Reckless (17 page)

“Then take it, because I want you, too. Just me and you. Right now.”

He reached up, knotting his hands in her hair to pull her close, and Zoe gave in to the move without hesitation. With the higher vantage point of being seated in his lap, she slanted her mouth over his, brushing the soft skin of his lips with a featherlight kiss. Alex arched beneath her, pressing up to increase their contact without deepening the connection of their mouths. He looped his arms around her shoulders, taking care to avoid the back of her bruised arms as he held her fast to trace the outline of her lips with his own. Teasing her mouth open with a slow sweep of his tongue, he explored the curve of her lower lip, sucking and testing and making her breathless as he took in every nuance. Her mouth parted wide on a gasp, and Alex slid his fingers to the back of her neck, loosening her hair from the knot at her nape until the waves spilled over her shoulders to cover them both.

“Do you know what I see in my mind's eye when I call you Gorgeous?” he asked, putting just enough gentle pressure against the column of her neck to tilt her head to one side.

“No.” The word trembled out of her, her breath going even tighter in her lungs as Alex skimmed a touch from her ear to the divot of her throat, then followed the path with his tongue.

“I see you like this. Hot.” His fingers found the tiny buttons on the front of her shirt, slipping the top one open with a muted rustle. “Sweet.” Another button fell loose, her nipples pearling harder in anticipation. “Brash.” His gold-blond lashes arced lower, and he thumbed one more button free from between the swell of her aching breasts. “Wide open and honest.”

Zoe dropped her chin, her pulse pushing faster and faster as she watched Alex undo the rest of the buttons to reveal her black lace bra. “God damn,” he whispered, his breath spilling into the hot expanse of her skin. “You really are gorgeous.”

“Then touch me.” The request flushed her cheeks. But something about Alex, about the way he was looking at her with both reverence and pure, wicked intention, had drawn the words right past her lips, and sweet God, she'd never felt want like this in her life.

Alex's hands shaped her waist and tightened. “Be sure.”

“I am,” Zoe said, dropping her mouth to his in promise.

“I want this, Alex. I want you.”

His fingers glided up to splay wide around the back of her rib cage, and she arched into his touch. Cupping the bottom edge of her bra with his thumbs, he lowered his mouth to her breastbone, slowly kissing his way down the
V
of her cleavage. Zoe's head tipped back, the ache in her nipples bordering on sweet pain as Alex freed the clasp nestled in the center of the black lace. He trailed a line of soft kisses down the midline of her body, pausing to show the curve of her breasts the attention of both his lips and his tongue. The rasp of his stubble sent tiny shock waves straight to her core, and Zoe thrust against him, wanting even more.

But Alex wouldn't be hurried. “Look at you. Look how pretty you are in the sunlight.” He pulled back from her body, but only enough to let the natural light pouring in through the curtains spill over her breasts and his hands. He grazed one flushed pink nipple with the pad of his thumb, and she bit down on her keening sigh, too late.

Alex's eyes glittered. “You blush everywhere, don't you?”

Zoe writhed beneath his touch, so agonizingly close to where she needed it. But then something unraveled, deep in her chest, and it welled up on a seductive smile. She pushed him against the ladder back of his chair, relishing the flash of surprise that parted his lips. Emboldened by his expression, Zoe slid her shoulder blades together, letting the edges of her shirt fall open over the tops of her arms, exposing her body all the way to the low rise of her jeans.

“If you want to see all the places I blush, go ahead and find them.”

His mouth was on her in an instant, hard and unyielding as he pulled her nipple past the heat of his lips. The friction sent a tug to the center of Zoe's thighs, and Alex swirled his tongue even harder, as if he felt her need by mere contact. Unable to hold back, she rocked against his hips, the damp center of her body pressing tight to his cock despite the layers of clothing between them. Every thrust sent sparks to her core, every pass of his lips urging the sparks into flame, until finally, Zoe's breath became short, honeyed moans.

