FIFTY
THE brECKENRIDGE PARENTS left not long after the meal was over. It wasn’t that they didn’t have life in them, she got the feeling they wanted the younger ones to let loose.
Ha, like they were teenagers with the house to themselves for the first time, the alcohol did flow a little freer after their elders departed. Festivities had progressed to a point their hosts invited everyone downstairs to the heart of the always beating building.
“Come down to the club,” Roxie beseeched, shaking Savvy’s hand. “We’ll kick everyone out. And you’ll be safe, the Ruby Room Dyce glass is bulletproof.”
Just what everyone wanted to consider on a night out.
Darroch was by the still open door, speaking to Tripp, the only other person left with them.
“Empress!” Tripp called. “Get moving!”
Roxie did glance back but took one more opportunity to turn on her doe eyes.
“Not tonight,” she said because the last thing she wanted was anyone else in danger. “It’s been a long day.”
A ridiculously long day.
“Okay.” Roxie hugged her and kissed her cheek. “If you change your mind, call; Ballard will send up a phalanx of guards to bring you down. Not bring you down, bring you down… escort you, is what I mean.”
“Okay,” she said on a laugh.
Tripp materialized to commandeer Roxie’s hand and lead her across the room. “Yeah, she gets it, Rox Out.”
Once Darroch closed the door behind the pair, she breathed out.
“Tired?” Darroch asked, sauntering toward her in the middle of the living room.
“Not really.”
“I’m sorry about everyone descending on—”
“They care about you. Didn’t you once say you don’t take that for granted?”
“Once said a lot of things.” He stopped in front of her. Closer than maybe he should’ve. “We both did.” Instead of backing away, her chin rose until their eyes met. “You know I’d never let anything hurt you, don’t you?”
Maybe. Yes. But she’d trusted him before and that turned out to be a mistake. Would he let anything hurt her? What a question. He’d let himself hurt her, broken her heart. Mocked her, lied to her, gotten God knows what kick out of pretending to be someone he wasn’t, two someones he wasn’t.
Argh! She couldn’t let herself get bogged down in the whys of the past. Maybe this time together was a gift. Fate gave her a last chance to taste what had been cruelly stolen from her so suddenly.
“This isn’t about us,” she murmured, drugged by his gaze. “Are you attracted to me?”
A crazy lush, the betrayal didn’t change her fundamental attraction to him. How could it still be so potent? His body, once apparently hers, had never shared itself with her. Why did she need that now?
Of their own accord, her hands skimmed up onto his body, so solid, and so close.
“Every fucking second, Cherry, baby—”
“We’re just two people.” Simple biology. “Here, alone.” And that was an advantage she hadn’t expected. Pressing her nails just a little deeper, she licked her lips. “Kiss me.”
Scooping both hands beneath her ears to cradle her skull, he dipped to capture her mouth with his. They were good at this. The pressure of need in that kiss promised more security than any building could provide. And, no, she didn’t mean forever, but in that moment, this man was—
“Baby…” he gasped, parting their mouths a whisper. “I’ve missed you so goddamn—”
“Not about us.”
Planting her hands on his chest, she pushed him back and went for the zipper on her dress. His flash of surprise heightened the mischief searing desire into her veins. God, she wanted to feel him, to lie under him and give in to the oblivion of just being a woman enjoying a guy hotter than sin.
Dropping her dress, she didn’t feel exposed or vulnerable. Under the shroud of his desire, her skin tingled, every hair quivered.
“Sav, you’re my whole world, there’s nothing I wouldn’t—”
“Then do this,” she said, guiding his hand to her waist. “Give me what I need.”
“I don’t understand what—”
“Didn’t you say this was my terms? That I’m the boss?”
“Yeah, but—”
“If you reject me—”
“Not possible.”
She opened her arms at her sides and strolled backward toward his bedroom. “Then come get me.”
Offering herself to him was selfish. Insanity. So risky. Yet slipping out of her underwear and crawling on to his bed was the most natural thing in the world. Just like the first night they’d slept together at—no.
