Lady Killer (Tangled Desires Book 2) (5 page)

I rinse off and wind a towel around my naked body before stepping out of the shower. It’s almost eerily quiet with no one else around, and it makes my skin creep. A little static charge that crawls over every inch. My life isn’t consistent, hasn’t been for years, and the one thing that grounds me is being able to fight and being able to take a shower where there are people coming and going and less chance of finding myself alone and susceptible.

I can hear the low rumbling of someone singing off-key. Tom, I’m pretty sure. The chill subsides. If anyone could protect me it would be him. If I told him about Santiago. If I let him in on what I’m running from, he’d help me, but then I’d have to tell him about that night. I probably should. He deserves at least that. I should apologize for his balls, and for ruining his life.

The thought makes my heart sink. I know it’s stupid, but he’d see me as I truly am. The thing that cost him his career, that almost ended his life, and I don’t want him to look at me like that. I carry enough guilt, harbour enough self-loathing already. I dry off and dress quickly. There’s a sweet, crispness to the fall air, but it’s still quite warm, so I chuck on a sports bra and shorts. A lightweight hoody in my hand for when I leave the gym.

Tom saunters around the corner of the lockers while I’m lacing my shoes. “Fuck, sorry, he says. “Didn’t realize you were in here.”

He’s staring at me unapologetically, and I’m not sure I can trust he actually means it while his gaze roves my body.

“Well, I am. Do you always walk into the ladies without checking? I could have been naked.” I stand up, gathering my stuff together. If he’d come in a minute earlier he would have found me touching myself, his name on my lips.

“If you want me to take your clothes off, all you have to do is ask.” Then he gives me that cocky grin, the one that should be in the public records as a crime against women, and winks. There’s a saying; something about being fucked six ways to Sunday. Well, that doesn’t even come close to how fucking fucked I am right now. I need a towel and a change of panties for how stupidly wet I am. For how he’s taken that tiny seed of want I’ve been carefully controlling and exploded it into a hot frenzy of need. I clench my thighs. God, I would cross my legs if it would ease the ache. I know I have to run. I need to leave this town, leave him in my fantasies. So I do the only thing I can do to keep from jumping him.

I drop my bag, crossing my arms over my chest and scowling while I rip him a new one.

Tom

She’s staring me down, as though she doesn’t want anything to do with me. Even if her body language says otherwise, even if those pretty eyes of hers dilate as I take a step closer and her lips part in a way that makes me wonder what they would feel like on mine. She darts a glance at my crotch, and it makes me fucking hard. Instantly. Like I’m a teenager who’s never gotten his dick wet before. I wouldn’t mind finding out how wet she is, or how she would feel on my cock. Any part of her. When she licks her lips, I’m drawn to her mouth. Yeah I’d love to know what that luscious mouth would feel like wrapped around my cock. Goddamn perfect, I imagine.

Then a subtle ripple of determination crosses her features as she lets her bag slip to the ground. “You. You think the sun shines out of your dick.” She scowls at me, her arms crossed, pushing her tits up and together.

I’m trying not to stare, but with her in that tiny pink sports bra, it’s almost impossible to look anywhere else. “If you got down on your knees you could find out for yourself, pretty girl.”
Oh shit! Did I say that out loud?
I was distracted. I can barely think while she’s standing in front of me, all pretty and soft creamy expanses of skin that I want to run my mouth over. I drag my gaze up as I take a step back, my palm over my balls. The last thing I want is another hit to the junk, especially while I’m hard as a fucking rock.

She’s choking with how angry I’ve made her. Her face goes almost as pink as her top. It’s the perfect color for her, probably the same color her pussy would be if I stripped her out of those tiny shorts. I’m pretty sure the idea has merit. Her wide-eyed gaze dips to my crotch again because she’s as turned on as I am.

“Did you just call me pretty girl?” Thumping a palm on her chest, she inhales. This sharp short sound that had a direct effect on my cock. I’m pretty sure I want to hear it again. It’s one of many sounds I want to hear grace her lips. Like my name if, no, when, I bury myself inside her.

“Yeah.” I have no delusions about what I want. I should have some kind of self-preservation instinct that tells me wanting her is a bad idea. I should be smart enough to back away from this girl whose presence sends me into permanent arousal. I should put her behind me, the way I have everything to do with that time in my life. Well, try to, anyway. I’ve got enough to deal with.

A baby momma to find, for one thing. But that just means I’m not going to randomly fuck the girl in front of me, up against the bank of lockers, no matter how much I might want to right now. Because there’s more I want to know about her than how she’d feel on my cock. I get the feeling she’s the kind of girl who becomes a permanent fixture in a guy’s bed.

“You’re full of shit,” she says.

