I couldn’t stop myself from shoving my bound hands into his hair as the first swipe of his tongue across my sensitive folds had my entire body arching up off the bed. It made him chuckle, and the soft puff of air across my heated core sent every muscle in my body quaking. He let go of my backside with one of his hands and used it to tickle the delicate skin along my inner thigh. The double stimulation had my breath wheezing in and out and my blood running heavy and thick through my veins.
When he used the edge of his teeth on my clit and twisted so that he could sink his fingers inside the wet heat that he had stirred up, I almost came all the way off the bed. I yelled his name with a hoarse cry and let my head roll around on the bed because I felt like I was going out of my mind.
He stroked me with his tongue, he stroked me with his fingers, and he didn’t stop even when I was yanking on his hair like a wild woman, the handcuffs rattling around between us. I told him I was close and that just seemed to urge him on even more. He tortured my center of pleasure, not letting up with his gentle ministrations even after I broke apart under him. I was panting, spent, and told him I wanted my turn, but he just slid his fingers out and lifted me up higher so that he could feast on me some more and started all over again.
If it was possible to die from pleasure, I was pretty sure I was looking death right in the face. It was only after two more spine-bending and voice-breaking orgasms, one with his mouth, the other with his clever fingers and his mouth on my nipples, that he finally let up on me. I was a boneless, worthless pile of satisfied goo when he climbed to his feet and started stripping off his own clothes. I wanted to touch, to pet all the rippling muscles that he revealed as his shirt hit the floor. That was hard to do with my hands locked together, but the way his eyes followed my palms as they skated over his abs and down lower so that I could help him with his belt made the awkwardness worthwhile.
“No one else does for me what you do, Royal.” His voice was thick with passion and sweet with the South that still colored it. I looked up at him from under my lashes as I pulled his waiting erection free from the confines of denim that was keeping it from me. “You made this second chance I got at life worth living.”
I blinked up at him and wrapped a hand around the base of his cock. I had to admit there was something extra sexy about the sight with the twin bands of silver around my wrists while I moved my hands up and down the thick shaft. I could feel the blood surge in the heavy veins underneath as he watched what I was doing with intent eyes.
“You cared about me when I was having a really hard time caring about myself. You have always challenged me and never once made me feel like a pretty showpiece and nothing more. You have always valued me, Asa, and I can’t tell you how important that was for me.” I grinned up at him and gave the rigid flesh that was throbbing in my hands a little tug. “And some of your games are fun, Asa, so don’t ever change.”
He sucked in a breath that made all his stomach muscles contract in a delightful way as I bent forward and ran the tip of my tongue all along every hot and hard ridge of his cock. He groaned and bent forward a little so that he could thread his fingers through my hair as I took him all the way into my mouth and hollowed out my cheeks. I sucked on him and swirled my tongue around the plump head. He grunted my name as I took him deep enough that the short, golden hairs of his happy trail tickled my nose. He tasted musky and strong on my tongue and all I wanted to do was undo him the way he had just done to me.
His fingers pulled harder and he started to move with less care as the tip of him hit the back of my throat. I used the edge of my teeth carefully and forced him to spread his legs just enough that I could get my hands between them and around his tightly drawn up sac. I tickled him on the outside in much the same way he had tickled me on the inside, which was apparently too much for him to take because he pulled away with a jerk and toppled me back onto the bed in an ungraceful heap.
He forced my legs up around his sides, looped my arms back around his neck, and sank into me with a satisfied sigh. He gazed down at me like I was the only girl in the world and then lowered his head so that his lips were resting right next to my ear as he started to move in and out of me at a furious pace.
“I was without this for too long. As much as I like that pretty mouth, I like being inside you a hell of a lot more.” Well, that was good to know.
I gasped as he bit down on my earlobe and used the hand that wasn’t holding his weight off of me to twist and tug at one of my overly sensitized nipples until it just hovered on the edge of being painful. The way he moved, the force with which he took me, made it clear this wasn’t about makeup sex or even about reconnecting after months apart. No, Asa was marking me, making me his, and it was imprinted on every thrust of his hips, every sting of his teeth as they scraped across my neck. He was letting me know that this was it, and it made my heart and body so deliciously happy.
I felt my inner walls contract around him, trying to hold him inside as he moved within me. I could feel how wet I was around his hardness, could feel every little internal flutter along his shaft as he pounded into me. My hips automatically lifted up to his, trying to match the fervor with which he was loving me. He was filling me up with emotion and his impressive erection. All of it felt so good I wasn’t sure I was going to survive any more of his attention. Not that I was ever going to ask him to stop or go easy on me. I liked that he was rough. Liked that along with all the pleasure there was the occasional bite of discomfort. It reminded me that Asa was never going to be like any other guy and that being with him was always going to mean I needed to stay on my toes. He wasn’t an easy man to love, and frankly that was one of my favorite things about him. No one would ever meet my needs the way he did, and he proved it by sinking one of his hands into the hair at the base of my neck and giving it a tug that wasn’t at all gentle.
