The Darkest Link (Second Circle Tattoos) (8 page)

“Kenny, yes,” she cried. “Please, faster.”

Speeding up the slide of his fingers deep inside her, he used his thumb and tongue to tease her until she was crying out for him over and over as she exploded, a kaleidoscope of emotions crossing her face as she tumbled over the edge. He eased her down, gently removing his fingers but continuing to draw out her orgasm with his tongue. They sat in silence for a moment, the only sounds in the room his heavy breathing and her gasps for air.

“Kenny?” she said hoarsely.

“Yeah, Red,” he said, sliding his thumb through her wetness gently, and smiling as her body shivered.

She sat up and looked at him. “You can fix my car,” she said, before flopping back on the bed.

* * *

Lia sat cross-legged on the floor in one of Kenny’s T-shirts, eating the last of the noodles from the carton with a pair of cheap wooden chopsticks. Her back rested against the sofa, and Kenny was sitting right by her side in a highly distracting pair of low-slung blue track pants. She could see much more of his half-sleeve ink. A mixture of dates, combined with words that were either lyrics or quotes being sucked into the eye of a tornado. Whoever did it had serious talent. The distortion of the font as the words headed into the whirlwind was incredible.

She fought the urge to ask him what they were about. That was a step toward getting to know someone better, and this was just about the sex. But simply thinking that made her feel a little hollow inside. Surely there was a middle ground between falling for someone in a heartbeat, and being emotionally detached, because she clearly didn’t operate well at either end of that spectrum.

Kenny had surprised her when he’d stepped away after giving her the best orgasm of her life, explaining that as much as he wanted to, in his words,
Fuck her right into Sunday,
he was going to go back to their original agreement to get cleaned up and then feed her.

While he showered, she fixed her lipstick. She had once joked with Harper, her boss’s fiancée, that fewer than five people had ever seen her without her makeup. And in all likelihood, one of those people was the doctor who’d delivered her. It was a part of who she was, and while she understood there were women who felt putting on makeup every day was a chore, or felt that they were somehow subjugated by men if they did, she enjoyed every moment of the girly ritual. To her it was the single biggest expression of her femininity, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

“You want any more of the noodles?” Kenny asked, offering her the box.

“No, thank you. I’m more than full.” It was true. She’d shamelessly devoured the Chinese food he’d ordered.

“Good,” he said, putting the box onto the small end table. “Because I’m starving.”

It had been impossible to miss Kenny’s almost constant state of arousal. She’d seen it in his shorts, felt it against her back, and now she watched with fascination as Kenny lowered his hand beneath the waistband of his track pants to grab his cock. Voyeurism built anticipation, and Lia was more than willing to sit back and see how far he would go without her involvement.

“You know,” Kenny said, his breath coming a little faster. “I thought about taking care of this in the shower. I thought to myself that I don’t want to come straightaway the first time I slide deep inside that hot wet pussy of yours. Then I decided that jerking off would be a poor substitute for the feel of you.”

Lia bit her lip. The combination of his words, the huskiness of his voice, and focusing on what his hand was doing even though she couldn’t see it was driving Lia crazy.

Watching him was definitely fun, but having sex with him was going to be infinitely better. Lia rose to her knees and slid her hand down his forearm until it was over the top of his, and Kenny gasped before moving his own hand out of the way. She used her other hand to lower his waistband so she could see him clearly. He was full and heavy; the long vein pulsed against her skin.

Kenny wound a handful of her hair around his palm and pulled her gently toward him. “As much as I freaking love the feel of your hand sliding up and down my cock,” he growled against her lips, “I want to be deep inside you the first time I come tonight.”

He crushed his lips to hers, a powerful, overwhelming force as he invaded her mouth with his tongue. He gripped her wrist, stilling her actions, pinning her in place while he ravaged her.

