Wicked Sexy (Wicked Games Series Book 2) (8 page)

He opens his mouth over the pulse in my neck. The unexpected heat of his lips and tongue feels so amazing, a low moan breaks from my chest.

I can’t remember the last time I was kissed on the throat. Before Connor, I can’t remember the last time I was kissed anywhere, by anyone.

It’s fucking
amazing
.

“One,” he prompts, his voice muffled against my skin.

“One.”

The word is so soft, it doesn’t qualify as a whisper. Connor sucks on my throat again, this time using a hint of teeth. My eyes slide shut with pleasure.

“Two.”

His mouth drifts closer to my collarbone, his tongue gliding like silk, raising goose bumps on the back of my neck. I inhale, arching toward him. In the distance, the whine of sirens competes with the intermittent squawk of the hotel’s alarm. I barely notice either.

“Three.”

He bites me softly on the long muscle above my clavicle. Heat pulses between my thighs, and I restlessly squeeze them together.

I breathe, “Four.”

His fingers find the hem of my shirt and slip beneath. When his fingertips brush my bare skin, I jerk, gasping. He kisses a soft trail from my shoulder back to my throat, his lips leaving sparks in their wake. I can hardly concentrate on counting, and have to think for a moment to remember what number I’m on.

“Five.”

His fingers drift up my waist and over my rib cage, tracing their shape, the hollows and ridges. His gentle kiss turns more insistent. His tongue laps at the dip in the base of my throat. My nipples harden and begin to ache.

I want his mouth on them. I want his hands on them. I want to feel the pull and tug of his teeth—

“Six,” he reminds me gently. When I breathlessly repeat it, I feel his lips curve against my skin. He whispers, “Good.”

He flattens his hand over my rib cage, just under my breast. His palm feels as if it’s scorching my skin. I wonder if he can feel my heartbeat, the wild hummingbird thrum of it, rising to a crescendo beneath his hand.

The sirens grow closer. Voices murmur nearby. People. People are close.

People can go fuck themselves.

The slow, upward drifting glide of his hand. The heat of it. The strength of it. The way he’s in no hurry, the way his lips feel, fire and satin, oh God this is good this is so,
so
good.

He stills for a moment, waiting.

Number. What number?
I mumble, “Seven.”

Connor moves to the other side of my neck, repeating the process of slow kisses, nibbles, gentle bites, but leaving his hand just below my breast, unmoving. Everything inside me is aching, clenching, surging. All my nerve endings are firing at once. My arms tangle around his neck. My head drops back against the wall.

“Eight,” I whisper, and adjust my body so the weight of my breast rests in his hand.

Because I hate them, I’m not wearing a bra.

Connor exhales softly. From somewhere very far off, I think it sounds like my name.

His mouth glides up my neck. His fingers slide together. He pinches my hard nipple between two calloused fingers, and I softly cry out. Into my ear, he says gruffly, “I want this in my mouth,” and flicks his thumb over the small silver stud pierced through it.

I like how verbal he is, how explicit. I wonder if he’d be this explicit during sex, talking in that low, rough voice about how I feel, how I taste, what he’s going to do next.

Between my legs, I’m drenched. The ache has turned into an insistent throb. I can’t concentrate on anything else. There’s only his mouth, his hand, and my body, reacting to both.

Connor says, “Nine, beautiful girl.”

In response I simply moan.

His thumb circles my taut nipple, over and over, sending shockwaves through my body. His erection presses insistently against my lower belly.

“Say it and you’ll get a reward.” His voice is a husky, wicked whisper. His breath is hot at my ear.

“N-nine.”

He dips his head, slides my shirt up, exposing my bare breast, and takes my rigid nipple into his hot mouth.

The noise that comes out of me doesn’t sound human.

Then a fire engine comes to a screeching, rubber-burning stop not thirty feet away, driving right up over the parking lot curb and onto the grass. When my body goes stiff, Connor pulls away, throws a glance over his shoulder at the fire truck and the men in yellow gear and hats hopping out of it, and mutters a curse.

