OGs: Deep Down (19 page)

“Hi, you,” Mike whispered to Kyra, his gaze dropping to her mouth, but he didn’t reach for her. No matter how hard it was for him—and it was, she could tell—he’d kept his word; in front of Sam he hadn’t shown any affection toward Kyra. In front of no one actually. It hadn’t helped with Angie though; the second her friend had glanced at Kyra the day after the community center, she’d figured it out. By the way Alden’s Charlie’s Angels smiled at her, they had too.

“Hi,” she whispered back. She felt an almost unstoppable desire to kiss him, but she restrained herself.

He went around the sofa and sat at the other end. Kyra watched, dumbfounded, as Sam uncurled and placed her feet on his lap. She was so at ease with him it was scary, especially as she’d never done that with Drake. And Mike was comfortable around her too.

“How come you can’t catch flies with chopsticks?” Sam asked, looking at him.

Mike chuckled and gestured at the screen. “Neither can your Mr. Miyagi.”

“True,” she mumbled and then went back to her movie.

“Sorry about this,” Kyra whispered. “Your grandmother brought Sam here and–”

His voice was quiet, his eyes intense. “Don’t be sorry. I’m not.” He took his cell, typed something, and then placed it on the sofa table. “I like having you guys here.”

They watched the rest of the movie in silence, her petting her daughter’s hair, him with his arm stretched on the back of the sofa, massaging Kyra’s neck. Playing with her hair. Brushing the hollow under her ear. Driving her insane with his sweet caresses.

Several times she eyed Sam warily, afraid she would notice, but her kid was so enthralled with
Karate Kid
she didn’t turn away from the screen once. She must have been tired, though, because no matter how exciting the movie was, by the time the final credits were rolling, Sam was sound asleep.

Kyra carefully stood and was placing a pillow under Sam’s head, when someone knocked on the door.

“I got it,” Mike said walking to the entryway. There was a young kid with a plastic bag full of white containers with Chinese symbols.

Mike handed him a bill and took the bag. “Keep the change, Billy.”

“Thanks, man.”

He turned to her. “Supper’s here.”

So that was what he’d been texting. “You ordered Chinese via text message?”

“Nope, I texted Sara and asked her to order for me. I was afraid if you heard food was coming, you would have bailed.”

And on that note… “Sam’s dead on her feet. I better go. I need to get her home.”

“No, you don’t. Not right away.” Mike turned the lights off, covered Sam with a plaid, and then moved to the kitchen. “Have you had supper yet?”

“Yes,” she boldly lied.

Mike grinned as he left the stuff on the table, took one of the containers, and stashed it in the freezer. “Liar.”

She was going to argue, but her stomach, damn traitor, chose that very moment to rumble loud and clear, so she followed him to the kitchen. “Mike, we are not supposed to—”

“Shut up and come here,” he said, cutting her off. “Sam’s sleeping. She doesn’t know whether I am here or not. I don’t see how she could get attached to me. There is no harm in us eating together.”

He had a point. Still, she was the one who had said they weren’t going to socialize. As weird as it sounded, this was much more intimate than having sex.

“Now come here, baby,” he repeated, holding his hand out to her.

She walked to him, and he kissed her hard and long, her body melting on the spot.

“Been thinking the whole afternoon about this.”

“About Chinese food?” she asked innocently.

“Smart-ass. No, about kissing you,” Mike said, nuzzling her face. “Love seeing you dance. Hate the way guys look at you. Max is right. We’re going to have to transfer your classes somewhere to the back. Since you’ve been in the gym, all my classes have started late because the assholes are salivating over you.”

She kissed him softly on the lips. “You’re exaggerating. By the way, do you think your dad would agree to install some poles at the gym? Now that some of the strippers from Bottoms Up are taking my classes, other women have gotten interested and started asking about pole-dancing lessons.”

He chuckled. “Dream on. It’s bad enough you have a bunch of strippers in your exotic-aerobics classes. My boys would never survive pole-dancing ones. And who would teach?”

She answered without thinking. “Me. I worked a pole for some months after Sam was born.”

Mike froze. “What?”

