18. Piper #2
Blowing out a sigh, I fiddled with the hem of my coat that I hadn’t bothered to zip. “We decided to stay for a bit.”
His sharp brow arched. “A bit? Meaning you’re moving here?”
My eyes were glued to my lap. “Temporarily.”
Because I had no idea how long we could stay before we had to run. How long I could sit idle when it felt like the only thing I was doing was making us targets.
“And where are you moving from?” he pushed.
Panic bubbled up from the depths.
There it was.
He was digging into the places I was pretty sure he could already see. As if he’d already come to his own conclusion, and he wanted me to confirm it.
I hefted a casual shoulder. “We move around quite a lot.”
“Yeah, figured that. But where is home?” Those eyes flashed to me for a beat.
A gusty sigh blew between my lips. “I don’t have one of those, Theo.”
God, was I really admitting this to him?
Agitation burned through my veins, my nerves firing with reticence.
“No? And why’s that, Piper?”
I could almost feel his hands on me, peeling back the layers.
Terrified to let him in, I tossed out the first ridiculous defense I could find. “Haven’t you heard it said not all who wander are lost?”
He came to a stop at the T at Vista View. His truck idled as he turned to peer over at me.
My insides roiled. A frenzy of fear and the need he incited.
I’d expected his expression might be amused.
Smug.
Cocky.
Only it was knowing.
Filled with a sincerity that it shouldn’t possess.
“But I think we both know you are lost, Piper, and maybe in all your wandering, you were supposed to find me.”
Emotion rushed, and I forced myself to keep my attention focused out the windshield. If I looked at him, I would completely crack.
My teeth ground as I tried to fight the moisture that burned at the backs of my eyes.
“I don’t have any space inside me for any more breaking, Theo.”
We both knew that’s exactly what would happen. There was something too volatile between us for it to amount to anything else.
And with whatever was coming off him right then—a brawl of grief and anguish and the unfound need that I could feel seeping from his spirit—I didn’t think he could take any more breaking, either.
He made the right, and silence took us over as he drove along the side of the lake.
The night was heavy, and a gibbous moon hung over the glittering waters and whispered through the spikes of the trees that stretched for the heavens.
The neon sign that said The Sanctuary glowed in the distance.
The setting was so gorgeous that I could hardly breathe.
Or maybe Theo Mallin was the entire reason that I couldn’t press the oxygen from my lungs, my chest screaming as he made the left onto the long drive that followed the winding path to the motel.
He slowed as he eased through, driving along the far side of the parking lot and onto the narrow lane that led to the two small cabins at the edge of the property.
He came to a stop in the little round drive and put the truck into park.
I started to tell him Thank you for the ride , but he was already out and rounding to my side. Pulling the door open, he extended his hand.
I hesitated, knowing I shouldn’t take it.
I needed to create as much distance between us as I could, but I was warily accepting it and allowing him to help me down from the truck.
My boots hit the ground, and I exhaled a staggered breath and tried to find my footing.
He stepped back, making a small opening for me to pass, though I felt his presence cover me from behind as I moved up the walkway.
The man was right there.
A shroud of darkness that consumed me whole.
Arms crossed over my chest, I stepped onto the porch and moved for the door, and I fumbled into my small purse to get the keycard and pressed it to the reader.
The lock buzzed and gave, and my hand went for the handle, though I froze when his nose was suddenly pressed into my hair.
His words were a rough scrape at the shell of my ear.
“I don’t want to break you, Piper. I want to please you. Pleasure you in every way. Put back together whatever’s been broken. Take that pain from your eyes and rewrite myself on you instead.”
Shock pitched from my lungs, and I spun around, my upper back fused to the door that clicked shut.
He stared down at me with those eyes.
A black sea lit in the moonlight.
“I don’t understand it, what it is you’re doing to me.” He dropped his forehead to mine, and the words he expelled were choked. “Feel like I might die if I don’t kiss you. Die if I don’t get to touch you.”
Our chests heaved and the tension bound as we toiled in the hesitation.
“Tell me to walk away from you,” he pleaded.
The front of his jacket was open, and my hands slipped through to fist in his tee shirt. “I don’t know how.”
“Piper.” My name was nothing but a moan, and he warred again, his entire being pressed against mine.
Our mouths hovered an inch apart as our spirits gripped and grasped.
