“Are you going to hurt my dad, Race?”
I heaved a heavy sigh and sauntered over to the bed so I could snag the bottle from her. I looked down at her and muttered, “I haven’t lied to you yet, Bry, and I’m not going to start now. Even if it means you start putting clothes back on and walk out the door.”
She cocked her head to the side and finished off her drink. “I need to know the truth.”
“I don’t know what’s going to happen with your dad, Brysen. He owes a lot of money, and eventually he has to figure out a way to pay it off. I’ll tell you this: dead men can’t pay, so even if we eventually have to have a talk, making it real clear he better come up with the cash is as far as it’s gonna go—for now.”
That was so far from reassuring that I was sure she was going to freak out again and leave, so I snapped the cap off the Scotch and finished the remainder of the bottle in one, burning chug. I had to hiss a cooling breath through my teeth. It was smoky and earthy tasting.
“There isn’t any money, Race. The house is in foreclosure, he gambled away his retirement, and you already have the car. There isn’t anything left.”
She sounded so sad, so defeated, that all I wanted to do was snatch her up and tell her everything was going to be all right, but like I said, I wasn’t going to start lying to her now.
“That happens more than you think.” It sucked but it was the cold, hard truth and it had long since stopped making my head hurt when I heard the same story over and over again. Only this time there was something there, something deeper than judgment and disappointment in her blue eyes that had a twinge of remorse poking at the iron shell I wrapped myself in when it came to business. I kept telling her I wanted to take care of her and keep her safe and yet here I was indirectly causing her all kinds of grief. It made me feel the first real stirrings of regret about what I was doing in the Point, considering all the suffering she had already been forced to endure as the result of so many poor choices made by others.
It was her turn to sigh and she bent over to the opposite side of the bed to put her empty glass on the floor. The motion gave me a perfect view of her very naked backside, and this time I couldn’t hold the groan in. She lifted her eyebrows and rose up on her knees so she could make her way to the edge of the bed where I was standing. She didn’t stop until she was right in front of me. Her chin tilted and those blue eyes bored into mine with unflinching directness.
“Are you the reason the TA from hell suddenly switched classes? The professor is reevaluating all of my work for the entire semester and now I’ll probably pass.”
I lifted the hand that wasn’t holding on to the chilly bottle and cupped her cheek. I used my thumb to brush across the velvety-soft curve of her bottom lip.
“You’re a good chick and a sweet girl. I’m tired of life trying to kick you around. We have to talk about that TA, Brysen. Shit doesn’t add up.”
She made a face but turned her head and put a kiss in the center of my palm that I felt all the way down to the last pieces of my soul that were untainted and unmarred by the life I chose to live.
“Are you trying to take care of me, Race?”
“Trying. So far my success rate is only about fifty-fifty.”
She laughed drily and put her hands on either side of my waist.
“Why? Why, with everything else in your life, do you want to add me to the mix, knowing I might not be able to stomach this? I’m not Dovie. I’m not from the streets, Race. Your life scares the hell out of me.”
I let the Scotch bottle fall to the floor, not caring if it broke. I threaded my fingers through the supersoft hair at her temples and tilted her face up so we were looking at each other and she couldn’t pull away.
“I know it does, but you’re here anyway and that’s why I want you in the mix. You make all the ugly things a little less nasty to look at, and really”—I leaned even closer so she was feeling my words against her parted lips rather than hearing them—“your life is just as scary as mine at the moment.”
She let out a breath and then lifted herself up on her knees so that our mouths were hovering a fraction of a breath apart.
“I really wanted to convince myself that I could hate you. I wanted you to be the worst thing in the world for me, but every time I turn around, you end up being the best thing in my world at any given moment.”
I brushed my mouth across hers, let the very tip of my tongue touch the little divot in her upper lip, which had her shuddering and had her fingers curling into the fabric of my shirt.
I told her in a rough rush, “I’m not a very good person, but I do know right from wrong. I’m tired of the wrong always winning in this place, and I’m tired of the wrong trying to eat you alive, so I will do anything and everything I can to make sure it doesn’t get its teeth into you.”
I was done talking. She was almost naked, she was beautiful, and she had come to me. I had every intention of kissing her and taking her backward to the bed, but she circumvented me by lifting her hands higher on my back, pulling herself up straighter, and sealing her mouth over mine. She tasted oaky and intoxicating from the booze, but under that she tasted tart and sweet, like the best treat I could ever ask for. My thoughts from earlier rang even more true now. I wasn’t done with her by a long shot, and at this rate I was doubting that I ever would be. I was more than willing to fall for her, and as she leaned backward and pulled us both down onto the bed, I literally fell for her, and nothing could’ve made me happier.
Chapter 13
Brysen
MY INTENT HADN’T BEEN to seduce or to tempt. But when I saw him standing at the gate, a perfectly composed, gleaming gold, and shining light in a place that was so dreary and dark, my motivations had instantly shifted. There was something about how effortless he was in both the skins he wore—the one of a stunningly handsome young blue blood, and the one he more typically wore as the ruthless and broken king of the streets. They both just got to me.