She realized her mistake immediately. She should not have mentioned that. “Drake was at sea. I was alone and needed money. They paid very well, and the flexible working hours allowed me to take care of Sam and keep auditioning.”

The vein at his temple was pulsing, and Mike’s jaw was so tight it was a miracle he got any words out. “You were stripping to support yourself?”

“It was more like pinup stuff. It was a fancy gentlemen’s club. Nothing sleazy. I never did lap dances. Mike?”

“Motherfucking piece of shit,” he growled hard, his expression feral.

She placed her hands at either side of his face. His eyes were stormy. “That was a long time ago. And I actually met Alexa there, when she came in to learn a few moves. It all turned out good. Let’s eat, honey.” Kyra brought him to the dining table and pointed at the food containers. “What did you order?”

It took a while for Mike to calm down, but he did. “The usual. Why? Have your tastes changed over these past seven years?” She shook her head. “Good.”

She took her noodles and started picking out the shrimp and giving them to Mike, who fed her several pieces of his chicken. The beef dish they shared.

They’d fallen back into their routine effortlessly. God, seven years had passed by, and at this very moment, it felt like they had never been a day apart. Some things about Mike were so different, yet others were so familiar. The bad thing was, she loved all those parts.

She was in deep trouble. Deeper than ever.

“You got dessert too?” she asked after they finished the food.

He smiled. “I said the usual, didn’t I?”

Deep-fried banana-and-vanilla ice cream. She warmed the banana and, after adding chocolate syrup to the scoop of vanilla ice cream, moved to the table. He took her by the hand to the rocking chair, sat down, and lifted her to sit on his lap.

Oh God. They’d done this a million times. Ate dessert in this manner, her feeding him morsels now and then. Or she would be rocking in the chair, and he would come home, lift her in his arms, take her seat, and place her on his lap. There was only one thing better than sitting in a rocking chair, and that was being in Mike’s arms while he was sitting in one.

If having dinner with him felt more intimate than sex, this was thousand times worse.

She tried to scramble away, but his grip on her tightened. “Shh, baby. Settle down.”

And she did. She didn’t want to, but she was powerless against him. They ate in silence.

“You kept my rocking chair,” she whispered after they were done with dessert.

“Of course I did.”

“This place is amazing, but somehow I hadn’t pictured you living in an apartment. You’d always wanted a house,” she told him.

They’d lived in an apartment in Boston while she’d attended college there, but he’d hated it. Maybe not so much the apartment, but not being in Alden.

“I wanted a house with you. I wanted a lot of things with you. Once I didn’t have you, I discovered those other things weren’t that important to me.”

There was no animosity in Mike’s words. He was just stating facts, but regret weighed heavily on her heart. At what he’d lost. At what she’d lost.

He might have noticed her discomfort, because he changed the subject.

“Saw you with the girls today. They’re good,” he mumbled.

“Yes, they are.” Kendall, Stacy, Megan, and Shantel were good dancers and better kids. She had fun dancing with them in a way she hadn’t in ages. “They’re so excited about it; they talked two more girls into joining them. I don’t know what kind of competition they’ll face, but they could win.”

“Does it matter to you?” he asked, rocking them. “Would you train them if they weren’t so good?”

“No, it doesn’t matter to me. I would train them even if they didn’t know how to put a foot in front of the other. They actually reminded me how fun dancing can be.”

“You like teaching?”

“Love it.” She would have never thought she’d go for it, but she did. Teaching satisfied something inside her that dancing herself didn’t.

“Good, because you’re a great teacher.”

“Thanks,” she barely got out. That coming from a natural teacher like him—and as far as she was concerned the best in the world, was the biggest of compliment.

They rocked for a while in silence, gazing through the window in front of them, until she was totally relaxed in his arms.

“Are close spaces the problem, or is it the dark?” he asked quietly.

He hadn’t brought up her issues until now. For the past week they’d had sex every day. She would go to sleep, and sometime in the night he would slip inside her bed. He’d never closed the curtains again, and he’d always left before dawn.

“I think it’s the darkness that triggers it. Not too fond of small, closed spaces, but I can manage. You turn the lights off, and I panic.”

