More Than Meets the Ink (18 page)

“Turn around, princess. Look at me.”

Yeah right, like she could keep half her mind working if she turned around and watched those warm hazel eyes. She shook her head vigorously. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore, James; I can’t.” She wasn’t strong enough to kick him out of her bed, yet she wasn’t strong enough to withstand the devastation that having a relationship with him was going to cause.

He sighed. “Okay, princess, we’ll do it your way. For now, let’s agree to disagree. I’ll be waiting here when you decide to turn around and face me. Literally and figuratively. For the time being, I’ll humor you and we’ll talk about something else. Something neutral.”

“Ha, we don’t have neutral subjects, James.” True, everything revolved around some land mine: the restaurant, her family, his lifestyle… “You’d better go.”

He ignored her. What a surprise. “Tell me, sweetheart, what are you doing living here in this crowded apartment on top of the restaurant?”

That took the fight out of her. The way he didn’t give up but steamrolled over her and still made her feel cherished.

She glanced around, knowing what he was seeing. A cluttered, tiny matchbox full of old, mismatched stuff.

“I can’t afford to live anywhere else,” she said, hoping her mouth would have the good sense to stop talking. It seemed good sense, though, was gone, along with the rest of her working brain. “This was my brother’s monument to bachelorhood. He could have afforded a house, but he liked this place, said it had character.” Or at least it had when Jonah lived there.

“Kind of smallish, don’t you think?”

“Small? Now it’s huge. You should’ve seen it before, with Jonah’s humongous king-size bed occupying half the living room.” He’d been a true ladies’ man, and this had been his private retreat. He’d torn down a couple of walls and turned the place into a loft, bought the biggest, comfiest bed he could find, and with his slick moves managed to acquaint it with half the female population of Boston.

James chuckled silently. “Tell me about your brother.”

She let out a groan of disbelief. “That’s what you call a neutral subject?”

“No, princess, that’s what I call life. He was a very important part of your life, and I want to know about it.”

A sigh escaped her throat. “Jonah was the best, a bit overbearing with him being the older brother and all that, but he was great. He and my dad used to fight a lot, mainly because they were very similar, but they still managed to work together for many years. You know, Jonah was the only one of us who spoke Italian. He used to say an Italian chef that didn’t speak Italian was like trying to eat pizza without any tomato sauce. He learned from Grandma and then from Granddad.” She wished she had a photo of Jonah to show him, but she didn’t. All the photos had gotten shipped out along with all his other belongings—by her. Her way to rid herself of unwanted memories, as if it’d be that easy. “Jonah didn’t die right away in that damned accident; the doctors managed to keep him alive for twenty-four hours in the hospital, hooked up to several machines, tubes coming in and out of him, until he died from a brain hemorrhage. If that hadn’t killed him, complete organ failure would have. His body was beyond help.” Until now, she hadn’t been able to talk about the accident without breaking down. But at the moment, she was all cried out. And it felt good to talk about it.

“I am so sorry, princess.”

“Fucking drunk driver had the balls to die too, so there’s really no one left to hate. The asshole was speeding and ran a stop sign while driving home, loaded, from some business meeting.”

She remembered that fateful night. There had been bad weather that day, poor visibility and icy roads. Not that it was an excuse. “Dad died before they had time to get him out of the rubble. He’d sustained such severe injuries from the crash that we couldn’t have an open casket at the funeral.”

James caressed her gently for a while, silently offering her his comfort.

“If this was Jonah’s place, why did you move here?”

There, she admonished to herself. Even he understood how crazy that move had been.

Tate shrugged. “When I left my job to take care of Rosita’s, I had to let go of my downtown apartment. Too expensive. And too far away from here. For a while, I was at Aidan’s, but well…soon I had to leave. At first it was…difficult to be here.” Ha, that was the understatement of the year. The first time she entered the apartment after the accident, the pain had brought her to her knees. Jonah’s memory was everywhere, embedded on the walls, on the furniture. She’d closed the door, called the movers, and got all her brother’s stuff packed and sent to the family house. She’d also hired a cleaning company, mainly to rid the apartment of her brother’s scent, but that had been unsuccessful. She could still smell him everywhere. Sometimes she thought she could see him too. “But I’m sure it’ll get better, eventually. It’s better than my parents’ house, anyway…”

“What do you mean?”

