Savage Things (Chaos & Ruin Book 2) (10 page)

“Is that so? Well, maybe I’ve just been rudely awakened by a really loud intruder, and I’m trying to go back to sleep.”

“Are you?” He cocks his head to one side.

“No.”

“Then drink your coffee.” He’s definitely in a better mood than he was last night. Strangely, he appears to be in a
good
mood, which doesn’t make all that much sense. Still. I’m not one to argue. I pull myself up so I’m sitting, collecting the mug of tar-black coffee he’s brought upstairs for me, and I can smell how sweet it is as I lift it to my lips. Perfection. It’s amazing how quickly caffeine can kick start your brain. Zeth watches me drink, his eyes fixed solely on the point where my lips meet the ‘Baddest Motherfucker Alive’ mug—the one I know he finds hilarious, even though he’s never said anything about it.
 

He doesn’t mention last night, or the fact that Mason’s now loose, perfectly capable of telling Lowell that we know she’s using him as an informant, and there’s little we can do about it. Or that it’s my fault. He sits on the edge of the bed, looking at me as I drink my coffee, like an artist studies the object of his painting, not expecting me to say anything or comment on the fact that he’s observing me. He wants to be an outsider in this moment. He wants to pretend like he’s not here, that he’s somehow managing to oversee this quiet, simple moment where I relax in bed, taking my time to wake up fully, hair everywhere, weird lines from the pillows marking my neck and my shoulder.
 

After a while, he says, “I was going to wait.”

“Wait for what?”
 

He’s got a flat, impassive look on his face, which usually goes hand in hand with a statement or a parting of information that he knows I’m not going to like. “Wait for you to come home last night. I was gonna wait for you to leave, and then I was going to go find him again. I thought about it for a long time.”

Ice water fills my stomach. “Oh? And…did you? Did you go and find him?” He’d better not say yes. I’m going to lose my fucking mind if he does. I especially asked him not to. I couldn’t have made it any clearer—I didn’t want the kid dead and dumped into the docks, regardless of what he may or may not have done.
 

Zeth lies down on the mattress, on his side, supporting himself on one elbow. He’s leonine, all predator, thick muscles shifting and twisting as he uses his body in the most perplexing ways. No one else moves like he does. “I didn’t go, no. I knew you’d fucking castrate me.”

“Good. Because I would have. I’d have kicked your ass so hard, you wouldn’t have been able to sit down for a year.”

He looks impressed. “Only a year?”

“A decade. I never would have spoken to you again.”

A slow, nefarious smirk spreads like honey across that perfect face of his. “I love that you think you could take me, angry girl. It turns me on to think of you trying to kick my ass.”

“It shouldn’t. It should instill fear and panic into you, the likes of which you’ve never felt before.”

Zeth is the owner of a multitude of barely visible tics that I’ve learned to decipher since I’ve been with him. Few others would be able to predict when he’s going to strike, or when he’s going to smile, but I can. I know he’s trying not to laugh as we joust back and forth.
 

“I’m glad you didn’t go back on your word,” I tell him.
 

“I am, too.”

“Promise me you’re not going to? Promise me you won’t do anything reckless?”

“I don’t make promises like that, angry girl.”

I would have known he was lying if he promised not to do anything reckless. It’s physically
impossible
for him to avoid reckless. It should probably be his middle name or something: Zeth
Reckless
Mayfair. “All right. Then just promise me you won’t keep anything from me again. We’re a team. We’re supposed to be in this together.”

He looks unhappy about it, but he jerks his head once in a downward motion—as good as an oath in blood when it comes to my man.
 

“And promise you’re not going to kill Mason in the next few weeks. That little girl needs her brother.”

“You know what
I
need?” Zeth shunts himself closer to me, closing the gap between our bodies on the bed. “I need about ninety minutes with you, naked, here in this bed. And I need it
now
.”

“Ninety minutes? That’s a very long time. How do you plan to allocate all of these minutes?” I laugh as he relieves me of my coffee cup and sets it back down on the bedside table. My smile is slipping as he leans into me, forcing me back onto the pillow. The mirth in his eyes is still there, but there’s an edge to it now. A casual, secret enjoyment that tells me he knows perfectly well what he’s going to do and he’s going to enjoy it greatly.
 