She hadn’t told anyone about her claustrophobia except for Mike. She hadn’t wanted to, but talking to him felt so natural, so right, it just slipped through. And once that door had opened, the whole sordid jail story had plopped out too. He hadn’t brought that up either, but when he didn’t think she was watching, there was a sorrow in his gaze that broke her heart.

He kissed her temple. “We’re going to have to do something about it.”

“No, we are not,” she said, trying to wrench away. There was no “we.” She should keep that in mind. “I need to go.”

“Nope. I want you here.”

She thrashed some more, but it was useless.

Mike trapped her in his arms. “Calm down. We need to make this about sex for you not to freak? Because I have no problem with that either,” he said as he roughly cupped her between her legs.

Kyra froze. “Let go. Sam—”

“Not a chance, kitten. Sam is out for the count. Even if she woke up, we would hear her moving before she could get to see us. I wanted to talk; you shut me down. Now open your legs,” he growled in her ear. “We’ve done this plenty of times. Surely you remember.”

She did remember, and taking into account the way she shivered and grew wet on the spot, her body did too. Still, common sense had to prevail. “There are people on the street. They can see us.”

It was getting late, and although Main Street had quieted there were patrons coming and going from the diner and from the bar down the road, the Red Chicken.

“No, they can’t. These windows are treated. They reflect from the outside. You see them, but they can’t see you. Now open up for me and give me what I want.”

She faltered for a second but then leaned back on his chest and slowly opened her legs, granting him access.

Obviously it wasn’t good enough for him because he parted his thighs, spreading her a bit more. “Like this, baby,” Mike whispered as he delved under her pants and caressed her. “Fuck, you’re wet. Open for me. Trembling for my touch.”

That she was—wet, open, trembling. About to come at any second just from the feel of him.

As he pushed two fingers in, Kyra arched her back and let out a strangled, almost soundless moan.

“So fucking tight. I love being inside you. My mouth, my fingers, my cock. It blows my mind away. Every fucking time.”

He slid out and in again, pushing deeper and deeper inside her, until the whole lengths of his index and middle fingers were in, and she was clamping against the intrusion, her nails searing his arms. Then he pulled back and moved some of her juices to her clit. She jerked, pressing her ass against his monumental erection, her insides tensing, more wetness rushing to her swollen folds.

She couldn’t stop watching the group of people that had gathered at the entrance of the Red Chicken, scared and excited at the same time that they would somehow notice.

She felt him smile against her throat, and his touch got lighter right away. “Not yet, baby. I can feel your clit throbbing. I don’t want you coming just now. Lift your top.”

“What?”

“Lift your top. I can see your nipples hard and straining against the cloth. I want to see you playing with them.”

Her dazzled mind started to work again. She eyed the street warily. “But—”

“They can’t see you. Only I can see you.”

“But I see them,” she whispered as he kissed her throat.

“Do they make you nervous?”

And turned on as hell, but she didn’t want to recognize it. She didn’t need to, because Mike could read her body rather well, and her body was shaking with arousal.

“Next time, with the street brimming with people, you’ll stand naked and brace yourself on the window, and I’ll fuck you from behind hard and fast while you scream my name and fog the glass up with your panting. Now lift your top.”

She hesitated, and he moved his hand away from her. “Because you want to blow, don’t you? I can help with that. I will make you come so fucking sweet you will pass out, but before that, I want to see you working those gorgeous tits. Show me or I stop.”

Damn manipulator.

“Stop if you want. I can take care of myself. Or do you think you’re the only one with fingers here?” she said, going for her sex. This was madness. She should stop. Get up. Go home. Masturbate in the dark of her room, like she’d been doing before this affair started. But she didn’t. She pushed two fingers inside her core and then tried to close her legs to give herself enough friction to get off.

He stopped her. “I didn’t give you permission to jack off, kitten. I know you have fingers too, but as far as I know, I’m the only one around with a cock. Now let me make myself very clear; if you want to come, it will have to be with me inside you and you showing off those tits to me.”

She could make herself come, even without the extra friction. Mike growling at her ear, macho tripping and ordering her around, his cock jerking on her ass, was actually turning her on more, but for some unfathomable reason, she found herself obeying him.