Having Her: Lies We Tell, Book 2 (28 page)

Peace. Security. Freedom.

And it hadn’t been until he’d gotten to Lillian’s place, seen her screaming on the floor, that it had truly sunk home. He couldn’t ever have that peace and security. Or the freedom. Not ever. Because he’d always have this. And even though Ellie had gone, the worry would never truly go away. If not for her, it would be worry for his child. Worry for Kara.

Perhaps his mother wouldn’t hurt them but there were no guarantees. And it wasn’t like she was ever going to get better.

No, he was stuck with it. With no one to help. No one to turn to. Hunter had helped to a certain extent but the guy had his own demons to deal with.

And now he was gone, Vin truly was alone.

Sometimes he didn’t know what was worse, the sense of being a prisoner in his own life or the crushing isolation. An isolation he couldn’t overcome because to do so would be to rely on someone else. Share the burden. And he couldn’t do that. Not ever.

A couple of hands were pulling at him, the warm weight against his knees shifting.

He opened his eyes to find Kara standing over him. What was she doing here?

Oh yeah, that’s right. He’d come back to her apartment after Lillian had been admitted to hospital. Why, he had no idea. But then she’d given him vodka.

Thank fuck for vodka.

“What is it, baby?” His voice sounded weird, slurred. Shit, he really was drunk. It was kind of unfamiliar since he didn’t often get like this. But right now, he didn’t much care.

“You need to go to bed. It’s late and you need sleep.”

“Yeah. Where are my keys?”

“You are so not driving.

Ah no. That probably wouldn’t be a good idea.

Somehow he was on his feet, swaying gently. An arm snaked around his waist, a curvy female body pressing against him.

Not just any female body. Kara. She was so soft, so warm. He turned his face into her hair. She smelled like flowers. Sweet and musky. Familiar. “I love the way you smell,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“You’re so fucking beautiful. You know that, right? You know how beautiful you are?”

“Yeah, you told me.”

“It’s true though. Even when you’ve got that color in your hair and your eyes are weird colors. Even then you’re beautiful.”

A light came on and he frowned, closing his eyes against it. Then she was pushing him and he felt something behind his knees. A bed. He sat as the light switched off.

Opening his eyes again, he watched as she reached forward to grip the hem of his T-shirt. “What are you doing?”

“Undressing you. You need to be in bed and asleep.”

Sleep. Yeah, that sounded good. So good. And yet there was something even better about the soft brush of her hands as she pulled his T-shirt up and over his head. He reached out and took one, pressing her palm to the bare skin of his chest. Her touch burned. Licked him with fire.

“Vin,” she said softly, her hand motionless.

No, it wasn’t sleep he needed. Or vodka. He wanted, just one more time, freedom from the worry. Freedom from responsibility. Freedom from all the fucking burdens he had to carry.

Freedom even from being her master.

For once in his life, he didn’t want to have to make any decisions. He wanted someone to make them for him.

“Touch me,” he said, his voice rough with the vodka and with sudden, desperate need.

In the dimness of her room, all he could see was her face, half shadowed by the bedside light. Clear skin, golden hair, wide dark eyes. Such beauty.

He was used to taking the control, but now the alcohol had loosened something inside him and it wasn’t control he wanted from her. So it was easy to say, “Please. I need you.”

Her expression changed. Became softer. She moved, pressed a kiss to his mouth, fleeting and soft. “Shall I change?”

And in his hazy, drunken brain, it suddenly became clear why he was here. He’d come for her. She’d seen what he had to deal with. She’d seen his mother screaming on the floor. She’d seen him exhausted and at the end of his rope. She’d seen everything. And he didn’t have to explain or talk about it because she knew. Because she’d been there too.

He lifted a hand and touched her cheek. “No. I don’t want a slave tonight. I want you.”

“Me?” The word sounded almost shocked. “Are you sure? I could go get the costume—”

“I’m sure. Kara, please.”

She stared at him and he couldn’t interpret the look on her face now. Then she said, “Lie back.”

He lay back on the bed, closed his eyes. And he felt her hands on his chest, on his arms, stroking him lightly, gently. Exploring him. Then her mouth at his throat, trailing kisses around his collarbone and down, the flick of her tongue against his nipples, light tracing fingers on his abs.

So good to be touched like this. So good be touched at all. The gentleness of her, the hesitancy of her touches, as if she wasn’t sure she should be doing this. Then her growing confidence that sent a crack straight through his heart.

He kept his eyes closed, let her explore. And when she stripped his jeans and boxers from him, he lifted his hips to help her. She ran her hands up his thighs, wrapped her fingers around his cock, the touch tearing a groan from him. Then she squeezed and the groan became a growl. “That’s right, baby girl. Just like that.”

She stroked him, made him ache. Made him want to push her beneath him and bury himself inside her. Take control. But he didn’t. Screw control. He didn’t need it. Not tonight.

Kara moved, holding him. Then he felt her tongue on his cock, swirling around the aching head, delicate little licks like a cat.

The breath hissed in his throat and he arched back into the mattress, fire streaking straight up his spine. Then heat engulfed him as she took him into her mouth.

“Oh fuck, Kara.” Pleasure hit him, a wave of it spinning him around, taking him away. Turning him over and over in a current made only of sensation. Of the wet heat of her mouth and the softness of her hair over his thighs.

Vin reached down, tangled his fingers in that softness, lifted his hips, driving himself into her mouth until it was so fucking good he couldn’t stand it. “Baby, wait,” he groaned, wanting to pull away so he could take her, too, but by then it was too late.

She took control, pushed him over the edge, pleasure exploding in his brain like a hammer blow and all he could was lie there as the climax gripped him tight, wringing him dry.