Lying on her back, on a kind of diagonal, her heavy eyes scrutinized his slow advance. Good idea or bad idea, the man came up close, absorbing her every atom, scrutinizing the figure he’d seen before. That didn’t matter, not according to the heated message sent by his gaze.
And though he opened his mouth on a quiet inhale, he thought better of whatever words almost passed his lips and unbuttoned his shirt instead. Ripping it from his shoulders, he had his pants off a breath later and then he was on her.
A kiss. A touch. The blanket of him protecting her, she writhed, raising her hips as he guided her leg high around him, holding it close and pushing his tongue deeper, forcing her head into the mattress.
Yes.
Yes!
Oh, she wanted to scream, wanted the world to exist in the long, hot shaft pressing against her, moving slow, massaging her, ripening her body for an advance.
And it was that advance she needed.
Rising from the kiss, he searched her eyes through the dim light supplied by the city beyond the windows.
“Are you sure this is—”
“What I need right here in this moment?” she asked and laid a hand on his face. “Yes.”
With a switch of his hips, the blunt head of his cock pushed against her. Still reluctant, he didn’t take his eyes from hers like he expected her to run out of there. She wouldn’t. He could take all night if she didn’t move things along.
Pressuring his chest, she rolled with him as he landed on his back. On the next inhale, she impaled herself deep, whining out the ecstasy of the plunge. What a world to live in. How could one simple act feel so good?
“Mmm,” she moaned, eyes closed, head back, she rolled her hips, pushing into the cradle of his hands fondling her breasts. “Darroch.” The taste of his name had never been so intimate. The head of his cock rocked against her G-spot and she sped up, teasing and caressing the space within that had never been so easily reached. “Oh, baby…”
“Cherry…”
She should tell him not to use that name. That moment wasn’t about them. It wasn’t intimacy, it was safety in numbers.
Pushing up, she dropped, squeezing and massaging him, taking all she wanted, enlivening herself on the gift buried deep within her.
And then she was on her back. In one swoop with his arms around her, he changed the game and took his turn hammering her deep, faster, harder, more than she’d been, yet the juxtaposition of styles fired her hormones to work overtime.
Oh, she couldn’t stop touching him. Every part of him was there for her, running its energy on pleasuring her and itself. Was it? Was her body pleasuring his?
“Are you… are you…” Each gasp was too much and the pressure within her burst out in a scream. Her body bucked, arching hard, squeezing tight, clinging to every vestige of the pure lust in physical form that electrified her body.
“Baby…”
He was quick to follow, plunging deep, releasing a long, powerful groan as he poured his seed into her. Without moving from above, he swept the hair from her brow.
Forcing him up, she was quick off the bed. “Thank you.”
“Babe!”
Despite his calls, she kept on going, leaving his room to cross to the living room and ensconce herself in her private space.
Or what was supposed to be her private space.
Darroch quickly invaded it. “Baby—”
“No, not baby,” she said, snatching her robe from the adjoining bathroom to put it on.
“Savanna. What was that? We’re—what was that?”
“What I needed,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me like you—baby, I lo—”
“Don’t say that. Don’t say anything. It is what it was.”
“And what was that?”
“What I needed.” She forced a smile, pushing her hair back with both hands. “Physical, Darroch. I needed the physical.”
“So you used me for sex? As a punishment?”
Didn’t that just change the hue of the conversation.
Her smile transitioned to a frown. “Used you? If you didn’t want to sleep with me—”
“I do want to sleep with you, that’s why I’m here. Sex? You want it, you got it, but you don’t have to run away the second we’re done.”
“We’re not a couple,” she said without intending to be cruel. Her words might hurt—ha, that was a laugh. He hadn’t spared a thought for how his actions hurt her. “I’m sorry, I thought you understood.”
“That it was physical.”
“Whatever I need, that’s what you said.”
Some of the bluster left his aura. “Whatever you need.” He exhaled. “You know how to find me.”
As he walked on out, she stayed put. They were attracted to each other, two people in an intense situation who needed comfort. What was wrong with that?