“Watch.” Alex ran his tongue along the very tip of her nipple, moving away just far enough to growl the word against her breast.

She blinked, still caught in the haze of want building low in her belly. “What?”

“You're gorgeous,” he said, repeating the openmouthed kiss on her other side. Slowly, his hands traveled up, cupping her face and tilting her line of sight to her breasts, then lower to the spot where her jeans slid over his visibly hard cock. “I want you to watch me make you come.”

Locking one hand over her hip, he guided her back into rhythm at the same time he returned to her nipple, a slow, dark smile edging the corners of his mouth as he met her eyes and held. The sight of his intensity tripled the sensation pulsing through her, the sunlight illuminating the sinful ministrations of his lips and teeth and tongue making it that much more forbidden, and oh God, oh
God,
if he stopped, Zoe was sure she'd die.

“Alex.” Release uncoiled, low and hot between her hips, but he didn't pull back.

“Gorgeous.”

Reaching down low, Alex hooked his palm beneath her thigh, opening her further as he pushed against her heat through the layers of denim. The change in angle coupled with the sweet pressure from both his mouth and his cock, and together they sent her right over the edge.

“
Oh.
” Zoe's orgasm crashed over her in wave after wave, the pleasure of it enough to draw laughter from her chest. She threw her head back as she arched the rest of herself forward, not willing or able to lose the connection Alex had given her from hips to breast. He scaled back his touches in slow sweeps, bringing her back down to earth gently, but the only thing Zoe could get past her lust-drenched mind was that she wanted more.

This time, she wanted to watch
him.

“Follow me.” She shifted off Alex's lap, mourning the loss of their connection for only a second before she pulled him from his chair. Moving down the hallway, she led him to her bedroom, not stopping until they'd crossed the threshold and reached the foot of her bed.

Alex paused, pressing a soft kiss to her mouth before drawing back to look at her. “You know we can't undo this.”

Zoe nodded, reaching down to lift the hem of his T-shirt over his chest, then his shoulders, before guiding it all the way off. “I do.”

Her fingers traced the top edge of her jeans, a bright ribbon of desire uncurling in her core at the way he watched her slide the denim over her thighs.

“And you're still sure,” he said, hissing out a low oath as Zoe turned her focus to his button fly. She ran her palm over the length of him, stroking his cock with one hand while undoing the buttons with the other.

“I am.”

In a tangle of hurried movements, they undressed each other to the bare essentials, although Zoe kept her open shirt loose around her shoulders. Still standing in front of her bed, she lowered Alex's boxer briefs, kneeling down in front of him to trail her fingertips over his hips. She wrapped her fingers around his cock, pumping once, then twice before following her fingers with her tongue. Alex threaded a hand through her hair, tension thrumming beneath his skin as Zoe parted her lips over his crown to draw him into her mouth.

“Zoe.” Her name was a prayer even as he grated it out. His exhales turned fast and heavy, and she adjusted the glide of her mouth to meet each one. Letting her gaze drift upward, she caught Alex's stare, his eyes glinting with so much intensity and raw want that they were practically molten. But his pleasure just made her own longing rebuild, fast and unrelenting between her legs, and she continued to stroke him with her hands and mouth, all the way from root to tip.

“Come here,” he finally said, interrupting her motions with a swift yet gentle grab. Bending low to hook his arms beneath hers, Alex lifted her to her feet, holding her there for only a second before pressing her back against the middle of her bed. Pausing for the scant moment it took to search his discarded clothes and take a condom from his wallet, he returned to her side, sheathing himself and dividing the cradle of her hips with his frame. Her panties disappeared from her hips with a quick slide, and Alex leaned forward to bracket her shoulders with both palms.

“Alex.” Zoe lifted her hips, searching. Her aching core brushed along his cock, her nipples re-hardening to tight points as she let her knees fall wide in encouragement. “Please.”