“The first ten minutes are going to be me removing your clothes, angry girl. I’m going to torture you as I slip you out of these ridiculous pineapple print pajamas.” He inches his face closer to mine, his eyebrows furrowing ever so slightly. I have to battle with myself not to fasten my teeth over that full bottom lip of his. Goddamn, he’s so sexy. “Pineapples, Sloane? You trying to tell me something?”

My cheeks flush, heat spreading across my face, my lips tingling. He’s done some questionable things to me with a pineapple before. I distinctly remember being very sticky and punch-drunk from his attentions in the aftermath; whenever I smell the saccharine sweet smell of cut fruit in the cafeteria at work, I’m instantly wet, a thrill of adrenalin ricocheting around my network of capillaries and major arteries like a spark chasing down a fuse, heading doggedly toward an impossible and unbearable explosion.
 

The upper right hand corner of Zeth’s mouth twitches. “I haven’t factored hitting the store for supplies into my ninety minute plan, I’m afraid,” he tells me. “You’re just going to have to make do with my fingers. My tongue. My cock. Promise me you’re not going to be too disappointed.”

I sound like a flustered teenager when I laugh, way too breathy and ruffled given how many times we’ve already fucked, but he does this to me. When he pins me down with that look of seduction in his eyes, I fall into him like light falling into a black hole, unable to deny the gravity that pulls me closer. It’s physics, after all. Physics and chemistry. I can’t fight the laws of the universe, and I sure as hell can’t fight the lust that burns inside me like napalm.
 

There are people out there that believe in the law of attraction. Each morning they wake up and stand in front of a mirror, staring at their reflections, telling themselves that today money will enter into their lives. They’ll get that job promotion. Their lives will be better and more satisfying in whatever way they desire. I don’t need any of that. I don’t need money. I don’t need a better job, or a new car, or to travel the world. If I were to stand in front of a mirror and plead with the universe for anything, it would be this man, inside me, twenty-four fucking seven, his hands on my breasts and his mouth on my clit. I’m so abruptly turned on that I don’t know what to do with myself, as Zeth pops up onto his knees so he can hover his body over mine, his dark eyes studious picking me apart with the precision of a heart surgeon.
 

“After the clothes are off, I’m going to spend the next fifteen minutes licking and kissing your body. I want a lesson in anatomy, Dr. Romera. I want to know the medical term for each and every point where my tongue meets your skin.”

“I’m not sure my brain works under that kind of pressure.”

“It had better. Or there will be dire,
dire
consequences.” Moving swiftly, he ducks, biting down hard and unexpectedly on my collarbone; I gasp, warring between my need to reel away from the pain and lean into it at the same time. Zeth chuckles in a dark, merciless way.

 
“Then I’m going to go down on you,” Zeth informs me. “I’m going to feast on that pussy of yours. I’m going to stroke my tongue up and down you. I’m going to tease it inside of you. I’m going to eat your ass until you beg me to stop.”

I buck underneath him, trying to squirm away. “No, you’re not!”

He grabs hold of me, pinning me by my wrists to the bed. “What? You don’t want me to eat your ass?”

“
No
!” Jesus. As if he needs to ask that. It’s one thing feeling his fingers there, his hard cock, but his tongue? That just seems very wrong. Especially since my job is heavily focused on hygiene and keeping things clean.
 

Zeth’s laughter grows louder. Somehow, even more wicked. “Oh dear, angry girl. I thought I’d already shocked the prude right out of you. Seems I was wrong.”

“You’re not going anywhere near my ass with your mouth.”

“Maybe you’re the one that needs the lesson in anatomy. Hate to tell you this, doc, but your pussy is very close to your ass. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time down there already, and let me tell you…I’ve never had more fun in my entire life.”

I squirm some more, only half-heartedly trying to get free. “My ass is not to be licked!”

“Every time you protest, I’m allocating another three minutes to that area of your body,” he informs me. His expression is serious, the tone of his voice deep and resonant. He’s not laughing anymore, which tells me I better shut the fuck up or he’s going to be making me writhe against his mouth for a full half an hour. He’s not really going to do it, though. He wouldn’t, surely?

“That should take us up to forty minutes,” he says evenly. “The next fifteen minutes are for me. Can you guess what I’m going to make you do, angry girl? Do you think you know what I want from you?”

