She shuddered, her hands coming up automatically to press against his broad chest, loving the feel of him beneath her palms.
There was a raw glow in his eyes, fierce and primal. “You like that?” he growled. “You like touching me?”
“Yes.” There was no hesitation this time, no pretending otherwise. She couldn’t pretend now, not about this, so she didn’t bother. “Yes, I love it.”
“Down here then.” He took her hand and pushed it between their bodies, down beneath the half-zipped denim of his jeans. He wasn’t wearing underwear so there was nothing but the silky skin of his cock, rock-hard and ready for her.
She inhaled sharply, closing her fingers around him, squeezing him. Looking deep into his eyes as she did it and watching the green flames leap high.
He made another of those sexy growling noises, making her squeeze him harder, give another couple of experimental pumps of her hand, rubbing the head of his cock with her thumb as she did so.
“Oh, yeah,” he said, low and dark, “that’s the way, baby.” His hips moved with her hand, thrusting against her palm. “You’re just like me. You’re fucking ruthless and you want what you want. So take it.” He leaned forward and kissed her hard, nipping her lip with his teeth. “If you can.”
Something flared inside her, a wild part of her that had been locked in a cage for a very long time. A cage that Quinn had ripped the doors from and let out what was inside. A wild, passionate creature who wanted nothing more than to feast on him.
She pushed at him, trying to turn him over and onto his back so she could straddle him, lifting her head to bite him in return. But he held her down, his big body pinning hers to the mattress, his mouth hungry and demanding, taking her passion and urging it higher, hotter.
Lily pumped her hand harder, squeezing the iron bar of his dick, and he made another sound, moving to drag her fingers away, his strength irresistible. She fought him but then he grabbed something from beside the bed and soft cotton was abruptly wrapped around her wrists as he tied his T-shirt around them.
The wildness inside her leapt higher, the binding making the throb of pleasure more intense, the feeling of being restrained more erotic than she’d ever thought possible.
He lifted her bound hands over his head, looping them behind his neck, his green eyes burning directly into hers. “I’m going to fuck you, Lily,” he said in a low growling voice. “I’m going to make you scream.”
She bared her teeth at him. “You can try.”
He snarled and there was a brief, panting moment as he dealt with the protection, before she found herself being shoved deep into the mattress as he thrust hard into her.
She cried out, the size of him stretching in her in all kinds of delicious ways, turning the pleasure sharp as a knife. And she almost wanted him to stop, to give her a chance to adjust, but he didn’t, driving himself into her. And a part of her loved it that he didn’t treat her as if she was fragile, as if she was strong enough to take him as he was, a raw, primal man. Because she was pretty primal herself.
She pulled her bound hands towards her so that he had to bend his head, and she was kissing him, biting him, giving him back the savagery that he was giving her, and then there was nothing in the world but his deep growls and the shove of his big cock deep inside her. The taste of his mouth and the scent of his skin,
She locked her legs around his hips, her heels digging into the taut muscle of his butt as he fucked her, the headboard banging against the wall in time with his movements. And she didn’t care about the sound it made, didn’t care about her panting cries or his rough sounds of pleasure.
She arched her hips and fucked him back, her kisses as demanding as his.
Then he was moving again, shifting and leaning back, hooking her legs from around his waist and up over his shoulders, tilting her hips so he was as deep inside her as he could get. The penetration made her gasp with agonized pleasure, and when he began to fuck her even harder, holding her down, making her take him as deep and as hard as he wanted, she couldn’t stop the raw sounds of ecstasy that broke from her.
“That’s it,” he growled breathlessly against her skin. “Come for me, baby. Scream my house down.”
And she did, loud and long in his ear, the world turning to fire as he followed her into the flames.
“SOOO….” Rush said casually. “Sounded like you had a great morning.”
Normally that would have earned his brother a scowl, but today Quinn didn’t really feel like scowling.
He didn’t feel like interacting with his brother at all. What he really wanted to do was to go back to bed with Lily and perhaps spend a week with her naked, fucking them both insensible.
Sadly they had a blackmailer to run down. One who could do serious damage to Lily and her team, and he wasn’t having that. Not one. Single. Fucking. Iota.
He’d meant what he’d said when he’d told her that she mattered to him. She did. And not just because she was fucking phenomenal in the sack. She was complicated and fiery and conflicted. A woman who’d been craving someone to care for her at the same time as she refused to accept that caring. A woman who wanted to cede control, who was desperate to trust, yet who kept hold of that control in an iron grip as she protected herself from everyone.
And no wonder. After what she’d told him about her shitty childhood, she had good reason.
It broke his heart for her, made him want to ease those conflicts inside her. Give her the caring she so obviously wanted, show her that she could give her trust to him. That he would keep it safe for her. Keep her safe.
Seriously? You really want to get that involved?
Yeah, he hadn’t thought he would. And he hadn’t wanted to add another person to the list of people he cared about, but somehow, Lily Hammond had gotten herself on that list. With her unexpected vulnerability and fiery passion, she’d gotten under his guard and now he was involved. Heavily.
Face it. You want to heal her.
“Hey dude,” Rush said warningly, “Careful banging that pan around. You’ll take someone’s eye out.”