Theo edged back for a beat, and his gaze flashed with desperation. Or maybe I was only seeing what was reflected in my own, because one second later, he dipped in and swept his lips over mine.
His heart pounded against my chest as he pressed in close, and he planted both his hands over my head as he leaned down to deepen the kiss.
His mouth slanted over mine, and our tongues tangled as they met.
A pulsing beat as he licked long and slow, shifting different directions with each ardent pass.
Angling back and forth.
Savoring each mind-bending caress.
Flames flickered low in my belly, desire a warm glow that steadily crawled through my body.
Theo’s left hand slipped down to the side of my neck, a cold clash with the heat, and his nose brushed mine as he let go of a weighty exhale.
“Fuck, Piper,” he rasped. “Kissing you shouldn’t feel like a dream.”
The words were woven through as the man dipped in to nip and pluck at my lips.
“Shouldn’t feel like the best thing I’ve ever felt.”
The fire was stoked as he traced the pad of his thumb along my jaw before he sank back in.
Deeper that time.
His tongue stroking against mine, pulling me into that dream.
It was like riding a wave.
Like falling.
Like floating.
Weightless.
Caught between heaven and hell.
Because it was perfect and not nearly enough, and my hands were tightening in the fabric of his shirt, desperate for something I knew I shouldn’t ask for.
Theo must have felt it, too, because a growl rumbled in his wide, powerful chest. The sound rose up his throat and flooded into the kiss.
Lust that he poured out against my tongue.
He pushed in closer, and he pressed me against the wood of the door.
Energy lashed and intensified.
Need burned brighter as something inside him seemed to snap.
Every inch of his solid body seared into me. His erection enormous and throbbing at my belly.
He rocked himself against me.
“Piper,” he grunted as both his hands slid down my sides, gripping and begging as they went. “Fuck, what have you done? Gonna wreck me.”
He lifted me off my feet so my shoulders were hitched to the door and my legs were wrapped around his waist.
My dress rode up to expose my panties where I was basically sitting on his jean-covered cock.
I couldn’t even sense the rush of the cold. Not with the wildfire that flashed through my being.
A moan ripped out of me as I rubbed my aching center over him, my hands going to the outside of his shoulders to hang on. “Theo, please…I…”
“Love that sound. Your voice that I can’t get out of my mind.
Haunting me night and day. Want to hear it moaning my name.
Want to hear it on repeat as I make you come again and again.
Want to hear it playing like a song as I write myself so deep in you that I’m the only thing you can feel.
As I show you that you’ll never experience anyone or anything like me again. ”
I whimpered at his gruff words as I struggled to get closer.
“Theo,” I gasped.
Big hands found my bottom, and he used them to roll me against him.
He leaned over me, his forehead dropping to mine as he grunted, “You’ll never be the same once I get my cock inside you.
You want to feel it, Piper? You want to know what it would be like to have my cock filling you so full you can’t feel anything else? ”
Yes.
I wanted to shout it.
Moan it.
Beg it.
Instead, I kept rubbing myself against him like it would be enough.
Sparks of pleasure lit as he kept rocking me against his hard length.
I sucked for air.
For clarity.
All while a huge piece of me wanted to give and experience this.
I wanted him to mark me.
Claim me.
Ruin me.
Because that’s what I’d be.
Ruined.
I knew it with the way my spirit was bending toward him. Connected to him in a way that I didn’t understand. As if fate had guided Nelly’s hand as she’d randomly set her finger on that map. Leading me here to him.
He looped an arm around my waist as he ground against me, hard and desperate, and his other hand skidded up my ribs under my jacket before he was palming and squeezing my left breast.
A tease of perfecting bliss rocketed through my insides, and I arched against him.
His breaths were short and jagged, his kisses manic as he spun us into mayhem.
A frenzy that screamed.
Muted laughter suddenly cut into the disorder, and Theo went rigid as his head whipped back and his attention flew to the left where the sound was coming from.
A flashlight wisped back and forth over the glinting snow as the muted laughter and hushed voices came nearer.
Theo quickly settled me onto my feet and stepped in front of me as three teenagers came into view where they were sneaking out from the woods. Teenage boys who were probably about sixteen who’d been staying here all week.
Each morning, they loaded their snowboards onto the top of a monstrous SUV before they headed up to the slopes with who I assumed were one of their parents.
One was hugging two bottles of alcohol to his chest as they slinked through the snow.