I couldn’t do much with my hands, so I had to hold him to me with my eyes. I refused to look away. I watched everything. I watched the way desire and passion made his eyes go hazy. I watched the way he watched me. I watched the way it made him smug and satisfied when he could see that I was once again close to falling over that edge of completion only he had ever been able to bring me to. I watched the love that shone out of him for me when I broke, and then I watched him drown in the love I had for him as he followed me over a split second later. He collapsed on me with a groan and buried his face in the curve of my neck where it was tender from his nipping at the skin there.
I rattled the handcuffs over his head with a little laugh. “I’m ready to be able to touch you now.”
He pulled out of me, which had us both gasping at the sexy glide, and rolled so that he was sitting next to me. He shoved his hands through his hair and grinned down at me. “Not sure I would have lasted for more than a minute if your hands had been free, Red. Where is the key?”
I had put it someplace where I absolutely wouldn’t leave it behind or forget it. While playing around like this with Asa was fun, there was no way I wanted anyone outside of this room to know that my cuffs had been used for anything other than hooking up a criminal. I directed him to the pocket in my purse where I had stashed the key, and it only took him a minute to set me free. The skin underneath the cuffs immediately started to tingle as a rush of blood began to flow back to my hands, and Asa picked up each wrist and put a kiss on my pulse. It made my heart flutter and the way he smiled against the skin touching his lips made me think he could feel it.
“So this is us, Royal. Me and you from here on out, and I’m not letting you go again.”
I reached out a finger and ran it across the arch of his eyebrow. “You get one secret, Asa. Everything else is mine. I’m not going to bring it up because I’m going to trust you and believe that you wouldn’t keep something from me that I absolutely need to know in order to make this relationship between us work. I’m not going to ask about it, but this is the one and only thing you get. The rest is all mine.”
He was a man with a
past. He was a man with a promising future. He was a man that had a lot to give right now, and I needed to know that he was willing to share all of it with me. I didn’t care if that made me seem greedy or unreasonable. I was asking for it all.
“You can have everything I have to give except for that.”
I let my finger trace over the slope of his nose and down so I could outline his mouth with the tip of my fingernail. He didn’t need to know that I had a pretty good guess what that big secret was. I didn’t need all the details. I just needed him.
“Then this is it. Me and you from here on out.”
He fell onto his back and pulled me over him so that I was draped across the hard planes of his chest. “The cop and the criminal. Who would have ever seen that coming?”
I traced a heart next to where his was steady and strong under my cheek. “I saw it from a mile away. It just took a little bit of time to get you to look in the same direction … and you’re a reformed criminal.”
He chuckled and twirled his fingers through the long ends of my hair where it wrapped around both of us.
“I stole your heart, didn’t I?”
I rubbed my cheek on the rock-hard muscle that made a surprisingly good pillow. “I stole yours first, Asa.” I let my eyes drift closed as he continued to pet me and rub his hand up and down my spine.
“Can’t take something that was yours all along, Red.” Oh my. That had a rush of tears rising up behind my eyelids.
“You’re so smooth.” My pillow moved as he laughed.
“I try. How do you feel about furniture shopping?”
I was almost asleep and feeling way better than I had in a long time. I gave his sides a little squeeze and turned my head so that I could put my lips right in the center of his chest.
“Whatever you want, Asa.”
Because if he was going to give me everything he had to give, then I could only do the same thing.
EPILOGUE
Six Months Later …
Living with a police officer was an interesting experience. I’d gotten used to Kevlar mixed in with silk and cotton in the closet. The sight of guns around the house no longer made me jolt in surprise, and her odd hours no longer had me staying awake when she rolled out of bed at the crack of dawn or in the middle of the night. What I was still learning to navigate was the way her job affected her. There were nights I came home to find she was crawling out of her skin with leftover adrenaline, and I barely made it through the door before she was all over me looking for some kind of release for all that pent-up energy. Then there were days that she came home and could hardly look at me. Those were the days I found her curled up in the shower crying and had to pull her out and hold her until she came back into herself. I figured out pretty quickly those were the days the bad guys won. Luckily the days I got tackled and stripped naked were far more common, so I just learned to love her through both. I still thought her job sucked but she loved it so much that I kept my mouth shut … most of the time.
Dom had worked hard and had the help of a very skilled physical therapist that had become instrumental in more ways than one when he had returned to the force. Surprisingly, Royal had asked him if it was okay with him if she stayed partnered with Barrett upon his return. She felt like she had been leaning on Dom too hard thus far in her career, and with a different partner she was really forced to be the cop she was always meant to be. Plus, she told him there was no way her heart could handle seeing him with a gun pointed at him again, and Dom, being the outstanding friend and man that he was, took all of that in stride. All he had ever wanted was for Royal to reach her full potential and she was doing exactly that.