Quinn gritted his teeth, trying to ignore his irritating brother as he put the pan down on the stove in preparation for scrambled eggs. Yeah, he did want to heal her, because she’d certainly been hurt by her father and, hell, he knew all about what that kind of parental bullshit did to a person.
But still, that’s as far as it went. He didn’t want anything more. She’d told him not to make it into something it wasn’t, like he was some fucking teenage boy with fantasies of the family he would some day have. But he wasn’t a teenage boy and though he might have had those family fantasies once with Deborah and Jack, he knew the score now. Those fantasies weren’t for a guy like him. He didn’t want them anyway, not with two brothers and a business that took up all of his time to run. He didn’t want any more additional responsibilities that was for sure.
Except for helping Lily out with this blackmail problem.
And healing her wounded heart.
With lots of sex. Yes. He could do that.
“Gently, bro, gently! Fuck’s sake.”
The egg carton he’d picked up was pulled out of his hand and he found himself shoved to the side as Rush came to stand in front of the stove instead, looking annoyed. “Jesus. Some good sex and you’re a fucking mess.” He waved the spatula in the direction of the metal bar stools that stood underneath the counter running along one wall. “Go sit down. I’ll deal with the eggs.”
Quinn wanted to argue, but it was clear his brother wasn’t going to be parted from his spatula or his place by the stove, so Quinn backed away, getting some coffee before going to sit down on one of the barstools.
“You’re an officious prick when you want to be,” he muttered, sipping at his coffee.
“Back at ya, asshole.” Rush turned back to making eggs. “So are you going go explain why you’re still so pissed off after getting spectacularly laid this morning?”
He and Lily had dis
cussed it just before he’d come down to get her breakfast. She’d agreed that everyone needed to know what had happened with Mason. Sure, she’d been reluctant, but she had agreed in the end. They’d decided that Lily should speak to her team that morning, while he handled his brothers. And then they were going to meet up again that night to get together a plan for how to deal with this bullshit. Which, now they had all the information, should be straightforward. Or at least, with any luck it would.
“Yeah, but I need to get Zane here first.” He glared at his brother’s tall form. “What the hell are you doing hanging around here so early anyway?”
Rush lifted a shoulder. “Ava had an early shift and you wanted me to report back on anything we found. So here I am, reporting back.”
“What? Already?”
“Well, like I said. Lots of reasons why someone might want to go after Duchess Bail Bonds. Lots of fucking enemies.” Rush adjusted the heat on the element in response to sizzles from the pan — a lot could be said about Rush Redmond and most of it bad, but he sure could do a mean scrambled eggs. “Would help if we knew what this blackmail shit was about.”
At that moment, the kitchen’s double doors opened and Zane strode in, all ice-blue eyes and seriousness, looking every inch the Green Beret sniper that he’d once been.
“Speak of the devil,” Rush said cheerfully. “You want some eggs, too, bro?”
Zane shook his head, moving straight over to the coffee maker and getting himself a mug. “Already had breakfast.” He nodded at Quinn, his usual effusive morning greeting.
“Sit down,” Quinn said to his brother without preamble. “I’ve got something serious to say.”
Zane opened his mouth — probably to argue, but catching the look on Quinn’s face, shut it again. Grabbing his coffee, he came over to where Quinn sat and hooked out a barstool for himself, sitting down on it, his gaze cool. “That sounds ominous.”
“Can it wait till after breakfast?” Rush did another quick flick with the spatula. “These eggs are done and are pretty fucking amazing if I do say so myself. And I do.”
“No,” Quinn said flatly. “You wanted to know what this blackmail thing is about? Well, I know.”
“Oh.” Rush turned off the element and turned around, leaning back against the stove with his arms folded, his expression serious. “Well, in that case do go on.”
Zane said nothing, just stared.
“It’s to do with Duchess’s ex,” Quinn said, looking at his brothers in turn. “He was a violent son-of-a-bitch who hurt Duchess and threatened Rose, and wouldn’t take no for an answer when Duchess told him where to go.” He paused, not because he thought his brothers would judge Lily — they’d be the last to do so — but because even thinking about it, let alone talking about it, made him so fucking furious he could hardly speak. Keep it locked down, asshole. “There was an argument, Duchess was afraid for her life, and she defended herself.”
Rush blinked. “Meaning…?”
“She shot him.” Zane said coldly. And it was not a question.
“Yeah, she did,” Quinn confirmed. “The fucker died.”
Neither Rush nor Zane looked particularly unhappy about this.
“Sounds like good riddance to me,” Rush said. “But is this what’s being held over her head?”
“Someone found some security camera footage.” Quinn took another sip of his coffee, relishing the hot liquid, hoping it would douse his fury. “Lily had the cameras wiped through a friend of her father’s, but somehow someone got hold of the footage beforehand and is threatening to send it to the police.”
Rush gave a long, low whistle, while Zane shook his head. “How the hell did whoever get hold of it then?”
“Lily doesn’t know, but I’m wondering if the guy who deleted the footage made copies of it somehow. She swore he was on the level, but he’s an associate of her dad’s, which makes him instantly sketchy as fuck.”
