouth open, my heart up in my throat.
“We’re both professionals. We have a job to do. And I don’t mix business with pleasure. Ever. But the way I figure it, we’ve got one more night until the work actually starts, and if I don’t do something to get you straight in my head, I won’t be able to do the job at all.”
He stops abruptly. Then he waits, watching me with unwavering intensity as I attempt to digest what just happened.
I whisper in disbelief, “You’re propositioning me?”
His gaze drops to my lips. When he looks back into my eyes, his own are burning. “You liked that kiss.”
He gives me time to deny it, but I don’t. How could I? We both know I’d be lying.
He adds, “And you called me hot, so I know you don’t think I’m a complete troll, even though you act like you do.”
“That was an accident.”
“Yep.” He nods. “And you fuckin’ hated yourself for it. Which is why I know it was true.”
Things are happening in my body. My nipples harden, my breath quickens, there is a distinctive throb and ache between my legs. All because this jarhead I hate just told me he wants to do bad things to me.
Bad things. Dear God, were any two sexier words ever spoken?
Connor says tersely, “It’s your turn to talk.”
Staring at him, I bite my lower lip. Seeing that, his eyes flare. He leans closer, and then closer still, until I can smell the fresh, soap-scrubbed scent of his skin, count every piece of stubble glinting copper along his hard jaw.
In a voice like sandpaper, he says, “Tabitha.”
I hesitate for a moment, fighting the simultaneous urges to slap him and surrender to him, hating myself for being intrigued, hating this excruciating disconnect between what my mind insists is logical and what my body is loudly demanding. Ultimately, my curiosity wins out by a hair.
I say, “About those bad things you mentioned…”
He reaches out and takes my wrist in his big, warm hand. He gently pulls me off my chair and toward him, so I’m standing between his open thighs, our chests almost touching. Our gazes locked together, he murmurs, “I want to make you come.”
I exhale, a small, astonished noise, my eyes flared wide and my heart pounding.
At my reaction, he presses closer, his mouth at my ear, his voice gruff with desire.
“I want to put my face between your legs and eat your beautiful sweet pussy until you come so hard, you forget your own name. Then I want to slide my hard cock inside you and fuck you, slow and deep. And when you’re about to come again, I’ll put a finger in here—” He reaches around, palms my ass, slips a finger between my cheeks until he hits the tender spot that makes me gasp—“and kiss you, so that when you go off, you’re full of me everywhere, your whole body is full of me, and all you can think of is me, all you can do is feel me fucking you, how much you love it, how incredible it feels, and how you never, ever want it to stop.”
A noise involuntarily escapes my lips, a low, breathy moan that sounds as if he’s already inside me.
A loud throat clearing. “Excuse me, folks.”
The waiter has arrived with our drinks. Connor and I ignore him completely. He sets the drinks down and quickly leaves.
Into my ear, Connor breathes, “Talk to me, sweetheart.”
I close my eyes, losing myself inch by inch to the most powerful desire I’ve ever felt. “We can’t.”
“Yes, we can. One night. Just to get it out of our system.” His other hand finds my hip, curls possessively around it. He drags me closer to his body, so we’re flush against each other, crotch to chest.
He’s hard everywhere.
Nearby, someone snickers, enjoying the scene we’re making, but I could care less.
My trembling hands climb iron pecs and flatten over them. “We shouldn’t.”
Connor’s soft lips hover over the wildly fluttering pulse in my throat. He whispers, “We definitely should,” and touches his tongue to my skin.
Electricity crackles through me. I arch instinctively, sucking in a breath, my fingers digging into Connor’s chest. He makes a sound like an animal and takes a hot mouthful of my flesh.
The instant my eyes roll back in my head, an ear-piercing alarm sounds, shattering the moment. People start to shout. Chairs scrape back from tables. Connor and I break apart, panting.
He says, “It’s a fire alarm.” Then, angrier, “A fuckin’ fire alarm,” like he can’t believe the timing.
Saved by the bell, I think. A semihysterical laugh bursts out of me.
Connor grabs my hand. We move in the opposite direction of the rest of the crowd and run to the door with the red Exit sign illuminated above it on the opposite side of the patio from the main entrance. Inside, a stairwell leads to the ground floor.
We take the stairs two at a time, Connor ahead of me, still gripping my hand. The stairwell echoes with the sound of our footsteps pounding against metal, the blare of the alarm. We burst through the door on the first floor and out into the night. We’re on the side of the hotel, on a lit pathway that leads to the parking lot.
Before I can get my bearings, Connor pulls me off the path into the shadows of the building, presses me back against the wall, and takes my face in his hands.