When she’d made the decision to return to Fort Pierce, this is what she was looking for, this was what she wanted. To be transported away from everything else that was happening in her world and for a little while to become the center of someone else’s. But never in a million years had she anticipated this. This overwhelming feeling of being consumed, of being owned. Her heart thundered and her mind raced as it tried to process everything he was doing to her. It was what she chased, those moments in life that left her breathless, that left her reduced to a mass of feelings and zero thoughts. It was what she wanted, to belong to someone fully, and to be loved in return. But the nagging voice in the back of her brain reminded her that this wasn’t love. This was twenty-four hours of grown-up sex, of distraction, of escape.

Lia forced her thoughts back into the moment. Back to where Kenny suddenly let her go.

“At some point tonight, I might fuck you on the floor, or the sofa, or even standing up in the shower,” he said, getting up off the floor. “But right now, I want your ass back in my bed where I can see if that hair looks as fucking hot on my pillow as I imagined it would.”

He offered her his hand, and she took it, allowing him to lead her back into the bedroom. As she entered the doorway, she slid his T-shirt over her head and dropped it to the floor.

“Jesus, Lia. You might be the only woman alive who could make me come simply by taking her clothes off.”

His words warmed her, filled her with confidence as she crawled onto the bed, arching her back. She laughed at his exasperated expletives as he opened the drawer of a small dresser and removed a box of condoms. Safety first was almost a religion to her, and she appreciated not having to ask.

Lia rolled onto her back and waited as he covered himself. The mattress dipped as he crawled over and covered her with his naked body. Surely there was no better feeling than that heady first touch of skin on skin. It was the most intimate of moments, and her breath caught in her throat with a hitch. Slowly she dragged her nails up his back as he kissed her neck. Kenny used his knee to push her thighs wider apart and trailed his kisses lower, his scruff deliciously rough against her skin, until he sucked one of her nipples into his mouth. Lia arched off the bed involuntarily at the sensation and ground herself shamelessly against his leg, looking for some relief.

“Your breasts are fucking perfect, soft and so sensitive.”

Unable to formulate any words of response, Lia pulled his head toward her, encouraging him to be rougher.

Kenny’s hand slid down her stomach until he reached her clit, which throbbed, viciously in need of release. He dragged his thumb through her wetness, circling her over and over, bringing her closer to the one thing she was desperate for.

“Please, Kenny, I need you.”

“Thank fuck for that, Red,” Kenny said, moving fully on top of her. He gripped the back of her knee and pulled her leg up against his thigh. In one steady motion he drove himself deep inside. “Fuck,” he groaned.

Lia closed her eyes and strained against him. The slow and controlled way he eased out and back in again drove her crazy. Nothing had ever felt so good. Kenny stretched her in all of the right places as he slid in and out.

“Faster. I need it faster.”

“I know you do, Red. But you aren’t in control right now. I am,” he said with a cocky grin.

Kenny slid his hands under her butt, spreading her and elevating her so the depths of his stroke changed. There was no way to keep up with the pace of his thrusts. All Lia could do was lie there and take everything he had to give her. Drown in the sensations and feelings that had taken over every cohesive thought she had, sending her tumbling into the heady spiral of release. With her orgasm crashing down around her, she had no choice but to let go, tightening around him, holding him close, as he shouted out and followed her over the edge.

* * *

Reid tried to open his eyes. His body felt sore, and he tried to think back to his workout the previous morning. What had he done? Just a run, a little basketball with Tyrell. Cardio only on Saturdays to give his muscles a rest. Then the bed next to him moved, and emitted a small groan.

Lia.

Carefully, he turned his head toward her, and as much as he didn’t want it to, his chest tightened. The usually perfectly put together Lia was a bird’s nest of hair, spreading up his pillow, around her face, and along her shoulders. Underneath the crazy yet perfect mess of hair, her skin shone, wiped clean of any makeup. Perfectly pink lips accented gently tanned skin and even pinker cheeks. Long eyelashes that seemed to go on forever were softened without all the black mascara he’d loved only hours earlier. Made-up or scrubbed clean, she was beautiful, and he only had a few more hours left with her.