Flushed and trembling, I scramble to pull my shirt down. By the time Connor turns back to me, my arms are crossed over my chest and I’m shaking my head in disbelief at what I just allowed to happen.

Looking at my expression, he says flatly, “Ten.”

When I wordlessly turn and run away, Connor doesn’t follow.

I
gnoring
the fire alarm and the fact that the hotel might soon be engulfed in flames, I trudge back up the stairs to the bar, willing my feet to climb instead of running after Tabby like they want to.

She needs space, not pressure. Though I’m almost positive I could convince her body to push past the constraints of her mind, it’s obvious that would only serve me in the short run.

I’d probably wake up tomorrow morning with a hatchet buried in my skull.

If I woke up at all. Can a man die from too much pleasure? Because if the little taste of Tabitha West I just got is any indication, climaxing inside her might send me straight into cardiac arrest.

Sweet. Everything about her is sweet. Beyond that thorny wall she hides behind is the fucking Garden of Eden.

I want her so much, it’s like holding your breath for too long under water and needing a big gulp of air. That desperate ache. That painful demand. I want to apologize to my cock for what he’s going through, but it seems my heart is first in line for any mea culpas, because you could drive the Hummer through the hole in my chest.

The horror on Tabby’s face when she broke away from me was like…a grenade. Right in the heart.

So my plan now is to finish my scotch, take a shower—if my room isn’t on fire—and get some shut-eye. Tomorrow we can both pretend nothing ever happened. And after the job is finished and we return to New York, I’ll try again. Only maybe with a little less waving my hard dick in the poor girl’s face like it’s a trophy for best in show.

Finesse, right?

The bar is deserted except for an old Native American janitor sweeping the floor. He has a gray braid that reaches his waist, tied at the end with a thin piece of leather. I make my way to the table where Tabby and I were sitting and down the glass of scotch I’d left behind.

“Kid at the pool pulled the alarm,” says the janitor, his eyes on his broom. His voice is smooth and smoky, like good whiskey. “Third time it’s happened this year. There’s no fire, in case you were wondering.”

Except for the one in my pants
, I think.

The intermittently ringing bell abruptly stops, punctuating the old man’s words with welcome silence. He squints up at the dark sky. “Electrical storm comin’ tonight.”

I follow his gaze. I see sapphire sky pricked with the glimmer of stars, but the mountains in the distance are blanketed with thunderclouds. As if on cue, a streak of lightning cuts a jagged white path through a cloud bank.

“Gonna be a big one,” he says, and chuckles. When I glance over at him, he isn’t looking at the sky or the mountains. He’s looking at me. “Just remember to keep yourself grounded so you don’t get electrocuted, son.”

I frown at his back as he turns and disappears, still chuckling, through the patio doors.

* * *

B
ack in my room
, I strip and take a long, hot shower. My thoughts are too scattered to focus on any one subject for long, and the attempted distraction is useless anyway. All I can think of is her.

My sweet, vicious, passionate, distant, marvelous, maddening riddle. If she’d let me, I’d spend a lifetime trying to figure her out.

Catching my own thoughts, I groan.

Ridiculous romantic notions like
that
tell me exactly how much trouble I’m in. If I ever repeat anything remotely similar to Tabby out loud, I’ll have to send out a search-and-rescue team for my manhood.

It’s tempting to relieve the ache in my groin, but my heart is too heavy to bother. So I ignore my erection—the fucking thing is becoming a cliché—and just let the water pound me. After ten minutes with my head bent under the spray, some of the tension in my shoulders is gone, but none of the ache in my chest. I figure it’s about as good as it’s going to get, so I turn off the water, dry off and brush my teeth. Sleep is the only thing that’s going to help me now.

If it even comes.

Towel in hand, I push open the bathroom door—

And freeze.

“Well,” says Tabby, reclining on my bed with her arms behind her head and her booted ankles crossed, “I must say my timing is excellent.”