There were so many unanswered questions and so many obstacles that seemed to stand between us. Really, when I broke it all down in my head, as I stripped on my way to the barren little room that now felt more welcoming and more like home than the house of lies I had been living in for the last year¸ I could see that Race was the only person who had been unfailing in his honesty with me. He was also the only person in recent memory who’d gone out of his way to do something for me, instead of expecting me to swoop in and hold it all together for him. I could no longer deny that this alone had me ready to crawl all over him and wind myself around him so tightly neither one of us could ever get loose.
I was impatient to get him at least to the same level of undress as I was, but when his shirt came up and off over his head, instead of admiring all the ripped and corded muscle pressing me down into the mattress, I got caught up skimming hands over bruises that had mottled to an ugly yellowish-green color. It was always there under his polished and glossy veneer. The ruthlessness of who he really was. The dual parts of the man that made Race Hartman who he was. I shifted my legs apart as he nudged them with his knee and gasped a little as he settled his hard body more fully into mine. I twined one arm across the breadth of his shoulders and let the other one snake between the very limited space between us so that I could go to work on his belt and the front of his pants. I could feel him pulsing in time to our racing hearts and could feel how hot and ready he was. When the backs of my fingers got inside his waistband, I heard him groan as they immediately encountered eager and willing flesh. Nothing ever thrummed and burned with life and vitality the way Race did. I wanted to eat them, and him, up.
He shoved the shoulders of the shirt I had commandeered off of me and bent his head so he could lick from one side of my collarbone to the other. He repeated the process back the other direction and stopped in the center at my breastbone. When he lifted his head and flashed that sexy dimple at me, I felt a full-body shiver overtake me. I could tell by the way the green in his eyes darkened that he fel
t my reaction as well. I needed to get his pants out of my way before he rendered me mindless, which I was pretty sure was his intent, when he lowered his head and captured the tip of one straining breast in his mouth.
It wasn’t just the heat of his mouth or the swirl of his tongue around my nipple that had my entire spine arching off the bed. It was the way he touched the other one with reverence and hummed against my already tingling skin like I was some kind of delectable dessert he had been deprived of until now. It was like he was going to use every sensory tool he had to savor me, and it made my hands shake, which had getting that throbbing erection free from its denim confines harder than it should have been.
“Race?” His name was a question and a plea.
He just grunted in response and pulled his head up off of my breast as he levered himself up in a one-armed push-up so that he could help me shove the rest of his clothes out of the way. My arms were still tangled in the sleeves of his shirt, and when I went to wiggle out of it, he shook his head, sending gold strands of hair into those eyes that were gleaming dark with arousal.
“I like you all twisted up in something of mine.”
He caught both of my legs, which were splayed on either side of him, and lifted them up so that they were wrapped around his lean waist. When he leaned back down on the bed over me, everything about him that was hard and hot was pressed up against everything in me that was warm and melty. I wanted to lift my hips up to force him inside, but he put a hand on the side of my face and used his index finger to trace over the curve of my eyebrow, which was arched in question.
“That’s not how we’re going to do this, Bry.” He bent his head and kissed the high curve of my cheekbone and then my temple. I ran my hand up and down the sides of his ribs, careful of his still-healing body.
“What do you mean?”
He moved to the other side of my face and repeated the gentle, lulling kisses at the same time as my body involuntarily arched into his. I could feel how ready he was, evident by the beads of arousal, wet and warm against the inside of my thigh, but for some reason, he held himself just out of reach.
“Get in, get off, and get out. We aren’t going to do that to each other. I don’t give a fuck what the reasons end up being, in the long run all I care about is that you are here, and when you are, I’m not going to ever give you a reason to regret it.”
His eyes burned into mine and then he kissed me. He kissed me with his mouth. He kissed me with the rest of his body as he finally sank inside of me. He kissed me with his hands as they trapped my face between his rough palms so that I was still and couldn’t look away from him, and he kissed me with something deeper, something more significant than that, as I felt his heart trip and dance against mine. I lifted my hips up to take him inside my clamoring body even farther, and curled my legs up higher along his sides.
“It isn’t always easy. You aren’t always easy, but I have yet to regret any of it, Race.”
I tasted the words as he breathed them back into me and we panted against each other as he planted his hands on either side of my head and started to move. Having sex with Race never felt the same, each time our bodies connected I felt like both of us were leaving pieces of ourselves behind with the other. I saw the darkness in his gaze deepen, felt his breathing hitch a little as the slick surface of our skin rubbed together.
I used my teeth on the lobe of his ear, kissed the sensitive skin behind it, and buried my nose in the hollow of his throat as I felt my body start to quake and flutter around him. His rhythm picked up, and one of his hands disappeared between us, his sensuous pace picked up a little, and muscles and veins in the arm that was holding him up bulged and flexed in a heady show of strength. I wanted to tell him not to bother with the added caress because I was already there. His words and the way he was looking at me, the way he kept bending to kiss me, to make love to my mouth as thoroughly as he was making love to the rest of me, had me already on the edge. I could feel how liquid I was, how needy my inner walls were, as they pulled at him, and the entire room smelled like sex and expensive Scotch. It was indisputably sexy.