“What do I mean? I’m the biggest cheat you’ve ever seen, James. You know how I told you Mom and Elle can’t stand setting a foot in Rosita’s? Well, I can’t get myself to cross the threshold in my childhood home. How about that, huh? I haven’t been there since the funeral. I can’t go there, so I hide here. I sent all my brother’s belongings there so I wouldn’t have to face that either. I’m a mess, James; you don’t want to get involved with me.” And she didn’t need him making a bigger mess of her.

“Hey, selective deafness here, remember?” he said jokingly over her shoulder and tightened his embrace. Then he kissed her ear. “You are not a cheat, princess; you just need time to recoup. You’re doing the best you can, and that’s more than anyone has the right to demand from you.”

Jesus, how did he always know the right thing to say to her? His warmth seeped into her, little by little, making her feel at peace, and for the first time since moving into that apartment, she couldn’t smell Jonah.

“Turn around, baby. Trust me. I only want to make you feel better.”

It took a while, but finally she turned to face him. He was so handsome, warm and rumpled from sleep. She placed her palm on his cheek, caressed his lips with her thumb.

“This is a bad idea, James.” The sex was already a bad idea, let alone this kind of intimacy. She was going to get attached to him—not a good place to be.

He stroked her back, his fingers finding all the curves and hollows, from the small of her back up to the back of her neck. His eyes were so intense that they held her captive.

“Let me kiss you, Tate,” he said as he drew her closer, her nipples gracing his chest. “Let me show you how good an idea this is.”

By the time he released her mouth, her breath was choppy and she had all but forgotten her own name. His huge hard-on was resting on her lower stomach, pulsing and flexing, but in spite of it, James didn’t put any moves on her. He seemed content just to caress her.

After a while of him kissing and fondling her, he wasn’t the only one visibly throbbing with need; she was so turned on she could hardly think straight.

“Do you plan to do something with that?” she said, signaling to his cock. “Anytime soon, I mean.”

“I’d love to, princess, but I don’t have any more rubbers with me.”

Her eyebrows lifted up. “You came here to seduce me armed with just one condom? What were you thinking?”

He breathed out hard. “Oh come on, Tate, don’t be nasty. I wasn’t sure whether you’d talk to me. I didn’t want to jinx it by being cocky and coming here with a string of latex. You know you would have had my arrogant, self-centered ass for it,” he muttered. Well, maybe he was right. “I gather you don’t have condoms around, right?”

She shook her head. They were doomed. Before the housekeepers swept over Jonah’s place, she’d have found condoms everywhere. And not only condoms, but other more colorful stuff too. Not now.

James nuzzled her face, dropped kisses over her eyes and mouth. “I can make you come with my hands and mouth all night long, no problem, but I’d love to be inside you bareback if you let me. We had the sex conversation, baby; we’re both safe.”

Tate froze at his words. “It’s not only about being safe, James. There’re other matters to consider. I’m not babyproof.”

“I won’t come inside you, princess, I promise. As a matter of fact, I’ll lay here and let you have your wicked way with me,” he said, falling to his back. “Whatever you want to do with me, I’m game. I’m here to serve you. I won’t even move. Unless I am ordered to.”

She laughed and dismissively rolled her eyes at him, but he was staring at her with those killer eyes and
wham
, she lost her mind. Or maybe she’d lost it in Florida and this was just the last straw. With her gaze intent on him, she lowered her lips to his chest. The man was so tasty she couldn’t help but trace his nipples with her mouth and revel in his shudders.

She straddled him, lowering herself onto him. Tate knew this was the worst of the ideas so far, but for the life of her, she couldn’t stop herself; she wanted him inside her too. She was wet and slick from all his kissing and cuddling, sensitive from their lovemaking. Tender and swollen. And needy.

“Slowly, baby,” he said, holding her by her waist, ensuring she didn’t rush it. “You can’t take me all at once, and honestly, neither can I. You feel too good, princess. Tight and hot.”

