Twelve
Ransom
Even in the darkness, her hair was golden.
Maybe it was the navy-colored sheets that made it stand out.
I stood in the corner of her bedroom, watching her.
I shouldn’t be here. I had a big shipment tomorrow that I needed to double-check and sign off on before sending it out.
Yet, it was two in the morning, and here I was.
The key card in my wallet had been taunting me every damn second since the last time I’d been here.
Making a copy of her card that got me into the building and into her apartment was for her safety.
At least that was what I had told myself when I did it.
She’d not been in any danger, but the longer I put off coming back here to see her, the more agitated I’d gotten.
Why she had to live in this city, I didn’t know. A writer could live anywhere. I didn’t like the fact that she was here without anyone. She’d not even left the fucking apartment in three days. Could that be good for her mental health?
Hell, who was I to be worried about someone else’s mental health?
I’d lied about needing to get a shipment of whiskey to Manhattan, just to take the private plane here without dealing with questions.
And now I was standing in the dark, watching a woman sleep without her knowing I was in her apartment.
I was the one who needed to seek therapy. Not that I was going to.
I couldn’t keep coming here either, but focusing on other things had been difficult lately. She was there in my head all the damn time. If she just lived closer. In Madison preferably.
But then I’d end up fucking her.
Rubbing the back of my neck, I let that thought run through my head as my eyes traveled down her body. She’d kicked the covers off at least partially, leaving me an excellent view of her bare stomach, where her camisole had ridden up.
Why did she have to also be the Shakespeare I texted with? My distraction. Why couldn’t they be two different people?
Regardless, I wasn’t going to be able to stop coming here. Which meant she had to move back home. I needed a plan. One that didn’t include killing anyone or trading them to the cartel for a future favor. The sooner, the better.
She murmured in her sleep, then turned over. The plump tit that had been peeking out from the bottom of her camisole was now on full display.
Fuck …
Moving closer, I leaned down to see it better. Rose-colored nipples. The craving to pull one into my mouth and suck caused me to break into a sweat. I stepped back before I cracked and gave in. If she woke up to that, she’d probably have a heart attack.
I should leave. I’d been here long enough.
But leaving was difficult. Part of me wanted her to wake up just so I could see her eyes. Hear her voice. Texting wasn’t enough now. I could hear the sultry tone when I read her words. I wanted to talk to her. Maybe if I called her, it would keep me from wanting to see her.
Doubtful. It might just make it worse. Her scent was pulling me in, and I tore my eyes off her to leave the room. I wanted to soak my sheets in whatever it was that made her smell like a damn field of honeysuckles. I’d stay hard all night, but, fuck, I loved the scent.
The living room and kitchen area smelled the same.
Time to go home, Ransom .
I started for the door when my gaze caught on a notebook on the counter. She’d been writing in it. The page was filled, and a pen lay on top of it. Curious, I went over to see what it was.
·Have her lose her job.
·Maybe change his eye color. He’s already too similar to Draven. Don’t describe Ransom. Just use him as inspiration.
I reread that part. She was using me as inspiration? Wait … had she described me in the other books? The reader at the bar had thought I looked like the Draven character.
·Find new positions. Look up some videos to get ideas.
·Add oral sex scene to the beginning. Maybe she walks in on it or hears it.
Fucking hell. Was her romance dirty shit?
Looking back over to the bookshelf in the living room, where I’d seen many books with her name on them, I walked over to it. Slipping out one of the copies she had the most of, I flipped it over to read the back.
Looked like I had some reading to do on the flight home.
“Tell me this is mine,” I demanded, needing to ease this possessive monster clawing inside my chest.
“It’s yours. You know that,” she panted.
That wasn’t enough.
“Say, This pussy is yours, Draven ,” I demanded.
She licked her lips. “This p-p-pussy is yours, Draven.”
Her eyes fluttered as I began to move my finger through her now-wet folds.
“That feel good, baby?” I asked, giving her clit attention with my thumb.
“Y-y-yes,” she breathed.