“One night,” he says roughly, staring at me like he’s starving. “Say yes.”
We’re both out of breath. I know it’s not from the sprint down the stairs.
“Connor, the building could be about to burn down—”
“Let it burn. Say yes.”
I laugh. A wild, dangerous feeling is growing inside me, a chafing at the seams, like an animal that has grown too large for its cage. “You said you wouldn’t kiss me again.”
“Only because you were about to cut off my balls. Say yes.”
The way he’s staring at me, the heat in his eyes, the hardness of his jaw, the raw, unmistakable need—I’ve never been looked at like this by a man. I feel as if I’m standing i
n the sun for the first time. I feel like I’ve been living underground my entire life, and I’ve just crawled out of a hole into glorious, burning sunlight.
Burning being the operative word.
Things destroyed by fire: the earth in 2 Peter 3:10 in the Bible; Rome in 64 A.D.; London in 1666; Chicago in 1871; Boston in 1872; San Francisco in 1906; the Hindenburg in 1937; much of Europe in WWII.
Tabitha West in 2016?
When I freeze, Connor says, “Stop thinking.”
“That’s like asking me to stop breathing.”
One of his hands drifts down and very lightly grips my throat. His thumb rests over the pulse throbbing hard in my neck, betraying me more than any words ever could.
He murmurs, “Give your brain a night off. Your body wants this. And so does mine.” Slowly, he presses his pelvis to mine, his chest to mine, his thighs to mine, until our bodies are flush together and I have irrefutable evidence of how much his body wants me.
I squeeze shut my eyes so I can’t see that incredibly enticing look on his face turn into something a little less enthusiastic. “It’s called nonconcordance.”
A pause, and then, “What?”
“My body and my brain sometimes don’t work together. Especially in things like…this. I can’t help it. I get stuck in my head. I’ll start reciting lists, narrating what’s happening, anything to distance myself. It’s like being a spectator in my own body.”
He gently thumbs over my cheekbone. He doesn’t speak, but his silence has a quality of thoughtfulness to it, as if he’s working through what I’ve said.
“Once it happens, I can’t…that’s it. So.” I give Connor’s chest a gentle push, but he doesn’t budge.
After another moment, he says quietly, “Permission to engage the enemy, ma’am.”
Furrowing my brows, I open my eyes. “Um…I don’t know what that means.”
“I want to kiss you,” he breathes, staring at my mouth.
When I don’t respond because my mind is in a death match with my hormones, Connor simply lowers his head and brushes his lips along the length of my jaw.
I shudder. He nuzzles his nose beneath my ear, inhaling against my skin, which makes me shudder again. He releases my throat and slides his hand into my hair. He takes a fistful of it and gently tugs, tilting my head back to expose my throat. He murmurs, “Just feel this. I’ll stop in ten seconds. And I want you to count the time. Out loud.”
He opens his mouth over the pulse in my neck. The unexpected heat of his lips and tongue feels so amazing, a low moan breaks from my chest.
I can’t remember the last time I was kissed on the throat. Before Connor, I can’t remember the last time I was kissed anywhere, by anyone.
It’s fucking amazing.
“One,” he prompts, his voice muffled against my skin.
“One.”
The word is so soft, it doesn’t qualify as a whisper. Connor sucks on my throat again, this time using a hint of teeth. My eyes slide shut with pleasure.
“Two.”
His mouth drifts closer to my collarbone, his tongue gliding like silk, raising goose bumps on the back of my neck. I inhale, arching toward him. In the distance, the whine of sirens competes with the intermittent squawk of the hotel’s alarm. I barely notice either.
“Three.”
He bites me softly on the long muscle above my clavicle. Heat pulses between my thighs, and I restlessly squeeze them together.
I breathe, “Four.”
His fingers find the hem of my shirt and slip beneath. When his fingertips brush my bare skin, I jerk, gasping. He kisses a soft trail from my shoulder back to my throat, his lips leaving sparks in their wake. I can hardly concentrate on counting, and have to think for a moment to remember what number I’m on.
“Five.”
His fingers drift up my waist and over my rib cage, tracing their shape, the hollows and ridges. His gentle kiss turns more insistent. His tongue laps at the dip in the base of my throat. My nipples harden and begin to ache.
I want his mouth on them. I want his hands on them. I want to feel the pull and tug of his teeth—
“Six,” he reminds me gently. When I breathlessly repeat it, I feel his lips curve against my skin. He whispers, “Good.”
He flattens his hand over my rib cage, just under my breast. His palm feels as if it’s scorching my skin. I wonder if he can feel my heartbeat, the wild hummingbird thrum of it, rising to a crescendo beneath his hand.
