Breathe Me In (6 page)

I studied her, puzzled. She was a total mystery to me. I didn’t know what she wanted. But I knew that I wanted to watch her let go, shatter beneath me. Call out my name. “Kiss me for real,” I demanded.

Anya narrowed her eyes, but she lifted her hand into my hair and yanked it hard, pulling my head towards her. Then she kissed me. A bossy, bitchy, defiant kiss that robbed me of any rational thought. Her tongue thrust into my mouth. I met it with mine, and we fought for dominance, an angry erotic sword play.

She jerked my hair harder. So I pulled hers.

When we both moved apart for a second, our eyes locking in stormy lust, breathing hard, I wasn’t sure what to say, but Anya wasn’t at a loss for words.

“Let go of my hair, asshole,” she said.

Not going to happen. “Let go of mine.”

“I asked first.”

“But it wasn’t nice.”

“If you want nice you’re talking to the wrong girl.”

That made me smile. I was definitely talking to the wrong girl. For many reasons.

“What if I want nasty?” Our faces were close, breath intermingling, my body just pressed over hers. I wanted to tear off her clothes and plunge first my tongue then my cock into her body. She could make me lose control, easily.

“Nasty mean or nasty dirty?”

“Nasty dirty. I want you to say filthy things to me so that I don’t feel sorry for you.” Because even as my lust came alive, like a caged animal about to be unleashed, I couldn’t get the images of her passed out, of her desperation, out of my head. Of her as a mother. I didn’t want to feel anything but desire for Anya.

She shook her head, eyes narrowing. “I don’t want your stupid sympathy. You can shove it up your ass and massage your prostate with it.”

Anya did have a way with words. “I know you don’t want any sympathy. So make me forget. And I promise I’ll make you forget.”

Without warning she leaned in and bit my lip, hard.

And I knew it was on.

Staying was dangerous. I hadn’t expected to feel lust again. Hell, I hadn’t expected to even feel any attraction to Kane. Not really. I certainly shouldn’t be feeling it with his hand locked into my hair, his body trapping mine. But he was making me angry, whether intentional or not I wasn’t sure, but anger was good. Anger allowed me to stay in control. It kept the vulnerability at bay, and it turned me on. I wanted to smack at him and ride him like a bullrider all at the same time.

Forget?

God, yes, please.

Let me forget everything for just a few brief minutes. So I tightened my grip on Kane’s rock star wannabe hair and yanked as hard as I could. “There was your kiss. Now get me a glass of wine.”

“That was a bite, not a kiss. And the prior tongue tango makeout session doesn’t qualify.” He reached up and pried my fingers out of his hair. “And I’ll get it in a minute.”

Then he kissed me again, and it was hot and hard, and with each thrust of his tongue into my mouth, my body awakened, like electrical currents were being shot through me. Holy shit, I still had it. Desire. A vagina. I could feel my body, and the deep, internal ache that begged for completion. He smelled like soap and something woodsy that I couldn’t place, but it was intrinsically masculine. His breathing deepened and he gave a low groan deep in the back of his throat. It made me feel frantic to have him, all of him, instantly, before the feeling went away as fast as it had appeared. So I grappled at his jeans, trying to take his zipper down and see what I had to work with.

Which of course was when he chose to pull away and give me a smirk. “I’ll get that wine for you.”

I should have seen it coming. He wanted to play. I wanted to get it over with.

“You’re a dick,” I told him, because I wouldn’t be me if I weren’t verbally vomiting every thought that ran through my head. I didn’t like to be teased, and he was teasing me. Maybe that was in line with the whole flirting plan, but I’d been ready to put out and now he wanted to be all cute and coy? “A total dick.” It was worth repeating.

He should have gotten mad. I would if someone was repeatedly insulting me after inviting herself over to my apartment. But Kane just laughed.

“And you’re a piece of work.” He pushed off the couch and walked towards his small kitchen. “You’re like a komodo dragon. Colorful. Fascinating. And most likely dangerous.”

Dragon did seem like a better nickname for me than Bubbles, come to think of it. Sad, but true. I sat there, panties damp, nipples tight, irritated. I kind of hated Kane because he was making me think about things I didn’t want to think about. Like how I appeared to other people. How I had lost the ability to trust and to open myself up to anyone.

