Love the Way You Lie (Stripped #1) (11 page)

“Jesus,” he says. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

I look up at him, face shadowed in the moonlight. He’s so beautiful.

And so cruel to make me want him.

I push away, ready to go back down the stairs, but I slide on the loose gravel that collects on the rooftop like snowdrifts. My body pitches forward, far enough over that I see the glistening street and let out a shriek. Then strong hands grasp my waist and pull me back—hard. I’m flush against a wall. Not made of brick, this wall. It’s muscle and will, steady strength and heartbreak.

“Thank you,” I say, my voice low and rough like the floor we’re on.

I’m still breathing too hard, my heart beating too fast. I was so close to falling. And the scariest part is the relief I would have felt.

“You’re always afraid, aren’t you?” he murmurs against my ear.

I can’t see his expression; I’m still facing away from him. His hands are still on my hips. But I can imagine his eyes when he says it, that mix of curiosity and reluctance. As if he’s intrigued by me but he doesn’t want to be.

I can feel him thinking instead. He’s trying to figure me out. He’s trying to burrow inside me until he sees how I work. But it will never work, because I’m not real. I’m smoke and mirrors—a magic trick. If he looks too closely, I’ll disappear.

I pull away and face him.

He’s a study in textures—the shadowed stubble on his jaw, the dark pools of his eyes. The worn leather of his jacket and the thick denim of his jeans. He is his own planet, terrain to be explored, mountains to climb and oceans to drown in. My fingers itch to touch him, though I’m not sure where I would start. I think his hair, because I want to know if he can be soft there, at least. Because the rest of him is so hard.

But I don’t touch him. “What do you want?”

He looks away and blows out a breath. “To give you something.”

“Something else?” I still have the Taser he gave me in my bag. Not that I could have used it on him. He caught me totally by surprise just now.

He reaches into his jacket and pulls something out. This time I don’t need to hold it to know what it is. I don’t extend my hand either.

Instead a strangled sound escapes me. “A gun?”

His expression is almost bashful, a sharp contrast to the sleek heavy metal thing he holds so expertly. “I was thinking…the Taser isn’t enough. Not in this neighborhood. Not with you working here.”

“Is that even legal?” I squeak.

His low laugh is my answer. “Do you want to put your name in a database?”

“No, but I don’t want a gun either.” I’m more likely to accidentally shoot somebody than protect myself with that. The Taser was already a big step for me. The gun is downright terrifying. It’s too much. I can’t take it.

He seems to understand that. He nods and puts it back in his jacket. “If you change your mind…”

I stare at him, both confused and captivated. What strange gifts he’s brought for me. First the Taser. Now the gun. They’re both so violent. I hate violence. But they are also protection—and I need protection.

He’s like a cat bringing me a dead mouse as a gift. Disturbing. And sweet.

“Do you want me to go?” he asks.

I should tell him yes. I should tell him to leave. “Don’t go.”

Christ, I’m in too deep. How long has it been since I was attracted to a man? I’m not sure I ever have been. I had a crush on the bodyguard, but that was girlish—despite the adult things he did to me. There had barely been time, or opportunity, to look at men before I got engaged to Byron. And now I’m so far into this man, into Kip, that I don’t know how to back away.

Kip smiles a little. “Then I’ll stay.”

I narrow my eyes, playfully suspicious. “Now that you have me here, what are you going to do with me?”

His smile gives me all kinds of suggestions. “That depends.”

“On what?”

“On what you like.”

Oh, he’s good. A little spark of pleasure lights up in me. It may just be a line he gives all the girls, but it works. It’s more seductive than his scruff or his muscles or his boots—the idea that he cares. I dance every day, trying to please men I don’t even know. And here is this one, trying to please me.

“I like to dance.”

“I’d like to see that.”

“Then why don’t you come into the club?”

“Not like that. I’d like to see you dance the way you want to.”

I’m not sure that’s even possible. If I know he’s there, I’ll be dancing for him. I’ve been trained too well—by Byron, by my father. I even perform for Clara, in a way. There is no freedom with other people. Only in being alone.

“No dancing,” I say, strangely disappointed.

