EMILY
“You should have stayed away,” I say, holding on to Shane’s waist when I should be pushing him away.
He tangles rough fingers in my hair, giving my head a gentle tug, and forcing my gaze to his. “I won’t stay away. Don’t you see that? And even if I wanted to, which I don’t, you’re a drug to me. The only addiction, outside of success, I’ve ever had.” He kisses me, a deep, intoxicating kiss, his tongue stroking, caressing, his hands under my T-shirt, warm on my bare skin. Sensations spiral through me—he spirals through me, this man who has become such a part of me in ways he can’t understand, in ways I am not sure I understand. I moan with their impact, with the force that is this man consuming me, and I’m struggling to stay sane. In the moment, I shove at his chest, pulling away from his kiss.
“Shane, wait, I need—”
“We need,” he says, and suddenly he is pulling my T-shirt over my head, tossing it aside, and his shirt follows. “It’s not you anymore,” he says, his hands back on my naked waist, branding me, seducing me. “It’s not me anymore. It’s us. It has been since the moment we shared that first cup of coffee. Us, Emily.”
“Shane—” I try again, but I before I can say more he cups my face.
“No one was ever supposed to matter to me like this,” he declares, and a moment later he is kissing me, his tongue doing a seductive slide against mine before he adds, “No one was supposed to taste this damn good.” Before I know his intent, he’s reached behind me, unhooked my bra, and dragged it down my arms. I flatten my hands on the hard wooden surface behind me, gasping with the contrast of the cold hotel air and the sizzling way his gaze strokes over my nipples. They tighten and knot and my breasts are heavy, my sex clenching. And now it’s him flattening a hand on the door by my head, while his other palm scorches my hip all over again. “And no one,” he adds, “was supposed to look this fucking good to me. So good I think about those rosy nipples in my mouth when I’m sitting at my desk.”
A shiver runs down my spine and I tremble, but every remnant of fear I’d felt an hour ago is gone.
No. Not all of it. I fear this man in ways that are not about the secrets of my past. It’s the way he seduces me and makes me forget everything else, even when I should remember. He is power. He is passion. Everything about him is too much. Too extreme. Too mighty. Too right and wrong at the same time. His hand slides between my shoulder blades and he molds me to him. “In case, I haven’t been clear,” he says, his voice a low rasp that manages to be both sandpaper and silk on my raw nerves. “I don’t like the word ‘can’t,’ so could I let you go? Yes. But I won’t.”
In this moment, I am most definitely consumed by this man. I don’t want him to let me go, even though I know that makes me selfish. It makes me weak, but he is already kissing me again, and he tastes of all the things I crave. Power. Control. Passion. Shelter in a storm raging wildly around me. And those thing are drugs, he is a drug that has me moaning and leaning into him, while I barely resist the urge to touch him, to cling to him. But if I do not resist him now, I never will, and so I do touch him. I shove against his chest and struggle to tear my mouth away.
“You won’t say ‘can’t,’ but I will. I am. You have to let me go. This can’t change that.”
“It already has,” he assures me, turning me to face the door, and pressing my hands to the wooden surface. “You just aren’t admitting it yet, but you will. And right now, I have one goal. Reminding you how much you trust me.” Before I can reply, he drags my sweats down, my panties following. In the next, his hand is on my backside, his teeth scraping the delicate flesh.
“I lied to you,” I say, making a lame attempt to push him away. “That isn’t trust.”
“That was fear I’m going to erase.” He seals that promise by wrapping my waist, lifting me and shoving aside the clothes pooling at my feet.
“Shane,” I plead the instant I’m back on my feet, trying to get him to hear me out before I have no resolve left to argue.
His reply is to turn me to face him, my back resting against the door again. His hands are on my hips, those gray eyes of his dark, unreadable. “I’m right here,” he promises. “With you, where I’ve been since the moment I met you. But what I said earlier is true. Everything has changed.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I came for you,” he declares. “I’m not leaving without you. Will you lie now and tell me you want me to?”
My chest tightens, eyes burning with the hint of betrayal I hear in his voice and my hands go to his arms. “I hated lying to you, Shane. Please know that. I thought this would end, I could confess.”
He leans in, his lips at my ear. “Tell me you don’t want me to stop,” he commands. “Tell me what you really feel, not what you think you’re supposed to feel.”
“You know what I feel,” I whisper.
“Say it.”
There is a gravelly, tormented sound to his voice. I desperately need to answer, but if I say what he wants me to say, what I want to say, I will only ensure he won’t let go of me when he has to let go. “No,” I say firmly. “No. I won’t.”