“I will be dangerous if you don’t get naked in the next five minutes.”

Again, he laughed as he twisted the corkscrew into the cork of the wine. “You have bigger balls than me, I swear. Slow down, Anya, what’s the rush?”

The rush was that I had to get home to Asher. And the rush was that while I was planning how to take advantage of Kane’s generosity, I didn’t actually want to spend too much time with him because I was disgusted with myself. I felt pathetic needing to ask him for help and I felt like a manipulative user. Sure, he was well aware of the score, but that didn’t make me any more comfortable with it. I wanted nothing more than to arrive at the day where I was totally and completely independent from every other person on the planet. I wanted to be able to support myself and Asher where no one could take it away from me. No one could toss me out of an apartment when I wouldn’t have sex with him, and when I dated it would be for all the right reasons not because I needed to get off or because I needed a meal. Or protection.

I stood up and strolled over to him, wishing I hadn’t lost so much weight. I wanted to have more curves to work with to entice Kane. It mattered to me, for whatever reason, that he found me attractive. Maybe because he didn’t leer at me. His interest in me felt twofold- yes, he wanted to nail me, but he was also concerned about me and Asher. I guess, on a certain level, I wanted to reward him for that. Make it really good. Or maybe I just wanted to feel that for myself. Look into a man’s eyes and see that he wanted me for me.

Yeah. This was dangerous. I couldn’t afford to think like that. Ever. It was a luxury I couldn’t afford. I couldn’t afford anything, least of all genuine emotion to creep in.

Leaning against the counter, I just watched him, not speaking. He really was good looking. I wondered why there wasn’t a cute little blonde who was a kindergarten teacher standing in his kitchen with him, cooking him pasta and planning their perfect wedding. That seemed like his scene. A beach wedding with monogrammed everything. Kane and Katie. That’s who he should be with- a Katie. I had envied all the Katies of the world growing up in their nice houses with their normal families and their Bichon dogs that they walked after soccer or volleyball or cheerleading practice. I couldn’t even despise them because I wanted to be them. I didn’t want to be the weird foreign girl with the jacked up accent. I wanted to be a Katie, to blend in to the group. To belong.

Instead I’d ended up a nobody in a city of eight million people where no one gave a shit about me.

Not worth the ten thousand dollar adoption fee.

Some day, I was going to have enough money that I would mail a check to that motherfucker who had called himself my father with a note that told him exactly what I thought of him. He could cash it and shove the money up his ass. I seemed to like ass shoving, didn’t I? God, I frustrated myself.

I hated when my thoughts did that, swirling around and around, always back to the negative, always back to anger. But it was the only way to keep myself from breaking down, from showing my fleshy underbelly, the vulnerable spot where the other animal could slice and kill.

Determined to not be any weirder than I already had been, I glanced around his kitchen. “Where do you keep the glasses?”

“Cabinet by the fridge.” He yanked out the cork. “I confess I don’t actually have wine glasses. I do have glass juice tumblers though.”

“I would be kind of freaked out if you did. It seems unusual for a single cop in his twenties.”

“Wine is a thing,” he said. “Don’t hate.”

That made me snort as I reached into the cabinet and got two glasses down. “If I hate on something, it’s going to be with a whole lot more feeling than that.”

Kane grinned. “Of that I have no doubt.”

I held both glasses out and he filled one, then the other. I really wanted to throw back my whole glass in one swallow but that would be a mistake. I hadn’t been eating enough to do that without ending up loaded. So I handed him one glass and sipped gingerly from the other. I didn’t even really like the taste of wine. Too tart and it made my tongue feel like sandpaper had been rubbed on it.

“I wish I could hear your thoughts,” he said, gripping his glass down by his side, not drinking any of it.

But I shook my head. “It’s not a pretty place inside my head. I doubt you’d want to visit.”

Kane eyed me, then he lifted his glass and did just what I wanted to- he drank the whole thing in one swallow. Yeah, he didn’t do the wine thing either. That made me feel more at ease actually. I wasn’t sure I could hang with classy.

He set the glass back down on the counter. “Tell me. I think you need to let it all out. Or if not every bit of it, one thing. What’s the thought running through your head right this second?”

Okay, I could play. “I’m thinking that I want to toss this wine back and then throw the glass. You ever throw a glass? I never have. I want to hear what it sounds like because I bet it’s really damn satisfying.” Let him think I was a freak. Hell, I was a freak. I didn’t think or do or feel normal things.