“Then let’s lie down,” he says gently. Maybe he knows how hard this is for me, to get close. Maybe it’s hard for him too. “We can look at the stars and let them dance for us.”

My heart clenches with something like wistfulness.

He’s not even gone, but I already miss him. I’ve had so little kindness lately. Or ever. And here he is with a whole weapons cache full of kindness.
The killing game.
I remember what Blue said about him. Even Ivan warned me away.

Kip stands there looking gruff and intimidating, like he would take on the whole world for looking at him sideways. There are scars on his knuckles that say he tried. And there’s a bend in his nose that says he’s lost. But despite all that violence, he touches me with desire.

He already has my body, already bought and used up. But he wants something else.

He wants me.

*     *     *

My father loved
my mother. I was young when she died—when he killed her—but I remember that much.

I remember how he doted on her, giving her everything she asked for and more. I remember how she would laugh and tell him not to spoil her. I would sneak out of my bed when they threw parties. Even in a crowd of people, all dressed in elaborate gowns and tuxedos, they were easy to spot. She always had a smile, and he only had eyes for her. They would dance in the middle of the room, eclipsing all the other people.

And then one day my father came to me, eyes red and swollen from crying, voice thick with grief, to tell me she had died. I think I knew then he had done it. It was the lack of revenge that told me. If anyone else had shot her, he would have destroyed the whole city to avenge her instead of holding a small closed-casket funeral in the rain. A casket I wanted to believe was empty. But was it really better to believe she had abandoned me?

Maybe that was why I slept with my bodyguard. It had been a way to be close to my mother, to be like her, years after she was gone. Of course then I didn’t understand that a twenty-one-year-old man interested in a fourteen-year-old girl was wrong. I don’t think he even cared about my body. He was a rush junkie, and I was his fix. Fucking the boss’s daughter was just another risk. The men on my father’s payroll didn’t exactly have printed resumes and pension plans.

They never lived long enough to need one.

On the roof of the strip club, we are a thousand miles away from that world. Far away from tuxedos and ball gowns. Far from love and jealousy and revenge.

There is only a man who wants to fuck me. And touch me and make me hump his boot.

A man who will pay for the right.

Inside the walls of the club, he pays in cash. On the roof he pays with gifted weapons and an unexpected gentleness. He pays with thoughtfulness, but it’s a currency all the same. And so I let myself relax. He puts aside the gun and lays his jacket down like a blanket. Then I’m lying with my head on his arm, looking up.

“How long have you lived here?” I ask.

I don’t mean for the question to come out, but it does. We shouldn’t get personal. Fucking and sucking, but no questions. And no answers.

“Not long,” he says, looking up at the sky. “I don’t stay put very long.”

“That sounds nice,” I murmur. Never putting down roots. Never having them yanked out.

“Sometimes. Other times I wonder what it would be like to have everything I need, right at my fingertips. Food, a bed. Sex.”

“You have those things.” It’s not supposed to be suggestive. I just mean he can buy them, in a restaurant or a motel. Or a strip club.

But when he looks at me, there’s heat in his eyes. And resolve, as if he’s finally taking what’s his. The words change and tighten. They become about the taste of him and the warm jacket we lie on. They become about the sex I’ll soon give him.

His gaze sweeps over my body, stretched out. I’m wearing yoga pants and a tank top, but the way he looks at me, I’m already naked. He strips me with just his eyes, leaving me bare and vulnerable and strangely unashamed.

“You’re beautiful,” he says, his voice hoarse.

I flinch, because it’s what Byron used to tell me. Of course when he said it, it was a compliment to himself, praise for finding the perfect accessory to his life.

Kip notices. “You don’t like that word.”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.” I laugh softly. “It’s complicated. I look like my mother.”

That’s what my father always told me, with the bitter light of grief in his eyes.

There must be grief in my eyes too, because Kip says, “She’s gone.”

“It was a long time ago. I thought I was over it, but for some reason I think of her a lot more now.” Maybe because Clara is paying for her sins. Maybe because I am too.

He is quiet a moment. “I think we never really get over the past. It’s always shaping us.”

Then how is it shaping you?
But I am careful not to ask that question. I think with the quietude and the starlit intimacy, he might actually tell me. And then where would I be? I can’t care about a man. I can’t care about anything but my sister. All I can carve out for myself is a single night with a man I choose.