I tossed my keys in the fancy ceramic bowl she had picked out to set by the front door. Even with a designated place for all the keys to live I was still running across town intermittently to let her into her car because she was still locking herself out of things and places on a regular basis. It was cute and the way she said thank you always left me with a smile on my face. My sexy cop was a handful and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Tonight I was the one getting home late. I had so many irons in the fire sometimes it was hard to keep track of things anymore. The business that Rome was spearheading was going like gangbusters. Our initial investment had doubled in just a few months. I honestly took pride in taking businesses that needed a helping hand and breathing new life into them. I was still working a shift a week at the Bar, mostly because I just couldn’t let it go. The place was like home to me when I really needed a place to feel welcome and I didn’t have it in me to just walk away from that completely. Generally I worked a Wednesday or Thursday night mostly so I could watch the way Dixie and Church were still dancing around each other. It was like a reality TV show live and in color, only far more entertaining. Dixie had recently started Internet dating and Church had all kinds of grumbly and growly opinions about the fact. I couldn’t figure out why he just didn’t take her to bed and put them both out of their misery, but he wasn’t explaining himself.
I had also found a tiny hole in the wall in LoDo that I was dying to turn into an old-fashioned cigar bar. The place sat maybe fifty people max and it was tucked away and hidden enough that I knew I could transform it into an exclusive spot that the trenderati would be dying to get into. Because he had been so good to me from the very start, I asked Rome if he wanted to buy in with me and was stunned when he told me no. When I told Royal his response she just smiled at me and told me the place was mine. Rome wanted me to have something all my own to either sink or swim with just in case the rest of it fell apart. He was trying to take care of me in his own gruff way. So tonight I had been talking with Zeb because I finally signed a lease on the place and wanted him to get in there to remodel the interior. The planning had gone longer than I expected, so I was quiet as I walked through the house just in case Royal was already in bed.
The lights in the house were off as I made my way through to that incredible kitchen and poured myself a scotch from my own private stash. The sliding glass door that led to the deck off the back of the house was cracked open and Tom Petty was playing softly from somewhere outside. Royal still liked her bubblegum pop, but when she was in a mellow mood and just needed to unwind after a long day, she tended to fall back on the classics, which I had to admit, I much preferred.
I took my drink and pulled the door open, my eyes automatically going to the set of Adirondack chairs that occupied the far corner of the deck opposite the hot tub. She was sitting in the dark outside in the cold; it was the first part of February, so there was still snow on the ground, and I wasn’t at all surprised that all she had on was one of my long flannel shirts and a pair of Uggs. I swear she was antipants as soon as she hit the front door. Not that I would ever be stupid enough to complain about it. She had a beer in her hand and a soft smile on her face, which reminded me every time I saw her here that this house and these moments of making it a home meant nothing without her in them.
“Did you wait up for me?” I walked over to the chair she was curled up in and pulled her up to her feet so I could kiss her. She tasted like the outside and cold beer. She tasted like heaven and hell all mixed together. I snagged the seat she had been sitting in and pulled her back down so that she was sitting in my lap with her back pressed up against my chest.
She lifted the beer to her lips and snuggled into me. I sighed in pure contentment and wrapped an arm around her trim waist.
“Yeah. I didn’t want to go to bed alone.”
I rubbed my nose in her soft hair and told her, “You should’ve called me. I would have come home.”
She put one of her hands over mine and I set my glass down on the ground because she was far more interesting to hold on to.
“I was actually talking to Ayden and lost track of time. I knew you couldn’t be much longer, so I thought I would just sit out here and wait for you.”
“Half naked.”
She laughed and lifted an arm up to curl around my neck. ?
??Of course.”
“How’s the drive from Austin going?” Ayden refused to get on a plane this far along into her pregnancy even if her doctor had informed her it was perfectly safe. She insisted she wasn’t taking any unnecessary chances with her little girl, so she and Jet were driving in the unpredictable weather so they could be here next week for Rome and Cora’s wedding.
“She sounds fine. Jet was the one suffering. He’s doing that guy thing where he wants to drive straight through, and with a wife that’s six months pregnant with a baby sitting on her bladder that just isn’t happening. She told me he looks like he’s going to shoot an embolism every time she tells him she needs to stop and use the bathroom. Knowing your sister, she’s doing it on purpose every fifty miles or so just to aggravate him.”
“Probably. I’m excited for them to get here.” I had Skyped with Ayden a few times, so I could see the way being an expectant mom was changing my little sister physically. I wanted to see how she was handling it up close and personal, with my own two eyes. And I wanted to put my hands on the baby bump that held my niece.
“Me, too.” She fell quiet for a second and then asked softly, “Do you ever think about getting married and having kids?”
I took her beer out of her hand, set it down next to my scotch, and put my hands on her hips so that I could lift her and turn her around so that she was straddling me and we were face-to-face in the dark.
“Do I think about marriage and kids in general, or do I think about them with you, Red?”
She put her hands on my shoulders and shrugged, which sent her auburn hair slithering across my hands in a sexy, cool glide.
“Ayden’s due in a few months, Rome and Cora are getting married in a week, Rule and Shaw are living in domestic bliss, Salem just told everyone she’s expecting, and Saint couldn’t tell Nash yes fast enough when he proposed over Christmas. There’s just a lot of kids and forever-after going on around us and you never mention it. I just wondered if it was even in the cards for us.”