She rode him, slowly and a bit awkwardly at first, then faster and harder, her hands splayed on his pecs, while James looked at her in awe, his fingers gripping her thighs, clearly fighting the urge to thrust up. He reached for her and brought her down on himself, kissing her possessively as she cried out at the change in position and fucked herself against him, hard and deep, grinding her clit against him while he murmured encouraging words to her in between kisses.

“Give it to me, princess,” he ordered. “Let me have it. I want it.”

She came long and hard and sweet, but even then, true to his words, James didn’t move.

She fell onto his chest and rested there for a long moment. She could feel his dick twitching and pulsing inside of her, hard as steel, yet James just lay there, hugging her and nuzzling her head. Her moves to unsaddle him were fast halted as he pressed her to him.

“Where are you going?”

“You didn’t…”

“No, I didn’t, but I’m in heaven deep in you. I want to stay like this. Let’s talk.”

She burst into laughter. “Talk? Are you nuts? I can’t talk while lying on top of you with your cock shoved deep inside me.”

He grabbed her by her waist and, without pulling out, he rose to lean on the wall, rearranging her to straddle him. “There you have it, no more lying.”

She laughed some more. “It wasn’t so much the lying as the hard club inside me distracting me, thank you very much.”

His fingers traced her lips. “You’re breathtaking when you laugh, do you know that? You should smile more. In the restaurant, you’re so serious; your mouth is tightly stretched in a grim line most the time. You break my heart.”

She lowered her gaze. “There hasn’t been too much lately to smile about, much less laugh. Mom’s always been somehow more serious, but Elle is hilarious—when she feels like it, that is, which she hasn’t lately.” She lifted her fingertips to his face and stroked his beautiful features, his strong chin, and his warm lips. She could feel him inside her, flexing and throbbing. Every one of her caresses got a response from that unyielding shaft inside her, rushing liquid heat down to her core. “I used to laugh a lot. My dad and Jonah were quite overbearing but always got me laughing. In a way, you remind me of them.”

“I’m not overbearing,” he said.

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, sure you aren’t.”

As his hands brushed her collarbone, her skin prickled in goose bumps. Then he reached for her breasts, caressed her nipples, and as her pussy contracted, he also jerked inside her. Their bodies were talking to each other, answering each other’s pleas. He continued exploring, and soon she was on fire.

“James, I’m sorry but I have to move. I need to.”

“Go on, princess. Ravish me all over again; I can hardly wait. This time I may move though.”

She smiled at his comment, pressed her fingers over his mouth, and began rolling her hips. “Shh, James, let me feel you.”

With his hands gripping her, holding her in place so he could push into her, he brought her to another powerful orgasm and helped her ride it. When she opened her eyes, his expression was hard with strain, the cords in his neck standing out.

He was sweating, his white-knuckled fists grabbing the sheets. “Make me come, Tate. Now.”

She reached for him, his hips thrusting up, seeking her, and after a couple of deep-throated strokes, he bent over her and growling found his release in her mouth.

Chapter Eight

After a couple of days of having to battle with Tate for almost everything that had anything remotely to do with gaining her trust, James knew her well enough to foresee that this wasn’t going to go down easy. She wasn’t fighting their attraction or his presence around her or in her bed, but she was fighting his need to help her, which, truth be told, was damn hard on James. Helping the people he cared about was ingrained in him; he was a protector, a provider, but she was stubborn and independent, and although he was getting under her defenses, she kept huge chunks of herself locked away, inaccessible, as if her problems were her own and he had no right to even ask about them.

He knew Tate had been expecting her suppliers, and when she saw James entering Rosita’s, surprise bloomed over her face. Then suspicion. Her eyes widened even farther as she realized he wasn’t alone, that behind him followed two men, and behind those, three men carrying boxes with fruits, vegetables, and other food items. They were her new suppliers, not that she knew it yet.

“What the hell?” he heard her grunting as she narrowed her eyes on him. It wasn’t a friendlier greeting than the one he’d expected. He offered her his killer smile and reached over the counter and brought his mouth to hers, trying to dazzle her with a kiss. Damn she was gorgeous, even while looking suspiciously at him.