The sirens grow closer. Voices murmur nearby. People. People are close.
People can go fuck themselves.
The slow, upward drifting glide of his hand. The heat of it. The strength of it. The way he’s in no hurry, the way his lips feel, fire and satin, oh God this is good this is so, so good.
He stills for a moment, waiting.
Number. What number? I mumble, “Seven.”
Connor moves to the other side of my neck, repeating the process of slow kisses, nibbles, gentle bites, but leaving his hand just below my breast, unmoving. Everything inside me is aching, clenching, surging. All my nerve endings are firing at once. My arms tangle around his neck. My head drops back against the wall.
“Eight,” I whisper, and adjust my body so the weight of my breast rests in his hand.
Because I hate them, I’m not wearing a bra.
Connor exhales softly. From somewhere very far off, I think it sounds like my name.
His mouth glides up my neck. His fingers slide together. He pinches my hard nipple between two calloused fingers, and I softly cry out. Into my ear, he says gruffly, “I want this in my mouth,” and flicks his thumb over the small silver stud pierced through it.
I like how verbal he is, how explicit. I wonder if he’d be this explicit during sex, talking in that low, rough voice about how I feel, how I taste, what he’s going to do next.
Between my legs, I’m drenched. The ache has turned into an insistent throb. I can’t concentrate on anything else. There’s only his mouth, his hand, and my body, reacting to both.
Connor says, “Nine, beautiful girl.”
In response I simply moan.
His thumb circles my taut nipple, over and over, sending shockwaves through my body. His erection presses insistently against my lower belly.
“Say it and you’ll get a reward.” His voice is a husky, wicked whisper. His breath is hot at my ear.
“N-nine.”
He dips his head, slides my shirt up, exposing my bare breast, and takes my rigid nipple into his hot mouth.
The noise that comes out of me doesn’t sound human.
Then a fire engine comes to a screeching, rubber-burning stop not thirty feet away, driving right up over the parking lot curb and onto the grass. When my body goes stiff, Connor pulls away, throws a glance over his shoulder at the fire truck and the men in yellow gear and hats hopping out of it, and mutters a curse.
Flushed and trembling, I scramble to pull my shirt down. By the time Connor turns back to me, my arms are crossed over my chest and I’m shaking my head in disbelief at what I just allowed to happen.
Looking at my expression, he says flatly, “Ten.”
When I wordlessly turn and run away, Connor doesn’t follow.
10
Connor
Ignoring the fire alarm and the fact that the hotel might soon be engulfed in flames, I trudge back up the stairs to the bar, willing my feet to climb instead of running after Tabby like they want to.
She needs space, not pressure. Though I’m almost positive I could convince her body to push past the constraints of her mind, it’s obvious that would only serve me in the short run.
I’d probably wake up tomorrow morning with a hatchet buried in my skull.
If I woke up at all. Can a man die from too much pleasure? Because if the little taste of Tabitha West I just got is any indication, climaxing inside her might send me straight into cardiac arrest.
Sweet. Everything about her is sweet. Beyond that thorn
y wall she hides behind is the fucking Garden of Eden.
I want her so much, it’s like holding your breath for too long under water and needing a big gulp of air. That desperate ache. That painful demand. I want to apologize to my cock for what he’s going through, but it seems my heart is first in line for any mea culpas, because you could drive the Hummer through the hole in my chest.
The horror on Tabby’s face when she broke away from me was like…a grenade. Right in the heart.
So my plan now is to finish my scotch, take a shower—if my room isn’t on fire—and get some shut-eye. Tomorrow we can both pretend nothing ever happened. And after the job is finished and we return to New York, I’ll try again. Only maybe with a little less waving my hard dick in the poor girl’s face like it’s a trophy for best in show.
Finesse, right?
The bar is deserted except for an old Native American janitor sweeping the floor. He has a gray braid that reaches his waist, tied at the end with a thin piece of leather. I make my way to the table where Tabby and I were sitting and down the glass of scotch I’d left behind.
“Kid at the pool pulled the alarm,” says the janitor, his eyes on his broom. His voice is smooth and smoky, like good whiskey. “Third time it’s happened this year. There’s no fire, in case you were wondering.”
Except for the one in my pants, I think.
The intermittently ringing bell abruptly stops, punctuating the old man’s words with welcome silence. He squints up at the dark sky. “Electrical storm comin’ tonight.”
I follow his gaze. I see sapphire sky pricked with the glimmer of stars, but the mountains in the distance are blanketed with thunderclouds. As if on cue, a streak of lightning cuts a jagged white path through a cloud bank.
Wicked Games: The Complete Wicked Games Series Box Set Page 38