Blood & Rust (Lock & Key #4) (52 page)

His chest was a wall of heat at my back. He tugged his thumb a few degrees out of my mouth, and it pulled on my lower lip.

“You gonna suck on my cock like that, baby?” His eyes were heavy, almost a shade darker now, like molten lapis.

I took his thumb between my lips again. I needed it.

He licked at my ear. “Be a good girl and suck it hard.”

A groan escaped my wet lips as they worked his thumb. His breath got ragged, and I liked it.

My eyes widened as he released his thumb from my mouth and turned me around. He tugged my skirt up, yanked my panties off my legs, and raised me up onto the counter. Spreading my thighs, he dropped to his knees. Those eyes glimmered at me as he buried his mouth between my legs.

Hallelujah!

A satisfied noise rose from his throat.

My hand slammed against the tiled wall as my breath caught. His grip on me tightened, his tongue licking, his lips sucking.

The door pulled, thudded, and I froze.

“Oh, sorry!” came a girl’s voice from the other side of the door.

Butler’s eyes shot up at me, and he kept licking, kept sucking, steadily increasing the pressure.

Hell yes.

I struggled for air. For sanity. For more of his incredible mouth.

“Is someone in there? What’s going on?” the voice insisted.

“B-be right out!” I managed.

“Oh, but I’m going in, baby,” murmured Butler against my sensitive skin. “Don’t make me a liar now.” Two of his fingers entered me and moved in quick, short motions, stroking.

“Holy shit.” My head fell back as my panting grew even more intense. I moaned loudly, and I didn’t care.

There was no more oxygen to be had in this fucking tiny restroom. Oh, who the hell needed air? I only needed my Butler-designed orgasm.

Right the hell
now
.

The door rattled. “Hey! Butler are you in there? What’s going on?”

What the hell?

The frantic noise only seemed to set Butler on fire. He removed his fingers and sucked hard on my clit, then pressed against it with the flat of his tongue.

Light exploded behind my eyelids.

I came, jerking in his hold, and he held me down on the counter, his magic tongue continuing its incantations over me. The sensations were extreme, intense, and I welcomed every one. Every single crazy one.

My body went limp, and he kissed the side of a thigh. I attempted to steady myself on the counter, my arms straining, my eyes blurry. Butler helped me off the counter.

I smoothed down my skirt as he adjusted his jeans. He scooped up my panty from the floor and held it out to me on one finger. I grabbed it, stuffed it in my bag, and he kissed me. I relished the taste of me on his mouth. He released me and washed his hands before splashing water on his face and drying off with a paper towel I’d handed him from the dispenser.

Those blue eyes met mine in the mirror, and I blushed.

“Oh, Scarlett,” he whispered, taking my hand in his and kissing it. “Look at you, baby.”

I grinned through my daze.

Butler clicked the lock and pulled open the door.

“Hey! Get a room!”

Kandace and her three pals, Lori, Shanda, and Amy stood in the narrow hallway. Their eyes widened at the sight of Butler as if he were their favorite book boyfriend unexpectedly come to life.

“I can’t help it if I’m always hungry for my woman, Kandace.” he replied with a wink, shooting his fairy dust over the four ladies as he steered me out of their way.

“Holy crap, did you really just say that?” Kandace’s mouth gaped open. “Yes, you did!”

“Boom,” said Shanda.

“I can’t even!” exclaimed Lori.

“Damn,” murmured Amy.

Their squeals and laughter followed us down the hallway.

“Are they stalking you?” I asked.

“It’s been known to happen.”

We strode out of Erica’s coffee shop, and I gulped in the fresh air, blinking in the stark sunshine. A new day had dawned. Yes, the new dawn of Butler and Tania. To think, when we’d first known each other, we’d continually treated each other with contempt, had no use for one another.

A smile tugged at my lips.

“What are you smiling about?” he asked, getting out a pack of cigarettes. “Or do I need to ask?”

“I was thinking, Dig’s probably laughing hysterically behind the pearly gates at this very moment.”

Butler laughed. “I’ll bet he is. The Ice Queen and his crazy lost boy.”

“Lost boy?”

He lit his smoke. “When he and I first met, I was bumming around on different beaches in Northern California, dealing weed, prescription drugs, whatever I could get my hands on to make a buck. All I wanted was to surf, to hang out. He compared me to one of Peter Pan’s Lost Boys. That’s when he told me to come out to South Dakota with him. He loved the ocean, had never seen the Pacific before. I think it was on his bucket list. He understood that I didn’t want to leave it. But it hit me. There comes a time when you’ve got to go forth into the world and discover more, and I did that, with him. Made me stand up on my own two feet. Made me grow up.”

“Eventually.”

He hooked an arm around me and pressed his lips against my forehead. “Yeah, eventually.” He laughed again.

That rich laugh, that I-don’t-give-a-fuck-what-anyone-thinks-of-me laugh was like a favorite song I had forgotten about but was excited to hear again on the radio, totally by chance.

“You know something,” I said. “I probably wouldn’t be who I am today if it wasn’t for you and one of the ugliest thirty minutes of my life in the back of Wreck’s repair shed.”

“Hmm. Very ugly,” he murmured, his eyes narrowing, his lips twitching.

“I’m curious—at the wedding, after you took off from the shed, did you go back to the party and find another girl to screw, like you’d said?”

“No, actually, I didn’t.” His eyes lit up. “I didn’t even go back to partying. I sobered up with water and coffee, got on my bike, and headed back up to North Dakota. Some sort of click had gone off inside me. I knew then that I had to try something different, that I had nothing more to lose and everything to gain. I dug in my heels at my club—paid attention, got involved, listened. I rose the ranks, and best of all, I mended fences with Dig. When I met Caitlyn, I was ready for her.”