Race being Race had to go the extra mile, though. He tickled the indentation of my belly button with his finger, which had me giggling into the curve of his shoulder, and then he was there, right at that center of me, where coiled pleasure writhed and begged to be released. Clever hands delving into the place where we were joined, into the damp fold of my sex and right on target. He used his thumb to press down and simultaneously levered his hips so that he was driving as hard and as deep as he could. I lost my breath and couldn’t keep my eyes open under the onslaught of pleasure and emotion that engulfed me. I might have screamed his name, or maybe I blacked out for a second, because the next thing I knew he was grinding his way to his own release and groaning his completion into my mouth as he dropped down and sealed our lips together in one final soul-entangling kiss.
We stayed like that for a long time. Replete and quiet. I could feel the weight that it always felt like so much more than sex when we were together settling pretty solidly on top of both of us. Finally I had to wiggle a little in order to breathe, because even though he wasn’t bulky, he was still big, heavy, and I didn’t want to be stuck in the wet spot on the mattress. He laughed when I told him that, and rolled us over to the other side of the bed, landing with him on the bottom this time. He helped me pull out of his now hopelessly wrinkled shirt and I don’t know how he did it, but he kept us joined together. I wasn’t going to complain about it and I liked the way he was twisting strands of my hair around his fingers as he stroked my spine up and down in long, smooth brushes of his palm.
“Can I ask you a question?”
I had my cheek resting right over his heart, so when he asked, I heard it rumble all the way through me. I yawned and rubbed my nose against the rock-hard plane of my pillow.
“Is it going to make me mad? Because I feel pretty great right now and that doesn’t happen very much for me anymore.”
He swore and his wandering hand landed on my naked rear end. He gave it a little tap and chuckled. The vibration made my insides all squishy and happy.
“Why did your parents give you a boy’s name? I mean, you are clearly a girly girl and Brysen sounds like a guy who takes your lunch money in elementary school.” I wiggled a little and sighed against him as his hand wandered even lower.
“I was supposed to be a boy. On the last ultrasound, the tech thought they saw a dangler, so my parents weren’t prepared for a little girl. They had a blue nursery, and a name already picked out. Then out I come and I guess they were too lazy or too unconcerned to change it.” I shrugged a little and kissed him on his breastbone. “I hated it when I was little but I grew into it. I kind of had to own it when Karsen came along and they gave her a boy’s name too.”
He shifted his legs a little and I felt the lower half of him start to stir. I was ready for a nap, but it seemed like Race, in all his otherworldly amazingness, was up for round two. I lifted my head and rested my chin on the back of my hand that I had crossed over his heart. I lifted both of my eyebrows and smirked at him.
“Really?”
He flashed that dimple at me and I groaned because it was a surefire way to get me to react. I felt the walls that he was nestled so snuggly in already clench in response. He moved his arms up above his head, treating me to a visual feast of sinew and skin flexing and rippling in the most mouthwatering way.
“Like I said, you might have a boy’s name, but you are all girl.” He said it with a leer that made goose bumps break out all over my exposed body. “So your parents were always kind of half-assed?”
I couldn’t keep up with how he turned our post–sexy time into a share-all about our pasts, but he was soothing me along with turning me on, and I was too mellow to argue about the timing or setting.
“I never really thought about it. We always had a nice house, and Karsen and I always had new clothes and went to an all-right school. We were nev
er Hill rich, but we were far from being poor. I didn’t know anything about the Point or the other side of the street until my mom’s accident. When the family lost her income, I think things really went downhill for my folks. It was always kind of just me and Karsen anyway. So I just did what I thought I had to do.”
“You were trying to hold the family together.”
I nodded and wiggled my hips a little, which had his pretty eyes rolling up in his head. I liked that I had the same kind of power, same kind of control over someone who could dismantle all my reservations and objections without trying. It was also kind of intoxicating to know that I had that kind of sexual pull over someone who seemed as powerful as Race.
“I thought for a long time that I owed it to them. They took care of me, at least on the surface. So it was my turn to go home and take care of them, only I didn’t realize they were bleeding from self-inflicted wounds.”
He grunted and shifted his hips in an impatient way under me. It made my stomach flutter. This was the most intimate kind of flirting, the most heady kind of foreplay. I turned my head and brushed my lips across the flat of his nipple and watched it bead up in response.
“How did your mom escape getting charges leveled at her if she killed someone while drinking and driving?”
I rubbed the tip of my nose against his pebbled flesh and blew out a heavy sigh.
“She hurt her back. She was in the hospital for a really long time. I don’t think anyone ever actually proved she was drunk. There was never a blood alcohol test done on her. The victim’s family got a settlement and I think my dad offered them a payoff. They were from the Point, so I think they took it and looked the other way. I was living on my own when it all went down, so I only know the aftermath. All of it has been ugly.”
His hand went back to cupping my ass as one of his legs moved my knee so that I bent it up and out to the side. I felt him expand and get harder where he was still planted inside of me.