Never in my life have I been the kind of person to bite my lip. Every time I see a woman do it in the movies, it makes me want to smash my fist through the damn screen and scream at the chick to grow some backbone. But right now? If I were a lip biter, right now I’d be damn near trying to chew the thing clean off. I shake my head, a little too intimidated to speak.
 

Zeth pouts in a way that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention. “Well,” he says. “I’m going to want you on the bed, Sloane. On your back. Your head will be hanging off the edge, and I’m going to stand over you. You’re going to open your mouth for me.” He frees one of his hands, gripping both my wrists with ease in just his right, so he can trace his fingertips lightly over my lips. He pushes his index finger between them, forcing my mouth open. His finger probes inside, running over teeth and tongue. He pushes my mouth open wider, humming to himself, eyes fixed on what he’s doing. He looks fascinated, like he’s already imagining enacting his plans and how good it’s going to feel.
 

“I’m going to slide myself in there, angry girl. I’m going to fuck your mouth until you can’t take it anymore. You’re going to feel me sliding all the way down, deep into your throat, and you’re going to love it.”

I press my legs together, the muscles in my thighs locking up tight. It feels wrong to admit that I believe him, I
am
going to love it, but I know that I will. His hands in my hair, pulling tighter and tighter as he grows so hard in my mouth; the way his legs lock when he skirts close to coming; the way his breath becomes ragged and intense—all of these things drive me crazy when I go down on him. And when he’s a little rough…god, I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me. I am so ready to jump him and do this already. I want him. No, I
need
him.
 

My desire to climb him like a tree is fierce. I want to take hold of the hem of his t-shirt, to bunch it up in my hands, to rip it off over his head, but Zeth still has hold of me by the wrists. They’re pinned high over my head, far from the smooth, solid, delicious feel of his skin, and that is almost too much to bear.
 

“Would you like me to come in your mouth?” he whispers. “When my cock is deep in your throat, do you want to feel me getting closer and closer? Do you want to hear me roar when I explode everywhere, so you can taste me on your tongue?” He asks me so intensely, brows still knotted together, unblinking, that he looks severe. His mouth is only two inches away from mine. I can’t stop staring at his lips.
 

Sweet Jesus. I’m a lost cause. I’m done for. I’ll never be the same again. “Yes,” I tell him. “I want you to come in my mouth. Please, Zeth.
Please
.”

“Good girl. You’re a very good girl.”

I am
his
good girl. Ever since I was old enough to think about such things, I’ve made a conscious effort never to measure myself by what other people think of me, particularly if their approval has been on the line. I’ve never wanted it. I’ve never needed it. Not even with my parents. I’ve always wanted to make
myself
proud, to work hard
for me
, to accomplish my best
for me
. But this man…shit, I don’t even know where to begin when I try to analyze how he makes me feel. It brings me such intense, unfathomable pleasure to make him happy. When he tells me that he’s pleased with me, I’m filled with such a pride that it almost makes me embarrassed. I live for it, though. I crave it like a drug. I wouldn’t sacrifice it for the world.
 

Zeth withdraws his fingers from my mouth, rubbing the pad of his index finger against the swell of my lip. He groans in the most electrifying way, and then he says, “Still plenty of time left. I’m going to give you what you want. I’m going to come in your mouth, but I’m still going to be hard for you. Once I’m done there, we’re still going to have another thirty-five minutes. Do you know what I’m going to do then, Sloane?”

“What?” He isn’t going to have to touch me to make me come at this rate. My nipples are peaked to painful degrees; every time I shift underneath him, they rub against the light material of my pineapple covered shirt, sending shockwave after shockwave of longing through me, making me pant.
 

“Then,” he says, lowering himself the tiniest bit further, baring his teeth a little. It’s such an animalistic, raw thing to do that my toes curl. “
Then
, I’m going to fuck you long, and I’m going to fuck you hard. I’m going to make you scream my name so goddamn loud that your neighbors three miles away are going to know who I am, and they’re gonna high five me in the motherfucking street. I’m going to bring you so close to coming that you’re delirious with need, and then I’m going to stop, over and over again, until all I need to do is blow on your skin to make you explode. Do you think you can take it?”