“Our ugly was good for you, too, huh?” I wrapped my arms around him.

“Yeah, it was.” He pulled me in close, brushing my lips with his.

“I wasn’t sure I’d hear from you after the other night. I thought maybe we’d gotten each other out of our systems with—”

“A good fucking?”

“A very, very good fucking.” I grinned.

“I’m not getting you out of my system, Scarlett. I think I just proved that in the restroom of the Meager Grand.” He laughed again and pulled back from me, tucking his lighter back in his pocket. His face was drawn as he exhaled the smoke to the side.

“It’s a very nice coffee shop,” I said.

“It sure is,” he said, his eyes holding mine.

“I like that you felt the urge so strongly that you couldn’t wait.”

“I got carried away.”

I sucked in a loud breath on purpose. “You’re still impulsive and hedonistic deep down in there. I knew it.”

“You bring it out of me, Scarlett.” He exhaled a stream of smoke from between his lips.

Those lips. Taunting me, teasing me, licking me into a fever.

“You mean, I’m responsible for a Butler Renaissance?” I asked.

“Jesus.”

“What? You don’t like that?”

“I like it. A lot.”

My hands gripped the leather handles of my handbag, my legs squeezing together. “Could we perhaps continue this somewhere else? If you’re free, that is. I am. I’m free.”

“I’m free. You don’t have to be at the store?”

“I have a few phone calls to make, but I can take care of them tomorrow. I deserve the afternoon off.”

“You deserve a lot of things,” he said.

My pulse spiked at the low timbre of his voice, at the promise in his words.

I got in closer and tugged on his shirt. “One thing first though.”

He leaned down into me, an eyebrow raised.

“Get back in there, and get me another coffee with half-and-half, and then take me somewhere appropriate because…”

His jaw slackened as his eyebrows shot up his forehead. “Because what?” he breathed, his eyes darting to my lips.

I stood up on my toes and touched his lips. “Because I need to suck hard on that cock of yours.”

“Goddamn it, that mouth.”

“Oh, I think you like this mouth.”

“I do.” His glinting eyes narrowed. “I have a feeling I’m going to like it even more, the more quality time I spend with it.”

My insides tightened. I released my hold on his shirt and smoothed my hand up his chest, my face heating.

“She’s blushing. Fuck, that right there is making me harder than hard, baby.”

“I like that.”

“Me extra hard for you?”

“No, Blondie. You calling me baby.” I wrinkled my nose. “Corny, huh?”

His one hand went to my chin and raised it, his lips brushing mine. Smoke and heat. A charged promise. “I like it, too.” He kissed me again—this time, slowly, gently, with his eyes wide open. “Baby…”

His smiling lips moved against mine, his hand cradling the back of my head. My chest swelled with a thick wave of heat.

Breathless never felt so good.

Kandace, Lori, Shanda, and Amy waved wildly from inside the coffee shop, where they sat at the front picture window. Smiling huge, all four gestured at me with a thumbs-up through the glass.
I waved at them.

“Get some sugar packets, too.” I touched Butler’s arm.

“What? Why?” He wiped a lock of blond hair behind an ear. “You said you didn’t like sugar in your coffee.”

“Not for me. For you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Wouldn’t you like to lick it off my skin?”

He stilled, his eyes pulsing. “
Raw
sugar for that white skin, Scarlett.”

I bit my lip as he stubbed out his cigarette in the sand-filled can by the entrance.

“What kind of coffee should I get you? Erika’s got a hell of a menu, and I want you to have exactly what you want.”

“Tanzania, please.”

A smile grew on his lips. “Tanzania, it is.”

He strode back into the coffee shop. A man on a mission.

Butler returned with a fresh coffee, a cup of ice, lots of packets of raw sugar, and a small stainless steel shaker canister.

“What the heck is that?” I asked.

He raised an eyebrow. “Sweetened cocoa.”

“Oh my G—”

“My place. Now.”

THE SECOND WE GOT THROUGH HIS FRONT DOOR
, Butler tore off my clothes and his own with me helping in between drawn-out kisses. He pulled me to the floor of his living room, and his tongue explored every inch of me. He grabbed the packets of raw sugar, ripped one open, lined up the crystals on the curve of my hip, and licked at it. A gentle swipe. My nipples hardened to attention, and goose bumps rose all over my skin. Another longer lick this time in swirling motions, and I gasped for air. My skin shimmered in Butler.

He tapped out another trail of the golden brown crystals around my belly button, my tummy caving in, tensing at the flicking touch of the paper, the sugar grazing my flesh. His tongue nudged the tiny flakes over my pale skin, and the wet heat of his tongue appeased the irritation with luxurious care.

We had all the time in the world, and we were taking it.

He held the canister of cocoa over my chest, my insides heating all over again as the soft kiss of the dark powder landed between my breasts and over my nipples. He licked, and he kneaded. They were his. I was all his.

My damp skin was streaked in chocolate. Butler’s hungry eyes flared over me; he had marked me. He raised himself up, his mouth hovering over mine, a groan unsticking from the back of his throat, the rich scent of chocolate thick between us.

“Come get it, baby,” he rasped.

I rose up and smashed my mouth to his, my tongue exploding in bittersweet chocolate Butler.

“You taste so, so good,” I managed between licks and sucks.

“It’s all you on me,” he murmured.

He sprinkled more cocoa over my breasts, tossing the canister to the side. His mouth sank over one of my tits again, taking me down into a whirlpool of sensation. He sucked each nipple with long, drawn-out movements of his lips, making each one painfully, ridiculously hard.