He reached between them, sliding a finger along her seam before testing her heat with a moan.

“Don't wait,” she whispered, her muscles clenching, begging for more.

Alex shifted forward, filling her with a long, slow thrust, and Zoe's breath flew out on a gasp. She stilled, her body adjusting to the tight fit of his cock inside her and the flood of sensuality that went with it. He drew back just slightly, creating the perfect combination of pressure and friction inside her core. The second push grew deeper, guiding them into a cadence of thrusts and retreats that heated Zoe's blood. With every motion, Zoe crested higher, thrust faster, wanted more. Her fingers curled around Alex's hips, and he shifted to balance the bulk of his weight on one forearm, dipping a hand between their bodies to slip the pad of his forefinger deep into the folds at the top of her sex.

“That's it. Christ, you're so hot like this.” His murmurs kept time with her moans, and God, even his voice made her want to come. He circled the slick bundle of nerves above while thrusting hard into her body below, and with one last press forward, Zoe flew apart. For a minute, she was weightless, wrapped in pure pleasure and calling out Alex's name. He lessened his movements, but despite the riot of sensations still pumping all the way through her, Zoe wrapped her hands around his lower back to keep him deep inside her.

“I like you right here,” she said, tipping her hips until there was no space at all between their bodies. Alex tensed, biting down on his bottom lip as she lifted to meet him again. But then he covered her chest with his, angling forward to kiss her as their rhythm grew stronger, and Zoe couldn't hold back. Opening her knees as wide as they would go, she knotted her legs around his corded waist, matching him thrust for thrust until it was impossible to tell who gave and who took.

“Ah, God.” For a second, he slowed, shifting his body almost to the point of withdrawing completely, but Zoe reached up to cup his face.

“Alex, watch.” She tilted her hips, the movement sliding his cock deeper into her aching center, and his eyes glittered, nearly midnight blue with lust and want. Sliding her palms over the strong line of his cheekbones, she guided his gaze to the spot where their bodies joined. “Watch me make you come. And don't hold back.”

Zoe rocked against him, her hips canting off the bed in a heated rhythm that sent spirals of pleasure from her belly to the deepest part of her core. Alex moaned, framing her shoulders with both hands as he thrust back once, then again, filling her completely. His ministrations became faster, more purposeful, until the tension in his muscles broke loose, signaling his climax with one last shuddering push.

For a second, a minute, an hour—Zoe had no concept of passing time—they lay in a twist of limbs and heated breath, until finally, Alex slipped from the bed to clean up. He returned just as quietly, and she braced herself for the awkward aftermath that surely had to follow.

Only it never did.

“You okay?” Alex asked, skinning back into his low-slung jeans before pulling aside her rumpled bedcovers, guiding her under the quilt with a gentle nudge.

“Yeah, absolutely.” The answer defaulted out of Zoe's mouth, fundamentally true and yet also inaccurate. Things like store-bought cookies and B-grade movies were okay. The mind-altering, pulse-scrambling, multiple-orgasm sex they'd just had?

So far past okay that the two syllables seemed pretty much ridiculous.

“Good.” He righted her shirt all the way around her frame, redoing the buttons and pulling her close. The afternoon sun slanted in past the blinds, scattering just enough golden light around them to be cozy but not blinding. Alex's body was warm and strong on hers, with his arms wrapped around her and his breath spilling over the crown of her head in long, drawn-out exhales. Zoe meant to say something, to get up, to move in some way, but with each rise and fall of her chest, her body unwound, her mind starting to drift.

It was the last thing she thought before falling asleep.

Chapter Sixteen

Alex woke the way he usually did, all at once and on full alert. He pulled in a deep breath of sweet orange citrus, and despite the cozy quiet and dusky twilight filling the space around him, a sudden chill stole down the length of his spine.