Because it isn’t really about payment when I take his hand and place it on my breast.

A breath leaves him on a sigh as his hand cups me. Broad fingers stroke my skin above the edge of my tank top. A heavy palm warms me through the fabric. I can still hear him saying I’m beautiful, but he holds back now, thoughtful. “I see you,” he finally murmurs. “Only you.”

It’s his way of grounding me in the present, and it’s working. He does see me, because he doesn’t know anything of my past. He doesn’t know where I came from or where I’m going. I’m so tired of being my father’s daughter, my mother’s daughter, my sister’s protector. For this moment I’m just me. I’m only a warm body for him to use, and I need to be that for him.

“Do you want me to dance for you now?” I whisper even though I said I wouldn’t.

He shakes his head slowly, eyes dark and solemn. “You don’t have to dance. You don’t even have to move. Just let me make you feel good.”

I don’t remember what good is anymore, but his strong hands show me. They push up the hem of my tank top, exposing me to the cool night air. They trace circles over my skin. He pulls the fabric over my breasts, sucking in a breath when he sees the lace bra I have on.

His hand looks dark against the bright red, powerful over the sheer fabric. He strokes his thumb back and forth across the tip of my breast, hardening the nipple until it makes a point. My body responds to him without me doing anything—like he said, I don’t even have to move. My hands remain at my sides, my head resting on the folded edge of the jacket that is my pillow. My head is propped enough that I can watch him stroke my breasts while I lay passive, and it’s so easy to lie there, so easy to let him, so easy to feel pleasure arc through me without moving a muscle.

He runs a finger over the curves of my small breasts, traces the lines of the bra. Then he slips his hand underneath, touching me without seeing. It is a shocking warmth, his hand on my breast. These breasts I’ve bared to so many men. They are covered now—by him.

The lacy fabric stretches over his hand, pushed up with no room to give. Underneath, his hand shifts, finding my nipple between thumb and forefinger. He squeezes gently, and a soft sound escapes me, like a whimper.

“You feel so good. You feel like fucking heaven.” He rolls my nipple between his fingers. “This is what I dream about. Keeping you in bed, bringing you food and wine, touching you as much as I want.”

My eyes fall shut, imagining his fantasy. Instead of a stripper in a seedy club, I am his personal sex slave, wrapped in silks and desire. My body grows warm at the thought, wet at the core. “Kip.”

“Would you like that?” he murmurs. I think he knows exactly what he’s doing to me. “Would you lie there and let me touch you as long as I want to? Even when you fall asleep, I’d keep my hands on you. On these pretty breasts. On your pussy.”

And then, as if to illustrate his point, he removes his hand from my bra and slides it down, underneath the waistband of my pants. He doesn’t stop until he dips his fingers into the slickness pooling there.

“Fuck, you do like this.” He actually sounds shocked.

It makes me laugh—though it’s almost a giggle. I didn’t know I was even capable of making that sound, but then a lot of things are a surprise tonight. Apparently I’m the type of girl who can drink alcohol with a boy she likes, who will let him finger her while she plays the docile, innocent victim.

Of course, I’m not innocent. And I’m not really sure I like him.

“Don’t stop,” I say.

That earns me a slight smile. “I wasn’t planning to.”

He runs his fingers through the wetness there, but without purpose, without the speed I’d need to get off. He’s just feeling me, exploring me, the same way he did my breasts. My legs are already parted enough to give him access, but without planning it, my knees fall apart. It’s an invitation, and he doesn’t miss a beat, pushing deeper. But still with lazy strokes.

Not enough. A whimper escapes me.

And it sounds like acceptance. It must be acceptance, because he pushes up and slings a leg over my chest. He pulls off his shirt, and I can see his chest in full glory, broad and strong, covered in tribal tattoos and scars. He’s dangerous. He’s primal.

For tonight he’s mine.

Then he’s undoing his jeans, pulling out his cock. He presses the tip to my lips—without foreplay or finesse. His body blocks the moonlight. The only thing I can see is the shadow of him. The only thing I can smell is the musk of his precum.