“You’re gonna come on my hand like a good girl so I can lick your sweet juices off,” I said in her ear before kissing her neck, then moving to her mouth.
She leaned into me, moaning. I loved the way she tasted.
Her lips had become another one of my addictions.
She flicked her tongue against mine as she rode my hand.
This was never going to get old. I’d thought it had to.
It always had. But she seemed to exclusively have the ability to drive me wild with lust over and over again.
“Come for me, baby,” I said against her mouth.
She rocked harder on my hand and panted into my mouth, “I am! I am!”
I held on to her while she jerked and shook in my arms.
“Ahhhhh,” she cried out, throwing her head back.
I had done that to her. Me. I was the one who made her feel this. No one else.
“Damn,” I muttered to myself as I unzipped my jeans with my free hand.
I hadn’t been aware women read shit like this. My cock was fucking throbbing. I started to reread that scene while stroking myself this time, but stopped when something hit me.
Who the fuck had inspired this? I might be the man she’d described in the book, but since we’d never so much as kissed, then who had taught her this shit?
My dick started to soften at the thought.
Clenching my teeth, I let go of it and slammed the book closed, then tossed it on the seat beside me.
It wasn’t like I’d not been aware she had a sex life, but I hadn’t considered the men she slept with.
What they said to her. Which ones she fantasized about when she got herself off.
The sound of the wheels being let down meant we were about to land.
The sun had already come up, but it was still early.
I had plenty of time to get the shipment signed off on.
I reached for my phone and pulled up our text thread.
I hadn’t responded yesterday to her last text because I decided I was going to see her.
I stared down at it for several minutes, trying to decide if I wanted to ask this question or not.
Would I need to kill some bastard if I had a name?
Was I that messed up in the head where she was concerned?
Deciding that, yes, she had made me a psycho, I did something I’d never done before. I tapped Call.
“Hello?” Her tone was hesitant when she answered after the second ring.
“Mornin’,” I replied.
I should have done this sooner. I’d wasted years not getting to hear her voice.
“Uh, good morning?” The way she said it was more like a question.
I leaned back in my chair. “Are you unsure if it’s good or not?”
Damn, my cock was getting hard again over her breathy laugh.
“No. I’m surprised. That’s all. You’ve never … called.”
I probably shouldn’t be now either, but she’d written some spicy sex shit, and I didn’t like knowing another man had inspired it. So, here I was, acting like a damn possessive idiot when I had no claim on her. I didn’t want a claim on her or any woman.
“Would you prefer I just texted?”
“No!” she said so quickly that it had me grinning. “I was just not expecting it.”
Yeah, well, you have really fucking pretty nipples, so here we are.
“What time do you start writing every day?” I asked her.
“I’m writing now,” she replied. “What are you doing?”
“Flying back from a delivery I had to do personally. About to land in Jackson.” Lie. I was in your room, watching you sleep.
“Oh, I didn’t think you could make calls on planes.”
“You can if it’s a private one.”
She let out another soft laugh.
Down, boy.
“I should have realized you wouldn’t be flying commercial.”
“I fly commercial on occasion,” I told her. “This was just business.”
“I see,” she replied just as the wheels hit the ground with a thud and we rushed to a stop on the runway.
“Landed.”
“I heard that.”
I unbuckled as the plane slowed, then glanced over at the book, picking it back up. “I had some reading material on my trip. Something new I thought I’d try.”
“And what was that?” she asked.
“You may know the author. It’s romance. And why didn’t I know that women read explicit shit?”
She said nothing. I waited, and I could faintly hear her breathing hitch.
“What did you read?” she asked with dread in her tone.
That had me smirking. She didn’t want me to know she’d written me into a book. I imagined that the innocent librarian she had me teaching pleasures to was her. And I wasn’t against that, it was the who had actually done those things to her that was pissing me off.
“I think you figured that out already. But I do have a complaint. His name. Couldn’t you have given me a better name?”
Silence again. I chuckled.
“I know now, Shakespeare. You might as well talk to me. Face up to the fact that you wrote me into a book and had your naughty way with me.”
The groan that came over the line had me throwing my head back and laughing.