“Am I?” I stalk closer, watching her back up against the lockers, a wildness to her gaze as she darts it around me.

Then she jabs a finger into my chest, and for some inexplicable reason that makes her more tempting. “I know you,” she says. “You don’t see anything past your own nose.”

“That might be true.” I certainly didn’t see my career coming to an end, and I didn’t see some woman sending me a fucking pee-stick in the mail. I snatch her finger, pulling her firmly against me. “Might have been true, but I see you, green eyes, and you’re fucking extraordinary.”

Her fingers flutter over my chest, moving lower while she pulls her bottom lip between her teeth. “Do you say that to all the girls?”

“Think what you like,” I say. “Most of it’s probably true.”

“But not that?”

“You know me.” I smirk. “I never noticed shit. What do you think the answer is?”

“I’m not interested in being one of your girls, Tom.” Her hands flutter lower, dipping over each ridge of my abs.

Every inch of me responds, heat radiating from point of contact, and I surge closer to her, pressing her against the locker while I roam my hands over the expanse of bare flesh at her waist. “If this is how you show how uninterested you are, I can’t wait until you’re begging for my cock.”

“Never going to happen.” She digs her finger into the material of my tank, gathers it into her fist and pulls herself up on tiptoe to press her mouth to mine.

Oh yeah, like she doesn’t want me so much right now she can’t keep from kissing me. “You’re thinking about my cock, aren’t you? Wondering what exactly I’m packing.”

She gasps, but she doesn’t let go of my shirt. “Something nasty, no doubt. After all you’re the one who said it’s out of commission.”

I chuckle. “I’m willing to make an exception for you.”

“And every other girl.”

“Just you, pretty girl.” I dive for her lips, licking my way into her mouth. I’m damn certain I’m going to explode from the sweet pressure of her lips, and her fucking taste. I’m dying here. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. Every single muscle strains to pick her up and ravage her. So I do.

Grasping her ass, my fingers slipping under the edge of those tiny shorts, I haul her up and press her into the lockers. They clatter with the force of it, and I’m rattled by the fact pre-cum is leaking from my cock while she nips my bottom lip, sucking it between her own. I’ve never been so fucking turned on in my life.

She’s all hot need, and sweet scent in my arms as I skate my tongue across hers. Surging into her, I devour her, taste her, my tongue licking inside her mouth. She’s fucking glorious. All wet heat and soft silky pleasure. Salt and sun, and fucking ice cream. And she gives so much better than she gets. She’s got my shirt bunched in her fists, using it as leverage to crawl deep inside my mouth, as though she can’t get enough, as though… she’s been denied too fucking long.

I’m pretty sure she can feel how hard I am for her, how much I fucking want her, and she responds with the sweetest damn whimpers. I bet she fucks the way she kisses. I bet if I ever get her to admit how very interested she is, she’ll fuck with the same intensity, same wild urgency that she’s claiming my mouth with. It makes my cock throb. I’m so hard it hurts. Her thighs are squeezed tight around my hips, and I’ve never felt anything like it. Like she could trap me to her if she wanted, and never let me go purely by the power of her will and sheer fucking muscle.

She smells like sex, her arousal scenting the air. My fingers hike a little higher inside her shorts, to where she’s slick for me. When I touch her wetness she groans into my mouth, lifting her whole body up and making it easier for me to slip a digit over her clit. I could cum in my shorts, like a goddamn teenager touching a girl for the first time. She arouses me that fucking much.

I break away, letting her slide down my body, because I want her needy, frustrated, and admitting to how much she wants me before I’ll give her anything more.

She groans, her face all flushed and her lips swollen from my mouth on them. I run my thumb along the bottom one. “You want more, pretty girl, you’re going to have to ask for it.”

She gasps, drawing air over my thumb that sends a shock to my groin, then glares at me. “You’re so full of yourself, aren’t you?”

I dip my thumb into her mouth, and her eyes widen while she fights the urge to suck on it. Then she flicks the tip of her tongue to the pad. I can see it clearly on her face, she’s imagining my cock in her mouth. “You’ll be the one full of me.”

“In your dreams.” She turns and gathers her things. “I wouldn’t touch that thing if it was the last cock on earth. I know where it’s been.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” I grin. “I’m pretty sure I could surprise you.”

“That’s disgusting,” she snaps. “You’re disgusting.”

“I’m anything you want, princess.”

She winces. “What I want is for you to leave me alone.”

“Except that,” I say. Because it’s the truth. Staying away from her is probably what I should do, but there is absolutely no chance I’m going to. I want her in a million different ways and keeping away from me isn’t one of them.

“Fine,” she says. “I’ll make it easy for you. I’ll stay away from you.”