And afterwards, when the vicious pull of it had lessened, he just didn’t have the energy to move, a delicious lassitude creeping up on him.

He felt like he’d left something unfinished but he couldn’t seem to remember what it was. At the end there was a cool hand on his head and a voice in his ear telling him to sleep.

So he did.

Chapter Fourteen

Kara woke up feeling trapped. Again. A heavy arm snaked around her and over her stomach, a hand pressing between her breasts. A possessive kind of hold.

She lay there for a moment, her eyes closed, enjoying the sensation. It felt good to be held like that. As if she wasn’t allowed to get away or escape. Not that she wanted to. In fact there was nothing much she wanted to do but lie here in Vin’s arms.

After a moment, the body lying curved around hers moved, hot bare skin shifting against her back. A muscular thigh eased between her own, pressing gently against her sex. She shivered, desire igniting in her blood.

She hadn’t been able to resist crawling into bed with Vin. He’d gone to sleep so quickly, the vodka and the orgasm doing their work almost too well. She hadn’t minded.

“I don’t want the slave tonight. I want you.”

She knew he wanted her. Shit, she’d always known that. But it hadn’t been until he’d said those words that she’d truly believed his desire wasn’t just because she fulfilled his need for control. That it was her, Kara, that he wanted. Not only the slave girl.

And it hadn’t been until that moment that she understood
she
wanted to be more than that for him too. She knew he didn’t feel about her the way she felt about him but that didn’t mean she had to hold back. He wanted her. He wanted Kara in all her fucked-up glory.

So that’s what she’d given him.

At first she’d been hesitant, used to the master-slave dynamic during sex, but that hesitancy had soon gone by the wayside. She hadn’t touched him for so long and he was so beautiful. All tanned skin and sculpted muscle. Not an ounce of fat on him. The legacy of his hard, physical job.

It had been intoxicating. The way she’d made him shake, made him moan, made him cry her name. For once she’d had the control, the power and the confidence, and she’d loved every second of it.

She hadn’t even cared that he’d gone to sleep, only getting in beside him and wrapping her arms around him. Warming herself against his heat. Feeling so good that finally she’d been able to give him something. A measure of the peace he’d once given her.

The hand between her breasts shifted, sliding down and under her T-shirt, his palm sliding over her bare skin. She let out a small, ragged breath as he cupped one breast, his thumb gently tracing around her nipple. It hardened beneath his touch.

“Hey,” he murmured in her ear, his voice soft and roughened with sleep. “I’m sorry. I was selfish last night.”

“You’d had four shots of vodka and an orgasm. I would have been amazed if you’d stayed awake more than two seconds.”

He shifted again, the heat of his erection against her hip. His thigh pressed a little harder and she found herself pushing down onto it, the friction tantalizing her. “Yeah, but still. Given the quality of the orgasm, you deserved more than me going to sleep on you.”

You deserved more…

Yeah. She was starting to think she bloody did. “Such as?”

“Such as me returning the favor.” His fingers pinched her nipple, sending a bolt of pleasure straight to her sex.

Kara shivered against him. “And here was I thinking we weren’t sleeping together again.”

“This isn’t sleeping.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I can’t change my mind?” A very conscious imitation of her words the day before. His hand shifted beneath her, curling under her arm, sliding under her T-shirt. His other hand cupping her other breast. Doing the same thing, thumb circling her nipple then brushing over it. Pinching gently. The breath escaped her. She could feel herself getting wet. Aching for him.

“I think we need this, baby,” he murmured against the back of her neck. “Both of us do. It’s better than pain. Better than vodka. And I just don’t think I can keep my hands off you when I’m close to you.”

He was right. They did need this. The release. The comfort. The connection with another person. Hell, not just another person. It was each other they needed.

She would never find this with another man. She would never love another man. It would only ever be him because there was no other person who understood what she needed like he did.

“Yes,” she said, arching against him, gasping as his fingers brushed her now button-hard nipples. “Yes, do it.” She lifted her hips, working herself against his thigh. Desperate for more contact, for more friction.

The feel of him naked against her was amazing. Always it was she who was naked, he who was clothed. Now their positions were reversed and it was an insane turn-on.

He kissed her behind her ear, bit her gently at the sensitive point where shoulder met neck. Not as hard as he’d done that time in her bathroom, but enough to add a sharp edge to the pleasure.

“Easy,” he murmured as she trembled, his kiss soothing at the same time as his hands incited.

“Oh…don’t…I can’t…”

“Hush.” His breath slid over her shoulder, pleasure twisting harder inside her as he moved a hand down, stroking over her stomach. Sliding under the waistband of her panties, pushing through the damp curls between her thighs.

“Oh…Vin…”

His clever fingers stroked through the wet folds of her sex. Then he shifted suddenly, tugging down her panties, pulling them off her. Turning her over onto her back, he gently pressed her thighs apart and Kara’s breath caught.

She trembled, feeling open and exposed. Laid bare to his gaze. “You meant it, didn’t you?” she whispered. “Last night. When you said you wanted me?”

He didn’t smile for reassurance. Just gave her that hard, level look that was by now familiar to her. “You really have to ask me that question? After all that stuff I told you last night about how beautiful and sexy you were?”

“You were drunk. And…no one’s ever wanted me, Vin. Not one single person.”

That piercing gaze remained on hers, searching. “You think I came here last night only for the vodka? Shit, if I’d wanted that I could have gone to the nearest booze shop. No, I came for you, Kara.” He said it so firmly and with so much certainty there was no denying it. “And now I want you to lie there and let me give you what you gave me last night.”

She couldn’t speak, a dense, heavy emotion sitting in her throat.

“It’s okay, baby,” he said, his voice softening, becoming even rougher. “It’ll be good, I promise.”