Holy shit. He'd totally, completely, irrevocably slept with Zoe Westin. And rather than feeling the remorse he damn well knew was proper, all Alex could think about was sleeping with her again.

And again.

As if the thought had been sent south from his brain in a direct memo, his cock stirred to life, no doubt encouraged by the fact that his arms were still full of the very enticing blonde in question. Alex forced himself to take a deep breath and recite quarterback ratings, but then Zoe gave a hazy, half-asleep sigh, shifting her ass right up against his hips in a perfect, excruciating fit, and oh hell. Not even a force of nature could make him want to let go of her.

“Mmm.” She burrowed deeper beneath the warmth of the quilt, her body loose and languid and damn near perfect in Alex's grasp. But then both her body and her breath went stiff, sending a slice of worry through his gut.

“Hey,” he said, the whisper spilling into the fall of her hair. She smelled so good, all sweet and citrusy, and he tightened his arm around her waist out of pure reflex.

“Hey.” Without breaking his hold on her, Zoe turned to face him, but before she could get all the way around, she yelped in pain.

Everything about Alex froze but his pulse. “Your shoulder.” God, he was such an
ass.
How could he have slept with her when he'd known full well she was hurt? “Here, let me look.”

“It's really . . . oh. Okay then.” Zoe's protest faded as he levered them both to a sitting position in her bed. Reaching through the shadows, he clicked on her bedside lamp, not even pausing to blink before returning his fingers to the buttons on her shirt.

“Alex,” she started, her voice still thick with residual sleep. “I'm just a little sore. The doctor at urgent care said I probably would be, remember?”

“I remember.” He scooped up the hem of the quilt, tucking it over her chest to keep her covered and warm before sliding the shirt from her arms.

It took every last ounce of his willpower not to swear out loud.

Alex forced a deep breath through his windpipe. The finger-shaped smudges on Zoe's upper arms were bad enough. But the purple bruise blooming like an angry, softball-sized starburst across the back of her shoulder made him want to find the guy who had muscled his way through Hope House and beat the snot out of him.

Not wanting to freak her out, he dialed back his expression even though his chest felt like it was chock-full of thumbtacks. “I'm going to get some ice from your freezer. That should help the swelling.”

“If you give me just a second, I'll come with you.” Zoe reached for her discarded jeans, and instinct had Alex in motion before he could fully register his hand on her quilt-covered knee.

“You need to rest, Zoe.”

She shifted from beneath the covers, putting on first her panties, then her jeans before grabbing a tank top from the nearby dresser. “What I need is to eat something, and you probably do, too.” A smile flitted over her face, but her slow, clumsy movements as she worked the tank top over her head canceled the humor right out. “So can you please do me a favor and stop going all Cro-Magnon man for just a couple of minutes so I can finish getting dressed and make that happen?”

Good
Lord,
this woman was certifiable. “You're not cooking,” Alex said, but the lightning-fast lift of Zoe's brows had him rephrasing just as quickly. “What I mean is, if you're sore, you should take it easy. Especially if you want to make it through your day at Hope House tomorrow without that shoulder locking up.”

Zoe paused, a frown unbending on her lips, and he took the ball and ran like hell. “Why don't I help you get dressed, and then we can order something for dinner? In the meantime, you can ice that bruise. Fair?”

She reached for the hoodie draped over the chair at her bedside, her frown intensifying as Alex slid out of the bed to guide it over her hurt shoulder before letting her do the rest. “Hmph. You're lucky you know how to talk your way into getting what you want.”

“And you suck at letting me have your back.” Okay, so he hadn't really meant to tease her—it had just slipped out. But Zoe laughed, and the sound scattered the tension pulling tight at Alex's muscles.

“All right, all right. Chinese or pizza?”

He followed her out of her bedroom and down the narrow hallway, shouldering his way back into his own T-shirt as he went. “Pizza. I can call my buddy and have it here in twenty minutes, tops.”

Zoe laughed again. “Of course you can.”