Her voice is tranquil, bordering on disinterested. Her expression reveals nothing. The lines of her body are completely relaxed. Only her eyes show anything other than perfect composure. They glitter in the low lamp light, edgy and steely, like the flash of knives in a cave.

After the moment it takes me to overcome my surprise, my voice comes out roughened. “You’re angry.”

She ignores that. Her gaze drifts down my chest, over my abdomen, lingers on my groin. Still with that disinterested tone, she says, “Perhaps you should seek treatment for that. It seems to be a chronic condition.”

I move to cover my erection with the towel, but Tabby says sharply, “Don’t.”

My fingers curl around the towel, bunching it in my fist. I hold still as she inspects me minutely from head to foot.

I deserve this. For her hotel room in DC, for her house in New York, for everything I saw without permission, I deserve this. So I hold still and allow it, watching her face as she looks with cool composure at my naked body. I feel equal parts unsteady, uncomfortable, and fantastically alive.

After a moment she inquires, “Aren’t you going to ask why I’m here?”

A dozen responses come to mind before I finally settle on “I suspect you’re about to tell me.”

Those glittering eyes flash to mine. Her hair falls loose around her shoulders, but no other sign of softness remains. She’s changed back into the black leather armor she wore yesterday in the car. I wonder if she’s hiding a cache of weapons beneath it.

“One night, you said.” She pauses, staring at me with something like rage. “I’ll take it.”

I feel the single, painful beat of my heart.

I say quietly, “No.”

Her brows shoot up. “No?” she repeats, drawing it out.

“Not like this. Not with this…” I struggle to find the word. “Resentment.”

The fierce look in her eyes softens. She drops her gaze again to my cock, standing at full attention. Her lips curve. “I’m not sure your opinion is the one that really matters.”

A gust of pent-up breath leaves my chest. “Tabby—”

“Come here,” she says, and holds out her hand.

My mouth goes dry. I feel like a teenager again, trembling with nerves on a first date.

“Connor,” she says, softer, still beckoning me with those eyes, that outstretched hand. When I don’t move, she adds, “Please.”

I close my eyes, swallow, take a breath to try to slow my pounding heart. What she’s offering is everything I want, yet a part of me is holding back, still listening to the old man’s warning:
Keep yourself grounded
.

I’m not grounded. I’m fucking unmoored. I’m so full of crackling, unstable energy, I feel like I might break the bonds of gravity altogether and rocket off into space.

Ultimately, my feet move me forward. Tabby on my bed is too great a compelling force for them, for any part of me, and so I walk.

When I get to the edge of the bed, Tabby stretches her leg out and stops me with her boot planted flat on my stomach. I halt, taken aback at the change of impetus, her sudden change of mind, but as she lies there staring at me and patiently waiting, it dawns on me that this isn’t a reversal.

It’s a command.

Without looking away from her face, I take her boot in my hands, untie the laces, and slide it off. I drop it to the floor, where it lands with a flat thud that momentarily blocks out the roar of my blood in my ears.

Her knee bent, she sets her bare foot on the bed, and then lifts her other foot to my stomach.

I moisten my lips. She watches the motion of my tongue with a flush creeping over her cheeks, but no other sign of emotion.

I drop her other boot to the floor and then stand motionless, holding myself in check with sheer force of will.

She says, “Well, if you don’t want to fuck me, maybe you could just kiss me. Since I went to the trouble to break into your room.”

Hearing her say the words “fuck me” makes my cock twitch. Slowly, she smiles. It’s ruthless, satisfied, and now I recognize the game.

Payback. For everything I’ve done, and made her feel, so far.

But I’m not having it. I’m not playing. With anyone else, at any other time, this would be fun. A lark. But not with this woman. Not tonight.

Tonight, she’s mine.

For
real
, or not at all.

I slowly lower myself to my knees on the bed, between her spread legs. Unmoving, she watches me. Her breathing is coming faster and her pupils have dilated, but she makes no effort to do anything other than lie still as I crawl up her body until I’m hovering over her, our noses inches apart.

