“Uhh…well, the walls are thin.” She went scarlet and jerked her gaze up to mine. “I heard the water turn off…and umm…well, when you were finished.”
My eyebrows shot up to my hairline and a chuckle rumbled out of my chest at her stuttering admission. She was telling me she had listened to me jerk off while thinking about her. A better man would be embarrassed and apologize. I wasn’t even a good man, so there was no way that was happening.
I shrugged my shoulders at her and pointed at my once again stirring cock. Anytime I was close enough to breathe the same air as her, I seemed to get hard. “You saw what I was dealing with when I climbed out of bed. It wasn’t going to go away on its own.” I had a beast that was used to being fed regularly, and lately I’d been starving it. “Give me a minute and you can get in here.”
“Well…I uh…kind of figured since you were already in here and wet, I would just jump in behind you so you don’t have to worry about changing again after you help me wash my hair. That shower is the smallest thing I’ve ever seen; there is no way you can help me without getting soaked.” She tilted her head back so she was looking in my eyes and when she smiled at me, it took every ounce of self-control I had not to grab her, lift her up on the counter, and make a permanent place for myself between her legs. “I figured this was more practical.”
What it was, was sweet agony. If the feds wanted to get me to talk, they should have sent her in with her calculating eyes and alluring body. I would have rolled over in a hot second and given them whatever they wanted if it meant I got the chance to touch her, put my mouth on her.
“It’s a lot of things, Pop-Tart, but practical isn’t one of them.” I inclined my head into the narrow, muggy room and gave her enough space to slide in around me. I leaned against the sink and gave her a challenging smirk. “I think this is the first time I’ve ever gotten a woman naked in order to clean her up instead of getting her dirty.” I circled a finger in the air in front of her. “Strip.”
She automatically moved to follow my direction, which meant my dick went rock hard. I liked a woman with fight, but I liked it even more when that fight faded to obedience. She let out a yelp when she moved her bad arm without thinking. I swore when she had to blink away tears of pain as she let the limb drop back to her side.
I took a step toward her, reaching for the hem of my shirt that covered her to mid-thigh. “I forgot for a second that you can’t handle the basics right now, which is the only reason I’m here. I’ll take care of you, promise.” I skimmed the thick fabric over her curves and off over her head, my lungs seizing and my heart stopping when I was face to face with her full breasts, perfectly pink nipples, and bare center. She was a stunner; all that white skin that looked like porcelain contrasted so vividly against her dark hair. If I was the prince, there was no way a simple kiss would ever do if Snow White looked like her. It was impossible to resist the urge to touch, to taste.
She didn’t try and cover up, but a pretty flush did find its way across her chest and up her throat. She turned on her foot and climbed into the shower I had just vacated. I leaned against the rickety vanity once again and watched her as she cranked on the water without closing the shower curtain. She was short enough that the stream hit her on the top of the head when it came on, making her jump as water touched her wound. Immediately, rivulets of rosy colored water started to track over her skin as her hair went slick, the curls heavy with moisture.
I waited for her to tell me to go, to insist. I waited for her to look at me and tell me she was fine and would call if she needed me. I kept my eyes glued to her sexy shimmy as she moved her head from side to side in order to make sure she washed away the last of her accident. I knew I should go, but I was rooted in place and it was going to take more than a conscience I didn’t have to make me move.
She grabbed my shampoo bottle and held it out to me, blinking water out of her eyes. “Can you squirt this in my hand? I think I can scrub okay with one hand, but I don’t think I can get it out of the bottle.”
Jesus. She had no sense of self-preservation. She wasn’t just pulling the wolf’s tail; she was waving a raw steak in front of its giant teeth and exposed claws. If I got close enough to touch, that was exactly what was going to happen. I only had so much self-control and the cords were stretched as thin as they had ever been.
Uncrossing my arms, I pushed off the sink and closed the distance between us. I took the shampoo out of her hand and emptied the viscous liquid into my own palm. “Turn around and I’ll do it for you. I don’t want you to aggravate that wound. It still looks pretty ugly.”
Again, she followed my order without complaint. I had a hungry growl working its way up through my chest but I managed to bite it back. I sank my hands into her hair and started to work up a lather. I lightly skimmed my fingers over her scalp and slipped her curls through my palms. I’d never had a gentle bone in my body but suddenly I was learning I could be all kinds of soft and tender when I needed to be. The fingers on her injured side twitched as she lifted her good arm in front of her, her hand skimming across the swell of her breasts. My brain short-circuited and forgot everything it knew before her when she caught one of those very pink, very pointed nipples between her fingers and gave a little tug.
My stomach tightened, my cock kicked under the towel, and my thighs locked.
She tilted her head to the side and gave me a sultry, searching look as I worked my hands down the length of her hair. “You were thinking about me while you were in here, weren’t you? I heard you say my name.” She let go of the hold she had on her breast and her long, tapered fingers danced over the smooth skin of her stomach as she watched me and waited for an answer.
I guided the water over her hair with my hands and chased the suds down the line of her back and over the curve of her backside. She sucked in a breath at the blatant caress, but her eyes held mine, waiting for an answer.