“Her father was a con man, right?” Zane asked.
“Yeah. There was that trouble Duchess had with the Graveyard Ministry, remember? Her father owed them money.”
“Right. Okay, so clearly this ‘associate’ has copied the footage for some reason.” Zane sipped at his coffee. “Probably for insurance purposes, I would imagine”
“Yeah, I would think so,” Rush murmured. “And maybe he sold it on to someone else who was interested.”
Quinn tried to ease the grip he had on his mug. “Which makes the first task of the day tracking this bastard down and getting that information out of him.”
Lily had given him the name of the man who’d erased the cameras for her, but she’d told Quinn she’d tried tracking him down when the blackmail demands had first started and hadn’t managed to find him.
Then again, Lily didn’t have the contacts he did.
Rush met his gaze. “You got a name?”
“Yeah. She wasn’t able to find him when she tried herself, but she won’t have your particular advantage, I’m thinking.” Rush’s advantage being his extensive network of criminal contacts due to his time spent inside.
His brother gave him a self-satisfied looking smile. “Oh, don’t you worry, I’ll find the little prick. Guaranteed.”
Quinn’s chest tightened strangely. He’d been hard on Rush in the months since their father had died and Rush had got out of prison, way too hard. And he hadn’t realized how difficult that had been until Lily had asked about it. The way she’d looked at him had been….well. She’d looked at him like she’d understood his complicated feelings. His anger at Rush for the stupid sacrifice he’d made for a father who hadn’t deserved it. And his anger at himself, too, for failing to step in when he should have. Anger at their father who’d told him to leave Rush with him, that he’d sort it out. But old Joe had never sorted it out and Rush had stayed in prison, while Quinn had gone into the SEALs.
That Rush was at least a semi-acceptable human being now had more to do with his fiancée Ava than anything he’d done for his middle brother.
Another failure to add to the list.
No wonder Rush had been so pissed at him. Quinn had wanted to tell the guy how sorry he’d been for his attitude over the past few months, and especially how appreciative he was for Rush’s efforts in helping Lily. But he didn’t have the words and he thought Rush wouldn’t appreciate them anyway.
So all he did was give Rush a nod and a gruff, ‘Thanks.”
Maybe his brother understood because Rush’s smile became a little less self satisfied and little more amused. “You can hug me, bro. Any time.”
Jesus. Since when had the usually oblivious Rush picked up on emotional cues? Clearly Ava’s influence. “Find that asshole first, then you can have a hug.”
Zane cleared his throat ostentatiously. “Are you two having a moment? Because if so, it can wait. Sounds like we have shit to do.”
And his youngest brother was another who could have done with Quinn being around more, because Joe had taken his grief at their mother’s death out on him. But Quinn had been dealing with Deborah’s pregnancy and Jack’s birth and that had taken up all of his headspace. He hadn’t had any time to spare for Zane.
Yet despite all of that, both brothers were here, throwing their support behind Lily, no matter that Duchess Bail Bonds was a rival company. Throwing their support behind him too, despite his own lack of brotherly guidance, and he was very conscious of that.
They might have had a shit upbringing, but they’d turned out to be good fucking men in spite of it.
No thanks to you.
Yeah, he’d failed a lot of people in his life, and his brothers were just two of them.
“Something else,” he muttered, suddenly remembering the text that Lily had received the night before. “He or she knows that we’re helping Duchess, because she got a text saying coming to us won’t help. Also, we’re on a time pressure. They threatened to send the footage out everywhere if she doesn’t pay within two days.”
Rush and Zane
exchanged a glance that for once Quinn didn’t quite understand.
“Fuck,” Zane muttered. “Better relocate then.”
Relocate? What the hell was he talking about?
“Yeah.” Rush shifted against the stove, an uncharacteristically serious expression on his scarred face. “They’re not going to like it, though.”
“Too fucking bad.” Zane’s voice was cold and certain. “Can’t have them alone while this fucker is running around throwing threats everywhere.”
“Not wrong,” Rush agreed. “Ava’ll be pissed. But she’ll live.”
Quinn scowled at his brothers. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“If threats are being made and this prick knows we’re involved then I’m not having Iris or her sister anywhere where they’ll be alone,” Zane said decisively, finishing his coffee and sliding off the barstool. “I’ll bring them in here to stay until this situation is resolved.”
Rush was nodding. “I’m with you there, man. Anyone touches Ava…” He didn’t finish, but then he didn’t need it. Someone would die was the obvious implication.
Okay, so his brothers were worried about their women. And that made sense, especially given the threats whoever it was had made against Rose. Hell, he’d do the same thing if he was in their shoes.
You’re already in their shoes.
A tight, hot feeling shifted inside him, that had everything to do with the woman he’d left sleeping in his bed upstairs. Beautiful and so delicate, yet tougher and stronger than most men he knew.
Yours…
The possessive feeling that that had unfurled in him the night before, wrapped itself around him again, pulling tight. Becoming part of him.
He’d always known that sleeping with Lily wouldn’t only involve his dick, that his emotions were going to be part of it too. Simply because of how he responded to her. It was why he’d resisted her so hard, after all.
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