Looking into her eyes I say, “All right. I’ll kiss you. I’ll give you the kiss I should’ve given you the first time. And depending on how well you kiss me back, we’ll see what happens next.”

I watch her face change, feel the tension invade her body, watch as she struggles to keep control of her breathing, and am so satisfied with all of that, I almost smile. Instead, I lower my head and gently, ever so softly, press my mouth to hers.

Her lips yield, opening.

Outside, a distant rumble of thunder echoes over the mountains.

I’m careful, oh so careful not to rush. I want to remember this moment, every second of it, every slight restless shift in her body, every telling flush on her skin. She takes my tongue into her mouth with a hesitancy that’s so sweet it’s heady, because I know that beneath her veneer of calm, she’s exactly as affected as I am by what it feels like when we touch.

I take my time, exploring her mouth, letting my tongue learn the shape of her lips, how much pressure and suction will elicit that soft, feminine sound in her throat that I crave. When she finally makes it, inhaling and arching but then almost instantly suppressing her reaction, I feel like I’ve won a victory.

I take her wrist, press it above her head to the pillow, hold it there, captive. She flexes against my hold, but doesn’t break away. Her other hand lightly rests against my shoulder. Her fingertips are five points of fire on my skin. I’m aware of her leg drawn up against my hip, of the heat of her body beneath mine, the feel of leather against my bare skin, and purposefully restrain myself from giving in to the drumbeat of
yes more deeper
that has begun to pound inside my head.

When I draw back, it takes a moment before Tabby opens her eyes. She’s breathing erratically, gentle, ragged breaths that match my own. Her fingers on my shoulder slide to my neck, slip into my hair. She pulls me down to kiss her again.

This time it isn’t quite as gentle. Need—both hers and mine—is growing, and it’s much more difficult to hold myself back. My cock is trapped between us, stiff against her thigh, and when she subtly shifts her hips, it twitches in reaction, an unmistakable pulse that makes Tabby smile.

“Is he always this eager?” she murmurs against my mouth.

“No,” I say, letting her hear the raw honesty in my voice. “No, only with you.”

We gaze at each other in silence as another boom of thunder rolls over the valley outside. Then her lashes lower. She whispers, “I’m wondering whether it would be possible…to ask you to…kiss me anywhere else?”

Her cheeks turn scarlet.

An invisible hand takes hold of my heart and squeezes to a fist. I’m shaken with a sudden certainty that there isn’t anything this woman could ask me, sexual or otherwise, that I could or would refuse. It surprises me and scares me in equal measure, because it’s new. And extremely dangerous.

I turn her face to mine. Flushed and faintly trembling, she opens her eyes.

“Give yourself to me, Tabby. All of you. I want everything. If we’re gonna do this and I only get one night, I want it to count. No holding back. No games.”

She swallows. “I…I’m…” Her eyes close again. Her voice comes out small. “I don’t want to disappoint you.”

My heart threatens to burst inside my chest. “My God,” I breathe, “how could you possibly disappoint me? You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Sounding miserable, she says, “I don’t think I’m very good in bed.”

I resist the urge to laugh in disbelief, because I know it would be mistaken for mocking, and I know how excruciating that admission must have been for her. I can’t imagine where she could have gotten the idea that she’s not desirable or perfect just the way she is, but it’s obvious the nonconcordance she mentioned earlier has been a major problem in the past with other men.

But now isn’t the time for psychoanalysis. Or for making her tell me who those idiots might be so I can break their skulls.

Now is the time to make her feel as beautiful as she is.

I lower my mouth to her ear and very deliberately say, “I think you’re the sexiest fucking woman alive. You’ve been driving me wild since the moment I set eyes on you three years ago, and even if you just laid here snoring while I made love to you it would be the best sex of my entire life because it’s with
you
. Now I’m going to get you naked and eat your pussy like it’s the last supper and you don’t have to do anything but enjoy it, do you understand me?”