“I was thinking about sex with you while I was in here. I was thinking how good you would feel, how sweet you would taste. It was the two of us together that got me off, not the idea of a hot, naked girl who is pretty much at my mercy.” That was something that would have gotten me off in the past, but with her, I wanted more.
I wanted her to want me for more than the fact that she owed me something.
“Oh.” Her teeth bit into her bottom lip at my words and the hand that was circling her belly button dipped into that valley between her legs that I was pretty sure was where heaven resided. “I feel hot. I feel wet, slippery, and slick.” Her eyes blazed, bluer than anything had the right to be, lit with an inner fire I wanted to touch. “I also feel empty. There is an ache here, a throb that matches every beat of my heart.”
I watched, still as stone, breathing like I was running a race as her fingers swirled and skipped through glistening folds. She was pink all over, soft as a flower petal, but there was an edge there, something hard and sharp that I liked the most. She wasn’t scared of me, of what I could do to her, and that reckless confidence called to something inside.
“Echo.” I barked her name as I grabbed her by her good shoulder and turned her so that her back was to the tiled wall and her little show was on full display in front of me. The water ran between the two of us, trickling over her fingers as she alternated between rubbing them over her distended clit and slipping them into all the secret places I wanted inside of. Her skin pebbled up under the weight of my gaze and her chest started to heave as she watched my reaction.
I was about to step in to her, ready to take her mouth with mine and replace her slick and shining fingers with my own, when she suddenly pulled her hand away and lifted it to my slightly parted lips. She smelled like sex and satisfaction. I circled her wrist as she traced the ridge of my bottom lip with her wet fingers.
“You’ll have to tell me how I taste, but if I had to wager a guess, I would put my money on turned the fuck on.” She lifted her eyebrows up at me and shifted her weight so that her legs were parted in invita
tion. “Do I taste ready, Ben?”
I sucked her fingers into my mouth and swirled my tongue around each and every one of the slender, delicate digits. I licked between them and dropped a kiss on the center of her palm. She curled her hand around the wet mark I left, like it was something she was going to hold onto forever, and stared up at me as I leaned into her and dropped my mouth down to touch hers.
“You taste perfect, Pop-Tart, but I need another bite to make sure.” I kissed her hard, pressing her back into the wall as she gasped into my mouth. I twisted my tongue with hers, gave her the edge of my teeth, and put my hands on her waist so that I could grind my demanding erection into her soft middle. All my senses were overrun by her, her taste, her scent, the tangle of her hair across her pale shoulders, the noises she made in her throat as I took her mouth over and over again. She became the only thing that mattered.
I ground my hips into hers before pulling back and dropping to my knees in front of her. The now icy water coming from the showerhead hit me, but it wasn’t enough to cool the fire burning under my skin. I pulled her hips toward my face, grabbed one of her long legs and propped it on my shoulder, gazing up at her as I ran my thumb in circles over the inside of her thigh. I was waiting for her to be the voice of reason, to get us back on the path to sanity and safety, but all she did was put her good hand into the longer top part of my hair and tug. She wasn’t going to be smart about this and I didn’t have the willpower to protect her from either of us anymore.
I ate her up. My tongue and teeth attacked her wet and welcoming center. She did taste ready, but more than that, she tasted like some kind of sweet salvation. She was clean and untainted, not part of the grit and grime that had spawned me. She was something better, the promise of what could be, and I couldn’t get enough of the way that brightness burst across my tongue.
I licked her, sucked her clit in between my teeth, and tortured the little nub with endless flicks from the tip of my tongue. I grazed my teeth across the quivering flesh and let my fingers sink into the greedy heat of her body. She was empty and I was the only one that could fill her up. Her body quaked and shuddered around my fingers, coating them in liquid desire and warm anticipation. Every pulse pulled me in deeper. Every moan she let slip out made me focus on bringing her to the ultimate level of pleasure. I forgot that she was hurt. I forgot that this was an impossible situation. I ignored the fact that I didn’t deserve to be the man that was making her feel this good. The only thing I focused on was making sure that no matter what happened when we left this shower, she would never be able to forget this…I would always be with her.
She mumbled my name and pulled on my hair as she undulated against my face. My beard was going to leave red marks on those milky white thighs and I kind of loved that. I was also going to have her pleasure, wet and noticeable, in my facial hair when I finally let her go. It was all so primal. It was the way two people that had nothing left to lose marked one another, clearly, obviously, in ways that were impossible to ignore.
I growled into her, rubbing my chin against her tender skin. She let out a strangled scream and pulled on my hair hard enough that it hurt. I could feel her body getting loose around my fingers, so I let go of her clit with one last tap of my tongue and pulled her up higher, tilting her farther back so that I could replace my plunging fingers with my tongue. I wanted to taste what I did to her, wanted her orgasm on my tongue. I fucked her with my mouth the way my aching dick was dying to do and she broke apart in my hands.