He leans back and looks at me, his gray eyes sparking with flecks of blue I know to be anger. “Yes,” he replies. “You will because I won’t stop until you give me everything that is real. That is what I want and deserve. And so do you. But that is what we have to be from this point forward. Real. Absolute. Honest.” He lowers himself to one knee, where his mouth presses to my belly, his tongue flickering over the sensitive flesh.
I pant and my lashes lower, because I know what is coming, what he will do next, and my willpower will soon evaporate, if it hasn’t already. He wants what is real, but that is dark and blood-laden, and he doesn’t deserve it. His hands caress up and down my hips, over my backside. His tongue flicks against me, sweeping into my belly button. I’m so very in this man’s control but the thing is, that is when I feel the safest. That is when I feel like nothing else can touch me.
“Look at me,” he orders, and as if I have no option, I do as he says. I look at him, and I find the smoldering heat of his desire and mine reflecting in his stare. And feel the connection I share with this man in every part of me. “I’m going to remind you how good we are together.” He cups my sex. “I might not own you,” he says, his thumb stroking my sex, and I feel each stroke in the tingling of my nipples. “But I own your pleasure. And more that we’ll talk about after I make you come.” He slips a finger inside me, then another. “More than once.”
I try to grab his shoulders, but he is out of reach, forcing me to fist my hands by my sides, and endure the pleasure. Endure. Like this is hell when it’s pretty much heaven. He lifts my leg to his shoulder, his lips pressing to my belly again, his free hand sliding up and down my thigh. And then it happens, that thing that I know will happen, and want to happen. His tongue finds my clit in a tease of a touch. Then another. And another, until he sucks me into his mouth, dragging deeply on the sensitive nub, while those two fingers are inside me. The world fades. There is just pleasure. Just Shane, who does indeed own my pleasure.
As if proving that point, his mouth lifts and his fingers stop moving. “Look at me,” he orders again.
“You’re killing me,” I hiss, lifting my head to stare down at him.
“Do you want me to stop?”
“You already did.”
“Do you want more?”
“Yes,” I hiss, and knowing he will insist on more, I add, “Yes. Yes. Yes. I want more. Please stop teasing me.”
“Whatever you say,” he declares, his sexy, sometimes punishing mouth dangerously, wonderfully close to that sweet spot where I need and want him. “You’re in charge.”
“We both know that’s not true,” I manage, just in time to have his deep, rumble of laughter whisper against my clit, but he still denies me, giving me a darkly amused look. “Do you want control?”
“Not right now,” I say. “Later I do.”
His sexy, often punishing mouth quirks and then, to my relief, there are no more questions. There is just a lick of his tongue, which is gone too soon. “Shane,” I plead desperately.
The sexy laugh that follows tells me that my urgency pleases him, and thankfully, my reward for doing so is his mouth closing over me. His tongue and fingers stroking my sex a moment later. And oh God, the spiral of heat and pleasure is almost too much to bear. It overwhelms me and I can’t think. I can only submit to this crazy, sexy, amazing man, and to the pleasure, so much pleasure. So very much and it’s too much, too fast. I want to fight the ball of tension in my belly moving lower and lower, but it’s powerful, fierce, and in a blink I stiffen, before my body spasms and pleasure rockets through me. A deep, low moan rips from my throat, a sound I barely know as my own, and time stands still. And then it’s over, and my body feels like it’s melting to the ground.
Shane lowers my leg and catches my hips, lifting me and carrying me across the room, setting me on top of the bed, his body arched above mine. And then he is kissing me, the saltiness of me on his lips, now on mine, before he tears his mouth from mine and declares, “I need to feel you wet and hot around me, and I need it right now. Skin to skin, the way I only let myself be with you.”
He means no condom, because he trusts me with my birth control. And while it seems a small thing it is not. It’s trust, he gives me. That’s what he’s telling me. He has, and does, trust me. And trust is a powerful, sexy thing. “Can you please hurry,” I whisper, my body suddenly achy and empty, in a deep, burning way.
“Say it,” he demands.
“I want you inside me. I need you inside me.”
“Need,” he repeats. “I like that word.” He kisses me again, a deep passionate kiss that is over too soon. “I have on too many clothes.”
He lifts off me and I ball my hand between my breasts, willing my racing heart to calm and trying to think, but he is already back. He is leaning over me, the thick ridge of his erection pressed against my sex, the heavy weight of him on top of me absolute perfection. And he stares down at me. I swear I can see what he wants from me in his eyes, and it’s everything. He wants everything, and that should scare me, but right now, I want that too. Right now, I feel like it’s possible. Seconds tick by, and questions and answers flow between us, and they all end in one place. How right we feel with each other. How connected.