“I can’t believe you are reading it,” she said. “I used a pen name for that reason. I never wanted you or anyone who knew me in Madison to read it.”
“Because you have me turning the good girl bad?”
A sigh. “Yes. It’s a trope. Very popular with romance readers.”
“What is a trope? Writing sex scenes that never happened with a guy from your past?” I teased her because I was working my way to finding out who the fuck had done this shit with her.
“No,” she said. “The whole innocent girl and popular bad boy.”
“I do have one problem with it,” I told her, turning serious.
“What?” she asked, sounding scared.
Did she think I was going to yell at her?
“Seeing as I didn’t take my Shakespeare tutor behind the stacks and slip my hand between her legs, I’m wondering where you got that material from.” Saying it out loud made me picture it, and my words came out edgy. As if I was angry about it.
“Oh God,” she moaned. “I am never going to be able to face you again.”
Like hell.
“Answer my question, Shakespeare.”
She inhaled deeply, then let it out. “What do you want to know exactly? It’s fiction. I make it up.”
You didn’t make up everything.
A couple of their conversations had been familiar. I remembered them. But I didn’t mind that. They were fucking funny. I’d laughed more than once.
“The dirty talk is one thing. But the details of what you have us doing—I mean, what you have the characters doing—who inspired that? I imagine if he read this, he’d be pissed that you put another face to the experience.”
My hand was clenched tightly in my lap, and I forced it open, then shook it before standing up now that the plane had come to a stop.
The flight attendant returned to the main cabin.
I’d sent her away so I could read, but she’d appeared deflated about it.
I’d had her suck me off more than once in the past. We all had—or I was pretty sure most of the guys had enjoyed her oral attention while in the air at some point.
She saw I was on the phone, so she said nothing as she went to open the door.
“No one,” Noa finally replied after a brief silence.
“Bullshit, Shakespeare. That was descriptive. The kind of descriptive that one can’t make up without having experienced it.”
Why was I pushing this? It was only going to taunt me. I should let it go.
“Or watched it.” Her voice was so soft that I almost didn’t hear her. I still didn’t think I’d heard her correctly.
“Did you say, watched it?”
“Yes.”
The door swung up and open. I nodded once at the flight attendant, then stepped outside with my book clutched in my hand.
“As in voyeur?”
At this rate, I was probably going to regret not having the blonde suck me off. My cock was back to full mast. Jesus, who would she have watched do that?
“God, no!” she replied. “I’m not a perv. I write spicy scenes,” she said defensively.
I bit my tongue before telling her that the idea of her being a perv was going to make my dick explode.
“You were the one who said watch,” I told her instead.
“As in on the internet. There are websites for that.”
I stopped walking. “Shakespeare,” I said, thinking, surely, I was misunderstanding her again, “are you telling me you watch porn?”
If she said yes, I was going to have to jerk myself off before I drove back to the distillery.
“Yes.”
“Fuck,” I muttered, and this time, it was me who blew out a breath. “I wasn’t expecting that answer.”
But the relief that came with knowing there was no other man she was writing about felt damn good. I wasn’t ready to kill someone. I just wanted to fuck. Her. I wanted to fuck her.
Dammit!
I turned back around and headed for the plane again. I couldn’t fuck her. It would ruin everything. I’d already called her. This was changing us, and I was afraid it would eventually end this. What I’d grown to need. A part of my life I wasn’t willing to lose.
The blonde was exiting the plane with her purse over her shoulder.
When her eyes met mine, I crooked a finger at her.
She was going to get more than my cock in her mouth.
I had a condom in my truck. I needed to fuck her and remind myself how good it was to fuck who I wanted. Variety was better than just one.
“Yeah,” she replied, sounding embarrassed.
“All right, you satisfied my curiosity. I’ve got someone waiting on me. I need to go,” I told her.
“Okay,” she replied.
The way my hand tightened on the phone when the desire to keep talking to her fought against me had me ending the call without a goodbye. It was rude, but fuck if I was going to allow my cock to screw up the best relationship I’d ever had.