I let her stalk out, because I know she’ll be back. She might not be willing to admit it, she might not want to get involved with me, but she sure as hell can’t hide that she’s attracted to me.

Except that’s not going to be enough. Because asking her to admit she wants me is going to mean telling her exactly why I’m not the kind of guy she can kiss and run from.

The bang of my palm slamming against the side of the lockers echoes through the quiet as I pass them on the way out. If I’d known she existed, this girl who would turn me upside down each time I saw her, then I would have kept my dick in my pants, but how was I supposed to fucking know? I start turning off the lights in the locker room, and the office, glancing around to make sure everything is ready for the morning before I lock the glass door behind me, shove my hands in my pockets, and head off down the street at a quick clip.

Gem

Staying away would be so much easier if I didn’t crave the gym, or the showers after my workout. Although I’m not entirely sure it would matter if he worked in a gym or a gynaecologist’s office. I’d probably still find myself gravitating toward him, and it isn’t just because I might want him to kiss me again, or I might have a hankering to find out what he meant when he said his dick was out of commission for everyone except me. It was probably a line. It had to be a line. A guy like him doesn’t change.

Except there was something in the way he looked at me when he said it that makes it impossible to get it off my mind. Lord knows I’ve tried. And I’ve tried to ease the frustration he’s created, but my fingers aren’t cutting it.

Maybe I’m a sucker for punishment. That has to be it. But when I see him, his gaze burning into me while I work the bag, the whole world slows down and for a moment I can rest. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt like that. Protected. The one guy I should be staying the hell away from gives me the ability to breathe again.

“Couldn’t stay away, pretty girl?” He smirks, striding over to me. “It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours.”

“I’m not here for you.” I turn my back on him to calm my racing pulse while I strip off my wraps and toss them into my bag.

“Sure you’re not.” He steps up behind me, his breath tickling my ear. “You can’t stop thinking about last night.”

“What happened last night?” I turn around, planning on pretending his attempts to get me all hot and bothered aren’t working, that I’m not constantly on edge around him and not on my second pair of panties for the day simply because I can’t stop thinking about his body pressing into mine.

My face is an inch from that tiny metal loop through his nipple. I wonder what it would feel like against my tongue. Salty, metallic, hard. Tom hisses between his teeth, his whole body growing rigid, much like his nipple under my tongue.

Oh shit.
This is one of those times I wish I had a filter between my brain and my mouth because I’ve darted my tongue over it before I even register we’re still standing on the main floor, amongst all the guys, some of them staring in our direction, while Tom freezes, slack-jawed, his gaze glued to my face that feels like its burst into flames.

I’ve never wanted to run away as much as I do right now.

Someone wolf whistles, and a few lewd comments get thrown about. Tom growls, low in his throat, and it sends a shiver up my spine with its possessiveness. He grasps my arm, and drags me off the floor, toward the locker rooms. There’s a door at the far end of the corridor and he marches me up to it, pushes it open, and then we’re standing outside.

I’ve just embarrassed him in front of his clients. He’s going to tell me not to come back to the gym. After that little stunt I probably shouldn’t anyway, but it’s the one place I’m almost at ease. Still, he’d be right to tell me to get lost. Maybe I should, maybe my time in Reverence is up. Hell, I should have been gone the moment I ran into him again.

So why am I dragging my feet, and why the hell do I think I might want to stay in this damn town? I am so flabbergasted by my behavior, I struggle to get words out. “I am so sorry. Please don’t kick me out.”

“Why would you think I’m kicking you out?” He grins at me as he presses me against the wall. “I thought if you wanted to use that sweet tongue of yours, I’d give you something to really wrap your mouth around.”

His hardness is pressed to my hip, and I lick my lips at the idea of taking him in my mouth. He has to be something pretty special if the rumors I’ve heard are correct in any way. “Do you have a piercing down there, too?”

Oh good Lord, what the hell has happened to my filter? Next thing I know I’ll tell him I want to see his cock, which I do, but I shouldn’t. I should be keeping my distance. It’s an abstract thought; the kind that slips past before I get a chance to grip onto it. Especially when he tugs the waist of my shorts down enough to slide his hand into my panties. A buzz sets itself up between my thighs, radiating through me as he presses a finger to my clit. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Something to roll your tongue around.”

Right now I’m thinking about how it would feel scraping over my most sensitive spot where his finger is rubbing in slow, sensual circles. “N-no.”

“So you’re not wet just thinking about it?”

I’m more than wet. I’m soaked. Have been since last night, thanks to him. It’s probably why my brain has ceased to function properly. Why instead of running, I’m letting him stick his hand in my panties in an alley, where anyone could walk past. “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I whimper.