He leans in, his lips at my ear. “Everything has changed,” he says again, and I don’t need to ask what he means, nor do I have time. He presses inside, filling me, stretching me, completing me in ways no other man has or ever could. He’s different. We’re different and the many ways that is true, are not all good.
“Shane,” I whisper, burning with the need to hold him, not to lose him, and he responds, leaning back to look at me.
“I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart, but you need to say the same thing. No more running. Not from me.”
“I’m not.”
“Say it.”
“This isn’t a fair time to—”
“Ask me if I give a fuck about fair right now. Say it.”
“I’m with you.”
“You’re staying.”
“Yes. I’m staying, Shane, but you—”
He kisses me, and there are no more words. There is only passion. So much passion. It’s like someone snapped their fingers and we exploded into want and need. His fingers are in my hair. Mine are in his. Our bodies are moving and swaying. And we don’t start slow. We press our bodies together. We touch each other everywhere, anywhere. The feel of his taut muscle under my hands makes me want more. The feel of his cock driving into me makes me want him deeper. Harder. I think I say that. I do. I say it. I say it over and over. Except, I still feel like this is good-bye, like this is the only time I will ever touch him again.
Too soon, I feel the ache in my belly that I know is another orgasm, and I pant out, “Shane,” trying to get him to slow down, but he answers with a deep thrust, and then another, and his tongue—his talented, demanding tongue—licks into my mouth, and I explode. I tumble over into the depths of pleasure, and my sex clenches around his shaft, and the sensation of him inside me, still pumping, still pushing, is almost too good to allow me to breathe. Then he is shuddering, a low, guttural growl escaping his lips, so raw and animalistic that it can only be described as pure sex.
When finally we collapse together, we don’t speak or move. We hold each other, absorbing everything that has happened between us, but I do not feel anger from him. I don’t feel accusation. I feel … us. I feel closer to him than I ever have and I don’t know how that’s possible. I lied to him.
He lifts his head, kissing my forehead in a tender act I feel as readily as I did that orgasm, but this time in my heart. “Stay still,” he orders. “I’ll get you a towel.” He lifts off and out of me, and I can already feel the sticky warmth of his release, but there is so much more going on with me in this moment. I start to shiver, and I do not believe it’s from the cold air blowing from somewhere in the room. I hug myself and images I’ve suppressed for weeks on end come at me. My father’s casket. My mother’s casket. And that night. The blood. So much blood. Nausea and panic overcome me, and I shoot to a sitting position, hunching forward.
Shane is there instantly, pressing the towel between my legs, and then his shirt is suddenly over my head, falling down to drape my body, a shelter that I want, but cannot have. A cold breeze blasts over us again, and he glowers in its direction. “Why the hell is the air on in the middle of the winter?” He stands and walks toward the thermostat in all his naked, leanly muscled glory, his backside a work of art. He is perfect, and not just his body. The way he controls everything around him. He is sex, power, and passion.
He adjusts the thermostat and grabs his pants, shoving his legs inside them before snatching up my sweats and bringing them to me. “Put these on so you can warm up.”
I don’t argue. Why would I? He’s protecting me, and in this, I can actually accept the gesture. Reaching for my pants, I maneuver to pull them on and then he is on the bed in front of me again, and in his eyes, there is possession I should reject, but there is more. There is this sense of him feeling I am his to protect, to please, to hold on to, and somehow, that feels right and good. But I am wrong to feel this, to jeopardize his safety.
“No,” I say, as if he has spoken those things, my hand settling on his chest, his heart thundering beneath my palm. “I can’t pull you into this. It’s wrong.”
He covers my hand with his. “You aren’t pulling me into anything. I’m here of my own free will.”
“You have to have plausible deniability. You have to, Shane.”
“Nothing that is spoken between you and I goes anywhere but you and I.”
“If you were put on the stand that would change. You have a legal obligation. A code of honor.”
“My code is to protect those I love and care about, even my family, who as you know, don’t even deserve it.”
“I’m not sure I deserve it.”
“I am,” he assures me. “And I should have found out the truth a long time ago.”
“I didn’t tell you because—”
“You didn’t have to tell me. I should have seen your fear. I did see it, but I let it lead me to the wrong conclusions. I was so damn wrapped up in my family’s war that I didn’t let myself know what it meant.”
“Let’s keep it real, Shane. It meant I was lying to you. You will never trust me again. Not when everyone around you lies and cheats, and cuts each other’s throats just to watch the other bleed.”
“I’d bleed for you. That’s what you don’t seem to understand.”
“I don’t want you to bleed for me. That’s what you don’t seem to understand. That’s the whole point. Damn it, Shane. This is as real as it gets. This is not about something you can fix.”
“Tell me. Tell me and let me try.”
“Murder. It’s about murder.”