8. Chapter 8
Chapter eight
Layla
K issing him isn’t smart. I know this, of course. I don’t dare trust him. I can’t even be certain he’s not one of them. But there are so many factors in play, so many reasons why the taste of him is heaven, and my need for him is everything.
I had cancer.
I don’t have cancer.
I’m a slave to Julian, kept alive by a drug addiction.
And most importantly, I thought Jensen was dead, but he is not.
And so, I sink into the warmth of him, the strength of him that I need so very much, and wrap my arms around his hard body. I trust him beyond reason, and I tell myself it’s because he’s familiar, because he’s a part of my past before all of this happened. None of those reasons are logical reasons to trust, but logic has gotten me nowhere but here.
Right now, there’s just this moment in time with Jensen, with his hand sliding over my waist and my hip. Unbidden, I moan as his palms cup my backside and he lifts me. My legs instinctively wrap his waist, my fingers latching behind his neck. I barely remember him carrying me or how I found myself sitting on the bathroom sink.
I blink.
Bathroom sink?
On some level, I register this as an odd choice of locations, but Jensen’s lips are traveling my jaw and my neck, driving me wild and muting my thoughts outside of those things.
His lips nuzzle my ear, sending shivers down my spine, and he whispers, “Cameras and recording devices.”
I suck in a shocked breath, tense with the implications, but he tilts my mouth to his again, his tongue stroking a long, sensual taste even as his hand slides over my hair. When his lips part from mine, I’m breathless, and he’s sliding open the shower door and turning on the water.
The absence of his touch leaves me shockingly cold. The memory of ICE sliding down my throat is a vivid, bittersweet memory. I can feel the absence of the cancer in my body and how easily I could beg for anything that would keep it away for life when that is not who I am. And it scares me, so very much.
Tension curls in my belly and spreads through my body, my fingers closing around the edges of the vanity beneath me. I’m addicted to ICE, a drug that might have eradicated my cancer, but there is no telling the long-term side effects.
Jensen returns to me, pressing one hand to the vanity beside me, the other cupping my cheek, gently drawing my eyes to his. “We’re getting out of here,” he promises, “but we have to be strategic about how we do it.” He leans in closer, his lips near my ear again, his breath a warm tickle on my neck and lobe. “They need to believe we are doing something other than talking.” He reaches up and turns out the light.
“What are you doing?” I demand, stiffening from the shock of near-complete darkness. Little lights at the baseboard are all that offer my eyes shelter from the depths of the inky room. My hands have landed on his arms, and my fingers curl into my own palms where they rest, resisting him and despising the idea that his kisses have been nothing more than a cover story.
“Letting their imaginations run wild,” he whispers. “And I can hear you thinking, Layla. No, I didn’t kiss you just for a cover. I’ve wanted to kiss you since the day I met you in that library fourteen years ago. And now that I have…” His fingers trail my bottom lip. “I want more.” He slides his hand up my back, sensual and strong, soothing me and exciting me, adding to the heat of his words. “I want that date we never had, and I want to convince you I deserve to make love to you.”
I pant out yet another shocked breath, and my hand presses to his chest, his heartbeat racing beneath my palm.
“But not here,” he murmurs, “not in this hellhole of a place where you don’t belong.” His lips brush mine, silk against my skin that I feel in every part of me.
“Jensen,” I whisper, my fingers curling around the cotton of his T-shirt, shocked how much I want him under such dire circumstances.
“You should know…it drives me so wild when you say my name.”
I laugh at that confession for no good reason—nerves maybe. I want him so badly I might combust. I want him more than I will ever want ICE. “They’re going to put you to work, baby,” he says, serving me a dose of reality, not seduction. “You need to stockpile ICE from the lab every day. And the minute we have enough, and you either have an antidote or you believe you have what you need to make one, you tell me, and I’ll get us out of here.”
A sliver of hope slides inside me that we might escape, that we might save the city, maybe the world, from an ICE addiction. Yes. I want that. I want to make up for walking away in the past and allowing all of this to happen.
But hope is a drug almost as dangerous as ICE. I know that, as I held onto it during my treatments and saw it tease and taunt me, only to let me down. “Why do you think you can get us out of here?”
“I will get us out of here,” he vows, and his mouth closes over mine, the taste of him somehow calming my nerves even as it ignites a fire inside me. I can taste his passion, his lust, his absolute hunger for me, and it’s all my delicate control needs to break me.
Something ignites inside me—a wild, urgent burn for this man like nothing I’ve ever felt. I’m touching him all over, my palms absorbing the heat, clinging to him, and pressing my hands under his T-shirt—taut skin and rippling muscle beneath my palms—and I can’t get enough of him.