Five minutes later, he'd put the call in to his friend who owned the pizza place and filled a bag with ice from Zoe's freezer. Turning toward the spot where she stood on the threshold, he nodded her into a kitchen chair. “You know your father's probably going to hear about what happened today.” He met her partly panicked
you wouldn't dare
expression with raised palms. “The paramedics who responded to check Damien out were from Station Four. Your father is pretty tight with Captain Lewis. There's no way the dots won't connect if your name got mentioned somewhere down the line.”

“Lovely. Just what my father needs is another reason to hate my job.” Zoe slumped, the bag of ice she'd propped between her shoulder and the back of her chair crinkling.

Alex's gut dipped, but not enough to keep his words at bay. “You can't really blame him for wanting you to be safe.”

“I can when his desire for that safety is a double standard,” she said, her light brown eyes flashing beneath the glow of the kitchen lights. But her fire didn't last. “Ugh, I'm sorry. I'm not trying to be difficult. I know he wants me safe, and I get that—after all, part of why I'm so mad at him is because I don't think he's being smart about his own self-preservation. But I'm not a kid anymore. We should be able to at least talk about it without fighting, but every time I try to explain that Hope House isn't some death trap, and that he risks his safety at every shift, too, he just argues and then clams up. Keeping all this tension inside makes me so . . .
frustrated.
”

“I'm not sure I'm an unbiased ear,” Alex admitted, dragging a rough hand through his hair. As much potential as this conversation had to turn sticky, that didn't mean they shouldn't have it. “Look, Zoe, I have a zero-tolerance policy for bullshit, so I'm going to be honest. I didn't intend for this to happen between me and you. I'm not saying I didn't want it,” he qualified, straightening his spine against the back of his chair. “Because I did. I do. It's just—”

“I'm still my father's daughter.”

Her words stopped the rest of his in his throat. Damn it. The him-and-her part of the conversation, Alex could have, no sweat. The chunk that involved the history between him and her father? Not so freaking much.

Not that his silence stopped Zoe from pushing back. “Alex, you and I are adults. We mutually agreed to have sex. Together. The two of us.”

A muscle pulled tight across his jaw. “There's more to it than that.”

“But there isn't,” she countered. “Look, I understand your sense of loyalty. But I'm twenty-seven years old. At a certain point, that's got to factor in.”

“Of course it does. But your father has been my captain for eight years, Zoe. That makes things complicated.”

Zoe paused, and for a minute, he thought she'd let the topic drop. Part of him was relieved—he might not tolerate a whole lot of runaround, but there was a difference between saying what needed to be said and airing out too much. The past was the past, over and done. Nothing could be said or done to change it.

So why were the events he'd tried so hard to leave behind still burning to come out?

“Okay,” she said. Only instead of changing the subject, or lapsing into silence, or doing any of the other things she could've done to let Alex off the hook, Zoe slid into the chair next to him to scoop up his hand.

“So uncomplicate it for me.”

Alex pulled back, staring at her through the soft overhead light and the softer evening shadows beyond. The fact that she'd blown his goddamn mind in bed had been reason enough to give him pause. But now that he sat next to her, in her kitchen of all places, not just ready but willing to green-light all the things he usually kept on emotional lockdown?

Yeah. This couldn't fucking end well.

He opened his mouth anyway.

“You were surprised the other day, when you picked me up at my house.” He'd seen it on her face as soon as she'd gotten out of her car, and she certainly hadn't been the first person to go brows-up over his zip code. “Probably wondering why I live in suburbia, right?”

Zoe's forehead furrowed in confusion, although the blush that said Alex was spot-on with his assessment didn't get by him, either. “Well, yeah. Most young, single guys live a lot closer to the city.”

He nodded, his rib cage going tight as he thought of where Brennan lived, and Cole and O'Keefe and even Crews, who had a family. “They do. But I live in my neighborhood because that house belonged to my parents.”