For a second, he didn’t say anything. “So do it. I’ll do it if you do it.”

My eyes narrowed. “You can’t be serious. It will make a mess. We’ll have to sweep it up.”

“I have a housekeeper apparently. She cleans naked for me. She can get it in the morning.”

The corner of my mouth turned up in a smile before I could stop it. He was a smartass. I liked that. Because it was totally without malice. He was just calling me out on my bullshit. “Oh, yeah? Then I guess there isn’t any reason why I can’t. Which direction should I throw in?”

“Don’t ask. You can’t plan a glass throwing. You just do it.” His right arm shot out and he hurled his glass at the sink with enough force that it crashed and instantly shattered, shards exploding all over the basin and the adjacent countertop. Liquid bounced and sprayed over the countertop.

That was fucking hot. The way he met my weirdness head on and rolled with it. The power of his throw. His complete lack of hesitation. All hugely sexy. My nipples tightened into hard painful buds and the ache between my thighs grew. He had issued a challenge and I never backed down from a challenge.

So I raised my glass to my lips, opened my throat and tossed the wine back like it was vodka. Then I lifted it up in the air and spiked it down into the sink, like a football player with the ball in the endzone. Glass shot in all directions in a glorious spray of defiance. The noise was loud, but the freedom I felt was louder. It was a big giant gesture of “fuck it.”

“That’s it. Feel better?” Kane asked, even as he was stripping his shirt off over his head.

“Yes,” I murmured, following his example and yanking my own shirt off, tossing it over the mess on the counter. There was no point in being shy about it and it wasn’t like my flat chest was worth hiding.

We both took one step forward and then we were on each other, gripping and touching and exchanging a hot dirty kiss, full of tongue and biting and the taste of wine. His skin was hot against mine and I ran my fingers down his arms, enjoying the muscular definition of his biceps. God, he was in shape. I had never been with a guy who took care of himself, worked out. He felt masculine and powerful and it made me wet with desire, that deep base ache between my thighs growing. He pushed me back against the refrigerator, gripping my hands and yanking them over my head. Kane rained kisses over my mouth, my chin, my neck.

I closed my eyes and let him move lower, his strength holding me up when I wanted to just lie down and spread my legs. Dangerous. It was definitely dangerous. But it felt so good. As freeing as shattering that glass had been. Somehow he pried my bra down so it was below my breasts and he sucked first one nipple, then the other, while I tried to even my breathing and not groan as loudly as I really wanted to. Then I wondered why I cared. So what if I yelled out? Fuck it. Fuck everything.

With his free hand he slipped inside my jeans and stroked me with no hesitation whatsoever. It felt like we were skipping a few steps, but I didn’t care. I wanted it. I wanted him. I wanted to come before desire skittered off back to whatever rock it had been hiding under.

“Are you going to come?” he asked, his breath hot on the side of my face.

“Do you want me to?” My voice sounded raspy, low, and my hips pushed forward to meet his finger. He was being rough, most likely rougher than he realized, and it shouldn’t have actually felt as good as it did, but I wanted it raw. That I could handle. Tender or gentle I couldn’t.

“Yes, I want you to come for me.”

That made me smirk and I shoved at his chest, hard enough to catch him off guard. He fell back a step. “I only come for myself,” I told him.

“You can only orgasm when you’re alone?”

That wasn’t what I’d meant and given the look on his face, he knew it. But his tease amused him, and I let him have that satisfaction for a split second. Then I reached forward and yanked down the zipper on his jeans and slipped my hand inside his jeans. “I meant I don’t come for the pleasure of a guy. I do it for my own satisfaction, no one else’s.”

“That’s because you’re stubborn.” His eyes darkened as I stroked his cock. “For having such a tiny hand, you sure in the hell know how to use it.”

Because it was a power position. Holding a guy’s precious package in my hand to either stroke or squeeze or rack, made me feel in control. I didn’t go on my knees. I was never doing that. But I could reduce a guy to jelly with a little polishing and it was fun to do that to Kane. I paused to moisten my fingers with my mouth, dragging my tongue across my fingertips. He swore as he watched me. Then groaned when I stroked him, going low enough on his shaft to brush his balls.