“Jensen,” I pant out, and somehow my legs are spread wide and his hips are between my thighs, the thick pulse of his arousal in the intimate V of my body.
He growls at his name on my lips. His hands slide under me, curving around my backside and molding me to him. “You’re killing me, woman. I said, not here, not now.”
“We don’t even know if we’ll have a tomorrow.”
His forehead rests against mine. “I only have so much willpower.”
“I don’t want you to have any .”
His fingers lace into my hair, tilting my gaze to his. “This isn’t how I wanted this to happen.”
“You don’t know what it’s like to go from being the walking dead to the living. I don’t know how long that lasts for me, Jensen. I might be the only one with cancer who’s taken that drug, and cancer is a more brutal, powerful beast than most understand. So, kiss me already, and stop trying to protect my virtue. I might not have tomorrow because I might be de—”
“Do not even say that. That’s not going to happen, but I’m not taking you like this, not when—”
“I won’t forgive you if you don’t,” I vow, and my hand slides between us, fingers tracing the hard line of his erection.
He groans and covers my hand with his, holds it there a moment, and leans in and kisses me until my toes curl. “We’ll compromise,” he whispers in my ear, nibbling the lobe.
“What does that mean?” I ask, sounding as breathless as I feel, his fingers brushing aside my shirt, his teeth scraping the delicate skin of my shoulder.
“Actions speak louder than words. I’ll show you what it means.” He shifts his body, and oh God, he’s on his knees on the floor, pushing my skirt along my thighs as he kisses a path upward, so intimately close to the place I want him most.
“Jensen,” I whisper, and it’s a plea and a demand, a wish and a want.
He kisses the silk of my panties. “Do you like the way I compromise?”
I swallow hard, warmth sliding through me, threatening to become fire. “Yes,” I manage. I think. I’m not sure I say it out loud.
“Good,” he murmurs, easing my panties down my legs, and my fingers curl around the vanity again, with the edge of anticipation driving me wild. One of his hands slides up and down my thigh, even as his mouth finds my inner thigh, teasing me mercilessly.
“Jensen,” I plead, needing his mouth. Oh, I need his mouth. It’s been so very long since there was anything in my life that represented pleasure.
He laughs at my eagerness, low and sexy, the sound filled with the mischief of a man enjoying his power. He licks my clit, and the shock is bittersweet—just what I want and not enough. I arch my hips, my nipples aching as if they, too, feel his tongue. The moments that follow are a haze of desire, stretching minutes or hours; I’m incapable of knowing at this point. His fingers slide along the sensitive, slick seam of my body, his tongue flickering about, mimicking lovemaking with such skill that I ache for him inside me.
I’m undone in the best of ways, my fingers diving into his hair, but not gently. He’s teasing me, making me absolutely wild, holding me on edge until neither he nor I can possibly win the battle to wait. I tumble over the edge, my body spasming around his fingers, his tongue gently easing me to the other side.
My release is so extreme and so intense that I’m all but collapsing forward when he stands up and anchors me with his body and hands, one hand cupping my face. What surprises me is how little shyness I feel when we are all but strangers, and yet somehow, we are not.
“Layla,” he says, and then suddenly stiffens, his energy sharp, edgy. “Get in the shower now.” He flips on the light and starts to undress.
“What? I don’t—”
He leans in and kisses me. “Someone just came in the front door. Get in the shower and stay there until I tell you to come out.”
He tugs his shirt over his head, the sprinkle of blond hair across his broad chest making me gulp for air. He leans against the wall and reaches for his boots. Meanwhile, I can’t seem to move off the vanity, let alone undress. Somehow it had been easier with the lights out and passion on.
He picks me up and sets me on the ground. “Shower. Now.”
Right. Shower. I bend down and unlace my flat sandals, right as his pants fall to the floor. Good Lord, he’s commando. And he has abs fine enough to make grown women cry.
A knock sounds on the door. “Open up.”
Horror seizes me at the sound of Tad’s voice. Jensen dips his head under the water and then wraps a towel around his waist. He runs a hand over his head and smoothes the hair to his scalp before reaching for the door, eyeing me over his shoulder with a silent command in his stare. We can’t look like we were using the water for cover, or I assume we’re in worse trouble than we already are. With that understanding, I unzip my skirt, allow it to fall to the floor, then open the shower door, stepping inside, my bra intact, my panties out there where he put them.
I lean against the wall, passion quickly turning to fear. The bathroom door opens, and I hold my breath. Tad is here. I feel the menace of him as readily as I feel trust for Jensen. Time stands still as I wait for what will come next. Finally, there’s movement, a shift in the air, and the door shuts. I let out a relieved breath, but my worry for Jensen roars a moment later.
He's not one of them, but that’s a small comfort in a moment such as this one.