They’d spent the night enjoying each other’s company, and what had surprised him most was not that the sex has been off-the-fucking-charts hot, but that they’d only had sex one more time before they’d moved to his sofa to eat potato chips washed down with cold beer. Granted it had been a pretty spectacular one more time that had started in his bed, but ended up with her on top of his dresser as promised in a journey that lasted over a hot and steamy hour. He was going to need to watch more movies to get inspired. They’d talked about motorbike designs, looked at some of the ones he’d built, and she’d stunned the crap out of him by taking a large sheet of paper and drawing a more feminine version of the bike he was currently designing based on a Busa frame. Eventually she’d fallen asleep while watching
The Thing from Another World,
the 1951 classic. He’d carried her to his bed, and that was the last thing he remembered.

He glanced toward the bathroom, where he could see her small case open on the counter, its bright red color a beacon in the otherwise neutral space. Moving gently toward her, he slid a hand underneath her and drew her to him, trying hard to bite down on his laugh as she grumbled at first, then wrapped herself around him. She snuggled into his shoulder and sighed, and he smoothed her hair down so it wasn’t in her face, or his, quite so much.

In the silence, it was easy to imagine that this could be the rest of his life. Not necessarily with Lia—it was far too early for that—but with someone. Someone who would like the things he did. No. Not liked. Someone who would value and appreciate the work he did. Someone who would remind him that he was good at what he did, rather than remind him of why he was a failure. When Lia had enthusiastically picked up a pencil and had started to draw and brainstorm designs with him, he could almost see the future he’d tried hard to bury.

So many years had passed, and he wondered for a moment if it wasn’t time to forgive himself, even if his father couldn’t. Perhaps then he’d feel like he could ask his sister for a place back in her life, but only after he’d explained why he had suddenly disappeared from it.

Still half asleep, Lia stroked her fingers across his chest, and unsurprisingly his morning erection jumped in response. Thank God he’d had the good judgment to negotiate more than a couple of hours with the woman whose hand was slowly making its way down his torso. He had no idea what the time was, though it was likely late morning if the sun shining in through the windows that ran along the length of the living room was anything to go by. The amount of natural light was one of the things that had drawn him to live above his workshop. He could draw, design, and build throughout most of the day without so much as a single light on. Plus, it saved him rent on an apartment. It had been worth all the hours of effort to make it his home.

“Ack. No,” Lia squealed, and pulled the covers over her head.

“As the guy whose dick you were about to grab hold of, should I be concerned about the scream?”

“No, sorry,” came the muffled reply.

“You don’t have a case of morning-after-the-night-before remorse, do you?” He felt her giggle against his chest.

“No, it’s not that. Goddamn, it’s hot in here.”

“It can get a whole load hotter if you climb out of there and kiss me.”

Reid couldn’t resist. He reached for the corner of the comforter and pulled it away from her head.

“Stop it,” she yelled, reaching for it again, but he gripped one of her wrists. It didn’t deter her and she frantically attempted to smooth down her hair with her free hand. “Close your eyes,” she instructed.

“No.”

“Kenny, please. At least give me five minutes to clean up a little,” she begged.

“No. Definitely not. I was awake before you, and I’ve spent the last twenty minutes looking at you. I’ve seen you, Lia. There’s no need to fix anything,” he added, and smiled when she stopped trying to hide. He released her wrist. A small thrill trickled through him seeing her like this. So perfectly imperfect.

She lifted both arms to run her fingers through her hair. Now
that
was the kind of wake up he appreciated. For a moment he’d forgotten she was naked.

“I have big hair,” she said, twirling a chunk of it around her hand. “It takes a while in the morning to make it look like anything normal. There is a very strong possibility that you are the sixth person to ever see me without makeup since I turned thirteen years of age.”

“In that case, I’m honored,” he said. “And there is a very strong possibility that you’re gorgeous with and without it.”

He slid his hand around the back of her neck and drew her toward him, thanking his lucky stars as she took the initiative and crawled on top of him to kiss him. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Her skin was soft under the hard calluses of his hands. He slid them down her back until they came to rest at the base of her spine. Their kiss deepened and he gripped her ass, holding her close as she pressed herself against him. Lia got up onto her knees. “How many hours do you have left?” she asked, straddling him.