Her confusion turned to clear surprise. “You bought your parents' house?”

“No.” The truth crowded up, shoving its way out of his mouth despite the rust on the words. “I inherited it.”

“You . . .
oh.
” Zoe froze, her copper stare going wide. “Oh my God, Alex. I'm so sorry. I didn't know.”

“It happened a long time ago, so not a lot of people do. My parents both died in a car accident, coming back from a long weekend on Sapphire Island.” He took a deep breath, waiting for the rest of the story to logjam in his throat. But instead, the words spilled out. “It was late, but they decided to come home at night rather than get up early the next morning to make the three-hour trip. A guy driving a tractor trailer fell asleep behind the wheel and crossed the center line on Route Seventeen to hit their SUV head-on. All three of them were killed instantly.”

Zoe's breath released on an audible exhale, and Alex steeled himself for the inevitable pity party that always accompanied the story on the rare occasion that he actually told it. But Zoe didn't offer one, and hell if that didn't make him want to talk even more.

“How old were you?” she asked, and his gut twisted hard before dropping toward his knees.

“The accident happened two months after my eighteenth birthday.”

She paused, her fingers tightening over his on the dark wood of her kitchen table. “Oh, Alex. I don't know what to say. That must have been really hard for you.”

“It was,” Alex replied with honesty instead of heat. “Our family was just the three of us, aside from my great-aunt and uncle who I'd seen maybe six times in my life. Even though I was legally an adult, my parents left everything to me in a trust. For all intents and purposes, I was pretty much an orphan.”

He shifted, his chair scraping softly over the ceramic tile. As if she'd grasped his need to do anything other than be still, Zoe let go of his hand, tilting her head slightly toward the center of the kitchen in a nonverbal
c'mon.

Alex followed her to the counter, a thread of relief spreading out in his chest as he continued. “College was really important to my old man, and he and I were close. Although he had a good job with the city, he'd never gone to college, and he always regretted it. My parents left me everything they had, with the one stipulation that I had to earn my degree. So I started at UVA that fall.”

“That must have been difficult, going to college so soon after they passed away.” Zoe reached into the fridge for a pair of beers, handing one over. The simple act of uncapping the bottle, then trading it for the other to repeat the process, chilled him out, and he rolled his shoulder in a shrug.

“Actually, it saved my ass in the long run. I'd already been accepted, and I landed a decent baseball scholarship. My parents had thankfully planned for a lot of the rest. In truth, without that stipulation in their will, I probably wouldn't have gone to college after their accident, and I damn sure wouldn't have stuck through it for all four years to get my degree like my dad wanted me to.” God, those first few years after his parents had been killed had been a blur, just motions to get from one step to the next. College had been the last freaking thing on his mind.

Alex took a sip of his beer, letting the smooth flavor linger for just a second before continuing. “Even though I knew enough people from baseball and stuff like that, I never really fit in. All they cared about was getting through exams and hanging out and drinking. Meanwhile, I was going home over Christmas break to fix leaky pipes in the bathroom and sort through personal property taxes. Looking back, I probably could've tried harder to find a place to belong. But at the time, I just didn't want to.”

“You felt like friends would replace your family,” Zoe said, and although her tone didn't make it a question, he answered anyway.

“I didn't realize it then, but yeah. Going to college got me thinking about all the things my parents never got to do. Part of me was so angry that my dad would never be able to go back and get a degree like he'd wanted, or see me get mine.”

She bit her lip, but didn't shield her suddenly tear-bright gaze. “All things considered, that anger seems justified.”

“Yeah, but I didn't even have anybody to be mad
at,
you know? And after a while, spending all that time angry just seemed like a waste. No matter how hard I tried, or how pissed I got, I couldn't change what had happened. I couldn't rewind, make my parents come home earlier, get sick so they couldn't go at all—I couldn't do anything. So instead, I decided I was going to do everything.”