It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
I would gladly take another razor across my throat if it meant the universe was going to throw me in this woman’s path and give me the honor of making her shatter. I immediately wanted to do it again and again. I wanted to watch her come while she was straddling me and riding me until I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to watch her explode when I had her bent over, that luscious ass in the air as my hips pounded into hers. I wanted to cover her from head to toe as I slid inside of her, eye to eye, heartbeat to heartbeat. I wanted to take her, own her, fill her in every way a man could possess a woman and then, I wanted to start all over again and work my way back down the list.
She was more addictive than power had been, which was why I kissed her low on her belly, rose to my feet, pushed her hair off her face where it clung because of the water. I gruffly reminded her, “I told you I would take care of you.” I couldn’t get wrapped up in someone I couldn’t have. She was going. I was staying, and the last time I got a taste of something I wanted as badly as I wanted her, I’d ruined more lives than I could count. Even if I was willing to go down in flames, I refused to take her with me.
She looked at me in confusion, her eyes drifting down to my painfully hard erection. “What about you?”
I shook my head and stepped back, turning so I could make my escape like a total coward.
“I told you the only reason I’m here is for you, Pop-Tart. Guys like me don’t deserve second chances. I’m gonna find something to feed us and then head out. I’m going to leave my cell with you in case the doc calls.”
The look in her eyes as before I turned to walk away was one I was achingly familiar with. I’d seen it in my mom’s eyes when she told me she didn’t ever want anything to do with me again.
It was heartbreak and disappointment, warring for space.
Chapter 7
Echo
I was usually the one that beat a hasty retreat after getting off and coming down. Once I had what I was after, I couldn’t get out the door fast enough. Typically, a cloud of shame and regret followed in my wake as I told myself once again, “You should do better.”
I liked sex. However, I very rarely liked the men I had it with. They were a means to an end, a tool used to get something I wanted, and then forgotten once I got it. I didn’t bother to invest time or energy into getting to know them because I never intended to stick around.
The truth was I was more intimately acquainted with Ben than any other man I’d been with. I knew more about him and he knew more about me than anyone else that had crossed my path in a very long time. Sure, part of that was the fact it was just the two of us out here in the middle of nowhere with no way to get out, but it was more than that. I felt like I understood him. I had a solid grasp on the regret and recrimination that hounded him and made his gray eyes lethally sharp. I lived in that same place of trying to figure out why I was the one that was spared when my sister had such a better, sweeter, softer soul. I understood the need to feed a habit you felt like you couldn’t control, even if the pursuit of that thing hurt the people around you. The things he struggled with were scattered on ground I’d traveled a lot in my life and I really wanted to tell him I could show him the way to the place where the path started to go downhill. It would be so much easier for him to find his way if he let me guide him.
But I never got the chance to tell him anything, because after giving me the best orgasm I’d ever had in my life, he disappeared, leaving me weak-kneed and shaking in the freezing cold water still pouring into the shower. By the time I rinsed the rest of my body off and went in search of something clean to wear, the cabin smelled like bacon and eggs but Ben was long gone. He’d left breakfast and a clean shirt, along with a way too-big pair of track pants, but there was no Ben.
I wanted to yell at him, to demand an answer as to how he could walk away from me, walk away from us. I wanted an apology for him so selfishly taking that impressive erection that he’d been taunting me with for hours upon hours, the erection that was rightfully mine, away. It was mine to touch. It was mine to taste. It was mine to savor and satisfy. I was angry that he wound me up, set me off, and let me fall without sticking around to catch me.
I knew he wanted me. The evidence was obvious. So was the fact that he couldn’t figure out a way to keep me once he had me. In the end, he decided to give me what I wanted, to take care of me like he had since the day he kept me from face planting in the snow. He denied himself someth
ing that was all his for the taking to protect us both from getting any deeper in when we both knew this was our only moment. There was no assurance we would have tomorrow or even tonight; all we were guaranteed were the stolen minutes surrounding us right now. There was no real world intrusions, no harsh light of reality here, even though he tried to force it on me. He did his best to remind me that he was a man that wasn’t any good for me off of this mountain and out in the reality of my day-to-day and because he did that, I totally disagreed with him about being worthy of a second chance. He didn’t want to be a mistake. But I wanted him to be a memory I would hold onto forever. I wanted my time with him to be the thing I held onto when I got lost and felt like I was alone.
We were two halves of a whole, opposite sides of the same coin, two people cut from the same tattered and torn fabric. His ugliness didn’t scare me; it called to my own and made it seem less harsh and unforgiving by comparison. He would never judge me, because he was a man that was too busy judging himself.
I bit into a piece of the bacon he’d left and wandered around the minuscule cabin looking for anything personal or private that would give me an insight into the mystery man that had turned my life upside down and saved me from more than myself.
There was nothing.
Not a single thing.
No pictures or knick-knacks.
No paperwork or documents.
No keepsakes or memorabilia.
All I found was a closet full of mountain man clothing and a jewelry box with a Patek Philippe watch in it. I almost dropped the damn thing, which would have been equal to tossing over a hundred grand on the floor. The watch was so out of place next to the worn denim and heavy flannel that again, I wondered who this man had been before. He was such a complicated mix of ostentatious and simple.