13

Wicked Thorns

Micah

Micah held Kylie’s glossy black curls in his fist and lowered her head.

The warmth and wetness of her mouth closing over him, licking and sucking as he moved her face up and down his shaft, drove him damn wild. He hadn’t been able to get this woman off his mind. Last weekend, he’d let go and taken her hard, and she’d loved it.

He wanted more of her.

She sucked as he pulled her up, an enthralling suction that shuddered through his bones.

Every stroke was a torment and Heaven on Earth.

He reached below her body with his other hand, flipping her skirt out of the way, and then found her slit with his fingers.

Her gasp around his shaft was everything, and he tightened.

Micah let her go for a few minutes, curling up to watch the ruby red of her lips that matched her dress sliding over him, until the want for more consumed him.

He punched the glove box and yanked her off him.

Her dark eyes were glazed, and her lips were still parted. Her lipstick was smeared where her mouth had been rubbing his dick.

Condoms tumbled out of the glove box. Micah slapped one on himself and grabbed her thigh, drawing her leg over his hips. “Ride me.”

Kylie crawled on top of him and pressed herself down, her body taking him inside her.

He arched his head back and ground his teeth, trying not to finish.

She pressed herself down, taking him in deeper and deeper until her ass nestled over his balls.

He was going to explode so hard he was going to die.

And damn, he hoped her ass didn’t hit the steering wheel and thus the horn.

The image of the horn honking in a frantic staccato rhythm distracted him just enough to hold back.

Kylie lifted off him and rode him back down again, every plunge inside her torturing him. His fingers tightened on her thighs as he squeezed, trying not to come, until her rhythm became more insistent, and she was ramming herself down, impaling herself on his cock. Then her body arched hard, and she keened like she was trying to keep from screaming as she pulsed on him.

And he couldn’t hold back.

Micah’s body clenched, and the blinding bliss of orgasm consumed him, all thought leaving his mind. He was a howling creature flowing outward through nothingness, and then his balls pumped into the condom with pulses of ecstasy.

The nothingness mist cleared, and he was gasping for breath.

Kylie was lying on him, her body limp, panting. “Jesus,” she whimpered.

He finger-combed her hair back and held it behind her head because he wanted to see the delirium on her face.

God, this woman was beautiful, and the way he’d made her weak was icing on the goddamned cake. He held her in his arms and pressed her head against his shoulder, growling, “Good girl.”

Micah had a month with her, longer than he’d ever spent with a woman. He wasn’t the relationship type. Plucking flower after flower was so easy. Why would he want to tend a potted rosebush?

And yet, he’d negotiated for a month.

Ripping flowers out of the ground was getting boring.

Then again, Micah had always found the plants with wicked thorns more interesting than the fragile ones, and wicked thorns described Kylie Miller perfectly.

He pressed his lips against her forehead because she was right there.

Kylie pushed herself up. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I like doing that.”

“This isn’t the girlfriend experience, buddy. You bought my body for a month, but that kind of snuggly shit doesn’t play with me. Use me and get away.”

Wicked thorns, indeed.

Micah made himself presentable and got rid of the condom in a trash can a few cars away.

When he was sauntering back to the car, Kylie was getting out the other side.

He asked, “Where are you going?”

She shrugged her bare shoulders. “Home.”

“What do you mean, ‘home?’ You’re mine for a month.”

“You’re not going to stick me with the room bill again, benny. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

Micah flipped his hand in the air and made a wry face that was too much like he was back in the old neighborhood. So he lowered his shoulders, composed his expression, and enunciated slowly and carefully, “As I said, that or anything like it will not happen again. You’re working for me now. We’re on the same team.”

“Likely story. This just seems like another big ol’ con to get me back into your hotel room so you can leave and stiff me with another eighty-large bill again.”

“But I’ve already transferred—”

“Yeah, whatever. I’ve never even heard of Banque Ammann, Jaggi, and Zug. It’s probably a fake bank and a sham website.”

“It’s a renowned private Swiss bank. We used to use Geneva Trust, but they had internal problems and went out of business last year. It’s too bad. They were the best for untraceable transactions. Totally corrupt.”

Kylie shook her head. “Until that money is in my hot little hands, it’s probably just another scam of yours.”

Micah paused and then admitted, “Yeah, that is something I’d set up if the circumstances called for it.”

She rolled her eyes. “At least you’re honest about that.”

“But I didn’t. That money really is in an account under your control.”

“Whatever.”

“Change the password. Transfer some of it to your usual bank account. It’s yours,” he said.

“I’m just going to go on home. I need to change my clothes and stuff.”

“Let me drive you home. You can pick up some clothes and come back to my hotel with me.”

“It’s okay. I’ll catch a bus to my place.”

“It’s after midnight. I can drive you.” He gestured at the BMW. “You can see that I do indeed have a car.”

She looked down and to the side, staring at the asphalt under their feet. “I don’t want to put you out.”

“It’s no trouble. I was going to take the car back to where I’m staying anyway.”

“My place is out of the way.”

“Atlantic City isn’t that big. How far out of the way could it be?”

“It’s on the other side of town. You wouldn’t want to go there.”

Micah paused and stuck his hands in his pockets, biting his lip before he said, “You must know that I had you under surveillance for a while before I approached you. I know where you live.”

Kylie sucked in a big breath through her nose and then held it like she was biting her tongue before she spat at him, “Yeah, well, you shouldn’t know where I live. You shouldn’t be spying on people like that. It just means that you’re an asshole.”

Micah nodded, looking down and with his hands still in his pockets. He’d seen her climb the stairway to the second floor of the dilapidated house with the burned-out ground floor. The narrow strip of dead weeds in front was another fire hazard. No one should be living in such an unsafe tenement, and the way she wouldn’t meet his eyes looked like shame. “You’re not the first person to call me an asshole.”

“I don’t live there by choice, you know? The Tropicana won’t give me more than twenty-five hours a week because then they’d have to pay me benefits. Even with no one able to work after the pandemic, all the casinos in AC are still shit to work for. Back when the real Mafia ran them, you could get a union job with benefits, but the Russian rackets that run most of Atlantic City now don’t give a shit about workers. I never wanted to con people. I wanted to have a normal job and a normal life.” Kylie curled her hands into fists and still didn’t look up at him. “I didn’t want to end up like this.”

Micah nodded. “Times are tough. Everything has been tough for a long time. I’ve lived in worse places, and I’ve done worse things. Let’s pick up some of your clothes and stuff, and you can stay with me for the month. After that, you’ll have at least five hundred thousand dollars to get yourself started someplace else, and probably a lot more than that.”

Kylie wrapped her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes at him. “How am I supposed to know you won’t try to pull a fast one again?”

“We can stop at the reservation desk, and they can tell you to whom the room is rented. Or I can show you on my account.”

She was still looking at him like he was a rat. “I can’t go back to the Borgata.”

“I’m staying at the Ocean Resort,” he told her.

“How long you been staying there?”

A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, and he allowed one side to turn up. “Two weeks.”

She rolled her eyes. “You son of a bitch.”

“Yeah,” he said, grinning. “Not the first time I’ve been called that, either.”

“Seriously, I don’t know whether you’re for real or not.”

“I am, now,” Micah admitted. “Come on. You can interrogate anyone you want about me. The room is rented with my credit card and under my name.”

“And Micah Shine is your real name?’” she asked.

“Yes,” he lied.